Guest essay by Dr. Patrick Michaels |
First, a disclaimer. I don’t listen to NPR. “State radio” bugs me. But I have friends who do, and I was bowled over when one sent me a seemingly innocuous story about the search for a pharmaceutical treatment for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis [ALS], the horrific ailment also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.I knew something big was about to happen when correspondent Richard Harris led off with this zinger:
There’s a funding crunch for biomedical research in the United States—and it’s not just causing pain for scientists and universities. It’s also creating incentives for researchers to cut corners—and that’s affecting people who are seriously ill.
Predictably, NPR, itself a federally (and privately) funded creature, said the problem was a lack of funding, even titling the piece, “Patients Vulnerable When Cash-Strapped Scientists Cut Corners.”
Allow NPR its sins, because what’s in the article is one key to a very disturbing trend, not just in biomedical science, but in “most disciplines and countries.” It seems that negative results are systematically disappearing from science. Those words appear in the title of a blockbuster 2012 article by University of Montreal’s Daniele Fanelli, more completely, “Negative Results are Disappearing from Most Disciplines and Countries.”
Memo to NPR: Scientists are always “cash-strapped.” Just ask one. The reason is very simple, and can be illustrated by my area, climate science.
There are actually very few people formally trained at the doctoral level in this field (yours truly being one of them). One reason was that, prior to the specter of anthropogenerated climate change, there wasn’t very much money from the federal government. It was about a $50 million a year operation, if that much. We didn’t have enough research dough.
Now the federal outlay is $2.3 billion. Guess what: we’re all climate scientists now. So ecologists, plant biologists, and even psychologists hitched their wagons to this gravy train. Today’s shocker: we don’t have enough research dough.
What Harris found out about ALS really does apply in a Fanelli-like fashion. It seems that drugs that work fine on mice and rats flop miserably when tested on humans. It turns out that the animal studies were all pretty shoddy.
Story Landis, director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, explained why. According to NPR, “There is no single answer, she says, but part of the explanation relates to a growing issue in biomedical science: the mad scramble for scarce research dollars.” She went on: “The field has become hypercompetitive,” and NPR added, “Many excellent grant proposals get turned down, simply because there’s not enough money to go around. So Landis says scientists are tempted to oversell weak results.”
“Getting a grant requires that you have an exciting story to tell, that you have preliminary data and you have published”, she says. “In the rush, to be perfectly honest, to get a wonderful story out on the street in a journal, and preferably with some publicity to match, scientists can cut corners.”
According to a research paper published earlier this year, corner-cutting turned out to be the rule, rather than the exception, in animal studies of ALS.
Stefano Bertuzzi, the executive director of the American Society for Cell Biology, says that’s because there is little incentive for scientists to take the time to go back and verify results from other labs;
“You want to be the first one to show something”, he says—not the one to verify or dispute a finding, “because you won’t get a big prize for that.”
Landis noted that “ALS is not the only example of this type of wishful science [emphasis added].” She found similar problems with other drugs for other diseases.
It’s too bad that NPR didn’t then go to Montreal’s Fanelli, because they would have found that similar problems are infecting science everywhere, which is why Cato now has a Center for the Study of Science.
Coming up: I’ll be posting soon on what this does to science itself. Teaser: if there’s little incentive to publish negative results, whatever reigning paradigm is operating in a given field will be very resistant to change. As the Center for the Study of Science’s Richard Lindzen has observed, there has been a remarkable lack of paradigm substitution in overall science as research budgets ballooned. Ironically, the more we spend on science, the more science can be harmed.
Global Science Report is a feature from the Center for the Study of Science, where we highlight one or two important new items in the scientific literature or the popular media. For broader and more technical perspectives, consult our monthly “Current Wisdom.”
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Anthony, everything I post since yesterday just disappears, not held for moderation, just gone.
Even my last message using your name, which is usually a flag to ensure “held for moderation” just went.
Please check.
I always wondered why someone like Michael Mann left particle physics for a relatively new field in climate science. I just figured his ability in sub-atomic physics was below average but perhaps his economic knowledge was well beyond his ability in science. He literally hockey-sticked massive amount of funding for himself and others. Probably not quite fair to say he took money from ALS sufferers. Heck, if we use economic forcing model, his climate research shortened their life-span, so spending on climate research versus ALS research was a net positive forcing on government spending by offsetting lifespan increases with carbon dioxide measurements.
The NPR story on scientists cutting corners was aired immediately after another pro-CAGW scare story. I couldn’t help laughing at the irony as I was driving to another job.
the problem is when they remove the dud results or the bad results, it not only hiodes serious issues..it also means other people may re-do the same bad resulting tests again and harm more.
Honesty. for the good and the bad results and ALL available to be seen is what we need.
retraction watch had a journal retract a study last week, BUT? the retractionitself was paywalled.
fat lot of good that is to anyone.
BBC radio recently had a programme that covered similar ground. It should still be available to UK readers here. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04f9r4k
They could save a lot of money and redirect it to these studies by just cutting out stupid stuff. But I guess to sociologists, studying why lesbians are obese or the mating habits of Peruvian prostitutes makes sense.
So as alluded to, cut the low hanging fruit first. NPR and PBS.
Peruvian prostitites are essential for the quality of life of workers at isolated drill sites in the Amazon; or at least they were when I was helping ferry them around in helicopters in the late 70’s.
Also the money was probably good and they all loved the helicopter rides. I always wondered whether they were on OXY’s payroll or were paid directly by the workers. In any case, business was brisk; with each group visiting two drill sites per day.
Seems they were not the only ones making out like bandits. 😉
Gregor Mendel fudged data.
There may very well be a lot of competition for research funding in health sciences but there is a lot of money being spent on it. In the days when my area of research had money, I used to review proposals, we would get 10 to 15 proposals for everyone we could fund. So yes, many very good proposals where not funded. A interesting plot would be to compare DoD research funding levels (lots of operations funding so need to break out research), NASA(research funding), DARPA and the NSF versus the NIH and how they have trended over the last couple of decades.
“There are several research studies – past and present – investigating possible risk factors that may be associated with ALS. More work is needed to conclusively determine what genetics and/or environment factors contribute to developing ALS.
It is known, however, that military veterans, particularly those deployed during the Gulf War, are approximately twice as likely to develop ALS.”
http://www.alsa.org/about-als/who-gets-als.html
Why is it so?
I don’t know the answer to the question of why, but I do know that veterans who get ALS are eligible for benefits. My uncle, a vet, died from ALS 2 years ago. He qualified for care at a VA medical center, and it was wonderful. This is a horrible and dreadful disease, and I cannot imagine the thoughts my uncle must have had in the last months of his life, confined to a hospital bed, unable to speak, and on a ventilator and feeding tube. His mind was all there, but not much else.
hard to see how ALS is simply a genetic disease if it spikes depending upon military service. this pattern is more consistent with ALS being an acquired disease, with a genetic susceptibility.
Or, certain aspects of military service, say, extreme trauma, cause ALS-predisposition to come to the fore? Just speculating.
Just spitballing here, but military service also tends to follow family lines. That is to say, people with parents or other repsected family who served are more likely to join. It could be simple coincidence. Though I do feel “it’s genetic” is often a gross oversimplification.
I recall years ago a study on MS that showed that everyone that developed MS had had measles earlier in life. Not a single MS patient had not. But of course not everyone that had measles went on to develop MS.
coincidence? or is the measles virus somehow able to insert itself into the genetics of susceptible individuals to cause MS later in life? Could ALS be something similar?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/616540
Depending how many “years ago” the study was, it could be that just about everybody had measles when they were growing up, period. That was certainly true when I was a child; it was considered a “normal” part of childhood. Measles vaccine didn’t show up until years later. (Of course, I’m also old enough to remember when the first polio vaccine came out.)
As I wrote in ‘And then they came for the Holocene’ yesterday:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/16/and-then-they-came-for-the-holocene-new-paper-suggests-removing-the-holocene-epoch-from-the-geologic-timescale/#comment-1738250
“Tom O September 16, 2014 at 8:55 am
“but niche science is where the money is”
——
You have it – right there. No scientist in academia appears to be interested in knowledge for its own sake, the research has to bring in research grants, more students, result in large numbers of papers cited by larger numbers of others. It is all about fame and fortune.
Worse still, research is expected to come up with a desired result or it has ‘failed’. But that is totally incorrect, a research result is valuable even if it falsifies the original hypothesis; but try to sell that to the Grants department who want a satisfied customer.
We are living Eisenhower’s nightmare.”
Science is dead in today’s universities – it is being driven solely by their bean counting Grant’s departments and the Deans that are subservient to them for collegiate funding.
Dr. Michaels,
I formed a habit of listening to NPR many years ago when I was “young and stupid.” It is a habit that I’ve found difficult to kick.
NPR (and Richard Harris) is so completely bent on the subject of climate that it can accurately be described as a wholly-owned propaganda broadcast platform for climate alarmism.
It has become nearly impossible for me to restrain the impulse to throw objects at the radio whenever NPR invokes “climate change” in its reports (and, believe me, it’s gotten to the point where they now attribute nearly every human problem to “climate change”).
In the area of climate, NPR’s pretense of journalistic impartiality and balance is a joke and a farce.
At the University of Nevada, Reno this story is just one of many that support Michaels’ story..
This isn’t climate, it’s medical. Equally emotional, equally, but likely more profitable.
“We were under so much pressure, we missed it,” says Ruscetti.
http://news.sciencemag.org/2011/10/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-researcher-fired-amidst-new-controversy
Government funding for science is inherently political. Someone must pick a “winner” before the results are known. This ultimately drives science down a belief based road. Funding is based on what we believe will work, not what actually works.
An alternative is to end government based grants and allow business to deduct the cost of scientific research 100% in the first year. The cost would be identical to government based funding, but the profit and loss effect over time would weed out junk science.
As things are now, the only way to weed out junk science from government funding is for the government to go bankrupt. While the government is doing its level best to implement this exact solution, it makes much more fiscal sense to apportion the risk to business and let the market sort things out.
In the end, the market is significantly more efficient than policy makers at determining the correct place to invest money, including research monies.
Having consulted one prominent scientist and professor in Australia, after attending his ‘Warmists are mutants’ or something more fancy named lecture. He stated that Australia alone was churning out 4000 scientists every year. That’s FOUR thousand hungry mouths to feed each and every year. That is a lot of taxpayer dollars to keep in grants and employment.
Imagine the effect that Uber will have on their income.
My Ph.D. advisor was just this sort of overselling academic who was wildly successful at bringing in grants and consulting money. I learned from the best….what not to do. I have seen bad-money-driving-out-good repeatedly and it is disgusting. For example, in a proposal to NSF propose lots of stuff (some of which you have already done, since they want proof [which is itself stupid]) and then deliver far less than the money you got. sickening.
I dare NPR to interview scientists for their opinion of the recent NSF-funded climate change musical.
Thanks, Dr. Michaels. Very good article.
Climate science has been hurt and discredited by alarmism that is encouraged by the need for tax-payer funding. A share of public exposure is required; so the media get to say what is good science and what is not.
Purposefully “cutting corners” is scientific fraud.
The finding that CO2 is the control of the Earth’s global temperature cut a long corner, it has disqualified itself.
I have the opportunity now to again be teaching people about “evidence-based medicine.” I teach off of the various examples of when common clinical practice has been proven wrong, when weaker methods have led to wrong conclusions, when lack-of-publication-of-negative-results has biased the prevailing available evidence, when the wrong end-points have become commonly accepted end-points, and so on.
For a lot of this, I can depend on JAMA and NEJM articles. Also, Circulation, and other high impact factor journals.
I used to use “alternative medicine” examples, but that just allowed everyone to carry on with their beliefs in the prevailing schema.
I then present some basic, straight-forward, common-sense epistemology – with no fancy words, and little to no reference to individuals or schools of thought – except to place these ideas in a timeline trend of history – cuz you have to understand that all of these ideas, the good and the bad – emerge from culture across time, so you need historical context.
Once I have shaken everyone’s belief in prevailing wisdom and published results, I teach them how to review existing pieces of information when evaluating any hypothesis, then how to analyze existing data and develop a research agenda to explore unknowns.
Then, I teach them how to take what they know of research design, science, and statistics already to design appropriate studies.
About half-way through, the medical doctors I am able to teach get a negative attitude to me, since I slay so many sacred cows. Remember, the docs are all raised on a steady diet of hubris and pharmaceutical-sponsored lunches.
Myself, I have diagnosed plenty of weak areas in healthcare, and published several negative-results studies. Because I am a scientist.
I have mostly done these studies with funding other than NIH/federal funding, and have worked in my spare time to carry out some studies, apart from my day job.
How to get cited?
I am considering emailing my studies to the 20 or 30 individuals I can identify as advocates for some prevailing idea.
I have had communication with those funded by promoting weak but trumped-up ideas. I politely present clear, legitimate questions. The first response is usually polite but insufficient to answer the question. The second round of emails gets cold, and then I never hear back.
I will never be a highly-recognized scientist. However, I hope my students will be clear-headed and contribute to society rather than practicing weak care or conducting worthless studies. One can hope.
NPR may get taxpayer money, but it is hardly state radio. It is left wing radio.
At 9:16 AM on 17 September, Ron Scubadiver had written that:
…in response to which one need only quote William James:
Cute, but not intelligent or meaningful. NPR’s message does not change with who is in the White House, it’s always left wing. If it followed the whims of each administration, it would be state radio.
At 9:16 AM on 17 September, Ron Scubadiver had written that:
…in response to which I had quoted philosopher William James:
…and now we’ve got Ron Scubadiver trying to come back with:
This assertion fails by way of the presumption that when “who is in the White House” is the head of the Republicans rather than the Partieleiter of the National Socialist Democrat American Party (NSDAP), the federal government is in the hands of the “right wing.”
The Red Faction of the great Boot-On-Your-Neck Party permanent incumbency are somehow supposed to be less statist than are their colleagues on the other side of the aisle?
Non sequitur.
Admittedly, the pseudointellectual weasels of NPR will adhere with barnacle tenacity (and intelligence) to the dogmata of National Socialism when confronted with the possibility of the Republicans gaining ascendency, but they will always engage with the “Grand Old Party” [sic] to draw those fundamentally mercantilistic servitors of corporate welfare into the “Liberal” fascist line.
As observed, the difference between Republican statists and National Socialist statists continues always to be a difference which is really no difference at all.
I don’t like NPR, or that it gets taxpayer money. We are arguing over definitions. Now go find some leftie to beat up.
Illegitimate climate research is killing people by vanquishing resources for legitimate life saving biotech research.
The market recently found a way to raise tens of millions of dollars without government assistance for ALS research by video taping people taking the “ice bucket challenge” and posting the video on social networks. This fund raising by cascading effect was extremely effective. Hopefully that money finds it’s way into the hands of ethical practicing scientists and not the hands of the emotionally practicing scientists.
Here’s something relevant I posted on another thread:
I still question that figure. You rely on industry sources and the industry would love to have a free hand in introducing new products- in other words, they would love it if the FDA disappeared. I will not be convinced as long as you use industry figures. I should say that the drug industry does not impress me as trustworthy. You need to do better than repeat unsubstantiated claims.
“You rely on industry sources and the industry would love to have a free hand in introducing new products- in other words, they would love it if the FDA disappeared. ”
mpainter, the FDA regulations constitute high barriers to entry; so the big companies can dominate. No small startup can compete. The Big Companies love barriers to entry.
Learn about the concept. It is everywhere. In the West at least, and an important reason for its demise.
At 1:10 PM on 17 September, in responding to mpainter‘s “unstuck” assertion of disbelief with regard to SAMURAI‘s earlier observation about the average costs associated with getting marketing approval from the U.S.Food & Drug Administration for a New Drug Application – about $1 billion, give or take a hundred million or so – DirkH advises:
Insofar as I’m aware, the phenomenon is known as regulatory capture, which is characterized in Wiki-bloody-pedia as “…a form of political corruption that occurs when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or special concerns of interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating.”
In actuality (of course), this is typical Wiki-friggin’-pedia statist cement-headedness, inasmuch as the scrupulously honest examination of regulatory capture reveals that such government regulation never comes into existence except at the behest of the established actors in the market sectors to be “regulated.” The Wiki-leftard-pedia convocation persist in viewing regulatory capture as an unintended consequence of dirigiste government diddling in the marketplace whereas it is (and has always been) the purpose of such “regulation.”
Drawing upon the Wiki of the Ludwig von Mises Institute on this subject:
I know the concept well and there is some truth in it but why did they deregulate airlines? And telephone companies? Things are not so simple and straightforward as you believe. If the drug companies have “captured” the FDA then why the complaints about the great expense of drug approval?
Tucci78 refers me below to quarterly reports for verification of the billion dollar figure given as the cost of gaining FDA approval for a new drug. He is an innocent that knows nothing about corporate accounting. I see that there is no way of substantiating that information that originates with the drug companies and cannot otherwise be verified. I know better than to swallow industry figures.
At 6:10 PM on 17 September, mpainter obliviates:
Okay, mpainter. Just what the hell do YOU conceive to be a reliable source of information on the costs associated with getting a New Drug Application through the approvals process at the Food & Drug Administration’s Office of New Drugs?
If the pharmaceuticals manufacturers’ compliance with SEC regulations (as embodied in their Form 10-K annual and Form 10-Q quarterly reports) can’t be taken as the figurative “gold standard” in terms of adherence to those limited liability corporations’ fiduciary responsibilities in “sunlighting” their officers’ allocations of stockholder funds and other resources, and therefore the most complete accounts of pharma research and development expenditures you’re going to get without waterboarding their Chief Financial Officers, have you another way of determining the degree – if any – to which those costs deviate from the billion-dollar rough estimate provided by SAMURAI and against which you’re yammering?
And, hey, I’m such an “innocent,” having spent just about all of my adult life as a physician and roughly twenty years, off and on, working with the pharmaceuticals industry at one remove or another.
Not that personal fund of knowledge matters one goddam little bit here, mpainter, but you’re the one who impugned my understanding of “corporate accounting” with regard to the pharmaceuticals industry, ain’tcha?
In my considered estimation, mpainter, you’re blowing it out’n your distalmost sphincter, and the same I’ll rise to explain.
Relax, tucci78, and show some moderation. I question the reliability of unconfirmable industry figures and you come sputtering insults. In regard to your innocence of corporate accounting, You could remedy that with some effort. Do not blame me.
At 5:56 AM on 18 September, the condescending obliterative evasive mpainter, obsessed with his wholly emotional denigration of SAMURAI‘s much earlier observation that the average pharmaceuticals manufacturer sustains costs of about one billion dollars in the course of getting the average New Drug Application through the FDA’s marketing approval process (not to mention the expenditures necessary to meet EMEA and Japanese requirements for similar approvals), continually confronted with the plain goddam fact that these corporations are required by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to file annual and quarterly reports in which those R&D costs are enumerated, and those reports are to all intents and purposes the best possible sources of information in the public domain with regard to the expenses associated with the development of pharmaceuticals in compliance with 21 CFR, Chapter I, continues to treat the facts of reality (not to mention this, your humble respondent) with contempt, blathering:
For your obstinate refusal to designate some source of drug development costs which you do, by whatever you use in lieu of reason and knowledge, consider a reliable appreciation of those expenditures, mpainter, who the hell else is to be blamed but you?
Let’s say that you, mpainter, have something that passes for knowledge “…of corporate accounting” pertinent to the PhRMA member corporations. Will you share that hard edge of your advantage with those of us, who, in our “innocence,” work from nothing more than business intelligence conduits like the SEC’s Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval (EDGAR) system and proprietary industry-specific services like the AdisInsight Databases?
If you continue in your failure to answer that simple, repeated question, mpainter, what else is to be concluded except that you’re just sucking wind and therefore deserving of nothing but insult?
Okay tucci78, I will answer any question you ask if you will only ask it. Right now you seem incoherent, so relax and have a beer and think pleasant thoughts. Then you might get in the right frame of mind to deal with this difficult problem of learning something new and asking questions in a sensible way.
Continuing in his [trimmed] about how there’s supposed to be some more reliable source of information than SEC reports and industry-specific business intelligence assets (such as the AdisInsight Databases previously mentioned) on the costs associated with a pharmaceuticals manufacturer’s compliance with the process required for the FDA’s approval of New Drug Application (an average of about one billion dollars per NDA, give or take a hundred million or so), at 4:21 PM on 18 September, mpainter disgraces himself in public yet again by spewing:
…whereupon it’s clear that [trimmed]
[Unfortunately, there’s not much left after the insults are removed. .mod]
Maybe casting aspersions on the other sciences is a “shared blame” climbdown strategy?
42 years ago, in an underground parking garage in Rosslyn VA, the injunction “Follow the money” was coined as a clue to identify the perpetrators of one of the most notorious crimes of the age – the Watergate Break-In.
Today it is simply a capsule description of how the academia-buraucracy complex works.