Posted on 01/06/2023 9:32:10 AM PST by DeweyCA
There’s a great article in Bari Weiss’ The Free Press that has great bearing on why consensus in science is often a bad thing, and how the consensus is enforced.
Called "The Reason There’s Been No Cure for Alzheimer’s," it was written by Joanne Silberner, a former NPR reporter. What I loved about the article was its insightful reporting about how the scientific process works in practice, rather than how it should in theory. Most people have little idea how academic science works, what the incentives are, how peer review works, how money gets distributed, and all the minutia that determines the path that scientific research takes. Silberner captures the intricacies of the process well.
In 2019, the celebrated science writer Sharon Begley wrote a startling investigative story for the health and medicine publication STAT about why Alzheimer’s research was mired in decades of failure. She asserted this wasn’t just due to the complexity of the brain or the infernal nature of Alzheimer’s itself. There was another reason that had less to do with the nature of the disease, and more to do with the nature of research.
As she wrote:
“The most influential researchers have long believed so dogmatically in one theory of Alzheimer’s that they systematically thwarted alternative approaches. Several scientists described those who controlled the Alzheimer’s agenda as ‘a cabal.’ In more than two dozen interviews, scientists whose ideas fell outside the dogma recounted how, for decades, believers in the dominant hypothesis suppressed research on alternative ideas…This stifling of competing ideas, say a growing number of scholars, is a big reason why there is no treatment for Alzheimer’s.”
Now Silberner rightly (or mostly so) dismisses the idea that there is a “cabal,” in the sense that there is a conspiracy to stifle the scientific process per se. Rather, there is something akin to a “cabal,” in the sense that a very powerful group of scientists who firmly believe in their own theory who steer resources and prestige to people who agree with them. This, in turn, has kept research on a particular path and has stifled the search for alternative explanations for the symptoms of Alzheimer’s Disease, and alternatives for treating the disease.
The particular details of the theory don’t matter for my purposes, although I have personally followed the controversies because that is the sort of thing I do. It has always been striking to me that almost all the research and drug development money has been directed at treating one particular protein expression in the brains of most Alzheimer’s patients, and that every drug that has been developed has been close to useless. AARP did a long story about the use and abuse of dementia drugs, concluding that in the main they are useless and dangerous.
About 20 drugs have been developed to address dementia, and none of them do much except cost money and have side effects. None of them even claim to do much, except produce minor delays in the progression of disease.
If decades of research and drug development has been a failure, why hasn’t there been any major change in Alzheimer’s research?
It has to do with the process of scientific research, not necessarily any problem with either the scientific method or even the greed of pharmaceutical companies. A drug that cured or halted the progression of the disease would be wildly profitable.
One way to understand the persistence of the amyloid theory is to look at the incentives of big academic medicine, big governmental medicine, and big pharma. For decades, time, effort, and money have been sunk into this single hypothesis. If we just make the right intervention in the process of amyloid being deposited in the brain, the logic goes, Alzheimer’s can be beaten.
Acknowledging that this theory may be a dead end would mean entire careers and billions of dollars have all been devoted to the wrong idea. Not only that—there is no clear path to the right one.
Dr. Dennis Selkoe, Professor of Neurologic Diseases at Harvard Medical School, is among the most prominent supporters of the amyloid hypothesis. He’s not happy about accusations of a cabal. “It’s my opinion that there was never any kind of organized or even semi-organized or concerted effort to delegate any aspect of Alzheimer’s research to an inferior position and heighten amyloid studies,” he told me. “Like everything in science and the world, it was a competition of ideas.” He says some of his own amyloid grants have been rejected, and journals have turned down some of his papers. “That’s just part of academic research.”
For many years the powers-that-be within the neuroscience community—researchers who sit on the committees that determine who gets financial support from the government and research organizations, and who review research papers for medical journals to determine what should be published—supported the amyloid hypothesis to the virtual exclusion of any others. As Sharon Begley described it, amyloid proponents “influenced what studies got published in top journals, which scientists got funded, who got tenure, and who got speaking slots at reputation-buffing scientific conferences.”
All it takes is one member of a granting committee (typically, they have a dozen members) or one of the usual three or so reviewers of a research article to kill a project. Cabal or not—and while I think there’s groupthink going on, I don’t think amyloid proponents are engaging in a “conspiracy” —the frustration of the suppressed scientists was and is palpable, and has sent some talented researchers to other fields.
As Dr Selkoe asserts, how the money and prestige is distributed is just part of how academic research works. That is true enough, and it doesn’t require an organized conspiracy for some research paths to get enormous preference and others to get sent to the circular file. All you need is a consensus among decision makers that one path is the way to go. Everything else follows from that.
Consensus is the problem, not the result of proven success. It can impede success, should the people in power be simply wrong in their judgments. It happens all the time. Max Planck, one of the great scientists of the 20th century, put this phenomenon succinctly: “A great scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.“
This, of course, is a slight exaggeration. Albert Einstein certainly had a huge impact and changed science forever, and he did it from a low-prestige position at the Swiss patent office. But of course being in the Swiss patent office he had no academic masters or funders to please. In today’s academic environment, he would have had a much more difficult time breaking through the clutter.
People unfamiliar with the academic sciences underestimate the obstacles to doing good science in such an environment. Research projects depend upon grants, peer review processes, dissertation, hiring and tenure committees…. The lone genius scientist working in obscurity and generating a groundbreaking new theory is just not realistic.
Ironically, some of the greatest researchers of the 2nd half of the 20th century worked outside of academia. Bell Labs and Xerox Parc produced some great science once upon a time, because these incredibly profitable businesses funded basic research with fewer strings attached than is usually the case in academia. I remember meeting Arno Penzias, who won the Nobel Prize for work he did at Bell Labs, discovering basic evidence for the Big Bang theory. (My parents were astrophysicists).
As we have all seen during the COVID era, consensus in science can be as big a barrier to clear thinking and scientific discussion as outright censorship. The public health community rallied around an idea and sidelined anybody who dissented. It went to great extremes that are unusual in science, but the process is similar.
Science is a human enterprise, and like all human enterprises it really isn’t objective and abstract, as much as the best scientists try to make it so. In fact, some of the most creative scientists are also the least tolerant of other ideas. Big ideas and big egos go together often enough.
So keep all this in mind as you listen to scientists discuss their ideas, knowing that the process by which theories arise is complicated and messy. That doesn’t mean that science is corrupt. It means it is human.
Groupthink or a "hive" mentality is potential liability for anyone, including scientists and also including us at Free Republic. This article tells how research and its findings can be skewed or become biased. On top of this problem, is the fact that the mainstream media then interprets and publishes scientific research to tell their liberal narrative. This is where the general public gets their information (not from the professional journals). And so the media compounds the problem.
This problem of a wrongful consensus obviously applies not only to amyloind and Alzheimer's disease, but also possibly to Covid treatments, climate change, transgender treatments and a myriad of other issues. It's not a matter of whether we should "trust the science." Instead it's a matter of whether we should "trust the scientists" and "trust the media" that tells us what scientists say. Lately, we have had a lot of reasons to NOT trust the scientists or the media that tells us what the scientists say.
Especially when those participating in the support of the fraud are themselves a fraud or a bot as noted in an earlier post regarding Twitter fakes.
Science and consensus don’t belong anywhere near each other.
Concensus = “a general agreement.”
Of who? I can get a general agreement of people on the plane going down.
Liberals in the house for years have listened and agreed with Nancy but that doesn’t mean any one of them was right. Nancy for being stupid and dishonest, and the others for not thinking for themselves thus being sick with avolition which is often a symptom of schizophrenia, a mental disorder that affects how you think, feel, and act.
wy69
Science doesn’t establish truth by voting. It evaluates teh consistency and quality of experimental data and also the degree that theory is the best fit to that data. The evaluationn of this is open to anyone who can read, think, speak and write. Of course you have to convince others of the soundness of your views - e.g. the experiment was bad because... or the data is anomalous because.... or that theory does not fit this data or a theory that better fits the data is...
Science is not Democracy.
The Earth is flat. At one time it was scientific consensus.
"Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present--and is gravely to be regarded .
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite."
Medical Doctors did the same thing with infection control and especially with ulcers.
Science has been thoroughly corrupted because of money and politics. This is especially true in “health care”.
Big pharma has incredible control over treatment/research - “there is a pill for that” is not usually the best health care but doctors prescribe because it is faster and easier and they can go on to the next patient. Big pharma lobbies doctors to prescribe their products and often there are better alternatives that should be attempted first. Big pharma will suppress cheap and safe alternatives for new and expensive medications. I give them credit for lots of “research”, but it is usually research for profit - not the public good.
Our “public health” and even world health to some extent is heavily influenced by big pharma and the politicians/media they shower money upon. This includes med school curriculum and research. The proof is the amount of drugs our nation consumes from people in white coats compared to the rest of the world. This pharmaceutical approach can have a major impact on long-term health and can be especially harmful to young people as it impacts their development. There are also many drugs that should be closely monitored for proper dosage and effect, but it does not always happen unless the patient educates themselves.
There is little focus on wellness and preventative medicine because there is little money in it for the health care system. The overall improvement that could be achieved by a simple blood test with diagnostic software and an app that promotes supplements is incredible. Long-term deficiencies in vitamins and minerals often cause long-term health issues. While exercise and diet are harder to control for most patients, many of them would supplement as recommended. These same blood test can also aid in early detection of serious health issues like cancer or apps via smart technology that would catch cardiac or pulmonary issues (like sleep apnea) minimizing the cost and impact of treatment if caught and treated early.
Overall, as someone very immersed in the world of medicine 30+ years ago I am very disappointed with the progress of health care in our country and felt that way prior to Covid. Covid revealed a lot of this to many people at a great cost because few had paid attention to it, but the lessons are applicable far beyond “Covid” and we should recognize them and apply them to the system which is much like our government - corrupted by money.
One of the best examples of this (paid for with a lot of preventable deaths/misery) is vitamin D. If you have not looked at the studies on vitamin D and Covid you should. A perfectly safe and cheap supplement that could have really helped with the “pandemic”, but unless you did your own research and sought out alternative viewpoints (against the “scientific consensus”), you would not have known this.
It is unforgivable to me and this single subject should cause change in our public health approach moving forward, but it won’t. The “system” is too invested in the failed structure we have now.
(signed)
The Fox Association
Another thing that destroys good science is FRAUD. It is estimated that a large percentage of scientific papers contain made up data. This is probably not surprising considering that most science is done by graduate students who depend on getting useful results to get their Ph.D. or Masters degrees. Graduate school is grueling, with long hours, years of often dead end work and low pay. The goal is to get your degree and move on to a University position, govt or industrial lab. Insurance against fraudulent data is reproducibility of your results by others. This is rarely attempted because there is no one free to do it. Everyone in the lab is slavishly working on their own projects. If a new student enters the lab to continue the work of one who graduates and cannot reproduce the results, it is often attributed to a learning curve or the new guy is “doing something wrong”. Sometimes the fraud is blatant. I worked in the lab of a top guy in his field. One day he comes in and shows us a paper that was published in an Indian Journal. It was identical to a paper he had published a decade earlier, only the names were changed. As far as I know nothing happened to the fraudster. This is reportedly pretty common in certain parts of the world. In another example I was on a team that flew to a guy’s lab that had published a paper reporting the successful development of a process we were interested in using. When we got to his lab and asked about it, he admitted that no one in his lab could reproduce the results, and that it was done by a grad student from Turkey who left the country after he gradated. He pretty much admitted the results were fake.
Research is harder to fake in an industrial lab where you are working with others to develop a product or process. The piece of the project you are working on is handed over to someone else and if it doesn’t work it’s instantly discovered.
Mattias Desmet wrote in his book, The Psychology of Totalitarianism, how scientific research since the 1970's has been basically worthless because it is all driven by the need to get funding which requires a fix and determine outcome. If you are paid to prove that something is true, you will achieve your objective.
Objective science would fund the discovery of the truth whatever that is. It would not fund experiments to prove something is true.
If a grant requires you to prove that a theory works, personal bias confirmation is going to cause a focus on information that supports the bias and the discarding of anything that opposes it.
On top of that, there is apparently an atmosphere of cheating in many university labs such that if you don't cheat, you don't get funding.
The dirty little secret about science is that almost every scientific “fact” turns out to be wrong (or mostly wrong) a couple of hundred years later.
That is the same track record as witch doctors!
“Consensus is the negation of leadership.”
- Margaret Thatcher
The Iron Lady was very wise and her wisdom applies to science as much as it does to any other human endeavor.
I tell that to people all the time on the left. They act like “Hey, I am the one that is supposed to call you a flat earther because you don’t believe in anthropogenic climate change”.
Then I say, the consensus was that ulcers were not from a bacterial cause as well. Then they realize they are in trouble and change the subject.
“How a scientific consensus can destroy good science”
No more truer than in the “climate change” scam.
It’s not just in academia. Lots of technology breakthroughs come from “skunk works”—unauthorized research and experimentation.
Even then, the breakthroughs are likely to be ignored or suppressed by the corporation. Xerox invented the mouse and the graphic user interface, but it lay dormant in the labs for years until Steve Jobs took a walkthrough of the lab and saw it.
Thank you for your personal examples of where you have seen science fraud. You are correct that this is pretty common. John Ioannidis, who is a Professor of Medicine at Stanford University, has documented that almost half of all research that is published in scientific journals can’t be replicated.
There was a recent thread suggesting that it was radiation, rather than vitamin D, that led to better Covid outcomes. Not sure I’m convinced, but food for thought.
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