Article One - This is an example of pseudoscience. The article was published online on 21 November 2016 in the journal Frontiers in Public Health. After considerable protest on twitter about the methodology, the journal retracted the paper on 28 November 2016. One of the many issues raised was how the article was peer reviewed by a chiropractor. The authors then submitted a nearly identical version of the paper to the Journal of Translational Science on 22 March 2017, where it was accepted on 21 April 2017. And, supposedly retracted on 8 May 2017. More detailed critique of the study is available in a blog and online.
Mawson 2017 "Pilot comparative study on the health of vaccinated and unvaccinated 6- to 12-year-old U.S. children"
Article Two - This is an example of pseudoscience. Medical Hypotheses is indexed in MEDLINE, and was, until 2010, the only non-peer reviewed journal published by Elsevier. The publication of this paper was celebrated by HIV denialists as evidence that their arguments had gone mainstream. Post-scripts available online and on a blog.
Duesberg 2009 "HIV-AIDS hypothesis out of touch with South African AIDS – A new perspective"
Article Three - This is a mainstream science publication. However, HIV denialists who believed that antiretrovirals were toxic selectively read into the findings. Note the advertisement from the Mathias Rath Foundation in the Naturalism cabinet: "On 1 July 2004, a landmark study by Harvard Univeristy was published in one of the world's leading medical journals, the New England Journal of Medicine, summed up the same day by the world's most influential and respected newspaper, the New York Times: 'The study found that daily doses of multivitamins slow down the disease and cut the risk of developing AIDS in half.'" The advertisement was published in South Africa's Mail and Guardian newspaper in November 2004, and later banned by South Africa's Advertising Standards Authority for being misleading.
In response to the advertisement, the Harvard researchers had to put out a press release to clarify their position, concluding: "While nutrition is important in the management of HIV/AIDS, nutritional supplements alone cannot replace the need for comprehensive treatment and care for people living with HIV/AIDS, including ART." More information is available online. Usually, entities such as the New England Journal of Medicine and New York Times are put forward as part of the university-pharma-industrial complex which suppresses the truth. However, when a selected finding fits into the denialist narrative, denialists are quick to refer to these entities as "most influential and respected newspaper", and "world's leading medical journals". And yet all of the other findings in these publications which confirm the treatment benefit conferred by antiretrovirals are ignored! Read more about Matthias Rath in Ben Goldacre's book Bad Science.
Fawzi 2004 "A Randomized Trial of Multivitamin Supplements and HIV Disease Progression and Mortality"
Article Four - This is an example of pseudoscience. The World Health Organization's Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety reviewed this paper, along with another by the same authors, and found that the methodological issues include "incorrect assumptions about known associations of aluminium with neurological disease, uncertainty of the accuracy of the autism spectrum disorder prevalence rates in different countries, and accuracy of vaccination schedules and resulting calculations of aluminium doses in different countries". More information is available online. The study continued to be cited frequently by anti-vaccination advocates, and the article remains accessible on PubMed.
Tomlijenovic and Shaw 2011 "Do aluminum vaccine adjuvants contribute to the rising prevalence of autism?"
Did you guess correctly?
It’s sometimes not that easy to tell if articles are pseudoscience or not. In a world of fake science and news, it’s ever more important that we keep a critical lens.
Below are some useful websites that can help you fish out the bad science from the good:
- Research tools; How do you know a paper is legit: http://callingbullshit.org/tools/tools_legit.html
- Beall’s list of predatory journals and publishers: https://beallslist.weebly.com/