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By Sivad
#15081140
Rancid wrote:Sounds like that dude's models needs some serous validation, and it's odd to see governments making decisions on unvalidated models. :eek: He had 13+ years to do that shit, and apparently didn't. :hmm: This is a real problem with science and experts, for sure.


It's not just him, it's insane that the code hasn't been independently vetted but what's even more insane is what governments did based on "thousands of lines of undocumented C written 13+ years ago to model flu pandemics" without even bothering to have it reviewed. :lol:

At least in his follow on tweets he say's he's working with people to have it refactored and posted on to github so others can use it. It's probbly too late with respect to this virus.


exactly. the bullet has left the gun.
By Sivad
#15081148
it's also hilarious that the unvetted model is using data from the Chicom gulagist regime that has already been caught in multiple corona related frauds and has even disappeared a few corona whistleblowers. :lol:
User avatar
By Rancid
#15081149
Sivad wrote:it's also hilarious that the unvetted model is using data from the Chicom gulagist regime that has already been caught in multiple corona related frauds and has even disappeared a few corona whistleblowers. :lol:


That is true. As they say,

garbage data in, you get garbage data out.
User avatar
By Rancid
#15081150
I was thinking a bit more. It's this kind of sloppy science that basically creates anti-vaxers, and flat earthers, etc. etc. If scientist/researchers/etc. follow the scientific methods properly and with more rigor, I think you wouldn't have all the pseudoscience stuff that they deem a threat to civil society.
By late
#15081156
Varannal wrote:
1) I am writing essay about cult of science.

2) One of the questions that I study is science and their future.

3) In addition to scientific data, it would be useful for me to gather the opinions of car enthusiasts and

4) professionals in this field.




1) When writing, be specific when you can. Exactly what is this about.

2) What I typically suggest is starting with the history of science. Learning how things got rolling helps a lot. Make sure you don't miss Kepler.

3) I come from a generation that was car crazy. I'm not an enthusiast by the standards of my generation.

4) I'm tired and retired. When I was in school, I had an interest in the history and philosophy of science. That's it.
By Sivad
#15097648
Rancid wrote: It's this kind of sloppy science that basically creates anti-vaxers


It's non-existent science that basically creates "anti-vaxxers". The watchdog group ICAN requested all the science on all the vaccines given to babies during their first year of life, the CDC couldn't produce a single study on even one of the vaccines.
User avatar
By Donna
#15097654
Unthinking Majority wrote:It's too bad some scientists are ideological bitches who cherry-pick all sorts of evidence to prove some point they're trying to make.


Such as?
By Sivad
#15097656
Unthinking Majority wrote: It's too bad some scientists are ideological bitches who cherry-pick all sorts of evidence to prove some point they're trying to make.


It's too bad science is just as captured and corrupt as every other institution in this society. And why wouldn't it be? If electoral politics and the legislative bodies, journalism and the media, intelligence agencies, and federal law enforcement, government regulatory agencies, and the judiciary can all be captured and corrupted then why would anyone think science is immune from capture? It's not, it has all the same vulnerabilities as all those other institutions and it's just as compromised as the rest of them.
By Sivad
#15099363
Leaked meeting between editors-in-chief of Lancet & NEJM show pressures from big pharma...described as "criminal."

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYgiCALEdpE

May 24, 2020: Philippe Douste-Blazy, Cardiology MD, Former France Health Minister and 2017 candidate for Director at WHO, former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, reveals that in a recent 2020 Chattam House closed door meeting, both the editors of the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine stated their concerns about the criminal pressures of BigPharma on their publications. Things are so bad that it is not science any longer.
By Sivad
#15111387
The most logical explanation is that it comes from a laboratory
The well-known Norwegian virologist Birger Sørensen and his colleagues have examined the corona virus. They believe it has certain properties which would not evolve naturally. These conclusions are politically controversial, but in this interview he shares the findings behind the headlines.

Birger Sørensen and one of his co-authors, Angus Dalgleish, are already known as HIV researchers par excellence.

In 2008, Sørensen’s work came to international attention when he launched a new immunotherapy for HIV. Angus Dalgleish is the professor at St. George’s Medical School in London who became world famous in 1984 after having discovered a novel receptor that the HIV virus uses to enter human cells.


Asked about why there has not been more debate on this topic Sørensen has several explanations.

This quickly becomes a discussion on politics, rather than science, Sørensen responds.

Nobody wants to put forward the inconvenient truth, many scientists are also concerned about their own funding and position if they were to put forward such a controversial hypothesis. It is nevertheless a fact that many people on the web have engaged in such a debate. But so far, those who participate in such forums are characterized as conspiratorial. It is also the case that a debate about this type of viral research and the technologies used may damage reputation and lead to new restrictions on how to conduct molecular genetic research. With this in mind, it is not difficult to see that it must be difficult to get accepted papers in peer reviewed journals that focus on such research", Sørensen elaborates


https://www.minervanett.no/corona/the-m ... ory/361860




The fight for a controversial article
Birger Sørensen and Angus Dalgleish failed to get an article about the origins of the coronavirus published in a scientific journal. The authors suspect foul play and political considerations. Not everything gets published, is the answer from the journals. Minerva has obtained a draft of the paper, to let readers and researchers decide.

In an interview with Minerva last week, the well-known Norwegian vaccine researcher and physical chemist Birger Sørensen argued that the novel coronavirus is not natural in origin.

Together with his colleagues Angus Dalgleish and Andres Susrud – the latter in a data analytical role as statistician and data miner – Sørensen has written a series of journal articles that put forward arguments for why the most likely explanation for the origin of the coronavirus is a laboratory.

If such findings were confirmed, there could be political ramifications. Naturally, therefore, Sørensen, Dalgleish and their unpublished paper have been mired in controversy ever since Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of the MI6, endorsed their conclusions. The authors themselves suspect that the controversial conclusions and the heated debate may have made journals reluctant to evaluate their paper objectively. However, tons of scientific articles are rejected for any number of reasons.

By tracing the writing of articles, the contact between the authors and the journals, and reviewing the findings, this article aims to shed light on a troubling question for the scientific community during the Corona crisis: One the one hand, there is an overabundance of papers and findings of highly variable quality – some of which fuel conspiracy theories. On the other hand, the question of the origin of the Corona virus has become a fraught political question, with the Chinese government clamping down on independent research, and president Donald Trump claiming that the virus originated in a Chinese lab without producing any evidence to back up the assertion.

With the consent of Mr. Sørensen and his co-authors (henceforth: Sørensen and Dalgleish), Minerva has obtained a full print of the article, to be read freely by our readers – and by scientists, who may then discuss and dissect the paper.

Searching for a vaccine

It started out with something less controversial: Originally, the authors were engaged in analysis of the virus with the aim to create a vaccine. The discoveries that the authors claim to be relevant for determining the origin of the virus came as a by-product of this research.

In fact, Sørensen and Dalgleish have managed to get a paper on the corona virus peer reviewed and published, in Quarterly Reviews of Biophysics Discovery. This article, which is more closely linked to their vaccine development, deals with observations of the virus and the receptors that the virus can attach to in humans. Sørensen and Dalgleish do indeed believe that these properties indicate a lab origin for the virus. However, the article itself avoids any mention of this implication of the discovered properties.

Originally, the findings which are now published in Quarterly Reviews of Biophysics Discovery were part of a more condensed article, which included the lab origin hypothesis. To make this argument, the three have now instead written a second article, “The Evidence which Suggests that This Is No Naturally Evolved Virus”, that puts forward their arguments on why they believe the virus is likely to be a laboratory construct, by combining insights from the first paper with what is known from lab work on corona viruses.

However, this second article is yet to be accepted by a scientific journal – having been rejected at different times and formats by three leading journals. Sørensen states that he is presently in dialogue with other journals regarding publication. A third paper on a related topic also taken from the original argument, is yet to be submitted.

Endorsed and criticized

Before we move on, let’s take a look on some of the reactions from within the scientific community. Sørensen has received both severe criticism and partial support.

Professor Kristian Andersen at the department of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research, a medical research facility in California, was lead author on the article “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2” where he states that his “analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus”.

Andersen last week told Sky news that Sørensen’s and Dalgleish’s work was “complete nonsense, unintelligible, and not even remotely scientific – leading the authors to make unfounded and unsupported conclusions about the origin of SARS-CoV-2”. However, Andersen has not had an opportunity to read the second, unpublished article.

Minerva has, however, shared that second article with Birgitta Åsjö, a professor emerita in virology at the university of Bergen. She is puzzled by Andersen’s comments, and rejects the notion that Sørensen’s and Dalgleish’ work is unscientific nonsense. “Andersen is harsh, I don’t know why he’s so harsh. I don’t want to dismiss it completely”, she told Minerva in an interview.

Åsjö does not consider the article to contain conclusive evidence that the novel coronavirus has a lab origin, but adds that she considers the article to contain “interesting findings”. She is herself critical of some of the arguments presented in Andersen’s own article on the origin of the virus.

In particular, Åsjö is interested in Sørensen’s and Dalgleish’ findings concerning properties of a swine corona virus detected in connection with an outbreak among piglets in Guandong in 2016–2017, and its possible significance for the present SARS-CoV-2 virus. So far, the controversy seems to resemble other controversies between academics who rarely hesitate to describe rivalling theories in the harshest possible terms. Indeed, Sørensen and Dalgleish originally intended to publish their arguments as a stark critique of the article by Andersen et al in Nature and what they describe “as puzzling errors in their use of evidence”.

Self-confident scientists and strict journals

With this aim, Angus Dalgleish wrote a letter to the editor in Nature on April 2, requesting that journal to publish an earlier version of these arguments.

This article was rejected by Nature five days later, on April 7. Announcing the rejection, João Monteiro, chief editor in Nature Medicine, wrote to Dalgleish:

First rejection from Nature Medicine

“While we appreciate that the points you have raised extend the discussion about the origin of SARS-CoV2 further our opinion is that the content complements other viewpoints that have been considered and published elsewhere, and therefore would be as appropriate for publication in the specialized literature. Please note that this is not a criticism regarding the importance of the matter or the quality of your analyses, but rather an editorial assessment of priority for publication, in a time when there are many pressing issues of public health and clinical interest that take precedence for publication in Nature Medicine, and limited space in the journal.”

Monteiro ended the email by encouraging Dalgleish to post his comments in one of “the accepted preprint repositories so that it remains visible and adds to the discussion about the origin of the virus.”

A clearly angered Dalgleish then wrote a response stating: “Thank you for your extraordinarily unhelpful replies. We can only conclude that the Nature editorial team does not understand that there is no scientific issue in the world at present more important than establishing with scientific precision the aetiology of the Covid-19 virus.”

After the first rejection by Nature, the authors approached another premier journal, Journal of Virology. However, by April 20, the first version of the paper had been rejected there as well. A few days later, this version of the paper was put to death by a rejection from bioRxiv, a non-peer-reviewed preprint repository. The stated reason for rejection was that the format of the paper did not conform to a normal, full research paper, with sections such as «Methods» and «Results».

The first iteration of rejections thus seem to fit into a typical pattern: Scientists with overconfidence not only in the quality of their own research, but also its relevance and significance, encountering journals with strict guidelines for format, each with its own mission and focus, and not very patient with professors that flaunt formal requirements.

Still, it seems that the actual arguments put forward might not have been properly evaluated, or could not be properly evaluated in this setting. And the findings, if correct, would seem to merit some sort of scientific attention. How to proceed?

A publication and new rejections

After the initial round of rejections, the authors made several revisions to their original article, with the arguments sectioned into separate articles. The first article – an analysis of the novel coronavirus, for the purpose of vaccine design, without making the argument that the virus is engineered – was published June 2 in the Quarterly Reviews of Biophysics Discovery which is one of the top peer-reviewed science journals in the world.

Having achieved this publication, and presumably regained confidence that the scientific quality of the work was all right, Sørensen and Dalgleish again reached out to several of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals. Now they wanted to publish the second article, which builds on the first, already accepted article, and presents their arguments for why the coronavirus is of a non-natural origin.

However this article was again rejected by Nature on June 24 – without being sent out to peer review. The rejection, written by Senior Editor Clare Thomas, states: .

Second rejection from Nature Medicine
It is our policy to decline a substantial proportion of manuscripts without sending them to referees so that they may be sent elsewhere without further delay. In making this decision, we are not questioning the technical quality or validity of your findings, or their value to others working in this area, only assessing the suitability of the study based on the editorial criteria of the journal. In this case, we do not believe that the work represents a development of sufficient scientific impact such that it might merit publication in Nature. We therefore feel that the study would find a more suitable audience in another journal.

On July 1, Sørensen and his colleagues therefore challenged Science, another scientific journal to publish his article. Arguing for the publication of the article Sørensen wrote in an e-mail to editor Professor Holden Thorp:

“Now that Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has indicated that WHO will pursue a long-overdue inquiry into the aetiology of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which we welcome, we hope that you will support the very necessary debate that is now breaking in a second wave, following the publication of our vaccine. We are aware of significant responsible mainstream media interventions that are imminent. We are glad that this important question will now be addressed where it should be, in mainstream media and science journals, and not left to internet speculations, some of which have been both uninformed and therefore unhelpful, in our view.”

However, Sørensen was rebuffed also by Science the very next day. In an email to Sørensen, Professor Throp wrote that the article was unfit for publishing in Science, due to the fact that it criticizes work published in another journal:

Rejection from Science
Dr. Sorenson,

Thank you for your interest. We do not publish papers that are critiques of works in other journals, so we cannot consider something along these lines.

Holden

Holden Thorp

Editor-in-Chief

On the rejections from the scientific journals co-author Angus Dalgleish told Sky News: “I thought the whole point of a scientific journal was that you put forward some speculation and you opened it up to debate”, said Professor Dalgleish.

Agree or disagree with Dalgleish’s description of what a scientific journal does, the new round of rejections complicate the picture from the first round. A major part of the argument was accepted by a respectable journal – the one that didn’t spell out the implications for the origin of the virus. The article that did spell it out, was now rejected twice, without peer review, and the second rejection on purely formal grounds that the authors vehemently contest, arguing that the paper in its current form is not first and foremost a critique of the Andersen et al. paper.

Minerva has asked both Nature and Science to elaborate on the reasons for why the articles by Sørensen and his co-authors have been rejected. Both Science and Nature have declined to comment on the specific rejection of the article as they view this information as confidential. However, Executive Director of the Science Press Package Meagan Phelan, replied that “Science receives upwards of 11,000 manuscripts per year, and the acceptance rate is 6%, so the vast majority of papers are rejected for one reason or another. Science’s acceptance rate for COVID-19-related submissions is even lower, at 4%. The journal continues to receive an exceptionally high volume of COVID-19-related submissions each week.”

At press time, the second article is still in search of a scientific journal willing to publish – or, at least, to subject it to peer review.


https://www.minervanett.no/angus-dalgle ... cle/362519
By Sivad
#15113755
Manipulating citations
Researchers often complain that reviewers ask them to add unnecessary references to papers, a practice termed coercive citation. Surveys suggest that around one-fifth or more of scientists have experienced this. The publisher Elsevier said last year that after examining peer-review records at its journals, it is investigating some scientists whom it suspects of deliberately manipulating the peer-review process to boost their citations. Authors also sometimes arrange to cite each other.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02378-2
By Sivad
#15114851
Stuart Ritchie interview: A deep rot is turning science into fiction
The systems of science are perpetuating bias, hype, negligence and fraud – and this means far too many findings are worthless, says psychologist Stuart Ritchie

Graham Lawton: The grand and scary claim of your book is that something is rotten in the kingdom of science.

Stuart Ritchie: Absolutely. We think of science as being this objective thing that tells us facts about the world and produces all these scientific papers, which are almost sacred things. But a lot of people don’t see how the sausage is made. I think if they had more of an idea of how the process happens, they would question the truth status of those papers much more. In a lot of cases, the science is useless, not worth the paper it is written on.

Stuart Ritchie is a psychologist and science communicator known for his research in human intelligence. He has served as a lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London since the summer of 2018. He was previously active in researching intelligence as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg ... z6VpU5xWsi




Should We Trust Scientists?


Medicine, education, psychology, health, parenting – wherever it really matters, we look to science for guidance. 'Science Fictions' the new book by Psychologist and Professor Stuart Ritchie reveals the disturbing flaws that undermine our understanding of all of these fields and more.


The Many Faces of Bad Science
In his new book, psychologist Stuart Ritchie paints a portrait of the modern system of research, and all the ways it gets undermined.
https://www.wired.com/story/the-many-fa ... d-science/
User avatar
By Godstud
#15114861
Yet another "Appeal to Authority" Logical Fallacy. You're on a roll, @Sivad :lol:

Can you find any more Youtube "scientists" to support your conspiracy theories? Is it Cultural Marxism?
By Rich
#15114868
Godstud wrote:Yet another "Appeal to Authority" Logical Fallacy. You're on a roll, @Sivad :lol:

Can you find any more Youtube "scientists" to support your conspiracy theories? Is it Cultural Marxism?

Did you even watch the above video? Now there's nothing wrong with conspiracy theories. Intelligent people just know that there was a conspiracy involved in 9/11, the planes didn't just fall out of the sky by coincidence. But this is not a conspiracy theory. The funny thing is the so called scientific community is finally coming round to ideas I realised back in the mid to late nineties. I have A levels in Double Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Biology, along with qualifications in software engineering, computer science and management accountancy. I mention this just to show it was no lack in my ability. I started doing an A level in psychology but gave it up because it was such joke. Clearly the problems that plague psychology, also apply to medical research, but are compounded by the vast amounts of money in the medical-care industrial complex.
User avatar
By Godstud
#15114875
Wow. It's like saying Candyman into a mirror 5 times. I said, 'Cultural Marxism', and Rich appeared! :lol:

It's an appeal to authority fallacy, @Rich. See my earlier post in this thread.

I am not going to watch Youtube videos on ANYTHING, as it's a big waste of time, and it doesn't necessarily support their argument(as I've discovered by watching videos promoted by Sivad and others).
#15114992
Rancid wrote:
I was thinking a bit more. It's this kind of sloppy science that basically creates anti-vaxers, and flat earthers, etc. etc. If scientist/researchers/etc. follow the scientific methods properly and with more rigor, I think you wouldn't have all the pseudoscience stuff that they deem a threat to civil society.



There's actually a (Marxist) political-economy-paradigm explanation for this dynamic -- initially aimed at all *religion*, but I'd say it applies here as well....

Bullshit subcultures, like anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers -- and Trump and all religions, I would add -- are able to be *economically* successful, if not *empirically* veracious, because they're effectively carving out *cottage* industries and getting adherents and sales, regardless.

Since capitalism is so anarchic and academia is hardly monolithic, the 'market' prevails over all else, and gives people what they want (if they can afford it), even if it's *wrong* or less-than-optimal, as with VHS tapes and the Qwerty keyboard, etc.


Godstud wrote:
Wow. It's like saying Candyman into a mirror 5 times. I said, 'Cultural Marxism', and Rich appeared! :lol:

It's an appeal to authority fallacy, @Rich. See my earlier post in this thread.

I am not going to watch Youtube videos on ANYTHING, as it's a big waste of time, and it doesn't necessarily support their argument(as I've discovered by watching videos promoted by Sivad and others).



I once said 'Candyman' into a mirror *3* times, but nothing happened. Now I know.


= /


= )
By Sivad
#15118167
“If peer review was a drug, it would never get on the market because we have lots of evidence of its adverse effects and don’t have evidence of its benefit…It’s time to slaughter the sacred cow.”



Scientific peer review 'sacred cow' ready to be slaughtered, says former editor of BMJ

The peer review process – long considered the gold standard of quality scientific research – is a “sacred cow” that should be slaughtered, the former editor of one of the country’s leading medical journals has said.

Richard Smith, who edited the British Medical Journal for more than a decade, said there was no evidence that peer review was a good method of detecting errors and claimed that “most of what is published in journals is just plain wrong or nonsense”.

Research papers considered for scientific and medical journals undergo a process of scrutiny by experts before they can be published. Hundreds of thousands of new studies are published around the world every year, and the peer review process exists to ensure that readers can have confidence that published findings are scientifically sound.

But Dr Smith said pre-publication peer review was slow, expensive and, perhaps ironically, lacking in evidence that it actually works in its chief goal of spotting errors.

Speaking at a Royal Society event earlier this week, he said an experiment conducted during his time at the BMJ, in which eight deliberate errors were included in a short paper sent to 300 reviewers, had exposed how easily the peer review process could fail.

“No-one found more than five, the median was two, and 20 per cent didn’t spot any,” he was quoted as saying by Times Higher Education. “If peer review was a drug it would never get on the market because we have lots of evidence of its adverse effects and don’t have evidence of its benefit.”

He said the process of peer review before publication could also work against innovative papers, was open to abuse, and should be done away with in favour of “the real peer review” of the wider scientific community post-publication.

“It’s time to slaughter the sacred cow,” he said, while acknowledging that do so would likely be “too bold a step” for a journal editor to take.

Dr Smith, who edited the BMJ between 1991 and 2004, is a longstanding critic of the pre-publication peer review process. In the past he has bemoaned the delays that the process can bring, in some cases of more than two years, between a paper being completed and its final publication.

His comments come at a time of serious soul-searching within the scientific community, over the quality of much published research.


The editor of the second of the country’s two leading medical journals, Dr Richard Horton of The Lancet, wrote in an editorial earlier this month that “much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue”, blaming, among other things, studies with small sample sizes, researchers’ conflicts of interest and “an obsession” among scientists for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance”.

“The apparent endemicity of bad research behaviour is alarming,” he wrote. “In their quest for telling a compelling story, scientists too often sculpt their data to fit their preferred theory of the world.”


https://www.independent.co.uk/news/scie ... 96077.html
By Sivad
#15142397


Kary Mullis (December 28, 1944 – August 7, 2019) was an American biochemist. In recognition of his invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique, he shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Michael Smith and was awarded the Japan Prize in the same year. His invention became a central technique in biochemistry and molecular biology, described by The New York Times as "highly original and significant, virtually dividing biology into the two epochs of before PCR and after PCR."
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