Archive for the ‘scientific misconduct’ Category
December 23, 2011
That psychology is a discipline and a field of study is indisputable. That the study of human (or animal) behaviour is a worthy field and that experimentation and research are well worth pursuing is also obvious. But I am of the view that it is far from being a science. Psychology can be considered to be a pre-science similar to alchemy. And the practitioners of psychology are similar to priests and shamans and witch-doctors and other practitioners of magic. Inevitably the field contains many charlatans.
During 2011 the high profile cases of Marc Hauser and Diederik Stapel where data was faked (and no matter which way the pill is coated they both fabricated data to suit their theories) only reinforces my view that their behaviour was essentially narcissistic and not uncommon in the burgeoning fields of psychology. In both cases inflated egos led to the creation of their “signature” hypotheses followed by the fabrication of data to prove their conclusions – which had already been reached! I am inherently suspicious of psychologists who are supposed scientists but who are seduced by the fame and fortunes of press adulation or tenure or who become Agony Aunts on TV.
Charles Gross writes in The Nation about the Marc Hauser affair and concludes:
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Tags:Diedrik Stapel, Harvard University, marc hauser, psychology, Science, Scientific misconduct, Tilburg University
Posted in Academic misconduct, psychology, scientific misconduct | Comments Off on Data fabrication by Hauser and Stapel strengthen the view that psychology is no science
December 20, 2011
Hiroaki Matsubara
Hiroaki Matsubara has been Professor of Cardiology and Vascular Regenerative Medicine at Kyoto Prefectural University’s School of Medicine since 2003 and was earlier at Kansai Medical University.
A Japanese investigative website (http://blog.m3.com/Retraction/) has found 12 published articles where manipulation of images is very likely. The suspicious images in the papers published by the Matsubara lab are carefully deconstructed by Abnormal Science in an ongoing series of posts: here, here and here.
Joerg Zwirner of Abnormal Science comments:
(Part 1) Taken together, articles 1-5 are distinguished by the extensive reuse and mutual exchange of data, in particular Western and Northern Blot bands. A single band has been reused up to eigth times in distinct blots in Kidney Int. 2002.
It is apparent that band images from ‘real’ blots may have been digitally reassembled into new blot images pretending to be derived from distinct experimental settings. Since ‘reconfigured blots’ have been densimetrically scanned and the results illustrated in tables and figures, we are presumably confronted with a case of severe data fabrication. …..
(Part 2) ….. The images on the left were derived from nude rats, the images on the right from C57BL/J mice. ….
Apparently, histological images have been modified by the exchange/addition of image fragments. According to the figure legend, “five fields from two muscle samples of each animal (n=10) were randomly selected, and capillary density was shown as the capillary/muscle fiber ratio.”
Can we call this practice experimental science or should we term it digital art?
Apparently, anything goes.
(Part 3)….. Of note, the only coauthor on all 12 articles is Hiroaki Matsubara. The sheer scope of the alleged manipulations in these 12 articles is reminiscent of the research misconduct investigations at Borstel/Germany into the work of Prof. Bulfone-Paus and at NUS/Singapore into the work of Prof. Melendez.
The Japanese M3 Blog is run by just one person with its readership mainly among doctors but apparently runs a serious risk of being shut down by legal threats as has happened with an earlier investigative blog.
Tags:Alirio Melendez, Hiroaki Matsubara, Japan, Kyoto Prefectural University, manipulated images, Scientific misconduct, Silvia Bulfone-Paus
Posted in Academic misconduct, Japan, Medicine, scientific misconduct | Comments Off on Suspicious goings on at Kyoto Prefectural University
November 24, 2011
As if the lopsided reporting by Roger Harrabin and Richard Black was not bad enough, the email exchange between Phil Jones and Alex Kirby of the BBC puts the BBC’s “impartiality” about global warming firmly in the dock.
Incidentally Kirby’s publicity blurb has this to say about him:
Alex has no scientific education, and is convinced that the widespread distrust and misunderstanding of scientists in industrial societies is a threat to human development.
Alex Kirby
WUWT:
Climategate 2.0 email 4894.txt shows just what Alex Kirby of BBC thinks of climate skeptics as he conveys it to Dr. Phil Jones. Clearly, there an incestuous relationship between climate science and the BBC.
date: Wed Dec 8 08:25:30 2004
from: Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.xx.xx>
subject: RE: something on new online.
to: “Alex Kirby” <alex.kirby@bbc.xxx.xx>
At 17:27 07/12/2004, you wrote:
Yes, glad you stopped this — I was sent it too, and decided to
spike it without more ado as pure stream-of-consciousness rubbish. I can
well understand your unhappiness at our running the other piece. But we
are constantly being savaged by the loonies for not giving them any
coverage at all, especially as you say with the COP in the offing, and
being the objective impartial (ho ho) BBC that we are, there is an
expectation in some quarters that we will every now and then let them
say something. I hope though that the weight of our coverage makes it
clear that we think they are talking through their hats.
—–Original Message—–
Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit
Another gem in the comments by FrancisT reveals that the BBC was in bed with the global warming fanatics but note that Kirby was considered to be not too expensive(!!??)
2011 Email #2403 (1)
Regarding ECF and a media person. You could try Alex Kirby if Roger Harrabin is not free. Joe Smith will have other contacts. The other possibility is for a European link, possibly via a German magazine. Finally, if we try, we could penetrate The Economist as I have contacts there.
2011 Email #3935 (1)
1. Media involvement. I would suggest Roger Harrabin might be a better (alternate?) invitee to Alex Kirby. Simon Torok has recently had contact with him about media coverage of Jo’berg and he is also on the Advisory Board of Tyndall.
2011 Email #4028 (1)
>> > > phone
>> > > > chat with Alex Kirby, BBC, some time before the conference, where we
>> may
2011 Email #4655 (1)
For more mainstream people, I agree that Alex Kirby would make a good job
and is probably first choice. He would certainly come cheaper than Humphreys
Tags:Alex Kirby, BBC, biased BBC, climate change, Climatic Research Unit, global warming, Impartial (Ho Ho) BBC, Phil Jones, Roger Harrabin
Posted in Academic misconduct, Climate, Ethics, Media, scientific misconduct | Comments Off on “the objective impartial (ho ho) BBC that we are” – Alex Kirby BBC environmental correspondent
November 22, 2011
Update 2100 CET: This has finally reached the Nature News Blog and the bits they quote are telling – especially in the light of the IPCC having to acknowledge that for the next few decades the global warming signal may be much smaller than the signals due to natural climate variation.
“I find myself in the strange position of being very skeptical of the quality of all present [climate] reconstructions,” one researcher is quoted as having allegedly remarked.
Another remark reads: “What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multidecadal natural fluctuation? They’ll kill us probably.”
Indeed!
===================================
The Global Warming Climate Change scam.
When it reads like a scam, talks like a scam and sings like a scam — it is most definitely a scam!
From the Air Vent:
It happened again.I woke up to find a link from FOIA.org on a thread. Thousands of emails unlocked with 220,000 more hidden behind a password. Despite the smaller size of the Air Vent due to my lack of time, there were twenty five downloads before I saw it once. As before, there are some very nice quotes and clarifications from the consensus. Below is a guest post in the form of a readme file from the FOIA.org group. – Jeff
/// FOIA 2011 — Background and Context ///
“Over 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day.”
“Every day nearly 16.000 children die from hunger and related causes.”
“One dollar can save a life” — the opposite must also be true.
“Poverty is a death sentence.”
“Nations must invest $37 trillion in energy technologies by 2030 to stabilize
greenhouse gas emissions at sustainable levels.”
Today’s decisions should be based on all the information we can get, not on
hiding the decline.
This archive contains some 5.000 emails picked from keyword searches. A few
remarks and redactions are marked with triple brackets.
The rest, some 220.000, are encrypted for various reasons. We are not planning
to publicly release the passphrase.
We could not read every one, but tried to cover the most relevant topics such
as…
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Tags:academic misconduct, climate change, Climategate 2.0, email-release, FOIA.org, global warming, IPCC, Scientific misconduct
Posted in Academic misconduct, Alarmism, Climate, scientific misconduct | 3 Comments »
November 21, 2011
I miss my incandescent light bulbs.
Low energy lamps have been touted as being environmentally friendly and Europe has virtually banned all incandescent light bulbs in favour of low energy lamps. But I do wonder who benefits most by this inane ban forced through by CFL manufacturers, politically correct bureaucrats and supine politicians.
But a new study in Sweden shows that the environmental benefits of compact fluorescent lamps are a myth and that mercury from some 200,000 CFL’s is being discharged directly into the surroundings every year.
Svenska Dagbladet reports (freely translated):
…. In 2009 Sweden introduced a total ban on mercury but compact fluorescent lamps (CFL’s) were excluded. Inhalation of mercury contained in lamps can, at worst, damage the brain and kidneys. Insomnia, irritability and personality changes are some examples of what can result after prolonged exposure. ....
“One must be terribly careful with mercury and certainly not inhale it under any circumstances”, says Jörn Nielsen, Chief of the Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at Lund University. The Division has studied companies that work with recycling of fluorescent lamps. Several of the employees surveyed were approaching levels of mercury “poisoning”.
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Tags:Compact fluorescent lamp, discharge of mercury to the environment, Incandescent light bulb, mercury in CFL's
Posted in Alarmism, Energy, Ethics, European Union, scientific misconduct, Sweden | 4 Comments »
November 21, 2011
Over the weekend Erasmus University published their executive summary (in Dutch) of the investigation which resulted in the dismissal of Professor Don Poldermans. The investigation commission included members from Erasmus, Leiden and Amsterdam Medical Centres.
Prof. Dr. P.J. van der Maas, former dean of Erasmus MC (Chair)
Prof. Dr. B. Löwenberg, Emeritus Professor of Hematology, Erasmus MC
Prof. Dr. R.J.G. Peters, Professor of Cardiology, Amsterdam MC
Prof. Dr. A.J. Rabelink, Professor of Internal Medicine, Leiden UMC
Mr. J.M. Oosting, head of Legal Affairs, Erasmus MC
Administrative support is provided by Dr. RE Juttmann and Dr. R.M. Struhkamp.
DECREASE I: In high-risk patients undergoing non-cardiac surgery, perioperative beta-blockade with bisoprolol significantly reduces cardiac death and MI in the short- and long-term
DECREASE II: Patients identified as intermediate risk on the basis of a simple clinical assessment do not need pre-operative echocardiographic cardiac stress testing, provided that they receive bisoprolol to maintain resting heart rate at 60–65 b.p.m.
DECREASE III: In high-risk patients undergoing major vascular surgery, fluvastatin XL significantly reduces myocardial ischaemia and the combined endpoint of cardiovascular death and MI
DECREASE IV: In intermediate-risk patients, bisoprolol significantly reduces cardiac death and MI, with a non-significant trend towards a beneficial effect of fluvastatin XL
DECREASE V: In high-risk patients with extensive stress-induced ischaemia, coronary revascularization (added to tight heart rate control with bisoprolol) does not produce any additional reduction in death and MI and delays surgery.
DECREASE VI: is a trial for testing NT-proBNP for the evaluation of cardiac risk in patients undergoing vascular surgery.
The investigation concluded that there were serious deficiencies in getting patients’ consent for inclusion in the studies, that data collection was sloppy and that data was fabricated. However no patients were harmed. Data manipulation was not found. The responsibility for the misconduct was that of the Professor Poldermans and not of any of the other researchers. The Commission found several serious errors and protocol violations in the D2 and D6 studies and possibly in D4. Evidence of data fabrication was found in submitted abstracts for the D6 study (not published).
The D6 study sponsored by Roche Diagnostics is to be discontinued.
The Commission believes that the Journal which published the D2 study should be informed (The Journal of the American College of Cardiology) but that retraction of the publications was not needed.
Tags:Don Poldermans, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Poöldermans dismissal, Roche Diagnostics, Scientific misconduct
Posted in Academic misconduct, Medicine, scientific misconduct | 1 Comment »
November 17, 2011
Don Poldermans
Universities in Holland are having a torrid time with another dismissal for scientific misconduct, this time at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. But the seriousness with which investigations are carried out and the speed and decisiveness with which Dutch Universities act is quite impressive.
Professor Don Poldermans, MD, PhD, is was Professor of Medicine and head of the section perioperative cardiac care of the Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Dr Poldermans received his medical degree at the Erasmus Medical Centre in 1981. He is a fellow of the European Society of Cardiology and an honorary member of the Dutch Society of Anesthesiology. He is active within the Departments of Anesthesiology, Internal Medicine, and Surgery of the Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Dr Poldermans is actively involved in patient care, education, research, and administration. He supervised 26 PhD students, all working on cardiovascular research. He has published more than 600 manuscripts in several peer-reviewed Journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, JAMA, Circulation, and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Dutch News:
Erasmus University in Rotterdam has sacked a professor in cardio-vascular medicine for damaging the institution’s academic integrity and for ‘scientific misconduct’, the NRC reports on Thursday.
The professor is accused of faking academic data and compromising patient trust, the paper says. In particular, he failed to obtain patient consent for carrying out research and recorded results ‘which cannot be resolved to patient information,’ the university said.
Don Poldermans has spent years researching the risk of complications during cardio-vascular surgery and has some 500 publications to his name.
A spokesman for Poldermans told the paper he admitted not keeping to research protocols but denied faking data.
Last month, Tilburg and Groningen universities said they planned to take legal action against behavioural science professor Diederik Stapel after an investigation showed he had faked research data in at least 30 scientific papers.
According to
Elsevier, an investigation committee brought the fraud to light. It found that Poldermans had taken blood samples and heart echoes from patients without their permisssion and has reported results which cannot be traced to any patient.
“Patients were not physically harmed,” emphasizes Dean and Director
Huib Pols. He said he was deeply shocked by the case. Patients who participated in the latest survey receive a letter of apology from the hospital.
Tags:Don Poldermans, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Professor of Medicine sacked, Rotterdam, Scientific misconduct
Posted in Academic misconduct, Medicine, scientific misconduct | 3 Comments »
November 17, 2011
The US Inspector General has issued a report of an investigation into how the Department of the Interior manipulated and altered a 30-day report from the National Academy of Engineers. It was in response to the explosion of British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 20th 2010, that the Department of the Interior declared a moratorium on deepwater drilling, which it extended for six months on May 27th claiming support from the 30 day report. But the executive summary implied – falsely – that the moratorium decision had been peer-reviewed by the National Association of Engineers. The President’s Climate Change Advisor Carol Browner was the key figure involved in altering the language to make the false implication.
What is disturbing is not that politicians make political decisions but it is their cowardice in standing for their own views when they distort and manipulate what professional engineers and scientists say to imply – falsely – that there is objective support for their views.
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Tags:Carol Browner, Deepwater Horizon, Department of the Interior, distortion of science, drilling mratorium, Inspector General, Salazar, United States Secretary of the Interior
Posted in Alarmism, Politics, scientific misconduct | Comments Off on Inspector General finds that Department of the Interior manipulated a scientific report to fit a political agenda
November 7, 2011
The saga of potential misconduct at the National University of Singapore continues to escalate with further questionable papers regularly being identified by “whistleblowers” to Abnormal Science (Joerg Zwirner).
But the investigations initiated by the University are not totally above criticism especially as Prof. Barry Haliwell the Vice President at the University and responsible for these investigations is himself facing allegations of self-plagiarism and is a co-author on some of the questionable papers. There is an urgent need for some outside participation in the investigations to ensure independence and impartiality. My current perception is that the objective of the investigation will over-ridingly be to save the reputation of the University (any by extension of the government of Singapore) and that the investigation committee will be heavily blinkered. Since the government has effectively been trying to short-cut its way to a scientific reputation by “buying in” researchers, there is little chance that the investigations – as they are set up now – will not be contaminated by government meddling.
As Abnormal Science comments:
A more stringent management of quality and integrity issues in experimental (medical ) research needs to take center stage at NUS. Vice president Prof. Halliwell is in charge of the Office of Research and Technology at NUS, and therefore responsible for driving the University’s research agenda. Unfortunately, he also appears to handle issues related to science integrity at NUS himself. This constellation constitutes an inacceptable accumulation of responsibilities and should be banned since it carries the potential for conflict of interest. Prof. Halliwell, you might want to take a leave of absence from your position as vice president until these issues (including the allegation of self-plagiarism) have been resolved.
Tags:Abnormal Science, National University of Singapore, NUS, Plagiarism, Professor Barry Haliwell, Scientific misconduct, Singapore
Posted in Academic misconduct, Science, scientific misconduct, Singapore | 1 Comment »
The k2p blog 