Winegate: Red wine health researcher falsified data

MMM… is it worth carrying on taking my Res V. plus ??

Oh No!

“Dr Nir Barzilai, whose team conducts resveratrol research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, says Das is not a major player in the field.”
“…the Health Center has declined nearly $900,000 in federal grants awarded to Das.”
So just how much does a major player in this field receive in federal grants?

India produces a good share of tricksters.
Beware in your business.

What on earth can cause a misconduct report to be 60,000 pages? How many words does it take to say the guy is a cheat? 60,000 pages – that’s more than the Encyclopaedia Brittanica! Must be a typo?

Cheers

For general quaffing I prefer white wine myself.
Not that I have anything against a fine red burgundy, or a good barolo or even a old rioja for that matter.
Claret I can take or leave and new world red wines I prefer to leave, if I want to be hit in the face by the flavour of blackcurrants I prefer to buy Ribena: a famous English blackcurrant syrup brand.
As for the health benefits I find wine most beneficial.
As for absurd health claims backed with meaningless statistical garbage I have no use for them. A current one is that eating processed meat increases the chance of pancreatic cancer by some 20%. Golly gosh. Isn’t going to put me off my bacon sandwiches I can tell you.
It’s all unbelievable balderdash. There are serious risks to life in this world which wise persons take account of: and there are imperceptible risks which might kill the odd unlucky person. These are of little or no account to thee and me.
Which does not stop do gooders and a sensation seeking press going on about them. Ignore.
Kindest Regards

“Barzilai told AP lots of labs around the world are conducting extensive research into resveratrol, with encouraging results, and the new allegation will not make a material difference.”
The science is settled. Move along. Nothing to see here.

Don’t forget that increased CO2 is good, at least for Port Wine:
http://www.vitis-vea.de/admin/volltext/w0%2009%2012.pdf
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf8020199
Ecotretas

Partially related, concerning (British) government limits on units of alcohol. This turned up on one site I read:
HeartAttackSurvivor said…
When I was being stented after my heart attack, my cardio surgeon told me “now, listen to me because I’m a heart specialist and I know these things. I want you to drink red wine every day”. He then went on at length (and I was of course a captive audience…) that he was closely associated with the working group that threw up the “21 units” figure. Apparently they had told the government that the range of units over which the mortality rate was lower than LD50 was 21 to 65 units (it’s a “J” shaped curve) and NOTWITHSTANDING other effects – cancer, liver disease, falling over into the path of a bus etc, people who drink 21 to 65 units a week live longer than people who drink nothing. The chief government health wonk was appalled and said “we can’t tell people to drink 65 units a week (about a bottle a day)!” So they fixed it at 21, any more than that and you’re a total sot with the life expetancy of Amy Winehouse. Also see http://www.wightwash.org.uk/drinks_units_myth.htm

‘research into resveratrol’
I read that as Reserve a troll.
I wonder what R.Gates thinks

If he had been a pro-cAGW researcher, I doubt this would have come out, but, as the establishment is currently on a massive anti-alcohol, anti-smoking, anti-fun crusade, you can bet the investigators went in with all guns blazing!

pat says:
January 12, 2012 at 10:47 pm
“12 Jan: UK Telegraph: South Africa weather forecasters threatened with jail if predictions wrong.”
Hmmm, could be more reasonable than appears at first read; – a lot of resources are mobilized, put on stand-by; however a jail threat is pretty overboard. Then again if I close my convertible, put on a rain mac, but sweat my bollocks off in winter woolies while my car suffers sun blisters, can I sue?

He should have ‘studied’ the effect of sparkling wines.
With CO2 involved every fake study survives.

I wonder do the cabal of climate scientists who have managed to mislead the governments of the west worry that they will one day face the wrath of the people? Or do they feel so confident in their protection that they are above the norms of ordinary men?
Their fall will be so satisfying.

A “Diederik Stapel” all over again, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diederik_Stapel
The whole thing with him started rolling when a he, Roos Vonk and Marcel Zeelenberg published an article that meat eaters are more selfish than vegetarians, wich was suspected to be based on faked data. The research result had not yet been published in a scientific journal, only a press bulletin was released.
He has written a 130 articles and 24 bookchapters and it will take years to research wich ones are based upon faked data, not to mention that others used his data as well.

Storm in wineglass.

Experts say …
…-
“‘Scientists falsify data to get research published and whistleblowers are bullied into keeping quiet,’ claim their own colleagues”
“More than one in ten scientists and doctors claim to have witnessed colleagues deliberately fabricating data in order to get their research published, a new poll has revealed.
The survey of almost 2,800 experts in Britain also found six per cent knew of possible research misconduct at their own institution that has not been properly investigated.
The poll for the hugely-respected British Medical Journal (BMJ) is being presented at a meeting aimed at tackling research misconduct in the UK.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2085814/Scientists-falsify-data-research-published-whistleblowers-bullied-keeping-quiet-claim-colleagues.html

It is just a matter of time until Penn State does a real investigation on Mann’s research. Without said investigation, Penn State will not be able to recover its reputation.

Smokey says:
January 13, 2012 at 4:33 am
I like your ad at the end of the above article:
http://www.smokeybear.com/
So you’re in the fire prevention business?

Is there ANY field of study, research, and scholarship where intentional exaggeration, misrepresentation, and biased slanting of the information is not common?

British medial journal poll reports more than 10% of scientists and doctors falsifiying their data in order to get it published.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2085814/Scientists-falsify-data-research-published-whistleblowers-bullied-keeping-quiet-claim-colleagues.html

You see these fairly often in the medical field. Have you EVER seen an intensive investigation associated with AGW where such conduct is rampant? I suppose the current DOJ inquiry into the “drowning polar bears” report comes close to a real investigation. The reason for the difference, I believe, are the legal and regulatory ramifications of medical malpractice that are completely absent in AGW. AGW is all about public acclaim, research funding and little else, even though the collective economic and social ramifications are enormous.
The only formal AGW investigations I can think of were the University of Virginia’s “investigation” into charges Dr. Michael Mann’s famous “hockey stick” temperature graph was a phony and a similar “investigation” into Climategate’s Dr. Phil Jones in the U.K. In both cases the exercise was a cursory whitewash that didn’t even involve a review of the material or how it had been used. So far as I can tell, the “investigative committee” didn’t even interview the scientists who’d made charges against the accused.
CH

“12 Jan: UK Telegraph: South Africa weather forecasters threatened with jail if predictions wrong.”
Shouldn’t this apply, a fortiori, to the climate alarmists?!!

This is not the first time that the UConn Health Center has had to deal with questionable activities by a faculty member. Back in the mid-1980s, the Chair of the Clinical Microbiology Department was ousted due to misappropriating funds. He had obtained a grant to research pathogenic bacteria that infected shell fish in Long Island Sound — arguably a worthy research project. As one would expect, he needed a boat to get his samples as well as technicians to retrieve and analyze them. On paper, there did not appear to be anything untoward about his expenses. Then an expose was published on the front page of The Hartford Courant: his research “vessel” was a 40 ft sailboat and his research “technicians” were his children. In a matter of weeks, the powers that be forced him to resign. Schadenfreude is a good description of the prevailing mood of the basic research faculty. He was the chair of the Rank & Tenure Committee and had torpedoed the careers of several excellent researchers, mostly on the grounds that the basic science faculty “did not publish enough”, at least with respect to the number of publications. After the story broke, one faculty member decided to take a look at his publications. It turned out that he would take a few tables of data and publish them over and over again in different journals — a big no-no in the basic science community. While not scientific fraud per se, one has to wonder given his other actions.
I never found out who leaked the story to the press, and most of my colleagues didn’t care: we were just glad that he was gone. This was about the same time that the Baltimore/Imanishi-Kari case was in the news, with John Dingell doggedly pursuing David Baltimore (Nobel prizes don’t protect you from the wrath of a congressman). Chins wagged, committees were formed up, and life in the research community went on.
As with all bureaucracies, the scope and number of the watchdog committees have grown. Have they increased the integrity of scientific investigations? Probably not. It is ultimately up to members of the research community to police themselves. But, it gets complicated with jobs, careers, grants and reputations at stake: being a whistle blower brings its own hazards. At a minimum, publicly funded research needs to be as open as possible with free (or low cost) access to published manuscripts, methods and data. While the maintenance of scientific integrity is an important motivating factor for openness, the real benefit comes from the free flow of information to curious, inventive and motivated individuals who can move knowledge forward. Who knows what key scientific insight is lurking behind a $35 paywall just waiting for the right person to come along?

Oh good gawd it’s the IPCC of brown bagging. A 60,000 page report to prove that he’s not a major player?? They sacrifice of grove of trees in order to further marginalize a Second rate player? Sounds oddly familiar.

@Anat T : Resveratrol is real. It’s a sirtuin 1 (Sirt1) inhibitor. Knowing that has pointed out the importance of histone deacetylases to longevity and disease progression. Resveratrol is protective in many animal models of injury. So, it’s real. The big question is whether it will do us humans any good. Because it’s so safe, clinical trials of the compound for various conditions abound. Here is a small group clinical trial for acne: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21348544. Here is a promising preliminary study for hepatic cancer: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21680702. I’ve noticed that big-name drugs like this actually get their negative results published. There is so much interest in drugs like this that a negative result is just as important as a positive. These studies show that resveratrol can have a positive effect in humans. As always, resveratrol is good for stroke in rodents: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20655115.
But your real question is whether the health food industry is pushing resveratrol. Here’s the thing: it doesn’t have to. If resveratrol as a neutraceutical weren’t hot, something else would be. Look at the history of natural food cure claims. Just as there is a certain population that are willing fools for AGW, there is a certain population that believes in natural foods for health. They can’t be completely wrong, but, they may not be completely right about anything either. I think that manipulating the sirtuin family of histone deacetylases will be productive in the future, once we know what these things do in disease or injury states in humans.

Aww… nevermind, I’ve now gone and bought the next delicious Luna Rosso wine kit and so I guess I have to just brew and drink it, despite the academic fraud =)
On a very serious note: never ever trust students to input or even collect your data. And if you do, be sure you have some tools and methods to validate what they did, and you should also assume that some of those students know about those tricks too. It’s totally rife, when I was an UG, I had to have a few ‘serious’ chats with my peers who proudly boasted of ‘cheating the man’ about why this sort of thing is a bad idea(tm). Not all of those talks were a success 🙁

Heck. If they would just pay off my bar tab, I might write them a favorable report . . . that is after a large research grant and some extensive further tests on my part and that of me mates on the subject of red wine. Thank you very much.

This exposure of another case of scientific fraud to justify a predetermined position is another black mark on the scientific community. A major player in that community, Science magazine editor, Bruce Alberts, has just written an editorial in the 23 Dec 11 issue of Science magazine, decrying the fact that “science denial” has become fashionable and pointing to his efforts to counter that denial by having the science community “strongly support evidence-based methods for improving how students learn science both in college and at lower levels, focusing on empowering all students with the reasoning and problem solving skills of scientists.” He writes this while continuing to push the case for anthropogenic global warming/climate change in the magazine he edits. He appears to overlook the fact that it is those who are trying to apply evidence-based methods to the question of the effects of CO2 on climate that he is calling science deniers.

Wow, the fact that they took action instead of trying to cover up has elevated UConn in my books. Maybe I will start to cheer for their sports teams.

“since alcohol doesn’t do me well”.
That would include me. The amount of alcohol I am able to consume in a given year could be held in a small vessel indeed. The stuff gives me a blinding headache. I’m afraid I am cursed with what could be a short but sober life.

My head hurts, is it from the spinning of information in my head or from the wine I drank last night?!

“Barzilai told AP lots of labs around the world are conducting extensive research into resveratrol, with encouraging results, and the new allegation will not make a material difference.”
That may be true, but there is something vaguely familiar about the tone .

The search for money is of highest import in the ivory tower. In many cases, University researchers and their lab assistants have a job based only on the dole of grantors.

Of more concern ought to be the same frauds played by the anti crowd.
I don’t much like wine but many people do so why shouldn’t they do what they want to do?

Always preferred vodka myself. With a recipe that reads:
Alcohol 40%
Water 60%
it makes no silly, disprovable claims about being ‘good for’ anything. Except getting drunk, of coursh, which was the object of the exershise.

I take a little wine daily purely for medishinull purposhes, y’know…

Pat Frank: “From this, one can surmise that the UEA, UVA, and UPenn administrative hierarchy are ethically smarmy rather than merely venal.”
Those who are going to make disparaging remarks about people or institutions, have an important duty, in fact, a moral obligation, to get the intended (and deserving) targets right. I assume in the line quoted above that you meant Penn State (of Michael Mann and Jerry Sandusky fame) and NOT UPenn, which is a completely different institution with no connection to Penn State whatsoever, except for being located in Pennsylvania. I hope that others here know the difference, but for those who may not, please realize that UPenn has so far maintained a quite respectable reputation and has no association with the sordid affairs and deeds being attributed to the other institutions listed in the quote above.
I should also warn readers that (I am pretty sure) the Pat Frank I quote above and retiring Massachusetts Senator Barney Frank are NOT the same person even though, if I may be frank (and confuse things even more), one could confuse them because they have identical surnames and share at least one letter in their given names.

Let me set the record straight IMHO. They are looking at the wrong molecule. It’s not the resveratrol that has theurapuetic benefits. It’s the flavonoids. Especially the ones with “sugar” functional groups at the 2 and 3 sites on the “C” ring ((as opposed to methylation, (more prevalent in citrus)). Such molecules as apigenin, quercitin, kaempherol, myricetin, etc. They act as both saponifying agents in the blood stream, Zwitterionic agents in cellular solution and as charged transport regulators positioned in the cellular plasmalemma membrane with the C ring swinging back and forth between the cell interior and the free space (as determined by electron microscopy).
In addition to red wine (concentrates the goodies) or juice, it can be found in:
“Foods rich in quercetin include black and green tea (Camellia sinensis; 2000–2500 mg/kg), capers (1800 mg/kg),[5] lovage (1700 mg/kg), apples (440 mg/kg), onion, especially red onion (191 mg/kg) (higher concentrations of quercetin occur in the outermost rings[6]), red grapes, citrus fruit, tomato, broccoli and other leafy green vegetables, and a number of berries, including raspberry, bog whortleberry (158 mg/kg, fresh weight), lingonberry (cultivated 74 mg/kg, wild 146 mg/kg), cranberry (cultivated 83 mg/kg, wild 121 mg/kg), chokeberry (89 mg/kg), sweet rowan (85 mg/kg), rowanberry (63 mg/kg), sea buckthorn berry (62 mg/kg), crowberry (cultivated 53 mg/kg, wild 56 mg/kg),[7] and the fruit of the prickly pear cactus. A recent study found that organically grown tomatoes had 79% more quercetin than “conventionally grown”.[8]”
Blackberry has verrry high concentrations!
Apigenin has the greatest “activity” on DNA replication in vitro. I had to fractionate and purify apigenin from the ground-up leaves of a black willow tree (also the source of aspirin) in a Methanolic-Acetic Acid HPLC distillation to get sufficient quantities for unpublished experimentation (not oil funded ;<D).
And of course, I drink red wine daily.

was this the only man… was this the only team…. this one study does not negate all other studies… and please, do you like wine? drink it… if you don’t like wine… ummm… don’t drink it. i don’t need a study on it anyway.