Because a paper 'refuting' the HIV-AIDS link has made it into a peer reviewed journal. (http://www.nature.com/news/paper-refuting-hiv-aids-link-secures-publication-1.9737)
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on January 05, 2012, 07:18:28 PM
Because a paper 'refuting' the HIV-AIDS link has made it into a peer reviewed journal. (http://www.nature.com/news/paper-refuting-hiv-aids-link-secures-publication-1.9737)
I don't understand something, Kai...A peer-reviewed journal will only (in theory) publish something believed to correct, rather than something they wish to discuss?
TGRR,
A little unclear on the subject.
:walken:
I am speechless.
:spag:
The idea is to invite other scientists to test the findings in the paper. But theres gotta be some sort of weird thing going on in this paper. This might actually be something i can look up on my work comp since i work at an epidemiology/virology lab. Im away from my desk atm though.
Quote from: Areola Shinerbock on January 05, 2012, 07:35:47 PM
The idea is to invite other scientists to test the findings in the paper.
Okay, so it's a tool for getting rid of bad signal.
I'm not sure I see the problem here? I mean, okay, it's junk science, but isn't this exactly why you'd WANT it put up where people can hack it to bits?
Kai whos the first author and whats the name of the paper? And i guess more importantly what journal?
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 05, 2012, 07:37:35 PM
Quote from: Areola Shinerbock on January 05, 2012, 07:35:47 PM
The idea is to invite other scientists to test the findings in the paper.
Okay, so it's a tool for getting rid of bad signal.
I'm not sure I see the problem here? I mean, okay, it's junk science, but isn't this exactly why you'd WANT it put up where people can hack it to bits?
From what I can tell, the "peer-review" process includes having other scientists look at it prior to publishing, to confirm its validity.
The fact that this is seeing print means two or more people looked at this paper which claims HIV does not cause AIDS, and said, "Seem legit."
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on January 05, 2012, 07:42:47 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 05, 2012, 07:37:35 PM
Quote from: Areola Shinerbock on January 05, 2012, 07:35:47 PM
The idea is to invite other scientists to test the findings in the paper.
Okay, so it's a tool for getting rid of bad signal.
I'm not sure I see the problem here? I mean, okay, it's junk science, but isn't this exactly why you'd WANT it put up where people can hack it to bits?
From what I can tell, the "peer-review" process includes having other scientists look at it prior to publishing, to confirm its validity.
The fact that this is seeing print means two or more people looked at this paper which claims HIV does not cause AIDS, and said, "Seem legit."
According to the article, there were two (2) "peer reviewers". I was just told that the idea was for scientists to test the idea, not for two (2) people to approve it as writ...That's not enough people, to bypass the prejudices and preconceived ideas that people come equipped with.
Thats why i want to take a look at the paper. This is going to be like that vaccine autism thing. I want to see how this could have passed peer review.
Quote from: Areola Shinerbock on January 05, 2012, 07:45:53 PM
Thats why i want to take a look at the paper. This is going to be like that vaccine autism thing. I want to see how this could have passed peer review.
WAIT
Now YOUR definition has changed.
:argh!:
QuoteThe reworked version of the paper, led by Peter Duesberg of the University of California, Berkeley, who is well known for denying the link between HIV and AIDS, was published in the Italian Journal of Anatomy and Embryology (IJAE) last month
There's the pertinent information you requested, Twid.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 05, 2012, 07:37:35 PM
Quote from: Areola Shinerbock on January 05, 2012, 07:35:47 PM
The idea is to invite other scientists to test the findings in the paper.
Okay, so it's a tool for getting rid of bad signal.
I'm not sure I see the problem here? I mean, okay, it's junk science, but isn't this exactly why you'd WANT it put up where people can hack it to bits?
I think the issue with it is that by actually publishing it, it lends it credibility in the public sphere. "This article passed peer review, so it must be accurate."
I could be wrong on that, though.
Quote from: Doktor Phoxero on January 05, 2012, 07:47:09 PM
think the issue with it is that by actually publishing it, it lends it credibility in the public sphere. "This article passed peer review, so it must be accurate."
I could be wrong on that, though.
That makes it sound like peer review means "canon".
Definition not changed. I just want to get a sense of why the science behind it was considered sound enough to not be immediately dismissed. Think of peer review like american idol tryouts. Except this time they let willaim hung into the competition.
Also the problem isnt with scientists refuting the findings. Its the media not understanding the purpose of scientific papers to begin with. So some assholes are going to think this is proof where its still a (very wrong) hypothesis.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 05, 2012, 07:48:07 PM
Quote from: Doktor Phoxero on January 05, 2012, 07:47:09 PM
think the issue with it is that by actually publishing it, it lends it credibility in the public sphere. "This article passed peer review, so it must be accurate."
I could be wrong on that, though.
That makes it sound like peer review means "canon".
In the minds of many people, it does. Which is not to say that it is/should be.
But I've heard many people say similar things. "This was in The American Journal of Psychiatric Wankery, which, means that it is 100% true."
You and I know that peer review, in theory, should be about testing and retesting things tearing them apart and reconstituting them, and if they are bollocks, then they are bollocks. But people, especially those who work outside the hard sciences, don't tend view it that way in my experience.
Phox,
Now wants to start a peer review journal about psychiatry for some reason...
Quote from: Areola Shinerbock on January 05, 2012, 07:52:31 PM
Definition not changed. I just want to get a sense of why the science behind it was considered sound enough to not be immediately dismissed. Think of peer review like american idol tryouts. Except this time they let willaim hung into the competition.
So two guys get to decide which ideas everyone gets to see?
I mean, sure, if it's obvious junk science like perpetual motion or some shit, but it sounds to me like the actual result is that new or shocking ideas are squelched.
It could be a journal prone to quackery. Ive not heard of it before. Plus the problem with reviewers is that authors can recommend reviewers and those reviewers remain anonymous
twid
used to submit my old bosses' articles to various cancer journals for them
Quote from: Areola Shinerbock on January 05, 2012, 07:57:57 PM
It could be a journal prone to quackery. Ive not heard of it before. Plus the problem with reviewers is that authors can recommend reviewers and those reviewers remain anonymous
twid
used to submit my old bosses' articles to various cancer journals for them
It sounds like Kai and I agree that the system is a fucking joke, but for very different reasons.
In theory the two reviewers are there to check to see if the study or experiment is flawed. But obviously the process itself is flawed and can be abused to sideline good science and advance bad science. I was always uncomfortable with it even when it was to advance our own findings.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 05, 2012, 07:22:16 PM
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on January 05, 2012, 07:18:28 PM
Because a paper 'refuting' the HIV-AIDS link has made it into a peer reviewed journal. (http://www.nature.com/news/paper-refuting-hiv-aids-link-secures-publication-1.9737)
I don't understand something, Kai...A peer-reviewed journal will only (in theory) publish something believed to correct, rather than something they wish to discuss?
TGRR,
A little unclear on the subject.
A peer review journal generally publishes on the below grounds.
1. The logic and methods in the paper are sound.
2. The conclusions stem from the results.
3. The writing is adequate.
4. The reviewers are satisfied (or at least will write it off as "ready to go").
5. The material contains new evidence or at least new arguments.
6. The paper is relevant to the topic matter of the journal (and is high enough profile research).
In good journals, this is true of everything from high impact important discoveries and crucial experiments, to philosophical discussions and book reviews. Some of the most interesting pieces I've read in journals have been works of philosophical or public discussion. But as I said, these have to follow a logical progression, have adequate writing, and present new ideas.
In the case of AIDS, the link between HIV and the syndrome has been established for decades, and generally papers that deny this are rejected outright. This was a perspective piece originally published in Medical Hypotheses, which was at the time not a peer reviewed journal. They claim to publish radical, non-mainstream hypotheses that are clearly expressed, and since it wasn't peer reviewed basically anything went. There was a great deal of public fervor and demand that it be withdrawn, since the HIV epidemic is a matter of global health. The editor was subsequently sacked and the paper withdrawn; now the journal /is/ peer review. It's important to note that this is a perspective piece and not an experimental work. It contains no new arguments, and all the arguments it does contain are old and tired. Even as a discussion, regardless of the topic, it shouldn't have been published on those grounds; when a single scientist publishes the same paper twice it's not only confusing, but it's considered self-plagiarism. It's even more so plagiarism to take someone elses ideas and pose them as your own, without any new information added. That it got through peer review after it has been withdrawn from a non peer reviewed journal suggests something very broken about that journal's peer review process.
Summary: A journal publishes all sorts of things, but among a short list of other rules, they have to be /new/ in some way to warrant publication. The peer review process is suppose to weed out manuscripts which do not have new information, and in this case it failed.
It's also idiotic. The evidence for HIV causing AIDS is so well established that arguing it is /not/ is like arguing against evolution or plate tectonics. We've sequenced it, imaged it's action on white blood cells, tracked it's transfer in body fluids, and watched as it suppresses immune systems enough to allow the common cold to kill otherwise healthy adults. "It is not clear that HIV causes AIDS" is dumb and dead.
Put it this way: Without peer review, you'd get dozens of papers in physics journals about perpetual motion machines and Quantum Jumping.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 05, 2012, 07:57:45 PM
Quote from: Areola Shinerbock on January 05, 2012, 07:52:31 PM
Definition not changed. I just want to get a sense of why the science behind it was considered sound enough to not be immediately dismissed. Think of peer review like american idol tryouts. Except this time they let willaim hung into the competition.
So two guys get to decide which ideas everyone gets to see?
I mean, sure, if it's obvious junk science like perpetual motion or some shit, but it sounds to me like the actual result is that new or shocking ideas are squelched.
More often than not, when new and shocking ideas have evidence, they get published in really high profile journals. The purpose of a journal isn't to publish mere opinion. That's what newspapers and blogs are for. And if a paper is rejected by one journal? There are plenty of other journals out there.
More information on Duesberg here. (http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/afa-magic-johnson-being-alive-is-confirmation-hiv-does-not-cause-aids/politics/2012/01/04/32759)
QuoteDuesberg claims that the use of massive recreational drug use by gay men causes AIDS, not the HIV virus.
I would also expect to see a large incidence of AIDS among the banking community then.
Sadly, this is not so far the case.
:facepalm:
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on January 05, 2012, 08:27:05 PM
More information on Duesberg here. (http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/afa-magic-johnson-being-alive-is-confirmation-hiv-does-not-cause-aids/politics/2012/01/04/32759)
QuoteDuesberg claims that the use of massive recreational drug use by gay men causes AIDS, not the HIV virus.
WHAT THE FUCK.
QuoteRomagnoli says he decided to review the revised paper because the original was withdrawn by Medical Hypotheses not for "flawed or falsified data" but for "highly controversial opinions" — which the IJAE's readers can make up their own minds about.
He has a point.
Not trying to threadjack, but I am compelled to post this here:
(http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20111227.gif)
Quote from: Nigel on January 05, 2012, 09:21:06 PM
QuoteRomagnoli says he decided to review the revised paper because the original was withdrawn by Medical Hypotheses not for "flawed or falsified data" but for "highly controversial opinions" — which the IJAE's readers can make up their own minds about.
He has a point.
So a journal is a newspaper, now. Great.
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on January 05, 2012, 09:59:44 PM
Quote from: Nigel on January 05, 2012, 09:21:06 PM
QuoteRomagnoli says he decided to review the revised paper because the original was withdrawn by Medical Hypotheses not for "flawed or falsified data" but for "highly controversial opinions" — which the IJAE's readers can make up their own minds about.
He has a point.
So a journal is a newspaper, now. Great.
Maybe this is just the FOX of journals? :lol:
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on January 05, 2012, 09:59:44 PM
Quote from: Nigel on January 05, 2012, 09:21:06 PM
QuoteRomagnoli says he decided to review the revised paper because the original was withdrawn by Medical Hypotheses not for "flawed or falsified data" but for "highly controversial opinions" — which the IJAE's readers can make up their own minds about.
He has a point.
So a journal is a newspaper, now. Great.
Um, no. Not what I said. At all. Also not what the editor said.
Quote from: Nigel on January 05, 2012, 10:29:00 PM
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on January 05, 2012, 09:59:44 PM
Quote from: Nigel on January 05, 2012, 09:21:06 PM
QuoteRomagnoli says he decided to review the revised paper because the original was withdrawn by Medical Hypotheses not for "flawed or falsified data" but for "highly controversial opinions" — which the IJAE's readers can make up their own minds about.
He has a point.
So a journal is a newspaper, now. Great.
Um, no. Not what I said. At all. Also not what the editor said.
Granted. It's also probably what the editor of Nature said when he published the Womenspace Futures story.
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on January 05, 2012, 08:04:33 PM
This was a perspective piece originally published in Medical Hypotheses, which was at the time not a peer reviewed journal.
I missed that in the original article.
So, what broke down, here?
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on January 05, 2012, 10:35:06 PM
Quote from: Nigel on January 05, 2012, 10:29:00 PM
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on January 05, 2012, 09:59:44 PM
Quote from: Nigel on January 05, 2012, 09:21:06 PM
QuoteRomagnoli says he decided to review the revised paper because the original was withdrawn by Medical Hypotheses not for "flawed or falsified data" but for "highly controversial opinions" — which the IJAE's readers can make up their own minds about.
He has a point.
So a journal is a newspaper, now. Great.
Um, no. Not what I said. At all. Also not what the editor said.
Granted. It's also probably what the editor of Nature said when he published the Womenspace Futures story.
The Womanspace story had no place in any scientific journal. It was fiction, not a scientific paper, and it was blatantly sexist fiction.
I don't know what his motivation for publishing the study was, but what Romagnoli seems to be saying there is that regardless of the validity of the conclusion, the paper should not be withheld from publication based on having an unsavory premise unless the data or the method is bad. This is science... the idea is to present the available information and let the scientific community determine whether the conclusions drawn by the researcher are valid.
The fact that the researcher's agenda is antisocial should not in itself be a barrier to publication. Now, we all know that personalities and bias do weigh heavily in the peer journal world, but they shouldn't. They only criteria a paper should be judged by is whether the data is good or bad and whether it's presented clearly. Even if it's an article which claims that having gay parents directly causes children to grow up alcoholic chain-smoking white nationalists, if it presents its data clearly it should not be withheld from publication simply for being unsavory.
Not that every paper deserves publication, and journals should pick and choose the best articles for publication (if they are fortunate enough to have enough submissions to pick and choose from) but I see Romagnoli's point; if the data is good, it is his right to present it in his journal, and let the scientific community rebut the study, which I'm sure they will do in droves. Further, it will help to dispel the conspiracy nutjobs' claims that information is being suppressed.
Many people on the web seem to think that this paper shouldn't be published anywhere for any reason because it's antisocial. I personally think that's walking a little too close to a slippery slope for my comfort.
Romagnoli:
Quote"Speculative conclusions are not a reason for rejection, provided they are correlated with the data presented,"
So I found the journal and the article. Or at least the abstract; I don't have access to the full article. http://www.fupress.net/index.php/ijae/article/view/10336
If the editors assert that the data presented actually allows for a speculative conclusion that HIV is, as they said in the abstract, "not a new killer virus", okay, I agree with you Nigel, let's test that. Does anyone here have access to this PDF? I've set a tweet out through #icanhazpdf, as well.
My general feeling about the realpolitik of the situation, is that IJAE editors published this paper to drive up controversial publicity for their journal. Reading the journal summary (http://www.fupress.net/index.php/ijae), and looking at some of the other papers (http://www.fupress.net/index.php/ijae/issue/current), this is very far from the normal fare for this periodical. They normally publish articles on gross and fine anatomy and embryology of humans, as well as comparative anatomy and embryology. On that current issue page, the HIV article is completely out of place. And when you look at other (http://www.fupress.net/index.php/ijae/issue/view/771) issues (http://www.fupress.net/index.php/ijae/issue/view/742), it's the same. As a example, this would be like having a paper on vertebrates with minimal connection to insects in an entomological journal.
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on January 06, 2012, 01:34:10 AM
So I found the journal and the article. Or at least the abstract; I don't have access to the full article. http://www.fupress.net/index.php/ijae/article/view/10336
If the editors assert that the data presented actually allows for a speculative conclusion that HIV is, as they said in the abstract, "not a new killer virus", okay, I agree with you Nigel, let's test that. Does anyone here have access to this PDF? I've set a tweet out through #icanhazpdf, as well.
My general feeling about the realpolitik of the situation, is that IJAE editors published this paper to drive up controversial publicity for their journal. Reading the journal summary (http://www.fupress.net/index.php/ijae), and looking at some of the other papers (http://www.fupress.net/index.php/ijae/issue/current), this is very far from the normal fare for this periodical. They normally publish articles on gross and fine anatomy and embryology of humans, as well as comparative anatomy and embryology. On that current issue page, the HIV article is completely out of place. And when you look at other (http://www.fupress.net/index.php/ijae/issue/view/771) issues (http://www.fupress.net/index.php/ijae/issue/view/742), it's the same. As a example, this would be like having a paper on vertebrates with minimal connection to insects in an entomological journal.
They don't have it at Countway Library, but they do have it at Simmons. I
may be able to get you a copy tomorrow.
ETA: I don't have access to our lab's PubMed account anymore. I'll have to scan a physical copy.
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on January 06, 2012, 01:34:10 AM
So I found the journal and the article. Or at least the abstract; I don't have access to the full article. http://www.fupress.net/index.php/ijae/article/view/10336
If the editors assert that the data presented actually allows for a speculative conclusion that HIV is, as they said in the abstract, "not a new killer virus", okay, I agree with you Nigel, let's test that. Does anyone here have access to this PDF? I've set a tweet out through #icanhazpdf, as well.
My general feeling about the realpolitik of the situation, is that IJAE editors published this paper to drive up controversial publicity for their journal. Reading the journal summary (http://www.fupress.net/index.php/ijae), and looking at some of the other papers (http://www.fupress.net/index.php/ijae/issue/current), this is very far from the normal fare for this periodical. They normally publish articles on gross and fine anatomy and embryology of humans, as well as comparative anatomy and embryology. On that current issue page, the HIV article is completely out of place. And when you look at other (http://www.fupress.net/index.php/ijae/issue/view/771) issues (http://www.fupress.net/index.php/ijae/issue/view/742), it's the same. As a example, this would be like having a paper on vertebrates with minimal connection to insects in an entomological journal.
You are probably right about the motivation for publishing this article. But that's sort of beside the point, unless it was pushed to publication despite bad data.
Obama going to Mars is a peer-reviewed theory.
Quote from: Cain on January 06, 2012, 08:08:10 AM
Obama going to Mars is a peer-reviewed theory.
Reviewed by a peerdom of crackpots!
Quote from: Nigel on January 06, 2012, 04:20:35 PM
Quote from: Cain on January 06, 2012, 08:08:10 AM
Obama going to Mars is a peer-reviewed theory.
Reviewed by a peerdom of crackpots!
Don't laugh too hard.
So was "abstinence only" education.
Kai- simmons only has it in electronic form and access is restricted to faculty and students :/
Quote from: Areola Shinerbock on January 06, 2012, 05:51:32 PM
Kai- simmons only has it in electronic form and access is restricted to faculty and students :/
Restricted science.
Oh, America...How I love thee.
Its more of a subscription thing. Simmons is the subscriber and im a harvard employee.
Quote from: Areola Shinerbock on January 06, 2012, 06:18:47 PM
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.
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.
Otoh hand i could probably get it from home but id have to pay for it out of pocket.
I'm still having trouble getting it. Not being affiliated with any university or museum right now is cramping my research.
Let me see what i can manage. Might have to do it next week tho.
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.
Quote from: Cainad on January 07, 2012, 11:28:35 PM
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.
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. (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCsQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fimage.guardian.co.uk%2Fsys-files%2FGuardian%2Fdocuments%2F2008%2F11%2F26%2Fharvard-universityreport.pdf&ei=J-YIT771Gc3sggerhr3iDA&usg=AFQjCNGU8UfwnofViAPDanlGar8WWKLUtg&sig2=kSdxK4X6Yr49f_jfRVF8Pg), 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 (http://www.unaids.org/en/media/unaids/contentassets/dataimport/pub/report/2006/2006_gr_en.pdf), 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 (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Frichardknight.homestead.com%2Ffiles%2FSouthAfrica2006-PopulationanandHIV-AIDS.pdf&ei=CPAIT5fgDcfqggeav425Ag&usg=AFQjCNEArMyu4MbhsOKKNPzSaO0iiUrRig&sig2=jBlvsC1iwUWp6XiTnlnGbA), and is now somewhere in the vicinity of .55 or less. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_growth_rate) 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.
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. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_growth_rate). Not to mention, their HIV infection rate has declined due to effective education and government oversight (http://www.avert.org/aids-uganda.htm).
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.
:golfclap: I'm glad I could be of help; the review is much appreciated.
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.
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. :)
I don't like that new smiley. I liked the old one.
Quote from: Nigel on January 08, 2012, 02:12:55 AM
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?"
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on January 08, 2012, 02:40:18 AM
Quote from: Nigel on January 08, 2012, 02:12:55 AM
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.
He doesn't even appear to know what the words he is using mean.
Quote from: Nigel on January 08, 2012, 02:47:19 AM
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on January 08, 2012, 02:40:18 AM
Quote from: Nigel on January 08, 2012, 02:12:55 AM
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.
If you have tenure, not much rattles your academic "name". Sad but true. And the journal is so obscure that I really think very few people will actually read this article, just hear about it.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 06, 2012, 06:00:48 PM
Quote from: Areola Shinerbock on January 06, 2012, 05:51:32 PM
Kai- simmons only has it in electronic form and access is restricted to faculty and students :/
Restricted science.
Oh, America...How I love thee.
It's not just America. And it's just the nature of peer viewed research. Research Journals are very good at making sure their articles are only viewable by people who have the rights to view them. That is, they've paid the subscription fee for the Journal. In educational settings the colleges pay the fee but then are able to confer the ability to view articles to staff and students.
Honestly, musicians and bands could probably take a tip or two from these guys to figure out how they can protect their intellectual property. Granted, I'm sure with some heavy digging, it's probably to find pirated copies of research articles somewhere. But it's much more challenging than finding a free copy of Nickelback's latest CD.
Quote from: RWHN Episode I: The Random Menace on January 08, 2012, 12:39:41 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 06, 2012, 06:00:48 PM
Quote from: Areola Shinerbock on January 06, 2012, 05:51:32 PM
Kai- simmons only has it in electronic form and access is restricted to faculty and students :/
Restricted science.
Oh, America...How I love thee.
It's not just America. And it's just the nature of peer viewed research. Research Journals are very good at making sure their articles are only viewable by people who have the rights to view them. That is, they've paid the subscription fee for the Journal. In educational settings the colleges pay the fee but then are able to confer the ability to view articles to staff and students.
Honestly, musicians and bands could probably take a tip or two from these guys to figure out how they can protect their intellectual property. Granted, I'm sure with some heavy digging, it's probably to find pirated copies of research articles somewhere. But it's much more challenging than finding a free copy of Nickelback's latest CD.
It's not "just the nature of peer reviewed research". Otherwise, there wouldn't be any open access journals, or journals that allow you to make your articles open access by paying a small fee.
Prior to the mid twentieth century, there was no way to get access to journal articles except by finding an original print copy. Back then the cost was to pay for the printing, and nearly everyone in a particular field has subscriptions to the necessary journals, because there weren't many of them. And if you didn't have a subscription, all you had to do was send a letter to the author. Sending other people copies of your publications was common courtesy, and was necessary to the free spread of ideas in science.
Once photo-copying came along, you no longer had to get an original. This is when things started to change, because now anyone could have their own copy, and the number of copies possible became infinite. Less people had direct subscriptions, but printing was also becoming cheaper.
With the onset of document files like PDFs and the public demand for articles to be electronic, the university systems became the major distributors of science because the subscriptions became very expensive. Journals couldn't afford the printing costs otherwise, because less and less people had a subscription. This has been a bad thing for science overall. When institutions become the gatekeepers for knowledge, only a select few who are affiliated with those universities can access that knowledge.
Which is why open access science like PLoSOne are such 'Bob'-sends. Now the gatekeepers are dissolving again. Most of the journals are still print, yes, but there is a great movement away from that, and towards only having print when necessary. Anyone can, for example, read directly about the discovery of the new deep ocean vent ecosystems discovered in the Antarctic Basin. Indeed, PLoS is replacing Science and Nature as the most prestigious journal for precisely that reason: people are familiar with it, can access it, and can freely share it. This is as it should be.
And I repeat: the point of publishing science is not to make money. The point of publishing science is to share ideas. Publishing ideas in a journal so obscure that nearly no one has access to it and then claming it refutes years of research is BAD SCIENCE. It is antithetical to publishing science in the first place. You can't compare it to literature or music, because scientific information is meant to be shared. It's meant to be used over and over with the only repayment being proper attribution. It gets written into other papers, books, talked about publicly, in schools and university, on the streets, shared at professional meetings, torn to shreds by other researchers and altered to discover new things.
HAH! I just realized that scientific information is under a Creative Commons license, whether the publishers want to believe it or not.
Okay, perhaps I put it crudely but that was what I was getting at. Direct access to original peer-reviewed research. It's tough if you aren't a college student/employee or if you don't want to shell out some considerable bucks for access. So we are left with news stories which offer short summaries of research but really don't give you enough information for critical assessments of the work.
Though it's a little better than it was now with things like Google Scholar where you can refine searches to freely available articles. But that still offers a significant limitation and can impact a person's search for information and what conclusions they come to.
Quote from: RWHN Episode I: The Random Menace on January 08, 2012, 02:09:13 PM
Okay, perhaps I put it crudely but that was what I was getting at. Direct access to original peer-reviewed research. It's tough if you aren't a college student/employee or if you don't want to shell out some considerable bucks for access. So we are left with news stories which offer short summaries of research but really don't give you enough information for critical assessments of the work.
Though it's a little better than it was now with things like Google Scholar where you can refine searches to freely available articles. But that still offers a significant limitation and can impact a person's search for information and what conclusions they come to.
I've never been happy with the "go search for similar articles" loophole, because if I want general information about a topic, I'll use a book. When I am looking for a journal article, I am searching because it holds very specific information that was not ever published anywhere else. I am looking for details. Since journal articles are supposed to be original research with new ideas or information, a similar article is probably not going to hold the bit of information I am looking for. This is especially true in Natural History research. If I want the type description of a particular species of insect, there is only one paper that holds that information, and if I can't get that paper I probably will be unable to get that information.
Yeah, it's pretty much the same situation in social sciences, and it can be very frustrating at times.
It was always my understanding that "peer review" meant that you published an article, and everyone else got to take a crack at it via independent confirmation. If you're right, then it's been tested. If you're pulling a Fleischman & Pons, you get slapped down. If you're mistaken, it gets pointed out.
I can understand the need for "gatekeepers", but if being published in a peer-reviewed journal now implies that the idea is accepted, then it serves no purpose.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 08, 2012, 02:37:45 PM
It was always my understanding that "peer review" meant that you published an article, and everyone else got to take a crack at it via independent confirmation. If you're right, then it's been tested. If you're pulling a Fleischman & Pons, you get slapped down. If you're mistaken, it gets pointed out.
I can understand the need for "gatekeepers", but if being published in a peer-reviewed journal now implies that the idea is accepted, then it serves no purpose.
There are two types of peer review: pre-publication and post-publication.
Pre-publication peer review is formal and supposed to weed out the crap, check the logic, make sure it's readable, and improve the paper before publication. Some people will send all their papers to Nature and Science, for example, knowing that they will get rejected. Then move to the next highest journal in terms of prestige. By the time they get to a journal that will accept the paper, the article is significantly improved due to the comments from reviewers.
While pre-publication review refines the paper, post publication review determines whether it is right or wrong beyond the simple checking of logic. Not only that, but the informal discussion of post-publication review (which is, incidentally, what we are doing in this thread) determines an article's significance.
In the case of the AIDS refutation article, it shouldn't have been published. It's logic and premise are so faulty and outdated that it should have been outright rejected. Lest we all waste our time reading articles providing "evidence" for young earth creationism or pangenesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangenesis), or reinventions of calculus (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2010/12/07/ncbi-rofl-clueless-doctor-sleeps-through-math-class-reinvents-calculus-and-names-it-after-herself/).
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 06, 2012, 06:00:48 PMQuote from: Areola Shinerbock on January 06, 2012, 05:51:32 PMKai- simmons only has it in electronic form and access is restricted to faculty and students :/
Restricted science.
Oh, America...How I love thee.
This is a world-wide thing, actually.
The scientific community doesn't make a big stink about it, because as long as they're doing science, most of the time they're accessing these journals and papers from a university network, which automatically lets you in--when a university subscribes to a major journal they just add the university's IP block to a whitelist.
You don't realize how much papers actually are completely inaccessible to the Muggles until you leave uni, at which point you don't run into it as a problem as often anymore, for lack of doing much research.
I think the arena is important. If we are just talking within the scientific community, or, the part of the scientific community interested in the particular area of science, that's one game. But then you have the arena of the general public and public policy. And I think we've seen the recent anti-intellectual shift in mainstream America over the past few years.
So I'm not so sure it really is that much of a given that if something is published in a peer-review jounal that the idea is accepted. Maybe within a specific sector of science, but then the question must be asked, does that even matter?
I think another point, and maybe this is more true in social sciences, but many peer-reviewed work really represents baby steps in terms of accepting and adopting an idea. That is, many research projects will kind of answer the research question, but will often raise several other questions that need to be examined further.
Incidentally, I'm reading the January issue of Annals of the Entomological Society of America, and the first article is a letter to the editor concerning a claim in a previous article that those authors were the first to investigate a particular issue in leaf cutting ants. The letter is about how they weren't the first people to investigate this, and instead of demanding a correction built upon the research by both groups. It was very classy.
Also, a little less than one third of the articles in this issue are labeled as open access. The authors have paid for them to be freely available. The only reason I can't link to it right now is that they don't go up online until a while after the print is sent out.
Quote from: RWHN Episode I: The Random Menace on January 08, 2012, 04:48:12 PM
I think the arena is important. If we are just talking within the scientific community, or, the part of the scientific community interested in the particular area of science, that's one game. But then you have the arena of the general public and public policy. And I think we've seen the recent anti-intellectual shift in mainstream America over the past few years.
So I'm not so sure it really is that much of a given that if something is published in a peer-review jounal that the idea is accepted. Maybe within a specific sector of science, but then the question must be asked, does that even matter?
I think another point, and maybe this is more true in social sciences, but many peer-reviewed work really represents baby steps in terms of accepting and adopting an idea. That is, many research projects will kind of answer the research question, but will often raise several other questions that need to be examined further.
Any good paper should raise questions in the conclusions that other researchers can take and run with.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 08, 2012, 02:37:45 PMIt was always my understanding that "peer review" meant that you published an article, and everyone else got to take a crack at it via independent confirmation. If you're right, then it's been tested. If you're pulling a Fleischman & Pons, you get slapped down. If you're mistaken, it gets pointed out.
I can understand the need for "gatekeepers", but if being published in a peer-reviewed journal now implies that the idea is accepted, then it serves no purpose.
They're just supposed to maintain some measure of scientific quality, in a sense. Being published in a peer-reviewed journal
should mean the logic is sound, the tone is factual, and it's not deliberately ignoring most of the other published research on the topic.
With that, you can assume the conclusion at least has
some merit, although that doesn't mean it's accepted as fact, and it can still be picked apart or refuted by new research.
Thing is, peer-reviewed publications are also getting cited by other research papers, so yes it is necessary that the peer-review process guarantees at least some level of accuracy.
In this case, that obviously failed.
Which brings me to Nigel's "career suicide" remark. I wonder, is peer-review anonymous? Could we find out who approved this poop?
And one more remark about papers being or not being freely available to the public, I was going to elaborate on that but Kai already said everything I wanted to say, except to point out that if, as a Muggle, you want to order just a single publication, that's 2-10 pages or so, expect to pay about $30 for it. That's ridiculous, because the journals don't make that kind of costs, they don't even pay commission for the content (because getting published is reward of its own--researcher is more likely to get funding), there's a minor cost of printing, and I dunno what the peer-reviewing costs, but it can't be that much. Especially not when you consider what universities all over the world must already be paying to get on the blanket access IP whitelist.
Which brings me to Kai's remark about Creative Commons, I don't understand what you mean? Which scientific information is licensed as CC? (also, which particular CC version?) Surely not all of it. Most often the copyright automatically defers to the university or faculty.
Additionally, I wrote this as my own very nitpicky review of that paper this afternoon when I was offline, it's kind of late to the party but here it is anyway:
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on January 08, 2012, 01:52:54 AMAlso, 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.
That should have been refused for publications on stylistic reasons
alone!
For those that didn't click, the (partial) table sort of looks like this:
| Year |
| Population x103 |
| 1980 | 29,300 |
| 1981 | 30,200 |
| 1982 | 31,100 |
| 1983 | 32,100 |
| 1984 | 33,200 |
| 1985 | 34,300 |
| 1986 | 35,100 |
| ... | ... |
| 2004 | 47,000 |
| ... | ... |
As you see, every population figure ends with two zeros. If I were to take this table at face value, I'd have to assume this was some sort of
amazing coincidence, since the usage of scientific notation (that's what you call the x10
3 stuff) indicates that you're paying attention to the number of significant digits in your data.
Except that they're not. Because probably the zeros mean the numbers are only significant up to three digits. Which means whoever reviewed this should have sent it back after simply paging it through with a note "I'm going to stop reading now, please fix your article in accordance with generally accepted scientific writing style, so's your tables look like this:"
| Year |
| Population x106 |
| 1980 | 29.3 |
| 1981 | 30.2 |
| 1982 | 31.1 |
| 1983 | 32.1 |
| 1984 | 33.2 |
| 1985 | 34.3 |
| 1986 | 35.1 |
| ... | ... |
| 2004 | 47.0 |
| ... | ... |
Why is this important? Well because you can't just look at the number of trailing zeroes to determine the number of significant digits. That's why I included 2004 there, as an example. Because I don't suppose they suddenly measured a whole degree of magnitude less accurate that year, it's probably that the number just happened to end in a zero.
There's nothing in the original table that indicates this. Except for the assumption "well it would be an amazing coincidence if it was significant up to, say, four digits that all just happen to end in a zero", which is of course a very reasonable assumption, but it's incredibly sloppy to leave it up to the reader to have to make it.
As an added bonus, shifting the decimal point like this makes the table x10
6, which is millions of people, a convenient and familiar unit of magnitude when dealing with human population sizes.
And that's
before the reviewer would have to deal with the actual content of the article, which is so full of opinionated bullshit, the only thing that makes it seem "scientific" is the way it's typeset. It would have a better place as an opinion piece in some pseudo-intellectual conservative magazine.
Proper scientific style and tone of writing are both perfectly fine reasons to reject a paper for publication. By tone of writing I mean the passive-aggressive "quoted" words when referring to other research and loaded language, scientific publication needs to be objective and clear. That doesn't mean "dry" or "boring", it just means that if you want to discredit something you state it in a factual manner.
Quote from: Triple Zero on January 08, 2012, 05:08:01 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 08, 2012, 02:37:45 PMIt was always my understanding that "peer review" meant that you published an article, and everyone else got to take a crack at it via independent confirmation. If you're right, then it's been tested. If you're pulling a Fleischman & Pons, you get slapped down. If you're mistaken, it gets pointed out.
I can understand the need for "gatekeepers", but if being published in a peer-reviewed journal now implies that the idea is accepted, then it serves no purpose.
They're just supposed to maintain some measure of scientific quality, in a sense. Being published in a peer-reviewed journal should mean the logic is sound, the tone is factual, and it's not deliberately ignoring most of the other published research on the topic.
With that, you can assume the conclusion at least has some merit, although that doesn't mean it's accepted as fact, and it can still be picked apart or refuted by new research.
Thing is, peer-reviewed publications are also getting cited by other research papers, so yes it is necessary that the peer-review process guarantees at least some level of accuracy.
In this case, that obviously failed.
Which brings me to Nigel's "career suicide" remark. I wonder, is peer-review anonymous? Could we find out who approved this poop?
And one more remark about papers being or not being freely available to the public, I was going to elaborate on that but Kai already said everything I wanted to say, except to point out that if, as a Muggle, you want to order just a single publication, that's 2-10 pages or so, expect to pay about $30 for it. That's ridiculous, because the journals don't make that kind of costs, they don't even pay commission for the content (because getting published is reward of its own--researcher is more likely to get funding), there's a minor cost of printing, and I dunno what the peer-reviewing costs, but it can't be that much. Especially not when you consider what universities all over the world must already be paying to get on the blanket access IP whitelist.
Which brings me to Kai's remark about Creative Commons, I don't understand what you mean? Which scientific information is licensed as CC? (also, which particular CC version?) Surely not all of it. Most often the copyright automatically defers to the university or faculty.
We know who peer reviewed this article because the reviewers made themselves public in the press release in the opening link. Pre-publication review (except in the case of the editor) is always anonymous unless the reviewers wish to reveal their identity. Though in many cases you generally have some idea who would be reviewing your paper because you know the experts in your field, and the editor usually asks for the names and addresses of potential reviewers when you first send the manuscript.
Peer review is free in the sense that no one gets paid for it. It is expected that, if you are a scientist and you publish papers, eventually you will be asked to pre-pub review someone's article. The really big time experts get asked to review all the time. You are of course allowed to decline, but if you do, the editors of that journal may not be interested in publishing your articles in the future. It's a lot like jury duty. No one really wants to do it, but the benefits are the reason for the obligation.
I meant it in a figurative sense. There are some journals which explicitly state they are creative commons, but due to the nature of scientific information and research, and to copyright law in terms of published ideas and data (and to making copies for research and individual use), all scientific information tends to be used like a CC non-commercial attribution derivative-allowed license with few exceptions. Those being illustrations and photographs.
Quote from: Triple Zero on January 08, 2012, 05:09:01 PM
Additionally, I wrote this as my own very nitpicky review of that paper this afternoon when I was offline, it's kind of late to the party but here it is anyway:
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on January 08, 2012, 01:52:54 AMAlso, 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.
That should have been refused for publications on stylistic reasons alone!
For those that didn't click, the (partial) table sort of looks like this:
| Year |
| Population x103 |
| 1980 | 29,300 |
| 1981 | 30,200 |
| 1982 | 31,100 |
| 1983 | 32,100 |
| 1984 | 33,200 |
| 1985 | 34,300 |
| 1986 | 35,100 |
| ... | ... |
| 2004 | 47,000 |
| ... | ... |
As you see, every population figure ends with two zeros. If I were to take this table at face value, I'd have to assume this was some sort of amazing coincidence, since the usage of scientific notation (that's what you call the x103 stuff) indicates that you're paying attention to the number of significant digits in your data.
Except that they're not. Because probably the zeros mean the numbers are only significant up to three digits. Which means whoever reviewed this should have sent it back after simply paging it through with a note "I'm going to stop reading now, please fix your article in accordance with generally accepted scientific writing style, so's your tables look like this:"
| Year |
| Population x106 |
| 1980 | 29.3 |
| 1981 | 30.2 |
| 1982 | 31.1 |
| 1983 | 32.1 |
| 1984 | 33.2 |
| 1985 | 34.3 |
| 1986 | 35.1 |
| ... | ... |
| 2004 | 47.0 |
| ... | ... |
Why is this important? Well because you can't just look at the number of trailing zeroes to determine the number of significant digits. That's why I included 2004 there, as an example. Because I don't suppose they suddenly measured a whole degree of magnitude less accurate that year, it's probably that the number just happened to end in a zero.
There's nothing in the original table that indicates this. Except for the assumption "well it would be an amazing coincidence if it was significant up to, say, four digits that all just happen to end in a zero", which is of course a very reasonable assumption, but it's incredibly sloppy to leave it up to the reader to have to make it.
As an added bonus, shifting the decimal point like this makes the table x106, which is millions of people, a convenient and familiar unit of magnitude when dealing with human population sizes.
And that's before the reviewer would have to deal with the actual content of the article, which is so full of opinionated bullshit, the only thing that makes it seem "scientific" is the way it's typeset. It would have a better place as an opinion piece in some pseudo-intellectual conservative magazine.
Proper scientific style and tone of writing are both perfectly fine reasons to reject a paper for publication. By tone of writing I mean the passive-aggressive "quoted" words when referring to other research and loaded language, scientific publication needs to be objective and clear. That doesn't mean "dry" or "boring", it just means that if you want to discredit something you state it in a factual manner.
Thanks Zero! I knew there was something very strange and wrong about those tables. I also thought that a title with 'in millions' (or in your case, 10
6) with the statistics in decimal millions would have been so much more straightforward, but I did not consider significant figures.
And yeah, the way Duesberg referred to the Chigwedere et al. article was an intentional jab.
Quote from: Duesberg 2011Recently, however, a new study by Chigwedere et al. from Harvard University "estimated" that from 2000 to 2005 1.8 million South Africans were killed by HIV at a steady rate of 300,000 per year (Chigwedere et al., 2008). These estimates were based on information from the World Health Organization (WHO) (World Health Organization, UNAIDS, UNICEF, 2008a). Chigwedere et al. (2008) further claimed, based on "modeling" the South African epidemic, that anti-HIV drugs could have prevented at least 330,000 of those 1.8 million estimated deaths.
Not only are the statistics altered (the 2008 paper estimated 340 thousand deaths in South Africa between 2000 and 2005, not that many a year), the quotes were sarcastic jabs meant to imply that they thought the paper's methods were crap without actually showing that they were crap.
*sigh*
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/gop-senator-virtually-impossible-for-heterosexuals-to-contract-aids/politics/2012/01/26/33697
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/afa-hiv-to-aids-link-a-scam-and-people-with-aids-reap-what-they-sow/politics/2012/01/18/33356
This is why bad science needs to be stopped.
That second link is living evidence of why it is dangerous and unethical to publish bad science, to allow it to be published, or to give it any time in the spotlight. It has nothing to do with controversial ideas, and everything to do with public safety.
I don't suppose Kary Mullis has come around on any of his outlandish theories yet, has he?
How can someone that smart be that dumb?
Quote from: Cramulus on January 27, 2012, 04:16:05 PM
*sigh*
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/gop-senator-virtually-impossible-for-heterosexuals-to-contract-aids/politics/2012/01/26/33697
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/afa-hiv-to-aids-link-a-scam-and-people-with-aids-reap-what-they-sow/politics/2012/01/18/33356
This is why bad science needs to be stopped.
What a complete and utter lunatic Campfield is.
One positive benefit of it is that it seems to be creating a schism among anti-gay bigots. I was starting to wonder whether any of these guys had a line they wouldn't cross.
Quote from: Emo Howard on January 27, 2012, 08:36:48 PM
I don't suppose Kary Mullis has come around on any of his outlandish theories yet, has he?
How can someone that smart be that dumb?
Example: Lynn Margulis.
Is there some sort of economic rationale that argues for the current fees required to access peer-reviewed articles?
Who profits the most off of these fees?
The journals?
The publishers. Example: Elsevier. And they are catching heavy flack right now (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/01/death_to_elsevier.php).
In news related to the OP, one of IJAE editors has resigned over this paper (http://www.nature.com/news/paper-denying-hiv-aids-link-sparks-resignation-1.9926).
QuoteKlaudia Brix, a cell biologist at Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany, says that she tendered her resignation from the board of the Italian Journal of Anatomy and Embryology (IJAE) because she felt that it was important for a journal to function within its scientific "scope".
Others on the 13-member board have also raised concerns. Hanne Mikkelsen, associate professor of molecular medicine at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, says that she too is considering resigning her position.
ETA: When journals self publish, their societies tend to do well enough off the membership and subscription fees. Publishing print is expensive when the publisher's prices are exorbitant.
You know what? We are awesome.
QuoteThis version, like the original, attempts to challenge estimates of HIV–AIDS death-tolls in South Africa put forward in a study3 led by AIDS epidemiologist Max Essex of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, and questions the effectiveness of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs. "There is no evidence for a new fatal HIV-AIDS epidemic in Africa," write the authors. "We deduce...that HIV is not a new killer virus," they add, and propose a "reevaluation of the HIV–AIDS hypothesis".
But AIDS researchers consulted by Nature say that the new paper uses the same arguments and data as the original version. Both papers, in their view, use flawed methods and selective evidence, they say. Given the body of available evidence, it is "ridiculous" to deny the link between HIV and AIDS, says Essex.
The previous referee reports — obtained by Nature — apply to the new paper "in almost their entirety", at least as far as the demographic anaylsis is concerned says Ian Timaeus, a professor of demography at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who studies the impact of the HIV–AIDS epidemic in South Africa.
One problem that remains unaddressed in the new paper, says Timaeus, is the use of estimates of AIDS deaths in South Africa based on cause-of-death data, which are notoriously unreliable. Another is the claim that South Africa's population is increasing, so large numbers of people cannot be dying of HIV–AIDS, an argument a previous reviewer described as "completely fatuous". There is no reason why South Africa's population can't grow in the presence of AIDS given, for example, its moderately high birth rate and fairly low infant and child mortality from other causes, Timaeus says.
We figured out all of this on our own, with minimal knowledge of the field. Pat yourselves on the back, people, YOU are how peer review should work. I broke into smile when I saw the bolded lines.
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on January 31, 2012, 11:29:30 PM
The publishers. Example: Elsevier. And they are catching heavy flack right now (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/01/death_to_elsevier.php).
In news related to the OP, one of IJAE editors has resigned over this paper (http://www.nature.com/news/paper-denying-hiv-aids-link-sparks-resignation-1.9926).
QuoteKlaudia Brix, a cell biologist at Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany, says that she tendered her resignation from the board of the Italian Journal of Anatomy and Embryology (IJAE) because she felt that it was important for a journal to function within its scientific "scope".
Others on the 13-member board have also raised concerns. Hanne Mikkelsen, associate professor of molecular medicine at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, says that she too is considering resigning her position.
ETA: When journals self publish, their societies tend to do well enough off the membership and subscription fees. Publishing print is expensive when the publisher's prices are exorbitant.
I am unsurprised about the resignation, and would expect that most scientists will decline to review submissions in the future. If they published that piece of junk in order to increase their visibility, they certainly accomplished that, if they are OK with "visibility" = "on a lot of shit lists".
I don't see any reason they should have expected publishing bad science to get them any more subscriptions. There is little or no reason for any university to pay for a journal that publishes shoddy and unscientific work.
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on January 31, 2012, 11:29:30 PM
The publishers. Example: Elsevier. And they are catching heavy flack right now (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/01/death_to_elsevier.php).
ETA: When journals self publish, their societies tend to do well enough off the membership and subscription fees. Publishing print is expensive when the publisher's prices are exorbitant.
Thanks for the info, Kai.
I've only read one of those links so far, but I'm completely infuriated and disgusted.
How long has it been this way?
Peer review is, like a wrench, a tool. You can use it for all sorts of things, but if you're a shrieking ape, you mostly use it to hit things.
Quote from: Nigel on February 01, 2012, 03:26:30 AM
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on January 31, 2012, 11:29:30 PM
The publishers. Example: Elsevier. And they are catching heavy flack right now (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/01/death_to_elsevier.php).
In news related to the OP, one of IJAE editors has resigned over this paper (http://www.nature.com/news/paper-denying-hiv-aids-link-sparks-resignation-1.9926).
QuoteKlaudia Brix, a cell biologist at Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany, says that she tendered her resignation from the board of the Italian Journal of Anatomy and Embryology (IJAE) because she felt that it was important for a journal to function within its scientific "scope".
Others on the 13-member board have also raised concerns. Hanne Mikkelsen, associate professor of molecular medicine at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, says that she too is considering resigning her position.
ETA: When journals self publish, their societies tend to do well enough off the membership and subscription fees. Publishing print is expensive when the publisher's prices are exorbitant.
I am unsurprised about the resignation, and would expect that most scientists will decline to review submissions in the future. If they published that piece of junk in order to increase their visibility, they certainly accomplished that, if they are OK with "visibility" = "on a lot of shit lists".
I don't see any reason they should have expected publishing bad science to get them any more subscriptions. There is little or no reason for any university to pay for a journal that publishes shoddy and unscientific work.
Or for people to join a society that publishes such shill in their journal.
The strength of peer review is obviously based on the strength of community scrutiny. It isn't effective if the readership can't think critically.
Quote from: Net on February 01, 2012, 06:51:05 AM
Quote from: ZL 'Kai' Burington, M.S. on January 31, 2012, 11:29:30 PM
The publishers. Example: Elsevier. And they are catching heavy flack right now (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/01/death_to_elsevier.php).
ETA: When journals self publish, their societies tend to do well enough off the membership and subscription fees. Publishing print is expensive when the publisher's prices are exorbitant.
Thanks for the info, Kai.
I've only read one of those links so far, but I'm completely infuriated and disgusted.
How long has it been this way?
Probably since printing became more expensive. In the 1920s, it was easy enough for journals to use small publishers because the subscription rates were low, and the articles were mostly text with very few images. The few images that were there, were in black and white. As design became more fancy and subscription rates increased, there was a need for better, larger presses. Now, a small publisher could probably not afford to make a journal issue given the subscription prices and the ability of larger publishers. This is even worse if journals aren't associated with a scientific society of some kind, because then the only oversight is A) the Editors and B) the publisher.
The best market example of how print journals should be published is Freshwater Science (http://www.freshwater-science.org/Journal.aspx), published by the Society for Freshwater Science. Yes, the print versions are quite expensive, but if you have membership you have free access to pdfs of every article from every volume. Whenever a journal goes open access, or is self published by a society, you can expect at least that the publishing practices will not be like Elsevier.
Quote from: Jasper on February 01, 2012, 06:37:34 PM
Peer review is, like a wrench, a tool. You can use it for all sorts of things, but if you're a shrieking ape, you mostly use it to hit things.
:cheers:
UK chemist on Elsevier's ban on textmining
http://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2011/11/25/the-scandal-of-publisher-forbidden-textmining-the-vision-denied/
Interesting read (you don't actually need to understand chemistry)
Quote from: Triple Zero on February 02, 2012, 10:20:54 PM
UK chemist on Elsevier's ban on textmining
http://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2011/11/25/the-scandal-of-publisher-forbidden-textmining-the-vision-denied/
Interesting read (you don't actually need to understand chemistry)
Elsevier can go to hell. No, I'm serious. They do not, as a publisher of scientific journals, actually understand how science articles are used by scientists.
Some possibly good news on the "free scientific information" front.
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/02/lawmakers-reintroduce-public-access.html?ref=hp (http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/02/lawmakers-reintroduce-public-access.html?ref=hp)
Quote
Lawmakers yesterday introduced a proposal to make scientific papers funded with taxpayer money available for free on the Internet. The bill adds to a recent flurry of debate about so-called public access policies.
The Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), which has identical versions in the House of Representatives and the Senate, would expand to other research agencies the National Institutes of Health's (NIH's) 4-year-old policy requiring investigators it funds to submit copies of their peer-reviewed manuscripts for posting in a public database. The bill would also set at 6 months the length of time an agency can wait to make the paper public after it appears in a journal (NIH's current policy is 12 months).
I think this is only fair and right. If the public pays for research through taxes, that research should be freely available to read.
I agree. Good to see some action on that.
Agreed. It would also be easier for a layman to go and see what the paper says more specifically rather than a poorly written overview in the news. If its jargony though it might be hard to understand. But it would i think help the average persons scientific literacy and if some asshat says something retarded about it in the news comments you can go "read the fucking paper or stfu."
The thing about scientific research is that if people think they have scientific evidence on their side, they aren't actually going to go read it.
Here's an example. This couple who has a child, with one parent having two children from previous relationships, are having an argument on, oh I dunno, potty training. One of them, the one that has two much older children, says that children should be potty trained by two. The other says "Are you high?" and posits that two is when you start them on it and four and change is probably the upper limit. When one of them looks for a study on it, and finds research that supports their argument and refutes the other's, the other ends up saying that they are both right and won't read anything.
And that's the problem. If people aren't already inclined to know facts, actual facts, then they won't go looking for it even if it would support some crackpot jibberish they think they are right about.
Have been a bit busy lately and not really following the news, so, from an uninformed and conspiratorial perspective, this is what went through my mind: there's that whole contraception debacle going on in the states as healthcare vs. Catholic church. Italy published the paper per force of the church to compromise the strength of arguments advocating contraception. Lending credence to otherwise untenable perspectives artificially polarizes the argument. The scary side is then the obverse - instead of consolidating a positive resolution, what if some were to benefit from the possible confusion? This is why I don't make time anymore for the news - it just channels issues to keep me from actually thinking. I mean really, is the causal link between HIV and aids really what we need to be arguing about? Of course that was going to be provocative... That's just not right. :?
Quote from: LuciferX on February 15, 2012, 02:13:25 AM
Have been a bit busy lately and not really following the news, so, from an uninformed and conspiratorial perspective, this is what went through my mind: there's that whole contraception debacle going on in the states as healthcare vs. Catholic church. Italy published the paper per force of the church to compromise the strength of arguments advocating contraception. Lending credence to otherwise untenable perspectives artificially polarizes the argument. The scary side is then the obverse - instead of consolidating a positive resolution, what if some were to benefit from the possible confusion? This is why I don't make time anymore for the news - it just channels issues to keep me from actually thinking. I mean really, is the causal link between HIV and aids really what we need to be arguing about? Of course that was going to be provocative... That's just not right. :?
No, it really isn't something we need to be arguing about. What we need to be arguing about, or rather, discussing, is a vaccine for HIV and AIDS treatment methods.
Id est, cures and prevention methods instead of the already well supported cause.
Apart from what already has been said - the one benefit I can think of is that it may challenge people's though about the mechanism involved in the development of HIV so that new angles and vectors are investigated for prevention and cure. I guess the one thing I gained was thinking about the possibility of a vaccine as a result of not exclusively linking HIV to aids, however, that's just misinformation covering misinformation...
Quote from: LuciferX on February 15, 2012, 02:59:44 AM
Apart from what already has been said - the one benefit I can think of is that it may challenge people's though about the mechanism involved in the development of HIV so that new angles and vectors are investigated for prevention and cure. I guess the one thing I gained was thinking about the possibility of a vaccine as a result of not exclusively linking HIV to aids, however, that's just misinformation covering misinformation...
Or, an analysis of experimental systems over here from Stanford
http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php/topic,31712.0.html (http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php/topic,31712.0.html)
Quote from: LuciferX on February 18, 2012, 11:19:17 PM
Quote from: LuciferX on February 15, 2012, 02:59:44 AM
Apart from what already has been said - the one benefit I can think of is that it may challenge people's though about the mechanism involved in the development of HIV so that new angles and vectors are investigated for prevention and cure. I guess the one thing I gained was thinking about the possibility of a vaccine as a result of not exclusively linking HIV to aids, however, that's just misinformation covering misinformation...
Or, an analysis of experimental systems over here from Stanford
http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php/topic,31712.0.html (http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php/topic,31712.0.html)
It won't challenge people's thoughts though. What it has done is enable peoples already held arguments. If you believed that AIDS is a result of HIV infection, the mere presence of an AIDS-denialist paper will tend to cause that belief to be held even more strongly, and if you believe that there is no connection, then the paper will enhance your belief there is no connection. This is regardless of the refutation; THAT will actually cause the above beliefs to strengthen, especially the AIDS denial belief. Changing one's mind rather than just gliding on cognitive bias takes great awareness and effort.
Further happenings related to this paper: One of the authors of the Duesberg paper is under academic investigation for teaching AIDS denialist doctrine to students. http://www.nature.com/news/inquiry-launched-over-aids-contrarian-s-teaching-1.10250
lime maroon 5:30:30