From the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy: “OSTP seeks information to help improve the effectiveness of Federal scientific integrity policies to enhance public trust in science.” Once I stopped spitting up my coffee, I came up with 10 principles based on my 30+ years of working in the sewer of government science that I submitted to OSTP. Please support Junkcience.com!
Continue reading Don’t laugh: How to improve public trust in government science?
This morning’s Washington Post front page tries to keep the coronavirus lockdown going based on reports of increasing cases in some states. But Obama CDC director Tom Friedman debunks this hysteria plus has some other interesting thoughts and admissions.
Continue reading Obama CDC director undercuts WaPo bid to keep coronavirus lockdown going
Here are some thoughts from an e-mail chain I was on today about reproducibility in science. Colleague #1 noted that, in some fields, as much as 80% of the published science was not reproducible. Colleague #2 countered that his worked showed the opposite was true. My thoughts that I shared with my colleagues:
[Colleague #1] said 80% percent in “many areas of science” — not 80% of all studies.
Environmental epidemiology is certainly one of the fields where that is true [i.e., 80% being not reproducible].
Yet, blanket statements concerning reproducibility are not really what’s important.
The problem in science is a pervasive lack of basic honesty among too many people. As it turns out, scientists lie just as much as everyone else.
Unfortunately, a lot of bad apples have been able to surf the reputations and accomplishments of the greats in science.
When non-scientists hear “scientist” they tend imagine Einstein or Pasteur — when they should really be imagining Madoff or Ponzi.
There is no permanent solution to this problem because it is the human condition.
The only solution is peers having the courage to speak out when needed. But lack of courage among people is the #2 problem in science after dishonesty.
Since the days of the EPA secondhand smoke risk assessment, JunkScience.com has had contempt for the bogus statistical technique of meta-analysis. We have also taken the lead in exposing as fraud claims that ambient air quality kills people. JunkScience.com friend Stan Young has just published a new paper dismantling a major 2012 air quality study (headlined below) as the product of publication bias and p-hacking, thus exposing its meta analysis methodology as just a bunch of junk.
The Department of Interior has just issued a science transparency directive to its staff (see below). DoI’s intention is to enshrine science transparency via rulemaking. Another YUGE win for us.
Continue reading WINNING!!! Science transparency moves to Department of Interior
I’ve always suspected that Stanford University professor John Ioannidis was only posing as a science reformer. His commentary in PLoS against the EPA science transparency rulemaking validates that.
Now finally available in PDF format, here is my 1994 report on science policy that the Clinton Administration tried to suppress. You can use it to comment on the just proposed EPA science transparency rule.
Get your comments to EPA before May 30, 2018.
Continue reading EPA officially proposes science transparency rule; 30-day comment period begins
P-hacking is where researchers collect or select data and statistical analysis until nonsignifiant results become significant.
Continue reading The Extent and Consequences of P-Hacking in Science
‘Science’ is facing a replication crisis.
Continue reading Publication bias and the canonization of false facts
Here is a 1987 article from the great Ernst Wynder (1922-1999) author of the first large-scale study to link smoking with lung cancer. In the 1987 article, Wynder discusses the problems of drawing causal connections based on weak association epidemiology. Readers of this page know that weak association epidemiology has long been abused by government regulators, especially the EPA (Read “Scare Pollution” for a thorough treatment of this point). That’s why JunkScience.com has petitioned President Trump to issue standards for the use of epidemiology by regulatory agencies. This article is the introductory one to a 1985 workshop on weak associations published in Preventative Medicine in 1987.
As long as I’ve been involved in federal regulatory issues (since 1990), regulators have used junk epidemiology to justify overregulation. For the first time ever, we have an administration that is committed to stopping overregulation. So JunkScience.com petitioned the Trump administration today to stop the misuse and abuse of epidemiology by issuing epidemiologic standards for federal agencies.
Continue reading JunkScience petitions White House for epidemiology standards