A major publisher of scholarly medical and science articles has retracted 43 papers because of “fabricated” peer reviews amid signs of a broader fake peer review racket affecting many more publications … 

[T]he Committee on Publication Ethics, a multidisciplinary group that includes more than 9,000 journal editors, issued a statement  suggesting a much broader potential problem. The committee, it said, “has become aware of systematic, inappropriate attempts to manipulate the peer review processes of several journals across different publishers.” Those journals are now reviewing manuscripts to determine how many may need to be retracted, it said. – Washington Post, March 27, 2015 

The Daily Bell published a reaction to the WaPo article on March 28 (see Real Tragedy of ‘Science’: Faith Declines as Fakery Grows). As that analysis explained, the scandal’s breadth is extraordinary. Dishonest scientists give us multiple reasons to distrust them. We have some additional thoughts.

Science, according to scientists, is about facts and evidence. These brave truth seekers prove their hypotheses with rigorous experimentation, and then share the newfound knowledge to make the world better.

That’s the theory. Reality is different.

Scientists are no more neutral than journalists are. Some try to expand human knowledge without regard for their own self-interest. Most are like everyone else; they just want to pay the bills and find meaning in their work.

The core problem is the idea that acting in one’s own self-interest is somehow wrong or shameful. This causes scientists to hide their true motivations and possibly mislead the public. The fabricated peer reviews reported in the Washington Post are a good example. The only surprise is that publishers are finally resisting.

Dare to publish a scientific study against Big Biotech, and Monsanto will defame and discredit you. For the first time, a Monsanto employee admits that there is an entire department within the corporation with the simple task of ‘discrediting’ and ‘debunking’ scientists who speak out against GMOs. 

The WHO recently classified glyphosate, a chemical in Monsanto’s best-selling herbicide Roundup, as carcinogenic – news that is really heating things up with biotech. So Monsanto has been demanding that the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) retract their statements about the poisons’s toxicity to human health.

The company demands this even though a peer-reviewed study published in March of 2015 in the respected journal, The Lancet Oncology, conducted a analysis proving that glyphosate was indeed ‘probably carcinogenic.’

Monsanto’s vice president of global regulatory affairs Philip Miller told Reuters the following in interview:

“We question the quality of the assessment. The WHO has something to explain.”

It has already been explained, Mr. Miller. The study states:

“Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum herbicide, currently with the highest production volumes of all herbicides. It is used in more than 750 different products for agriculture, forestry, urban, and home applications. Its use has increased sharply with the development of genetically modified glyphosate-resistant crop varieties. Glyphosate has been detected in air during spraying, in water, and in food. There WAS limited evidence in humans for the carcinogenicity of glyphosate.

Glyphosate has been detected in the blood and urine of agricultural workers, indicating absorption. Soil microbes degrade glyphosate to aminomethylphosphoric acid (AMPA). Blood AMPA detection after poisonings suggests intestinal microbial metabolism in humans. Glyphosate and glyphosate formulations induced DNA and chromosomal damage in mammals, and in human and animal cells in vitro. One study reported increases in blood markers of chromosomal damage (micronuclei) in residents of several communities after spraying of glyphosate formulations.”

French Senator Jean Germain, a friend of windfarm victims, has been found dead in what appears to be a suicide. He had made increasingly effective political opposition against ‘Big Green’ interests in recent times. His death may be considered suspicious.  As UK national newspaper, The Guardian noted:

New report responds to Senator Birmingham’s apparent reliance on false claims by the Australian Government’s Bureau of Meteorology (BOM). The Senator’s letter dated December 18th, 2014 to Malcolm Roberts is refuted by overwhelming empirical scientific evidence, as outlined in excerpts from the report, below. Moreover, key players in the climate alarm narrative are exposed as beneficiaries of related financial scams.

In a report prepared at the invitation of Steve Austin, host on ABC-Radio 612 Brisbane, Australian government climate scientists are exposed as conspiring to create an alarmist and false picture of global warming. 

Independent analyst, Malcolm Roberts, of the Galileo Movement reports:

 “I’ve written to many of the people whose behaviours, opinions and/or claims are discussed in this report and whose core claim is that human CO2 caused Earth’s latest modest cyclic global atmospheric warming that ended in 1998. Most have responded. All have failed to provide empirical scientific evidence and logical scientific reasoning for the basis of their core claim. All seemed reluctant to address my questions adequately. They failed to meet my reasonable need for integrity, reassurance and understanding.”

Below Principia Scientific International has pleasure in providing readers with full links to all sections of Roberts’ findings:

Major publisher retracts 43 scientific papers amid wider fake peer-review scandal … A major publisher of scholarly medical and science articles has retracted 43 papers because of “fabricated” peer reviews amid signs of a broader fake peer review racket affecting many more publications. – Washington Post 

Dominant Social Theme: Science saves us?

Free-Market Analysis: The breadth of this scandal (see excerpt above) is extraordinary and comes not long after a top executive at Monsanto issued a plaintive tweet lamenting the West’s eroding faith in “science.” You can see our Monsanto analysis here:

Monsanto Laments Dwindling Faith in Science

We wrote:

As we have noted in the past, the current status quo emphasizes “experts” and “expertise.” In part this is because the foundational meme of modern society is based on central banking – and central bankers are presented as having the expertise to predict the future.

If people generally came to doubt the ability of central bankers to peer into the future in order to generate accurate monetary prices, then central banking itself would become a doubtful proposition. The same thing holds true in other fields.

Science – faith in science – was supposed to justify the modern technocratic society. It is in fact an ancient manipulation. The meme of the “expert” is that of the technocrat – a model of social manipulation that dates back at least to Socrates and his theory that “philosopher kings” ought to run the world.

When we called science a “manipulation” a month ago, we didn’t except to receive such efficient confirmation as this so quickly.

Evidence from other planets in our solar system continues to prove hydrocarbons (so called ‘fossil fuels’) are abundant outside earth’s biosphere and are not the product of decayed organic matter. The following BBC article shows this. 

 Dropping a robotic lander on to the surface of a comet was arguably one of the most audacious space achievements of recent times.

But one concept mission being studied by the US space agency could top even that.

Scientists are proposing to send a robot submarine to the oily seas of Saturn’s moon Titan. The seas are filled not with water, but with hydrocarbons like methane and ethane.

These compounds exist in their liquid state on the moon, where the temperature averages -180C.

The plan is funded by an initiative called Nasa Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC), where researchers are encouraged to think out of the box.

“That’s quite liberating,” says the scientist behind the project, Dr Ralph Lorenz, who is outlining the concept here at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in Texas.

“You can take a step back and really let your imagination run riot.”

But Dr Lorenz believes the mission is eminently achievable with the right resources, timing and technology.

Unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) are now widely used for military purposes, by search teams, in oil exploration and scientific investigation. So existing technologies could be adapted for use on another world.

One of the most striking aspects of the proposal is a plan to deliver the sub in a variant of the US military’s secretive mini-space shuttle, the X-37B.

The sub would fit in the payload bay of the unmanned shuttle, with the stack then launched on a rocket. Once at Titan, the shuttle and its payload would glide down through the moon’s soupy atmosphere.

Nasa’s Curiosity rover has found that water can exist as a liquid near the Martian surface. Mars should be too cold to support liquid water at the surface, but salts in the soil lower its freezing point – allowing briny films to form. 

The results lend credence to a theory that dark streaks seen on features such as crater walls could be formed by flowing water.

The results are published in the journal Nature.

Scientists think thin films of water form when salts in the soil, called perchlorates, absorb water vapour from the atmosphere.

The temperature of these liquid films is about -70C – too cold to support any of the microbial life forms that we know about.

Forming in the top 15cm of the Martian soil, the brines would also be exposed to high levels of cosmic radiation – another challenge to life.

But it’s still possible that organisms could exist somewhere beneath the surface on Mars, where conditions are more favourable.

Is the oil we rely on for energy really derived from organic sources (as per fossil fuel theory), or is it constantly being regenerated within earth’s mantle from rocks (as per abiogenic oil theory)?

Very briefly, Liew et al. (2014) begin their recent report on the climatic history of Taiwan by describing how high-resolution pollen records from four lakes and a bog – which they recovered from both high and low altitudes in northern and southern Taiwan – were used together with radiocarbon dating to develop a 4000-year temperature history of the subtropical mountain island. 

The result of this effort was a temperature history that compares well with trends that previously had been developed for China and Europe. And again, very briefly, it revealed the occurrence of a relatively long cold period from approximately 1920 BC to 30 AD, which was followed by the Roman Warm Period (about 30-360 AD), which was followed by the Dark Ages Cold Period (about 360-760 AD), which was followed by the Medieval Warm Period (about 760-1300 AD), which was followed by the Little Ice Age (about 1300-1850 AD). Then, last of all, the record depicts the gradual development of the Current Warm Period, which at this point in time appears to be at its peak, having not risen further than where it is now over the past couple of decades.

Therefore, in light of these and other well-documented findings that are reported and analyzed in the Medieval Warm Period Project portion of the Data section of our website (co2science.org) – which can readily be accessed here – it can clearly be seen that there is nothing unusual, unnatural or unprecedented about the current state of earth’s warmth, which was clearly eclipsed by the Medieval Warm Period at various locations around the globe.

In my related article I explained there is an epoch in the Earth’s history termed the “Great Oxygenation Event.” It happened a long time ago, roughly 350 million years ago, when much of today’s coal beds in the earth’s rocks began forming. 

It all began with one simple and then-new invention by Mother Nature. That invention has been truly great and everlasting; it’s widely known under the term PHOTOSYNTHESIS.

Photosynthesis

Photosynthesis (PS) is the process by which algae and plants convert carbon dioxide (CO2) to organic matter, like the wood of trees. Any other organism on this planet that is not an alga or plant itself feeds on the former. Therefore, CO2 is the source of all life on earth. There is not a single organism that does not require the carbon atom as a basic building block.

Photosynthesis brings about another product, rarely mentioned but vital to all higher organisms on the planet, and that is molecular oxygen (O2). There is no other source of O2 on earth but photosynthesis. Therefore, without carbon dioxide there also would be no free oxygen in our atmosphere.

There is an epoch in the Earth history termed the “Great Oxygenation Event” (GOE). I described it in my recent post on the rise of molecular oxygen in earth’s atmosphere. 

What is the theory of man-made global warming? The short answer to that seemingly simple question is that it is a scam. The biggest, most complex, and most successful, deliberate scam so far in human history. 

The take home messages that will be explained are – 

1) The difference between a physical law (which is merely a prediction) and a law of thermodynamics (which is a material fact).
– A so called physical law is a simple and elegant, but unphysically calculated prediction. THAT is not a law at all.

Such “physical laws”, ie, P/4, Black Body, Stefan Boltzman and Wien’s law, are merely predictions, whilst the Laws of thermodynamics actually ARE laws that always apply, and thus can be stated as simple facts. ie, the 2nd Law of thermodynamics is the fact that colder (or the same) can not heat (the same or) warmer.

2) In reality energy can not be created, therefore in reality there CAN NOT be a greenhouse effect or “theory”.
– The GH “theory” in any of the versions, or interpretations currently in use (heat flow, energy flow, or fluxes), HAS TO create energy for there to be a “working in reality theory” in the first place. Which invalidates the “theory”.

3) Climate science has to start any explanation of how earth’s climate system works from a physical basis.
– Climate science will have to (in the end) move from the current unphysical basis, based upon “physical laws” to a physical basis based upon and in accord with the known laws (of thermodynamics) and properties of physical matter (such as heat capacity), from which to study earth’s climate system from.

Predictions of the result are not explanations of how the result was achieved. 

A huge increase in the incidence and prevalence of chronic diseases has been reported in the United States (US) over the last 20 years. Similar increases have been seen globally. 

The herbicide glyphosate was introduced in 1974 and its use is accelerating with the advent of herbicide-tolerant genetically engineered (GE) crops. Evidence is mounting that glyphosate interferes with many metabolic processes in plants and animals and glyphosate residues have been detected in both.

Glyphosate disrupts the endocrine system and the balance of gut bacteria, it damages DNA and is a driver of mutations that lead to cancer. In the present study, US government databases were searched for GE crop data, glyphosate application data and disease epidemiological data. Correlation analyses were then performed on a total of 22 diseases in these time-series data sets. 

Conclusions

These data show very strong and highly significant correlations between the increasing use of glyphosate, GE crop growth and the increase in a multitude of diseases. Many of the graphs show sudden increases in the rates of diseases in the mid-1990s that coincide with the commercial production of GE crops.

The large increase in glyphosate use in the US is mostly due to the increase in glyphosate-resistant GE crops. The probabilities in the graphs and tables show that it is highly unlikely that the correlations are a coincidence.

Man-made global warming is junk science. So say highly-qualified experts from the ‘hard’ sciences. Poorly trained government climate ‘experts’ for too long refused to share their half-baked theories and data about the role of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) with better qualified experts. 

Below are typical well-known and established scientific facts that climate change alarmists would rather keep from you.

• As part of the “Carbon Cycle”, through photosynthesis, atmospheric carbon dioxide is the sole source of the oxygen that we need to breathe (one molecule of CO₂ produces one molecule of O₂). 
• Similarly, through photosynthesis,our entire food supply (animal and vegetable) is dependent upon carbon dioxide.  Needless to say, carbon dioxide is essential to our survival.
• In Calgary, Alberta, we accommodate “seasonal” temperature changes from, say, +30 C (summer) to -30 C (winter) for a 60 C temperature range, which is due to the Sun.  The +2 C “drift” in “average” global temperatures is attributed, by alarmists, to carbon dioxide (currently 400 ppm, parts-per-million, by volume in the atmosphere). 
• Carbon dioxide is a much poorer “green house gas” than water vapour (by a factor of ~160, see thermodynamic analysis: http://www.biocab.org/Heat Stored.html).  Water vapour (at 1{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} or 10,000 ppm, by volume in the atmosphere) is particularly prevalent over the oceans that cover three-quarters of the surface of our planet.
• A recent publication by NASA suggests that carbon dioxide actually contributes to “Global Cooling”:http://www.naturalnews.com/040448 solar radiation global warming debunked.html
• There are fossils of palm trees in the high Arctic and evidence of a previous Ice Age that had little to do with the activities of Man.
• Meaningful, unbiased/objective, “hard” sources of global data regarding sources of carbon dioxide can be difficult to find in a format suitable for comparison purposes. 
• The site http://www.planetseed.com/relatedarticle/carbon-dioxide-sources provides an excellent list of sources, but ignores the contribution of “natural” forest and grass fires.