The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue.
Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.

As one participant put it, “poor methods get results”. The Academy of Medical Sciences, Medical Research Council, and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council have now put their reputational weight behind an investigation into these questionable research practices. The apparent endemicity of bad research behaviour is alarming.

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2015/05/16/editor-in-chief-of-worlds-best-known-medical-journal-half-of-all-the-literature-is-false/

science is only a method for finding out facts.
The real problem is pseudoscience and/or Kochsuckers masquerading as real scientists.

He made a case against the lack of scientific integrity in medical research, really old news.

He's absolutely correct. The big news is that it was published.

Yup.

Needed to be said by someone with creds plus cajones.

Would peer review be merely redundant?

Shummy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yup.
>
> Needed to be said by someone with creds plus
> cajones.
>
> Would peer review be merely redundant?

______________

Funny.

Can you imagine JAMA, fat with pharma, writing in support? They'll just tell me to ask my doctor if the article is right for me.

Turns out the whole study was a complete fabrication.

http://wakeupfromyourslumber.com/gay-conversion-canvassing-study-published-by-science-magazine-was-fabricated/

I'd say peer review is on life support at this point. Like politics, much of today's "science" is money and agenda driven. Therefore, it fails to meet the definition of science.

Researchers at the University of Surrey (England) claim that many of the purported benefits of meditation and "mindfulness" are prone to confirmation bias, in that these are popular and trendy practices, especially among celebrities. They further claim that there are significant number of negative side affects, including psychosis, panic attacks, mania, depression, and hallucinations, but researchers are loathe to explore, document, and expose them.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3092572/The-dark-meditation-mindfulness-Treatment-trigger-mania-depression-psychosis-new-book-claims.html

Something to think about when proponents of major agendae claim that they have the backing of "the scientific community" and that opponents are arguing against "settled science."

Yogic traditions are well aware that certain stages during the pursuit of togic practices can bring on certain negative experiences. It's kind of like how undergoing psychological therapy can 'bring up' issues that must be dealt with along the way. In fact, that is kind of the point.

'Shakti Pad', along certain troubling experiences when the kundalini first begins to flow strongly are well documented and usually discussed in any decent book on yoga or meditation.

Did the people writing that article and doing the research really inform themselves much about the subject at all? It doesn't sound like they're very well informed about what they're researching to me. Although, I could have guessed that when I saw them using the 'fad' terms 'TM' and 'mindfullness.' (That's pretty elementary and not very advanced stuff, that sets off red flags for me when they use this kind of terminology.)

Sheesh, go buy a good book on the subject. It will discuss these issues, in fact, it's an expected and even hoped for part of the process.

That article was an example for sure, of ignorance. And also maybe exactly the sort of thing this thread addresses ... agendas.

You really can't believe anything anymore that comes out as a soundbite on the internet. Buy a decent book on the subject, it'll discuss shakti pad. If it doesn't, it's not a very good book on meditation and yoga.

I could add to this that those researchers took a very 'western' view of yogic practice by thinking it promises a magic pill to take away your problems without you having to do any work.

Wrong.

Yogic practice will exactly bring up your shit, and make you face it. That's the point of it, you have to do some work on yourself, that's what it's about. Same as psychotherapy.

These researchers were ignorant to that. They should read a book on the subject instead of watching the news and having silly epiphanies.

You are, of course, quite correct on this, torturednevermo.

The article, which was a brief report on an academic study, never mentioned yoga. Yes, there is an overlap of issues and some similarities between meditation and yoga, but they are, of course, not the same.

I gather you have a strong involvement in yoga, torturednevermo. I don't know if yoga is something the University of Surrey's researchers discussed in their book, "The Buddha Pill." But I do believe that any regimen we undertake should be periodically reexamined, whether it be vitamin supplements, Christian Science, accupuncture, weight training...or even yoga!

Is it really meeting my needs? Is it truly safe? Is there new information on the matter? Am I doing it right? Etc.

Meditation is part of yoga, addressed through several of the ‘eight limbs’ of yoga. Meditation comes from the yogic traditions.

There is pranayama yoga, as one of the eight limbs, which uses no bendy posture yoga (asanas), but instead uses breathing ‘meditations’ (pranayama).

The limb 'Pratyahara' involves withdrawing the senses from external phenomena. The 'Dhāraṇā' limb builds further upon this by refining it further to ekagrata or ekagra chitta, that is single-pointed concentration and focus. (See, like all the popular 'fad' meditations teach.)

Many people from the west don’t realize that all of this stuff comes from ‘yogic tradition’, and it's all ‘yoga’.

In the west, people (wrongly) think of yoga as just being the bendy physical exercise stuff, which is just in fact one of the eight limbs of yoga (asana.)

It’s all yoga, and all comes from ‘yogic tradition’, practiced by yogis and yoganinis.


The eight limbs (for reference):

• Yama : Universal morality
• Niyama : Personal observances
• Asanas : Body postures
• Pranayama : Breathing exercises, and control of prana
• Pratyahara : Control of the senses
• Dharana : Concentration and cultivating inner perceptual awareness
• Dhyana : Devotion, Meditation on the Divine
• Samadhi : Union with the Divine




I agree, we should always research and inform ourselves about things we’re interested in by researching. To me, that is something these researchers didn’t seem to do. What they said is equivalent to saying a surgeon is bad because gosh, did you know they slice people open, how terrible. That’s a pretty misinformed and slanted way to look at it. The researchers seemed to think they were exposing something, when in fact what they is expose is already well understood by people who are informed about the subject. What they describe, (using scary language like psychosis, depression, and hallucinations), is just part of the growth process in the deeper practice of yoga (or meditation, if you distinguish between the two, which I don’t.)

All I was saying was the researchers seemed ignorant and ill informed about their subject to not understand why these things happen temporarily sometimes when engaging in a yogic practice. But they sure thought they were onto something, didn’t they? I found it to be a silly article, by people who didn’t seem to know much about the subject at all.

If you want to inform yourself about something, don’t read about it from people like that. Like I say, they seemed ignorant about what they were observing in their research.

I'm just saying if you want to know about this stuff, don't read about it from a bunch of ill informed researchers from some western university who really know nothing about it. Better to learn and ask from someone who actually understands it. Don't get your plumbing fixed by an accountant, I guess that's the point here.

Most modern yoga is derived from Patanjali's "yoga Sutras" from one thousand years ago. Yoga dates from much further back in time than that. Patanjali deals mainly with Raja Yoga, which includes as a necessary part, meditation. Samadhi, which is the deepest form of meditation, is the goal of Raja Yoga.

Raja Yoga should be studied and practiced with a master teacher, who can monitor the student closely. Much of yoga is imparted by the "inner teacher", or "higher self", but the master is still necessary to guide the student. This arrangement should limit error or danger from yoga and meditation.

I tend to agree with torturednevermo on this. I doubt very much these British authors understand the goals of meditation, or are possibly even incapable of separating symptoms of being a living human (with all of their possible negatives), from the demonstrated effects of meditation. But I haven't read their book.

If I understand your brief review of their assessment of meditation, they will likely also be fearful of the effects of psychotherapy, or public schools, or local pubs.

Delete.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/24/2015 11:35PM by Pista.

I think your point is well-taken and understood. I think some journalists, in an effort to be succinct and possibly sensationalistic, use the term "science" as shorthand for the "science industry". Which is what I and other posters on this thread are referring to.

I certainly doubt the learned professor who is the subject of the article in the OP is anti-science, qua science.

I haven't heard anyone say 'science bad'.

bad science = science bad

Junk science is worse because it masquerades as honest science but alas it has now been gleefully embraced by the medico-pharma cartel.

Money talks and BS walks. And I don't mean Bad Science. :o(

One HUGE problem in medical research is the influence of Big
Pharm. They often fund the research either directly or
indirectly. Researchers who get the kind of result Big Pharm
likes, tend to get funded again over and over. Researchers who
don't get the results Big Pharm likes tend to not get funded.

For science to work the impetus for research can't be to reach a
preconceived result. The funding has to be independent of the
result of the research.

I shudder to imagine what physics would look like if certain
experimental results were greatly desired by giant corporations
who financed research.

It would look like Mormon cosmology.

It was the Lancet which published a paper in 1998 which claimed that the mumps/measles/rubella vaccine is responsible for an upturn in Autism and other such maladies. It turned out that the study was based upon a population of group of twelve (12!) subjects, and the authors were on the take with tort lawyers who were hoping to cash in on this "danger."

Alas, this highly anomalous case has caused extreme fear about and prejudice against immunizations, which is especially harmful to public health as unregulated immigration from Third World countries increases.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/health/research/03lancet.html

I well remember that article. They had encountered mercury and all too eagerly they made the leap to link autism with vaxes and their cred took a well earned hit.

Methinks the editor-in-cheif pondered a while before releasing this latest hard hitting missive.

But there did used to be Mercury in vaxes, as a preservative. I'm not against vaxination, but I am against having mercury in it. Not good for brains.

"An ethyl mercury derivative call thimerosal is used as a preservative. No vaccine made in Canada since March 2001 for routine use in children contains thimerosal, with the exception of the influenza vaccine. DTaP, polio and Hib vaccines have not contained this preservative since 1997-98."

So I think it was good these guys raised the alarm over possible links to autism. It seems to have got the thimerosal removed from vaxinations. Who ever thought preserving it in mercury was safe anyway?

But please, I don't wish to start a vax/anti-vax debate.

Just keep the damn mercury out of them.

That was the one that landed Andrew Wakefield in the stockade. It involved specifically the MMR vaccine, and he was accused of fabricating data.

Thimerosal--a preservative used in many vaccines--has also been indicted by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as a cause of autism. I just had two experts on autism in the cab last week (there was a conference here), and both said the problem is "the research is messy" on the causes. But they're working on it, and the truth will out.

A whole bunch of people here seriously need to do their homework; I hate making my friends look foolish.

What "hello" said about "peer review being on life support" is utter horse $#!!%. That may be true in the high drama world of the Internet (a moment of silence for our beloved FlattopSF who nailed that stuff as the "because I said so" justification), but the world of scholarly sorts is--despite having quite a few nutcases--generally grounded in reality and not histrionics.

I'm trying to find a National Geographic article titled "The War on Science"; I have four working scientists in my regular e-mail conversations, three PhD's and a guy with a Master's (he's the only one still in the LDS Church), and I'm waiting for comments from several of them. Having followed this stuff, I know it was the Bush Administration who began these practices (just a variation on Karl Rove's "Wedge Theory"), and a whole group of Nobel laureates sent a loud letter of protest.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is way out of step with mainstream, consensus science when it comes to any link between thimerosal and autism:

"Vaccine ingredients do not cause autism.
"One vaccine ingredient that has been studied specifically is thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative used to prevent contamination of multidose vials of vaccines. Research shows that thimerosal does not cause ASD. In fact, a 2004 scientific review by the IOM concluded that 'the evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between thimerosal–containing vaccines and autism.' Since 2003, there have been nine CDC-funded or conducted studies that have found no link between thimerosal-containing vaccines and ASD, as well as no link between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and ASD in children."

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/autism/

Good to see those who follow the religion of science reminded of this yet again. The great thing about science is that if you don't like what they discover today, just wait a few years and often the exact opposite will be proven and peer reviewed as well. Makes for a fun roller coaster ride

almost Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Good to see those who follow the religion of
> science reminded of this yet again. The great
> thing about science is that if you don't like what
> they discover today, just wait a few years and
> often the exact opposite will be proven and peer
> reviewed as well. Makes for a fun roller coaster
> ride

_____________


Only the religious refer to science as a religion.

Unlike religion, science is open to discovery, debate and evolution as it progresses.

If science didn't progess (change), it would not be science, it would be a religion.

I hope that helps to clear it up for you.

Calling science a religion is downright ignernt.

Gee, it sounds like science is just another branch of politics.

bradley Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Gee, it sounds like science is just another branch
> of politics.

No, however politicians love to control what science gets done, misrepresent the findings, pay to quell findings they don't like, and commission "studies" that aren't scientifically valid.

And some scientists play at "politics," too. Hardly anything close to a majority, though. Typically it's usually those that have given up doing science to chase after funding or status or money or fame.

Science is self-correcting. Sometimes it doesn't self-correct nearly as fast as some (including me) would like, but it does get around to it. Simply because there's always some other scientist willing to look at YOUR results, try to replicate them, and call "bullshit" when he/she can't :)

Here Shummy, this Bud's for you...

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/science-doubters/achenbach-text

>"Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science?"

Borrowing from a scene from "Dr. Strangelove" about the "fluoride conspiracy":

>The movie came out in 1964, by which time the health benefits of fluoridation had been thoroughly established, and antifluoridation conspiracy theories could be the stuff of comedy. So you might be surprised to learn that, half a century later, fluoridation continues to incite fear and paranoia. In 2013 citizens in Portland, Oregon, one of only a few major American cities that don’t fluoridate their water, blocked a plan by local officials to do so. Opponents didn’t like the idea of the government adding “chemicals” to their water. They claimed that fluoride could be harmful to human health.

I had a few knock-down drag outs here on the subject of fluoridation. The reason that "anti-science" mantra sets off the road rage is those folks (the original John Birch Society founded by Pappy Koch and championed by none other than W. Cleon Skousen) were making the same claims. I think about that every time I go to the dentist.

Some folks appear to be immune to the lessons of history. A bit more from the article...

>"We live in an age when all manner of scientific knowledge—from the safety of fluoride and vaccines to the reality of climate change—faces organized and often furious opposition. Empowered by their own sources of information and their own interpretations of research, doubters have declared war on the consensus of experts. There are so many of these controversies these days, you’d think a diabolical agency had put something in the water to make people argumentative. And there’s so much talk about the trend these days—in books, articles, and academic conferences—that science doubt itself has become a pop-culture meme."

>"The trouble goes way back, of course. The scientific method leads us to truths that are less than self-evident, often mind-blowing, and sometimes hard to swallow. In the early 17th century, when Galileo claimed that the Earth spins on its axis and orbits the sun, he wasn’t just rejecting church doctrine. He was asking people to believe something that defied common sense—because it sure looks like the sun’s going around the Earth, and you can’t feel the Earth spinning. Galileo was put on trial and forced to recant. Two centuries later Charles Darwin escaped that fate. But his idea that all life on Earth evolved from a primordial ancestor and that we humans are distant cousins of apes, whales, and even deep-sea mollusks is still a big ask for a lot of people. So is another 19th-century notion: that carbon dioxide, an invisible gas that we all exhale all the time and that makes up less than a tenth of one percent of the atmosphere, could be affecting Earth’s climate."

Play it again, Tom...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvlTJrNJ5lA

BTW, it was Will Bagley who turned me onto that song...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/25/2015 10:43PM by SL Cabbie.

So they do a scientific study to show that scientific studies are inaccurate? What if they think his results are inaccurate because scientific studies are shown to be inaccurate?

Paranoia sets in.

Heretic 2 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So they do a scientific study to show that
> scientific studies are inaccurate? What if they
> think his results are inaccurate because
> scientific studies are shown to be inaccurate?
>
> Paranoia sets in.

Hard to tell if that was complete sarcasm or partial...? ;-)

The point was that what gets published as a "scientific study" doesn't always meet standards for validity. This is the fault of the journal publishing the study, of course -- and having better review and standards for journals is what the original article was about (mostly).

The fact is, medical science is especially prone to such problems. One, because of the money in "big pharma." Two, because there is a huge amount of variation in the population of human beings (this is a good thing, and is what we'd expect from evolution by natural selection). There are all kinds of drugs, treatments, etc. in medical science that simply don't work for ALL humans (sometimes even most), because of that variation. So a small sample in a study is a big problem -- your sample doesn't include enough variation to be able to draw conclusions about "all humans." Or even most.