Ok, that's a switch for you!! So, feel free to explain how you would slow Kennedy, who is doing actual real damage to US healthcare.
Plague of anomalies in conference proceedings hint at ‘systemic issues’ Hundreds of conference papers published by the U.S.-based Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) show signs of plagiarism, citation fraud and other types of scientific misconduct, according to data sleuths. “I am concerned that the issue with these particular conferences is widespread enough such that it indicates systemic issues with their peer review systems,” Kendra Albert wrote last August in an email to IEEE that Retraction Watch has seen. Albert is a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School and a lecturer in women, gender, and sexuality at Harvard University. On the side, Albert has been working with Guillaume Cabanac, a professor of computer science at the University of Toulouse, in France, to ferret out research misconduct using a computer system called the Problematic Paper Screener. Continue reading
I'm am reading (or, attempting to read, most of it is way above my head) link--> Alan Longhurst's Doubt and Uncertainty in Climate Science; popped up on a Amazon "You make like this" email; turns out it's intended as a Graduate or Doctoral level text. That being said his chapter on peer reviews pretty much destroys the idea that a "peer review" certifies the content as climatic gospel.
The Recursive Crisis of Trust in Social Psychology and Beyond Charles Rotter The crisis of trust in scientific research is a harsh wake-up call in the ongoing crisis that is academia. . . . The recent allegations surrounding Francesca Gino, a respected researcher of dishonesty at Harvard Business School, have cast a disquieting shadow over the field of social psychology. The breadth and depth of the scandal, coupled with Gino’s widespread influence in the field of dishonesty research illuminates the precarious nature of trust in academic research and poses serious questions about the integrity of peer-reviewed science. https://www.chronicle.com/article/a...h-her-are-scrambling?sra=true&cid=gen_sign_in According to reports, Gino stands accused of fabricating data in multiple studies she co-authored, inciting fear and confusion amongst her collaborators and the wider scientific community. As someone deeply entrenched in the study of unethical behavior, Gino’s actions, if proven, would be a jarring paradox, as well as a hilarious irony, further stirring the mistrust. This shocking turn of events forces us to continue to reconsider the nature and foundations of academic integrity in scientific research and the ongoing replication crisis. Could this be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, shining a a spotlight on a flawed system that has been festering beneath the surface for years? Gino’s case is not an isolated incident in social psychology. The field has seen its fair share of controversies in recent years, with other respected researchers like Diederik Stapel and Brian Wansink embroiled in similar misconduct cases. Such incidents have even continued to reinforce the “replication crisis,” challenging the credibility and reliability of previously accepted research. This series of events points to a systemic problem, raising uncomfortable questions about the state of peer-reviewed science. The allegation that multiple academic papers contain manipulated or completely fabricated data undermines the very foundation of scientific research – trust. Academics, like Maurice E. Schweitzer, who collaborated with Gino, admit that they implicitly trusted their peers to provide accurate and reliable data. This implicit trust, however, can be exploited, leading to significant ramifications for the credibility and progress of science. This crisis of trust is not confined to social psychology. While social psychology might appear as a bellwether, the issues at hand impact the wider scientific community. Lack of data availability, opaque methodologies, and the pressure to produce groundbreaking research are prevalent in numerous disciplines. The scientific community’s obsession with novel findings, as well as reinforcing ideologically driven narratives, often overlooks the rigorous validation of results, making fertile ground for misconduct. . . .
On a more positive note, IEEE seems to be giving some long-overdue recognition to Kim Roberts, the man who, perhaps more than anyone but Tim Berners-Lee, can claim actually to have invented the Internet. Roberts's teams of engineers, first at Nortel Networks and more recently at Ciena, have developed most of the optical switching technology the Internet runs on, and could not exist without. A few years ago, Roberts got the Tyndall Award (one step below a Nobel) for lifetime achievement in optical engineering. It was actually Roberts's shameful treatment by top management at Nortel that persuaded me businessmen are not generally virtuous Ayn Randian Heroes of Production.
Publisher blacklists authors after preprint cites made-up studies Henrik Enghoff Last month, a millipede expert in Denmark received an email notifying him that one of his publications had been mentioned in a new manuscript on Preprints.org. But when the researcher, Henrik Enghoff, downloaded the paper, he learned that it cited his work for something off-topic. Stranger still, the authors of the now-withdrawn preprint, a group of researchers in China and Africa, also referenced two papers by Enghoff that he knew he hadn’t written. It turned out they didn’t exist. “I’ve never had anything like this happen before,” Enghoff, a professor at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, in Copenhagen, told Retraction Watch. Continue reading
Editorial board member dropped from journal site after Retraction Watch-Undark report links him to paper mill Masoud Afrand The journal Scientific Reports removed a scientist linked to paper mill activity from its editorial board last year, but didn’t take his name off the web page until last month, after a Retraction Watch-Undark story pointed out his association. The former editorial board member, Masoud Afrand, is an assistant professor of engineering at the Islamic Azad University in Iran. In our story, Alexander Magazinov, a scientific sleuth and software engineer based in Kazakhstan, cited Afrand as an example of researchers seemingly associated with paper mills who manage to get editorial positions at reputable journals. Afrand, he said: Continue reading
The new retraction record holder is a German anesthesiologist, with 184 Ludwigshafen Hospital, via Wikimedia The German anesthesiologist Joachim Boldt has lost 20 more papers since January 2023, earning him the top spot in our leaderboard, with 184 retractions. Boldt, readers may recall, was once one of the leading international figures in perioperative medicine. His work, particularly studies involving the use of fluid management during surgery, helped inform clinical guidelines that, thanks to his misdeeds, some experts believe may have put patients at risk for serious harm and even death. Boldt has vaulted over another anesthesiologist, Yoshitaka Fujii, to take the crown (more on that in a moment) – although one might fairly ask: Why did it take so long? Continue reading
From Dr. Richard Horton, the current editor-in-chief of the Lancet one of the most prestigous journals of the health and biosciences: "The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness." Quote provided from the following source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/editor...l-half-of-all-the-literature-is-false/5451305 https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(15)60696-1.pdf Everyone should know that most cancer research is largely a fraud, and that the major cancer research organisations are derelict in their duties to the people who support them. Linus Pauling, Ph.D., two time Nobel Prize winner, in Outrage, Oct/Nov 1986 Dr. Marcia Angell, a physician and longtime Editor in Chief of the New England Medical Journal (NEMJ), which is considered to another one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals in the world, makes her view of the subject quite plain: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2964337/ “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine”
Weekend reads: The black market for papers; the secret life of retractions; a ‘troublesome pattern’ The week at Retraction Watch featured: Science rescinds expression of concern issued last month Exclusive: Public health journal says it will retract vaping paper for questions authors say were addressed in peer review Exclusive: City of Hope cancer researcher goes to court to fight misconduct finding Meet the author who has published more than 500 letters to the editor in a year Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up to nearly 350. There are now 41,000 retractions in our database — which powers retraction alerts in Edifix, EndNote, LibKey, Papers, and Zotero. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains 200 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately — or our list of top 10 most highly cited retracted papers? Here’s what was happening elsewhere (some of these items may be paywalled, metered access, or require free registration to read): Continue reading
The "Replication Crisis" is being exposed in every area of science research. “In my opinion, the ‘ML Replication Crisis’ goes against the ethical principles research was founded upon (i.e., reliability, validity, trustworthiness, replicability. . .), but is also a reflection of what research has become,” said Chantel Perry, Senior Data Scientist at Microsoft. Earlier in 2022, researchers from Princeton University published a paper titled, ‘Leakage and the Reproducibility Crisis in ML-based Science’. The study notes that a research can be termed reproducible only if the codes and data used by the researchers are made available. In 2020, Google Health published a paper in Nature that described how AI was leveraged to look for signs of breast cancer in medical images. However, as noteworthy as the innovation was, Google was criticised for providing little to no information about its code or how it was tested. A replication crisis does not only occur when researchers find it hard to replicate earlier research. Chantel Perry believes the replication crisis may occur due to several reasons, including: proprietary reasons, limitations in project scope, lack of a third-party review process, lack of rigour when utilising existing ML frameworks, pressure to publish perfect studies rather than listing the details of a study (i.e., limitations, biases, recommendations and future studies), lack of rigorous editorial and peer review process, along with several other reasons. Perry further adds that technology research is no longer just a medium to share knowledge, findings, and mistakes to help other researchers and improve society. “In some cases, technology research is a source of profit for organisations, which isn’t necessarily a problem, except for the fact that this could put pressure on researchers to move quickly and result in more errors. I think the ‘ML Replication Crisis’ is just a symbol of how technology research is no longer a primary tool for sharing innovation and societal improvement but is being prioritised more for capital gain.”—Chantel Perry, Senior Data Scientist – Microsoft.” ANALYTICS INDIA, Endless Origins, Tech Research is Facing a Replication Crisis and Everyone is Blaming Everyone, AI already suffers from the black-box problem and the lack of transparency on research only aggravates the issue. By Pritam Bordoloi, 8/23/2023. https://analyticsindiamag.com/tech-...tion-crisis-and-everyone-is-blaming-everyone/
Clearly, this should be addressed. Scientists are the best source of knowledge that Earth has, and the down side of ignoring problems can not be tolerated. So, the question becomes what to do. The items the list above make sense to me. Some of these are going to be tough, I suspect. For example, rewards go to those who advance science, not to those who duplicate the studies of those who advance science. Others clearly require time and money. One of the largest problems I see is that concerns about quality can be used by political activists to denigrate solidly confirmed results. This turns a collection of problems into an assault on all science, today and into the past - an technique that is saleable even though it's preposterous.
Much of the C-19 research is now "stinking to high heaven" like a dead skunk in the middle of the road". "‘Fraud and Scientific Misconduct'? The findings have led several prominent figures to accuse the authors of outright deception. Richard H. Ebright, the Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University, called the paper "scientific fraud." "The 2020 ‘Proximal Origin' paper falsely claimed science showed COVID-19 did not have a lab origin," tweeted Ebright. "Newly released messages from the authors show they did not believe the conclusions of the paper and show the paper is the product of scientific fraud and scientific misconduct." Ebright and Silver are among those pushing a petition urging Nature to retract the article in light of these findings. Among those to sign the petition was Neil Harrison, a professor of anesthesiology and molecular pharmacology at Columbia University." American Institute for Economic Research ‘Caught-Red-Handed': Scientists Call for Full Retraction of Nature's Proximal Origin Paper, as Fraud Accusations Mount, Story by Jon Miltimore •1w [8/12/23] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/tech...-paper-as-fraud-accusations-mount/ar-AA1eB6IW
I hope that a common agreement on sources emerges. But, that's not nearly so important as taking steps concerning future SARs variants causing similar and quite possibly more lethal disease throughout the world. SARS lives within a know region of the world. It's known that there are many thousands of SARS variants in the bats of that region, for example. The USA (and others) should want moves toward a cooperative approach on SARS, including in China. Unfortunately, the US position has been STRONGLY anti-China, declaring them to be nothing short of criminal. That is how one goes about assuring that NO cooperative approach is even possible. This is one of the most profoundly STUPID and self destructive directions we could have possibly taken. Our focus MUST include the developing a working relationship with China on this problem, including at that particular lab (which contains the world's knowledge of SARS vectors, food practices, other disease outbreaks that didn't get to the world, and other key knowledge).
And??? Deciding they are criminals doesn't lead to ANYTHING of any value to the USA or the world. All our attempts to accuse China of being a bunch of criminals is preposterous - not just from the crap evidence, but from the fact that it is a NEGATIVE achievement for the whole rest of the world. In fact, Trump's "hate China" movement prevented cooperation AND got Americans of Asian descent MURDERED in hate crimes. We need to be working on things that DO have value. There have already been multiple SARS outbreaks from the same general region. COVID will NOT be the last one. Plus, the next one could very easily be far more deadly. We should be working WITH China on this problem, especially as they are the ones who have the information on SARS and WILL be the first to detect the next outbreak.
The most important step to confront SARS is to get the science right. The Chinese have consistently attempted to stop that. Their actions are literally a crime against humanity. Isolating China is the beginning of finding solutions.
The science we need to get right is in CHINA. Pretending we're doing better by ignoring that fact is anti-science. Plus, it continues to be destructive of any possible direction in improving access to information on SARS. There is LITERALLY nothing to be gained by these accusations. All we've accomplished is to ensure we have no access. Plus, we're continue to ensure we will have no access in the future, either. This is the most STUPID, counterproductive witch hunt we could possibly design. There is literally ZERO up side. And, it prevents ANY possibility of changing that.
