Great Moments in Research: Peer Review Fraud

I'm resurrecting the sarcastic "Great Moments in Research" tag to report yet another massive scandal in scientific research publication.  Ugh:

In August 2015, the publisher Springer retracted 64 articles from 10 different subscription journals “after editorial checks spotted fake email addresses, and subsequent internal investigations uncovered fabricated peer review reports,” according to a statement on their website. The retractions came only months after BioMed Central, an open-access publisher also owned by Springer, retracted 43 articles for the same reason. 

“This is officially becoming a trend,” Alison McCook wrote on the blog Retraction Watch, referring to the increasing number of retractions due to fabricated peer reviews. Since it was first reported 3 years ago, when South Korean researcher Hyung-in Moon admitted to having invented e-mail addresses so that he could provide “peer reviews” of his own manuscripts, more than 250 articles have been retracted because of fake reviews — about 15% of the total number of retractions.

Quote of the Day: Greenie Hysteria

Heh:

... the habit of reading every warm spike and every storm as fresh confirmation of the coming apocalypse needs to stop. It’s bad science and it’s bad politics. Green hysteria is more likely to paralyze us then help us take the kind of steps we need to take towards sustainability. 

The gravest danger to Earth these days isn’t climate skepticism; it’s the broken, Malthusian and statist green policy imagination. Wedded to grandiose and unworkable “solutions”, greens feel they must push the panic button at every opportunity to stampede the world into embracing an unworkable and unsustainable policy agenda.

Well, I don't feel the urge to panic and adopt a Stone Age lifestyle if the New York Times is shutting down its environment desk and if Al Gore, that blowhard high priest of the Green religion, feels it's OK to sell out to Al Jazeera for a sweet, sweet personal profit of $100 million.  

Movie Madness: Dumbest Apocalypse Scenarios On Film

It's the end of the world as we know it ... and I feel fiiiiiiiine!

Great Moments in Research: Incomprehensible New Biochemistry Paper Baffles Just About Everybody

Ummmm ... yeah.

Nerd News: Huge Social Psych Research Fraud

BUSTED.

Quote of the Day: Science and Experts

Here it is:

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."

Fascinating!  More here:

"Never rely on the consensus of experts about the future. Experts are worth listening to about the past, but not the future. Futurology is pseudoscience."

Al Gore and the Great Green Meltdown

Well, I'm glad to see that I'm the only one who's sick and tired of Al Gore and his self-righteously shrill, pseudo-cultic, fraudulent greenie crusade.  Its implosion will be a moment of Schadenfreudtastic glee, not to mention relief for serious people who resist the outright politicization and corruption of science for power and profit (including people like ... oh, I don't know ...  actual scientists).  

Great Moments in Research: Head Trauma in Asterix Comics

No, really!  I do love Asterix, though.

Apocalypse Not and Profits of Doom

Kyle Smith is basically right.

Friday Fun Video: The Physics of "My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic"

Absolutely hilarious and clever in that nerdy/geeky kind of way!  You'll never look at the children's cartoon show in the same way again.

Nerd/Geek Fun: The Buttered-Cat Paradox

Heh.

It's Earth Hour ... Fiat Lux!

So while the treehugging Greenies are busy sitting in the dark -- hey, it's Earth Hour so you're supposed to be guilt-tripped into turning off your lights for an hour or whatever.  Forget that, man -- I got basketball games to watch and homework to do!  Besides, I love my light bulbs heat balls.  Check out some gorgeous video footage of some brilliantly illuminated cities -- centers of learning and culture, places where people live and work and have better, longer lives because of technological advancement and human achievement.  

Remember this?  Notice how the most miserable and poverty-stricken swathes of the planets are the ones that have no lights?  

Besides, do you really think that sitting in the dark for an hour is going to do anything substantive for the earth?  The very idea is laughable.  See this factoid from that piece:

When we switch off the electricity, many of us turn to candlelight. This seems natural and environmentally friendly, but unfortunately candles are almost 100 times less efficient than incandescent light bulbs, and more than 300 times less efficient than fluorescent lights. Using one candle for each extinguished bulb cancels the CO2 reduction; two candles emit more CO2.

Earth Hour is really just an opportunity for more moral-pietastic posturing and self-congratulatory egotism on the part of the enviro-fanatics.  Let them sit in the dark.  The rest of us have better things to do!

Bad Astronomy = Headline of the Day

No, there's no proof of a giant planet in the outer solar system.  Also: interesting but inconclusive evidence does not = proof.

Oh, This Will End Well

Killing one native species in order to help another?  Only environmentalists could think this is a good idea.  I'm waiting for the wildlife biologists -- you know, REAL scientists -- to put the beatdown on the environmentalists.  Meanwhile, place all bets now on the barred owl!

Nerd News: Psychology Journal to Publish ESP "Experiment Results"

Aaaaaand you don't need psychic powers to know that a gazillion scientists are responding to this with *facepalm.*  OK, so you can argue that the publication is part of academic freedom (just like freedom of speech and expression in general, academic freedom is good as an ideal but also because it soon lets you know who all the loons and crackpots are), but I'm more inclined to agree with this:

“It’s craziness, pure craziness. I can’t believe a major journal is allowing this work in,” Ray Hyman, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Oregon and longtime critic of ESP research, said. “I think it’s just an embarrassment for the entire field.”

As the news article does point out, "So far, at least three efforts to replicate the experiments have failed."   Hmmmmm.  If you cannot replicate an experiment, then your results are inherently suspect.

Climate Change Skepticism and Elitism

Read this!  It's a thoughtful, intelligent essay of a type that is all too rare now.

ClimateGate Revisited: Nullius In Verba

Read this.  Plus some Latin you can use: Nullius in verba!

Great Moments in Research: Harvard Study Finds Being Good or Evil Makes You Stronger

Well, good thing I'm evil, then. 
  
Hm ... Alessandra did just yesterday say that I have the most energy of anybody she knows.  And I did pull not one but two allnighters last week with no ill effects.  Maybe there's something to this new research, ha! 

Oh, and the research says being good OR evil makes you stronger, so I suppose you get no benefits at all out of being a mediocre moral fence-sitter.  Which somehow seems just as the world should be.

Nerd Journal: World Cup Obsession + Doctor Who Addiction = Perfect Saturday

I am in clover.  All I'm going to say about this perfect storm of sport and sci fi (so gloriously telegraphed here):

~The US-Ghana match in the Round of 16  (to be seen on HDTV!) -- what a follow-up to that heart-stopping US-Algeria match!  Watch THIS!

~Part 2 of the two-part season finale of "Doctor Who"-- what a follow-up to Part 1!  Remember this?

Emotional roller coaster-a-palooza!  (Dear Aristotle, You were so totally right about that whole catharsis thing.  Thanks, man!  Love, MM.)

I am having the best Saturday in a long, long time.  Plus I got to sleep in!  And I wickedly read fun fiction instead of working on my nerd research!

Don't tell my Nerd Lords -- and pass the remote control!

Bonus: I just got off the phone with La Parisienne, who -- beautiful as the dawn after a storm and terrible as an army with banners -- reported her latest triumph, which is even more awesome than her previous victory.  Now that deserves a post all its own later!  All I'm going to say now is: Do not cross this woman.  Ever.

UPDATE: Oh, too bad ... We're out of the World Cup.  But what a ride it was!  I think we earned some respect along the way too.

What Fresh Hell Is This? NOAA Claims Temperature Accuracy Doesn't Matter

A veteran meteorologist disassembles the spin from the NOAA, via Watts Up With That, whose commentary is worth a look too.

But this isn't really surprising, is it? What matters is the willful massaging of data (and defense of such corrupted data) in order to fit a predetermined narrative in which too many people have sunk all their social, political, and professional capital for the purposes for gaining still more. It's called ClimateGate, people, and the turning point came, I think we'll agree eventually, in November 2009.

RELATED POST:

~"The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Christy was specifically talking about weather measurement stations.