"Compromised science" news/opines (includes retractions, declining academic standards, pred-J, etc)

exchemist said:
What credence should we give the South China Morning Post nowadays, though? [...] Is it not possible that the Chinese authorities simply want to undermine the prestige of Nature because it is Western?
Click to expand...

The overall mood is derived from discussions taking place on Chinese social media platforms, and a lot of it sounds like angry students. Though there may be some established, professional veterans participating. Given that context, the trust issue with Nature is probably an overblown topic, even if this latest eruption might be more prominent than those in the past.
  • Academic Jobs: "Retraction trends are not unique to China, but the scale of Chinese-affiliated retractions has drawn particular attention. International publishers, including Springer Nature, have faced past mass retractions involving Chinese authors, such as the 2017 case of 107 papers in Tumor Biology due to fake peer reviews. The current wave, however, centres on high-profile titles like Nature, amplifying visibility. Experts note that China's rapid growth in research output-now leading in many fields-has outpaced the development of uniform integrity safeguards, though recent policy changes aim to close the gap."
What does Nature itself have to say about these criticisms emanating from China?
Click to expand...

They're addressing it much as the other times. Diagnose and fix. No extreme alarm, seemingly regarded as within routine parameters (for this troublesome era, anyway). Probably viewed as more a matter of Chinese institutions needing to revise their protocols and funding distribution system, which is also taking place in response to the fraud outbreak.
  • SCMP article: "In an email received after publication time, Springer Nature’s head of communications Michael Stacey said, “Concerns have been raised with us regarding five papers published in our journals. We are undertaking a rigorous investigation which is ongoing. Once this process is complete, we will take any appropriate action in line with our policies to protect the integrity of the scientific record."

    Regulatory and Institutional Responses in China (AJ article): "Chinese authorities have responded with stronger measures. The science ministry has announced plans to penalise universities that fail to investigate or sanction serious misconduct. [...] Universities are now required to declare all retractions and conduct investigations, contributing to a growing database of misconduct cases. These steps reflect a shift from prestige-driven metrics toward greater emphasis on integrity, though challenges remain in implementation across thousands of institutions."
 
C C said:
The overall mood is derived from discussions taking place on Chinese social media platforms, and a lot of it sounds like angry students. Though there may be some established, professional veterans participating. Given that context, the trust issue with Nature is probably an overblown topic, even if this latest eruption might be more prominent than those in the past.
  • Academic Jobs: "Retraction trends are not unique to China, but the scale of Chinese-affiliated retractions has drawn particular attention. International publishers, including Springer Nature, have faced past mass retractions involving Chinese authors, such as the 2017 case of 107 papers in Tumor Biology due to fake peer reviews. The current wave, however, centres on high-profile titles like Nature, amplifying visibility. Experts note that China's rapid growth in research output-now leading in many fields-has outpaced the development of uniform integrity safeguards, though recent policy changes aim to close the gap."


They're addressing it much as the other times. Diagnose and fix. No extreme alarm, seemingly regarded as within routine parameters (for this troublesome era, anyway). Probably viewed as more a matter of Chinese institutions needing to revise their protocols and funding distribution system, which is also taking place in response to the fraud outbreak.
  • SCMP article: "In an email received after publication time, Springer Nature’s head of communications Michael Stacey said, “Concerns have been raised with us regarding five papers published in our journals. We are undertaking a rigorous investigation which is ongoing. Once this process is complete, we will take any appropriate action in line with our policies to protect the integrity of the scientific record."

    Regulatory and Institutional Responses in China (AJ article): "Chinese authorities have responded with stronger measures. The science ministry has announced plans to penalise universities that fail to investigate or sanction serious misconduct. [...] Universities are now required to declare all retractions and conduct investigations, contributing to a growing database of misconduct cases. These steps reflect a shift from prestige-driven metrics toward greater emphasis on integrity, though challenges remain in implementation across thousands of institutions."
Click to expand...
Hmm, but now I’m confused. The tone of the SCMP article seemed to be that Nature’s standards have slipped, whereas this is saying it is the integrity of scientific research in China that is the problem. Which I think we all knew. China (and India) seem to churn out crap papers on an industrial scale.
 
exchemist said:
Hmm, but now I’m confused. The tone of the SCMP article seemed to be that Nature’s standards have slipped, whereas this is saying it is the integrity of scientific research in China that is the problem. Which I think we all knew. China (and India) seem to churn out crap papers on an industrial scale.
Click to expand...

Yah, in a sense it sounds like Nature got caught in the crossfire between the students / researchers and the Chinese academic system, because their careers are often tied to publication success in the journals. Via the latter being a key factor of what the country's institutional scheme revolves around. If the journals loses integrity via substandard evaluation and acceptance of poor papers, then the boffins suffer from the fallout in terms of financial support and promotional perks, not just drops in personal reputation and other punishments. Only a native insider or access to the translated dialogues transpiring on the platforms could probably clarify the details of the system's heavy dependency on journals (that differs somehow from the West?) and whatever the complicated reciprocal effects are.
_
 
Last edited:
Statistical misreporting on a new cancer drug: “survival times” misconstrued as “survival rates” or “death risks”
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2026...isconstrued-as-survival-rates-or-death-risks/

EXCERPTS: Last night on the NBC News ... I heard a report on a new cancer drug touted as being almost miraculous. ... But the news confused survival time with survival rate ... I knew that something was wrong, as metastatic pancreatic cancer is almost always fatal, so the survival rate, which the percentage of people still alive after a specified period of time (often five years), cannot be expressed in months. Sure enough, this mistake, expressing the effects as a doubling of survival rate, was not only misleading, but widespread. It’s easy to find similar errors in the press; just google the drug name and “survival rate”... (MORE - details)

Science has met its nemesis in the broad, ongoing political neutralization of Western oppression? ;) No defense at all against activist non-Christian beliefs? ;) Toss it in for the heck of it, since the "dark side" might be the only camp allowed to whine.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The Reburial of the Southwest
https://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/policy-report/the-reburial-of-the-southwest/

EXCERPTS: The desire to understand humanity’s past is as old as civilization itself, and archaeology and anthropology have long been the disciplines that make key insights possible. [...] In 1990, Congress attempted to reconcile the scientific process of analyzing archaeological artifacts with concerns raised by Native American tribes about the treatment of ancestral remains. [...] Over time, however, the interpretation and application of NAGPRA have changed. Activists, regulators, and increasingly risk-averse museum administrators have begun interpreting NAGPRA regulations as applicable far beyond what Congress originally intended. Remains that predate modern tribes by thousands of years are now slated for tribal reburial. Ordinary artifacts-and even objects created for commercial sale-have been removed from museum collections or withdrawn from displays. In some cases, the expansion of repatriation policies has effectively barred scientists from studying materials that once formed the foundation of much archaeological research... (MORE - details)
_
 
Last edited:
C C said:
But the news confused survival time with survival rate ... I knew that something was wrong, as metastatic pancreatic cancer is almost always fatal, so the survival rate, which the percentage of people still alive after a specified period of time (often five years), cannot be expressed in months.
Click to expand...
Saw this and was going to post a short rant on media frequently doing this sort of breathless and misleading reportage. This one especially rankled, as I've known several people who've had pancreatic cancer. Few survive, and those rare cases are only when it is caught extremely early, i.e. stage one. And it is very hard to detect in stage one.

Eat your fiber and hide when you see a pastry cart coming, people. All the usual advice is pertinent to preventing this horrible cancer - high fiber low glycemic diets, plenty of exercise, foods like salmon, eggs, avocados, apple cider vinegar and olive oil on leafy salads, whole fruits not juices, etc. These are the horses to bet on, not daraxonrasib. /rant
 
  • Like
Reactions: C C
Hijab-switching researcher scandal puts Indonesian academia under scrutiny
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/s...andal-puts-indonesian-academia-under-scrutiny

EXCERPTS: The almost cartoonish antics of an Indonesian researcher at an international scientific conference has opened a Pandora’s box of alleged academic misconduct, putting Indonesian academia under the spotlight. [...] At the conference, held from May 17 to 21, Dwi observed the researcher, later identified as Prihantini, changing her hijab and switching name tags in an apparent attempt to pose as other members of her team. [...] What they found suggested the Copenhagen incident was not an isolated one: Rifaldy and associates appeared to have submitted suspiciously similar abstracts to dozens of international conferences over several years... (MORE - details)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

AI is eating the academic publishing industry alive, but some good might come of it
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opi...ndustry-alive-but-some-good-might-come-of-it/

EXCERPTS: In a publish-or-perish environment where numbers count much more than quality, artificial intelligence has become the great disruptor. [...] This is the logic of today’s numbers-obsessed university that cannot tell the difference between the creation of knowledge and the production of outputs. A university that cannot tell the difference between the creation of knowledge and the production of outputs has confused use value with exchange value [...] If the exposure of AI-generated slop, hallucinated references, fabricated data and voiceless prose brings about the downfall of the Big Five publishing oligopoly, I cannot mourn it. An industry that profits so spectacularly from unpaid labour, that sells publicly funded research to the public at an enormous mark-up, that has used its stranglehold on prestige to distort what universities are for, well, this industry deserves disruption... (MORE - details)
_
 
TheVat said:
Saw this and was going to post a short rant on media frequently doing this sort of breathless and misleading reportage. This one especially rankled, as I've known several people who've had pancreatic cancer. Few survive, and those rare cases are only when it is caught extremely early, i.e. stage one. And it is very hard to detect in stage one.

Eat your fiber and hide when you see a pastry cart coming, people. All the usual advice is pertinent to preventing this horrible cancer - high fiber low glycemic diets, plenty of exercise, foods like salmon, eggs, avocados, apple cider vinegar and olive oil on leafy salads, whole fruits not juices, etc. These are the horses to bet on, not daraxonrasib. /rant
Click to expand...
Yes it happens a lot, because often the journalists are not very knowledgeable in the field and are working to a tight deadline. For most of my life I have operated on the rule of thumb that in any article on a topic on which you yourself are knowledgeable, you will spot at least one error. Often it is quantitative data that trip them up, wrong orders of magnitude, confusing kW with kWh, things like that. This example is in that category.
 
Scientists ejected from diabetes conference for distributing journal reprints
https://arstechnica.com/science/202...conference-for-distributing-journal-reprints/

Five leading scientists were ousted from the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) in New Orleans on Friday. Their crime: handing out copies of an editorial, published in the journal Diabetes Care on April 29, sharply criticizing the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks on scientific research...
_
 
How Scientific American went from fighting pseudoscience to platforming it
https://beyondtheabstract.substack.com/p/how-scientific-american-went-from

EXCERPTS: Much as I don’t go to POLITICO to learn about black holes, or Sports Illustrated for movie reviews, I didn’t subscribe to Scientific American to be told what conclusions I should reach on political issues. [...] I stumbled upon a hard copy of the October 2025 issue in a waiting room and began reading. Inside it, I found a piece that highlighted a study claiming that tongue photographs, analyzed by machine learning, could diagnose diseases. My immediate reaction was: This can’t be serious. Tongue-reading has a long history in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), and while it can be culturally meaningful, its scientific basis has never passed basic clinical scrutiny... (MORE - details)
_
 
How science got lost
https://mahmudfarooque892889.substack.com/p/how-science-got-lost

EXCERPTS: I have been thinking about the recent RCP8.5-related conversation not as a climate denial story or an argument against climate action, but as a case study in how science can sometimes get lost. [...] how does science get lost when most of the people involved believe they are doing the right thing? [...] That may be the real lesson: science does not stop being self-correcting all at once. It becomes slower to self-correct in areas where correction is interpreted as betrayal. [...] When science-policy communities treat some options as unspeakable, they make science less useful. [...] The uncomfortable possibility raised by RCP8.5 is that the greatest threat to science in politics is not always an external attack. Sometimes it is internal over-identification: science becomes so attached to a political project that it loses the ability to discipline itself... (MORE - details)

(RELATED) Why Scientists Retired the Dire Climate Scenario Used for Over a Decade: For more than a decade, RCP8.5 represented a “worst-case” scenario in which greenhouse gas emissions would rise dramatically, leading to extreme warming of about 4.4°C (8°F) by 2100. While it was never intended to be the most likely outcome, it became widely used in studies and media coverage as a benchmark for potential catastrophic impacts. However, new research concludes that this scenario is now “implausible” given current global energy trends, such as slower growth in coal use and increased adoption of renewable energy...
_
 
C C said:
How science got lost
https://mahmudfarooque892889.substack.com/p/how-science-got-lost

EXCERPTS: I have been thinking about the recent RCP8.5-related conversation not as a climate denial story or an argument against climate action, but as a case study in how science can sometimes get lost. [...] how does science get lost when most of the people involved believe they are doing the right thing? [...] That may be the real lesson: science does not stop being self-correcting all at once. It becomes slower to self-correct in areas where correction is interpreted as betrayal. [...] When science-policy communities treat some options as unspeakable, they make science less useful. [...] The uncomfortable possibility raised by RCP8.5 is that the greatest threat to science in politics is not always an external attack. Sometimes it is internal over-identification: science becomes so attached to a political project that it loses the ability to discipline itself... (MORE - details)

(RELATED) Why Scientists Retired the Dire Climate Scenario Used for Over a Decade: For more than a decade, RCP8.5 represented a “worst-case” scenario in which greenhouse gas emissions would rise dramatically, leading to extreme warming of about 4.4°C (8°F) by 2100. While it was never intended to be the most likely outcome, it became widely used in studies and media coverage as a benchmark for potential catastrophic impacts. However, new research concludes that this scenario is now “implausible” given current global energy trends, such as slower growth in coal use and increased adoption of renewable energy...
_
Click to expand...
Perhaps scientists do better when they make clear that RCP8.5 is the WCS and has such dire consequences that shifting our economies to avoid it is a good gamble. It's like sending a toddler to the playground alone - even though the streets are quiet, the neighbors friendly, and the equipment all has rubber padding, making a serious accident of low probability (say, 0.5 percent), you still wouldn't do it. Holding their tiny hand all the way is seen as a good gamble. The stakes are too high, so investing in a good deal of proactive behavior is worthwhile.

If science can communicate what "the stakes are too high" means, in a concrete way, that can help credibility and reduce being branded as alarmist or sensationalist. The chances of a runaway polar melt might be only 1/200. If so, say that upfront, and then explain clearly what that runaway would mean. We humans will take protective action against implausible events, if they are clearly bad enough.
 
  • Like
Reactions: C C
C C said:
How science got lost
https://mahmudfarooque892889.substack.com/p/how-science-got-lost
Click to expand...

Science will always seem befuddled at its intersections with politics. One of the biggest challenges I know is trying to get people to focus on what even they pretend is the issue at hand. Part of "how science got lost" in the example is that people focused too much on fallicies of political discourse.

We see a similar phenomenon going on right now with statistics and history; what reads like solipsism among armchair experts disputing California election results↗ comes down to validity and reliability being the reason one has so little faith in institutions, i.e., they can never trust again because they didn't get their way.

The politics of politics are, of course, their own question. But scientists and, as such, "science" are frequently confused, at their intersections with politics, why facts and evidence simply aren't good enough for the masses seeking opiation. Right now, people are trying to remind overnight statistics experts the same thing the overnight elections experts couldn't grasp in 2020, in Georgia.

It's also what happened at the beginning of the American Covid experience, when people pretended confusion about masks. Suddenly, people pretended to forget what they already knew, that CDC wasn't going to start a panic by overstating; when the results came in, and they changed their position to recommending masks, some joker pretended to not know why they had recommended against a week before, and how many other people decided akin to election conspiracists: The reliable result of the institution doing its job according to its purpose is the reason one has little faith in the institutions, anymore, and they know many people who feel that way. (Counterpoint: Considering the antimask and antivax behavioral result, how badly would it had gone if CDC started a run on masks and hand sanitizer and then the result came back and said it wasn't necessary?)

Think, then, of how much climate denial and conspiracism required overrepresenting this or that circumstance; this time later, I can't remember what the damn email scandal was supposed to be about because the science continues to come through, and if it was that much of a problem, the science should have collapsed by now.

It's kind of like a squeaky wheel, and if someone makes enough noise, people behaviorally condition themselves to looking at and discussing the issue accordingly. And it's hard to figure good advice for "science" on this part; but at some point it doesn't matter how reliable and explicable a result is, i.e., Farooque, "when it moves from one context to another without the appropriate caveats"; the scientists themselves don't necessarily have the final say on those caveats. Given enough noise to answer, one cannot postulate enough caveats; in a cacophony where all speech is equal for having been uttered, some pretense of "science" getting lost is inevitable: Answering populism with reliable science only offends the populism; trying to ignore insupportable noise as much as one can similarly hurts people's feelings. Eventually, they condition themselves to feel perpetually victimized; when reality disagrees, somebody must be doing them dirty.
 
  • Like
Reactions: C C
Sociology’s reckoning has arrived
https://unsafescience.substack.com/p/rigor-or-ruin

EXCERPT: Sociology confronts an epistemological reckoning that threatens to exhaust whatever credibility the discipline retains. This article—a condensed version of which Eppard gave as a plenary address at the North Central Sociological Association’s (NCSA) 2026 Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh—argues that the social sciences, and sociology most acutely, have normalized a systematic asymmetry in evidentiary standards: permissive toward ideologically congenial claims, stringent toward inconvenient ones.

The result is a discipline in which overclaiming, causal overreach, idea laundering, and the conflation of advocacy with empirical inquiry have become endemic. Compounding these epistemological failures are precipitous enrollment declines and the imminent disruption posed by artificial intelligence, which promises to collapse the informational asymmetries that have insulated imprecise academic claims from proper scrutiny... (MORE - details)
_
 
Ok so I was chatting about this with either C C TheVat or exchemist.
A group of scientists went to parliament to discuss significant government cuts (UK) to Scientific research.
Brian Cox, Dr Becky but I spotted Christopher Lintott and Jon Butterworth too, nice to have a Manc in there.

 
  • Like
Reactions: C C
Pinball1970 said:
Ok so I was chatting about this with either C C TheVat or exchemist.
A group of scientists went to parliament to discuss significant government cuts (UK) to Scientific research.
Brian Cox, Dr Becky but I spotted Christopher Lintott and Jon Butterworth too, nice to have a Manc in there.

Click to expand...

Hmm. Not their title but seems to be the overarching reason. Howarth wasn't buying the disavowal.
- - - - - - - -

Curiosity research cut in “devastating blow” to boost economic technological growth
https://www.iop.org/about/news/vital-science-cut-in-devastating-blow

EXCERPTS: STFC wrote to physicists in the particle physics, astronomy and nuclear physics community, and likely others, informing them that funding would be cut by 30%. [...] funding would be refocused from 2026 onwards in line with its new mission to “advance knowledge, improve lives and improve growth”.

Boosts to areas like quantum, AI, green tech and semiconductors are promised... Responding to today’s letter from STFC regarding funding changes, IOP President-elect Professor Paul Howarth CBE said:

[...] “Physics isn’t a luxury we can afford to throw away through confusion and cuts. Our nation’s growth and security depend upon technologies invented by physics, and these in turn depend upon the physics skills, research and infrastructure which are today under threat.

“The government has promised boosts for areas like quantum, green tech and AI, and all of this is welcome, but the reality on the ground is hundreds of scientists being told their research is being slashed, jobs under threat, and no sign of the funding we’re told will replace it. [...] The government insists that curiosity research will not be reduced but today’s cuts seem to tell a different story. Research in areas like particle and nuclear physics is where future breakthroughs and growth are born, and where we train up the people who will go on to lead sectors like AI, defence and health. Cut curiosity research and you cut the expert workforce of tomorrow..."
_
 
The mathematics of medical panic: How misused statistics distort healthcare policy
https://www.acsh.org/news/2026/06/2...ed-statistics-distort-healthcare-policy-50197

INTRO: Healthcare policy is increasingly justified through the language of numbers, yet numerical precision does not guarantee sound reasoning. Some of the most damaging public health controversies, from opioid prescribing restrictions to vaccine skepticism, demonstrate how statistical misunderstandings can distort risk, fuel panic, and transform flawed interpretations into harmful policy... (MORE - details)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The MAHA movement’s worrisome embrace of ibogaine
https://undark.org/2026/06/25/opinion-maha-ibogaine-addiction/

EXCERPTS: Ibogaine is a psychedelic substance derived from a plant native to Central and West Africa that is illegal in the U.S. - and it is having a moment. A New York Times political reporter recounted his experience taking the psychedelic in a recent piece that was widely read. In March, Texas became the first state to start its own ibogaine research program, after the legislature passed a funding bill for the drug last year...

[...] As a physician who practices addiction medicine, I fully support the rescheduling of ibogaine under the Controlled Substances Act to facilitate research. But the Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, movement’s ad hoc embrace of ibogaine as a solution to our addiction and mental health crises worries me. Ibogaine is associated with serious risks, even when patients are closely monitored.

The most feared side effect is cardiac toxicity, which can lead to fatal arrythmias. (Psilocybin, another psychedelic shown to reduce alcohol use and treat refractory depression, does not carry nearly as severe cardiac risks.) The effects of an ibogaine trip are not benign: Ibogaine can be felt for over 24 hours, leading to severe disorientation, even psychosis... (MORE - details)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Why have papers by one of history’s most famous physicists been retracted? (bot menace)
https://www.science.org/content/art...story-s-most-famous-physicists-been-retracted

EXCERPTS: “There’s something fishy,” Gingras said. The papers, both quietly retracted in 2011, originally appeared in the early 1940s in Naturwissenschaften, a German journal now owned by publishing giant Springer Nature.

[...] Yet publishing identical material in multiple journals was widespread before the internet. “Science was more fragmented” then, Khelfaoui says. “You wanted different audiences … to have access to your work.” The practice was especially common for luminaries like Planck. Albert Einstein did the same (but escaped retractions).

Springer Nature’s “anachronistic” application of modern standards to a 1942 paper “distorts the historical record,” Gingras and Khelfaoui argue in a preprint posted last month on arXiv. Any concerns about copyright violations are largely moot anyway: Because Planck died in 1947, his works are in the public domain in most countries.

[...] The retraction of the second Planck paper, published in 1940, left Gingras and Khelfaoui even more baffled. It also cited copyright violation—yet the piece had never appeared elsewhere. Then Khelfaoui noticed something that added to suspicions that an algorithm was at work... (MORE - details)
_
 
Is science self-correcting? Not in this Elsevier journal.
https://scienceintegritydigest.com/...self-correcting-not-in-this-elsevier-journal/

INTRO: These two papers were both published in Elsevier/ScienceDirect’s Cytokine. Cytokine has been one of the journals that did very little with the 30 papers I reported to them in October 2015. Of those papers, only 2 have been retracted, and another 2 have been corrected. The remaining 26 (87%!) have not been touched. It is cases like these that are extremely frustrating. The problems are obvious, but the editors refused to take action. Is science self-correcting? Not for Cytokine... (MORE - details)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

In China, some researchers are attending academic conferences that do not exist
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/sci...e-attending-academic-conferences-do-not-exist

EXCERPT: Scammers in China [...] have found a new target: academics. Wu Guangheng [...] said he first heard about the “bogus conferences” in late May. With the number of accusations mounting, some are questioning how this “grey industry” continues to endure. According to Liu, the lecturer from Wuhan, many of those affected choose not to pursue the matter. And for those who do try to defend their rights, the hurdles are steep.

One issue is that these companies are procedurally compliant and registered taxpayers, leaving local market regulators with neither the capacity nor the incentive to pursue deeper investigations and regulation, she said. Liu also noted that the existence of these businesses was closely tied to the broader academic ecosystem in China. “In fact, some people are fully aware of the nature of these conferences, yet still choose to submit to them.” (MORE - details)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

What drives academic research misconduct?
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07294360.2026.2627872

ABSTRACT: Research misconduct in higher education is a global concern. Research integrity is vital for ensuring scientific research is trustworthy for the research community and public. Despite the importance of research integrity, research misconduct – breaches of scientific norms such as fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, and questionable practices – remains prevalent.

This study explores academic researchers’ perceptions of the relative importance of factors driving research misconduct. An online survey incorporating a novel application of a choice experiment was undertaken by researchers at universities in Australia, the United States and Europe. We adopted an inferred behavior approach to address self-reporting bias and, hence, the choice experiment focused on a hypothetical researcher.

The results indicate that among the 11 factors varied within the choice experiment, researchers perceive misconduct as significantly more likely to occur mainly when penalties are lower, when there is lower likelihood of investigation into misconduct, and when the negative human/animal/environmental impact of misconduct is smaller. Three latent classes are also identified, revealing differences among researchers with respect to their judgement of the factors that drive misconduct. The findings of our study provide guidance for university policies and promotion of research integrity... (MORE - the paper)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Quackery in Quebec: The trojan horse bill I worry about
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/c...ackery-quebec-trojan-horse-bill-i-worry-about

INTRO: A new bill has been proposed at the National Assembly of Quebec, and while it may look like it will benefit our health, there is a lot going on under the surface. It is an excellent example of how the rebranding of pseudoscience gives it legitimacy, and this Trojan horse is now knocking on our legislative door.

The bill proposes a number of things around the nebulous phrase “complementary and integrative approaches to health.” The member who introduced it wants to identify knowledge gaps and recommendations in that field; to get research into integrative health funded by our provincial health research body; and for the government to finance university-level education in this field.

If you have never heard of “integrative health” or if you are a fan of it, it all sounds good. Many Quebecers are already using these complementary therapies. Why not invest money in finding out which ones work particularly well and ensure that more therapists can benefit from a higher education so as to ease the burden of illness in our province? After all, the bill does not mention replacing medicine but rather complementing it.

But complementing it with what? Because when we scratch the surface of this Trojan horse, we discover that it is full of nonsense... (MORE - details)
_
 
Last edited:
The complex truth about trust in science
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01974-y

EXCERPTS: Trust in science is important. Scientific knowledge cannot influence decisions and improve lives unless citizens and policymakers consider it trustworthy. Confidence that scientists and the scientific process produce reliable, valuable knowledge is also necessary to maintain support for public funding of research.

[...] Along with an extended collection online, it identifies the problems and looks at how scientists can maintain the trust of the public and policymakers. The idea that science is experiencing a trust crisis is simplistic shorthand for more complex problems. As laid out in a Feature, the data do not bear out the idea of a global crisis. Surveys consistently show that the scientific profession is trusted — much more than most. [...]

Confidence is also sagging when it comes to specific areas involving science. A growing number of people are questioning or rejecting vaccines. [...] Some problems have no easy answers. There is no incentive for politicians to support science if they can gain more votes and influence by rejecting its evidence and embracing alternative narratives.... (MORE - details)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The strange history of the anti-vaccine movement
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250905-the-strange-history-of-the-anti-vaccine-movement

EXCERPTS: . . there is a long history of protests against them, including anti-vaccine riots in 1850s England, 1880s Canada and 1890s America. In 1905 in Boston, US, vaccination opposition led to widespread protests and a Supreme Court case, which would go on to deem vaccine mandates constitutional.

Interestingly, opposition to the idea of vaccination existed even before vaccines themselves. Variolation – a precursor to modern immunisation, which used material from smallpox victims to induce a less serious reaction and immunity – was introduced in the UK and America in the 1720s.

It immediately drew the ire of critics. [...] Religious opposition to vaccination was not the sole form of objection. ... one common trope was that immunisations should be avoided because they were "unnatural" – making vaccines the latest victim of the "appeal to nature" fallacy ... Some critics also believed that a vaccine might not just change your defences against a disease, but somehow transform your body itself... Claims that vaccines were poisons also were common...

[...] But there were other reasons for anti-vaccine campaigning, too. One of the biggest arguments hinged on concerns about bodily autonomy and individual freedoms. ... The "personal freedom" argument, in particular, seemed to be especially compelling to the residents of Stockholm, Sweden – only 40% of whom were vaccinated against smallpox in 1873..

[...] Anti-vaccine activism did not disappear, however. Instead, the advent of the information age – particularly the internet – gave new life to some of the messages first spread 225 years ago... (MORE - details)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

WHO and the death of evidence-based medicine
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/who-and-the-death-of-evidence-based-medicine/

EXCERPTS: I have long been critical of the World Health Organization’s promotion of dubious treatment methods under the banner of “traditional medicine”. It now has a global strategy to promote what is calls “traditional, complementary and integrative medicine” (TCIM). In my opinion (shared by at least some others) the document is a master class in how to promote medical pseudoscience with the language of evidence-based medicine. It is very similar to RFK’s use of “gold standard science”. Superficially, it sounds fine, but in context, it is a weaponization of the weaknesses and misunderstandings of evidence-based medicine.

The goals sound reasonable, such as this paragraph [...] But the document gives the game away in several critical ways, including what it says and what it doesn’t say...

[...] the unstated major premise of the entire document is that there are safe and effective treatments that are not being used by mainstream medicine systems for some reason. This is unlikely because how would we have rigorous evidence of safety and effectiveness if a modality were not already incorporated into mainstream medicine? Who did this research, and why? Are doctors leaving effective treatments on the table? (MORE - details)
_
 
A 25-year-old Air Force recruit died from the flu. The blood is on Pete Hegseth’s hands.
https://www.jezebel.com/air-force-r...andate-pete-hegseth-blame-keon-talik-mcdaniel

EXCERPT: For those wondering why the Department of Defense and DOD Secretary Pete Hegseth would suddenly pull a complete 180 and reinstate the mandated flu vaccine for new recruits at the end of last month, we now suddenly have what certainly looks like a plausible answer: All it took was a pointlessly dead U.S. citizen... (MORE - details)
_
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top