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Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

Health research is based on trust. Health professionals and journal editors reading the results of a clinical trial assume that the trial happened and that the results were honestly reported. But about 20% of the time, said Ben Mol, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Monash Health, they would be wrong. As I’ve been concerned about research fraud for 40 years, I wasn’t that surprised as many would be by this figure, but it led me to think that the time may have come to stop assuming that research actually happened and is honestly reported, and assume that the research is fraudulent until there is some evidence to support it having happened and been honestly reported. The Cochrane Collaboration, which purveys “trusted information,” has now taken a step in that direction.

As he described in a webinar last week, Ian Roberts, professor of epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, began to have doubts about the honest reporting of trials after a colleague asked if he knew that his systematic review showing the mannitol halved death from head injury was based on trials that had never happened. He didn’t, but he set about investigating the trials and confirmed that they hadn’t ever happened. They all had a lead author who purported to come from an institution that didn’t exist and who killed himself a few years later. The trials were all published in prestigious neurosurgery journals and had multiple co-authors. None of the co-authors had contributed patients to the trials, and some didn’t know that they were co-authors until after the trials were published. When Roberts contacted one of the journals the editor responded that “I wouldn’t trust the data.” Why, Roberts wondered, did he publish the trial? None of the trials have been retracted.

Later Roberts, who headed one of the Cochrane groups, did a systematic review of colloids versus crystalloids only to discover again that many of the trials that were included in the review could not be trusted. He is now sceptical about all systematic reviews, particularly those that are mostly reviews of multiple small trials. He compared the original idea of systematic reviews as searching for diamonds, knowledge that was available if brought together in systematic reviews; now he thinks of systematic reviewing as searching through rubbish. He proposed that small, single centre trials should be discarded, not combined in systematic reviews.

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Bernie Sanders: Republican Party All About ‘Conspiracy Theories’ and ‘Anti-Science Vaccine Rejection’

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) declared on Monday that the Republican Party “cannot be allowed to prevail,” reducing it to a gang of conspiracy theorists who seek to suppress votes and engage in “anti-science vaccine rejection.”

“Here is what the modern Republican Party is all about: cult-like devotion to Trump, big lies and conspiracy theories, voter suppression, climate denial and anti-science vaccine rejection,” the Democrat socialist said.

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Android Creator Andy Rubin Accused Of Running ‘Sex Ring,’ Defrauding Wife

The estranged wife of Andy Rubin has accused the former Google executive who invented the Android operating system of defrauding her of millions of dollars and squandering money on affairs and a “sex ring.”

In court documents unsealed by a California judge this week, Rie Rubin, who married Rubin in 2009, claims her husband spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on sexual favors and “affairs with multiple women” during their marriage.

These affairs, her lawsuit says, included ”‘ownership’ relationships with other women, whereby Rubin would pay for their expenses in exchange for offering them to other men.” 

The complaint also accuses Rubin ― who left Google in 2014 after a female subordinate accused him of sexual assault ― of running a “sex ring” involving at least one woman. The woman, identified as “M” in the documents, would “agree to perform various sexual acts with multiple men” which would be filmed for “the enjoyment of Rubin and other men,” according to the documents. 

“After these orgies, Rubin would himself have sex with ‘M’ off-camera,” the complaint alleges. 

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Twitter suspended New Jersey State Senator Declan O’Scanlon for questioning vaccine passports and mandates

New Jersey State Senator Declan O’Scanlon was silenced on Twitter and was only reinstated when he agreed to delete his tweet.

The tweet, posted on June 25, read “Given that we have crushed Covid with combination of natural immunity and voluntary uptake there is no reason anyone should be compelled to take the vaccine. Restrictions/mandates/vaccine passports all uncalled for.”

Twitter’s response to O’Scanlon’s Twitter post was to lock him out of his account without giving a specific reason as to why.

On Twitter, Republicans blasted the lawmaker’s detention. The state GOP called the action a “continuous and rising limitation of freedom of expression.”

On O’Scanlon’s timeline, the tweet has been deleted, with a warning that says, “This Tweet is no longer available because it violates the Twitter Rules.”

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Bill Gates- and George Soros-Backed Organization Buys Out COVID-19 Testing Company

A consortium backed by George Soros and Bill Gates has joined a buyout of Mologic, a COVID-19 testing company.

The Soros Economic Development Fund, an arm of Soros’ Open Society Foundations, confirmed in a July 19 statement that it has partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Soros–Gates collaboration is part of the Global Access Health initiative, which will invest “at least” $41.1 million in the project, according to the statement.

“The group has financed the acquisition of Mologic Ltd, a world-leading innovator in the development of lateral flow and rapid diagnostic technologies including tests that can help combat tropical diseases such as dengue, bilharzia, and river blindness, as well as for COVID-19,” the statement reads, noting that the purchase is an attempt to “expand access to affordable state-of-the-art medical technology through decentralized research, development, and manufacturing” in developing countries.

Founded about two decades ago by the father-and-son team of Mark and Paul Davis, Mologic previously worked with Gates’s foundation, establishing the Advanced Rapid Diagnostics in 2016. Paul Davis is also known for creating the Clearblue pregnancy test in 1988, which, according to the company, is the first application of lateral flow technology.

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Warmongers Should Be Treated Like Serial Killers And Child Rapists

California Representative Ro Khanna announced on Monday that he’d just hung out with Iraq war architect Bill Kristol and had a wonderful exchange of ideas, fully discrediting the myth of the progressive Democrat with a single tweet.

“Bill Kristol is one of the most thoughtful voices in defending liberalism and democratic institutions in our country,” Khanna tweeted. “Learned a lot in our conversation about shaping also an inclusive narrative around American patriotism.”

When Khanna’s Twitter followers began reacting with shock and disgust at a congressman who is generally regarded as one of the most progressive elected officials on Capitol Hill saying sweet things about a murderous arch-neocon, he added:

“I was a strong and early critic of the war in Iraq, and Kristol and I have very different worldviews on foreign policy. But to have a discussion about strengthening liberalism and liberal institutions with people you disagree is in my view needed in a pluralistic democracy.”

“I’m back in the office after a stimulating lunch with Ro Khanna and see he’s tweeted about it,” Kristol posted on Twitter. “Which is fine! But not with some on the Left! I’m sure Ro can take the heat. As for me, I benefited from our talk, and admire Ro’s willingness to argue—and occasionally (gasp!) agree.”

It’s really odious how they’re framing this get-together as two men from differing ideological backgrounds overcoming their little disagreements to find common ground. We’re talking about someone who has pushed for psychopathic acts of military violence at every opportunity throughout his entire career, and has had an ungodly amount of success in doing so. As the co-founder of the influential neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century and major Bush administration thought leader, Kristol played a key role in manufacturing support for the invasion of Iraq and ushering in an unprecedented new era of US military expansionism, a fact for which he remains completely unapologetic.

The invasion killed at least a million Iraqis, and arguably more than twice that. We’re not talking about two people setting aside their disagreements about farming subsidies or net neutrality here, we’re talking about fucking murder. Murder at a scale so massive it’s impossible to fully wrap your mind around it. Mass murder is not a difference of opinion, it’s mass murder. It’s no more an ideological position than stomping on kittens is an ideological position.

Saying you disagree with Bill Kristol’s engineering the Iraq war but found plenty of common ground on liberalism and patriotism is the same as saying you disagree with Jared Fogle on his raping children but found plenty of common ground on his fondness for Subway sandwiches.

It’s like announcing you just had lunch with serial killer Edmund Kemper and, while you disagree with his policy of murdering women and copulating with their severed heads, you really respect his opinions on immigration.

I’m actually being charitable here. There’s not a pedophile or serial killer on earth who has contributed as much death and suffering to our world as William Kristol.

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