
What a scientist didn't tell the New York Times about his study on bee deaths - Morendil
http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/08/news/honey_bees_ny_times.fortune/index.htm
======
waterhouse
If any of those reading this are in the business of writing news articles,
then, please:

If you want to tell me about a scientist's report being something fake he
cooked up (for fame or because someone paid him to say it or whatever), then
_first_ tell me what, scientifically, is or might be wrong with the report,
and _then_ tell me about his background and financial incentives and stuff.

I believe it's supposed to be good news-article-writing style to put the most
important facts and overview first, so that the reader can stop at any part in
the article and come away with a good overall picture of whatever the article
talks about. The thesis of the article seems to be that there's something
wrong with this scientist's study... yet this author seems to have thought it
was fine for a reader to walk away having read the ad hominem attacks against
the scientist, but not the actual description of what might be wrong with his
study. I was rather disconcerted to see this in a major news outlet like CNN;
I thought that only happened in Ayn Rand novels.

~~~
reader5000
The gist of this article was not that the original report was "something fake"
the scientist "cooked up". It was that the scientist received funding from an
interested party that he failed to disclose.

While it is true that in the realm of pure logical discourse this fact is
irrelevant to the argumentative structure of the original paper, in the real
world it is a significant fact that legitimately questions the credibility of
the scientist.

~~~
billswift
Except of course when the scientist is paid by a government agency and
concludes that the government needs more power - then the funding or
employment situation is irrelevant.

~~~
lzw
You make a very good point. However your point is not politically correct
therefore it is being buries. Have an upvote.

I find the fact that people who make valid points that don't happen to be in
lock step with party ideology are buried on this site very tragic and it has
significantly reduced my interest in participating in this site.

Particularly ironic is that the ideological downvoting always seems to come
from the left/socialist wing, yet this is ostensibly a capitalist/startup
oriented site.

~~~
irons
He's not being downvoted for being un-PC, he's being downvoted for being
reflexively paranoid, in a style that resists falsification and contributes
nothing to the discussion.

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araneae
Oh, whatever.

a) He didn't use the funding for this study.

b) Science papers aren't opinion articles. Nowhere in the study did he say
that the virus and the fungus are exclusively the cause of the epidemic. If
you got that impression, that was the media editorializing the study. If he
falsified or omitted data, then he's guilty. But all he did was show that
these two pathogens are present in collapsed colonies. You can't criticize the
guy for something that another writer invented.

~~~
slantyyz
A Even if he didn't use the funding for the study, he should have at least
disclosed it. His research is going to now be perceived (right or wrong) as a
lot shadier now that this CNN article came out than it would have if he just
made his disclosure in the first place.

B Well, I don't know if I agree with you there. There's a fine line between
opinion and theory in scientific papers, especially when you're trying to
prove (or disprove) causation. You don't find it interesting that, say, the
tobacco industry manages to find scientists to refute links between use of
their products and cancer? Or what about the division between the "global
warming" debate. There's a reason for peer review in scientific publications,
and even the peer review process can occasionally break down.

------
code_duck
It seemed rather apparent to me that something was missing from that other
article - like more insight into the underlying causes. Its reaffirming to see
that Dr. Jennifer Sass asks the same questions I was asking (which,
incidentally I was downvoted for and 'corrected' about here on HN).

~~~
bapadna
Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it
makes boring reading.

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

~~~
jacquesm
Hint: resist lecturing people as though you own the place when your account is
10 days old.

------
olefoo
The problem of agency, in scientific research especially, but also in any
field where the results of the questions asked have direct effects on
businesses, is a hard problem. It will always be the case that those most
interested in funding a given field of research will be biased towards a
specific class of results. It becomes that much more difficult for lines of
enquiry that touch on liability for causing economic harm to others.

------
slantyyz
This article makes me think of Nobel Prize winner Kary Mullis
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary_Mullis>), who wrote this book called
"Dancing in a Mind Field" years ago, and it brought up some interesting points
when talking about "scientific research" and the reporting behind it.

The one takeaway from the book.. "follow the money". Fact checking, of course,
is much harder than it sounds, which is probably why a lot of news
organizations don't do as much as they should when reporting stuff like the
bee colony collapses, etc.

Mullis has some interesting (almost conspiracy theory-esque) ideas about AIDS
research, etc. One of the more memorable anecdotes in this book - he found it
amusingly coincidental that there was a huge movement to ban Freon for
environmental reasons right before Dupont's patents were about to expire.

~~~
carbocation
Kary Mullis is a great example of why you should only consider scientists to
be experts in their specific, narrow domain.

~~~
ursablanco
And his particular domain is exquisitely narrow ... as further evidenced by
the breadth and depth of his ignorance. Sorry to rant, but there's a guy that
gets on my nerves.

~~~
slantyyz
But his points, at least as he wrote them in the particular book I mentioned
aren't invalid or interesting because he's a jerk (his chapter on wanderlust
had my head spinning).

"Follow the money" is a guideline that makes sense. I even thought his reasons
for -not- dismissing astrology outright were somewhat interesting, although I
see in his wikipedia entry that he now 'believes' in astrology.

------
Fargren
I've read reports that the global bee population is not actually decreacing.
The poplution seem to be decreasing in the USA and a few other areas in Great
Britaitn and Holand, but overall there's no evidence of the world population
being signifficantly lowered.

This is the only source I could find with a quick search, and it's in spanish
[PDF]<http://www.fcen.uba.ar/prensa/cable/2010/pdf/Cable_752.pdf>

------
napierzaza
Guess what. If they are able to fix the bee genocide with some sort of
pharmaceutical... that means that it was the virus/bacteria/fungus that caused
the problem! This New York Times article isn't bringing the bees back.

I don't think Bayer thought it would be great to make people think this would
work, for PR (?) and then to go ahead and NOT be able to fix it. We're not
talking about 9/11 or something that you can sort of say "we're stopping
another one of those from happening every day."

Instead, we have ONGOING deaths that we don't know the cause of. So if this
particular study, and any extrapolated treatment ACTUALLY WORKS. Then yes, it
wasn't pesticides. Maybe Bayer is wrong, but the article is pretty clear this
is preliminary.

------
nice1
This touches on an very important topic: the corruption of scientists (often
"scientists") by funding. The corruption that lead to the "climate consensus"
is now costing the world a LOT, and the green-industrial complex is not likely
to rest on its laurels.

------
Flow
One step closer to Soylent Green.

------
JCThoughtscream
Something smells - and it smells oddly like that supposed BP oil spill
microbe.

~~~
gaius
No, the timings don't work out. CCD has been an ongoing issue.

