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Regarding the delay in delivering the coup de grace, regulators are unlikely to allow a medical testing lab to operate and deliver test results that could jeopardize patient health. Let’s recall several news reports mentioned that bowing to regulatory pressure, Theranos had stopped using its proprietary Edison instruments already back in June 2015. We aren't privy to the behind-the-scenes back and forth between the regulators and Theranos but everything that's steadily dripped out over the last few months suggests the regulators are pulling the strings and Theranos appears to be in the throes of a slow death by a thousand cuts.However, does this story end with Theranos shutting down? Was Theranos alone responsible for this shameful and sorry state of affairs? No, like any morality play worth its weight in gold, Theranos merely personifies the prevailing morals. Several usual suspects were and are involved in creating and sustaining the parasitic feeding frenzy that Theranos represents, a frenzy that persists to this day. Such involvement epitomizes a serious erosion of standards and ethics in professions ranging from technology journalism to corporate governance to law to academics.Parlous State Of Technology JournalismTheranos hype timeline: Zero Hedge blog has a helpful list of some 97 or so unique, largely laudatory, intensely hyped, largely credulous puff pieces about Theranos in the media (1). Starting with the San Francisco Business Times on August 30, 2013 to MarketWatch on October 12, 2015, the sources run the gamut from what pretends to be technology journalism to mainstream media to storied names in literary magazines.So what? Well, where's the skepticism that's supposed to personify professional journalism? No tough questions, lack of even cursory attempts to vet the technology by seeking input from experts in the field, a rare exception being the April 25, 2015, Business Insider story by Kevin Loria, which actually did do all of this (2).Theranos shuts down and we'll just forget there seems little difference between technology journalism and PR when it comes to covering Silicon Valley darlings, shall we? Oh goody, that means the next Theranos is inevitably just around the corner.Parlous State Of US Corporate BoardsIn the wake of the 1st WSJ (Wall Street Journal) expose back in October 2015, Theranos reorganized its board amidst much fanfare (3). With things only headed steadily downhill ever since, Theranos added new heavyweight Board members in May 2016 (see excerpt below from 4).'Along with the announcement of what Theranos described as Mr. Balwani’s retirement, the company also said it had made three new additions to its board that it said would bring “a wealth of scientific, medical and executive leadership to the company.”The three new directors are Fabrizio Bonanni, a 14-year veteran of Amgen Inc., former Wells Fargo & Co. Chief Executive Richard M. Kovacevich, and William Foege, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Mr. Kovacevich and Dr. Foege used to be on Theranos’s board until a previous board reshuffle last October, following The Wall Street Journal’s front-page articles raising questions about Theranos’s technology and operations. They spent the past six months on a board of counselors along with former Theranos board members George Shultz and Henry Kissinger.During his tenure at Amgen, Dr. Bonanni served as senior vice president of quality and compliance and corporate compliance officer, Theranos said.“Dr. Bonanni’s leadership and guidance in operations, quality and compliance is exceptional, and we are fortunate to add his experience to our team both on the board and to work with us internally,” Ms. Holmes said in a news release about the new appointments.'Wait, what? Isn't this akin to rowing up to board the Titanic as it's sinking fast? How does this make any sense? In what world? And what have the board members added back in October 2015 been up to? Obviously it means the reputations and future prospects of those who joined then and are joining now at this late stage will stay secure in the future or least that's the calculation at play. What does it say about current US start-up corporate culture that something that should be ethically abhorrent is instead a fait accompli? That as far as Silicon Valley start-up boards are concerned, accountability is just a word sitting unused in the dictionary, gathering dust and maybe even weight, and that apparently is just as it should be.Let’s not forget when it comes to the business of science, industry has long sneered at academia (see excerpt below from 5, emphasis mine)“[Nonprofits are] unable to stop a project – in industry you have to be able to make these decisions. This is the disciplining power of money, which a lot of other incentives don’t have.”Ah, the mythical disciplining power of money! But with the Wall Street and auto bailouts in our rearview mirror, in this kleptocratic post-Great Recession world, it's usually someone else's money at stake. In such circumstances poof through the window vanishes the disciplining power of money.Theranos shuts down and we'll just forget that corporate boards of medical technology companies have any duties beyond ensuring their funds safekeeping and potential profits, shall we? Risking the lives of patients? Meh.Parlous State Of US Legal EthicsWhat's a little conflict of interest when one's legal counsel is one of the most high-powered and successful in the entire US? David Boies was Theranos' outside counsel. He apparently joined its board a couple of weeks after, not before but after, the first of WSJ’s damaging exposes on Theranos (6, see excerpt below from 3).'The members of the old board that will remain on the new governing board are Ms. Holmes; the company’s chief operating officer, Sunny Balwani; the construction executive Riley P. Bechtel; and James N. Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general. The fifth member of the governing board will be David Boies, a noted lawyer who has been the company’s outside legal adviser.'Note as well the interesting nugget of Riley Bechtel's presence on Theranos' board as recently as October 2015. Mind you, an extensive recent Fortune exclusive on Bechtel (7) points out that he'd stepped down as Bechtel CEO in 2013 following a Parkinson's diagnosis.'In late 2013 his father, Riley Bechtel, who had served for 24 years as CEO, retired four years early at 61 after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Since then, Bill Dudley, a 35- year veteran of Bechtel, has been CEO.'Obvious modus operandi to stack the board with influential names to attract and retain investor support. So what if it's likely their health conditions may preclude due diligence and capability to adequately discharge their duties? Evidently Silicon Valley start-up boards expect to be held to a lower standard and expect to get away with it (8, 9, 10).Also pertinent, Boies' staying on as outside legal counsel after joining Theranos' board creates a serious conflict of interest (see excerpt below from 11)'That Mr. Boies is representing an embattled client is nothing new. But this time, the lawyer has raised the ante by becoming a director of Theranos.Let’s stop here and note that this has the potential to blow up. Mr. Boies is taking on two different roles at Theranos. A lawyer represents a client — here Theranos — while a director, even at a privately held company like Theranos, represents the company’s investors.Depending on what unfolds at Theranos, Mr. Boies may be put in a position where he either has to protect the company (as its lawyer) or the shareholders (as a director).I asked one of my colleagues, Jo-Ellen Pozner, a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, who specializes in business ethics, about this potential conflict. She was skeptical of Mr. Boies’s dual role.“I have a hard time believing that an experienced litigator can adequately represent investors — one of the primary responsibilities of a director — while being attentive to potential legal strategies, which might cause him to privilege the interests of management,” she told me. “It just seems a difficult line to walk.”No doubt Theranos waived the conflict in lots of documented forms. And the American Bar Association does allow this type of dual role. But just because a conflict is allowed doesn’t mean it will not lead to problems.If the technology of Theranos turns out to be not what it claims, investors would almost certainly seek to sue the chief executive, Ms. Holmes, and the company, as well as the board that allowed this to happen.This gets complicated for Mr. Boies, because Theranos is a corporate governance disaster.'Theranos shuts down and we'll just forget about the need for legal ethics when it comes to how Silicon Valley darlings are run, shall we?Parlous State Of US AcademicsBack when the world was subjected to only treacly sweet flattery posing as news articles about Theranos, Stanford University Chemical Engineering professor, Channing Robertson appeared as Elizabeth Holmes' indulgent, avuncular mentor (see excerpt below from 12).'Theranos senior technical adviser Channing Robertson admits, "I do worry, because I've never seen a person with this kind of drive who doesn't miss or skip a beat." Robertson frequently checks in on Holmes, who seems nothing more than bemused by his concern. "She just turns around with a big, wide smile and says, 'Life is great. Everything is fine,'" he says.'Mentioned as Theranos' senior technical adviser in 2015, he's made clear in interviews that he was involved in confidential aspects of its technology from the earliest stages (see excerpt below from 13).'Theranos, which is privately held, is both a hardware company and a medical company, and for many years it has operated with a stealth common to many Silicon Valley startups. “For a long time, I couldn’t even tell my wife what I was working on,” Channing Robertson, a chemical-engineering professor at Stanford and the company’s first board member, told me.'Theranos' proprietary technology apparently failing at even the most basic of routine blood tests begs obvious questions. What did this senior technical advisor know about these problems and when did he know them (see excerpt below from 14)?'"I was there when it was invented. I was in the laboratory, putting the screws in the first instruments," Stanford professor emeritus and technologist Channing Robertson said.Robertson is Holmes' former mentor and has been working with Theranos for 13 years."I expect we'll be under the microscope and we'll be scrutinized. We welcome that. We're not afraid of it. Because we know what we've done works," Robertson said.'Also relevant, Robertson left Theranos' board in July 2013 after retiring from Stanford (see excerpt below from 15).'The company in July disclosed a makeover of its board of directors, with former Secretary of State George Shultz, Holmes and Theranos President and COO Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani as the only holdovers.Among those who left are Robert Shapiro, the former chairman of drug company Pharmacia Corp. , venture capitalist Pete Thomas of Redwood City’s ATA Ventures — another early Theranos investor — and Channing Robertson, the recently retired Stanford chemical engineering professor who encouraged Holmes to start her company.'However, he apparently stayed on as a Theranos executive (see excerpt below from 16).'Though she now faces harsh criticism from the outside, she is still surrounded largely by true believers. Her younger brother, Christian Holmes V, is an executive at Theranos, as is her former Stanford professor, Channing Robertson“I truly was astonished,” Mr. Robertson said. She had come up with an idea for a drug-delivery system that would be able to detect drug levels in the blood and wirelessly transmit those results.“It had never even occurred to me,” Mr. Robertson said, adding that he considers being Ms. Holmes’s mentor akin to teaching Beethoven to play piano or teaching science to Einstein.'As the above media snippets incontrovertibly show, Channing Robertson personifies the close ties between Stanford University and Theranos. Lab testing academic heavyweights have vociferously emphasized that independently vetted peer-reviewed publications are the gold standard for verifying new medical technologies. With none forthcoming even till date, Theranos obviously doesn't believe in hewing to long-established and universally accepted scientific norms. Given Robertson's close association with Theranos, should we conclude academics from elite universities like Stanford also abjure the scientific peer-review process when it suits their convenience?Theranos shuts down and we'll just forget that be it academia or industry, scientists need to adhere to strict scientific norms and standards, shall we? So what if it's medical technology that directly impacts patients' lives?Since the name Theranos is an ostentatious combination of the Greek words, 'therapy' and 'diagnosis', the last words belong appropriately enough to the Greek, John Ioannidis, who, Cassandra-like, raised doubts back when there was nothing but a Theranos love-fest (17). One year later, with nothing but disaster writ large, Theranos is starting to more closely resemble 'Thanatos' (death) (see excerpt below from 18),'Hopefully, the name Theranos does stand for well thought-out and useful therapy and diagnosis and does not represent the harms suggested by another similar Greek word, thanatos (death).'Bibliography1. Elizabeth Holmes Admits Theranos' "Technology" Is A Fraud: Restates, Voids Years Of Test Results. Zero Hedge, Tyler Durden, May 19, 2016.2. Scientists are skeptical about the secret blood test that has made Elizabeth Holmes a billionaire. Business Insider, Kevin Loria, April 25, 2015.3. Theranos, Facing Criticism, Says It Has Changed Board Structure. The New York Times, Andrew Pollack, October 28, 2015.4. Theranos Executive Sunny Balwani to Depart Amid Regulatory Probes. The Wall Street Journal, John Carreyrou, May 11, 2016.5. Wilson, Paul, Sarah Post, and Smita Srinivas. "R&D models: lessons from vaccine history." Available at SSRN 1099495 (2007). R&D Models: Lessons from Vaccine History6. Why Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes Has Only Two Choices. Inc., Kimberly Weisul, Oct 29, 2015.7. Meet the Private Company That Has Changed the Face of the World. Fortune, Shawn Tully, June 1, 2016.8. What Makes Great Boards Great. Harvard Business Review, Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, September 2002.9. Carl Icahn’s criticism of eBay’s board highlights Silicon Valley’s systemic issues. The Washington Post, Vivek Wadhwa, February 24, 2014.10. Theranos teaches Silicon Valley a hard lesson about accountability. The Washington Post, Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, May 23, 2016.11. David Boies’s Dual Roles at Theranos Set Up Conflict. The New York Times, February 2, 2016.12. How Playing the Long Game Made Elizabeth Holmes a Billionaire. Inc, Kimberly Weisul, October 2015.13. Blood, Simpler - The New Yorker. The New Yorker, Ken Auletta, December 15, 2014.14. Why biotech company Theranos is under review by two federal regulators. CBS News, March 9, 2016.15. Theranos: The biggest biotech you’ve never heard of - San Francisco Business Times. San Francisco Business Times, Ron Leuty, August 30, 2013.16. Theranos Founder Faces a Test of Technology, and Reputation. The New York Times, Reed Abelson and Julie Creswell, December 19, 2015.17. Ioannidis, John PA. "Stealth research: is biomedical innovation happening outside the peer-reviewed literature?." JAMA 313.7 (2015): 663-664. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.685.1043&rep=rep1&type=pdf18. Ioannidis, John PA. "Stealth Research and Theranos: Reflections and Update 1 Year Later." JAMA (2016). Stealth Research—Reflections and UpdateThanks for the R2A, Terrence Yang.

First, it's easier to pile on when the media narrative turns. Kudos to media outlets (1A) and scientists (2, 3A, B, C) who questioned back when the uniform media narrative around Theranos was cloyingly fawning and credulous.Several scientists were already publicly dubious about Theranos' disproportionate and baffling secrecy, lack of peer-reviewed publications and utterly non-scientific but heavily political Board of Directors.In an eerily prescient article published in JAMA (journal) on Feb 17, 2015 (2), one of the most important among such high-profile scientific critics, John Ioannidis wrote, 'Information about Theranos, a privately held biotechnology company that has developed novel approaches for laboratory diagnostic testing, has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, San Francisco Business Times, Fortune, Forbes, Medscape, and Silicon Valley Business Journal—but not in the peer-reviewed biomedical literature. As of January 5, 2015, a search in PubMed using Theranos as a search term identified affiliations for only 2 unrelated articles coauthored by Theranos Inc employees, although these 2 reports do not offer insights about their company...stealth research creates total ambiguity about what evidence can be trusted in a mix of possibly brilliant ideas, aggressive corporate announcements, and mass media hype...how can the validity of the claims made be assessed, if the evidence is not within reach of other scientists to evaluate and scrutinize?...unless stealth research adopts more scientific transparency, investors, physicians, patients, and healthy people will not be able to judge whether some proposed innovation is worth $9 billion, $900 billion, or just $9—let alone if the innovation will improve the health and well-being of individuals'.Second, Theranos' technology and science. 12 years is a long time in science, especially for a company funded to the tune of millions of dollars to not have already done the following,Tightly IP (Intellectual Property)-protect the so-called novel Theranos technology (Edison) through patents.Publish data generated by Edison in peer-reviewed scientific journals.After all, there are only four simple checkerboard questions w.r.t. Theranos' science and technology. All they needed to do was take samples at the same time from the same volunteers. Pick an analyte that's part of a normal blood screen. Generate and show Edison test data for that analyte from:Traditional arm vein bleed (venipuncture) and traditional readout (Quest/LabCorp): Positive control.Finger prick and Edison readout (Theranos): the experiment.Venipuncture and Edison readout (Theranos): Accuracy and precision of Edison readout alone.Finger prick and traditional readout (Quest/LabCorp): Does finger prick change traditional test result?Do these tests on one analyte on hundreds of people at one site and repeat at many sites. Publish the data.For Theranos' technology to pass the smell test, 2 should =1. 3 and 4 are critical controls.Not difficult to do, especially with the funding they got and given their Walgreen Wellness Centers in Arizona and California.What's the hold up? No convincing answer from the company. Retreating defensively into the realms of paranoia and ad-hominem attacks on entrenched incumbents doesn't engender credibility. Debate is and should be about their science and data. After all, this is about health, arguably the most important life issue.More troubling? The Oct 16, 2015 John Carreyrou WSJ (Wall Street Journal) article (12) alleges that Theranos' Edison technology didn't perform on par in proficiency testing. To quote (12), 'Whether labs buy their testing instruments or develop them internally, all are required to prove to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that they can produce accurate results. The process is known as proficiency testing and is administered by accredited organizations that send samples to labs several times a year. Labs must test those samples and report back the results, which aren’t disclosed to the public. If a lab’s results are close to the average of those in a peer group, the lab receives a passing grade. In early 2014, Theranos split some of the proficiency-testing samples it got into two pieces, according to internal emails reviewed by the Journal. One was tested with Edison machines and the other with instruments from other companies. The two types of equipment gave different results when testing for vitamin D, two thyroid hormones and prostate cancer. The gap suggested to some employees that the Edison results were off, according to the internal emails and people familiar with the findings. Senior lab employees showed both sets of results to Sunny Balwani, Theranos’s president and chief operating officer. In an email, one employee said he had read “through the regulations more finely” and asked which results should be reported back to the test administrators and government. Mr. Balwani replied the next day, copying in Ms. Holmes. “I am extremely irritated and frustrated by folks with no legal background taking legal positions and interpretations on these matters,” he wrote. “This must stop.” He added that the “samples should have never run on Edisons to begin with.” Former employees say Mr. Balwani ordered lab personnel to stop using Edison machines on any of the proficiency-testing samples and report only the results from instruments bought from other companies... The former employees say they did what they were told but were concerned that the instructions violated federal rules, which state that a lab must handle “proficiency testing samples…in the same manner as it tests patient specimens” and by “using the laboratory’s routine methods.”'Accuracy is among the two most important aspects of medical assays, the other being precision. The two aren't synonymous. Accuracy = how well the technology measures industry consensus reference standards. Precision = how much test results vary for same sample tested in repeat tests. Even if a technology is very precise, if it isn't accurate, it could be precise about exactly the wrong thing (9). That's why accuracy in proficiency testing is a clinical lab gold standard and pretty much everything else about a blood testing technology is irrelevant without it.Third, Silicon Valley has been excellent at using computing power to provide consumers products of convenience. Buy a smart phone or download an app. Change mind or too many glitches? Just return or exchange or delete. Biotech is not IT (infotech). Accuracy and precision of a health test result can literally mean the difference between life and death. Obviously self-evident, only the suicidal or suicidally foolhardy would gamble with their health.Theranos exemplifies a dangerous mission creep of the excessive, bombastic Silicon Valley hype infiltrating octopus-like into realms such as health where it has no business to be in and in fact is outright dangerous for it to be in.Matters even more with a privately held company with potential political backing to have laws written or re-written, tilting the balance in its favor at the expense of people's health.Fourth, maybe most important, the dangers of wellness testing or Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) health care products.As John Ioannidis writes (2), 'overdiagnosis, false-positive findings, or the potential for escalation of iatrogenic disease secondary to misplaced and perhaps overly zealous diagnostic and screening efforts'.Eleftherios P. Diamandis, professor of clinical pathology at the University of Toronto, raised similar concerns in the May, 2015 issue of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (3A), 'In this paper, I analyze the Theranos technology and their promises, and contrast this information with the currently used technologies, to show that most of the company’s claims are exaggerated. While it remains to be seen if this technology will revolutionize diagnostics, in this Opinion Paper, I also draw attention of associated issues, such as self-testing and self-interpretation of results, over-testing, over-diagnosis and over-treatment, along with their associated harms'.Other than those that detect infections, with few exceptions, most routine lab tests are by themselves not indicative of disease. Most important exception is blood sugar for diabetes and patients' already self-test for that.False positives are obviously a huge problem in diagnostic tests, especially for the asymptomatic. Is it occult disease or test precision issue? Is it reasonable to expect a lay person to understand the difference? Isn't this why doctors spend a decade or more in intensive training and practice?Dangers of false positives, over-testing and over-diagnosis aside, there is also a much more dangerous conflict of interest at play here. Who clearly benefits from changing the status quo of doctors interpreting test results? Neither patients nor doctors but only service providers benefit from DTC diagnostic blood tests. But how?As Wired (13 B) points out, passed in the wake of another WSJ report of serious flaws in lab reports on pap smears, the 1988 Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) regulations were supposed to strengthen patient safety. Every new test is rated on a complexity range. At one end, 'highest complexity', i.e., only physician or nurse can administer. At the other end, 'waived', i.e., self-administered, e.g., insulin and pregnancy. To quote Wired (13B), 'But diagnostics companies eventually realized that CLIA, designed to close a loophole, had actually opened one. “Originally these were academic medical centers coming up with new way of testing,” says Master. “Someone at some point realized it was great business model.” Theranos apparently recognized that opportunity, too. Its strategy is all about patient access, so it wants waived status for its tests and in fact received it for its herpes simplex I test. Make tests easy and accessible to patients, even at severely discounted prices, and any company stands to make a lot of money—and potentially revolutionize healthcare'.This is a huge red flag and undeniable conflict of interest. Bodes ill for a society when a privately held entity schemes its way to a healthcare outcome that the public should reach after vigorous public debate and consensus.For further reading, the information sources I used in composing this answer:Business InsiderA) Kevin Loria, April 25, 2015. Scientists are skeptical about the secret blood test that has made Elizabeth Holmes a billionaireB) Jillian D'onfro, Oct 20, 2015. Bill Maris: Here's why Google Ventures didn't invest in TheranosIoannidis, John PA. "Stealth research: is biomedical innovation happening outside the peer-reviewed literature?." JAMA 313.7 (2015): 663-664. Page on jamanetwork.comA) Diamandis, Eleftherios P. "Theranos phenomenon: promises and fallacies." Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (CCLM) (2015). Page on degruyter.comB) Li, Michelle, and Eleftherios P. Diamandis. "Theranos phenomenon− part 2." Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (CCLM) (2015). Page on degruyter.comC) Plebani, Mario. "Evaluating and using innovative technologies: a lesson from Theranos?" Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (CCLM) (2015). Page on degruyter.comMonday Note, Jean-Louis Gassée, former Apple exec, Oct 18, 2015. His first person accounts of his and his wife's all-over-the map Theranos blood test results make for engrossing reading. Also very revealing about Theranos' tone-deaf corporate culture. Theranos Trouble: A First Person Account | Monday NoteBloomberg Business rolling coverage post-WSJOct 15, 2015, Melissa Mittelman. Theranos Disputes Report, Says Tests Are `Accurate and Reliable'Oct 15, 2015, Caroline Chen. Theranos Limits Blood Technology to a Single Test Out of 200Oct 19, 2015, Caroline Chen. Early Theranos Investor Stands by Blood Testing StartupFortune magazine, Roger Parloff, Oct 15, 2015. Are The Wall Street Journal's Allegations About Theranos TrueFox Business, Steve Tobak, Oct 19, 2015. Is Theranos $9 Billion Worth of Hype?The Tech Insider, Kevin Loria, Oct 16, 2015. Here's what we know about how Theranos' 'revolutionary' technology worksBobby Gladd at the KHIT blog for the most comprehensive summation of all the recent media hoopla about Theranos. Holmes is no Sherlock. Edison is no Watson. Theranos, continued. The KHIT BlogMatthew Holt at the HealthCare blog, Oct 16, 2015. Similar implication to 4 of tone-deaf corporate culture in this first person account. Five takeaways about the Theranos broo-ha-haThe Los Angeles Times, Michael Hitlzik, Oct 16, 2015. The Theranos Affair: When Silicon Valley hype outpaces realityThe Wall Street Journal, John Carreyrou, Oct 16, 2015. Hot Startup Theranos Has Struggled With Its Blood-Test TechnologyWired MagazineA) Oct 15, 2015, Issie Lapowsky. Theranos' Scandal Exposes the Danger of Silicon Valley's Myth-Making MachineB) Oct 20, 2015, Nick Stockton. Fixing the Laws That Let Theranos Hide Data Won’t Be EasyThanks for the A2A, Anonymous.

Come on..how could anyone “fake” climate change?The signals are coming from the planet itself. We don’t even need scientists to see this. It’s right in front of our eyes.It's so hot in India, farmers are killing themselvesSomeone please tell the farmers of the world more C02 is "good for us" when they can’t even plant their corn or they have their harvest hit by droughts or flooded by billions of tons of water because of AGW. And maybe those same people can send “thoughts and prayers” while we wait for the humanitarian and atheist help organizations to arrive with actual help?Farmers needs stability and predictability, not a rapidly warming and changing world.Rising carbon levels threaten diets of hundreds of millions of poor.Rising carbon emissions could make vital food crops from wheat to rice less nutritious and endanger the health of hundreds of millions of the world's poorest.Certain staple crops grown in open fields with elevated carbon dioxide levels had up to 17 percent lower levels of protein, iron and zinc compared to those grown amid less of the gas, according to a study in the journal Nature Climate Change.This science has been out there in the science journals for nearly 150 years. It’s now basic, trivial physics whch anyone, anytime and anywhere can duplicate with simple tools in any school lab.The science of climate science, both the natural and human made is based upon physics and observations. Tons of research, tons of studies. Tons of data.The question imply world wide conspiracy theories and is thus probably a troll question. It’s a turned table logical fallacy. You don’t ask why someone would fake “climate change”. That’s the consensus based upon overwhelming evidence.That’s the default.It’s like asking “Why would scientists fake round earth?”Scientists are 99.9999 percent sure humans caused climate changeAGW is proven by basic physics - the greenhouse effect.Every scientific body, org and institution of the world, every National Academy of Sciences of the world, every government, over 99% of the peer reviewed papers + most oil companies ALL agree on AGW theory.The following are 198 scientific organizations that hold the position that Climate Change has been caused by human action:List of Worldwide Scientific OrganizationsScientific consensus: Earth's climate is warmingThe question should be “Why would anyone deny climate change?The only ones who are caught faking climate science are contrarians.Because, there are powerful corporate interests which do not want to get obstructions to their money flow.The goal of the fossil fuel industry is to keep its profits rolling in without interference by government or by new, competing energy sources. To do this they need the public embroiled in doubt and suspicion; they need to degrade public confidence in science and scientists; they need to harm America’s future—and the world’s future—so that one of the wealthiest industries on Earth can indulge itself in even more wealth.What do you do if all the world's experts disagree with you?A decades old technique perfected by the tobacco industry is to manufacture the appearance of a continued debate through fake experts. Climate change is a complicated, multi-disciplinary science and yet many of the leading voices who purport to know better than the experts have never published a single piece of climate research.The professional climate deniers are using the same playbook as the tobacco industry used to play down the hazards of tobacco smoking. A playbook which was created by the lead polluters. Some of the climate denial think tanks are in fact still denying the hazards of tobacco smoking.It’s called denial for profit."As early as the 1950s, the groups shared scientists and publicists to downplay dangers of smoking and climate change".Tobacco and Oil Industries Used Same Researchers to Sway PublicThe only scientists who has been caught cheating on climate science matters are contrarian scientists. Here are 6 of them:WILLIE SOONHe has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers.Work of prominent climate change denier was funded by energy industry"At least 11 papers he has published since 2008 omitted such a disclosure, and in at least eight of those cases, he appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his work,” the New York Times reported in February 2015"https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/...Smithsonian Gives Nod to More 'Dark Money' Funding for Willie SoonExcept for two grants from the Mount Wilson Observatory, all of Soon's research since 2002 has been funded by fossil fuel interests, according to Harvard-Smithsonian records. The 11 Soon papers range from denial of human-caused global warming to articles that downplay the role of climate change in ecological impacts.He not only took a lot of money, he hid that he took it. He keeps taking it. He knew what he was doing, regardless of his public statements since. Between the duplicity about funding and his inability to get the science right, he has no credibility.2. WILLIAM HAPPER AND FRANK CLEMENTEWilliam Happer, born 1939 (age 78–79), is a climate change denier and Professor of Physics at Princeton University, specialising in MRI imaging. He has no training in climate science. He is also Chairman of the Board of Directors of the George C. Marshall Institute and is on the Academic Advisory Council of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a denier think tank.William Happer - SourceWatchHapper is not a climate scientist, but is very often used as the “C02 is good for us” alibi.Watch this video from War on our future:https://www.facebook.com/yearswa...Greenpeace exposes sceptics hired to cast doubt on climate science“Sting operation uncovers two prominent climate sceptics available for hire by the hour to write reports on the benefits of rising CO2 levels and coal.”“Happer wrote in an email that his fee was $250 an hour and that it would require four days of work – a total of $8,000. “Depending on how extensive a document you have in mind, the time required or cost could be more or less, but I hope this gives you some idea of what I would expect if we were to proceed on some mutually agreeable course,” he wrote.”Happer even told them how to pay him in dark money not to be traced.“Our research reveals that professors at prestigious universities can be sponsored by foreign fossil fuel companies to write reports that sow doubt about climate change and that this sponsorship will then be kept secret,” said John Sauven, the director of Greenpeace UK. “Down the years, how many scientific reports that sowed public doubt on climate change were actually funded by oil, coal and gas companies? This investigation shows how they do it, now we need to know when and where they did it.”Greenpeace exposes sceptics hired to cast doubt on climate scienceHapper is simply a talking head for the polluters industry paid to talk down the dangers of climate change and to portrait C02 as a “gift from God”. The tobacco industry had similar fake experts to talk down the dangers of tobacco smoking.3 & 4. ROY SPENCER AND JOHN CHRISTYCreationist Roy Spencer conveniently forgot to factor in sensor degradation in his database for a LONG time until the scientific community forced him to issue the corrections.But rather than doing a careful analysis of various potential explanations, McNider and Christy, as well as their colleague Roy Spencer, prefer to draw far reaching conclusions based on a particularly flawed comparison: They shift the modelled temperature anomaly upwards to increase the discrepancy with observations by around 50%. Using this tactic, Roy Spencer showed the following figure on his blog:(Above) The misleading and fake graph. You will find this is hundreds of denier blogs and videos.In 2014, the truth came out: Spencer’s UAH team had made a huge mistake in the calibration of their data. Instead of negligible upper-atmosphere warming, they found that the upper atmosphere had been warming at +0.14 degrees per decade, double the 1880-2014 rate of 0.07 degrees per decade. The other major satellite data set, RSS, also found a calibration error, meaning the Earth warmed 140% faster since 1998 than previous conclusions indicated. At the same time, the ground-based data from NOAA, NASA, the Hadley center and BEST all displayed agreement with one another. Once the 2014, 2015 and 2016 data are also included, the graph shows the scientific truth: the models are very much in line with what we observe.The fake and cherry picked RSS data as misrepresented by deniers:Researchers from Remote Sensing Systems (RSS), based in California, have released a substantially revised version of their lower tropospheric temperature record.After correcting for problems caused by the decaying orbit of satellites, as well as other factors, they have produced a new record showing 36% faster warming since 1979 and nearly 140% faster (i.e. 2.4 times larger) warming since 1998. This is in comparison to the previous version 3 of the lower tropospheric temperature (TLT) data published in 2009.Climate sceptics have long claimed that satellite data shows global warming to be less pronounced than observational data collected on the Earth’s surface. This new correction to the RSS data substantially undermines that argument. The new data actually shows more warming than has been observed on the surface, though still slightly less than projected in most climate models.Major correction to satellite data shows 140% faster warming since 1998Spencer being paid to write junk science on behalf of fossil fuel funded think tanks:Twitter Ads info and privacyPeter Dykstra@pdykstraRoy Spencer augments $190k U of Alabama salary by doing a climate denial paper for oil funded think tank http://www.texaspolicy.com/library/doclib/FFP-Global-Temperature-booklet-July-2016-PDF.pdf …Different types of numbersThe upper left panel in Fig. 1 shows that Christy compared the average of 102 climate model simulations with temperature from satellite measurements (average of three different analyses) and weather balloons (average of two analyses). This is a flawed comparison because it compares a statistical parameter with a variable.A parameter, such as the mean (also referred to as the ‘average’) and the standard deviation, describe the statistical distribution of a given variable. However, such parameters are not equivalent to the variable they describe.The comparison between the average of model runs and observations is surprising, because it is clearly incorrect from elementary statistics (This is similar statistics-confusion as the flaw found in the Douglass et al. (2007)).John Christy and Spencer were wrong — dead wrong — for a very long time, which created one of the most enduring denier myths, that the satellite data didn’t show the global warming that the surface temperature data did. As RealClimate explained a few years ago:We now know, of course, that the satellite data set confirms that the climate is warming, and indeed at very nearly the same rate as indicated by the surface temperature records. Now, there’s nothing wrong with making mistakes when pursuing an innovative observational method, but Spencer and Christy sat by for most of a decade allowing — indeed encouraging — the use of their data set as an icon for global warming skeptics. They committed serial errors in the data analysis, but insisted they were right and models and thermometers were wrong. They did little or nothing to root out possible sources of errors, and left it to others to clean up the mess, as has now been done.Amazingly (or not), the “serial errors in the data analysis” all pushed the (mis)analysis in the same, wrong direction. Coincidence? You decide.But what would you expect from a guy who contributed the chapter “The Global Warming Fiasco” to a 2002 book called Global Warming and Other Eco-Myths, published by Competitive Enterprise Institute, a leading provider of disinformation on global warming that was funded by ExxonMobil?____________________________Spencer and Christy’s data set has undergone many major corrections to address various errors and biases. This is how science always progresses, but those who believe that adjustments to surface temperature measurements are part of a conspiracy (including Roy Spencer) always seem to neglect the major adjustments to the satellite data. In fact, in its early days, Spencer and Christy’s data set seemed to indicate the atmosphere was cooling, before a series of big adjustments were made. [..] Much of Spencer and Christy’s contrarian research has not withstood subsequent scientific scrutiny.http://www.realclimate.org/index...http://www.realclimate.org/index...Climate scientists, using current science, are successful in predicting temperatures.5. PATRICK MICHAELSPatrick Michaels (born 1950) is a climatologist at George Mason University, though he is currently listed as a "Distinguished Senior Fellow in Public Policy" at the university and a "Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies" at the Cato Institute. Michaels used to be the token global warming denier among real climatologists, though he seems to have been replaced by Richard Lindzenin more recent years due to some of his notorious cases of screw-ups and outright fraud, such that he has lost any semblance of plausible deniability at this point.Michaels is one of the ex scientists who degenerated into a think tank Denial for profit fake expert.Roger Fjellstad Olsen's answer to Are there any prominent and well-respected scientists who do not believe in climate change?Patrick Michaels debunked:Linked to oil/koch-brothers funded think tank? Check!The Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank founded by Charles G. Koch and funded by the Koch brothers.PATRICK MICHAELS BIG LIE:In 1988, James Hansen testified before the U.S. Senate on the danger of anthropogenic global warming. During that testimony he presented a graph — part of a paper published soon after. This graph had three lines on it, representing three scenarios based on three projections of future emissions and volcanism. Hansen was right on the money, and the models he used proved successful. Unfortunately, when Patrick Michaels made his testimony before Congress in 1998, ten years later, he saw fit to erase the two lower lines, B and C, and show the Senators only Line A. He did so to make his testimony that Hansen’s predictions had been off by 300% believable. He lied by omission. This lie was picked up by Michael Crichton in his novel State of Fear (one of many omissions, confusions, and falsehood in that book — see here).Potholer54 debunks Michaels:In this video Michaels admits he is funded (40%) by the oil industry:https://climateinvestigations.or...https://www.desmogblog.com/patri...https://www.desmogblog.com/cato-...https://sourcewatch.org/index.ph...https://skepticalscience.com/pat...https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Pa...https://www.sourcewatch.org/inde...https://exxonsecrets.org/html/pe...LATEST:Cato closes its climate shop; Pat Michaels is out“The Cato Institute quietly shut down a program that for years sought to raise uncertainty about climate science, leaving the libertarian think tank co-founded by Charles Koch without an office dedicated to global warming.”POLITICS: Cato closes its climate shop; Pat Michaels is out6. MURRY SALBY.is a crank.Thus you will only find links to him from the usual echo chamber of denier blogs.In fact, his hypothesis are so bad even denier blogs are not having it:“Salby’s natural carbon dioxide theory cannot be true. It is falsified. Even before detailing his definitional, mathematical, and factual errors.”Is Murry Salby Right?Salby is really a rotten egg:“John Mashey and The Guardian's Graham Readfearn decided to research Salby's legal history and came up with some stunning findings. Salby had previously been banned for three years from accessing US taxpayer-funded science research money after the National Science Foundation (NSF) found that Salby's "actions over a period of years displays a pattern of deception, a lack of integrity, and a persistent and intentional disregard of NSF and University rules and policies."The NSF report found that Salby had funneled himself hundreds of thousands of dollars in government grant money through a for-profit company he created, of which he was the sole employee. To justify his salary payments to the NSF, Salby claimed to be working for this company for an average of 14 hours per day for 98 consecutive days, which aside from being entirely implausible, would also have left him no time to fulfill his university obligations. The NSF concluded that Salby's behavior was likely fraudulent, but by the time the report was completed, Salby had resigned from the University of Colorado and moved to his job at Australia's Macquarie University (from where he was later dismissed).Potentially fraudulent and unethical behavior aside, what about the scientific credibility of Salby's arguments? They too are entirely lacking in quality. We know that humans emissions are responsible for 100 percent of the atmospheric carbon dioxide increase from simple basic accounting. Humans are emitting approximately 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, and the amount in the atmosphere is increasing by approximately 15 billion tons per year (the other half is absorbed by the oceans, which in turn is causing ocean acidification, known as "global warming's evil twin"). Quite simply, human greenhouse gas emissions cannot magically vanish.Salby's argument is based on a mathematical error detailed in papers published by two of my colleagues, Gavin Cawley and Mark Richardson. In short, Salby and others who make this same mistake confuse the natural contribution to the short-term wobbles in atmospheric carbon dioxide with the contribution to the long-term trend, which is unquestionably due to human emissions. This is as settled as science gets, as noted above, proven based on simple accounting. Those who wish to be considered climate "skeptics" should think twice about unskeptically accepting the claims of someone with Salby's history and with his obviously fundamentally wrong climate arguments.”Wretched week for a typical trio of climate contrarians | Dana NuccitelliMore debunks:The lines of evidence that humans are raising CO2 levelsBONUSTHE CLIMATE DENIAL MOVEMENTS OWN JOURNAL WHERE THEY PUBLISHED MANY OF THEIR JUNK PAPERS ON CLIMATE MATTERSThe journal Energy and Environment is a peer-reviewed social science journal published by Multi-Science. The journal's editor is Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, a reader in geography at the University of Hull in England and climate skeptic. Co-editor is Benny Peiser.Energy and Environment is carried in the ISI and SCOPUS listing of peer-reviewed journals, but its peer review process has been criticized for allowing the publication of substandard papers. Numerous climate skeptics and contrarians have published in the journal and these studies have later been quoted by Republican critics of global warming science such as Senator James Inhofe and Congressman Joe Barton.Climate change skeptics who have been published in this journal include Sallie Baliunas, Patrick Michaels, Ross McKitrick, Stephen McIntyre, Ian Castles, Roger Pielke Jr., Willie Soon, Madhav Khandekar, Craig Loehle, Steve McIntyre, and Indur Goklany.The current editor of Energy and Environment Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen admits in an article published online that "the journal I edit has tried to keep this debate [climate scepticism] alive" She also states elsewhere I'm following my political agenda -- a bit, anyway," ... "But isn't that the right of the editor?It is unclear whether E&E is peer-reviewed. The journal is not listed by the ISI Web of Knowledge, which provides “comprehensive coverage of the world’s most important and influential journals“. E&E has been described by Gavin Schmidt of the science blog RealClimate as having “effectively dispensed with substantive peer review for any papers that follow the editor’s political line”.Climate Science Deniers’ Favourite Journal Just got ‘Overhauled’ — And it Could Lead to a Skeptic ShutoutThe publisher of an academic journal beloved by climate science deniers has been revamped to ensure it meets industry standards of peer-review and editorial practice. Its climate science denier editor has also stepped down.Long a home for papers that cast doubt on climate science and the seriousness of climate change, Energy and Environment was recently bought by publishing behemoth SAGE. As part of the acquisition process, the publisher “over-hauled its peer review practices to bring it into line with SAGE standards”, a spokesperson told DeSmog UK.https://www.desmog.uk/2018/02/23...Beware! Academics are getting reeled in by scam journalsThe number of predatory publishers is skyrocketing – and they’re eager to pounce on unsuspecting scholars.https://www.universityaffairs.ca...Potholer54 explains:BONUS 2:Q: How much money bribe from oil and gas industry does it take to claim that “climate scientists are in it for the money”?A: $763,331Climate scientists slam Rick Santorum's "conspiracy theory" that they're in it for the moneyWhen you have received $763,331 from oil and gas companies, I guess its mandatory to claim that "climate scientists are in it for the money" right?LOLRoger Fjellstad Olsen's answer to Why is opposition to climate science more common in the United States than other countries?Roger Fjellstad Olsen's answer to What are some of the worst cases of academic fraud? What can we do to prevent this?