By Matt Ridley, The Times 06/01/14
It’s not only Tamiflu where inconvenient data goes unpublished. Try climate science and psychology too
Perhaps it should be called Tamiflugate. Yet the doubts reported by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee last week go well beyond the possible waste of nearly half a billion pounds on a flu drug that might not be much better than paracetamol. All sorts of science are contaminated with the problem of cherry-picked data.
The Tamiflu tale is that some years ago the pharmaceutical company Roche produced evidence that persuaded the World Health Organisation that Tamiflu was effective against flu, and governments such as ours began stockpiling the drug in readiness for a pandemic. But then a Japanese scientist pointed out that most of the clinical trials on the drug had not been published. It appears that the unpublished ones generally showed less impressive results than the published ones. […]
To illustrate how far this problem reaches, a few years ago there was a scientific scandal with remarkable similarities, in respect of the non-publishing of negative data, to the Tamiflu scandal. A relentless, independent scientific auditor in Canada named Stephen McIntyre grew suspicious of a graph being promoted by governments to portray today’s global temperatures as warming far faster than any in the past 1,400 years — the famous “hockey stick” graph. When he dug into the data behind the graph, to the fury of its authors, especially Michael Mann, he found not only problems with the data and the analysis of it but a whole directory of results labelled “CENSORED”.
This proved to contain five calculations of what the graph would have looked like without any tree-ring samples from bristlecone pine trees. None of the five graphs showed a hockey stick upturn in the late 20th century: “This shows about as vividly as one could imagine that the hockey stick is made out of bristlecone pine,” wrote Mr McIntyre drily. (The bristlecone pine was well known to have grown larger tree rings in recent years for non-climate reasons: goats tearing the bark, which regrew rapidly, and extra carbon dioxide making trees grow faster.)
Mr McIntyre later unearthed the same problem when the hockey stick graph was relaunched to overcome his critique, with Siberian larch trees instead of bristlecones. This time the lead author, Keith Briffa, of the University of East Anglia, had used only a small sample of 12 larch trees for recent years, ignoring a much larger data set of the same age from the same region. If the analysis was repeated with all the larch trees there was no hockey-stick shape to the graph. Explanations for the omission were unconvincing.
Given that these were the most prominent and recognisable graphs used to show evidence of unprecedented climate change in recent decades, and to justify unusual energy policies that hit poor people especially hard, this case of cherry-picked publication was just as potentially shocking and costly as Tamiflugate. Omission of inconvenient data is a sin in government science as well as in the private sector.
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h/t to The GWPF
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The more I see of this stuff, the more I think certain branches of “science” are actually religious in nature rather than any kind of science. “Thou shalt not find any evidence that my theory is wrong!” “If any man find evidence that our pet project is wrong, let him have his funding cut!”
Full disclosure: I am a member of a conservative Christian church, so I do know what religion looks like. Too much of this so-called science has the very worst elements of religion about it, including the condemnations for anybody who would dare to question the accepted view of the matter as proposed by the “prophets” of the “science” we seem to be questioning.
Second disclosure: It’s cold in Chicago today. It does that every winter, AGW or not.
Climate change has become a cult, not unlike Jim Jones.
We have been told over and over of these flawed science results yet not one of the perpertrators have been named and shamed in the MSM or in the science academies. Indeed they have, without exception, been touted as heroic figures. These frauds have imposed huge costs on society through the various changes to energy policies, they have destroyed faith in scientists generally and have caused deep and offensive insult to those who oppose them. They are a disgrace and it surprises me that science academies have not exposed them and their flawed science in order to restore a modicum of trust with their major funding contributors, the taxpayer.
mjmsprt40 says:
January 6, 2014 at 12:11 pm
The more I see of this stuff, the more I think certain branches of “science” are actually religious in nature rather than any kind of science
===
Hmmm. Might that be the religion of the Exclusive Brethren of the Climatastrophist Kleptocracy?
Auto
I’ve said it before, and I will likely say it again: This stuff is allowed to perpetuate because governments WANT it to be true because it represents $$$$$ without direct taxes on voters’ incomes. PERIOD.
I do not waste money on the Flu stuff. Until they announce a cure, I will just tough it out.
But it does piss me off that the government wasted so much money on something with dubious benefits at best. That is OUR money after all.
By posting this, can I assume that you are not on the “Big Pharma” payroll either Anthony?
Tom G(ologist) says:
January 6, 2014 at 12:26 pm
I’ve said it before, and I will likely say it again: This stuff is allowed to perpetuate because governments WANT it to be true because it represents $$$$$ without direct taxes on voters’ incomes. PERIOD.
——————————————————–
Real science restricts government action like a constitution. Hence government has no use for either. Only people have a use for these. Their use in government only goes as far as the peoples will to make it so.
“It’s cold in Chicago today. It does that every winter, AGW or not.”
But certainly never hot in summer before AGW!!
Take the time to look at the background studies which have been used for licensing various drugs, pesticides and insecticides. I did some years ago and was astounded and horrified at a lot of what I saw.
Old England says:@ur momisugly January 6, 2014 at 12:46 pm
…. I did some years ago and was astounded and horrified at a lot of what I saw.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
AMEN!
It is enough to make you understand why there is a ‘Homeopathy’ back to nature backlash against Big Pharma. – NOT a good trend.
“The more I see of this stuff, the more I think certain branches of “science” are actually religious in nature rather than any kind of science. “
No, not religion, unless you’re talking about the church of ego and self seeking. These people knew exactly what they were going, and why.
From wikipedia, “It was developed by C.U. Kim, W. Lew, and X. Chen of US-based Gilead Sciences,[2] and is marketed by Genentech.[3]”
And the paper was published in 2000, so the chemical was found to be effective somewhere in the mid 90’s.
Given that a virus can mutate within a single flu season, why would you stock pile something, that’s close to two decades old? Because the risk of not stockpiling (even if the drug is only partially effective) is much greater than doing nothing.
You never know what tomorrow may bring, a super deadly virus which threatens to wipe out europe, which tamiflu is effective against?
Of all the genuine threats in the world, iran, terrorists, etc. A pandemic is of great concern.
Matt Ridley is full of it.
If I were a corporate science manager, I’d want all the data on trials fully disclosed. That is the only way to immunize yourself against the tsunami of lawsuits if the product isn’t as effective as the end user hopes or produces known side effects. If Tamiflu negatives were not published, the company has left itself open to massive litigation losses should it massively under-perform the published data in a pandemic event.
Every effective drug has side effects – that’s why doctors should be very careful to match dose and duration with the symptoms and keep drug use to the minimum required. The same is true of industrial chemicals and pesticides – use only the bare minimum to perform the mission and no more.
“It appears that the unpublished ones generally showed less impressive results than the published ones.”
This is straightforward publication bias. To my knowledge, the only area you aren’t allowed to suggest is impact by publication bias is Climate Science (TM). To do so is HERESY.
“Omission of inconvenient data is a sin in government science as well as in the private sector.”
“The Tamiflu tale is that some years ago the pharmaceutical company Roche produced evidence that persuaded the World Health Organisation that Tamiflu was effective against flu, and governments such as ours began stockpiling the drug in readiness for a pandemic.”
I wished to juxtapose these two statements because I believe it is a little misleading to just say that hiding inconvenient data happens in the private sector, at least if you only evidence there of is this particular case. In transactions between private individuals and companies, such practices may occur, but it is unlikely people would get away with it for long, for the simple reason that if the product doesn’t actually work, it is a loss to someone, and wanting to minimize losses and maximize gains (profits) people and firms are going to tend to figure this stuff out: if they don’t, it’s lost money. On the other hand, in this case what happened was that the Government doesn’t have those same concerns, so a private company could dupe them in a way it would have more difficulty fooling a non government. The government doesn’t care about profit and loss, it cares about things like elections and support from the public. Naturally the public readily supports anything that it can be made to believe will protect it from something frightening; be it a pandemic or catastrophic global warming. That’s true whether the fear is justified or not. So it is easy for unscrupulous individuals to take advantage of the situation.
X Anonymous says: “Matt Ridley is full of it.”
No, YOU are full of it. Show me one thing Matt Ridley said that you can prove isn’t true. Most of his post only pointed out that “climate science” suffers from the same degeneracy as the pharmaceutical industry, of which Tamiflu is but one bad example. As for your desperate appeal to a Pascal’s Wager, it’s nonsense and doesn’t take into account the probabilities and costs of all alternatives. From now on, I’d suggest you actually read and understand posts before you engage in a rant about content.
Its ironic that Ben Goldacre, a true CAGW believer, can take a shot at Matt Ridley (“Here’s a comment piece by Matt Ridley in the Times (caution: contains climate lols)”) but he fails to see the parallels between bad “pharma” science and bad “climate” science. When it comes to the latter he is only too happy to trust the science.
Pharma also have their own convenient thermometers like the Yamal trees…”professional” clinical trial participants who lie about their medical history (including being involved in previous drug trials) and don’t report symptoms (since that is a sure way to get kicked out of the trial).
Wow, I have never commented on this site, because I don’t have the expertise to add to the discussion. While I too believe in solar driven climatology as a default mode, and have seen first hand the use of cherry picked data, and erroneous data sets that mislead good analysis, I have to say the author of the article is way out of line conflagrating Tamiflu with the global warming cock-up, especially without citations.
Tell you what, Mr. Ridley. You stay out of molecular biology, and I’ll stay out of Sunspots (as a proxy) for climate control.
As to the readers of this wonderful website, any mol bio guy will tell you that Tamiflu was designed for a very specific 3D conformation of a very specific influenza. Tamiflu will not, and has not been, able to stop just any HxNx influenza. The Tamiflu stockpiles were a very good idea at the time, because if H5N1 influenza HAD made the jump to easy airborne transmission to people, I would have expected humans to become close to extinction due to the extremely high kill rate, and the concurrent breakdown is society and food distribution. Low probability, High impact risks. Asteroid anyone?
It is NOT the fault of Tamiflu, that influenza has a very high, cross species, mutation rate. In fact, some scientists, myself included, believe that there is a very good chance that some dinos became extinct from influenza, and not “climate change” as we have been told in school.. Honestly, do any of you really, really buy the absurd story line that millions of millions of passenger pigeons suddenly became extinct do to out of control hunters? Heh. (think “bird flu” influenza) That the American Chestnut tree became extinct due to excessive logging? (fungal) Mother nature is a much more harsh bitch than she lets on.
If you rally want to look at bad science, you should do some research into the history of the science behind HIV/AIDS, same thing, doctored research to keep the gravy train going.
X Anonymous says:
January 6, 2014 at 1:29 pm
“You never know what tomorrow may bring, a super deadly virus which threatens to wipe out europe, which tamiflu is effective against?”
Maybe roach droppings would be effective against it. Should we stockpile those, just in case?
@TAD-You were told in school that Climate Change killed the Dinosaurs? How long ago did you go to school? Alvarez’s impact theory is taught as gospel nowadays.
But the idea that influenza could have caused anything to go extinct, much less an *clade* of animals, is the kookiest thing I have heard in a while, thanks for that.
TAD says:
January 6, 2014 at 2:18 pm
Thanks. That is a more cogent criticism than X above. I do recall the concern about H5N1 going airborne.
@timetochoose — Ummmm, and just exactly what happened the week after an asteroid impact, hmmmm? timetochoose goes to prove the internet maxim, you can lead a troll to water, but you can’t make him think.
AND
some dinosaurs, and all dinosaurs, are two different assertions, no? And so you reject human caused global warming, but accept human caused extinction of the passenger pigeon? Why do you get to pick and choose? Are you of the mind set that all animal extinction events are human caused? If so, you are on the wrong website, bubba.
@Bart Thanks! most epidemiologists are petrified of an HxNx going airborne with high R0’s and high morbidity rates. Spanish influenza a 100 years ago knocked the world on its ass, and it had a very low kill rate. H5N1 was 100% lethal overnight in chicken farms. That’s every f’ng chicken in a barn ok the night before, dead by morning. If that doesn’t terrify you, then you are a braver man than I.
“Maybe roach droppings would be effective against it. Should we stockpile those, just in case?”
Tell you what, Bart, in the case where both of us are too lazy to have a preventive flu shot (like the rest of the population), and there’s an outbreak of some type of deadly respiratory virus, you can take the droppings, I’ll take the Tamiflu, deal?
I’ll live in modern society enriched with science, you and Matt Ridley can live in Big Whiskey.