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Most Significant Scientific Retraction Ever?

https://hotair.com/david-strom/2024/06/07/most-significant-scientific-retraction-ever-n3789789

Excerpt:

.....The paper helped create and sustain the theory that amyloid protein buildups caused the symptoms of Alzheimer’s Disease and was one of a number of apparently fraudulent papers written by Sylvain Lesné, a professor at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

All the paper’s authors agreed to retract, save Lesné, who has been under investigation for manipulating data.

Authors of a landmark Alzheimer’s disease research paper published in Nature in 2006 have agreed to retract the study in response to allegations of image manipulation. University of Minnesota (UMN) Twin Cities neuroscientist Karen Ashe, the paper’s senior author, acknowledged in a post on the journal discussion site PubPeer that the paper contains doctored images. The study has been cited nearly 2500 times, and would be the most cited paper ever to be retracted, according to Retraction Watch data.

“Although I had no knowledge of any image manipulations in the published paper until it was brought to my attention two years ago,” Ashe wrote on PubPeer, “it is clear that several of the figures in Lesné et al. (2006) have been manipulated … for which I as the senior and corresponding author take ultimate responsibility.”

After initially arguing the paper’s problems could be addressed with a correction, Ashe said in another post last week that all of the authors had agreed to a retraction—with the exception of its first author, UMN neuro- scientist Sylvain Lesné, a protégé of Ashe’s who was the focus of a 2022 investigation by Science. A Nature spokesperson would not comment on the journal’s plans.

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What makes this retraction so significant is that it has driven research into Alzheimer’s treatments for nearly two decades, and treatment approaches based on its conclusions have failed to yield results.

If the hypothesis that amyloid protein buildups cause Alzheimer’s symptoms is wrong, Lesné is responsible for perhaps billions of wasted research dollars and two decades of scientists following a false lead.

The 2006 paper suggested an amyloid beta (Aβ) protein called Aβ*56 could cause Alzheimer’s. Aβ proteins have long been linked to the disease. The authors reported that Aβ*56 was present in mice genetically engineered to develop an Alzheimer’s-like condition, and that it built up in step with their cognitive decline. The team also reported memory deficits in rats injected with Aβ*56.

For years researchers had tried to improve Alzheimer’s outcomes by stripping amyloid proteins from the brain, but the experimental drugs all failed. Aβ*56 seemed to offer a more specific and promising therapeutic target, and many embraced the finding. Funding for related work rose sharply.

But the Science investigation revealed evidence that the Nature paper and numerous others co-authored by Lesné, some listing Ashe as senior author, appeared to use manipulated data. After the story was published, leading scientists who had cited the paper to support their own experiments questioned whether Aβ*56 could be reliably detected and purified as described by Lesné and Ashe—or even existed. Some said the problems in that paper and others supported fresh doubts about the dominant hypothesis that amyloid drives Alzheimer’s. Others maintained that the hypothesis remains viable.

If it turns out that the entirety of the work was fraudulent—and there appears to be some dispute—I can imagine no punishment harsh enough for Lesné. Alzheimer’s is a horrible disease. Creating fraudulent research to enhance one’s career when the stakes are so high is sociopathic.

There appear to be quite a number of sociopaths in the biological sciences if recent evidence is any guide, and very few checks and balances to control for this fact.

Researchers, medical professionals, public health officials, and far too many people in the “caring” professions have been very cavalier with people’s lives of late. There are far too many stories from the COVID pandemic about doctors harming their patients—some of the stories of patients being put on ventilators when they weren’t needed are heartbreaking, and of course the isolation of patients who were dying was unforgivable.

.....WE need to realize that credentials do not confer immunity from scrutiny, nor do they indicate any special status as ethical human beings. They are signifiers of meeting some threshold criteria, and nothing more.

This is an age of scientific scandals. Science is now a multi-billion dollar industry, and one that gets far too little scrutiny. That has to change.
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Research from 2006 and it took 18 years to find out it was fraudulent. Trust the science not!

Cowering before Carbon

There is no greater transfer of wealth from poor to rich than this scam.

https://elizabethnickson.substack.com/p/cowering-before-carbon-aa7

Excerpt:

Despite turning this back this spring, South Dakota continues to be under attack by a freshly born green corporation, Summit Carbon Solutions, funded by China’s Belt and Road initiative, and you, through the Green New Deal provisions buried in the last debt ceiling deal, to pipe “carbon,” from the oil fields to some obscure part of the Dakotas and bury it. The “people” may “rise up” and demand it be shuttered, and all they do is crawl away and try again.

There can be no more stupid waste of money than this. But even some of our bravest politicians, including Kristi Noem, Pierre Poilivere and Danielle Smith in Canada cower before the almighty (anti-)carbon lobby and rabbit on about sequestering it. It is an industry into which thieves flood because it means you loot the public purse at the beginning through Green New Deal giveaways, and then for all perpetuity because of the tax advantage. People have been so scarified by the word, they do not know what it means anymore, they nod enthusiastically.

.....Carbon sequestration is a scam meant to steal public money.

This time, Kristi Noem is facing down an activated people who are fit to be tied, protesting and signing petitions. This is generally taken as “the people’s voice” in the enviro business and must be obeyed. But not, apparently, when you are fighting “green.” This time, Summit Corporation is barreling through people’s farms, breaking into their barns, threatening ranchers with armed guards, and generally behaving like the WEFer army Trudeau sent to brutalize the truckers. This is a new iteration from the One World Government, anonymous Kevlar-coated mercenaries in the heartland.

So it is that the carbon dioxide pipeline in North Dakota is receiving rapid approvals and aggressive eminent domain clearing overturning the years, even decades it takes to clear a pipeline. The first thing Biden did was cancel the Keystone XL pipeline. It was protested by the activist army that moves into any hot spot, the leaders of which are paid well to lead the chaos. But in this instance, the carbon pipeline is being protested by actual residents fearing actual harm. Co2 is an unstable gas, unlike oil and natural gas. Co2 pipelines explode and kill people. They blow up in part because the technology is not sorted out, unlike petroleum engineering. But never mind! It’s virtuous. It’s fabulous, it must be done, whether you like it or not.

.....The most overwrought, assertive climate change activists have a “transformative” agenda to halt and reverse global warming. The problem is that there’s no evidence voting majorities in any modern democracy are willing to be transformed by Green New Deals or other, even wilder schemes. And if the people reject the climate agenda? There must be ways to enact it despite them. There may even be ways to insist that this thwarting of the popular will is, in fact, a more noble rendering of democracy than mere government by consent of the governed.

.....Satisfying this standard may entail elevating the status or power of experts in the political process by, for instance, affording them a salient consultatory role or even some kind of veto power over legislation…. One can imagine a “Supreme Court of Climate Experts,” tasked with evaluating, modifying, or striking down legislation to the extent it exacerbates the climate crisis or contributes to other grave forms of environmental destruction.

Observes Steve: “This hardly differs from the parade of authoritarian horrors offered elsewhere.....

Alas, all over the U.S., activists are attempting to override both political and judicial process placing their judgment above democratic process, and their pet judges agree. Usually local farmers, ranchers, rural businessmen and women are rolled flat by out-of-state lawyers and money from movie stars, but this time, the victims have constitutional lawyers. The South Dakota Freedom Caucus is fighting back and Gov. Noem is caught. Approving this pipeline will mean money for her coffers from Summit, jobs, albeit temporary; no doubt, federal funds will be held back until she approves it. You can read the Caucus’ extensive legal argument here.

Even the Sierra Club thinks carbon capture is fraudulent:

The fact that the 45Q tax break for carbon capture and sequestration specifically states that enhanced oil recovery [EOR] counts as sequestration means that these companies could get paid twice for the same carbon— first, via the tax break for capturing and shipping it, and again when they sell it for EOR. “The bottom line,” says [Richard] Kuprewicz, “is if you’re trying to get CO2 in the atmosphere to reduce global warming, but you’ve created this huge market incentive to drive and generate more oil recovery, that may be in conflict with getting rid of CO2 in the atmosphere... We’re getting ahead of ourselves on pipelines,” he says. “For billions of dollars you can make smart people do incredibly stupid things.”

Carbon capture is a gold rush, the gold being public money. Exxon Mobil just bought a carbon capture company. Certainly it knows of the dangers and inefficacy, but such virtue signaling makes them look good. Summit Corporation is another dishonest outfit prospecting for free public money.

Opposition mounts. The South Dakota Public Utilities Commission has announced it will hold hearings on their pipeline in September. Three days ago, Daniel Horowitz of The Blaze asked why Noem was dragging her heels about calling a special session of the legislature to deal with the “carbon-capture” threat.

This problem has been festering for quite some time, it’s just that the governor thought she’d be able to quietly skate by enabling Summit Carbon Solutions and Navigator CO2 to do the dirty work while not overtly endorsing their project. Noem’s reluctance to call a session comes on the heels of her refusal to support the existing bill in the regular session. The governor is pretending like this issue is just beginning and that lawmakers need to send some new legislation for her to review. But she is very familiar with House Bill 1133, introduced by Rep. Karla Lems. There’s nothing to review; it’s a one-paragraph bill. It simply makes it clear that eminent domain can only be used for a pipeline that actually produces a public good, not merely captures carbon. Done.

.....In Illinois, through which carbon pipelines are planned to flow, a state senator has proposed a moratorium on carbon capture pipelines to address safety concerns.

McClure said the pipeline issue was first brought to his attention by some of those who live along the path of Heartland Greenway. He said he was concerned about the potential for a pipeline rupture similar to one that happened in Satartia, Mississippi in early 2020, when 45 people were hospitalized and 200 were evacuated. The carbon dioxide sucked the air out of the surrounding area and caused gas-using vehicles to fail, according to reports.

“When you have a pipeline that’s that big [and] that will stretch across so much rural area, how on earth would emergency folks be able to get to a rupture in time to help people?,” McClure said.

We have to stop throwing our future into the great green maw.