A challenge to the membership

[retired1]

This popped into my news feed this morning:

A new record: Major publisher retracting more than 100 studies from cancer journal over fake peer reviews - Retraction Watch

Springer is retracting 107 papers from one journal after discovering they had been accepted with fake peer reviews. Yes, 107.

To submit a fake review, someone (often the author of a paper) either makes up an outside expert to review the paper, or suggests a real researcher — and in both cases, provides a fake email address that comes back to someone who will invariably give the paper a glowing review. In this case, Springer, the publisher of Tumor Biology through 2016, told us that an investigation produced “clear evidence” the reviews were submitted under the names of real researchers with faked emails. Some of the authors may have used a third-party editing service, which may have supplied the reviews. The journal is now published by SAGE.

Pretty interesting site, no?

Here's the challenge. Let's see if we can find any mention of authors of e-cigarette studies on this site. The mention doesn't have to be for an e-cigarette study. However, if we can start tallying up incidents involving the researchers for other studies, perhaps we can then investigate the e-cigarette study itself to see if the peer reviews fall under the fake review standard.

Wouldn't it be lovely if we could discredit a lot of those studies?

Game on folks. Let's get to it.

Retraction Watch - Tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process

 

[FlamingoTutu]

WTF Retired, it's the middle of the bloody night here when I saw this. This is something near and dear to my heart about all the BS medical studies that come out, you have no idea.

Thank you for bringing this up. Internet's been intermittent for three days but I'd love to sink my teeth into this tomorrow. Sincerely hope this thread is, as they say, epic. It would be about time.

 

[FlamingoTutu]

Nobody?

I remembered this one which was pretty quickly shredded here on ECF when somebody phoned the, or one of the, authors and found out how they executed the tests.

Hidden Formaldehyde in E-cigarette Aerosols

Announcement by PSU Portland State University | News

Letter published in New England Journal of Medicine http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc1413069#t=letters

Debunked by the local paper Oh, the misrepresentations of PSU's vaping study: Joe Nocera

The original letter has been cross referenced 117 times.

 

[Lessifer]

I'm going to try to remember to run a bunch of searches tomorrow. Is it just me, or are they all Chinese?

 

[Alien Traveler]

The retracted papers are predominantly from 3rd world countries.

 

[David Wolf]

Nobody?

I remembered this one which was pretty quickly shredded here on ECF when somebody phoned the, or one of the, authors and found out how they executed the tests.

Hidden Formaldehyde in E-cigarette Aerosols

Announcement by PSU Portland State University | News

Letter published in New England Journal of Medicine http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc1413069#t=letters

Debunked by the local paper Oh, the misrepresentations of PSU's vaping study: Joe Nocera

The original letter has been cross referenced 117 times.

The NEJM one was also captured on the retractionwatch.com site:
Researchers call for retraction of NEJM paper showing dangers of e-cigarettes - Retraction Watch

 

[FlamingoTutu]

The NEJM one was also captured on the retractionwatch.com site:
Researchers call for retraction of NEJM paper showing dangers of e-cigarettes - Retraction Watch

Thank you! Hadn't seen that. Be nice if they had retracted it, just one more skewed study for the ANTZ to gloat about.

 

[jamesbeat]

I don't necessarily think that the formaldehyde study was skewed.

They used commercially available vaping hardware within its design settings.

I have actually read the study, and they did report that it was only the higher settings that caused the formaldehyde to be formed.

It was equally clear that there was no formaldehyde detected at the lower settings that vapers actually use.
We vapers know that this would never happen in real life, because we would experience this as a dry hit and not inhale it.

That isn't something that could be covered by the study however.


What WAS unethical was the way the study was reported in the media.
It wasn't the scientists themselves, but the journalists who caused the problem.
They turned a sober and rather pointless scientific study into sensationalist scare stories.

This was unethical in the extreme, because the general public do not often read scientific papers, but they do read newspapers.

These idiot journalists may have directly caused the death of thousands of people with their junk science interpretation of this study.

 

[Verb]

I don't necessarily think that the formaldehyde study was skewed.

They used commercially available vaping hardware within its design settings.

I have actually read the study, and they did report that it was only the higher settings that caused the formaldehyde to be formed.

It was equally clear that there was no formaldehyde detected at the lower settings that vapers actually use.
We vapers know that this would never happen in real life, because we would experience this as a dry hit and not inhale it.

That isn't something that could be covered by the study however.


What WAS unethical was the way the study was reported in the media.
It wasn't the scientists themselves, but the journalists who caused the problem.
They turned a sober and rather pointless scientific study into sensationalist scare stories.

This was unethical in the extreme, because the general public do not often read scientific papers, but they do read newspapers.

These idiot journalists may have directly caused the death of thousands of people with their junk science interpretation of this study.

Chances are the press release announcing the peer reviewed published paper nudged the reporters in that direction. If I remember correctly, it did not include any of the lower voltage results.

 

[jamesbeat]

Then it was pre sensationalized by them too?

Well, I guess they were trying to draw attention to their study then.
It's always the human factor that ruins science.

Taken alone, the study is ok, apart from being a little pointless.

It does make me wonder if the manufacturers should be a bit more careful about what their devices are capable of doing, or rather they should provide decent instructions.

I imagine the fact that they were able to produce these results with an over the counter device would be worrisome if you're not actually a vaper.

In practice of course, it only takes one burnt hit to tell you your settings are wrong.

 

[Jaguar07]

There is another potential issue with the formaldehyde level presented in the result of that particular study. The levels indicated within that study, MAY be from normal human respiration. We all breath in air and breath out, part the resulting gases we breath out includes detectable amounts of formaldehyde at times. The amount of formaldehyde that we naturally breath out varies based on a wide variety of factors such as: recent physical activity levels, diet, things we breath in, etc. The study did not isolate that as a potential causal influence correctly.

 

[DPLongo22]

In practice of course, it only takes one burnt hit to tell you your settings are wrong.

There is another potential issue with the formaldehyde level presented in the result of that particular study. The levels indicated within that study, MAY be from normal human respiration. We all breath in air and breath out, part the resulting gases we breath out includes detectable amounts of formaldehyde at times. The amount of formaldehyde that we naturally breath out varies based on a wide variety of factors such as: recent physical activity levels, diet, things we breath in, etc. The study did not isolate that as a potential causal influence correctly.

Lotsa "Likes" right there, with those two references.

I smoked two packs per day, for 3.5 decades. I know my vape isn't perfect, but it literally saved the arteries in my right leg, which they assured me would be coming off at the knee.

That was 5.5 years ago. My blood flows so well now that they released me from all care & monitoring (over 2 years ago).

My instinct also tells me that I breathed in more garbage, working in NYC for 30 years, then I ever could in four lifetimes of vaping.

 

[Tonee N]

I smoked two packs per day, for 3.5 decades. I know my vape isn't perfect, but it literally saved the arteries in my right leg, which they assured me would be coming off at the knee.

That was 5.5 years ago. My blood flows so well now that they released me from all care & monitoring (over 2 years ago).

My instinct also tells me that I breathed in more garbage, working in NYC for 30 years, then I ever could in four lifetimes of vaping.

Awesome story! That's great to hear![emoji2]

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[sos2001]

Here's part of an email I received from Blue Cross, Blue Shield of SC today.....

The popularity of e-cigarettes and other ENDS have caught the attention of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and other governmental agencies. Recently, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) stepped in to regulate ENDS products. New FDA regulations classified the devices as tobacco products, and you now must be 18 years of age or older to purchase them. In 2016, the Surgeon General’s report warned about the increase of e-cigarette use amongst Americans, especially middle and high school aged children. The report also found that e-cigarette manufacturers were specifically targeting youth in the same way tobacco companies did in the past. Nicotine addiction is greater in young people because it affects their developing brains. Nicotine can also harm long-term cognitive thinking and increase the risk of addiction to other drugs.

As far as the bold part, I've been around vaping for a minute now, and have NEVER seen that.

 

[retired1]

One really does have to wonder about "published studies" now. As far as I'm concerned, the entire system is now suspect.

The Perth dog that's probably smarter than you

 

[DPLongo22]

One really does have to wonder about "published studies" now. As far as I'm concerned, the entire system is now suspect.

The Perth dog that's probably smarter than you

One of my most often used statements is (was & will be), "You give me your dataset, and tell me what you'd like it to say, and I can make that data tell that story."

I know that I echo the sentiments of many who spend their lives telling stories with data, and there's little that compares to a dog with a CV to prove a point. Mulder was definitely onto something.

Great post, R1. Thanks (saving, and will be using again).

 

[Tonee N]

Sounds like Moody's with Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Lehman Brothers. They got paid to give AAA reviews on worthless investments.

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[Ca Ike]

One really does have to wonder about "published studies" now. As far as I'm concerned, the entire system is now suspect.

The Perth dog that's probably smarter than you

This doesn't surprise me. In today's lazy society no one, including the so called academics, will bother looking past the pedigree statement. I gave up on college when half of my professors used material in their lectures that was flat out false and never bothered to verify it. Then called me an ignorant student when I confronted them with proof they were using false material and the heads of the school refused to hear my complaints.

 

[Completely Average]

I don't necessarily think that the formaldehyde study was skewed.

They used commercially available vaping hardware within its design settings.

I have actually read the study, and they did report that it was only the higher settings that caused the formaldehyde to be formed.

It was equally clear that there was no formaldehyde detected at the lower settings that vapers actually use.
We vapers know that this would never happen in real life, because we would experience this as a dry hit and not inhale it.

That isn't something that could be covered by the study however.

It was a skewed study in the sense that super-heating (burning) ANY form of vegetation produces formaldehyde. It doesn't matter if it's from vaping gear, cooking, or burning lawn debris, if you super-heat ANY form of vegetation you'll produce formaldehyde. So natuarally super-heating vegetable glycerin produces fermaldehyde, just like superheating canola oil does.

What made the study biased and scientifically unsound is the lack of a baseline of comparison. A control. For example, they never compared the amount of fermaldehyde exposure between a subohm vaper and a fry cook at McDonald's, but both are being exposed to some amount of fermaldehyde. Chinese woman have a higher than average rate of lung cancer, and the use of vegetable oils in the stir-fry cooking on a wok is the primary cause. I would take the ecig studies more seriously if they would compare the amount produced and the exposure levels to other instance of fermaldehyde exposure such as cooking.

Without that basis of comparison (control) then the study is scientifically lacking. No scientific study of any kind should be considered valid without a control to use as a basis of compaison. The control is absolutely essential in proper study using the scientific method.

 

[Tonee N]

This doesn't surprise me. In today's lazy society no one, including the so called academics, will bother looking past the pedigree statement. I gave up on college when half of my professors used material in their lectures that was flat out false and never bothered to verify it. Then called me an ignorant student when I confronted them with proof they were using false material and the heads of the school refused to hear my complaints.

I can make my own PHD in whatever field I want, they must use the same version of MS Office to get theirs.[emoji106]

My dog has his own drivers lisc.[emoji1]

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