A short time ago, in a Universe remarkably similar to our own, a team of researchers investigated racial differences in cognitive skills and concluded, with high degrees of certainty and precision, that the correlation between race and intelligence is zero. They submitted their results to a journal called Science, which is remarkably similar to the journal called Science in our own Universe. The paper was accepted for publication, but the editors saw fit to issue this public statement:
We were concerned that the forces that want to downplay the differences between the races as well as the need for racial segregation would seize on these results to advance their agenda. We decided that the benefit of providing the results to the scientific community was worthwhile.
Which of the following best captures the way you feel about that statement?
A. Bravo to the editors for advancing the cause of truth, even if it might be misused.
B. Boo to the editors for even thinking about suppressing the truth, even if the truth might be misused.
C. WHAT?!?!? Since when is a failure to share the editors’ political priorities a “misuse” in the first place?
D. Both B and C.
E. Other (please elaborate).
My vote is for D. It is outrageously wrong for the editors to even consider using the resources of their journal to promote their private political agenda. It is doubly wrong for them to even consider doing so by suppressing a paper they would otherwise accept. And it is triply wrong for them to even consider imposing on the owners and readers of the journal to support a political agenda that some of those owners and readers will no doubt find deplorable.
I happen to be one of those who deplore the expressed agenda, but that has nothing to do with my point here. The outrage would be exactly as great if the editors were focused on protecting capitalism instead of segregation.
Now let’s come back to our own Universe, where the editors of Science (the real Science) accepted a paper suggesting that a large fraction of the population might already have a sort of pre-immunity to Covid 19, and somehow saw fit to issue the following statement:
We were concerned that forces that want to downplay the severity of the pandemic as well as the need for social distancing woud seize on the results to suggest that the situation was less urgent. We decided that the benefit of providing the model to the scientific community was worthwhile.
As I said, the two Universes are eerily similar. The statements made by the editorial boards in both Universes seem about equally outrageous to me.
The real-world editors, if they cared what I thought, might want to respond that my analogy fails because “the need for racial segregation” is a political stance, whereas “the need for social distancing” is a scientific one. If so, they’d simply be wrong. Biologists have no particular insight into whether people would be happier in a world with both a little more Covid and a few more hugs. If any group is uniquely qualified to estimate the terms of that tradeoff, it’s the economists — but I wouldn’t want the editors of an economics journal making this kind of call either.
I’m glad that the editors did the right thing. I’m appalled they even considered doing the wrong thing, and concerned that this means they might do the wrong thing in the future, and might have done so in the past. It is not okay to suppress truth in the furtherance of a political agenda. It is not okay to presume that all good people share in your agenda, or to co-opt other people’s resources in order to advance it.
(Hat tip to David Friedman, whose blog made me aware of this.)
I agree with you in principle, though I give the editors a little more of a pass here. They may be admitting to a “crime” they did not actually commit simply as a defensive measure against those who would hammer them for publishing. Remember that we are on the heels of the Uhlig debacle after all and these editors may accurately conclude that they face reprisals should they not respond proactively.
I sympathize with D, but it seems a bit harsh,and a little A should be thrown in as well. While it might not seem to be especially praiseworthy to just do your job, in this sometimes disappointing world it does deserve a little praise.
My version of B would be more that it is regrettable that there would be a temptation, but denying the temptation was there would itself be dishonest.
So, essentially E: I am glad they thought “the benefit of providing the model to the scientific community was worthwhile” and saddened that this seems to be only a marginal consideration.
“We were concerned that the forces that want to downplay the differences between the races as well as the need for racial segregation would seize on these results to advance their agenda.”
Their world has forces, seen as subversive and anti science, that try to downplay the scientific need for racial segregation. This means that the scientific need for racial segregation is widely accepted in their universe. We know there is no scientific basis for this. The forces in our universe that want to downplay that need are the forces of science. They have somehow come to the opposite conclusion in the other universe.
“The real-world editors, if they cared what I thought, might want to respond that my analogy fails because “the need for racial segregation” is a political stance, whereas “the need for social distancing” is a scientific one.”
No, the analogy fails because the accepted view of science is wrong in the other universe. There is no scientific case to be made for racial segregation. There is no need. Their universe promotes as science that which has no scientific basis. The science is right in our universe – social distancing will reduce the spread of the infection. As you point out, that does not necessarily mean we should do it, but there is a scientific need if you want to reduce infection rate. This is a fundamental difference. In our universe the publishers are trying to combat people who deny science, in their universe it is to combat people who promote science.
We know that people misuse science to promote their political agenda. We know that many people do this with the science of Covid-19. It is predictable that those with a loud voice and far reach will take this paper out of context and claim that it is fact. We have lots of evidence for this. They cite quacks as authorities, they promote fake cures, they select only that which can be twisted to promote their cause. Surely I don’t need to provide examples, but I can if anyone really needs them.
The paper uses a simple model to estimate herd immunity given some assumptions. These are not intended to be realistic (50% with normal activity, 25% with half and 25% with double.) It is to illustrate that this can reduce the threshold for herd immunity. We know that some people will use this to misinform people about herd immunity in the real world.
If the journal publishes, they have good reason to believe this will be a consequence. Does the information in the paper justify this? Maybe they should ask for more realistic estimates of mobility, or is it important enough to put out as it is?
Does a scientific journal have a responsibility to consider public interest? if not a responsibility, should it do so at all? I think it is reasonable for a responsible publisher to ask these questions, but it is a close call. there are very few situations that should prevent publishing.
Journals are sometimes publishing Covid related papers before peer review. I don’t think that is the case here, but in those cases it is entirely reasonable to take each paper individually.
One example is this paper by Gomes et al, which discussed the same issues back in May.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.27.20081893v3.full.pdf+html
Also, they did not really issue that as a public statement. It was discussed on the editors blog.
Public statement can mean any statement made in public, but when the statement is “issued” I think the meaning is of an official statement of great importance made by a body, such as a press release, statement or announcement. That was not the case here.
For the avoidance of confusion it would be cleared to say they said or wrote that, rather than that they issued a statement.
Also, you have the papers mixed up. The one the quote was about was reducing herd immunity threshold due to heterogeneity in the population, nothing to do with pre-existing immunity.
The pre-existing immunity paper from science was this one:
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/08/04/science.abd3871
They found some reactivity to SARS-Cov-2 from blood samples from before the pandemic. They say:
“it is plausible to hypothesize that pre-existing cross-reactive HCoV CD4+ T cell memory in some donors could be a contributing factor to variations in COVID-19 patient disease outcomes, but this is at present highly speculative.”
There have been other papers with similar findings, such as this from Nature:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2598-9
“However, the presence of S-cross-reactive T cells in a sizable fraction of the general population may affect the dynamics of the current pandemic, and has important implications for the design and analysis of upcoming COVID-19 vaccine trials.”
All in all, it seems good news from the Covid-19 perspective, but nothing conclusive yet.
If journal editors make just a few more comments like that, then the people on the political right will have no reason to respect peer-reviewed papers at all, and consider the journals to be equal to any other news outlet or blog with their own agenda. I suppose many people have already gotten to that point, but comments like that would convert people who aren’t sure.
David Grayson (#5): I completely agree that a few comments like this can go a long way toward undermining public confidence in science. But (perhaps naively) I don’t see why this should affect people on the right any more or less than it affects people on the left.
Reminds me of another universe, called Harvard, in their year 2005
A.D. Where a prominent member received treatment more extreme than
B, actually excommunicated, for suggesting a line of research banned
by the lords of thought, on grounds it might be misused.
Yes, science journals are politicized. Some have published support for Black Lives Matter. A couple have published phony papers trashing hydroxychloroquine, only to retract them later. Hardly any dare publish anything on race and IQ.
“There is no scientific case to be made for racial segregation.”
This is a strange statement. Racial segregation and integration have an assortment of positive and negative effects. It is within the realm of social science to study those effects. How one values those effects is a matter of opinion.
My guess is that the Science journal probably would refuse to publish a paper on the benefits of racial segregation.
#8 “A couple have published phony papers trashing hydroxychloroquine, only to retract them later.”
Only one, actually.
There is a list of retracted Covid-19 papers at retraction watch. there are 31 as of July 27.
https://retractionwatch.com/retracted-coronavirus-covid-19-papers/
Most are nothing to do with hydroxycjhloroquine (HQ)or other therapies.
Of those that are, we have a French and a Korean study finding positive outcomes -both are pre-prints before peer review and they say they now wish to share results after formal publication, no specific reason given for the retraction.
All the other therapy retractions are linked to Surgisphere – a data supply company that several researchers have used to provide data from hospitals around the world. The Lancet paper had “purportedly analysed electronic health records gathered on 96,000 patients in 671 hospitals across six continents. But critics soon raised questions about oddities in the data, and asked for more details on its origins.” Surgisphere were unwilling to share or cooperate with an audit of the data, therefore the authors could not be certain of the quality of the data. The withdrawn papers resulting from this are:
-the lancet study showing no benefits from HQ,
-A New England J of medicine paper showing no negative effect from ACE inhibitors,
-comment articles based on these (which have been replaced with new versions not using the retracted papers)
-2 papers claiming positive outcomes from Ivermectin (an anti parasite drug).
The problem was the rush to publish. Short-cuts were taken which sacrificed accuracy for speed. With hindsight, we can see this was a wrong choice.
These were in no way phony papers, but they should not have been published without the checks.
Overall, we have 2 retracted papers with positive outcomes from HQ and one with negative outcomes.
Retracted papers are science working. Mistakes are noticed and removed.
We also have 2 large double blind, randomised controlled trials showing no benefits of HQ in the regimes used, and also no evidence of cardiac toxicity.
“It is within the realm of social science to study those effects.”
Show me the studies demonstrating the need for segregation as clearly as the science on social distancing reducing the spread of infection.
#6. ” I don’t see why this should affect people on the right any more or less than it affects people on the left.”
Yes, it is funny , that. Why is this? My theory is that people on the right are more threatened by science. Sure, the left still indulges in science denial over things like GMO’s and nuclear power. But the right is threatened much more by things requiring action by everyone. It threatens their view that there are just individuals, and no such thing as society. So when science reveals that there are some problems that just cannot be solved by individual action, they either have to shed their world view, or accept that they are fine with their actions causing problems for others, or deny the science.
So in this instance, your are indeed being incredibly naive if you think those on the left would use this as evidence to support their distrust of science as much as those on the right. The left uses other things.
I am sure it cannot possibly have escaped your notice that most of the Covid-19 science denial has been from those on the right.
The anti-vax movement is interesting. Years ago it was more a trendy-lefty, natural granola sort of thing. Recently the right has moved in and made it a freedom thing. Expect bad repercussions from this. It would be fine if they accepted the science and argued against vaccines anyway. However, from the track record we can confidently predict this will not be the case. We are seeing it now with Covid-19. A recent poll found slightly more than 80% of Democrats would get a Covid vaccine, whilst slightly fewer than 60% of republicans would.
David Grayson recognizes this in his comment, that is is really only those ion the right who will find this gives them ammunition.
It is reasonable to point out the hypocrisy of condemning anti stay-at-home protests as spreading Covid-19, whilst doing the opposite for BLM protests. However, there is a fundamental difference. The pro BLM protest advocates are generally not denying the science. They are doing exactly what we here have argued for all along – weigh the pros and cons. One example is an open letter from medical professionals in support of the BLM protests. They specifically recognize the risk and suggest means to reduce them. Neverthless, in their opinion the protests should continue.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Jyfn4Wd2i6bRi12ePghMHtX3ys1b7K1A/view
E. It was not “wrong” for editors of Science either thinking about not publishing results that conflicts with their political agenda or actually not publishing the results.
My answer is predicated on my belief that:
a) Science (the journal) is a private enterprise.
b) Science has finite resources and so must make editorial decisions regarding what to publish and what not to publish.
c) Science must compete in a free and competitive marketplace for publishing scientific ideas and results.
e) The editors were acting in accordance with the journal’s policy as set by the owners.
Readers are free to read another journal if they feel the editors are imposing a political viewpoint on them that they are unwilling to have imposed on them.
If the editors have imposed their own personal political viewpoint on the journal that is a violation of the policy set by the owners then the owners are free to fire them.
Anyone is free to start their own journal and run it in such a manner that no such political viewpoint interference occurs (If that is in fact possible in the real world of science publication). This is analogous to anyone who thinks businesses are underpaying women by 30% is free to start a business which pays women 30% more than what the existing market pays them.
I might be inclined to say the editors committed a wrong if they made claims that their publication decisions were based entirely on the scientific integrity of the work and was devoid of political considerations and were therefore lying about their actions. But, I don’t think any such claims were ever made. In fact, the owners of Science, the AAAS has the following as part of it’s mission statement: Promote the responsible use of science in public policy. We can argue about what constitutes “responsible use in public policy” but it seems clear to me the Science and the AAAS was telling us upfront that politics matters to them and they are willing to act on their politics.
I was referring to these two retractions of highly-promoted papers in leading medical journals.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-lancet-retracts-hydroxychloroquine-studies-covid-19/
“Science (the journal) is a private enterprise.”
Okay, but let’s all understand that it is a politically leftist enterprise. In any editorial opinion on government spending, control, environmentalism, racism, sexism, Trump, etc, they predictable come down the side of the Left. You never find a right-wing opinion.
“The pro BLM protest advocates are generally not denying the science.”
They certainly are. Your linked open letter is filled with assertions that are contradicted by the science.
“It would be fine if they accepted the science and argued against vaccines anyway.”
Many are. There are a lot of scientific and medical experts who are skeptical about a COVID-19 vaccine.
@Roger (11)
“Okay, but let’s all understand that it is a politically leftist enterprise. In any editorial opinion on government spending, control, environmentalism, racism, sexism, Trump, etc, they predictable come down the side of the Left. You never find a right-wing opinion.”
Agreed, let’s understand that. Let’s even be disappointed with the lack of ideological diversity. But should we be outraged? As in Dr. Landsburg’s statement:
“It is outrageously wrong for the editors to even consider using the resources of their journal to promote their private political agenda.”
#11 Roger. I was also talking about those, but only one was about HQ. Both were due to concerns over Surgisphere data. Only the Lancet one concerned hydroxychloroqine. The other was about ACE inhibitors and found no adverse effects.
What has happened is that there were two papers using Surgisphere data, one in the Lancet and one in NEJM. Both were retracted, but only one was about HQ.
At about the same time a different paper of a controlled trial was also published in the NEJM. This found no benefit as a prophylaxis after exposure, but also no serious negative effects. It was not examining HQ as a therapy. This paper has not been retracted.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2016638
The reporting does not make it clear that the two NEJM papers are different, so I can understand the confusion. I read it that way also at first.
“They certainly are. Your linked open letter is filled with assertions that are contradicted by the science.”
Can you point out the claims about Covid-19 that are contradicted by the science? I can’t find them.
“Many are. There are a lot of scientific and medical experts who are skeptical about a COVID-19 vaccine.”
I have no problem with those that argue from the science. But there are many who do not, and it is these I object to.
“In any editorial opinion on government spending, control, environmentalism, racism, sexism, Trump, etc, they predictable come down the side of the Left. You never find a right-wing opinion.”
That could also be possible if the journal was neutral and the right-wing was consistently wrong. I am not necessarily claiming that is the case, but it must be considered.
That letter singled out white people for condemnation, blamed the police for killing George Floyd (he died of a fentanyl overdose), said infectious disease experts must promote anti-racist messages, blamed white supremacy for contributing to COVID-19, claimed Blacks are being excessively killed by police, listed crazy theories for oppression of Blacks, blamed white supremacy a few more times, made excuses for riots, etc.
The main point of the letter is to say that white people should not protest because it spreads COVID-19, but Blacks should because they then can blame their COVID-19 on white supremacy.
So no example of denying the science relating to Covid-19 by downplaying its significance.
“blamed the police for killing George Floyd (he died of a fentanyl overdose)”
That is funny, because the County medical examiner concluded it was homicide. What information do you have that the medical examiner did not?
Yes, the examiner’s opinion was that the manner of death was homicide, and then he denied that the term has legal significance.
No, I don’t have any additional info. The autopsy said that Floyd had a high level of fentanyl. That level is commonly lethal. There were no injuries to the neck or any serious explanation of how police action contributed to death.
Some additional videos were leaked, after the prosecutor tried to suppress them. I don’t know if the coroner viewed those.
Believe what you want, but there is little or no scientific evidence that police contributed to Floyd’s death.
” then he denied that the term has legal significance.”
From the report:
“Manner of death classification is a statutory function of the medical examiner, as part of death certification for purposes of vital statistics and public health. Manner of death is not a legal determination of culpability or intent, and should not be used to usurp the judicial process.
“Such decisions are outside the scope of the Medical Examiner’s role or authority.”
He is saying this is not the trial. However, the determination of homicide does have legal significance.
“Believe what you want, but there is little or no scientific evidence that police contributed to Floyd’s death.”
There really are two universes here. It is one thing to argue that we do not have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. That is for the trial to determine. It is really incomprehensible to argue that we have no evidence the police contributed to his death when we have 2 autopsies saying they did and the video evidence we have.
Get a grip Roger. Overplaying your hand reveals a level of bias that undermines your credibility.
To Steve’s original question: E — it’s a shame we live in a world where the editors thought this necessary.
My interpretation is that the editors just want to get on with publishing science, but the current nature of public discourse and social media means they could foresee a chance of being attacked for doing so.
They don’t want an angry mob demanding they be ‘cancelled’, nor the distraction of having to spend time defend themselves, replying, rebutting, and so on. So these words were an attempt to avoid that, and were phrased in a way calculated to minimize widespread attack, rather than to actually explain their thought process.
Obviously it didn’t entirely work, since you criticized them for the very words (and we are discussing those words rather than the paper itself), but I don’t think less of them for trying.
No, there is one autopsy, and that one did not find evidence that the police caused the death. (There was a supposed second autopsy, but I am not sure that person saw the body or wrote a report.)
If the police caused the death, how did that happen? Did Chauvin block the trachea, and air to the lungs? Did he block the corotid artery, cutting off blood flow to the brain? Did he break the neck? Was it somehow harmful to allow Floyd to lie down? Did the police delay the ambulance?
Yes, I know that there are lots of people claiming that the police killed Floyd. But nobody can explain how or give any evidence for it.
I don’t know who’s reporting you would trust. I generally find FiveThirtyEight reasonably objective. They report that the two autopsy reports were basically saying the same thing – Floyd died due to the restraint and both stated homicide as the manner of death.
You really have to go out of your way to find evidence to reject this conclusion, which for some reason you appear to be doing. The County report says the cause of death was “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.”
What sources did you get you information from – particularly that there is no evidence the police caused the death? I mean, maybe I have missed something.
I just realised that Roger has derailed the discussion about the journal article by making false claims about Floyd’s death.
Back to the main point,
Roger claimed that “A couple [of journals] have published phony papers trashing hydroxychloroquine, only to retract them later.”
There was one paper retracted about HQ, not two. It was retracted because the database could not be supported. It was not a phoney paper, but it did have problems.
Since then there have been several papers showing HQ is not effective, either as a treatment or a prophylactic. There was one saying it may be, but that one has been widely criticised as observational rather than randomised.
One of the genuine ranomised trials, the RECOVERY trial in the UK has identified that dexamethasone appears to be effective. This is a decades old drug. This totally repudiates the conspiracy theory that the trials are designed to only provide evidence for new on-patent drugs and to trash any old, cheap drugs, so as to maximise Phamra profits. The same trial found HQ to be ineffective.
I do not deny that big pharma will use any and all opportunities to maximise their profits, including selective reporting of drug trial data. This investigation of treatments for Covid is to some extent outside the control of big pharma.
The RECOVERY trial was only possible in the UK because we have a central NHS. Recruitment was coordinated across the whole system relatively easily. This was not possible in the USA because of the fragmented system there. The trial was particularly succesful in part because the UK was almost as ineffective (in the early stages) as the US in supressing the spread of the disease. Therefore we had a lot of cases to recruit into the trial. The US was unable to capitalise on their particulry high infection rate to conduct trails because of the fragmentation of their heathcare sytem. This is one benfit of a central healthcare system that is incredibly difficult to optimise with a market approach. There is no market model that will incorporate coordination of clinical trials during a pandemic, but nevertheless this turns out to be a significant benefit.
The conclusion so far is that HQ is not en effective treatment, dexanethasone might be.
Trials on HQ as a prophylactic are ongoing, but nothing so far to indicate it is useful.
I know this is a bit late, but on further consideration I suspect there are two views on what the publishers were concerned about.
View 1. The publishers want to have social distancing because they think stopping the spread of disease is more important than other costs. This is a political view. This paper would lead to justified pressure on this policy and therefore they considered suppressing it to promote their political view.
View 2. The publishers have no opinions on the overall value of social distancing. The science proves that it does reduce the spread of disease. This is a fact. They are aware that many people will mis-represent the results of this somewhat speculative paper to spread disinformation. This will put unjustified pressure on social distancing and hence lead to an increased spread of disease.
It seems obvious to me that view 2 is closer, but many seem to think the publishers have view 1.
In my earlier comments I had not realised that view 1 was being attributed to the publishers. The race analogy just seemed a bad one because the situations were not similar. I now see that the analogy is a good one if you assume view 1. Smylers’ comment seems to assume view 1. However, the publishers were not fearful of being attacked or cancelled but of inadvertently being used by the forces of misinformation.
However, since view 1 is wrong the analogy fails anyway.
I do agree with Smylers comment – it is a shame we live in a world where the editors thought this was something that needed to be considered, but that is where we are. Blame the forces of misinformation.
Here is a report form an author who was a victim of this. His first paper was taken completely out of context and used to promote the exact opposite of the actual scientific conclusions.
https://eos.org/opinions/dont-at-me-what-happened-when-climate-skeptics-misused-my-work
“By taking slivers of published scientific research out of context, anybody who can parse an abstract can launch an ideological crusade—masquerading as thoughtful scientific criticism—against the scientific consensus.
These crusades are always political.”
He learned a lesson.
“One lesson I learned is to anticipate how my science could potentially be distorted and to address these points explicitly in abstracts and in any public-facing components of my research. ”
“Journal editors can act as a second line of defense, directing authors to acknowledge and preemptively refute points in their papers that could be misrepresented.”
Thus he says Editors should be thinking about these things.
I suspect that many people are simply unaware how much abuse of science goes on for political purposes.
“Biologists have no particular insight into whether people would be happier in a world with both a little more Covid and a few more hugs. If any group is uniquely qualified to estimate the terms of that tradeoff, it’s the economists”
Very late to this thread but love this quote. I would argue this has been largely a problem for Economics from the start. And not just because those invoking “the science” as some sort of mic drop tend to focus solely on the most visible aspects of the medical risks (e.g. as opposed to all of the mental health issues arising from isolation and financial stress, and more recently the enormous costs of ineffective online learning for students). Solving this is an exercise in allocating resources, as informed by the medical science. Even on something as basic as the great mask debate, saying “well even if they don’t help they can’t hurt” is patently wrong in a way (only?) an economist would instantly recognize – if they’re not very effective but provide a false sense of security that encourages people to go out more and / or distance less, they can easily do more harm than good. (Note as of now I assume they do enough to help a little.)