Plagiarism and the role of publishers

Anyone who reads Just Like Cooking or Chemjobber is by now probably aware of the freshly-discovered plagiarism case wherein a 2013 Chem. Eur. J. article by Professor Xi Yan lifts, verbatim or nearly so, entire portions of a three-years-prior (2009) JACS paper by Professor Valérie Pierre. Reading the commentary, the plagiarism is pretty egregious. Additionally, comments and a further blog post by See Arr Oh have brought up more instances of plagiarism like this.

Of course, #spacedino is immediately brought to mind (for the uninitiated, that particular hashtag refers to the 2012 controversy where esteemed chemist Breslow, of Columbia University, was found to have submitted what amounted to essentially the same publication to multiple journals; it was only really caught because biologists took his lame ending joke seriously). After lengthy conversation on various media and social media outlets, the offending papers were retracted at Breslow's (and others') request (though initially he denied wrongdoing).

While the Breslow violation was aggravating and arguably wrong, the Yan violation is worse. I don't think that's a very controversial point to make, but it's an important one to recognize. The Breslow affair fell into what some categorized as an ethical grey zone; the Yan violation is in clear things-they-tell-you-from-day-one-in-university territory.

Rapid retraction is vital, I'd wager; thought many retracted papers still get heavily cited or believed, early correction is probably the best way to prevent such propagation. Once an article has been believed as true for a substantial period of time and gets included in dissertation of paper-introduction citation-vomits, less care is taken to check the original source and see the glaring retraction notice. Better to stop the train before it leaves the station.

I think this highlights the role of open and quick dialogue among scientists, along the same lines as Blog Syn. The ability to rapidly disseminate these issues when they are discovered can, ultimately, improve the quality of scientific communication. In a pre-social-media era, it was certainly easier to just assume a paper would slip by unnoticed. Not so much anymore; via Twitter, for instance, a wide audience can be quickly reached. See Arr Oh wrote that he has notified the two publishers (Wiley and ACS); it will be very interesting to see what action occurs.

Of course, a point could be made that such post-publication watchdog action shouldn't be necessary. Aren't these things peer reviewed? Alas, I think anyone with a healthy dose of realism is aware that a good bulk of reviewers put in the minimum conceivable effort in reviewing (consider the sheer quantity of bad Supplementary Information files). Usually, this is justified by a variety of factors, namely that reviewers are (1) busy and (2) unpaid. (And they aren't held accountable if the article is later retracted).

But hey, you know who are paid? Publisher staff. I'm a bit surprised that more journal editors haven't made a practice of submitting manuscripts to plagiarism detection software. There's many available; universities often have TAs use them to check undergraduate papers. One comment on Chemjobber's blog points out that Elsevier provides access to one such service, iThenticate, to its reviewers. One readily available service, eTBLAST, compares blocks of text to databases of scientific papers using the BLAST algorithms commonly employed in bioinformatics for sequence alignment. In short, many tools exist for plagiarism detection. So what's the deal, journals? A common claim of open-access opponents is that paywall publishers "add value" to papers by the publication process.

So why aren't all papers routinely submitted to these checks after peer review and before publication? Ideally, reviewers should do a thorough job vetting submitted articles and should be supplied with tools to do so. But publishers share that responsibility. If you can Cantrill an article, it shouldn't slip by.

(One caveat: I'm not sure about the journal coverage of many of the anti-plagiarism packages. eTBLAST, for instance, appears to have access to Medline and PMC, but doesn't seem to have many of the synthetic journals in full-text. That's from an initial assessment; I may be wrong. CrossCheck, the service powered by iThenticate, has a very wide list of included content, but interestingly, I don't immediately see ACS on the list). Is it possible that some of these illustrated issues just don't get picked up by the software?

Lastly, something that would be very interesting: how much scientific plagiarism occurred in the pre-software-detection era? That is, how prevalent were issues of plagiarism in the 1960s? If one took journals from the 1960s, for instance, and ran them through this software--what would they find? Is it more prevalent now? Is it less prevalent? When did scientific plagiarism mature? I suspect the issue is a very old one.

Pseudoscientist calls science dogmatic (surprise)

Bad Religion, to which bad science has been compared.
Source: Flickr (available via CC license)

In a post a couple of weeks ago on the HuffingtonPost blog, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake lamented what he regards as crippling dogmas in science (I'm relieved to see it placed in HuffPost Religion and not HuffingtonPost Science). The piece is titled: Why Bad Science is like Bad Religion. For reference, a photograph of Bad Religion is shown to the right.

The HuffingtonPost piece is a diatribe devoid of evidence. Says Sheldrake:

I have been a scientist for more than 40 years, having studied at Cambridge and Harvard. I researched and taught at Cambridge University, was a research fellow of the Royal Society, and have more than 80 publications in peer-reviewed journals. I am strongly pro-science. But I am more and more convinced that that the spirit of free inquiry is being repressed within the scientific community by fear-based conformity. Institutional science is being crippled by dogmas and taboos. Increasingly expensive research is yielding diminishing returns.

He starts off relatively normal; the argument that research is driven by conformity has been explored recently by writers including John Ioannidis. It's got truth to it. Grant funding is scarce, and grant proposals must draw heavily on literature precedent (putatively to show the money will not be wasted). Though this does select against potentially very innovative projects, some avenues exist to fund "startup" ideas (see NIH Challenge Grants for instance). And conformity has some utility: it would be very, very expensive to fund every single crazy idea--unsustainably so. This is a reason the federally-funded National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) has received criticism and proposals for defunding. (NCCAM is part of the NIH! What??).

Next the punches at scientists begin to come out:

Bad religion is arrogant, self-righteous, dogmatic and intolerant. And so is bad science. But unlike religious fundamentalists, scientific fundamentalists do not realize that their opinions are based on faith. They think they know the truth. They believe that science has already solved the fundamental questions. The details still need working out, but in principle the answers are known.

Ah, the classic "science is as based on faith as religion is" argument. That's simplistic and shallow, of course, and many authors (including, obviously, Richard Dawkins) have countered this stale line of thought. Sheldrake seems to suggest that religious fundamentalists are more self-aware than scientists are--that they're more aware of their own limitations.

Since the 19th century, materialists have promised that science will eventually explain everything in terms of physics and chemistry. Science will prove that living organisms are complex machines, nature is purposeless, and minds are nothing but brain activity. Believers are sustained by the implicit faith that scientific discoveries will justify their beliefs. The philosopher of science Karl Popper called this stance "promissory materialism" because it depends on issuing promissory notes for discoveries not yet made. Many promises have been issued, but few redeemed. Materialism is now facing a credibility crunch unimaginable in the 20th century.

Here Sheldrake assumes that by following the scientific method, you remit yourself to cold nihilism, to blank materialism devoid of any joy or meaning. That's also ridiculous. As Douglas Adams has said: "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"

And there is no such "credibility crunch". Scientific tools are cheaper and faster than ever before, and advances are rapid. Genome sequencing, for instance, is increasingly quick and affordable. Biology, "materialistic" as it may be, has grown from a descriptive endeavor to a broad arena utilizing information science, chemistry, systematics, physics, and more to rationalize life processes. If there is a credibility crunch, I'm missing what it is: science seems to be doing quite well.

The following is, however, the shakiest part of Sheldrake's argument:

Despite the confident claim in the late 20th century that genes and molecular biology would soon explain the nature of life, the problems of biological development remain unsolved. No one knows how plants and animals develop from fertilized eggs. Many details have been discovered, hundreds of genomes have been sequenced, but there is still no proof that life and minds can be explained by physics and chemistry alone. 

The technical triumph of the Human Genome Project led to big surprises. There are far fewer human genes than anticipated, a mere 23,000 instead of 100,000. Sea urchins have about 26,000 and rice plants 38,000. Attempts to predict characteristics such as height have shown that genes account for only about 5 percent of the variation from person to person, instead of the 80 percent expected. Unbounded confidence has given way to the "missing heritability problem." Meanwhile, investors in genomics and biotechnology have lost many billions of dollars. A recent report by the Harvard Business School on the biotechnology industry revealed that "only a tiny fraction of companies had ever made a profit" and showed how promises of breakthroughs have failed over and over again. 

Despite the brilliant technical achievements of neuroscience, like brain scanning, there is still no proof that consciousness is merely brain activity. Leading journals such as Behavioural and Brain Sciences and the Journal of Consciousness Studies publish many articles that reveal deep problems with the materialist doctrine. The philosopher David Chalmers has called the very existence of subjective experience the "hard problem." It is hard because it defies explanation in terms of mechanisms. Even if we understand how eyes and brains respond to red light, the experience of redness is not accounted for.

Here Sheldrake commits one of the biggest anti-science sins: worship of gaps. This is what anti-evolutionists say, too: "There are unexplained gaps in the fossil record!" "We don't have records of every fossil!" "Why aren't there transitional forms?" Science hasn't failed to explain biological development. We know a lot about it. And there aren't any big insurmountable walls. The picture keeps getting filled in. And the extension of heritable biology beyond simple genetics is illustrative of life's complexity: it isn't a case for adoption of magic and psychic nonsense.

Sheldrake says "there's no proof that consciousness is merely brain activity": but importantly, he neglects that there's no proof for anything supernatural.

I admit I'd never heard of Sheldrake before reading this piece, which I learned of when it was shared by a nutritionist I follow on some social media website. Who is this guy? I wondered. Should I know of him? Is this a Harvard biologist I hadn't heard of? Maybe a tenured professor at a smaller school who's big in the education field, or in science writing? The bottom of the article made him sound reputable: (but yes, they spelled it "resaerch")

Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D., is a biologist and author of Science Set Free. He was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge University, where he was Director of Studies in cell biology, and was Principal Plant Physiologist at the International Crops Resaerch Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics in Hyderabad, India. From 2005-2010 he was Director of the Perrott-Warrick Project, funded from Trinity College, Cambridge. His web site is www.sheldrake.org.

The problem is, Huffington Post made him sound like an actual real-live scientist. I guess he is indisputably an author. But his credentials, as outlined on his website, are spotty (not that non-traditional career paths are bad); it's interesting that he is crying out against dogma, yet he lists his most traditional posts in the article to establish his identity.

Sheldrake did indeed get his PhD from Cambridge and was initially regarded as a promising student. But he has, for all intents and purposes, parted ways with the scientific community. His career started out well (he was a Crick student and a fellow at Cambridge), but he ventured into the realm of magic with his 1981 publication of the book A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Causative Formation. Scientists quickly recognized the work as unscientific, but Sheldrake held onto his ideas and has for the last 31 years been in conflict with, you know, real biologists.

For a more thorough analysis of his career, read this account.

Is his work really that far out? Is it really unscientific? Is he being unfairly pilloried by dogma-loving, chauvinistic power-hungry capitalist traditional hegemonically dominating scientists? Is his critique of science as prejudiced and fear-driven justified?

Nah, he's way off base. His "science" consists of self-promoting, mystic, pseudoscientific nonsense that preys on the superstitions of the uninformed. From his own website, his research areas include: unexplained powers of animals; experimenter effects; morphic fields; the sense of being stared at; telepathy.

My personal favorite: "Can you wake a sleeping animal by staring at it?"

Before someone yells "continental drift!" at me: there's a big difference between someone being shunned for crazy theories without evidence and someone being shunned for theories with evidence. Science is self-correcting, and the dogmas shift over time. If there are facts and analysis to back it up. Sheldrake has not provided the extraordinary evidence (or any evidence) that extraordinary claims require.

He touts his publication record: early on he had some high-profile papers doing actual science (such as a 1968 paper in Nature) but his last few decades have been dominated by fringe-science journals like the Journal of Scientific Exploration and the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research.

Dr. Rupert Sheldrake
Source: Wikipedia/Public domain.

So is Sheldrake taken seriously by non-biologists? The problem is: he seems to be. We live in a society that loves Dr. Oz and thinks alternative medicine is an equally valid alternative to evidence-based therapy. So not suprisingly, there are a variety of fawning articles, reviews, and interviews. One piece proposes that Sheldrake may be a modern-day Isaac Newton. And several of his books have sold very well, according to Amazon stats.

As I previously mentioned, the article grossly misrepresents Sheldrake's credentials and area of "expertise". He calls himself a biologist, but that's a bit of a stretch. Sheldrake is more well-known for his parapsychology research and doesn't appear to have recently held a job that we would consider being a "biologist" for any appreciable amount of time.

Shrouding pseudoscience in science's clothing is a common tactic; shame on Huffington Post for not being clearer about who Sheldrake really is. When pseudoscience and actual science are blurred (especially by those who claim to be scientific experts), a great harm is done to the public good and the advancement of scientific thinking.

In final response to Sheldrake's points: of course there is dogma in science.* Of course there's resistance to change. But it's not in the things he's suggesting (he confuses how science works with what science says). And science, unlike religion, is self-correcting; views change over time, and they change broadly across the field. We don't have a thousand subsciences that conflict with each other, insisting the others are doomed to burn for eternity in Tetrahedron Letters.

* One such dogma is that n = 1 is sufficient for comparing the yields of two reactions. "Putting in LiCl raised the yield from 89% to 92% and the ee from 91% to 96%". Yeah, no it didn't.

Reading assignments, vol. 5

Despite the widely celebrated secular/pagan holiday this week, science-related journalism trudged on. Some interesting posts below related to the fiscal cliff, science education (creationism is sneaking back), scientific imagery and creativity, and some science- (and pseudoscience)-related awards.

Science and politics

• New Statesman guest editors Brian Cox and Robin Ince have written a pointed commentary on the role of science in policymaking. They highlight that non-scientific political issues have invaded public interpretation of science; this risks damaging society's confidence in scientific truth. It's a good read. A couple of responses quickly followed, including two weakly critical responses from Rebekah Higgitt (The Guardian), Jack Stilgoe (also The Guardian), and a favorable reply from Jon Butterworth (still at The Guardian). I commented on this earlier this week here.
• Discover Magazine blogger Keith Kloor (Collide-a-Scape) comments on the above article and also on the current toxic environment of the science-vs-religion fights. He argues against the "Puritanical" zero-tolerance policy of Richard Dawkins and like-minded skeptics.
• Bill Nye has written a sort of open letter to the federal legislature regarding the impending fiscal cliff; he urges (like most of us do) a combination of spending cuts and tax increases, but makes the case that legislators avoid cuts in science. His argument is that science drives innovation which drives American economic superiority. Is science going to be immune from the cuts? I doubt it, unfortunately.
• Antibiotic use (also discussed last week) in livestock is a major contributor to widespread drug resistance. Laura Rogers reports on recent issues and developments in laws and regulations regarding antibiotic use, including increased oversight of how and where the drugs are used, an end to non-prescription antibiotic use for animals, and stopping the practice of using antibiotics when they're not needed.

Bad science and bad journalism

• Under the "bad journalism" theme comes a Fox News (!!!) science section piece titled "Duh! 12 obvious science findings of 2012". I have a problem with pieces that pander to readers by highlighting "obvious" research (especially since many things previously considered "obvious" are now known not to be true). To be fair to Fox News, this same piece appeared at Huffington Post.
• Complementary to bad journalism is bad science. Christopher Wanjek writes on HuffingtonPost about  the top five science retractions of 2012. The first one (the scientist who made up his own peer reviewers and clued editors in by responding too favorably and too quickly) is the best. This, too, is cross-posted to Fox News. Although the retractions highlighted are certainly disturbing, the tone of the article's introduction sets an atmosphere of general mistrust of scientists and science. Of course, scientific misconduct is serious (and increasingly we are being made aware of it) but the author seems to de-emphasize the role of kneejerk journalism in public disappointment.
• Disgraced doctor Andrew Wakefield (the guy who had that fraudulent study linking autism and vaccines) has been given the Golden Duck award for 'lifetime achievement in quackery'. The award is part of an effort by scientists and science advocates to spread awareness of bad science and pseudoscience. However, some, such as Frank Swain of SciencePunk, feel the award is counterproductive: things like this come across as smug and contemptuous, and the group giving out the Golden Duck isn't influential enough to matter.
• To the long list of "people at The Ohio State University who have gotten caught committing research fraud" we can add pharmacologist Terry S. Elton, who apparently manipulated over two dozen figures in papers and grant applications. (For other examples see pharmacy professor Robert J. Lee and, most familiar to chemists, Leo Paquette).

Science education

• Michael Zimmerman describes Indiana State Senator Dennise Kruse's attempt to insert creationism into Indiana public school science classes under the tired guise of "academic freedom". Zimmerman points out the ridiculousness of expecting middle schoolers to be able to be able to reach the same scientific conclusions as scientific researchers.
• A New York Times piece by Jennifer Kingson gives a brief and interesting history of chemistry sets.
• Mark at Chemistry Blog takes issue with the model of bonding/antibonding used in one of this year's Christmas Lectures. Meanwhile, we in the USA (i.e. 'Murica) remain confused.

Imagery in science

• Imagery and aesthetics are usually the last thing on scientists' minds, but they can be instrumental in promotion of science. See not only this post by Alex Wild asking readers to submit the year's best science imagery, but also this fascinating blog where a chemist uses large quantities of materials and takes beautiful high-resolution -- and artistic -- photos of labware and reactions.
• Wired features a gallery of what they describe as the best scientific figures of 2012 (i.e. figures in journals, not "figures" as in people/scientists). I like "The Essence of Tomato" -- it's the one that looks like a DNA microchip heat map and it describes relative abundance of various flavor compounds in varietals of tomatoes. There's also an image of a lonely yttrium atom.
• On a related tangent, there's a piece by Virginia Hughes on Only Human over at National Geographic regarding perception of science and the importance of creativity. It's short and well-written and highlights important issues in how children at impressionable ages are losing interest because they don't see creativity in it. The piece also addresses strategies for combating this notion.

Other

• An incidence of chemophobia from a science blog (Last Word on Nothing) has attracted attention from the chemblogosphere (namely this post by See Arr Oh). It's part of a series where the writers talk about their fears of certain sciences. Though it perhaps comes off as anti-chemistry and can be seen as pointing the central science in boring/incomprehensible tones, I think that it importantly highlights the need for science educators to address this (read the last two paragraphs) in making the subject more broadly accessible. I suppose I object to the post less than See Arr Oh does.
• The winners of the National Medal of Science this year include chemists Allen J. Bard (electrochemistry; UT Austin) and M. Frederick Hawthorne (inorganic chemistry; Missouri, previously UCLA). Also on the list is influential biomedical scientist Leroy Hood (systems biology; Johns Hopkins).
• B.R.S.M. comments on the the synthetic biology vs organic synthesis rivalry.
• See Arr Oh asks readers about vacation time in academia, industry, etc. 1 day a year should be good enough for anybody, right?
• Here on Not the Lab I've added a Biology Resources page that may be useful to some; it'll grow.
• The Huffington Post featured Sense About Science's list of the year's most science illiterate celebrities; it's a pretty amusing read. It also includes a list of buzzwords that are commonly used but are meaningless, including "detox", "immune-boosting", "superfood", "oxygenating", and "cleansing". Meanwhile, the Huffington Post swings to the other end of the quackery spectrum by publishing a favorable article about holiday "cleanses".

Reading assignments, vol. 3

Some reads from the internet are below. I should have some organic synthesis-oriented post(s) on here this coming week, so for anyone who likes organotrifluoroborates: stay tuned.

Three themes for this week, as discussed below.

Research in practice:

• Quintus at Chemistry Blog comments on the Seven Deadly Sins of Science recently published in an essay in Angewandte Chem. Int. Ed. These should be familiar, and I think they're more common than some people would like to believe. Though I disagree with the blogger and author views that self-plagiarism is not a thing. It is a thing and it's bad. 
• In response to John Ioannidis's recent Nature commentary about conformity and grant funding, Orac at Respectful Insolence has some things to say; he doesn't completely agree with the assertions. Worth reading for anyone who deals with NIH grants or the scarcity of grants in general.
• A really fascinating piece by Christina Agapakis at Scientific American about aesthetics and sensory presentation in science. Not usually a topic we're taught.
• A commentary by David Matthews (not that one) notes that labs with a strong international presence are more productive and more heavily cited.

Science and the public:

• Via Talk Nerdy to Me, a good video commenting on anti-science politicians, including the House Science Committee. One of my favorite topics, so watch it.
• Karen Kashmanian (a dean at the WPI) recommends that science (and access to science via technology) be formally deemed a human right.
• Rebecca Harrington comments on a UC Berkeley study on the dialogue surrounding environmentalism. The rhetoric used to promote environmental protection (i.e. the wording, not necessarily the factual arguments) is critical in shifting conservatives toward environmentalism. Should be of interest to those fighting denialism.
• An excellent post on Slate about the public's perception of conservation and ecology. Turns out white tigers are inbred mutants, and their breeding causes harm to animals as well as depletion of valuable resources otherwise useful for conservation. It's an important read for any scientist or conservationist.

Graduate chemical education:

• Chemjobber points out that now even the higher-ups in ACS are acknowledging that there are way too many chemistry PhDs. In a separate post, other surprising assertions by the ACS leadership are noted.
• An opinion piece by Stacey Patton at the Chronicle of Higher Education (posted also to HuffingtonPost) discusses the combination of student debt and poor employment prospects in the context of graduate school (more geared toward humanities but this applies to science to a degree). She and others recommend that graduate programs warn prospective students and offer guidance.
• A commentary by science writer and Earth science professor Scott K. Johnson makes the case for a different model of science education in order to better teach critical thinking to science and non-science students alike. He argues against the current (failed) paradigm that thinking abilities come as a byproduct (side product?) when you teach the basics. He's right.

Other

• Greg Laden points out the convergence of a fake study and a real study on the conclusion that Fox News viewers are, on average, unintelligent. 
• Because See Arr Oh likes odd things in chemistry, there's a post on Just Like Cooking about the use of Sweet 'n Low in an Org. Lett. procedure. At least it found a use in chemistry, because it tastes gross.
• A brief New Scientist interview with Tom Knight about synthetic biology. On a somewhat related note, see this Scientific American post about complexity in science/engineering.
• Derek Lowe (In the Pipeline) points out a scientist angry to the point of legally claiming defamation over not being awarded the Nobel Prize.
• Chemists generally know about the helium shortage (better learn to do NMR without magnets!). Here's a piece that talks about it on Starts With a Bang.

Mark Johnson - Wrong on climate change AND Sasquatch

As a former denizen of Northeast Ohio, I can say with certitude that the state has several unappealing features, including John Kasich, meth labs, unconstitutional school funding, the Cuyahoga River, and Mark Johnson.

Mark Johnson is WEWS-TV ABC News Channel 5's Chief Meteorologist, which means for better or for worse, he is heard and trusted by a good portion of the population. His science background is not extensive: his education includes a bachelor's degree in telecommunications and a 'meteorology certification'.

Of course, he nevertheless weighs in on science issues to a broad audience (Northeast Ohio boasts ca. 4.5 million people). Unfortunately, he's a climate change denialist. Earlier this year, Johnson voiced his dissenting view on climate change, writing a full piece about claiming the Earth hasn't warmed in 15 years:

"Last week, the UK Met released its latest global temperature data to the world. It shows that the Earth has not warmed in 15 years. The warming ceased after the great super El Nino of 1998."

It's little wonder denialism is prevalent when public figures who should be versed in the science make these statements.

But it turns out Johnson's scientific misinformation isn't limited to climate change. The recent Bigfoot likely-hoax has attracted a flurry of attention from the general public but has been treated with due caution by science bloggers, including Greg Laden, Steven Novella, and Eric Berger, who have pointed out issues with the claim.

Unfortunately, Johnson's at it again. Yesterday, he wrote an article titled "New DNA Study Proves Existence of Sasquatch." Proves? Proves???? Sigh. It's, as you might expect, a pretty one-sided article that paints Dr. Ketchum's story as an effort commensurate to the Human Genome Project. And given the CSI phenomenon on TV (side node: apparently CSI effect is a real term), the mere fact that 'DNA' is in the title will carry a lot of weight toward convincing the public of the story's truthfulness. From the article:

"Researchers’ extensive five-year DNA sequencing study suggests that the legendary Sasquatch is a human relative that arose approximately 15,000 years ago as a hybrid cross of modern Homo sapiens with an unknown primate species."

"The study was conducted by a team of experts in genetics, forensics, imaging and pathology, led by Dr. Melba S. Ketchum of Nacogdoches, Texas. In response to recent interest in the study, Dr. Ketchum can confirm that her team has sequenced three complete Sasquatch nuclear genomes and determined the species is a human hybrid."

The piece is all-hype, without a word of caution or a shred of doubt. Pretty bold, for a press release about a study that has no accompanying data and some dubious claims from a company, as Eric Berger points out, with the worst possible rating from the Better Business Bureau.

Researchers’ extensive five-year DNA sequencing study suggests that the legendary Sasquatch is a human relative that arose approximately 15,000 years ago as a hybrid cross of modern Homo sapiens with an unknown primate species.

Read more: http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/news/local_news/water_cooler/new-dna-study-proves-existence-of-sasquatch#ixzz2Da7dZUjj

Researchers’ extensive five-year DNA sequencing study suggests that the legendary Sasquatch is a human relative that arose approximately 15,000 years ago as a hybrid cross of modern Homo sapiens with an unknown primate species.

Read more: http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/news/local_news/water_cooler/new-dna-study-proves-existence-of-sasquatch#ixzz2Da7dZUjj

Read more: http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/weather/weather_news/United-Kingdom-Meteorology-Office-declares-Earth-hasnt-warmed-in-15-years#ixzz2Da3bx7oq

Last week, the UK Met released its latest global temperature data to the world. It shows that the Earth has not warmed in 15 years. The warming ceased after the great super El Nino of 1998.

Read more: http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/weather/weather_news/United-Kingdom-Meteorology-Office-declares-Earth-hasnt-warmed-in-15-years#ixzz2Da3bx7oq

Wheatgrass: "Creat" your own reality!

Wheatgrass juice being made. Credit: Wikipedia.
Image available via Creative Commons license.

I've found the idea of wheatgrass funny for a while now. Pseudo-health stores that dress up fruit/sugar concoctions as 'health drinks' by throwing in a spoonful of nutritional supplement dust have become popular recently, and they all seem to peddle the privilege of drinking shots of wheatgrass juice. For a fee ($2-$3), you can get a bunch of grass squeezed into juice by a machine (itself a few hundred dollars) and then drink it. Cows consume grass, too, but it's free for them and then we turn them into delicious beef.

Proponents of wheatgrass juice basically think it's a nutritional panacea. But a lot of the health claims (i.e. it contains lots of vitamin B₁₂, which is an important vitamin that is found in meat and so vegans don't usually get enough) are dubious (i.e. turns out the B₁₂ content is negligible). There's not a lot of scientific literature on the effects of wheatgrass (PubMed lists only 2 random controlled trials involving wheatgrass, for instance). But most evidence seems to suggest that wheatgrass is no better or worse than any green vegetable. It's just trendier.

Lack of evidence doesn't stop the marketing people. One of my favorite wheatgrass companies is Pure Intentions, who not only sell the stuff to local smoothie shops but also operate a School of Energy (a "diverse spectrum of holistic and energetic facilitators and teachers for all ages and levels"). Their website contains all sorts of cringe-worthy pseudoscience/bad-science goodies.

Let's take a look at what Pure Intentions says about their product (red comments are mine)

"What is Wheatgrass?
Wheatgrass is the young grass of wheat grown from the red winter wheatberry seed. The fresh-squeezed juice of the grass produces high concentrations of chlorophyll, active enzymes, vitamins, minerals, and amino acids. It is true that 1oz. of wheatgrass juice has the nutritional equivalent of 2-1/2 lbs. of green, leafy vegetables. [no--it doesn't--Dole, for instance, points out that spinach is much richer in nutrients. and pressing it into juice to concentrate it is kind of cheating] It is one of the richest natural sources of vitamins A, B complex, B-17, C, E, & K. Additionally, it is an excellent source of calcium, potassium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, sodium, sulfur, cobalt, zinc, as well as 17 forms of amino acids and enzymes." [apparently 'excellent source' doesn't mean much, since it's got 1% DV of calcium/magnesium/phosphorus but 413% DV zinc]

Here is where it gets good:

"Why is Chlorophyll important? [why did you capitalize it? why?]  
Chlorophyll, which makes up over 70% of the solid content of wheatgrass juice, is the basis of all plant life and closely resembles the molecular structure of human red blood cells. [...] Chlorophyll is the first product of light, containing more light energy than any other element. [make it stop. make it stop.] It can be extracted from any plant, but wheatgrass is superior because it has been found to have over 100 elements needed by the human body." [it has over 100 elements? I'm pretty sure you're obligated to include thallium and lead and stuff by that point...]

What?

Chlorophyll A and human red blood cells
displaying remarkable structural similarity.
Credit: RBC Image is in the public domain.

Hey guys! Chlorophyll is THE BASIS of all plant life! Forget amino acids, carbohydrates, lipids, and nucleic acids.

And as depicted in the figure to the left, they're correct. Chlorophyll certainly does resemble human erythrocytes.

My favorite jam-packed sentence: "Chlorophylll is the first product of light, containing more light energy than any other element." Digest that one for a second. Pretty high cringe efficiency. Personally, I've never noticed the "element" chlorophyll on the periodic table, but then again--I'm an organic chemist, so if it's in the transition metals or lanthanides, I probably ignored it. And what is "light energy"? Photons? It has photons? In... a bucket? Where does it keep the photons? It's remarkable that chlorophyll is the "first product of light"; turning all those photons into carbon and nitrogen must be hard work.

Chlorophyll is important, of course, in the process of photosynthesis (which is a pretty cool process). It's what the authors are trying to hint at, though even if you fix the inaccuracies photosynthesis is irrelevant to human nutrition. We can't digest chlorophyll. So regardless what nice things you might say about it, it's useless as a supplement.

The website also proclaims the abundance of enzymes in wheatgrass:

"Enzymes play an important role in many bodily functions including vision, thought, reproduction, breathing, and digestion, just to mention a few. The enzymes found in wheatgrass have been found to supplement the indigenous enzymes manufactured in the human body."

This leaf also contains chlorophyll, and for $200 you can
probably make it into a trendy organic drink.
Source: my own work. I totally found that leaf.

This is, of course, nonsense. Enzymes are nature's catalysts, and with rare exceptions they are proteins. All organisms need enzymes to function--they catalyze diverse functions from translation of RNA to metabolism to immune responses to cell signaling. But we make our own diverse set of highly specialized enzymes, and each organism's enzymes are typically different from other species, genera, orders, and so on. So ingesting a bunch of wheatgrass enzymes doesn't give you mystical powers of wheatgrass. In fact, your body won't even use them. Since enzymes are proteins, they are digested indiscriminately in the stomach, along with all other protein. Congratulations: you've made some ordinary amino acids. Simply put, ingesting enzymes confers no health benefit.

I encourage you to read the rest of what they say; there's more delightful puzzles in there. The growers make a bunch of health claims, tell you that wheatgrass is so potent it'll give you nausea, and advise you to cleanse your palate with a lemon afterwards (maybe because grass is disgusting).

$3 worth of wheatgrass. Source:
Pure Intentions website

Like I said earlier, there's not a lot of scientific literature behind the wheatgrass juice phenomenon. So most of what is put out is hype--a mixture of novelty, optimism, and marketing. There may be health benefits (it's a vegetable, after all). But wrapping anything up in pseudoscience is dishonest and does a disservice to gullible customers. It's not the chlorophyll; in case your biology is rusty, humans can't photosynthesize or even digest the molecule. It's not the enzymes (hello, denaturing environment of the stomach).

Wheatgrass juice is an example of one of those areas where anecdotes carry more emotional weight than conventional medicine. This phenomenon has been written about before (see Denialism by Michael Specter for a good read in this area). It's interesting, and something we have to be aware of as scientists. As pitifully adorable as the glaring pseudoscience above is, it's actually effective in reaching people. We might have science on our side, but they have marketing.

Added note: check out their recently added "cat grass" (vets seem to support this) and "floral grass." I especially like the tagline: "Creat your own reality!"

Creat your own reality! Source: Pure Intentions website.