The Sound Of Settled Science

It's a shame really, science is mankinds greatest achievement.

AllanS, exactly.

Some of us have known about scientific fraud for quite some time thanks to Anthony Watts, Ross McKittrick, Lord Moncton, Dr. Tim Ball, Vivian Krause, countless others whose names escape me now and last but not least SDA.

Many in the scientific community have adopted the Soviet Pavlov's dog method of research, that being ideological research.

We will be celebrating man's achievements in our home today by enjoying non-ideological human advances in electricity and fuel.

There were, to my very certain knowledge, exactly four (4) scientifically acceptable studies regarding firearms policy published in the medical journals of the USA, Canada and Britain between 1968 and 2000. I stopped reading then (Algore lost that election) so there may have been a couple since then. But I doubt it.

That's out of several hundred journal articles my friends. I have boxes of photocopies in the basement, plus all the on-line linkage you could shake a stick at. We're talking millions and millions of dollars worth of "research" here, a significant portion of which was funded by the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) with tax dollars. Much of the rest was paid for by charitable trusts and foundations whose names will be familiar to you, such as Tides, Packard Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, Pew Charitable Trust, and so forth.

Some of these we have seen linked to Fruitfly Guy's foundation as well. Also the various Glowball Warming outlets like GreenPeas, and such dens of Leftist iniquity as the Daily Kos, Rabble, what have you.

Its not really fraud, you see. Its one front in the same war that's got George Zimmerman in jail for shooting the puke that was bashing his head on the sidewalk.

Scientific journals considered prestigious two or three generations ago were co-opted and corrupted by people who are not our friends. Currently they are actively working against the traditional freedom of the West overall. That's not hyperbole, that's a factual observation based on the gun control "debate" and the global warming "debate", two current socialist scams aimed at controlling and fleecing supposedly free individuals in the West and using the money to grow government.

In my pretty well informed opinion, Anthropology, Sociology and Psychology are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the socialist/liberal/progressive establishment in Western countries, and have been since the 1950's. Medicine is rapidly joining them with "research" outcomes dictated by political strategy or regulatory timetables instead of patient outcome in a lot of cases.

You'll understand if I don't name names, Lucy is watching. Which is itself significant in the trends we see in scientific journals, isn't it?

Physics, Chemistry and Biology are later to the party than most, but if there's money being thrown around there will be sticky fingers there to catch it.

Here endeth my p1ssed off rant for today. Happy Lenin's Birthday.

It's also human psychological nature - to manoevre, to focus on the self, to 'show' oneself as The Best. This emotional 'gene' promotes our expansion of ourselves into exploring and controlling the Outside World. But, it also goes with that puffery of the Self via tactics of manipulation and misinformation.

Some people move into using only the latter tactics. Obama is a prime example of someone who manipulates and misinforms to Be Successful.

It's the same in any other realm than politics. In science, you'll find that a new idea comes up but is sidelined and marginalized by the current powers-in-science. They don't want the competition. So, the attempts to hold on to power and gain even more power, will be based around fierce manipulation.

When there's money involved, as in govt funding for a science research field, the power games becomes more intense. Gradually, the research becomes even more detached from reality, more based in the manipulative power of Words.

When you get a political infrastructure based around capitalism and individual enterprise, you can fight these basic human emotional endeavours for power. But, it will always be a battle.

Back in the 80's while I was going to Grad School, a tenure stream professor in my department was exposed weeks before gaining tenure for taking one data point in an experiment and then manufacturing all the rest of the data. It appears that funding was proportional to the number of papers one published.

To add insult to injury, he was never a Ph.D. -- his initials where D.R. and people assumed it was Dr. as in the title. Nobody had bothered to check this person's credentials till another professor in the department, suspicious of the number of papers being published had checked on their own.

It was quite a scandal.

Two things always corrupt integrity - money and powr/politics. We see both corrupting modern scientific inquiry and yes, it seems like they are "discovering" a new Piltdown man every week.

ET said: "It's also human psychological nature - to manoevre, to focus on the self, to 'show' oneself as The Best."

That's true ET, and I'm as guilty as anyone. However don't you find there's a certain segment of the "scholarly" population who go far beyond the usual self-aggrandizement and "I'm so smart!" bragging and stray into the realm of the paid propagandist? The literature is awash with this stuff.

Not been held accountelbe would be the biggest issue, one only has to look at Paul Ehrlich.
How can somebody so demonstrably wrong yet still healed in the highest regard by people like David Suzuki and the scientific community in general.

Phantom, it's been in the hard sciences for longer than that. For example, Gallileo was a notorious faker. His books are riddled with things he couldn't prove, things he stole from others, or outright slander (Starry Messenger is a good example of the latter).

Cancer research has been riddled with it for decades. RNA Cascade Theory is just one example in the early '80s of a supposed breakthrough based on faked evidence. Epidemiology is riddled with it. It's why we have fake health scares, sometimes two a week. Typical examples are Alar, second hand smoke and phobias about salt.

Famously, it was in anthropology with the Piltdown Man.

ET, capitalism is irrelevant. Most of the money handed out for research is done by government. Except for the notorious fakery by the tobacco companies back in the 1960s and '70s, corporations lose too much if they invest in research that turns out to be bogus.

What all of these things have in common is money. The basic principles of science and scientific method are entirely sounnd. But when there's lots of money being handed out to find particular kinds of outcomes, all too many succumb to normal human failings of greed and mendacity.

And all of them are found out sooner or later because they all violate the basic scientific principle of reproducible results.

Agreed ET and Phantom. I've just heard through one of my colleagues in the department that there's a Japanese researcher in our field who's just been discovered to have been inventing his data for the past several years. He's published over 120 papers!! Can you imagine the headache trying to go back through all his "research" to determine what we may be thinking currently is based on pure BS? These guys ought to be pilloried for a day at every academic centre in the world!

Yeti, it's an interesting point about Paul Ehrlich. The man doesn't particularly fake his results. He relies on data dredging. It doesn't help his credibility much that he's been spectacularly wrong about every single prediction he's ever made.

Yes, I know, there's a very thin line between data dredging and outright fakery.

Ehrlich isn't so much in the category of fakery as he is in the category of a loon like Erik Von Danniken. He genuinely believes in his own drivel.

If anything, Ehrlich has an inverse Cassandra complex. Everyone believes him and he's always wrong.

Phantom - yes, I agree. There's a LARGE segment of the 'scholarly' population who go far beyond personal self-assertion in their own local contacts and set up an infrastructure of Power over Others.

You'll see it in the majority of graduate research centres, where one guy will manoevre himself into getting such a centre and being head of it. This is his fiefdom, and he focuses on this, getting funding for research assistants, graduate students. These do all his 'work' for him - work which MUST reinforce his basic themes. Then - any dissent, any innovative areas, any new people coming in who are not sycophants - are stamped out. Brutally.

This is found in science and it's basic in the social 'sciences' (sociology, political science, anthroplogy, etc ).

Even getting published can be difficult for these Big Guys dominate the review boards and a newcomer with diverging points of view will find it very difficult. BUT - it does happen, and what occurs is interesting. A dissenting view finally makes it through the FireWalls. And then..heh..others dare to publish in support of this dissent. It grows like spring flowers, quite something to see.

The mainstream fights back - they still have the funding, the big university research centres - but, change does take place.

But for the individual with the dissenting view, it's a hard fight. They'll be denied contracts, denied tenure, denied publication.

But, that's human nature and frankly, there's not much we can do about it other than recognize it, and vow to not keep silent but to keep on with the dissent and new perspective.

I've been following Astronomy for over 30 years and it amazes me how the Artsy-fartsy John Moore at CFRB is bent on mocking me and others that even hint at how the Sun affects earth's weather and Temperatures . Moore calls me the usual "Denier" as to silence debate , but Moore has a house as a single male and owns a Dog while he alos had a High-end Sports car until he had to get a Bicycle for his image.
These leftist socialist love to tell others about OUR Carbon-Footprints , but Hollywood and the Movie business has a huge Carbon Footprint for their Filming projects and consumtion of Diesel fuel to power the generators on Location and have Air Conditioned Dressing rooms for the celebs. Then there is the traffic jams and garbage created by the fast food trucks and snacks by the crews.

Oh to be a leftist/Liberal in canada or the USA, I could own 5 homes like Al Gore and use a private Jet like many Celebs do and consume power at 5 times the rate for those useful-idiot peons that are the real enemies of mother Earth.

As for Lord Suzuki (peace be upon him) , I thought he would be happy that canada is cleaning up that ugly Natural Disaster cause by Mother earth that has all those tonnes of Oil-sands that could be used for Houses and Hospitals for natives once the Reclaimation-Project is done.
Unless Suzuki hates natives and now refuses to allow Hospitals to be build for local Aboriginal babies or children with cancer .

BTW
Those who love to cite the IPCC for the "Evidence" that it is a Con-Census , please name me just 3 "Scientists" from that report that went Public and now do the Podium circuit to aspouse those Facts .
Because I can't find even 1 of them , and I really don't see Al Gore and Suzuki as Experts to give their opinions.

An interesting New York Times article, mostly about medical research fraud.
They link to the blog "retraction watch" -- I did a search on "climate" and three climate science retractions came up. One was by Edward Wegman, another by Roy Spencer. The third was a EurekAlert press release of an Argentinian NGO claiam.

The WSJ journal has an article about how mistakes are creating a lot of delay and waste in cancer research but it's behind a pay wall. One guy got a 'breakthrough' and was just in the process of publishing when he was told he had done all his experiments on the wrong type of cancer!

Evil likes to twist anything good. Even science for decomposition into perverse directions. A profession mostly dedicated to help human beings, is ripe to be taken over by cons for political & monetary gains. Let alone the damage they can do. These leftists use repudiation as currency for corruption.

Thanks to all for a fascinating read - apparently lots of first-hand knowledge.
I question calling calling Von Danniken a loon considering our steady advance in the field of genetic engineering. Perhaps his "Gods" were time traveling humans from our not-so-far-off future.

cgh - my point about the benefits of capitalism in preventing scientific fraud is that a capitalist economy cannot afford to fund fraud. Govts get their research funding from capitalism.

But I don't think the reality of fraud in academia is entirely due to money; it's due to self-assertion, pride, greed not for money but for prestige, and power over others.

In the US, you can get research funding from private foundations but in Canada, it's basically from the govt. The review boards are made up of the old guard academia, who thus prevent new and innovative research. [And the requirement that the reviewers be bilingual; and that a high ratio of grants go to Quebec, further stifles research].

Thus, innovative research and development in Canada is far behind that in the US, in Europe and in China. We've set up a mind-stifling research infrastructure in Canada.

Gary nails it !

ET you are incorrect -- corporations on a big scale run exactly like government bureaucracies and stupidity reigns there in spades. Nortel decimating their R&D groups in favour of commercial off the shelf products thus giving away their big lead in technology in favour of short term profits. That was Capitalism in full force.

I worked for a large american software company that is not microsoft and they are giving away their dominance in the field by pushing out the experienced staff who built the company in favour of cheap labour overseas. Decisions are based on maximizing the bonus for the quarter and cutting costs without regards to the future health of the company.

Politics & Power & Money & Egos & Personal agendas corrupt scientific progress. Even scientific/engineering journals have lost their ability to properly vet progress.

China does not have a strong R&D infrastructure -- they have a successful intelligence program that steals technology from the West and poorly implement what they have stolen. Just look at how poorly they implemented the stolen plans of the French high speed technology as witnessed recently.

Me thinks the religion of scientism needs a reformation.

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Apr 22, 2012; 3:55 PM ET
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A strengthening storm rolling up the Atlantic will bring flooding, strong winds, heavy snow and power outages."

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http://www.accuweather.com/

Gerry - Nortel's actions are not 'capitalism in full force' but production errors of management which will result in long term harm to the profit margin of the company. That result - is capitalism in full force.

Pushing out the experienced staff in favour of cheap and incompetent labour is a production decision, and the result, due to capitalism and its 'natural selection' will be the loss of long term stability and profit to the company.

As for China, their research in biological and chemical areas is, in my view, serious and very productive.

An example of medical research at its "finest":
http://news.yahoo.com/90-percent-early-stage-cancer-research-wrong-study-174500501.html

STUDIES SUGGEST STUDIES ARE BULLSHIT
Fixed that headline for you.

I got out of academia as I didn't like the constant need to apply for grants and risk being out of a job if there wasn't a paper published by the time the grant money ran out. This is a strong incentive for people to come up with something to publish and, if the methodology is sufficiently complex, no-one is going to spend a few years building a lab to attempt to replicate the results.

One of the things that we used to do, write up a grant to investigate something we'd already done, is now considered unethical. Back then it was a matter of survival as we could then at least double-check the results we'd obtained before publishing them and start working on something new that we'd ask for a new grant for.

Given the need for getting results out as quickly as possible, one can only expect a lot of scientists to make incorrect bets about whether their results are real or artifactual. I used to have endless arguments with my boss over my need to constantly recheck results and recalibrate systems (and discovered a few potentially very embarrassing errors that way) rather than publishing what we had right away.

I thought that I had discovered an interesting blog. Instead, I find it is saturated with ignorance and a vehicle for slander.

Pity

j
You did, but you then found out that you are, in a word, 'lacking'.

Cheers

I'm working on a big breakthrough here, umm, it's E equals m c cubed, right?

"... Just like "science" of Global Warming , other scientific fields have been corrupted. In the article below 88.6% of the cancer publications could not be reproduced. ..."

... does anyone remember the Cold Fusion fraud ?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/28/us-science-cancer-idUSBRE82R12P20120328

"... During a decade as head of global cancer research at Amgen, C. Glenn Begley identified 53 "landmark" publications -- papers in top journals, from reputable labs -- for his team to reproduce. Begley sought to double-check the findings before trying to build on them for drug development.

Result: 47 of the 53 could not be replicated. He described his findings in a commentary piece published on Wednesday in the journal Nature. ..."

... but it seems a 1 in 6 success rate qualifies as reputable science these days.

"... Part way through his project to reproduce promising studies, Begley met for breakfast at a cancer conference with the lead scientist of one of the problematic studies. ..."

> "We went through the paper line by line, figure by figure," said Begley. "I explained that we re-did their experiment 50 times and never got their result. He said they'd done it six times and got this result once, but put it in the paper because it made the best story. It's very disillusioning."