Science Schmience
Science has all too often been warped into ridiculous, politically-motivated conclusions about everything the government wants to use to control the masses: Vaccines, climate change, GMOs, fluoride, flu shots, chemical agriculture, carbon dioxide and the list goes on.
Science can no longer be blindly trusted if it ever should have been, to begin with.
I suppose it’s easy to forget about a sobering set of reports that as much as 80 percent of the science from academic labs, even science published in the best journals, cannot be replicated.
As if that isn’t concerning enough here are several more practices you shouldn't forget about that manipulate the science pushed onto us.
Publication bias Publication bias is a type of bias that occurs in published academic research. It happens when the outcome of an experiment or research study influences the decision whether to publish or distribute it. Publication bias matters because literature reviews regarding support for a hypothesis can be biased if the original literature is contaminated by publication bias.
Publishing only results that show a specific finding disturbs the balance of findings.
An example of this would be only papers stating that a drug works are published, while studies that find a negative result are buried. This leads to doctors falsely believing a drug is safe because all they can read are favorable reviews, when in reality it may be ineffective - or worse, deadly.
Because let's face it...
Publication bias can kill you. Lorcainide was supposed to combat heart arrhythmia, but trials found the troubling side effect of death. Because of this result, the study was never published. Several years later, pharmaceutical companies put Lorcainide on the market. And 100,000 deaths were expedited by its use.
Even after Lorcainide brought hundreds of thousands of people to their premature graves the authors of the study trying to call it to people's attention were rejected by multiple journals before finally getting published.
p-hacking some scientists have adopted something called "p-hacking." Which is essentially testing one hypothesis over and over again until you get a positive result. It's dishonest misleading, irresponsible, and unethical.
The proof is in the pudd …., wait… where’s the pudding? Have you ever asked anyone to see proof of something? Congratulations you have higher standards than most scientific journals. When scientists submit a paper, they're rarely required to show raw data.
Only about 15 percent of journals have relevant instructions, and enforcement is lax.
The case of Joachim Boldt (the record holder for number of retracted papers, with 90) is one of the worst.
Boldt faked data insisting that a particular type of IV drip caused no increase in patient death, whereas most other researchers found the exact opposite. Boldt convinced many doctors to continue using the drip for years, which produced an estimated 20,000 deaths.
Pay to Play
A scientist gets paid nothing for every paper they produce unless BIG industry is kicking them back (don't act like it isn't done). Scientists actually lose money if you consider that publishers often require an article-processing charge. So...scientists, who are judged by the number of publications they have, whose results can’t be replicated, and whose data or testing results are not shared- have to pay to publish their papers. Are you still with me?
Surely a charge of a few hundred dollars to keep out the riff-raff would be sensible but the average is $2,300 per article, some journals charging as much as $5,000. Scientists from developing countries don’t stand a chance.
The Oligopoly
A mere three publishing companies (Reed Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell, and Springer) account for 42 percent of all published articles (something feels familiar about this...hmm).
This oligopoly has insanely high-profit margins of 30 to 40 percent.
Charge em twice, extra for the mice. Charging scientists twice: once for publishing an article and again for the privilege of reading an article. Scientists need to pay around $35 to read papers, including their own (I wonder where that money goes?).
Charging a fee to read articles can restrict scientific progress, particularly in developing countries. For example, a 1982 paper warned that Ebola was present in Western Africa when everyone presumed it wasn't. This information went unknown to Liberian doctors because the $32.00 reading fee was at least half of their weekly salary.
Reed Elsevier once accepted money from pharmaceutical companies, including Merck, to launch new journals that published favorable studies. Elsevier was also caught offering $25 vouchers to any scientist that gave a book published by them a five-star rating on Amazon.
Policy-based evidence making "Policy-based evidence making" is a term which refers to the commissioning of research in order to maintain a policy which has already been decided upon.
Policy-based evidence making means working back from a predefined policy to assemble evidence that supports the policy. Working from a conclusion to provide only supporting evidence is an approach which contradicts any interpretation of the scientific method I can think of.
Ghostwriting Ghostwriting remains prevalent in areas of academic research. Studies composed by corporations and published in scientific journals with academic authors have been used to sway government decisions, court cases, and even medical practice. A host of universities have been caught in ghostwriting scandals, including Harvard University, Brown University, Stanford University, and Emory University.
Which brings us to the present day Monsanto ruling. The recent lawsuit win against Monsanto offers a clear and troubling view into industry tactics that distort research for corporate gain. In the lawsuit regarding the carcinogenicity of the pesticide Roundup, the plaintiffs’ lawyers showed that Monsanto had participated in ghostwriting an academic study finding that Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate, is not harmful. Glyphosate is the world’s most widely used weed killer and is critical for successful cultivation of genetically modified crops (GMOs) such as corn and soybean, which are resistant to the pesticide due to genetic modification. Monsanto has denied they participated in ghostwriting and defend the integrity of the study insisting on their blog, “The paper also underwent the journal’s rigorous peer review process before it was published.” But the term “rigorous” is not an accurate description for the journal. A glance into the journal’s history offers a telling window into the industry of creating and packaging junk science with the appearance of academic precision.
“Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology is a vanity journal that publishes mercenary science created by polluters and producers of toxic chemicals to manufacture uncertainty about the science underlying public-health and environmental protections,” says David Michaels, professor of environmental and occupational health at the George Washington University School of Public Health. The problem is that it’s not just Monsanto, and it’s not just this one journal. Corporations regularly buy academics to do their bidding.
Every institution in America is sold out, corrupted and politically rigged to favor Big Government and Big Business. The total corruption of every public and the private institution is complete. Nothing remains but tyranny. And lies. Endless lies.
