Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from House Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Speaker 1: Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry This Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know. Um, Josh, We're gonna do something weird today.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do a listener mail at the head of
Speaker 1: the podcast. I know, all right, what? All right, let's
Speaker 1: do it. Okay, this is from b Wait, hold on,
Speaker 1: can you have the listener mail? Music going? Oh? I
Speaker 1: don't know, Jerry, should we go the whole nine yards?
Speaker 1: So let's do it? People might freak out? All right?
Speaker 1: This is from Bianca. Uh voice is what I'm gonna say.
Speaker 1: I think that's great. Hey, guys wrote you not too
Speaker 1: long ago asking about Hey, research your own podcast. It
Speaker 1: just got back from a class where we talked about
Speaker 1: research misrepresentation and journal articles. Apparently journals don't publish everything
Speaker 1: that is submitted, and lot of researchers don't even publish
Speaker 1: their studies they don't like the results. Uh. Some laws
Speaker 1: have been put into place to prevent misrepresentation, such as
Speaker 1: researchers having to register their studies before they get results
Speaker 1: and journals only accepting preregistered studies. But apparently this is
Speaker 1: not happening at all, even though it is now technically law.
Speaker 1: This ends with the general public being misinformed about methods
Speaker 1: and drugs that work. For example, there are twenty five
Speaker 1: studies proving a drug works, twenty five that don't. It's
Speaker 1: more likely that twenty of the positive results have been
Speaker 1: published and only one or two of the negative. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that is from Bianca, and that led us to
Speaker 1: this article on our own website. Ten signs that that
Speaker 1: study is bogus, and here it is nice Chuck. Well,
Speaker 1: we get asked a lot about research from people usually
Speaker 1: in college. Are like, you guys are professional researchers. How
Speaker 1: do I know I'm doing a good job and getting
Speaker 1: good info? And it's getting harder and harder these days,
Speaker 1: it really is. You know. One sign that I've learned
Speaker 1: is if you are searching about his study, and all
Speaker 1: of the hits that come back are from different news organizations,
Speaker 1: and they're all within like a two three day period
Speaker 1: from a year ago, nothing like, nothing more recent than
Speaker 1: that than somebody released a sensational study and no one
Speaker 1: did any actual effort into investigating it, and there was
Speaker 1: no follow up. If you dig deep enough, somebody might
Speaker 1: have done follow up or something like that, but for
Speaker 1: the most part, it was just something that splashed across
Speaker 1: the headlines, which more often than not is the is
Speaker 1: the case as far as science reporting goes. So that's
Speaker 1: a bonus. That's the eleven boom. How about that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: should we just start banging these out let's do it?
Speaker 1: Al Do you have some other clever well apart and
Speaker 1: parcel with that, I don't know if it's clever. You
Speaker 1: do come across people who you know can be trusted
Speaker 1: and relied upon to do good science reporting. So like
Speaker 1: Ed Young is one, another guy named Ben gold Acre
Speaker 1: has something called bad Science I don't remember what, Yeah,
Speaker 1: outlet he's with. And then there's a guy I think
Speaker 1: scientific American named John Horgan who's awesome. Yeah, or some
Speaker 1: journalism organizations that have been around instood the test of
Speaker 1: time that you know are really doing it right, like
Speaker 1: a nature Yeah. Scientific Americans are like really science Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I feel I feel really good about using those sources. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but even they can you know, there's there's something called
Speaker 1: scientis um where there's a lot of like faith in
Speaker 1: dogma associated with the scientific process, and you know, you
Speaker 1: have to root through that as well. Try it. I'm done. Uh.
Speaker 1: The first one that they have here on the list
Speaker 1: is that it's unrepeatable, and that's a big one. UM.
Speaker 1: The Center for Open Science did a study, UH was
Speaker 1: a project really where they took two hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: researchers and they said, you know what, take these one
Speaker 1: hundred studies that have been published already psychological studies and
Speaker 1: pour over them. And uh in just last year. They
Speaker 1: took him a while, took them several years. They said,
Speaker 1: you know what, more than half of these can't even
Speaker 1: be repeated using the same methods. They're not reproducible. Nope,
Speaker 1: not reproducible. That's a big one. And and ones that
Speaker 1: means that they they when they carried out they followed
Speaker 1: the methodology. UM Scientific method podcasts. You should listen to
Speaker 1: that one. That was a good one. That they found
Speaker 1: that their results were just not what the what the
Speaker 1: people published, not anywhere near them. UM. For example, they
Speaker 1: used one as an example where a study found that
Speaker 1: men were terrible at a determining whether a woman was
Speaker 1: giving them UM some sort of like a clues to
Speaker 1: attraction or just being friendly, sexy, sexy stuff or yeah,
Speaker 1: or good to meet you or buzz off jerky um.
Speaker 1: And they did the study again and as part of
Speaker 1: this Open Science Center for Open Science study or survey,
Speaker 1: and they found that that was not reproducible or that
Speaker 1: they came up with totally different results. And that was
Speaker 1: just one of many. Yeah, and in this case specifically,
Speaker 1: they looked into that study and they found that it was, um,
Speaker 1: one was in the United Kingdom, one was in the
Speaker 1: United States. May have something to do with it. But
Speaker 1: the point is, Chuck, is if you're talking about humanity,
Speaker 1: I don't think that the study was like the American
Speaker 1: male is terrible at it. It's men are terrible at it. Right.
Speaker 1: So that means that whether it's in the UK, which
Speaker 1: is basically the US with an accent and a penchant
Speaker 1: for t I'm just kidding UK s soon, Um, the
Speaker 1: it should be universal. Yeah, you know, unless you're saying, no,
Speaker 1: it's just this only applies to American men, the American men, right,
Speaker 1: then it's not even study. Yeah. The next one we
Speaker 1: have is, uh, it's it's plausible, not necessarily a provable.
Speaker 1: And this is a big one because and I think, um,
Speaker 1: we're talking about observational studies here more than lab experiments,
Speaker 1: because with observational studies, you know, you sit in a
Speaker 1: room and get asked three questions about something, and all
Speaker 1: these people get asked the same questions, and then they
Speaker 1: pour over the data and they draw out their own observations.
Speaker 1: And one of the very famously an observational study that
Speaker 1: led to false results found a correlation between having a
Speaker 1: type A personality and UM being prone to risk for
Speaker 1: heart attacks and UM. For a long time, you know
Speaker 1: that the news outlets were like, oh, yes, of course,
Speaker 1: that makes total sense. This study proved what we've all
Speaker 1: known all along, UM, And then it came out that no,
Speaker 1: actually what was going on was a well known anomaly
Speaker 1: where you have a five percent um risk that chance
Speaker 1: will produce something that looks like a statistically significant correlation
Speaker 1: when it's not all when really it's just total chance.
Speaker 1: And science is aware of this, especially with observational studies,
Speaker 1: because the more questions you have, the more opportunity you
Speaker 1: have for that five percent chance to create a seemingly
Speaker 1: statistically significant correlation when really it's not there. It was
Speaker 1: just random chance where if somebody else goes back and
Speaker 1: does the same same study, they're not going to come
Speaker 1: up with the same results. But the if a researcher
Speaker 1: is I would guess willfully blind to that five percent chance, um,
Speaker 1: they will go ahead and produce the study and be like, no,
Speaker 1: it's true, here's the results right here, go ahead and
Speaker 1: report on it and make my career. Yeah. Well, and
Speaker 1: they also might be looking for something inter affect Chances
Speaker 1: are they are, Um, it's not just some random studying. Look,
Speaker 1: let's just see what we get if we ask a
Speaker 1: bunch of weird questions. It's like, hey, we're looking to
Speaker 1: try and prove something most likely so that better minehoff
Speaker 1: thing might come into play where you're kind of chair
Speaker 1: picking data. Yeah, that's a big problem that kind of
Speaker 1: comes up. A lot of these are really kind of
Speaker 1: interrelated to totally. The other big thing that's in related
Speaker 1: is how the media reports on science these days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, he's a big deal. Yeah, Like in John
Speaker 1: Oliver just recently went off on this and NPR did
Speaker 1: a thing on it, like they might even like the
Speaker 1: researcher might say plausible, but it doesn't get portrayed that
Speaker 1: way in the media. Sure, remember that poor kid who
Speaker 1: thought he found the ancient Mayan city. The media just
Speaker 1: took it and ran with it. You know, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think there was a lot of maybe or it's possible,
Speaker 1: we need to go check kind of thing. That mean,
Speaker 1: He's like, no, he discovered an ancient Mayan city never
Speaker 1: known before. Yeah, and let's put it in a headline.
Speaker 1: And that's I mean, that's the That's just kind of
Speaker 1: the way it is these days. Do you have to
Speaker 1: be able to sort through it? I guess that's what
Speaker 1: we're doing here, aren't we, Chuck, We're telling everybody how
Speaker 1: to sort through it, or at the very least take
Speaker 1: scientific reporting with a grain of salt, right, Not like
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily have the time to go through and
Speaker 1: double that research and then check on that research and
Speaker 1: you know, right, so take it with a grain of salt.
Speaker 1: Um unsound samples. Uh, here was this study that basically said, um,
Speaker 1: how you lost your virginity. It's going to have a
Speaker 1: very large impact and play a role on how you
Speaker 1: feel about sex and experienced sex for the rest of
Speaker 1: your life. Yeah, it's possible. Sure, it seems logical, so
Speaker 1: we'll just go with it. But when you um only
Speaker 1: interview college students and uh, you don't you only interview
Speaker 1: heterosexual people, Then you can't really say you've done a
Speaker 1: robust study, now, can't you. Plus you also take out
Speaker 1: of the sample size your sample population, anybody who reports
Speaker 1: having had a violent encounter, Throw them out, that data out.
Speaker 1: That's not gonna inform how you feel about sex, right exactly.
Speaker 1: You're just narrowing it down further and further and again,
Speaker 1: cherry picking the data by throwing people out of your
Speaker 1: population sample that don't that will throw off the data
Speaker 1: that you want. Yeah, and I've never heard of this
Speaker 1: acronym weird and um. A lot of these studies are
Speaker 1: conducted by professors in academics. So a lot of times
Speaker 1: you've got college students as your sample, and there's something
Speaker 1: called weird Western educated from industrialized rich in democratic countries. Right,
Speaker 1: those are the participants in the studies studies subject. But
Speaker 1: then they will say, men, right, well, what about the
Speaker 1: gay man in Africa? Like you didn't ask him? So
Speaker 1: that was that's actually a really really big deal. Um.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and ten, these three researchers did a
Speaker 1: a survey of a ton of social science and behavioral
Speaker 1: science studies found that eight percent of them used your
Speaker 1: study participants. So basically it was college kids for eighty
Speaker 1: percent of these papers. And they surveyed a bunch of
Speaker 1: papers and they took it a little further and they
Speaker 1: said that, um, people who fit into the weird category
Speaker 1: only make up twelve percent of the world population, but
Speaker 1: they represent eight percent of the population of these studies.
Speaker 1: And a college student, chuck in North America, Europe, Israel,
Speaker 1: or Australia is four thousand times more likely to be
Speaker 1: in a scientific study than anyone else on the planet.
Speaker 1: And they're basing psychology and behavioral sciences are basing their
Speaker 1: findings onto everybody else based on this this small tranch
Speaker 1: of humanity. And that's a that's a big problem. That's
Speaker 1: extremely misleading. Yeah, and it's also a little insulting because
Speaker 1: what they're essentially saying is like, this is who matters.
Speaker 1: Well also, yeah, but what's sad is this is who
Speaker 1: I am going to go to the trouble of recruiting
Speaker 1: for my study. It's just sheer laziness. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: a lot of them are like, well, I don't have
Speaker 1: the funding to do that. I guess I see that.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I guarantee there's a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of laziness involved. Yeah, or maybe if you don't
Speaker 1: have the money, maybe don't do that study. Is it
Speaker 1: that simple? I'm probably over simple plying. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm sure we're going to hear from some people in
Speaker 1: academia about this one. We'll stop using weird participants, or
Speaker 1: at the very least say, um, like this is sexual
Speaker 1: Dartmouth students. This applies to them, not everybody in the world.
Speaker 1: Of these studies where used those people as study participants,
Speaker 1: and they're not even they're not even emblematic of the
Speaker 1: rest of the human race. Like college students are shown
Speaker 1: to see the world differently than other people around the world.
Speaker 1: And so it's not like you can be like, well,
Speaker 1: it still works, you can still extrapolate. It's like flawed
Speaker 1: in every way, shape and form. Probably take a break. Come, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's take a break because, uh, you're get a little
Speaker 1: hot under the collar. I love it, man. Uh, we'll
Speaker 1: be right back after this. Just so much, All right,
Speaker 1: what's next, buddy? Uh? Very small sample sizes. Right, if
Speaker 1: you do a study with twenty mice, then you're not
Speaker 1: doing a good enough study. No, So They used this
Speaker 1: um in the the article. They use the idea of
Speaker 1: ten thousand smokers and ten thousand non smokers, and they said, okay,
Speaker 1: if you have a population sample that size, that's not bad.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty good start. And you find that fifty
Speaker 1: of the smokers developed lung cancer but only five percent
Speaker 1: of non smokers did, then your study has what's called
Speaker 1: a high power. UM. It's if if you had something
Speaker 1: like ten smokers and ten non smokers, and two of
Speaker 1: the smokers developed lung cancer and one developed lung cancer
Speaker 1: as well, you have very little power and you should
Speaker 1: have a very little confidence in your findings. But regardless,
Speaker 1: it's still going to get reported if it's a sexy
Speaker 1: idea yea for sure. Um. And because these are kind
Speaker 1: of overlapping in a lot of ways, it was I
Speaker 1: want to mention this guy, a scientist named Ulrich uh
Speaker 1: Dirnegle Uh. He and his colleague Malcolm McCloud have been trying,
Speaker 1: I mean, and there are a lot of scientists that
Speaker 1: are trying to clean this up because they know it's
Speaker 1: a problem. But he co wrote an article in Nature.
Speaker 1: Uh that's called robust research. Colon institutions must do their
Speaker 1: part for reproducibility. So this kind of ties back into
Speaker 1: the reproducing things, like we said earlier, and his whole ideas,
Speaker 1: you know what good funding they should tie funding too
Speaker 1: good institutional practices, like you shouldn't get the money if
Speaker 1: you can't show that you're doing it right. Um, and
Speaker 1: he said that would just weed out a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: Here's one staggering stat for reproducibility and small, simple size. Uh.
Speaker 1: Biomedical researchers for drug companies reported that of their only
Speaker 1: of the papers that they published or even reproducible, that
Speaker 1: was like an insider stat And it doesn't matter. They
Speaker 1: still drugs are still going to market, yeah, which is
Speaker 1: that's a really good example of why this does matter
Speaker 1: to the average person. You know, like if you hear
Speaker 1: something thing like um uh, monkeys like to cuddle with
Speaker 1: one another because they are reminded of their mothers. Study shows.
Speaker 1: Do you could just be like, oh, that's great, I'm
Speaker 1: going to share that on the internet. Doesn't really affect
Speaker 1: you in any way. But when their studies being conducted
Speaker 1: that are that are creating drugs that could kill you
Speaker 1: or not treat you or that kind of thing, And
Speaker 1: is it's attracting money and funding and that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff that's like that's harmful. Yeah. Absolutely. I found another survey,
Speaker 1: did you like that terrible study idea? That it came up?
Speaker 1: The monkeys like the cuddle A hundred and forty trainees
Speaker 1: at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, Thank
Speaker 1: you Houston for being so kind to us at a
Speaker 1: recent show. They found that nearly a third of these
Speaker 1: UM trainees felt pressure to support their mentors work. It's
Speaker 1: like to get ahead or not get fired. So that's
Speaker 1: another issue. As you've got these trainees or residents, uh,
Speaker 1: and you have these mentors, and even if you disagree
Speaker 1: or don't think it's a great study, you're you're pressured
Speaker 1: into just going along with it. I could see that
Speaker 1: for sure. There's there seems to be a huge hierarchy.
Speaker 1: And UM science can a lab. You know, you've got
Speaker 1: the person who runs the lab, it's their lab, and
Speaker 1: go against them. But there are people UM like Science
Speaker 1: and Nature to great journals are updating their guidelines right now.
Speaker 1: They're introducing checklists. UM Science hired statisticians to their panel
Speaker 1: of reviewing editors, not just other you know, peer reviewed
Speaker 1: like they actually actually hired numbers people specifically because that's
Speaker 1: a bigger process. That's a huge part of studies. It's
Speaker 1: like these this mind breaking statistical analysis that can be
Speaker 1: used for good or ill. And I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: think the average scientists necessarily is a whiz at that,
Speaker 1: although I it has to be part of training, but
Speaker 1: not necessarily. And that's a different kind of beast altogether.
Speaker 1: Um Stats, we talked about it earlier. I took a
Speaker 1: stats class in college, had so much trouble that was
Speaker 1: awful at it. It really just it's a special kind
Speaker 1: of is it even matter? Yeah, I didn't get it.
Speaker 1: I passed it, though I passed it because my professor
Speaker 1: took pity on me. Um that Ulric during durnagal Ulric
Speaker 1: narnagal Um. He is a he's a big time crusader
Speaker 1: for his jam making sure that science is good science.
Speaker 1: One of the things um he crusades against is the
Speaker 1: idea of remembering that virginity study where they just threw
Speaker 1: out anybody who had a violent encounter for their first
Speaker 1: sexual experience. UM. Apparently that's a big deal with annam
Speaker 1: studies as well. If you're studying the effects of a
Speaker 1: drug or something like there was this one in the article. Um,
Speaker 1: if you're studying the effects of a stroke drug and
Speaker 1: you've got a control group of mice that are taking
Speaker 1: the drug or that aren't taking the drug, and then
Speaker 1: a test group that are getting the drug. Um, and
Speaker 1: then like three mice from the test group die even
Speaker 1: though they're on the stroke drug. They die of a
Speaker 1: massive stroke, and you just literally and figuratively throw them
Speaker 1: out of the study, um, and don't include them in
Speaker 1: the results. That changes the data. And he's been on
Speaker 1: a peer of you on a paper before. He's like, no,
Speaker 1: this doesn't pass peer of you. You can't just throw
Speaker 1: out what happened to these three rodents? You started with ten,
Speaker 1: there's only seven reported in the end. What happened to
Speaker 1: those three? And how many of them just don't report
Speaker 1: the ten? They're like, oh, we only started with seven.
Speaker 1: Were going, you know, well, I was about to say
Speaker 1: I get the urge. I don't get it because it's
Speaker 1: not right. But I think what happens is you work
Speaker 1: so hard at something yeah yeah, and you're like, how
Speaker 1: can I just walk away from two years of this
Speaker 1: because it didn't get a result? Okay, The point of
Speaker 1: real science, though you have to walk away from it. Well,
Speaker 1: you have to publish that. And that's the other thing too,
Speaker 1: And I guarantee scientists will say, hey, man, try getting
Speaker 1: a negative paper published in a good journal. These days,
Speaker 1: you don't want that kind of stuff. But part of
Speaker 1: it also is I don't think it's enough to just
Speaker 1: have to be published in like a journal. You want
Speaker 1: to make the news cycle as well. That makes it
Speaker 1: even better, right, Um So, I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of factors involved. But ultimately, if you take all that
Speaker 1: stuff away, if you take the culture away from it,
Speaker 1: you're if you get negative results, you're supposed to publish
Speaker 1: that so that some other scientists can come along and
Speaker 1: be like, oh, somebody else already did this using these
Speaker 1: methods that I was going to use. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: waste two years of my career because somebody else already did.
Speaker 1: Thank you, buddy for saving me this time and trouble
Speaker 1: and effort to know that this does not work. You've
Speaker 1: proven this doesn't work when you saw it to prove
Speaker 1: it does work, you actually proved it didn't work. That's
Speaker 1: part of science. Yeah, I wish there wasn't a negative
Speaker 1: connotation to a negative result, because to me, it's the
Speaker 1: value is the same as proving something does work as
Speaker 1: proving something doesn't work. Right again, it's just not Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sexy either, so maybe that's why I
Speaker 1: get it. Uh. Here's one that I didn't know was
Speaker 1: a thing, predatory publishing. You never heard of this. So
Speaker 1: here's the scenario. You're a doctor or a scientists and um,
Speaker 1: you get an email from a journal that says, hey,
Speaker 1: you got anything interesting for us. I've heard about your
Speaker 1: work and you say, well, actually, do I have this
Speaker 1: this study right here? They say, cool, we'll publish it.
Speaker 1: You go great, my career is taking off. Then you
Speaker 1: get a bill he says, where's my three grand for
Speaker 1: publishing your article? And you're like, I don't owe you
Speaker 1: three grand, all right, give us two? And you know
Speaker 1: I can't even give you two. And if you fight
Speaker 1: them long enough, maybe they'll drop it and never work
Speaker 1: with you again. Or maybe it'll just be like, well,
Speaker 1: we'll talk to your next court. Exactly. That's called predatory publishing.
Speaker 1: And it is I'm not sure how new it is.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's pretty new. Is it pretty new? But it's
Speaker 1: a thing now where uh, you can pay essentially to
Speaker 1: get something published. Yes, you can, um it kind of
Speaker 1: it's kind of like who's who in behavioral science is
Speaker 1: kind of thing, you know. Um. And apparently it's new
Speaker 1: because it's a result of open source academic journals, which
Speaker 1: a lot of people push for, including Aaron Schwartz very
Speaker 1: famously who like took a bunch of academic articles and
Speaker 1: published him online and was prosecuted heavily for it. Persecuted.
Speaker 1: You could even say, um, but the idea that science
Speaker 1: is behind this paywall, which is another great article from
Speaker 1: Priceonomics by the way, um, really just takes a lot
Speaker 1: of people off. So they started open source journals right,
Speaker 1: and as a result, predatory publishers came about and said, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's make this free, but we need to make our
Speaker 1: money anyway, so we're going to charge the academic who
Speaker 1: wrote the study for publishing it. Well yeah, and and
Speaker 1: sometimes now it's just a flat out scam operation. There's
Speaker 1: this guy named Jeffrey Beale who is a research librarian.
Speaker 1: He is my new hero because he's truly like one
Speaker 1: of these dudes that has uh, he's trying to make
Speaker 1: a difference and he's not profiting from this, but he's
Speaker 1: spending a lot of time by creating a list of
Speaker 1: of predatory publishers. Yeah, a significant list too. Yeah, how
Speaker 1: many four thousand of them right now? Um. Some of
Speaker 1: these companies flat out lie, like they're literally based out
Speaker 1: of Pakistan or Nigeria and they say no, we're in
Speaker 1: New York. Yea publisher, So it's just a flat out scam.
Speaker 1: Or they lie about their review practices. Um, like they
Speaker 1: might not have any review practices and they straight up
Speaker 1: lie and say they do. There was one called Scientific
Speaker 1: Journals International out of Minnesota that he found out was
Speaker 1: just one guy like literally working out of his home,
Speaker 1: just lobbying for articles, charging to get them published, not
Speaker 1: reviewing anything, and just saying I'm a journal, I'm a
Speaker 1: scientific journal. He shut it down apparently or tried to
Speaker 1: sell it. I think he was found out. Um and
Speaker 1: this other one, the International Journal of Engineering Research and Applications.
Speaker 1: They created an award and then gave it to itself
Speaker 1: and even modeled the award from an Australian TV award
Speaker 1: like the physical Statute. That's fascinating. I didn't they could
Speaker 1: do that. I'm gonna give ourselves. Yeah, let's the best
Speaker 1: podcast in the Universal Award. It's gonna look like the Oscar. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: the Oscar crusted with the Emmy. Uh this other one
Speaker 1: med med No publications actually confused the meaning of STM
Speaker 1: Science Technology Medicine. They thought it meant sports technology in Medicine. No. Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of UM science journalists or scientists too. But
Speaker 1: watchdogs like to send like gibberish articles into those things
Speaker 1: to see if they publish him, and sometimes they do.
Speaker 1: Frequently they do sniff them off the case it's the
Speaker 1: big time. How about that call back? It's been a while,
Speaker 1: it needs to be a T shirt. Did we take
Speaker 1: a break? Yeah, all right, we'll be back and finish
Speaker 1: up right after this. Just so much so, here's a
Speaker 1: big one. You ever heard the term follow the money? Hm.
Speaker 1: That's applicable to a lot of realms of society, and
Speaker 1: most certainly in journals. UM. If something looks hinky, just
Speaker 1: do a little investigating and see who's sponsoring their work. Well,
Speaker 1: especially if that person is like, no, everyone else is wrong.
Speaker 1: Climate change is not man made kind of thing. Sure,
Speaker 1: you know, if you look at where their funding is
Speaker 1: coming from, you might be unsurprised to find that it's
Speaker 1: coming from people who would benefit from the idea that
Speaker 1: anthropogenic climate change isn't real. Yeah, well we might as
Speaker 1: well talk about him Willie Soon. Yeah, Mr Soon. Is
Speaker 1: he a doctor? He's a He's a physicist of some sort. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, m M. I'm just gonna say Mr. Or
Speaker 1: doctor Soon because I'm not positive. Uh. He is one
Speaker 1: of a few people on the planet Earth. Um professionals,
Speaker 1: that is, who deny human climate change, human influence climate
Speaker 1: change like you said, he said the fancier word for
Speaker 1: it though, and anthropogenic um. And he works at the
Speaker 1: Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. So hey, he's with Harvard.
Speaker 1: He's got the cred right. Um. Turns out when you
Speaker 1: look into where he's getting his funding. Uh. He received
Speaker 1: one point two million dollars over the past decade from
Speaker 1: Exxon Mobile, the Southern Company, the Cokes, and the Koke brothers,
Speaker 1: their foundation, the Charles G. Coke Foundation. Excen stopped in
Speaker 1: stopped funding him, but the bulk of his money and
Speaker 1: his funding came and I'm sorry, I forgot the American
Speaker 1: Petroleum Institute came from people who clearly had a dog
Speaker 1: in this fight. And it's just how can you trust this?
Speaker 1: You know? Yeah, well you trusted because there's a guy
Speaker 1: and he has a PhD in aerospace engineering by the way,
Speaker 1: all right, he's a duck. He works with this, um,
Speaker 1: this organization, the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, which is
Speaker 1: a legitimate place. Um, it doesn't get any funding from Harvard,
Speaker 1: but it gets a lot from NASA and from the Smithsonian. Well,
Speaker 1: and Harvard's very clear to point this out when people
Speaker 1: ask him about Willie Soon, Um, they're kind of like, well,
Speaker 1: here's the quote. Willie Soon as a Smithsonian staff researcher
Speaker 1: at Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, a collaboration of the
Speaker 1: Harvard College Observatory in the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Like they
Speaker 1: just want to be real clear. Even though he uses
Speaker 1: a Harvard email address, he's not our employee. No, but
Speaker 1: again he's getting lots of funding from NASA and lots
Speaker 1: of funding from the Smithsonian. This guy, Um, if his
Speaker 1: scientific beliefs are what they are, and he's a smart guy,
Speaker 1: then yeah, I don't know about like getting fired for saying,
Speaker 1: you know, here's a paper on on the idea that
Speaker 1: climate change is not human made. Yeah, he thinks it's
Speaker 1: the Sun's fault. But he didn't. He doesn't reveal in
Speaker 1: any of his um conflicts of interest. Uh, that should
Speaker 1: go at the end of the paper. He didn't reveal
Speaker 1: where his funding was coming from. And I get the
Speaker 1: impression that in academia, if you're are totally cool with
Speaker 1: everybody thinking like you're a shill, you can get away
Speaker 1: with it. Right. Well, this stuff, a lot of this
Speaker 1: stuff is not illegal. Right, Even predatory publishing is not illegal,
Speaker 1: just unethical. And if you're counting on people to police
Speaker 1: themselves with ethics, a lot of times will disappoint you.
Speaker 1: The Heartland Institute gave Willie Soon a Courage Award, and
Speaker 1: if you're not caring about what other scientists think about
Speaker 1: if you've heard the Heartland Institute, you might remember them.
Speaker 1: They are a conservative think tank. You might remember them
Speaker 1: in the nineties when they worked alongside Philip Morris to
Speaker 1: deny the risks of secondhand smoke. Yeah, that's all chronicle
Speaker 1: In that book. I've talked about merchants of doubt, A
Speaker 1: bunch of scientists, legitimate bona fide scientists who are like
Speaker 1: up for for um, being bought by groups like that said,
Speaker 1: it is sad um and the whole the whole thing
Speaker 1: is they're saying like, well, you can't stay without beyond
Speaker 1: a shadow of a doubt with absolute certainty, that that's
Speaker 1: the case, and science is like, no, science doesn't do that.
Speaker 1: Science doesn't do absolute certainty. But the average person reading
Speaker 1: a newspaper sees that, oh you can't stay with absolute certainty, Well,
Speaker 1: then maybe it isn't man made. And then there's that
Speaker 1: doubt that the people just go and get the money
Speaker 1: for for saying that, for writing papers about it. It's
Speaker 1: millions of Yeah, it really is. Um self reviewed. Uh,
Speaker 1: you've heard of peer review. We've talked about it quite
Speaker 1: a bit. Your reviews. When you have a study and
Speaker 1: then one or more ideally more of your peers reviews
Speaker 1: your study and says, you know what, you had best practices,
Speaker 1: You did it right. Um, it was reproducible, you follow
Speaker 1: the scientific method. Um, I'm gonna give it my stamp
Speaker 1: of approval and put my name on it, not literally
Speaker 1: or is it? I think so? It says who reviewed
Speaker 1: it in the journal when it's published, but not my
Speaker 1: name as the author of study. You know what I mean? Um,
Speaker 1: And the peer reviewer. Yeah, as a peer reviewer, and
Speaker 1: that's a wonderful thing. But people have faked this and
Speaker 1: been their own peer reviewer, which is not how it works. No,
Speaker 1: who is this guy? Uh? Well, I'm terrible at pronouncing
Speaker 1: Korean names, so all apologies, but I'm gonna say nung
Speaker 1: In Moon. Nice, Dr Moon, I think, yeah, let's call
Speaker 1: m Dr Moon. Okay. So Dr Moon Um worked on
Speaker 1: natural medicine, I believe, and was submitting all these papers
Speaker 1: that were getting very quickly because apparently part of the
Speaker 1: process of peer of views to say, this paper is great,
Speaker 1: Can you recommend some people in your field that can
Speaker 1: review your paper? And Dr Moon said, I sure can.
Speaker 1: He was on fire. Let me go make up some
Speaker 1: people and make up some email addresses that actually come
Speaker 1: to my inbox and just posed as all of his
Speaker 1: own peer reviewers. He was lazy, though, is the thing, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know that he would have been found out
Speaker 1: if he hadn't been um careless. I guess because he
Speaker 1: was returning the reviews within like twenty four hours. Sometimes
Speaker 1: a peer of view of like a real um study
Speaker 1: should take I would guess weeks, if not months, like
Speaker 1: the the study the publication schedule for the average study
Speaker 1: or paper. I don't think it's a very quick thing.
Speaker 1: There's not a lot of quick turner And this guy
Speaker 1: was like twenty four hours. Dr Moon. I see your
Speaker 1: paper was reviewed and accepted by Dr Mooney. It's like
Speaker 1: I just added a Y to the end. It seemed easy. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you google peer review fraud, you will be shocked
Speaker 1: at how often this happens and how many legit science
Speaker 1: publishers are having to retract studies. Uh. And it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean they're bad. Um, they're getting duped as well. But
Speaker 1: there was one based in Berlin that had sixty four
Speaker 1: retractions because of fraudulent reviews. And they're just one publisher
Speaker 1: of many. Every publisher out there probably has been duped. Um.
Speaker 1: Maybe not everyone, I'm surmising that, but it's a big problem.
Speaker 1: I'll review it. It'll end up in the headlines. Now,
Speaker 1: every single publisher duped, says Chuck. Uh. And speaking of
Speaker 1: um the headlines, Chuck. One of the problems with science
Speaker 1: reporting or reading science reporting is that what you usually
Speaker 1: are hearing, especially if it's making a big splash, is
Speaker 1: what's called the initial findings. Somebody carried out a study,
Speaker 1: and this is what they found, and it's amazing and
Speaker 1: mind blowing and it um, it supports everything everyone's always known.
Speaker 1: But now there's a scientific study that says, yes, that's
Speaker 1: the case. And then if you wait a year or two,
Speaker 1: when people follow up and reproduce the study and find
Speaker 1: that it's actually not the case, it doesn't get reported on.
Speaker 1: Usually yeah, and and sometimes the science scientists or the
Speaker 1: publisher is they're doing it right, and they say initial findings,
Speaker 1: but the public and sometimes even the reporter will say
Speaker 1: initial findings. But we as a people that ingest this
Speaker 1: stuff need to understand what that means, um, And the
Speaker 1: fine print is always like you know, you know, more
Speaker 1: studies needed, but no one if it's something that you
Speaker 1: want to be true, you'll just say, hey, look at
Speaker 1: the study, right. You know it's brand new and they
Speaker 1: need to study for twenty more years, but hey, look
Speaker 1: what it says. And the more the more you start
Speaker 1: paying attention to this kind of thing, the more kind
Speaker 1: of disdain you have for that kind of just off
Speaker 1: hand um sensationalist science reporting. But you'll still get caught
Speaker 1: up in it. Like every once in a while, I'll
Speaker 1: catch myself like saying something you'd be like, oh, did
Speaker 1: you hear this? And then as I'm saying it out loud,
Speaker 1: I'm like, that's preposterous. Yeah, there's no way that's going
Speaker 1: to pan out to be true. I got collebated, I know.
Speaker 1: I mean, we we have to avoid this stuff. It's
Speaker 1: stuff because we have our name on this podcast. But
Speaker 1: luckily we've given ourselves the back door of saying, hey,
Speaker 1: we make mistakes a lot. It's true though we're not
Speaker 1: we're not scientists. Uh. And then finally we're gonna finish
Speaker 1: up with the header on this one is it's a
Speaker 1: cool story. And that's a big one because, um, it's
Speaker 1: not enough these days. And this all ties in with
Speaker 1: the media and how we read things as people. But
Speaker 1: it's not enough just to have a study that might
Speaker 1: prove something. You have to wrap it up in a
Speaker 1: nice package to deliver people, get it in the news cycle.
Speaker 1: And the cooler the better. Yep. It almost doesn't matter
Speaker 1: about the science as far as the media is concerned.
Speaker 1: They just want a good headline and a scientist who
Speaker 1: will say, yeah, that's that's cool. Here's what I found.
Speaker 1: This is going to change the world. Lockness Monster is real.
Speaker 1: This is a kind of ended up being depressing somehow
Speaker 1: not somehow Yeah, like, yeah, it's kind of depressing. We'll
Speaker 1: figure it out, Chuck. Well, we do our best. I'll
Speaker 1: say that science will prevail, I hope. So. Uh, if
Speaker 1: you want to know more about science and scientific studies
Speaker 1: and research fraud and all that kind of stuff, just
Speaker 1: type some random words into the search part how to
Speaker 1: work dot com. See what comes up. And since I
Speaker 1: said random, it's time for a listener mail. Oh no, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what. It's time for administrator All right, Josh,
Speaker 1: administrative details. If you're new to the show, you don't
Speaker 1: know what it is. That's the very clunky title. We're saying,
Speaker 1: thank you to listeners who send us neat things. It
Speaker 1: is clunky and generic and I've totally gotten used to
Speaker 1: it by now. Well you're the one who made it
Speaker 1: up to be clunky and generic, and it's stuck. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So people send us stuff from time to time, and
Speaker 1: it's just very kind of you to do so, yes,
Speaker 1: and we like to give shout outs whether or not
Speaker 1: it's just out of the goodness of your heart, or
Speaker 1: if you have a little small business that you're trying
Speaker 1: to plug either way, it's a sneaky way of getting
Speaker 1: it in there. Yeah, but I mean I think we
Speaker 1: we brought that on, didn't we didn't We say like,
Speaker 1: if you have a small business, then you send us something,
Speaker 1: we'll we'll be happy to say something exactly. Thank you.
Speaker 1: All right, so let's get it going here. We got
Speaker 1: some coffee right from uh, from one thousand faces right
Speaker 1: here in Athens, Georgia from Kayla. Yeah, delicious, Yes it was.
Speaker 1: We also got some other coffee too, from Jonathan at
Speaker 1: Steamworks Coffee. He came up with a Josh and Chuck blend.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's pretty awesome. I believe it's available for
Speaker 1: sale to Yeah. That Josh and Chuck blend is dark
Speaker 1: and bitter. Uh. Jim Simmons, he's a retired teacher who
Speaker 1: sent us some lovely handmade wooden bowls and a very
Speaker 1: nice handwritten letter, which is always great. Thanks a lot, Jim. Uh.
Speaker 1: Let's see. Chamberlayne sent us homemade pasta, including a delicious
Speaker 1: savory pumpkin fettuccini. It was very nice. Um. Jake graft
Speaker 1: two F's send us a postcard from Great Wall of China.
Speaker 1: It's kind of neat. Sometimes we get those postcards from
Speaker 1: places we've talked about. I was like, thanks, here, let's
Speaker 1: see the Hammer Press team. They sent us a bunch
Speaker 1: of Mother's Day cards that are wonderful. Oh those were
Speaker 1: really nice, really great. You should check them out. The
Speaker 1: Hammer Press team. Yeah. Uh, Misty Billy and Jessica. They
Speaker 1: sent us a care package of a lot of things.
Speaker 1: There were some cookies, um, including one of my favorite
Speaker 1: white chocolate dipped rits, and peanut butter crackers. Oh yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I love those homemade right yeah. And uh, then some
Speaker 1: seventies Macromay for you, along with seventies Macromay magazines because
Speaker 1: you're obsessed with Macromay. We have a Macromay plant holder
Speaker 1: hanging from my um microphone arms a coffee mug sent
Speaker 1: to us by Joe and Lynda heckt oh that's right,
Speaker 1: and it has some pens in it. Uh. And they
Speaker 1: also sent us a Misty Billy and Jessica a lovely
Speaker 1: little hand drawn picture of us with their family, which
Speaker 1: was so sweet, awesome. Um. We've said it before, we'll
Speaker 1: say it again. Huge thank you to Jim Ruaine. I
Speaker 1: believe that's how you say his name and the Crown
Speaker 1: Royal people for sending us all the Crown Royal We
Speaker 1: are running low. Uh. Mark Silberg at the Rocky Mountain
Speaker 1: Institute sent us a book called Reinventing Fire. They're great
Speaker 1: out there, man, they know what they're talking about. And
Speaker 1: I think it's reinventing Fire. Colon Bold Businesses Bowld business
Speaker 1: Solutions for the New Energy Era. Yeah, they're they're basically
Speaker 1: like um, green energy observers, but I think they um,
Speaker 1: they're experts in like all sectors of energy, but they
Speaker 1: have a focus on green energy, which is awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're pretty cool. Um john whose wife makes Delightfully Delicious
Speaker 1: doggie treats. Delightfully Delicious is the name of the company.
Speaker 1: There's no artificial colors or flavors. And they got um
Speaker 1: sweet little Momo hooked on sweet potato dog treats. I
Speaker 1: thought you're gonna say, hooked on the junk, the the
Speaker 1: sweet potato junk. She's crazy cuckoo for sweet potatoes. Nice.
Speaker 1: That's good for a dog too. It is very h
Speaker 1: Stratt Johnson sent us his band's LP And if you're
Speaker 1: in a band, your name is Strat. That's pretty cool. Uh,
Speaker 1: die omeya still mhm. I think that was great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if I pronounced all right, d I
Speaker 1: O M A e a uh. Frederick, this is long overdue.
Speaker 1: Frederick at the store one five to one store dot
Speaker 1: com sent us some awesome low profile cork iPhone cases
Speaker 1: and passport holders, and I was telling him, Jerry walks
Speaker 1: around with her iPhone in the cork holder and it
Speaker 1: looks pretty sweet. Yeah, so he said, AWESO, I'm glad
Speaker 1: to hear. Joe and Holly Harper sent us some really
Speaker 1: cool three D printed stuff you should know, things like
Speaker 1: s y s k uh, you know, like a little
Speaker 1: desk oh as, like after Robert Indiana's love sculpture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I couldn't think of what that was from. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's awesome. It's really neat and like a bracelet um
Speaker 1: made out of stuff you should know, three D carved
Speaker 1: like plastics, really neat. Yeah, they did some good stuff.
Speaker 1: Thanks Joe and Holly Harper for that. And then last
Speaker 1: for this one, we got a postcard from Yosemite National
Speaker 1: Park from Laura Jackson, So thanks a lot for that.
Speaker 1: Thanks to everybody who sends us stuff. It's nice to
Speaker 1: know we're thought of and we appreciate it. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: gonna finish up with another set on the next episode
Speaker 1: of Administrative Details. You got anything else, No, it's it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. If you guys want to hang out with
Speaker 1: us on social media, you can go to s Y
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Speaker 1: always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff
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