Undisciplinary
Undisciplinary
Good Take/Bad Take: USYD & gambling money, research misconduct at Peter Mac, & Kim Kardashian gets a full body scan
[FYI the below is an AI generated program description - lol]
Wondering how industry funding could potentially sway the direction of research? Stroll with us into the labyrinth of the University of Sydney's new Centre of Excellence in Gambling Research, partly supported by companies from the world of wagering. Listen as we peel back the layers of this complex relationship, shining a light on the possible implications, bias, and the ambiguity of the "social license" that these companies might be seeking.
Strap in as we pivot towards the stormy seas of research ethics and accountability. Our focus narrows on the intriguing case of Professor Smyth, weathering allegations of bullying and intimidation. We question the environments that incubate such conduct and the ripple effects on co-authors and fellow researchers when misconduct accusations surface. How does the return of grant funding fit into this turbulent picture, you ask? Join us, as we probe beneath the surface.
Lastly, we steer towards the intriguing world of personalized healthcare and celebrity influence on health narratives. Ponder with us on the costs, risks, and potential for over-diagnosis of full-body scans, and the paradox of quality data access. Together, we'll examine the yawning gap between those who can afford such treatments and those who cannot. We'll also question the impact of celebrities as health influencers, and the potential fallout of their messages. So, buckle up and prepare for an absorbing discussion on these vital issues!
Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health.
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" undisciplinarypod@gmail.com
Undisciplinary is recorded on the unceded lands of the Watarong peoples of the Kulin Nation in Geelong and the Gadigal peoples of the Iroha Nation in Sydney. We pay our respects to Elders, past and present. All right, so this week we will talk about some perhaps more significant issues and be equally what is it? Sanguine?
Speaker 2:I'm not 100% sure what they're most going to say wishy-washy.
Speaker 1:Wishy-washy about them. So without further ado, let's get into the first one. Say that's French again, so I'm getting the French. So our alma mater, the university of Sydney, has come under a bit of media scrutiny, as well as criticism from other public health experts and experts in gambling, for establishing a centre of excellence in gambling research that has drawn funding from gambling companies. What do you know about this and what do you think?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what I know about it is just what I read in the paper. Give me two seconds, chris. I think I'm really handily close to that. Okay, I'm just going to have to wing it because I appear to be close to that.
Speaker 1:Well, if you're talking about the Guardian article, which we will provide a link to, they have received $600,000 funding commitment from International Centre for Responsible Gambling, which the university has described as a global leader in research and education on gambling disorder and responsible gambling. And the funders of the International Centre for Responsible Gambling include MGM Resorts International, caesars Foundation, bally's Corporation, sands Inc, win Resorts, boyd Gaming Corporation's Draft Kings, fanjewel Pocomachine Company, igt and many other entities. The board of directors also includes executives from US based casino resorts, all of whom are keen for responsible gambling.
Speaker 2:Yes. So the centre's leader says that the gambling companies won't be given any opportunity to constrain or edit the research in any way, which I think for them seems to translate to a non-biased research program, and I'm just kind of extrapolating that from something further down, where the gambling folks will like yes, we really want to. Even in gambling, they really want to do evidence-based practice and love a bit of evidence-based practice, and that that should be based on thorough and unbiased research. They're happy to contribute towards any program that delivers thorough and unbiased research, which suggests that they're not happy to contribute towards any program that delivers biased research, which makes me wonder if there needs to be some sort of what makes for biased gambling research right? Is that research that kind of starts with the assumption of harms or something like that? I don't know.
Speaker 1:Well, I think two things that interest me on this topic, specifically of what makes good research in this and similar kinds of areas, seems to be access to data and access to good quality data. And the best quality data that they're going to get and this is one of the justifications from the university side of things is that they're going to get good quality data by through these gambling companies and their data sets and their infrastructure, which is the case in a lot of areas, particularly when there's industry engagement, and so I guess they would say well, you know, you've got to get evidence based because of the data that we can provide. But then there are also the costs associated with working with those institutions and costs in terms of perception, as well as undue influence, and that's where I think so Professor Sally Gainsbury says she's the center's leader, and you mentioned this before. It's saying that the gambling companies would not be given any opportunity to constrain or edit the research in any way. Now I think this assumes a very specific kind of influence.
Speaker 1:That does happen in academic research, particularly with government collaborations, where a government or ministerial office may get oversight and get final say over what gets published, and so they do have direct constraint or editing over that, but there are, as research about industry influence on research goes, there are so many other ways that they can be influenced, particularly if it's known that that money is coming from those sources that they are wanting. Is a gambling abolition conclusion possible? Will they get funding next time round If they say actually we need to support the movement to remove all pokey machines from from New South Wales pumps. That's the best way forward for responsible gambling and remove all advertisements from sporting.
Speaker 2:Yeah close down the TAs.
Speaker 1:Close down the TAs.
Speaker 2:All of that stuff.
Speaker 1:So there are. Even if there's not explicit and even if there are protections for explicit interference, there is still the broader sense of who's the context in which the research is being done and conducted. And that has happened, I think, in over the years when the various governments have tried to constrain or influence research done in universities through things like the national interest test. That's alarming and disturbing the effect that that has then had on the research community, even though on the one hand we laugh at the idea of a pub test and all that sort of stuff. But then when you try to put something through the research office they go over it with a fine tooth comb to make sure that the research could get past the pub test. So I think there's a naivety about the kind of influence that can happen through these relationships.
Speaker 2:And I think also the perceptions are really interesting. So I think it reflects poorly on the researchers because there's been so much pushback about industry funded research in other areas, I guess, in other disciplines, that it just looks a bit naive. But on the flip side I think in terms of perception it I think the phrasing in the article talked about the social license, so the positive spin. I guess that the gambling companies or the gambling bodies look at them. You know they're contributing, that they don't want to harm us, they're contributing to research on gambling harms as if this weren't a money-making thing. I mean, you know, like if gambling weren't a massive industry, you know that needs to profit.
Speaker 1:Well, and also, and I think the key thing is that they're not just getting quote, unquote, evidence-based research about responsible gambling, as you say, and that's the quote from Tim Costello, who says for gambling companies to bolster and window-dress their social license by trumpeting the Sydney University Association hurts all Australians. And I think when, particularly in New South Wales, where there has been a strong push for there to be legislation, when there are parliamentary inquiries which there have been and various Senate inquiries they, the gambling industry, get to say look at us, we are contributing to this research, we're putting our money or we're putting the money that we get from our users where our mouth is.
Speaker 2:We're putting your money where our mouth is.
Speaker 1:I thought there was also a good quote from in that article from Professor Samantha Thomas from Deakin University I was unaware of her work and that she, I guess, is a colleague within the same university who said that industry funding of research legitimizes and normalizes the gambling industry role in providing solutions to the problems they have caused. And I think broadly and this is, I think, what we talked about in the context of the James Packer donation and then also in the previous discussion a good-take-bad-take about Qatar and the World Cup is that it normalizes these industry and problematic financial relationships. If we accept money from the gambling industry, then you know we've already accepted money from the military and munitions industries. Why not go back to tobacco?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was just going to say so. It does feel a bit lazy to always come back to tobacco, but it's just such a good classic example.
Speaker 1:Well, it's also an example where universities have, you know, drawn a line in the sand and will, you know, create a narrative about how noble their cause is and they'll point to that as to you know, their the integrity of their research. But that's only, I think, serves as one example. That's increasingly being sort of the exception that proves the rule. So the university did respond and I'd be interested in your assessment of this. So the university responded by saying that research integrity was essential to our success and reputation and we adhere to a strict policy of academic research integrity, with research oversight by our ethics office.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was interested to see that. I put in the lap of the outro.
Speaker 1:That's right. So what do you think the from your understanding of the ethics office and ethics offices? How are they going to ensure that this is all going to be?
Speaker 2:great. So. So in the national statement you do have to account for conflicts of interest. But honestly, I think it would be sufficient for the researchers to say what they've said in this article. But they've got an agreement with the funders that they're you know they're allowed to publish whatever their findings are or or similar.
Speaker 2:You know there's no gag order, basically, which, as you said, is fine but doesn't doesn't deal with the issue of conflicts of interest and how entire sort of programs of researcher created and structured and and so on, in order to have these partnerships with industry which we're so strongly encouraged to form.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so yeah. So I think for me that as well leads into the second topic. I mean, unless we want to sort of, I think we can both say I just knocked over my bottle, unless we, you know. I think that we're both pretty clear that this is that our good take is that it's a bad to take money from the gambling industry. How about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was very slick.
Speaker 1:But so the next one is this research scandal at the Peter McMillan Cancer Center associated with the University of Melbourne. He reported that a study led by Mark Smith, who was one of Australia's foremost cancer researchers until 2021, when he was accused of a bunch of research misconduct issues. He published more than 150 papers and had spent 13 years working at Peter Mac. Last week, the Journal of Clinical Oncology placed retraction notices on a paper the guys had coauthored while working at Peter Mac and that that paper and the Associated Research had been funded by the National Research Council, and there has been some suggestion that there may need to repay that money, or return that money, I should say, to the National Health and Medical Research Council. So the issue seems to be about the data. Some of the data used was there was lack of supporting information about the animal database, and it seems to be just another example of research misconduct in general in relation to data. So two things are interested me and I'd be interested in what you think about it and obviously interested in any other things that you found interesting with this case. So, in reading the Herald's reporting of this, the other thing that just and this, I think, is the tie into.
Speaker 1:You know what's the research office going to do at Sydney University. On the one hand, there is this sort of bureaucratic, protocol driven approach to ethics that doesn't capture the intricacies of the institutional relationships, in that case between Sydney University and the gambling bodies. But there are also criticisms about approaches to ethics that they don't address the character of individual researchers, and that seems to be another case that has come up. Or this example of Professor Smyth, where colleagues have said, or it's reported, that he was a bully, and let me just get the other. Yeah, so an investigation panel comprising of distinguished research and senior independent did not. Oh sorry, that's the wrong thing. Why can I never find the exact quote that I'm trying to get to, to avoid being sued by somebody, by Mr Krab?
Speaker 1:So this is a he was a bully he used his reputation, status and power to intimidate. Yes, and so this is, I think, the voice scrutiny of his research importantly, importantly, yeah.
Speaker 1:So here is seemingly another classic example of the character of the researcher, particularly a male in a high profile position, being able to bully and intimidate to avoid scrutiny over research. And whether, I guess, the question being you know these sorts of things, often respond the responses of all we need more ethics training or we need to develop, you know, ethics committees. You know the same thing happened with Dr he, with CRISPR and that sort of stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, a sort of deficit and sort of educational deficit model that's right. If only they'd read the national statement.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or if only they had done a course.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh, they have done a course. Well, maybe we need to just do a different course. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:So those are the things. So I'm interested also in the sheer volume of papers that this dude published, and so it said 238 papers while he was at QAMR, which I think was from about 2014 to 2021. So let's just say seven or eight years. I don't know how many papers you published, chris, but seems like an awful lot of papers. Yeah, so that is. H index is a hundred and seventy seven, which is higher than mine. It's really interesting to me how that sort of ridiculous I don't even know what you call it- Like my name on papers is celebrated Right Like dude's got a massive H index.
Speaker 2:He must be amazing. Let's put them on our ground. It's getting some money, yeah, so nobody can possibly be that productive in any meaningful way. But it also speaks to that. I mean other people must have known what was going on right, Because it's you can't publish 238 papers in seven or eight years without a whole lot of collaborators. I just find it all really curious.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's yeah, I just want to say super easy to blame that dude because he was, you know, making stuff up, which is not what we're supposed to do when we're researchers. But he was making stuff up with the backing of an entire system that was celebrating the successes.
Speaker 1:Yes, I mean, I'd say that it's perhaps a bit more complicated.
Speaker 2:Which I know you know.
Speaker 1:But, I mean, I think what you are talking about is the research ecologies that promote and provide the sustenance for, you know, if the reports are true, that he is this bullying, intimidating kind of person, but that environment where he is named on papers, when he is, you know, named on grants, those sorts of things, or where there's other people, because, you know, this is a common, common story, that there is this reciprocal relationship that seems to go on where certain personalities, I believe with big reputations, are tolerated and I've heard the sort of ways that people are tolerated because of their reputation and that it's going to potentially, you know, lead to more grant success for the team and I guess that's the second thing that I found interesting or concerning about this.
Speaker 1:You know both of us have been involved in a lot of co-authorship of things and to be a co-author on one of these sorts of papers with you know it does reputational damage to yourself as well If one of your co-authors unwittingly or unwittingly to you does. You know plagiarism, misconduct, that sort of stuff. But then you've got a lot of trust with people.
Speaker 2:Yep, that's true, that's true. Yeah, no important point. Ok, but that includes a new选� ger of room around the corner. Yeah, I guess, reading that thing. It was interesting to me, though, that it all comes down to this one person's well character based flaws but also cheating, I guess, when I do think that there are heaps of problems also with the system.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, definitely, and that I think in the sciences there, which isn't something I know very well like the ins and outs of there, is that expectation for a higher volume of publishing and to be on multiple projects and papers. That is different to the, I guess, social sciences or humanities, where there still is the conga line of authors at times. Yeah, so anyway, I found that it was a sort of depressing read and a sort of an old story really.
Speaker 1:So, Prior to Marigans getting in the way of, you know, coming back to haunt someone, I guess.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the good take, bad take part. I'm interested in your take on this. Should Peter Mac and QAMR have to pay back their grant funding? So it wasn't clear to me. I want more detail, right. So first, it wasn't clear to me that he was the lead investigator in these grants. Yeah, for me, my hot take that I just made up right now is that if he was leading the grants and promising to do a bunch of stuff and then lying about doing it, then there's some responsibility there. If he was on a massive team, yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I think that he would have been on a massive team, because they're all on massive teams, so they wouldn't. Even if he was the lead, there would have been a team and it would have probably been across different universities, I suspect. Let's just assume that that is the case. And then there's a member, generally a member and a member of understanding between universities. I think that they, I guess, giving some of the money back. I mean, yeah, it's hard, it's a hard one to know In terms of the nuts and bolts of it, because what does that serve? Because it's likely going to be, I mean, unless the money's coming from the coffers of University of Melbourne or some other place. But yeah, it's unclear what that achieve.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I hear you, I hear you.
Speaker 1:Like if it's, you know, that's likely gone into the salary of postdocs and Lab equipment. I mean, it'd be different if it was Miser appropriate use of research funding to sort of Go traveling around on holidays or different sorts of things. If the money would have come out of his Pockets which it unlikely would, I imagine as various University policies that would protect him from that, Then maybe have to ask In Tuscany, which is? I have no idea. I have no idea and maybe he has to be, it's all.
Speaker 2:Above board today.
Speaker 1:To me and take my house from All right Loads of money and I suspect has some kind of house in Something like Tuscany, although I do believe there was a meme where she was complaining that she didn't have a jacuzzi. Kim Kardashian, yeah, kanye West had a very funny response to her and she said I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but yeah, we are talking about Kim Kardashian.
Speaker 1:Who has promoted A commercial whole body magnetic resonance imaging Service on her Instagram, and we're getting this information largely from an article Written by Heath Pado, written for the conversation, so we will provide a link to that. But this I mean ties in with your research, jane.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Not so much Kardashian related, but Just the idea of screening and the assurances that we can get, or believe that we may be getting, from Screening.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now it's a really tough one. Hey, because I think the idea Of a full body scan or a kind of whole body screening is really Intuitively nice, right, because the idea is that they can look at every bit of you and reassure you that you're okay.
Speaker 2:We don't have anything that you don't know about, sort of looking in In the recesses of your liver or whatever. Whatever I was detect, but you know, but there are so many associated harms with it and it was interesting to me that this conversation piece didn't Really get to that I he was, I mean he did obviously talk about it Over diagnosis problem. So basically, if you go looking for stuff In a body, you're going to find it. So If you did a full body scan of me right now, you know it could be that I've got a weird kidney or something like that. And then that leads down a whole sort of rabbit hole of investigation and Potentially diagnosis For something that was asymptomatic and might have been that way since I was born and might continue that way until I die. And there are always harms associated with investigating things. There can also be benefits, but not always. So it's. I mean, I get what she's saying, but don't get a full body scan, fellas.
Speaker 1:What about fellow rats?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean the All inclusive.
Speaker 1:Well, I think the other thing and this, this is the yeah. So, firstly, I think it's about $4000 to get one of these things and it seems that they can. You know, there's obviously the over diagnosis Problems that you suggested, that you can. You're just going to find abnormalities and things that could potentially require some Intervention and, depending on who's reading it and depending on your disposition, may then Make you further paranoid about trying to Get your abnormalities normalized. It seems that there are also risks with exposing your body to these huge magnetic fields.
Speaker 2:Not to MRI. I don't know. I don't think any of you know hopefully Listeners who are paying attention, let us know for you. But I don't think the MRI themselves have any Any side effects unless you've got you know well, that's what happens? I don't know.
Speaker 1:So all right. So leaving that aside, the other thing is this further Personalized, consumer driven healthcare service of. If there's money to be made here, then big players in the healthcare provision will move in that direction, such that, say, down here in Geelong, we've had maternity wards open and closed based on market demand for them, while at the same time mental health and primary care needs screaming for government funding. But private funding isn't obviously going to go to those areas. But where there is money to be made in areas like maternity or full body scans and those sorts of things, then that's going to skew the kinds of medical services available. The other thing and on the one hand I see this as a positive, but then the public health scold in me also. I could imagine a public health person like Mike Dorb having a concern like this, which is, if people do one of these things and find out that their liver's in great mick and their lungs are great despite smoking, they might then just go. I'm going to guilt free. I mean, that's what I would do.
Speaker 2:That's fine, isn't it? Well, that's right.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So my friend was in a horrific accident and this is not a good thing Like decades ago now, such that they were in the context the doctors saw his lungs and he was a smoker, and the doctors afterwards just in some conversation sent him about how his lungs look great and you're clearly not a smoker or made some kind of comment like that.
Speaker 1:I'm a smoker and it's sort of good to know my lungs look great because now I can continue to smoke guilt free or at least with the knowledge that my lungs don't appear to have been damaged in the way that those just don't smoke ads, although every cigarette's doing you damage ads, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I think there's another problem here as well, and that's that all this kind of thing is always available privately, right?
Speaker 2:So if you want a full body scan, you can go and pay for one, which is what Kim Kardashian has done, and you will, from time to time, see ads pop up about this, whether or not scan is, I actually believe there was one available at the CPC years ago, and I sort of threw my voice into the fray.
Speaker 2:Anyway, we should possibly not go into that, because I don't remember the details. The problem is, though, that, with all of the focus on a personalised approach to medicine and taking responsibility for your own health, there's this idea that it's good to look for problems so that you can deal with them. This comes to cancer screening as well the idea that the earlier you find something, the more successful it is, the easier it is to treat, or the more successful the treatment. This is sometimes true it's not always true but if you've got a portion of the population that can afford all these special things and then a much larger portion of the population that can't afford these special things, then we're going to keep with the equity problems of people getting really, really differential outcomes when it comes to the same sorts of health problems. Just not to say that everyone needs to have shitty outcomes. We've got to lower that baseline. But when there are wildly different health opportunities open to people with different incomes, then I think that's problematic. If it's a good thing, then make it available.
Speaker 1:Yes On that. And just to finish up, should Kim Kardashian be held accountable in any way in promoting this and being an influencer, should she be able to provide such things? We've seen it in other areas in relation to various fertility treatments, and some people from different medical fields get very anxious about these celebrities promoting things, but it seems to me that that anxiety is misdirected and should perhaps be directed towards themselves or their medical society governing bodies, rather than Kim.
Speaker 2:Yes, I feel like she can promote whatever she wants. It's her business. I would love it if people didn't take health advice from Kim Kardashian. We also need to remember that sometimes we really want celebrities to promote health messages. So it gets really when you say we who's? We, we Governments, that's right.
Speaker 1:Public health people. I love that when Jamie Oliver says things about food nutrition and they hate it when Pete Evans says things about it.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm just thinking about when Jade Goody, who was on Big Brother, I believe, died of cervical cancer young she was a think in her 20s. That had a really, really positive impact on underscreened people going for cervical screening, and cervical screening is one of those programs that works well and we do want people to take part in it, right? So I believe something similar happened when Kylie Minogue got breast cancer breast screening slightly more complicated, but yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, that's right and I think that I think, with Shane Warren and concerns around men having heart attacks and related to COVID also, I think, led to a spike of attempts for early detection and diagnosis around things like heart disease.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, when celebrities so what been going to their GPs for a checkup?
Speaker 1:Yeah, or maybe going to Q and on forums about the role of the various COVID vaccines and heart irregularities. All right, well, we should probably wrap up before we say something, even more ridiculous Anything you wanna promote or talk about in the last 30 seconds. We do have a I won't say the name or topic yet but we do have a great interview coming up shortly just to let you know that there will be some back to regular interview style combos.
Speaker 2:Looking forward to that one. We've found Yep. No, nothing for me to promote.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, until next time, friends. Thanks, See you.
Speaker 2:Good night, good night, good night, good night, good night, good night, good night, good night, good night, good night, good night, good night, good night, good night, good night. It's not an ethics question, but I'm really interested to hear your take. You go to a restaurant. You have mediocre food. The person says how was it? Do you say it was great?
Speaker 1:Or something. Well, that is an ethics question, and that also gets me to something. So I've been teaching this philosophy and film subject and part of which has been really great and the students are really great but part of that in teaching about Frederick Nietzsche was talking about aesthetic judgments and how we one of the readings this isn't from Nietzsche directly, but just that we make more aesthetic judgments, much more aesthetic judgments in our daily existence than we do moral judgments, and that sort of aesthetic judgments contain moral judgments as a narrower form of judgment, and that is a great example. And so I was asking them what are some examples? And they just left me hanging, so I just had to provide all these random examples as to my breakfast choice and things like that. So, yeah, I think that you do say it was great. Well, I do. Yeah, no, I do.
Speaker 2:And then I'm kind of like am I perpetuating mediocre Chris?
Speaker 1:Yes, that's right. Just like with that kid who I told not to, didn't tell off for pushing their fingers into watermelons, I'm perpetuating violence towards food.
Speaker 2:Exactly a sort of tested acceptance.