How do Western Blots differ from Southern Blots and Northern Blots? I went to Lappland once to see the Northern Blots. One day I hope to sail around Cape Horn to see the Southern Blots.
Jess (the real one not the robo-one) - thank you for summing this up so perfectly! The issue for me is that these AWBs (which are not Western blots but are essentially interpreted electropherograms displayed in a nice even plot) are just so easy to falsify. You can't use these as proof of anything. They are internal screening devices to look for stuff which, when you publish, you'd better have the real Western otherwise your reviewers are (should be) asking questions.
I so love you! Your humour! Your computer mind! Your ability to be a human and humane whilst disseminating tough stuff that few can even comprehend! Cheers Bella! Muchas Gracias from your home country of Canada!
Even if the blots were fraudulent nothing would have happened. All the media does is ignore it and the story never comes out except on substack. Its a winning strategy that for sure.
"Not to defend Pfizer, but simply the computer generated nature of the Western blots cannot be used to prove fraud."
I dissent. Unless it stated that those blotches - or whatever they are - were computer generated, it was fraud upon fraud. It is like claiming an animal is a real bat when it was not even a natural animal!
All brought to us by people who find humans expendable, and because they find humans expendable. Humans cost too much money and resources while also being the only part of creation that asks preposterous questions, for instance about the authenticity of virus genomes and western blot printouts. Extremely irritating and expendable.
Having done more than my share of western blots, I'm all in favor of machine automation. It's been done for DNA, so why not protein also? I don't get why you distrust the idea of this kind of machine.
Did you read my thoughts? I personally will never think that automating Westerns will out-do the traditional hands-on methodology. :) I know I am probably the minority in my thinking.
Among all the valid criticisms of these vaccines, it strikes me as the least problematic that drug development used modern analysis machines. Lots of researchers put the machines to good use. https://www.bio-techne.com/resources/testimonials
Well, I’d assume that the machine developer has tested its accuracy,speed and reproducibility, which hopefully exceeds that of humans. I’m not doubting your skill, nor mine, but personally I’d love to have had robotic assistance. I could have spent my time on other more human-dependent things.
If it's a 'black box', and particularly if software updates are automatic, then it is open to fraud and closed to scrutiny.
The terms of use are VERY restrictive, I have no idea of the potential implications (or not), but I do know that when hundreds of $billions are involved, if it can be used for fraud, it will be at some point.
What other human-dependent things do you think could not be automated and done by a robot? Sounds like an advocacy for transhumanism? Where does it stop? who decides?
I come from an era, a philosophy, of science in which most people are honest with their data presentation because eventually your results are either confirmed or rejected by other labs, or even your own further work. The problem with the pharma industry is that it’s become not traditional science, but businessified and politicized charlatanism. So I can understand why people have lost trust. I still have some hope that the fraud will be revealed and that certain people will be held accountable, because otherwise the biomedical enterprise is going to be increasingly seen as snake oil.
I think it is easy to distrust also because it is known that in science generally, there have often been people who have faked research results in the past, and more specifically Pfizer is a company with a long track record of proven cases of dishonesty, and with this new type of machine, you get a new additional possibility for faking research results, as you routinely get print results that are cleaned of any unique artefacts, so you get a result document that looks much more easy to fake than a traditional western blot end result, the new end output unfortunately
is not something with difficult to fake characteristics, so depending on character of involved researcher, depending on stakes involved, invites forgery and fraud.
The mechanical steps (gel run, transfer, and Ab treatment/washes) can be automated without changing anything, but the digital image is where fraud enters. I can make a digital Western image appear however I want it to. Not a matter of distrust, but just understanding that where fraud is possible, fraud will occur. Big Pharma and Big Science have proven that in spades.
I think so. Those images look manufactured, even considering automation and the fact that they said the resulting image comes from deconvoluting another signal (I personally don't see how that should change anything, sounds like a lame excuse). Running a bunch of proteins in a gel is such a sensitive thing that some noise should be present.
That's what have been done with proteomics, but even there people still use some ''traditional'' approaches. Automatic results, specially from ''omics'' techniques should be taken with caution, even if done in good faith...
MAYBE... robo-Jess is good for the middle steps (or what a programmer might call "rapid prototyping") to take the tedium out, while a real human-Jess does the endpoint Western blots as not only a verification of the data/blots, but a verification of the results themselves.
I dunno. Maybe... but I just don't think automation belongs here. There's something specific about Westerns that should always be used to torture us lab rats. :D
I’ve read that giving robots human names (like Jess or Alexa or Sophia) humanize them for us, makes us think of them on some level as being like us. They might be made to look/act human but they are NOT human, they are machines.
I’m curious to know why some Western blots would be automated and others done by hand. If as mentioned in the Midwestern substack comment (amazing substack btw) they have 20 why wouldn’t all be automated?
Robo-Jess fills in our western blots, like how Dominion fills in our voting blots.
lol
How do Western Blots differ from Southern Blots and Northern Blots? I went to Lappland once to see the Northern Blots. One day I hope to sail around Cape Horn to see the Southern Blots.
They’re called western blots because they’re a democracy, which means the pharmaceutical companies can buy them into saying whatever they want.
I'll wager it is all paid for by the same evil actors trying to take America down, along with the majority of the population
Jess (the real one not the robo-one) - thank you for summing this up so perfectly! The issue for me is that these AWBs (which are not Western blots but are essentially interpreted electropherograms displayed in a nice even plot) are just so easy to falsify. You can't use these as proof of anything. They are internal screening devices to look for stuff which, when you publish, you'd better have the real Western otherwise your reviewers are (should be) asking questions.
Which is exactly what the FDA didn't do.
Glad that I was able to! Robo-Jess can't write so I got her beat on this.
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Won't be long though - https://www.insider.com/artificial-intelligence-bot-wrote-scientific-paper-on-itself-2-hours-2022-7
But they labeled them as real Western Blots in the submissions :(
This is all a plausible legalistic ruse for a fraud defense if taken to court that they know will come.
The Judge's that could well preside over this litigation effort I am sure have already been handsomely paid off.
I was just reading A Midwestern Doctor's Substack and then checked my email to find this. Yes to human hand made Westerns Blots.
I so love you! Your humour! Your computer mind! Your ability to be a human and humane whilst disseminating tough stuff that few can even comprehend! Cheers Bella! Muchas Gracias from your home country of Canada!
The whole thing reads like a western plot! Bad guys, good guys, you name it! 😜
🤠
Even if the blots were fraudulent nothing would have happened. All the media does is ignore it and the story never comes out except on substack. Its a winning strategy that for sure.
Well then we need to speak LOUDER, don't we?
People obviously dont listen to us. We are right wing anti vaxxer Trumpalos to them. If the media doesnt report it—it aint happening.
Thanks for all youre great work. God bless.
They SAY they aren’t listening to us…
We’re getting to them.
We’re poking holes in the dam, while the damn operator screams down at us, “Still standing!”
Yeah…not for long….
I pray you are right and i am wrong. Time will tell.
Can you hear me now?
Or get on Tucker Carlson's show. Do your screaming on that forum.
"Not to defend Pfizer, but simply the computer generated nature of the Western blots cannot be used to prove fraud."
I dissent. Unless it stated that those blotches - or whatever they are - were computer generated, it was fraud upon fraud. It is like claiming an animal is a real bat when it was not even a natural animal!
Pfizer’s past history sure as shit can be used to prove fraud.
It is trite to say pfizer has blotted its already much tarnished reputation even further!
It’s the same as the PCR debacle.
Convert complex molecular biochemistry from an expert task into an automated process and you have an unreliable and corruptible platform.
So we have a ‘novel’ genomic sequence provided in-silico, a computer modelled pandemic outcome and target proteins identified by Jess.
There has to be a link in there.............
All brought to us by people who find humans expendable, and because they find humans expendable. Humans cost too much money and resources while also being the only part of creation that asks preposterous questions, for instance about the authenticity of virus genomes and western blot printouts. Extremely irritating and expendable.
And the PCR test to ‘prove’ it.
Having done more than my share of western blots, I'm all in favor of machine automation. It's been done for DNA, so why not protein also? I don't get why you distrust the idea of this kind of machine.
Did you read my thoughts? I personally will never think that automating Westerns will out-do the traditional hands-on methodology. :) I know I am probably the minority in my thinking.
Among all the valid criticisms of these vaccines, it strikes me as the least problematic that drug development used modern analysis machines. Lots of researchers put the machines to good use. https://www.bio-techne.com/resources/testimonials
Well, I’d assume that the machine developer has tested its accuracy,speed and reproducibility, which hopefully exceeds that of humans. I’m not doubting your skill, nor mine, but personally I’d love to have had robotic assistance. I could have spent my time on other more human-dependent things.
If it's a 'black box', and particularly if software updates are automatic, then it is open to fraud and closed to scrutiny.
The terms of use are VERY restrictive, I have no idea of the potential implications (or not), but I do know that when hundreds of $billions are involved, if it can be used for fraud, it will be at some point.
https://www.bio-techne.com/terms-and-conditions
What other human-dependent things do you think could not be automated and done by a robot? Sounds like an advocacy for transhumanism? Where does it stop? who decides?
I come from an era, a philosophy, of science in which most people are honest with their data presentation because eventually your results are either confirmed or rejected by other labs, or even your own further work. The problem with the pharma industry is that it’s become not traditional science, but businessified and politicized charlatanism. So I can understand why people have lost trust. I still have some hope that the fraud will be revealed and that certain people will be held accountable, because otherwise the biomedical enterprise is going to be increasingly seen as snake oil.
I think it is easy to distrust also because it is known that in science generally, there have often been people who have faked research results in the past, and more specifically Pfizer is a company with a long track record of proven cases of dishonesty, and with this new type of machine, you get a new additional possibility for faking research results, as you routinely get print results that are cleaned of any unique artefacts, so you get a result document that looks much more easy to fake than a traditional western blot end result, the new end output unfortunately
is not something with difficult to fake characteristics, so depending on character of involved researcher, depending on stakes involved, invites forgery and fraud.
The mechanical steps (gel run, transfer, and Ab treatment/washes) can be automated without changing anything, but the digital image is where fraud enters. I can make a digital Western image appear however I want it to. Not a matter of distrust, but just understanding that where fraud is possible, fraud will occur. Big Pharma and Big Science have proven that in spades.
I think so. Those images look manufactured, even considering automation and the fact that they said the resulting image comes from deconvoluting another signal (I personally don't see how that should change anything, sounds like a lame excuse). Running a bunch of proteins in a gel is such a sensitive thing that some noise should be present.
That's what have been done with proteomics, but even there people still use some ''traditional'' approaches. Automatic results, specially from ''omics'' techniques should be taken with caution, even if done in good faith...
MAYBE... robo-Jess is good for the middle steps (or what a programmer might call "rapid prototyping") to take the tedium out, while a real human-Jess does the endpoint Western blots as not only a verification of the data/blots, but a verification of the results themselves.
I dunno. Maybe... but I just don't think automation belongs here. There's something specific about Westerns that should always be used to torture us lab rats. :D
My personal theory is that Pfizer used their Automated Western Blot machines to do their redactions in their clinical trial results.
I’ve read that giving robots human names (like Jess or Alexa or Sophia) humanize them for us, makes us think of them on some level as being like us. They might be made to look/act human but they are NOT human, they are machines.
Nah, people just have to name stuff.
Can’t even have a semi submersible without some wanker naming it Boaty McBoatFace
I’m curious to know why some Western blots would be automated and others done by hand. If as mentioned in the Midwestern substack comment (amazing substack btw) they have 20 why wouldn’t all be automated?
Great question!
I assume that Pfizer is a massive enterprise, and that they prioritize the distribution of robotic technology to the most urgent projects.
What time is tea and biscuits round your place, then? I'm looking forward to homemade goodness!