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Category Archives: Noteworthy
Pubmed already dying?
Pubmed is again down today following some cryptic messages last week.
Medpage has a longer article discussing the fate of the database given the fact that the Trump administration has signaled its hostility to the NIH and research in general.
1.Make it inaccessible. …This one is straightforward: lay off everyone involved in maintaining PubMed and take it offline.
2. Stop updating it. Similar to the first one … stop adding new publications to the database…
3. Change the indexing system for journals. This could be weaponized to punish journals… [for] research on certain health policies and populations, and so on.
4. Strip the indexing system for journals. .. This would be the “flood the zone” method. … This would remove the limited safeguards we have in place so no quality checks would exist at all.
5. Remake it. Delete what you don’t like…
I think this is an emergency call for the EU to fund future Pubmed indexing.
Things to do now
– let https://dnschecker.org/#A/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov do the job
– run standard searches “transgender diversity” and “women equal opportunities” for comparison to March 3, 2025
Update 3.3.2025
With the help of chatGPT, the log files at zonemaster.net and hacker news, the most likely scenario is now a misconfigured firewall upfront of the 3 NIH name server.
Can also confirm that the search for “transgender” at nih.gov is redirected to the search page.
Research has become a game of publication and not of science
This is quote from Gelman and King in the Chronicle
The publication process in social science is broken. Articles in prestigious journals use flawed data, employ questionable research practices, and reach illogical conclusions. Sometimes doubts over research become public, such as in the case of honesty scholar Francesca Gino, but most of the time research malpractice goes unacknowledged and uncorrected. Yet scholars know it is there, hiding below the surface, leading to frustration and cynicism. Research “has become a game of publication and not science,” as one professor wrote in response to a survey on research practices.
They want a “replay review” like in professional sports.
Once a publication receives a specified number of citations, it would receive an independent review. These reviews would then be published in full, along with author responses, so that readers have additional guidance on how to interpret the initial publication.
It is an interesting idea – basically a mandatory PubPeer review…
Is “Pro life” in reality only “Pro birth”?
A new paper in JAMA, distributed by Reuters and discussed at Bluesky has sparked a lot of interest showing a higher than expected infant mortality in states after adoption of abortion bans with observed 6.26 vs expected 5.93 per 1000 live births.
The reasons are not fully clear while methodological artifacts can be largely excluded
The results are consistent with clinician and media reports documenting denial of terminations for non viable pregnancies … The increase in infant mortality rate due to non congenital causes is less straight forward and warrants further investigation. One possibility is that these increases may result from the disproportionate impact of abortion bans on already disadvantaged populations, who are at higher risk of infant mortality, or from delays in receiving timely medical interventions.
The online discussion includes
– political and racial Implications as many users argue that this outcome was a foreseeable consequence of the Dobbs decision, with some claiming it aligns with systemic racial discrimination.
– criticism of “Pro-Life” sance. Many commenters criticize the anti-abortion movement, stating that its real goal was not to protect life but to exert control over marginalized populations.
– There are concerns about women’s healthcare: Some responses emphasize that these bans exacerbate existing disparities in maternal and infant health, particularly for Black women.
_ Responses range from outrage and frustration to calls for political action against policymakers responsible for the bans.
Not mentioned in the paper: Maternal death rate according to sepsis increased in Texas( Texas provided most observations in the new JAMA paper).
Source 23/2/25 https://www.propublica.org/article/texas-abortion-ban-sepsis-maternal-mortality-analysis In the two earlier years, there were 79 maternal hospital deaths. In the two most recent, there were 120.
The scientific literature is an essential ocean of knowledge, in which floats an alarming amount of junk
It is now exactly 30 years and 15 days since “The scandal of poor medical research”
When I tell friends outside medicine that many papers published in medical journals are misleading because of methodological weaknesses they are rightly shocked. Huge sums of money are spent annually on research that is seriously flawed through the use of inappropriate designs, unrepresentative samples, small samples, incorrect methods of analysis, and faulty interpretation. Errors are so varied that a whole book on the topic,7 valuable as it is, is not comprehensive
In 2025 we are talking not about one but dozen books. You can now find a peer-reviewed article to support almost any opinion, effectively proving it to be “true” in your view—whether you are a climate change denier, an anti-vaxxer or an advocate for tobacco smoke.
This phenomenon mirrors the way people interpret religious texts, such as the Bible, to justify vastly different beliefs. Just as proponents of the prosperity gospel find scriptural backing for wealth accumulation, Franciscans draw upon the same text to support their vow of poverty. Or the recently disputed ordo amoris (family is important but migrants can be deported) which is stark contrast to the parable of the Good Samaritan.
Back to science and The Atlantic article by Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky from where the ocean metaphor originates
… 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 although 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.
https://bsky.app/profile/alala55.bsky.social/post/3lhya4k3zls2p
Das Ende der Fördermittelaffäre
Die Fördermittelaffäre ist vorbei.
Da haben sich zwar Ausschussmitglieder wie Thomas Jarzombek nochmal dafür stark gemacht, alle Unterlagen zu bekommen. Leider war aber auch das Interesse des Ersatzministers Özdemir nicht allzu hoch, Licht in das Dunkel zu bringen. Das war’s dann, so Jan-Martin Wiarda. Die Ministerin hat sich in die Bedeutungslosigkeit verabschiedet, der Ausschussvorsitzenden Kai Gehring scheidet aus dem Bundestag aus.
Das allgemeine Wissenschaftsklima hat sich in Deutschland gedreht, was nicht zuletzt durch die umstrittenen Antisemitismus Resolution des Bundestages verursacht wurde, die “nicht mit dem Grundrecht auf Meinungsfreiheit zu vereinbaren und daher verfassungswidrig” ist, so das Rechtsgutachten des Bundestages. So sagte auch Walter Rosenthal, Präsident der Hochschulrektorenkonferenz
Die Resolution enthält Forderungen, die auch bei besten Absichten als Einfallstor für Einschränkungen und Bevormundung etwa in der Forschungsförderung verstanden werden könnten.
Wissenschaftsfreiheit bestand auch vorher nur auf dem Papier wenn ich über viele Jahre wichtige Studien nicht machen kann.
Nun steht die Wissenschaftsfreiheit also auch nur noch im Grundgesetz aber wird offiziell von den Teilen des BMBF und einigen Parteien im Bundestag als (bitte ankreuzen)
- abgewertet
- gering geachtet
- unterbewertet
- missachtet
- herabgewürdiget
- bagatellisiert
- vernachlässigt
- zweitrangig behandelt
- minderwertig eingestuft
- nebensächlich erachtet
AI is using copyrighted material
We know it for years: LLMs are trained by copyrighted material. But we should never forget: Aaron Swartz, a copyright activist lost his life. And so did Suchir Balaji (his parents do not believe in a suicide). And another activist Alexandra Elbakayan is being prosecuted for years.
So how can LLMs of all kind now make money of copyrighted text and images bypassing all rules? The Guardian about OpenAI
The developer OpenAI has said it would be impossible to create tools like its groundbreaking chatbot ChatGPT without access to copyrighted material, as pressure grows on artificial intelligence firms over the content used to train their products.
The New York Times about Suchir Balaji
But after the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, he thought harder about what the company was doing. He came to the conclusion that OpenAI’s use of copyrighted data violated the law and that technologies like ChatGPT were damaging the internet. In August, he left OpenAI because he no longer wanted to contribute to technologies that he believed would bring society more harm than benefit.
Are there still copyright rules in place?
Probably. Getty Images is now suing Stable Diffusion, Facebook is using LibGen although they had to pay recently 30m penalties. Universal Music filed a lawsuit against Anthropic and NYT against OpenAI. At least a dozen of court cases are ongoing.
But I haven’t heard so far of any action of a major medical publishers against any AI company (including the company who sued Elbakayan). They must have a different strategy – instead of suing they just sell their content even behind the back of the authors. This is what Christa Dutton found out.
One of those tech companies, Microsoft, paid Informa, the parent company of Taylor & Francis, an initial fee of $10 million to make use of its content “to help improve relevance and performance of AI systems,” according to a report released in May… Another publisher, Wiley, also recently agreed to sell academic content to a tech company for training AI models. The publisher completed a “GenAI content rights project” with an undisclosed “large tech company,” according to a quarterly earnings report released at the end of June
But can publishers just do this without asking authors? authorsalliance.org has an answer.
In a lot of cases, yes, publishers can license AI training rights without asking authors first. Many publishing contracts include a full and broad grant of rights–sometimes even a full transfer of copyright to the publisher for them to exploit those rights and to license the rights to third parties.
We had been too naive.
Or we have been blackmailed.
14/23/25
There was never fair use … https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/03/openai-urges-trump-either-settle-ai-copyright-debate-or-lose-ai-race-to-china/ … while I now fear that this will be decided by politics not by courts.
20/3/2025
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/03/libgen-meta-openai/682093/ writes
Meta employees acknowledged in their internal communications that training Llama on LibGen presented a “medium-high legal risk,” and discussed a variety of “mitigations” to mask their activity.
leading to the paradoxical situation
LibGen and other such pirated libraries make information more accessible, allowing people to read original work without paying for it. Yet generative-AI companies such as Meta have gone a step further: Their goal is to absorb the work into profitable technology products that compete with the originals.
Warum nur? 10 Punkte, die den neuen Rechtspopulismus erklären
Ein hervorragender Artikel in der ZEIT vom 2.2.2025 von Johannes Böhme erklärt “warum die Welt nach rechts rückt”. Zusammengefasst zunächst
Historische Parallelen. Soziale und wirtschaftliche Umbrüche haben in der Geschichte immer wieder Revolten und populistische Bewegungen hervorgebracht. Die Mechanismen sind oft dieselben: Verdrängung, Angst vor sozialem Abstieg und die Suche nach Schuldigen.
Der gesellschaftliche Bildungsgraben. Der massive Anstieg von Hochschulabsolventen hat eine neue Konfliktlinie geschaffen: Gebildete tendieren eher zu progressiven, kosmopolitischen Werten, während diejenigen ohne akademischen Abschluss sich wirtschaftlich und gesellschaftlich abgehängt fühlen, und den Nährboden für rechtspopulistische Strömungen bilden,
Die Angst vor sozialem Abstieg. Die Globalisierung, Automatisierung und der Strukturwandel in der Arbeitswelt haben viele traditionelle Arbeitsplätze bedroht oder zerstört. Besonders die untere Mittelschicht, die noch viel zu verlieren hat, fühlt sich existenziell bedroht und wendet sich rechten Parteien zu, die einfache Lösungen versprechen. Es ist weniger die Unterschicht, die nichts mehr zu verlieren hat.
Soziale Ungleichheit und relativer Statusverlust. Menschen vergleichen sich vor allem mit ihrem unmittelbaren Umfeld. Wenn die Unterschiede zwischen „oben“ und „unten“ wachsen, entsteht Frustration – besonders, wenn der Aufstieg immer schwieriger wird. Diese Frustration führt zur Suche nach den Ursachen mit Sündenböcken und der Distanzierung von der Gesellschaft.
Die Rolle der sozialen Medien. Rechtspopulistische Parteien konnten durch soziale Netzwerke enorm an Reichweite gewinnen. Es ist der Brandbeschleuniger ohne den der Rechtspopulismus nie die Reichweite und ein “Wir”-Gefühl hätte entwicklen können. Algorithmen verstärken Empörung, Ängste und Verschwörungserzählungen.
Migrationsängste als politisches Mobilisierungsthema. Migranten werden zum zentralen Feindbild erklärt, um gesellschaftliche Ängste zu bündeln. Menschen, die direkten Kontakt zu Migranten haben, sind dabei weniger anfällig für rechte Propaganda sind – die stärkste Ablehnung kommt von denen, die Migration nur aus rechten Medien oder sozialen Netzwerken kennen.
Die Lust an der Zerstörung des politischen Establishments. Viele Wähler rechtspopulistischer Parteien wählen bewusst destruktiv, um das bestehende politische System abzustrafen. Die Hoffnung besteht, dass ein Umbruch ihre eigene gesellschaftliche Position verbessert oder zumindest die Eliten bestraft werden. Dass sie sich dabei selbst viel mehr in das eigene Fleisch schneiden, wird verdrängt.
Das Fehlen politischer Repräsentation. Die Politik ist zunehmend von Akademikern geprägt, während Nicht-Akademiker kaum noch vertreten sind. Das führt zu einem Gefühl der Ohnmacht und des „Nicht-Gehört-Werdens“, das rechtspopulistische Parteien ausnutzen.
Die Schwäche der etablierten Parteien. Traditionelle Parteien haben es versäumt, die Sorgen und Ängste der unteren Mittelschicht ernst zu nehmen. Statt konkrete Antworten auf Globalisierung und soziale Unsicherheit zu bieten, setzen sie oft auf symbolische Politik oder moralische Appelle, die viele Menschen nicht erreichen.
Die Notwendigkeit von Reformen. Die einzige nachhaltige Lösung gegen den wachsenden Rechtspopulismus liegt in weit reichenden Reformen, die soziale Ungleichheit abbauen, wirtschaftliche Sicherheit bieten und den politischen Einfluss breiterer Gesellschaftsschichten wiederherstellen. Eine höhere politische Teilhabe und vor allem wirtschaftliche Sicherheit könnte die Dynamik bremsen.
Kommentar
Daß der Rechtsruck kein isoliertes Phänomen ist, sondern aus der allgemeinen gesellschaftlichen Entwicklung folgt, ist offensichtlich. Und es scheint so, daß dies weltweit sehr ähnliche Prozesse sind. Wenn der Rechtspopulismus in der Tat den Nachschub aus der unteren Mittelschicht und Arbeiterschicht bezieht, dann hat er mit 30% nun fast schon seine maximale Kapazität erreicht. Wierklich gefährlich wird es, wenn die Bewegung nun auch noch auf die weitere Mittelschicht übergreift. Mit der Bundestagsabstimmung am letzten Mittwoch bei der die CDU/CSU zusammen mit der AfD in der Migrationsfrage abstimmte, ist dies nun auch immer wahrscheinlicher (“werden es nach der Wahl wieder machen“).
Zurück zur historischen Parallele: Auch Franz von Papen glaubte. den Rechtspopulismus kontrollieren zu können, was nicht einmal ein halbes Jahr gelang. Die NSDAP erzielte bei der Reichstagswahl 1930 erstmals 18%. Viele der Wähler kamen von der DNVP, wobei die NSDAP zudem von der Agrarkrise profitierte und zunehmend das bürgerliche Lager anzog. Nicht zuletzt die Weltwirtschaftskrise trieb viele Bürger in radikalere politische Bahnen. So erreichte die NSDAP bei den Wahlen 1932 dann auch 37,3%, ihr letzte Wahlergebnis vor dem Ermächtigungsgesetz 1933.
Double blind peer review – well-intentioned but too many side effects
A new paper by CA Mebane in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry now makes six arguments for why double-blind peer review practices increase vulnerability to scientific integrity lapses by
(1) obscuring data from reviewers is detrimental
(2) obscuring sponsorship makes bias harder to detect
(3) author networks can be revealing
(4) undue trust and responsibility are placed on editors
(5) double-blind reviews are not really all that blind
(6) willful blindness is not the answer to prestige bias.
And here are his 5 recommendations for improving scientific integrity
(1) Require persistent identifiers, i.e., ORCIDs, and encourage
durable email addresses from all authors, not just the corresponding
author
(2) Withhold author information from the review invitation
emails
(3) Conduct the review in the usual single-blind style, with
reviewers having full access to all the same manuscript
materials as the editors, except the cover letter
(4) Cross-review and drop the ‘confidential comments to the editor’
option
(5) Open review reports: Publish the anonymous peer review
reports and author responses as online supplements.
Der MDPI Deal (1 von 3)
Wie kann das nur sein?
Über 100 deutsche Universitäten kooperieren nun mit MDPI in einem neuen nationalen Abkommen? Aus einer Bildunterschrift
Franziska Fischer (rechts), Kaufmännische Direktorin bei ZB MED, und Peter Roth (links), Verlagsleiter bei MDPI, bei der Unterzeichnung des neuen nationalen Open-Access-Abkommens zwischen MDPI und dem ZB MED-Konsortium. Foto: MDPI
Mehr als die Hälfte der befragten Fachbereiche bezweifelt die Seriosität, so eine Studie der Universität Kassel.
Die Reputation von MDPI ist im Keller so auch das Laborjournal
Von mehreren Lesern erhielt die Laborjournal-Redaktion in den vergangenen Wochen ähnliche Zuschriften: „Der MDPI-Verlag gehört unbedingt in die öffentliche Diskussion. Bitte bewahren Sie … insbesondere junge Forscher:innen davor …, in seinen möglicherweise fragwürdigen Zeitschriften zu publizieren, … sodass wissenschaftliches Denken und Handeln … wieder eine Zukunft haben.“
Ich hätte jedenfalls nie einen Artikel zu MDPI geschickt.
Und als dann doch eine Kollegin ohne mein Zutun einen abgelehnten Artikel dort abgab, war das Review mehr als dürftig. Dafür war die Spamflut, die dann einsetzte gewaltig.
Kein Wunder, dass sich nun im Januar die Fragen häufen, warum um Himmels willen die ZB MED freiwillig mit MDPI kooperiert? Wo wir doch sowieso schon eine völlige Überproduktion an Artikeln haben?
“This deal should provoke a discussion about publication priorities and the need to avoid supporting predatory journals,” said Abalkina, who questioned why the Germany’s research funder had not been required to ratify the agreement, as it did with larger deals involving Springer Nature, Elsevier and Wiley.The deal was announced after Finland’s Publication Forum downgraded 271 journals belonging to Frontiers and MDPI to its lowest level, claiming these publishers “make use of the APC operating model” which “aim[s] to increase the number of publications with the minimum time spend for editorial work and quality assessment”.
Und dann erschien vor wenigen Tagen noch eine Studie in QSS/MIT Press, die eindrucksvoll belegt, wie sehr MDPI in nahezu allen Parametern abhängt.
PlagScan wants to leave the scene without refund of prepaid credit
Plagscan had a good name in the scientific community in the past. When complaining that my account was no more working, I received an email this morning Continue reading PlagScan wants to leave the scene without refund of prepaid credit
We as editors were losing the academic freedom
Here is an unrolled thread of Brandy Schillace at Bluesky
My very last issue (on ..) has now come out with BMJ Medical Humanities: I have stepped down from my role as Editor in Chief. There are a lot of factors—after 17 years editing two consecutive journals, it was time. But there’s more, and I feel we should talk about the climate of #academic publishing.
When I began in 2007, editing a medical anthropology #journal for Springer, I had complete control of process. Articles came to me directly, I sent them personally to reviewed, who replied to me, and when accepted I worked one on one with a dedicated copy editor. A lot to juggle, but great QC.
Ours was a top ranked publication with high impact factor; we processed a lot of material—and yes, that was lots of paper shuffling. But we had an associate build a database of reviewers, and we managed just fine. Imagine! You sent a paper to the editor! And she had it copy edited!
In 2010 or so, Springer forced all journals to use a new online system. On one hand, a bit easier on me… the system kept track of where papers were, who was reviewing. I didn’t love it. But I didn’t hate it. Yet. Unfortunately, though, the system made other things invisible. Who ran the thing?
It was kept up by online assistants who worked overseas—largely in India. It looked like we were just using plug and play software, but there were people keeping all that tech going; ghost workers in the #AI. Except I couldn’t just speak to them if something went wrong. And things did go wrong.
And then something worse happened. They took away my copy editor. I had to send things through the new system to be copy edited—and that too happened overseas. There were teams of people editing all genres, with no specificity, and without English as a first language. Citations were a nightmare.
Authors complained and I would reach out to my contact, who had to reach out to their contacts, and so on in three time zones every time something went awry. But that’s not all. I was losing control of the process, unable to see it clearly. Reviewed got mad at the system too. Authors hated it.I left that journal to take over BMJ Medical Humanities in 2017. The publisher was smaller and I had far more contact—all good things. The online system was, however, a beast. No better. Possibly worse. And yet again all copy edits were handled overseas. I wanted CMA style; it crashed the system
(It had to do with the software in use but also the four levels of people, time zones, and language issues among us). Everything too ages, but ultimately I had the support of a good network of people—including an assistant through BMJ, and my associate editors and colleagues.But let’s skip ahead— I had begun a big push to diversify our journal. We started Path to Publication, helping those without institutional support. It was a lot of work. For my meager stipend, about 25 hrs a week. But I had support. Then … About 2-3 years ago, things began to change. Was it Covid? Maybe. Hard to say.
There was a reorganization. We lost my immediate report and the assistant. Plan S was putting pressure on everyone to go OA but that would mean costs fell on authors—and it would certainly end all our diversity work. Who could afford to pay the fees, especially from the humanities? We pushed back.
But a new emphasis on profit, and on publishing more and more papers had taken hold. I was questioned about my QC; why wasn’t I accepting more papers, faster? Meanwhile, system problems persisted and authors and reviewers already overtaxed were giving up. We continued to publish edgy DEI work—
One of our most important pieces was about white supremacy culture in medicine. There was blowback; I got a lot of ugly emails. Thankfully, BMJ stood by my decision to publish it. I’m grateful. But the flurry around it should have rolled a warning bell. More changes were on the horizon.
The physician burnout discourse emphasises organisational challenges and personal well-being as primary points of intervention. However, these foci have minimally impacted this worsening public health…
Not long after, I began to get notices from behind the scenes people—those who received articles before I did, through the online system. They were ‘flagging’ articles they deemed ‘problematic.’ Now, they often had reason… perhaps they hadn’t completed the patient anonymization, or etc. But.
But—*someone else* was determining things before I could read the work. It’s easy to see how this affects decision making—harder for me to read unbiased. And sometimes, the problems weren’t really a failure to complete a step. In another BMJ journal, a paper accepted by the EiC was pulled.
Somewhere behind the scenes, we as editors were losing the academic freedom to evaluate papers for ourselves. It’s not outright. And I’m sure it’s in the name of safety and efficiency. But I’ve watched as one by one, things that used to be the purview of editors have been lost. And it’s everywhere.
I am not here to attack my past publishers; they are part of a giant revolution that stretches from academia to finders private and public. It has been accelerated by Covid and by the political turn from DEI, from diversity and autonomy as good things—to ‘problematic’ things. We are not profitable.
There are many good things that have come from my time as an editor. I enjoyed working with BMJ and still prefer it to many other institutions (and they did fight for me, and for papers I wanted published and authors I wanted protected). But the academic publishing world is not what it was.
I wish all luck and strength to those stepping into editorial shoes. And I can hope things will get better. But with the encroachment of AI, I imagine things will get worse before they get better. And that makes it harder for everyone.
* BMJ = British Medical Journal
* DEI = diversity, equity and inclusion
* EIC = editor in chief
AI lobotomizing knowledge
I tried out chatGPT 4o to create the R ggplot2 code for a professional color chart
ChatGPT had serious problems to recognize even the grid fields while it was impossible to get the right colors or any order after more than a dozen attempts (I created the above chart in less than 15m).
At the end, chatGPT ended with something like a bad copy of Gerhard Richters “4900 Colours”…
Why was this task so difficult?
Although labeled as generative, AI is not generative in a linguistic sense that
… aims to explain the cognitive basis of language by formulating and testing explicit models of humans’ subconscious grammatical knowledge
I would like to call it better imitating AI. ChatGPT never got the idea of a professional color chart for optimizing color workflow from camera to print).
It was also lacking any aesthetics. Although the Richter squares are arranged randomly, they form a luminous grid pattern with overwhelming kaleidoscopic color fields.
A less academic version – it is the biggest copyright infringement ever since Kim Dotcom.
TBC
Scientific conclusions need not be accurate, justified, or believed by their authors
This is the subtitle of another blog on the scientific method (and scientific madness).
I don’t agree with the statement – conclusion should be as accurate and as logical as possible. Conclusions should be believed by the authors as they are fraudsters otherwise.
The original paper for the strange hypothesis is by Dang and Bright.
Dang and Bright argue that all this makes sense if we expect the norms governing the presentation of scientific conclusions to scientific peers to align with the reality that science works through division of cognitive labor and collective efforts at error correction.
which is basically not true – see Brandolinis law.
Another example where bad science was leading to a catastrophic event
The full story at this address and the 3 reasond in a nutshell
Clever ecological modelers came up with a way of calculating a ‘maximum sustainable yield’ (MSY), set at 16% of the total population, which should theoretically leave enough fish to repopulate each year … But fishing floundered further and the Grand Banks cod population collapsed almost entirely in 1992 …
While the Canadian government attempted to sample the cod population in the 1980s, their ships caught so much less than professional fishermen … In doing so, the modelers ignored a selection bias: the pros used better tech and only fished in the highest-yielding spots, so these numbers cannot be extrapolated to the entire region…
In humans, the number of kids in a population depends heavily on the number of parents, because one pair of parents usually has just one kid at a time. In cod, on the other hand, a single fish can produce eight million eggs at a time. This means that the number of cod babies who make it to adulthood depends much less on the existing population size and much more on environmental factors like food and predation.
A third problem is that the fishing industry has far-reaching and often unforeseeable effects on the ecosystem as a whole.