This post comes to us via Paul Driessen of CFACT. He highlights a very serious problem. Readers may want to weigh in with their own examples, some thoughts on why this is happening, and what possibly can be done about the problem.~ctm
Falsifying or ignoring data that don’t support conclusions or agendas is worse than junk science
Paul Driessen
The epidemic of agenda-driven science by press release and falsification has reached crisis proportions.
In just the past week: Duke University admitted that its researchers had falsified or fabricated data that were used to get $113 million in EPA grants – and advance the agency’s air pollution and “environmental justice” programs. A New England Journal of Medicine (NJEM) article and editorial claimed the same pollutants kill people – but blatantly ignored multiple studies demonstrating that there is no significant, evidence-based relationship between fine particulates and human illness or mortality.
In an even more outrageous case, the American Academy for the Advancement of Science’s journal Science published an article whose authors violated multiple guidelines for scientific integrity. The article claimed two years of field studies in three countries show exposure to neonicotinoid pesticides reduces the ability of honeybees and wild bees to survive winters and establish new populations and hives the following year. Not only did the authors’ own data contradict that assertion – they kept extensive data out of their analysis and incorporated only what supported their (pre-determined?) conclusions.
Some 90% of these innovative neonic pesticides are applied as seed coatings, so that crops absorb the chemicals into their tissue and farmers can target only pests that feed on the crops. Neonics largely eliminate the need to spray with old-line chemicals like pyrethroids that clearly do harm bees. But neonics have nevertheless been at the center of debate over their possible effects on bees, as well as ideological opposition in some quarters to agricultural use of neonics – or any manmade pesticides.
Laboratory studies had mixed results and were criticized for overdosing bees with far more neonics than they would ever encounter in the real world, predictably affecting their behavior and often killing them. Multiple field studies – in actual farmers’ fields – have consistently shown no adverse effects on honeybees at the colony level from realistic exposures to neonics. In fact, bees thrive in and around neonic-treated corn and canola crops in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia and elsewhere.
So how did the Dr. Ben Woodcock, et al. Center for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) field studies reach such radically different conclusions? After all, the researchers set up 33 sites in fields in Germany, Hungary and England, each one with groups of honeybee or wild bee colonies in or next to oilseed rape (canola) crops. Each group involved one test field treated with fungicides, a neonic and a pyrethroid; one field treated with a different neonic and fungicides; and one “control” group by a field treated only with fungicides. They then conducted multiple data analyses throughout the two-year trial period.
Their report and Science article supposedly presented all the results of their exhaustive research. They did not. The authors fudged the data, and the “peer reviewers” and AAAS journal editors failed to spot the massive flaws. Other reviewers (here, here and here) quickly found the gross errors, lack of transparency and misrepresentations – but not before the article and press releases had gone out far and wide.
Thankfully, and ironically, the Woodcock-CEH study was funded by Syngenta and Bayer, two companies that make neonics. That meant the companies received the complete study and all 1,000 pages of data – not just the portions carefully selected by the article authors. Otherwise, all that inconvenient research information would probably still be hidden from view – and the truth would never have come out.
Most glaring, as dramatically presented in a chart that’s included in each of the reviews just cited, there were far more data sets than suggested by the Science article. In fact, there were 258 separate honeybee statistical data analyses. Of the 258, a solid 238 found no effects on bees from neonics! Seven found beneficial effects from neonics! Just nine found harmful impacts, and four had insufficient data.
Not one group of test colonies in Germany displayed harmful effects, but five benefitted from neonics. Five in Hungary showed harm, but the nosema gut fungus was prevalent in Hungarian beehives during the study period; it could have affected bee foraging behavior and caused colony losses. But Woodcock and CEH failed to mention the problem or reflect it in their analyses. Instead, they blamed neonics.
In England, four test colony groups were negatively affected by neonics, while two benefitted, and the rest showed no effects. But numerous English hives were infested with Varroa mites, which suck on bee blood and carry numerous pathogens that they transmit to bees and colonies. Along with poor beekeeping and mite control practices, Varroa could have been the reason a number of UK test colonies died out during the study – but CEH blamed neonics.
(Incredibly, even though CEH’s control hives in England were far from any possible neonic exposure, they had horrendous overwinter bee losses: 58%, compared to the UK national average of 14.5% that year, while overwinter colony losses for CEH hives were 67-79% near their neonic-treated fields.)
In sum, fully 95% of all the hives studied by CEH demonstrated no effects or benefitted from neonic exposure – but the Science magazine authors chose to ignore them, and focus on nine hives (3% of the total) which displayed harmful impacts that they attributed to neonicotinoids.
Almost as amazing, CEH analyses found that nearly 95% of the time pollen and nectar in hives showed no measurable neonic residues. Even samples taken directly from neonic-treated crops did not have residues – demonstrating that bees in the CEH trials were likely never even exposed to neonics.
How then could CEH researchers and authors come to the conclusions they did? How could they ignore the 245 out of 258 honeybee statistical data analyses that demonstrated no effects or beneficial effects from neonics? How could they focus on the nine analyses (3.4%) that showed negative effects – a number that could just as easily have been due to random consequences or their margin of error?
The sheer number of “no effect” results (92%) is consistent with what a dozen other field studies have found: that foraging on neonicotinoid-treated crops has no effect on honeybees. Why was this ignored?
Also relevant is the fact that CEH honeybee colonies near neonic-treated fields recovered from any adverse effects of their exposure to neonics before going into their winter clusters. As “super organisms,” honeybee colonies are able to metabolize many pesticides and detoxify themselves. This raises doubts about whether any different overwintering results between test colonies and controls can properly be ascribed to neonics. Woodcock, et al. should have discussed this, but failed to do so.
Finally, as The Mad Virologist pointed out, if neonics have negative impacts on bees, the effects should have been consistent across multiple locations and seed treatments. They were not. In fact, the number of bee larval cells during crop flowering periods for one neonic increased in response to seed treatments in Germany, but declined in Hungary and had no change in England. For another neonic, the response was neutral (no change) in all three countries. Something other than neonics clearly seems to be involved.
The honest, accurate conclusion would have been that exposure to neonics probably had little or no effect on the honeybees or wild bees that CEH studied. The Washington Post got that right; Science did not.
US law defines “falsification” as (among other things) “changing or omitting data or results, such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record.” Woodcock and CEH clearly did that. Then the AAAS and Science failed to do basic fact-checking before publishing the article; the media parroted the press releases; and anti-pesticide factions rushed to say “the science is settled” against neonics.
The AAAS and Science need to retract the Woodcock article, apologize for misleading the nation, and publish an article that fully, fairly and accurately represents what the CEH research and other field studies actually documented. They should ban Woodcock and his coauthors from publishing future articles in Science and issue press releases explaining all these actions. The NJEM should take similar actions.
Meanwhile, Duke should be prosecuted, fined and compelled to return the fraudulently obtained funds.
Failure to do so would mean falsification and fraud have replaced integrity at the highest levels of once-respected American institutions of scientific investigation, learning and advancement.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power – Black death.
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What is described above seems to be part of the reproducibility crisis which is currently reducing the credibility of science. Some of the factors of concern are:. 1. Lack of training in scientists with regard to how pervasive self-deception is in experimentation. 2. Poor quality people (too many people) doing research, science needs to start from a philosophical underpinning, not from the desire for a cushy job. 3. Confusion of technology and science. Tinkerers developing new drugs or flashier ipods, are not scientists, they are technicians. Much of what the news media report as science is just technology. 4. Money drives technological development and so there is high pressure to cheat. Snake oil patent medicines, sporting equipment, cosmetics, climate science, nutritionism and several other sectors are largely fraudulent activities and yet these activities are treated as if they actually have scientific underpinnings. 5. While the commitment to scientific integrity varies within western countries, some countries which now publish vast amounts of “science” have much older and stronger traditions such as obeisance to superiors. 6.Statistical techniques are used to compensate for poor biometrics. The results of well designed experiments should be obvious or to paraphrase Rutherford, if you need complex statistical analysis to tell what happened then your experiment was poorly designed. 7.Modelling is cheaper than research and can be used to mollify tight fisted and weak minded managers. 8. Funding is tied to celebrity. Every finding has to be earth shaking, ground breaking. 9. Too many journals- too many journals willing to publish just about anything. 10. News media use questionable science as click bait, they do not critically assess what they disseminate. 11………this could go on for a while yet
While not science, a large portion of my days were spent looking for data falsification in data coming in from field offices. Everything from “scan in the Jeep before actual delivery was attempted” to having employees scanning packages when the carrier returned to “stop the service clock”. This was not poor training of the supervisory personnel, but active attempts to game the system. These are but two I uncovered. Problem was delivery was a compensatory goal that directly affected their paycheck, or in the case of poor performance, their job.
We did “adjust” the national data – we applied what I called a coarse rake – we ran the data through a series of filters to screen out nonsensical data only – i.e., a piece delivered before that piece was accepted. (not data we didn’t like or data that did not support our goals). This was as coarse a filter as we could possibly make, remaining neutral, and keep our bosses (and us) out of jail, yet clean the data enough to be of use for diagnostics of the entire system.
Given the option of “the hammer” or falsifying the data, the data always suffered. No one wants to be beat over the head for poor performance. Shading the truth is lying as sure as omitting part of the story, or a bald-faced lie. One has to expect gaming of the system where humans are involved.
Simply human nature to look good via their work, truthful or not. Thats where clever comes in. Maybe no one will notice (and if caught, maybe no repercussions)
It is up to skeptics to constantly challenge the data and methods.
How about applying a liitle of your professional scepticism and look at the ethics of the author and his funding sources?
“Scientists” who fake data to obtain taxpayer’s money are guilty of fraud, it is that simple. Proving they have done so is not easy, peer review does not seem to work, the belief in AGW seems to suit the left leaning politicians, “news” organisations and celebrities. A better basic scientific education would be a start but teachers and professors seem to be more and more left wing inclined. All I can suggest is that some high profile researchers that have bled the system are made to repay the monies that they have gained through fraud, are stripped of their qualifications and given a jail term. The only way I can suggest for this to happen is by encouraging whistle-blowing with rewards and multiple sources of grant money for each research project with different sources for individuals. “Capitalism for Science”.
You mixed up the ‘right results ‘ with the ‘correct results’ , the authors got, has they wanted, the ‘right results ‘
Excellent bit on Climate Science Corruption – Its the money.
it’s
Watching the “Why I changed my mind” clip was sort of like watching grass grow. He rambles on and on before getting to the points he wants to make.
Roy,
Ar sure that’s not more properly said; Before he gets to the points you want him to make? He seems to me to be making a rather many points throughout . .
(Yikes, my machine is behaving strangely . . like unstable ?)
I was educated in the atmospheric sciences and in the late 70’s and early 80’s. That education included climate studies. While we certainly didn’t know everything about climate, we knew that it fluctuated. We were taught about the various warm and cold periods. This was generally accepted science, but certainly not settled science. We were taught that there wasn’t any such thing as ‘settled’ science.
Through the 80’s and early 90’s, there was very little dispute about Holocene Climate science. Then, out of nowhere, a paper appeared that was an outlier. It was based on an amazingly small number of tree rings, yet made the very bold claim that current temperatures were unprecedented in the last 1000 years and that temperatures were relatively stable over the last millennium. The paper seemed obviously flawed with the first reading. Statisticians tore it to pieces. Yet it became front page news, because it was precisely what was needed to give credence to the growing AGW scare.
The Hockey Stick team is still producing outlier science, using dubious proxies, even more dubious statistics and cherry picked data. It is obvious that they are activists with a predetermined conclusion before they even started. Of course, that is still hard to prove, especially when they are delivering exactly what the paradigm ordered. They will not be convicted by a jury of their peers, and they are still crazy after all these years.
Isn’t that term supposed to be out and out liar?
What to do? in my opinion, not much is necessary. Increasingly the junk science gets exposed on the internet (as here) for any who care to find and learn. I provided the compelling written evidence for Marcotts academic misconduct in his 2013 Science paper three weeks after publication to Marsha McNutt, then Science editor in chief. Her secretary acknowledged receipt. Nothing was done. So I published it at Climate Etc. And then in ebook Blowing Smoke. That indelible stain will follow Marcott for the rest of his career. Mann got taken down by Steyn’s book on him, and by Judith Curry at the 29 March 2017 congressional hearing, now indelibly a Youtube snippet fo all to ‘enjoy’.
People will lose faith in ‘science’, and ‘science’ will suffer until it self corrects. There is already evidence of self correction in dietary advice despite the fluten free craze, GMOs (golden rice), and newly in some climate science (Pruitt’s red team will chew up,the endangerment finding). All that is needed on the political front is whistle blowers (Karl 2015) and congressional hearings (Christy 29 May 2017) as the real battle isn’t the politicized junk science, its the ensuing public policies.
>>there is no significant, evidence-based relationship between
>>fine particulates and human illness or mortality.
Do you mean that the UK’s pogrom on diesel cars, for producing fine particulates, is all based upon flawed science? If so, it is about time that VW and Mercedes took these universities to court, and screwed them for every penny they have.
R
Cui Bono
Scientist produce #fakescience because there is career progression and money in it and there is almost no downside, especially if the #fakescience supports a political funder. Scientists have also become gullible, they believe ‘peer reviewed’ papers despite it being repeatedly shown that peer == pal and that group-thinking pals can therefore generate a huge body of self referential papers supporting the #fakescience and can suppress the publication of any skeptical papers. This was shown by ‘The Team’ in climate ‘science’.
These problems can only be fixed by ensuring that where it is shown that research results have been deliberately faked, the response of the scientific community should be so hard that regardless of the possible pecuniary and career advantages no scientist would risk faking research. For example in obvious egregious cases the degrees/qualifications of the participants could be withdrawn, their research establishments could have accreditation removed and all papers citing the research and papers citing them withdrawn.
“Falsification” is an ambiguous term in this context. I strongly suggest it not be used.
In some cases it is much, much to generous! A spade should be called a spade. Michael Man is a nasty, self-serving, duplicitous , conniving, falsifying, conspiratorial………. spade!
In my career I managed a lot of scientists, many with PhDs. When I was in school every scientific course I took started with a short history of the field of study, a review of Scientific Method and a bit on scientific ethics. I had one course in my anthropology minor where the entire course was a discussion of proper scientific method, experimental design and changing ethics over time. I guarantee it is not still taught today. The professor teaching the graduate level course had to fight his on department head to be allowed to teach it. The professor was deeply concerned with what he believed was a significantly decline in scientific integrity (note this was in the late 1960s.) The older scientists I managed had received a similar education but it was not true of the younger scientific staff we hired. Some of the younger staff could not define Scientific Method and scientific ethics apparently was for some other field of study not theirs. It became a continual battle towards the end of my career. Peripheral to my main field of research I had to follow the bee hive collapse issue. I got to know beekeepers. The oldest keepers made it clear that while pesticides could be a problem they were not responsible for hive collapse and neither was global warming as was blamed for a while. They maintain that in a large majority of the cases it was poor hive management by the keeper that led to collapse. They maintained the problem got worse when the federal government stepped in. The older keepers believed that little attention was being directed toward bee genetics and genetic diversity. In some cases all the queens in a given area, even a state were coming from the same source, even the exact same breeding line. [Remember “killer bees” that was one experiment designed to increase genetic diversity in domestic bee colonies.] One of the problems we face is that today most people have never had a science course. Heck, most have never been taught to critically think. The media especially lacks any science education but they also know that few other people have. The lack of scientific integrity and the failure of the systems supposedly in place to insure scientific integrity of what is published is a danger to all of us. Consider the fiasco around vaccinations and autism. At least that “scientist” ultimately was caught and disciplined but hist work has actually caused the deaths of children and a resurgence of childhood diseases all but wipe out in western democracies.
It seems to me most folks, at least most who publish findings and opinions on this site, understand that the majority of scientific papers contain errors in data collection, analysis and sometimes both. I don’t think that’s an issue that can be addressed by editing or review; it’s inherent in the field, which has as its purpose the discovery of new knowledge, often using untried experimental methods. That’s really the reason behind publishing, to allow a broad community of fellow investigators to test the validity of the results by reproducing them.
But a few alarms went off for me after reading this research had been funded by two companies actively involved in commercially producing the chemicals studied, and that is was one or both of those companies who acted as “whistle blowers” in this case. There’s something very fishy about that. Why would the scientists (Woodcock, et. al.) publish a paper they knew was based on “cherry picked” results, when at the same time they released all of the data to their sponsors, who have a very understandable motivation (and no doubt “in house” expertise) to publicly castigate them for doing it? It smells like either rank stupidity on the part of the investigators, or a set up.
If it were a setup, what’s the purpose? What would be accomplished? Who benefits from it?
Let’s state outright the motive implied in this article, that Woodcock & etc. are activist eco-loons willing to throw away their careers for “the cause”. Maybe that’s blunt, and I expect the author has deniability, but that’s the way I’ve read it and it seems others who’ve commented here have arrived at a similar conclusion. WUWT has a rich and diverse collection of skeptics in its readership. It’s a perfect place to publish this sort of story.
If the investigators did in fact commit outright fraud, which generally requires a claim of financial damage, who could make that claim? Certainly not other scientists and not even the general public. It would seem the only “people” with standing to bring such a claim would be the sponsors of the research themselves, the very people “blowing the whistle”.
The effect this has on public opinion should be obvious; all research to date on this molecule should be considered junk. If this story is broadly promoted, a public that’s become skeptical of environmental justics warriors will extend that skepticism to neonic pesticide studies. Bayer wins. Their product has been “slandered by science”. Woodcock and crew are quietly hired into lucrative long term possitions with one of the many, many nameless subsidiaries of the sponsor corporations, never to be seen on the pages of Science again.
Anyway, it’s just a thought.
I have watched with varying degrees of amusement and horror at the campaign to demonize glyphosphate commonly known as RoundUp.
The circumlocutions the negative findings “studies” twist into conclusions is hard to tolerate.
I was once asked if I would drink RoundUp. I said no. An ah hah moment until I explained the surfactant (dish soap) was yuckky and gave you GI distress. I said I would have no problem with full glasses of just the active chemical in water at spray dilutions. I then asked if they were willing to drink dishwater in equal quantities.
Glyphosate is an example of scepticism gone bad. Studies have found no link to cancer, but the MSM gives great credence to those sceptical of those studies. Being sceptical of a positive link is fine, but how can you be sceptical of no-link, unless you have deep knowledge of the chemistry of carcinogens, totally lacking in those who claim to be sceptical.
climarecon. And I am already seeing lawyers’ TV commercials begging for clients that have been hurt by glyphosate. If they win a case in court the matter is settled and the product will be pulled from the market. It is hard to reverse a court ruling and it takes a lot of money and time and effort.
Instead of spending all this money on Climate Change couldn’t we just buy a few copies of “ the emperor has no Clothes” and make it compulsory reading in schools?
Falsification of data is fraud and is a felony. Cherry picking data, omitting data, skewing data are fraudulent and if caught in engaging in such activity in private industry an individual would be terminated for cause at the very least. The same result should obtain in Academia or Government employment IMO. Obtaining grants based on fraudulent data is theft. Fraud and theft need to be punished and the individuals or organizations involved barred from any further participation in the grant process at any level.
You have an optimistic view of private industry. I was at a major bank for 24 years. It went under, partially due to the CEO’s emphasis on results while keeping insulated from how they were attained (preserving deniability). I wasn’t at Wells Fargo, but it appears to have had the same problem recently.
Why is this happening? Reason is not inate. We have to be formed intellectually. The intellectual formation in our universities has radically rejected classical western philosophy, from which science emerged, in favour of modern political philosophy and relativism. Once truth is relative, then nothing – I emphasize nothing – can be proven or disproven. Truth is reduced to political power. Agenda based science becomes the norm, because science is no longer about truth, it’s about the agenda.
Welcome to Nietzsche’s world. God help us.
Nietzsche’s world had no God.
If we are being philosophical then truth is indeed relative, that is to say, contextual.
What day of the week is it? The true answer is contextual. It might be Wednesday, it might not.
What is a correct course of action to take? It depends on when you ask the question.
This is the core problem with nationalism and communism, both of which are aspects of materialism. The answer required to all questions becomes either ‘the nation’ or ‘the party’. There is no significant difference between them. They both function as false gods.
If truth is communicating reality as it actually is, speaking the truth, it is still dependent on accepting reality as it is comprehended at the time, because additional underlying realities may remain unknown for several more generations.
We have to deal with realities as we perceive them to be. Misrepresenting reality, faking data, making stuff up, arbitrarily assigning values to variables: that is unlikely to be ‘the truth’ and certainly not provably so.
The essence of CAGW is that some guys made a guess and sought to validate it because it seemed like it was a good idea at the time. Well, it wasn’t. The data shows nothing unnatural, catastrophic or tipping is going to happen. So their guesses and speculations were not, in the end, truthful, not then, not now. It is hard to think of a context in which their guess would be true.
Literally, nothing to see, move along.
If nationality is a false god, please tell me that Bedouin culture is appropriate for London.
Or that “If Allah wills it” is appropriate for science.
The article is about
but does not define what near means. Since honeybees forage in a 3-mile radius, near makes no sense. The question is – What percentage of the fields in a 3-mile radius were treated?
In the case of the controls, the hives must be more than 3 miles away from treated fields.
To have a valid study, all the hives (test and control) must be exposed to the same number of fields (actually, the same area) that that are sprayed with problem pesticides.
(PS – the link above to the “Science” article is broken.)
According to the article, each hive was “next to” a 63.1 hectare field – about 0.24 square miles. A circle with a radius of 3 miles is about 28.3 square miles. Conclusion – no data was collected.
According to one of the references, this was “two year, $3.6 million study”!
The fundamental problem lies in a) individuals’ ethics being watered down – we have gone well beyond the horror of Fletcher’s (?) Situational Ethics and b) many truly believe – and/or act accordingly – that the end justifies the means. As a people we are learning to compromise on behavior that our grandparents would have called downright not moral. So… are we prepared as individuals to stand tall and be beat down with criticism? Incidentally, the scientific method i) gather more and more data, never discarding what you do not like; ii) prepare or postulate a tentative conclusion/inference, iii) test it and validated the conclusion using data other than the one used to generate the conclusion, has been completely put to a side. Now it is i) make a claim ii) chose the data to validate it, iii) and then create a computer “model” adjusted to be proposed as a just validation iii) and yes, publish it with friendly peer reviewers. I retired in 2000 having served many graduate students. If any one of them had either a) ignored “outliers” type data, b) not validated a model by – relationship to first principles, and or application to a complete new set of data, they would have never received my approval.
It’s like my niece told me “It’s more important to be liked than be right”. This was how she lived her life—morally was fluid and depended on the situation.
Cut the funding of all sciences until it becomes so scarce, that only the best research will rise to the top.
I mean, if you ask any researcher today, how hard it is to obtain funding and they will say it is extremely, extremely difficult. But there is obviously too much floating around given the junk science coming out today.
Climate science is obviously in a different league. If you don’t tow the line, you get nothing. But that means there is just too much floating around and too much controlled by funding award committees that have been fully captured by the global warming believers.
Yes, we can take the believers off of the committees but the simple fact is there is too much available to start with. Get the believers off of the committees and cut the money to one-quarter of what it is today. Then, make it fully conditional on all data being publicly available and no adjustments can be made (as in the raw data is also publicly available).
Excellent point Bill. I do believe federal research grants could be significantly cut and the science would probably improve.
The actual effect would be significantly different. The best FUNDING APPLICATION writers would rise to the top, not necessarily the best scientists.
I once worked with a non-degreed individual who possessed on of the most creative minds I have ever observed. But he could neither write well nor present data and/or proposals in an understandable (i.e., to managers) fashion. I, on the other hand, am not very creative, but can synthesize other folks concepts well into a coherent and practical whole, and am the guy to whom coworkers came when they needed their papers and presentations edited. Over several years, we – as a team – were able to get several major NASA projects funded and implemented, but take one guess who generally was credited with the success. HINT: it wasn’t the guy who had the ideas…
I sure hope there is a better way to fund research, but I don’t know what that is.
These days, Academia is so badly infested with Leftist scientists who believe that ;the Cause’ is greater than ‘the Truth’ that they are prepared to misrepresenmt and distort science to support and advance their own false beliefs. Their politics derermine the outcomes of their studies. The government bureaucracies, similarly infested with Leftists, supports them with money.
It’s called “Post-Normal Science”.
https://buythetruth.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/climate-change-and-the-death-of-science/
A reviewer from Nature about a (non-proper) paper on exotic species—
“Unfortunately, while the authors are careful to state that they are discussing biodiversity changes at local scales, and to explain why this is relevant to the scientific community, clearly media reporting on these results are going to skim right over that and report that biological diversity is not declining if this paper were to be published in Nature. I do not think this conclusion would be justified, and I think it is important not to pave the way for that conclusion to be reached by the public.”
This came from a link from TWTW which I had posted before. http://issues.org/33-4/the-science-police/
I suspect that the smaller, less obvious (as fxk noted) but more numerous sins are more important than the total more easy to catch fabrications and as the rejected author pointed out at least this reviewer was honest about his failure to understand science. His paper was published in PNAS and another in American Scientist, too both of their credit. Fear of exotic species has an interesting and important background, both scientific and political.
Wish I had a patent for these “… it is (include your own, like much more, simpler, etc.) than previously thought.”Or it “…may not be (good, right, substantial, etc.), but it makes a good point.” Or “..further investigations into (add your grant proposal title here) are needed. ” The middle one is rare in the literature I read, but I heard it too often, or similar phrases like the Nature reviewer used, a couple of decades ago. Us peasants are just too stupid to understand.
Let me add an amendment, as this link just came from a Sigma Xi (American Scientist) Smart Brief. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-07/weather-gets-weird-as-record-rainfall-follows-record-drought
I just learned from them that in 2011 we had the worst drought in history in Texas and the worst flood on the Mississippi. As one who studied the end of the Texas drought (and also lived here in 2011) and the 1970s Mississippi floods, both are hard to believe, although it would be necessary to look up real data. I do have this handy. (Hazen, H. A. 1899. Extraordinary rainfall in Texas. Monthly Weather Review. 27(6):249. In less than four days at the end of June an estimated 2000+ square miles from Hearne to just above Waco was covered with 30 inches of rain. )
There are other extremes attested to by a MIT professor and a California State Meteorologist, both who seem to admit that they are throwing out history.
Extraordinary in 1899, Weird in 2017. Homework in 1899, Delusion crisis in 2017.
I left out that the Texas drought was that of the 1950s. Was told it was worse in some of Texas than in the 1930s, also not good. Old enough to well remember the second drought, born in the first.
Confidence above 95% is a statistical social construct. (1 in 20.)
So, many studies will have some outliers that contradict the consensus.
This is expected.
If you have doubts that small particulates are damaging to health and mortality, you can read a meta-study that looks at 60 such studies. Among 60 you may find 3 that are outliers…
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4335916/
95% confidence doesn’t necessarily mean that there were a few outliers and the rest of the studies agreed with the conclusion. A few outliers can skew an average up to the point to where a conclusion looks meaningful.
If you have worries that small particulates actually affect mortality, you can actually read that study and its supplementary data. Even though most studies showed no overall correlation, combining the figures created an average that lets them claim a positive correlation.
For example, the study concludes that elementary carbon (EC) had a strong connection with mortality, even though they had 13 studies that showed no connection (or even negative correlation), and only 6 that showed a positive correlation. -Figures 7,8, and 9 of the supplementary data.
They also state “For metals, there were insufficient estimates for meta-analysis”, but Table 3 shows they had just as many studies for metals as they did for EC. Strangely enough those studies for metals only showed a connection to mortality 32% of the time, about the same as EC, but with fewer strong outliers so the average wasn’t as high.
It’s heartening to hear such things. Yet in India, especially the teachers working in colleges and universities are the worst and they simply borrow or steal from others or fabricated on their own and without any morals and ethics they simply submit. Further their own team as experts & panels and referees without any hurdles they got their research degrees. Their criminal acts are spreading like a web as if like internet and press on.
As an example, my own colleagues were involved in such plagiarism and the concerned university (Bharathiar University) had helped them in every respect to award them their Ph. D. Degree. If there is any mechanism to stop it, it will be of great boon to science.
In 70s eminent agricultural scientists committed suicide in the office (?). Later government appointed Gajendragadkar (?) a SC (retired) judge to enquire on this. This is relating to bass using the subordinate data. But nothing happened.
When my boss submitted a work for award by agricultural commission, my previous boss who was a member of the committee informed the committee this was initiated by me when he was my boss. The committee rejected the submission for award but chairman over ruled and awarded. At my office, officials asked me fight against that but I refused to do that. Then they threatened me to get me transferred to Gahahti [considered as punishment place]. — In Canberra Australia, I met another member of the committee and enquired on this. He said yes before other ICRISAT Scientists who came to attend a conference —. Just at that time I attended an interview for a post in ICRISAT, Hyderabad and got order immediately after the interview. I resigned my central government post and joined an international body. I encountered worse than this at ICRISAT where my work was published on my collegues names and informed the Dy. DG that I am not doing any work. But at a in-house meet I presented all my work. This was shocking to Dy. DG and then questioned my boss. After this I resigned and went Canberra for my Ph.D. At the farewell party all the top bosses questioned my boss in a open function. And my DG recommended my name to Brazilian DG of EMBRAPA in the ICRISAT Committee meeting. After submitting my thesis in 11 months and joined the Brazilian post.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
in continuation — let me give my experience on exactly opposite to the above. While doing my Ph.D., I used some models and the data was analysed using the software available on CSIRO computer. The computer-in-charge helped me running the programmes.
One day my neighboure [sitting next to my cubicle] -Ph.D. Student asked for my appointment to discuss on the models I used instead of standard models used in Australia. In fact he approached my guides on this on the advise of his guides [one of them was the computer-in-charge in CSIRO]. My Guides suggested him to discuss with me. On one Sunday I presented why I am using the some models instead of Austraian model. He accepted my argument and he dumped his Ph.D. thesis and took up a new topic and completed his thesis. We both received Ph.D. at the time — this information was sent to me to my Brazil Address by the Ph.D. student.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
I work in a local government office. For years I supplied statistics on local traffic accidents to the university students for their papers, newspaper stories, activism, etc. One student asked for stats on an intersection near the college. I told him that there had been one accident the year before. He insisted I must be wrong because surely there were more. I told him I could only find the one. He asked how many near misses there had been. I told him those weren’t reported. He asked why not. I explained that unless an accident happens and is reported, I wouldn’t know about it. He insisted that it was a very dangerous intersection, and something had to be done. When I said that the statistics didn’t support that, he said he was sure it was dangerous and sure that something needed to be done. I’ve always kept that experience in mind when alamists say something has to be done. I also wonder who’s keeping the stats and counting the near misses.
Energy use in existing buildings would a prima-fascia case for “corrupt science”. It has been funded by both EPA And DOE for too many years.
Uptown Sinclair said it best – “It is hard to teach a person a new concept when their salary depends on them not understanding it.”
The other quote I like is – “It is hard to teach a person a concept they think they already know”.