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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Showing posts with label Science Journals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Science Journals. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 10, 2025

Beware of “Experts”

By Jim Beers

Editor's Note:  I originally published this on September 14, 2015, and given what's going on by firing all these administrative state "experts", and the recent condemnation of science journals, I thought it worthwhile to republish this. RK

According to medical Dr. Carey Franklin:  
 
 “I don’t believe most of the studies published in the medical journals anymore....A review of more than 2,000 articles retracted by major journals revealed that more than two-thirds were retracted because of some type of fraud....Medical journal editors openly acknowledge that they cannot find article reviewers without any financial ties to private companies.....Medical researchers aim for articles that will attract the mainstream press......There is no quick fix for the erosion of trust in medical studies.....If the current trend continues, medical studies will become the ‘reality television’ of science – difficult for outside observers to tell what has been manipulated and what hasn’t.”

Dr. Franklin - If you think the medical “experts” are corrupt in the field of medical science where human lives, and cause and effect should make bastardized “science” evident and minimal: take a look at the ocean of “environmental” “scientific” “studies” and “research” burying western civilization about environmental “facts” that are little more than hidden agenda “preferences”. You may feel some consolation knowing that your concerns regarding the current state of medical research are but one area of a generally collapsing field of “scientific” research.

The recent rash of shark attacks that severely injured and maimed children playing in shallow Atlantic surf is but one recent example of this phenomenon of “experts” misleading and bamboozling the public.

The “experts” tell us such attacks are “rare”. Four children attacked along our coast in a month is four too many when the cause is dangerous sharks present where children are enjoying the beach and this is not acknowledged as amenable to shark control or management in such places by “experts”. Targeted shark population and area controls through various means where human use is significant are simply unspoken, marginalized or shouted down as inappropriate by “experts”; just like managing or eliminating wolves/grizzly bears/panthers where they seriously distress and impact human activities are forbidden by “experts” partnered with bureaucrats. 
 
This is somewhat similar to gun control “experts” and bureaucrats discouraging “the public” from buying guns or arming themselves while killers that escaped from a “maximum security” prison roam the rural countryside. Such behavior by government and their associated “experts” defies common sense and endangers human lives.

Shark “experts” tell us that last year only 200 or 300 shark attacks occurred worldwide. As if Madagascar or Indonesia or a thousand such remote places know or report such things, or that someone really knows how Abdul or Freddie “disappeared”. Or even that nearby resorts or towns where an attack occurs suppresses such reports like the town fathers in the movie “Jaws” worried about business.

The shark “experts” (like the wolf/grizzly bear/panther/native ecosystem/etc. “experts”) are nearly all either government bureaucrats whose careers depend on “saving” sharks; professors and researchers who have lifelong attachments to sharks and adult needs for making a living from grants and donations; or non-government organization staffs and members that manipulate the general public by creating faux environmental hobgoblins to bamboozle unaffected and mostly urban dwellers into donating money and voting for the steady increase in central government tyranny that rural Americans are increasingly aware of as I write.

Wolf advocates told us wolves are not mortal dangers to children and the elderly; that there have “never been recorded wolf attacks”; that they don’t spread disease; that they don’t destroy ranches and livestock operations; that they don’t destroy big game herds and the hunting that supports so much State conservation programs; that they don’t kill thousands of dogs; that their numbers are minimal; that they should not be managed or controlled; that local people should have no say or rights where wolves roam: these are all lies disguised as “scientific” emanations from the mouths of “experts”. “Experts” that by the way (like the medical/bear/panther/native ecosystem/ etc. “experts”) neither have nor acknowledge any responsibility or liability for the mayhem and destruction that they create for others.

It is the same for grizzly bear advocates that blame the increasing attacks, destruction and deaths as these animals spread into more and more settled landscapes (like the sharks on bathing beaches or wolves and panthers in the settled landscapes of the Lower 48 States) ON THE VICTIM’S behavior or simple human presence instead of the animal that does not belong there. The bear/wolf/panther “experts” are only distinguishable from shark “experts” in one regard: the shark “experts” disguise their advocacy regarding an omnipresent animal; while the wolf/grizzly bear/panther advocates lie and forcibly impose their dangerous and destructive animals in vast areas that were once purposely and at great expense cleansed of these animals from Europe to The Lower 48 States. These latter “experts” that justify and enable these re-introductions have much more to ultimately answer for despite their current celebrity status.

An “expert” should first and foremost be concerned with human welfare, human rights, Constitutional government and the economy that supports all of us. Instead, today’s “expert” is a no-holds-barred advocate for the critter in these instances I just mentioned as well as many others. They think the critter should be more abundant, never killed, never controlled or bothered in any way. They think WE need to be suppressed, prevented from supporting families or living as free men in order for the sharks to occupy the beach; and the wolf, grizzly bear and panthers to roam everywhere and reach densities our forefathers knew all too well bode disaster for men, families and their communities. Look no further than the absence of recommended lethal controls or even the ability of free men to protect themselves, their families, their communities and their livelihoods from these animals that we once hired these “experts” to tell us how to maintain WHILE WE WENT ABOUT OUR LIVES.

When anyone tells you to listen to the “experts”, remember the years of propaganda about the “native” ecosystem. You know the silliness about “they were here first”, “they belong here”, “the ‘native’ ecosystem is best and ‘belongs’ everywhere it can be established”. These are little more than romantic notions camouflaging a host of hidden agendas. Some brie-nibbler on the North Side of Chicago or some young woman (often the daughter of a big donor) transferring from a Congressman’s staff in Washington to a job at The Nature Conservancy or Defenders of Wildlife might think that doing whatever is necessary to forcibly allow wolves/sharks/grizzly bears/panthers galore is wonderful. However, that is NO DIFFERENT than me as a young man wanting more pheasants and ducks for hunting and being willing to manipulate the terrible force of government to force my notions upon others, no matter their cost in human suffering.

Eliminating or minimizing deadly animals where humans live in settled landscapes (be it Minnesota or Tanzania) is no more wrong or inappropriate than forcing everyone to support more game animals for my hunting desires, despite what “experts” say and think. A settled human-oriented landscape and Constitutional freedoms are what have become increasingly “endangered” not the animals that “experts” believe should be allowed to destroy human lives and the liberties that were once responsible for building the most prosperous nation on earth that not only freed and supported others but was a magnet for 200-plus years for people worldwide that hungered for the safety and freedoms that no other nation offered.

If you found this worthwhile, please share it with others. Thanks.


Sunday, March 3, 2024

Have I Ever Told You About Preconceptual Science?

By Rich Kozlovich
 
My now passed friend Dr. Jay Lehr was at Princeton when Einstein was there, and he told me when Einstein first came to Princeton he delivered a series of lectures, and I think it was seven, but five for sure.  He said at the first couple of those lectures you couldn't buy or steal a seat in that room it was so packed, but by the last lecture there were plenty of seats.  
 
I was a bit surprised and asked why.  He said a lot of these people, many of whom were among the smartest people in the world, didn't have a clue what he was talking about, and clearly they didn't dare suggest is was Einstein who didn't know what he was talking about.  Can you imagine what that must have done to their egos?
 
Over the course of my almost 78 years respect for science has gone from the top of Mt. Everest to the toilet, and for good reason.   During and right after WWII science exposed the world to the atom bomb, sputnik, men to the moon, and amazing medical advances at disease prevention.  And as a result some scientist could look up from his microscope, or turn from his blackboard with all sorts of gibberish only they and their peers understood, and mumble out incomprehensible babble almost no one would understand, but everyone would be sure to believe.   And it might be true, and it might not.
 
As my friend Mike Shaw noted:   
 
Science, once indistinguishable from a search for truth—has become fatally corrupted by academia in a rapacious search for dollars.
 
With all the scientific jargon, and arrogant ivory tower isolation, we just didn't know any better, but time and truth are on the same side, and before now we just didn't know scientific integrity has always been a serious issue.
 
Evolution was at the heart of much of it, and was the greatest scientific fraud ever perpetrated on humanity, until global warming, and this fraudulent coronavirus pandemic, and worse yet, the shots they forced on much of humanity they fraudulently called "vaccines".  The negative health consequences as a result of these vaccination mandates of are world wide, and will continue for decades.
 
Let's try and get this once and for all. Government grant money has made
 

Nothing has changed, and in point of fact it's getting worse, and will get far worse in the coming years because now any nitwit, or group of nitwits with computers and a "twitter" account can force science to reject anything they don't like. Nitwits are now part of the peer review process.  The article about the study in question went on to say:

On January 4th, the paper "Meta-analysis: On average, undergraduate students’ intelligence is merely average," was accepted to the journal. That same day, the abstract was published with the notice that the "final, formatted version of the article will be published soon".

Apparently the average IQ for college undergraduates has dropped, and a lot from "around 120 to 102, just slightly above the average of 100."  Let's  not delude ourselves, that's huge, and apparently it's true.  The authors went on to point out the ranks attending college is no longer from the higher IQ members of society, and as a result, "academic standards and curricula might have to be adjusted."  After what we've seen at Harvard, does anyone doubt that?

Well, this set up a fire storm of protest because they really didn't like the author's "tone".  It was demeaning, and lacked sensitivity, and criticized the peer reviewers for not finding fault with their paper, including the Frontiers in Psychology handling editor.  

The editor  of that journal, Eddy Davelaar, overrode all that and attempted to refute the evidence presented, and he did so....... with his opinions.......and has refused to respond to challenges over his actions and his opinions.  

But none of that changes the fact these young academics are dumber than ever, and are no longer required to perform mentally challenging tasks.  Academia is more about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion than it is with honest education, that teaches critical thinking, versus Critical Race Theory.

Diversity without accomplishment is philosophy without form and incompetence without consequence.  Unfortunately, as with all these schemes, humanity pays the penalty, and in the future the consequences are going to be dramatic.  Negatively dramatic.  

One more thing, this whole Preconceptual claptrap mentality doesn't just apply to science.  It works for economics also. 

Tuesday, May 9, 2023

Blasts From the Past: Latest Academic Hoax Is A Doozy

The first sign this is a hoax is that the article says the two authors, Sage Owens and Kal Avers-Lynde III, are on the economics faculty at UCLA, but I can find no record of their existence at UCLA or anywhere else, and no record of other publications by either author. I believe they do not exist. My suspicion is that the “authors” may be conservatives, or at least anti-leftists, who decided to see whether an article that flatters the deep biases of academia could get past peer review and into print...........To Read More...

American institutions outsource graduation speeches to foreign elites, By Olivia Murray  May 28, 2022 - Springtime in these United States means universities across the country gather for ceremonies and speeches. Two of the most academically (dis)reputable establishments, Stanford and Harvard, played host to foreign elites pushing a leftist global agenda. Zelenskyy made an emotional appeal to encourage further bankrupting American citizens to support his war with a global superpower, while New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern arrogantly detailed her country’s ‘progressive’ legislative model.    From her speech:..........

 University Accused of Weaponizing Public Records Law to Harass, Intimidate Faculty - January 3, 2022 - Indiana University paid a law firm to file a public records request against itself to search the emails of a law professor who was investigating its presidential search process, the professor claims, citing an invoice for the firm's services. Steve..

‘BIPOC’ Debate Tournament Banned White Students from Competing - Student-run debate organizations at Northeastern University and Boston College co-hosted the American Parliamentary Debate Association’s (APDA) “inaugural BIPOC tournament” and explicitly prohibited white students from competing.  The BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color,) only tournament included teams from multiple universities including the University of Chicago.  As The Chicago Thinker reported this past semester, The University of Chicago informed students the BIPOC debate was only open to anyone who “does not identify as white.”..........Topics for the debate tournament include “issues relating to race and social justice.”

Academic Ideologues Are Corrupting STEM. The Silent Liberal Majority Must Fight Back (quillette.com) Anna Krylov and Jay Tanzman 18 Dec 2021 - Earlier this year, I (Anna) did something that my friends feared I would come to regret: I publicly spoke out against the intrusion of illiberal thought into science and education, with a letter entitled, The Peril of Politicizing Science, published on June 10th in The Journal of Physical Chemistry. In that letter, I drew on my own early life in the USSR, where communist ideology permeated all aspects of life, and survival required strict adherence to the party line and enthusiastic displays of ideologically proper behavior.  I noted that certain names and ideas are now forbidden within academia for ideological reasons, just as had been the case in my youth. My own home town of Yuzovka, I noted, was called Trotsk (after Leon Trotsky), then renamed Stalino after Trotsky was purged, then Donetsk when Stalin was posthumously canceled by Khrushchev. ............

Jesuit-Led Loyola Academics Urge Continued Teaching of CRT in K-12 Schools - Dr. Susan Berry - Faculty members of the School of Education at Loyola University Maryland argued recently that while there are many topics that should be kept at the collegiate level because they are too advanced or inappropriate for children, Critical Race Theory (CRT) is not among them...........

A law school forces Maoist re-education on a professor who ran afoul of Black students - December 27, 2021 The details of both his non-sin and the insane fire the law school is raining down on his head should be a reminder to all of us that American academia is toxic. .....

And the Golden Turkey Award Goes To… November 24, 2021 — John Hinderaker -Twice a year, Center of the American Experiment presents its Golden Turkey Award to highlight wasteful government spending in the State of Minnesota. Each contest features four nominees, and thousands of Minnesotans vote to select the winner. This time around, the nominees included a $261,000 grant to the University of Minnesota to teach eagles not to fly into wind turbines.........

Struggle sessions come to UC Berkeley - By Jared Peterson November 23, 2021 - Read the email reproduced below from Dania Matos, U.C. Berkeley's new vice chancellor for diversity, equity, and inclusion.  And weep.  Or laugh.  The language alone — an inadvertent parody of academic incomprehensibility — is enough to provoke uncontrollable laughter or tears, depending on one's state of mind.  Here it is in all its Orwellian glory:...........Let's be clear about what we have here:  This is a summons from U.C., Berkeley's new vice chancellor for "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion," a lawyer and 2003 political science graduate of Brown, presumably sent to all faculty members (and to many others — postdocs, grad students, who knows?), informing them that their presence is "requested" at the "political orthodoxy training seminar cum hate whitey and excoriate excellence festival" (my title) announced by the good comrade vice chancellor.......

Time for a New University?Allen Mendenhall November 19, 2021 -  “The foreseeable ranting and naysaying among journalists and scribblers isn’t an impediment to UATX. The chief challenge for UATX, in fact, will be recruiting students.”   Higher education in the United States is in dire condition. Priced Out, a report by Neetu Arnold of the National Association of Scholars released earlier this year, describes several problems afflicting colleges and universities: profligate spending, administrative bloat, exorbitant tuition costs, massive student loan debt, mission drift, student radicalism—the list goes on.  What can be done to fix these challenges? Is it time to build parallel schools to rival too-far-gone institutions? Is there room for new colleges and universities predicated on the serious, unbridled pursuit of truth and open inquiry, free from the rigid orthodoxies, anti-intellectualism, and close-mindedness of wokeism and identity politics?..........

Tuesday, September 21, 2021

Science journals have been corrupted by China

Have researchers close to Beijing been compromised?

Ian Birrell
By August 13, 2021

Nine months ago, the scientific establishment’s determined efforts to stifle debate on the origins of the pandemic began to crumble with the revelation that Peter Daszak, a British scientist with long-standing links to Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), had secretly orchestrated a landmark statement in The Lancet. Published last February, this influential missive, signed by 27 leading public health experts, infamously attacked “conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin”, saying they only spread “fear, rumours, and prejudice.” Incredibly, it also praised Beijing’s “rapid, open and transparent” sharing of data.

The clandestine involvement of Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance charity, was exposed in a batch of emails obtained by US Right To Know. This tenacious body has played an important role in opening up global debate on the pandemic’s origins, chipping away with freedom of information requests to draw out crumbs of evidence exposing attempts by leading scientific figures to shut down talk of any lab-related incident. And the more we discover from such efforts, the murkier the events early last year seem to appear.

The investigative body’s most recent cache of documents — published this week — involve emails obtained from Ohio State University virologist Shan-Lu Liu. They reveal a senior Chinese researcher was infected with Covid-19 in a leading Beijing virology laboratory soon after the Wuhan outbreak, highlighting the risks of inadvertent laboratory transmission. They also suggest that, according to Prof Liu, WIV “has many bat samples not yet worked out or results published”.

Yet perhaps most significantly, the emails from early last year expose yet again how key science journals, supposed to promote unfettered debate among experts, instead pushed the idea that anyone questioning the notion of natural transmission from animals was a wild-eyed conspiracy nut. There has been alarm over The Lancet, along with the likes of Nature and Scientific American, for their roles in inflaming such myopic viewpoints, sparking concern over the Chinese ties of their corporate owners. Such fears are heightened when even Peter Ben Embarek, head of the World Health Organisation’s patsy study into the origins, suddenly turns round — as he did yesterday — and says Patient Zero in the pandemic may be a worker at a Wuhan laboratory after all..........To Read More.... 

Tuesday, June 15, 2021

Scientific American is not scientific and not American

For over 175 years the magazine Scientific American has bragged that it covers

the advances in research and discovery that are changing our understanding of the world and shaping our lives.  (snip) Authoritative, engaging features, news, opinion and multimedia stories from journalists and expert authors -- including more than 200 Nobel Prize winners -- provide need-to-know coverage, insights and illumination of the most important developments at the intersection of science and society.

However around six years ago the American segment of the publication changed as it was purchased by a private German-British conglomerate, Springer Nature, which has affiliates and publications worldwide.  And international controversies to go along with its international nature such as highly credible accusations of succumbing to demands for censorship from Communist China against research from scientists in Tibet and independent Taiwan.   

Not very scientific.  

Further veering from science, the magazine entered the political realm for the first time in the November, 2020 election, endorsing Joe Biden for president because well, he is so scientific.  Or something.  And Donald J. Trump is not. Or something............To Read More.....

Wednesday, March 20, 2019

The Lancet Has Gotten Really Weird

By Alex Berezow — March 12, 2019 @ American Council on Science and Health

TheLancet is a highly respected biomedical journal that rightly carries a lot of clout in the scientific community. That's what makes its recent turn toward sensationalism and clickbait so incredibly odd.

We first noticed that something was strangely amiss in 2017 when the editor-in-chief of The Lancet praised Karl Marx in a bizarre editorial. The piece made multiple dubious claims, such as, "Medicine and Marxism have entangled, intimate, and respectable histories." The 100 million (or so) graves of the victims of communism beg to differ.

Then, in 2018, The Lancet went on an ideological bender against alcohol. First, it hyped a study that purportedly showed that every additional glass of alcohol above roughly 5 per week decreases a person's life expectancy by 15 to 30 minutes. Think about that for a minute. Many people around the world have a nightly glass of wine with dinner. In The Lancet's opinion, that's precisely two too many, and anyone who does that is slowly killing themselves.

When a scientist reaches an absurd conclusion, that should serve as a warning to take a closer look at the methodology, the data, or both. Instead, The Lancet decided to double down. Later that year, it published a study that declared that any alcohol whatsoever is bad for your health. Somebody, please notify the French.

This year, the weirdness continued. A paper in The Lancet argued that certain food experts should be banned from food policy discussions. (Of course, the experts that should be banned are any that are associated with industry, because industry = bad.) And then, The Lancet slandered surgeons, using shady statistics to blame them for killing millions of people every year. The study was so bad that our typically calm, cool, and collected Dr. Charles Dinerstein worried that his head would explode.

The Lancet on Twitter: The World Is Worse Now than Ever Before

Apparently, whoever is operating The Lancet's Twitter feed said, "Hold my beer, and watch this." Here is what the organization posted today:


The study itself may be fine, but The Lancet's tweet about it is misleading at best. Disease, violence, and inequality threaten more adolescents than ever before. Really?
The statement is absurd on its face. Violence has decreased all over the world. The Medieval period was a particularly rough time to be alive. Not only were people dying of things like the Black Death (which killed 1/3 of Europe in the mid-1300's), homicide rates were incredibly high. (See chart below from Our World in Data.)


As recently as the 20th Century, smallpox is thought to have killed 300-500 million people. Likewise, measles killed millions. But vaccines have prevented millions, if not billions, of deaths.
Inequality? Well, that's getting better, too. Yes, in some places, the rich are getting richer, but in a lot of impoverished regions, the poor are getting richer. In fact, poverty has fallen from around 90% of the global population in 1820 to under 10% today. (See chart below from Our World in Data.)



Putting this all together, it's easy to see that humanity has never had it better than in 2019. To quote The Beatles, "It's getting better all the time." So, what on Earth is The Lancet talking about?

The only possible explanation for the tweet is that the journal decided to ignore the indisputable trends and instead hyped absolute numbers. That's extremely misleading in this case because there are more people on the planet now than ever before. (It would be like comparing the cost of a TV in 1960 versus 2019 without adjusting for inflation.) The data need to be standardized, which is why percentages are really the only honest way to do this analysis.

Of course, The Lancet knows this. They just chose to put out a sensationalist tweet, instead. That is troubling.

Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Research integrity and why bad science has become such a problem

, | | March 11, 2019

Science depends on corroboration — that is, researchers verify others’ results, often making incremental advances as they do so.  The nature of science dictates that no research paper is ever considered to be the final word, but increasingly, there are too many whose results are not reproducible.  Explanations include the complexity of experimental systems, misunderstanding (and often, misuse) of statistics, pressures on researchers to publish, and the proliferation of shoddy pay-to-play “predatory” journals.

In 2011 and 2012, two articles rocked the scientific world.  One reported the attempt to reproduce the results of 53 preclinical research papers that were considered “landmark” studies.  The scientific findings were confirmed in only six (11%) of them.  Astonishingly, even the researchers making the claims could not replicate their own work.

The second article found that claims made using observational data could not be replicated in randomized clinical trials (which is why the latter are known as the “gold standard).  Overall, there were 52 claims tested and none replicated in the expected direction, although most had very strong statistical support in the original papers.

Subsequently, there has been more evidence of a crisis in scientific research: In a survey of ~1500 scientists, 90% said there were major or minor problems with the replication of experiments.

More recently, in 2015, 270 co-investigators published the results of their systematic attempt to replicate work reported in 98 original papers from three psychology journals, to see how their results would compare.  According to the replicators’ qualitative assessments, only 39 of the 100 replication attempts were successful.

Around the same time, a multinational group attempted to replicate 21 systematically selected experimental studies in the social sciences published in the journals Nature and Science between 2010 and 2015.  They found “a significant effect in the same direction as the original study for 13 (62%) studies, and the effect size of the replications is on average about 50% of the original effect size.”

These failure rates for reports in prominent journals are astonishing — and worrisome, because false claims can become canonized.

Of course, technical problems with laboratory experiments – contamination of cell lines or reagents; unreliable equipment; the difficulty of doing a complex, multi-step experiment the same way, time after time; etc. – are one explanation, but another is statistical sleight-of-hand. One technique for that is called p-hacking: Scientists try one statistical or data manipulation after another until they get a small p-value that qualifies as “statistical significance,” although the finding is the result of chance, not reality.

Australian researchers examined all the publicly available literature and found evidence that p-hacking was common in almost every scientific field.  Peer review and editorial oversight are inadequate to ensure that articles in scientific publications represent reality instead of statistical chicanery.  Another problem is that competing scientists often do not retest questions, or if they do, they don’t make known their failure to replicate, so there are significant lacunae, or gaps, in the published literature – which, of course, mostly comes from universities and is funded by taxpayers.

Many claims appearing in the literature do, of course, replicate, but even those may not be reliable. Many claims in the psychology literature, for example, are only “indirectly” replicated. If X is true, then Y, a consequence, should also be true. Often Y is accepted as correct, but it turns out that neither X nor Y replicates when tested anew.

Understandably, editors and referees are biased against papers that report negative results; they greatly prefer positive, statistically significant results. Researchers know this and often don’t even submit them – the so-called “file drawer effect.”  Once enough nominally positive, confirmatory papers appear, the claim becomes canonized, making it even more difficult to publish an article that reports a contrary result.

The system thus perverts the method, the value of accumulated data, and the dogma of science.  It makes us wonder whether scientists who practice statistical trickery fail to understand statistics, or whether they’re so confident of the correct outcome that they take shortcuts to get to it.  If the latter, it would bring to mind the memorable observation about science by the late, great physicist and science communicator Richard Feynman, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.”

Part of the canonization process often involves a meta-analysis, which is defined as “a method for systematically combining pertinent qualitative and quantitative study data from several selected studies to develop a single conclusion that has greater statistical power [and that] is statistically stronger than the analysis of any single study, due to increased numbers of subjects, greater diversity among subjects, or accumulated effects and results.”

This is how it’s done… A computer search finds published articles that address a particular question – say, whether taking large amounts of vitamin C prevents colds.  From those that are considered to be methodologically sound, the data are consolidated and carried over to the meta-analysis. If the weight of evidence, based on a very stylized analysis, favors the claim, it is determined to be real, or canonized.

The problem is that there may not be safety in numbers because many of the individual base papers are very likely wrong – the result of p-hacking and publication bias.  Potential p-hacking can be detected by creating a “p-curve” – i.e., plotting the p-values for each of the papers included in the meta-analysis against the “rank” — the integers 1,2,3…etc., up to the number of papers.  The first figure below, for example, plots a meta-analysis in which there were 19 papers; in the second figure, the meta-analysis included 14 papers.

Want to follow the latest news and policy debates over agricultural biotechnology and biomedicine?
 
Recall that a p-value measures the likelihood that an effect is real, as opposed to having occurred by chance. The smaller the p-value, the more likely the effect is real.

If the resulting p-curve looks like a hockey stick, with small p-values on the blade and larger p-values on the handle (as in the two figures below), there is a good case to be made for p-hacking.

The figures below are derived from meta-analyses of the supposedly beneficial effects of omega-3 fatty acids and the alleged direct relationship between sulfur dioxide in the air and mortality, respectively that were presented in a major medical journal and claimed a positive effect.  There are, indeed, several small p-values reported and, taken alone, they would indicate a real effect. But there are more p-values greater than 0.05, which indicate no effect.  Both cannot be correct.  Inasmuch as there are many more negative studies and p-hacking is the logical explanation for the presence of a small number of low p-values, the most likely conclusion is that there is no effect.  Thus, the meta-analyses yield false-positive results.

These examples are all too common.  The sad truth is that much of published science and the canonized claims resulting from it are likely wrong, and it is incumbent on the scientific community to find solutions.  Without research integrity, we don’t know what we know.

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Dr. S. Stanley Young is a statistician who has worked at pharmaceutical companies and the National Institute of Statistical Sciences on questions of applied statistics. He is an adjunct professor at several universities and a member of the EPA’s Science Advisory Board

Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is a Senior Fellow at the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco. He was the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology. Follow him on Twitter @henryimiller