Archive for the ‘Scientific Fraud’ Category

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The 10:10 video and ecofascism

October 2, 2010

I find the entire 10.10 campaign infantile but still feel I have to address their (at best) stupid video.

That this puerile video was castigated soundly (as for example at WUWT) is only right and proper. That infantile humour – when indulged in by infants – has a place in comedy is not in doubt. But what is much more disturbing in my opinion is that in this case – and in these times – it is being used to cloak the message that terror and mayhem and execution are acceptable to eliminate dissent.

The apology by the 10.10 campaign is not much of an apology and is more in the way of an attack on those who did not find it funny ” Many people found the resulting film extremely funny, but unfortunately some didn’t …”. They continue that “We won’t be making any attempt to censor or remove other versions currently in circulation on the internet”.

No? Presumably because they feel their message is fundamentally sound — it is just that the “some” who didn’t find it funny are reacting disproportionately !

The campaign denied that the withdrawal was planned from the beginning as a publicity stunt. I also found Monty Python and Blackadder extremely funny but this is something entirely different. This video is insidious in that it supports the creation of an atmosphere in which the ecofascism creed can flourish under the cloak of “humour”:

An ecocatastrophe is taking place on earth and therefore discipline, prohibition, enforcement and oppression must be used on dissenters. They must be sent to the mountains for “re-education” in eco-gulags or eliminated. The sole glimmer of hope lies in a centralised government and the tireless control of citizens.

The video is puerile — but so is the entire juvenile, misguided and meaningless 10:10 campaign which seems to be little more than an easy, painless way for “privileged brats” to salve their consciences.

Low carbon meals

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Nobel prize winner retracts more papers

September 24, 2010

Following quickly on the heels of Hausergate and the Mount Sinai misconduct, we now have a Nobel laureate  – Linda Buck – retracting two papers because results from her lab at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC) were not reproducible (which is a euphemism for faked data). This was not the first time. She also retracted a Nature paper in 2008 for much the same reason. One particular (former) postdoctoral researcher Zhihua Zou is identified as the culprit.

Dr. Buck is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and also a Member of the Basic Sciences Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and an Affiliate Professor of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Washington. She was at Harvard Medical School from 1994 – 2002.

Linda B. Buck

Linda B. Buck

The Scientist reports that:

Two prominent journals have retracted papers by Nobel laureate Linda Buck today because she was “unable to reproduce [the] key findings” of experiments done by her former postdoctoral researcher Zhihua Zou, according to a statement made by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC), where Buck worked at the time of the publications.

These retractions, a 2006 Science paper and a 2005 Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences (PNAS)paper, are tied to a 2001 Nature paperthat she retracted in 2008, due to the inability “to reproduce the reported findings” and “inconsistencies between some of the figures and data published in the paper and the original data,” according to the retraction. Zou was the first author on all three papers and responsible for conducting the experiments.

The FHCRC is currently conducting an investigation into the issue, said Kristen Woodward, senior media relations manager, but no findings of misconduct have been made. John Dahlberg of the Office of Research Integrity declined to comment on the matter.

Yesterday The Scientist reported another case of faked data from the University of Washington. Postdoc fudged epigenetic data.

A former postdoctoral fellow at Washington State University has reportedly falsified data presented in two figures of an epigenetics paper, according to the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) report released late last month. The data fabrication resulted in the retraction of a 2006Endocrinology paper, but a repeat of the original study, which uses newer and more quantitative technology and confirms the paper’s conclusions, will be published next week inPLoS ONE.

“This was an extremely difficult issue for myself and the laboratory to deal with,” said Michael Skinner, a professor of reproduction and environmental epigenetics at WSU who headed the research.

According to the ORI’s report, Hung-Shu Chang, a visiting postdoc from Taiwan who worked in Skinner’s lab from 2005 to 2006, falsified sequencing data used to identify DNA regions in rat sperm cells that had different methylation patterns following treatment with an endocrine disruptor known as vinclozolin.

( Is it just coincidence that the post-docs apparently faking data both at Mount Sinai and in these cases all seem to be of foreign origin? Is it a case of “cheap labour” being pressurised by the need for publications?)

Read more:More retractions from Nobelist – The Scientist – Magazine of the Life Scienceshttp://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/57699/#comments#ixzz10Q4NXwiY

Postdoc fudged epigenetic data – The Scientist – Magazine of the LifeScienceshttp://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/57696/#ixzz10QD852cp


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Posted in Behaviour, Medicine, Science, Scientific Fraud | 2 Comments »

Harvard President says Hauser could lose tenure

September 22, 2010
Statue of John Harvard, founder of Harvard Uni...

John Harvard: Wikipedia

The Boston Globe reports on an interview of Harvard’s President Drew Gilpin Faust by former ABC correspondent Charlie Gibson.

The discussion, billed as a start-of-the-school year address, was held at Sanders Theatre and broadcast over the Internet. In response to Gibson’s question about why Marc Hauser remained on the faculty even after the university found him guilty of eight instances of scientific misconduct, Faust said Harvard is addressing the issue. “Integrity is absolutely fundamental in everything we do,’’ Faust said. “We have a process we have undertaken, and that process still has some part to continue because it involves federal funds.’’ Cases of scientific misconduct could result in a loss of tenure, Faust said.

Gibson said the silence from the university has been “somewhat deafening,’’ and raised the possibility that the lack of response could call into question Harvard’s research integrity and have financial implications. But Faust replied that Harvard has moved to depart somewhat from its normally confidential proceedings, in order to correct the scientific record, though it remains mindful of ongoing federal investigations. “Announcing that there were indeed findings, that was unprecedented,’’ she said.

Whether the Harvard President is actually trying to maintain and protect integrity or merely engaging in damage control is unclear. The second part of the Boston Globe article is about the honouring of Martin Peretz and how Harvard is swallowing its principles and seems to show that there is a price at which Harvard is prepared to compromise integrity.

But meanwhile the wagons continue to circle.

Bert Vaux who is a former Professor of Linguistics at Harvard University and Jeffrey Watumull who is a PhD student in Linguistics and a member of Hauser’s lab have rushed to his defence in The Harvard Crimson.

“In our experience, Marc Hauser is the consummate scientist—the most disinterested, the most rational, the most ethical. We are proud to be his colleagues. However, we are less than proud of those in the cognitive sciences reacting publicly to Hauser’s case with irresponsible impatience (disrespect for due process), unjustified slurs, and half-baked conjectures. All are interested in the truth, but as scientists we ought to consider the case reasonably and measuredly, with objectivity and fairness”.

But they forget that his nonsense started at least as long ago as 1995. One wonders whether Hauser’s defenders are part of a concerted damage control exercise. Methinks they do protest too much.

The onus of proof has shifted.

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After Harvard’s Hausergate, now misconduct at Mount Sinai

September 21, 2010
Mount Sinai School of Medicine logo.png

Image via Wikipedia

Earlier this week, the blog Retraction Watch called attention to four recent paper retractions by noted gene therapy researcher Savio Woo of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. Today, the school said in a statement that two of Woo’s postdoctoral fellows have been fired for research misconduct and that an internal investigation has cleared Woo of any wrongdoing.

Two of Woo’s post-doctoral fellows at Mount Sinai School of Medicine were dismissed for “research misconduct,” said Ian Michaels, a spokesman for the institution. According to Michaels:

When Dr. Savio L C Woo came to suspect that two post-doctoral fellows in his laboratory may have engaged in research misconduct he notified the Mount Sinai Research Integrity Office. Mount Sinai immediately initiated institutional reviews that resulted in both post-doctoral fellows being dismissed for research misconduct. At no time were there allegations that Dr. Woo had engaged in research misconduct. As part of its review, the investigation committee looked into this possibility and confirmed that no research misconduct could be attributed to Dr. Woo, who voluntarily retracted the papers regarding the research in question. Mount Sinai reported the results of its investigations to the appropriate government agencies and continues to cooperate with them as part of its commitment to adhere to the highest standards for research integrity.

File:HippocraticOath.jpg

Wikipedia: A twelfth-century Byzantine manuscript of the Hippocratic Oath.

According to ScienceInsider, the names of postdocs Li Chen and Zhiyu Li were recently removed from Mount Sinai’s directory. Chen and Li were listed as first authors on the retracted papers. Three  major journals — Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Human Gene Therapy, and the Journal of the National Cancer Institute — recently retracted papers authored by Woo and others.

In a retraction notice issued this month, Woo wrote that:

It was discovered that some of the micrographs in two papers we published [figure 4 in J Natl Cancer Inst 2008;100:1389-1400 (1), and figure 3 in Hum Gene Ther 2009;20:751-758 (2)] are apparently duplicated. This has been reported to the institutional research integrity committee by the authors and while the outcome of an investigation is pending, the undersigned co-authors respectfully request a retraction of both papers and sincerely apologize to our colleagues.

The four papers in question focus on two different areas of gene therapy research. One pair, published in 2008 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute and in 2009 in Human Gene Therapy, investigate genetically engineered bacteria as a weapon against cancer. The other two papers describe a method for using bacterial enzymes to introduce therapeutic genes. A 2005 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports experiments in which mice with the metabolic disorder phenylketonuria appeared to be cured using this method. As a demonstration of the promise of gene therapy, that work garnered some media coverage, includingthis article in Science. A 2008 paper in Human Gene Therapy described the use of the technique in human cells.

Source: http://blog.the-scientist.com/2010/09/20/new-in-a-nutshell/

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Posted in Behaviour, Ethics, Medicine, Science, Scientific Fraud | 2 Comments »

Harvard reviews Hauser’s work – but is the purpose investigation or vindication?

September 17, 2010
Harvard is reviewing all “relevant” work by Marc Hauser . But there is a large element of “damage control” and “vindication” of Hauser’s co-workers which is mixed in with the investigation. It is to be hoped that they will be able to resist the temptation to stand on the position that if further misconduct by others cannot be rigorously proven then these others can be acquitted. Now that Hauser’s misconduct has been established the onus of proof shifts – and must do so. The default position must be that all his work is now tainted unless shown beyond reasonable doubt to be otherwise.

The focus must be on investigation and not on a pre-planned vindication or on “rescuing” the money spent if the work is suspect.

http://www.thecrimson.com/

With a federal investigation now underway, much of Hauser’s research has been called into question—and with it, the annals of literature that have grown out of it. In response, the Psychology Department at Harvard has set in motion a project to review Hauser’s work and to determine the areas of his groundbreaking research that can be salvaged.

Cotton-top tamarind

In the last 10 years alone, Hauser has published 143 articles and four books, work that has helped form the foundation for an entirely new field of science. “It creates a lot of uncertainty for people in those fields,” said a Harvard psychology professor who asked to remain anonymous, stating that the situation is still evolving. “They may begin to worry about whether they can trust other findings from that lab.”

The department established a committee to begin a process that could include combing through decades of research. “We are starting a process in collaboration with the animal cognition community about how to deal with this,” Carey said. “Clearing the record is the way you deal with the integrity of the science.” Carey said that the department has also assumed the responsibility of vindicating any department members—students and colleagues alike—who may have worked with Hauser in the past.

According to his curriculum vitae, Hauser has advised 24 Ph.D. students and overseen 15 post doctoral students. The CV lists 221 published papers authored or co-authored by him. And in an academic web of peer research, hundreds of published articles cite and work off of Hauser’s research. And in an academic web of peer research, hundreds of published articles cite and work off of Hauser’s research.

Hauser has made a name for himself by executing novel research techniques in the field of animal cognition. His work with primates and cotton-top tamarinds—the subject of Hauser’s only article to have been retracted—has involved a unique set of research skills and costly access to the animals.

“You don’t want to throw out about two decades of groundbreaking work, but you also don’t want to build a science on shaky ground,” said the psychology professor. “How do we rescue millions of dollars of research?” the individual added.

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Oxburgh “Inquiry”: Defendants decide on admissibility of evidence

September 16, 2010

Steve McIntyre is upto his admirable sleuthing again.

The question as to who chose the super-11 “peer-reviewed” papers  has been solved.

Dear Mr McIntyre
In response to your recent enquiry I can provide the following information.

I understand that the list of 11 papers for the Oxburgh review was collated by Prof Trevor Davies, in consultation with others. He was also the author of the statement at the bottom of the list.

Yours sincerely,
Lisa Williams

So the list was not selected by the Royal Society after all, but by Trevor Davies, the pro-VC of the University and former director of CRU. In consultation with “others”. Dare one hypothesize that these mysterious “others” will turn out to be Jones and Briffa after all?

An impartial objective inquiry? Where the defendant decided which evidence would be admissible.

image: sodahead.com

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IPCC: Self adulation or just simple plagiarism

September 7, 2010

It would appear that large sections of the IPCC 1995 Working Group 2 report has just lifted sections from a book published by its lead author.

It could be just simple plagiarism or is perhaps the self-adulation to be expected from lead authors – or the IPCC report being used for marketing the book??

http://www.rescuepost.com/.a/6a00d8357f3f2969e2013485bc0fc9970c-250wi

The Book the IPCC Plagiarized

by Donna Laframboise.

(more…)

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Michael Mann and Marc Hauser

September 4, 2010

I am not sure if the cases of Marc Hauser(Harvard)  of Hausergate and Michael E Mann (Penn State and the University of Virginia) of Climategate are strictly comparable since the two gates follow different routes in the faking of science.

Climategate was more of a group activity by a small clique with a great deal of group-think, whereas Hausergate was much more solitary.  The peer-review process was perverted to an end by the Climategate gang but this is not apparent with Hauser. Mann’s “hockeystick” was more a “fudging” of some data, “cherry-picking” and massaging statistical method to support a pre-determined result while Hauser seems to have just plain faked the data he wanted to support his personal theories. The pursuit of tenure and publications and fame (and some associated fortune) are probably common to both cases.

Climategate however affected policy and had a clear political agenda. Many involved around Climategate and the IPCC have murky ties to the multi-billion carbon scam. In Hausergate the political agenda, if any, is rather soft.

But what is noteworthy is the increase in the number of such comparisons being made and that such comparisons seem appropriate:

  1. If Michael Mann Had Worked At Harvard Instead Of Uva, Would He Now Be Working At Burger King Or Mcdonald’s?
  2. David Sheffield ’11: Scientific misconduct
  3. Monkey business?
  4. “HAUSERGATE” IS GOOD FOR SCIENCE
  5. Two Different Approaches to Academic Monkey Business

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Amazing: Hauser “solely responsible” but still maintains control of his lab!!

September 3, 2010

Amazing!

The Harvard Crimson reports that:

Harvard Psychology Professor Marc D. Hauser will remain in charge of his laboratory in William James Hall under “supervision established by the Dean of the [Faculty of Arts and Sciences],” a University official said yesterday.

FAS spokesman Jeff Neal declined to elaborate on the nature of the supervision, stating only that FAS Dean Michael D. Smith had imposed the additional oversight.

Neal added that graduate and post-doctoral students were given the option of switching advisers or continuing their research under Hauser “in order to avoid potential disruption to their careers.

Meanwhile, University of Washington Psychology Professor Michael D. Beecher said “people should be patient and let this thing play out and not rush to judgment on Marc.”

“I’m not sure to what extent the problem is Marc was fast and sloppy—and I don’t think he will be anymore,” he said.”

“Fast and sloppy” is the current euphemism it seems at the University of Washington for faking results. Fatuous words about “not rushing to judgement”. 15 years ought to be enough. Hauser has been playing this game at least since 1995.

The wagons indeed are circling but while Hauser’s ethics are in tatters those of Harvard with their reluctance to take a stand do not impress much either.

http://www.nonprofituniversityblog.org/wp-content/uploads/double-standards.png


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Hauser will not teach Harvard Extension School class

August 31, 2010

From the Boston Globe, by Carolyn Y. Johnson August 31, 2010:

Harvard psychology professor Marc Hauser will not be teaching a Harvard Extension School class on Cognitive Evolution that was scheduled to start today, or a spring class called “The Moral Sense: From Genes to Law.”

Hauser, who was found by an internal Harvard investigation to have engaged in scientific misconduct, is on a one-year leave from research and teaching duties in the university’s main Arts and Sciences school, but the Globe reported earlier this month that he still planned to teach in the extension school.

But the extension school sent an e-mail to students who were enrolled in the class explaining that the course has been cancelled “at the request of the instructor, Professor Marc Hauser.”

If Hauser pulled out does it mean that Harvard found no problem with his continuing the classes?

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