Mastodawn

A #study testing 13 #LLMs found that all can be used to commit #academicfraud or facilitate #junkscience. While some models, like Claude, were more resistant to fraudulent requests, others, like Grok and early GPT versions, performed poorly. The study highlights the need for developers to implement stronger #safeguards against #misuse of LLMs. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00595-9?eicker.news #tech #media #news

Hey ChatGPT, write me a fictional paper: these LLMs are willing to commit academic fraud

Mainstream chatbots presented varying levels of resistance to deliberate requests for fabrication, study finds.

Show thread

bsmall2 Feb 2

> The concept of "junk science" broadened to arenas outside the courtroom in 1989 when pro-industry groups used the term to attack what has come to be known as "the great Alar scare." Alar was a chemical, first marketed in 1968, that apple growers sprayed on trees to make their apples ripen longer before falling off. In use, however, Alar breaks down to a byproduct called "unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine" or UDMH...
http://www.herinst.org/envcrisis/science/uncertainty/junk.html
#JunkScience #ScienceWars #edwardherman
other links to the article may be brokern..

@bsmall2

Science-Junk Science

LB Thomas 💎🏳️‍🌈Jan 25

Genetic Data From Over 20,000 U.S. Children Misused for ‘Race Science’

The National Institutes of Health failed to protect brain scans that an international group of fringe researchers used to argue for the intellectual superiority of white people.

Gifted Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/us/children-genetics-race-science.html?unlocked_article_code=1.HFA.QnBp.GS7BBH5TVnqY&smid=bs-share

#Race #RaceScience #WhiteNationalism #Racism #JunkScience #WhiteSupremacy #NIH #Trump #MAGA #RobertFKennedyJr

Genetic Data From Over 20,000 U.S. Children Misused for ‘Race Science’

The National Institutes of Health failed to protect brain scans that an international group of fringe researchers used to argue for the intellectual superiority of white people.

The New York Times

Jeremy Mallin Jan 13

"I have an IQ of 172."

Really? What was the IQ of the person who wrote the test?

Also what the Hell even is IQ?

When it comes to my ME/CFS many people are the same about "traditional" Chinese "medicine", or naturopathy, homoeopathy, acupuncture, etc etc.

If I haven't tried it, because it's bullshit, a scam or otherwise failed to be proved by standards we'd expect of any treatment to be funded under the pharmaceutical benefits scheme (Australia), I "mustn't actually want to get well" - verbatim quote from many incredulous morons and ultimately people I don't ever want to speak to ever again.

#JunkScience #MECFS

Show thread

Levka Dec 14

#JunkScience #vaccines #FDA #COVID #RFKJr

"Covid Shots May Get FDA’s Strongest Warning

The agency’s black-box label is meant to flag serious threats to life and health.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.‘s FDA has already reversed established vaccine policy and guidance

The Food and Drug Administration is considering whether to place a 'black-box' warning—a high-danger label only used to flag risk of death, severe harm, or incapacitation—on Covid vaccines, CNN has reported.

According to the Friday CNN report, the initiative to include the warning—part of a range of efforts by Trump administration health officials to limit access to, public support for, and uptake of Covid shots and other vaccinations—is being led by FDA chief medical and scientific officer Vinay Prasad, who is also director of the agency’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. The plan to implement the warnings is expected to be made public by the end of December.

(. . .)

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s FDA has already reversed previous federal policy on Covid vaccines, restricting the most recent vaccineto people who are at elevated risk due to age or an underlying health condition. Kennedy said in November that he instructed CDC to retract its long-held public stance that vaccines do not cause autism despite evidence to the contrary. (CDC’s website now claims that the assertion that vaccines do not cause autism is not 'evidence-based.')"

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/12/fda-prasad-covid-vaccine-black-box-warning/

Covid shots may get FDA's strongest warning

The agency's black-box label is meant to flag serious threats to life and health.

Mother Jones

Levka Dec 14

#JunkScience #cannabis #propaganda

"Review of Medical Cannabis Use Finds Little Evidence of Benefit

Researchers found a chasm between the health reasons for which the public seeks out cannabis and what gold-standard science actually shows about its effectiveness.

To treat their pain, anxiety and sleep problems, millions of Americans turn to cannabis, which is now legal in 40 states for medical use. But a new review of 15 years of research concludes that the evidence of its benefits is often weak or inconclusive, and that nearly 30 percent of medical cannabis patients meet criteria for cannabis use disorder.

'The evidence does not support the use of cannabis or cannabinoids at this point for most of the indications that folks are using it for,' said Dr. Michael Hsu, an addiction psychiatrist and clinical instructor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the lead author of the review, which was published last month in the medical journal JAMA. (Cannabis refers to the entire plant; cannabinoids are its many compounds.)

The analysis arrives amid a surging acceptance and normalization of cannabis products, a $32 billion industry. For the review, addiction experts at academic medical centers across the country studied more than 2,500 clinical trials, guidelines and surveys conducted mostly in the United States and Canada. They found a wide gulf between the health purposes for which the public seeks out cannabis and what gold-standard science shows about its effectiveness.

The researchers distinguished between medical cannabis, sold at dispensaries, and pharmaceutical-grade cannabinoids — the handful of medicines approved by the Food and Drug Administration with formulations containing either low-grade THC, a psychoactive compound, or CBD, a nonintoxicating compound. Those medicines, including Marinol, Syndros and Cesamet, are available by prescription at conventional pharmacies and have had good results in easing chemotherapy-related nausea, stimulating the appetite of patients with debilitating illnesses like H.I.V./AIDS, and easing some pediatric seizure disorders.

The researchers found that doctors themselves do not have a firm understanding of medical cannabis."

https://archive.ph/jwX1X#selection-691.0-733.100

Adrian Segar Dec 5

“Today is a defining moment for our country,” Michael Osterholm, a public health expert at the University of Minnesota, said. “We can no longer trust federal health authorities when it comes to vaccines.”

CDC Panel Votes to End Recommendation for Hepatitis B Shots for All Newborns

[guest link] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/05/health/kennedy-vaccine-committee-vote-hepatitisb.html?unlocked_article_code=1.6U8.o3Kr.buSv_5tTwoNJ&smid=url-share

#vaccines #CDC #health #children #RFK #junkscience

Anthony Nov 29

The present perspective outlines how epistemically baseless and ethically pernicious paradigms are recycled back into the scientific literature via machine learning (ML) and explores connections between these two dimensions of failure. We hold up the renewed emergence of physiognomic methods, facilitated by ML, as a case study in the harmful repercussions of ML-laundered junk science. A summary and analysis of several such studies is delivered, with attention to the means by which unsound research lends itself to social harms. We explore some of the many factors contributing to poor practice in applied ML. In conclusion, we offer resources for research best practices to developers and practitioners.
From The reanimation of pseudoscience in machine learning and its ethical repercussions here: https://www.cell.com/patterns/fulltext/S2666-3899(24)00160-0. It's open access.

In other words ML--which includes generative AI--is smuggling long-disgraced pseudoscientific ideas back into "respectable" science, and rejuvenating the harms such ideas cause.

#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #LLMs #MachineLearning #ML #AIEthics #science #pseudoscience #JunkScience #eugenics #physiognomy

AMonkeyInSilk Nov 15

Polygraphs have as much credibility as astrology, or the #FBI for that matter.

#uspol #junkscience

https://www.propublica.org/article/fbi-kash-patel-dan-bongino-waived-polygraph

FBI Director Kash Patel Waived Polygraph Security Screening for Dan Bongino, Two Other Senior Staff

As the FBI’s deputy director, Bongino receives some of the country’s most sensitive secrets, including the President’s Daily Brief. His ascent to that position without passing a standard bureau background check is unprecedented, insiders say.

ProPublica