Post

Carl T. Bergstrom
@carlbergstrom.com

So in a huge surprise to absolutely no one, it turns out that NIH director Jay Bhattacharya's new journal based on the premise of letting his friends and only his friends publish essentially whatever they want is full of crackpot nonsense from retired cranks.

publichealth.realclearjournals.orgAre air quality‒health effect claims a statistical analysis fluke?There are literally thousands of epidemiology (observational) studies in the literature claiming that air quality causes adverse health effects, including mortality. There are three profound examples ...

231 reposts664 likes

Kate Simpson, PhD, RN
@katersimpson.bsky.social

As a journal editor, the last thing we need is another journal that looks credible but is publishing bad science. I check references in articles published in our journal and frequently find fake citations or citations in predatory journals supposedly supporting key points authors are trying to make.

Carl T. Bergstrom
@carlbergstrom.com

What's so striking about the original piece is how utterly incoherent it is. It's logical consequence of pursuing the "peer review is censorship" mentality that Jay has espoused ever since everyone and their undergrad RA pointed out that his April 2020 study was hopelessly flawed.

kgay2.bsky.social
@kgay2.bsky.social

Strangely, the smaller the p-value, which is less than one (doesn’t seem very significant to me), the more significant the result. And yet, if you take the -log10 of the p-value, suddenly the value is greater than one, and the larger the value, the more significant the result. Concerning.

Mark Ungrin
@mark-ungrin.bsky.social

Your regularly scheduled reminder that the anti-vax cranks, the anti-PPE cranks and the overdiagnosis cranks are all part of the same country club.

John Mashey
@johnmashey.bsky.social

Lead author Stan(ley) Young is name I’ve heard before, has written for National Association of Scholars (much Scaife$), was speaker #15 at this: www.desmog.com/2020/02/07/d... Search that for Young to see notes on him. @deevybee.bsky.social wrote about getting invite to this conference.

desmog.comDark-Moneyed Denialists Are Running 'Fixing Science' Symposium of DoubtThe “Fixing Science” symposium, which is hosted by the National Association of Scholars and kicks off today in Oakland, California, includes credible speakers who want to improve some areas of science...
John Mashey
@johnmashey.bsky.social

Note : @deevybee.bsky.social’s post, deevybee.blogspot.com/2020/01/shou... Is well worth reading, very useful in doing Desmog post, some ideas apply well to these fakery journals. She noted few women in prelim program (final: 1 of 22). i’m told audience mostly older male, didn’t seem science-strong.

deevybee.blogspot.comShould I stay or should I go? When debate with opponents should be avoidedSuppose you are invited to speak at a conference where some of the other speakers have views very different from yours. What do you do? My g...
Seth Trueger
@mdaware.org

I don’t know what I was expecting

Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com

So in a huge surprise to absolutely no one, it turns out that NIH director Jay Bhattacharya's new journal based on the premise of letting his friends and only his friends publish essentially whatever they want is full of crackpot nonsense from retired cranks.

publichealth.realclearjournals.orgAre air quality‒health effect claims a statistical analysis fluke?There are literally thousands of epidemiology (observational) studies in the literature claiming that air quality causes adverse health effects, including mortality. There are three profound examples ...
Tai Viinikka
@eastpole.bsky.social

Sure, but just about any coverage that accurately reports RFK Jr.'s activities and goals amounts to character assassination. That's how it is with some people.

animeorama.bsky.social
@animeorama.bsky.social

I know it is just a perspective but to claim that health is not affected by air quality by using 13 paragraphs (including abstract) with 3 of them complaining about peer review seems...like a poor way to disprove something.

wendy norris
@wendynorris.bsky.social

At some point soon (very, very soon), we all need to launch a campaign to lobby our respective professional associations to retract membership, awards, and honors from these clowns. I shudder at the damage these charlatans are inflicting on our fields.

Paul Bleicher
@pbleic.bsky.social

PNAS used to allow members to submit without (or with their own privately arranged) peer review. Showing my age, but at least I still remember it.

Tom
@tomrees.eurosky.social

Nabu's analysis: The argument selectively assembles examples, does not explain evidence selection, and leaves the effective-sample-size premise unsupported. The contradictory descriptions of the 2011 study are surfaced through the Red flag, not a reliability-based score cap.

nabu.scienceAre air quality‒health effect claims a statistical analysis fluke? — Limited · CaveatsA critique linking analytical flexibility to air-quality mortality research whose broad dismissal of associations exceeds its selectively assembled evidence.
Kent Lind
@camasonian.bsky.social

Pretty sure he is still a Stanford professor. If they let him crawl back to Stanford after all this like nothing has happened, then that place needs to be razed to the ground. Or at least shut down until we can figure out what the hell is happening with it.

Derek Young
@derekmyoung.bsky.social

Nobel disease is incredible. The important thing is to pick a field where it won't do much harm. I think you should spend your twilight years being wrong about bees. For me, it should be physics. I've accumulated my mother's books but none of her knowledge. Should be great.

Carl T. Bergstrom
@carlbergstrom.com

Well actually, bees are not as smart as LLMs, that's why they've been around for 120 million years whereas LLMs will go interplanetary and be around for the remainder of the lifetime of the universe.