Rebecca Culshaw on Sinking Scientific Standards

AIDS is said to be caused principally by the HIV-mediated destruction of CD4+ T-cells. The first conundrum I encountered was the lack of agreement on, or evidence for, any mechanism by which HIV supposedly caused this cell death. The second problem, less troubling on a purely virological level, but much more disturbing in light of scientific standards, was that papers on the molecular biology of HIV seemed to have a very short “shelf life” – they go “out of date” very quickly. In mathematics, a journal article takes a significant amount of time to write and at least several months to go through the review process. By the time a paper appears in print, it may well be years from the time the work was first started. On several occasions I submitted papers with fairly recent references regarding various aspect of HIV’s molecular biology, only to be answered with the criticism from a reviewer that some of these references were now “out of date”. Sometimes the references were only two or three years old. I later discovered that this is a common occurrence in HIV research. Science is of course meant to be self-correcting, but it seems to be endemic in HIV research that, rather than continually building on an accumulating body of secure knowledge, with only occasional missteps, it’s more like the bulk of the structure gets knocked down every three to four years, replaced by yet another hypothesis, standard of care, or definition of what, exactly, AIDS really is. This new structure is then also eventually knocked down in the same fashion. 

Even more disturbing is the fact that HIV researchers continually claim that certain papers’ results are “out of date”, yet have absolutely no hesitation in citing the “entire body of scientific research on HIV as massive overwhelming evidence” in favor of HIV. They can’t have it both ways, yet this is exactly what they try to do.

There are further problems with the scientific method surrounding HIV/AIDS. Among the major ones are the circumstances surrounding the publication of the initial papers by Robert Gallo’s group that appeared in the journal Science following the historic 1984 press conference; continuing difficulties in demonstrating a cell-killing role for HIV; continuing problems with (and an apparent lack of interest in) properly isolating HIV as an exogenous retrovirus; and, possibly the worst of all, the astounding lack of specificity, standardization and reproducibility of the HIV antibody and “viral load” tests -- and meaning as shown to widely felt ripples very recently in JAMA. 

The question still remains: How could science have gone so far astray? Why did the scientific community accept the HIV hypothesis so readily before any papers were published to support it? And how has this belief persisted so long despite results becoming “outdated” every few years? Why is there such disagreement between dissenting and orthodox scientists regarding the standards to which such crucial cornerstones as isolation procedures and antibody testing should adhere? How could scientists have so readily allowed their research to settle into one narrow, unproven channel of investigation? It’s been over twenty years – surely, if there was something wrong with the theory, this fact would have been discovered. Corrective action would have been taken, and a “diverse portfolio of research direction”, as Richard Strohman put it, would have been explored. 

I have now been employed at the faculty level in university academia for four years, and prior to that I spent a cumulative total of four years doing graduate level research. (The gap perceived by my having stated that I first began working on HIV ten years ago owes to the fact that following my Master’s degree I spent two years working in industry.) I have also observed my father’s employment circumstances and academic research experience as a professor in the physical sciences. Over the years, I have had plenty of opportunity to see exactly how research expectations affect the quality of work we produce. It is clear to me that the pressure to obtain big government grants and to publish as many papers as possible is not necessarily helping the advancement of science. Rather, academics (and in particular, young ones) are pressured to choose projects that can be completed quickly and easily, so as to increase their publication list as fast as possible. As a result, quality suffers. 

This lowering of scientific standards and critical thinking has been apparent in many aspects of research for some time, and after several generations of students, it is now beginning to infiltrate the classroom – the textbooks and the undergraduate curriculum. It is germane at this point to indicate that many of the common arguments presented in response to the queries of HIV/AIDS skeptics are essentially some form of appeal to the use of low standards. (For example, “You don’t need a reference that HIV causes AIDS”, “The fact that HIV and AIDS are so well correlated indicates that it must be the cause”, “HIV is a new virus, and new viruses will meet new standards”, “Koch's postulates are outdated and don't apply in this day and age”, “We don’t need to worry about actual infectious virus, viral ‘markers’ should suffice”, or “Real scientists do experiments; they don't write review articles on the literature”.) All of these observations are eloquently summed up by the mathematician Mark Craddock: 

“Science is about making observations and trying to fit them into a theoretical framework. Having the theoretical framework allows us to make predictions about phenomena that we can then test. HIV “science” long ago set off on a different path...People who ask simple, straightforward questions are labeled as loonies who are dangerous to public health.”  

It is this decline in scientific standards that I point to, when I am asked how so many scientists and doctors could be so wrong. Given the current research atmosphere, it was almost inevitable that a very significant scientific mistake was going to be made.

 

Rebecca V. Culshaw worked on mathematical models of HIV infection for almost ten years. She received her Ph.D. in mathematics (with a specialization in mathematical biology) from Dalhousie University in Canada in 2002 and is currently an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Texas at Tyler. She is a celebrated internet author as a result of her writings on Lew Rockwell, and "Science Sold Out: Does HIV Really Cause AIDS?", a book based on those essays, and from which the piece above is modified, is due next month.

Note: A few days ago, a technician with a PhD from Los Alamos National Laboratory by the name of Brian Foley sent Dr. Culshaw the followinbg email that is not only typical of the sad situation she outlined above, but is also 100% typical of the behavior of the AIDS apologists, namely to accuse the critic of not knowing the literature and then cite a bunch of papers which are supposed, by their citing alone, to prove that the critique is wrong. Here is Dr. Foley's enlightening missive, slightly insultingly entitled, "Errors in Rebecca's Post" and referring to her article on AIDS in Africa. He quotes from the essay as follows:

"This ridiculous concept is utterly empty the evidence for an African origin for HIV, much less AIDS, is essentially non-existent, and what there is is based entirely on the hypothesis that Africans have been doing bizarre and obscene things with monkeys that permitted not one but two distinct
retroviruses, HIV-1 and HIV-2, to emerge and begin to cause massive immune deficiency the likes of which has never before been caused by a single let alone two distinct‹infectious agents. For this improbable enough scenario to even approximate a possible reality, these two ³new² retroviruses in humans would have to be pretty new in monkeys, too, since nothing has changed regarding how Africans relate to monkeys in the last forty or so years, and logically, such a zoonotic jump, if it were possible, should have happened long ago. So if this were even partially so, AIDS ought to have existed in Africa significantly before it existed in New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, rather than after (1983), which is what happened."

Rebecca clearly has never looked at studies of the origins of HIV-1 and HIV-2.  See the attached papers, if you have any interest.

Mokili J, Korber B. ,The spread of HIV in Africa., J Neurovirol. 2005;11 Suppl 1:66-75. Review.
Zhu T, Korber BT, Nahmias AJ, Hooper E, Sharp PM, Ho DD.   An African HIV-1 sequence from 1959 and implications for the origin of the epidemic., Nature. 1998 Feb 5;391(6667):594-7.
Korber B, Muldoon M, Theiler J, Gao F, Gupta R, Lapedes A, Hahn BH, Wolinsky S, Bhattacharya T. Timing the ancestor of the HIV-1 pandemic strains. Science. 2000 Ju"

Dr. Culshaw replies to Brian: "Dear Dr. Foley, If you would compose an actual presentation of the data in these "papers", which of course I have read and studied, and that you think support the counter-propositions to what I wrote, by all means do so and it will be published here, along with my reply." [Otis]

Comments

[Dan]

Even more disturbing is the fact that HIV researchers continually claim that certain papers’ results are “out of date”, yet have absolutely no hesitation in citing the “entire body of scientific research on HIV as massive overwhelming evidence” in favor of HIV. They can’t have it both ways, yet this is exactly what they try to do.

Not only do they try to "have it both ways", somehow, we're not supposed to notice that.

The "overwhelming evidence" is nothing but an overwhelming amount of research...which can only "work" through what is effectively scientific tunnel vision.

[pat]

Aidstruth.org is another example of how they can have it both ways.
They charge, through Ad Hominems, that "denialists" use Ad Hominem attacks to promote their views.
examples of "apologist" Ad Hominems:

"Extreme-right + extreme-left (reciprocal loathing, united by only one theme - the Hitler-Stalin Pact redux) "

"Frustrated scientists with flawed careers" (this will come back to haunt JP Moore in the future)

"Profiteers (vitamin pill peddlers)"

and here comes the worst:
"Infected people in personal denial"

As for the rest of the site it argues from authority (a well-known logical fallacy that even rednecks are aware of) and hardly ever bother to give references when making sweeping claims. Duesberg (and others) to their great credit at least give exhaustive lists of references which, strangely, is also held against him.

On a final note I would like to say that JP Moore is the best thing to have happened to the rethinking movement just as Ann Coulter is the best thing that has happened to the anti-NeoCon Media-vangelists movement. They will eventually, singlehandedly perhaps, burn their own house of cards down.

[John Cleese]

It has been brought to my attention that this John P. Moore character claims to have been at Cambridge the same time as myself. Perhaps, but I certainly never encountered him, as I am sure I would have remembered such a total twit.

He has been called an "embarrassment even to AIDS,Inc." in an earlier posting, but I must amend that description. He could embarrass the Spanish Inquisition.