... let's read "This 18-Year-Old College Journalist Could Bring Down Stanford University’s President/Theo Baker recently became the youngest-ever recipient of the prestigious Polk Award" (BuzzFeed).
Baker and the Stanford Daily merited a “special award” for their series looking into allegations that scientific papers coauthored by Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne, a noted neuroscientist, contained manipulated imagery.
It marked the first time that a student-run paper has won a Polk Award. “The word that they used was moxie,” Baker said, describing the moment he received the call from the award committee, right when he was arriving at a class. “They liked that our reporting had so much moxie.”...
(You can read all of the Stanford Daily’s coverage here.)...
His one in-person interaction with Tessier-Lavigne was brief, Baker said. He approached the university president shortly after sending him an email requesting comment for the story about the alleged cover-up of the falsified Alzheimer's data. “I walked up to him. I just said, ‘Hi,’ and he said, 'Oh yes, yes. I have received your letter. I look forward to being in touch. I’m in a hurry.’
“I started to say something, and he closed his car door in the middle of my sentence,” Baker continued. “And of course, he did not get back to us. His lawyer did.”...
Baker had a major advantage in getting to this distinction so young: "His father is New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker, and his mother is New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser."
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As long as we're talking about sissy hypnosis porn...
It's going to be a long day if I can't get that phrase out of my mind, and so far it's the immovable object.
I posted this already in the cafe post, but the entire article seems apropos to the student paper's report:
Social science is irreproducible, drug tests nonreplicable, and stoves studies ignore confounders.
[Selected section about gas stoves:]
"Are gas stoves dangerous? This 2022 environmental study said they are, claiming with 95% confidence that they are responsible for 12.7% of childhood asthma. I doubt the study will be reproducible for reasons I’ll detail below, but for now it’s science, and it may soon be law.
Part of the replication problem is that researchers have been found to lie. They fudge data or eliminate undesirable results, some more some less, and a few are honest, but the journals don’t bother checking. Some researchers convince themselves that they are doing the world a favor, but many seem money-motivated. A foundational study on Alzheimers was faked outright. The authors doctored photos using photoshop, and used the fake results to justify approval of non-working, expensive drugs. The researchers got $1B in NIH funding too. I’d want to see the researchers jailed, long term: it’s grand larceny and a serious violation of trust."
So this of course means that the slap down of the DEI dean has no merit......
The rot is very deep. I had an exchange with the USC medical school dean shortly before he was fired for drugs and sex parties. He was clueless about what was going on at the medical school. Why he was clueless came out soon after.
A former USC dean who described himself as a “God” to medical students lived a secret life of drinking, drug use and partying with addicts and prostitutes – sometimes even after-hours on the school’s campus -- according to an explosive new investigative report.
Dr. Carmen A. Puliafito, the dean of USC’s Keck School of Medicine, was a top bundler for the institution before his resignation in March 2016, hauling in $200 million in research grants while overseeing hundreds of students and thousands of professors and clinicians, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday.
But three weeks before leaving the $1.1-million-a-year post, a 21-year-old woman had overdosed in his company at Pasadena hotel, with the ensuing investigation by the newspaper revealing Puliafito’s secret life.
“Baker had a major advantage in getting to this distinction so young: "His father is New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker, and his mother is New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser."
Matthews law, paraphrased, Unto he that hath, much is given. Unto he that hath not much is taken, even all that he hath.
I wonder if Journalism is an inherited trait or if being the child of an elite journalist is selective of getting Journalism awards.
I am, like, so impressed with awards handed out to the offspring of wired-in propagandists.
“I started to say something, and he closed his car door in the middle of my sentence,” Baker continued. “And of course, he did not get back to us. His lawyer did.”...
If the prof was responsible for the fake he should be sanctioned. Often co authors provide content unrelated to the data and he may not be responsible but a defrauded party. The journalist is very smug. Presidents are busy, did the guy call his office and ask for an appointment? If I was going to be crucified I would place my replies in the hands of my attorney, is that not a right?
It depends on the kind of enhancements. False color imagery has been in use, especially in satellite imagery, for fifty years or more. If it’s use in brain scans was novel at the time, that just means medicine was backwards then.
I don’t expect student journalists to grasp that level of technical sophistication.
His apology in defense of civil rights is now null and void.
'I wonder if Journalism is an inherited trait or if being the child of an elite journalist is selective of getting Journalism awards.'
Never underestimate the power of nepotism.
It's like Hollywood.
Do you think the sons and daughters of actors are really the best actors?
My football coach liked to use the word moxie.
The journalist is very smug.
He’s a liberal. Liberals are always smug.
"I don’t expect student journalists to grasp that level of technical sophistication."
We may hope they will extend you the same courtesy, since you completely misunderstand the nature of the faked evidence.
BTW, the paper with the falsified data initiated an approach to Alzheimer's that has wasted billions of research funding since it was published. I can't think of anyone better-suited to be President of Shithole U than this lying weasel.
Regarding the comment above about the Alzheimer study, according to Science mag, the fakes are being attributed to two researchers at U Minn twin cities. So I would not rush to judgement too fast, it is an ongoing issue and is the subject of a product liability case, so, lawyers. Why did the student get an award for publishing other people’s journalism research? I hope he cited everyone who actually did the work properly. The story is in “REB Research Blog
Random thoughts about hydrogen, engineering, business and life by Dr. Robert E. Buxbaum“
well the whole field of transgenderism is unknowledge so it crt and green energy, no such animal,
"His father is New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker, and his mother is New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser."
So he was born on Third Base, so to speak.
There's such an abysmal trend towards ends justify the means. Fuck all y'all who think that way...
...ending government incentives would help...
And now we come to the crux of the matter. This is why so few people stand up to the woke mob. Who doesn’t have tiny (or larger ones) indiscretions, secrets. Immediately the woke mob and it’s handmaidens (male and female) wave about accusations. These accusations have zero to do with the merits of the argument. We’re not only leaping forward today, we’re at the threshold of the Great Leap Forward.
Yep, make him Theo Baker, son of a plumber and nurse from Bakersfield with all else being equal, no Polk Award for him.
From WaPo:
The 2009 paper that is under scrutiny generated attention for its suggestion that the cause of Alzheimer’s disease might reside with a different parent protein than what most scientists agreed at the time, said Matthew Schrag, an Alzheimer’s expert. The hypothesis isn’t widely embraced by scientists in the field today, Schrag said; that is the nature of science, not evidence of misconduct. But Schrag, who is an assistant professor of neurology at Vanderbilt University, said that in his opinion, the recent allegations demand greater transparency around what happened.
Maybe Democrats in Congress can ask this 18 year-old journalist his sources in his critique of the scientific method in such esoteric pathbreaking research?
i'm reminded of when they went after jed rubenfeld and amy chua, because well crimethink
i'm reminded of when they went after jed rubenfeld and amy chua, because well crimethink
MadTownGuy @ 10:38: “… A foundational study on Alzheimers was faked outright. The authors doctored photos using photoshop, and used the fake results to justify approval of non-working, expensive drugs. The researchers got $1B in NIH funding too. I’d want to see the researchers jailed, long term: it’s grand larceny and a serious violation of trust.”
Great post, thanks. I would double-down on condemning the evil of fake studies of disease mechanism —because not only do they result in simple theft by fraudulent grant applications to study the mechanism and justify useless medicines, they also cause everybody in the field to chase the new target and redeploy their efforts. Opportunity costs are gigantic: tons of money wasted, many careers skewed or misspent, and who knows what better work foreclosed? Hanging is too good for the perpetrators.
Peter Baker soft boils the news.
https://stanforddaily.com/2021/02/21/peter-baker-soft-boils-the-news/
We may hope they will extend you the same courtesy, since you completely misunderstand the nature of the faked evidence.
@Jupiter, I’ve never seen a description of the alleged fakery, nor the before and after images that were supposedly photoshopped. I don’t know whether the alleged falsification is due to an effort to deceive or is merely a novel use — in biomedical research — of a standard research technique that goes back to LANDSAT imagery, if not earlier. If you have a link you can share that gets to the heart of the controversy, I’d be obliged if you could include it in a follow-up comment.
a different parent protein than what most scientists agreed at the time, said Matthew Schrag, an Alzheimer’s expert. The hypothesis isn’t widely embraced by scientists in the field today
The controversy today resides with progress assuming the popular consensus and efforts to challenge its basis and explain its low performance in clinical treatments.
I love awards! The prestigious Polk Award (for special achievements in journalism) goes to Theo Baker. Hurrah! The prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom (for staying awake long enough to score another 10% graft) goes to Joe Biden! My hope is that Theo's award hasn't been cheapened to the same extent as Joe's.
Joe Smith: "Do you think the sons and daughters of actors are really the best actors?"
The only one I can think of who was (she no longer acts, alas) is Bridget Fonda. Way better than her father, uncle, and grandfather. A pleasure too watch in every role.
Twenty-Five years ago, aroused by a day of frenzied viewing of sissy hypno porn, Tirien Steinbach raped me in the lobby of the Stanford Student Union. Like the Judge, she couldn't find the clit either. I don't have one, but that's beside the point.
This is my lived experience. Dare you question me!
Goes back to my theory that honest work is the exemption now, not the rule. People who get caught are sloppy.
Here is a link to the science mag article on this the Stanford president does not seem to be the led on this but the fraud sounds like it was done by some researchers from the univ of Minn.
https://www.science.org/content/article/potential-fabrication-research-images-threatens-key-theory-alzheimers-disease
I wonder what the journalism award kid really did on this story? Repeat other people’s work?
Polk rhymes with woke.
peter-baker-soft-boils-the-news
Critical Reporting Theory (CRT) assumes.. denies that readers lack dignity and agency in the pantheon of Critical Theorism.
I haven't seen any claims of falsified data in his papers. The Stanford board of trustees is looking into claims of image manipulation. Tessier-Lavigne submitted corrections of some image errors to the Science journals in 2015, but the journals failed to publish the corrections. None of this, so far, has implicated issues in the underlying data or the substance of the papers.
It would be wonderful if the PubPeer folks would devote even half this much attention to the global warming papers that are full of manipulated data and outright cherry-picking.
- Krumhorn
With pharmacy, DIEversity, and the Fourth leg complicit, we have to consider that the target of collusion was Tessier-Lavigne, and cancelling Duncan was an equitable opportunity for inclusion in a double-planned scalping to remove two viable "burdens" to an establishment, domestic, foreign, and transnational.
I wonder what the journalism award kid really did on this story? Repeat other people’s work?
ChatGPT?
Theo Baker personifies white privilege. Clearly his reporting is solely intended to perpetuate the hegemony of cishet white males, and so is invalid per se.
If you're inclined to as for evidence in support of that conclusion, you clearly need additional DEI training.
It is a mistake to assume that Baker's success somehow involves nepotism or an unfair advantage derived from his family background. The reality has always been that a young person with a successful parent has a profound advantage in the field of that parent's success, in large part because they have essentially been mentored in that field since birth.
I will pay $1000 to the individual who provides proof, on this site, that Tessier-Lavigne committed the alleged data falsification at issue. (Not abstractly "responsible for as PI". COMMITTED. HIMSELF. Or, since I'm generous, PUBLISHED WITH PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE OF FALSITY.)
Althouse, Quaestor, Jupiter judging, to vote yea or nay. Majority rules. Judges not eligible for reward. Payment by cashier's check, Bank of America, mailed USPS First Class.
Deal? Three "yeses" and we have a deal.
"I will pay $1000 to the individual who provides proof, on this site, that Tessier-Lavigne committed the alleged data falsification at issue."
I don't see how anyone can prove what MTL had PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE of in 2011, short of MTL testifying to his own guilt. Having looked into the matter a bit, it certainly seems to me that MTL was not at all interested in getting to the bottom of why the research he signed his name to was not reproducible, and may have used his considerable authority to discourage others from investigating. But compared to monsters like Gallo and Fauci, the guy is a saint.
It's really quite astonishing what a filthy business molecular biology has become. The biggest rats aren't in the little cages.
On 22 August of this year Megyn Kelly had a one and a half hour podcast about the manipulation of the images in this paper that falsified results leading to false hopes and vast sums spent on research that led nowhere.
The journalist who uncovered this was pilloried at the time. He was interviewed at length by Kelly as was an honest and disinterested party who analyzed at length the apparent manipulation of the images in this paper (and possibly others by the researchers).
Not sure what research the Polk Award winner conducted. However I would like to think thst at least in his various articles a nod would have been given to the original fraud detector.
At now, in a distance of some time, can we discuss the fact that this attack on the President of Stanford's research integrity was done because he apologized for the assault on the free speech of a judge? Have I been misled by misinformation? Perhaps his Journalistic parents used him as a clean outlet? The Kid said it, not me.
People should just stop speaking at colleges. It’s a ridiculous grift. Let them deteriorate under their own weight.
It is not surprising that the self proclaimed “intellectual” class are the ones destroying our society.
They are, in reality, the dumbest people in America.
Decades ago, when another issue of potential scientific fraud was in the headlines (I can't recall which it was), a historian colleague of mine told a table full of scientists that scientific means would never prove scientific fraud, only that scientific mistakes were made.
To prove fraud you need old-fashioned forensics and understanding of human motivations.
Baker had a major advantage in getting to this distinction so young: "His father is New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker, and his mother is New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser."
Means little if the person has not the intelligence to profit from advantages.
Plenty of those born on third base are average or below average
.
And plenty of low-born, broke ass intelligent kids end up doing well.
I have no opinion about the quality of the research that is the subject of Baker’s prizewinning reportage. Getting at that ultimate question would require a *lot* of work —work that I haven’t done, work that may not have been done by anyone or if done has yet to be adequately tested and explained (has the research been shown to be *deliberately* falsified? Or does the crime amount to cleaning up visual noise? What are the confidence intervals on which claims?
…this gets highly technical and there are layers of judgment based on specialized training). What is the peer community that will judge the quality of the work? A handful of rival geniuses or just about anybody using common sense with many samples?
Sorry not to be more definitive or ready to place a bet. My rant is directed at the terrible corrupting power of falsifications of science, which IMHO are worst when they falsify the raw data on which others will depend. A rotten foundation produces disaster.
"I will pay $1000 to the individual who provides proof, on this site, that Tessier-Lavigne committed the alleged data falsification at issue."
Ok I think this is proof of falsity that Tessier Lavigne the major author committed by publishing the assertion that he saw a result he could not have seen. This is not about photo-shopping but another data falsification. The argument is this: A 2009 paper claimed that it had discovered that a certain protein (APP) bound to a certain receptor (DR6) and this caused neurodegeneration. The 2009 study did not have a complete version of the APP protein available to it. A later study showed that the APP protein bound to the DR6 receptor at a place on the APP protein which was not included in the fragmentary APP protein available in 2009. Therefore the protein and the receptor site could not have been observed binding. Since the 2009 team led by T-L could not have observed the binding it could not have inferred consequences from data it never saw (i.e. the Nobel prize level possibility of a treatment for Alzheimers.)
Here is the quote from the Stanford Daily:
"The specific issues with the paper had to do with its central conclusions, according to all four scientists. The paper included several experiments claiming to show that the amino-terminal fragment of the amyloid precursor protein (N-APP) binds to death receptor six (DR6) and that this bind causes neurodegeneration. But later-published studies by Tessier-Lavigne’s lab and other research groups show this conclusion was inaccurate. A crystal structure — a type of labor intensive experiment that determines the exact arrangement of atoms — published in 2015 proved that APP, the complete protein, binds to DR6 at the E2 site. The N-APP fragment used in the 2009 research did not include the E2 site, meaning that DR6 could not have bound to the fragment and caused the results described in the paper.
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/02/17/internal-review-found-falsified-data-in-stanford-presidents-alzheimers-research-colleagues-allege/
I claim the prize. I am going to get an i14 phone with it.
Maybe you don't want to give the prize to womxn but I would be happy to identify as a tomato soup can (pronouns: heinz, 57 ) if it will help. I'm already planning my shots of the water out back with that amazing glisten only the i14 captures.
wildswan @ 8:53: Sounds pretty solid*. Enjoy the phone.
*Although you may want to have some analogies ready to help the lay readers. Maybe "it's like saying in 2009 that the murder weapon was loaded with silver bullets; but silver bullets only began to be used in 2015. So how could the earlier study claim they saw them?"
Wildswan, you jumped the gun. I am not the judge, and none of the three judges I specified have agreed to be judges, yet. If they agree with you later, you will be paid. ( let's put a time limit on this thing: one week from right now.)
I recall a time when the major energy companies funded a high proportion of the research being performed on global warming, as it was then called. The findings of that research were of course dismissed as irredeemably corrupted and untrustworthy by all the usual loudmouths.
Then as our elites realized how much revenue and power they could loot from the rest of us under the guise of environmentalism, and poured upwards of a trillion dollars of tax money into the project over the last thirty years, the corrupting power of grant money was completely swept under the rug. They would have us believe that scientists, and the politicians who funnel money to them, and the academic establishment that grants tenure to them are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind. It is a form of religious fervor. We saw it again with the deification of Dr. Fauci.
Having been intimately involved in the health care field for some thirty years now, I am quite certain that the low hanging fruit in medical knowledge has long since been picked. Most of Science nowadays consists of running 20-variable multivariate analyses, cherry-picking the one that (by the mathematical nature of statistics) shows a random correlation to a 95th-percentile confidence interval, and discarding the rest. This has been true since 1990 at the latest. In the last ten years, the straining at gnats has become even more of a joke, as every paper has to cobble together some tortured, piously-proclaimed connection to diversity, equity, racism, climate change, gay or trans issues, or other left wing pieties.
At the risk of sounding like the Patent Office director who wanted to close his agency a hundred years ago, because "everything that can be invented has been invented," I am beginning to think that modern medical science and Big Pharma are doing more harm to public health than if we stopped right where we are and did no more research at all.
"Althouse, Quaestor, Jupiter judging, to vote yea or nay."
Fred Drinkwater said...
Wildswan, you jumped the gun. I am not the judge, and none of the three judges I specified have agreed to be judges, yet."
I have a problem here. I am quite sure that I proved that T-L knew he was committing fraud. He stated that he had found that the APP protein was binding to the DR6 receptor. But he only had a fragment of the APP protein to work with and the fragment he had does not bind to the DR6 receptor. It's as if he was working on the causes of a train derailment and he stated the cause was a broken coupling which he had observed and it was shown that he had only examined the first ten cars of the train and these cars had not derailed and had no broken couplings.
However three people were invited to judge the contest and have not accepted the invitation. I don't think they should feel any pressure to do so just because I have wanted an i14 ever since I saw the first picture by Althouse, and I could get one if I won the contest, and I think I have proved my point, and it will make me very sad if this prize is snatched from me and I will probably remember it to my now not very distant dying day, sob.
Possibly on that day. Again sob.
But there are many reasons why people might not want to insert themselves into an ongoing public dispute even when it means snatching away what is likely my last chance before I die to get an i14 unless there's another pandemic and more checks come from the government or something else happens. But I'm not a big bank, I'm more like a resident of East Palestine and I can't count on checks raining from the sky. Sob.
Solution:
I think Fred Drinkwater should acknowledge that I presented a case that needs no judges because it is so clear. Drinkwater thought judges were needed because he focused on intent but I was able to show that a claimed observation could not have been made. Intent does not matter. He should do the handsome thing, the glorious thing and settle out of court, sending me my money for my i14 with a smile.
Still slightly sobbing, she pushed "publish."
When I wrote for it 1990-91, the Stanford Daily had pretty high standards for copy-editing and sourcing. I was a first-year grad student, though with four years experience writing for both the student and the institutional paper/newsletter at Carnegie Mellon, but the Editors, who were Juniors and Senior undergrads, were extremely sharp and had very high standards. So it's not impossible that the stories were good enough to deserve an award. However, the student is getting all kinds of love from the Journalism faculty (technically "Communication," the dead was very strident that there was no "Journalism" department at Stanford!), and I saw how some of them would fall all over themselves for a "Golden Boy" undergrad who had news-industry or governmental family connections--becoming the beloved mentor of such a person was obviously seen as a great way to suck up to their high-ranking parents as well as an solid investment if the golden boy ended up successful.
(I'm disappointed that Corey Booker has turned out to be such a turd, because I would have loved to be able to say "Back when President Booker and I were writing for the Stanford Daily..." [though I only met him twice and everybody thought of him as a football star who wrote the occasional story or column, not as a future journalist or politician. He wasn't nearly as stupid in person as he seems on TV).
Fred? Fred?
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