Search This Blog

De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Showing posts with label Parkinson's. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Parkinson's. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Exposure to pesticides a risk factor for Parkinson s? Not so fast!

ASCH Staff @ American Council on Science and Health

A new study published in the journal Neurology tries to suggest that there may be an association between exposure to pesticides and solvents and Parkinson s disease. Even the study authors are blatantly aware of the shortcomings of their study when they say, the evidence is limited, or at least inconclusive, because of lack of definitive agreement between cohort and case-control studies. Yet that didn t stop them from publishing it. This meta-analysis was based on 89 prospective and case-control studies considering a range of chemicals pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, rodenticides, solvents, organophosphates, paraquat, and DDT, among others and their relation to Parkinson s. After analysis, researchers concluded that risk of developing Parkinson s was increased by 33 percent to 80 percent due to exposure to these chemicals.

The analysis was a first-rate mess. Conclusions from the included studies were not in agreement the majority of the time, and even higher quality studies showed statistically significant associations for solvents, paraquat, and well-water drinking but they also found reductions in Parkinson s for exposure to insecticides, farming and well-water drinking.

How can something well-water drinking both increase risk of Parkinson s and also decrease risk? The answer: garbage science. As if to prove this point, the case-control studies differed in terms of study quality and size and in the prospective studies, estimates of exposure were not determined in the same way. And secondary causes of Parkinson s were completely ignored by the authors.

ACSH s Dr. Gilbert Ross says, This is a prime example of a bad study; it could be used as an illustration in a college text on how not to do epidemiology. First of all, there was so much variation between studies, a point even the authors are aware of, that definitive conclusions cannot be made. And results were clearly contradictory as pointed out in the well-water example previously. The one good point made by study authors was that no association was found between DDT and Parkinson s.

ACSH s Dr. Josh Bloom points out that the entire premise is biologically implausible. He says, There is no way that you can lump these substances together and draw any type of valid conclusion. They are all chemically different, work by different mechanisms, and each one is processed in the body in a different way. This is like saying since a cannon ball is round and kills people, all other round objects are dangerous. He continues, According to this logic, perhaps the Department of Homeland Security ought to think about banning Nerf Balls.

Sunday, December 2, 2018

Hiding in plain sight: Exploring Parkinson’s link to the appendix

| | November 28, 2018

Lurking in the layers of the human appendix lie deposits of alpha-synuclein, a protein prone to gumminess, like sticky rice. Known mostly for its clumping in the brains of people with Parkinson’s disease, alpha-synuclein aggregates found in the appendixes of healthy people made headlines a few weeks ago.

Isn’t the appendix fairly useless, even dangerous when inflamed? Is it also a gateway to a brain disease?

Actually, a link between the Parkinson’s protein and the appendix has been known for a few years. Now, new experiments reported in Science Translational Medicine confirm the connection and suggest a protective role for appendectomy. But rather than advising people to shed their appendixes, the researchers see their findings as opening up a new target for drug discovery for Parkinson’s.

“We have shown that the appendix is a hub for the accumulation of clumped forms of alpha-synuclein proteins, which are implicated in Parkinson’s disease. This knowledge will be invaluable as we explore new prevention and treatment strategies,” said Bryan Killinger, first author of the report and a post-doctoral researcher in the laboratory of Viviane Labrie at the Center for Neurodegenerative Science, Van Andel Research Institute in Grand Rapids.

The much-maligned appendix is quite active. It produces 71 percent of all of the nearly 20,000 types of human proteins, so it must be doing something. The most abundant 200 proteins also are prominent in the spleen, tonsils and lymph nodes, creating a quartet of body parts that protect us from infection. Plus, the tiny organ regulates the microbiomes of the small and large intestines, serving as a reserve to replenish resident bacteria........To Read More......
 

Friday, August 31, 2012

Scientific Integrity is an Oxymoron: From Retraction Watch

_____



This is just from 2012 thus far. As you go through these you will see the same names appearing over and over again. Some of these articles are about this same issue, but some involve a number of different issues and over a period of years, as a result it can be clearly seen that these people have been getting away with this stuff for years. That clearly justifies my personal motto:
De Omnibus Dubitandum
(Question Everything!)

Twenty More Retractions For Scientist Who Made Up e-mail Addresses So He Could Review His Own Papers
Hyung-In Moon, the South Korean plant compound researcher who came up with fake email addresses so that he could do his own peer review, has retracted twenty more papers, all in Immunopharmacology and Immunotoxicology, an Informa Healthcare title. The notice is the same as for the four others Moon retracted from Informa journals:
 The peer-review process for all of the above articles was found to have been compromised and inappropriately influenced by the corresponding author, Professor Hyung-In Moon. As a result the findings and conclusions of these articles cannot be relied upon.

 The corresponding author and the publisher wish to retract these papers to preserve the integrity of material published in the journal. The publisher acknowledges that the integrity of the peer review process should have been subject to more rigorous verification to ensure the reviews provided were genuine and impartial. The publisher apologizes for any inconvenience rendered to the readers of the journal and wishes to assure the reader that measures have been taken to ensure that the peer review process is comprehensively checked to avoid a similar error occurring.
 The retractions bring Moon’s total to 31 — 24 from this episode, and seven from several years ago.


 
In the case of Hyung-In Moon — the researcher who faked email addresses for potential peer reviewers so he could do his own peer review — has already led to one resignation.
Emilio Jirillo, the editor of Immunopharmacology and Immunotoxicology, which retracted 20 of Moon’s papers, stepped down earlier this year in the wake of the case, Retraction Watch has learned.
In an unusual move, a German university has issued a statement calling into question “the scientific honesty” of a whistleblower, and suggesting that his emails were “dangerous.”
Some background: Off and on here at Retraction Watch, we have been following a complicated case involving Robert Nitsch, a scientist at the Johannes-Gutenberg-University. In August of last year, we reported on the retraction in the FASEB Journal of a paper on which Nitsch was a co-author. What made that retraction unusual was that it came after Charite – Universitatsmedizin Berlin, where Nitsch and some of his co-authors worked at the time, recommended a retraction even though the journal had originally agreed to a correction at the authors’ request. And a month later, we noted that Nitsch was a co-author on a Cell paper that was corrected for figure errors........
A group of South Korean researchers has decided to withdraw a paper they recently published in the journal Digestion because it was filled with mistakes.
The paper, “Endoscopy-Based Decision Is Sufficient for Predicting Completeness in Lateral Resection Margin in Colon Endoscopic Submucosal Dissection,” was published earlier this year (and online in late 2011) by a group in Seoul. But according to the retraction notice:
A materials researcher faced three months without salary, retired from his research position and may have to return a portion of a grant worth $1 million US as punishment after a postdoc in his lab was caught fabricating data.

Seizo Miyata, formerly a materials researcher at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, headed a group that worked on carbon alloy catalysts. Last year, Miyata told Retraction Watch, he found evidence that postdoc Wu Libin had fabricated data.

Reached by Retraction Watch by phone, Miyata didn’t say who uncovered the evidence, nor how, but when he confronted Libin, the postdoc confessed. Miyata said he alerted Tokyo Tech administrators last year, and requested the retraction of “Preparation of carbon-based catalysts for PEFC cathodes from aromatic polyamide with Fe compound,” which appeared in Applied Catalysis A: General in July 2011. That retraction notice reads: Read the rest of this entry »
Tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process


The U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) has found that a neuroscientist who studied the effects of pesticides on a mouse model of Parkinson’s disease made up data.
As The Scientist reported on Friday, the ORI found that Mona Thiruchelvam faked cell counts in two grant applications and a number of papers that claimed to show how the pesticides paraquat, maneb, and atrazine might affect parts of the brain involved in Parkinson’s. The Scientist notes: Read the rest of this entry »



·         Fujii retractions mount
·         Can we trust Western blots?