Understanding the Perth Group

MRS ELENI PAPADOPULOS-ELEOPULOS of Perth, Western Australia, explains her theory (which is hers and which belongs to her) in an early interview:

More pseudoscholarship from the Italian Journal of Anatomy and Embryology

WELL, IT LOOKS LIKE HIGHLY COMPETENT, Even Distinguished Scientist and Scholar Marco Ruggiero of the University of Florence, (whose academic achievements are celebrated here) has scored another coup in his ongoing campaign to embarrass his university and draw the contempt of the few people who can be bothered watching his self-promoting antics and those of his fellow clowns from Rethinking AIDS.

Apparently his and coauthor Henry Bauer's brilliant scheme to secure fame and fortune through marketing  Mad Marco's Magic Yoghurt Cure For AIDS over the internet has fallen through, despite the free advertising to the target demographic provided by Leading Scientific Discussion Forum Questioning AIDS. So they've gone back to writing inept epidemiology papers with their friends Duesberg, Rasnick, Fiala and the other denialists, and trying to get them published.

Their latest effort is called  AIDS since 1984: No evidence for a new, viral epidemic - not even in Africa.

To get it into print Ruggiero has had to call in yet another favor from his dear and close friend Paolo Romagnoli, editor of the... umm... prestigious Italian Journal of Anatomy and Embryology - lauded by Nature news editor Brian Owens on Twitter as "a journal you've never heard of".

Romagnoli has also put his hand up to confess that he was one of the two "peer reviewers" who okayed this drivel for publication. Unfortunately that marks him as as clueless as the authors.

This is now the third AIDS denialist pseudo-epidemiology paper published by Romagnoli's IJAE, or fourth if you include a recently published conference abstract by Ruggiero et al that probably could be classified as "denialist" if it were remotely intelligible. The other two papers are discussed here.

As more than one commentator has observed, Romagnoli seems to be trying to convert his journal from a respectable but somewhat obscure anatomy and embryology publication into the Italian Journal of Amateur Epidemiology - a vanity journal for his personal friends in the AIDS denialist movement to gain access to coveted NIH library listing despite the fact that they are - well there's no kind way of saying this - completely nuts.

That seems to be Henry Bauer's idea, anyway:

THE SIX SENIOR AUTHORS OF THE PAPER - Duesberg, Rasnick, Bauer, Koehnlein, Fiala and Ruggiero - comprise about half the board members of Rethinking AIDS. The other three are recent graduates who have worked under Duesberg and Ruggiero.To get an idea of just how seriously whacked out the "Board of Rethinking AIDS" really is, have a look at the homicidally negligent Patient Information Leaflet they publish and distribute to people with HIV/AIDS, or who are at risk:

"AIDS doctors accidentally killed an estimated 300,000 people during the AIDS hysteria years of 1987-1997 (by prescribing heavy doses of AZT or similar drugs). It was a mass iatrogenic (doctor caused) massacre, claiming the lives of Arthur Ashe, Rudolf Nureyev, Keith Haring, Kimberley Bergalis, Freddie Mercury and many others.

“They were healthy until convinced to take the medicines. This danger is still with us. Modern AIDS drugs are less toxic, but still life threatening, just not as quickly. Today, 2009, those taking the modern-day ARV therapy are dying at an average age of 45.”

etc...

Or check out coauthor Dr David Rasnick's medical "advice" about HIV testing, originally posted on the Rethinking AIDS channel on Youtube:

"People ask me all the time. I don't volunteer - I only answer if they ask. I say: Don't take the test. If unfortunately you take the test don't find out what the result is. If you come back positive I say forget it. If you can't forget it, the test is so unstable keep taking it until you get a negative one and then stop."

In reality, the IJAE paper's just a rehash of the woeful Out of Touch With South African AIDS fiasco, a work so inept that even the publishers of Medical Hypotheses rejected it. And your paper has to be pretty bad if even Med Hype refuses to accept your payment to print it

Yep, it's a stinker.

No serious epidemiologist or HIV/AIDS scientist or clinician would consider either the original paper or its latest incarnation even remotely credible, but that's not the point of it. The paper wasn't written and published for a scientific readership: rather the idea is to provide a veneer of credibility for the benefit of their unsophisticated target audience - to be able to say "Look! There really is a genuine scientific controversy here about whether HIV causes AIDS!" And when people with HIV/AIDS get sucked into the Rethinking AIDS propaganda, the consequences are often devastating.

While Romagnoli and his University of Florence might like to pretend to themselves that they are simply providing a platform for genuine and sincere scientific debate about an unresolved issue, in reality they are merely supporting a cynical propaganda campaign targeted at those people who are least able to critically examine the claims of the AIDS denialists, and who can be most harmed by their misinformation. Henry Bauer makes the strategy of Rethinking AIDS perfectly clear:

"At any rate, AIDStruthers [ie the scientific mainstream] are not the audience to be courted. Their arguments must be countered with answers directed to the media and the general public in terms that are understandable by and clearly convincing for unengaged observers. That means the points cannot be too technical."

And when generally credible scientific media outlets like Nature News and Comment provide publicity - even negative publicity - they are playing the Rethinking AIDS game, especially when they trumpet the headline, "Paper refuting HIV–AIDS link secures publication: Work by infamous AIDS contrarian passes peer review" without making any attempt to investigate the background to the paper's publication. (A day or two later someone at Nature sobered up and changed "refuting" to "denying", but this makes little difference).

As former "public relations chairperson" of Rethinking AIDS Elizabeth Ely gloats on RA's facebook page:

SNOUT WON'T BORE HIS READERS with a blow by blow dissection thorough, careful, sensitive, and yet transformational reading of the whole paper, but here's a small sample of the Burning Stupid that Romagnoli thought worth publishing. As Actual Epidemiologist Max Essex remarked, when faced with bilge like this "it's hard to respond in an intelligent way". Coauthor on the paper Christian Fiala, of course, excitedly interprets this as meaning "there is no argument against what we have presented", and in a way that's true - after all as Thomas Jefferson once said, "Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."

Fiala, of course, is the guy who gained recent notoriety for announcing on the fundamentalist christian website WingNut Daily that he not only denies that HIV causes AIDS but also that HPV causes cervical cancer.

In any case, the main thrust of Duesenggiero's argument in this paper is that because the estimated populations of various African countries have continued to increase during the HIV/AIDS epidemic, there can't possibly have been significant HIV/AIDS mortality.

That's essentially it.

No, really. It's that dumb.

These amateur epidemiologists have apparently never considered the impact of high birth rates, migrations, and other factors on total population estimates.

*head/desk*

 

For example, they state:

Unexpectedly we found that the population of South Africa had increased by 3 million from 2000 to 2005, based on concordant statistics from South Africa and the US Census Bureau.

Duesenggiero et al appear to be unaware that the Statistics South Africa and US Census Bureau population figures they are citing are not head counts, but estimates that included explicit modelling of the impact of HIV/AIDS on mortality.

Source: Statistics South Africa: Mid-year population estimates, South Africa 2005

Then they tell us that:

In all countries where testing was introduced the prevalence of HIV-antibodies was soon found to be steady as it would be expected if HIV were a long-established endemic retrovirus (Duesberg, 1996; Duesberg, 1992; Duesberg et al., 2003).

This is an unbelievably ignorant claim. It is so wrong you can only wonder what morons provided the three references used to support it. And - you guessed it - Duesberg mined this stupid factoid out of his own arse on all three occasions, despite the authors contradicting themselves only a couple of paragraphs earlier when they inform us that

anti-HIV antibodies were first detected in 0.7% of the (South African) population. This percentage then increased gradually (not exponentially!) over about 10 years until 2000 when it levelled off between 25 and 30%.

Duesenggiero also appear not to have noticed that the figures they are citing were not for the South African population as a whole, but rather were annual surveys of antenatal clinic attendees.

The authors go on to recycle their claim that:

In the US, for example, 1 million have been HIV-antibody-positive since 1985 (Curran et al., 1985; Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, 1986; Duesberg et al., 2003; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2007, 2008).

This is nonsense that has been refuted over and over again - for example see here - and yet they bring out their favorite poor dead horse for yet another flogging. Aside from the fact that they are seriously misrepresenting Curran et al's 1985 estimate (which was based on taking the 10,000 notified AIDS cases to 1985 and guessing what percentage of the total HIV positive population they represent) it is disingenuous if not dishonest to suggest that the CDC estimates a steady 1 million prevalence. The CDC's US HIV prevalence and incidence estimates over the course of the epidemic to 2006 are shown here:

Source: CDC Fact Sheet HIV in the United States, July 2010

And so on. You get the idea - it's unutterable crap, even if you disregard the appalling nauseating arrogance of the authors sitting on their fat arses in Berkeley or Firenze or Blacksburg Virginia and telling African communities that have buried far too many of their young adults that - hey! never mind, these deaths never really happened. Have some of our yummy yoghurt!

Yet another FAIL for the University of Florence. Please report to the Unsatisfactory Academic Progress Committee.




Further Reading:
What do we know about AIDS deaths in South Africa?
Debunking the new Duesberg HIV/AIDS Denialist “paper” in IJAE
Fighting on after the war is over, HIV contrarian publishes yet another paper

HIV/AIDS denialism at the University of Florence

AN OPEN LETTER TO PROFESSOR ALBERTO TESI, Provost of the University of Florence in Italy:

Prof. Alberto Tesi

Magnifico Rettore

Università degli Studi di Firenze

Piazza S. Marco, 4

50121 – FIRENZE

ITALY

Dear Professor Tesi,

I am writing to express my deepest admiration for your University’s courageous stance in defending the academic endeavors and teaching standards of your Highly Competent, Even Distinguished Scientists and Scholars, Prof. Marco Ruggiero and Prof. Stefania Pacini, as reported recently by the award-winning American medical science journalist and humanitarian, Celia Farber.

It is especially gratifying to note that thanks to their efforts and those of their friends in the international AIDS denialist community, the traditional and culturally vital Art of Plagiarism is being so vigorously promoted, endorsed and it seems actively taught at your University, and also that this is apparently - according Ms Farber's report  - with your express personal support.

For far too long the time honored discipline of copy-pasting the work of others and passing it off as ones own has been discouraged, frowned upon and indeed cruelly persecuted within so-called academic circles. And while the Internet was initially a boon to practitioners of Plagiarism worldwide, with the recent development of anti-plagiarism software there have been concerns raised that it could soon become a dying Art in the schools, colleges and universities where it has previously flourished.

It is therefore a pleasure to read on the Internet the published tesi di laurea (graduation theses) on AIDS denialist theory from two of your students - mentored by the Highly Competent, Even Distinguished Scientists and Scholars Professor Ruggiero and Professor Pacini, along with Dr Vincenzo Crupi of the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery and Dr Henry H. Bauer, Professor Emeritus at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA.

This is from the title page of one of them:

And this is from the title page of the other:

These scientific papers have been made available and indeed have been extensively promoted for several months now on the World Wide Web as shining examples of the excellent student work at your University, including on Professor Ruggiero’s personal website and also on the websites of his numerous friends in the AIDS denialist community.

See for example the entries for 7/13/2010 and 10/21/2010 on the website of Highly Competent, Even Distinguished Scientist and Scholar David Crowe, President of the international scientific think-tank Rethinking AIDS (of which Professor Ruggiero has recently been honored by his election to the  board).

"July 13th – New insights into the role of HIV in the aetiology and pathogenesis of AIDS

University of Florence: [Presented July 14, 2010 at the University of Florence for a thesis defence] “In the first part of this thesis I analyze current hypotheses on AIDS aetiology and pathogenesis using the deconstructive analytical approach proposed by Jacques Derrida, i.e. I conducted thorough, careful, sensitive, and yet transformational readings of scientific texts on HIV and AIDS, to determine what aspects of those texts run counter to their apparent systematicity (structural unity) or intended sense (authorial genesis)... etc.""

"10/21/2010 - Endogenous retroviruses as confounding factors in the pathogenesis of AIDS

"A new thesis from the University of Florence approved with high marks on October 20, 2010, studies the issue of human endogenous retroviruses in signs and symptoms usually interpreted as being from an exogenous virus - HIV"

... or the website of Investigator, Student of Humanity and Self-Taught Pharmacologist Clark Baker:

... or the widely read and influential web log of leading US academic Professor Henry Bauer, a Highly Competent, Even Distinguished Scientist and Scholar of such brilliance that I’m sure you need no introduction:

Further HIV/AIDS Enlightenment out of Italy

Posted by Henry Bauer on 2010/10/21 

"That HIV does not cause AIDS is again demonstrated, this time in a doctoral thesis, “Endogenous retroviruses as confounding factors in the pathogenesis of AIDS”... mentored by Dr. Stefania Pacini and Dr. Marco Ruggiero. The work has just been accepted (with maximum marks) at the University of Florence, is in English, and is publicly available. The presentation was in Italian.

"The literature review mentions Montagnier’s longstanding view that sound immune systems withstand HIV, unpublished work of Dr. Christl Meyer suggesting that HIV is an evolutionary adapted and partly active variable and heritable gene construct of our immune (MHC/HLA)-system, De Harven’s discussion of human endogenous retroviruses as confounding factors in AIDS pathogenesis, and Yamamoto’s demonstration that stimulation of the immune system can eradicate HIV..."

It is particularly encouraging to note that there is nothing half-hearted about the Plagiarism in these dissident student works. Each paper consists almost entirely of passages copied from the net - mostly from a variety of AIDS denialist websites, "scientific" and other papers and lecture slides readily downloadable from the web, and even from wikipedia. Here are the first twenty or so pages of the first thesis, with the copy-pasted material highlighted in various colors according to the original sources, blue for wikipedia, red for Ruggiero, brown for Crupi, green for Bauer, purple for Duesberg, etc:

And here are the first pages of the second thesis, similarly highlighted. Note that the extended red section of what Highly Competent, Even Distinguished Scientist and Scholar Professor Bauer has described in glowing terms as a "literature review" is copied verbatim (and without any distracting comments by the student) from an article by Dr Etiene De Harven and recently published the highly respected first rank US science periodical Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons

As you can see, both Graduation Theses (Tesi di Laurea) are almost entirely uncontaminated by any actual original work from either student, and represent some of the finest and purest examples of the Art of Plagiarism as taught at your University. Bravo!  The University should be proud to have awarded these AIDS denialist papers the highest honors, and to see them distributed so widely to the world in the University's name as examples of quality scholarship one might expect as standard for the Università degli Studi di Firenze - thanks to the tireless efforts of Professor Ruggiero, Professor Bauer, Mr Crowe and their friends.

It is a rare pleasure to note such diligent efforts as those shown by these fine and exemplary mentors and tutors of undergraduate students. Usually when an academic is confronted with evidence of plagiarism in a student’s paper that he has hitherto lauded and recommended I understand it is customary to sheepishly deny any knowledge of the original publications from which it was lifted. Prof Ruggiero, Dr Crupi, and Prof Bauer have unequivocally eschewed such pusillanimity, and stand justly proud of the skills of their protégés with the Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V keys, even actively promoting the fruits of their work over the World Wide Web. Indeed, they have no choice but to proudly acknowledge the Plagiarism, given that the bulk of the material in each thesis was stolen largely from their own previously published work, and from other well known AIDS denialist sources, including an article of Mr Crowe's. This is, of course, well established practice amongst the AIDS denialist intelligentsia.

Might I also congratulate your University on its courage in officially approving and funding Prof Ruggiero’s recent course entitled “The Chemical Bases of AIDS”, lecture slides of which are freely available as a gift to the world from his website. (See "One chemical AIDS", "Two chemical AIDS"... "Last chemical AIDS", etc).

Here he proudly shows off the evidence of the University's endorsement of his course:

As you will note if you review the slides,

the content of the course is not so much in the area of chemistry or cell biology but rather consists of a remarkably fearless and creative re-imagining of the history and epidemiology of HIV/AIDS in order to press upon his students his firm personal conviction that HIV is not the cause of AIDS. It is an especially brave example of the quality of teaching at your University to publicize to the world, particularly since it is more than obvious from these lecture slides that neither Professor Ruggiero nor either of his co-lecturers Dr Rasnick and Dr De Harven (both past Presidents of Rethinking AIDS) are encumbered with even a passing acquaintance with the basic methods of epidemiology or any familiarity with the history of the disease which is their subject of interest. Or indeed, with elementary logic as it is conventionally understood.

The immensely positive influence of Prof. Ruggiero’s teaching on his young and eager students is best exemplified in the "Conclusions" sections of both theses, which in each case consists of a verbatim transcription of Prof. Ruggiero’s lecture slides 28 to 32 from the last of his six-lecture series. What educator would not be thrilled and delighted that his students’ work could so faithfully reproduce his own teachings, particularly when such opinions risk being unkindly characterized by a bigoted and mean-spirited scientific world as “profoundly ignorant” and “intellectually dishonest” and their active and direct promotion by scientists and academics to people at risk of HIV/AIDS as “grossly unethical” and “a serious threat to public health”?

As I mentioned before, what prompted me to write to you was the recent interview published by award-winning American medical science journalist and humanitarian, Celia Farber. From this interview it is clear that a certain so-called “Italian professor of microbiology, now retired” has had the temerity to write to you to draw your attention to the Plagiarism proudly endorsed by Professors Ruggiero, Pacini, Bauer et al, and to the innovative, imaginative, and highly original content of their teaching. An English translation of your cogent and entirely appropriate reply to this alleged “professor of microbiology” was published in full in Ms Farber’s article, as forwarded to her by Prof. Ruggiero:

“Dear Professor La Placa,

I acknowledge receipt of your letter of October 16, 2010 (registered with n. 20.10.2010). As far as the substance of your letter is concerned, I cannot but state that, as you should know, freedom of teaching is in our corpus of laws and it is related with the amplest sphere of freedom of expression and communication of thought guaranteed by our Constitution. Such a freedom, by the way, concerns all dimension of free cultural expression of the profession of teaching that is realized within the laws and rules concerning the matter.

Sincerely yours,

Prof. Alberto Tesi,

Rettore dell’Università di Firenze.”

I want to thank you for publicly putting this upstart “professor of microbiology, now retired” in his place. Bravo!

Reading your reply brought tears (of almost unbelieving gratitude) to my eyes, and I urge you to stand firm in dismissing any pressures from the prejudiced reality-based community to try to get you to address what might be called in institutions less liberated and enlightened than yours “gross academic misconduct” or “a major public embarrassment” or “bat-shit insane”. It was also reassuring to read your opinion that it is actually illegal under Italian Constitutional Law for your University to intervene in cases of plagiarism and obviously deranged or incompetent teaching. I only wish that the rest of the world could one day enjoy such freedom from narrow-minded and oppressive restrictions on academic conduct as is enjoyed in the City of Galileo.

With the most extremely warm wishes from the Land Down Under, and in the spirit of the amplest sphere of freedom of expression and communication of thought, made possible over such distances by the Electric Internet.

I am your servant,

Snout.

PS: As you can see from your letter reproduced in Ms Farber’s article, it is now customary (in the interests of transparency) to routinely publish correspondence on these matters on the net. I have therefore taken the liberty of publishing this letter on my own website, http://snoutworld.blogspot.com/.