Antiscience

Check your theory here first. http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html

I don't know why this is, but whenever I hear a pseudoscientist invoke the name of Stephen Hawking for any reason, they almost always get his name wrong. It's either Hawkin, Hawkins, or Hawkings; almost never do they get it correct as Hawking. Why? It's a mystery. Perhaps saying it right would burn their tongue. Whenever I do get this email from a crank, wanting me to read his lengthy PDF tome on a new model of physics for the universe, or whatever it is, I reflect on what it was that made him think I was likely to be receptive to it. The answer is obvious: it's the association of the idea of skepticism with the title of the show Skeptoid. He figured that I, as the skeptic, am the adversary of the mainstream and the champion of the maverick, looking to tear down the dark-aged establishment using the radiance of new ideas as my weapon. This is kind of a half-right definition of skepticism. Yes, we do want to shine the light of science on the ideas around us to see what...

Stem cell research is a hot field of science and, according to statistics, also a rather scandal-prone one. Articles in this area are retracted 2.4 times more often than the average for biomedicine, and over half of these retractions are due to fraud. Does the “heat” of stem cell research – the high levels of funding, prestige and media coverage it enjoys – somehow encourage fraud? That’s what our experience of medical research leads us to suspect. While there isn’t enough data to actually prove this, we do have some key indicators. We have, for example, a growing list of scientific celebrities who have committed major stem cell fraud. There is South Korea’s Hwang Woo-suk who, in 2004, falsely claimed to have created the first human embryonic stem cells by means of cloning. A few years ago, Japan’s Haruko Obokata pulled a similar con when she announced to the world a new and simple – and fake – method of turning ordinary body cells into stem cells. Hwang, Obokata and Macchiarini were a...

So, how do you successfully sell that steaming pile of goop? In its latest post, the Goop team wanders through all the steps. I've brought them out and reordered them here for a more coherent interpretation. Step 1. Assure the customer that you are there for them and can care for them—especially when no one else is or can, including the heartless, mainstream medical community. As Goop puts it: Our primary place is in addressing people, women in particular, who are tired of feeling less-than-great, who are looking for solutions—these women are not hypochondriacs, and they should not be dismissed or marginalized. 2. Explain that you just have more answers than those stuffy evidence-based doctors because you look at things from a fresh, holistic perspective. We are drawn to physicians who are interested in both Western and Eastern modalities and incorporate the best from both, as they generally believe that, while traditional medicine can be really good at saving lives, functional med...

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...