Since when did questioning established medical procedures make one a "pariah?"
Since always, you silly man. Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis and Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr, were both ridiculed for suggesting that physicians wash their hands in between patients. There are countless other examples.
Great ideas and innovations are generally not accepted by those that represent the status quo. We would be much better served by a decentralized, market-based model of private science funding than by the centralized, country-club model in which insiders act as the gatekeepers to public money.
Doesn't his status as a pariah come from the denial of approvals from those 'authorities' that consistently deny his grants and funding? As such, it doesn't really mean anything as a word, except for the auxiliary pejorative connotations.
Dean, here's a suggestion in good faith. in a comment earlier you wrote,
Now over a decade after advancing the aneuploidy theory, he still gets every grant application turned down. What's the excuse now? He can't write good? Or is it that they just don't like him, and the "anonymity" of this phony funding system is and always has been a crock?
Would you be willing to ask Dr. Duesberg to publish his grant applications publicly online so that the merits of the application can be judged by the open scientific community?
1985: Duesberg is awarded Outstanding Investigator Grant by the National Institute of Health, well over $1 Million.
1986: Duesberg is elected into the National Academy of Science , which is basically the Hall of Fame for scientists.
But, in 1987, in Cancer Research, he points out the many flaws in the viral hypothesis of AIDS.
Uh-Oh. This makes a lotta scientists look embarrassed and incompetent, so they exclude him from the herd.
That simple.
Ironically, though, during his 20-year exile, apart from the herd, he develops a comprehensive theory of cancer, culminating with this blockbuster piece in SciAm.
Hank: One might mention that he published on the theory over ten years ago, and has continued working with desperately meager funding, and few if any grad students, ever since.
One might also mention again that other cancer scientists have cited his work frequently, he's played host to packed houses at NIH and other scientific conferences to explain his work, etc. This Scientific American article is just where he finally, and completely, gets the public exposure he deserves.
Aziz: That's a splendid idea. I'll shoot him a note when I get home tonight.
Aziz, In case you don't get it *again*, Dean was being faceitious...Peer reviewed publications are where the "scientific community" gets to assess the value of work. Grant review is not, and never was, and never should be a public matter, idiot.
And whewre does a punk like you wind up suggesting that a member of the National Academy publish CONFIDENTIAL grant applications on the itnernet to satisfy your, I have no idea what to call it, ego?
So far as I'm concerned, grant applications should be a public matter, so long as it is public funds which are being used.
I suppose the fear here is that someone will blanch; "Oh my God, such and such a scientist wants a $10 million grant? What's that for?" The answer should be plain as day: to pay salaries to lab assistants and associates, to buy and maintain equipment which is often very expensive (and sometimes lab rent, depending), and so on.
I don't find any of that unreasonable (and by the way, I pulled the number out of my hat, it could be $10,000, or $100 million, or whatever).
I know of no system of doling out government dollars where those who make the decision to fund or not do not have to sign off personally with their remarks and justifications for their decisions, or where someone applying for a grant has no significant right of appeal or representation if they believe they are being discriminated against.
By the way, yes, I seem to have to keep repeating it, but:
1) Peer review is a fine system for reviewing papers. It's not perfect but it's proven for generations that it's effective and makes for rigorous science. And, the fact is that you've always had at least one form of appeal if you feel your "peers" at one publication are dealing with you unjustly: go to another journal.
2) "Peer review" as a government funding system is profoundly dysfunctional. That is a much more recent invention, and it has shown itself to have huge weaknesses so far as I can see. Nothing that can't be fixed, but first the problem has to be acknowledged to exist.
Dean
I picked up this particular issue yesterday without realizing Duesberg was in it. While reading the editor's forward to the magazine I was reminded why I don't subscribe to it: The editors use the magazine to promote political agendas instead of scientific ones.
I also subscribe to New Scientist, and its even worse. However it's European and therefore the politics are so over-the-top goofy that its easy to mutter "Don't mention the war..." while paying the bill.
I have mixed feelings about the article. Duesberg is an intelligent scientist and his ideas about cancer are fresh. Therefore it's good that SciAm publishes his work. On the other hand the way they prostrated themselves in the editorial was so disingenuous that I'm sure it tees people on the pro-HIV side as much as the anti-HIV side.
Be sure to publish what Duesberg thinks of their handling of the article - if he's willing to express it.
eccles, you're the best satirist I've seen in a while. Of course f someone reading your comment thinks you're being serious, we need only point them towards PLoS and arXiv.
Aziz..you are such a transparent and complete idiot, I pay you no other attention than that.
Dean: You appear to be missing a very crucical point about grant applications, and the reason they are confidential, and the realest reason that the INTEGRITY of the reviewers must be impeccable, and without any trace of any potential conflict of interest:
THE APPLICANT IS PROPOSING,IN VERY PRECISE EXPERIMENTAL DETAIL, HOW HE/SHE PROPOSES TO TEST THEIR BEST NEW IDEAS!
Can you think of any other reason that such applications are by historical record confidential?
The reasons for setting the system up this way made much sense at the time. The problem is that the inherent weaknesses in it only became manifest over time: there is no accountability, there really is no enforcement mechanism against underhandedness, and the more money is involved the more lesser lights will get involved in the system--and they will begin to push the system to their own ends.
This is entirely outside of the issue of any willful manipulation. The fact is that the way it is set up, the whole thing militates against original thinkers who question whatever ideas are hot right now--the hot ideas happening to be what's also paying the salaries and getting the grant money.
And if there is actual collusion--and really, why should we believe there *never* would be such collusion, under any circumstances?--there appears to be no rigorous mechanism to catch it unless someone confesses. No one runs sting operations. There are no Federal investigators planted in the system trying to look for evidence of corruption. If no one reports, no one rocks the boat, then nothing happens.
Do you really think Gallo and his cronys have gotten where they are because the system as it is set up now is so "pure?"
The thing is that researchers in countless areas have told me that what I describe above is exactly how the system works now. I think my young friend (and I am proud to call him friend, so please stop kicking him around) Aziz, the 32 year old young postdoc who still appears to have stars in his eyes about the bureaucratic system he is now entrenched in, is struggling and looking for evidence that what I tell him is true. I think that if nothing changes then by the time he is 45 or 50, or talks to enough researchers of that age and listens to them carefully, he'll start to see the way it really works now. Which is far away different from the way it worked when you were doing your own postdoc work back in the late '60s and early '70s.
Bloviating, pommpous, self-important little bureaucrats now rule the game. The funny part being, they too whine about the system. But then they viciously attack the likes of Duesberg anyway.
The system worked good 30 years ago, maybe even 25 years ago, but it does not work good now. Peter is not its only victim, but he's the most egregious example I've seen. And this is rendered all the more maddening because when you try to lay out all the facts and tell people why it's so screwed up, and so in need of reform, they say you're a Duesberg-worshiper and sycophant. [rolls eyes] Yeah whatever.
My own suggestions for reform--and there are other suggestions by the way:
1) Be done with the anonymity completely. It was a good idea 40 years ago. It is a terrible idea now. Let every reviewer in the funding system (NOT the publishing system, the FUNDING system, the publishing system is fine as it is) put his name over every recommendation he makes for FUNDING, with a signature, and with full disclosure of all conflicts of interest he might have.
2) Require peer review FUNDING boards be multidisciplinary. No more of this business where only AIDS researchers can decide whether there's an idea on AIDS research that's worthwhile, only cancer researchers get to decide what's worth funding on cancer, no more climatologists being the only ones able to decide which climatology ideas are worth funding, etc. FORCE a multidisciplinary approach on funding: every application MUST be looked at by someone with a background in mathematics, and at least one other semi-related field but with no direct interest in the field.
3) REQUIRE that a certain percentage of grants go to unpopular ideas. Perhaps 5%.
4) Institute a system whereby a qualified scientist who feels she is discriminated against can file an appeal, with a multidisciplintary review board empowered to hear such appeals.
These are some ideas. They have been advanced by actual scientists, all of them. Peter's suggested some of them in his own papers.
There are a lot of young and idealistic postdocs out there now who think the current funding system is just peachy, or that it has problems but is basically sound. But it is not sound, and there are plenty of older heads who know better.
Aziz asks a perfectly legitimate question: Peter's grant applications, two dozen in a row, 100%, were accepted. Then more than 20 since then, 100%, have been rejected. All stemming from the publication of his (INVITED) paper questioning the HIV/AIDS hypothesis. As a 31 year old postdoc, Dr. Poonawalla's natural question is, "well, did Duesberg just go crazy and turn psycho? Can we see one of these rejected applications?"
It is a perfectly appropriate question.
Let's see what Peter says. He's not always good at answering his emails (he is, after all, the Mister Magoo of the Internet) but I'll ask him. In fact I think it would be a splendid thing to put *all* his grant applications online. Why not? I'm sure they're in the library they established for him at Berkeley.
And you know, I know there are other researchers who've been shabbily treated by the establishment who might do the same thing. I've talked to more than one of them, and they don't even know Peter or have anything to do with AIDS.
This might actually start something very constructive.
The system is broken. Its anonymity is at the core of its corruption. The anonymity made sense 40 years ago. It does not now.
Oh, and how might corruption appear in such a system, even if 99% of all participants in this "anonymous peer review FUNDING board" are pure and noble? Why I think it might look much like this.
---
A private meeting in a restaurant over cocktails. Two jovial old gray hairs, good friends, meeting once again at a semi-annual, all-important conference where all the researchers are discussing the latest and hottest ideas.
The two gray hairs--let's call then John and Bob--have a fine cigar, and a nice brandy, and just talk.
John: You know Bob, we've done so much good in this world, and accomplished much. But this bureaucratic system we're part of, it is so frustrating sometimes.
Bob: It is. Those suits in Washington, those bureaucrats, they don't understand what we really do, who the real bright lights are and who the real dim bulbs are.
John: Without doubt! Nor the anti-science ideas that are so much a threat to what we do.
Bob: I know, I know! Speaking of which, and just between you and me, there's this very bright young protege of mine who has a grant application--a small one, only about a half-million dollars....
John: For good work?
Bob: Oh excellent work. You know, it's about [insert certain key words and other descriptors here]. I know it's coming. Do you think you might help me champion it when it comes up in the review board next month?
John: Well I might. As it happens, I've got an associate who's having unjustified trouble right now who's got a similar small grant application coming up. It's going to involve [insert key words and descriptors here]. She's brilliant, really, although having some problems these days.
Bob: Well we understand science. I'm certain we can help each other do the right thing.
----
Is that common? I doubt it. But can it happen? Does it happen? Is it a "conspiracy?" Well, certainly not in the sense of dark evil figures trying to gain world domination.
But ask a lawyer what I've just described.
Other than honor, I can detect no serious system in place to catch this sort of thing.
And by the way, Aziz's brilliant question might even start something interesting.
So far as I know, nothing like this has ever been done in the history of science. A direct challenge, from the outside, to this monolithic "peer review funding" system, happening through the Internet?
All because one bright and skeptical young postdoc said, "oh yeah? prove it to me!"
As the system stands now, there is cno appeal process. None. Which is scandalous. Can the internet become part of a new appeal process, and force changes to the entrenched bureaucracy?
I hope Peter answers my email. I know he's got nothing to lose and little to fear. I also know other researchers who've been wronged by this system who might do the same: put their work out there to be seen by anyone who cares to look, and say, "explain to me why this was rejected if you would. Is it truly without value?"
What is to be gained? What is to be lost?
They actually tried to bribe Peter once. I'm sure he remembers.
Confidentiality is the key to getting people to write grants with their best ideas!
That feature must be ´protected always...the rest is fiddling. Jerry Pollack has been trying to do what you suggest above (paret at least)for years. But nobody in their right mind would suggest open publication of the grants themselves......and no Duesberg's are not publicly available from his archive...Think about it fella...Would you want you brightest and cleversest new idea about anything made available to Aziz et al who then got a chance to vote or somthing on whether they thought it was good?
My suggestions are only my suggestions (and none of them original to me). Perhaps the submitters of the proposals are anonymous, but the "peer reviewers" who make recommendations are not? Should they not have their names attached to the recommendations they make? And should there not be some way to catch and severely punish those who are found to be colluding, even if collusion is rare?
There are many ideas. The point is that you cannot fix anything until you recognize that there is a problem that needs fixing, and start making suggestions. I am hardly the first to suggest an appeals process, or a multidisciplinary approach.
But you are the first to suggest that the grants themselves be available for public scrutiny as either part of the funding process or the appeal. I tell you again...that is impossible, and the realest reason the reviewers must be beyond all reproach. Whether this has ever happend is a moot point. All I am saying, and for the last time, is that grant proposals themselves must remain confidential or there is no reason for anyone to put their best ideas in them.
Stop trying to be a policy wonk in an area where you have really no idea what the policy actually is, and are full of idealism about what works and what doesn't.
Peter is a very special case of the process gone wrong. Peter is, as Kary says, a one in a million, not to be repeated.
Yes the grant pocess, and a lot of publication peer review is dreafully broken and has been for 10+ years. BS-ing about solutions on a blog is not going to produce any. If people just wake up to the fact that the governmental-scientific-pharmaceutical complex is as politicised as every other such complex...and that scientists are not above ordinary human frailities, like lying to protect their asses and turf...that is all that one could hope for.
An enlightened populus can change a lot. The mass of dead heads in America unfortunately can and will change nothing except the channels on their tvs.
Stop trying to be a policy wonk in an area where you have really no idea what the policy actually is, and are full of idealism about what works and what doesn't.
Thank you so very much, eccles,
Por favor,
In your profound humility-ness perhaps you might enlighten the viewership just exactly what qualifications your advanced edujacation and professor-ship-ness qualified you to continually, relentlessly abate any opinion that doesn't jibe with your thinking.
Harvey: I as a taxpayer have every right to demand reforms and make suggestions as to how my tax dollars will be spent. Some may be good, some may be bad, but the discussion must be had--and the people who are paying the bills, the taxpayers, have every right not only to ask for reforms but to make suggestions as to how their money will be spent.
I have made my suggestions. Others will make theirs. Your condescending elitism and sneering contempt for everyday Americans aside, I will continue to do so.
Oh yes, and Duesberg is not the only scientist who has been abused this way. There are definitely others. You and Mullis are both extremely naive if you think so. He's the most egregious example I know of, but there are clearly others, some of whom I've talked to.
Shining some light on what really goes on here is a good thing. More people need to know how their tax money is being used.
If public money is to be paid to someone for research and/or experimentation, then i do believe that the public has every right to see the application. If the scientist(s) are so concerned about protecting their little secrets, then go for patronage through some private funding source or a corporation that might be interested in the results of your work.
The issuing of public funds MUST be transparent, because it is OUR money. Would YOU be willing to fork over a good chunk of your personal change to someone who basically said "trust me on this one?"
The real galling factor behind much research, however, is that the Universities which host so many of these scientists/researchers/whatever, have HUGE piles of cash and investments. Harvard, for example, is one of, if not THE largest landowner in Boston. I'm talking about commercial property, not the college itself. Yet it is quite nigardly with it's assets. Why shouldn't the hosting institutions be required to leverage their own resources to provide funding before turning to the taxpayers?
All I am saying, and for the last time, is that grant proposals themselves must remain confidential or there is no reason for anyone to put their best ideas in them.
Huh? So the public is supposed to pay to research (or bury) these ideas, but we're not allowed to see what the ideas are? If that's the way the grant system works then it's even dumber than I thought.
And your justifications aren't much better, Eccles. You claim that scientists won't research their "best ideas" if they have to document them and make them public. So, if required to do so, what will happen? They'll only ask for grants on their boring, mediocre stuff and keep all the good ideas hidden under the mattress? "Oh well, I have this promising treatment for cancer, but I certainly wouldn't want to tell anyone about it! I'll spend my life researching improved hangnail treatments instead."
If there were any impact at all it would be to encourage scientists to seek alternate sources of funding that did not rely on public money and mandatory public disclosure. Another win.
Am I to infer that Eccles is actually Bialy?! I thought Bialy was a scientist. Eccles betrays a total ignorance of science. No wonder Duesberg's ideas haven't gained traction on their merits; with such pathetic advocates working for him, he's being set two steps backwards for every step forward.
Science is to be about exchange of ideas, the proving of theroies, so why should the grant application be confidential? If research is done in a bubble, which is what is happening right now, then science does not advance, only political agendas advance.(HIV/AIDS). Grant applications, and the funding of those grants must be taken out of the hidden corners, and the High School CLICKS, and made transparent, with peer review, and NON-peer review. The present system is broken and must be changed.
Research is expensive, and sinking my tax dollars into the same research for decades due to political agendas, and cronism, is wrong. All ideas need to be funded, not just the popular ones.
I advanced the idea of completely doing away with anonymity as one possible reform.
But maybe it's a bad idea. All I was doing was pointing out ideas.
On a moral/ethical level I don't have a problem with the grant application being confidential for some time period. But if money is issued, at some point that application should be a public document. Now maybe there's a time period to protect the applicant--six months, a year, something--but at some point, it should be transparent.
But I stand firmly with those who say that ultimately--in the long term--we need to reform the system so that we know not just who got money and for what, but also what we got for our money, and, most important of all, who took the personal, individual responsibility for the exact yeah or nay on every application, and have them be personally accountable for it.
As well as an appeals process.
We also need reforms that investigate collusion and fraud much more aggressively than we do--right now there's far too little.
Here's the thing, is the system we have mostly working or mostly failing? I don't doubt that it fails at times, but when you are talking about radical change, which is what you are asking for, if the system is mostly working (and we certainly seem to me to be progressing scientifically and technologically) then I think a heavy burden is asked upon those who want to reform the system.
I also suspect that these reforms wouldn't work. Publically making grant applications would undoubtably make it more 'political' not less, and subject to more, not less, special interest pressure.
Multidisciplinary peer review would probably result in inefficiency more often then it would result in efficiency. And of course how far do you take it? Should we demand that geologists review aids funding as well? Saying that people who don't know much about something should be part of the review process as a matter of principle doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Requiring that a certain percentage of grants goes to 'unpopular' ideas is nonsensical. First off, who decides that something is 'unpopular' and thus availible for those funds? Secondly, that would result in just the most popular of the 'unpopular' ideas getting funding. So we are taking money away from those grants that people think are a good idea and putting it into money that they think is a less good idea, on, apparently, the belief that they are generally wrong but only a little wrong so they will now pick the right 'unpopular' idea.
As for an appeal system, where does it end? Can we appeal the appeal? Is the final decision to be made by the supreme court? I would imagine that nearly every scientist whose grant application is turned down feels that it is unfair and a mistake. Why would the appeal system yeild better results then the original system? Secondly, what happens when the appeal succeeds? Given that we have finite funding, someone else will have to lose their grant, and doubtless would think that that was unfair and need to appeal it.
Look, the objective is: (a) to generate good science (b) towards noble ends.
The objective isn't to provide endless employment opportunities for smart college grads who take science classes. In the real world, you have to produce -- scientists should not be exempt.
I say not. Unlike these poseurs, Dr. Duesberg produces. Without any NIH funding, without any support from the establishment, his dogged research on the cause of cancer has now broken through into the mainstream, USA, via Scientific American.
So, let's shake it up a bit for these comfy academicians, who continually whine about not enough funding, yet produce nothing of any scientific, health or social value. Just papers that no sane person ever reads.
What's wrong with re-assessing how science gets funded in America?
What do those two things that we 'know' have to do with each other, and in particular what does the second one have to do with the NIH, or any sort of scientific grant funding?
I will also note that Duesberg hasn't cured cancer either, so obviously you are argueing not to fund his research as well.
Dave: We have ample evidence of a system that's broken. The way it works out now is rife with opportunity for inefficiency and corruption. The idea that "we seem to be advancing, so leave it alone" is bullcrap.
This is public money we're talking about, and the methods of distribution of funds would not pass muster in ANY guideline on good or ethical or intelligent business or government or military practice. We are somehow supposed to believe that science is invulnerable to the weaknesses of other fields?
Look at the boondoggle that cancer research has become--a 35 year, hundreds of billions of 2007 dollars effort that has produced very little of substance. That alone is proof of the problem.
Look at the garbage that's coming now out of the cronys who run the Global Warming system, and what they've done to Richard Lindzen and anyone who dares disagree with him. And that doesn't even count many low-level scientists I've talked to who've either quit in despair, and told me they agree with everything I've described, in all sorts of fields.
What you're giving us is the fearful "there is nothing wrong, don't fix it, changing anything would be dangerous!" line of thinking. In the face of a funding system that utterly lacks accountability and is obviously filled with holes where corruption can leak through.
In the interests of disclosure, Dave: what do you do for a living?
2. On Medicine: The 3rd biggest killer in American, after heart attack and cancer is....doctors and hospitals. This isn't some do-gooder, commie, wheat-grass drinking, tree-huggers -- this Starfield, Phd/MD from Johns Hopkins in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Connecting these 2 dots for you, Justus, I conclude -- the medical status quo sucks!
So, I basically agree with Dean that we should re-evaluate the peer-review system, root out the cronyism, root out the backroom dealing, root out the academic boondoggles in an effort to restore good science.
No McK, the opines of Orac and Ms. Thang are hardly interesting, except maybe to you, and even as gossip, which is the only possible reason anyone would read them, they pale by comparison to this, or this.
McK was not offering an editorial opinion but merely linking by subject title the posts on Aetiology and Orac.
To my dismay, Mr. Aziz continues his bad habit of posting stuff and then hiding and running after the merest objection to what he has written.
Cheers
4.28.2007 1:12am
Commenting on Dean's World is a privilege, not a right. Dean is your host, you are his guest, and you should behave in that fashion. Dean is not your babysitter, nor is he your punching bag. Please remember this. In general, you are free to disagree with anyone on any subject you wish, but abusive behavior will not be tolerated.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.
Since always, you silly man. Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis and Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr, were both ridiculed for suggesting that physicians wash their hands in between patients. There are countless other examples.
Great ideas and innovations are generally not accepted by those that represent the status quo. We would be much better served by a decentralized, market-based model of private science funding than by the centralized, country-club model in which insiders act as the gatekeepers to public money.
Would you be willing to ask Dr. Duesberg to publish his grant applications publicly online so that the merits of the application can be judged by the open scientific community?
Nice little piece in Wall St. Journal.
You ask: "Why is he a pariah exactly?"
Because modern day science has a herd mentality, and if you don't follow the herd, you get deemed a "pariah."
Timeline:
1983: Duesberg publishes remarkable paper on oncogenes in Nature (1 of the top scientific journal in the world).
1985: Duesberg is awarded Outstanding Investigator Grant by the National Institute of Health, well over $1 Million.
1986: Duesberg is elected into the National Academy of Science , which is basically the Hall of Fame for scientists.
But, in 1987, in Cancer Research, he points out the many flaws in the viral hypothesis of AIDS.
Uh-Oh. This makes a lotta scientists look embarrassed and incompetent, so they exclude him from the herd.
That simple.
Ironically, though, during his 20-year exile, apart from the herd, he develops a comprehensive theory of cancer, culminating with this blockbuster piece in SciAm.
So, maybe it's good to stray from the herd!
HankB
One might also mention again that other cancer scientists have cited his work frequently, he's played host to packed houses at NIH and other scientific conferences to explain his work, etc. This Scientific American article is just where he finally, and completely, gets the public exposure he deserves.
Aziz: That's a splendid idea. I'll shoot him a note when I get home tonight.
And whewre does a punk like you wind up suggesting that a member of the National Academy publish CONFIDENTIAL grant applications on the itnernet to satisfy your, I have no idea what to call it, ego?
I suppose the fear here is that someone will blanch; "Oh my God, such and such a scientist wants a $10 million grant? What's that for?" The answer should be plain as day: to pay salaries to lab assistants and associates, to buy and maintain equipment which is often very expensive (and sometimes lab rent, depending), and so on.
I don't find any of that unreasonable (and by the way, I pulled the number out of my hat, it could be $10,000, or $100 million, or whatever).
I know of no system of doling out government dollars where those who make the decision to fund or not do not have to sign off personally with their remarks and justifications for their decisions, or where someone applying for a grant has no significant right of appeal or representation if they believe they are being discriminated against.
1) Peer review is a fine system for reviewing papers. It's not perfect but it's proven for generations that it's effective and makes for rigorous science. And, the fact is that you've always had at least one form of appeal if you feel your "peers" at one publication are dealing with you unjustly: go to another journal.
2) "Peer review" as a government funding system is profoundly dysfunctional. That is a much more recent invention, and it has shown itself to have huge weaknesses so far as I can see. Nothing that can't be fixed, but first the problem has to be acknowledged to exist.
I picked up this particular issue yesterday without realizing Duesberg was in it. While reading the editor's forward to the magazine I was reminded why I don't subscribe to it: The editors use the magazine to promote political agendas instead of scientific ones.
I also subscribe to New Scientist, and its even worse. However it's European and therefore the politics are so over-the-top goofy that its easy to mutter "Don't mention the war..." while paying the bill.
I have mixed feelings about the article. Duesberg is an intelligent scientist and his ideas about cancer are fresh. Therefore it's good that SciAm publishes his work. On the other hand the way they prostrated themselves in the editorial was so disingenuous that I'm sure it tees people on the pro-HIV side as much as the anti-HIV side.
Be sure to publish what Duesberg thinks of their handling of the article - if he's willing to express it.
Dean: You appear to be missing a very crucical point about grant applications, and the reason they are confidential, and the realest reason that the INTEGRITY of the reviewers must be impeccable, and without any trace of any potential conflict of interest:
THE APPLICANT IS PROPOSING,IN VERY PRECISE EXPERIMENTAL DETAIL, HOW HE/SHE PROPOSES TO TEST THEIR BEST NEW IDEAS!
Can you think of any other reason that such applications are by historical record confidential?
The reasons for setting the system up this way made much sense at the time. The problem is that the inherent weaknesses in it only became manifest over time: there is no accountability, there really is no enforcement mechanism against underhandedness, and the more money is involved the more lesser lights will get involved in the system--and they will begin to push the system to their own ends.
This is entirely outside of the issue of any willful manipulation. The fact is that the way it is set up, the whole thing militates against original thinkers who question whatever ideas are hot right now--the hot ideas happening to be what's also paying the salaries and getting the grant money.
And if there is actual collusion--and really, why should we believe there *never* would be such collusion, under any circumstances?--there appears to be no rigorous mechanism to catch it unless someone confesses. No one runs sting operations. There are no Federal investigators planted in the system trying to look for evidence of corruption. If no one reports, no one rocks the boat, then nothing happens.
Do you really think Gallo and his cronys have gotten where they are because the system as it is set up now is so "pure?"
The thing is that researchers in countless areas have told me that what I describe above is exactly how the system works now. I think my young friend (and I am proud to call him friend, so please stop kicking him around) Aziz, the 32 year old young postdoc who still appears to have stars in his eyes about the bureaucratic system he is now entrenched in, is struggling and looking for evidence that what I tell him is true. I think that if nothing changes then by the time he is 45 or 50, or talks to enough researchers of that age and listens to them carefully, he'll start to see the way it really works now. Which is far away different from the way it worked when you were doing your own postdoc work back in the late '60s and early '70s.
Bloviating, pommpous, self-important little bureaucrats now rule the game. The funny part being, they too whine about the system. But then they viciously attack the likes of Duesberg anyway.
The system worked good 30 years ago, maybe even 25 years ago, but it does not work good now. Peter is not its only victim, but he's the most egregious example I've seen. And this is rendered all the more maddening because when you try to lay out all the facts and tell people why it's so screwed up, and so in need of reform, they say you're a Duesberg-worshiper and sycophant. [rolls eyes] Yeah whatever.
My own suggestions for reform--and there are other suggestions by the way:
1) Be done with the anonymity completely. It was a good idea 40 years ago. It is a terrible idea now. Let every reviewer in the funding system (NOT the publishing system, the FUNDING system, the publishing system is fine as it is) put his name over every recommendation he makes for FUNDING, with a signature, and with full disclosure of all conflicts of interest he might have.
2) Require peer review FUNDING boards be multidisciplinary. No more of this business where only AIDS researchers can decide whether there's an idea on AIDS research that's worthwhile, only cancer researchers get to decide what's worth funding on cancer, no more climatologists being the only ones able to decide which climatology ideas are worth funding, etc. FORCE a multidisciplinary approach on funding: every application MUST be looked at by someone with a background in mathematics, and at least one other semi-related field but with no direct interest in the field.
3) REQUIRE that a certain percentage of grants go to unpopular ideas. Perhaps 5%.
4) Institute a system whereby a qualified scientist who feels she is discriminated against can file an appeal, with a multidisciplintary review board empowered to hear such appeals.
These are some ideas. They have been advanced by actual scientists, all of them. Peter's suggested some of them in his own papers.
There are a lot of young and idealistic postdocs out there now who think the current funding system is just peachy, or that it has problems but is basically sound. But it is not sound, and there are plenty of older heads who know better.
Aziz asks a perfectly legitimate question: Peter's grant applications, two dozen in a row, 100%, were accepted. Then more than 20 since then, 100%, have been rejected. All stemming from the publication of his (INVITED) paper questioning the HIV/AIDS hypothesis. As a 31 year old postdoc, Dr. Poonawalla's natural question is, "well, did Duesberg just go crazy and turn psycho? Can we see one of these rejected applications?"
It is a perfectly appropriate question.
Let's see what Peter says. He's not always good at answering his emails (he is, after all, the Mister Magoo of the Internet) but I'll ask him. In fact I think it would be a splendid thing to put *all* his grant applications online. Why not? I'm sure they're in the library they established for him at Berkeley.
And you know, I know there are other researchers who've been shabbily treated by the establishment who might do the same thing. I've talked to more than one of them, and they don't even know Peter or have anything to do with AIDS.
This might actually start something very constructive.
The system is broken. Its anonymity is at the core of its corruption. The anonymity made sense 40 years ago. It does not now.
---
A private meeting in a restaurant over cocktails. Two jovial old gray hairs, good friends, meeting once again at a semi-annual, all-important conference where all the researchers are discussing the latest and hottest ideas.
The two gray hairs--let's call then John and Bob--have a fine cigar, and a nice brandy, and just talk.
John: You know Bob, we've done so much good in this world, and accomplished much. But this bureaucratic system we're part of, it is so frustrating sometimes.
Bob: It is. Those suits in Washington, those bureaucrats, they don't understand what we really do, who the real bright lights are and who the real dim bulbs are.
John: Without doubt! Nor the anti-science ideas that are so much a threat to what we do.
Bob: I know, I know! Speaking of which, and just between you and me, there's this very bright young protege of mine who has a grant application--a small one, only about a half-million dollars....
John: For good work?
Bob: Oh excellent work. You know, it's about [insert certain key words and other descriptors here]. I know it's coming. Do you think you might help me champion it when it comes up in the review board next month?
John: Well I might. As it happens, I've got an associate who's having unjustified trouble right now who's got a similar small grant application coming up. It's going to involve [insert key words and descriptors here]. She's brilliant, really, although having some problems these days.
Bob: Well we understand science. I'm certain we can help each other do the right thing.
----
Is that common? I doubt it. But can it happen? Does it happen? Is it a "conspiracy?" Well, certainly not in the sense of dark evil figures trying to gain world domination.
But ask a lawyer what I've just described.
Other than honor, I can detect no serious system in place to catch this sort of thing.
The system's broken, dammit.
So far as I know, nothing like this has ever been done in the history of science. A direct challenge, from the outside, to this monolithic "peer review funding" system, happening through the Internet?
All because one bright and skeptical young postdoc said, "oh yeah? prove it to me!"
As the system stands now, there is cno appeal process. None. Which is scandalous. Can the internet become part of a new appeal process, and force changes to the entrenched bureaucracy?
I hope Peter answers my email. I know he's got nothing to lose and little to fear. I also know other researchers who've been wronged by this system who might do the same: put their work out there to be seen by anyone who cares to look, and say, "explain to me why this was rejected if you would. Is it truly without value?"
What is to be gained? What is to be lost?
They actually tried to bribe Peter once. I'm sure he remembers.
Confidentiality is the key to getting people to write grants with their best ideas!
That feature must be ´protected always...the rest is fiddling. Jerry Pollack has been trying to do what you suggest above (paret at least)for years. But nobody in their right mind would suggest open publication of the grants themselves......and no Duesberg's are not publicly available from his archive...Think about it fella...Would you want you brightest and cleversest new idea about anything made available to Aziz et al who then got a chance to vote or somthing on whether they thought it was good?
get real..
There are many ideas. The point is that you cannot fix anything until you recognize that there is a problem that needs fixing, and start making suggestions. I am hardly the first to suggest an appeals process, or a multidisciplinary approach.
Stop trying to be a policy wonk in an area where you have really no idea what the policy actually is, and are full of idealism about what works and what doesn't.
Peter is a very special case of the process gone wrong. Peter is, as Kary says, a one in a million, not to be repeated.
Yes the grant pocess, and a lot of publication peer review is dreafully broken and has been for 10+ years. BS-ing about solutions on a blog is not going to produce any. If people just wake up to the fact that the governmental-scientific-pharmaceutical complex is as politicised as every other such complex...and that scientists are not above ordinary human frailities, like lying to protect their asses and turf...that is all that one could hope for.
An enlightened populus can change a lot. The mass of dead heads in America unfortunately can and will change nothing except the channels on their tvs.
Thank you so very much, eccles,
Por favor,
In your profound humility-ness perhaps you might enlighten the viewership just exactly what qualifications your advanced edujacation and professor-ship-ness qualified you to continually, relentlessly abate any opinion that doesn't jibe with your thinking.
And why are you right ?
It ought not take more than three sentences.
I have made my suggestions. Others will make theirs. Your condescending elitism and sneering contempt for everyday Americans aside, I will continue to do so.
Shining some light on what really goes on here is a good thing. More people need to know how their tax money is being used.
Why? Isn't knowledge supposed to benefit us all?
And even then wouldn't there be a public record that X idea belongs first and foremost to the first person to point it out?
Or are you hunting for recognition and privileges? Wouldn't this come after your ideas prove successful?
If public money is to be paid to someone for research and/or experimentation, then i do believe that the public has every right to see the application. If the scientist(s) are so concerned about protecting their little secrets, then go for patronage through some private funding source or a corporation that might be interested in the results of your work.
The issuing of public funds MUST be transparent, because it is OUR money. Would YOU be willing to fork over a good chunk of your personal change to someone who basically said "trust me on this one?"
The real galling factor behind much research, however, is that the Universities which host so many of these scientists/researchers/whatever, have HUGE piles of cash and investments. Harvard, for example, is one of, if not THE largest landowner in Boston. I'm talking about commercial property, not the college itself. Yet it is quite nigardly with it's assets. Why shouldn't the hosting institutions be required to leverage their own resources to provide funding before turning to the taxpayers?
Enough for now.
Respects,
Huh? So the public is supposed to pay to research (or bury) these ideas, but we're not allowed to see what the ideas are? If that's the way the grant system works then it's even dumber than I thought.
And your justifications aren't much better, Eccles. You claim that scientists won't research their "best ideas" if they have to document them and make them public. So, if required to do so, what will happen? They'll only ask for grants on their boring, mediocre stuff and keep all the good ideas hidden under the mattress? "Oh well, I have this promising treatment for cancer, but I certainly wouldn't want to tell anyone about it! I'll spend my life researching improved hangnail treatments instead."
If there were any impact at all it would be to encourage scientists to seek alternate sources of funding that did not rely on public money and mandatory public disclosure. Another win.
(see, I can troll you right back, buddy.)
Research is expensive, and sinking my tax dollars into the same research for decades due to political agendas, and cronism, is wrong. All ideas need to be funded, not just the popular ones.
And more is learned when a theroy is disproved.
But maybe it's a bad idea. All I was doing was pointing out ideas.
On a moral/ethical level I don't have a problem with the grant application being confidential for some time period. But if money is issued, at some point that application should be a public document. Now maybe there's a time period to protect the applicant--six months, a year, something--but at some point, it should be transparent.
But I stand firmly with those who say that ultimately--in the long term--we need to reform the system so that we know not just who got money and for what, but also what we got for our money, and, most important of all, who took the personal, individual responsibility for the exact yeah or nay on every application, and have them be personally accountable for it.
As well as an appeals process.
We also need reforms that investigate collusion and fraud much more aggressively than we do--right now there's far too little.
I also suspect that these reforms wouldn't work. Publically making grant applications would undoubtably make it more 'political' not less, and subject to more, not less, special interest pressure.
Multidisciplinary peer review would probably result in inefficiency more often then it would result in efficiency. And of course how far do you take it? Should we demand that geologists review aids funding as well? Saying that people who don't know much about something should be part of the review process as a matter of principle doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Requiring that a certain percentage of grants goes to 'unpopular' ideas is nonsensical. First off, who decides that something is 'unpopular' and thus availible for those funds? Secondly, that would result in just the most popular of the 'unpopular' ideas getting funding. So we are taking money away from those grants that people think are a good idea and putting it into money that they think is a less good idea, on, apparently, the belief that they are generally wrong but only a little wrong so they will now pick the right 'unpopular' idea.
As for an appeal system, where does it end? Can we appeal the appeal? Is the final decision to be made by the supreme court? I would imagine that nearly every scientist whose grant application is turned down feels that it is unfair and a mistake. Why would the appeal system yeild better results then the original system? Secondly, what happens when the appeal succeeds? Given that we have finite funding, someone else will have to lose their grant, and doubtless would think that that was unfair and need to appeal it.
The objective isn't to provide endless employment opportunities for smart college grads who take science classes. In the real world, you have to produce -- scientists should not be exempt.
We know two things:
1. The War on Cancer has produced virtually no tangible health benefits;
2. Current medicine in the US produces about 225,000 iatrogenic deaths each year by hospitals and doctors -- whose job is to help, not hurt.
So, is the current system working well or not?
I say not. Unlike these poseurs, Dr. Duesberg produces. Without any NIH funding, without any support from the establishment, his dogged research on the cause of cancer has now broken through into the mainstream, USA, via Scientific American.
So, let's shake it up a bit for these comfy academicians, who continually whine about not enough funding, yet produce nothing of any scientific, health or social value. Just papers that no sane person ever reads.
What's wrong with re-assessing how science gets funded in America?
Don't we all want to cure cancer?
HankB
What do those two things that we 'know' have to do with each other, and in particular what does the second one have to do with the NIH, or any sort of scientific grant funding?
I will also note that Duesberg hasn't cured cancer either, so obviously you are argueing not to fund his research as well.
This is public money we're talking about, and the methods of distribution of funds would not pass muster in ANY guideline on good or ethical or intelligent business or government or military practice. We are somehow supposed to believe that science is invulnerable to the weaknesses of other fields?
Look at the boondoggle that cancer research has become--a 35 year, hundreds of billions of 2007 dollars effort that has produced very little of substance. That alone is proof of the problem.
Look at the garbage that's coming now out of the cronys who run the Global Warming system, and what they've done to Richard Lindzen and anyone who dares disagree with him. And that doesn't even count many low-level scientists I've talked to who've either quit in despair, and told me they agree with everything I've described, in all sorts of fields.
What you're giving us is the fearful "there is nothing wrong, don't fix it, changing anything would be dangerous!" line of thinking. In the face of a funding system that utterly lacks accountability and is obviously filled with holes where corruption can leak through.
In the interests of disclosure, Dave: what do you do for a living?
Huh?
1. On Science: The War on Cancer has not reduced cancer rates.
2. On Medicine: The 3rd biggest killer in American, after heart attack and cancer is....doctors and hospitals. This isn't some do-gooder, commie, wheat-grass drinking, tree-huggers -- this Starfield, Phd/MD from Johns Hopkins in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Connecting these 2 dots for you, Justus, I conclude -- the medical status quo sucks!
So, I basically agree with Dean that we should re-evaluate the peer-review system, root out the cronyism, root out the backroom dealing, root out the academic boondoggles in an effort to restore good science.
HB
Well, isn't this interesting...
And this:
Peter Duesberg, chromosomal chaos, and cancer: An intriguing hypothesis argued poorly
McK was not offering an editorial opinion but merely linking by subject title the posts on Aetiology and Orac.
To my dismay, Mr. Aziz continues his bad habit of posting stuff and then hiding and running after the merest objection to what he has written.
Cheers
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.