Dan Ariely and the Credibility of (Social) Psychological Science

 https://replicationindex.com/2021/08/27/dan-ariely-and-the-credibility-of-social-psychological-science/

 Arguably, the most damaging finding for social psychology was the finding that only 25% of published results could be replicated in a direct attempt to reproduce original findings (Open Science Collaboration, 2015). With such a low base-rate of successful replications, all published results in social psychology journals are likely to fail to replicate. The rational response to this discovery is to not trust anything that is published in social psychology journals unless there is evidence that a finding is replicable. Based on this logic, the discovery of fraud in a study published in 2012 is of little significance. Even without fraud, many findings are questionable. 

 

 Conclusion

The discovery of a fraudulent dataset in a study on dishonesty has raised new questions about the credibility of social psychology. Meanwhile, the much bigger problem of selection for significance is neglected. Rather than treating studies as credible unless they are retracted, it is time to distrust studies unless there is evidence to trust them. Z-curve provides one way to assure readers that findings can be trusted by keeping the false discovery risk at a reasonably low level, say below 5%. Applying this methods to Ariely’s most cited articles showed that nearly half of Ariely’s published results can be discarded because they entail a high false positive risk. This is also true for many other findings in social psychology, but social psychologists try to pretend that the use of questionable practices was harmless and can be ignored. Instead, undergraduate students, readers of popular psychology books, and policy makers may be better off by ignoring social psychology until social psychologists report all of their results honestly and subject their theories to real empirical tests that may fail. That is, if social psychology wants to be a science, social psychologists have to act like scientists.

 

Behavioral researcher says he ‘undoubtedly made a mistake’ in false data scandal

https://www.timesofisrael.com/behavioral-researcher-says-he-undoubtedly-made-a-mistake-in-false-data-scandal/ 

Israeli-American celebrity academic Dan Ariely has said he “undoubtedly made a mistake” in a famous study of his that has been revealed as based on falsified data.

In an interview with Channel 12 Friday, Ariely denied responsibility for the forgery and expressed belief that his reputation would recover from a recent slew of problematic revelations.

Ariely is a Duke University professor of psychology and behavioral economics and author of best-selling books including “The Honest Truth about Dishonesty.”

Apparently, it's the next big thing. What is the metaverse?

 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58749529

 What is the metaverse?

To the outsider, it may look like a souped-up version of Virtual Reality (VR) - but some people think the metaverse could be the future of the internet.

In fact, the belief is that it could be to VR what the modern smartphone is to the first clunky mobile phones of the 1980s.

Instead of being on a computer, in the metaverse you might use a headset to enter a virtual world connecting all sorts of digital environments.

Unlike current VR, which is mostly used for gaming, this virtual world could be used for practically anything - work, play, concerts, cinema trips - or just hanging out.

Most people envision that you would have a 3D avatar - a representation of yourself - as you use it.

But because it's still just an idea, there's no single agreed definition of the metaverse.

Why Jews really join the so-called “Far right” parties

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/315254

 Jewish intellectuals began to describe the leftist reservation against Jewish self-empowerment early. In the USA, many formerly leftist Jews became conservatives after understanding what had happened to the Left after 1968. In France, author and member of the Académie Française Alain Finkielkraut wrote Le juif imaginaire (The Imaginary Jew) in 1980, denouncing Leftist Jews who used their Jewish roots in order to fight against conservatism, without any interest in what Jewish identity actually means.

3 arrested over cold case murders from 80s, 90s reportedly tied to Hasidic cult

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/3-arrested-over-cold-case-murders-from-80s-90s-reportedly-tied-to-hasidic-cult/

Police on Sunday announced the arrest of three suspects over their alleged connection to two unsolved murders in the 1980s and 90s near Jerusalem.

According to Hebrew-language media reports, the suspects — two men and a woman in their 60s from Jerusalem — are from the extremist Shuvu Bonim sect led by convicted sex offender rabbi Eliezer Berland.

Reports said they were arrested over their involvement in the disappearance of 17-year-old Nissim Shitrit, who was allegedly beaten by the sect’s “religious police” four months before he was last seen in January 1986.

Lev Tahor members stopped from entering Mexico, on route to Iran

 https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/lev-tahor-members-arrested-for-allegedly-trying-to-flee-to-iran-682305

Members of the Lev Tahor ultra-Orthodox cult have been prevented by Mexican authorities from traveling to Iran and have been returned to Guatemala where they have resided since 2014, Mexican media reported.

The cult, number around 300 individuals, the majority of whom are Israeli, has made several attempts to reach Iran, first in 2018 and most recently last week. 

According to the ultra-Orthodox news site B’Hadrei Haredim, the cult's members are attempting to fly to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, and from there travel to neighboring Iran, in order to more freely conduct their affairs without state interference. 

"Millions have died from COVID injections."

 https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/oct/01/blog-posting/report-shares-wildly-unfounded-claims-covid-19-vac/

 A 52-page report from a pair of anti-vaccine advocates claims to present the truth about COVID-19 vaccines. However, it does just the opposite.

The website Stop World Control published the so-called Vaccine Death Report in September 2021, and it was shared across Facebook, including in this Sept. 26 post. It is written by David Sorenson and Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, a New York doctor who made headlines for prescribing hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 even though health authorities cautioned against it.

The report claims that "millions have died from COVID injections" around the world, and includes narratives from the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel and Brazil to back up this claim.

On top of that, it claims that half a million people within the United States have suffered severe side effects such as strokes, heart failure, brain disorders, convulsions and more.

"The data shows that we are currently witnessing the greatest organized mass murder in the history of our world," the report states. 

The alarming findings cite databases like the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System and others. But the report misinterpreted the data to draw unfounded conclusions about the vaccines.

The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, also called VAERS, is an official public government database where anyone can submit any potential adverse health effect following a vaccine. However, the reports are not verified, and the system itself warns that reports can contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental or unverifiable. When used improperly, VAERS can be a source for misinformation.

Reports of death after COVID-19 vaccination are rare. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not verified any deaths as a result of the vaccines approved in the United States. Researchers are still evaluating whether there is a connection between the Johnson and Johnson vaccine and rare types of blood clots, but such cases are few.

Did Fauci Spend Taxpayer Dollars on ‘Cruel and Unnecessary’ Test of Vaccine on Beagles?

 https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fauci-vaccine-experiment-beagles/

 Claim

Under the direction of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases division of the National Institutes of Health approved the use of taxpayer dollars to fund "cruel and unnecessary" testing of an experimental vaccine on beagles.

The Wuhan Lab and the Gain-of-Function Disagreement

 https://www.factcheck.org/2021/05/the-wuhan-lab-and-the-gain-of-function-disagreement/

 So, did the NIH’s grant to EcoHealth fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab? There are differing opinions on that. As noted above, whether research is “likely” or “reasonably anticipated” to enhance transmissibility can be subjective.

EcoHealth and the NIH and NIAID say no. “EcoHealth Alliance has not nor does it plan to engage in gain-of-function research,” EcoHealth spokesman Robert Kessler told us in an email. Nor did the grant get an exception from the pause, as some have speculated, he said. “No dispensation was needed as no gain-of-function research was being conducted.”

The NIAID told the Wall Street Journal: “The research by EcoHealth Alliance, Inc. that NIH funded was for a project that aimed to characterize at the molecular level the function of newly discovered bat spike proteins and naturally occurring pathogens. Molecular characterization examines functions of an organism at the molecular level, in this case a virus and a spike protein, without affecting the environment or development or physiological state of the organism. At no time did NIAID fund gain-of-function research to be conducted at WIV.”

And in a May 19 statement, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins said that “neither NIH nor NIAID have ever approved any grant that would have supported ‘gain-of-function’ research on coronaviruses that would have increased their transmissibility or lethality for humans.”

Should Work on the Coronavirus in Wuhan Be Considered ‘Gain-of-Function’ Research?

 https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/should-work-on-the-coronavirus-in-wuhan-be-considered-gain-of-function-research/

 There’s no evidence NIH-funded research sparked the pandemic. But the dispute underscores widespread confusion surrounding gain-of-function research, which is now a flashpoint in the broader debate over lab experiments with dangerous viruses. That Paul and Fauci could arrive at such different conclusions about the same work gets to the heart of a thorny problem: When it comes to gain-of-function research, “no one agrees on what it is,” says Nicholas Evans, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, who specializes in biosecurity and pandemic preparedness.

Fauci and Paul, Round 2

 https://www.factcheck.org/2021/07/scicheck-fauci-and-paul-round-2/

 As we wrote in May, there’s no dispute that some U.S. funding went to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. The disagreement is over whether the research the lab conducted with the money was gain-of-function research.

Nearly $600,000 from a National Institutes of Health grant to the U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance went to the Wuhan lab, a collaborator on the six-year project to study the risk of the future emergence of coronaviruses from bats. The grant was canceled in April 2020.

The NIH, EcoHealth Alliance and the lead researcher in Wuhan all say the experiments weren’t gain-of-function — a type of research the U.S. government generally defined in 2014 as aiming to “increase the ability of infectious agents to cause disease by enhancing its pathogenicity or by increasing its transmissibility.”

There’s no evidence that Fauci lied to Congress, as Paul asserted in the July 20 hearing, given that the NIH unequivocally backs up Fauci’s statement that the grant-backed research “was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being gain-of-function.”

 

Southwest, airline pilots union deny claims that anti-vaccine walkouts prompted cancellations

 https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/oct/11/tweets/southwest-airline-pilots-union-deny-claims-anti-va/

In separate statements to the press, Southwest Airlines and the union representing its pilots denied the widespread internet rumors that claimed the airline canceled thousands of flights because crew members walked off the job or called in sick to protest the company’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

Tucker Carlson blames Southwest flight disruption on Biden vaccine mandate

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/oct/12/tucker-carlson-biden-vaccine-mandates-fox-news-southwest-airlines 

 Tucker Carlson has claimed the cancellation of thousands of flights by Southwest Airlines was “a direct consequence” of the Biden administration’s vaccination mandate for federal workers.

 Southwest is a private company, not subject to federal vaccine rules.

 Local media has reported that the head of Jacksonville Aviation Authority rejected reports of a walkout.

 Carlson did not mention that his company has a strict vaccinations and testing policy. In a memo reported last month, Fox News’ head of human resources, Kevin Lord, said that after being asked to report their status, “90% of full-time employees” said “they were fully vaccinated”.

 “The Fox News vaccine requirement is stricter than the one proposed by President Joe Biden and described as tyranny and creeping communism,” Hayes said.

The Lab-Leak Debate Just Got Even Messier

 https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/09/lab-leak-pandemic-origins-even-messier/620209/

For anyone looking for the great, final vindication of the lab-leak hypothesis, this document will leave you wanting. Does the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic have an unnatural origin? The answer hasn’t changed: probably not. But we have learned something quite disturbing in the past few days, simply from how and when this information came to light.

 Stephen Goldstein, a postdoctoral researcher in evolutionary virology at the University of Utah and one of the co-authors of the pandemic-origins critical review, considers it “unlikely” that any such work would have gone forward in Wuhan. It would be unusual—even unethical—for a lab in China to pursue experiments that were originally proposed by one of its collaborators in the United States, he told us. Another co-author of the critical review, the Johns Hopkins University microbiology postdoc Alex Crits-Christoph, interprets the proposal as stating that any novel cleavage sites would be inserted into a SARS-CoV-1-like coronavirus. Unless the Wuhan lab had already isolated a SARS-CoV-2-like virus that could carry this insertion—which Crits-Christoph doubts, given that it is not mentioned in the proposal—researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology would not have had enough time between early 2018 and the fall of 2019 to construct (and then mistakenly release) the virus at the root of the pandemic.