Alarming increase in the number of retractions of scientific papers

www.nytimes.com and www.npr.com
Misdeeds, Not Mistakes, Behind Most Scientific Retractions

When there's something really wrong with a published study, the journal can retract it, much like a carmaker recalling a flawed automobile.

But are the errors that lead to retractions honest mistakes or something more problematic?

A newly published analysis finds that more than two-thirds of biomedical papers retracted over the past four decades were the result of misconduct, not error. That's much higher than previous studies of retractions had found.

That comes as no surprise to those of us who have witnessed the corruption of science by the tens of billions of dollars with which Tony Fauci and his friends at the drug companies have bribed "researchers" in The HIV-AIDS Industry over the past 28 years.
--Terry Michael

Richard Horton of the "Lancet" blasts HIV and AIDS scientific community on journalist bully

Richard Horton of the Lancet (the world's leading general medical journal and specialty journals in Oncology, Neurology and Infectious Diseases) blasts John P Moore & Nathan Geffen for their conflicting decision to stop anyone other than scientists from challenging the scientiifc consensus of HIV/GRID/AIDS research.

"Peer review": a flawed process at the heart of science and journals, by the Royal Society of Medicine Press

Saliva HIV Test As Effective As Blood Test: Study

Here we good more PR to push Testing:

www.huffingtonpost.com

Despite advances in the treatment of HIV, one huge challenge still lingers in the medical community: getting people tested in the first place.

The stigma associated with being tested and potentially exposed in a public clinic has prompted scientists at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre to evaluate the efficacy of an oral HIV self-test, a method they believe can serve as an effective but much more private alternative to clinical testing.

Compared to a traditional blood screening, the saliva test OraQuick HIV1/2, the only oral fluid test approved for use in a health-care setting by the Food and Drug Administration, was 99 percent accurate in detecting HIV antibodies in high-risk populations and about 97 percent in low-risk populations, according to study findings published in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

To evaluate this saliva test's potential for worldwide use, researchers analyzed real-life field research data from five global databases. High-risk groups include injection drug users, men who have sex with men, and people who have unprotected sex.

Much like home pregnancy tests, researchers believe that oral HIV self-tests can serve as an effective preliminary method of diagnosis.

"Getting people to show up for HIV testing at public clinics has been difficult because of visibility, stigma, lack of privacy and discrimination," the study’s lead author, Dr. Nitika Pant Pai, said in a release announcing the study findings. "A confidential testing option such as self-testing could bring an end to the stigmatization associated with HIV testing."

Earlier this month, another innovative HIV testing program called Testing Together was unveiled, allowing couples to hear their HIV status together, within minutes of receiving a blood test.

Experts Express Concerns Over Use Of HIV Fingerprinting To Establish Proof Of HIV Criminal Transmission

By Kieryn Graham and Courtney McQueen

In a recent article in the Lancet Infectious Diseases, experts warned that a forensics technique called HIV phylogenetic analysis, sometimes called HIV fingerprinting, cannot definitively establish whether a specific individual transmitted HIV to another person. The authors also stressed the need for scientists to recognize the limitations of the technique as a basis for proving HIV criminal transmission.

“Phylogenetic analysis is more powerful in its ability to exclude certain scenarios,” said Professor Anne-Meike Vandamme of the Rega Institute for Medical Research at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and coauthor of the Lancet article, in correspondence with The AIDS Beacon. “Phylogenetics can prove that people cannot have infected each other, but it can never prove that people infected each other.”

Cancer Research of 10 Years Useless: Lancet's editor calls

Cancer Research of 10 Years Useless: Fraudulent Studies

Lancet's editor calls fraudulent medical research a 'scar on the moral body of science'. But it's really just part of an entire system of fraud in medicine.

by Heidi Stevenson

14 August 2011

Medical science is rampant with fraud. At the Mayo Clinic, ten years of research that appeared to be leading towards harnessing the immune system to fight cancer is worthless because of fraudulent studies and later research based on the fraudulent ones.

Retraction of medical research papers is at an all-time high. Though error was cited at a 3 to 1 rate over fraud, one must seriously question whether simple error is the primary reason. After all, these studies are peer-reviewed. They are supposed to have passed rigorous examination. But, what's the reality?

Of course, as Gaia Health readers have seen over and over, the reality is that flaws in much of medical research are blatant. Often, merely examining a study, instead of taking it at face value, demonstrates that the conclusions are not supported by the evidence.
Nonetheless, those same studies are cited as evidence of efficacy of drugs and procedures. Even after papers have been retracted, the impression they've given doesn't disappear. Research based on those papers is already designed and in process.
Doctors are loathe to change their practices on the basis of bad studies. Changes are made more readily as new drugs and procedures are advocated, not as old ones are discredited. Just take a look at doctors' continuing to prescribe bisphonates for the nonexistent disease, osteopenia (pre-osteoporosis), and hormone replacement therapy for another nonexistent disease, menopause—or even the routine prescribing of fever-reducing drugs, which is nearly always counter-productive.