PNAS politics in the name of science

This 2019 Germany/Canada human fetal cell study was a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America direct submission:

“In a human hippocampal progenitor cell line, we assessed the short- and long-term effects of GC [glucocorticoid] exposure during neurogenesis on messenger RNA expression and DNA methylation profiles. Our data suggest that early exposure to GCs can change the set point of future transcriptional responses to stress by inducing lasting DNAm changes.”

The study’s basic finding was that cells had initial responses to stressors that primed them for subsequent stressors. Since this finding wasn’t new, the researchers tried to make it exciting by applying it to novel contexts that were yet circumscribed by official paradigms.

Hypothesis-seeking associations of human fetal hippocampal cell behaviors with human behaviors were flimsy stretches, as were correlations to placental measurements. These appeared to have been efforts to find headline-making effects.

There wasn’t even a hint of the principle described in Epigenetic variations in metabolism:

“Because of the extreme interconnectivity of cell regulatory networks, even at the cellular level, predicting the impact of a sequence variant is difficult as the resultant variation acts:

  • In the context of all other variants and
  • Their potential additive, synergistic and antagonistic interactions.

This phenomenon is known as epistasis.”

It would have condemned pet models of reality to acknowledge the reality that a cell exists in multiple contexts of other cells – all in interconnected networks – with potential additive, synergistic, and antagonistic interactions. A research proposal to trace a specific cell type’s behaviors while isolated from their contexts and networks to trillion-celled human behaviors would be rejected in less-politicized organizations.

Sanctioned speculations manifested in this paper with phrases such as “although not significant..” and “although not directly tested..” The study’s title was probably a disappointment in that it conformed to the study’s evidence.

Involvements of psychiatry departments at the pictured Kings College, Harvard, etc., as part of PNAS entrenched politics, retard advancements of science past approved paradigms. This is my final curation of PNAS papers. “Glucocorticoid exposure during hippocampal neurogenesis primes future stress response by inducing changes in DNA methylation”


Would you return a lost wallet?

The researchers in this 2019 Swiss/US study intentionally “lost” > 17,000 wallets under experimental conditions:

“We conducted field experiments in 40 countries to examine whether people act more dishonestly when they have a greater economic incentive to do so, and we found the opposite to be true. Citizens were more likely to return wallets that contained relatively larger amounts of money. Neither nonexperts nor professional economists were able to predict this result.

When people stand to heavily profit from engaging in dishonest behavior, the desire to cheat increases but so do the psychological costs of viewing oneself as a thief.”

The study did well in some aspects, including publicity. However:

1. The researchers admitted in the final paragraph:

“Using average reporting rates across countries, we find substantial variation in rates of civic honesty, ranging from 14 to 76%. This variation largely persists even when controlling for a country’s gross domestic product, suggesting that other factors besides a country’s wealth are also at play.”

Yet the paper’s first page contained the above graphic, which used each country’s GDP as a dependent variable! Wasn’t a behavioral economics study of honesty required to present their data honestly, and use factors that were experimentally significant?

2. “Other play” were relegated to the supplementary materials. The paper was only three-and-a-half pages long, so there was room for further explanations.

Here’s one comment on cultural differences from a Chinese PhD student:

“Biased design. In China (and Asian countries), people seldom use email, and our merit is to leave things untouched (“路不拾遗“:no one picks up lost articles in the street (idiom)).”

3. The study design had nothing to do with avoiding taxes, but three of the four sentences in the paper’s first paragraph did. This impressed as pointless. “Civic honesty around the globe” (not freely available)

Caloric restriction’s epigenetic effects

This 2019 US review subject was caloric restriction (CR) without malnutrition:

“Cellular adaptation that occurs in response to dietary patterns can be explained by alterations in epigenetic mechanisms such as DNA methylation, histone modifications, and microRNA. Epigenetic reprogramming of the underlying chronic low-grade inflammation by CR can lead to immuno-metabolic adaptations that enhance quality of life, extend lifespan, and delay chronic disease onset.

Short- and long-term CRs produce significant changes in different tissues and across species, in some animal models even with sex-specific effects. Early CR onset may cause a different and even an opposite effect on physiological outcomes in animal models such as body weight.”


Charts usually don’t have two different values plotted on the same axis. There wasn’t evidence that equated survival with methylation drift per the above graphic. Methylation drift should point in the opposite direction of survival, if anything.

No mention was made of the epigenetic clock method of measuring age acceleration, although recent diet studies have used it. The sole citation of an age acceleration study was from 2001, which was unacceptable for a review published in 2019.

The review provided many cellular-level details about the subject. However, organism-level areas weren’t sufficiently evidenced:

1. Arguments for an effect usually include explanations for no effect as well as opposite effects. The reviewers didn’t provide direct evidence for why, if caloric restriction extended lifespan, caloric overabundance produced shorter lifespans.

2. Caloric restriction evidence was presented as if only it was responsible for organism-level effects. Other mechanisms may have been involved.

An example of such a mechanism was demonstrated in a 2007 rodent study Reduced Oxidant Stress and Extended Lifespan in Mice Exposed to a Low Glycotoxin Diet which compared two 40%-calorie-restricted diets.

The calories and composition of both diets were identical. However, advanced glycation end product (AGE) levels were doubled in standard chow because heating temperatures were “sufficiently high to inadvertently cause standard mouse chow to be rich in oxidant AGEs.”

The study found that a diet with lower chow heating temperatures increased lifespan and health span irrespective of caloric restriction!

  • The low-AGE calorie-restricted diet group lived an average of 15% longer (>20 human equivalent years) than the standard calorie-restricted diet group. 40% of the low-AGE calorie-restricted diet group were still alive when the last standard calorie-restricted diet group member died.
  • The standard calorie-restricted diet group also had significantly more: 1) oxidative stress damage; 2) glucose and insulin metabolism problems; and 3) kidney, spleen, and liver injuries. “Epigenetic Regulation of Metabolism and Inflammation by Calorie Restriction” (not freely available)

Do delusions have therapeutic value?

This 2019 UK review discussed delusions, aka false beliefs about reality:

“Delusions are characterized by their behavioral manifestations and defined as irrational beliefs that compromise good functioning. In this overview paper, we ask whether delusions can be adaptive notwithstanding their negative features.

We consider different types of delusions and different ways in which they can be considered as adaptive: psychologically (e.g., by increasing wellbeing, purpose in life, intrapsychic coherence, or good functioning) and biologically (e.g., by enhancing genetic fitness).”

1) Although the review section 4 heading was Biological Adaptiveness of Delusions, the reviewers never got around to discussing the evolved roles of brain areas. One mention of evolutionary biology was:

“Delusions are biologically adaptive if, as a response to a crisis of some sort (anomalous perception or overwhelming distress), they enhance a person’s chances of reproductive success and survival by conferring systematic biological benefits.”

2) Although section 5’s heading was Psychological Adaptiveness of Delusions, the reviewers didn’t connect feelings and survival sensations as origins of beliefs (delusions) and behaviors. They had a few examples of feelings:

“Delusions of reference and delusions of grandeur can make the person feel important and worthy of admiration.”

and occasionally sniffed a clue:

“Some delusions (especially so‐called motivated delusions) play a defensive function, representing the world as the person would like it to be.”

where “motivated delusions” were later deemed in the Conclusion section to be a:

“Response to negative emotions that could otherwise become overwhelming.”

3) Feelings weren’t extensively discussed until section 6 Delusions in OCD and MDD, which gave readers the impression that feelings were best associated with those diseases.

4) In the Introduction, sections 4, 5, and 7 How Do We Establish and Measure Adaptiveness, the reviewers discussed feeling meaning in life, but without understanding:

  1. Feelings = meaning in life, as I quoted Dr. Arthur Janov in The pain societies instill into children:

    “Without feeling, life becomes empty and sterile. It, above all, loses its meaning.

  2. Beliefs (delusions) defend against feelings.
  3. Consequentially, the stronger and more numerous beliefs (delusions) a person has, the less they feel meaning in life.

5) Where, when, why, and how do beliefs (delusions) arise? Where, when, why, and how does a person sense and feel, and what are the connections with beliefs (delusions)?

The word “sense” was used 29 times in contexts such as “make sense” and “sense of [anxiety, coherence, control, meaning, purpose, rational agency, reality, self, uncertainty]” but no framework connected biological sensing to delusions. Papers from other fields have detailed cause-and-effect explanations and precursor-successor diagrams for every step of a process.

Regarding the therapeutic value of someone else’s opinion of a patient’s delusions – I’ll reuse this quotation from the Scientific evidence page of Dr. Janov’s 2011 book “Life Before Birth: The Hidden Script that Rules Our Lives” p.166:

“Primal Therapy differs from other forms of treatment in that the patient is himself a therapist of sorts. Equipped with the insights of his history, he learns how to access himself and how to feel.

The therapist does not heal him; the therapist is only the catalyst allowing the healing forces to take place. The patient has the power to heal himself.

Another way Dr. Janov wrote this was on p.58 of his 2016 book Beyond Belief as quoted in Beyond Belief: The impact of merciless beatings on beliefs:



Everything the patient has to learn already resides inside. The patient can make herself conscious. No one else can.” “Are clinical delusions adaptive?”

Non-emotional memories

This 2019 US review covered memory mechanisms:

“With memory encoding reliant on persistent changes in the properties of synapses, a key question is how can memories be maintained from days to months or a lifetime given molecular turnover? It is likely that positive feedback loops are necessary to persistently maintain the strength of synapses that participate in encoding.

These levels are not isolated, but linked by shared components of feedback loops.”

Despite the review’s exhaustive discussion, the reviewers never came to the point. The word cloud I made of the review’s most frequent thirty words had little to do with why memory occurs:

  • Why do some stimuli evoke a memory in response?
  • Why are almost all of the stimuli an organism receives not remembered?

Much of the discussion was baseless because it excluded emotion. Many of the citations’ memory findings relied on emotion, though.

For example, in the subsection Roles of persistent epigenetic modifications for maintaining LTF [long-term facilitation], LTP [long-term potentiation], and LTM [long-term memory]:

  • Histone acetylation is increased after fear conditioning in the hippocampus and amygdala.
  • Correspondingly, inhibition of histone deacetylase enhances fear conditioning and LTP.
  • Following fear conditioning, histone phosphorylation is also increased.
  • DNA methylation is also up-regulated in the hippocampus and amygdala after fear conditioning, and inhibition of DNA methylation blocks fear LTM.” “How can memories last for days, years, or a lifetime? Proposed mechanisms for maintaining synaptic potentiation and memory”

Wouldn’t it be nice?

Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older
Then we wouldn’t have to wait so long?
And wouldn’t it be nice to live together
In the kind of world where we belong?

You know it’s gonna make it that much better
When we can say goodnight and stay together

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could wake up
In the morning when the day is new?
And after having spent the day together
Hold each other close the whole night through?

Happy times together we’ve been spending
I wish that every kiss was neverending
Oh wouldn’t it be nice?

Baby then there wouldn’t be a single thing we couldn’t do
We could be married (we could be married)
And then we’d be happy (and then we’d be happy)
Oh wouldn’t it be nice?

You know it seems the more we talk about it
It only makes it worse to live without it
But lets talk about it
Oh wouldn’t it be nice?

Good night my baby
Sleep tight my baby

From What was not, is not, and will never be:

We long for what was and is impossible.

Flawed epigenetic measurements of behavioral experiences

This 2018 New York rodent study not only wasted resources but also speciously attempted to extrapolate animal study findings to humans:

“While it is clear that behavioral experience modulates epigenetic profiles, it is less evident how the nature of that experience influences outcomes and whether epigenetic/genetic “biomarkers” could be extracted to classify different types of behavioral experience.

Male and female mice were subjected to either:

  • a Fixed Interval (FI) schedule of food reward, or
  • a single episode of forced swim followed by restraint stress, or
  • no explicit behavioral experience

after which global expression levels of two activating (H3K9ac and H3K4me3) and two repressive (H3K9me2 and H3k27me3) post-translational histone modifications (PTHMs), were measured in hippocampus (HIPP) and frontal cortex (FC).

A random subset of 5 of the 12 animals from each sex/behavioral experience group were used for these analyses. FC and HIPP were dissected from each of those 5 brains and homogenized for subsequent analyses. Thus, sample size for PTHM expression levels was n = 5 for each region/sex/behavioral treatment group and all PTHM expression level analyses utilized the homogenized tissue.

The specific nature of the behavioral experience differentiated profiles of PTHMs in a sex- and brain region-dependent manner, with all 4 PTHMs changing in parallel in response to different behavioral experiences. Global PTHMs may provide a higher-order pattern recognition function.”

The researchers knew or should have known that measuring “global expression levels” in “homogenized tissue” of “n = 5” subjects was flawed, and they did it anyway. They acknowledged some of the numerous study design defects with qualifiers such as:

“Even though these were global levels of histone modifications (and thus not indicative of changes at specific genes or sites on genes)..

As FS-RS behavioral experience was completed before FI behavioral experience, a longer overall post-behavior experience time (approximately 1 week) elapsed for this group, resulting in some differences in overall timing between these experiences and global PTHM assessment. However, extending the duration of the FS-RS experience (i.e., repeated exposures) would also have led to habituation..”

Did they purposely make these mistakes because of the “biomarkers” paradigm?

What would they have found if they had followed their judgments and training to design a better study? Experience-dependent histone modifications that differed by gender and brain region was certainly a promising research opportunity.

As for extrapolating the cited animal study findings to humans? Ummm..NO! “Different Behavioral Experiences Produce Distinctive Parallel Changes in, and Correlate With, Frontal Cortex and Hippocampal Global Post-translational Histone Levels”