I came across this interesting video about the My Little Pony fandom (the Bronys). It is by Jenny Nicholson, who has a great long-form YouTube channel, and who was an active part of the Brony fandom, so she is a great guide.
It is not a fandom I know much about, so this was a fascinating introduction to me. What I appreciated is that Jenny Nicholson is non-judgmental but is also not afraid of pointing out negative things about the fandom.
Most people who don’t follow science fiction fandoms and literature are probably not aware of the latest blowup related to the Hugos – one of the premier awards in the science fiction genre.
The Hugo Awards are handed out at the Worldcon, and the 2023 Worldcon was held in January in Chengdu, China. Holding a convention like Worldcon in an undemocratic country is always a bit controversial, and this years Worldcon shows why this is the case, and why organisations should avoid making conferences and conventions such places. NY Times reports on the story.
Some Authors Were Left Out of Awards Held in China. Leaked Emails Show Why
The Hugo Awards, a major literary prize for science fiction, have been engulfed in controversy over revelations that some writers may have been excluded based on their perceived criticism of China or the Chinese government.
Suspicions in the science fiction community have been building for weeks that something was amiss with last year’s awards, which rotate to a different city each year, and in 2023 were hosted in Chengdu, China. Now, newly released emails show that the awards were likely manipulated because of political concerns.
What happened was that some works were marked as not edible for an award, including the critically acclaimed Babel by R.F. Kuang and the successful Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao. This obviously raised the concern that it “was a matter of undesirability rather than ineligibility” as Kuang put it on Instagram.
This was confirmed when emails were leaked
The exclusion of popular authors of Chinese descent led to speculation that the awards’ administrators had weeded out those whose political views might prove controversial in China. Those suspicions were confirmed recently, when emails leaked by Diane Lacey, a member of last year’s Hugo administration team, were published in a report by Chris M. Barkley, a science fiction fan and journalist, and Jason Sanford, a journalist and science fiction writer.
The email correspondence published in the report showed that Dave McCarty, one of the Hugo administrators, had advised other members to vet the finalists and “highlight anything of a sensitive political nature” in China, including works that focused “on China, Taiwan, Tibet or other topics that may be an issue in China.” Such works, he added, might not be safe to put on the ballot.
“This really just cut to the core of the awards,” Sanford said. “For a genre that believes so deeply in free speech to willingly take part in doing research on political issues of awards finalists, knowing that it’s going to be used to eliminate some of those finalists, it’s outrageous.”
In an interview with The Times, Lacey confirmed that she had provided the emails, and said that she shared them publicly because she regretted her actions, and wanted to ensure that the Hugos would not be tainted again in the future. “I felt very guilty about what I did and wanted to be able to look myself in the mirror again,” she said.
It is hardly news that there is controversy around the Hugo awards – from right-winged attempts on trying to overcome “wokeness” to more or less direct accusations of writers trying to buy votes, but this is the first time where the Hugos have been affected by the wishes of a government. This is a new low for the Hugos, which by many is considered the most democratic of the science fiction awards.
Each Worldcon stands on its own, so the actions of this Worldcon should not reflect badly on the next one, which is taking place in Glasgow. Even so, the upcoming organizers of the Worldcon has apologized, and has promised that there will be transparency about the administration of the awards.
My hope is that people will continue supporting the Worldcons, but also that they won’t be in undemocratic countries in the future. Let this one dark spot be the catalyst to make sure that cons in the future happens in democracies.
Bharat B. Aggarwal was until recently the leading expert in the curative effects of curcumin.
Bharat B. Aggarwal is an Indian-American biochemist who worked at MD Anderson Cancer Center from 1989 to 2015. His research focused on potential anti-cancer effects and therapeutic applications of herbs and spices. Aggarwal was particularly drawn to curcumin, a non-toxic compound found in turmeric that has long been staple in Ayurvedic systems of medicine. He authored more than 120 articles about the compound from 1994 to 2020. These articles reported that curcumin had therapeutic potential for a variety of diseases, including various cancers, Alzheimer’s disease and, more recently, COVID-19. In his 2011 book Healing Spices: How to Use 50 Everyday and Exotic Spices to Boost Health and Beat Disease, Aggarwal recommends “taking a daily 500 mg curcumin supplement for general health”.
The above quote is from The King of Curcumin: a case study in the consequences of large-scale research fraud
As the title says, it turned out that Aggarwal committed research fraud
MD Anderson Cancer Center initially appeared to be fully on board with Aggarwal’s work. At one point, their website’s FAQ page recommended visitors buy curcumin wholesale from a company for which Aggarwal was a paid speaker (see “Spice Healer”, Scientific American). However, in 2012 (following observations of image manipulation raised by pseudonymous sleuth Juuichi Jigen), MD Anderson Cancer Center launched a research fraud probe against Aggarwal which eventually led to 30 of Aggarwal’s articles being retracted. Only some of these studies were about curcumin specifically, but most concerned similar natural products.
Retractions rarely number this high for a single author; according to the Retraction Watch leaderboard, only 26 other people have authored this many retracted studies. Aggarwal’s retracted articles feature dozens of instances of spliced Western blots and duplicated images, as well as several instances where mice were implanted with tumors exceeding volumes considered ethical. PubPeer commenters have noted irregularities in many publications beyond the 30 that have already been retracted. Aggarwal retired from M.D. Anderson in 2015, but has continued to author articles and appear at conferences.
I predict that more articles will be retracted in the future – not only because of Aggarwal being the author, but also because the field of study seems to be a magnet for frauds
Despite curcumin’s apparent lack of therapeutic promise, the volume of research produced on curcumin grows each year. More than 2,000 studies involving the compound are published annually. Many of these studies bear signs of fraud and involvement of paper mills. As of 2020, the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) has spent more than 150 million USD funding projects related to curcumin. Funding increased drastically in the 2007 fiscal year, shortly after Aggarwal began to publish in earnest about the compound and the same year he declared curcumin “the Indian solid gold”.
A obvious reason for this is the big money connected to this sort of fraudulent research
This proliferation of research on curcumin has fueled its popularity as a dietary supplement. Grand View Research estimated the global market for curcumin as a pharmaceutical to be around 30 million USD in 2020. Manufacturers are routinely scolded by the United States Food and Drug Administration for making false claims about the health effects of these supplements.
When you look at so-called alternative medicine, one of the remedies that is often pushed is using different spices against different disease, and quite frequently using spice as a cancer cure. Every time anyone have looked into any of these spices as a cure for something, they have of course turned out to be mostly worthless, though a few have turned out to have some effect.
This of course, leads to the claim that spice consumption is an ancient remedy against cancer. Unfortunately, a study from last year has shown that this is not likely to be the case.
No evidence that spice consumption is a cancer prevention mechanism in human populations by Antoine M Dujon et al
Abstract
Why humans historically began to incorporate spices into their diets is still a matter of unresolved debate. For example, a recent study (Bromham et al. There is little evidence that spicy food in hot countries is an adaptation to reducing infection risk. Nat Hum Behav 2021;5:878–91.) did not support the most popular hypothesis that spice consumption was a practice favoured by selection in certain environments to reduce food poisoning, parasitic infections, and foodborne diseases.
MethodsBecause several spices are known to have anticancer effects, we explored the hypothesis that natural selection and/or cultural evolution may have favoured spice consumption as an adaptive prophylactic response to reduce the burden of cancer pathology. We used linear models to investigate the potential relationship between age-standardized gastrointestinal cancer rates and spice consumption in 36 countries.
ResultsPatterns of spice are not consistent with a cancer mitigation mechanism: the age-standardized rate of almost all gastrointestinal cancers was not related to spice consumption.
ConclusionsDirection other than foodborne pathogens and cancers should be explored to understand the health reasons, if any, why our ancestors developed a taste for spices.
I appropriate the effort to understand why spice was introduced into food in some parts of the world, and am looking forward to future research results
Putin is not a nice person. He is a despot and a warmonger.
Today we saw another piece of evidence for this, as yet another of his critics was killed
Putin critic Alexei Navalny, 47, dies in Arctic Circle jail
Russia’s most significant opposition leader for the past decade, Alexei Navalny, has died in an Arctic Circle jail, the prison service has said.
It is highly likely he was killed directly, but even if the death wasn’t caused by a direct murder, it was still caused indirectly by Putin by sending him to this harsh prison. I don’t, however, believe for a second that he wasn’t murdered – it is not like it was the first attempt to kill him after all
Most of the Russian president’s critics have fled Russia, but Alexei Navalny returned in January 2021, after months of medical treatment. In August 2020 he was poisoned at the end of a trip to Siberia with a Novichok nerve agent.
Yet despite this, and the invasion of Ukraine, you have powerful people in the US singing Putin’s praise. You have so-called journalists interviewing him and Trump praising him, even encouraging him to attack US allies.
For the best dissection of Tucker Carlson’s interview of Putin, I highly recommend Knowledge Fight’s podcast episode on it.