Tag Archives: Scientific

Science Is Ignoring its “Publication Pollution” Problem

by LillianM49 Posted on April 6, 2015

Mother Jones

In a damning op-ed published Friday, Arthur Caplan, a medical ethicist at NYU’s Langone Medical Center, called out scientists who are turning a blind eye to the scientific publishing industry’s “publication pollution problem.” At the root of the matter: pay-to-publish journals with weak or nonexistent pre-publication review standards that are “corroding the reliability of research.” As he wrote in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, “neither the leadership nor those who rely on the truth of science and medicine are sounding the alarm loudly or moving to fix the problem with appropriate energy.”

Consider this recent experiment, as described in the (unfortunately paywalled) commentary:

Harvard researcher Mark Shrime recently wrote an article entitled “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs?: The Surgical and Neoplastic Role of Cacao Extract in Breakfast Cereals.” The fake authors he chose for the piece were Pinkerton A. LeBrain and Orson Welles. Shrime submitted this fake article to 37 journals. At last count, 17 had accepted the obviously phony, nonsensical paper. John Bohannon did the same thing with a completely phony paper, with even more depressing results in terms of peer reviewed acceptance to journals. The journals that took these gibberish-laden, concocted articles were scam, author-must-pay, profit driven entities that nevertheless have every appearance of being legitimate journals.

“Predatory publishers” create a seeming win-win situation: the publisher makes money and the author gets a journal article published—currency in the world of science and academia. The result?

Predatory, pay-to-publish, non-peer-reviewed journals flood disciplines with bad or fake science, making it hard, much as light pollution does, to see the real stars. Worse, publication pollution lessons the impact of legitimate science in the formation of public policy, undermining public health, weakening the overall value of legitimate publications in influencing policy, and creating opportunities for the continued power of crackpot views that corrode many areas of public life, such as vaccination, fluoridation, and the prevention and treatment of diseases, such as autism, AIDS, and cancer.

Jeffrey Beall, a University of Colorado librarian who wrote a similar op-ed in Nature in 2012, estimates these publishers make up a whopping 25 percent of all open-source journals. Beall maintains an ongoing list of “potential, possible, and probable” predatory publishers on his website, Scholarly Open Access. He’s identified over 1,300 such publishers and journals to date.

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Science Is Ignoring its “Publication Pollution” Problem

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Scientists Are Arguing About When, Exactly, Humans Started to Rule the Planet

by Ouida0066rq Posted on April 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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Signs of human impact on the planet are everywhere. Sea levels are rising as ice at both poles melts; plastic waste clogs the ocean; urban sprawl paves over landscapes while industrial agricultural empties aquifers. Between climate change, urban development, and straight-up, old-school pollution, the Earth we inhabit now would be scarcely recognizable to our earliest ancestors 150,000 year ago.

In fact, these changes are so pronounced and their connection to human activity so obvious, that many scientists now believe we’ve already ventured well past a remarkable tipping point—Homo sapiens, they argue, have now surpassed nature as the dominant force shaping the Earth’s landscapes, atmosphere, and other living things. Units of deep geologic time often are defined by their dominant species: 400 million years ago fish owned the Devonian Period; 265 million years ago dinosaurs ruled the Mesozoic Era. Today, humans dominate the Anthropocene.

If defining what the Anthropocene represents is straight-forward, assigning it a commencement date has proved a monumental challenge. The term was first proposed by Russian geologist Aleksei Pavlov in 1922, and since then it has occupied off-and-on the attentions of the niche group of scientists whose job it is to decide how to slice our planet’s 4.5 billion-year history into manageable chunks. But in 2009, as climate change increasingly gained traction as a matter of public interest, the idea of actually making a formal designation started to appear in talks and papers. Today, if the scientific literature is any indication, the debate is fully ignited.

In fact, “it has been open season on the Anthropocene,” said Jan Zalasiewicz, a University of Leicester paleogeologist who is a leading voice in the debate. Within the last month a heap of new papers have come out with competing views on whether the Anthropocene is worthy of a formal designation, and if so, when exactly it began. The latest was published in Science today.

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Scientists Are Arguing About When, Exactly, Humans Started to Rule the Planet

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Attention GOP Presidential Candidates: Winter Does Not Disprove Global Warming

by Shawn75Imwhebm Posted on January 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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Snow is falling across the Northeast, and millions of people are preparing for a massive blizzard. Due to the extreme winter conditions, my colleague at Climate Desk has issued the following advisory:

It may seem obvious to you that the existence of extreme winter weather doesn’t negate the scientific fact that humans are warming the planet. But that’s probably because you aren’t a climate change denier who’s contemplating a run for the GOP presidential nomination.

Last year, for example, Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) weighed in on the issue. “It is really freezing in DC,” Cruz said during a speech on energy policy, according to TPM. “I have to admit I was surprised. Al Gore told us this wouldn’t happen!” Cruz said the same thing a month earlier, according to Slate: “It’s cold!…Al Gore told me this wouldn’t happen.”

And here’s former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee on his Fox News show, after a major blizzard back in December 2009:

Which brings us to a couple of Republicans who are probably not going to run for president but who have nevertheless generated headlines recently by suggesting they might. Here’s Donald Trump, during a cold snap last year:

And here’s a 2012 Facebook post from former Gov. Sarah Palin, citing extremely cold winter temperatures in her home state of Alaska:

If you’re a regular Climate Desk reader, you already know why all this is wrong. You understand the difference between individual weather events and long-term climate trends. You probably even know that according to the National Climate Assessment, winter precipitation is expected to increase in the northeastern United States as a result of climate change. But if you’re a Republican who wants to be president, please pay close attention to the following video:

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Attention GOP Presidential Candidates: Winter Does Not Disprove Global Warming

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One Perfect Tweet Sums Up Why Climate Denial in Congress Is So Dangerous

by GabrielDerose Posted on January 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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Here’s the good news: Yesterday the Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of an amendment to the Keystone XL bill that says “climate change is real and not a hoax.” Good work, ladies and gentlemen! Glad we got that on the record, only 25 years after scientists agreed on it.

Here’s the bad news: Turns out the vote was just an excuse for James Inhofe (Okla.) to say, as he has many times before: Sure, climate change is real. The climate changes all the time. But humans aren’t the cause.

His evidence for this dismissal of the mainstream scientific consensus? The bible.

Oy vey.

Now here’s the really bad news: This same gentleman from Oklahoma recently became the chairman of the very Senate committee that oversees environmental policy. And two of his climate change-denying peers will chair other subcommittees that oversee vital climate science.

In case it isn’t self-evident why these facts are so terrible, we have our lovely readers to sum it up:

Thanks, Sharon Dennis!

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One Perfect Tweet Sums Up Why Climate Denial in Congress Is So Dangerous

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Watch a US Senator Cite the Bible to Prove That Humans Aren’t Causing Global Warming

by RemonaNecaise Posted on January 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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To understand the craziness that just went down on the floor of the US Senate, you first have to understand the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. It’s pretty simple, actually: The planet is getting warmer, largely because humans are releasing heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide. Or, as the world’s leading climate scientists put it in a recent report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal,” and it’s “extremely likely”—that is, at least 95 percent certain—”that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.”

These are well established scientific facts, but congressional Republicans have had a hard time accepting them. So on Wednesday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), sought to put his colleagues on record by having them vote on a simple measure declaring it the sense of the Senate that “climate change is real and not a hoax.”

When Whitehouse first introduced this amendment a couple days ago, he made clear that by “climate change,” he was referring to “what our carbon pollution…is doing to our atmosphere and what it is doing to our oceans.” But the amendment didn’t literally say that, and the Senate’s most outspoken climate science denier saw this as an opportunity. James Inhofe—an Oklahoma Republican who has previously pointed to the Bible as evidence that human-caused global warming is a hoax—urged his fellow senators to support the amendment.

Addressing his Senate colleagues before the vote, Inhofe once again cited the Bible to argue that the climate does indeed change but that humans aren’t the cause. “Climate is changing, and climate has always changed,” said Inhofe, who chairs the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee. “There’s archeological evidence of that. There’s biblical evidence of that. There’s historic evidence of that.” He continued: “The hoax is that there are some people who are so arrogant to think that they are so powerful, they can change climate. Man can’t change climate.” You can watch the back-and-forth above.

And with that, every Republican except Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), voted “aye.” The amendment passed 98-1, and the Senate was on record agreeing to the obvious fact that climate change sometimes occurs.

But they weren’t done. Next, Republicans brought up their own climate amendment, which stated that climate change is indeed “real” and that human activity “contributes” to it. This amendment got 59 votes (one short of the 60-vote threshold for passage), but just 15 of the chamber’s 54 Republicans supported it.

And of course, the scientific consensus isn’t merely that human activity “contributes” to climate change. Rather, scientists say that humans are the “dominant cause” of the recent warming. That was the subject of a third amendment, from Democrat Brian Schatz (Hawaii), which stated that human activity “significantly contributes” to climate change. That was too much for Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who objected specifically to the word “significantly.” Murkowski, an Alaska Republican who chairs the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, urged her colleagues to vote no. In the end, Schatz’s amendment received just 50 votes, and only five of those came from Republicans.

On Thursday morning, the Senate began discussing yet another amendment, from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). This one declares that climate change is real, that it is caused by human activity, that it’s already causing significant problems, and that it is “imperative” that we actually do something about it—specifically, that we transition our economy away from fossil fuels. We’ll see how many GOP votes that one gets.

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Watch a US Senator Cite the Bible to Prove That Humans Aren’t Causing Global Warming

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Climate change could be happening 2,400 feet under Antarctic ice

by PaulettKen Posted on January 19, 2015

Climate change could be happening 2,400 feet under Antarctic ice

By on 19 Jan 2015commentsShare

In case you missed out on the bad news du jour, let me both enlighten and disturb you (the primary job description here at Grist): The world is now experiencing skyrocketing temperatures and ocean death spirals, all while humans are sucking the living daylights out of the planet. And now, scientists have uncovered data that suggests climate change could be affecting a place where humans have never even set foot: 2,400 feet below Antarctic ice.

We’ve known for a while that the warming planet is causing massive, irreparable collapse of glaciers in Western Antarctica. What’s new here is that even the muddy floor beneath these glaciers, which was previously thought to be resistant to ocean-driven changes, now shows evidence of instability.

On a massive ice sheet on coast of West Antarctica, there’s currently a camp of 40 scientists, ice drillers, and technicians. The team was reportedly successful in their attempt to reach one of the most isolated areas in the ocean when, at 3:55 P.M. PST on Jan. 7, their drill hit the bottom of the ice sheet. With the help of a video camera, the researchers are able to observe life (or, lack thereof) on the Arctic seafloor.

Scientific American reported on the scientists’ first look and (nerd alert), it gives me full-body goosebumps.

Through nearly a kilometer of slow descent the camera showed the undulating, mirrorlike walls of the ice borehole scrolling past. Then, 715 meters down, the image suddenly want black, clouded by thick wisps of silt and clay that had been liberated from the ice as the drill melted its way through. The bottom few feet of ice is probably cluttered with such debris, picked up by the glacier as it slid over the hidden face of Antarctica for thousands of years.

The camera soon emerged from this “black zone” (as people at camp are calling it) into an open expanse of crystal clear seawater beneath the ice. This thin sliver of ocean reaching under the ice turned out to be 10 meters deep, and the camera came to rest on the bottom beneath it, revealing it to be muddy and strewn with pebbles — a flat, barren tract, devoid of any obvious signs of large marine life such as brittle stars, sponges or worms.

Science, guys. It’s awesome.

But here’s where a mysterious and beautiful scene turns towards a dubious discovery: The pebbles the scientists found scattered on the seafloor aren’t normal to find at that depth. It would be more normal to see just very fine material, like silt or dust, that could be carried far beneath the ice by wind or currents. The pebbles would only be there if the ice underbelly were melting at an unprecedented rate, leaving them to drop from the glacier as it melts.

Something’s moving things around under the ice. It’s either deep-sea poltergeists, or traces of possibly human-caused “environmental change.” (Guess which we’re voting?) We should note that this change could have happened two years ago or hundreds, as these findings are — the researchers emphasize — preliminary and inconclusive. Nonetheless, trip co-leader Russ Powell and his team believe that change may be well underway underneath the ice — and if so, it will impact how quickly ice sheets melt, and how rapidly global sea levels will continue to tick higher.

If further study turns up more bad news, humanity may be forced to fall back on its last-ditch effort to escape a changing climate: Burrow somewhere deep underground in the most remote place on Earth, and — oh, wait. Nvm.

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Climate change could be happening 2,400 feet under Antarctic ice

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Climate deniers don’t deserve to be called “skeptics,” scientists say

by MillaRubbo Posted on December 11, 2014

Climate deniers don’t deserve to be called “skeptics,” scientists say

By on 11 Dec 2014commentsShare

There’s a difference between those who are “skeptical” about climate change and those who outright deny that it is happening, and a group of scientists and science communicators is calling on the media to acknowledge it.

“Please stop using the word ‘skeptic’ to describe deniers,” 48 fellows of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, a science advocacy group, ask in a statement. Among the prominent people to sign the letter are Bill Nye, Cosmos co-writer and producer Ann Druyan, and Nobel prize-winning chemist Sir Harold Kroto.

The signees cast the media’s treatment of Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe (R) as exhibit A to illustrate the difference between a “skeptic” and a “denier.” Inhofe, who smugly believes climate change is a “hoax” that he and wise others have seen through, is a “denier.” NPR recently identified him as such, yet, around the same time, The New York Times identified him as a “skeptic.” Confusing.

From the letter:

As Fellows of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, we are concerned that the words “skeptic” and “denier” have been conflated by the popular media. Proper skepticism promotes scientific inquiry, critical investigation, and the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims. It is foundational to the scientific method. Denial, on the other hand, is the a priori rejection of ideas without objective consideration.

Real skepticism is summed up by a quote popularized by Carl Sagan, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Inhofe’s belief that global warming is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people” is an extraordinary claim indeed. He has never been able to provide evidence for this vast alleged conspiracy. That alone should disqualify him from using the title “skeptic.”

As scientific skeptics, we are well aware of political efforts to undermine climate science by those who deny reality but do not engage in scientific research or consider evidence that their deeply held opinions are wrong. The most appropriate word to describe the behavior of those individuals is “denial.” Not all individuals who call themselves climate change skeptics are deniers. But virtually all deniers have falsely branded themselves as skeptics. By perpetrating this misnomer, journalists have granted undeserved credibility to those who reject science and scientific inquiry.

Unfortunately, the distinction between skeptic and denier is one the media will need to be making more and more frequently, as greater numbers of both are moving into positions of power in Congress.

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Climate deniers don’t deserve to be called “skeptics,” scientists say

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What a shrimp treadmill can teach us about science funding

by MargaretteFAOC Posted on November 17, 2014

Shrimpercise

What a shrimp treadmill can teach us about science funding

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17 Nov 2014 5:15 PM

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What a shrimp treadmill can teach us about science funding

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When you picture the extravagancies of government spending, what do you see? If your answer is “a tiny marine crustacean jogging in place,” then your memory is a weird place — in 2011, Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn (Republican, duh) made some fuss about science grants awarded by the NSF to various projects, deemed by him to be “wasteful.”

Among those Coburn singled out, including the entirety of the search for extraterrestrial life and a robot that can fold laundry, was a project at the Grice Marine Laboratory at the College of Charleston, South Carolina. Coburn complained that the lab had received 12 separate grants from the National Science Foundation, for a total of $3 million … though, to be fair, this was over 10 YEARS of work.

Last week, David Scholnick, a biologist from Pacific University, slowly jogged back with his rejoinder — we can only assume with his legs and arms and miscellaneous appendages flailing. It may have taken three years, but it was worth the wait: “My name is David, and I am the marine biologist who put a shrimp on a treadmill — a burden I will forever carry.”

A burden we all must carry, Dave! Scholnick points out that reports — including a gibe from Forbes and a commercial from the AARP — of the $3 million treadmill price tag are just flat-out wrong. While it’s not chump change, a couple of million is reasonable for a decade worth of lab expenses — but the treadmill itself, he estimates, cost about $47 in spare parts. And he paid for those himself.

What’s more, the shrimp weren’t just experiencing the benefits of cardiovascular exercise for the heck of it, says Scholnick:

S[hr]imply put, my colleagues and I were studying how recent changes in the oceans could potentially affect the ability of marine organisms to fight infections — an important question, given that the amount of bacteria a shrimp is able remove from its body is directly related to how much bacteria could potentially end up on seafood-filled plates. And since shrimp are active animals in nature, it was logical to study the immune response of shrimp during activity.

In an era of public skepticism about the basic tenets of the scientific method, Scholnick’s defense of his shrimpy research stands as a defense of science in general:

In science, it is often necessary to develop creative solutions to complex problems. How do you get active marine animals to move naturally in a laboratory setting? How do marine animals fight off the glut of pathogens they are exposed to in the harsh environments where they live? These are not simple questions, there are no easy solutions, and they require an enormous amount of time and effort to answer.

With such symbolic weight to carry, this little shrimp deserves a more dignified anthem — here’s the Grist remix:

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How a $47 Shrimp Treadmill Became a $3-Million Political Plaything

, Chronicle of Higher Education.

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Sorry, Raw Sugar Is No Better For You Than Refined

by ShannaQuintero Posted on September 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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Along with plain white refined sugar, most hip coffee shops now offer “raw” sugar. I usually go with raw: The golden crystals and brown paper packets somehow make me think it’s more wholesome than the conventional white stuff, which, as highlighted in a previous Mother Jones investigation, many scientists now believe is far worse for you than the industry would have us think.

Sugar in the Raw, a leading raw sugar brand, suggests on its Frequently Asked Questions page that its product is indeed more wholesome. “White sugar is obtained by refining the sugarcane crystals to remove the molasses (and with that, trace nutrients),” it states. “Some nutritionists believe that the small amount of micronutrients retained in Sugar In The Raw® provides advantages over refined white sugar.” Raw sugar is also more expensive: On Amazon, a four-pound bag of Sugar in the Raw retails for $12.99, versus $3.25 for regular.

So is the raw stuff really more virtuous? Sugar in the Raw could not be reached for comment, but a spokeswoman for the Wholesome Sweeteners brand of raw sugar explained to me that, like refined sugar, raw—technically called Turbinado—sugar comes from sugarcane (refined sugar can also be derived from beets). The main difference between the two is in the boiling of the cane juice: The juice for refined sugar is boiled several times to remove all the molasses, whereas Turbinado sugar is boiled only once.

The residual molasses gives Turbinado sugar “some flavor and texture other than just sweetness,” says Katherine Zeratski, a registered dietitian with Mayo Clinic. But it doesn’t provide any significant nutrition. Refined and raw sugar are “calorically identical,” Zeratski notes. And while Turbinado sugar does contain calcium, iron, and potassium, it contains them in trace amounts. We used the USDA’s National Nutrient Database to calculate a few comparisons:

By Katie Rose Quandt

While one 2012 study found that molasses from sugar cane acted as an antioxidant in laboratory cell cultures, Kimber Stanhope, a University of California-Davis microbiologist who focuses on sugars, said she was unable to find any research suggesting the same effect for cells in the body. She emails: “Given the lack of scientific evidence that consumption of molasses has any health benefits in humans, and the fact that the molasses content of Turbinado sugar is very low, it is certainly a stretch to suggest that Turbinado sugar is healthier than refined sugar.”

There goes my virtuous latte.

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Sorry, Raw Sugar Is No Better For You Than Refined

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Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell Convicted on Corruption Charges

by Kandace86G Posted on September 4, 2014

Mother Jones

A jury found former Republican Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell guilty on 11 counts of corruption on Thursday, ending a bizarre trial that featured bad shrimp, a broken marriage, and non-FDA approved dietary supplements. McDonnell’s wife, Maureen, was found guilty on eight charges.

The charges stemmed from the couple’s relationship with Johnnie Williams, the former CEO of Star Scientific, Inc., a pharmaceutical company. Williams, dubbed the “tic-tac man” by the governor’s staff, was pushing two new drugs, Antabloc and CigRx, and needed help getting the pills into doctors’ offices. He lavished gifts on the McDonnells, paying for their daughter’s wedding, taking Maureen on shopping sprees, and letting the couple borrow his “James Bond car”—an Aston Martin—for vacations. At one point, he bid against himself at a charity auction to win a free weekend with Maureen. In turn, the McDonnells became Star Scientific boosters. Maureen went so far as to pitch Antabloc to prospective first lady Ann Romney, telling her it could help her MS.

What’s there to say about the trial? BuzzFeed‘s Katherine Miller has the fullest summation of what happened, but let’s just call it a mess, a soap opera, the world’s worst “Modern Love” column in legalese. It was also a useful corrective to the facade politicians sometimes present when they trot their families in front of the cameras before trying to legislate yours. McDonnell, whose master’s thesis at Pat Robertson’s Regent University made the case for covenant marriage and subservient roles for wives, built his defense on the theory that his own union was too much of a failure for him and his wife to mount a conspiracy. According to the governor, his wife was a paranoid loon who had a crush on the businessman who bought her nice dresses.

At one point, a former aide to Maureen McDonnell—who called the former first lady a “nutbag“—testified that she had received a text message from the governor’s wife alleging that the couple’s chef was attempting to ruin Christmas by serving them bad shrimp. Fed up with the McDonnells (who had accused him of stealing food), the chef, Todd Schneider, handed a trove of documents to federal investigators in 2012 that led to the probe. The lesson, as always, is to be nice to the people who prepare your food.

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Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell Convicted on Corruption Charges

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