On "The Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine" (aka "The Merck Journal of Advertising Propaganda and other Bullshit"

This is really pathetic. TheScientist reports (Merck published fake journal):

"Merck paid an undisclosed sum to Elsevier to produce several volumes of a publication that had the look of a peer-reviewed medical journal, but contained only reprinted or summarized articles--most of which presented data favorable to Merck products--that appeared to act solely as marketing tools with no disclosure of company sponsorship."

Elsevier has pulled the journal from its roster, but you can bet there are many more so-called peer-reviewed biomedical journals out there that fit this bill. The only reason we're hearing about this one is that Vioxx gave some Australian guy a heart attack and he's suing.

Kristin-gate at the OHRI

Notice anything strange with these blots? Apparently the data on it was faked and photoshoped along with "19 panels of Western blot data, appearing in 11 figures in 3 publications" by a post-doc fellow who shared working space with some bayblab readers and contributors. The story is all over the news today as we learned that her employment with the OHRI was terminated. You can find coverage of the whole story in the Ottawa Citizen and the National Post. The OHRI is trying to do some damage control, and thankfully the fraud wasn't commited here in the Ottawa lab but during Kristin's PhD at the university of Pennsylvania. The Office of Research Intergrity has taken the following disciplinary actions:

"for a period of five (5) years, beginning on June 7, 2007:

(1) Dr. Roovers is debarred from eligibility for any contracting or subcontracting with any agency of the United States Government and from eligibility or involvement in nonprocurement programs of the United States Government referred to as ``covered transactions'' as defined in HHS' implementation of OMB Guidelines to Agencies on Governmentwide Debarment and Suspension at 2 CFR part 376, et seq.; and

(2) Dr. Roovers is prohibited from serving in any advisory capacity to PHS, including but not limited to service on any PHS advisory committee, board, and/or peer review committee, or as a consultant."

This is bad news for everybody involved, the university, the institute and the scientific community. How could such blatant fraud make it past peer review? I would hate to be one of the innocent co-authors. Science is stressful and sometimes frustrating, and there can be tremendous pressure to have experiments work, but I am still baffled by the extent of fogery in this case. Any thoughts on the subject?

Case for Man-Made Global Warming Made Up By NASA Scientists?

Blogger Steve McIntyre has apparently discovered what seems to be a blatantly fraudulent presentation of NASA temperature data which has been used to make the case for global warming:

"NASA has now silently released corrected figures, and the changes are truly astounding. The warmest year on record is now 1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place. 1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II."

NASA's Reto Ruedy and James Hansen, the scientists responsible for the data, are blaming a Y2K data glitch. How convenient. Hansen made headlines previously, when he publicly denounced the US government for trying to censor his data. Sorry guys, but you're scientists. Not really cool to blame the computer for your hugely massive "mistake" of misinforming the world on global warming. Hard to believe they never even took a glance at the final data...

Despite this fiasco regarding the US data, it seems that long-term global temperatures are indeed on the rise as previously believed.

The science on this issue has become so corrupted by politics I find it pretty much impossible to know what to believe. Hopefully the scientific community will take this as a lesson that the ultimate price of compromising objectivity by selling out to political and corporate interests is the loss of the public trust. Once this happens, the benefits and freedoms science can provide are lost to society altogether. Maybe I'm naive to hope we haven't yet reached that point...