
The Scientific Literature Can't Save Us Now
Twice during his Senate confirmation hearings at the end of January, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. brought up a peer-reviewed study by a certain 'Mawson' that had come out just the week before. 'That article is by Mawson,' he said to Senator Bill Cassidy, then spelled out the author's name for emphasis: 'M-A-W-S-O-N.' And to Bernie Sanders: 'Look at the Mawson study, Senator. … Mawson. Just look at that study.'
'Mawson' is Anthony Mawson, an epidemiologist and former academic who has published several papers alleging a connection between childhood vaccines and autism. (Any such connection has been thoroughly debunked.) His latest on the subject, and the one to which Kennedy was referring appeared in a journal that is not indexed by the National Library of Medicine, or by any other organization that might provide it with some scientific credibility. One leading member of the journal's editorial board, a stubborn advocate for using hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin to treat COVID-19, has lost five papers to retraction. Another member is Didier Raoult (whose name the journal has misspelled), a presence on the Retraction Watch leaderboard, which is derived from the work of a nonprofit we cofounded, with 31 retractions. A third, and the journal's editor in chief, is James Lyons-Weiler, who has one retraction of his own and has called himself, in a since deleted post on X, a friend and 'close adviser to Bobby Kennedy.' (Mawson told us he chose this journal because several mainstream ones had rejected his manuscript without review. Lyons-Weiler did not respond to a request for comment.)
Perhaps a scientist or politician—and certainly a citizen-activist who hopes to be the nation's leading health-policy official—should be wary of citing anything from this researcher or this journal to support a claim. The fact that one can do so anyway in a setting of the highest stakes, while stating truthfully that the work originated in a peer-reviewed, academic publication, reveals an awkward fact: The scientific literature is an essential ocean of knowledge, in which floats an alarming amount of junk. Think of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, but the trash cannot be identified without special knowledge and equipment. And while this problem is long-standing, until the past decade or so, no one with both the necessary expertise and the power to intervene has been inclined to help. With the Trump administration taking control of the CDC and other posts on the nation's science bulwark, the consequences are getting worse. As RFK Jr. made plain during his confirmation hearing, the advocates or foes of virtually any claim can point to published work and say, 'See? Science!'
This state of affairs is not terribly surprising when one considers how many studies labeled as 'peer reviewed' appear every year: at least 3 million. The system of scientific publishing is, as others have noted, under severe strain. Junk papers proliferate at vanity journals and legitimate ones alike, due in part to the 'publish or perish' ethos that pervades the research enterprise, and in part to the catastrophic business model that has captured much of scientific publishing since the early 2000s.
That model—based on a well-meaning attempt to free scientific findings from subscription paywalls—relies on what are known as article-processing charges: fees researchers pay to publishers. The charges aren't inconsequential, sometimes running into the low five figures. And the more papers that journals publish, the more money they bring in. Researchers are solicited to feed the beast with an ever-increasing number of manuscripts, while publishers have reason to create new journals that may end up serving as a destination for lower-quality work. The result: Far too many papers appear each year in too many journals without adequate peer review or even editing.
The mess that this creates, in the form of unreliable research, can to some extent be cleaned up after publication. Indeed, the retraction rate in science—meaning the frequency with which a journal says, for one reason or another, 'Don't rely on this paper'—has been growing rapidly. It's going up even faster than the rate of publication, having increased roughly tenfold over the past decade. That may sound like editors are weeding out the literature more aggressively as it expands. And the news is in some ways good—but even now, far more papers should be retracted than are retracted. No one likes to admit an error—not scientists, not publishers, not universities, not funders.
Profit motive can sometimes trump quality control even at the world's largest publishers, which earn billions annually. It also fuels a ravenous pack of 'paper mills' that publish scientific work with barely any standards whatsoever, including those that might be used to screen out AI-generated scientific slop.
An empiricist might say that the sum total of these articles simply adds to human knowledge. If only. Many, or even most, published papers serve no purpose whatsoever. They simply appear and … that's it. No one ever cites them in subsequent work; they leave virtually no trace of their existence.
Until, of course, someone convinces a gullible public—or a U.S. senator—that all research currency, new and old, is created equal. Want to make the case that childhood vaccines cause autism? Find a paper in a journal that says as much and, more important, ignore the countless other articles discrediting the same idea. Consumers are already all too familiar with this strategy: News outlets use the same tactic when they tell you that chocolate, coffee, and red wine are good for you one week—but will kill you the next.
Scientists are not immune from picking and choosing, either. They may, for example, assert that there is no evidence for a claim even though such evidence exists—a practice that has been termed ' dismissive citation.' Or they may cite retracted papers, either because they didn't bother checking on those papers' status or because that status was unclear. (Our team built and shared the Retraction Watch Database —recently acquired by another nonprofit—to help address the latter problem.)
The pharmaceutical industry can also play the science-publication system to its advantage. Today, reviewers at the FDA rely on raw data for their drug approvals, not the questionable thumbs-up of journals' peer review. But if the agency, flawed as it may be, has its power or its workforce curbed, the scientific literature (with even greater flaws) is not prepared to fill the gap.
Kennedy has endorsed at least one idea that could help to solve these many problems. At his confirmation hearing, he suggested that scientific papers should be published alongside their peer reviews. (By convention, these appraisals are kept both anonymous and secret.) A few publishers have already taken this step, and while only time will tell if it succeeds, the practice does appear to blunt the argument that too much scientific work is hashed out behind closed doors. If such a policy were applied across the literature, we might all be better off.
Regardless, publishers must be more honest about their limitations, and the fact that many of their papers are unreliable. If they did their part to clean up the literature by retracting more unworthy papers, even better. Opening up science at various stages to more aggressive scrutiny—' red teaming,' if you will—would also help. Any such reforms will be slow-moving, though, and America is foundering right now in a whirlpool of contested facts. The scientific literature is not equipped to bail us out.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
28 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Measles outbreaks in Michigan and Pennsylvania end, while Texas logs just 4 new cases
The U.S. logged 122 more cases of measles last week — but only four of them in Texas — while the outbreaks in Pennsylvania and Michigan officially ended. There were 1,168 confirmed measles cases in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. Health officials in Texas, where the nation's biggest outbreak raged during the late winter and spring, said they'll now post case counts only once a week — yet another sign the outbreak is slowing. There are three other major outbreaks in North America. The longest, in Ontario, Canada, has resulted in 2,009 cases from mid-October through June 3. The province logged its first death Thursday in a baby that got congenital measles but also had other preexisting conditions. Another outbreak in Alberta, Canada, has sickened 761 as of Thursday. And the Mexican state of Chihuahua had 1,940 measles cases and four deaths as of Friday, according to data from the state health ministry. Other U.S. states with active outbreaks — which the CDC defines as three or more related cases — include Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio and Oklahoma. In the U.S., two elementary school-aged children in the epicenter in West Texas and an adult in New Mexico have died of measles this year. All were unvaccinated. Measles is caused by a highly contagious virus that's airborne and spreads easily when an infected person breathes, sneezes or coughs. It is preventable through vaccines, and has been considered eliminated from the U.S. since 2000. How many measles cases are there in Texas? There were a total of 742 cases across 35 counties, most of them in West Texas, state health officials said Friday. Throughout the outbreak, 94 people have been hospitalized. State health officials estimated less than 1% of cases — fewer than 10 — are actively infectious. Fifty-five percent of Texas' cases are in Gaines County, where the virus started spreading in a close-knit, undervaccinated Mennonite community. The county has had 411 cases since late January — just under 2% of the county's residents. The April 3 death in Texas was an 8-year-old child, according to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Local health officials said the child did not have underlying health conditions and died of 'what the child's doctor described as measles pulmonary failure.' A unvaccinated child with no underlying conditions died of measles in Texas in late February; Kennedy said the child was 6. How many measles cases are there in New Mexico? New Mexico added two cases in the last week for a total of 81. Seven people have been hospitalized since the outbreak started. Most of the state's cases are in Lea County. Sandoval County near Albuquerque has six cases, Eddy County has three, Doña Ana County has two. Chaves, Curry and San Juan counties have one each. An unvaccinated adult died of measles-related illness March 6. The person did not seek medical care. How many cases are there in Oklahoma? Oklahoma added one case last week for a total of 15 confirmed and three probable cases. The state health department is not releasing which counties have cases. How many cases are there in Colorado? Colorado has seen a total of 12 measles cases in 2025, which includes one outbreak of seven related cases. The outbreak is linked to a Turkish Airlines flight that landed at Denver International Airport in mid-May, and includes three cases each in Arapahoe and El Paso counties and one in Denver, plus a person who doesn't live in Colorado. Other counties that have seen measles this year include Archuleta and Pueblo. How many cases are there in Illinois? Illinois health officials confirmed a four-case outbreak on May 5 in the far southern part of the state, and it's grown to eight cases as of June 6, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health. The state's other two cases so far this year were in Cook County, and are unrelated to the southern Illinois outbreak. How many cases are there in Kansas? Kansas has a total of 71 cases across 11 counties in the southwestern part of the state, with three hospitalizations. All but two of the cases are connected, and most are in Gray County. How many cases are there in Montana? Montana had 17 measles cases as of Thursday. Ten were in Gallatin County, which is where the first cases showed up — Montana's first in 35 years. Flathead and Yellowstone counties had two cases each, and Hill County had three case. There are outbreaks in neighboring North Dakota and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan. How many cases are there in North Dakota? North Dakota, which hadn't seen measles since 2011, was up to 34 cases as of Friday. Two of the people have been hospitalized, and all of the people with confirmed cases were not vaccinated. There were 16 cases in Williams County in western North Dakota on the Montana border. On the eastern side of the state on the Minnesota border, there were 10 cases in Grand Forks County and seven cases in Cass County. Burke County, in northwest North Dakota on the border of Saskatchewan, Canada, had one case. How many cases are there in Ohio? Ohio remained steady for a third week at 34 measles cases and one hospitalization, according to the Ohio Department of Health. That count includes only Ohio residents. The state has two outbreaks: Ashtabula County near Cleveland has 16 cases, and Knox County in east-central Ohio has 20 — 14 among Ohio residents and the rest among visitors. Allen, Cuyahoga, Holmes and Defiance counties have one case each. How many cases are there in Tennessee? Tennessee has had six measles cases since early May, but no change since. Tennessee's outbreak appears to be over, as health officials say there have not been any new cases in six weeks. Where else is measles showing up in the U.S.? Measles cases also have been reported in Alaska, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia and Washington. Earlier outbreaks in Indiana, Michigan and Pennsylvania were declared over by health officials after six weeks of no new cases. Cases and outbreaks in the U.S. are frequently traced to someone who caught the disease abroad. The CDC said in May that more than twice as many measles have come from outside of the U.S. compared to May of last year, and most of those are in unvaccinated Americans returning home. In 2019, the U.S. saw 1,274 cases and almost lost its status of having eliminated measles. What do you need to know about the MMR vaccine? The best way to avoid measles is to get the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. The first shot is recommended for children between 12 and 15 months old and the second between 4 and 6 years old. Getting another MMR shot as an adult is harmless if there are concerns about waning immunity, the CDC says. People who have documentation of receiving a live measles vaccine in the 1960s don't need to be revaccinated, but people who were immunized before 1968 with an ineffective vaccine made from 'killed' virus should be revaccinated with at least one dose, the agency said. People who have documentation that they had measles are immune, and those born before 1957 generally don't need the shots because so many children got measles back then that they have 'presumptive immunity." Measles has a harder time spreading through communities with high vaccination rates — above 95% — due to 'herd immunity.' But childhood vaccination rates have declined nationwide since the pandemic and more parents are claiming religious or personal conscience waivers to exempt their kids from required shots. What are the symptoms of measles? Measles first infects the respiratory tract, then spreads throughout the body, causing a high fever, runny nose, cough, red, watery eyes and a rash. The rash generally appears three to five days after the first symptoms, beginning as flat red spots on the face and then spreading downward to the neck, trunk, arms, legs and feet. When the rash appears, the fever may spike over 104 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the CDC. Most kids will recover from measles, but infection can lead to dangerous complications such as pneumonia, blindness, brain swelling and death. How can you treat measles? There's no specific treatment for measles, so doctors generally try to alleviate symptoms, prevent complications and keep patients comfortable. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Yahoo
31 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Former O.C. Supervisor Andrew Do headed to prison for COVID relief bribery scheme
Andrew Do, the former Orange County supervisor who took more than $550,000 in bribes over COVID-relief money meant to buy meals for needy, elderly constituents, was sentenced Monday to five years in federal prison. 'I just do not believe a sentence anything less than the maximum reflects the seriousness of the crime,' said U.S. District Judge James Selna. "Public corruption brings damage far beyond the monetary loss to the county." The judge expressed displeasure that the law allowed him to sentence Do to only five years. Do fled war-torn Vietnam with his family as a child to become an attorney and one of Southern California's most powerful Vietnamese American politicians. As part of a plea deal, Do admitted last year that he funneled more than $10 million in federal pandemic funds to a nonprofit that in turn steered money to his two daughters. The scandal was uncovered in 2023 by the news site LAist, which reported that Do approved contracts worth millions to the nonprofit, which promised to provide meals to the poor, elderly and disabled residents of Little Saigon but could show scant evidence of its effort. Do approved the contracts without disclosing that his 23-year-old daughter Rhiannon, a law student at UC Irvine, had signed documents identifying herself as the nonprofit's president or vice president. As accusations mounted, Do claimed he was the victim of slander, responding with defiant vitriol against the reporter who broke the story, Nick Gerda, and demanding his firing. When the Orange County Register called for Do's resignation, he accused the newspaper of spreading 'gross misinformation.' Late last year, however, Do agreed to resign from the Board of Supervisors and pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bribery. Federal prosecutors said the Viet America Society gave Rhiannon a job, and paid her as an employee, after her father voted in favor of the lucrative contracts. Prosecutors also said the organization steered money to Do's other daughter through an air conditioning company. 'I'm very grateful that the judge saw the case for what it is,' said Janet Nguyen, the current First District Supervisor. 'He benefitted while people suffered. He took advantage during the pandemic, when no one was watching.' She said the county is conducting an audit to better understand how Do's scheme was allowed to occur. Prosecutors accused Rhiannon Do of making a false statement on a loan application, but agreed to defer the charge, allowing her to enter a diversion agreement in exchange for her cooperation. The elder Do, a Republican, worked as a deputy public defender and a prosecutor before he won a special election in 2015 to represent Orange County's 1st Supervisorial District, which covers Cypress, Fountain Valley, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, La Palma, Los Alamitos, Westminster and Seal Beach. He became the second Vietnamese American ever to serve on the board, and was later elected to two four-year terms. He was known for his efforts to combat homelessness and for his sponsorship of a Tet Festival in Fountain Valley that drew thousands of people annually. At a time when Vietnamese immigrants face increased threats of eviction and deportation, the disgraced supervisor's behavior 'erodes the already precarious level of trust our community has in the government,' said Mai Nguyen Do, the research and policy manager for the Harbor Institute for Immigrant and Economic Justice, a community group. 'After he's released, it wouldn't surprise me if he goes about his life, and meanwhile so many working-class people in the community don't have the resources to pick themselves up again after they're incarcerated,' said Do, who has no relation to the former supervisor. Jodi Balma, a professor of political science at Fullerton College who has followed the Do scandal, wondered how the bribery scheme somehow passed through the checkpoints of the county bureaucracy. 'There are really good and smart though somewhat annoying procedures in place to verify all contracts with the county,' Balma said. 'Somebody had to say, 'Approve that payment' without any receipts or verification or services. And those people have not been held responsible.' Balma also wondered whether it was fair that Rhiannon Do was allowed to enter a diversion program. 'If there is no punishment for his daughter, that feels unfair to all the other law students who might not be accepted to the California Bar Association because of misconduct,' Balma said. 'This is huge misconduct for someone who wants to be a lawyer.' Andrew Do's defense attorneys asked that he be sentenced to 33 months in prison. In a court filing, they said he had been volunteering at a maritime institute that teaches sailing to underprivileged teens, adding that the head of the program had praised Do's 'unwavering ethical compass.' The defense attorneys said that Do had expressed 'shame' and 'deep sorrow' for his crimes, that his license to practice law had been suspended and that his life has been 'destroyed by his own acts.' Do had 'received no actual payment to himself—all significant funds were provided to his daughter Rhiannon Do,' the defense wrote in a court motion, claiming he had been 'willfully blinded to the violations by the desire to see benefit to his adult daughter.… He now recognizes how completely wrong he was in this catastrophic self-delusion.' The plea deal called for restitution between $550,000 and $730,500, with the sale of the family's forfeited house in Tustin credited against that figure. 'This episode of poor judgment stands out as unique in his otherwise commendable life,' the defense wrote. 'He had a catastrophic lapse of judgment when he failed to stop payments to his daughters, and because VAS was helping his family, he failed to see the red flags of these illegal acts.' Pleading for leniency, defense attorneys invoked Do's backstory as a man who rose to public service after a childhood in war-ravaged Vietnam. But prosecutors said his background only amplified his guilt, considering many of the constituents he victimized had similarly difficult pasts, and he was aware of their vulnerability. Do 'made the decision to abandon the elderly, sick, and impoverished during a national emergency so that he could personally benefit,' prosecutors wrote. 'When the County and nation were at their most vulnerable, defendant saw an opportunity to exploit the chaos for his own benefit and, in so doing, betrayed the trust of hundreds of thousands of his constituents,' prosecutors wrote. 'The scheme was far-reaching and premeditated, and defendant had no qualms about pulling others into his criminal enterprise, including his own children.' Do's crimes, the prosecutors wrote, were 'an assault on the very legitimacy of government.' Calling his conduct 'despicable' and his attempt to minimize his crimes 'absurd,' prosecutors said that of the more than $10 million he steered to the Viet America Society , much of it supposedly for meal programs for the elderly and disabled, only $1.4 million went to that purpose. Do's willingness to involve his family in his scheme pointed to his 'moral indifference,' prosecutors said, while his campaign of invective against the press aggravated his culpability. In connection with the Do case, the U.S. Attorneys office announced charges last week of bribery against the founder of the Viet America Society, and for wire fraud against a man affiliated with another Orange County relief group. The judge ordered that Do surrender himself to federal custody by Aug. 15 and recommended he be incarcerated in the federal prison in Lompoc. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Yahoo
31 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Baltimore's top prosecutor seeks funding for division he says helped lower city's crime rates
BALTIMORE — Baltimore City State's Attorney Ivan Bates is asking the city to fund its division that reviews body camera footage, which he says has played a key role in helping drive down the city's crime rates. 'There's no more important division to the success of our office than the body-worn camera (division),' he said Wednesday at a city council budget hearing. The money for reviewing body camera footage previously came through federal COVID-19 grant funding, which is expiring at the end of this month. Bates has requested continued funding from both city and state leaders at a time when both are grappling with budget deficits. The two-year, $1.7 million grant was allocated by the Governor's Office of Crime Prevention and Policy, using funds from the federal American Rescue Plan Act. The money allowed the state's attorney's office to hire 10 people for the division. This year, Bates is asking the city to provide another $864,000, enabling his office to hire 10 permanent full-time paralegals for its body camera unit. Bates said prior to receiving the grant, prosecutors were leaving the state's attorney's office because they didn't have enough time to review video footage as part of preparing their cases. Even if the key footage for a case lasts only five minutes, the total video that needs to be reviewed could be hours long, Bates said. With the grant, other staff can take the time to help review the footage. 'Now instead of that prosecutor spending those five hours on reviewing body camera footage, they now can spend those five hours preparing that case and other cases,' Bates said. He added that this was the 'secret sauce' his office needed in order to increase criminal convictions over the past two years. If no money is provided to replace the grant, Bates said his office will have to make budget cuts related to its work with partner agencies and organizations. The body camera division has reviewed 1,916 cases comprising 22,065 videos containing 14,621 hours of footage, Bates said. 'Ensuring accountability and transparency in law enforcement is crucial to fostering trust between the police and communities they serve,' Bates told council members during the hearing. The state's attorney's office has one Evidence Review Unit staff member for every 140 police officers in Baltimore City. The ratio in surrounding jurisdictions is smaller: 1 to 51 in Howard County, 1 to 69 in Anne Arundel County and 1 to 112 in Baltimore County. Bates said the industry standard is a ratio of 1 to 110. 'We're doing more with less compared to these other jurisdictions, but we still have so much more we need to do,' Bates said. Bates said the office's workload has increased because of an increased number of police arrests, including 'double' the number of cases in its misdemeanor jury trial division compared with last year. Councilmember Paris Gray asked Bates whether he had asked the governor or anyone else at the state level for the evidence review unit funding, noting the 'tremendous deficit' the city and state are both facing. Bates said his office reached out to the Governor's Office of Crime Prevention and Policy and that they will 'continue to talk to Governor Moore and his team.' 'That was one-time ARPA money, and so we'd have to try to find out a special way to try to do that,' Bates said. 'We're trying to find the money however we can.' Gray suggested Bates and Mayor Brandon Scott ask the governor to provide the funds if it's not fiscally possible for the city. The governor's and mayor's offices didn't respond to separate requests for comment about whether the state or city would provide the requested funding. Council President Zeke Cohen said in a statement to The Baltimore Sun that he supports the state's attorney's request for additional personnel to review footage from body cameras. 'This is a powerful tool for ensuring investigations can proceed in a timely manner to deliver justice for the victims of crimes and their families,' he said. Gray said Bates's office is operating with a $2 million surplus this year and asked for an explanation about his request for additional funding. Bates said that the office spent almost $900,000 of its rainy day funds to defend against a cyberattack and install a new firewall, and that the office needs money set aside to reconfigure employee raises. He added that the surplus resulted from the departure of a number of prosecutors with six-figure salaries. 'I'm a real big believer — if we're going to be stewards of the public's money — I do everything I can, and we try to do everything we can, not to ever have a deficit. Because you never know when a rainy day's going to happen,' Bates said. _____