Science Prestige Crumbles

Public trust in science has taken drastic hits lately, and Big Science admits it. What will be required to get back its respect?

Last year, major journals dismissed the Covid-19 lab leak theory as a conspiracy theory, but now that “their guy” the Democrat president is in and the despised Republican is out, Big Science cannot hide its bias with as much bluffing. Revelations of politically-motivated journal articles, though, are just the top of the iceberg. There are deeper reasons to doubt much of what they print.

Take the most mundane, everyday, easily-observable science: look under the hood, and you find that scientists really don’t know much about it. Conventional wisdom looks more like talking points. Many people trust the talking points, but few know why.

What really makes junk food bad for us? Here’s what the science says (New Scientist). We know what to expect from the headline. Clare Wilson, however, gives a surprise:

Cut down on fatty food. No, sugar. Aim for a Mediterranean diet. And remember to eat more plants…

The variability of healthy eating advice has become a cliché in itself. Yet despite all the contradictions, there is one thing that many agree on: we should avoid junk food. Until recently though, no one could give you a decent reason why. Gastronomic snobbery aside, science lacked an agreed definition of what junk food actually is, and that has made it difficult to know whether we should be avoiding it and, if so, why.

Fear not; Wilson ends with the expected caveats against junk food. In her reasoning, though, she admits to gaps in empirical knowledge big enough to drive a Doritos truck through. What is processed food? What is “ultra-processed” food? Is salt, sugar and fat always bad? If people should eat “real food,” what is it? Nutrition research is “notorious for its contradictory results,” Wilson admits. She touts a new study that finds an association with junk food and weight gain, but weight gain alone may not be a bad sign; it may indicate that the junk food was tastier and more tempting. Some people need to gain weight. Some heavy people are fit.

Wilson ends on the “right side” of the issue that ultra-processed junk food is bad, but she leaves lots of questions. What do changes in diet do to our gut bacteria? How do health-food promoters expect the poor to afford “real food”? Does junk food affect everyone the same, or is genetics more important? How do the assumed “bad” ingredients like fat and sugar affect health alone and in combination? Is all processing bad? Some processing, Wilson says, can be good. One quoted expert confesses, “no one can yet agree on exactly what it is that makes processed food unhealthy, so we don’t know which processed food components to limit and which from wholefoods we need to boost.” In the end, Wilson can only offer wimpy advice, not clear answers to her opening promise about “Here’s what the science says.”

All things considered, while we may not yet fully understand the mechanisms, the evidence is accumulating that it is probably best to avoid eating too much ultra-processed food. While we wait for the science to catch up, the take-home message is simple: eat wholefoods as much as budget and circumstances allow. Your body may thank you for it.

Other Threats to Scientific Trustworthiness, and Admissions of Ignorance

1/ Problem: Bold Pronouncements Lacking Adequate Empirical Support

No good decisions without good data: Climate, policymaking, the critical role of science (Phys.org). As we have reported numerous times now (e.g., 23 March 2021, 11 Nov 2020), numerous poorly-known factors and unknown unknowns belie the confident assertions about world climate. Now they tell us they are trying to do better!

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” This concept is also true within the context of climate policy, where the achievement of the objectives of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is dependent on the ability of the international community to accurately measure greenhouse gas (GHG) emission trends, and consequently, to alter these trends.

2/ Problem: Changing Stories

Geological riddle solved: ‘Roof of the World’ has gotten higher (Phys.org). The old story was that the Himalaya Mountains rose when India crashed into Asia. Now they tell us there has long been controversy about that account, including when it occurred and how long the range continued to rise. Beware when they say that an indirect measurement “sheds new light” on evolution.

There has long been controversy about whether the world’s highest region, Tibet, has grown taller during the recent geological past. New results from the University of Copenhagen indicate that the ‘Roof of the World’ appears to have risen by up to 600 meters and the answer was found in underwater lava. The knowledge sheds new light on Earth’s evolution.

3/ Problem: Unreported Errors

Correcting a major error in assessing organic carbon pollution in natural waters (Science Advances). We’ve been lied to for 100 years! And policies were built on the “major error” reported in this paper.

For nearly a century, chemical oxygen demand (COD) has been widely used for assessment of organic pollution in aquatic systems. Here, we show through a multicountry survey and experimental studies that COD is not an appropriate proxy of microbial degradability of organic matter because it oxidizes both LDOC and RDOC, and the latter contributes up to 90% of DOC in high-latitude forested areas. Hence, COD measurements do not provide appropriate scientific information on organic pollution in natural waters and can mislead environmental policies.

4/ Problem: Unknown Unknowns

Research Brief: Ocean bacteria release carbon into the atmosphere (University of Michigan). We’re told that climate change is settled science. What is not settled is how many unknown factors keep coming to light. Are they minimizing this one after discovering it?

“If CO2 is being released into the ocean, it’s also being released into the atmosphere, because they’re constantly interchanging gases between them,” explained Dalton Leprich, the first author on the paper and a Ph.D. student in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. “While it’s not as big of an impact as what humans are doing to the environment, it is a flux of CO2 into the atmosphere that we didn’t know about. These numbers should help us home in on that global carbon budget.”

5/ Problem: Hidden Bias

Research identifies gender bias in estimation of patients’ pain (University of Miami). Have women been getting a fair shake in medical diagnoses? If so, what other biases emerge out of “business as usual” practices in science?

According to “Gender biases in estimation of others’ pain,” when male and female patients expressed the same amount of pain, observers viewed female patients’ pain as less intense and more likely to benefit from psychotherapy versus medication as compared to men’s pain, exposing a significant patient gender bias that could lead to disparities in treatments.

6/ Problem: Invalid Models

What’s not in the news headlines or titles of Alzheimer disease articles? #InMice (PLoS Biology). Mouse models are routinely used to test treatments on humans, but researchers often fail to reveal the fact. These authors feel that humans and mice are too different to transfer findings from mouse models. Look what can happen when the media fails to disclose that fact:

Around 200 rodent models have been developed to study AD [Alzheimer’s Disease], even though AD is an exclusively human condition that does not occur naturally in other species and appears impervious to reproduction in artificial animal models, an information not always disclosed…. We found a significant association (p < 0.01) between articles’ titles and news stories’ headlines, revealing that when authors omit the species in the paper’s title, writers of news stories tend to follow suit. We also found that papers not mentioning mice in their titles are more newsworthy and significantly more tweeted than papers that do. Our study shows that science reporting may affect media reporting and asks for changes in the way we report about findings obtained with animal models used to study human diseases.

7/ Problem: Political Persecution and Selective Reporting About It

Scientific image sleuth faces legal action for criticizing research papers (Nature News). This article tells the story of a woman who got into trouble for criticizing a paper about hydroxychloroquine’s possible efffectiveness against Covid-19, and says that the complaint against her could have a “chilling effect” on whistleblowers. But Nature is in no position to do moral posturing about this (9 July 2020), because they have been viciously anti-Trump for the entire former president’s term. Conservative news sites could tell scarier stories about how their reputations were ruined, their social media accounts censored (example), and their jobs threatened for agreeing with Donald Trump that the common drug might do some good. Now, it appears that there is evidence that hydroxychloroquine is effective when prescribed correctly (Epoch Times and commentary).

8/ Problem: Advice Too Late

Don’t abandon 14-day limit on embryo research, it makes sense (Nature Commentary by Green, West and Hayflick). A regulating agency has already lifted time restrictions on human embryo research (see 27 May 2021). Their concerns are worth relaying, even if too late:

There are 4 compelling reasons for the 14-day limit. Its clarity leaves little room for misinterpretation. It corresponds to important biological events, including the beginning of ectoderm/neural progenitors. In marking the end of the possibilities of twinning or chimaerism, it is the start of a unique biological identity. There is no later relevant nexus of events….

We caution that these utilitarian objectives are limitless….

Under the new guidelines, in other words, there is no stopping the slippery slope. See also the commentary by John Evans, “Setting ethical limits on human gene editing after the fall of the somatic/germline barrier” in PNAS, where he worries about the slippery slope into dystopia.

9/ Problem: Fake Science

Hundreds of gibberish papers still lurk in the scientific literature (Nature). This is a follow-up essay by Van Noorden (see 27 March 2021) warning of fake science papers getting so good, journals cannot even detect them to remove them.

Nonsensical research papers generated by a computer program are still popping up in the scientific literature many years after the problem was first seen, a study has revealed. Some publishers have told Nature they will take down the papers, which could result in more than 200 retractions.

The issue began in 2005, when three PhD students created paper-generating software called SCIgen for “maximum amusement”, and to show that some conferences would accept meaningless papers. The program cobbles together words to generate research articles with random titles, text and charts, easily spotted as gibberish by a human reader. It is free to download, and anyone can use it.

10/ Problem: Blindness to Political Ideology

Superpowered science: charting China’s research rise (Nature). Can Nature be so blind as to not realize that everything that happens in China is motivated to bolster the Chinese Communist Party and achieve world domination? This paper shows graphs and charts of China’s achievements in “superpowered science” without a bit of warning about what this portends for the world. Do they not realize that China has all but silenced freedom in Hong Kong, and is poised to threaten Taiwan? Do they look forward to being subjects of a tyrannical regime?

While other journals are beginning to take seriously the “lab leak” theory for the origin of Covid-19 (see 13 May 2021), Nature is taking the side of China’s communist propagandists. Nature‘s 27 May commentary weeps, “Divisive COVID ‘lab leak’ debate prompts dire warnings from researchers” and warns that “Allegations that COVID escaped from a Chinese lab make it harder for nations to collaborate on ending the pandemic — and fuel online bullying, some scientists say.” Oh good grief. Bullying. Compare that with nearly 4 million deaths from a pandemic that began suspiciously in Wuhan, China next to a level-4 virus research lab! As new facts are coming to light, should not a “scientific” journal care about finding the truth?

This list of 10 problems undermining trust in science is not intended to be exhaustive.

Nature‘s Darwin-dogmatic Editors (who hate conservative America, but love the IPCC) should read the BBC news item from May 7, “Report: China emissions exceed all developed nations combined.” If they don’t give a pence about communism, that might shake them up a tad.

Is it not understandable, after a year of flip-flopping experts, political posturing by scientists (always to one party, 22 May 2021), embarrassing retractions and nonstop Darwin fogma that the public has reason to distrust Big Science? If scientists want their credibility back, they need to evolve the one thing we keep stressing is essential for science: Integrity.

Additional Reading: Matthew Connally, “Who Is the Author of scientific truth?”, World Magazine, 18 June 2021.