Dec 12, 2022 07:38 PM
(This post was last modified: Dec 13, 2022 07:44 AM by C C.)
Who Is Responsible For Research Fraud Anyway?
https://goodscience.substack.com/p/who-i...arch-fraud
EXCERPT: The President of Stanford (Marc Tessier-Lavigne) has recently come under investigation for a series of neuroscience papers that apparently had fake imagery in them. It remains to be seen how it will all play out.
[...] This is a well-known phenomenon in biomedicine, if not other fields as well, and it seems problematic at best. It’s how you end up with absurdities like the discredited French scholar Didier Raoult, who is listed as an author on 2,113 papers that came out of his lab. Obviously, no one has that many papers—that’s one paper a week for 40 years—unless other people are doing most of the actual work.
So, was Tessier-Lavigne actually responsible for creating any alleged fraud? I’m guessing not. It was probably other people far below him who were responsible. And that’s often the excuse in such situations... (MORE - details)
The science of placebos is fueling quackery
https://bigthink.com/health/placebos/
INTRO: For several decades now, many scientists, including me, have been working hard to reveal the full power and scope of the placebo effect — the amazing ability of a simple sugar pill or other non-pharmaceutical “fake intervention” to improve someone’s quality of life. This research has been crucial to giving scientific credibility to a powerful psychological effect. But the advances of science have also backfired, spawning an alternative industry that preys on the vulnerable.
The placebo effect describes how the mere belief and expectation of receiving a drug may produce a benefit, such as a reduction in pain. Albeit strange at first sight, the placebo effect is based on profound and fascinating mechanisms in the human brain, and highlights the power of attention given to a patient by a caregiver. As a neuroscientist, I have been working on understanding these mechanisms for 30 years, alongside other researchers around the world who specialize in everything from biochemistry to physiology, genetics to brain imaging. What has emerged is an understanding of how the mere expectation of a therapeutic benefit can activate a variety of chemicals in the human brain, such as pain-relieving opioids and cannabinoids, as well as pleasure-enhancing dopamine. Placebos, a doctor’s words and drugs can all share some common mechanisms of action.
All this means that some alternative medicines can indeed have positive outcomes for patients, though not necessarily through the mechanisms that the therapy’s inventors supposed, but rather through a placebo effect. This holds true for treatments ranging from strange talismans to acupuncture — studies have shown that pain relief is about the same for patients receiving true acupuncture with needles, for example, as for those receiving sham acupuncture with trick needles.
The scientific advances in understanding placebo are fascinating. But one unfortunate outcome of all this work is that profit-seeking companies and individuals now have a new weapon: It is no longer necessary to demonstrate the effectiveness of their proposed therapies; it is enough to assert that these work because of the placebo effect. I receive myriad eccentric proposals for new therapies, ranging from talismans and concoctions to mascots and weird rituals. Their inventors claim that these are capable of inducing substantial health benefits and often seek my endorsement. These proposals have stepped up sharply in recent years. Sadly, the science of the placebo effect is fueling this new breed of pseudoscience... (MORE - details)
https://goodscience.substack.com/p/who-i...arch-fraud
EXCERPT: The President of Stanford (Marc Tessier-Lavigne) has recently come under investigation for a series of neuroscience papers that apparently had fake imagery in them. It remains to be seen how it will all play out.
[...] This is a well-known phenomenon in biomedicine, if not other fields as well, and it seems problematic at best. It’s how you end up with absurdities like the discredited French scholar Didier Raoult, who is listed as an author on 2,113 papers that came out of his lab. Obviously, no one has that many papers—that’s one paper a week for 40 years—unless other people are doing most of the actual work.
So, was Tessier-Lavigne actually responsible for creating any alleged fraud? I’m guessing not. It was probably other people far below him who were responsible. And that’s often the excuse in such situations... (MORE - details)
The science of placebos is fueling quackery
https://bigthink.com/health/placebos/
INTRO: For several decades now, many scientists, including me, have been working hard to reveal the full power and scope of the placebo effect — the amazing ability of a simple sugar pill or other non-pharmaceutical “fake intervention” to improve someone’s quality of life. This research has been crucial to giving scientific credibility to a powerful psychological effect. But the advances of science have also backfired, spawning an alternative industry that preys on the vulnerable.
The placebo effect describes how the mere belief and expectation of receiving a drug may produce a benefit, such as a reduction in pain. Albeit strange at first sight, the placebo effect is based on profound and fascinating mechanisms in the human brain, and highlights the power of attention given to a patient by a caregiver. As a neuroscientist, I have been working on understanding these mechanisms for 30 years, alongside other researchers around the world who specialize in everything from biochemistry to physiology, genetics to brain imaging. What has emerged is an understanding of how the mere expectation of a therapeutic benefit can activate a variety of chemicals in the human brain, such as pain-relieving opioids and cannabinoids, as well as pleasure-enhancing dopamine. Placebos, a doctor’s words and drugs can all share some common mechanisms of action.
All this means that some alternative medicines can indeed have positive outcomes for patients, though not necessarily through the mechanisms that the therapy’s inventors supposed, but rather through a placebo effect. This holds true for treatments ranging from strange talismans to acupuncture — studies have shown that pain relief is about the same for patients receiving true acupuncture with needles, for example, as for those receiving sham acupuncture with trick needles.
The scientific advances in understanding placebo are fascinating. But one unfortunate outcome of all this work is that profit-seeking companies and individuals now have a new weapon: It is no longer necessary to demonstrate the effectiveness of their proposed therapies; it is enough to assert that these work because of the placebo effect. I receive myriad eccentric proposals for new therapies, ranging from talismans and concoctions to mascots and weird rituals. Their inventors claim that these are capable of inducing substantial health benefits and often seek my endorsement. These proposals have stepped up sharply in recent years. Sadly, the science of the placebo effect is fueling this new breed of pseudoscience... (MORE - details)