Oct. 10, 2022 – Are there “cool kids” in science? Yes, there are – and which may be limiting up-and-comers from getting new analysis out into the world.  

“Researchers who have a good reputation, are from very prominent universities, and are from the U.S. probably have a higher chance of getting their work into a good journal than does someone whose work is equally good but is a young PhD from an obscure university or country,” says Juergen Huber, PhD, of the University of Innsbruck, in Austria. 

There’s a purpose for that, says Huber, and it’s known as standing bias – our tendency to favor the work of somebody we all know. It’s a bit like the favored child at college getting picked first for kickball. We go together with who we acknowledge, respect, or wish to be preferred by.   

A brand new research, co-authored by Huber, reveals how this standing bias can affect peer evaluation, an vital a part of scientific publishing. 

“[Expert reviewers] read the paper and decide if it is scientifically significant enough to be published in a journal,” says Sabiou Inoua, PhD, one other co-author of the research. 

A peer-reviewed paper is the gold normal within the analysis world. As a end result, researchers have to get their work peer-reviewed to validate their findings. But when standing bias jeopardizes this course of – as Huber and Inoua’s analysis suggests it does – it may maintain new analysis again, impeding progress in each area from drugs to public coverage.   

What the Researchers Did

For the research, the researchers distributed a finance paper to greater than 3,300 peer reviewers, presenting it 3 ways: 

1. For some, the paper was credited to Vernon L. Smith, a Nobel laureate and distinguished research writer.
2. For others, it was credited to Inoua, an “early-career research associate” with 42 Google Scholar citations (in comparison with Smith’s 54,000 citations). 
3. In a 3rd model, the paper was nameless, with no research writer listed. 

Reviewers first have to resolve whether or not to learn a piece in any respect. In the research, 31% agreed to learn the nameless paper, in contrast with 28.5% who selected to learn Inoua’s work. For Smith, the evaluation price improved to 38.5%. 

That means the nameless writer had a higher probability of getting their work learn than the much less acknowledged writer, and the Nobel laureate had a greater probability nonetheless. 

The variations had been much more noticeable when it got here time to just accept (or reject) the paper. When the Nobel laureate was listed, 23% of reviewers rejected the paper. Anonymous was turned down by 48%. And a whopping 65% deemed the paper unfit for publishing when the writer was the rookie researcher.

Remember, this was the similar paper. The solely distinction was the writer. 

“The rejection rate is three times as high for low-prominence authors, implying that they have much lower chances of getting published,” Huber says. “As publishing is crucial, especially for early-career researchers, that is quite bad news.”

Is It Time to ‘Fix’ Peer Review? 

This research provides to rising scrutiny of the peer evaluation course of, together with whether or not it could be vulnerable to other forms of bias, equivalent to racial or gender bias. (It additionally comes amid a waning pandemic, after an pressing want for COVID therapies prompted many researchers to bypass peer evaluation altogether, pushing papers straight to print to get them out sooner.)

One potential resolution might be to make use of a double-anonymized peer evaluation system, the place the reviewer and writer stay nameless. 

The downside: “Many papers awaiting peer review have already been presented in some form at conferences, or are otherwise available on the web,” Huber says. So, a single Google search may simply expose an writer’s identification.

But Huber feels assured that change is on the horizon. 

“Members of the scientific community are very interested and ready to take action,” he says. “Some processes need to change. There is a lot of potential for the 300-year history of peer review to take the next step.” How the method will change shouldn’t be but identified, however being conscious of the issue is step one.

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Oct. 12, 2022 – Another stoner stereotype bites the mud: Despite its appetite-boosting results – higher often called the “munchies” – hashish may very well assist hold your weight in test.

 Cannabis customers could also be much less more likely to turn out to be overweight than individuals who abstain, in accordance with a latest examine within the journal Health Economics. The examine tracked well being information from the state of Washington earlier than and after 2014, the 12 months hashish turned broadly accessible there for leisure use. 

According to the examine: “Marijuana legalization, which allowed for recreational marijuana dispensaries to open, resulted [in] decreases in obesity rates for Washington State.” 

During the 4 years after legalization, the state’s weight problems charge was 5.4% decrease, on common, than it will have been had hashish not been legalized. 

How Did They Figure That Out? 

The researchers arrange one thing known as an artificial counterfactual. 

“It’s the best approximation of what Washington would have looked like had it not legalized marijuana,” says lead writer Raymond March, PhD, an assistant professor of utilized economics at North Dakota State University. March and his colleagues got here up with a inhabitants that is like Washington state’s by combining information from states that didn’t legalize throughout those self same 4  years, together with Arizona, Minnesota, Kansas, and New Hampshire.

Hence the “synthetic counterfactual” – what Washington may need seemed like had it not legalized. The authors conclude that the state would have had 5.4% extra overweight folks over the “post-treatment period” – the 4 years after legalization – with the medical bills and human distress that go together with such obesity-related situations as diabetes, coronary heart illness, stroke, and elevated threat of early dying. 

The researchers additionally in contrast Washington state’s weight problems numbers with the nationwide development. Both development upward, however after 2014, Washington’s charge of enhance declined considerably. 

Why Might This Be Happening?

Thomas Clark, PhD, a physiologist with the Department of Biological Sciences at Indiana University in South Bend, addressed one potential purpose in a 2018 examine within the journal Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research. According to the examine, “Cannabis use appears to reverse the impact of the modern American diet on health by reducing the effects of an elevated ratio of omega-6/omega-3 fatty acids on endocannabinoid (eCB) tone.” 

Clark explains: “The 1970s saw increasing obesity in the United States, and it’s still rising today. It began with the government subsidies of corn- and soybean oil, which alter the body’s physiological regulation of metabolism. When you alter the balance of omega-6 fatty acids and omega-3 fatty acids – which you do by increasing vegetable oils such as soybean oil in the diet – the body’s endocannabinoid system becomes overactive, resulting in weight gain.” 

The endocannabinoid system – which promotes homeostasis, or steadiness, within the physique – is regulated by signaling molecules which are mimicked by chemical substances in hashish. Yes, hashish stimulates urge for food, therefore its therapeutic use by folks with illnesses like AIDS, or who’re getting appetite-killing remedies like chemotherapy. But in accordance with Clark, it additionally down-regulates the endocannabinoid system, bringing it into steadiness, stopping weight achieve, and, theoretically at the very least, serving to the folks of Washington gradual the tide of weight achieve of their state.

“My research indicates that we should look at these metabolic diseases and their correlation with cannabis use,” he says. “There may be a significant health benefit to cannabis use.”

If these advantages could be confirmed, hashish is perhaps one reply to the swelling waistlines and well being dangers of the American public.

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Sept. 1, 2022 – Warning labels on alcoholic drinks have to be up to date to spell out particulars of potential hurt with the intention to make them simpler, two U.S. researchers say.

The present labelling has not modified for 30 years and focuses solely on dangers throughout being pregnant and with working equipment, with a imprecise assertion that alcohol “may cause health problems.”

This is “so understated that it borders on being misleading,” the researchers say.

The science has moved on, and there may be now agency proof of hurt. Alcohol has been categorized by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as a bunch 1 carcinogen and has been linked to an elevated danger of many cancers. It has additionally been linked to a variety of ailments, from liver illness to pancreatitis to some varieties of coronary heart illness.

Yet the general public is usually unaware of essentially the most critical well being dangers which are related to consuming, they level out.

“We believe Americans deserve the opportunity to make well-informed decisions about their alcohol consumption,” stated Anna H. Grummon, PhD, of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, and Marissa G. Hall, PhD, of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

“Designing and adopting new alcohol warning labels should therefore be a research and policy priority,” they stated.

The two researchers set out their arguments in The New England Journal of Medicine.

“Alcohol consumption and its associated harms are reaching a crisis point in the United States,” they identified.

It now accounts for greater than 140,000 deaths per yr within the U.S., in keeping with the most recent information from the CDC. The COVID-19 pandemic has made the issue even worse, with a 25% enhance in alcohol-related deaths reported in 2020.

New, well-designed warning labels on alcohol is a commonsense option to give shoppers data and reduce alcohol-related hurt, they counsel.

What Makes a Good Warning Label?

Warning labels are handiest when they’re prominently displayed, once they embody footage of some kind, and when the content material is rotated to keep away from anybody message from changing into “stale,” the researchers say. This has labored properly for cigarette packets, the place such a warning has elevated smoking give up charges, as in contrast with smaller, side-of-pack, text-only warning labels.

There can also be some proof that such a labeling can work for alcohol. When massive warnings about most cancers danger that included footage had been quickly added to the entrance of alcohol containers in some shops in Yukon, Canada, alcohol gross sales declined from 6% to 10%, they level out.

But stress from the alcohol trade led to adjustments within the Yukon undertaking, and whereas a basic well being warning stays, the label about elevated most cancers danger was eliminated.

The researchers say the alcohol trade will get in the best way of efforts to coach the general public. The trade spends greater than $1 billion annually to market its merchandise within the U.S.

The authors warning that if the federal government doesn’t get entangled, the alcohol trade has little purpose to share the dangers.

And some corporations even hyperlink their merchandise to well being campaigns, comparable to promoting pink ribbon-themed alcoholic drinks in October to advertise efforts to lift funds for breast most cancers analysis, regardless of compelling proof linking alcohol to the next danger of breast most cancers.

Calling on Congress for New Labels

This isn’t the primary name for a change in alcohol warning labels.

Last yr, a number of medical teams petitioned Congress for a brand new cancer-specific warning label for all alcoholic drinks.

The petition was signed by the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the American Institute for Cancer Research, and Breast Cancer Prevention Partners, together with the American Public Health Association, the Consumer Federation of America, the Center for Science within the Public Interest, Alcohol Justice, and the U.S. Alcohol Policy Alliance.

They are calling for a label that might say: “WARNING: According to the Surgeon General, consumption of alcoholic drinks could cause most cancers, together with breast and colon cancers.”

But that petition remains to be pending, stated Melissa Maitin-Shepard, a coverage knowledgeable on the American Institute for Cancer Research.

In addition, the institute is “working to advocate for the addition of a cancer warning label to alcoholic beverages through multiple channels,” she stated. “Given the strong evidence linking alcohol use with at least six types of cancer – and low awareness of the alcohol and cancer connection – there is a tremendous need to educate the public about alcohol and cancer risk.”

Noelle LoConte, MD, an affiliate professor of drugs on the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the lead writer of the ASCO assertion on alcohol and most cancers danger, burdened that there is no such thing as a doubt that alcohol is a carcinogen, inflicting about 5% of cancers globally, and likewise that its use has elevated through the pandemic.

“Initiatives that raise awareness around this issue could help generate more public support for policies that limit alcohol access and thereby decrease the number of alcohol-associated cancers,” she stated. “In ASCO’s statement on alcohol and cancer, we recommend several key strategies to reduce high-risk alcohol consumption, including limiting youth access to alcohol, giving municipalities more control over alcohol outlet density and points of sale, and increasing taxes on alcohol.”

But she additionally had a small criticism of 1 level within the New England Journal of Medicine article. It exhibits a pattern diagram that lists gastric most cancers as attributable to alcohol.

“But as of today, gastric cancer is not on the IARC [International Agency for Research on Cancer] list of alcohol associated cancers,” she stated. “I think this brings to mind one critical point, that these warning labels have to contain scientifically established facts.”

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April 8, 2022 — Researchers from Australia and Israel have discovered proof of compelled organ harvesting in China on individuals who weren’t first declared mind useless.

Searching for documentation that organs folks must dwell are being harvested from executed prisoners who didn’t give their permission — a observe that the China Tribunal confirmed “beyond any reasonable doubt” in 2020 — Jacob Lavee, MD, an Israeli coronary heart transplant surgeon, and Matthew Robertson, a PhD scholar at Australian National University, uncovered one thing much more stunning: that organs are being taken from sufferers who’re nonetheless alive.

The paper “bring[s] attention to an enormous human rights violation,” says Arthur Caplan, PhD, Head of the Division of Medical Ethics at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine. “What they’ve reported has been going on for many, many, years. The data is very clear that China’s doing many more transplants than they have cadaver organ donors,” he says.

The analysis, revealed within the American Journal of Transplantation, concerned detailed evaluation of hundreds of Chinese language papers describing transplants. It recognized 71 papers during which transplant surgeons describe beginning organ procurement surgical procedure earlier than declaring their sufferers mind useless.

“What we found were improper, illegitimate, non-existent or false declarations of brain death,” says Robertson, explaining this violates what’s referred to as the Dead Donor Rule, which is prime in transplant ethics.

“The surgeons wrote that the donor was brain dead, but according to everything we know about medical science they could not possibly have been brain dead because there was no apnea test performed,” says Robertson, referring to a take a look at that determines if the mind stem is lively.

Robertson and Lavee have painstakingly documented “incriminating sentences” in every of the 71 papers, proving that mind demise had not occurred earlier than the process to take away organs started.

“There were two criteria by which we claimed a problematic brain death declaration,” says Robertson, who translated the Chinese. “One was where the patient was not ventilated and was only intubated after they were declared brain dead, the other was that the intubation took place immediately prior to the surgery beginning.”

“We have shown for the first time that the transplant surgeons are the executioners — that the mode of execution is organ procurement. These are self-admissions of executing the patient,” says Lavee, from Tel Aviv University.

“It was mind-boggling,” he says. “But the more of these papers we read, we saw it was a pattern…And they didn’t come out of a single medical center, they are spread all over China.”

For the evaluation, Robertson scrutinized 124,770 medical papers from official Chinese databases between 1980 and 2020. The 71 papers revealing problematic mind demise got here from 56 hospitals (of which 12 had been army) in 33 cities throughout 15 provinces, they reported. In whole, 348 surgeons, nurses, anesthesiologists, and different medical staff or researchers had been listed as authors on these publications.

Why would these medical staff publish such self-incriminating proof? The researchers say it’s unclear. “They don’t think anyone’s reading this stuff,” Robertson suggests. “Sometimes it’s revealed in just five or six characters in a paper of 8 pages.”

NYU’s Caplan added that China’s well-documented and profitable involvement in transplant tourism “means you have to have a donor ready when the would-be recipient appears, you have to have a matched organ available, and that’s hard to do waiting on a cadaver donor.”

Caplan and the researchers have referred to as for tutorial establishments and medical journals to renew their earlier boycotts of Chinese transplant publications and audio system, however so long as China denies the practices, financial and political leaders will flip a blind eye.

“In the previous, I do not assume the query of China’s medical skilled involvement within the execution of donors has been taken as severely because it ought to have,” says Robertson. “I definitely hope that with the publication of this paper within the main journal within the discipline, it will change.”

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