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What a scientist didn't tell the New York Times about his study on bee deaths
- JCThoughtscream 16y agoSomething smells - and it smells oddly like that supposed BP oil spill microbe.
- gaius 16y agoNo, the timings don't work out. CCD has been an ongoing issue.
- olefoo 16y agoThe problem of agency, in scientific research especially, but also in any field where the results of the questions asked have direct effects on businesses, is a hard problem. It will always be the case that those most interested in funding a given field of research will be biased towards a specific class of results. It becomes that much more difficult for lines of enquiry that touch on liability for causing economic harm to others.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- waterhouse 16y agoIf any of those reading this are in the business of writing news articles, then, please: If you want to tell me about a scientist's report being something fake he cooked up (for fame or because someone paid him to say it or whatever), then first tell me what, scientifically, is or might be wrong with the report, and then tell me about his background and financial incentives and stuff. I believe it's supposed to be good news-article-writing style to put the most important facts and overview first, so that the reader can stop at any part in the article and come away with a good overall picture of whatever the article talks about. The thesis of the article seems to be that there's something wrong with this scientist's study... yet this author seems to have thought it was fine for a reader to walk away having read the ad hominem attacks against the scientist, but not the actual description of what might be wrong with his study. I was rather disconcerted to see this in a major news outlet like CNN; I thought that only happened in Ayn Rand novels.
- yummyfajitas 16y agoBut that would require work, and besides which, it would give the scientist the opportunity respond to criticism. It's much easier this way.
- reader5000 16y agoThe gist of this article was not that the original report was "something fake" the scientist "cooked up". It was that the scientist received funding from an interested party that he failed to disclose. While it is true that in the realm of pure logical discourse this fact is irrelevant to the argumentative structure of the original paper, in the real world it is a significant fact that legitimately questions the credibility of the scientist.
- billswift 16y agoExcept of course when the scientist is paid by a government agency and concludes that the government needs more power - then the funding or employment situation is irrelevant.
- lzw 16y agoYou make a very good point. However your point is not politically correct therefore it is being buries. Have an upvote. I find the fact that people who make valid points that don't happen to be in lock step with party ideology are buried on this site very tragic and it has significantly reduced my interest in participating in this site. Particularly ironic is that the ideological downvoting always seems to come from the left/socialist wing, yet this is ostensibly a capitalist/startup oriented site.
- irons 16y agoHe's not being downvoted for being un-PC, he's being downvoted for being reflexively paranoid, in a style that resists falsification and contributes nothing to the discussion.
- code_duck 16y agoIt seemed rather apparent to me that something was missing from that other article - like more insight into the underlying causes. Its reaffirming to see that Dr. Jennifer Sass asks the same questions I was asking (which, incidentally I was downvoted for and 'corrected' about here on HN).
- bapadna 16y agoResist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- jacquesm 16y agoHint: resist lecturing people as though you own the place when your account is 10 days old.
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- code_duck 16y agoI kind of agree, actually, I didn't need to throw that in. My point was not to whine about being marked down, but rather to comment that I'm surprised that a community of people as sharp as this one didn't agree that there seemed to be something major missing from the earlier article.
- bapadna 16y ago[test]
- jacquesm 16y agoI think you're referring to this bit: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1767170 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1767170 Finding the root cause is certainly interesting, but finding intermediary steps on the road to finding a root cause is also important. The press is notorious for being unable to represent scientific findings in a proper light. I don't know how many times I've read about 'possible cures for cancer' HIV and a whole series of other diseases simply because the press tends to hype things in order to get more eyeballs. "minor link in bee mystery found" makes for less user engagement than "Possible Cause of Bee Die-Off Is Found". The effect of the pairing of the two pathogens being more sever than either one on their own is also not novel (usually if you suffer from two diseases at the same time you feel a bit worse than if you had only one), but the magnitude of the effect is. So possibly that's where they key to all this lies. Even if the effect is real though, I'm not quite sure what can be done other than monitoring the bee populations for any strain of bee that is resistant to this combination. If it turns out that Bayer funded this research in order to squash the idea that their chemicals are the root cause here then there will be(e) a lot of explaining to do. Scientific research and 'big business' go hand in hand, Bayer, Monsanto and many other companies have used their money and lobbying muscle in the past to manipulate the scientific community and the press to their advantage, so it would not come as a total shock if they've done it again. However, I think it is a little early to shoot this research down, that should only come after a competing lab has tried to verify their findings and they turn out to be un-reproducible. Not disclosing funding would be a problem if Bayer funds were used for this particular research, but if it wasn't then I don't have a problem with that, and even if the truth will come out eventually.
- Fargren 16y agoI've read reports that the global bee population is not actually decreacing. The poplution seem to be decreasing in the USA and a few other areas in Great Britaitn and Holand, but overall there's no evidence of the world population being signifficantly lowered. This is the only source I could find with a quick search, and it's in spanish [PDF]http://www.fcen.uba.ar/prensa/cable/2010/pdf/Cable_752.pdf http://www.fcen.uba.ar/prensa/cable/2010/pdf/Cable_752.pdf
- napierzaza 16y agoGuess what. If they are able to fix the bee genocide with some sort of pharmaceutical... that means that it was the virus/bacteria/fungus that caused the problem! This New York Times article isn't bringing the bees back. I don't think Bayer thought it would be great to make people think this would work, for PR (?) and then to go ahead and NOT be able to fix it. We're not talking about 9/11 or something that you can sort of say "we're stopping another one of those from happening every day." Instead, we have ONGOING deaths that we don't know the cause of. So if this particular study, and any extrapolated treatment ACTUALLY WORKS. Then yes, it wasn't pesticides. Maybe Bayer is wrong, but the article is pretty clear this is preliminary.
- Flow 16y agoOne step closer to Soylent Green.
- araneae 16y agoOh, whatever. a) He didn't use the funding for this study. b) Science papers aren't opinion articles. Nowhere in the study did he say that the virus and the fungus are exclusively the cause of the epidemic. If you got that impression, that was the media editorializing the study. If he falsified or omitted data, then he's guilty. But all he did was show that these two pathogens are present in collapsed colonies. You can't criticize the guy for something that another writer invented.
- slantyyz 16y agoA Even if he didn't use the funding for the study, he should have at least disclosed it. His research is going to now be perceived (right or wrong) as a lot shadier now that this CNN article came out than it would have if he just made his disclosure in the first place. B Well, I don't know if I agree with you there. There's a fine line between opinion and theory in scientific papers, especially when you're trying to prove (or disprove) causation. You don't find it interesting that, say, the tobacco industry manages to find scientists to refute links between use of their products and cancer? Or what about the division between the "global warming" debate. There's a reason for peer review in scientific publications, and even the peer review process can occasionally break down.
- nice1 16y agoThis touches on an very important topic: the corruption of scientists (often "scientists") by funding. The corruption that lead to the "climate consensus" is now costing the world a LOT, and the green-industrial complex is not likely to rest on its laurels.
- slantyyz 16y agoThis article makes me think of Nobel Prize winner Kary Mullis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary_Mullis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary_Mullis), who wrote this book called "Dancing in a Mind Field" years ago, and it brought up some interesting points when talking about "scientific research" and the reporting behind it. The one takeaway from the book.. "follow the money". Fact checking, of course, is much harder than it sounds, which is probably why a lot of news organizations don't do as much as they should when reporting stuff like the bee colony collapses, etc. Mullis has some interesting (almost conspiracy theory-esque) ideas about AIDS research, etc. One of the more memorable anecdotes in this book - he found it amusingly coincidental that there was a huge movement to ban Freon for environmental reasons right before Dupont's patents were about to expire.
- carbocation 16y agoKary Mullis is a great example of why you should only consider scientists to be experts in their specific, narrow domain.
- slantyyz 16y agoYou definitely have to take him, and anyone proclaiming to be an expert or analyst, for that matter, with a grain of salt.
- ursablanco 16y agoAnd his particular domain is exquisitely narrow ... as further evidenced by the breadth and depth of his ignorance. Sorry to rant, but there's a guy that gets on my nerves.
- slantyyz 16y agoBut his points, at least as he wrote them in the particular book I mentioned aren't invalid or interesting because he's a jerk (his chapter on wanderlust had my head spinning). "Follow the money" is a guideline that makes sense. I even thought his reasons for -not- dismissing astrology outright were somewhat interesting, although I see in his wikipedia entry that he now 'believes' in astrology.