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Heavy Blow to Scientific Credibility

July 29, 2022 by tornado Leave a Comment

The entire theory (and research thereon) that Alzheimer’s disease is caused by “amyloid beta” protein plaques, which has been around since a widely publicized and seminal 2006 paper, now teeters on the brink of implosion, or at least deep and major reworking. A six-month Science magazine-supported investigation reveals “doctored” (pun not intended, but fits) medical imaging of the sufferers’ brains. Those images appeared inside that first paper, other papers by the same authors, and on down through more papers by others that used the original work and data as a foundation.

Many tens of millions of dollars of research, across 16 years of elapsed time, is at risk, thanks to irreproducibility and perhaps outright tampering. That risk includes waste of a lot of taxpayer funding. If these images contain bogus alterations (in effect, unethically altering data to fit hypotheses), as independent analysis hired by Science magazine have affirmed, this could become the greatest scientific scandal of our time, and that’s saying something.

Science (the profession), and medical science in particular, are having a tough time reputationally right now — most of it not deserved, but some of it well-earned, unfortunately. Science (the profession) doesn’t need any more body blows to credibility. The great majority of scientists are honest and ethical. I know many in meteorology and other geosciences, and even a few in medicine. Scientists absolutely should be held to utmost high ethical standards. Still, as with any profession, human nature can infest science with bad actors too — some of whom are smart enough to get away with it, at least for awhile.

Yes, science is self-correcting, but the time for that with this topic was *before* publication, during peer review — or at the very latest, independent reproduction shortly after with retractions…but not 16 years and countless research time and money later. Better late than never in exposing potential misconduct, of course — but this has a uniquely foul stench due to the broad impact. It’s not some obscure work with an audience of ten, investigating the electrical conductivity of a piece of tree bark in Tasmania. Instead this is a horrid disease that impacts millions of people, now and future, with enormous social and economic cost, and most of us know someone(s) affected.

As a (non-medical) scientist and photographer, who is also a journal editor, I care about experimental and data reproducibility, photographic & science ethics, as well as waste of taxpayers’ research funding. I’ve also lost friends and colleagues to Alzheimer’s disease. That all makes this revelation rather infuriating.

Please read the full, long-form article (linked here again) for the full story. Here is an excerpt:

If Schrag’s doubts are correct, Lesné’s findings were an elaborate mirage.

Schrag, who had not publicly revealed his role as a whistleblower until this article, avoids the word “fraud” in his critiques of Lesné’s work and the Cassava-related studies and does not claim to have proved misconduct. That would require access to original, complete, unpublished images and in some cases raw numerical data. “I focus on what we can see in the published images, and describe them as red flags, not final conclusions,” he says. “The data should speak for itself.”

A 6-month investigation by Science provided strong support for Schrag’s suspicions and raised questions about Lesné’s research. A leading independent image analyst and several top Alzheimer’s researchers—including George Perry of the University of Texas, San Antonio, and John Forsayeth of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)—reviewed most of Schrag’s findings at Science’s request. They concurred with his overall conclusions, which cast doubt on hundreds of images, including more than 70 in Lesné’s papers. Some look like “shockingly blatant” examples of image tampering, says Donna Wilcock, an Alzheimer’s expert at the University of Kentucky.

The authors “appeared to have composed figures by piecing together parts of photos from different experiments,” says Elisabeth Bik, a molecular biologist and well-known forensic image consultant. “The obtained experimental results might not have been the desired results, and that data might have been changed to … better fit a hypothesis.”

Filed Under: Not weather Tagged With: Alzheimer's, bad science, ethics, medicine, peer review, photography ethics, reproducibility, research, science, science media, scientific ethics, scientific fraud, scientific misconduct

Wartime in the Era of Social Media: Watch What You Share!

February 24, 2022 by tornado Leave a Comment

As you’ve likely heard by now, Russian forces have entered Ukraine. One nation’s invading a much smaller, less-powerful neighbor is nothing new historically; it’s happened countless many times. But it is new to the cell-phones/social-media/fake-image era.

Real and bogus images and videos will abound, flooding the internet from true reporters, propaganda bots, and well-meaning but ignorant Uncle Bubbas. Without first-hand knowledge of the situation, you are unlikely to know, with absolute certainty, which is which. You also are likely to overestimate your own ability to judge what is authentic.

This message below is nonpartisan, wise advice right now for all: self-discipline and restraint.

Don’t share emotionally manipulative war images and stories without independent verification — preferably from multiple credible media sources. [Mainline media has been caught sharing fake images hastily before.] Even then, choose prudence over impulse, and wait awhile.

It’s easier for most humans to react with reflexive emotion than self-discipline, restraint, analysis, logic, and reason. We meteorologists have seen this ad nauseam with frequent sharing of old, misdated, manipulated and/or outright fake storm images. Far more is at stake here than some old or fake storm image passed off as yesterday’s event!

War images (real, fake or old) will be shared widely without verifying authenticity — sometimes even by “credible” but duped media. For the sake of all, don’t be the fooled fool.

And for those thirsting for some formally published science on the issue of sharing fake, manipulated and/or misleading imagery, here you go. It really does cause social and psychological damage!

Filed Under: Not weather Tagged With: fakery, media, media ethics, media mistakes, photo fakery, photography, photography ethics, propaganda, self-restraint, social media, war

Scattershooting 191022

October 22, 2019 by tornado Leave a Comment

Scattershooting while wondering what happened to sanity and common sense…

“PHOTOGRAPHY” GAME FARMS: “Photography game farms” are unethical and dishonest. I refuse to participate in staged “wildlife” shots, and those who are (without complete disclosure) are being dishonest, greedy, and unethical. A nasty pox with a thousand chiggers on any photographer who sells images of these captive wild animals, without full and open disclosure of the circumstances.
…

FASCINATING INSIGHTS on SOCIOPATHS: This article, about a self-professed and supposedly professionally diagnosed case, offers a fascinating peek into the mentality of a sociopathic woman. In the spirit of her own mentality, I might have to read the book at a library, bookstore, borrowed, or other medium where I won’t have to pay.
…

SUCKERS for POP-CULTURAL OCCULT: Going through my “Groupon” offers, the above shows up. Here it is 2019, and enough gullible suckers (over a thousand bought!) clearly still exist to fulfill a consumer demand for pop-occult rubbish. In the ’70s it was mail-order psychic readings…in the ’80s and ’90s, 1-900 scams and Miss Cleo on TV, in the 2000s, interactive websites…and all the while, in-person shops for palm readings, tarot, crystal energy, and other such rectally manufactured hocus-pocus crapola. Today…Groupons. I suppose people really enjoy being ripped off while duped into feeling good about it. If Groupon is right, Miss Francine has raked in over $69,000 gross just from this ad alone. Talk about voodoo economics!
…

BIG CORPORATE MEDIA DETACHMENT from REAL AMERICA:
ABC corporate HQ: Upper West Side of Manhattan.
NBC corporate HQ: GE Building, Rockefeller Center, NYC
CBS corporate HQ: Midtown Manhattan.
CNN HQ: Atlanta (not coastal, but close).
Microsoft (MS in MSNBC): Seattle
Gannett (USA Today, et al.): McLean VA
NY Times: NYC
LA Times: Los Angeles
Knowing this, is it any wonder that the sheltered, insular, professionally incestuous and mutually sycophantic “journalists” of leftist coastal media are so woefully clueless about what matters to real, everyday, working Americans in our towns and on our land? We conservative folk in Middle America apparently are just backward, ill-educated, tobacco-chewing, rodeo-riding, meth-sucking, toothless rednecks in need of shame, ostracism and ridicule. O how the “woke” are so comatose in their blissful ignorance…
…

MANIFEST EVIL of TRANSGENDERISM:
Transgenderism is nothing short of diabolical, satanic wickedness. You bet I said it, and I absolutely mean it. This deranged practice is being forced upon a small Texas boy by his so-called doctor “mother” who, given her zealous pursuit of legal permission to inflict permanent psychological and physical abuse on her child, probably is possessed by demons. What else can explain such hideous and delusional sadism toward a child? Devout Catholic Matt Walsh, in his two otherwise solid essays on this topic (first, second) doesn’t go there, but I will. The father’s ex is dripping with evil, and the child is at grave mental, physical, and spiritual risk. I would not blame the dad one bit if he took that kid on an overnight flight to a country that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the U.S. The extremist whack jobs supporting this lunacy have lost sight of one crucial thing: he (yes, he) is a minor child, with immature & undeveloped mind (not to mention brainwashed by that horrendous excuse for a “mom”). Precisely because of that incomplete mental development, he is thoroughly incompetent to make such decisions. Yet a jury has ruled, with sociopathic frigidity only possible through unadulterated devilry, that this innocent little child can be deliberately, deeply abused and scarred for life by being forced into transgenderism. Horrid!
…

MUTUALLY TRUE STATEMENTS about TRUMP and LEFTISM:
Donald Trump is a bombastic, insufferable, degenerate, unrepentant adulterer and liar, a hideously immoral heathen who, regardless of some positive accomplishments (such as boosting conservative federal judiciary and standing up somewhat to Red China) has soiled the office of the Presidency through his prideful ignorance and repugnantly undignified behavior, damaged Christianity via sellout pastors who have pandered his favor, and set back the cause of conservatism for years to come, simply by association. Leftism is a festering, maggot-ridden, gangrenous ideological rot on the faces of governance and social order, and a “divide and conquer” tool of the evil enemy that will consume this nation’s youth and future in its deviously delusional stench, if unchecked by the forces of sanity. Both statements can be true. Both are. And both truths are why it’s not hard to see the end times approaching. The good news? We who follow the Lord know who wins in the end. Keep the faith.

Filed Under: Scattershooting Tagged With: Donald Trump, journalism, journalists, leftism, media, morals, photography, photography ethics, scammers, scams, sociopathy

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- May 28, 2023, 12:56 pm

@cwhowell123: So I followed @GaryMarcus's suggestion and had my undergrad class use ChatGPT for a critical assignment. I had them all generate an essay using a prompt I gave them, and then their job was to "grade" it--look for hallucinated info and critique its analysis. *All 63* essays had
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@wrong_speak His wife's name is Casey. That Loomer can't even be bothered to get the name right of the person she's discussing instantly invalidates her entire premise.
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