Antiscience

China is getting serious about its massive problem with scientific fraud. This brief story in STAT outlines efforts by the Chinese state to impose rigor and punish scientific misconduct, in a typically draconian fashion. This month, in the wake of a fake peer review scandal that claimed 107 papers by Chinese scholars, the country’s Ministry of Science and Technology proclaimed a “no tolerance” policy for research misconduct — although it’s not clear what that might look like. According to the Financial Times, the ministry said the mass retractions “seriously harmed the international reputation of our country’s scientific research and the dignity of Chinese scientists at large. ” But a prior court decision in the country threatened the equivalent of the nuclear option. In April courts approved a new policy calling for stiff prison sentences for researchers who fabricate data in studies that lead to drug approvals. If the misconduct ends up harming people, then the punishment on the tab...

Thanks to antivaxxer idiocy, kids in Minnesota are getting sick. “The outbreak started among Somali Minnesotans who have a low vaccination rate for M.M.R.,” he said, referring to the shot for measles, mumps, rubella. He said the community was “targeted” by members of the anti-vaccination movement, adding that vaccination rates in the community had been as high or even higher than those in the white population, but that began to change in 2008. Members of the community came to believe incorrectly that they had an unusually high rate of autism and that the cases were related to vaccines. But later studies showed that their autism rates were not out of line with those of the state’s white population, he said. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/05/us/measles-minnesota-vaccines.html?module=WatchingPortal&region=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=none&state=standard&contentPlacement=2&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.co...

The heart of the book is the story of the Great Terror that struck the scientific establishment in the 1930s. Ings shows that scientists now depended for resources and promotion (but also for physical survival) on the power of patrons such as top leaders like Andrei Zhdanov, or the greatest patron of all, Stalin. He describes the rise of the maliciously cunning but childlike Trofim Lysenko, who notoriously became Stalin’s favorite scientist (though they met only once or twice). As starvation spread in the wake of Stalin’s collectivization, particularly in 1932-33, Lysenko, a semi-educated charlatan, attacked well-known geneticists who were trying to develop new hybrid crops that could solve the problem of low productivity, much of it caused by Stalin’s brutal policies. Fueled by what Ings calls “a huckster’s monomania,” Lysenko claimed he could raise crop yields by his own process, called vernalization, in which artificially induced coldness could fool winter wheat to develop earlier i...

Meet William Happer, high on the list to be Delirium Tremens' chief science advisor. The notoriously reality-biased scientific journal liberal rag Nature reports: Happer, an emeritus professor at Princeton, is no stranger to government: he directed energy research at the US Department of Energy from 1991 to 1993 and is a long-time member of JASON, a US defence advisory group. He is also a well-known critic of mainstream climate science and as such, a frequent target of environmental activists. In 2015, the environmental group Greenpeace UK announced that it had caught Happer in a sting operation. Greenpeace officials, posing as representatives of an unnamed Middle Eastern oil company, offered Happer money to write a report on the benefits of increasing atmospheric levels of CO2 — while keeping the funding source a secret. Happer agreed, and maintains that he did nothing wrong. He says that he told the ‘oil company’ officials that any payments should be sent to the CO2 Coalition, ...

A splendidly horrible press release touts a nematode worm model for teenaged fickleness. Worms and people respond to the smell of the chemical diacetyl, known to humans as “buttered popcorn smell,” which is present in a number of foods, including ones in the C. elegans diet. In fact, the worms have a pair of neurons called AWA dedicated to sensing it. To observe behavioral variation between adult and adolescent worms, the Salk team placed the animals in the center of a dish with a drop of diacetyl on one side, and a neutral odor on the other. Then, in a series of trials over several days, they characterized the paths the worms took. What the scientists saw surprised them: Adolescent worms meandered and took their time getting to the diacetyl, if they got there at all; adult worms made a beeline for it. I hate C. elegans , having spent far too many years trying to teach this microscopic nematode how to do tricks. Press releases like this stretch the bounds of credibility for an organism...

Science denial goes big --- creationist theme park Ark Encounter not only rejects evolution but also electromagnetism (note the non-ROYGBIV rainbow). Originally shared by Peter da Silva Nice rainbow, with red in the middle and green at the end. http://sdgln.com/entertainment/2016/12/22/christian-theme-park-wants-take-back-rainbow

The study was funded by the Templeton Foundation, which has traditionally opposed Dawkins' work. Originally shared by Jeff Green And another well designed study finds just was it was funded to find. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/richard-dawkins-atheism-criticism-atheist-study-rice-university-science-scientists-a7389396.html