News Brief by Kip Hansen
JAMA Network Open, an online open-access journal of the American Medical Association, has published “Climate Change and Health — Call for Papers” from authors Drs. Frederick P. Rivara and Stephan D. Fihn, Editor and Deputy Editor of JAMA Network Open. It is a good thing that they have published it as an Editorial.
This “Call for Papers” is a prime example of what leads to bias in scientific (and medical) journals. Rivara and Fihn, the editors of JAMA Network Open, expressly call for papers that will show harms from future climate change. No pretense is made to call for papers that will discuss the possible benefits or harms of future climate change — only harms.
After what appears to be a fair and sensible (if unsurprisingly already biased) lede:
“The scientific community widely agrees that climate change is occurring due to the increase in greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities. These changes are likely to have profound implications in a range of human experiences worldwide. As a global open access health journal, JAMA Network Open is issuing a call for papers on the health outcomes and risks associated with climate change.” [ footnote reference numbers deleted –kh ]
the authors out their true objectives by then writing:
“We are interested in reports of original research on the associations of heat with the health of humans and their potential adaptations to global warming. Air pollution is a critically important topic because it is associated with increases in the risk of cardiovascular disease, impaired lung function,, allergies and asthma, altered thyroid function, food insecurity and malnutrition, and forced migration. The increasing incidence of wildfires further lessens air quality and has immediate and long-term effects on humans and other organisms. We are also interested in studies on changes in the incidence of infectious diseases, including vector-borne and food-borne illnesses, occurring as a result of changes in a region’s temperature, biome, and capacity to combat these illnesses.
Climate change may also be associated with risks to mental health, including increased stress, anxiety, and depression. As extreme weather occurs with greater frequency, threats to health are associated with the traumas of natural disasters, which bring loss of life and the destruction of community infrastructure. These studies are thus critically important to fully understand the magnitude and breadth of the health consequences of environmental changes. Climate change may also impact a community’s ability to support and develop health-promoting resources, such as green space, which has been shown to be associated with improvements in mental health.
JAMA Network Open is particularly interested in examining how climate change affects people most susceptible to environmental degradation: people at the extremes of age, those with chronic illness, those performing physical work in the heat, and those living with homelessness, poverty, food insecurity, and discrimination.”
That is certainly a fine list of Climate Catastrophe topics, mostly imaginary [ht — by analogy — Douglas Adams ] . They will view as “favorable” any submitted paper that is pre-conceived to show that Climate Change will be bad for humans — or agriculture, the atmosphere, animals, environments … make your own list — and especially for the disadvantaged: old people, very young people, chronically ill people, people who have to work (outside), the homeless, poor, hungry and with identities that suffer “discrimination” (used in its special Identity Politics definition).
Better hurry though: get your grant requests in quickly because “Manuscripts should be submitted by March 1, 2020.”
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Author’s Comment:
This solicitation for papers is one of the many reasons that scientific journals have been found to contain an endless supply of research that is often not only biased but just plain wrong. A journal soliciting papers specifically to represent only one side of a science controversy is, in my opinion, simply unscientific and violates the very premise of a scientific or medical journal.
JAMA Network Open would have been fully justified to call for papers on the future health and environmental health implications of possible climate change futures. Sensible voices have been pointing out for years that cold places will benefit from longer growing seasons, less stress and death from cold temperatures and that hot places will see little, if any, warming. The “spread of tropical diseases” concept is well-known to be a false issue from the start [ see here and here ].
As John P. A. Ioannidis has pointed out, time and time again, “for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.”
This essay covers one of the reasons that Ioannidis gets that right.
Begin your comments with “Kip…” if you would like a reply.
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This is not a new thing for the medical field. They regularly publish flawed papers written by Palestinians activists sympathetic to or outright working for HAMAS and attacking Israel as if that represents medical science. Just one more way the leftists infiltrate everything to use to push there agendas.
The only climate change harm is coming from the fear of climate change harm.
+10
co2isnotevil ==> Yes, included in their list of ‘appropriate’ topics is the psychological harm of climate change.
Note “associated with ” not “caused by”.
It is quite clear that those affected by stress, anxiety, and depression w.r.t. climate are those gullible enough to be believe climate activist / pseudo-scientists’ constant alarmist claims.
Greg ==> For today’s epidemiologists, “associated with” and “caused by” are equivalent.
Which shouldn’t be so. True enough, if there is causation, there must be correlation; though the inverse does not necessarily hold. We even have a phrase for it: spurious correlation.
cdquarles ==> Yes, that is correct.
Climate change definitely causes massive harm to humans .. that is, when the earth’s climate is cooling.
When it is warming, climate change causes massive benefits to humans, such as right now, when there are more humans alive than ever before, eating better than ever before, living longer than ever before, less subject to starvation and disease than ever before, and less people dying off due to hypothernia, which kills vastly more people than does over heating. Vastly fewer humans dying from storms, earthquakes, floods, fires, and other such natural disasters.
Warming is Good.
Cooling is Bad.
No. When the oceans boil it will be really, really bad for humanity. But that won’t be for about 5 billion years, so I suppose we have time to work on it.
Leghorn ==> We just need to add more ice to keep it from boiling……
And let us not forget that in 2015 the editor of Lancet said that 50% of all submitted medical studies were false or fraudulent.
Kip, given that this med journal is calling for only one side of the possibilities it should approach 100% false instead of only 50% as in the Lancet study. My doctor told me that at a medical conference he asked a fair number of doctors if they had noticed a big increase in asthma patients after he had read the hype on this by the Lung Association. He said everyone replied that no they hadn’t. I think such a survey should be done. I would worry that doctors may “identify moe asthma patien5s and medicate unnecessarily everytime someone clears his throat.
Gary ==> I may write about the Asthma Wars….powerful medical organizations are pushing “increasing asthma” mostly claiming “air pollution because climate change” as the cause. Of course, to do so, they must ignore the facts that air pollution has been reduced leeaps and bounds and is currently a non-problem for almost all areas of the United States.
I am an asthmatic and I can personal experience I can verify that what you are saying is true.
William ==> Thanks for your personal experience. There are certainly increases in asthma diagnoses in some areas, but not caused by new air pollution.
Relation asthma / ___
“CONCLUSIONS: Bacterial exposure in house dust determined childhood asthma and allergies.
Personal cleanliness, such as washing hands, and home cleanliness were objectively reflected by dust parameters in homes.
However, neither personal nor home cleanliness was associated with a risk for asthma and allergies.
Other microbial components in house dust
not affected by personal hygiene
are likely to play a role.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25584716/
https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-huawei&sxsrf=ACYBGNScoFacoq_W1VrbGxnVWu9J9LIC1g:1568859147765&q=asthma+excess+hygiene&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjr1NHh59vkAhWwyKYKHZ-iB04Q7xYoAHoECAwQAg&biw=360&bih=518
“Sometimes, number one, you have to bow to the absurd.”
Jean-Luc Picard
Why not ask for papers that demonstrate currant damage from climate change? They have been warning us for over 30 years. There must be some evidence that the deterioration is ongoing. I cannot think of anything supported by evidence but there must be something. It is possible increasing CO2 causes hearing loss. I have personal experience with that.
…over 70 years
A hard freeze can be rough on the current currant crop.
MarkW and DMA ==> “Currant (Ribes) is a thornless understory shrub that grows in hardiness zones 3-8.” and grow best in zones 3-5. They need the cool temps to fruit and prosper. Plants may drop their leaves when temperatures exceed 85 degrees Fahrenheit (29 C.) for an extended period of time.
When do currants fruit? Currants (and gooseberries) ripen in June and July, depending on cultivar, so are really unlikely to be affected by early frosts (heaven help us in case of Global Cooling.)
We grow a lot of berries here in New York State — and have extensive areas of wild berries — all the blackberries, thimble berries, gooseberries, wild low-bush blue berries — a berry nice crop most years.
My pending submission to JAMA: “God and Religions Got it Wrong – It’s Never Been About the Devil and Evil, But Rather Climate Change”.
Climate change . . . the scourge of mankind.
I’m sure Professor Ridd, from Australia, could submit a paper about his adverse health effects, related to stress, regarding climate change. Not sure that is what they are expecting, however.
Ron ==> Good one….
Their pretense of being interested in “science” is a blatant one. These papers/studies/what-have-you could be written by a robot. They already have the formula and the guidelines. Just input different people, places, flora and fauna, and presto, bingo.
Bruce ==> Some journals have accepted papers written by robots and algorithms.
https://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f5975
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/new-sokal-hoax/572212/
Here’s a contact page, where feedback to the journal might be offered (I think):
https://sites.jamanetwork.com/help/
Robert ==> Thanks for sharing the link.
Assume RCP 8.5 grossly underestimates warming and use RCP 97 just in case. Then wave hands ROBUSTLY (over keyboard) until deadly mortality and catastrophic disasters appear with a plea for more funding.
Here are some of my suggestions for papers in the journal:
Cumulative Adverse Effects on Children Age 5 to 12 of Sensationalizing Unsupported Catastrophic Climate Change Forecasts
Costs and Benefits of Hyping Climate Doom in Professional Medical Journals
Epidemiological Overview of Climate-Change-Awareness Hypersensitivity in Preteen and Post-Adolescent Females
Robert ==> Now, go our and get some grants and a computer algorithm for writing climate papers- stir, don’t shake, and submit!
How ’bout “Increased Death Rate in Populations Exposed to Fuel Poverty.” That’s where I’d start . . .
Goldrider ==> Not bad!
I’m a shoo-in.
Just flew across the Pacific from northern hemisphere summer to southern hemisphere winter.
Got a bugger of a cold.
So there you have it – empirical evidence of the harmful health effects of climate change. 😨
oh thanks..bring another strain of some nasty flubug back home..
thats WHY I dislike the global flying bug spreading tourist setup.
The consensus is clear, the discussion is over, all citizens must hand over their plasma.
It is claimed that the atmospheric CO2 concentration has increased from 280 ppm to 410 ppm in the past 150 years concurrent with a global average life expectancy at birth increase from ~30 years to ~70 years (excepting Africa):
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-globally-since-1770
At the same time the world population has increased from ~2B to ~8B.
Employing climate-alarmist logic: therefore increasing CO2 has directly caused more people and to live longer healthier lives.
Hooray!
Chris Hanley ==> With the right Epidemiological Statistics Package, one could easily produce a paper showing that effect ( a direct statistical cause…) with a ver small P-value. Go for it!
I like that….excellent
Well, the abundance of food has greatly reduced starvation but now there are more obese people than ever before, and as CO2 rises crop yields will also generally rise leading to even more obesity.
Scissor ==> I suspect sarcasm — but food abundance ( sufficiency of food ) is not a cause of obesity.
Here is a good graphical illustration of that idea, less any direct correlation to CO2…
Ty ==> Gotta love the Rosslings.
“As extreme weather occurs with greater frequency,…”
This article already subscribes to the fake news pushed by alarmists. Fake news being that there is a concensus that storms will intensify and multply, despite the lack of any supportive data. Where I live down in Australia, there is a noted reduction in tropical cyclone activity over the past 40 years, as evidenced by the BOM data.
http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/climatology/trends.shtml
However, like all government agencies in the search of more taxpayer money for a better life, the BOM claim that it will still be bad in the future based on their superior models. In fairness to these people, TC data is difficult to homogenize like is done for temperature data. If you start removing early TCs to create an increasing trend someone will notice and it will be more difficult to argue the case, for example that cyclone Tracy never really happened, or it was just a thunderstorm, etc. This lack of ability to modiffy TC data to match the models is indeed a serious problem for the BOM. At this stage, all they can do is note that data before satellite introduction in 1979 is suspect, which ironically makes no difference to the trend, because the same decrease occurs after 1979. – Nice work guys, keep up the grant seeking propaganda for your next BMWs 😉
Serge ==> Perfectly right. Two editors of an online medical journal pretend to know something about extreme weather frequency (probably heard something on NPR…).
https://www.wsj.com/articles/take-two-aspirin-and-call-me-by-my-pronouns-11568325291
“…During my term as associate dean of curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania’s medical school, I was chastised by a faculty member for not including a program on climate change in the course of study. As the Journal reported last month, such programs are spreading across medical schools nationwide…”
Michael Jankowski ==> Thanks, great link. I’d like to read but don’t subscribe .. . if you do, could you copy and past into a doc or pdf file and email it to me at my first name at i4 dot net? Thanks.
Here is a very very very easy experiment that would make a great article for JAMA pretty much proving that AGW is pure Horse Shinola.
The Hockeystick, on which all this nonsense if dependent, makes a sharp Dog Leg in 1902. You can do to NASA GISS and filter for all the stations that existed in 1901, along with their BI. Simply identify Weather Stations that have been in existence since 1902 and have a BI of 10 or less. 10 or less implies a rural station largely removed from the Urban Heat Island Effect. What you will find is that if you control for the Urban Heat Island Effect there has been no warming over the past 117 years. CO2 increased from around 296 to 410 today, and it had no impact of temperatures of stations with BIs 10 and below. Every kid should be doing this experiment in their High Schools.
Here is the Site: Choose the Weather Station Alice Springs (23.8S, 133.88E) ID:501943260000 as a perfect example
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data_v3/
The reality is that true climate change has been so small that it cannot possible have caused any medical problems. One must not mix up true climate change with weather cycles that are part of the current climate. People endure a much greater climate change by moving a few hundred miles than has happened during the past century. Where I live near the beach in Southern California, climate changes radically by the mile as one moves inland so if ones current climate disagrees with you just pull up stakes and move. One can look at gardening books for climate maps and for decades they have not changed. Extreme weather events are part of the current climate and are not themselves indicative of climate change.
One can look at gardening books for climate maps and for decades they have not changed.
The hardiness zones have changed over time.
William ==> Quite right., slim. weather does cause effects, including health effects. Climate is just the average weather (+/- 30 yrs) of a locality.
To me, it is better to say that the current climate is the result of the previously realized weather.
What is needed is a publication for the sceptics. Honest ones of course.
So where is the money to come from. ?
Businesses of course, they have the most to lose if the Green nonsense
continues, but they seem to be busy either taking advantage of the Green
thing, or are keeping their heads well down so they do not attract the attention
of the Green mobs of true believers.
As so frequently stated by me, we will just have to wait till the lights start
to go out , and hope that the damage to our economies is not to severe.
Perhaps Nature will help this Northern winter by being really cold, although even then the Greenies will try to claim the credit for preventing the World from frying.
MJE VK5ELL
Looks to me like they are soliciting articles that can be used as fodder for msm articles, primarily for the purpose of scaring people. “If the temperature rises 3 degrees then see how many different ways you can die!”
They figure they can scare people into voting for a more tractable POTUS than the current one.
I think theyve been asked by too many people for PROOF about the claims theyve already made
same as our idiot docs collectives down here declaring climate energency too just this week. with not a shred of proof.
biased so called proof is what theyre after.
down under theyll be using the “thunderstorm asthma” even had in Vic a couple yrs ago as evidence.
before the same events would have been blamed(prob rightly so) on windborne pollens from the stormfront
Steve ==> Yes, getting harder to separate out the social, the political, and the scientific these days….sad news.
A lot of this is a parallel to the search for deleterious effects of caffeine. I watched this saga, and vast amounts of money were spent over 30 years before anyone looked for potential beneficial effects. It is a shame about the scaring of children, but how is that different from telling kids that they will burn in hell if they fail to do certain rituals, or that they will go blind if they masturbate? Scaring children has been a popular industry since time immemorial. The strong smart ones grow out of it and the rest become ‘conforming’ adults who cannot wait to start scaring their own children. Maybe its the former who make up creative new scare stories for their peers (an interesting research topic?). I hope I didn’t scare mine too much, but I did try to get across the notion that something terrible would happen if they strayed off the sidewalk – probably warped them for life,
I suppose most reasonably normal kids will see their parents and other adults doing very little about catastrophic climate change and take the message with a grain of salt. Only one of my 4 sibs kept up the religion that was drummed into us, and that one is the only one who believes catastrophic gorbal warming with the same religious emotionality (he also needs 2 cars because the EV’s range was too low, so he has a hybred as well).
We see in the mainstream media, most vividly the NY Times, that activism has replaced journalism. No one is denying that any more. Even the editors themselves like NYT Editor in Chief Baquet admits it, so the NYT no longer even tries to hide this tossing journalism aside with its “Project 1619” disinformation campaign to re-write the history of US based into a white racist narrative. And we already knew they’d discarded journalism for climate activism. Now the entire world of “woke social justice” garbage is being paraded openly by the Left in journalism schools and media outlets, like a bunch of drag queens at a Gay Pride parade seeing who can be most outrageous to get noticed.
The same is now happening across science and medicine.
We’re seeing more and more open displays of activism replacing science at the science journals. NAS President Marcia McNutt is the most vivid example of this intentional abandonment of science in exchange for a political activism via her Editorial Opinion in Science magazine in August. The destruction of science norms within the National Academy are no doubt well underway with her at the helm there.
So that destruction of medicine is happening now openly in the medical associations and societies. We always suspected that there were political activist motivations at work, but now they no longer hide it. They feel emboldened, in the same way the Green New Deal’s unveiling demonstrated that Democrats’ demands for “climate action” were merely a Trojan Horse bearing socialism and a path to one party political power.
The reality though that is Climate Change policies advanced by the Left are the greatest threat to human health over the next 100 years. The so called climate crisis is in reality a self-inflicted climate policy crisis that will destroy affordable health care as one party pursues politcal domination in the US.
Climate Change policies of expensive fossil fuels that will destroy:
– access to affordable energy for the working class and fixed-income elderly in both cold and warm climates,
– access to affordable nutrition of fresh vegetables and animal proteins, and
– rural medicine thru unaffordable or prohibitively restrictive transportation costs.
A recent pushback by a former associate dean of curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine at the “woke-ness” that is descending its tentacles on medical schools by activist doctors:.
https://www.inquirer.com/health/stanley-goldfarb-wsj-gun-control-climate-change-penn-20190913.html
and here at the WSJ:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/take-two-aspirin-and-call-me-by-my-pronouns-11568325291
The main take-away from Dr Goldfarb, “… teaching these issues [social justice and climate change issues in medical school curricula] is coming at the expense of rigorous training in medical science.”
Where this will end nobody knows. But it will not be good for anyone. Most especially the medical profession or their patients.
Medicine needs to #stayinyourlane.
“Now the entire world of “woke social justice” garbage is being paraded openly by the Left in journalism schools and media outlets …. The same is now happening across science and medicine.”
All lined up to get knocked down by a cooling climate counter-pulse. Fate, tempted, may have them in its sights.
Joel ==> Couldn’t be truer than your “activism has replaced journalism”.
…. “or that they will go blind if they masturbate?”
I figured that if that was true, one could always stop at the “needing glasses” stage.
I was more concerned with the revelation that CO2 makes you deaf. Clearly the adverse impact on vision from juvenile discoveries is only temporary. As I have got older, my need for distance specs has reduced.
More troubling is the CO2 effect on hearing seems to have kicked in. Just the other day, I was looking for my reading glasses and failed to hear my wife tell me, “they are on top of your head”….
I am putting forward the hypothesis, CO2 ages you….its effect is most noticeable in the over fifties.
JAMA here I come.
Question….
Who reads any of this stuff ?
Is it truly insidious, or just a product of….literary desperation ?
u.k.(us) ==> who reads?….(I think you mean JAMA…) every doctor in the world? Me? (a not-a-doctor). Every Health and Wellness Journalist in every major world newspaper? every journalist on the health and environmental beat?
Question JAMA authority.
I don’t believe anything anymore.
Do you expect us to believe that?
How about sending them a paper on the increasing occurrence of psychotic delusions among a wide swath of ‘scientists’ in western countries?
Dear Drs Frederick P. Rivara and Stephan D. Fihn, JAMA Network Open:
I would be pleased if you would consider the following paper for publication in Climate Change and Health:
Doubleyu, D.(1) Increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations and the climate crisis are directly correlated with assault weapons sales in the United States.
Abstract: Assault weapons kill more Americans annually than poisonous snakes. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act was signed into law by President William Jefferson Clinton in 1994 and made illegal the manufacture and civilian use of semi-automatic assault weapons for 10 years. Unfortunately, although assault weapons were less likely to be used, violent gun crime failed to decrease over the decade and the use of assault weapons in Hollywood movies actually increased. In 2004 assault weapons sales to individuals again became legal and since then the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has increased from 380 to 414 ppb. We present a model demonstrating how a ban on the sale and possession of assault weapons will eliminate the correlation between atmospheric carbon and assault weapon sales.
(1) Director, International Centre for Climate Alarm & Armaments, The Hague
DaveW ==> I am writing aboutEpidemiology next….
This is a legal alert… we are seeking witches to prop a consensus, and using empathy to pass warlock judgments for Profits.
Carbonophobia – Fear of the sixth element.
Someone that denies CO2 is good for life is an oxymoron…
“The scientific community widely agrees that climate change is occurring due to the increase in greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities”.
Well you can’t say they don’t start from preconceived ideas. The fact even their preconceived idea is flawed doesn’t embarrass them.
Now, had they opened their call for papers with the term “environmental change” replacing climate change they might have been on to something worth progressing.
The greening of the planet, thanks to the release of CO2 over the past 75 years seems to be recognised by the scientific community, at long last.
The correlation between the increased green plant growth rates and the growth in urbanisation living, (where there are no lawns to mow or hedges to trim) is positive. Clear evidence of the effect on the environment of burning fossil fuel…. 🙂
Not so much a call for more papers of a scientific nature as it is a call for scientific themed papers that are really thinly disguised justifications to impose socialism.
same setup as the IPCC -ONLY manmade supposed co2 harm to be looked at .
hardly open fair or scientifically based is it?
If the organization’s publication’s name began, as some do (I suspect), with “Proceedings and Journal,” it would go by a nifty acronym: PAJAMA.
Roger ==> Cute.
I suggest that the medical journals need to concentrate on medical mistakes, the number three killer after heart disease and cancer instead of jousting with windmills.
Mike ==> Self criticism is hard for any field — John P. A. Ioannidis does what he can for medicine (and gets slammed for it). In medicine, it is called the “White Wall of Silence” — my father was a doctor and i have personal experience with it. Doctors are very reluctant to call out other doctors.
We’ve seen the nastiness that pervades in CliSci — and in Reef Science in Oz.
Um, maybe so to an extent, in public; yet examples do get made, or did. As they say, YMMV. I say YMWV.
Now contrast the number of medical malpractice lawsuits with the number of legal ones.
cd ==> Medical malpractice suits are driven by lawyers who pay a very few doctors to testify on behalf of their claim.
You seldom see MDs reporting other MDs for anything.
My proposal, “The impact on Health by the Unreliability of Renewable Energy.”
Kip, you wrote: “A journal soliciting papers specifically to represent only one side of a science controversy is, in my opinion, simply unscientific…”
Is this only an opinion, or is it universally true that choosing to ignore half of the scientific data and results is unscientific, and not a matter of opinion?
I acknowledge that scientists can specialize in their field of study to the point that they are only studying one aspect of one side of a controversy, but that is not the same as intentionally ignoring evidence and results.
James ==> It is my opinion (as labelled clearly) — but it is also true in the larger sense. Were a medical journal to call for papers only the on harms of “excess” dietary salt would be unscientific. The call should be for papers on the effects of various levels of dietary salt on health.
WUWT calls for papers on benefits to man, nature and the environment due to increased in OCO?
John Q. ==> The masthead for this site used to say (under the site name) “Commentary on puzzling things in life, nature, science, weather, climate change, technology and recent news”. That’s still what gets published here — at least by me (with the kind forbearance of Anthony and Charles-the-Moderator).
There is a site that publishes “on benefits to man, nature and the environment due to increased in OCO”. It is
https://co2coalition.org/
“A journal soliciting papers specifically to represent only one side of a science controversy is, in my opinion, simply unscientific and violates the very premise of a scientific or medical journal.”
Next year, when JAMA is full of papers claiming all kinds of negative consequences, the usual suspects will start proclaiming that this proves that only harm will come from global warming.
MarkW ==> I believe that is their intention….