It was just revealed that the Biden administration intentionally buried an “inconvenient” study in order to justify an energy crackdown. Of course, we’re seldom shocked to hear that politics is, well, political. But what about when study authors themselves bury, or otherwise obscure, inconvenient data? This not only happens, says a Ph.D. scientist with more than 20 years experience, but is actually common in research. In fact, the picture painted by Dr. Lorene Leiter reveals, the mainstream science establishment is much like our mainstream media establishment: a realm where lies may reign supreme.
Explaining her background, Leiter states that she “earned a Ph.D. from Rutgers University and worked at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.” She began her scientific career as a starry-eyed young idealist, too. Her romantic vision was one of toiling in a basement with Marie Curie-like figures pushing back the frontiers of knowledge. And Leiter did make a major discovery:
She learned that today, the “publish or perish” priority trumps all.
“No paper, no money for your lab. Period,” Leiter writes at American Thinker Wednesday. “And the motherlode [sic] for money is the NIH.”
Yes, that would be the National Institutes of Health — the entity the now notorious Dr. Anthony Fauci was part of.
Get the Cat — An Infernal Lab Mouse Is Refusing to Cooperate Again
Leiter states that our current system ensures scientific fraud. In fact, the incidents of cheating she observed are legion, she says. Know that she’s far from the first to make this observation, too, as I reported in 2014. (More on this later.)
A common cheating method, Leiter relates, is to, à la Joseph Stalin, “airbrush” “uncooperative” lab mice from an experiment. That is, let’s say that upon conducting research you find that your hypothesis isn’t borne out. But then you realize you can use the Chinese menu method of result “alteration.” Just dispense with “the data from two mice in Group A and one in Group B,” writes Leiter, and voila! Hypothesis alignment is achieved — and publication is possible.
As for possibly disclosing the negative results revealing your hypothesis’ invalidity, that’s a nonstarter, states Leiter. First, you won’t be published. Moreover, it’ll be disastrous for the other scientists expending resources studying the same hypothesis. (Probably a good way to earn persona non grata status among your colleagues.)
Staggering Deceit
Leiter also provides some examples of the scientific fraud. She writes that, for instance,
there’s the interaction that wasn’t — published in a prestigious journal. The “discovery?” Molecules A and B bound together! It was a big discovery in cancer research. What the journal didn’t know was A and B never bound directly. Instead, they both bound to Molecule C, giving the appearance that A and B bound directly. This was easily proven by dissolving C. The kicker? The researcher did this experiment before submitting the paper, but mum’s the word to the journal. And wouldn’t you know — that paper resulted in a big grant from the NIH.
And then there’s the “smart” gene. A gene in mouse brains was altered to see if it affected intelligence. Success! It made them smarter! The study got so much attention that David Letterman included it in his act. But then…
Oops. No one could reproduce the results, and a close look at the raw data by a clever new researcher revealed the truth — the famous paper was bogus.
Warnings Abound
As mentioned earlier, Leiter isn’t alone in blowing this whistle. As I related in 2014 in “Blinding Me With Science: Fraud and Folly for Fame and Funding”:
BMJ.com (formerly the British Medical Journal) has done much good reporting on this topic. [Its] Bob Roehr wrote in 2012:
Retraction of biomedical and life science research papers for fraud or misconduct is more widespread than previously thought and is roughly 10-fold more common today than in 1975, shows a new study….
The study looked at all 2047 retractions listed in the PubMed index as at [sic] 3 May 2012. It tallied the reasons stated by the journal in making its retraction and also examined reports filed with the US government’s Office of Research Integrity and other sources. That resulted in reclassification of 118 of 742 retractions (16%) given in an earlier study of retraction from error to fraud.
Also in 2012, BMJ’s Aniket Tavare reported, “One in seven UK based scientists or doctors has witnessed colleagues intentionally altering or fabricating data during their research or for the purposes of publication, found a survey of more than 2700 researchers conducted by the BMJ.” In the same vein, BMJ’s Tony Sheldon wrote just three months later, “A Dutch survey claims that one in seven doctors have seen scientific research results that have been invented. In addition, nearly a quarter have seen data that have been massaged to achieve significant results.”
Not-so-mighty Mouse
What’s more, the problems with today’s research are baked in, asserts Leiter. For example, consider that the most commonly used mice in research now are the “C57BL/6” variety. These are purposely inbred rodents (brother/sister pairings) designed to have no genetic variability. One result of this is “fixed” recessive genes and “fixed” mutations — some of which are dangerous. As Leiter writes:
Interestingly, C57BL/6 mice don’t hear well; they prefer alcohol to water; and they are more prone to obesity. What else is wrong that has yet to be discovered? The defect may not be overt, but is it affecting your experiment without you even knowing it?
Leiter makes more points related to using these dysgenic creatures:
- “Outbred” mice would mirror humans more in exhibiting great genetic diversity, but aren’t usually used. For this variability would necessitate much larger sample sizes and far greater monetary expense.
- Lab rodents never see sunlight and have one dimensional diets. How does this affect their immune systems?
- Lab mice usually have no toys and languish in small cages; meaning, there’s little exercise or stimulation. Does this create a mental state (depression?) conducive to health?
She then illustrates the problem with an example:
Suppose you discover that a certain diet made a mouse sicker. Was it the diet itself, or did the diet push the mouse over the edge because it wasn’t healthy to begin with? Or what if another diet made the mice healthier? Were they so sick (albeit not to the naked eye) that just about anything would improve their health?
Solutions
Finally, Leiter presents some possible ways to remedy the scientific corruption. She states:
For starters, minimize cheating by perhaps setting up a lab with the purpose of randomly reproducing studies submitted for publication. You never know if yours will be picked, so you better not cheat. If you’re caught, you’ll lose your NIH funding.
Second, abolish the “publish or perish” scam that encourages cheating and bad science. A good start is being able to publish negative data.
Third — how about a think tank? We don’t have to fill it with Ph.Ds — just great minds…. Imagine ideas that could emerge among people from all different backgrounds.
Really, this corruption and waste sound like problems Elon Musk and DOGE should perhaps tackle. After all, just imagine how many billions of dollars are wasted funding fraudulent research. And is any of this surprising? It is, in fact, precisely what we might expect when we combine science and state.
