6 ms·

One of the paper's authors, Dr Judith Rowbotham, is a historian, not a scientist: https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/staff/judith-rowbotham https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/

One of the paper's authors, Dr Judith Rowbotham, is a historian, not a scientist: https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/staff/judith-rowbotham https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/staff/judith-rowbotham And here is the other author, Dr Paul Clayton, promoting "MonaVie" supplements: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C28Bx_jbP_o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C28Bx_jbP_o MonaVie turns out to be a multi-level marketing company selling food supplements (the same kind of supplements that this paper goes out of its way to recommend) that defaulted on a $152m loan in 2015 and went into foreclosure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MonaVie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MonaVie

TeMPOraL 9y ago
Glad to see it dead. MLMs are cancer. I attended one of MonaVie's "internal"[0] meetings, invited there by an acquaintance of mine who was over-eager to get me to join in under him. I can tell you, this thing was literally a cult. The meeting consisted of people one-upping each other in describing how happy and rich they will be, coupled with top regional staff promising rewards for best performers - including, I kid you not, an orbital flight as a space tourist. The entire meeting was a happy death spiral[1] - a chain reaction of good feelings. Seriously, I am so glad to see it down. -- [0] - i.e. by distributors, for distributors, not meant for the product end-users. [1] - http://lesswrong.com/lw/lm/affective_death_spirals/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/lm/affective_death_spirals/
etrevino 9y ago
This article seems to me to be a sales pitch, which makes me think that Dr. Rowbotham wrote the historical context for the article and Dr. Clayton built up the scientific portion. I'd call shenanigans, except the article was originally published in three parts by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (which is refereed), so I'm just calling shenani. Since I am (or was) an historian I'm going to look at Dr. Rowbotham to see if I can make sense of her motivations for writing this paper.* That might help us understand why an historian would even consent to publish an article like this. At first glance, things don't look good. She's working in the school of business at Plymouth, which is weird, but perhaps that figures in to her interests in crime? She co-founded the SOLON institute, which has been the vehicle for publishing some of her work. Her work has been published by several journals and publishers, but generally they're not that great. The SOLON institute is also led by what most academics in English would consider "tier 3" universities, at best. She just looks like a fringe academic. But then we dive deeper into her resume. She was a Reader at Nottingham Trent Uni. Now, Nottingham is nothing to write home about, but being a Reader is-- in the US it's the equivalent of being an Associate Professor. Now she's a Visiting Research Fellow, which is usually a stipended position and allows the researcher to work solely on ... research. That means that her project, whatever it is, at the very least was interesting and viable to the University of Plymouth. So that's worth knowing, because even at low level universities research fellowships are desirable. I think that this line from her bio may be key: "My research focus consequently shifted to 'bad' behaviour, and I began to develop my interdisciplinary credentials as a lawyer and criminologist as well as a historian of crime." After publishing her PhD thesis in 1989 she doesn't appear to have produced much research. Then in 2010 everything picks up. When seeing vitae gaps like this on the resume of a female professor the assumption of most (male) academics is that she was raising children, and that's probably true, but she also made a pivot in her career to law and criminology, which further interrupted her career. She is likely a very rare creature in British academia: a generalist. That's the sort of thing that's horrible for a career in the UK, but may very well make her an excellent teacher and a great resource if you're into crime and law in Victorian England. I can't say of course. One thing I do know is that it's good (for the historical profession) to have historians reaching across fields and asking these sorts of questions. So, Dr. Clayton notwithstanding, this may very well be a worthwhile endeavor. I think we'd all like some corroboration, though, because the article itself is pretty shaky. I wonder if Dr. Rowbotham's training gave her an understanding of statistics. * In theory someone could just ask, but then that wouldn't require the kind of qualitative analysis that historians do so well!
- kwhitefoot 9y ago
  > . I wonder if Dr. Rowbotham's training gave her an understanding of statistics. Surely an understanding of statistics is a prerequisite for a study of criminology?
  - etrevino 9y ago
    You would think so! But if she went to Nottingham Trent for her criminology coursework she would have had no statistics courses at the undergrad level and the only stats-related course at the postgrad level is "Comprehensive Research Methods Training". Their law school coursework is also lacking in stats, but that's not really a surprise.
    - kwhitefoot 9y ago
      Umm. I had basic statistics as part of SMP maths in the early seventies at senior high school for A levels. And of course this was reinforced at uni because you can't make sense of experiments without statistics. I studied physics where results are actually often pretty clear but we still had to justify our conclusions with statistical reasoning; surely it is even more important in fields where you have more confounding variables and no or incomplete controls.
wdr1 9y ago
So how did this get published by the NIH? And is there a way to tell if it has been peer reviewed?
- obstinate 9y ago
  It was actually published in this journal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Journal_of_Environmental_Research_and_Public_Health https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Journal_of_Envir.... The journal charges a fee to have one's paper processed. I'm not sure if that is typical in open access journals, but the analogy to self-publishing fiction makes me slightly uncomfortable.

TeMPOraL 9y ago

Glad to see it dead. MLMs are cancer. I attended one of MonaVie's "internal"[0] meetings, invited there by an acquaintance of mine who was over-eager to get me to join in under him. I can tell you, this thing was literally a cult. The meeting consisted of people one-upping each other in describing how happy and rich they will be, coupled with top regional staff promising rewards for best performers - including, I kid you not, an orbital flight as a space tourist. The entire meeting was a happy death spiral[1] - a chain reaction of good feelings. Seriously, I am so glad to see it down. -- [0] - i.e. by distributors, for distributors, not meant for the product end-users. [1] - http://lesswrong.com/lw/lm/affective_death_spirals/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/lm/affective_death_spirals/

etrevino 9y ago

This article seems to me to be a sales pitch, which makes me think that Dr. Rowbotham wrote the historical context for the article and Dr. Clayton built up the scientific portion. I'd call shenanigans, except the article was originally published in three parts by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (which is refereed), so I'm just calling shenani. Since I am (or was) an historian I'm going to look at Dr. Rowbotham to see if I can make sense of her motivations for writing this paper.* That might help us understand why an historian would even consent to publish an article like this. At first glance, things don't look good. She's working in the school of business at Plymouth, which is weird, but perhaps that figures in to her interests in crime? She co-founded the SOLON institute, which has been the vehicle for publishing some of her work. Her work has been published by several journals and publishers, but generally they're not that great. The SOLON institute is also led by what most academics in English would consider "tier 3" universities, at best. She just looks like a fringe academic. But then we dive deeper into her resume. She was a Reader at Nottingham Trent Uni. Now, Nottingham is nothing to write home about, but being a Reader is-- in the US it's the equivalent of being an Associate Professor. Now she's a Visiting Research Fellow, which is usually a stipended position and allows the researcher to work solely on ... research. That means that her project, whatever it is, at the very least was interesting and viable to the University of Plymouth. So that's worth knowing, because even at low level universities research fellowships are desirable. I think that this line from her bio may be key: "My research focus consequently shifted to 'bad' behaviour, and I began to develop my interdisciplinary credentials as a lawyer and criminologist as well as a historian of crime." After publishing her PhD thesis in 1989 she doesn't appear to have produced much research. Then in 2010 everything picks up. When seeing vitae gaps like this on the resume of a female professor the assumption of most (male) academics is that she was raising children, and that's probably true, but she also made a pivot in her career to law and criminology, which further interrupted her career. She is likely a very rare creature in British academia: a generalist. That's the sort of thing that's horrible for a career in the UK, but may very well make her an excellent teacher and a great resource if you're into crime and law in Victorian England. I can't say of course. One thing I do know is that it's good (for the historical profession) to have historians reaching across fields and asking these sorts of questions. So, Dr. Clayton notwithstanding, this may very well be a worthwhile endeavor. I think we'd all like some corroboration, though, because the article itself is pretty shaky. I wonder if Dr. Rowbotham's training gave her an understanding of statistics. * In theory someone could just ask, but then that wouldn't require the kind of qualitative analysis that historians do so well!

kwhitefoot 9y ago
> . I wonder if Dr. Rowbotham's training gave her an understanding of statistics. Surely an understanding of statistics is a prerequisite for a study of criminology?
- etrevino 9y ago
  You would think so! But if she went to Nottingham Trent for her criminology coursework she would have had no statistics courses at the undergrad level and the only stats-related course at the postgrad level is "Comprehensive Research Methods Training". Their law school coursework is also lacking in stats, but that's not really a surprise.
  - kwhitefoot 9y ago
    Umm. I had basic statistics as part of SMP maths in the early seventies at senior high school for A levels. And of course this was reinforced at uni because you can't make sense of experiments without statistics. I studied physics where results are actually often pretty clear but we still had to justify our conclusions with statistical reasoning; surely it is even more important in fields where you have more confounding variables and no or incomplete controls.

wdr1 9y ago

So how did this get published by the NIH? And is there a way to tell if it has been peer reviewed?

obstinate 9y ago
It was actually published in this journal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Journal_of_Environmental_Research_and_Public_Health https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Journal_of_Envir.... The journal charges a fee to have one's paper processed. I'm not sure if that is typical in open access journals, but the analogy to self-publishing fiction makes me slightly uncomfortable.