It was Friday, so I walked around the trapline to see if the Stupid Traps had snared anything. And oh yes, there was Stupid aplenty, enough for everyone, but of such a nature that I find myself working the Retraction Watch side of the street.
1. Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?
RW blogposts have sometimes focused on the long delays between the appearance of a flawed paper and its eventual expulsion from the academic literature, and its transferral into the hands of the secular branch to be consumed in cleansing fire.
At the other end of the spectrum, one hears less often of negative delays, where the paper is criticised, condemned and withdrawn even before it appeared in press. If only because the Temporal Continuity Police look askance on that kind of chrono-anomaly and CODE PALIMPSEST dangling causality pointers (which require no end of temporal-continuum re-knitting and recompiling from the source code, and you wouldn't believe the paperwork, while the Temporal Continuity Accounts auditors are notoriously humourless on the concept of "overtime").
But none of this stopped one Jake Crosby, anti-vaccine campaigner, in the throes of a Category 4 Butthurt, from demanding the pre-emptive retraction of a paper that hasn't been published, and currently exists only in the fertile imagination of another anti-vaccine campaigner (who in turn claims to have heard about it from the author's lawyer,* because that's what lawyers are for).
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
In short, it is Schrödinger's Manuscript, in a superpositioned state of potential publication, and Jake wants to collapse the wave-function to a state of unpublication, for he is convinced that if it were written it would violate his belief system.
To that end, Crosby asks his readers to
(a) Stalk the potential author.
(b) Contact the potential author's employers.
(c) Contact the P.N.A.S. (which he believes to be the target journal IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PROPHECY) and warn them not to publish the potential paper.
(d) Denounce the P.N.A.S. to the CommitteeOf Public Safety On Publication Ethics
Clik here to view.It only remains for Retraction Watch to take up the story (for Jake has prior form with RW and believes the bloggers there to be Suppressive Persons, part of the conspiracy to Hide the Truth) to elevate the butthurt to Category 5.
* "Mr. Richard Morgan, Esq.[sic], Dr. Thompson’s whistle blower attorney, stated that Dr. Thompson will be publishing a paper in May, 2016". Actual attorney is Mr Frederick "Rick" Morgan.
** Crosby is perhaps unaware that a key part of the COPE mission statement is "Do not criticise dues-paying members of COPE".
2. He who lies down with dogs should take a long spoon. And being smeared all over with peanut butter beforehand, turns out not to be such a good idea.
Dear Health Ministry people,
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.This is what happens when you go into partnership with the Police and NZ Customs to establish a National Drug Intelligence Bureau -- which with three bodies and a single head is going one step better than a T'ao T'ieh. You find your name signed onto a mendacious clickbaity 'report', Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view. stuffed full as a bad- taxidermy walrus with fabricated claims and numbers about social costs, gateway drug, dangerous potency of marijuana today, hospital emergency admissions. A report that served the police well back in 2008, when it was mysteriously though promptly leaked to the media and churnalised into editorials about the need to press on with the War on Drugs.
Then when the report's tendentious and self-serving nature comes to light eight years later, and you seek to retract it for fear that 'making shit up' will not reflect well on the joint agency's reputation as a source of impartial reliable information, the police will veto that retraction, for fear of damaging the NDIB's reputation. Remember, they come from a culture in which the only shame in fabrication or chicanery comes from admitting it.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.![]()
Also (a) there is nothing to be gained from recriminations after so many years; (b) the report is long forgotten; (c) it was of little importance and was only used to dictate public policy; (d) the Drug Analyst who wrote it is no longer in the NDIB, after promotion elsewhere for a job well done.
Clik here to view.![]()
This description of Stuart Dawson's five-year exercise in accessing the actual number of drug-related hospital admissions makes for interesting although repetitive reading, in which phrases recur about "file destroyed". Apparently the custom of the day was to maintain no hard-copy back-ups for crucial dispositive data, and only a single easily-corrupted electronic copy/
HA HA, "joint agency", you see what I did there?
3. Bonus Anti-Vax Loon: Christopher Savage
4. Protraction Watch
1. Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?
RW blogposts have sometimes focused on the long delays between the appearance of a flawed paper and its eventual expulsion from the academic literature, and its transferral into the hands of the secular branch to be consumed in cleansing fire.
At the other end of the spectrum, one hears less often of negative delays, where the paper is criticised, condemned and withdrawn even before it appeared in press. If only because the Temporal Continuity Police look askance on that kind of chrono-anomaly and CODE PALIMPSEST dangling causality pointers (which require no end of temporal-continuum re-knitting and recompiling from the source code, and you wouldn't believe the paperwork, while the Temporal Continuity Accounts auditors are notoriously humourless on the concept of "overtime").
But none of this stopped one Jake Crosby, anti-vaccine campaigner, in the throes of a Category 4 Butthurt, from demanding the pre-emptive retraction of a paper that hasn't been published, and currently exists only in the fertile imagination of another anti-vaccine campaigner (who in turn claims to have heard about it from the author's lawyer,* because that's what lawyers are for).
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
In short, it is Schrödinger's Manuscript, in a superpositioned state of potential publication, and Jake wants to collapse the wave-function to a state of unpublication, for he is convinced that if it were written it would violate his belief system.To that end, Crosby asks his readers to
(a) Stalk the potential author.
(b) Contact the potential author's employers.
(c) Contact the P.N.A.S. (which he believes to be the target journal IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PROPHECY) and warn them not to publish the potential paper.
(d) Denounce the P.N.A.S. to the Committee
.**Please write and call Dr. Thompson at the following numbers and email address and tell him to withdraw his “reanalysis” and that he will face ethical complaints against him due to the ridiculous nature of his claims.
[redacted]@cdc DOT gov
(404) xxx-xxxx (office) Liz writes: the number published is incorrect
(404) xxx-xxxx (cell) Liz writes: the number published is incorrect
Also contact the journal publishing his paper as well and tell them withdraw his paper and that they too will face ethics complaints for publishing it. Here is the email for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, where the “reanalysis” will likely be published. You should let the journal know that it too will face an ethical complaint for publishing Thompson’s analysis and should withdraw it from press: [redacted]@nas dot edu, Phone: xxx-xxx-xxxx redacted for charity
Also make a complaint to the Committee on Publication Ethics. Let them know you complained to both the author of the piece and to PNAS: http://publicationethics.org/contact-us Clik here to view.
It only remains for Retraction Watch to take up the story (for Jake has prior form with RW and believes the bloggers there to be Suppressive Persons, part of the conspiracy to Hide the Truth) to elevate the butthurt to Category 5.[h/t Liz Ditz and Respectful Insolence]
* "Mr. Richard Morgan, Esq.[sic], Dr. Thompson’s whistle blower attorney, stated that Dr. Thompson will be publishing a paper in May, 2016". Actual attorney is Mr Frederick "Rick" Morgan.
** Crosby is perhaps unaware that a key part of the COPE mission statement is "Do not criticise dues-paying members of COPE".
2. He who lies down with dogs should take a long spoon. And being smeared all over with peanut butter beforehand, turns out not to be such a good idea.
Dear Health Ministry people,
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
This is what happens when you go into partnership with the Police and NZ Customs to establish a National Drug Intelligence Bureau -- which with three bodies and a single head is going one step better than a T'ao T'ieh. You find your name signed onto a mendacious clickbaity 'report', Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
stuffed full as a bad- taxidermy walrus with fabricated claims and numbers about social costs, gateway drug, dangerous potency of marijuana today, hospital emergency admissions. A report that served the police well back in 2008, when it was mysteriously though promptly leaked to the media and churnalised into editorials about the need to press on with the War on Drugs.
Then when the report's tendentious and self-serving nature comes to light eight years later, and you seek to retract it for fear that 'making shit up' will not reflect well on the joint agency's reputation as a source of impartial reliable information, the police will veto that retraction, for fear of damaging the NDIB's reputation. Remember, they come from a culture in which the only shame in fabrication or chicanery comes from admitting it.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Also (a) there is nothing to be gained from recriminations after so many years; (b) the report is long forgotten; (c) it was of little importance and was only used to dictate public policy; (d) the Drug Analyst who wrote it is no longer in the NDIB, after promotion elsewhere for a job well done.
In a letter dated October, 2013, national manager of intelligence Detective Superintendent Stephen Vaughan said the report had been removed from the police website and the internal police intranet.
He said the report was no longer referenced, "due to the fact that it is over six years old", there had been "significant changes" to intelligence practices and processes within the NDIB, and none of the current staff were in their roles when the report was released.
"The issues that you raise ... would not occur in the current intelligence system," Vaughan wrote, saying there was no need for further action.
Bonus T'ao T'ieh
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
This description of Stuart Dawson's five-year exercise in accessing the actual number of drug-related hospital admissions makes for interesting although repetitive reading, in which phrases recur about "file destroyed". Apparently the custom of the day was to maintain no hard-copy back-ups for crucial dispositive data, and only a single easily-corrupted electronic copy/HA HA, "joint agency", you see what I did there?
3. Bonus Anti-Vax Loon: Christopher Savage
4. Protraction Watch
[Work in Progress]