From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   How ‘Preapproved Narratives’ Corrupt Science   
   By Allysia Finley, Oct. 1, 2023, WSJ   
   Scientists were aghast last month when Patrick Brown, climate director at the   
   Breakthrough Institute in Berkeley, Calif., acknowledged that he’d censored   
   one of his studies to increase his odds of getting published. Credit to him   
   for being honest about    
   something his peers also do but are loath to admit.   
      
   In an essay for the Free Press, Mr. Brown explained that he omitted “key   
   aspects other than climate change” from a paper on California wildfires   
   because such details would “dilute the story that prestigious journals like   
   Nature and its rival,    
   Science, want to tell.” Editors of scientific journals, he wrote, “have   
   made it abundantly clear, both by what they publish and what they reject, that   
   they want climate papers that support certain preapproved narratives.”   
      
   Nature’s editor, Magdalena Skipper, denied that the journal has “a   
   preferred narrative.” No doubt the editors at the New York Times and   
   ProPublica would say the same of their own pages.   
      
   Mr. Brown’s criticisms aren’t new. In 2005 Stanford epidemiologist John   
   Ioannidis wrote an essay titled “Why Most Published Research Findings Are   
   False.” He contended that scientists “may be prejudiced purely because of   
   their belief in a    
   scientific theory or commitment to their own findings.”   
      
   “The greater the financial and other interests and prejudices in a   
   scientific field, the less likely the research findings are to be true,” Dr.   
   Ioannidis argued. “Many otherwise seemingly independent, university-based   
   studies may be conducted for    
   no other reason than to give physicians and researchers qualifications for   
   promotion or tenure.”   
      
   In addition, many scientists use the peer-review process to suppress findings   
   that challenge their own beliefs, which perpetuates “false dogma.” As Dr.   
   Ioannidis explained, the more scientists there are in a field, the more   
   competition there is to    
   get published and the more likely they are to produce “impressive   
   ‘positive’ results” and “extreme research claims.”   
      
   The same dynamic applies to Covid research. A July study in the Journal of the   
   American Medical Association purported to find higher rates of excess deaths   
   among Republican voters in Florida and Ohio after vaccines had been rolled   
   out. Differences in    
   partisan vaccination attitude, the study concluded, may have contributed to   
   the “severity and trajectory of the pandemic.”   
      
   But the study lacked information on individuals’ vaccination and cause of   
   death. It also didn’t adjust for confounding variables, such as underlying   
   health conditions and behaviors. Charts buried in the study’s appendix   
   showed excess deaths among    
   older Republicans started to exceed Democrats in mid-2020—well before   
   vaccines were available.   
      
   Despite these flaws, the study was published and pumped by left-wing   
   journalists because it promoted their preferred narrative. The peer-review   
   process is supposed to flag problems in studies that get submitted to   
   journals. But as Dr. Ioannidis explained    
   in a Sept. 22 JAMA editorial, the process is failing: “Many stakeholders try   
   to profit from or influence the scientific literature in ways that do not   
   necessarily serve science or enhance its benefits to society.” Those   
   “stakeholders” include the    
   scientific journals themselves, which he notes have among the highest profit   
   margins of any industry—by some estimates, about 40%.   
      
   Journals often don’t compensate peer reviewers, which can result in   
   perfunctory work. The bigger problem is that reviewers often disregard a   
   study’s flaws when its conclusions reinforce their own biases. One result is   
   that “a large share of what is    
   published may not be replicable or is obviously false,” Dr. Ioannidis notes.   
   “Even outright fraud may be becoming more common.”   
      
   As scientists struggle to publish against-the-grain research, many are turning   
   to preprint servers—online academic repositories—to debunk studies in   
   mainstream journals. Yet even some of those sites, such as the Social Science   
   Research Network, are    
   blocking studies that don’t fit preapproved narratives.   
      
   In Jan 2022, Johns Hopkins Univ. economist Steve H. Hanke reported that Covid   
   lockdowns had little effect on deaths. When he attempted to publish the   
   findings on SSRN, the site turned him down. “Given the need to be cautious   
   about posting medical    
   content, SSRN is selective on the papers we post,” a rejection notice   
   informed Mr. Hanke.   
      
   That’s the same response the site gave UC San Francisco epidemiologist Vinay   
   Prasad when rejecting his studies debunking widely cited Covid studies, such   
   as one claiming Boston schools’ mask mandate reduced cases. SSRN is run by   
   the company Elsevier,    
   which also publishes prominent medical journals that uniformly promote Covid   
   orthodoxy.   
      
   Scientific journals and preprint servers aren’t selective about research   
   quality. They’re selective about the conclusions. If experts want to know   
   why so many Americans don’t trust “science,” they have their answer. Too   
   many scientists no    
   longer care about science.   
      
   https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-preapproved-narratives-corrupt-   
   cience-false-studies-covid-climate-change-5bee0844   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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