U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, who is also the chairman of the Colorado Republican Party, was captured ordering a local party official to report false election results in a primary race for a state Senate seat in a leaked audio recording released earlier this week.

Systems, devices, processors, and methods are described which may be used for the reception of a wireless broadband signal at a user terminal from a gateway via a satellite. A wireless signal may include a series of physical layer frames, each frame including a physical layer header and payload. The received signal is digitized and processed using various novel physical layer headers and related techniques to synchronize the physical layer frames and recover data from physical layer headers for purposes of demodulation and decoding.

A bottom mount refrigerator is provided with refrigerator components housed in a space adjacent the top of the fresh food compartment between a false ceiling and the top wall of the compartment. The top wall includes a stepped portion formed in the liner forming the compartment. The stepped portion is positioned near the top and front of the compartment, and it includes a section that is lower than the remainder of the top wall. The stepped portion includes a rear facing face in the interior of the compartment, and the false ceiling is positioned between the rear facing face and the back wall. The ceiling extends horizontal from the rear wall before angling upward to abut the face of the stepped portion. The false ceiling may also contain apertures to provide access to the components housed between the ceiling and the top wall.

Prior to this, it was said that the Bravo honchos decided to fire Cynthia and fellow 'The Real Housewives of Atlanta' star Eva Marcille because their 'storylines were the weakest.'

Richard Lutz meanders through another miasmic week

Chuck Jaffe: As they shelter at home, Americans have been building their knowledge on seemingly every subject. That doesn't make them financial experts.

Chuck Jaffe: As they shelter at home, Americans have been building their knowledge on seemingly every subject. That doesn't make them financial experts.

The $500 million a year "Amazon tax" before the Seattle City Council would also likely hit some firms in the health sector that are working on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic.

After Victorian police were found to have falsified hundreds of thousands of breath tests last year, the state's anti-corruption body warns there's a risk officers could still be conducting fake tests because of "meaningless and unachievable" targets.

John Setka has denied he made disparaging remarks about Rosie Batty, saying the allegations were made as part of a political campaign against him and there was "no reason" for him to resign.

Faruk Orman, who spent 12 years in prison for murder before being acquitted because of the Lawyer X scandal, is suing Victoria Police for unspecified damages.

A pharmaceutical giant owned by the Sackler family in the United States is using flaws in regulation to push its latest product deep into regional Australia.

Billionaire Clive Palmer is accused of faking entries in a green notebook in a bid to justify draining Queensland Nickel of millions of dollars for anything he wanted before it collapsed in 2016, a court is told.

Victorian prosecutors say there is no justification for the High Court to grant special leave for Cardinal George Pell to appeal against his child sexual abuse convictions.

A man is taken into police custody in relation to a car that crashed through the front of a house on the Gold Coast early on Sunday morning, leaving a teenage girl trapped inside.

Mining giant Adani is being accused of providing false information to Queensland's environment department over land clearing at the site of its proposed Carmichael mine.

A new study demonstrates the role of culture in welcoming children with Down syndrome.

For years, I have read news headlines in Christian and secular outlets, from conservatives and liberals alike, stating that “90% of babies with Down syndrome are aborted.” As I have argued before, and as a new study demonstrates, it’s just not true. Correcting this common misconception matters both in providing accurate information to pregnant women and in normalizing the experience of receiving a child with Down syndrome.

Last week, the American Journal of Medical Geneticspublished a study about the birth rates of babies with Down syndrome in the United States. The study estimates live births of babies with Down syndrome from 1900-2010, with a focus upon the effect of prenatal screening programs within the United States on the population of babies with Down syndrome. After factoring in the expected number of live births, miscarriages, and stillbirths, it then posits a “reduction rate.” This reduction rate demonstrates the number of babies with Down syndrome that are not born as a result of selective abortion.

To be specific, in 2006-2010 theses researchers estimate around 5,300 babies were born with Down syndrome annually. During this same time period, approximately 3,100 babies with Down syndrome were selectively aborted each year. Around 800 of those aborted babies would have died before birth, so without selective abortion, the researchers estimate there would be around 7,600 live births with Down syndrome. The reduction rate of babies with Down syndrome in the United States in 2010 was around 30 percent. In other words, without selective abortion, the number of babies born with Down syndrome in recent years would have been about 30 percent higher than it actually has been.

So why ...

Continue reading...

Says cop put her in cuffs after she asked not to be shoved.

Dismissing concerns that states are reopening too soon, President Donald Trump incorrectly said that a newly revised model projecting 134,000 COVID-19 deaths by August “assumes no mitigation.” In fact, the model assumes states will keep their existing social distancing measures in place, unless suspensions have already been announced.

The post Trump Falsely Claims COVID-19 Death Projection Assumes ‘No Mitigation’ appeared first on FactCheck.org.

There's no evidence that Bill Gates ever visited Jeffrey Epstein's private island in the Caribbean, contrary to a viral Facebook post claiming he went there numerous times. The "flight records" cited do not show that.

The post False Claim Targets Gates Using Epstein Connection appeared first on FactCheck.org.

The first installment of a documentary called "Plandemic" stormed through social media this week. But the viral video weaves a grand conspiracy theory by using a host of false and misleading claims about the novel coronavirus pandemic and its origins, vaccines, treatments for COVID-19, and more.

The post The Falsehoods of the ‘Plandemic’ Video appeared first on FactCheck.org.

The three-day event was therapeutic for starved sports fans and millions of people confined to their homes.

There's no evidence that the use of plastic bags prevents exposure to the coronavirus, so why use them instead of reusable bags?

Already sanctioned by the SEC on a fraud charge, Elon Musk and Tesla fight a civil suit on his buyout claim.

• Facebook is taking a harder line on misinformation related to coronavirus than it has on other health topics in the past.
• This decision may increase the pressure on the company to act more decisively against other forms of harmful falsehoods that spread on its social networks.
• Facebook is banning events that promote flouting lockdown protests, and is removing the conspiracy theory video "Plandemic."
• But false claims that vaccines are dangerous still proliferate on Facebook — even though they contribute to the deaths of children.

Amid the pandemic, Facebook is taking a harder line on misinformation than it has in the past. That decision may come back to haunt it.

As coronavirus has wreaked havoc across the globe, forcing lockdowns and disrupting economies, false information and hoaxes have spread like wildfire on social media. Miracle cures, intentional disinformation about government policies, and wild claims that Bill Gates orchestrated the entire health crisis abound.

In the past, Facebook has been heavily criticised for failing to take action to stop its platform being used to facilitate the spread of misinformation. To be sure, coronavirus falsehoods are still easily found on Facebook — but the company has taken more decisive action than in previous years:

• For starters, Facebook is now displaying warning messages to people who have shared false information about COVID-19. They're imperfect — Stat reported that they may be too vague in their wording to have a major impact — but it's a step further than Facebook has taken on misinformation in the past.
• The company is also taking down event pages for events that reject mainstream science on coronavirus by calling on people to flout lockdown rules.
• And it is banning "Plandemic," a conspiratorial video about coronavirus that has been going viral on social media and contains numerous falsehoods.

But Facebook's actions to combat COVID-19 misinformation may backfire — in the sense that it has the potential to dramatically increase pressure on the company to take stronger action against other forms of misinformation.

The company has long struggled with how to handle fake news and hoaxes; historically, its approach is not to delete them, but to try to artificially stifle their reach via algorithmic tweaks. Despite this, pseudoscience, anti-government conspiracy theories, and other falsehoods still abound on the social network.

Facebook has now demonstrated that it is willing to take more decisive action on misinformation, when the stakes are high enough. Its critics may subsequently ask why it is so reticent to combat the issue when it causes harm in other areas — particularly around other medical misinformation.

One expected defence for Facebook? That it is focused on taking down content that causes "imminent harm," and while COVID-19 misinformation falls into that category, lots of other sorts of falsehoods don't.

However, using "imminence" as the barometer of acceptability is dubious: Vaccine denialism directly results in the deaths of babies and children. That this harm isn't "imminent" doesn't make it any less dangerous — but, for now, such material is freely posted on Facebook.

Far-right conspiracy theories like Pizzagate, and more recent, Qanon, have also spread on Facebook — stoking baseless fears of shadowy cabals secretly controlling the government. These theories don't intrinsically incite harm, but have been linked to multiple acts of violence, from a Pizzagate believer firing his weapon in a pizza parlour to the Qanon-linked killing of a Gambino crime boss. (Earlier this week, Facebook did take down some popular QAnon pages — but for breaking its rules on fake profiles, rather than disinformation.)

And Facebook is still full of groups rallying against 5G technology, making evidence-free claims about its health effects (and now, sometimes linking it to coronavirus in a messy web). These posts exist on a continuum, with believers at the extreme end attempting to burn down radio towers and assault technicians; Facebook does take down such incitements to violence, but the more general fearmongering that can act as a gateway to more extreme action remains.

This week, Facebook announced the first 20 members of its Oversight Board — a "Supreme Court"-style entity that will review reports from users make rulings as to what objectionable content is and isn't allowed on Facebook and Instagram, with — in theory — the power to overrule the company. It remains to be seen whether its decisions may affect the company's approach for misinformation, and it still needs to appoint the rest of its members and get up and running.

For now, limits remain in place as to what Facebook will countenance in its fight against coronavirus-specific misinformation.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company would immediately take down posts advertising dangerous false cures to COVID-19, like drinking bleach. It is "obviously going to create imminent harm," he said in March. "That is just in a completely different class of content than the back-and-forth accusations a candidate might make in an election."

But in April, President Donald Trump suggested that people might try injecting a "disinfectant" as a cure, which both has the potential to be extremely harmful, and will not cure coronavirus.

Facebook is not taking down video of his comments.

Do you work at Facebook? Contact Business Insider reporter Rob Price via encrypted messaging app Signal (+1 650-636-6268), encrypted email (robaeprice@protonmail.com), standard email (rprice@businessinsider.com), Telegram/Wickr/WeChat (robaeprice), or Twitter DM (@robaeprice). We can keep sources anonymous. Use a non-work device to reach out. PR pitches by standard email only, please.

SEE ALSO: Facebook announced the first 20 members of its oversight board that will decide what controversial content is allowed on Facebook and Instagram

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NOW WATCH: A cleaning expert reveals her 3-step method for cleaning your entire home quickly

By Emily Reynolds. Findings have implications for judges, police officers, and others involved with gathering evidence and interviewing eyewitnesses.

Hawaii's schools are prepared to respond to ballistic missile threats, education officials wrote in a letter to parents after Saturday's false alarm.

Sihai Dave Zhao, Yet Tien Nguyen.

Source: Electronic Journal of Statistics, Volume 14, Number 1, 110--142.

Abstract:
It is frequently of interest to identify simultaneous signals, defined as features that exhibit statistical significance across each of several independent experiments. For example, genes that are consistently differentially expressed across experiments in different animal species can reveal evolutionarily conserved biological mechanisms. However, in some problems the test statistics corresponding to these features can have complicated or unknown null distributions. This paper proposes a novel nonparametric false discovery rate control procedure that can identify simultaneous signals even without knowing these null distributions. The method is shown, theoretically and in simulations, to asymptotically control the false discovery rate. It was also used to identify genes that were both differentially expressed and proximal to differentially accessible chromatin in the brains of mice exposed to a conspecific intruder. The proposed method is available in the R package github.com/sdzhao/ssa.

The paper focuses on a novel approach for false-positive reduction (FPR) of nodule candidates in Computer-aided detection (CADe) system after suspicious lesions proposing stage. Unlike common decisions in medical image analysis, the proposed approach considers input data not as 2d or 3d image, but as a point cloud and uses deep learning models for point clouds. We found out that models for point clouds require less memory and are faster on both training and inference than traditional CNN 3D, achieves better performance and does not impose restrictions on the size of the input image, thereby the size of the nodule candidate. We propose an algorithm for transforming 3d CT scan data to point cloud. In some cases, the volume of the nodule candidate can be much smaller than the surrounding context, for example, in the case of subpleural localization of the nodule. Therefore, we developed an algorithm for sampling points from a point cloud constructed from a 3D image of the candidate region. The algorithm guarantees to capture both context and candidate information as part of the point cloud of the nodule candidate. An experiment with creating a dataset from an open LIDC-IDRI database for a feature of the FPR task was accurately designed, set up and described in detail. The data augmentation technique was applied to avoid overfitting and as an upsampling method. Experiments are conducted with PointNet, PointNet++ and DGCNN. We show that the proposed approach outperforms baseline CNN 3D models and demonstrates 85.98 FROC versus 77.26 FROC for baseline models.

The chief of Millbrook First Nation says the Nova Scotia RCMP's competition for its new communication centre was "distorted and biased," arbitrarily inflating the price of his community's proposal to reach a "predetermined outcome."

Tesla says the petition under review by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration was brought by a Tesla stock short-seller and is 'completely false.'

During the cabinet chaired by CM Khattar, it was also decided that even in case of very urgent need of a new car or jeep, outsourcing/hiring of the vehicles should be done.

Hi Team, I am from Delhi. The issue is as subjected. My brothers got the NOC signed just after the death of my father (in 1981) and, claimed to transfer property to Mother’s name. Now, when our Mother died recently (Feb’2020), I got to know that they have transferred the property in their names (2 person) already. But, they have not informed me. Please suggest if I can claim my share.

Check here each week to keep up with the latest from John MacArthur's pulpit at Grace Community Church.

...

Since the controversial removal of Dr Aniekeme Uwah as the Akwa Ibom State Epidemiologist, several lies have continuously been peddled by media hirelings of 'powers that be' to smear the character of the renowned and celebrated medical expert. Ordinarily , one would not bother about their mischief; but in an article titled " COVID-19 testing and controversies in Akwa Ibom" published in some national dailies and online platforms  by Usman Yusuf ( obviously a fake name), the hireling struggled albeit unsuccessfully to paint a picture of Dr Aniekeme Uwah being removed for unethical practices.

As the Akwa Ibom NMA PRO stated on a Live radio interview, after the infamous redeployment, the reason for Dr Aniekeme Uwah's removal as state Epidemiologist was his refusal to carry out the Commissioner for health's bidding of testing  only 10 persons instead of 31 who had met the case definition .

To cover up the overwhelming public backlash that greeted the politicization of Dr Uwah's removal, aides and hirelings of 'powers that be' have tried justifying the removal of the epidemiologist by first claiming he "banged the phone on the Governor " to later changing the story, that the cerebral Doctor is responsible for the number of positive COVID-19 cases in the state amongst other fables. 

This only proves the truism , that " to cover up one lie, many other lies will have to be told..." and desperately so if I may add.

 Some of the despicable falsehood peddled against  Dr Aniekeme Uwah include falsifying NCDC results.This assertion betrays the writer's ignorance of the procedures for sample collection and test results. 

As the State Epidemiologist, it should be noted that Dr Uwah worked with an incident Management Committee (IMC) which included doctors and other Supervisory agencies like NCDC and the World Health Organization(WHO).

It is under the watchful eyes of these disciplined medical professionals, that samples which meet case definition are gotten and sent to laboratories in Edo State or Ebonyi State with adequate security escort. The results are instantly communicated  by the Laboratory to the NCDC headquarters and the state is copied.

One wonders how Dr Aniekeme Uwah had the powers to change negative results in these laboratories to positive and subsequently force or bribe 12 persons (as at when he was epidemiologist) who were predominantly medics to move into the Isolation Center for treatment. This thinking is not only absurd, but smirks of conspiracy by the writer and cohorts. 

Moreover, four new positive cases have been confirmed after he was redeployed as state Epidemiologist, did he still influence those results?

In another online defamatory write up by yet another faceless hireling Bassey Wils, it was alleged that the former Epidemiologist was angered that his proposal for purchase of laboratory equipment was rejected.

This is obviously far from the truth. The writer is obviously unaware of the workings of Government and the procedures for procurement in a ministry that has a Commissioner.   Even if the Epidemiologist would have recommended that the state had its own laboratory to stop incessant travels to other states for tests confirmations, it would best remain only a novel suggestion as the implementation of such ideas rest between the Commissioner for health and agencies of Government responsible for such procurement . 

The said fake Bassey Wils also blamed the former Epidemiologist for the embarrassment the state suffered during it's infamous imbrioglio with NCDC over the 5 index cases..This is a case of selective amnesia suffered by Blackmailer hiding under the moniker of Bassey Wils. For the avoidance of doubt, It was the Commissioner for Health who held a world press conference to disagree with the results of the 5 index cases and NCDC procedures not Dr Aniekeme Uwah. This further goes to buttress the allegations against " Powers" over their intentions to suppress testing to avoid a record of high positive results by the state as stated by the NMA PRO on radio. 

Further more, the fake Bassey Wills claimed Dr Aniekeme Uwah  went against NCDC guidelines which stated that only 10 samples should be sent in a day.  

For avoidance of doubt, it must be stated unequivocally that such guidelines does not exist.

On April 27, 2020 Dr Sani Aliyu, National Coordinator presidential task force ( PTF) on COVID-19 said on National TV and i quote " I will like to emphasize that there is no limit to testing when it comes to COVID-19. Covid numbers is not an issue of competition between states. There is no shame if a state comes up with positive numbers. In other to deal with an epidemic, we need to have transparency in numbers and that transparency is linked to the number of tests. If you do not know the extent of the problem, you will not be able to deal with it. I am appealing to state governments to please continue helping the state emergency operating centers and state ministry of health to make sure that everybody that needs to be tested has the opportunity to get the test done " . 

One would expect that after such affirmative words by the PTF on no ceilings for tests , Fake Bassey Wils and his gang of liars will bury their heads in shame. 

It shouldn't be taken for granted that the suspected case confirmed positive from the 31 would have been missed if Dr Aniekeme Uwah had carried out the Commissioner 's directive to take only 10samples.  This most likely would have led to more spread of the pandemic in the state if that suspected case was not tested or would have made the health of the patient worse if not timely diagnosed. 

Apart from this,  a large number of Doctors who were exposed to COVID-19 had been out of work for up to a month on self isolation because they had not been tested, thus leading to loss of man hours and critical essential services, and inadvertently leading to denial of life - saving services by these experts to those who needed their expertise. 

The fact that Dr Aniekeme Uwah insisted on these Doctors getting tested as part of the 31 , helped seventeen out of the eighteen of them whose results came out negative return to work at the University of Uyo teaching Hospital almost immediately. 

Dr Aniekeme Uwah should be commended for such clinical dexterity.  This tests are conducted free of charge by NCDC, so why the fuss of testing a large number? Why the insistence of testing a smaller number when everyone that met case definition at the time could be tested at once to save time and ensure clinical efficacy? 

The state loses nothing by testing more as tests are free of charge. Instead, the more agressive it gets with testing, the clearer the picture of viral penetration. That is pure Epidemiology! 

In the words of Dr Emmanuel John, the NMA PRO on radio, " testing is a clinical decision. And no doctor should have recourse to a political mastermind before taking such decisions"

Another allegation by Bassey Wils bothering a late surgeon need not be dignified for the respect of the dead and family. But it must be noted that the allegations remain false and spurious, tailored only the damage reputation of Dr Aniekeme Uwah. fortunately for every discerning mind, Bassey Wil's campaign of calumny has largely been mischievous, comic at it's best and utterly balderdash.

Fake Bassey Wil's nonsensical allegation of having evidence of text messages between Dr Aniekeme Uwah and "middle men" is not only absurd and baseless but further attempts to 'give a dog a bad name in order to hang it'. Such text messages remain only in the conjecture of his imagination. If there is any iota of truth, I challenge fake Bassey Wils to produce such evidences in court or forever bury his head in the pit of hell.

Lastly Fake Bassey Wils, a leader of the blackmail syndicate alleged that Dr Aniekeme Uwah put the state in bad light during a National Survey that ranked the state as leading in the number of persons living with HIV/AIDs in the country.  He doesn't realize that his particular allegation, provides more evidence as to the unquenching thirst for suppressing data and statistics by those in authority.

The fact remains that after the result of the HIV/AIDs National and Impact survey was published in Abuja by Federal Ministry Of Health, Dr Aniekeme Uwah moved by passion and love for his people, sensitized the public on the dangers of HIV/ AIDs and how infection can be reduced.

 He admonished on Abstainance, faithfulness to sexual partners, usage condoms and usage of anti-retroviral drugs to suppress the viral load  thereby hindering further transmission. 

In saner climes, Such patriotic zeal, would  been encouraged ; as truly there is need for sensitization of the masses whose majority especially in rural areas are still in illusion about HIV/AIDs.

 Instead of commending Dr Uwah for putting in time and personal resources to educate the masses, the "powers that be" sternly condemned Dr Aniekeme Uwah  for educating the masses about HIV/AIDs and claimed he put state in bad light. He was queried! What a sad irony!

One would ask, what is the gain of the state if it hides the figures of the HIV/AIDs prevalence from the masses? What is the intention of hiding the result of  the national survey? To record more infections due to ignorance of the populace? It has been a long walk to trampling on truth, honesty and dedication to duty.

In the court of public opinion, Dr Aniekeme Uwah has acquitted himself as a professional of unparalleled integrity.

A courageous medical doctor whose commitment to the service of humanity is common to none. 

Dr Uwah is loyal to the Hippocratic oath and will remain resolute in advocating for better health care delivery to the people.

 His award of Honor by the African Union for dedicating Six months of his life to Liberia in the fight of Ebola remains indelible.

He was also honoured as the most outstanding NMA state chairman by the National President and National Officers Committee of the NMA during his tenure as Chairman. 

His exploits as NMA Chairman include building the first Doctors Mess in Nigeria, The first NMA Clinic in Nigeria, Doctors Court as well as numerous free Surgical outreach accross the state. 

It is worthy of note that during his tenure as NMA Chairman, he pushed for the establishment of the State Primary Health Care Development Agency and State Insurance Scheme.

In the past two years, Dr Aniekeme Uwah was the chairman Planning Committee of National Physicians Week in Rivers State and Ondo State as well as the chairman Planning committee of the National Executive Council meeting of the Association in Akwa Ibom State. This is a testament to his Sterling leadership qualities which has earned him the trust of his colleagues Nationwide. 

As State Epidemiologist,  Dr Aniekeme Uwah's achievements are enormous but to mention

1. Partnering with WHO to donate motorcycles to all the 31 Disease Surveillance Officers (DSNOs) in the 31 LGAs in the state to enhance their mobility.

2. Training of the 31DSNOs and other Health workers on frontline field epidemiology in partnership with AFENET.

3. Donation of Lap top computers and android phones to all the 31DSNOs to enhance their disease surveillance activities etc

Recently , Dr Aniekeme Uwah was appointed Secretary of the Common Wealth Medical Association's Committee on Covid-19 response. The Common Wealth Comprises of 54 countries accross all continents. Only Men of proven track record get such International appointments. 

These and more are some of Dr Aniekeme Uwah's legacies that his blackmailers cannot wish away.

No greater testimonial would Dr Uwah wish  for in times like this, than that of The DG of NCDC,  Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu who while responding to the redeployment saga on national TV said "The state Epidemiologist, Dr Aniekeme Uwah is a great colleague who did his work creditably. He is one of my great colleagues .. we worked on Ebola outbreak together. I wish him well in his new assignment".

I understand that Dr Uwah's traducers and their media hirelings are intimidated by his towering profile. I would rather implore them to work hard on improving their miserable lives rather than constantly attempt to defame and disparage a man whose track record is way beyond their reach. It will remain a mere waste of time! 

It is worthy of note, that Dr Aniekeme Uwah's removal as state Epidemiologist to suppress Covid 19 test results has already made him a hero, a professional of no mean repute in the court of public opinion and no volume of blackmail can change that narrative!

- Asteroid Bassey writes in from Uyo.

By Chimaobi Nwaiwu – Nnewi The Anambra State Commissioner for Transport, Dr. Christian Madubuko has warned Commercial Tricycle Owners and Riders Welfare Association of Anambra State, CTORWAAS, and their alleged paid agents to desist from peddling false allegations against his Ministry or face the wrath of the law. Dr. Madubuko also warned CTORWAAS, its Chairman,
Read More

The post Anambra Commissioner warns tricycle operators against peddling falsehood appeared first on Vanguard News.

Senator representing Adamawa North Senatorial district, Elisha Ishaku Abbo has accused governor Ahmadu Fintiri of making false claims over the donation of transformers to some communities in the State. The lawmaker said the transformers were donated by the newly established Northeast Development Commission (NEDC) through the intervention of his Committee. He frowned at the publication […]

Senator Abbo accuses Adamawa Governor of ‘false claims’ over NEDC projects

A former senior North Korean diplomat has apologised after saying Kim Jong-un was probably so ill he could not stand, days before he was seen at an event attended by hundreds of officials.

Half of those reading about coronavirus in the UK have come across false or misleading information, a watchdog has warned.

In some cases, the tests may detect old particles of the virus, which may no longer pose a significant threat to the patient or others, scientists say.

Early in the morning on April 5, 2020, an article appeared on the website Medium with the title “Covid-19 had us all fooled, but now we might have finally found its secret.” The article claimed that the pathology of COVID-19 was completely different from what public health authorities, such as the World Health Organization, had previously described. According to the author, COVID-19 strips the body’s hemoglobin of iron, preventing red blood cells from delivering oxygen and damaging the lungs in the process. It also claimed to explain why hydroxychloroquine, an experimental treatment often hyped by President Trump, should be effective.

The article was published under a pseudonym—libertymavenstock—but the associated account was linked to a Chicagoland man working in finance, with no medical expertise. (His father is a retired M.D., and in a follow-up note posted on a blog called “Small Dead Animals,” the author claimed that the original article was a collaboration between the two of them.) Although it was not cited, the claims were apparently based on a single scientific article that has not yet undergone peer-review or been accepted for publication, along with “anecdotal evidence” scraped from social media.1

While Medium allows anyone to post on their site and does not attempt to fact-check content, this article remained up for less than 24 hours before it was removed for violating Medium’s COVID-19 content policy. Removing the article, though, has not stopped it from making a splash. The original text continues to circulate widely on social media, with users tweeting or sharing versions archived by the Wayback Machine and re-published by a right-wing blog. As of April 12, the article had been tweeted thousands of times.

There is a pandemic of misinformation about COVID-19 spreading on social media sites. Some of this misinformation takes well-understood forms: baseless rumors, intentional disinformation, and conspiracy theories. But much of it seems to have a different character. In recent months, claims with some scientific legitimacy have spread so far, so fast, that even if it later becomes clear they are false or unfounded, they cannot be laid to rest. Instead, they become information zombies, continuing to shamble on long after they should be dead.

It is not uncommon for media sources like Medium to retract articles or claims that turn out to be false or misleading. Neither are retractions limited to the popular press. In fact, they are common in the sciences, including the medical sciences. Every year, hundreds of papers are retracted, sometimes because of fraud, but more often due to genuine errors that invalidate study findings.2 (The blog Retraction Watch does an admirable job of tracking these.)

Reversing mistakes is a key part of the scientific process. Science proceeds in stops and starts. Given the inherent uncertainty in creating new knowledge, errors will be made, and have to be corrected. Even in cases where findings are not officially retracted, they are sometimes reversed— definitively shown to be false, and thus no longer valid pieces of scientific information.3

Researchers have found, however, that the process of retraction or reversal does not always work the way it should. Retracted papers are often cited long after problems are identified,4 sometimes at a rate comparable to that before retraction. And in the vast majority of these cases, the authors citing retracted findings treat them as valid.5 (It seems that many of these authors pull information directly from colleagues’ papers, and trust that it is current without actually checking.) Likewise, medical researchers have bemoaned the fact that reversals in practice sometimes move at a glacial pace, with doctors continuing to use contraindicated therapies even though better practices are available.6

For example, in 2010, the anesthesiologist Scott Reuben was convicted of health care fraud for fabricating data and publishing it without having performed the reported research. Twenty-one of Reuben’s articles were ultimately retracted. And yet, an investigation four years later found half of these articles were still consistently cited, and that only one-fourth of these citations mentioned that the original work was fraudulent.7 Given that Reuben’s work focused on the use of anesthetics, this failure of retraction is seriously disturbing.

Claims with some scientific legitimacy continue to shamble on long after they should be dead.

But why don’t scientific retractions always work? At the heart of the matter lies the fact that information takes on a life of its own. Facts, beliefs, and ideas are transmitted socially, from person to person to person. This means that the originator of an idea soon loses control over it. In an age of instant reporting and social media, this can happen at lightning speed.

The first models of the social spread of information were actually epidemiological models, developed to track the spread of disease. (Yes, these are the very same models now being used to predict the spread of COVID-19.) These models treat individuals as nodes in a network and suppose that information (or disease) can propagate between connected nodes.

Recently, one of us, along with co-authors Travis LaCroix and Anders Geil, repurposed these models to think specifically about failures of retraction and reversal.8 A general feature of retracted information, understood broadly, is that it is less catchy than novel information in the following way. People tend to care about reversals or retractions only when they have already heard the original, false claim. And they tend to share retractions only when those around them are continuing to spread the false claim. This means that retractions actually depend on the spread of false information.

We built a contagion model where novel ideas and retractions can spread from person to person, but where retractions only “infect” those who have already heard something false. Across many versions of this model, we find that while a false belief spreads quickly and indiscriminately, its retraction can only follow in the path of its spread, and typically fails to reach many individuals. To quote Mark Twain, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” In these cases it’s because the truth can’t go anywhere until the lie has gotten there first.

Another problem for retractions and reversals is that it can be embarrassing to admit one was wrong, especially where false claims can have life or death consequences. While scientists are expected to regularly update their views under normal circumstances, under the heat of media and political scrutiny during a pandemic they too may be less willing to publicize reversals of opinion.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed lives around the world at a startling speed—and scientists have raced to keep up. Academic journals, accustomed to a comparatively glacial pace of operations, have faced a torrent of new papers to evaluate and process, threatening to overwhelm a peer-review system built largely on volunteer work and the honor system.9 Meanwhile, an army of journalists and amateur epidemiologists scour preprint archives and university press releases for any whiff of the next big development in our understanding of the virus. This has created a perfect storm for information zombies—and although it also means erroneous work is quickly scrutinized and refuted, this often makes little difference to how those ideas spread.

Many examples of COVID-19 information zombies look like standard cases of retraction in science, only on steroids. They originate with journal articles written by credentialed scientists that are later retracted, or withdrawn after being refuted by colleagues. For instance, in a now-retracted paper, a team of biologists based in New Delhi, India, suggested that novel coronavirus shared some features with HIV and was likely engineered.10 It appeared on an online preprint archive, where scientists post articles before they have undergone peer review, on January 31; it was withdrawn only two days later, following intense critique of the methods employed and the interpretation of the results by scientists from around the world. Days later, a detailed analysis refuting the article was published in the peer-reviewed journal Emerging Microbes & Infections.11 But a month afterward, the retracted paper was still so widely discussed on social media and elsewhere that it had that highest Altmetric score—a measure of general engagement with scientific research—of any scientific article published or written in the previous eight years. Despite a thorough rejection of the research by the scientific community, the dead information keeps walking.

Other cases are more subtle. One major question with far-reaching implications for the future development of the pandemic is to what extent asymptomatic carriers are able to transmit the virus. The first article reporting on asymptomatic transmission was a letter published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine claiming that a traveler from China to Germany transmitted the disease to four Germans before her symptoms appeared.12 Within four days, Science reported that the article was flawed because the authors of the letter had not actually spoken with the Chinese traveler, and a follow-up phone call by public health authorities confirmed that she had had mild symptoms while visiting Germany after all.13 Even so, the article has subsequently been cited nearly 500 times according to Google Scholar, and has been tweeted nearly 10,000 times, according to Altmetric.

Media reporting on COVID-19 should be linked to authoritative sources that are updated as information changes.

Despite the follow-up reporting on this article’s questionable methods, the New England Journal of Medicine did not officially retract it. Instead, a week after publishing the letter, the journal added a supplemental appendix describing the progression of the patient’s symptoms while in Germany, leaving it to the reader to determine whether the patient’s mild early symptoms should truly count. Meanwhile, subsequent research14, 15 involving different cases has suggested that asymptomatic transmission may be possible after all—though as of April 13, the World Health Organization considers the risk of infection from asymptomatic carriers to be “very low.” It may turn out that transmission of the virus can occur before any symptoms appear, or while only mild symptoms are present, or even in patients who will never go on to present symptoms. Even untangling these questions is difficult, and the jury is still out on their answers. But the original basis for claims of confirmed asymptomatic transmission was invalid, and those sharing them are not typically aware of the fact.

Another widely discussed article, which claims that the antiviral drug hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin, when administered together, are effective treatments for COVID-19 has drawn enormous amounts of attention to these particular treatments, fueled in part by President Trump.16 These claims, too, may or may not turn out to be true—but the article with which they apparently originated has since received a statement of concern from its publisher, noting that its methodology was problematic. Again, we have a claim that rests on shoddy footing, but which is spreading much farther than the objections can.17 And in the meantime, the increased demand for these medications has led to dangerous shortages for patients who have an established need for them.18

The fast-paced and highly uncertain nature of research on COVID-19 has also created the possibility for different kinds of information zombies, which follow a similar pattern as retracted or refuted articles, but with different origins. There have been a number of widely discussed arguments to the effect that the true fatality rate associated with COVID-19 may be ten or even a hundred times lower than early estimates from the World Health Organization, which pegged the so-called “case fatality rate” (CFR)—the number of fatalities per detected case of COVID-19—at 3.4 percent.19-21

Some of these arguments have noted that the case fatality rate in certain countries with extensive testing, such as Iceland, Germany, and Norway, is substantially lower. References to the low CFR in these countries have continued to circulate on social media, even though the CFR in all of these locations has crept up over time. In the academic realm, John Ioannidis, a Stanford professor and epidemiologist, noted in an editorial, “The harms of exaggerated information and non‐evidence‐based measures,” published on March 19 in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation, that Germany’s CFR in early March was only 0.2 percent.21 But by mid-April it had climbed to 2.45 percent, far closer to the original WHO estimate. (Ioannidis has not updated the editorial to reflect the changing numbers.) Even Iceland, which has tested more extensively than any other nation, had a CFR of 0.47 percent on April 13, more than 4 times higher than it was a month ago. None of this means that the WHO figure was correct—but it does mean some arguments that it is wildly incorrect must be revisited.

What do we do about false claims that refuse to die? Especially when these claims have serious implications for decision-making in light of a global pandemic? To some degree, we have to accept that in a world with rapid information sharing on social media, information zombies will appear. Still, we must combat them. Science journals and science journalists rightly recognize that there is intense interest in COVID-19 and that the science is evolving rapidly. But that does not obviate the risks of spreading information that is not properly vetted or failing to emphasize when arguments depend on data that is very much in flux.

Wherever possible, media reporting on COVID-19 developments should be linked to authoritative sources of information that are updated as the information changes. The Oxford-based Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine maintains several pages that review the current evidence on rapidly evolving questions connected to COVID-19—including whether current data supports the use of hydroxychloroquine and the current best estimates for COVID-19 fatality rates. Authors and platforms seeking to keep the record straight should not just remove or revise now-false information, but should clearly state what has changed and why. Platforms such as Twitter should provide authors, especially scientists and members of the media, the ability to explain why Tweets that may be referenced elsewhere have been deleted. Scientific preprint archives should encourage authors to provide an overview of major changes when articles are revised.

And we should all become more active sharers of retraction. It may be embarrassing to shout one’s errors from the rooftops, but that is what scientists, journals, and responsible individuals must do to slay the information zombies haunting our social networks.

Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall are an associate professor and professor of logic and philosophy at the University of California, Irvine. They are coauthors of The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread.

Lead image: nazareno / Shutterstock

References

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2. Wager, E. & Williams, P. Why and how do journals retract articles? An analysis of Medline retractions 1988-2008. Journal of Medical Ethics 37, 567-570 (2011).

3. Prasad, V., Gall, V., & Cifu, A. The frequency of medical reversal. Archives of Internal Medicine 171, 1675-1676 (2011).

4. Budd, J.M., Sievert, M., & Schultz, T.R. Phenomena of retraction: Reasons for retraction and citations to the publications. The Journal of the American Medical Association 280, 296-297 (1998).

5. Madlock-Brown, C.R. & Eichmann, D. The (lack of) impact of retraction on citation networks. Science and Engineering Ethics 21, 127-137 (2015).

6. Prasad, V. & Cifu, A. Medical reversal: Why we must raise the bar before adopting new technologies. Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine 84, 471-478 (2011).

7. Bornemann-Cimenti, H., Szilagyi, I.S., & Sandner-Kiesling, A. Perpetuation of retracted publications using the example of the Scott S. Reuben case: Incidences, reasons and possible improvements. Science and Engineering Ethics 22, 1063-1072 (2016).

8. LaCroix, T., Geil, A., & O’Connor, C. The dynamics of retraction in epistemic networks. Preprint. (2019).

9. Jarvis, C. Journals, peer reviewers cope with surge in COVID-19 publications. The Scientist (2020).

10. Pradhan, P., et al. Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag. bioRxiv (2020).

11. Xiao, C. HIV-1 did not contribute to the 2019-nCoV genome. Journal of Emerging Microbes and Infections 9, 378-381 (2020).

12. Rothe, C., et al. Transmission of 2019-nCoV infection from an asymptomatic contact in Germany. New England Journal of Medicine 382, 970-971 (2020).

13. Kupferschmidt, K. Study claiming new coronavirus can be transmitted by people without symptoms was flawed. Science (2020).

14. Hu, Z., et al. Clinical characteristics of 24 asymptomatic infections with COVID-19 screened among close contacts in Nanjing, China. Science China Life Sciences (2020). Retrieved from doi: 10.1007/s11427-020-1661-4.

15. Bai, R., et al. Presumed asymptomatic carrier transmission of COVID-19. The Journal of the American Medical Association 323, 1406-1407 (2020).

16. Gautret, P., et al. Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin as a treatment of COVID-19: results of an open-label non-randomized clinical trial. International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents (2020).

17. Ferner, R.E. & Aronson, J.K. Hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19: What do the clinical trials tell us? The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (2020).

18. The Arthritis Foundation. Hydroxychloroquine (Plaquenil) shortage causing concern. Arthritis.org (2020).

19. Oke, J. & Heneghan, C. Global COVID-19 case fatality rates. The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (2020).

20. Bendavid, E. & Bhattacharya, J. Is the coronavirus as deadly as they say? The Wall Street Journal (2020).

21. Ionnidis, J.P.A. Coronavirus disease 2019: The harms of exaggerated information and non-evidence-based measures. European Journal of Clinical Investigation 50, e13222 (2020).

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