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Most likely explanation for all of it: they're lying and they submitted samples from others.

Why do you jump straight to that conclusion rather than researching how DNA tests are done in the first place and how uncertainty is inherently part of the process? Or has CSI Miami trained you to believe that lab samples are perfect? http://phdcomics.com/comics.ph...

I was sent this awhile back by a friend doing her PhD: http://phdcomics.com/comics.ph...

When you move from a 10 ft cliff to a 20 ft cliff, and it takes you twice as long, it does NOT mean we are moving half as fast.

Yes, in fact it does (+1 for pedantry).

Getting back to your real point, though, simply observing it does not mean you necessarily know why you are moving half as fast. It could be because you have become lazier or weaker, or it could be because the next cliff is harder. So yeah, generally agree that the article's statement is stupid, but I would be willing to bet that is NOT what the actual research paper says at all.

Reference,
http://phdcomics.com/comics/ar...

In other words :

Article "Doing activity X will improve training on capability A and B, but the unused skill C and D will dwindle"
Press "OMG! X is going to kill us all because of C and D ! Quick, click on our advertisement!"

Cue in ob. reference to PhDcomics

Another study that cannot distinguish if it's causation of just correlation.

Actually, it's not the studies' fault.
Both studies only use the term "association" (as in : "we found the number to be somewhat correlated") with the first one even in the title.
Even in the abstract the second study mentions it's only correlation, and there might even be reverse causation.

But then you can count on the press to spin it up as "Coffee cures death !!!!11!!1!!"

Ob. PHDcomics ref

Did the study state there was a concrete cause-and-effect aspect? Or did they just show their results that show a correlation?

Yes they impled cause-and-effect :
the original BMJ article title is Moderate alcohol consumption as risk factor for adverse brain outcomes and cognitive decline: longitudinal cohort study.
It implies that moderate drinking is a potential factor that contributes to the brain damage.

This is then speculated even further by the press, with titles such as "Can Damage The Brain".

The PHDComics on Science News Cycle applies as usual.

The correct wording would have been " Link found between drinking and brain".

i.e.: we know that they are correlated (we have a link in the numbers), but we haven't yet a model explaining why (not a model which reasonnably explains most of the observed data).

- Is the drinking causing the brain damage ?
(it's plausible, as alcohol is toxic. And other situations have proven that repeated damage, even if each one should be small enough to recover, can cumulate over time and could sometime cause degenerative disease. See the problem with degenrative diseases and contact sports).

- Is having a stupider brain make the person more likely to drink ?
(again it's plausible. people with psychiatric problems are more likely to seek substances, both for the "feel better" kick and as misguided attempts to self medicate (feel functional). See alcoholism and depression, etc.)

- Are both drinking and brain damage just appearing together in people as a consequence of some other factor that the researcher haven't controlled for.

My understanding is that there was one scientific report that said an ice age might be coming. Maybe. Sometime.

Then some magazine picked up on it, put it through the usual distortion filter, the TV picked up on the magazine article and it snowballed (sorry) from there.

OB xkcd, and OB PhD Comics.

Not long ago, we were all being told that illumination that mimics natural sunlight cures Seasonal Affective Disorder. Now we're being told it causes insomnia and bipolar disorder. If you look at the original article, the effect is tiny at best.

But, but, but... It must've at some point... The benevolent and omniscient government officials kept telling us, that butter is evil. They could not ban it outright for the adults, insisting on their silly "liberties" and "freedoms, but they did ban it for children. As recently as in 2013

Are you confusing science with the science news cycle?

There are some good nutrition studies out there. And a lot of mediocre ones - ones that amount to basically someone saying "hey, we found an interesting correlation in this small study" and the news blowing it completely out of proportion.

Skip the news blurb about X being shown to be either dangerous or a panacea, and look at the study behind it.

I think PhD comics nicely sums up the grant cycle (although it exaggerates parts):

http://www.phdcomics.com/comic...

The chances of successfully completing the goals in your grant are usually quite high because you generally apply for money to work on things that have already been _partially_ completed! This sounds disingenuous, but it's a practical response to funding levels. Money is scarce, so if you don't meet the goals in your grant proposal, you're less likely to get future grants funded. For that reason, projects with a low chance for success are just too risky.

So what do you do? You write a proposal for something that you're confident will work because you're already made headway into the problem. Then if you get the grant money, you use some of the funding to complete the project that you already started, and you use the rest of the money to work on a different project. Rinse. Lather. Repeat.

I'm not thrilled with this type of funding cycle. However, it does ensure that the research aims are completed, and it gives scientists some freedom to try different things. In short, it's still moving science forward, so I've made peace with the process.

PHD Comics has a great summary

Obligatory PHD Comics: The Science News Cycle.

At their most specific, the scientists might say that Climate Change means we'll be more likely to get stronger storms more often, but the media reports it as "Scientists say Current Storm X is directly caused by Climate Change!!!"

Short Answer: Obligatory PHD Comics: The Science New Cycle

Longer Answer: Reporters know "Scientists have found that X is weakly correlated with an increase in Y. More studies will clarify whether this is correlation, causation, or whether the first study was incorrect." won't generate views (or sell papers for the old school newspaper folks in the house). Instead "X found to cause Y" is a much better headline for generating more views. Even better is clickbait like "You won't believe the horrible things X has been found to cause!" So reporters go for the most sensational spin on the scientific study in order to get more views.

The side effect of this is a mistrust of scientists who "can't make up their minds." After all, today it's being reported that "X directly leads to Y, scientists 100% sure." Tomorrow, though, the reporting says "X shown to have no effect on Y!" The actual details of the studies don't matter. It doesn't matter that this is how science works (someone tests a theory, proves or disproves it, and then others try to replicate it). It doesn't matter that science "changing its mind" isn't a weakness, but a strength of science. All that matters is that the headlines changed so scientists must not know what they're doing. Luckily, the local creationist/anti-vax proponent/homeopath/etc says they know what's what and they insist that they would never change their story.

It's all part of the Science News Cycle.

I think a concerning matter is that journalists (not science journals necessarily) also destroy the credibility of science by taking these observations ("according to a recent study...") and running with the "results" as news.

That's what current is happening. Researchers generally are allowed a certain degree of speculation in the conclusions of their papers, speculation that goes far beyond what the data actually shows. That's what journalists often "run with" and publish as "peer reviewed fact".

http://www.phdcomics.com/comic...

But the thing is: scientists themselves often fall into the same trap, in particular when they are not intimately familiar with the area that a paper has been published about. I don't think this journal will do much to break the news cycle, but it may be a start towards getting "legitimate scientists" themselves to act a bit more responsibly and carefully.

As a recent PHD Comic demonstrates, scientists must substantiate everything they write with a reference. This is like a Wikipedia-style page that makes it easy for the uninitiated to click for understanding. All the cognoscenti use Lynx.

PhD Comics - Author List

I loved Bloom County in the 80s. I was sad to see the strip stop. However I moved on and now there are a ton of quality comics to take its place. Do you want sharp, pointed humor? Try Non-Sequiter (ex http://www.gocomics.com/nonseq...). There is xkcd.com, userfriendly.org (yeah, I know the comic is semi-mostly-retired), and PhD (Piled Higher and Deeper) http://phdcomics.com/comics.ph....

I'm sorry Bloom County, you were great in the 80s but now it is the 2010s. It might be interesting to read the new strips for the nostalgia factor but that would be about it. After a certain period of time you realize it is time to move on. (Big pointed hint to George R R Martin and his over-delayed next book in the Game of Thrones series)

The Science News Cycle:

http://www.phdcomics.com/comic...

Funny (and sad) because it's accurate.

This needs fixing and this proposal might be a very good way to do it. In the same way as social media bypasses the MSM, perhaps this proposal can bypass the above players.

This is almost certainly true. Take a look at this correlation between the unemployment rate and the rate of grad school enrolments.

There's another effect, too: during the recession, the government increased spending, including on research. This is a sensible Keynesian thing to do to stimulate the economy - but it does mean that these government-driven sectors are going to contract when the recession ends.

Ha! We should all know that the way academic funding occurs is more like this: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1431

When people read the summary of this story, I'm sure a lot will be like "blah blah blah blah MAGNETS GOOD FOR HEALTH AND CURE EBOLA blah blah blah.

Just as the PhD Comics comic referred to in another posting says.

Obligatory PhD Comics.

I'm wearing this hat to ward off antibiotic resistant viruses and their army of self-replicating toxins.

You're not reading research. You're reading news articles. There are unscrupulous "journalists" out there that spend all day scanning research journals for studies they can turn into shocking stories to get clicks.

Journalists are at fault, but they're not the only ones. See PHD Comics.

The research might have said "people who wear tight pants have a 1.2% greater risk of cancer given this study and these error parameters." After the study passed through the various layers of reporting, though, it turned into JEANS CAUSE CANCER!!!!!

He was making the point that lithium is not heavy. Other than that, it's hard to know what else he was trying to say, because the article doesn't give much context.

I know it's not XKCD, but there's relevant SMBC and PHD comics.

Roughly speaking, outside of very dedicated science reporting channels by the time you go from the scientist's representative trying to dumb it down, to the reporter trying to dumb it down, to the editor doing it yet again, accuracy sucks.

Maybe they're trying for a hydrogen battery?

FYI, the scientists who did the work did not report it as "communication." As usual, the popular science writers were a bit over zealous in their choice of words.

http://www.phdcomics.com/comic...

http://www.phdcomics.com/comic...

http://www.phdcomics.com/comic...

I did a quick review of the literature and the abstracts and media hype claim that, but from what I could garner from reading the actual papers there are two key points. Firstly, that thc can cause transient psychotic symptoms, viz. freaking out for a bit. Secondly, honesty in self-reporting thc usage increases the odds -- by values varying between around up to the 2 to 1 mark -- of being diagnosed as having a a long term freak out catagorized as a psychotic episode (as opposed to say intense affect) and being diagnosed as a schizophrenic.

http://www.phdcomics.com/comic...

Obligatory, errr, not XKCD.... http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd042009s.gif

Academics routinely scavenge for food and raid junk piles for equipment.

An insightful comic: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php

There are some really interesting experiments going on these days with QM behavior of macroscopic objects (micrometer-scale). I've seen descriptions of MEMS cantilevers built and they measure its vibrational modes, and these guys describe how they did it using reflected laser light. The trick is to cool the device to get rid of the phonons and detect when it falls into the ground state.

I'm just reading the summary, but "unexpectedly" seems like a word that might not be carelessly used. Legal trade is probably known and wouldn't be too hard to compare.

Alternatively, perhaps the researchers speculated that part of it might be illegal trafficking in addition to the usual stuff. Perhaps they suggested this could be a good method of identifying illegal trade spots. And then the downstream journalists siezed on that idle speculation even though it was not the point. Relevant PhD comics comic.

I should skim the actual paper, but I'm procrastinating FROM reading papers on a totally different field, so I'm not going to :-P

Relevant: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174

I was wondering how many of them were named Mohammed.

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1244

I was referring to how PR departments and the media in general spin pretty much every nutritional study into what amount to either flat out lies or terribly misleading statements.

I assume you're familiar with this?

re: unl presentation: very interesting, thanks for that link. I knew spices such as pepper and cumin were effective preservatives, but really didn't think the same could be said about herbs like oregano and thyme. I guess it makes sense that those flavors are related to plant defense mechanisms, which could apply equally to seeds as leaves, so I suppose that does make sense.

Still, a question I have is, not considering severe digestive issues, are there detrimental effects of the types and levels of artificial preservatives on nutrient absorption? I'm not familiar with any data on that, and would like to, eventually, try to digest (no pun intended) some of the available literature (the link as one example, but I'm not experienced enough in this field to make much sense of such studies without spending more time that I can afford at the moment). And I certainly don't trust Kraft Foods to prioritize a thorough understanding of these issues over an extra dose of additives to ensure foods don't discolor and turn sour on the shelf. In the meantime, while i have little basis for telling others that they are "bad", I'm just as happy avoiding these additives when i can do so without too much hassle.

Mmm, fecal transplant therapy...my girlfriend has already talked my ear off about this one as she used to study C. difficile, for which this therapy is sometimes used. From one (only half-serious) perspective, it's another neat reminder of what we can and can't engineer with current biotechnology: "we can't really culture the same flora needed to repopulate your digestive system, but we can shove someone else's poop up your butt!"

If I'm not mistaken, oxidization requires being exposed to oxygen. There's a reason why some stuff can be stored for weeks in a closed package and mere days when the packaging is opened. There's still oxygen exposure, but it is greatly reduced and fairly predictable.

Are there other mechanisms of nutrient loss beyond simple oxidation that are harder to control? For example, does cellular metabolism in plant material, which i believe continues long past harvest, lead to breakdown of nutrients even in the packaging, either directly or as a result of byproducts created in the process? This is, of course, all speculation at this point. Still, I intuitively believe that the blueberries I'm adding to my breakfast might be more nutritionally valuable than the freeze-dried ones in a box of cereal. I enjoy them more, at the very least.

In addition to that, 'non-packaged food' may also have been or be exposed to significant amounts of oxygen and other deteriorating influences.

This is an excellent point, and is probably a pretty significant factor in judging the value of items like pre-cut, plastic-wrapped fruit available in many stores (polyethylene, used in many commercial food wraps, is oxygen-permeable). I also intuitively think the nutritional value of unadulterated produce is correlated to some measure of its fragrance and taste (this at least makes sense from an evolutionary point of view), and, on the flip-side, have seen some pretty depressing-looking produce offerings at several different markets. But, again, I have nothing to back up up that claim of a meaningful difference, or the implicit follow-up claim that I have been better-than-random at picking the "good stuff". I'm ok with that.

With regard to supplements and fortification, it's true that I'm lumping the two together with

2) Take away your sense of reason and accountability.

It's called graduate school.

No fret. It is all explained here.

There are billions *per galaxy*

Because actually detecting exoplanets is recent and fancy shouldn't prevent us to understand this. You may wish to consult the PHDcomics stance on this at http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1584 , at least they understood it the right way: indeed it's the lack of planet around a star that's the exception.

Since the idea is recent it'll take 10 years to mankind at large to accept is as normal, but come on, not on slashdot! ;-)

There are some numbers in this newest comic: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1584

Obligato-mahto: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174

Some "fake" journals have peer review, but it is really a group of professors teaming up, who already hold the same opinion, or support each others non-mainstream position in the respective fields. This can be problematic because it does not provide independent, skeptical review.

That said, main-stream journals are also not fair. Payment increased by a huge fraction (4x IIRC), countries are paying triple (publishing, reviewing and accessing), which effectively blocks out a large fraction of the population. see here for a introductory video. This leads to a big demand in cheaper publications also for legitimate research.

Saw this on facebook the other day, seems very relevant:

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1144

Counting from the start of my PhD program, I have spent over 15 years doing science (biology) -- most of my grown-up life. I'm still doing science, it's my life. And what I have to say to you, young padawan, is not nice.

You are about to do the most thrilling (awesome, exciting, depressing, frustrating, crazy, fulfilling, everything at once) thing on Earth, you will be doing bloody science, and you think about getting ...new hobbies? New interests? All that in a fashion of someone shopping for a new T-shirt? (ah, skydiving, seems nice, I'll take a pair).

How will you come up with ideas for your research if you have not enough curiosity and interest in the world around you, and you have to fish for interests / hobbies on Slashdot? This is how your question sounds for me: "I just got an apprenticeship at NASA, can someone give me an idea for a new hobby? 'cause I have none". If you need to ask a question like that, then better ask yourself whether PhD in science is really what you want.

Apart from that, if you already have anything that you like to do with your free time, plus you have some kind of relationship (or plan to have one), plus you will take your science seriously, you will have barely any time to pursue "new hobbies / interests". Go and read http://www.phdcomics.com/.

And get out of my lawn.

Holy crap, some SUNY Binghamton coach is making $240k.

Why is a state school wasting money like that?

Obligatory PhD Comics link: Acadmic salaries

Cancer is not one disease but many many diseases under the same banner. In fact, the same type of cancer can be completely different diseases in different people.

Just because cancer is a category for many different diseases does not mean we can't cure them one at a time. An emerging technology that could change the outcome for cancer patients is DNA sequencing of tumor vs. healthy cells to determine precisely which medication is effective for treating a specific kind of cancer. Such DNA sequencing is dropping rapidly in price, and is likely to make its way into clinics soon.

See here.
I would suggest you refrain from making idiotic remarks about subjects you have no clue about.

Point taken, but I''m not sure you make a good case when you cite a comic.

Cancer is not one disease but many many diseases under the same banner. In fact, the same type of cancer can be completely different diseases in different people.
See here.
I would suggest you refrain from making idiotic remarks about subjects you have no clue about.

Definition of Vacation