Re: Have You Had Your Yearly Eye Exam?

Wes Groleau <groleau+news@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Jennifer wrote:
Read the rest at: http://tinyurl.com/sxma9

Another excerpt:
> The risk was actually higher in women who had diabetes
> for 5 years or less than for those with long-standing disease.

Could that be because the latter have gotten their BG under
control better?

The other thing I notice is that by not mentioning us men
at all, they give the impression that men do NOT have the
risk. In other words, by not actually saying, "We don't
know whether this is true for men" they make it seem like
it isn't.

It's an unfortunate fact of scientific publishing life that scientists
are often constrained by limits on number of pages, words, etc., so
they get very used to packing their published papers down to size by
omitting everything that doesn't actually have to be specifically said
because it's logically implied. That frugal skill often becomes a
habit which carries over into publications and statements which are
not constrained by limits.

That's one of the reasons why scientific publications are often hard
to read, and typically take a few readings, even by an expert, before
all the meaning can be unpacked. It's one of the reasons why you can't
make the assumptions of normal everyday linguistic communication when
dealing with statements by scientists. Quite apart from the
specialised jargon issue, where everyday words sometimes have very
specialised meanings, such as the use of "evaluation" pointed out by
Alice Faber recently.

Another point which came up recently was important results not being
mentioned in the abstract. I can't comment on the specific example,
but generally speaking it's an unfortuante fact of research funding
life that sometimes the paymaster's lawyers insist on approving the
text of your publications. It would be silly if they paid you a lot of
money to diss one of their marketing stances, wouldn't it?

But lawyers are often not scientists, so sometimes what you do is to
omit the important finding from the abstract which is contrary to your
sponsor's interests, and to make it more obviously implied by the
results than making a quite explicit statement in the text of the
paper. That way the company lawyers are happy because you haven't
obviously dissed their product or marketing stance, and your fellow
scientists are quite able to see what you really mean :-(

Sometimes the company lawyers can see quite clearly what you're up to,
sympathise as fellow professionals who object to the bosses thinking
they've bought the consciences of their employees, and simply ask that
you conceal your unpleasant finding only just well enough that the
company managers won't spot it, assisting you to do so :-)

It's not true that all industry sponsored scientists are doing their
dishonest best to defend the commercial interests of their
sponsors. Sometimes they're doing their best to be honest scientists
without actually losing their research funding, which means not always
being quite straightforward in their publications. IMHO that kind of
diplomatic camouflage is more common than suppression or distortion of
results, although there's plenty of that too.

If you won't pay for research out of taxes, that's the kind of
research you get. And very sad indeed to say, there are some
governments who feel exactly the same way about scientific results
which upset their policies, or the interests of their own commercial
sponsors, so you don't necessarily even get straightforwardly honest
scientific publications from government funded research.

--
Chris Malcolm cam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]

.

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