“Peer-Reviewed” Covid Article Failures | Unfollow the #Science

Wow, some amazing news as of late. I will start out with the bad news for the cult of vaccines, then a good peer-reviewed story. Including this flashback 6-months ago (video to the right).

Here is the video description for it:

As of November 18, 2022 Retraction Watch has documented 270 peer reviewed articles about COVID-19 that have been retracted by their publishers. Articles about the unusually high retraction rate have appeared in the journal Accountability in Research and in the journal Nature. The articles about the high retraction rate suggest that lowered stringency and standards on the part of publishers and the eagerness to publish on the part of researchers may have been driving forces in the unusually high retraction rate (typically only about 4 out of 10,000 research papers are retracted).

The high rate of flawed / junk science published raises questions about the effectiveness of the peer review process which was greatly expedited to get articles published quickly.

That FLASHBACK aside, here is the latest news via DAILY CALLER on the issue:

At least 330 COVID-19-related medical papers have been retracted since the coronavirus pandemic began, oftentimes for scientific errors or ethical shortcomings, according to watchdog Retraction Watch.

Many of the papers were published in smaller, less influential publications, although a number were published in the highly-prestigious Lancet and other influential journals like Science. The topics covered in the papers ranged from alternative proposed COVID-19 treatments like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to false COVID-19 side effects.

One example of a U-turn from researchers occurred at the University of Manchester, where researchers two years ago asserted that hearing loss could be a result of COVID-19. Now, those researchers admit that was a faulty assumption.

Professor Kevin Munro of the University of Manchester audiology department admitted that many COVID-19 studies had been rushed. “There was an urgent need for this carefully conducted clinical and diagnostic study to investigate the long-term effects of Covid-19 on the auditory system. Many previous studies were published rapidly during the pandemic but lacked good scientific rigour,” he said.

One retracted paper published in Science examined the spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 in South Africa. It was withdrawn after social media users pointed out that some of the samples used could have been false positives. A number of the retractions were also social science papers, including one that used an inadequate sample size and imbalanced search terms to try and report on COVID-19 vaccine “misinformation” on social media……

This is why PJ-MEDIA headlines it as “Unfollow the Science.” and HOT AIR has a decent little break down as well:

More than 300 COVID-19-related articles have been retracted — long after they’d done their damage — due to a lack of scientific truthfulness and ethical guidelines, according to Retraction Watch, a website that monitors retractions of science-related articles.

A total of 330 COVID-related papers have been retracted thus far.

According to Gunnveig Grødeland, a senior researcher at the Institute of Immunology at the University of Oslo, many researchers took ethical shortcuts when writing their essays.

[….]

The Lancet journal (which dubs itself as “The best science for better lives”) was described as having used “fraudulent research” when it concluded that hydroxychloroquine “caused an increased risk of heart arrhythmia and even death” in COVID patients. The World Health Organization used those findings as a justification to shut down their research into what turned out to be a very effective medication for treating COVID and the media lectured us endlessly about the dangers it posed, particularly after Trump endorsed it.

Another paper from the University of Manchester that has since disappeared reported that COVID “was associated with vertigo, hearing loss, and tinnitus.” They later admitted that this is not the case. The author of the paper apparently had no research to draw on, but since viruses such as measles, mumps, and meningitis can cause auditory damage, she said “it was reasonable to assume” that COVID would do so also. I see. So policy was being made based on assumption.

And then there was the whole Ivermectin debacle. (Also endorsed by Trump initially.)

So all of that unpleasantness is simply disappearing from medical journals and research archives. And the media would like us all to pretend that it never happened. But it did happen. And if we don’t learn anything from all of this, it will happen again when the next pandemic inevitably comes along. The need for speed must be moderated by adhering to proven practices from the past. And if you’re trusting the government to deal with you honestly and fairly based on the best available science rather than “The Science,” I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn you might be interested in purchasing.

HEADLINE USA notes some of the main ideas in the general public that were overturned pre and post pandemic:

  • Studies about the effectiveness of masking and other COVID-related control efforts pushed by government officials are under intense scrutiny. Some second looks even revealed that masking and other measures put people in more danger than was necessary.

And don’t forget that these retractions happened while the general public still went on having their mind warped by previous headlines and what they thought was “honest reporting”


JIMMY DORE SHOW w/Dr. Jay Bhattacharya


LA Times Prints DUMBEST Covid Article In History!

Even as the dominant COVID narrative rapidly unravels more every day, the establishment’s wagons are being circled, and a perfect example is a recent LA Times article by Michael Hiltzik insisting that the authors of The Great Barrington Declaration should have faced professional consequences for “getting COVID wrong.” Except that the horrific consequences of COVID took place following establishment guidelines, NOT The Great Barrington Declaration.

Jimmy and Americans’ Comedian Kurt Metzger talk to The Great Barrington Declaration co-author Jay Bhattacharya about this LA Times hit piece filled with blatant misinformation.

I forgot to add this when I posted this originally… then I was off for a quick turn-around d to Arizona Thurs/Fri. So here is the missed PJ-MEDIA post I wanted to share. The entire post is worth linking over to, but I will emphasize the last sentence in my excerpt:

The pre-print for this study, prior to the peer review process, came out late last year. It showed, in a nutshell, that more COVID-19 shots correlated to a greater risk of contracting COVID-19.

But the COVIDians predictably, in eternal denial as is their nature, pounced on the fact that the initial paper was a pre-print. They dismissed it for not being peer-reviewed, which is often described as the “gold standard” stamp of approval by The ScienceTM.

Mind you, the corporate state media expresses no such criticism of pre-print studies that say what they want them to say about the alleged efficacy of masking, the wonders of Pfizer’s mRNA injections, etc. It’s only when a study counters the narrative that they pump the brakes.

Via McGill, February 2023:

Recently, some people have been spreading the idea that getting additional doses of the COVID vaccine increases the risk of catching the virus. The suggestion was made in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal and repeated recently by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. The notion seems to stem from a preprint uploaded last December by researchers from the Cleveland Clinic. Opponents of vaccines have been using it to argue their case, worrying a fair number of people, if the emails I have received on the subject are any indication.

Well, now it is peer-reviewed, and none of the conclusions have changed….

 

Hydroxychloroquine Effective and Safe (Mark Levin UPDATED)

Dennis Prager reads from Harvey A. Risch’s (MD, PhD , Professor of Epidemiology, Yale School of Public Health) article entitled, “The Key to Defeating COVID-19 Already Exists. We Need to Start Using It” (NEWSWEEK)

In the article, not only does Dr. Risch discuss Hydroxychloroquine as safe and effective to use, but he notes the attack on doctors who use it:

  • Physicians who have been using these medications in the face of widespread skepticism have been truly heroic. They have done what the science shows is best for their patients, often at great personal risk. I myself know of two doctors who have saved the lives of hundreds of patients with these medications, but are now fighting state medical boards to save their licenses and reputations. The cases against them are completely without scientific merit.

One such high profile doctor is Senator and “Doctor of the Year,” Scott Jensen, MD. I have two videos about that on my site: “Enforced Group Think – Covid 1984”. Later in the Prager commentary he reads some Tweets by ALEX BERENSON, of which the strain can be found at the link. If you are Tweet savvy, follow the discussion throughout the branches.

In a separate video a friend sent me, the video talk show “America Can We Talk?” interviews Dr. Richard Bartlett who goes through some of the countries with very low death numbers and helps explain their use of steroid inhalers. Interesting indeed:


UPDATED STUFF


This updated and graphics are all with thanks to REAL CLIMATE SCIENCE. What a great post!

This paper from the censored group of doctors provides pretty strong arguments  that HCQ is both safe and effective.

White Paper on HCQ 2020.2

And another.

COVID-19 Treatment – Analysis of 126 global studies showing high effectiveness for early treatment

Also, a friend linked this to me on FB (hat-tip, Joshua P.)

 

Wow. Academic Hoax (Part 2 Added)

Three people conducted what they call a ‘grievance studies’ experiment. They wrote fake papers on ridiculous subjects and submitted them to prominent academic journals in fields that study gender, race, and sexuality….

…CONTINUING THE DESCRIPTION FROM ABOVE…

They did this to “expose a political corruption that has taken hold of the universities,” say the hoaxers in a video which documented the process.

John Stossel interviewed James Lindsay and Peter Boghossian, who along with Helen Pluckrose, sent so-called research papers to 20 journals.

They were surprised when seven papers were accepted. One claimed that “dog humping incidents at dog parks” can be taken as “evidence of rape culture.” It was honored as “excellent scholarship.”

Another paper rewrote a section of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf as intersectional feminism.

Stossel assumed that the journals would apologize for publishing nonsense and question the quality of their scholarship. But instead they criticized the the hoaxers, complaining that they “engaged in flawed and unethical research.”

Of course, that was the point of the hoax.

Boghossian is unapologetic, telling Stossel the hoax shows “scholarship in these disciplines is utterly corrupted … they have placed an agenda before the truth.”

When Stossel suggests, “maybe you are just conservative hacks looking to defend your white privilege.” Lindsay replied “I’ve never voted for a republican in my life.” Boghossian added, “Nor have I.”

Stossel says what upsets him is that after the hoax “no university said ‘we’re not gonna use these journals’ and no editor publicly said, ‘we have to raise our standards.’”

Instead, Portland State University began disciplinary procedures against Boghossian.

OLDER PEER REVIEW ISSUES:


PART TWO


Seven academic journals recently published papers that were actually hoaxes designed to show the absurdity of academic fields like gender studies, race studies, queer studies, etc.

MORE…

The hoaxers intentionally submitted papers that were ridiculous; one included gibberish about rape culture in dog parks. Another was a section of Hitler’s Mein Kampf re-written with feminist buzzwords. John Stossel covered the hoax here: https://youtu.be/As8h2ZCfIPs

Six journal editors would not talk to Stossel, but one — Roberto Refinetti, editor in chief of “Sexuality and Culture” — agreed to an interview.

He condemns what the hoaxers did: “You’re deceiving people without much of a reason.”

He complains, “If you’re going to do your research with people, you have to propose your research, submit to a body called an Institutional Review Board.” 

One of the hoaxers, Peter Boghossian, was found guilty by his employer (Portland State University) of violating their rules requiring him to get approval for the hoax.

Of course, since the Institutional Review Board would have insisted that the researchers inform the journals that they were being tested, the test wouldn’t have worked.

Stossel says he thinks the hoaxers had good reason not to go to the review board first. “Their hoax woke us up to the fact that some academic journals publish nonsense,” he says.

Refinetti’s journal, for instance, published the hoax paper titled, “Going in Through the Back Door: Challenging Straight Male Homohysteria, Transhysteria, and Transphobia Through Receptive Penetrative Sex Toy Use.”

The paper touted “encouraging male anal eroticism with sex toys” because it would help make men more feminist.

“Sexuality and Culture” published that paper after its reviewers praised it glowingly. One called it, “an incredibly rich and exciting contribution… timely, and worthy of publication.”

Refinetti defends his journal, saying that it publishes mind-expanding questions.

“What is the problem with [the subject of the paper]? I don’t see a problem… It’s nothing really absurd or unusual,” Refinetti says.

He also says: “Let’s question our assumptions, because maybe we’re making assumptions that we shouldn’t be making… When homosexuality was considered a mental illness. People pushed, the psychiatrists got together, and said… ‘it’s a perfectly fine thing to choose and not to call it mental illness.’ So that’s the type of thing that a journal in sexuality and culture does, is discuss.”

Discussion is good, Stossel agrees. But in journals today, it seems that only certain conclusions are permitted. The hoaxers complain that in many university fields: “A culture has developed in which only certain conclusions are allowed, like those that make whiteness and masculinity problematic.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that in some places that is correct,” Refinetti agrees.

“Is that a problem?” asks Stossel.

Refinetti replies: “How big of a problem is it? Is it worse than hunger? Is it worse than people shooting each other?”

But a lack of diversity of ideas does make it harder to find truth — and more likely for ridiculous ideas to thrive. Today’s colleges have an extreme lack of diversity — A National Association of Scholars report found that professors at top liberal arts colleges are ten times more likely to be Democrats than Republicans.

Refinetti says that’s not surprising.

“I think it’s very reasonable  — because what is the job of learning?… being more open to new ideas, which is what being a liberal is,” he says.

Stossel pushes back: “This is your left leaning definition; it’s conservatives that proposed changes like school vouchers… privatizing air traffic control.”

“That’s an interesting point,” Refinetti responds. “Then the hypothesis is shut down. See, that’s how things work. You show the idea, you discuss the idea, and get it.”

Refinetti says his journal publishes multiple viewpoints. It has published articles that question feminist orthodoxy.

Stossel says he’s grateful that Refinetti was willing to have a conversation — but he still cheers the hoaxers for revealing that much of what passes for scholarship at colleges is bunk.

Peer-Review Issues | Sharyl Attkinsson

See some other posts:

Key exchange:

Sharyl: What’s your view of how much we can trust the articles that appear in these prestigious medical journals?

Dr. Howard Pomeranz: One always has to be aware of the possibility that somebody who is an author or coauthor or someone who is consulted to help support the research was a paid consultant by the pharmaceutical industry and that’s not always apparent.

Dr. Howard Pomeranz is a neuro-ophthalmologist at the Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine. He’s authored dozens of journal articles and says many studies are written by academic researchers fraught with conflicts of interest.

Sharyl: In some cases, it sounds like it’s nothing more than advertising by an employee that works for a drug company.

Pomeranz: It is and I think that’s often the way you have to look at it.

Angell: I came to the New England Journal of Medicine in 1979. Starting about then was when you saw the drug companies assert more and more control until finally they over the next couple of decades, they began to treat the researchers as hired hands. They would design the research themselves. You know you can do a lot of mischief in how you design a trial. Or we’ll test this drug and we’ll tell you whether it can be published or not, and so if it’s a positive study, it’s published, if it’s a negative study, it’ll never see the light of day.

That happened in 2000. The makers of an experimental AIDS vaccine threatened to sue Dr. James Kahn, their lead researcher at the University of California San Francisco for $7 million, to keep him from publishing study results showing the vaccine didn’t work.

Angell: An official of the company said something to the effect of, ‘we have put $30 million into that study, we have our rights,’ or something like that.

Angell says as she applied due diligence to the many studies submitted to the New England Journal of Medicine, it started to feel like a losing battle.

Angell: I would call up and say, okay, you’ve shown that your drug is pretty good. But there’s not a single side effect. Any drug that does anything is going to have some side effects. And I had people say, ‘well the sponsor won’t let me’. And so, I became to be extremely distrustful of most of the research that was published. We did our very best, we often rejected things because it was clearly biased, but anything we rejected always ended up in another journal.

Angell left the New England Journal of Medicine in 2000, but kept her eye on the journal industry, which she says resisted meaningful efforts to rein in conflicts of interest. In 2009, she wrote an article that famously declared “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published.”

Sharyl: What would you say is the state of the journal landscape today and the New England Journal of Medicine, particularly?

Angell: I think that that role that the New England Journal used to fill, one was the role of being skeptical, the other was the role of caring about the ethics of the whole system. I think the journal has given that up, the New England Journal of Medicine has given that up.

The New England Journal of Medicine declined our interview requests, but told us “since 1984 we have requested author disclosures.” In 2009, the journal says it helped pioneer a universal form requesting “that authors report all relevant financial conflicts” during the most recent three years. And it posts the form and study sponsorship. Besides Dr. Angell, another powerful voice is also weighing in. The current Editor in Chief of the British journal Lancet, Dr. Richard Horton, wrote a scathing editorial saying: “Much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue; science has taken a turn towards darkness.”

Annie Waldman: Be skeptical about everything. Be skeptical about every study that you read, whether it’s in the New England Journal of Medicine or some journal you’ve never heard of.

Annie Waldman writes for the nonprofit ProPublica.

Another article referencing issues with peer-review comes via THE BLAZE:

A peer-reviewed academic journal was recently duped in a hilarious way.

Two academics, Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay, recently used pen names to submit an academic paper to a peer-reviewed academic journal to expose the absurdity of modern gender studies by arguing that the male reproductive organ known as the penis is a “social construct.”

The 3,000-word paper was titled, “The Conceptual Penis As A Social Construct,” and was submitted, and published, to the “Cogent Social Sciences” academic journal in its May edition. Lindsay and Boghossian cited 20 sources in their paper, many of which they said they made up or never read….

When “Peer-Reviewed” Is Used To Hold the Line (UPDATED)

(UPDATED) Via Fox News and Climate Depot:

Some are calling it the new “Climategate.”

A paper by Lennart Bengtsson, a respected research fellow and climatologist at Britain’s University of Reading, was rejected last February by a leading academic journal after a reviewer found it “harmful” to the climate change agenda. The incident is prompting new charges that the scientific community is muzzling dissent when it comes to global warming.

“[Bengtsson] has been a very prolific publisher and was considered one of the top scientists in the mainstream climate community,” said Marc Morano, of the website ClimateDepot.com, which is devoted to questioning global warming.

Bengtsson had grown increasingly skeptical of the scientific consensus, often cited by President Obama, that urgent action is needed to curb carbon emissions before climate change exacts an irreversible toll on the planet with extreme drought, storms and rising seas levels.

The president repeatedly has rejected naysayers in the climate debate — most recently, when he spoke May 9 in Mountainview, Calif. “We’ve still got some climate deniers who shout loud, but they’re wasting everybody’s time on a settled debate,” he said.

The administration recently released a comprehensive climate report that critics worry will be used to justify additional environmental regulations.

Bengtsson’s paper, submitted to the journal Environmental Research Letters, found that greenhouse gas emissions might be less harmful and cause less warming than computer models project. For that, Morano said, Bengtssonpaid a steep price.

“They’ve threatened him. They’ve bullied him. They’ve pulled his papers. They’re now going through everything they can to smear his reputation. And the ‘they’ I’m referring to is the global warming establishment,” Morano said.

…read more…

A good portion of the article is below, thanks to The Global Warming Policy Foundation, any more will require denaro [a subscription] (See also the Daily Mail for a fuller dealing with the topic): 

…The unnamed scientist concluded: “Actually it is harmful as it opens the door for oversimplified claims of ‘errors’ and worse from the climate skeptic s media side.”

In other words, the truth hurts our advocacy. Scientists should not have a global warming or a skeptic “side.” According to the Oxford dictionary science is, The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment. Notice there is nothing about suppressing the observations and experiments you don’t like.

Professor Bengtsson resigned from the advisory board of Lord Lawson of Blaby’s climate skeptic think-tank this week after being subjected to what he described as McCarthy-style pressure from fellow academics.

Lord Lawson, the former Conservative chancellor, said that the pressure exerted by other climate scientists had been appalling and the comparison with McCarthyism was “fully warranted”.

And this study didn’t even argue that climate change is happening, only that it is happening more slowly…

(The Lid)

 

In an echo of the infamous “Climategate” scandal at the University of East Anglia, one of the world’s top academic journals rejected the work of five experts after a reviewer privately denounced it as “harmful”.

Lennart Bengtsson, a research fellow at the University of Reading and one of the authors of the study, said he suspected that intolerance of dissenting views on climate science was preventing his paper from being published. “The problem we now have in the climate community is that some scientists are mixing up their scientific role with that of a climate activist,” he added.

Professor Bengtsson’s paper challenged the finding of the UN’s Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that the global average temperature would rise by up to 4.5C if greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were allowed to double.

It suggested that the climate might be much less sensitive to greenhouse gases than had been claimed by the IPCC in its report last September, and recommended that more work be carried out “to reduce the underlying uncertainty”.

The five contributing scientists, from America and Sweden, submitted the paper to Environmental Research Letters, one of the most highly regarded journals, at the end of last year but were told in February that it had been rejected.

A scientist asked by the journal to assess the paper under the peer review process wrote that he strongly advised against publishing it because it was “less than helpful”.

The unnamed scientist concluded: “Actually it is harmful as it opens the door for oversimplified claims of ‘errors’ and worse from the climate sceptics media side.”

Professor Bengtsson resigned from the advisory board of Lord Lawson of Blaby’s climate sceptic think-tank this week after being subjected to what he described as McCarthy-style pressure from fellow academics.

Lord Lawson, the former Conservative chancellor, said that the pressure exerted by other climate scientists had been appalling and the comparison with McCarthyism was “fully warranted”.

The claims are a stark reminder of events at the University of East Anglia in 2009. Scientists there were accused of manipulating data and suppressing critics of global warming predictions in the run-up to the crucial Copenhagen climate change conference.

They were later cleared, though the IPCC was found to have misrepresented their research by failing to reflect uncertainties over raw temperature data.

Professor Bengtsson, the former director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, said he accepted that emissions would increase the global average temperature but the key question was how quickly.

He added that it was “utterly unacceptable” to advise against publishing a paper on the ground that the findings might be used by climate sceptics to advance their arguments. “It is an indication of how science is gradually being influenced by political views. The reality hasn’t been keeping up with the [computer] models. Therefore, if people are proposing to do major changes to the world’s economic system we must have much more solid information.”

Scientists from around the world sent messages of support to Professor Bengtsson. David Gee, a former geology professor at Uppsala University in Sweden, wrote: “The pressure on you from the climate community simply confirms the worst aspects of politicised science. I have been reprimanded myself for opposing the climate bandwagon, with its blind dedication to political ambitions…..

Mark Steyn (Steyn Online) has some commentary that underlies the “peer pressure” or the peer-review process:

Here’s what Phil Jones of the CRU and his colleague Michael Mann of Penn State mean by “peer review.” When Climate Research published a paper dissenting from the Jones-Mann “consensus,” Jones demanded that the journal “rid itself of this troublesome editor,” and Mann advised that “we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers.”

So much for Climate Research. When Geophysical Research Letters also showed signs of wandering off the “consensus” reservation, Dr. Tom Wigley (“one of the world’s foremost experts on climate change”) suggested they get the goods on its editor, Jim Saiers, and go to his bosses at the American Geophysical Union to “get him ousted.” When another pair of troublesome dissenters emerge, Dr. Jones assured Dr. Mann, “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

Which in essence is what they did. The more frantically they talked up “peer review” as the only legitimate basis for criticism, the more assiduously they turned the process into what James Lewis calls the Chicago machine politics of international science. The headline in The Wall Street Journal Europe is unimprovable: “How To Forge A Consensus.” Pressuring publishers, firing editors, blacklisting scientists: That’s “peer review,” climate-style.

“Climategate” wasn’t only about the science – “Hide the decline” et al. It was also about the general thuggishness with which Mann and his gang treated anyone who disagreed with them, however mildly: The science is settled. Got it? Nice little peer-review journal you got here. Shame if anything were to happen to it….

…read more…

“The Problem With Peer-Review” ~ Serious Saturday

On this episode of ID the Future, host David Boze interviews Casey Luskin about the importance of peer-review within the scientific community. The 50th pro-intelligent design paper was recently published, despite the frequent claim by critics that there are no peer-reviewed published papers supporting ID. Although such criticism has been seen to be invalid, it still raises the question–must a scientific theory appear in a peer-reviewed journal in order to be good, legitimate science?

Peer-Reviewed Scientific Literature Building a Compelling Case for ID

On this episode of ID The Future, Casey Luskin puts to rest once and for all the common assertion by opponents of intelligent design that there are no scientific papers supporting the claims of ID. This wasn’t true in 2005 when Eugenie Scott of the NCSE stated it on MSNBC and it certainly isn’t true six years later. Luskin discusses the most recent scientific paper, by Stephen Meyer and Paul Nelson, and talks about the importance of the peer-reviewed scientific literature: “These papers collectively make a case that intelligent causation is necessary to produce the sort of biological complexity that we are discovering in the cell today.”