Fraud, Medical Errors and Other Media Links This Weekend

Related articles

1. The alternative medicine community, naturopaths, homeopaths (pick any -path and it will be suspect, really) like to claim that real medicine kills a lot of people. Obviously they ignore the many people that are helped.  A recent BMJ paper used the fact that there is no International Classification Disease (ICD) code for plain old mistakes to claim medical error was the third leading cause of death.

No, the actual number of those was about 35, notes journalist Christina Thielst, and discusses the issue with American Council on Science and Health Board of Scientific Advisor's member Dr. John Dunn. “The authors admit they accepted research previously published for their projection of negligent deaths and did not make an independent effort to assess the negligence numbers for reliability,” Dunn said. “They simply applied the patient safety claims of other researchers to the previously reported death statistics and then made projections based on population growth. They don’t offer any original research, assume too much, and provide a superficial treatment to get so much publicity."

2. Fraud is a different issue. With so many more academics convinced by government marketing campaigns ($5 billion worth just this century) that only academic science is real science and the private sector is less worthwhile, its no surprise more people want to stay in school and will do anything to make that possible.

Though 'profession' is used interchangeably with 'occupation', 'craft' and 'trade' these days, there are only five actual professions: law, the military, education, engineering and medicine. One thing they all share is self-governing ethics. Science has no uniform code of ethics, notes William Reville while discussing the work of American Council on Science and Health molecular biologist Dr. Julianna LeMieux (her article: "Full of shite: why a fecal transplant paper was retracted").

3. Why did hippies become such fascists? It's a valid question, especially given that an entire swath of fringe political activists has been on a two-week campaign to tell USA Today not to publish anything written by me. Why would they do such a thing, and why would their followers on social media who invariably self-identify as tolerant and advocates for freedom and progress so casually parrot social authoritarian groups like AlterNet and TruthOut, which are primarily involved in hate speech, stereotyping and calls for oppression of anyone they deem political outsiders?

AlterNet paranoiaI've discussed why they hate us (Our Audience Is Up 700% – And Anti-Science Groups Are Going Nuts) - they are in a panic about our success and the anti-science corporations that pay them (e.g. funders of Organic Consumers Association) to harass and bully scientists and journalists who disagree with their ideological ravings expect results.

But they are paid to deny science and promote hate speech, why have former flower children who claimed to want peace and love been able to drive opposing thought out of universities and colleges and transformed them into the most rigid, closed-minded, repressive, unthinking sort of society imaginable? J.C. Bourque searches for answers. The good news is, what was done can be undone.

And as for the anti-science groups trying to block out our freedom of speech (and the public's right to know about science), they will fail; the best publications will continue to want our work, while the corporate shills blocking us have to pay other sites to reprint their rants.