In Subsahara Afrika gibt es, abgesehen von Südafrika, kein funktionierendes Antidot bei einem Schlangenbiss. Darauf wies der Toxikologe Dietrich Mebs, emeritierter Professor der Universität Frankfurt, vergangene Woche beim Forum Reisen und Gesundheit des Centrums für Reisemedizin (CRM) hin.
Die Details sind nicht zu glauben…
Roland Reuss und Volker Rieble schon vor über 10 Jahren in der FAZ
Fördert die mächtige Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) den Ideenklau und die Selbstbedienung? Transparenz ist für sie ein Fremdwort. Dieses Monopol ist bedenklich …
Sie erhält Geld vom Staat, jedes Jahr etwa 2,5 Milliarden Euro. Dieses Geld verteilt sie an Forscher und Forschungseinrichtungen, vor allem für die Förderung von Forschungsprojekten. Daneben nimmt sie mit Geld Einfluss auf die Forschungsstruktur …
Zentrale Entscheidung ist die Gutachterauswahl. Sie wird von der Geschäftsstelle der DFG in Bonn vorgenommen, letztlich selbstmächtig durch den Fachreferenten – und ist geheim. Nach welchen Maßstäben die Gutachterauswahl erfolgt, ob es Sperren für Missliebige und Unzuverlässige gibt oder ob bestimmte Gutachter besonders häufig zum Einsatz kommen, das alles ist unbekannt….
Externe Kontrolle findet praktisch nicht statt.
Als Verein des bürgerlichen Rechts unterliegt die DFG auch keiner Auskunftspflicht nach Informationsfreiheitsgesetz ( IFG ) genausowenig wie die GmbHs der Großforschungseinrichtungen – eine völlig inakzeptable Situation wie ich finde.
Was der Bundesrechnungshof von der DFG hält, kann man hier nachlesen …
The Semrush blog has a nice summary
By analyzing two main characteristics of the text: perplexity and burstiness. In other words, how predictable or unpredictable it sounds to the reader, as well as how varied or uniform the sentences are.
a statistical measure of how confidently a language model predicts a text sample. In other words, it quantifies how “surprised” the model is when it sees new data. The lower the perplexity, the better the model predicts the text.
is the intermittent increases and decreases in activity or frequency of an event. One of measures of burstiness is the Fano factor —a ratio between the variance and mean of counts. In natural language processing, burstiness has a slightly more specific definition… A word is more likely to occur again in a document if it has already appeared in the document. Importantly, the burstiness of a word and its semantic content are positively correlated; words that are more informative are also more bursty.
Or lets call it entropy? So we now have some criteria
Well, there appear now also AI prologue sentences in scientific literature for example like “Certainly! Here is…”
There are some indications that an image is created by AI showing wrong details of the human hand like 6 fingers. So far AI does not understand the semantic meaning of “hand” having only the visual demarcation of hands in images as trained by mechanical turks. Images of hands however, can be misleading for the trained eye where also good painters have difficulties.
Let’s have a closer look at the images of Princess Kate and their kids Charlotte (8, right) , Louis (5, left) and George, 10 (behind) by a check list that I developed earlier with another family member, the Andrew/Maxwell/Giuffre image that even fooled me in the beginning.
Image source: credible /dpa.
File Modification Date/Time : 2024:03:11 07:00:09+01:00
File Access Date/Time : 2024:03:11 16:27:05+01:00
File Inode Change Date/Time : 2024:03:11 16:27:04+01:00
Image Width : 1024
Image Height : 1536
SRGB Rendering : Perceptual
Exif Byte Order : Big-endian (Motorola, MM)
Image Description : 10.03.2024, Großbritannien, Windsor: Das undatierte, vom Kensington-Palast herausgegebene Handout-Foto zeigt Kate, Prinzessin von Wales, mit ihren Kindern, Prinz Louis, Prinz George und Prinzessin Charlotte, aufgenommen in Windsor, Anfang dieser Woche, vom Prinzen von Wales. Prinzessin Kate bedankte sich in einer Botschaft in den sozialen Medien für die anhaltende Unterstützung und wünschte den Menschen einen schönen Muttertag. Foto: Prince Of Wales/Kensington Palast/PA Media/dpa – ACHTUNG: Nur zur redaktionellen Verwendung bis zum 31.12.2024 und nur mit vollständiger Nennung des vorstehenden Credits. Das Foto darf nicht bearbeitet oder im Ausschnitt verändert werden. +++ dpa-Bildfunk +++
Artist : Prince Of Wales
Exif Version : 0232
Date/Time Original : 2024:03:10 02:34:23
Create Date : 2024:03:10 02:34:23
Source : Kensington Palast/PA Media
Urgency : 4
Transmission Reference : 911-004243
Instructions : UNITED KINGDOM OUT, IRELAND OUT, PICTURE DESK USE ONLY. NO SALES. HANDOUT
Supplemental Categories : Leute
Credit : dpa
Caption Writer : kde
Title : urn:newsml:dpa.com:20090101:240310-911-004243
Elvis ID : 9WexS6c3amM9b0m_iOBING
Keyword : Monarchie, Royals, Familie
Credit Line : dpa
Image Size : 1024×1536
Megapixels : 1.6
Situation: credible, should show their well being
Photographer: allegedly husband
Camera: unknown, cropped wide angle?
The overall look: A bit weird and plastic look in my eyes. Dimensions are wrong as her upper body seems too large for her legs. The right arm of Louis (and even George?) seem too long. Trying the posture of her in reality shows that it is unreal to get the embracing hands in this position.
Hands: The fingers of Charlotte’s left hand are larger than the fingers of her right hand. The index finger of Louis is missing which is difficult to reproduce in front of a mirror.
Teeth: Kate’s teeth look authentic when compared with other pictures of her, except for an unsharp band on the upper front teeth. Without having other images at hand, the teeth of the children look age-related (although Louis may be older than 5 on this picture).
Pattern: Floor looks good except left wall. There is a gap at the patten of right arm of Louis and lower left arm of Charlotte. While images of natural objects never have 100% identical patterns, such patterns are frequent with man-made objects — and difficult for AI to reproduce.
Sharpness: Floor mosaic: gets unsharp from tile 6 onwards – which is otherwise a perfect sharp area in the rest of the image.
Irregular: Kate’s right upper shoe border looks double. Zipper misaligns.
Sun/Shadow: sunshine on Kate’s left hand although there should be shadow under Charlotte’s arm. And well there background in the triangle under Charlotte’s arm is missing. The window mirror shows a tree that could cast more shadow on the scene.
General: Green leaves on the background trees in early March?
no clear results from splicing probability heatmap and ELA
no clear results from AI detectors, maybe it’s not de novo fabrication but merging of multiple sources?
March 11, 2024
Maybe that business should be left to professional photographers?
More comments at SPON by Matthias Kremp: Another possibility is a Google Pixel 8 that combines internally images which is however unlikely here. Kremp notices also the white paint at the step behind Louis.
SZ highlights some details that I do not understand.
March 12, 2024
The public interest continues ;-) BBC and Youtube while the palace doesn’t show the original picture.
but here is a new image version
March 15, 2024
Medium “something more serious”
ZEIT “trust retouched”
SKY believes that The first save was made at 9.54pm on Friday night, with the second at 9.39am on Saturday morning.
The image was taken at Adelaide Cottage – the family’s home in Windsor – on a Canon 5D mark IV, which retails at £2,929.99 and used a Canon 50mm lens, which is priced at £1,629.99.
which contradicts the dpa exif data…
March 20, 2024
Guardian “Photo of Queen Elizabeth II and family was enhanced at source, agency says” and a famous photographer Pete Souza “lets not call it photoshopped”.
Die Fakten
Die Verschwörung
So erkennt man Verschwörungstheorien
1. Worum geht es?
Der Glaube, dass bestimmte Ereignisse oder Situationen heimlich hinter den Kulissen von mächtigen Kräften mit negativen Absichten manipuliert werden.2. Verschwörungstheorien haben diese 6 Dinge gemeinsam
Eine angebliche, geheime Verschwörung.
Eine Gruppe von Verschwörern.
„Beweise“, die die Verschwörungstheorie zu stützen scheinen.
Sie suggerieren fälschlicherweise, dass nichts zufällig geschieht und dass es keine Zufälle gibt; Nichts ist so, wie es scheint und alles ist miteinander verbunden.
Sie teilen die Welt in Gut und Böse ein.
Sie machen Menschen und Gruppen zum Sündenbock.3. Warum gedeihen sie?
Sie erscheinen oft als logische Erklärung von Ereignissen oder Situationen, die schwer zu verstehen sind und ein falsches Gefühl von Kontrolle und Entscheidungsfreiheit vermitteln. Dieses Bedürfnis nach Klarheit wird in Zeiten der Unsicherheit noch verstärkt.4. Woher kommen sie?
Verschwörungstheorien beginnen oft mit einem Verdacht. Sie fragen, wer von dem Ereignis oder der Situation profitiert und identifizieren so die Verschwörer. Jeder „Beweis“ muss dann der Theorie entsprechen.Wenn Verschwörungstheorien erst einmal Fuß gefasst haben, können sie sich schnell verbreiten. Sie sind schwer zu widerlegen, weil jeder, der es versucht, als Teil der Verschwörung angesehen wird.
5. Menschen verbreiten Verschwörungstheorien aus unterschiedlichen Gründen:
Die meisten glauben, dass sie wahr sind. Andere wollen Menschen aus politischen oder finanziellen Gründen gezielt provozieren, manipulieren oder ins Visier nehmen. Sie können aus vielen Quellen stammen wie Internet, Freunden, Verwandten.
(Maria Skłodowska-Curie).
When scientific conferences were more about facts than about the show: the first seven Solvay conferences
… because it keeps you lab running.
Writing now a review in immunology, I found a nice joke in The Atlantic quite early in the COVID-19 pandemic
There’s a joke about immunology, which Jessica Metcalf of Princeton recently told me. An immunologist and a cardiologist are kidnapped. The kidnappers threaten to shoot one of them, but promise to spare whoever has made the greater contribution to humanity. The cardiologist says, “Well, I’ve identified drugs that have saved the lives of millions of people.” Impressed, the kidnappers turn to the immunologist. “What have you done?” they ask. The immunologist says, “The thing is, the immune system is very complicated …” And the cardiologist says, “Just shoot me now.”
The British trials tracker, a never ending list of fame and shame
Although limited in scope, the COMPARE website of switched outcomes is also entertaining.
Working on a meta-science paper on pitfalls of pre-registration I found it timely to attend a seminar of the Royal Society about the “The promises and pitfalls of pregistration“.
My personal highlights from today are the introduction 6:35 by Nicholas deVito, the end of the Fiona de Fidler talk 1:36.03 and the great Nick Brown at 4:27:57.
Here is day 2, Tue March 5 2024
404 errors reported by Nature
More than one-quarter of scholarly articles are not being properly archived and preserved, a study of more than seven million digital publications suggests.
The findings, published in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication on 24 January indicate that systems to preserve papers online have failed to keep pace with the growth of research output.
“Our entire epistemology of science and research relies on the chain of footnotes,” explains author Martin Eve, a researcher in literature, technology and publishing at Birkbeck, University of London. “If you can’t verify what someone else has said at some other point, you’re just trusting to blind faith for artefacts that you can no longer read yourself.”
I save every PDF that I cite. But books are gone as soon as I give them back to the library.
But when I am gone?
Then it is gone.
404.
“Genetic drivers of heterogeneity” is the new description for the failed genetic concept of “reverse genetic engineering” – where we see now only sand running through the fingers.
The genetic cause of type II diabetes explodes now into fragments. There are now 1,289 “association signals” in a new study while in another study published back to back in Nature 1 billion new genetic variants are being described that have not been included in the 1289 or 08-15 analysis.
What is the purpose of counting grains of sand?
And why introducing a new concept of race as noted also by others?
27 Feb 2024
Another reaction by Michael Eisen and Ewan Birney
The problem, critics said, is that UMAP creates blobs that look distinct while masking the inherent messiness in the data. “The fact that they are distinct is an artefact/feature of UMAP,” Ewan Birney, director of the European Bioinformatics Institute, wrote in a long thread
and by Lior Pachter who has an analysis way beyond the outrage
We begin with the figure legend, which lists Race, Ethnicity and Ancestry. Race and Ethnicity refer to the self identified race choices for participants (based on the OMB categories). Ancestry refers to the genetic ancestry groups discussed above. While these three concepts are distinct, the Ancestry colors are the same as some of the Race and Ethnicity colors: This is problematic because the coloring suggests a 1-1 identification between certain races and ethnicities, and genetic ancestry groups.
where we indeed arrive now at scientific racism.
part I
(sound is poor)
part II
part III
part IV
TBC
Nature News writes about a genetic study in Chinese families
The study also identified some new links. For example, mothers with higher levels of bile acid had shorter babies. Clifton says the analysis falls short of establishing causality but offers leads for further research.
I wonder about the title “The Born in Guangzhou Cohort Study enables generational genetic discoveries” which is more promotional than informational. I wonder also about the geopolitical statement as the map includes also Taiwan (with zero observations, as found also in a previous Cell paper).
And well this is certainly not the first family study in China (see the halted research of Scott Weiss just before he went into vitamin lobbying).
It is also not any new information that mothers with higher levels of bile acid have shorter babies. Did neither interviewer nor interview partner ever hear of intrahepatic cholestasis during pregnancy that is leading to multiple adverse perinatal outcomes?
Cholestasis is leading to preterm birth, which is leading to LBW (by an OR of 2) and also to shorter babies. Without any preregistration and any replication study included, it is difficult to make any conclusion of “leads for further research”. The bile acid result may be a regional artifact if it is only found in one region – basically like in the farming studies.
Neither are numbers in this study as large as the Nature News piece wants us to believe, I think that 332 trios is only an average study size.
