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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

Ethics in Science: Fauci Must Go

October 24, 2021 by tornado Leave a Comment

As a scientist who publishes peer-reviewed research, I strongly support and favor scientific work, the scientific method with reproducibility and falsifiability, and science as problem-solver for human civilization. However, I’m not one of those who raises science to the level of a false god, to be served at all costs, morals and ethics be damned. I also cringe and anger when government gets unethical with science in any way, because that unfairly smears me by association.

Science should help to solve our problems, not cause them, nor make them worse! This is why I oppose such “scientific” endeavors as human experiments that are involuntary, unknowing, misrepresented, or deliberately physically or psychologically damaging (say, Tuskegee syphilis experiments by the United States Public Health Service, Wendell Johnson stuttering-orphan “experiments”, anything involving eugenics, “Little Albert” infant-fear test, 1955 CIA whooping-cough release near Tampa, human radioactivity experiments at the Universities of Rochester and Cincinnati, CIA’s MKULTRA subproject 68, 1950s/60s covered-up toxic, radioactive chemical releases in St. Louis, and many more).

[Have you ever noticed how many of these inhumane “experiments” have been performed or funded by government? Do you still wonder why so many people don’t trust government science? I have to deal with that blowback even in weather science, where harmful ethical problems have been extremely rare.]

Animal testing is a gray area for me, context-dependent, case-by-case. I’m not some PETA extremist who worships worms, roaches and rats. I gladly eat meat and lots of it. I don’t have a problem with most animal experimentation involving mice, insects, fish, etc. However, some are clearly and obviously cruel to anyone with even the most minuscule conscience. Pretty much anything that causes harm to animals that are common human pets definitely crosses my line.

Enter Anthony Fauci’s National Institutes of Health. Some background…

On Fauci’s watch: Chinese gain-of-function experiments on viral bat coronaviruses were backdoor-funded via third party with taxpayer money, after it was banned in the U.S. (for good reason). This provided plausible deniability on direct funding of any sort of corona gain-of-function work in Wuhan, a semantics game Fauci cunningly and misleadingly played in testimony. Four days ago, in a latter to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, DHS admitted to very limited coronavirus GoF money laundering through a third party (EcoHealth Allaince Inc) to Wuhan Institute. Your tax money, folks! I’m highly skeptical this was limited to viruses unrelated to the one now causing so much human devastation, and am confident more will trickle out over many years, until all this smoke reveals the ultimate fire.

This full stream of Glenn Greenwald’s tweets summarizes this NIH/EcoHealth/gain-of-function insanity succinctly. Greenwald is hardly a Q-anon right winger. In fact he quotes a story from Vanity Fair, of all things, that damns Fauci badly. [Vanity Fair? Also hardly a right-wing rag — in fact, quite the opposite! Yes, it’s fair to ask why that outfit investigated this, instead of supposed journalistic titans turned woke-cult mouthpieces like NY Times or Washington Post.] I agree with Greenwald that Rand Paul is owed an apology he’ll never receive, from Fauci and NIH.

Greenwald ignores Red Commie China too much in his statements — they obviously know everything about everything happening in that country through their deep, pervasive, Orwellian surveillance state — most certainly at the Wuhan lab, and all of EcoHealth’s involvement. They knew all too well about how the pandemic began (and aren’t telling nor permitting full outside investigation) — then incompetently responded to the disease emergence, leading to its worldwide spread. Not to mention cooking their own books with low fatalities and case numbers. The CCP is very much culpable here *also*, even as Greenwald hyperfocuses on encouragement and financial support via the U.S. bureaucracy, NIH. So, back to NIH and Fauci…

Bottom line: Fauci either didn’t know about the EcoHealth GoF work, and should have (malfeasance, incompetent leadership), or did know (per the 2018 grant report Greenwald notes) and is lying. Either way, he needs to go. But wait, there’s more!

Do you like beagle puppies? Stop now if you wish not to know of recent “experiments” on them that you and I unknowingly funded, that if any of us did in our own homes, rightfully would land us in jail and labeled as psychopaths. I hate stories like this, and almost never share them. However, this is a rare exception, because you are paying for this every week out of your salary, and should at least have the option to know about it. NIH funded the needless medical torture of beagle puppies.

From another bipartisan House report: “NIAID spent $1.68 million in taxpayer funds on drug tests involving 44 beagle puppies. The dogs were all between six and eight months old. The commissioned tests involved injecting and force-feeding the puppies an experimental drug for several weeks, before killing and dissecting them. Of particular concern is the fact that the invoice to NIAID included a line item for ‘cordectomy.’ As you are likely aware, a cordectomy, also known as ‘devocalization,’ involves slitting a dog’s vocal cords in order to prevent them from barking, howling, or crying. This cruel procedure — which is opposed with rare exceptions by the American Veterinary Medical Association, the American Animal Hospital Association, and others – seems to have been performed so that experimenters would not have to listen to the pained cries of the beagle puppies. This is a reprehensible misuse of taxpayer funds.”

NIAID is a unit of the NIH, directed by Fauci. This cruelty in the name of science was done on his watch. He is responsible.

I find it ironic, and somewhat pathetic, that Fauci is likely to face far more heat for this than for other ways he has misled (covered up) and/or outright lied. If truly “the buck stops here”, his removal from NIH is long past due.

Filed Under: Not weather Tagged With: animal cruelty, Anthony Fauci, bureaucracy, bureaucrats, China, coronavirus, ethics, Glenn Greenwald, government scandal, government waste, pandemic, Rand Paul, science, scientific ethics

My Brutally Honest Position on Climate

December 19, 2018 by tornado Leave a Comment

I want to make a brief and categorical statement on climate in response to bullshit rumors about me that trickle back.

I have no substantive dispute with peer-reviewed research on the thermal trends observed so far. As such: In no way, shape or form am I a “climate denier”.  The overall global climate has warmed in recent decades and probably will continue to do so in the next several decades. Period.  There you go.  Rumors debunked. 

That said, I quite deliberately take no specific positions on future scenarios (due to uncertainties inherent to atmospheric numerical modeling), nor advocacies as to what specific to do about it, if anything.  I stand mostly in the sidelines of that screaming match, on purpose.  Yes, I sometimes read papers and articles by an array of scientists, out of scientific curiosity, and laugh or snooze at some of the absurdities thrown out from time to time by both non-scientist pundits, and a small cadre of scientists who engage in sociopolitical extremism and conflicts of interest related to their own research.

Otherwise I’m not wasting time with it anymore here, after this post.  I have better things to do, namely live my life the best I know, and forecast and research what I deal with: localized weather (specifically tornadoes and other severe storms).  As such, I say little about climate on social media because I have little meaningful to say.

I only will speak to one generality, as a sociopolitical conservative and libertarian:  Overall, for all the societal troubles we do have morally and ethically (more later), poverty is lower, crime is lower, and base mean income levels higher worldwide than ever. Why is this?

Look no further than free-market solutions, science and technology (and the medical and logistical advancements that have arisen therewith). Without burdensome governmental regulation, the free market, scientific ingenuity and technological advances, as with every other major societal challenge, will allow us to adapt to whatever happens with the climate. This is an optimistic view based on the benefits already reaped from technology.  Any failure to adapt will be related to the extent that tech is handcuffed by regulation in its ability to respond to whatever climate may do. [We are, after all, a tropical species.]

In an earthly, material way, I am confident free-market technology and innovation will “save us” to the extent we need saving.  Outside earthly material concerns, the ethical, spiritual and moral decline (including the cancer of socialism and the mass abdication of Judeo-Christian Biblical morals) is far more likely to be our downfall as a civilization!  Not the climate, to which humanity can adapt quite well if we let focused sci-tech (especially but not exclusively private sector) on it, and not just fling taxpayer money about willy-nilly.  Throwing money at problems doesn’t solve them.  Nor does forcible wealth redistribution at governmental gunpoint.  Instead, focused ingenuity and innovation do.

As for energy, I favor a gradated, economically neutral to gainful, “all of the above” approach toward less-polluting sources. Those who are advocating total cessation of fossil-fuel use are welcomed to do so:  put their money where their mouth is and stop using them right now, today, otherwise it’s pure sanctimony and hypocrisy. I give those who advocate an end to fossil fuels, yet still use gasoline or jet fuel in any form for their own personal transport, no credibility in the argument whatsoever. Not to mention those who use petroleum-based plastics or lubricants in any form in their lives!

And that is my position, as someone who is absolutely, positively, unquestionably, and indisputably not a “climate denier”. Warming is underway.  Let tech have at it.  Otherwise…

I simply have more important things to concern myself with in life, and don’t see good reason to prioritize nor get radical about it, aside from my trust in science and technology to offer economically viable adaptive strategies.  Most of the arguments I see flying back and forth on this issue, from all sides, are banal, repetitive, unoriginal, and uninteresting.  Let’s get real:  this issue bores me.  After this post and a previous (more detailed) offering of advice to all concerned, I’m done with it.

See, I am a fiercely independent thinker and follow nobody’s herd mentality.  My positions are right here, in your face. If you don’t like my brutally honest ambivalence about how to specifically respond to climate, as I often say: your problem, not mine. Deal with it.

One final quip:  isn’t it curious that the only home in my neighborhood with either solar PV panels and solar water belongs to a socially conservative, fiscally conservative, governmentally libertarian Christian couple:  my wife and I.  Looks like I put my money where others’ mouths are, even if they don’t.  Damnedest thing, huh?  Go stick the “denier” garbage where the sun don’t shine.

Filed Under: Weather AND Not Tagged With: climate, ethics, innovation, Libertarian, science, science media, scientific ethics, scientific usage, technology

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