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January 2024

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to retract 6 studies, correct 31 after ‘data forgery’ allegations By Rick Sobey

By on January 29th, 2024

https://www.bostonherald.com/2024/01/23/dana-farber-cancer-institute-to-retract-6-studies-correct-31-after-data-forgery-allegations/
This comes after Harvard’s ex-prez faced plagiarism allegations

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute says the research giant is seeking to retract six studies and correct 31 others, as local scientists face “data forgery” allegations for their cancer research.

This controversy at the Harvard cancer institute comes after the university’s former president, Claudine Gay, resigned amid plagiarism allegations.

Dana-Farber is moving to retract the six manuscripts and correct 31 others following a bombshell blog from scientist Sholto David. His revealing blog took aim at four Dana-Farber researchers, including Dana-Farber President and CEO Laurie Glimcher.

“No doubt Laurie built her career on papers like this one, in Nature Immunology (2003), which includes some impressive contributions to art, but perhaps not to science,” David wrote in the “For Better Science” blog.

“As the whole world furiously argues over whether the president of Harvard did or didn’t use some quotation marks in the right place, scientists at the affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) must breathe a sigh of relief, no one has bothered to critically read their research in years! Far worse skeletons than plagiarism lurk in the archives…,” wrote David, a molecular biologist.

Following David’s explosive post that focused on four researchers, Dana-Farber confirmed that six studies have retractions underway: Requests have been submitted and are being reviewed by the relevant publication, or requests are being prepared.

Also, 31 manuscripts have been identified as needing corrections, which are in various stages of completion. One manuscript with a reported error remains under examination.

“Correcting the scientific record is a common practice of institutions with strong research integrity processes at which basic research is conducted,” said Barrett Rollins, research integrity officer and chief scientific officer, emeritus, at Dana-Farber. “Some of the potential errors that blogger Sholto David flagged had come up in our ongoing reviews.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

American Museum of Natural History Closes Certain Displays Amid New Federal Regulations: Mallory Moench

By on January 29th, 2024

https://www.aol.com/news/american-museum-natural-history-closes-151912003.html

The American Museum of Natural History in New York City has closed certain Native American exhibits in accordance with new federal regulations. Credit – Richard Drew–AP

The American Museum of Natural History in New York City is the latest institution across the country to close access to Native American exhibits as authorities return or seek permission from tribes to display artifacts in accordance with a new Biden Administration rule.

The museum’s president Sean Decatur informed staff in a letter Friday of the closure of two of its halls filled with Native American objects, as well as the covering of cases in or just outside three other halls, starting Saturday. The museum will also suspend school field trips to one hall, but said it remains committed to supporting education about Indigenous peoples. Another exhibit developed with Indigenous communities remains open.

“While the actions we are taking this week may seem sudden, they reflect a growing urgency among all museums to change their relationships to, and representation of, Indigenous cultures,” Decatur wrote. “The Halls we are closing are vestiges of an era when museums such as ours did not respect the values, perspectives, and indeed shared humanity of Indigenous peoples. Actions that may feel sudden to some may seem long overdue to others.”

The Administration’s new rule, an update to the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act that regulates the return of Native American human remains and sacred, cultural or funeral objects to descendants of those communities, came into effect on Jan. 12. The Natural History Museum already pulled all human remains, many of Native American or Black enslaved people, from display in October.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israeli Defense Conference paints ‘day after’ scenario with Israel firmly in control David Isaac

By on January 29th, 2024

https://www.jns.org/israeli-defense-conference-paints-day-after-scenario-with-israel-firmly-in-control/

 While the world pressures Israel, even before its war against Hamas has ended, to turn the Gaza Strip over to the Palestinian Authority, Israeli security experts delivered the opposite message at a security conference Thursday, saying Israel must remain in Gaza for a long time.

The Israel Defense Conference 2024, which took place in Ashkelon on Jan. 25, was organized by the Israel Defense and Security Forum (IDSF). Thursday’s conference was the third held by the organization, and the most successful, with 500 attending.

The IDSF has grown in reputation following Oct. 7 as it has been warning for years that Israel needs to reevaluate its security posture. The group, comprising thousands of former security officers, was founded in 2020 by senior retired IDF personnel concerned that Israel was entering a dangerous period.

“For two years now, we have warned that the State of Israel has been on the road to war,” said Israel Defense Forces Brig. Gen. (res.) Amir Avivi, co-founder and chairman of IDSF, in his opening remarks.

“We predicted that Israel was going to face a Six-Day War scenario, or a Yom Kippur scenario, in which we would find ourselves completely surprised.”

In the 1967 SixDay War Israel struck first, quickly defeating its enemies. In the 1973 Yom Kippur War Israel was taken by surprise, hesitated to carry out a last-minute preemptive strike, and suffered heavy losses.

“Unfortunately, we found ourselves in the Yom Kippur reality that we so feared, a surprise scenario that caught Israel off guard,” he said, referring to the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas invasion.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Some Notes On The Trial Of Mann v. Steyn  Francis Menton *****

By on January 29th, 2024

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&id=0ae785da5d
Way back in October 2012, climate alarmist and activist Michael Mann brought a libel suit against Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg for allegedly defamatory blog posts that the two had written a few months previously. The case has gone through an incredible history of procedural twists and turns since then, a few of which I have covered in prior blog posts, for example here on March 20, 2014, and here on March 26, 2021. The trial finally started on January 16.

Probably most readers here are familiar with the case to at least some degree, and many may even be following the trial. (The court has a live feed available to the public. Follow this link at WattsUpWithThat if you want to tune in during the coming week.). I have watched some substantial chunks of the trial during its first two weeks.

Mann is best known as the creator of the famous “Hockey Stick” graph, purporting to be a world temperature reconstruction of the past thousand or so years, with essentially level temperatures until the 20th century, and then sharply rising temperatures in the 20th century era of human use of fossil fuels. Mann published versions of the figure in Nature magazine, originally in 1998; and the UN’s IPCC quickly (in 2001) seized on the Hockey Stick as its iconic demonstration that human use of fossil fuels was causing global warming. In the blog posts that are the subject of the case, Steyn and Simberg called Mann’s graph false and deceptive. (Steyn referred to Mann’s figure as “the fraudulent climate-change ‘hockey stick’ graph” while Simberg called out “[Mann’s] and others’ hockey stick deceptions.”) (Note: in multiple prior blog posts, I have also called Mann’s Hockey Stick graph fraudulent, for example here in August 2019.)

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