Junk Science: Poor science, pseudoscience, errors, and fraud

[Doc]

Not sure whether to put this here or in political humor. Could someone do a study and let me know?




I see I was scooped on this. Lest any gender study majors reading this are confused:

https://www.chronicle.com/article/Sokal ... uge/244714

kVk9a5Jcd1k




For a good time call, or rather click:

https://twitter.com/RealPeerReview

[Doc]

Question "expertise"


https://eugenics.us/scientific-american ... 11/448.htm

“The Science of Breeding Better Men” 1911

Editorial from a 1911 edition of Scientific American [Source]:

Sci-Am’s Editor’s note: This editorial was written and published in 1911. Although our editors of a century ago pondered some lofty aspirations for the orderly future of humans, it was only three decades later that the brutal reality of a Nazi social order suffused with a eugenicist ideal brought home the practical shortcomings of the philosophy.

Practical shortcomings of the Philosophy......

....and 12 million dead.

[Typhoon]

The Spectator | Lying with science: a guide to myth debunking

Pseudoscience is on the rise – and the media is completely hooked.

[Typhoon]

Quillette | Motivated Reasoning Is Disfiguring Social Science

[Nonc Hilaire]

Open Science: working solutions to the increasing politicalization of science by the elite.

MlVVUgWsBRo

[Simple Minded]

https://quillette.com/2019/04/16/why-ar ... n-physics/

"
The results that came out of this study did not fit the discrimination narrative. With colleagues, I spent the summer checking the data and exploring ways to present them at the workshop that wouldn’t harm our careers. We joked among ourselves about what would happen to the person giving the presentation, having discovered the fate of other scientists who made similar points. Our findings were scientifically robust, but nobody in our little group wanted to present them. In the end, I decided that I had the least to lose.

So I presented the results, discussed them with colleagues at CERN and tried to convey as sincerely as I could that the final sentence of my talk—“hope to see you again”—was not supposed to be ironic. As predicted, a storm was quickly whipped up on Twitter and elsewhere, misinterpreting my views and even inventing some statements and attributing them to me. CERN issued a press release according to which “everyone is welcome…regardless of…beliefs” and suspended me while investigating whether my 30-minute talk had violated internal rules, such as the “obligation to exercise reserve and tact,” “reserve in expressing personal opinions” and “communications to the public.”

"

"Particles for justice"

PFJ's are the natural allies of SJW's

[Typhoon]

Decades of attempts to recruit women into the physical sciences and mathematics to achieve representation proportional to the general population have not lead to the intended result.

Anecdotally, women seem more interested in fields such as biology and psychology.

On the other hand, the few women that do choose these fields tend to be first-rate in their abilities.

[Typhoon]

A favourite, much mis-applied, supposedly scientific explanation for why people that disagree with one's own beliefs are dumb is probably pseudo-science.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect Is Probably Not Real

The darling of those who wish to explain why incompetent people don’t know they’re unskilled, the Dunning-Kruger effect may actually just be a data artefact.

- The Dunning-Kruger effect was originally described in 1999 as the observation that people who are terrible at a particular task think they are much better than they are, while people who are very good at it tend to underestimate their competence
- The Dunning-Kruger effect was never about “dumb people not knowing they are dumb” or about “ignorant people being very arrogant and confident in their lack of knowledge.”
- Because the effect can be seen in random, computer-generated data, it may not be a real flaw in our thinking and thus may not really exist

[Doc]

42QuXLucH3Q

[Typhoon]

Daily Mail | The plague of fake medical trials putting lives in danger as experts reveal a FIFTH of studies published each year could contain invented or plagiarised results

Group of highly respected experts fear medical world is rife with research fraud

One in five of the two million studies published annually could involve fake data

Former editor of British Medical Journal warned of a reluctance to address issue

[Nonc Hilaire]

On the capture of the academic sciences by government.

https://americanmind.org/salvo/modern-s ... n-bargain/

[Typhoon]

Nature | Stamp out fake clinical data by working together

How can we make sure that medical trials reported in the scientific literature are real? It is surprisingly hard — but not impossible.

[Nonc Hilaire]

2003 Congressional testimony. SV-40 cancer virus included in polio vaccines from 1960’s until at least 1990’s covered up by FDA.

D3CD1173-2646-404C-AAD5-8B7BC1363B2C.jpeg (318.18 KiB) Viewed 7752 times

[Typhoon]

The US Congressional Record is for drama, not science.

Research that is a bit more up-to-date

Journal of Clinical Oncology | Is There a Role for SV40 in Human Cancer?

Abstract

The question of whether Simian Virus 40 (SV40) can cause human tumors has been one of the most highly controversial topics in cancer research during the last 50 years. The longstanding debate began with the discovery of SV40 as a contaminant in poliovirus vaccine stocks that were used to inoculate approximately 100 million children and adults in the United States between 1955 and 1963, and countless more throughout the world. Concerns regarding the potential health risk of SV40 exposure were reinforced by studies demonstrating SV40's potential to transform human cells and promote tumor growth in animal models. Many studies have attempted to assess the relationship between the potential exposure of humans to SV40 and cancer incidence. Reports of the detection of SV40 DNA in a variety of cancers have raised serious concerns as to whether the inadvertent inoculation with SV40 has led to the development of cancer in humans. However, inconsistent reports linking SV40 with various tumor types has led to conflicting views regarding the potential of SV40 as a human cancer virus. Several recent studies suggest that older detection methodologies were flawed, and the limitations of these methods could account for most, if not all, of the positive correlations of SV40 in human tumors to date. Although many people may have been exposed to SV40 by polio vaccination, there is inadequate evidence to support widespread SV40 infection in the population, increased tumor incidence in those individuals who received contaminated vaccine, or a direct role for SV40 in human cancer.

Link to full paper [pdf]

[Nonc Hilaire]

Talking about bad science in this thread. The FDA covered up the SV-40 instead of flagging it and rejecting the vaccine.

Not medical science. Political science, criminal science, economic science?

The vaccine contaminant is not material. The fact that the FDA covered up the contamination is.

[Typhoon]

The polio vaccine saved countless children's lives - from a life severely crippled, possibly in an iron lung, or death.

The simian virus contamination was identified and fixed.

There is no good evidence that SV40 contamination caused cancer in humans.

OWID | Polio

Polio has been now eradicated globally.

Any new biological is not without risk.
Some individuals have allergic reactions, of varying severity, to penicillin.
Anecdotally, I know someone who is allergic to a common beta-blocker: only three such cases,
with the specific allergic reaction, have been reported in the global medical literature.

The key point is relative risk: lives saved versus potential side effects.

If anti-vaxxers want to obsess over imperfect history, that's fine.

Considering the life-saving benefits of the polio vaccine, I don't care.

[Miss_Faucie_Fishtits]

The polio vaccine saved countless children's lives - from a life severely crippled, possibly in an iron lung, or death.

The simian virus contamination was identified and fixed.

There is no good evidence that SV40 contamination caused cancer in humans.

OWID | Polio

Polio has been now eradicated globally.

Any new biological is not without risk.
Some individuals have allergic reactions, of varying severity, to penicillin.
Anecdotally, I know someone who is allergic to a common beta-blocker: only three such cases,
with the specific allergic reaction, have been reported in the global medical literature.

The key point is relative risk: lives saved versus potential side effects.

If anti-vaxxers want to obsess over imperfect history, that's fine.

Considering the life-saving benefits of the polio vaccine, I don't care.

https://archive.org/details/polioamericansto00oshi

[kmich]

An anti-vaccination cartoon from the 1940's. Anti-vaccination movements were common in the first half of the 20th century. The last natural outbreak of smallpox in the United States occurred in 1949 and was declared eradicated worldwide in 1980 due to vaccination campaigns and initiatives. One of the great public health achievements in human history.

[Typhoon]

As you know, anti-vaccination goes all the way back to vaccine pioneer Dr. Edward Jenner and his cowpox vaccine for smallpox.

A personal favourite cartoon:

The_cow_pock.jpg (1016.57 KiB) Viewed 7681 times

[The British Museum]

[kmich]

Dismantling the anti-vaxx industry

When we see anti-vaxx misinformation on social media, we must resist falling into the trap of engaging with it, however tempting it may be to point out obvious flaws and falsehoods. Engaging with misinformation online spreads it further: if we scratch the itch, we spread the disease. It is far more helpful and effective to instead share good information about vaccines from trusted sources.

[Nonc Hilaire]

On scientific publishing.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... or-science

[Doc]

FOIA request court order release of Pfizer COVID Vaccine documents

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YOD9drZasM

7YOD9drZasM

[Doc]

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/07 ... -plankton/

Beware of bad science reporting: No, we haven’t killed 90% of all plankton
A very misleading article on marine life has been getting a lot of attention.

[Typhoon]

=https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/fraud ... s Research

A stunning case of possible fraud in Alzheimer’s research reinforces the need for scientific rigor at every level.

[Nonc Hilaire]

After months of investigation that identified networks of reviewers and editors manipulating the peer review process, Hindawi plans to retract 511 papers across 16 journals, Retraction Watch has learned.

The retractions, which the publisher and its parent company, Wiley, will announce tomorrow in a blog post, will be issued in the next month, and more may come as its investigation continues. They are not yet making the list available.

Hindawi’s research integrity team found several signs of manipulated peer reviews for the affected papers, including reviews that contained duplicated text, a few individuals who did a lot of reviews, reviewers who turned in their reviews extremely quickly, and misuse of databases that publishers use to vet potential reviewers.

Richard Bennett, vice president of researcher and publishing services for Hindawi, told us that the publisher suspects “coordinated peer review rings” consisting of reviewers and editors working together to advance manuscripts through to publication. Some of the manuscripts appeared to come from paper mills, he said.

https://retractionwatch.com/2022/09/28/ ... dium=email