Contrarian gets the sack

[little grey rabbit]

Professor Bruce Charlton will be sacked this week from editor of the journal Medical Hypothesis for publish something from a credible scientist who is an AIDS denier.

Originally Posted by Higher Times Education

Full description here:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.u...ode=411468&c=2

On 11 May, Elsevier, the multinational academic publisher, will sack me from my position as editor of Medical Hypotheses. This affair has attracted international coverage in major journals such as Nature, Science and the British Medical Journal.

How did it come to this? Last year I published two papers on Aids that led to a complaint sent to Elsevier.

This was not unexpected. Medical Hypotheses was established with the express intent of allowing ideas outside the mainstream to be aired so that they could be debated openly. Its policy had not changed since its founding more than three decades ago, and it remained unaltered under my editorship, which began in 2003.

Edited by Locknar:

<SNIP>; edited breach of Rule 4.

But for me to collude with prohibiting Duesberg from publishing, I would have needed to be 100 per cent sure that Duesberg was 100 per cent wrong. Because even if he is mostly wrong, it is possible that someone of his ability may be seeing some kind of problem with the current consensus about Aids that other people of lesser ability (that is, most of us) are missing.

And if Duesberg may be even partially correct, it is extremely dangerous that the proper scientific process has been so ruthlessly distorted and subverted simply to exclude his ideas from the official scientific literature.

Bruce G. Charlton is professor of theoretical medicine, University of Buckingham.

Did Elsevier make the right decision here?

[quixotecoyote]

Obviously. He's a kook that ran a tabloid rag of a journal.
Samples:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/category/ncbi-rofl/charlton-week/

eta: I apparently can't link directly to the tag results, so click on "charlton week" in the tags.

Here's a good example of what's wrong with the journal as it existed under Charlton care:

Quote:

A recent issue of Medical Hypotheses includes an article that tries to link autism to Lyme disease. Why pick those two diseases? Who knows. Perhaps because both attract a lot of cult medicine.
So let's examine this "hypothesis".


The paper doesn't start well, as it begs the question immediately. For example, it simply assumes there is an autism "epidemic" that is "spreading" while evidence has shown this epidemic to be largely artifact. They also note that "[a]n association between Lyme disease (LYD) and other tick-borne infections (TBI) during fetal development and in infancy with autism, autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and autistic symptoms has been noted by numerous clinicians and parents." I'm not sure what that means. If they are going to base a whole paper on a particular assertion/observation, they probably should cite some data. Just sayin'.


...


Here is their blindingly stupid observation:

In a geostatistical review of CDC and IDEA statistics 10 out of the top 15 states overlap for the incidence of autism and LYD (MN, ME, MA, MD, CT, WI, RI, NJ, PA, VA).

The science of statistical analysis was developed to do away with this type of primitive observation.


It's difficult to overstate how bad this paper is. First, it relies on the journal's stated preference for maverick (i.e. way the hell out there) ideas. It starts with a hypothesis whose implausibility
matched only by it's weak observational foundation. It then goes on to support this hypothesis with case reports and other weak "evidence".

http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/20...st_make_sh.php

[Uncayimmy]

Here's there withdrawal notice:

Quote:

http://www.medical-hypotheses.com/ar...447-2/abstract
This Article-in-Press has been permanently withdrawn.

The editorial policy of Medical Hypotheses makes it clear that the journal considers “radical, speculative, and non-mainstream scientific ideas”, and articles will only be acceptable if they are “coherent and clearly expressed.” However, we received serious expressions of concern about the quality of this article, which contains highly controversial opinions about the causes of AIDS, opinions that could potentially be damaging to global public health.

Given these important signals of concern, we commissioned an external expert panel to investigate the circumstances in which this article came to be published online. The panel recommended that the article should be externally peer-reviewed. Following a peer-review process managed by The Lancet editorial team, all five external reviewers recommended rejection, as a result of which the expert panel recommended permanent withdrawal.

Sounds to me like they contravened their own policies. The article itself seems coherent and clearly expressed.

[tsig]

Originally Posted by quixotecoyote

Obviously. He's a kook that ran a tabloid rag of a journal.
Samples:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/category/ncbi-rofl/charlton-week/

eta: I apparently can't link directly to the tag results, so click on "charlton week" in the tags.

You've become a data point in lgr's psychological evaluation of the JREF.

[little grey rabbit]

That isnt a sample of anything but some random blog on the web.

Do you have something better that shows Medical Hypothesis to be a tabloid journal?

BTW, it seems the issue that Duesberg wrote on may be fraud with methodological problems, but he is probably not the best person to investigate them

Quote:

South Africa: Death Stats 'Implausible'

Kerry Cullinan

17 November 2009

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The Health Department's claim of a massive jump in deaths in 2008 is unlikely, according to experts

Death statistics released by the Department of Health last week that showed a jump of 182,654 deaths in a single year are "implausible".

This is according to the Medical Research Council (MRC), which usually supplies government with mortality figures.

Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi told a press briefing last week that, in 2007, the total number of deaths from all causes was 573,408 but by the end of 2008, this figure had jumped to 756,062.
[...]
However, it is appears that the Minister got his figures from the Department of Home Affairs. The MRC says it does not yet have the 2008 mortality figures and Statistics SA only released the 2007 mortality statistics two weeks ago.

The Stats SA death rate for 2007 was 601,133 - almost 30,000 higher than the 2007 figures quoted by the health minister.

In addition, Stats SA noted that there was slight decline of 1,8% in deaths between 2007 and 2006 when 612 462 people died. Some interpreted this as a modest indication that government's antiretroviral treatment programme was working.


Thus, the Minister's report last week of the massive jump in deaths - which he attributed to AIDS - caused disbelief among statisticians and researchers who track the mortality rate.
[....]
What is not in dispute, however, is the fact that the death rate of South Africans has more than doubled in the past decade, with the greatest increases occuring in adult women in their late twenties and early thirties and men in their late thirties - a clear indication of the impact of AIDS.

[quixotecoyote]

Originally Posted by UncaYimmy

Here's there withdrawal notice:



Sounds to me like they contravened their own policies. The article itself seems coherent and clearly expressed.

Coherent in the sense that it is possible to understand the words and sentences, yes.

Coherent in the sense that it is "logically integrated" with known facts and data, not so much.


http://www.aidstruth.org/news/2009/e...ialist-article

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...eview-goldacre

Originally Posted by tsig

You've become a data point in lgr's psychological evaluation of the JREF.

Am I supposed to care?

[little grey rabbit]

Originally Posted by quixotecoyote

Coherent in the sense that it is possible to understand the words and sentences, yes.

A little birdy is tweeting in my ear that you haven't had time to read this provocative paper yet.

Quote:

Am I supposed to care?

You will when my peer-reviewed paper comes out "Herd Instinct and Group-think in the skeptic sub-community"in the Journal of Anthropology

[uke2se]

Elsevier can do whatever they want as it is the publisher's prerogative. If they feel the article is crap, and they went as far as checking it with people who would know, they have the right to remove it from publication. As Charlton apparently isn't performing his duties as editor to the publisher's standards, they have the right to relieve him of those duties as they see fit. Charlton whining about it doesn't make him more right.

[little grey rabbit]

I certainly don't think it was a Crime against Humanity.

[quixotecoyote]

Originally Posted by little grey rabbit

That isnt a sample of anything but some random blog on the web.

Do you have something better that shows Medical Hypothesis to be a tabloid journal?

BTW, it seems the issue that Duesberg wrote on may be fraud with methodological problems, but he is probably not the best person to investigate them

From the Bad Science column in the Guardian:

Quote:

Articles from Medical Hypotheses have appeared in this column quite a lot. They carried one almost surreally crass paper in which two Italian doctors argued "mongoloid" really was an appropriate term for people with Down's syndrome after all, because they share many characteristics with oriental populations (including: sitting cross-legged; eating small amounts of lots of types of food with MSG in it; and an enjoyment of handicrafts). You might also remember two pieces discussing the benefits and side-effects of masturbation as a treatment for nasal congestion.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...eview-goldacre

Science-Based Medicine has a good review of the journal with plenty of links to the dumbass articles they publish.

Quote:

MH published Mark and David Geier’s “hypothesis” proposing the use of the powerful anti-sex hormone drug Lupron to treat autism, an utterly ridiculous idea from a scientific standpoint that wasn’t just “radical”; it was demonstrably wrong. In the same vein, MH published a paper by a dream team of anti-vaccine activists proposing the use of spironolactone to treat autism based on its anti-androgen properties. Recently, MH published an article that appeared to echo attempts by the anti-vaccine movement to link mitochondrial diseases to “vaccine injury.”

...

Nor do most people–even scientists– have any idea of some of the other amusingly (and not-so-amusingly) wacky “hypotheses” published in MH, such as ideas that masturbation is a treatment for nasal congestion, a paper linking high heeled shoes to schizophrenia, a meditation on the nature of navel fluff, and truly offensive speculations about “mongoloids.” And there was support for the most blatant pseudoscience as well, even above and beyond support of HIV/AIDS denialism. For example, over the years MH has published several articles arguing for the “plausibility” of homeopathy, such as this, this, and this.

Originally Posted by little grey rabbit

A little birdy is tweeting in my ear that you haven't had time to read this provocative paper yet.

Apparently the same bird that helped you design your protocols.

Quote:

You will when my peer-reviewed paper comes out "Herd Instinct and Group-think in the skeptic sub-community"in the Journal of Anthropology

If the standard of evidence you're using is that skeptics support the removal of an editor of an non-peer reviewed journal with a history of publishing crackpot articles given the last straw of publishing a article with false information about aids that had already been rejected by one reputable journal and dismissed by the vast majority of competent experts, I can see why you'd be upset about ME going to peer review.

[bit_pattern]

Hack editor of hack journal is a hack

/shrugs

So what's the big deal here?

[little grey rabbit]

It seems to me you don't understand the mission the journal set itself. It was to be a venue to discuss things which data may not yet support.
To give an example of a more typical contribution
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16797871

Is it worth having? That is up to the people who read it, I guess. But it wasn't setting out to be another journal where scientists churn over data based on micro-questions - essential though such processes are - it was supposed to be an exception, to fill a special niche.

[quixotecoyote]

Originally Posted by little grey rabbit

It seems to me you don't understand the mission the journal set itself. It was to be a venue to discuss things which data may not yet support.
To give an example of a more typical contribution
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16797871

Is it worth having? That is up to the people who read it, I guess. But it wasn't setting out to be another journal where scientists churn over data based on micro-questions - essential though such processes are - it was supposed to be an exception, to fill a special niche.

Yes, and if it had kept to speculative fact-based articles instead of publishing the articles it did (of which I've linked about a dozen already and can probably go back for more), it would have served a valuable purpose.

[uke2se]

Originally Posted by little grey rabbit

It seems to me you don't understand the mission the journal set itself. It was to be a venue to discuss things which data may not yet support.
To give an example of a more typical contribution
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16797871

Is it worth having? That is up to the people who read it, I guess. But it wasn't setting out to be another journal where scientists churn over data based on micro-questions - essential though such processes are - it was supposed to be an exception, to fill a special niche.

Who decides the mission of the journal? Do you believe that the journal sets the mission itself? Do you think the publishers have some say in what this mission should be? I'm just asking questions.

[little grey rabbit]

Originally Posted by quixotecoyote

Yes, and if it had kept to speculative fact-based articles instead of publishing the articles it did, it would have served a valuable purpose.

The response Prof. Charlton might make is it is not his business to decide what is "fact" and what is not. So if someone provides a coherent and scientifically based hypothesis he will publish it - and publish the rebuttal.

As we see above, mortality stats in South Africa seem to be tainted by politics in any case, so it is too soon to silence dissident voices.

[quixotecoyote]

Originally Posted by little grey rabbit

The response Prof. Charlton might make is it is not his business to decide what is "fact" and what is not. So if someone provides a coherent and scientifically based hypothesis he will publish it - and publish the rebuttal.

You don't see the contradiction in refusing to decide what is fact-based but proceeding to decide what is scientifically-based?

eta: I'll just skip ahead here. If an article claims that Lupron can treat autism, it is neither fact-based nor science-based but is instead pseudo-scientific woo-mongering that poses a danger to public health.

[little grey rabbit]

Except if Lupron does successfully treat Autism you have just contributed to unnecessary misery.

The little birdy in my ear is still tweeting that you have looked at that Duesburg article yet.

[Uncayimmy]

Originally Posted by quixotecoyote

Coherent in the sense that it is possible to understand the words and sentences, yes.

Coherent in the sense that it is "logically integrated" with known facts and data, not so much.

You're twisting the meaning of coherent. It's logically integrated with itself. The whole point, it would seem, of this rag is to present ideas that are not consistent with mainstream science and to question "known" facts and data. If they want to change things around, that's cool.

Quote:

http://www.aidstruth.org/news/2009/e...ialist-article

Did you read the Duesberg article or are you relying on somebody else's opinion? The first source you cite has its own flaws in logic. It states, "For example, they argue that AIDS is not a problem in Africa because the total population of Africa has increased during the AIDS era. One could as easily conclude that cancers are never fatal, since the population of California has increased despite the presence of these diseases."

What the article actually did was point out the high rates of infections and high rate of population growth and concluded that "the claims that HIV has caused huge losses of African lives are unconfirmed." That's very different. And cancer, unlike HIV, is not infectious. It's a misleading analogy at best.

The claims about conflict of interest seem a bit dubious. The argument is that Rasnick's former employer could conceivably benefit. That's a bit of a stretch right there. If you read their article about Rasnick it leads you to the court decision. If you read the court decision, you'll see that that company is now prohibited from marketing their vitamins in a manner that would make it easy for them to benefit from the article.

Also, if you read that article, you'll see how they misrepresent the case to make Rasnick look like a nazi (even referring to the Nuremberg trials). What they don't tell you is that the overseeing government authorities were aware of what was going on and concluded that it was acceptable under the law. I'm not going to argue whether it was or not. My point is that they make it sound like Rasnick and VitaCell were rogues breaking the law under a cloak of darkness when that was not the case at all.

I don't know enough about the science to comment on Duesberg's article, but just a wee bit of digging and critical thinking shows me that AIDSTruth seems less than objective and forthcoming.

[quixotecoyote]

Originally Posted by little grey rabbit

Except if Lupron does successfully treat Autism you have just contributed to unnecessary misery.

And if cases of beer were nuclear weapons, liquor store owners would be a threat to world peace. Fortunately we don't have to worry about either scenario.

Quote:

The little birdy in my ear is still tweeting that you have looked at that Duesburg article yet.

It's funny, you're only right because you mistyped.

[quixotecoyote]

Originally Posted by UncaYimmy

You're twisting the meaning of coherent. It's logically integrated with itself. The whole point, it would seem, of this rag is to present ideas that are not consistent with mainstream science and to question "known" facts and data. If they want to change things around, that's cool.

<shrug> As I said. it depends on how you define coherent. If you choose to define coherent as simply self-consistent, then the journal could fulfill it's mission by posting an article which talked about how sentient bananas were rising up to overthrow the Panamanians, so long as it didn't contradict itself. I don't think that's the kind of mission it sees for itself, but I could be wrong.

Quote:

Did you read the Duesberg article or are you relying on somebody else's opinion?

I both read the article and looked for opinions from many sources who would be more qualified than myself to judge its worth.

Quote:

The first source you cite has its own flaws in logic. It states, "For example, they argue that AIDS is not a problem in Africa because the total population of Africa has increased during the AIDS era. One could as easily conclude that cancers are never fatal, since the population of California has increased despite the presence of these diseases."

What the article actually did was point out the high rates of infections and high rate of population growth and concluded that "the claims that HIV has caused huge losses of African lives are unconfirmed." That's very different. And cancer, unlike HIV, is not infectious. It's a misleading analogy at best.

What the article actually did was argue that

Quote:

In contrast to the huge losses of lives claimed by the Harvard study
of Chigwedere et al. the vital statistics of South Africa show that
the population has increased from 2000 to 2005 by 3 million, from
44.5 to 47.5 million, continuing a steady trend since 1980, even
though an average of 25% to 30% were positive for antibodies
against HIV since 1998.

Therefore, we call into question the hypothesis that HIV causes
AIDS and the proposal of Chigwedere et al. that huge hypothetical
losses of lives from HIV can be prevented by treatments designed
to inhibit HIV with inhibitors of DNA synthesis, not only because
there is no evidence for lost lives and thus for a pathogenic HIV,
but also because these drugs are inevitably toxic.

Which is exactly the claim that aidstruth attributed to it.

eta:

Quote:

The claims about conflict of interest seem a bit dubious. The argument is that Rasnick's former employer could conceivably benefit. That's a bit of a stretch right there. If you read their article about Rasnick it leads you to the court decision. If you read the court decision, you'll see that that company is now prohibited from marketing their vitamins in a manner that would make it easy for them to benefit from the article.

Also, if you read that article, you'll see how they misrepresent the case to make Rasnick look like a nazi (even referring to the Nuremberg trials). What they don't tell you is that the overseeing government authorities were aware of what was going on and concluded that it was acceptable under the law. I'm not going to argue whether it was or not. My point is that they make it sound like Rasnick and VitaCell were rogues breaking the law under a cloak of darkness when that was not the case at all.

Well, I agree that I'm not sure how the ex-employer conflict of interest is supposed to work, but the Nuremberg reference seems fair given that they were using that as their basis for rules on ethical experimentation and it's one of the big landmarks of experimental ethics. They could have gone with the Belmont Report, which is another landmark, but since that came on the heels of the Tuskegee experiments, you could raise the same objections.

I'll check in again tomorrow. I'm hitting the sack.

[Uncayimmy]

Originally Posted by quixotecoyote

What the article actually did was argue that

Which is exactly the claim that aidstruth attributed to it.

You're also misrepresenting the article by skipping a major step in their logic and attributing to them something other than their stated conclusion of the article. Did Duesberg throw in some stuff about AIDS and AZT? Sure. But the primary thrust of the article was summed up with, "We have found no statistical evidence for the claim of the Harvard study that hundreds of thousands of South African lives were lost in the period from 2000 to 2005 due to an HIV-AIDS epidemic." That's pretty much what all of their data concerns, and that is what should be attacked.

Duesberg also concluded that since the claimed additional deaths were not seen (based on his research) either in South Africa or Uganda, then AIDS is not what the Harvard folks and others seem to think it is. That claim can and should be attacked, but that's easy: Debunk his data. If someone can show that his analysis of the data for the additional deaths was faulty and offer evidence that those deaths were there as estimated, then it's a done deal.

I'm saying I find that they misrepresented the article primarily through the use of cherry-picking. Just debunk his analysis of the numbers and be done with it.

Quote:

eta:
Well, I agree that I'm not sure how the ex-employer conflict of interest is supposed to work, but the Nuremberg reference seems fair given that they were using that as their basis for rules on ethical experimentation and it's one of the big landmarks of experimental ethics. They could have gone with the Belmont Report, which is another landmark, but since that came on the heels of the Tuskegee experiments, you could raise the same objections.

I thought it was way over the top especially since the 60 page trial document didn't even mention it.

Quote:

I'll check in again tomorrow. I'm hitting the sack.

No rush. I have no dog in this fight. I'd just like to see a sound rebuttal of the Duesberg's data without all the rhetoric because I've asked myself similar questions about just how bad the problem really is.