[Link] Persistence of Long-Term Memory in Vitrified and Revived C. elegans worms
http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/rej.2014.1636
This is a paper published in 2014 by Natasha Vita-More and Daniel Barranco, both associated with the Alcor Research Center (ARC).
The abstract:
Can memory be retained after cryopreservation? Our research has attempted to answer this long-standing question by using the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), a well-known model organism for biological research that has generated revolutionary findings but has not been tested for memory retention after cryopreservation. Our study’s goal was to test C. elegans’ memory recall after vitrification and reviving. Using a method of sensory imprinting in the young C. elegans we establish that learning acquired through olfactory cues shapes the animal’s behavior and the learning is retained at the adult stage after vitrification. Our research method included olfactory imprinting with the chemical benzaldehyde (C₆H₅CHO) for phase-sense olfactory imprinting at the L1 stage, the fast cooling SafeSpeed method for vitrification at the L2 stage, reviving, and a chemotaxis assay for testing memory retention of learning at the adult stage. Our results in testing memory retention after cryopreservation show that the mechanisms that regulate the odorant imprinting (a form of long-term memory) in C. elegans have not been modified by the process of vitrification or by slow freezing.
HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9594201
It seems that you are trying to argue that there is some sort of conspiracy by cryobiologists to prevent cryonicists from publishing in high-impact journals.
If I understand correctly, the Society for Cryobiology officially bans its members from practicing or endorsing cyonics (defined as the cryopreservation of human corpses for the purpose of reanimation), but it has no position about preventing people associated with cryonics organization from publishing research.
If you want to claim that cryobiologists are covertly suppressing research by cryonicists by lobbying journal editors or abusing the peer review system, I would say that this is a very serious accusation of professional misconduct and you should not make it unless you can back it with evidence.
Yes. Some sort of conspiracy. I don’t know why anyone would think that. What an odd thing to think.
‘Comrades, good news. You are free to research and publish anything you want about capitalist economics, as long as it’s negative and does not endorse or practice it. Let 100 flowers bloom!’
Are you arguing that despite bitter hatred and an astonishing policy outright banning cryonics, this has zero influence on the notoriously politicized, inconsistent, random, risk-averse scientific publication process which has been amply documented to settle for lowest common denominators, punish ambitious work, express peer reviewers’ personal prejudices in discriminating against minorities, conservatives, etc? You think that somehow cryonics papers will be an exception to all this, will get a free pass and be fairly and impartially evaluated by its sworn enemies?
The ban is only for members of the Society for Cryobiology and concerns supporting human cryopreservation. I don’t see how experiments on worms would have anything to do with it.
Oh you’re right. And in the related news, global warming doesn’t exist, evolution is a hoax, vaccines cause autism, etc...
The ban’s obvious rationale is that cryobiologists believe that cryonics is a pseudo-scientific practice and they don’t want the reputation of their field to be tarnished by association with it.
You seem to claim that the ban is a matter of personal or tribal hatred and cryobiologists are acting like a religious cult trying to do everything in its power to undermine the heretics even by suppressing perfectly good cryobiology research.
As I said, this is a very serious allegation and it should be backed by evidence.
Dismissing the lack of scientific publications in favor for your pet position by accusing mainstream scientists of being biased is an overly general argument that could be used and is in fact used to support every crackpot theory out there.
Now you are playing dumb. We are talking about chilling effects, and there are not that many cryobiologists (or cryonicists, for that matter). Everyone has gotten the message sent by the ban.
What on earth are you talking about? The ban is right there in the bylaws. I don’t need to misinterpret any hacked emails to talk about it or make up data like Wakefield did and the anti-vaxers do. You seem to be blinded by the phrase ‘conspiracy theory’. Small groups organize all the time to promote or criticize particular theories in science, and even you admit the existence of the ban and hostility to cryonics; to paraphrase Patrick Henry, if that be conspiracy theorizing, make the most of it!
A lot of people do have very emotional reactions to cryonics, but I don’t need to prove it’s personal or tribal hatred, just point out that any papers to do with cryonics are not going to be treated the same. Whether the peer reviewer believes cryonics is absurd and the work must be wrong and is just searching for an excuse to reject it, or whether they personally hate Mike Darwin because he said something mean to them 40 years ago, doesn’t make a difference.
Please see the citations about the many serious flaws which have been demonstrated in peer review. Bias is the default. If you believe that peer reviews of cryonics papers will be shining exceptions, that should be backed by evidence because that would be a truly remarkable and extraordinary claim.
That they are biased is not in question. The difference is that things like anti-vaxers have been disproven time and again and often to be based on fraud or deception, and have no experimental evidence and are not simple extrapolations of current theories, whereas cryonics, while still unproven and highly speculative, is none of those. There’s a difference between proto and pseudo science.
Again, the bylaws bans members of the Society for Cryobiology from practicing or endorsing cryonics, it does not mandate them to sabotage the publication of research by cryonicists. One thing does not necessarily imply the other.
The former is an unusual, perhaps controversial, but IMHO understandable rule that does not constitute professional impropriety, the latter would be a gross breach of scientific ethics. If you want to claim that cryobiologists are doing the latter anyway, then you need evidence.
The paper is not about cryonics, is about cryopreservation of C. elegans, the only connections with cryonics are the authors’ affiliation and the acknowledgment section, which would be not even visible to the referees if the journal used a double-blind review protocol.
Even assuming that the referees could guess from the content that the paper was coming from cryonicists, they would have to be extremely prejudiced to reject it out of hand without considering its scientific merits.
And anyway, in the review protocol of most reputable journals, the authors can petition to the editor to change the referees if they have a reasonable suspicion that they may be biased. Am I to believe that the Society for Cryobiology has so much influence on all the major journals that the editors couldn’t find any unbiased referee?
Said every crackpot on the Internet.
Peer review has many flaws, but the consistent suppression of correct but unpopular scientific theories by an interest group is not one of them, as far as we know.
Again, evidence please. If what you are saying is true, there should be tons of good scientific articles from cryonicists that were rejected with flimsy excuses. Cryonicists could make them public and scientists from contiguous sub-fields (e.g. neurobiologists, who often use cryopreservation techniques in their research) would notice. It would be a major scandal that would forever destroy the reputation of mainstream cryobiolgists. Cryonicists have in their interest the destruction of the reputation of their mortal enemies.
So why this does not happen? Maybe because this heap of unfairly rejected articles does not exist?
Actually, it is in question. But even if you assume that their are biased, it doesn’t follow that they are blacklisting cryonicists from publishing.
Yes, because frauds never happened in cryonics.
Sure. I have a cold fusion reactor to sell you...
Give me a break. When a professional society has declared something to be so beyond the pale that it will formally censure and expel any members who goes near it or says anything positive about it, there is going to be a chilling effect for anyone doing closely related research, and people have said as much privately.
Yes, it is. So? P-hacking is a gross breach of scientific ethics. Falsifying or tweaking data is a gross breach of scientific ethics. I hate to break it to you, but as a factual matter, these sorts of things happen all the time. Scientists will admit to them in anonymous surveys at high rates, and of course the more statistical sins appear in bright neon lights in any sort of meta-analysis of these topics like publication bias (hoo boy, is that a breach of medical ethics! but happens all the time anyway). Did you read the recent paper by Jussim et al on discrimination in psychology and how practicing psychologists are totally willing to, and admit to, discriminate against conservative research? (Or are you now going to argue that all conservative-connected theories must be pseudoscience put forth by cranks which this discrimination is totally fair against...?) What makes you think any cryobiologists would be fairer? Peer review fails all the time. You keep ignoring my comments on this matter—discriminating against unpopular or niche ideas is routine and common, cryonics would just be yet another instance. You keep trying to put the burden of proof on my side and implying that I’m saying something shocking, but really, I’m not; the idealized picture of scientists you have in your mind is very far from the gritty reality of academic politics, tribes (sorry, I mean, ‘labs’ or ‘schools’ or ‘departments’) of researchers, anonymous peer review. It’s unfortunate that peer review has been rather misleadingly promoted to the public as why science works (as opposed to testing falsifiable predictions or replication), but it’s not true; peer review is not necessary and not very good.
It is about using cryonics-oriented techniques to verify a claim of extreme interest to cryonicists, and of minimal interest to cryobiology in general (which does not care much about whole organisms or their neurological integrity, but about narrower more applied topics like gametes or organ transplants where neurons either don’t exist or are largely irrelevant). The title alone screams cryonics to any peer reviewer competent enough to be reviewing it. Seeing the authors and their affiliation is merely the final straw.
Not really, any more than people elsewhere have to be ‘extremely prejudiced’ to yield considerably disparate impacts. Someone discriminating against blacks does not have to be constantly talking about how niggers are responsible for everything wrong in America.
And how would they prove that, exactly, about the anonymous peer reviewer? If the reviewer pans the paper and trumps up some ultimately minor concerns, how does one prove the reviewer was biased? How does one prove that given the extreme randomness and inconsistency of the peer review process where the same paper can be judged diametrically opposite? Has this ever been done? It’s difficult enough to merely publish a letter to the editor criticizing some published research, or get a retraction of papers published about completely bogus data, there’s no way one is going to convince the editor that the peer reviewer has it in for one.
Taking money for a service not delivered is quite different from faking research.
Bullshit! OK, I’m done. I’ve argued in good faith with you. The problems with peer review are well known. There are countless studies in Google Scholar demonstrating problems in the peer review process from gender bias to country bias to publication bias to novel findings etc etc, on top of all the ones in the Wikipedia link I gave you; your blind veneration of peer review is not based on the empirical reality. Further, the war of cryobiologists on cryonics is well known and well documented, and there is zero reason to believe that cryonics-related papers would be given a fair reception. You keep making ridiculous claims like pointing out problems with peer review is the sign of a crackpot or arguing that a professional society banning a topic will somehow have no effect on research and does not indicate any biases in reviewing research on the topic, demanding proof of impossible things, and then completely ignoring when I point to available supporting evidence. This is not a debate, this is you digging your head into the sand and going ‘La la la reviewers are totally fair, there is no opposition to cryonics, peer review is the best thing since sliced bread, and you can’t force me to believe otherwise!’ Indeed, I can’t. So I will stop here.
I suppose that I were a neurobiologist I would find the topic of the paper very interesting. I mean, it’s about cryopreservation of plastic nervous structures!
If the paper was good science and it turned out that it had been unfairly rejected by major journals I would be quite disappointed. If it turned out that there was a systemic suppression of this kind of research I would be calling it a scandal.
So where is the evidence of all this wrong doing? Where are all these unfairly rejected papers?
I think you are strawmanning my position.
I’m not claiming that the peer review system is totally fair. I can even concede that it may be biased against cryonics, to the effect that a cryonics-related paper has to pass a higher bar to be accepted.
But your claim is much stronger than that. Your claim is that the peer-review system is so much biased that it has effectively managed to systematically keep scientifically sound cryonics-related research off all major journals.
This is an extraordinary claim. Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence.
This is also a claim that it would be easy to verify if it was true: just produce the unfairly rejected papers with the reviewers comments. This is the type of claims for which absence of evidence is evidence of absence.