Monday, June 16, 2008

The underbelly of scientifical publishing


N3xus6 thought the bottom had been reached when Princess Denial, editor of Energy and Environment rejected Klaus Schulte's endocrine belch. That was so 2007. Just a few days ago Rudy Baum's C&E News jeremiad against that curious little entity, the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons turned up in Quigginsville and on Deltoid. You can get a good feel for that operation from a recently appearing book review by one Joel Kauffman

Science Sold Out: Does HIV Really Cause AIDS? by Rebecca Culshaw, 96 pp, paperback,

It must have been hard for a professor of mathematics to write a technical book with only one graph (prevalence of HIV positives in the U.S. 1985-2005 steady at 1 million, p 2) and only one “equation”: human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) = acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) = death (p 1). Culshaw’s goal is to show the total falsity of that equation, and in my opinion, she succeeds.
Joel Kauffman you ask, not the Joel Kauffman, emeriti from Philadelphia, who recently published on climate change in the Journal of Scientific Exploration? What is he selling and what is that you ask? Why it is a mighty curious little entity published by an extremely curious other little entity, the Society for Scientific Exploration. And what science do they explore ask the little bunnies? Well you can get a taste from the focus of their national conference 'Emerging Paradigms at the Frontiers of Consciousness & UFO Research" but they have their doubts about HIV causing AIDs, plate tectonics and anything else you can rent-a-nut for.

The flavor and value of Kauffman's essay is easy to extract
Either Warmers or Skeptics may accept that primordial ionizing radiation from within warms the Earth.
which Eli will match with the discovery of how microwaves from satellites are what is really warming the earth (ear tip to John Mashey), but Kauffman is not one to think that his opinion is popular
Because of the existence of a research cartel and media control in this field (Bauer, 2004), the readers’ forbearance in my use of websites and non-refereed sources is requested.
and his footnotes are a veritable treasure chest of laughs. For one thing we have links to a quarterly magazine, 21st Century Science and Technology, covering scientific topics from the perspective of Lyndon LaRouche. That's where Nils-Axel Moerner and Ziggy Jaworoski hang out, Margie Mazel Hecht tells us where the global warming hoax was born (good luck Maggie), Lawrence Hecht tells us about how nuclei are really sets of nested Platonic solids, and much more. Woot!

21 comments:

John Mashey said...

Eek, that might be tough to beat, but I need the real data:

was there supposed to be a link to the actual essay from which you quoted? I couldn't easily find it online, although I found many other good things. Some of this, had it any humor, might be suitable for the JIR, although probably not intended so.

I rummaged a bit on their website. I did look at the latest year's I could find online, 2006. It was sad to see that Halton Arp actually writes to them. I see their page charges are $30/page.

Google: joel kauffmann climate
gets useful hits, including ~10 book reviews on Amazon. He gave 5-stars to "The Sky's Not falling!: Why It's OK to Chill About Global Warming".

Their newest newsletter, http://www.scientificexploration.org/Explorer/SSE_Explorer_v22n1_May08.pdf

is well worth perusing.

"While one organization may cover parapsychology, another consciousness, a third exotic energy sources, and a fourth UFO inquires, the SSE cover the gamut..." (and more)

and Courtney Brown writes, plaintively:

"The SSE is a renegade group of scientists, scholars, and thinkers. if we are a renegade group, then there must be others who consider us enemies, Therein lies our fundamental problem; we lack an enemy....
Alas, to date, our impact on mainstream science has not been as significant as it should be."

Courtney's website yields a fascinating mix, including "Remote Viewing..." (ahh, Targ&Puthoff rise again).

Well, OK, I concede your group effort is pretty tough to beat [maybe there is a group category and a lone-individual category?], but still, is there an online version of Kauffmann's essay?

Eli: you don't actually subscribe to this, do you? (NO, NO, SAY IT'S NOT TRUE).

EliRabett said...

Thanks John, Eli forgot to insert the links. They are there now, some spelling (Kauffman) has been corrected and a soupecon of snark added.

However, you raise an interesting point about subscriptions. . .

Anonymous said...

MarkeyMouse says:

I've never seen a proven real image of the HIV virus. Anyone got one?

guthrie said...

I've never seen a proven real image of markey mouse, therefore he does not exist.

Anonymous said...

MarkeyMouse writes:

From Amazon book review:

"Noting the long recognized near impossibility of isolating HIV particles even from advanced AIDS patients, Culshaw remarks: "The farcical concept of viral load was invented to crate the illusion of correcting this embarrassing fact." This book demonstrates that the entire theoretical edifice of HIV/AIDS is an illusion, a vast farce, now a faith, the greatest blunder in the history of medicine. It will forever shame what we today accept as "science" that a courageous young mathematician, armed with one brief volume, can so easily discredit twenty years of Earth's most advanced research enterprise."

"In just 100 pages, this deceptively slender volume shreds the standard account of HIV and its relationship to AIDS. Though Culshaw is obviously outraged by the collusion of government, medical/scientific, and media establishments in silencing debate about HIV and AIDS, this book is no mere polemic. The science behind Culshaw's (and other dissenters') objections to the party line is dispassionately and rigorously argued from start to finish."

"Review
"An excellent account of the most shameful episode in the history of medicine. Rebecca Culshaw has pulled it all together: a history of inept and dishonest AIDS ‘science,’ the manifold reasons HIV cannot be the cause of AIDS, the harmfulness of AIDS drugs, the physical and psychological human suffering caused by the AIDS hoax."
John Lauritsen, author of Poison By Prescription: The AZT Story and The AIDS War

"Every mathematician knows that by changing the definition of something, you can change the entire truth about that thing. Rebecca Culshaw describes how the HIV = AIDS ‘orthodoxists’ have abused this idea. As in a shell game, they keep moving the definitions around, so that anything can be true and everyone will be confused. The abuse of science that has been documented here is itself very frightening. But when we learn that the standard treatment for HIV-positives—antiviral therapy—will substantially increase their risk of dying, it’s even scarier."
Dan Fendel, professor of mathematics, emeritus, San Francisco State University

Product Description
There are many well-established scientific reasons that the HIV/AIDS hypothesis is highly doubtful. In Science Sold Out, Rebecca Culshaw describes her slow uncovering of these reasons over her years researching HIV for her work constructing mathematical models of its interaction with the immune system. It is rare that a researcher who has received funding to study HIV ever expresses any doubt in the paradigm, and an even rarer event still when she abandons the field altogether. This book focuses on the changing definition of AIDS and the flaws in all HIV testing. In a much broader sense, it explains how the current, government-based structure of scientific research has corrupted science as the search for truth. It offers not only scientific reasons for HIV/AIDS being untenable, but also sociological explanations as to how the theory was accepted by the media and the world so quickly. In particular, this book offers a scathing criticism of the outrageous discriminatory measures that have been leveled at HIV-positives from the inception."

http://www.amazon.com/Science-Sold-Out-Really-Cause/dp/1556436424

Sounds a bit like another massive scam. Dishonesty and stupidity are not confined to Climate Science. The same drivers, greed for funding and reputation, and political push by the left wing useful idiots.

guthrie said...

Way to go, Markey, if you are an HIV denier as well, thats all we need to know to be able to consign you to the moron pile.
I mean, can't you try not to fit the stereotype?

Anonymous said...

MarkeyMouse says:

Guthrie. I wish I could be there when you realise you have been wrong about everything.

Could you take a picture and post it here for us? Seeing as you can't find one of the HIV Virus?

EliRabett said...

Hey Marky, wanna tell us where your latest got started? OTOH how much you pay me for an image of HIV

Anonymous said...

MarkeyMouse says:

Not an "image", an certified electron microscope photograph of the isolated HIV.

If you can find isolated HIV, you will be doing better than everyone since, and including the first fraudsters Luc Montagnier and Gallo.

"A $1,000,000 Reward for Scientific Proof of HIV"

http://articlesofhealth.blogspot.com/2007/05/ph-miracle-living-foundation-in.html

"Most surprisingly, nobody has ever succeeded in demonstrating HIV particles in the blood of any AIDS patient by this simple method, even though patients were selected for presenting a so-called high “viral load” as determined by PCR methods. This embarrassing lack of electron microscope evidence for substantiating the nature of the so-called viral load in AIDS patients was first reported during an important AIDS conference that took place in Pretoria, S.A., in May 2000 (2). None of the AIDS experts present at that conference could demonstrate the presence of retroviral particles in the blood of AIDS patients. Moreover, almost two years ago, a substantial award ($100,000) was officially offered (3) to anybody who would demonstrate HIV particles in the blood of allegedly high viral load patients. Two years later, the award has still not been claimed. Obviously, what was so readily and reproducibly demonstrated in leukaemic mice has never been observed in any AIDS patient.

ALLEGED CLAIMS OF HIV ISOLATION BASED ON NON-SPECIFIC “MARKERS”.

Over the past 20 years, the medical literature has been inundated with innumerable papers, attempting to dodge the lack of electron microscope evidence for the presence of retroviral particles in samples directly collected from AIDS patients. In all these papers, the missing retroviral particles have been swiftly substituted with so-called HIV “markers”. These “markers” were of physical, biochemical, or genetic nature."

http://hivskeptic.wordpress.com/2008/01/15/hiv-has-never-been-isolated-from-aids-patients/

Anonymous said...

Well Malarkey Mouse, here are a couple of EM pics of HIV:

http://www.aids-info.ch/bilder/schule_aids/jpg_bilder/koch6_1.jpg

http://www.aids-info.ch/bilder/schule_aids/jpg_bilder/koch9_2.jpg

No doubt you will come up with an ill-informed reason to deny these pics.

Anonymous said...

MarkeyMouse says:

Ian. Come on. You know the rules. A certified electron microscope photograph of the isolated HIV is what is require. Not some random non attributable image that doesn't even seem to appear on the host web site.

Come on. This should be easy. After all Billions have been spent on "research" and "cures". At least we should have aproper picture.

EliRabett said...

What you gonna put on the table Marky?

Anonymous said...

MarkeyMouse says:

Virtue is its own reward. Don't be a tease Rabbett. Show your card.

Anonymous said...

MarkeyMouse says,

"A certified electron microscope photograph of the isolated HIV is what is require."

Got your tinfoil hat ready, MarkeyMouse? Because there just might be a hammer-and-sickle pattern inside the photograph, and that'll be very bad indeed. (For you.)

-- bi, International Journal of Inactivism

Anonymous said...

've never seen a proven real image of the HIV virus. Anyone got one?

I've never seen an image of an electron either.

Does that mean I can disregard the universe?

Anonymous said...

MarkeyMouse says: Still no proper pic. What is one to make of that? Has the bar for evidence been set too high? Lack of interest? Denial?

Anonymous said...

MarkeyMouse, who obviously has no education in matters immunological or virological, asks firstly for a 'proven real' image of HIV, and then, in a shift of goal-posts, for a 'certified electron microscope photograph'.

This is sheer wrong-headed ignorance on so many levels. If he had any acquaintance with virological literature he would find images that are as proven to be HIV as are respective images of smallpox, measles, polio, influenza, or any of hundres of other viruses. Is he asking for similar proof in these instances too? Has the whole edifice of virology just come crashing to the ground because of one denialist's ha-ha trump?

And what's with 'certified'? I would love to see this defined, because I doubt that he could point to any other recognised virus and show that it is more 'certified' than is HIV.

Most folk clued in to the terminology at an operational level would speak of electron photomicrographs, or perhaps a similar permutation, but not of an 'electron microscope photograph' - to me this indicates that he is ignorant, and quite probably trawling quotes from similarly ignorant HIV denialist sites.

Oh, and 'HIV virus' is a tautology. Human immunodeficiency virus virus - come on, really?

MarkeyMouse, in the I have argued with those of your ilk more than I care to dwell upon. I have found in every case that deniers have not ever stepped into an introductory university or college immunology/virology class, let alone into a laboratory. And almost to a person none has had even the most basic nouse so as to be able to perform a Medline, a PubMed, or even a Google Scholar search to answer the misplaced questions that their conspiracy theory vomits up.

My experience includes over a decade in immunology, including HIV immunology, and through infected friends and through patients I am intimately acquainted with the immunology and the pathology of the disease. It is real, and with your blather you insult the suffering of millions of people infected with the virus. I suggest that you spend even a mere dozen hours or so speaking with a scientist or a doctor who works in this field before you open your mouth to reveal your lack of fundamental education.

Failing that, if you are so convinced that the virus does not exist, would you be prepared to be injected with purified virus that was scientifically identified as HIV? After all, if you are right and the medical world is wrong, you have nothing to fear.

It would make for some interesting 'current affairs' television...

Anonymous said...

I should clarify:

My experience includes over a decade as a professional scientist in research and in diagnostic immunology...

Oh, and the 4th last paragraph was '...in the past I have argued...'

EliRabett said...

Many thanks for the explanation. Marky probably has denial dementia.

willard said...

Soupçon, Eli, with a "c" that sounds like an "s".

But "soupecon" might an interesting neologism, for it would be mean something like "idiotsoup".

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