Remember the Daily Mail story about the man with the car in his lounge? The headline suggested he had converted his living room into a garage whereas he had actually converted his garage into a luxury living room for his car.
But then this is the Daily Mail where you expect that sort of thing. Take the facts and derive a conclusion that has nothing to do with the facts and publish it. It's tabloid hack-rag standard fayre. It doesn't really matter, it's just entertainment. Nobody expects the Mail to apply the same sort of rigour to the words they publish as, say, a prestigious scientific journal. The Daily Mail, like all newspapers, has no ambition to take a place on the dry and dusty shelves of a scientific library.
Through Dick Puddlecote's link tank, there is a story showing how one of the most prestigious of scientific journals shows every sign of wanting to oust the Daily Mail from its rightful place as a peddler of made-up sensationalist tales. Those dry and sombre shelves in the serious library of science no longer satisfy the editors. They want action, adventure, pictures of celebrities in low-cut dresses taken from every angle until they secure the coveted nipple shot. They want the speed and excitement of booze-fuelled Daily Mail writing. Science and experimental rigour is all very well but the Mail gets by very nicely just by making stuff up.
Now it seems the American Journal of Physiology: Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology wants some of that action. They have published a paper whose conclusions bear no relation to the reported results and which were never possible to reach from the experimental design. It's there, in print, published as a tribute to that journal's desire to be known in the future as a tabloid hack-rag. I expect they'll rename it 'The Sunday Science' any day now.
It's the journal's escape from the dusty shelves and into the wild, wild world of Hello and Cosmopolitan and the Sunday Sport and men's magazines such as 'Brrm' and 'Trousers'. They don't want to be taken seriously any more. They want to publish papers about New York yellow cabs found on the Moon with drivers who have held their breath for a decade, about huge boobs and their effect on the lungs beneath (with pictures on page three), about a race of people descended from Atlanteans who have learned to breathe under water and about women who can breathe with their mouth full for extended periods. All of which would be just as credible and as scientifically valid as the one they have now published.
That ridiculous paper makes every other paper in that journal look suspect by association. Science would now have more credibility if it appeared in the Beano. Publication of such obvious tabloid nonsense is an embarrassment to science as a whole. The editors of that journal should resign and seek new positions with the Sun or the Mirror, although they'd have to learn to be a bit more scrupulous with their editing.
The harm caused by the smokophobes is not limited to smokers. Well, okay, we all knew that. They have closed pubs and cafes, they have wrecked the social lives of non-smokers as well as their smoking friends, they have forced guilt onto parents of children who die of SIDS by pretending that smoking causes it, when there is no evidence of this at all, they have invented second and third hand smoke to terrify and subjugate the masses, and much more. We already knew we were dealing with exceptionally unpleasant people who have no regard for the collateral damage they inflict while chasing their personal agenda.
Now they have reduced scientific journals to the level of the Daily Mail. Those journals were the one place where you would expect to find at least some unbiased truth, where you would expect to find dispassionate discussion of facts with no sensationalism. No longer.
Get your facts from the Sunday Sport in future. They are as reliable as a scientific journal now and considerably cheaper.
I never thought I'd see the day when a reputable journal would descend to the level of the gutter press, but here it is.
Maybe the end is nigh after all.
12 comments:
“ ….. they have forced guilt onto parents of children who die of SIDS by pretending that smoking causes it, when there is no evidence of this at all, ….”
In fact, quite the opposite. The steepest and greatest increase in the number of cot-deaths occurred at precisely the same time (and at precisely the same rate) as the number of people smoking was undergoing its sharpest-ever decline. The correlation in the figures is astonishing and, were “smoking” not the subject matter, serious scientific study would have been carried out to discover how children were being so well protected, so that future ones could be similarly safeguarded.
How ironic is it that those who use the “for the cheeldren” line in order to further their own agenda could well turn out to be the ones responsible for the deaths of the very “cheeldren” they profess to be concerned for?
I think it accurately reflects the education, outlook and abilities of the researchers involved. I would hesitate to call them scientists.
but how do you FEEEELl! about the results.
excitement of booze-fuelled Daily Mail writing
Nothing actually wrong with booze=fuelled writing per se.
The prostitution of Science continues. How much longer can it be before real scientists speak up?
The trouble is, real scientists are generally hopeless in the Media world. The ones with a flair for communication tend to be the ones who sell out, (with a few notable exceptions).
Presentation before substance. Funding before truth. Success before integrity.
It's a slow-burn disaster. One day, historians will look back at this era with fascinated horror.
they think the end is nigh? it is now that i'm in charge. h'earthquakes hardly h'ever happen in the houses of parliament...or so it's said in these parts...but i can't help noticing how earthquakes, volcanic explosions, and tsunamis keep occurring on the eleventh day of the month, or on a day of the month which is a multiple of eleven - and these disasters usually seem to affect major conurbations of western powers and their allies...maybe someone doesn't like us? conspiracy theorists on the internet reckon that it's either god doing the dirty on us...or that it's the oil companies drilling for methane hydrates and causing submarine landslides on the ocean-floor. well, call me crazy (and paranoid), but i'm personally of the opinion that some people are not very happy with our performance as a global western government, and that they are deliberately blowing-out the 'fire-ice' as some form of political protest. now, the question is this: how should we handle this delicate ecological situation? well, after due deliberation and work-shopping in my garden-shed, i have ascertained that there are three clear alternatives:
a) leave the matter in the hands of our 'intelligent' services, and do nothing whatsoever.
b) (to be on the safe side) cease all political, financial and military intervention in every state around the world, whether it be trouble-making friend, or foe - and return all lands which we have seized and colonized by force.
c) gradually cease all political, financial and military intervention around the world state by state, and gradually return all lands which we have seized and colonized by force, state by state - until the earthquakes stop and we can identify our enemy.
obviously, if we choose option 'c' and we methodically withdraw military, political and financial intervention from afghanistan and pakistan right through to places such as south africa, ivory coast, libya, northern ireland, and the falklands...and we're only left with the rock of gibraltar...and a volcanic eruption blasts our westminster offices into orbit...we'll never be able to determine exactly whether it was the whole bloody world which hated us, or whether it was really the just the barbary macaques all along...or the possibly the cia doing false-flagellation...or maybe the cia infiltrating the barbary macaques...? and oh dear, i suppose we'd have to appease the feminists and the lefties to be absolutely certain of carrying out a proper controlled experiment...
mmm...it's a bit of a tricky one...i don't know...ermmm...let's have a referendum...yes, that's it...now, all i have to do is make-up my mind what the question will be, and choose whether the referendum will be decided by the 'alternative vote' system, or 'first-past-the-post'...?
see you all in the after-life folks.
wow...great minds think alike dave
By the date of this posting I would deduce that you did not become selected to be taken up in the highly publicized prediction of Saturday's rapture and are stuck here on earth with the rest of us, awaiting our final fate and descent into tribulation, hell and damnation. As such, I would predict we will only see more distortions and lies presented as truth in the satanic tomes falsely labled as science journals. It's the devil having a go at us and forcing lies into truth, our tribulation being forced to make a decision as to what is true and sticking to that and the consequences, or taking the easier course of feigning belief in the lies so as to fit in and avoid punishment for being nonconformist, the ultimate punishment for being noncomformist eventually being that of beheading of course. Welcome to the boat we're all on as it slowly keeps sinking.
many thanks for your reassuring and comforting message, anonymous - during a cataclysmic event such as we are currently experiencing, it's always good to have someone around who can keep a cool head and crack off a few hearty jokes. incidently, i wouldn't like a cheery chap of your optimistic nature to go out/under/up* (*delete as appropriate) maliciously misinformed by neurotic nutters like davy doolittle (dr) - the catastrophes we are witnessing are not of a terrorist causality, but are, in fact, being triggered by fundamentally bonkers global-warming scientits, who, due to making one simple arithmetical error in their original calculations, have vastly over-egged the climate-changing effects of co2 emissions, and, happening upon the serendipity that methane is a far more wicked and deadly greenhouse gas than any other compound wafting about in the earth's atmosphere, are now frantically blowing-out the world's methane hydrate reserves in a desperate attempt to raise mean planetary temperatures by between about 20 and 30 degrees celsius - a process basically designed to:
a) make actual metereological readings fit the projected results spewed-out by their cumulatively innacurate computer-generated model
b) to save face
and
c) to exterminate the human race lest any clever bugger unearth their fuck-up.
now readers of this right-wing blog may well point to this sorry scenario as a cast-iron argument against granting government scientists unconditional salaries which are not related to performance (instead of, for example, making wages seasonally-adjusted and fahrenheit-linked...), but the chilling truth is...that the scientists who made the ignitial bollox-up were paid such a pecuniary pitance that they were forced to moonlight, and were engaged in astronomically-complex purple-and-green-sky research into a vital and revolutionary new form of super-strength lsd, which was to be made available free on the nhs to ailing creative artists suffering from aesthetic constipation - sadly the unfortunate boffins were so zapped after their nocturnal endeavours that the inevitable occurred and one sunlit spring morning one of the poor sods added two-and-two together and got an amanita muscaria toadstool which in turn magically mushroomed into the figure 451, thus accidentally laying the theoretical foundations for hypothetical global-warming and interglacial cyclical socialism, both of which were eventually approved, adopted, and implemented on a largely unsuspecting and innocent world...
...so, whilst i disagree with dr davy doolittle's findings in respect of cause, i nevertheless still reach the ultimate conclusion that we're all totally and utterly fucked up the fucking bastard jaxi.
pb
03:41
typical of pinkwinkel propoganda - making excuses for those renegade leftwing-nutjob-mutant-labrats, just as he usually does, the commie-chemist-c-c-c-condenser-in-chief. what he's failing to mention are the heroics performed by scientists loyal to david cameron's government, who are right now trying their damnedest to clean up this eco-mess - namely by setting-off huge volcanic eruptions, which release dust into the atmosphere, in order to block out the sunlight and reduce average global temperatures. it's a known fact that this works. these are very brave men, i tell you...i would imagine they are pumping water down into the depths of the craters to effect adiabatic decompression and subsequent rock-melt...of course, they could be employing a far more sophisticated approach, which roughly entails lobbing a nuke into the bitch...and believe me, they're so committed to their profession and craft that they're not even demanding to be paid overtime. salt-of-the-bloody-earth and true-blue to-the-core. my only criticism of the government's handling of the situation being that prime minister cameron and president obama must soon publicly acknowledge that we are currently engaged in a full-scale meteorological and tectonic war against the mad pinko professors - further delay of such an announcement could lead to our esteemed political leaders being accused of covering-up the emerging apocalypse, and being held complicit in its precipitation. but back to business now, let's go save the world - let's go blow some more cones guys. spitzenspaß!
01:21
mightn't this contravene anti-smoking regulations?
01:29
oh shut up boy. jesus wept, haven't you ever sparked-up a volcano before, you dumb limey pussy?
oh yeah...i remember this cute li'l old backwater state...which part of america is it in now? and so curious aswell...what with with it having two capitals...do we have to visit them both, hun?
Post a Comment