Scientific Fraud becoming endemic?


Selene

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Is everyone as infuriated by this, the global warming scientific fraud and hell Rachel Carson and Silent Spring?

"A new examination found, by comparing the reported diagnoses in the paper to hospital records, that Wakefield and colleagues altered facts about patients in their study.

The analysis, by British journalist Brian Deer, found that despite the claim in Wakefield’s paper that the 12 children studied were normal until they had the MMR shot, five had previously documented developmental problems. Deer also found that all the cases were somehow misrepresented when he compared data from medical records and the children’s parents."

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/journal-study-linking-vaccine-to-autism-was-a-fraud/

How many children became ill by being scared away from vaccines?

We know the rampant death worldwide from malaria each year that could be virtually eliminated by DDT.

"Science" is apparently so politicized as to be nearing unreliability.

The EPA, this week, I believe removed Saccharine from the cancer causing list, ending a thirty (30) year ban.

Adam

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Fraud in science is not becoming endemic, but it is coming out into the public eye.

I get these emails via the Department of Justice. Last year at this time, one of my final classes toward my master's in social science was "Ethical Issues in Physics." It was an eye-opener.

For one thing, science is more tightly integrated into our technological society. In Newton's day, all the people in London who were interested in science could fit in one room -- and it wasn't an auditorium. But, when Andrew Wiles first demonstrated his proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, it was in an auditorium. Discovery Channel, Nova, PBS Science Friday, Bill Nye the Science Guy,... all in the generation after we watched Don Herbert as "Mr. Wizard."

Add to that the tons of money we throw at science. These perpetrators say that they feel "pressured to achieve." Some few actually only are caught in their own beliefs: they accept their own findings and never ask themselves the tough questions -- or get asked because their managers like results, too. Fraud is inevitable, just on the structure of the system and number of people in it.

NEW RESEARCH MISCONDUCT CASE: SAGAR MUNGEKAR

ORI found that Dr. Mungekar falsified five tables and five figures in his Ph.D. thesis entitled "Autoregulation of Ribonuclease E," by discarding certain spectrophotometric data, to increase statistical significance, used to calculate repression ratios and RNA decay rates.

NEW RESEARCH MISCONDUCT CASE: BENGU SEZEN

ORI made twenty-one (21) findings of scientific misconduct against Dr. Sezen based on evidence that she knowingly and intentionally falsified and fabricated, and in one instance plagiarized, data reported in three papers and her doctoral thesis.

NEW RESEARCH MISCONDUCT FINDING: HUNG-SHU CHANG

ORI found that Hung-Shu Chang, PhD, Washington State University, engaged in research misconduct in research supported by National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), National Institutes of Health (NIH), grant R01 ES012974. PHS found that the Respondent engaged in scientific (42 CFR 50.102) and research misconduct by fabricating and falsifying data in Figure 3 of a paper published in Endocrinology.

NEW RESEARCH MISCONDUCT FINDING: ELIZABETH GOODWIN

ORI found that Elizabeth Goodwin, PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison engaged in misconduct in science by falsifying and fabricating data that she included in grant applications 2 R01 GM051836-13 and 1 R01 GM073183-01.

Edited by Michael E. Marotta
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Michael:

Thanks. To the best of your knowledge, are these persons criminally prosecuted?

Adam

Edited by Selene
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Adam,

The rush to publish for the sake of self-aggrandizement and State grants deserves some blame, highlighting the cheap ethics of those scientists.

Spare a thought for those who won't compromise their objective principles, while such cheating is going on around them. (Like athletes who refuse to use performance-enhancers when everyone else is.)

Tony

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Is everyone as infuriated by this, the global warming scientific fraud and hell Rachel Carson and Silent Spring?

Not me, since I don't buy that there has been 'fraud' in climate science. In other words, the three things you note are not of the same thing, in my opinion. I was once a Global Warming agnostic, but tried hard to educate myself and now come down firmly as a believer in anthropogenic global warming. That of course doesn't entail any particular freak-out on my part.

I have been watching the Wakefield controversy for a few years, and read all the documentation at the BMJ site.

One thing I noted in the initial commentary threads following many news reports (at CNN/Fox especially) is that some who think that Wakefield was and is a hero use the trope of global warming to underline their rejection of the fraud findings against Wakefield.

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Is everyone as infuriated by this, the global warming scientific fraud and hell Rachel Carson and Silent Spring?

Not me, since I don't buy that there has been 'fraud' in climate science. In other words, the three things you note are not of the same thing, in my opinion. I was once a Global Warming agnostic, but tried hard to educate myself and now come down firmly as a believer in anthropogenic global warming. That of course doesn't entail any particular freak-out on my part.

I have been watching the Wakefield controversy for a few years, and read all the documentation at the BMJ site.

One thing I noted in the initial commentary threads following many news reports (at CNN/Fox especially) is that some who think that Wakefield was and is a hero use the trope of global warming to underline their rejection of the fraud findings against Wakefield.

William:

Define "anthropogenic global warming" specifically please. Include, if you would be so kind, that if "it" is occurring, is "it" a net negative for the human race.

Thanks.

Adam

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Define "anthropogenic global warming" specifically please.

I don't think we would disagree on a definition, Adam, but how about this:

Anthropogenic: caused or produced by humans

Global Warming: increase in the average temperature of Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century and its projected continuation

If that doesn't seem a proper definition, please put forward another for consideration.

Include, if you would be so kind, that if "it" is occurring, is "it" a net negative for the human race.

Calculating a net negative requires balancing all putative positive effects with all putative negative effects and giving a sum. That's beyond my skill set.

Anyhow, I am just letting you know what I believe. Judging from previous discussions and mentions on this list, debate goes haywire at about sentence five.

Let me put it this way: I don't think it is a fruitful topic to pursue here, but I suppose I could be convinced . . .

Care to try convincing me an AGW discussion on OL will be fruitful?

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William:

Those definitions work for me also.

I am reasonably certain that we would agree that mankind is one of the causes of an increase in the near surface temperature of the earth.

Additionally, I would assert the hypothesis that mankind is one of the smallest causes of the increase in the near surface temperature of the earth.

Moreover, the warming and cooling is cyclical and we are basically irrelevant to the huge biosphere that is this planet.

I think we could discuss it on OL if we set the definitions and the terms of the debate.

It would be an interesting experiment.

Adam

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I think we could discuss it on OL if we set the definitions and the terms of the debate.

If I remember correctly, you have long experience in formal debate. So, I will leave it to you to propose formalities. Please let us wrangle backstage over that, and then we could start a fresh topic with the rules made explicit.

I remember part of the fun of debating in High School was when in one round we didn't get to choose the side of the issue we were to debate, but were assigned to a team. It freaked out a substantial number of the kids in my class -- "But how can I argue for Abortion? Abortion is murder gnash snarl, snark crank bluster."

Mixing up the composition of the teams led most of us to give the best shake we could to the opposition argument . . . it made some kids realize the value of research. I recall our Fundie Nutcase having a minor crisis of faith simply by having to put forward a rebuttal to her own deeply-held notions.

I do wonder if we could get folks to sign up for that kind of thang . . .

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William:

Agreed. Be interesting if we could do that and then present the proposition in a new thread with some formal rules.

Teddy Roosevelt forced himself to prove the case of his opponents to himself before he even began developing his case.

Very effective mental gymnastics which I have always advocated.

We had the final debate with the Oxford debate team in a tournament. It was a humorous debate proposition with a big audience of academia and we drew lots for the affirmative and negative.

The final debate proposition was: Resolved that: Sex will never replace night baseball as a spectator sport. And we drew the damn negative and had to defend night baseball!

It was one of the funniest and most raucous debates I ever participated in. The Brits were really good too.

Adam

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Be interesting if we could do that and then present the proposition in a new thread with some formal rules.

It is at least possible to get to that first step. But from my online reading over the past five years or so, I see debates proliferate in a kind of mad onrushing evolutionary explosion. I mean, the debates (such as they are) on just a couple of high-traffic sites -- e.g., Wattsupwiththat and Realclimate -- are hugely entailed. A single post at Realclimate (home of the AGWAs) can generate five hundred comments or more, and this with fairly stern moderation.

Kind of makes the I Met God thread seem simple and easy to comprehend.

It might be a good idea to exchange some information on 'where to start' first. I would ask you which climate books you have in your library, pro and con, from the two 'poles of contention.' I wonder also if we could each read the other's choice of a single volume, perhaps a history.

With that in mind, are you acquainted with Weart's "The Discovery of Global Warming"? That's a question for anyone interested in the controversies . . . I don't presume that opinion is monolithic here. Though it seems that the few who opine on climate tend to the anti-AGWA side of things, I bet there are more than a few here who are relatively agnostic, even if they don't express their doubts or uncertainties.

I sometimes get the impression that there is a sort of Objectivish Party Line on global warming.

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I, too, think that Man has impacted to a TINY DEGREE on global warming - tiny, when projected against the natural swings of temperature, influenced by other awesome powers, over unimaginable time.

But still, what can be done about it?

How much should be done about it?

Who should do the doing?

How much will it cost, in loss of liberties, as well as financially, and is the sacrifice worth it?

-are questions I keep asking myself.

That there is an element of humanity (some scientists included) that gleefully point to Man's achievements - his survival, highest values, and his mind - as the cause of his downfall, is obvious to me in one-on-one conversations, and in publications.

These GW alarmists pose a direct challenge to Primacy of Existence (that the Earth just IS), so naturally Objectivists have a beef with them.

Tony

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To the best of your knowledge, are these persons criminally prosecuted?

Defrauding the government is a federal offense. The classic case is that of Eric Poehlman (Wikipedia here)who was sentenced to a year and a day in prison. Since then, I could find nothing on the ORI website. Note, however, that prison accomplishes little -- do you want PhD's teaching criminals how to do it better? Generally, they suffer retraction fron further grants, from working for schools that get grants, from working for other researchers who get grants, etc. for anywhere from three to seven years. It all depends on how severe the infraction was and how they deal with it. (Attempting to cover it up is a bad choice.) Poehlman's crime was faking the experiments that led to the massive prescriptions of estrogen for women in menopause. It was right up there with the autism thing.

Aside from that it is generally better to deal with this in a peer context. The government police complain that corporations sweep fraud and embezzlement under the rug to prevent bad publicity when the police (and prosecutors, of course) want to sent the perps to prison. It is not fruitful.

"In responding to and resolving the criminal behavior of employees, organizations routinely choose options other than criminal prosecution, for example, suspension without pay, transfer, job reassignment, job redesign (eliminating some job duties), civil restitution, and dismissal...

While on the surface, it appears that organizations opt for less severe sanctions than would be imposed by the criminal justice system, in reality, the organizational sanctions may have greater impact... In addition, the private systems of criminal justice are not always subject to principles of exclusionary evidence, fairness, and defendant rights which characterize the public criminal justice systems. The level of position, the amount of power, and socio-economic standing of the employee in the company may greatly influence the formality and type of company sanctions. In general, private justice systems are characterized by informal negotiations and outcomes, and nonuniform standards and procedures among organizations and crime types."

(THE HALLCREST REPORTS. 1. Private Security and Police in America, William C. Cunningham and Todd Taylor, Stoneham, Mass. Butterworth-Heinemann, 1985. 2. Private Security Trends 1970 to 2000, William C. Cunningham and John J. Strauchs and Clifford W. Van Meter, Stoneham, Mass. Butterworth-Heinemann, 1990.) ("This publication reports a 30-month descriptive research project performed by Hallcrest Systems, Inc., MacLean, Virginia, under a grant from the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice.")

For another thing, it costs $30,000 to $60,000 per year to incarcerate someone, whereas debarring them from research costs nothing, and is just as effective, if not moreso.

As you might expect also prison is not for people with multiple doctorates at major institutions. Prison is for small fry:

Guterman, L. P., W. (2003). Former Graduate Student Sentenced to Prison for Faking Theft of Research. Chronicle of Higher Education, August 21 [2003]. ... A graduate student who had done no work for several years (good mentoring here) just reported all his notebooks stolen. He was quickly caught and jailed for 10 months for theft. (The notebooks didn't belong to him.)
Edited by Michael E. Marotta
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Enjoy global warming while it lasts, we're lucky it's warmer than normal, probably not to long before we dip into the next ice age.

Shayne

Shayne:

Is that a no?

You would not be interested in a structured thread debating AGW with a reading list, structure, etc?

Adam

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Enjoy global warming while it lasts, we're lucky it's warmer than normal, probably not to long before we dip into the next ice age.

Shayne

Shayne:

Is that a no?

Do you need better reading glasses?

Shayne

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WSS,

A debate on AGW with ground rules and a reading list would interest me.

Robert Campbell

Great. That makes three of us so far who have made their interest explicit -- Adam, me, and Robert. Any other takers?

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WSS,

A debate on AGW with ground rules and a reading list would interest me.

Robert Campbell

Great. That makes three of us so far who have made their interest explicit -- Adam, me, and Robert. Any other takers?

Let's give it a little time, like the weekend.

I am sure you saw this...

1231river.jpg?w=620 HANDOUT PHOTO: Jane London

The water in Goldstream River, at Goldstream Provincial Park flows a bright green December 29, 2010 in this handout photo.

Postmedia News December 31, 2010 – 5:44 pm

By Judith Lavoie, Postmedia News

VICTORIA—The chemical that turned Victoria’s Goldstream River green earlier this week has been confirmed as fluorescein.

Read more: http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/12/31/green-chemical-in-b-c-river-not-toxic-study-confirms/#ixzz1AOCtM2PJ

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I'm afraid "Goldstream" is an outdated name ...

Robert Campbell

LOL...even though it was for only five (5) hours that was funny...

Wow sorry about this - its been blocked

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT0O2RyxnkY&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&version=3

Even the polar Bears are trying to influence the scientific date!

Edited by Selene
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WSS,

A debate on AGW with ground rules and a reading list would interest me.

Robert Campbell

Great. That makes three of us so far who have made their interest explicit -- Adam, me, and Robert. Any other takers?

Let's give it a little time, like the weekend.

Sounds good. I add this only to put the thread on the page again.

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WSS,

A debate on AGW with ground rules and a reading list would interest me.

Robert Campbell

Great. That makes three of us so far who have made their interest explicit -- Adam, me, and Robert. Any other takers?

Let's give it a little time, like the weekend.

Sounds good. I add this only to put the thread on the page again.

Going once, going twice, and . . . the House wins. There is no need to 'debate' AGW.

Edited by william.scherk
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