Marty Pall's recent press release: bogus claims and sloppy science

[Guest guest]

Forearded with permission

I know Albert and very RARELY does he make statements usch as this unless it is

TRUELY justified........

Angel

-----Original Message-----

From: Albert Donnay <adonnay@...>

Marty Pall's recent press release: bogus claims and sloppy science

I've given up trying to correct all of Marty Pall's misinformation.

I've learned from past experience that he refuses to correct errors in

his publications, and it's a waste of my time sending him the same

corrections over and over.

But I can't let his latest press release pass without comment since it

has attracted so many attention on various lists but none yet that have

focused on either Pall's bogus claims or his sloppy science.

To illustrate, one need look no further than the title of Pall's press

release, a literally bold-face statement to which he presumably gave a

lot of thought:

" Breakthrough study on Multiple Chemical Sensitivity shows MCS is an

epidemic caused by toxic chemicals; peer-reviewed paper is published in

prestigious toxicology reference work. "

The only accurate fact in this title is that MCS is caused by toxic

chemicals, but this is hardly new. Researchers have been reporting the

same for decades.

Consider, in contrast, that the same title contains three significantly

misleading claims:

#1. Pall's paper is a chapter in a textbook. It is neither a

" breakthrough " nor a " study " in the normal meaning of either word.

It is a review article that reprints information he has repeatedly

published elsewhere over the last several years. So why does Pall

misrepresent it is a " breakthrough study " ?

#2. MCS is not " an epidemic, " and Pall's chapter presents NO evidence

that it is. For a disease to be epidemic, its INCIDENCE (the rate of

new cases, usually expressed as X per 100,000 population per year) must

be increasing rapidly in a specific area (which could be a city, a

country, a region or even the entire world) over some specific time

(such as last year or last decade). Either Pall does not know the

meaning of this term, or he has choosen to misrepresent it.

To his credit, Pall does quote research studies that have reported the

PREVALENCE of diagnosed and undiagnosed MCS in a few states and one

study in USA nationwide, but these do not tell us the incidence.

Prevalence is only the number of cases at a particular time, not the

rate at which new new cases are emerging and being diagnosed. H1N1 is a

perfect example of an epidemic. MCS may or not be one. We simply don't

know because the data needed to determine this are not available.

#3. Most galling is Pall's claim that his paper was peer-reviewed.

I suspected Pall was lying about this because most medical textbook

editors merely solicit authors to submit chapters and then print

whatever they get without going through any peer-review.

To check Pall's claim, I called one of the 3 editors of the 3rd edition

of General and Applied Toxicology, Dr. Tore Syversen, Professor of

Pharmacology and Toxicology at the Norwegian University of Science and

Technology in Trondheim.

He confirmed that only a few of the 150 contributions they solicited

were peer-reviewed, and that Pall's chapter on MCS was NOT among them.

Most of the chapters, including Pall's, were only proof-read and edited

for style but not for content. Pall must have known this since the

editors never sent him any anonymous reviewer comments, as is standard

practice for papers that have been peer-reviewed.

So why did Pall lie about this? Perhaps because he knows that

peer-reviewed papers have more credibility than papers that are

peer-reviewed... But what about his own credibility? Did he really

think no one would ever check? (He should know me better by now...)

#4. Do you really need to know any more?

The only silver lining to this sordid matter is that the textbook in

which Pall's chapter appears is unlikely to be either widely purchased

or thoroughly read. It has 149 chapters, 3940 pages and costs $1295 !!!

No wonder Pall is encouraging people to read his chapter for free on

his website, although his posting it there does technically violate the

copyright which is held by Wiley & Sons.

If anyone wants to learn more about the book, see:

http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470723270,descCd-description\

..html

--Albert Donnay, MHS

www.mcsrr.org

[Guest guest]

Albert,

I'm fairly new to this group so this is the first time I have read

anything you have to say about Pall. Just wondering if you

also have critiqued his protocol. Anne