World’s Smartest Dog Peer-Reviews Science Papers

Staffordshire Bull Terrier
AP/Alastair Grant

Meet Dr Olivia Doll, the world’s smartest dog. Dr Doll is the formal professional name of Ollie, a Staffordshire terrier, who sits on the board of seven international medical journals and was recently asked to review a paper on the management of tumors.

According to Perth Now:

Her impressive curriculum vitae lists her current role as senior lecturer at the Subiaco College of Veterinary Science and past associate of the Shenton Park Institute for Canine Refuge Studies — which is code for her earlier life in the dog refuge.

Ollie’s owner, veteran public health expert Mike Daube, decided to test how carefully some journals scrutinised their editorial reviewers, by inventing Dr Doll and making up her credentials.

The five-year-old pooch has managed to dupe a range of publications specialising in drug abuse, psychiatry and respiratory medicine into appointing her to their editorial boards.

Dr Doll has even been fast-tracked to the position of associate editor of the Global Journal of Addiction and Rehabilitation Medicine.

Several journals have published on their websites a supplied photo of Dr Doll, which is actually of a bespectacled Kylie Minogue.

Professor Daube said none of them smelt a rat, despite Dr Doll’s listed research interests in “the benefits of abdominal massage for medium-sized canines” and “the role of domestic canines in promoting optimal mental health in ageing males”.

But just like the “penises cause climate change” hoaxers, Professor Daube is using humor to make a serious point about the reliability of research in academe.

The Canadian investigative journalist Donna Laframboise concluded something similar in a report last year for the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

“A journal’s decision to publish a paper provides no assurance that its conclusions are sound . . . Fraudulent research makes it past gatekeepers at even the most prestigious journals. While science is supposed to be self-correcting, the process by which this occurs is haphazard and byzantine.”

Laframboise was especially damning about the way “peer review” has been used to flatter dubious research in the field of climate ‘science’.

This has been a well-publicized problem with climate science ever since the Climategate emails leak showed the scientists at the heart of the global warming ‘consensus’ engaging in all manner of skullduggery in order to prop up their debased cod-scientific theory.

Read the rest at Breitbart.

Trump Will Use Art of the Deal to Kill Paris Climate Treaty

paris agreement
Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty

President Trump’s latest moves on the Paris agreement are – depending on your point of view – either a masterstroke of realpolitik by a consummate dealmaker or a shameful fudge: he has decided to kick the can down the road by leaving the decision up to the Senate.

This isn’t, of course, what he promised on the campaign trail.

In May last year in North Dakota he was quite explicit:

We’re going to cancel the Paris Climate Agreement and stop all payments of U.S. tax dollars to UN global warming programs.

What he probably wasn’t banking on, though, when he made that commitment was that it wouldn’t just be the liberals and greenies he’d be battling – but also a significant chunk of his own administration.

Though his EPA chief Scott Pruitt and his advisor Steve Bannon were all for pulling out, everyone else in his inner circle – not just the inevitable Jared Kushner and Ivanka, but also Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and even Energy Secretary Rick Perry – were keen to stay in.

The compromise – declare the agreement a treaty then send it to the senate to be killed – was in the event, probably the best skeptics could have hoped for.

Read the rest at Breitbart.