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Why are medical journals full of fashionable nonsense? (sci fashions)

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https://bigthink.com/health/medical-jour...-nonsense/

KEY TAKEAWAYS: Medical journals are increasingly and dangerously kowtowing to academia’s political zeitgeist. From manipulating public health data to using Orwellian language, the publication of “fashionable nonsense” has contributed to a credibility crisis. If the public comes to believe that it cannot trust medical journals on the easy stuff, then why would we expect people to trust them on anything?

EXCERPT: . . . Why a research paper would come to a conclusion that is not supported by its own data would be puzzling were it not for the fact that the authors (to their credit?) stated their motivation up front: “These results suggest that alcohol control policies might need to be revised worldwide, refocusing on efforts to lower overall population-level consumption.” In other words, the authors are on a holy mission; whether the data support it is of secondary concern.

The Lancet study is indicative of a larger trend in scientific journals, namely, an increasing prevalence of fashionable nonsense that is supported not by research but by ideology. Scientific journals are supposed to be the gatekeepers of objective facts, not cheerleaders for moral crusades or voguish ideologies. Kowtowing to academia’s political zeitgeist is not something that a medical journal — or any scholarly journal — ought to do. Yet, increasingly, that is exactly what they are doing. This is dangerous. And we can turn to a landmark book for some guidance as to why this is happening.

Fashionable nonsense. In 1999, physicists Alan Sokal (of Sokal hoax fame) and Jean Bricmont published a book titled Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science. Their thesis was that a portion of academia, generally within the humanities and social sciences, had adopted postmodernism, a philosophy that they defined as:

“…an intellectual current characterized by the more-or-less explicit rejection of the rationalist tradition of the Enlightenment, by theoretical discourses disconnected from any empirical test, and by a cognitive and cultural relativism that regards science as nothing more than a ‘narration,’ a ‘myth,’ or a social construction among many others.”

Using their definition, a good example of fashionable nonsense comes from self-help guru Deepak Chopra, who once wrote a book called Quantum Healing — a term that sounds erudite but is complete gibberish. The word “quantum” is often used in particle physics to refer to the minimum differences in energy levels, but it has no use in medicine. Combining the two is nonsense, akin to wowing an audience with a term like “gravitational genetics.”

More than two decades after Sokal and Bricmont’s book was published, the problem has grown exponentially worse. Instead of merely adopting the language of science improperly, postmodernism — whose inherent indefinability seems to be a feature rather than a bug — has invaded the scientific establishment itself. The “fashionable nonsense” that Sokal and Bricmont originally identified has mutated and grown to encapsulate a wide range of problems, from cynical bandwagoning to Orwellian changes to our vocabulary.

Medical journals hop aboard political bandwagons. In the weeks, months, and years after the 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States, it became fashionable for scientists to tie their research to bioterrorism, no matter how tangentially related it might be. This still occurs. A paper published in April 2021 in the Journal of Bacteriology reported the discovery that a particular gene (or perhaps group of genes) is necessary for the bacterium that causes Q fever (called Coxiella burnetii) to infect immune cells in mice. The authors were quick to point out that C. burnetti is “classified as a potential biowarfare agent.”

To be clear, the research is perfectly legitimate and important. The Journal of Bacteriology is a very reputable journal in the field of microbiology. And yes, C. burnetii has been weaponized before and is considered a bioterrorist threat. But let’s be realistic: Few if any national security officials are losing sleep over Q fever, a disease transmitted by livestock that kills roughly 12 Americans each year.

The point is that hopping aboard a political bandwagon is good for grabbing attention — and subsequently, funding... (MORE)
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