16 Comments

Denis, it is an honor to welcome you (belatedly) to Substack. I consider your mortality data analyses to be the definitive nail in the coffin of the COVID narrative and am grateful to you for introducing me to psychological concepts such as “cooling the mark out,” which I referenced in this piece (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/mistakes-were-not-made-one-poem-to).

Thank you for this well-considered and desperately needed set of guidelines for reforming the thoroughly corrupted industry of high-impact journals (which Pierre Kory has been diligently exposing at his Stack: https://pierrekory.substack.com/archive?sort=search&search=%22high-impact%20journals%22).

The first two things I look for when evaluating the trustworthiness of a scientific article are 1) funding sources and 2) conflict of interest statement, so #11 is especially critical (and should explicitly include not only financial interests but also other mechanisms of influence such as board appointments and NGO associations).

The recent discoveries of widespread academic fraud and a “peer-review ring” resulting in the retraction of hundreds of academic papers (e.g., Hindawi/Wiley retracted 511 articles across 16 journals, including 265 articles on COVID: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-K3obvnKYQ; see also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAdZ10TVNrc by DrBeen) drive home the importance of addressing this vehicle for manufacturing the dangerous illusion of scientific consensus (https://www.illusionconsensus.com/).

That said, I do not expect any high-impact journals to actually implement these guidelines as their very existence necessitates collusion with corrupting influences.

We may need to simply begin developing a parallel set of scientific publications with some sort of certification/indicator showing they are adhering to these rules—much like “organic” and “non-GMO” labels emerged to combat Big Ag.

One example of a good starting point is Primary Doctor Medical Journal (https://pdmj.org/), whose tagline is “A peer-reviewed journal by physicians and scientists without commercial influence” and whose articles on masking I referenced in this piece:

• “Letter to the Oregon Health Authority” (https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/letter-to-the-oregon-health-authority)

Expand full comment

Love your fulsome comment Margaret, and your work!

Those are excellent additional resources for me.

Thanks.

PS: Starting to think I may be wasting my efforts on twitter?

Expand full comment

Aww, thank you, Denis, and I’m glad you found them useful.

And yes, Substack is definitely the place to be if you want to engage in substantive discussions with world-class scientists, physicians, data analysts, writers, and researchers. I feel like we multiply our knowledge exponentially by exchanging findings, vetting sources, identifying errors, and distributing problem-solving based on our individual expertises.

I primarily use Twitter/FB/social media to share links to my articles but otherwise spend the rest of my time at Substack as the level of discourse is much higher here. That said, you have a much larger audience on Twitter and can reach a lot of people who wouldn’t otherwise come across your content, so it is probably still worth sharing pertinent info there for you.

Expand full comment
Comment removed
July 23, 2023
Comment removed
Expand full comment

Oh believe me, Denis is high on my list of candidates for Profiles in Courage. I just have so many time-sensitive projects that always take priority, so that series gets pushed down (I only tackled Sucharit’s because of the urgency of his trial: https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/profiles-in-courage-prof-dr-sucharit). But I do look forward to profiling Denis (sorry for spoiling the surprise, Denis :-) once my schedule permits, whenever that is.

Expand full comment

Now if it was somehow possible to de-politicize funding.

Every publisher will read this piece in fear.

All research relies on funding, and it will be difficult to protect the publishing of it as well.

Expand full comment

We miss the point. Rather; Scientists must prove themselves a la Inquisition style. Just as Galileo was persecuted by The Church for his heresies, so should today's questors of knowledge. HOWEVER 💣 if ANY of their ouvre proves to be contaminated by BigSick then... they are burned alive, at the stake. Simple!🤷

Expand full comment

I'm a nurse with an advanced science degree and we need an overhaul. Welcome and thank-you!

Expand full comment

These rules are excellent. They should already have been the standard. Eg anonymity.

Expand full comment

I think we need to leave journals behind altogether. Publishing, including the peer-review process should be decentralized, open to any researcher and open-ended. All Research work should be saved on a blockchain along with the data that was used.

Reviews need to be weighted according to reviewers' ratings and ratings need to be much more reactive in order to prevent abuse.

Expand full comment

Hear hear Dennis and great to add you to my ever expanding subs list. Whoever controls the information flow is King. I am seriously considering withholding my tax bill in UK. Magna Carta Article 61. The corruption of EVERY institution is mind boggling. Blacks Law Dictionary early editions may yield some clarity. Check out "should". https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/should

Expand full comment

Excellent rules, I would prefer them to be stronger and clearer. For example, the word "should" is use several times. In all likelihood this will be abused and treated as I will do what I think is best. There should be no wiggle room. It can be argued that judgment is needed allow a process to work efficiently. We all thought the Charter of Rights or the US Constitution was clear and would protect us, well it didn't.

Expand full comment

no state funding for science. that's all that's needed. similarly, abolish NIH, CDC, FDA, EPA and any other government agency purporting to do research. you want the best science, geared only towards things that really matter? subject scientists/researchers to the marketplace.

Expand full comment

Very good. However, I wonder if in this day and age, the gatekeeping, big business and archaic method of disseminating science is so broken as to be unsavable. It may be better to focus efforts on using modern methods, open review and rankings, such as an app. After all, amazon and google review do the job for other things for the most part.

Expand full comment

Society doesn't really need to care about scientific publishing. If scientific "results" were simply ignored by the meanstream, SNR for everyone would increase. Bothersome virus research is more due to structural funding issues than publications.

Expand full comment

Hi Denis, you might appreciate Toby’s writing especially with respect to this article of yours on science publishing. https://open.substack.com/pub/tobyrogers/p/systematic-review-and-meta-analysis

Expand full comment

The imposition of rules on private business with law is fascism.

Expand full comment