And this is why peer review is a joke.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Its more of a subscription thing. Simmons is the subscriber and im a harvard employee.

Yeah?  Then explain to me why nobody here can seem to get ahold of this paper anywhere.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Mostly because it seems to not be a very influential journal in the us so only a handful of universities would bother and only in electronic format. If they had physical copies like they would jama or bjm i could walk in and scan it  and send it to my email. The fact that harvard doesnt have it suggests to me that it doesnt have a lot of high impact science in it.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Otoh hand i could probably get it from home but id have to pay for it out of pocket.

[Kai]

I'm still having trouble getting it. Not being affiliated with any university or museum right now is cramping my research.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Let me see what i can manage. Might have to do it next week tho.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Got it, Scribd'd it

http://www.scribd.com/doc/77498176


I was able to get it from the link Kai posted for some reason

Download it while you can; I'm not so sure it's supposed to be posted somewhere like Scribd.

[Kai]

Got it, Scribd'd it

http://www.scribd.com/doc/77498176


I was able to get it from the link Kai posted for some reason

Download it while you can; I'm not so sure it's supposed to be posted somewhere like Scribd.

Thank you.

I've already discovered my first problem with the piece. The authors are working from the premise that an epidemic caused by the HIV virus would cause symtoms in the same manner as a cold or flu epidemic, i.e., over a very short period; they call this the "classic germ theory of disease".  This is completely at odds with what is known of HIV, that it is a virus with an extremely long incubation period, that varies from person to person; an individual with HIV will not likely experience symtoms for many years. They also do not cite any of the major papers tying the acquired autoimmunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) with HIV. Instead, they cite influential works such as Encyclopedia Britannica, and the New York Times.

Also, Duesberg cites himself an inordinate amount of the time. For example, he cites himself as the source for "Slowly rising, declining or steady epidemics are, however, the characteristic patterns of chemical lifestyle diseases, not that of a new viral epidemic." Again, he omits any mention of long incubation pathogens. Overall, his leadup is to question the utility of antiviral drugs by those infected with HIV. This sounds HIGHLY reminisce of the anti-vaccers.

And that's just the introduction. He's referring to classical germ theory, which does not apply to a long incubation pathogen, which is something we know about HIV. He does not cite any evidence that HIV is not a long incubation pathogen. He cites himself repeatedly, cites sources about as amaturish as citing wikipedia, and he uses the entire premisce as a lead in to diiscuss anti-viral toxicity.

[Kai]

On to the methods.

The authors propose to check three sources: the world health organization, AIDS mortality statistics of South Africa, and population statistics of South Africa. There is no great justification as to why they choose south africa for this refutation, as opposed to say, Botswana, which has an even higher rate of HIV infection (24% versus 17%) (see http://www.aidsinafrica.net/map.php). The main justification they give is a 2005 study by Chigwedere et al., which using a number of different sources reconstructs the true number of lives lost in south africa to AIDS between 2000 and 2005 to be ~334,000. Their plan is to refute these numbers, showing the total deaths as much lower.

The first source they site, the WHO, is an EMPTY TABLE. Seriously, they pasted an empty table into the document. Since there is no information at all, it cannot be used as evidence for their case and is discarded. We know there is HIV incidence in South Africa from other sources. This is an intentional mislead.

Second, they use a different source than the Chigwedere article, from a South African government website called Statistics South Africa, which are all directly to several PDFs, one from 2000, 2007 and 2008. Contrast with the Chigwedere article, which uses statistics from the UN 2006 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic, as well as from the previous 5 years. These statistics sheets are the main piece of evidence that Duesberg et al. use to support their claim. They cite "10,000 deaths a year" as opposed to the much larger (and increasing) numbers in the UN Report. Indeed, Chigwedere et al. mention that "in the 2006 report, UNAIDS suggests that earlier modeling could have overestimated the prevalents of AIDS and death statistic", so they actually use more conservative numbers than the estimates for some of those years. There are multiple reasons to trust the UN report over the South African government report, but most of all for the comprehensiveness and neutrality of the report (in terms of political affiliation), and the tendency of government statistics to gloss over the negative and underestimate problems. The disparity between the two statistics is used by Duesberg to suggest that the UN Report is wrong, but I don't know of any reason to trust the government statistics over the UN report. They seem to call these numbers into question but present no case that their source is correct.

Third, they used population statistics (i.e. growth versus decline) to show that the population in South Africa has grown 3 million between 2000 and 2005. This is not the least bit surprising if you consider that almost all the African nations have extremely high growth rates (in the 3% to 4% range) in 2011. However, if you investigate how the growth rate changed between 2000 and 2005 in South Africa, you find it declined from 1.25 to 1.06 percent, and is now somewhere in the vicinity of .55 or less. Ironically, the decline in growth rate and demographics of HIV infected is taken directly from Statistics South Africa, the source Duesberg sites for it's low death count.

This is the entirety of the Duesberg evidence for their case in South Africa. After this, the authors switch gears to Uganda, which is where I will pick up in the next post.

[Kai]

Actually, forget it. The next two sections focus on population growth rates, and it follows, (just the same) that these countries in question have some of the highest growth rates in the world, Uganda somewhere between 2.5 and 3.5 in 2009.. Not to mention, their HIV infection rate has declined due to effective education and government oversight.

Also, may I just say that I really hate how they seem to minimize statistics in this paper by making them all "x10^-3; it's very misleading.

And the next section is just a repeat of "population still increasing in South Africa", as they fail to mention that growth rates have severely declined.

The rest on antivirals rests on HIV not being a dangerous pathogen, and given that the previous is almost complete bollocks, this section is irrelevant.


Thus I refute. This paper should have never been published for it's faulty reasoning, data picking, misleading presentation, and ignorance of the biology of the HIV virus. It is wholly amateurish, and it makes me ashamed to be a biologist.

ETA: I hope you all appreciate the time I've spent here, because I feel dirty now, like I need to take a scalding shower.

[Cainad (dec.)]

I'm glad I could be of help; the review is much appreciated.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Hahaha is this guy even an epidemiologist? What is he talking about? I'm not very far in, but so far a large percentage of his premise seems to be based on the expectation that all viruses behave like the flu.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Oops, didn't refresh the page for two hours or I could have seen that Kai has already torn it apart.

You are right, Kai; this paper is scientifically RICKOCULOUS and undeserving of publication in any science publication.

However, I was also right, in my assertion that merely being socially and politically repugnant wouldn't have been reason enough to withhold it.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I don't like that new smiley. I liked the old one.

[Kai]

Hahaha is this guy even an epidemiologist? What is he talking about? I'm not very far in, but so far a large percentage of his premise seems to be based on the expectation that all viruses behave like the flu.

Exactly. They use "classical germ theory" as the basis for their whole argument, that all viral epidemics everywhere ever take a particular form. Ever. Always.

And yes, you were right about social and political repugnance. Despite how dirty I feel, it wasn't even an issue in this case. The paper was just so /bad/.

And maybe that's why it only caught controversy rather than being ripped to bits. It was published in such an obscure journal that most people can't get a copy, and therefore it escapes direct attacks on the content. Science hipsters: "We published research in this journal, you've probably never heard of it. It's not even subscribed to by most universities. Aren't we awesome? Oh, you're criticizing it, did you even read it?"

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Hahaha is this guy even an epidemiologist? What is he talking about? I'm not very far in, but so far a large percentage of his premise seems to be based on the expectation that all viruses behave like the flu.

Exactly. They use "classical germ theory" as the basis for their whole argument, that all viral epidemics everywhere ever take a particular form. Ever. Always.

And yes, you were right about social and political repugnance. Despite how dirty I feel, it wasn't even an issue in this case. The paper was just so /bad/.

And maybe that's why it only caught controversy rather than being ripped to bits. It was published in such an obscure journal that most people can't get a copy, and therefore it escapes direct attacks on the content. Science hipsters: "We published research in this journal, you've probably never heard of it. It's not even subscribed to by most universities. Aren't we awesome? Oh, you're criticizing it, did you even read it?"

The editor of that journal and whoever "peer reviewed" it should have been more interested in career suicide than notoriety, because by publishing it they are essentially making a claim that they found, in reviewing it, that the study methods and data are scientifically sound, and I cannot imagine for a moment being willing to associate my academic name with such an assertion.