Links - 16th September 2017 (1)

80% of data in Chinese clinical trials have been fabricated - "Worst of all, it wasn't just a few scientists or pharma companies doing the dirty work. The report found that pretty much everyone involved was guilty of some kind of malpractice of fraud."
Why predictions of impending Chinese scientific dominance ring hollow

A surprising number of American adults think chocolate milk comes from brown cows - "Seven percent of all American adults – roughly 16.4 million people – do not know that chocolate milk is made of milk, cocoa, and sugar... Forty-eight percent of respondents also didn’t know how chocolate milk is made."

Study warns that science as we know it is evolving into something shoddy and unreliable - "the model suggests that the 'bad' (if you will) scientists who take shortcuts in relation to the incentives on offer will end up passing on their methods to the next generation of scientists who work in their lab, creating in effect an evolutionary conundrum that the study authors call "the natural selection of bad science""

The globalisation of marriage markets - "freer movement of people between Hong Kong and China resulted in more Hong Kong women not being married or getting divorced. The data also shows that these disadvantages in the marriage market lowered Hong Kong women's bargaining power within the household. Relative to men, their probability of being a household head decreased by 8.5 percentage points after the triggering events. Finally, we found the adverse outcomes in the marriage market had an incentive effect on their labour market behaviour. They were more likely to participate in the labour market or take a second job. As such, we can tentatively conclude that global hypergamy would result in a new pattern of regional and gender inequality in the marriage market. Men in affluent destination countries gain, as do women in poor source countries, because each group has access to more potential marital partners. But women in affluent destination countries and men in poor source countries lose, as they have more competitors in the marriage market."

Teachers 'denied schoolboy, 10, water on the hottest day of the year to avoid upsetting Muslim pupils during Ramadan'

EXCLUSIVE: Teachers Report 15-Year-Old Boy To Govt Extremism Watchdog for Jokes about Caitlyn Jenner and Campaigning for UKIP - "Michael Higginson, a 15-year-old year 10 student at Vision Studio School in Mansfield, also claims teachers openly back the Labour Party and said the website for his local UKIP branch is blocked on the school’s Internet service. He told Breitbart London the school’s “safeguarding officer” told him he could have committed “a hate crime” and that they “needed to find out if [he was] an extremist” before he was subsequently interviewed by two police officers... One school in Hampshire called the police in February 2016 after a pupil viewed the UKIP website on a class computer, and a boy in Yorkshire was referred for opposing the burqa... Despite the vast majority of violent extremist being Islamists, in Yorkshire, “far-right” referrals have accounted for nearly 50 per cent of the caseload and 30 per cent of the caseload in the East Midlands."

People are freezing their genitals to 'spice up' their sex life - and improve their appearance

Police arrest man who cross-dressed to peep inside female toilet at ITE - "Police have arrested a man who allegedly dressed up as a woman to peep inside the toilet at ITE College West in Choa Chu Kang"'
Trans activists will say that this was probably not a trans person, but that ignores the question of how you tell a bona fide trans person from a fake one (especially since there's no external verification of that characteristic)

Young Japanese people are not having sex - "Some men claimed they "find women scary" as a poll found that around 31% of people aged 18 to 34 from the island nation say they are virgins."

Black Lives Matter activist creates database of people suspected of racism - The website's logo is a Swastika - "Professional victim and delusional moron, Tariq Nasheed, after spending the past day accusing the latest Planet of the Apes movie trailer of racism, has decided to create a database of suspected bigots on Social Media"

Is Tinder in Trouble? Users Flee Hook-Up App Amid Rise in Fake Accounts

Here's When Machines Will Take Your Job, as Predicted by AI Gurus - "In the next 10 years, we should have AI do better than humans in translating languages (by 2024), writing high-school-level essays (by 2026), writing top 40 songs (by 2028) and driving trucks. And while the consensus may be that driving trucks may come by 2027, it's easy to predict that this could happen even sooner, with top tech entrepreneurs like Elon Musk constantly pushing the envelope and promising these innovations earlier"

Why China May Never Democratize

North Korea's barmy list of 15 state-approved hairstyles for men and women - "Surprisingly, however, none of the 15 styles appear to match Jong-un’s infamous hairstyle... “You can forget about dyeing your hair though.” However, social media users have been quick to point out the posters may simply be guides for North Koreans, as opposed to “mandatory styles”."

Couple married in one of UK's first gay Muslim weddings suffer online abuse - "A couple who had one of the UK's first same-sex marriages involving a Muslim partner have received online abuse after their wedding... One commenter said "Islam doesn't accept this" while another wrote: "Just putting asian costumes doesn't make it a Muslim marriage, there is no concept of gay marriage in Islam." Another said: "They are not Muslims, we don't have gays and lesbians." Mr Choudhury, 24, was previously bullied at school, attacked by other Muslims and banned from his local mosque"
Since we have "LGBT against Islamophobia" we should have "Muslims against homophobia"

Pav from the Nau: India’s Portuguese Food Trail - "The most significant contribution of the Portuguese has been the variety of fruits and vegetables that they introduced to the Indian land. Many of the most common fruits and vegetables consumed in India today, came with the Portuguese. These include potato, tomato, tapioca, groundnuts, corn, papaya, pineapple, guava, avocado, rajma (kidney bean), cashew, chikoo, capsicum and even the chilli. Not just spicy chillies, even some of the most popular sweets in India have Portuguese connections and this can be attributed to the chenna, which gave rise to a new chapter in Indian cooking. Made from split milk, chenna is the base preparation for several well-known foods today, including the paneer. Prior to this introduction, the practice of splitting of milk had been considered taboo in Hindu traditions."

Award-Winning Journalist Who Broke Story of Jewish Women Barred From Chicago 'Dyke March' Removed From Reporting Duties - "Gretchen Rachel Hammond — whose June 24 story caused a national storm after she detailed how three women flying Jewish Pride flags embossed with the Star of David were instructed to leave the gathering by organizers from the Dyke March Collective — confirmed to The Algemeiner on Monday that while she was still employed by the paper, she was not presently engaged in its reporting and writing operations."

This Guy Made A Fake Tinder Profile To Prove That Girls Never Think Hot Dudes Are Creepy - "It doesn’t matter how raunchy and offensive his opening line is, these girls are totally into him!"

Scientists discover what’s killing the bees and it’s worse than you thought - "Scientists had struggled to find the trigger for so-called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) that has wiped out an estimated 10 million beehives, worth $2 billion, over the past six years. Suspects have included pesticides, disease-bearing parasites and poor nutrition. But in a first-of-its-kind study published today in the journal PLOS ONE, scientists at the University of Maryland and the US Department of Agriculture have identified a witch’s brew of pesticides and fungicides contaminating pollen that bees collect to feed their hives... Bee populations are so low in the US that it now takes 60% of the country’s surviving colonies just to pollinate one California crop, almonds"

Unattractive People Are Seen As Better Scientists - "Good looking, sociable people don’t make good scientists, according to popular stereotypes... While they may be perceived as being less able, Gheorghiu et al. also found that attractiveness was a strong, positive predictor of whether scientists were seen as interesting

The Real Reason Most Women Don't Go Into Tech - "Both genders took about an equal amount of business-related degrees. But most graduate degrees taken by women leaned more towards education, nursing, social work and counselling. Is this a leftover from the past? No. It’s likely because many women, per a recent Pew Research Center report, choose to be stay at home moms and these careers offer more flexibility than the typical technology job"

This Is What Ariel Would Look Like If She Evolved In Different Ocean Environments

Women are paying for expert vagina yoni massages for £200! - "Isis explained that her treatments cost upwards of $300 (£200), and involve the use of herbs, steam, and massaging tension out of the vagina... Katie even suggests that by giving clients orgasms, the treatments can ‘reduce the risk of many types of cancer usually associated with women’."

Youths from ethnic minorities could get softer sentences - "Judges will be told to consider the ‘discrimination and negative experiences of authority’ they may have suffered... A spokesman for the Sentencing Council said yesterday: ‘The guidelines recognise that black and ethnic minority children are over-represented in the care system, and children in care are more likely to end up in the criminal justice system."

The bacon freak-out: Why the WHO's cancer warnings cause so much confusion - "Scientists are confident that high levels of sunlight can cause skin cancer. They're also confident that smoking can cause lung cancer. But the similarities end there. No one believes that sunlight and smoking are equally dangerous... Based on existing research, the IARC estimates that eating 50 grams of processed meat daily — one hot dog, say, or two bacon slices — can increase your relative risk of colorectal cancer by 18 percent. That's way less scary than it sounds. In the United States, a person's lifetime odds of getting colorectal cancer are already about 4.5 percent. So eating a hot dog's worth of processed meat every day would raise that lifetime risk to ~5.3 percent... It's one thing to establish causality. It's another thing entirely to tell us what the risks actually entail."

The impact of a celebrity promotional campaign on the use of colon cancer screening: the Katie Couric effect. - "Katie Couric's televised colon cancer awareness campaign was temporally associated with an increase in colonoscopy use in 2 different data sets. These findings suggest that a celebrity spokesperson can have a substantial impact on public participation in preventive care programs."

Empathy Cards by Emily McDowell are greeting cards designed for cancer patients by a cancer survivor. - "“Get well soon” cards “don’t make sense when someone might not,” McDowell writes. “Sympathy cards can make people feel like you think they’re already dead. A ‘fuck cancer’ card is a nice sentiment, but when I had cancer, it never really made me feel better. And I never personally connected with jokes about being bald or getting a free boob job, which is what most ‘cancer cards’ focus on.”"

Cancer is the 'best death' – so don't waste billions trying to cure it, says leading doctor - "Dr Richard Smith, a former editor of the British Medical Journal, said that cancer allowed people to say goodbye and prepare for death and was therefore preferable to sudden death, death from organ failure or “the long, slow death from dementia”."

Cancer of Islamic extremism was tolerated for 20 years - "Once legitimacy rests on who is deemed a “credible” or “authentic” Muslim, the conversation can only slide downhill. It was this “not Muslim enough” game within our communities that Anjem was destined to win. By definition, such a game is stacked in favour of the fanatic. As a nation, we came to tolerate such incredible intolerance. Too many on the left simply assumed Islamism was “Muslim culture, so let’s enjoy it”. Too many on the right said “it’s Muslim culture, let’s keep it at arm’s length”, while Islamists told Muslims “this is your culture, you have no choice but to follow it”. Very few were actively engaged in challenging Islamism, as they would racism or antisemitism."

Drinking very hot drinks 'probably' causes cancer, but coffee is okay - "the IARC said there is evidence to suggest that drinks consumed at temperatures above 65°C (149°F) can cause cancer of the esophagus, classifying them as "probably carcinogenic to humans." The organization's findings were based on studies conducted in places like Iran, China, and South America, where tea is often consumed at around 70°C (158°F)."

Did Cancer Evolve to Protect Us? - "The team’s hypothesis is that when faced with an environmental threat to the health of a cell—radiation, say, or a lifestyle factor—cells can revert to a “preprogrammed safe mode.” In so doing, the cells jettison higher functionality and switch their dormant ability to proliferate back on in a misguided attempt to survive. “Cancer is a fail-safe,” Davies remarks. “Once the subroutine is triggered, it implements its program ruthlessly.” Speaking at a medical engineering conference held at Imperial College London, on September 11, Davies outlined a set of therapies for cancer based on this atavistic model. Rather than simply attacking cancer’s ability to reproduce, or “cancer’s strength,” as Davies terms it, the model exposes “cancer’s Achilles’ heel.” For instance, if the theory is correct, then cancer evolved at a time when Earth’s environment was more acidic and contained less oxygen. So the team predicts that treating patients with high levels of oxygen and reducing sugar in their diet, to lower acidity, will strain the cancer and cause tumors to shrink... Davies and his colleagues also advocate immunotherapy—specifically, selectively infecting patients with bacterial or viral agents."