'There is a Scientific Fraud Epidemic' (ft.com) 148
Rooting out manipulation should not depend on dedicated amateurs who take personal legal risks for the greater good. From a story on Financial Times: As the Oxford university psychologist Dorothy Bishop has written, we only know about the ones who get caught. In her view, our "relaxed attitude" to the scientific fraud epidemic is a "disaster-in-waiting." The microbiologist Elisabeth Bik, a data sleuth who specialises in spotting suspect images, might argue the disaster is already here: her Patreon-funded work has resulted in over a thousand retractions and almost as many corrections. That work has been mostly done in Bik's spare time, amid hostility and threats of lawsuits. Instead of this ad hoc vigilantism, Bishop argues, there should be a proper police force, with an army of scientists specifically trained, perhaps through a masters degree, to protect research integrity.
It is a fine idea, if publishers and institutions can be persuaded to employ them (Spandidos, a biomedical publisher, has an in-house anti-fraud team). It could help to scupper the rise of the "paper mill," an estimated $1bn industry in which unscrupulous researchers can buy authorship on fake papers destined for peer-reviewed journals. China plays an outsize role in this nefarious practice, set up to feed a globally competitive "publish or perish" culture that rates academics according to how often they are published and cited. Peer reviewers, mostly unpaid, don't always spot the scam. And as the sheer volume of science piles up -- an estimated 3.7mn papers from China alone in 2021 -- the chances of being rumbled dwindle. Some researchers have been caught on social media asking to opportunistically add their names to existing papers, presumably in return for cash.
It is a fine idea, if publishers and institutions can be persuaded to employ them (Spandidos, a biomedical publisher, has an in-house anti-fraud team). It could help to scupper the rise of the "paper mill," an estimated $1bn industry in which unscrupulous researchers can buy authorship on fake papers destined for peer-reviewed journals. China plays an outsize role in this nefarious practice, set up to feed a globally competitive "publish or perish" culture that rates academics according to how often they are published and cited. Peer reviewers, mostly unpaid, don't always spot the scam. And as the sheer volume of science piles up -- an estimated 3.7mn papers from China alone in 2021 -- the chances of being rumbled dwindle. Some researchers have been caught on social media asking to opportunistically add their names to existing papers, presumably in return for cash.
Self-limiting problem (Score:2, Insightful)
I think the reason there is such a "relaxed attitude" is that the problem will solve itself. People will just learn to ignore anything published by the Chinese. Citing a Chinese paper will just reduce your own credibility, regardless of what journal it's published in. If this hasn't happened yet, it will.
Re:Self-limiting problem (Score:5, Insightful)
People will just learn to ignore anything published by the Chinese.
That's wishful thinking. People will just ignore anything published, not just chinese sources if the scientific process gets discredited.
Re:Self-limiting problem (Score:5, Interesting)
No people will learn to ignore anything that gets published that doesn't match their world model. Oh wait that is already happening.
Re:Self-limiting problem (Score:4, Interesting)
That is clearly a bad solution that would deprive the world of the benefits produced by one of the most scientifically active countries on the planet.
The root cause here is incentives, not nationality. Science costs money, and anything that costs money needs either a profit motive, a charity motive, or taxpayer funding. As it stands, the profit motive is the primary motive funding most science, and it is extremely selective: only research that shows practical results gets the funding. Research that eliminates wrong theories is just as important, but doesn't give anything that anybody wants to pay for, so anyone who does THAT research winds up starving in the street.
The same goes for this proposed group of science police. Who is going to pay for that, and more importantly, WHY are they going to pay for that? Clearly, there is no way to profit off of that, so it will have to be charity funded or taxpayer funded.
So, that is what I propose, anyway: a government group of science police, in addition to a whole lot more government and/or charity funded science that doesn't consider it a failure when bad hypothesis are shown not to work, so long as there was good reason to try.
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This police force could be funded by having an associated TV show. It would be like CSI expect for real!
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I think that would have the exact opposite effect, the profit motive here would be to show there was fraud, since that would be more entertaining. If 9 times out of 10 nothing was dubious, then that would be a boring show.
Even if they did edit out the good science, that would give a false impression of how bad science was, there would give the impression to people that almost all science was bad, if show after show showed fraud in science. Just like CSI give you the impression that murder is everywhere wher
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Ok, Xi. Whatever you say. Considering China has still not provided a truthful accounting of the number of people infected and killed by covid, and that it destroyed the earliest examples of the virus, anything they say or claim should be taken with a shit ton of salt.
Speaking of accounting, how many people did you run over with tanks or gun down in
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How many people did the US kill in Iraq? Afghanistan? Libya? Over a thousand people are killed by police [statista.com] in the US every year. What point are you trying to make? And what does it have to do with scientific papers?
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The same goes for this proposed group of science police. Who is going to pay for that,
I don't know, Coast Guard?
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The second reason is the old "publish or perish" rule. In most of the world, it's sort of enforced by peers. In some parts of the world, it's more likely enforced or monitored by political
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Re:Self-limiting problem (Score:5, Interesting)
The core problem is that there's been an absolutely explosion in research productivity in the past 20 years, both legit AND fraudulent. Meanwhile, the number of reputable, legit journals have stayed roughly the same. The result is the legit journals getting absolutely swamped in submissions. They take a flame-thrower approach to sorting the submissions, which means that you only get your paper published in a strong journal if:
1. You win the journal lottery
2. Youre a member of a "favored" research group, which isn't supposed to be a thing but absolutely is.
3. You fabricate or plagiarize, thus betraying your field, dumping your honesty, your ethics, your self-esteem, and probably tanking your career because when/if it gets found, youre done.
4. You actually have groundbreaking research, which only happens once, maybe twice, in the lifetime of a researcher.
If you're an honest, legit, mid-teir researcher producing decent-but-not-worldshaking papers, you get the privilege of submitting them to the Q1 journals and enduring a string of rejections, working your way down the journal ladder hoping you win the lottery. Meanwhile, you're constantly second guessing yourself and trying to avoid dipping into predatory-journal territory where the publication will actually subtract from your CV rather than add to it.
In a balanced world, this would result in a sorting process that effectively ranks papers for impact. In reality, you wind up with top-tier journals that are constantly getting targeted by dishonest researchers, and a huge number of low-mid-tier journals that are dealing with a massive mix of good ones, soso-ones, and junk and fake papers.
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The core problem is that there's been an absolutely explosion in research productivity in the past 20 years,
Also the way the funding and jobs work selects for people who spam papers and "round up" results as it were to a better class of results. You can afford to not play that game if you're (a) an established professor or (b) as you say insanely lucky.
If you don't play the game, you find yourself out of a job. Many people choose the latter, trouble is that leaves nothing but the game players.
Thing is the e
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Racist brain finds incorrect pattern.
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The summary itself points out China has a disproportionately huge number of fraudulent papers submitted ...
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That doesn't mean the best or only solution is to wall off all of China.
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And btw, I have suffered because of a Chinese fake research .. spent maybe 3 to 4 months on it and wasted interns time trying to build on and reproduce something in one of their papers. Yet I am not bitter .. there's lots of good stuff coming from there too. The problem is there are a lot of bad individuals but its unfair to punish collectively.
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No, the problem is that it is self-perpetuating. Even these studies on scientific fraud are rife with problems since the funding institutions that they are dependent on requires headlines for further funding. If your study makes news headlines, it is 3x more likely to get future funding. There are a quite a few criteria from DEI to news to team size, to even the University it is associated with, all of which have literally nothing to do with the science but influence your likelihood of funding significantly
Re: Self-limiting problem (Score:2)
It's not just the Chinese though. Academic dishonesty happens every day at top US universities. Professors put their names on their students papers routinely, after not only not working on them but not understanding them. Professors take work from one student and give it to another student. Some professors have very fragile egos and will lie and cheat to get back at students they believe disrespected them, and nothing keeps those professors in check.
The whole system is corrupt.
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If you reject Al Gore's work, without explaining the last 20 years holding the hottest 12 ever recorded, YOU are the problem
As for Greta Thunberg, she has followed the science, which is irrefutable, and is acting as spokeswoman for a future, as opposed to you, arguing to "let them die".
Also an epidemic of articles on the topic. (Score:1)
\subject
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Sorts out who to target whence the camps open.
Way to go Scientific Community! (Score:2)
The scientific community finally decided to catch up with the rest of society and base most of their work on fraud! Fraud science for a fraud world run by fraud politicians doing fraudulent things to their citizens for massive personal gains! It's frauds all the way down! We're almost there. Just a little more and we can give up reality altogether!
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The Supreme Court agrees.
Put the institution in the firing line (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever a false paper is revealed, the university / lab / company for which the researchers worked should be given negative marks. All articles published should record how many negative marks the institution has against it. This would rapidly encourage them to address cultural issues leading to such misbehaviour, and to check the papers being published from their labs. If they fail to do anything about it, funding bodies will become ever less willing to offer them money...
Psychology == Scientific Fraud (Score:1)
There SHOULD BE no difference between an unreplicated paper and a false paper.
Until Psychology deals with that and TRIES to be a science, PSYCHOLOGY IS BUNK.
Quality department (Score:3)
Corporations that are subject to regulations often hire auditors. Some have an entire department dedicated to this purpose, that has a different reporting structure from the R&D or manufacturing departments. That way, when the manufacturing department boss tells their people "I don't care what it takes, I need 100 widgets per hour to make our numbers!" the quality auditors people do not report to that boss.
Do universities have something equivalent?
Re: Quality department (Score:3)
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Do universities have something equivalent?
Many papers do not come from universities. In fact most of the shitty papers in question do not come from universities. And those which do often come from universities that already have a shithouse reputation.
Well... (Score:2)
Publish or Perish (Score:1)
It turns out, they don't care what you publish.
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It turns out, they don't care what you publish.
Kind of reminds me of the Wall Street ratings agencies circa 2008. We know what that greedy ignorance resulted in.
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Wall street had very little to do with the REAL ESTATE FRAUD perpetrated by Banks and Accountancies, what happens when you let spoiled rich boys run the country
Wall Street had everything to do with packaging up that FRAUD to pass off to bought-and-paid-for ratings agencies who ranked complete dogshit as Grade-A+ premium investments.
We bailed out the banks who invested in CDOs because of Wall Street fuckery. You don't crash an economy because a housing market fell. You crash that economy by manufacturing an incredible amount of fraud that invested in dogshit lies driven by Wall Street greed, which also resulted in setting the insane precedent of Too Big To Fail,
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Oh, for F-s sake. GREED is the other word for CAPITALISM. if you want to get rid of greed, Capitalism has to go.
Not learning about human history, is another word for IGNORANCE.
Greed is a hell of a lot older than capitalism. Look at the main reasons empires rise, and fall. Unless humans solve for the Disease of Greed, we're likely to die right here on this rock forever addicted to it, with Greed being the epitaph of the human race.
Ammo to Anti-Science Crowd (Score:4, Insightful)
Predatory journals (Score:5, Informative)
Can't read the paywalled article, but it's Interesting that the summary doesn't mention predatory scientific journals. These journals will publish anything for a page fee (e.g., $500/page). These journals advertise that they have a review process but this is clearly not the case. For respected journals, the review process can take months or even up to a year.
The temptation for scientists is immense. Example: a colleague submitted one of our papers to a respected, long-established journal but it was rejected for what seemed like lame reasons. We had waited six months to get that verdict. Rather than go through that process again with another quality journal, he decided to send it to a journal I had never heard of, but which advertised a fast turnaround time. This journal was published by MDPI, based in India, which publishes hundreds of journals. By the time I had figured out this scam, the journal had already concluded their "review," accepted the paper and our payment (less than two weeks for the entire process).
Here's the thing -- this was a decent paper, written by a highly respected leader in his field. Since then, I've seen lots of excellent scientists publish solid papers in these lame journals. But, since these journals will publish anything from anybody, you need to be careful. Apparently their business model is working and the result is a polluted scientific literature. Beall's List — https://beallslist.net/ [beallslist.net] -- has a list of predatory publishers. Interestingly, Beale removed MDPI from the list, but warns authors to carefully consider submitting to their journals. See Wikipedia for details.
Starting to see a pattern (Score:5, Interesting)
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And I remember the Internet before the Web. Or more specifically, before commercialisation of the Web.
When the most significant measure is money, then the strongest behavioural response will be greed.
Slow science (Score:2)
Just learned about this, worth spreading:
http://slow-science.org/
This is what happens with pressure to publish (Score:3)
I often quote Goodhart's law: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
Researchers must publish or perish, whether they have something to publish or not.
Thus there is a strong incentive to publish poor quality (though non fraudulent) research just to get a publication out.
Then there is pressure to optimise your metrics, which is easier though fraud.
And if you have nothing publication worthy to publish, you have to get your publication material from somewhere,
hence the incentive for fraud.
What you see is an evolving system adapting to match the metrics it's designed to optimise.
Scientists are just people (Score:2)
They might be better equipped in a given domain, but ultimately the bell curve includes the same amount of detritus as any other group. Some will be dishonest, opportunistic, incompetent, and otherwise questionable - exactly the same as auto mechanics, medical doctors, and teachers. No group is immune. And no degree ensures competency. Having said that, the people to lead the charge against shitty scientists are capable, ethical scientists.
Meta publication needed? (Score:3)
Would a meta publication help this? A non-profit curation of believed-to-be-legit studies previously published in other journals. No submissions taken. I assume these exist? It might be helpful to have a multitude of these for geographic regions, to ensure diversity and to allow reputation to be built on a broader scale over time. Then you could have higher-level publications that further filter and conglomerate them into larger regions, and to blacklist publications that are breaking the rules.
Disclaimer: I don't even read scientific journals. Just thinking with keystrokes.
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European names (Score:2)
Re:It didn't start with CV1984, but got there quic (Score:4, Informative)
I just did a search and all the sources I found online confirmed that getting COVID was a greater risk to health than getting the vaccine.
Where is your evidence that the vaccine was more risky than the disease? Is it all from some fringe conspiracy-theory sites with no credibility?
I remember a while back there was an article published with an attention-getting title like "covid deaths from vaccinated patients now outnumber covid deaths from unvaccinated patients" leaving people with the impression that the vaccine killed more people than the disease did. That isn't what the data presented in the article said and the article even concluded by saying that getting vaccinated was still the safest option. What they did was a linguistic trick, where they made a true statement that was worded in a way to ensure that it was misinterpreted, and they only did that in the title to get attention.
It was a simple enough trick, they looked at the data and eliminated from it all people who got vaccinated and never got covid, and eliminated all people who got vaccinated and got covid but had only mild symptoms, and eliminated all people who got vaccinated, got covid, had severe symptoms but survived, and looked ONLY at people who got vaccinated, got covid, and died anyway. They compared that number to the number of people who never got vaccinated, got covid, and died. That comparison is meaningless. Even with numbers showing one greater than the other, that tells you absolutely nothing about how much the vaccine improved one's odds of surviving, and only tells you something about what percentage of the hospital-going population got vaccinated. But juggling the numbers this way produces confusion and allows you to say something that is true but make people THINK you said something ELSE, which was false (specifically, more people died from the vaccine than from covid - FALSE).
Specifically and relevantly they did NOT compare the set of people who got vaccinated and died, without ever getting COVID. that number was too tiny to even bother with and of course there were extraneous medical complications in every such case. But people read their conclusion thinking that is what they were talking about, when it was not.
Is that what you are thinking of, or do you have something else?
Or are you just spreading lies for fun?
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This is exactly the point of the article, that the scientific community has discredited itself so much that to find quality and factual scientific information is beyond the scientific community, and far beyond the average person, meaning people who are overly sceptical will never find quality or correct information.
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I just did a search and all the sources I found online confirmed that getting COVID was a greater risk to health than getting the vaccine.
It's impossible to evaluate your claimed results without knowing the query you used. But Google is also not really a good entrypoint to research information unless you mean you are searching using google scholar.
There is also a fundamental misunderstanding here. "Is COVID or the vaccine a higher risk?" is almost meaningless as a clinical question. It is like asking "Should the average person carry an extra scuba tank or bear spray?" The risks related to diving and bear attack are so localized to different
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Mod parent up.
I don't know many anti vaxxers, but I do know many parents that wondered why their kids needed the COVID shot _at all_ and wondered why "wait and see" was such a volatile issue. The vast vast vast majority of those same parents (9/10 or more) got the shot and a booster for themselves. I am among them, and wondered why I was a villain...
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Wait and see is a problem because unvaccinated kids are a hazard to the rest of the vaccinated kids. No vaccine is 100% effective, they always depend on herd immunity to work at their full potential. This is particularly a problem with kids because they're all unhygienic disease monsters.
This has been well covered by both the media in general and right here on slashdot. I remember learning it in school as well.
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Wait and see is a problem because unvaccinated kids are a hazard to the rest of the vaccinated kids. No vaccine is 100% effective, they always depend on herd immunity to work at their full potential. This is particularly a problem with kids because they're all unhygienic disease monsters.
This has been well covered by both the media in general and right here on slashdot. I remember learning it in school as well.
I will assume I'm not being villainized again. ;-) ;-) ;-) :-)
If the purported stories and stats on Slashdot were accurate, herd immunity was possible even with 100% of the anti vaxers opting out.
Also, considering so many friends and colleagues children _were_ vaccinated and still turned up positive, you're 100% correct about effectivity. Wait and see was to learn about health concerns for a population for which the vaccine wasn't "absolutely critical".
Then again, we all enjoy the benefit of hindsight right
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I'm not necessarily trying to villainize you here, I just find it frustrating that with all the info thats easily had out there people are still grossly ignorant on how vaccines stop disease.
If the purported stories and stats on Slashdot were accurate, herd immunity was possible even with 100% of the anti vaxers opting out
I'm calling bullshit on that, we never achieved proper herd immunity in this country precisely because of the anti vax movement and their misinformation.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/dis... [mayoclinic.org]
"It's estimated that 94% of the population must be immune to interrupt the chain of transmission."
We didn't get close and given that ch
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The only vaccine "withdrawn" from the market was J&J and that was due to it having an impact on women causing blood clots if they were on birth control.
This was the only vaccine made using traditional methods. Modern and pfizer vaccines have held up quite well to the test of time. They absolutely are safer for children even to this day. There was an inflammatory study talking about heart inflammation caused by the vaccine and completely ignored that it was greatly worse when caused by Covid itself.
Chi
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Let's be honest here, if these vaccines were as effective as, say, the Polio or Smallpox vaccine, we wouldn't be having this conversation
Yeah we would. It isn't like anti-vax was invented in 2020. People thought the smallpox vaccine would turn you into a cow. It's just been so long ago since we had the anti-vax conversation about either of those that we tend to forget that it was even had. But for everything, we have this conversation. You're trying to downplay the effectiveness of the COVID vaccine by attempting to omit actual history. Either intentionally or you just didn't know. But neither of those bode well for your argument.
there would probably be more than a 2-3% uptake on the latest boosters wouldn't you think?
I'm
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I'm just going to say, that sounds like some random number you pulled out your ass.
Except that I didn't and it's 3% [bloomberg.com]. Of course, if you hadn't cynically dismissed that fact and you'd had an open mind to other folks arguments, you might not have missed that. Hi pot, meet kettle.
You're trying to downplay the effectiveness of the COVID vaccine by attempting to omit actual history.
You have no idea what I'm "trying to do". You cannot read my mind, so stick to things you have actual insight into or data on, tough guy. You could ask, but you seem to have it all figured out on your own... (says you). I'm just curious, what actual history am I forgetting? Was the lack of effectiveness evinced by t
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You know what I had typed out this reply to you. But then I looked over everything and really here's the deal.
You aren't mentally well. You should go seek help. The reason why I say this, is not too long ago during the pandemic, someone who sounded very much like you blew themselves up on 2nd Avenue downtown and took some parts of some buildings with him too. Now the reasons and what not were slightly different but it was this perception of being wronged by some larger figure that's ill defined and vagu
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perception of being wronged by some larger figure that's ill defined and vaguely manifest.
Offenses against individuals and individual rights during the pandemic were real. Gaslighting is a pretty weak tactic to confront real evidence of abuse of power. Is fake concern for my mental health going to really distract anyone from you weak assertions that wrongs of the pandemic years were "vaguely manifest" ? Let's see who folks believe, you or their lying memories, eh?
You know I live in Tennessee
No, I didn't know, but I'm sorry for the rest of the folks who live in the beautiful state.
I wouldn't label any of them authoritarian.
I would. They threw people out of their jo
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"I would. They threw people out of their jobs, canceled professional licenses, screwed up the schools, and started many fights over specific pandemic policies like masks and vaccines. They could have asked. They could have counted on the magic vaccine to work for people that chose to take it."
January 31, 2020 [cdc.gov]: "The Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Alex Azar, declares the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak a public health emergency."
The first vaccines weren't availab
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Your tribalist paradigm and stereotyping are showing. Did you know that every person is an individual and capable of making individual decisions? You seem to believe that every individual who disagrees with whatever your position i
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Don't assume that everyone who disagrees with you is a member of some homogeneous evil cabal. That would be crazy.
Okay, I won't. However, as a heuristic, I'd assert they are more likely to be grouped together. If I fire scattershot at someone on a condescending bitch-mode trip, perhaps I might be forgiven?
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Smallpox anti-vax in 1901 [npr.org]. That was before the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 or the modern drug development protocols, so the smallpox vaccines did have significant risks.
Legal justification: "The battle between the government and the vocal anti-vaccinators came to a head in a landmark 1902 Supreme Court decision, where the Supreme Court upheld the right of a state to order a vaccination for its population during an epidemic to protect the people from a deva
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so the smallpox vaccines did have significant risks.
Most vaccines do. One just hopes that the benefits outweigh the risks. The trouble is that folks aren't allowed to decide for themselves when the government picks a vaccine and mandates it. The authoritarians cannot be satisfied that those who want the vaccine's protection can take the vaccine. Instead, they want to be able to cast any refuseniks as "terrorists" trying to kill your grandma with their weaponized illness.
Legal justification
Legal justifications are rationalizations, they aren't always ethical arguments or valid
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u mad bro
You know, anti-vaxxers are the real and widespread perpetrators of fraud. WTF is your beef against teachers?
No beef. Matter of fact, my parents were high school teachers...
Quoting myself from another post: I don't know many anti vaxxers, but I do know many parents that wondered why their kids needed the COVID shot _at all_ and wondered why "wait and see" was such a volatile issue. The vast vast vast majority of those same parents (9/10 or more) got the shot and a booster for themselves. I am among them, and wondered why I was a villain...
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Re:It didn't start with CV1984, but got there quic (Score:5, Insightful)
You're LOSING, lockdown-fucks. Slowly but surely, everything you've done is getting reversed, being seen for the lie it always was, and turning against you.
What in earth are you going on about? Losing what? What' on earth is getting reversed? You sound like a crazy person, move on with your life like the rest of America has.
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What are some of her fascist policies? I’m genuinely curious.
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https://regs.health.ny.gov/sit... [ny.gov]
If Trump tried this the world would have been on fire.
Tl;dr: tried this through regulation when she couldn't get a similar bill passed (NY AB416), she gave herself the power to lock up anyone because they might be sick with something based on uh stuff. No trial or medical facts required. The suspicion and feeling they might be is sufficient.
You can read the details but it's all pretty clear. Yes this is proposed and she got slammed for it but it says where her head is at.
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You haven't read the current definition - "facist" is now defined as
"anyone the mob decides needs bad-mouthing".
Brett
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Lol, how many vaccines are emergency response workers already required to receive before being employed? Being fired for not taking a vaccine is a leopards ate my face moment. You championed “at will” employment so lazy employees could be fired for any reason. Well here is them being fired for any reason moment and now it’s suddenly a problem.
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Wait, I thought *any reason* was, you know, ANY REASON. Now, suddenly you want to start talking about "what reasons". Ok, let's start with discrimination, then, or whistleblower protections, perhaps?
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Parent keeps trying to say that Covid vaccine was experimental, completely ignoring the reality that the one vaccine that was made using traditional methods (J&J) was actually the one that caused the most problems. Statistically it was still a better bet than catching the virus without any protection. The RNA based vaccines were absolutely tested to the tune of hundreds of thousands of people before being given to those emergency response workers they clearly don't care about as they were some of the ha
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The RNA vaccine is no longer present in your body after 30 days. The resulting immunity fades after 6 months. You're attaching an arbitrary timeline to say something is safe. We'll gain more knowledge as time progresses sure. Calling it experimental when they've been experimenting with it for many years is not operating in good faith for an argument. Work on it started way back during SARS.
The reality is that over 100k people tested the vaccine before emergency responders ever got to it. I'm saying charact
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"So yes, the RNA vaccine was experimental and rolling it out on the largest vaccine rollout in history is beyond irresponsible."
I would say that having a potential vaccine and not providing it would have been far more irresponsible. Report on clinical trial [nejm.org] of the Pfizer-Biontech vaccine: "Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine". "A total of 43,548 participants underwent randomization, of whom 43,448 received injections: 21,720 with BNT162b2 and 21,728 with placebo. There were 8 cases of
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Your definition of fascism is what was commonly accepted and taught for 70 years but unfortunately "fascism" has been recently redefined to just mean anyone who loves their country (nationalists). I'm not exaggerating:
"1- often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forci
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You sound triggered. Perhaps you need a therapy dog? It might help with your anger. Calling me a communist is also hilarious, you have any other 1950s era insults ready?
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Example? No one was "arbitrarily" tossed out of work.
forcing lockdown policies
A health measure which has been done since time in memoriam. It's literally where we get the word quarantine from, a forced lock down of ships entering a harbor.
canceling outdoor events,
Another health measure. People gathered together will transmit viral infections [salon.com] and some may even die [thedailybeast.com].
mask mandates
Oh the horror of wearing a mask for a few minutes when s
Re: It didn't start with CV1984, but got there qui (Score:1)
"A health measure which has been done since time in memoriam. It's literally where we get the word quarantine from, a forced lock down of ships entering a harbor."
Well quarantine was, and is, locking down sick people. Locking down healthy people is quite unusual or even unique to covid in history. I guess the Torah, arguing that women menstruating should be kept out the city for seven days, is the only time I read about locking down healthy people.
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It used to be common, that people infected with germs showed well observable symptoms first and only then turned contagious. This was the other way round with Covid 19 and therefore required unusual measures. Please tell me you are the last remaining one on earth who has never heard about this. SMH
Re: It didn't start with CV1984, but got there qu (Score:1)
I just say that the comment saying that quarantaine for healthy people is something not unsual that, according to known history, is in fact unusual. I did not say if it was right or wrong. I did not even share my point of view in that comment.
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Not exactly "begging them to come back", rather an offer to correct their military service records to replace "other than honorable" discharge status. "It also instructs soldiers looking to return to service to contact an Army, Army Reserve, or National Guard recruiter. ... The Army separated 1,903 active duty soldiers for COVID-19 vaccine refusal. Letters were sent to approximately 1,900."
There's also th
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How about reading the actual letter?
I did read it. It sounds like you didn't. The main gist of it was to tell folks that had received anything other than an honorable discharge that they could request a records change to prevent them being screwed over later by an potential employer doing a background check.
It does nothing at all but inform separated personell of their right to appeal.
No, that's not what it says. You are desperate to misrepresent anything you can, aren't you? Nowhere in the letter does it use the word "appeal". It states very clearly that anyone who was "separated" due to CV19 policy can request a recor
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You sound like you are very proud, because not all people following your advice died. Think about it ....
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you won't be a Rittenhouse
I'll just remind you that Rittenhouse walked genius, and for good reason: it was self-defense. Also, he was carrying an AR-15, not a 9MM, not that you'd know the difference, dipshit.
Medicine beats rhetoric
You haven't been paying attention. Medicine has become political rhetoric. It's supposed to be science and skepticism, not politics, but that's where it seems to be bolted onto our society. So much for "do no harm"... However, history says Communists will weaponize any part of society against it's political enemies.
Perhaps you will bring your 9mm popgun to take over.
Hell no. I wo
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Rittenhouse used a strawman buyer, a felony all by itself, and no one approached him with a weapon UNTIL he murdered an unarmed sandwich bag thrower.
Uh huh, I'm sure. He walked, remember?
Of course I know the difference between a .38 and a .223.
I seriously doubt you do, Mr GunPoser. You can't even keep your calibers straight. I mentioned 9mm, not .38. A 9mm bullet is smaller than a .38 caliber bullet, 9.01mm versus 9.65mm in diameter.
Fact, in a confrontation with the army, neither will keep you alive.
The army themselves use .223, genius. The .223 Rittenhouse used kept him alive. Folks aren't facing the army, they are facing criminals and "fiery, but mostly peaceful" protesters. Also, if you think small groups with nothing but small arms cannot take on larger and better equipp
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Yes I pay taxes to the government and get services in return. I drive on maintained roads and enjoy protection by police and the fire department. If you dislike the government so much you could always move to a place with less government. I hear they’re splendid places to live.
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I hear they’re splendid places to live.
Yes, they are. That's why folks are, in general, moving to Texas and running away from California [pods.com]. I wonder why they don't appreciate Commiefornia's "government paradise" of high taxes, high crime, clueless policies, and lying lockdown-loving politicians?