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Major medical journal backtracks on charges of statistical flaws in published clinical trials

Jennifer Couzin-Frankel
Science
Wed, 13 Jun 2018 22:00 UTC
statisical errors, science corruption
One year after a damning review suggested that many published clinical trials contain statistical errors, The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) today is correcting five of the papers fingered and retracting and republishing a sixth, about whether a Mediterranean diet helps prevent heart disease. (Spoiler alert: It still does, according to the new version of the paper.) Despite errors missed until now, in many ways the journal system worked as intended, with NEJM launching an inquiry within days of the accusations.

The journal's unusual move was prompted by a controversial analysis published in June 2017. Writing in Anaesthesia, where he is also an editor, anesthesiologist John Carlisle of Torbay Hospital in Torquay, U.K., took a statistical deep dive into 5087 randomized, controlled trials. With the help of a computer program, Carlisle looked for a specific type of anomaly: nonrandom assignment of volunteers to different treatments, when the trial had claimed the assignments were random. This can skew a trial's results-for example, if many more elderly people are assigned to a control group while younger ones get an experimental treatment, the new drug may look like it has fewer side effects because the people getting it are healthier.

Across eight journals, Carlisle analyzed how certain features of the volunteers-such as their height, weight, and age-were spread across the treatments tested. If he didn't see certain patterns-if the distribution was too perfect, or too far off-he suspected the assignments were not truly random, whether because of scientific misconduct or honest error. Roughly 2% of the papers he ran through his program fell into this questionable category.

Comment: Further reading:

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Sun

Politically motivated study claims warmer temps will reduce agricultural production

Anthony Watts
Watts Up With That
Tue, 12 Jun 2018 16:52 UTC
vegetables
From the LONDON SCHOOL OF HYGIENE & TROPICAL MEDICINE, doom division, comes this story that seems not to realize what every gardener knows: that many vegetable plants do better in a warmer environment with more CO2, hence the idea of "hothouse tomatoes.

What's funny is that their own paper reported this:
The mean (95% CI) reported yield changes for all vegetables and legumes combined were +22.0% (+11.6% to +32.5%) for a 250-ppm increase in CO2 concentration...

... −8.9% (−15.6% to −2.2%) for a 25% increase in O3 concentration,−34.7% (−44.6% to −24.9%) for a 50% reduction in water availability, and −2.3% (−3.7% to −0.9%) for a 25% increase in salinity.
So, they are assuming water availability will be less and more salty in the future, and there will be more ozone O3 pollution. Yet all indications thus far that a warmer world will be a wetter world due to enhanced atmospheric water vapor, and so far, ozone pollution has been declining, especially in coastal areas.

Then there's this:
The authors acknowledge limitations of the study, including the fact that collated evidence on the impact of environmental changes on the nutritional quality of vegetables and legumes was limited and the research team identified this as an area requiring more evidence generation.
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Sun

Researchers discover the sun changes size according to its level of activity

Emily Conover
Science News
Mon, 11 Jun 2018 16:18 UTC
active sun
© Solar Dynamic Observatory/NASAThe radius of the sun gets a smidge smaller during periods when the sun is most active, a new study reports.
Its radius decreases by 1 or 2 kilometers during periods of high solar activity

How big is the sun? Well, that depends on when you're measuring.

The sun slightly shrinks and expands as it goes through a solar cycle, a roughly 11-year period of high and low magnetic activity, a new study finds. When the sun is the most active, its radius decreases by 1 or 2 kilometers, two researchers report in a paper accepted in the Astrophysical Journal. Given that the sun's full radius is about 700,000 kilometers, that's a tiny change.
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Fire

Scientists monitoring infrasound in volcanic crater to predict activity

Anthony Watts
Watts Up With That
Wed, 13 Jun 2018 15:59 UTC
Cotopaxi volcano ecuador
© Silvia Vallejo Vargas/Insituto Geofisico, Escuela Politecnica NacionalInstituto Geofisico researchers maintain a monitoring station at Cotopaxi volcano in central Ecuador. A new study shows Cotopaxi produces unique sounds scientists could use to monitor the volcano and its hazards.
From the AGU and the "lava tooting" department

A volcano in Ecuador with a deep cylindrical crater might be the largest musical instrument on Earth, producing unique sounds scientists could use to monitor its activity.

New infrasound recordings of Cotopaxi volcano in central Ecuador show that after a sequence of eruptions in 2015, the volcano's crater changed shape. The deep narrow crater forced air to reverberate against the crater walls when the volcano rumbled. This created sound waves like those made by a pipe organ, where pressurized air is forced through metal pipes.
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Moon

Desperate facts call for desperate theories: Astronauts' movement increased subsurface temperatures on the moon, study finds

Nicole Mortillaro
Yahoo! News
Mon, 11 Jun 2018 14:04 UTC
Apollo 15 mission
© NASA
The Apollo 15 mission was the fourth lunar landing and launched on July 26, 1971.

It may have been one giant leap for man, but those steps may have consequences for mankind.

The presence of astronauts on the moon caused an unexpected warming of its subsurface temperatures for a period of time in the 1970s, a new study has found after delving into "lost" tapes from the Apollo missions.

In 1971 and 1972, NASA deployed sensors on the moon during the Apollo 15 and 17 missions in an effort to measure the moon's surface and subsurface temperatures - a project dubbed the heat flow experiment.

Data was collected and beamed back down to Earth until 1977, where scientists were baffled by the gradual warming of the moon's surface being read by the sensors.
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Microscope 2

What at-home genetic testing really told me about my health

Tina Hesman Saey
Science News
Tue, 22 May 2018 12:00 UTC
DNA testing
© peart/ShutterstockCOMPARISON TESTING Consumer genetic testing companies offer different levels of DNA analysis, but none offer complete information about a person’s health.

What you need to know before signing up for at-home DNA testing

Direct-to-consumer genetic testing first came on the market about a decade ago, but I resisted the temptation to see what health information is hidden in my DNA - until now.

As a molecular biology writer, I've been skeptical that the field of genetics is mature enough to accurately predict health (see related article). What finally motivated me to send away my DNA in the mail was the fact that companies are now offering much more genetic information. Is more better? Would an expensive test that deciphered my entire genetic instruction manual, or genome, reveal more about me than more limited tests? That's what I wanted to find out.

Comment: Given what is being uncovered more and more in the extremely young science of genetics, it's best to approach these tests with a sense of curiosity and a large pinch of salt. There is still so much we don't know about genetics. Using these tests as a solid diagnosis is likely to lead one to get lost in the woods.

See also:

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Mars

Huge, possibly planet-wide dust storm affecting Mars


Space Weather
Thu, 14 Jun 2018 02:23 UTC
Mars dust storm
© NASANASA's veteran Mars rover has been hunkering down since last week in the midst of an unprecedented dust storm that is now just days away from becoming a 'planet-circling dust event.' The storm has been growing since the end of May and now covers 14-million square miles (35-million square kilometers) of Mars' surface, or a quarter of the planet
Mars rover Opportunity is in trouble. NASA engineers attempted to contact Opportunity yesterday, June 12th, but did not hear back from the nearly 15-year old rover. The problem: A huge dust storm is blanketing Perseverance Valley where Opportunity has been working. This sequence of images from NASA's Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter shows the progression of the storm: see here.

The huge dust cloud is highlighted in red. Soon after it appeared on May 31st, it swirled south to envelope Opportunity. Right now, the dust is so thick in Perseverance Valley, day has been turned into night. The solar powered rover is being deprived of the sunlight it needs to charge its batteries.

NASA is now operating under the assumption that the charge in Opportunity's batteries has dipped below 24 volts and the rover has entered low power fault mode, a condition where all subsystems, except a mission clock, are turned off. The rover's mission clock is programmed to wake Opportunity at intervals so it can check power levels. If the batteries don't have enough charge, the rover will put itself back to sleep again.
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Galaxy

Astronomers suggest nanodiamonds are responsible for the microwave light emanating from distant stars

Anthony Watts
Watts Up With That
Mon, 11 Jun 2018 00:00 UTC
Nanoscale gemstones source of mysterious cosmic microwave light

Nanoscale diamonds Milky Way
© S. Dagnello, NRAO/AUI/NSFArtist impression of nanoscale diamonds surrounding a young star in the Milky Way. Recent GBT and ATCA observations have identified the telltale radio signal of diamond dust around 3 such stars, suggesting they are a source of the so-called anomalous microwave emission.
For decades, astronomers have puzzled over the exact source of a peculiar type of faint microwave light emanating from a number of regions across the Milky Way. Known as anomalous microwave emission (AME), this light comes from energy released by rapidly spinning nanoparticles - bits of matter so small that they defy detection by ordinary microscopes. (The period on an average printed page is approximately 500,000 nanometers across.)

"Though we know that some type of particle is responsible for this microwave light, its precise source has been a puzzle since it was first detected nearly 20 years ago," said Jane Greaves, an astronomer at Cardiff University in Wales and lead author on a paper announcing this result in Nature Astronomy.

Until now, the most likely culprit for this microwave emission was thought to be a class of organic molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) - carbon-based molecules found throughout interstellar space and recognized by the distinct, yet faint infrared (IR) light they emit. Nanodiamonds - particularly hydrogenated nanodiamonds, those bristling with hydrogen-bearing molecules on their surfaces - also naturally emit in the infrared portion of the spectrum, but at a different wavelength.

A series of observations with the National Science Foundation's Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in West Virginia and the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) has - for the first time - homed in on three clear sources of AME light, the protoplanetary disks surrounding the young stars known as V892 Tau, HD 97048, and MWC 297. The GBT observed V892 Tau and the ATCA observed the other two systems.
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Cow

SOTT Focus: No, George Monbiot, Dropping Meat and Dairy Will Not Reduce Your Impact on the Earth

Doug DiPasquale
Sott.net
Wed, 13 Jun 2018 15:18 UTC
Guardian George Monbiot
© The GuardianFeel the awesome power of meat guilt
If you were to believe the headlines (something not generally recommended) gracing newspapers and interwebs this week, you'd be assured that if you don't go vegan, you're going to kill the planet. Peer-reviewed research published in the prestigious journal Science late last month is based on a database of a bunch of different food products, which the study's authors analyzed from production to retailing to determine their environmental impact. From Science Daily:
Researchers at Oxford University and the Swiss agricultural research institute, Agroscope, have created the most comprehensive database yet on the environmental impacts of nearly 40,000 farms, and 1,600 processors, packaging types, and retailers. This allows them to assess how different production practices and geographies lead to different environmental impacts for 40 major foods.
So how did they assess the environmental impact of our daily foodstuffs? Pollutants like heavy metals or toxic chemicals being released? Destruction of fragile ecosystems? The number of endangered species affected? Invasive genetically modified technologies and their consequences? Nope. Those things don't matter in the grand scheme of things, apparently. All that matters now is carbon dioxide, the innocuous gas that feeds plants. In the current media landscape, all the horrific things we do to the environment get a pass. The only thing that gets attention is CO2.
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Igloo

West Antarctic ice sheet made a 'surprising comeback' 10,000 years ago - And it's been growing ever since

Joe Pinkstone
Daily Mail
Wed, 13 Jun 2018 18:00 UTC
Larsen-C Iceshelf Antarctica
© NASA Global Look PressLarsen-C Iceshelf, Antarctica. NASA / Global Look Press
The ice sheets near Earth's poles have been constantly shrinking for the past 20,000 years.

Or at least, that's what scientists used to think.

Surprising new data suggests that between 14,500 and 9,000 years ago, the West Antarctic ice sheet partially melted and shrunk to a size even smaller than today.

But instead of collapsing, it began to regrow over the subsequent millennia.

Comment: Could it be that Antarctica was relatively ice-free say 20,000 years ago but some cataclysmic event induced rapid cooling on our planet?

In The Golden Age, Psychopathy and the Sixth Extinction Laura Knight-Jadczyk writes:
Allan & Delair bring serious questions to bear on the mainstream interpretation of our reality and history and do it armed to the teeth with science. The case they make for a Golden Age world prior to the Deluge is compelling and quite unique. Wielding hard data from literally every field of science, they demonstrate that hundreds of thousands of years of ice ages may be a myth created to explain many anomalous findings on earth that uniformitarian science had no other way to explain. This data strongly suggests a completely different planet prior to a worldwide cataclysm that they say occurred in 9500 bc, but the latest research puts the most recent major event back at least another thousand years.
In Of Flash Frozen Mammoths and Cosmic Catastrophes Pierre Lescaudron writes:
Last, but not least, the mammoth's diet argues against the creature existing in a polar climate. How could the woolly mammoth sustain its vegetarian diet of hundreds of pounds of daily intake in an Arctic region devoid of vegetation for most of the year? How could woolly mammoths find the gallons of water that they had to drink everyday?

To make things worse, the woolly mammoth lived during the ice age, when temperatures were colder than today. Mammoths could not have survived the harsh northern Siberia climate of today, even less so 13,000 years ago when the Siberian climate should have been significantly colder.

The evidence above strongly suggests that the woolly mammoth was not a polar creature but a temperate one. Consequently, at the beginning of the Younger Dryas, 13,000 years ago, Siberia was not an arctic region but a temperate one.
See also:

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