Fake Pharmaceutical Publications

Care of Philip at Furious Seasons:

Earlier this month I noted that news had come out that Merck had--with the help of major academic medical journal publisher Elsevier--had created a fake medical journal earlier this decade, which then presented studies that were basically gigantic advertorials for Merck's products. Now there's news that the same academic publisher has admitted to creating five other fake journals earlier this decade.

The journals in question are: the Australasian Journal of General Practice, the Australasian Journal of Neurology, the Australasian Journal of Cardiology, the Australasian Journal of Clinical Pharmacy, the Australasian Journal of Cardiovascular Medicine.

Elsevier has a lot to answer for. So far, the company has blamed all of this an its Australian office.

And people think I am off-base when I point out how corrupt the research world has gotten.

You can't make this stuff up...bit more info here.

More stuff you couldn't write if you tried:

God and Cats Playing Keyboard

This poor kid is trying to come out as an atheist to his idiot mother and (I'm assuming) subordinate father. I love the "you'll get nothing for Christmas" threat, which makes sense here because "Christmas is all about Jesus Christ!"

Anyway, what better way to break the tension with a cat playing keyboard.

I'm getting slightly ashamed this blog has turned into a viral video stop, oh well...

Newsflash: Satan is Dead

New Hope First Babtist Church interrupts your regular programming to bring you some breaking news - Satan is dead.

The killer was indeed identified as Mr. Jesus Christ...of...heaven...

This is a sad day for hell and a happy day for the saints and residents of Greenville Mississippi.

There may be too many soundbites to list...just watch...

Kurzweil, Shatner - Dreams Coming True

The new documentary on Raymond Kurzweil looks pretty amazing. He is a technology and future predictor, whose proclamations are often correct (human genome mapping, the internet, the collapse of the soviet union, a computer beating a human chess champion, etc...). The recent big one focuses on the singularlity - a point at which biology and technology are so intermingled they are indistinguishable. I've written about this a lot here, but I can't stop thinking about it - he thinks it will happen right around 2029.

An interesting parallel to Darwin (and maybe a reason he's sometimes regarded as a crackpot), Kurzweil believes he can resurrect his father with DNA and robots. Darwin himself was often quoted as believing in an afterlife and/or God - in particular, during the time when his mother and sister died, which he was heartsick over. Even the most brilliant people can be somewhat deluded it seems. Deluded or not, he believes this evolution of technology will allow him (and maybe all of us) to live forever.

The trailer is great, it really paints him as Vonnegut-like character - half evil genius, half prophet, mostly misunderstood. Towards the end, you can tell the type of backlash he must often receive from bible thumping, fear-mongers frightened he's playing God. Then again, it's nice to hear a quote from Stevie Wonder (a major God believer) praising him, "he is using the gift he was given for the betterment of human kind." Kurzweil is of course also famous for his unique brand of electric keyboards, of which Stevie is a big fan.

There is a showing of this at the Tribeca Film Festival Friday night, anyone got a spare ticket??

Oh yeah, the reason I have to see this now is because it seems to include an unironic interview with THE William Shatner about eternal life.

Auto-Tuned Baby

This baby sounds better than T-Pain and Kanye combined. Seems like something right out of Radiolab...

It Takes Different Strokes

A little exercise in music's ability to...shift the emotion of a visual scene. For the love of God, Arnold and Dudley, do NOT get in that old white guy's car. Courtesy of The Gothamist:

The Micro-Expressions of A-Roid

Our faces our billboards to our emotions, but often only on a lightning fast time scale. The famous microexpressionist (I think I just made that word up), Dr. Paul Eckman takes the time to analyze A-Rod's lying ways on his 60 minutes interview in 2007.

"The most reliable thing that he did is what we call a gestural slip," Dr. Ekman said. Several times during his session with Ms. Couric, Mr. Rodriguez raises his left shoulder momentarily as he speaks.

"It's a slight raise of one shoulder, a fragment that slips out of a full gesture," Dr. Ekman said. In a full shrug, both shoulders rise, stay up, then drop.

A half-shrug can be prompted by feelings like helplessness in the face of tough questions, or a "Who, me?" response to accusations. It doesn't square with firm denials, Dr. Ekman said.

In the interview, Ms. Couric asks: "What's your reaction to this investigation?" referring to the Mitchell report on steroid use in baseball.

His shoulder appears to pop up three times as Mr. Rodriguez talks of being "extremely disappointed" and adds, "It would be a huge black eye on the game of baseball."

He is also asked if he ever witnessed or suspected illegal drug use among players. His answer: "I never saw" - here, his left shoulder lifts - "anything. I never had raw evidence."

The article goes on to explain, that scientifically, nothing is particularly conclusive because he would need to study the purple-lipped cheater during a less stressful conversation to establish a baseline of whatever idiosyncratic facial expressions he has. Frankly, I couldn't imagine staring at that face any longer than I had to.

And even more frankly, I don't need science to prove that Arod and the rest of baseball's lying liars are in a constant state of fabrication, back pedalling, and denial.

If there's anything the steroid era in baseball elucidates, it's the extraordinary lengths people will go to protect their secrets and lies, and that most people, despite instinctually knowing the truth, will still believe the perpetuated stories. Innocent until proven guilty works well in the court of law, but I think we can safely say it doesn't apply to celebrities, athletes and politicians.