5 ms·

Is this some vaccine hesitancy in disguise from BMJ? Stephen Lock, my predecessor as editor of The BMJ, became worried about research fraud in the 1980s, but p

by adolph 5y ago

Is this some vaccine hesitancy in disguise from BMJ? Stephen Lock, my predecessor as editor of The BMJ, became worried about research fraud in the 1980s, but people thought his concerns eccentric. Research authorities insisted that fraud was rare, didn’t matter because science was self-correcting, and that no patients had suffered because of scientific fraud. All those reasons for not taking research fraud seriously have proved to be false, and, 40 years on from Lock’s concerns, we are realising that the problem is huge, the system encourages fraud, and we have no adequate way to respond.

zucker42 5y ago
What? How do you figure that? Some person points out actual instances of poor quality research and you imply he is anti-vaccine? I can find no record of this person discouraging vaccination.
- adolph 5y ago
  Ok, maybe its just a coincidence that it was published right when the current dangers of misinformation are so high and so many are failing to believe science.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    The solution to “people aren't believing academia” is to make academia more trustworthy (probably by filtering for trustworthiness rather than making individuals more trustworthy), not to encourage scientism. Seeking the truth is still important, after all.
    - adolph 5y ago
      Wasn’t trustworthiness what “peer reviewed journals” was all about? Clearly research fraud isn’t “seeking the truth.”
  - zucker42 5y ago
    Well of course I'm not going to believe blatantly fraudulent "science". That has nothing to do whether or not I would take a COVID vaccine (I have). Trying to suppress the truth that there is shoddy or false research to keep up appearances is ridiculous. There's something between ignoring scientific evidence you dislike and credulously taking everything a scientist says as fact. And the "dangers of misinformation" have been high for a long time now (perhaps since antiquity). Modern climate change denial has its roots in the 90s, and modern vaccine skepticism is similarly old.
    - adolph 5y ago
      What is your plan for identifying the "blatantly fraudulent?" How do you know your medical provider agrees with you about what is "blatantly fraudulent?"
      - joshuaissac 5y ago
        > What is your plan for identifying the "blatantly fraudulent?" One way is to assume that all health research is fraudulent, unless proven otherwise through replication by multiple unrelated parties.
  - faeriechangling 5y ago
    >failing to believe science Believing in science means believing in falsification and sceptism. This was published during the ongoing replication crisis in medicine where we're finding that more than half of cancer studies don't replicate [1]. This replication crisis hasn't been put on hold and all science is now deemed irrefutable or you are VACCINE HESISTANT and DANGEROUS. I'm mostly confident in the COVID vaccines because we're at billions of doses and there is so much uncorrelated data about the vaccines, and they're so controversial and their safety/efficacy is being looked at by so many people that one can be relatively confident about their efficacy and safety (so long as you look at uncensored information to avoid systemic bias). We don't need to be science denialists and start denouncing scepticism on safety grounds, we can point out there are special reasons to be confident in the vaccines. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/01/18/510304871/what-does-it-mean-when-cancer-findings-cant-be-reproduced https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/01/18/5103048...
    - adolph 5y ago
      don't replicate != fraudulent I'm mostly confident in the COVID vaccines <- Is this "mostly" qualifier not the dangerous front end of misinformation and vaccine hesitancy?
      - faeriechangling 5y ago
        I've got both vaccines especially early for my age group (clinical vulnerability) and I've been lobbying my vaccinated peers to at least get one dose, so apparently not. I say "mostly confident" because we have literally zero data of effects after 3 years and can only make inferences, and it's foolish to feign knowledge you do not have to avoid being called "hesitant", but my lack of confidence does not make me hesitate to recommend the vaccine. I also lack knowledge of long term effects of COVID itself which may in fact be worse than the long term effects of any vaccine given COVID does most of what the vaccines do plus extra nasty stuff.
        adolph 5y ago
        You are recommending something over nothing despite not being confident in the data about your recommendation? Which vaccines were in "both vaccines?" An mRNA and J&J, or just both administrations of a two-shot mRNA vaccine?
long_time_gone 5y ago
Is there a name for the phenomenon where an internet comment is guilty of doing the thing it accuses others of doing?
- adolph 5y ago
  also need the name for the one where an accusation is made through a question
- hammock 5y ago
  It's called transference in the spook world, and you'll see it in the media/politics all the time.
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
No, this is about all of medecine, not about vaccines for a specific illness.
- adolph 5y ago
  Are "vaccines for a specific illness" not in the set "all of medicine?"
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    Yes. But "all of medecine" is not in the set "vaccines for a specific illness".
    - adolph 5y ago
      Affirming the consequent, sometimes called converse error, fallacy of the converse, or confusion of necessity and sufficiency, is a formal fallacy of taking a true conditional statement (e.g., "If the lamp were broken, then the room would be dark,") and invalidly inferring its converse ("The room is dark, so the lamp is broken,") even though the converse may not be true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent
      - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
        You are trying to take a very general statement and make it a statement only about one very specific subset. That does not mean that someone pointing out your logical flaws is falling into the converse fallacy. It's like someone writes an article about drought in the west, and you're saying that they must really be talking about El Centro, California. Yes, it probably includes El Centro, but it's also talking about Phoenix, and LA, and Salt Lake City, because it's really talking about the west as a whole. Trying to make it be "about" El Centro is missing the point.
        adolph 5y ago
artifact_44 5y ago
That was my first thought as well. Casting doubt, and then in a few days we'll see this opinion piece references by some right wing politician who is vaccinated but "can understand their constituents hesitency to trust the medical establishment". Also I haven't seen anyone bring up the perverse incentive of capitalism in this thread. Like.. let's just pretend this is moral failing rather than the literal race to the bottom of capitalism.
- adolph 5y ago
  Perverse incentives exist in many socio-political systems, capitalism isn't unique in that regard. For example, the Soviet whaling industry [0] sounds almost like the paperclip maximization AI [1]. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_the_Soviet_Union_and_Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_the_Soviet_Union_an... 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paperclip_maximizer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paper...
bena 5y ago
This is almost an apples/oranges comparison. There's research and then there's research. Yes, all approved medicines are the result of medical research. But approving medicines isn't the entirety of medical research. I'm sure you've heard of the adage: egos are large when the stakes are low. This is related to that. The push to "get published" is so great that if you know that your research has no practical effect or that it won't affect anyone, you can kind of make up whatever results you want. As long as it publishes. The goal isn't to find the truth or to answer a question, the goal is to get a byline in a paper. And you get more and better bylines by discovering something radical and novel rather than by saying "Nope, doesn't work, just like expected". On the flip side, when the results really matter, you'll find people do proper due diligence. Especially when your results will be essentially confirmed practically by billions of people on the planet. When the stakes are high, we wind up being way more cautious. Of course, I hear your meta-concern. Because, yes, people will use this paper to pull the "Science is a lying bitch"* card. But it is also an issue that must be dealt with or at the very least acknowledged. As the article itself notes, someone did notice it in the 80s, but due to very concern of casting doubt on medical research, they kind of just hoped it wouldn't be an issue. And now the issue is too great to deal with simply. In the end, medical, and really all scientific, research cannot be "hit driven". Failure must be an option. And if this month's issue of The BMJ is a bit "boring" or "thin", then so be it. The focus must be more on finding the correct answer rather than the flashier answer. Even when the stakes are small. *Science is a lying bitch: From the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode "Reynolds vs. Reynolds: The Cereal Defense". One of the characters uses the fact that certain noted scientists had incomplete ideas about certain scientific phenomenon or weren't completely right on every subject as proof that science itself was flawed and couldn't be trusted on the subject of evolution and therefore one should believe the biblical account of creation because the bible hasn't been changed since it was written.

by adolph 5y ago

zucker42 5y ago

What? How do you figure that? Some person points out actual instances of poor quality research and you imply he is anti-vaccine? I can find no record of this person discouraging vaccination.

adolph 5y ago
Ok, maybe its just a coincidence that it was published right when the current dangers of misinformation are so high and so many are failing to believe science.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  The solution to “people aren't believing academia” is to make academia more trustworthy (probably by filtering for trustworthiness rather than making individuals more trustworthy), not to encourage scientism. Seeking the truth is still important, after all.
  - adolph 5y ago
    Wasn’t trustworthiness what “peer reviewed journals” was all about? Clearly research fraud isn’t “seeking the truth.”
- zucker42 5y ago
  Well of course I'm not going to believe blatantly fraudulent "science". That has nothing to do whether or not I would take a COVID vaccine (I have). Trying to suppress the truth that there is shoddy or false research to keep up appearances is ridiculous. There's something between ignoring scientific evidence you dislike and credulously taking everything a scientist says as fact. And the "dangers of misinformation" have been high for a long time now (perhaps since antiquity). Modern climate change denial has its roots in the 90s, and modern vaccine skepticism is similarly old.
  - adolph 5y ago
    What is your plan for identifying the "blatantly fraudulent?" How do you know your medical provider agrees with you about what is "blatantly fraudulent?"
    - joshuaissac 5y ago
      > What is your plan for identifying the "blatantly fraudulent?" One way is to assume that all health research is fraudulent, unless proven otherwise through replication by multiple unrelated parties.
- faeriechangling 5y ago
  >failing to believe science Believing in science means believing in falsification and sceptism. This was published during the ongoing replication crisis in medicine where we're finding that more than half of cancer studies don't replicate [1]. This replication crisis hasn't been put on hold and all science is now deemed irrefutable or you are VACCINE HESISTANT and DANGEROUS. I'm mostly confident in the COVID vaccines because we're at billions of doses and there is so much uncorrelated data about the vaccines, and they're so controversial and their safety/efficacy is being looked at by so many people that one can be relatively confident about their efficacy and safety (so long as you look at uncensored information to avoid systemic bias). We don't need to be science denialists and start denouncing scepticism on safety grounds, we can point out there are special reasons to be confident in the vaccines. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/01/18/510304871/what-does-it-mean-when-cancer-findings-cant-be-reproduced https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/01/18/5103048...
  - adolph 5y ago
    don't replicate != fraudulent I'm mostly confident in the COVID vaccines <- Is this "mostly" qualifier not the dangerous front end of misinformation and vaccine hesitancy?
    - faeriechangling 5y ago
      I've got both vaccines especially early for my age group (clinical vulnerability) and I've been lobbying my vaccinated peers to at least get one dose, so apparently not. I say "mostly confident" because we have literally zero data of effects after 3 years and can only make inferences, and it's foolish to feign knowledge you do not have to avoid being called "hesitant", but my lack of confidence does not make me hesitate to recommend the vaccine. I also lack knowledge of long term effects of COVID itself which may in fact be worse than the long term effects of any vaccine given COVID does most of what the vaccines do plus extra nasty stuff.
      - adolph 5y ago
        You are recommending something over nothing despite not being confident in the data about your recommendation? Which vaccines were in "both vaccines?" An mRNA and J&J, or just both administrations of a two-shot mRNA vaccine?

long_time_gone 5y ago

Is there a name for the phenomenon where an internet comment is guilty of doing the thing it accuses others of doing?

adolph 5y ago
also need the name for the one where an accusation is made through a question
hammock 5y ago
It's called transference in the spook world, and you'll see it in the media/politics all the time.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

No, this is about all of medecine, not about vaccines for a specific illness.

adolph 5y ago
Are "vaccines for a specific illness" not in the set "all of medicine?"
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  Yes. But "all of medecine" is not in the set "vaccines for a specific illness".
  - adolph 5y ago
    Affirming the consequent, sometimes called converse error, fallacy of the converse, or confusion of necessity and sufficiency, is a formal fallacy of taking a true conditional statement (e.g., "If the lamp were broken, then the room would be dark,") and invalidly inferring its converse ("The room is dark, so the lamp is broken,") even though the converse may not be true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      You are trying to take a very general statement and make it a statement only about one very specific subset. That does not mean that someone pointing out your logical flaws is falling into the converse fallacy. It's like someone writes an article about drought in the west, and you're saying that they must really be talking about El Centro, California. Yes, it probably includes El Centro, but it's also talking about Phoenix, and LA, and Salt Lake City, because it's really talking about the west as a whole. Trying to make it be "about" El Centro is missing the point.
      - adolph 5y ago

artifact_44 5y ago

That was my first thought as well. Casting doubt, and then in a few days we'll see this opinion piece references by some right wing politician who is vaccinated but "can understand their constituents hesitency to trust the medical establishment". Also I haven't seen anyone bring up the perverse incentive of capitalism in this thread. Like.. let's just pretend this is moral failing rather than the literal race to the bottom of capitalism.

adolph 5y ago
Perverse incentives exist in many socio-political systems, capitalism isn't unique in that regard. For example, the Soviet whaling industry [0] sounds almost like the paperclip maximization AI [1]. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_the_Soviet_Union_and_Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_the_Soviet_Union_an... 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paperclip_maximizer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paper...

bena 5y ago

This is almost an apples/oranges comparison. There's research and then there's research. Yes, all approved medicines are the result of medical research. But approving medicines isn't the entirety of medical research. I'm sure you've heard of the adage: egos are large when the stakes are low. This is related to that. The push to "get published" is so great that if you know that your research has no practical effect or that it won't affect anyone, you can kind of make up whatever results you want. As long as it publishes. The goal isn't to find the truth or to answer a question, the goal is to get a byline in a paper. And you get more and better bylines by discovering something radical and novel rather than by saying "Nope, doesn't work, just like expected". On the flip side, when the results really matter, you'll find people do proper due diligence. Especially when your results will be essentially confirmed practically by billions of people on the planet. When the stakes are high, we wind up being way more cautious. Of course, I hear your meta-concern. Because, yes, people will use this paper to pull the "Science is a lying bitch"* card. But it is also an issue that must be dealt with or at the very least acknowledged. As the article itself notes, someone did notice it in the 80s, but due to very concern of casting doubt on medical research, they kind of just hoped it wouldn't be an issue. And now the issue is too great to deal with simply. In the end, medical, and really all scientific, research cannot be "hit driven". Failure must be an option. And if this month's issue of The BMJ is a bit "boring" or "thin", then so be it. The focus must be more on finding the correct answer rather than the flashier answer. Even when the stakes are small. *Science is a lying bitch: From the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode "Reynolds vs. Reynolds: The Cereal Defense". One of the characters uses the fact that certain noted scientists had incomplete ideas about certain scientific phenomenon or weren't completely right on every subject as proof that science itself was flawed and couldn't be trusted on the subject of evolution and therefore one should believe the biblical account of creation because the bible hasn't been changed since it was written.