Posts Tagged ‘Uncategorized’
Wired Left Out A Few Details in “Oppressed Scientist” Story
Its a bit over a year old now, but I happened to run across this Wired story from December 2003 with a familiar them — evil corporations are trying to punish the heroic researchers who expose the inherent problems with biotechnology. But the Wired News story was little more than a fairy tale, sustained by keeping its audience in ignorance.
Consider, for example, one of the beleaguered researchers featured by Wired,
Arpad Pusztai encountered a similar situation with a study he performed on genetically modified potatoes.
“We found that when we are feeding these (young) rats with genetically modified potatoes, their immune system … was not developing so well,” Pusztai said. “Their organs, their guts, their pancreas (and) their liver were not developing as well as the ones which had been fed on the parent line non-genetically modified potatoes. Quite truly I tell you I was very perplexed.”
He “naively” published his work, he said. He was unprepared for the vortex into which the paper threw him.
“I never thought that as a conventional scientist I would have reporters parking and living on my driveway to try to get my views on anything,” he said. “I’m a very polite and humble person and I couldn’t really understand how this happened until somebody explained to me that what I put my foot in was a multibillion-dollar business.”
That is simply an unbelievably inept summary of Pusztai’s story
Pustzai first came to prominence after he published a study in The Lancet claiming that rats who were fed genetically modified potatoes experienced immune system changes. The Lancet published the study over the objections of its own referees assigned to conduct a peer review of Pustzai’s research. A number of those referees, who are usually semi-anonymous, went public with their objections to the Lancet’s publication. Professor John Pickett, for example, who refereed Pustzai’s paper for The Lancet, told the BBC,
Since I understand that a number of us were very, very critical of the work and yet the journal is going to go ahead and publish this information with its conclusions, then we have decided to speak out.
If this work had been part of a student’s study, then the student would have failed whatever examination he was contributing the work for.
An independent group of six toxicologists appointed by the UK’s Royal Society concluded that Pusztai’s research was fundamentally flawed. Its report said,
We found no convincing evidence of adverse affects from GM potatoes.
Where the data seemed to show slight differences between rats fed predominantly on GM and on non-GM potatoes, the difference were uninterpretable because of the technical limitations of the experiment and the incorrect use of statistical tests.
Too often, the media’s depiction of scientific controversies is like this Wired News article — a one-sided fairy tale that leaves out key information that the reader needs to evaluate the claims being made.
Sources:
Professor, Biotech Butt Heads. Kristen Philipkoski, Wired News, December 13, 2003.
GM controversy intensifies . The BBC, October 15, 1999.
Genetics scientist suspended . The BBC, August 12, 1998.
Lancet defies GM study advice. The BBC, October 15, 1999.
GM food study was flawed. The BBC, May 18, 1999.
Tags: Uncategorized
Just How Accurate Are Third World HIV Estimates?
In January, Kenya announced that its HIV rate had fell almost in half overnight. But this was not due to any new program adopted by Kenya. Rather the government released a more accurate estimate that only 6.7 percent of people in Kenya suffer from AIDS compared to the older estimate of 15 percent.
The 6.7 percent infection rate is based on the most extensive look at AIDS in Kenya yet, and even then the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey looked at a mere 8,561 households in a country of 32 million people.
On the heels of other studies in Mali, Zambia and elsewhere that found similar overestimates, one has to wonder about the quality of data on HIV prevalence throughout the developing world.
Meanwhile UNAIDS advisor Catherine Hankins took the bizarre view that there was, in fact, no overestimation of HIV rates,
We cannot say that we have overestimated HIV rates in Africa. All figures for HIV prevalence in Africa are estimates.
Yes, but I don’t remember UNAIDS ever warning publicity that estimates may be off by a factor of two or more. Such large discrepancies could potentially cause donor nations to question the reliability of UNAIDS assessments of the epidemic.
Source:
Study cuts Kenyan HIV estimates. The BBC, January 9, 2004.
Tags: Uncategorized
Man’s Conviction Overturned After FBI Agent’s False Testimony Revealed
In 1992 Anthony Bragdon was convicted of assault with intent to rape and sentenced to 30 years in jail. Bragdon’s conviction was recently reversed by a Washington D.C. Superior Court that found an FBI expert on fiber and hair evidence had given false testimony at Bragdon’s trial.
FBI Agent Michael Malone’s supervisors had been warned by a whistleblower three years prior to his testimony in Bragdon’s case that Malone may have given false testimony in a previous case, but that warning went unheeded.
In Bragdon’s case, the only scientific evidence linking Bragdon to the crime was fibers that were carpet fibers found on the body of the victim. Malone testified in court that the fibers were consistent with the carpet found in Malone’s apartment.
In 1997, an internal Department of Justice investigation concluded that Malone’s testimony to that effect was false and recommended he be disciplined. Instead Malone was allowed to retire in 1999. Not until 2001 did the government notify Bragdon’s lawyers of the problems with Malone’s testimony.
The major problem with Malone’s testimony is that he never bothered to conduct the tests that would have determined if the carpet fibers found on the woman’s clothing were the same as those from Bragdon’s apartment. In addition, Malone claimed that the type of fiber found on the woman’s clothing could only come from a carpet fiber, which was not true, and he failed to disclose that he found other fibers on the woman’s clothing that did not match the carpet in Bragdon’s apartment.
The National Whistleblower Center claims that problems like this could plague as many as 3,000 criminal cases at which FBI agents provided expert testimony.
Source:
Conviction tossed on FBI lab misconduct. Associated Press, May 28, 2007.
DOJ to Open its Brady Task Force Files Overturned Conviction Brings New Questions to Light. Press Release, June 5, 2003, National Whistleblower Center.
Tags: Uncategorized
Are the Odds of an Apocalypse 50/50?
Proving that it’s not just nutcase religious types who are wont to give firm predictions about the end of the world, British astronomer Martin Rees received a lot of credulous news coverage for his claim that human species only has a 50 percent chance of surviving the next 100 years. Conveniently, should such an apocalypse strike it will not threaten sales of Rees’ new book our Final Hour.
Rees’ book appears to be a rehashed version of every other “technology is going to kill us all” book. In the 1960s and 1970s the theme was that previous technologies were somewhat benign, but recombinant DNA technology was a serious threat that could endanger life as we know it. Now the watchword is that recombinant DNA may not have been all it was cracked up to be as a method of doomsday, but nanotechnology and genetic engineer really are the real deal.
As Clive Cookson put it in a review of Our Final Hour,
The flaw in this book, however, is easy to identify and it is a surprising one for an eminent scientist known for his intellectual rigour. Rees outlines a series of Doomsday scenarios, all quite unlikely, and he makes little effort to quantify their probabilities and none to bring them together into an overall risk estimate. His assertion that human civilisation has only a 50 per cent chance of surviving into the 21st century is plucked out of the air without justification.
Another problem is that Rees emphasises the growing vulnerability of humanity to scientific progress, while neglecting the increasing resilience of new technologies such as the Internet. Biotechnology will make it easier to produce deadly germs but at the same time it will offer a huge range of diagnostic and therapeutic defences against them.
Of course adding such provisos doesn’t do as much for book sales as does yelling that the sky is falling.
Sources:
British scientist puts odds for apocalypse at 50-50. Deena Beasley, Reuters, June 9, 2003.
Apocalypse, now? Clive Cookson, The Financial Times (London), May 3, 2003.
Tags: Uncategorized
Ronald Bailey on Depleted Uranium
Ronald Bailey wrote an interesting survey back in March of research on depleted uranium. As Bailey notes, studies from a wide variety of sources fail to find any negative health consequences from depleted uranium despite the anti-DU rhetoric from environmentalists and some on the Left.
Bailey notes, for example, that the European Union looked at what would happen if someone actually ate significant amounts of deplete uranium,
According to a European Union study released in 2001, “most of the ingested DU (between 98% and 99.8%, depending on the solubility of the uranium compound) will be rapidly eliminated in the faeces.” The vast majority of any remaining uranium will be “rapidly cleared from the blood” in a few weeks. Similarly, the majority of inhaled DU dust will also be cleared via the bloodstream and kidneys. The EU report concluded that “exposure to DU could not produce any detectable health effects under realistic assumptions of the doses that would be received.”
Similarly, studies by the European Union and World Health Organization also fail to find any evidence that would back up claims by alarmists such as Helen Caldicott that the use of DU in the 1991 Iraq war constituted America’s second nuclear war. Bailey writes,
Another 2001 report to the European Parliament compared exposures to DU to those experienced by uranium miners and concluded, “The fact that there is no evidence of an association between exposures—sometimes high and lasting since the beginning of the uranium industry—and health damages such as bone cancer, lymphatic or other forms of leukemia shows that these diseases as a consequence of an uranium exposure are either not present or very exceptional.”
The World Health Organization agrees that DU is not a great health risk. Its 2003 fact sheet on the topic declares that “because DU is only weakly radioactive, very large amounts of dust (on the order of grams) would have to be inhaled for the additional risk of lung cancer to be detectable in an exposed group. Risks for other radiation-induced cancers, including leukaemia, are considered to be very much lower than for lung cancer.” Another WHO report found, “The radiological hazard is likely to be very small. No increase of leukemia or other cancers has been established following exposure to uranium or DU.”
The anti-DU rhetoric plays upon people’s fears and misconceptions about anything said to be even remotely radioactive. WHat it doesn’t have on its side is much in the way of evidence for its alarmist claims.
Source:
Nuclear genocide? Ronald Bailey, Reason, March 26, 2003.
Tags: Uncategorized
Cancer Researcher Resigns Amid Fraud Allegations
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researcher Steven Leadon resigned from his position in June amid allegations that he “fabricated and falsified findings.”
Leadon was a professor of radiation oncology and headed up Chapel Hill’s molecular radiobiology program.
In 1998 Science published research by Leadon and four other researchers claiming to show that the BRCA1 gene plays a critical role in repairing damage to DNA. Defects in the BRCA1 gene have been associated with an increased risk of breast cancer.
Leadon was the last author on the paper which Science formally withdrew after a committee at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill judged that its findings were at least in part fraudulent.
Leadon disputes this, however, saying that although the data may be incorrect, there was no fraud involved. Leadon told the Raleigh News and Observer that he is disputing the university’s finding that he fabricated any results. Leadon told The Scientist,
The pathway that we initially characterized is still a valid pathway. I think that some of the data that we had which pointed to the pathway was flawed, but fundamentally the results still stand.
Sources:
N.C. researcher resigns over allegations of fraud. Martha Waggoner, Associated Press, June 14, 2003.
Researcher Resigns Amid Fraud Allegations. HealthCentral.Com, June 14, 2003.
Repairing BRCA1 science. Peg Brickley, BiomedCentral.Com, June 18, 2003.
Tags: Uncategorized
Are Highway Fatalities on the Rise Thanks to SUVs? No
Writing for TechCentralStation, Iain Murray did an excellent job in April of pointing out some flaws in the way that the latest report from The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on traffic accidents and fatalities was covered.
As Murray notes, a lot of the coverage focused on the increase in the number of people killed while offering up SUVs as the problem. But digging deeper into the study makes one wonder what the fuss was all about.
In 2002, 42,850 people were killed in 38,356 fatal automobile accidents. This compared to 2001, when 42,116 people were killed in 37,795 fatal accidents. So the increase in traffic fatalities was only 734, or a 0.018 percent increase. Much of that was accounted for by the growth in the U.S. population which the U.S. Census Bureau estimates increased by 0.009 percent from 2001 to 2002.
The rest of the difference is likely accounted for by slight changes in driving patterns. As Murray points out, the NHTSA’s statistics show no change in the number of fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled which remained at 1.5 for both 2001 and 2002 (in contrast, in 1991 the figure was two fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled).
Injuries, Murray points out, decreased despite the slight population increase. There were only 103 injuries per 100 million vehicle miles in 2002 compared to 109 in 2001. According to Murray, injury rates have been decreasing since 1995, which is likely attributable to newer cars with more advanced safety features replacing older cars with less sophisticated safety options.
Now here’s where the statistical trickery really comes in. The NHTSA noted that a whopping 59 percent of the increase in fatalities were in accidents involving SUV’s. So of those 734 additional people killed, 434 were killed in accidents involving SUVs. But again, as Murray points out, not only as the nation’s population been increasing, but the number of SUVs has been increasing as well. A decade ago there were hardly any SUVs on the road, whereas today they are everywhere and seem to be multiplying like rabbits. As Murray writes,
There may be a safety issue with SUVs, but it is also possible that reckless drivers who would get into an accident anyway are now more likely than before to drive an SUV. It would therefore be useful to know the number of fatalities per SUV registered, but the NHTSA does not provide this information. It is also noticeable that the number of injuries sustained in SUV, pickup and van accidents declined from 861,000 to 840,000.
I wonder why the NHTSA did not deem it relevant to provide that information?
Sources:
Statistical Traffic Wreck. Iain Murray, TechCentralStation.Com, April 28, 2003.
Annual Projections of the Total Resident Population as of July 1: Middle, Lowest, Highest, and Zero International Migration Series, 1999 to 2100. U.S. Census Bureau, 2000.
Tags: Uncategorized
Latest Research on Atkins Diet
In May the New England Journal of Medicine published two new studies looking at the Atkins Diet which, oddly enough, received diametrically different spin from different news agencies.
Here’s how the Associated Press covered the new studies,
Atkins Diet Bolstered by Two New Studies
A month after Dr. Robert C. Atkins’ death, his much-ridiculed diet has received its most powerful scientific support yet: Two studies in one of medicine’s most distinguished journals show it really does help people lose weight faster without raising their cholesterol.
But here’s how Reuters covered the exact same story,
Atkins Diet May Be No Better Than Just Cutting Fat
Shunning starchy foods in favor of meat and fat helps obese people shed some weight faster than a standard low-fat diet, but over time there may not be a big difference, researchers said on Wednesday.
In reality, these two studies really did little more than affirm previous research about the Atkins Diet. Can you lose weight on the Atkins Diet? Absolutely, especially in the short term. But in the long term, as with most fad diets, people tend to give up on the diet and/or weight loss tends to stop.
The two studies tracked people on the Atkins Diet for 6 months and 12 months. In the 6 month study, people on the Atkins Diet lost 13 pounds compared to just 4 pounds for people on a low-fat diet. But in the 12 month study, there was no significant difference in total weight loss between the two groups.
On the other hand, while showing that people can lose weight on a high protein diet, this just reinforces the likelihood that what is really going on is simply that people on these diets are simply switching from high calorie high carbohydrate diets to low calorie high protein diets. The Atkins nonsense about needing to cut carbs to burn fat is simply that — nonsense.
The magic formula for losing weight remains the same — increase exercise and reduce calories.
Sources:
Atkins diet bolstered by two new studies. Associated Press, May 21, 2002.
Atkins diet may be no better than just cutting fat. Reuters, May 21, 2002.
Tags: Uncategorized
Death Rate Among Anorexia Nervosa Patients Exaggerated
A Mayo Clinic study that looked at mortality rates among patients with anorexia nervosa over a period of 60 years concluded that people diagnosed with the disorder die at the same rate as people who do not have the disorder. This contradicts both previous clinical studies as well as many commonly cited claims that the death rate for people with the disorder is extremely high.
The commonly repeated claim is that individuals with anorexia nervosa have a mortality rate that is an astounding 12 times higher than the general population. But, as an epidemiologist with the Mayo Clinic points out, that is because previous studies were generally conducted in hospital settings where individuals with the most advanced cases of the disorder would be overrepresented.
Searching medical records, the Mayo Clinic identified 208 patients who met the criteria for an anorexia nervosa diagnosis between 1935 and 1989. The researchers found that those patients had the same death rate as the general population.
Mayo Clinic epidemiologist Joseph Melton said that,
Although our data suggest that overall mortality is not increased among community patients with anorexia nervosa in general, these findings should not lead to complacency in clinical practice because deaths do occur.
Patrick Sullivan, a professor of psychiatry and genetics at the University of Carolina at Chapel Hill, wrote in an editorial accompanying the study that what it showed was that anorexia nervosa symptoms occurred along a spectrum. Those with the most severe cases — such as those requiring hospitalization — may indeed have a higher mortality rate, but it is important to make distinctions between the degree of severity of the disease rather than lumping all cases in with the most severe and claiming that anyone with the disorder has a 12 times higher mortality rate.
Source:
Death rate for eating disorder not unusual. Brad Evenson, National Post (Canada), March 12, 2003.
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The Ideology Goes On Before the Data Comes In
Sydney Smith wrote an interesting look at activists and others who complain that food and food alone is responsible for the increasing rate of obesity in America that notes they are missing a major component of obesity — lack of exercise.
As Smith points out, the data simply do not back up the claim that Americans weigh more because they are eating more — rather, it appears that Americans have simply stopped exercising as much as they used to,
The average daily caloric consumption of Americans is not far from the recommended rates of 1800 to 2200 calories a day (depending on age and sex.) On the other hand, less than ten percent of schools set aside time for physical education each day, and less than 40 percent of adults engage in enough physical activity to confer health benefits. With numbers like that, our waist lines will continue to expand, no matter what we eat.
A recent study of teenagers’ habits over the past twenty years supports this observation. Nutritionist Lisa Sutherland of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill looked at data from the CDC’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, and the Department of Agriculture’s Nationwide Food Consumption Survey, all of which have been following our national weight trends, activity trends, and food consumption trends for several years. She found that over the past twenty years, teenagers have, on average, increased their caloric intake by one percent. During that same time period, the percentage of teenagers who said they engaged in some sort of physical activity for thirty minutes a day dropped from 42 percent to 29 percent. Not surprisingly, teenage obesity over the twenty year period increased by 10 percent. The logical conclusion is that it isn’t junk food that’s making teenagers fat - it’s their lack of activity.
But the kicker is the quote that Smith digs up from Dr. Nancy Krebs, the chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ committee on nutrition about the study of teenagers. Krebs was quoted by the Associated Press as saying,
We are pretty sure they are eating too much, no matter what the data say.
Well sure. And psychics are certain that they are able to reliably predict events no matter what the data (and those horrible skeptics and debunkers) say. If you throw out a need for data and just go with the “pretty sure” standard of evidence, a lot of things just fall into place.
Source:
‘No Matter What the Data Say. Sydney Smith, TechCentralStation.Com, May 29, 2003.
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