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Peer Review and the Scientific Process

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Renegade:
Fraud and cover-ups at the FDA?

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/02/fda_inspections_fraud_fabrication_and_scientific_misconduct_are_hidden_from.single.html

http://www.wired.com/2015/02/infoporn-proof-fda-isnt-protecting-americans-health/

Want some examples? How about the study on a treatment for leg blood clots that claimed the legs were getting a lot better, when one of the patients actually needed his foot amputated? Or falsified research in eight of the 16 research sites investigating a single blood clotting treatment? Or the researcher who was disbarred and sent to prison for overdosing a chemotherapy patient? All of these were reported in warning letters, but missing from the peer-reviewed research.
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Hm.

Renegade:
A post that points out how many scientific debates are framed as false dichotomies, i.e. You either accept everything we say 100% or you're an idiot.

https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/2wvxgn/the_war_on_science_an_alternative_view/


The War On Science: An alternative view (self.conspiracy)

submitted 18 hours ago by qthagun [+1]

(Note: this article is written to go with the March 2015 National Geographic cover

large image (cover)

 ; it is such an excellent piece of propaganda that it can be easily subverted for an alternative viewpoint.)

Do you remember a time before there were Wars, with a capital W, on intangible ideas? As an American who's only in their 30s, I can't say that I do; my first introduction to our political paradigm was the War on Drugs. I still can't really tell you what a Drug is these days, the legal pharmaceuticals we manufacture killing more people each year than the few illegal scheduled Drugs, science showing that sugar and cocaine activate similar reward pathways. In the US our drug addiction rate hasn't really changed since the 1970s, while the amount we spend on drug control each year has skyrocketed from the millions to the tens of billions. We view Prohibition as a charming relic of the past, while we raid medical marijuana dispensaries at home and guard captured opium fields abroad. I guess that tells you what a War on an Intangible Idea entails.

The same media which raised my generation on the War on Drugs, and the following generation on the War on Terror, has a new War for a new generation. Enter: The War on Science. Everything from Climate Change to the moon landings to vaccinations, these uneducated idiots are coming for you! And if there's one thing we know about uneducated idiots, it's that they're organized and good at what they do. And what they do is get everything wrong and cause all of our problems. It's 2015 you uneducated idiots! Don't you know that we have the right answers for everything? That's why we have experts.

We've actually put a few of our own experts to work on this cover photo, lovingly recreating that famous scene etched into all of our memories. Notice our attention to detail, taking care to ensure the dust underneath the LEM's engine is completely undisturbed, with no blast crater or any evidence of propulsive landing whatsoever. Looks just like the real NASA thing with the exception of our devoted worker who's almost spoiling the illusion with his size. We wanted to show everyone just how easy it is to recreate these scenes for a camera (minus the long journey back home to Earth for our worker and crew). But let's not get too distracted by the past; besides pointing out that it is impossible to prove a negative (such as that something didn't happen or that something doesn't exist), we'll leave "removing one of truth's protective layers" (Neil Armstrong, 1994) for another exercise, as this upcoming War on Science has much more immediate political concerns.

Let's start with the careful selection of messages on this cover, the witches we'll need to burn if we want to be warriors in defense of Science. "Climate change does not exist". We are officially 1984 now. "Climate change" is a tautology by its definition. There is no way to define the climate of the entire planet in a static way; it always changes. What also always changes are the political arguments attached to such a vague topic as Climate Change. Most of the media my generation consumed focused on Global Warming, while a few decades earlier the same mobs were whipped up with fear of Global Cooling. Today it is Climate Change and no one can really define it except that it's scary and coming for you. Everyone knows we are polluting our air and our water, but they want you arguing about whether or not the Climate is changing and in which direction. We've covered up the deep recession since 2008 with the explosive growth of fracking, destroying our own land for short-term profit, but instead of looking at that they want to propose carbon taxes and cap and trade schemes, ultimately resulting in a whole new regulating government bureaucracy. We're currently waging war on our own environment and they want you arguing about how we can prevent Climate Change.

Next up in pithy slogans is "Evolution never happened", excellent bait for a controversy as it simultaneously muddies up a topic and then simplifies it to a false dichotomy. Here we have an example of the War on Science already occurring. The definition of evolution itself has evolved multiple times in my lifetime. Discovering mitochondrial DNA and a common human female ancestor of ~200,000 years ago exemplifies the process of science, where continual questioning and investigation overturn our past understanding and open up all new avenues of questioning. It is a thing of beauty to behold. But instead we're encouraged to divide ourselves into camps, to claim we finally have it all right, to choose sides in a battle between the Current Conclusions of Science TM and anyone who would question. All shades of nuance are ignored: you either agree with the Current Conclusions of Science TM or you are an uneducated idiot whose very existence threatens us all.

This is what the cover illustrates and what the War on Science is: an all or nothing proposition. How else could we be made to spend all of our time arguing against ourselves? Simply frame the argument such that both sides are wrong, but both sides have legitimate grievances, and you've engineered a propaganda playground for the unwitting. Keep the medium brief and the content fast; no one has time for anything more than that. We definitely need someone to blame. Everyone senses something is wrong with our world. Wasn't Science supposed to deliver us from this? Maybe all these problems are because enough people aren't going with the flow anymore. That's why we need to regularly reinforce the one conclusion that has never been overturned: we know what we're talking about, because we have our experts working on it.

Which is why we can tell you with complete confidence that genetically modified food isn't evil. Who can say what evil is anyway, but an emotional idea loaded with religious and moral connotations, undefinable by either either science or the law. It's a useful term to generate endless arguments, framing the subject emotionally to engage feelings before thought. Everyone intuitively understands that there is an information war going on, and so often we take our sides first and that is the extent of our communication. We are encouraged to segregate ourselves based on our ideas and when one of the sides we can choose is the Current Conclusions of Science TM, the choice is obvious to many. By definition, the Current Conclusions of Science TM are correct, are they not? Tautologies are true everywhere.

GMOs aren't evil; GMOs are unlabelled in America. In dozens of other countries, GMOs are completely banned. But National Geographic and its American audience just know that there isn't a debate, because obviously GMOs aren't evil. Hip celebrity scientists such as Neil DeGrasse Tyson tell us everything is OK while blurring the distinction between natural hybridization over centuries and transgenic GMOs over years. While GMOs are sold to us with the promise of supernutrition and feeding the world, the ones we get are modified to be pesticide resistant and are covered with toxic pesticides. Instead of transparency and accountability there is a rotating door between the companies making these GMOs and the government agencies regulating them, as the current deputy commissioner for foods at the FDA, Michael Taylor, was previously a VP of public policy at Monsanto. Meanwhile the companies themselves are the ones tasked with the testing to prove the safety of their products - inevitably they find their products to be safe.

Much of this data is hard to get and not available for public access. There are no epidemiological studies investigating potential health effects of GMO food on human health. International agreements show widespread recognition of risks posed by GMO foods and crops. There is no consensus on environmental impacts of GMOs. A recent statement in the journal Enviromental Sciences Europe concludes “…the totality of scientific research outcomes in the field of GM crop safety is nuanced; complex; often contradictory or inconclusive; confounded by researchers’ choices, assumptions, and funding sources; and, in general, has raised more questions than it has currently answered.” In short, the science isn't settled at all.

As anyone who has taken part in the vaccine discussion that has exploded on social media over the past month can tell you, it's not really about the science anymore. It's about choosing sides in The War on Science. Who can even tell what sides there are, on such a wide array of issues? With so many disparate hot button issues lumped together, each carefully chosen with a distracting straw-man to burn, National Geographic is here to tell you exactly what to think. With the modernization of the Smith-Mundt act of 2012, it really isn't even illegal for the US Government to knowingly lie to the public anymore. The companies that are selling you these products employ massive public relations divisions, and nowadays you can see the results of spending so much money on advertising when you turn on the TV or pick up a newspaper or magazine.

Thankfully this magazine is here to strong-arm us to the final topic, the most pressing of all, the real target: vaccines. The rhetoric and fear surrounding vaccines is rising; it seems if we don't make a decision soon we face unspeakable consequences. Step out of line, potentially support the wrong side, and experience vicious social ramifications, public shaming, and group shunning. What's the simple conflict here, and what is a non-expert to think? Here the stink of desperation oozes out of the propaganda. "Vaccinations can lead to autism": a milquetoast statement, a clear retreat from the more blunt and catchy "Vaccines cause autism". With such an obvious clue that things might be more complicated than all or nothing, let's take a moment to examine this from an alternative perspective.

The mainstream Current Conclusions of Science TM (in America, God Bless America) are that vaccines are both safe and effective. The gold standard for proving medical safety is to compare human populations with a control group over the long term. Out of the current US Vaccination schedule of 12 different vaccines (compared with just 3 in the 1980s), none of them have ever been tested against a saline control in a human population long term, either individually or as a group. If none of our drug testing included comparisons of populations given placebos, would you trust them? On the other side of the vaccine safety issue, the US Supreme Court ruled in 2011 that federal law prohibits parents from suing drug makers over serious side effects from childhood vaccines. The only way Americans have left to defend themselves, the lawsuit, cannot be used to seek compensation from vaccine injury, and yet they want us to know that vaccines are safe? They had to create a program to handle all the numerous reports of negative side effects of vaccines (VAERS - the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System), and yet they want us arguing whether or not vaccines may lead to autism?

This is overt manipulation, and yet a review of history leaves us with the conclusion that it is effective manipulation. Populations have been whipped up with the fear of biological armageddon before, with dissidents fined and jailed for refusal of the current cure du jour. A new wave of people are publically arguing for forced mandatory vaccinations right now, because ultimately their fear trumps your liberties. The efficacy of vaccines has never actually been proven, neither has herd immunity ever been shown to exist. There are outbreaks among fully vaccinated populations. President Obama recently granted immunity to a CDC whistleblower to testify about the efficacy of vaccines to Congress. This is another clear example where the science is anything but settled, but our culture of choosing sides is moving towards a future where individuals no longer have any choice for themselves. There is a comments period open right now for the US Health and Human Services current draft proposal regarding more mandated employer-enforced vaccines for adults, at the same time that the US Government is involved with a lawsuit against Merck (the manufacturer of the MMR vaccine) about the false claims of efficacy of its vaccine.

Jenny McCarthy served as the sacrificial offering in the media, an open warning and example to anyone who would question the current narrative. The government has a monopoly on legal force, and a narrative is forming across the media that such force should be used to override our individual right to bodily integrity and self-determination. We are shown the social effects of questioning the narrative, and anyone that's even questioned the ever increasing vaccine schedule can tell you what those social effects feel like personally. There is a science, with a lowercase s, that is a method, an application, a process that is founded upon open questioning. And then there is a Science, with a capital a S, that is the Current Conclusions of Our National Experts TM, a dogma which does not allow any questioning or deviation from the herd.

We should always be questioning. The truth fears no investigation.

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bit:
(see attachment in previous post)
As the human species becomes more enlightened (assuming we don't annihilate ourselves first) I think there will have to come a time when there will be an admission that there are things we cannot know/learn by reflection, analysis or discovery. Though I'm sure the opinion I'm putting forth is in opposition to that of many site members, I believe there are absolute limits to human ability, and that there are phenomena in the universe that are not susceptible to scientific investigation, however advanced our tools become.
-kyrathaba (April 19, 2013, 12:46 PM)
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We all have faith...maybe not religious faith, but faith nonetheless.

A priest once explained it to me like this:

Faith is believing or trusting in something when you have no proof or when common sense tells you not to.

Then he went on to state that we all buy cans of soup on faith, that we trust that the label is truthful and purchase it without any proof beforehand that what is in the can is what it says on the label. You don't really know for sure what you are going to get. The label could be wrong. It could be a can of corn and not soup...or it could be a different kind of soup than what it says on the label. But you will continue to believe that it is soup in that can and trust in that label until you open it, get your proof and know for sure.

We have faith in the people we love, even when they do something wrong and common sense tells you not to. You are willing to forgive the mistakes of your children and trust again, even when there is no proof that they will not make a mistake again. We trust people that have never hurt us, even though we have been hurt by others. There is no proof that this new person in our lives will not hurt us. There is never any proof they won't...even after knowing them for 50 years and them never hurting us. They could still hurt us tomorrow. But we have faith that they won't. This is part of what makes a marriage work...faith in each other.

Religious people are like that. They have their beliefs that they accept on faith. They trust that they are the truth. It won't be until they get to open their can after their death that they will get their proof of whether there is a god inside, something else, or nothing at all. One way or another they will have their proof that what they have believed all their lives is true or not. And if it's not true, they will never know. Either way, it doesn't matter to them, just like it wouldn't matter to you if someone came along and told you that the soup you bought isn't soup, without any proof that it isn't soup. You'll be content to keep believing the label until you open it and see for yourself. And you'll go on having faith in the people you love.

I am not saying that I agree with the religious about what they believe, but I am willing to admit that I understand how faith works and why it is hard for them to believe otherwise. Nobody has given them a can opener yet, and until then, they don't have their proof and anyone that tells them otherwise without proof themselves is just as looney as you think they are for having the faith they have. And if you hand them anything other than the can opener they need, they will reject it as being the wrong tool for the job.

And if you can't understand what I am trying to say, then try applying the scientific method, with or without peer review, the next time you are shopping for canned goods, before you make your purchase. (I hope you don't starve)
-app103 (April 19, 2013, 06:28 PM)
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^Very thought-provoking.

Renegade:
More inconvenient tidbits of reality from Washington's Blog...

tl;dr - Half of peer-reviewed studies show concern for GMOs. The other half are funded by industry.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/03/meta-study-genetically-modified-food-virtually-independent-scientists-concerned.html

Tufts University’s Director of the Research and Policy Program at the Global Development and Environment Institute (Timothy Wise) points out:


There is no … consensus on the safety of GM food. A peer-reviewed study of the research, from peer-reviewed journals, found that about half of the animal-feeding studies conducted in recent years found cause for concern. The other half didn’t, and as the researchers noted, “most of these studies have been conducted by biotechnology companies responsible of commercializing these GM plants.”

***

The only consensus that GM food is safe is among industry-funded researchers.
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By way of background, genetically engineered foods have been linked to obesity, cancer, liver failure, infertility and all sorts of other diseases (brief, must-watch videos here and here).


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One tidbit suggests that today in modern science, the most scientific thing one can do is to "follow the money":

Indeed – as Tufts’ Timothy Wise notes – huge sums of money are being poured into shutting down all honest scientific debate about the risks from GMOs:
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A lot more at the link.

IainB:
Just read in my feed-reader an article in Remedia that seems to be a highly informative piece of work, where the medical and scientific history of some intensively peer-reviewed and audited research is brought into the context of the present day, for further review/discussion. It is relevant today.
Posted as:
High Dilution, Homeopathy, and the Purpose of the Scientific Journal | REMEDIA
(Some clips extracted an copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)
April 24, 2015
By Melinda Baldwin

On June 30, 1988, readers of the British scientific journal Nature opened their issues to find a lead editorial titled, “When to believe the unbelievable.” The editorial’s sub-headline was even more provocative: “An article in this week’s issue describes observations for which there is no present physical basis.”

* *1 The article in question was “Human basophil degranulation triggered by very dilute antiserum against IgE,” from a team led by the immunologist Jacques Benveniste at Paris’s Institut national de la santé et de la recherché médicale (INSERM) laboratory.
* *2 And the story quickly became even stranger: a month later, Nature printed a report by a three-man investigative team—including editor John Maddox—that declared INSERM’s results a “delusion.”So why would Nature print this piece if the editorial staff found its claims “unbelievable”—and perhaps more puzzling still, why would the editor of a scientific journal personally undertake a critical evaluation of results his journal had published? ...
...
(Read the rest at the link.)

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An aspect of it that interests me is that it adds to my previous understanding that homeopathy had been thoroughly debunked in 1988 (following a government investigation into a 1986 Cell paper on the subject, co-authored by the Nobel Prize-winning immunologist David Baltimore).
One thing I could never understand was that, even after being exposed as a fraud, homeopathy continued for some years to be practiced as an apparently relatively respectable branch of pseudo-alternative medicine. (Still is practiced by "believers" in some benighted quarters.)
The Remedia article offers some explanation as to how that irrational situation could have come about. It seems to be about latent irrational/unscientific "belief" (and probably about whether one can make a buck at it).

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