The Fragile Masculinity of MAGA Cancel Culture

 

Censorship. Surveillance. Loss of Privacy. Big Government. Stamping Out Due Process. Embracing the Evil Empire. Rejection of States’ Rights.

As the Trump regime enacts p. 555 of Project 2025 — illegal mobilization of the California National Guard without the Governor’s permission — the loss of personal freedoms is embraced by MAGA without a trace of irony.

 

100 Days of Lies

The Number One rule of the Trump administration is to lie. That's it. That's all. Once you understand this mandate, it's easier to realize that yes, the next outrage is false too.

Trump himself stands for nothing and no one (other than his own glory and wealth). He has no principles and no morals. He demands undying loyalty from his unqualified Cabinet and staff, but he'll throw them under a bus when he considers them a liability. 

What have been the goals of the first 100 days?

• to dismantle government institutions
• to demoralize federal workers
• to destroy liberal universities
• to demolish federally funded science 
• to deport law-abiding foreign students
• to enact a eugenics-based health care system
• to ruin the economy
• to pillage the environment
  
• to establish an authoritarian state 
• to consolidate Executive power 
• to neuter Congress and the Courts
• to eliminate conflicts of interest for Oligarchs
• to ensure a dictatorship for billionaires
• to redistribute wealth ever upwards
• to glorify the prejudice of white Christian nationalists
• to starve children in Sudan
• to generate sheer chaos
• to alienate international allies
• to scapegoat immigrants, minorities, and transgender people  
• TO CAUSE FEAR AND SUFFERING

 These goals have been achieved. The US is no longer a democracy. 

Are we winning yet??

 

100 Days of Failure

Even Fox News — in a rare moment of candor and truthfulness — has a hard time listing Trump's positive accomplishments.

100 Days of Hatred

Everyone deserves human dignity and due process. 

But cruelty is the point, the humiliation is deliberate.

The New DEI Is Domination, Exclusion, and Incompetence

There are so many unqualified, white male affirmative action hires in the Trump Administration (Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Pete Hegseth are among the worst). 

I've been trying hard to picture the end game.

I've been trying very hard to understand so many things, especially the unholy alliance between secular billionaire tech bros and the Heritage Foundation (i.e., the Christian theocracy outlined in Project 2025). One proposal: They share a common delusion — an unjustified faith in their own superiority, a self-declared directive to rule the universe and live forever. All other humans are condemned.

Therefore our lives are trivial.

 

Along with many other Americans, I'm angry and dejected. But we mustn't give up. I'll continue to write, and I'll continue to protest. My voice — and my writing — have been in exile for far too long.

On being a federal employee

Unhinged Nazi controls US government

 

UPDATE (Feb 6 2025): U.S. District Judge George O'Toole Jr. has temporarily blocked the Fork in the Road fraud. However, I haven't yet been notified by the Musk youth who illegally infiltrated the computer systems at OPM.

I am a federal employee. And I will not comply with a series of illegal demands and threats, including the Fork in the Road “deferred resignation” program. It's an unenforceable sham, with no money allocated for these payouts.

Everything I write is old news by the time I finish the paragraph

An unelected oligarch has seized control of the US Federal Government. He feels entitled to execute this hostile and illegal takeover because he purchased the presidential election for Donald Trump, who has installed himself as dictator. Trump doesn't have a mandate for anything, despite what he says — he won the popular vote by only a narrow margin (49.8% vs. 48.3% for Vice President Kamala Harris). So now the Christian nationalists at the Heritage Foundation are setting policy for the rest of us, as written in their blueprint for oppression (see Project 2025).


Controlling (and Culling) the Federal Workforce Through Intimidation and Fear

Musk is treating the federal workforce like Twitter employees, meaning he wants to fire 80% of us. The “terms” of the deferred resignation offer (if you can call them that) keep changing:

January 28, 2025  (original Fork)

If you resign under this program, you will retain all pay and benefits regardless of your daily workload and will be exempted from all applicable in-person work requirements until September 30, 2025 (or earlier if you choose to accelerate your resignation for any reason). 

However, the FAQ says that employees are not expected to work at all, while some sample contracts state that employees are agreeing to work through Feb. 28 (and payment comes with a caveat: “Subject to the availability of appropriations...”).

As the deadline approaches, threats to accept the offer have escalated.

“The reality is clear: A large-scale reduction, in response to the President’s workforce executive orders, is already happening. The government is restructuring, and unfortunately, many employees will later realize they missed a valuable, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” [an anonymous] official said.

But the response thus far has been underwhelming. Recent news reports indicate that only 1% or 2% of 2.3 million federal workers have accepted the offer.¹ The deadline is February 6, 2025 at 11:59 EST 

UPDATE: A federal judge has temporarily blocked implementation of this fraudulent offer.

DOGE is a Clown Show (until it wasn't)

The Department of Government Efficiency is a make-believe entity. It has no official standing in the Executive Branch and yet issues one illegal memo after another. The most outrageous initial ploy — to “pause” Financial Assistance Programs — has been blocked by temporary stays and restraining orders. The ignorance and ineptitude of DOGE would be comical if critical programs for farmers, commercial fishermen, meat and poultry inspection, veterans, rural economic development, Medicare prescription drug coverage, the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, NSF, NIH (and thousands more) weren't stalled for an indeterminate time period.

And the irony is that... 

I would welcome a true department of government efficiency to improve IT capabilities and to reduce the delays and administrative burdens involved in every aspect of research. It's discouraging. But I'm not leaving.

Footnote

¹ Great comment: 

This is not about you—your performance, your value, your contribution to public service. This is about a billionaire panicking because his big idea is collapsing under the weight of reality. He wants you afraid. He wants you to think that staying is a risk, that leaving is the only path to survival. It isn’t.

Backed by Science? Building a lucrative spiritual empire based on potentially “questionable” publications

 image from Google Scholar

Mahendra Kumar Trivedi is the founder of Trivedi Global, Inc., a provider of health and wellness products and services. His Google Scholar profile lists 795 publications with a collective citation count of 12,032 (as of July 31, 2024). This prolific output reached its peak in 2015, with 268 papers.

“How is this possible?” you may ask. Here's the reason. Only 17 of 795 articles are indexed in PubMed. All the others were published in journals that do not meet the quality standards of MEDLINE. {This is a fact.}¹

The National Library of Medicine decides whether a journal is included in MEDLINE (the source database for PubMed) based on:

• Scope and Coverage
• Editorial Policies and Processes
• Scientific Rigor/Methodological Rigor
• Production and Administration
• Impact

So-called “predatory” journals – first documented by librarian Jeffrey Beall – do not meet the quality standards for MEDLINE.

According to Wikipedia, predatory publishing “is an exploitative academic publishing business model, where the journal or publisher prioritizes self-interest at the expense of scholarship. It is characterized by misleading information, deviates from the standard peer review process, is highly non-transparent, and often utilizes aggressive solicitation practices.”

In such journals, the time between manuscript submission and acceptance for publication is alarmingly short, leading some to question whether adequate peer review had taken place.

Here are several examples for Trivedi et al. (2015). Note that time from submission to publication was 8-10 days.²

In vitro Evaluation of Biofield Treatment on Viral Load Against Human Immunodeficiency-1 and Cytomegalo Viruses
American Journal of Health Research (Volume 3, Issue 6)
Received: 9 October 2015 Accepted: 19 October 2015

Evaluation of Plant Growth Regulator, Immunity and DNA Fingerprinting of Biofield Energy Treated Mustard Seeds (Brassica juncea)
Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (Volume 4, Issue 6)
Received: 11 October 2015 Accepted: 19 October 2015

Agronomic Characteristics, Growth Analysis, and Yield Response of Biofield Treated Mustard, Cowpea, Horse Gram, and Groundnuts
International Journal of Genetics and Genomics (Volume 3, Issue 6)
Received: 12 October 2015 Accepted: 21 October 2015

Evaluation of Biochemical Marker - Glutathione and DNA Fingerprinting of Biofield Energy Treated Oryza sativa
American Journal of BioScience (Volume 3, Issue 6)
Received: 12 October 2015 Accepted: 21 October 2015

{Qualification: Science Publishing Group claims that articles are peer-reviewed, although some have compiled evidence to the contrary.}

Why is this important? When a company tries to sell products and services that are “backed by science,” we are free to evaluate the evidence for these claims.

My previous post introduced you to Mr. Trivedi and his Divine Connection:

“Guruji Mahendra Kumar Trivedi is an Enlightened and miraculous being with Divine Embodiment, gifted to transform living organisms at the genetic level & non-living materials at the atomic level. … Guruji’s Blessing has impacted the lives of hundreds of thousands of people globally, and has been validated globally with cutting-edge scientific research.” 

 

I read a 2023 paper, The role of biofield energy treatment on psychological symptoms, mental health disorders, and stress‐related quality of life in adult subjects: A randomized controlled clinical trial (indexed in PubMed), and found irregularities and questionable results. I’m confident that some of the reported data are physiologically impossible. Thus, I urged the journal to reconsider the paper and the publisher (Wiley) to retract it from the scientific literature {if warranted}.

The bottom line (so to speak) for Trivedi Global, Inc. is net revenue from sales of Remote Blessing Memberships:

1 Blessing, $250 per month (only $200 per month for blessings from his wife, Dahryn)
2 Blessings, $400 per month ($300 per month for Dahryn)
…
Daily Blessings, $2,000 per month

Path to Enlightenment Memberships
Platinum, $10,000 per month

Caveat emptor.

 

Footnotes

¹ Any statement in curly brackets is an effort to avoid a lawsuit. See Appendix.

² Other bursts of productivity include June 2021 (19 papers) and July 2021 (17 papers). Most of these reported findings from Sprague Dawley rats.

The Appendix provides links to previous news articles, blog posts, and lawsuits related to Mr. Trivedi, followed by an egregious example of self-citation (which artificially elevates the h-index).

 

Appendix

Mahendra Kumar Trivedi : Transform Your Life With The Science Of Miracles

Mahendra Trivedi along with other Trivedi Masters have the supernatural ability to transform living organisms and non-living substances through the power of their thoughts, known as The Trivedi Effect®.

Trivedi effect® – the Skeptic's Dictionary

TE is an “unknown” energy. Well, it was unknown until 1995, when Trivedi “received 'guidance' from Universal Intelligence that the gift he had been given was now to be used for the welfare of mankind.”

The Skeptic's Dictionary also mentions several “failed” experiments that were conducted at Penn State. The results were summarized by Dr. Tania Slaweki in May 2011:

Mahendra Trivedi was tested extensively at the Penn State University’s Materials Research Laboratory on several occasions from June – September 2009, and we did not observe any changes in materials or their properties as a result of his “blessings”.  We tested MANY solid, powdered and liquid materials, including radioactive materials.  “Blessed” samples were unchanged.  While there were sporadic changes to a handful of water samples as observed with 785 nm Raman spectroscopy, it must be understood that the changes (a) were not reproducible, (b) occurred sometimes to the blessed samples and sometimes to the control samples and (c) were most likely due to a problem we were having with an unstable laser source on the Raman spectrometer, which was knowen to fluctuate in intensity and produce the kinds of sporadic results that were observed.

Mr. Trivedi sued Dr. Slawecki (see PDF) for these and other statements, but the case was dismissed.

The Trivedi Defect, by Mike Mosedale (Minnesota Lawyer, July 2015) – journalist Dennis Lang is sued.

 ...case dismissed (Techdirt, July 2016).

 

Driving up the h-factor

Self-Citations from: An Impact of Energy of Consciousness (The Trivedi Effect®) on the Physicochemical, Thermal, Structural, and Behavioral Properties of Magnesium Gluconate. Biomedical Sciences. Vol. 3, No. 2, 2017, pp. 42-54.

19 citations of their own work. 

Publishers {considered by some to be “predatory”} are listed below each reference in red.

[23] Trivedi MK, Branton A, Trivedi D, Shettigar H, Bairwa K, Jana S (2015) Fourier transform infrared and ultraviolet-visible spectroscopic characterization of biofield treated salicylic acid and sparfloxacin. Nat Prod Chem Res 3: 186.

International Online Medical Council (IOMC)

[24] Trivedi MK, Patil S, Shettigar H, Bairwa K, Jana S (2015) Effect of biofield treatment on spectral properties of paracetamol and piroxicam. Chem Sci J 6: 98.

Hilaris Publisher (OMICS Group)

[25] Trivedi MK, Tallapragada RM, Branton A, Trivedi D, Nayak G, Latiyal O, Jana S (2015) Potential impact of biofield treatment on atomic and physical characteristics of magnesium. Vitam Miner 3: 129.   

Hilaris Publisher (OMICS Group)

[26] Trivedi MK, Nayak G, Patil S, Tallapragada RM, Jana S, Mishra RK (2015) Bio-field treatment: An effective strategy to improve the quality of beef extract and meat infusion powder. J Nutr Food Sci 5: 389.  

Longdom Publishing (OMICS Group)

[27] Trivedi MK, Branton A, Trivedi D, Nayak G, Bairwa K, Jana S (2015) Spectroscopic characterization of disodium hydrogen orthophosphate and sodium nitrate after biofield treatment. J Chromatogr Sep Tech 6: 282.

Longdom Publishing (OMICS Group)

[28] Trivedi MK, Branton A, Trivedi D, Nayak G, Sethi KK, Jana S (2016) Isotopic abundance ratio analysis of biofield energy treated indole using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Science Journal of Chemistry 4: 41-48.

Science PG (Science Publishing Group)

[29] Trivedi MK, Branton A, Trivedi D, Nayak G, Panda P, Jana S (2016) Evaluation of the isotopic abundance ratio in biofield energy treated resorcinol using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry technique. Pharm Anal Acta 7: 481.  

Walsh Medical Media *

[30] Trivedi MK, Tallapragada RM, Branton A, Trivedi D, Nayak G, Mishra RK, Jana S (2015) Spectral and thermal properties of biofield energy treated cotton. American Journal of Energy Engineering. 3: 86-92.

Science PG

[31] Trivedi MK, Nayak G, Patil S, Tallapragada RM, Latiyal O, Jana S (2015) Characterization of physical and structural properties of brass powder after biofield treatment. J Powder

Metall Min 4: 134

OMICS Publishing Group

[32] Trivedi MK, Nayak G, Patil S, Tallapragada RM, Latiyal O, Jana S (2015) Evaluation of biofield treatment on physical and structural properties of bronze powder. Adv Automob Eng 4: 119.

OMICS Publishing Group

[33] Trivedi MK, Tallapragada RM, Branton A, Trivedi D, Nayak G, Latiyal O, Jana S (2015) Evaluation of atomic, physical, and thermal properties of bismuth oxide powder: an impact of biofield energy treatment. American Journal of Nano Research and Applications. 3: 94-98.

Science PG

[34] Trivedi MK, Branton A, Trivedi D, Nayak G, Gangwar M, Jana S (2015) Evaluation of vegetative growth parameters in biofield treated bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) and okra (Abelmoschus esculentus). International Journal of Nutrition and Food Sciences 4: 688-694.

Science PG

[35] Trivedi MK, Branton A, Trivedi D, Nayak G, Mondal SC, Jana S (2015) Evaluation of plant growth regulator, immunity and DNA fingerprinting of biofield energy treated mustard seeds (Brassica juncea). Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries 4: 269-274.

Science PG

[36] Trivedi MK, Branton A, Trivedi D, Nayak G, Mondal SC, Jana S (2015) Effect of biofield treated energized water on the growth and health status in chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus). Poult Fish Wildl Sci 3: 140.

Longdom Publishing

[37] Trivedi MK, Branton A, Trivedi D, Nayak G, Gangwar M, Jana S (2015) Antibiogram and genotypic analysis using 16S rDNA after biofield treatment on Morganella morganii. Adv Tech Biol Med 3: 137.

OMICS Publishing Group

[38] Trivedi MK, Patil S, Shettigar H, Bairwa K, Jana S (2015) Evaluation of phenotyping and genotyping characteristic of Shigella sonnei after biofield treatment. J Biotechnol Biomater 5: 196.

OMICS Publishing Group

[39] Trivedi MK, Branton A, Trivedi D, Nayak G, Shettigar H, Gangwar M, Jana S (2015) Antibiogram of multidrug-resistant isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa after Biofield Treatment. J Infect Dis Ther 3: 244.

OMICS Publishing Group

[40] Trivedi MK, Branton A, Trivedi D, Nayak G, Mondal SC, Jana S (2015) Antibiogram of biofield-treated Shigella boydii: Global burden of infections. Science Journal of Clinical Medicine 4:121-126.

Science PG

[44] Trivedi MK, Mohan TRR (2016) Biofield energy signals, energy transmission and neutrinos. American Journal of Modern Physics 5: 172-176.

Science PG

* Walsh Medical Media (WMM) presents peer-reviewed original research and analysis that deals exclusively with the treatment of schizophrenia and related psychoses and is directly relevant to patient care through…
https://www.walshmedicalmedia.com/publish-with-us.html

Figure 4 (Trivedi et al., 2024): Proposed schematic representation explains how biofield energy transmission forms quantum entanglement that leads to positive outcomes of this therapy. PPR, Practitioner-patient relationship; PPQE, Practitioner-patient quantum energy entanglement; E, Energy; h, Planck ’ s constant; v, Frequency.  © 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

The Miraculous Guru with an h-index of 62

 

Guruji Mahendra Kumar Trivedi is an “Enlightened and miraculous being” with a Google Scholar page, an h-index¹ of 62, and 12,031 citations of his work. Most of these are self-citations from a tangled collection of predatory journals that publish questionable papers without proper peer review (e.g., Science Publishing Group).

Guruji Trivedi claims to have the ability to harness his own...

...biofield energy to change the behaviour and characteristics of living organisms including soil, seeds, plants, trees, animals, microbes, and humans, along with non-living materials including metals, ceramics, polymers, chemicals, pharmaceutical compounds and nutraceuticals, etc.

The paper quoted above, Biofield Energy Signals, Energy Transmission and Neutrinos, was published in the American Journal of Modern Physics (Science PG) and explains how “neutrino oscillations” can account for his seemingly supernatural powers:

Based on the information available on neutrino oscillations and biofield and brain computer interface (BCI), Mr. Trivedi’s experimental results are explained by certain postulates. The neutrino oscillations require energy. This is possible by extraordinary individuals, who can negate all stray thoughts (as in meditation or intense concentration) and focus these in a single intended direction. Often, such individuals in this state emit radiation known to be halos (could be linked to photon emission). The thoughts are thus a focused beam of neutral neutrinos and can change into positive and negative on interacting with a receiver object composed of atoms and ions and replicate the original signals and thought pattern as observed in BCI and other psychic phenomena.

{Physicists, please post your comments.}

Mr. Trivedi has also published in journals from reputable publishers. One of my favorites is “A transcendental to changing metal powder characteristics” in Elsevier's Metal Powder Report. I found another in Wiley's Journal of General and Family Medicine. I have reprinted my Letter to the Editor and Publisher below, formatted for the blog.²

-- start of letter --

July 23, 2024

Dr. Okayama and the Editorial Staff of the Journal of General and Family Medicine,  

I am writing about the legitimacy of an article published in the journal:

Trivedi, M. K., Branton, A., Trivedi, D., Mondal, S., & Jana, S. (2023). The role of biofield energy treatment on psychological symptoms, mental health disorders, and stress‐related quality of life in adult subjects: A randomized controlled clinical trial. Journal of General and Family Medicine, 24(3), 154-163.

 

In this paper, the first author (Mahendra Kumar Trivedi, also known as “Guruji” on the Divine Connection website) makes extraordinary and unvalidated claims about his ability to change the state of matter – and the mental and physical health of human volunteers – via transmission of his thoughts (described as “blessing” throughout the manuscript). A peer-reviewed journal that accepts such declarations without incontrovertible scientific evidence, which was never provided, has compromised its scientific reputation. Furthermore, the study’s design is flawed and much of the data contained in the paper is implausible and inauthentic.

I am an established scientist who runs a research lab, and as I will outline below, it is ethically mandatory for the Journal of General and Family Medicine to reconsider this paper and for Wiley to retract it from the scientific literature for the following reasons.

1. The paper contends that the “randomized controlled clinical trial” (p. 154) used a placebo control condition when it did not. An experimental design that uses a no-treatment group does not control for expectation effects. Although the Abstract mentions that the placebo group was assigned to “naïve attunement” (p. 154), this procedure was not explained. It appears that the control group received no treatment or manipulation at all, and therefore cannot be considered “a placebo group” (see quote below). 
   
   

“Besides, the placebo control group subjects did not receive any blessing or attunements.”  (p. 156)




2.  The Psychological Questionnaires Scoring (PQS) used to assess mental health was “…prepared in-house with few modifications based on the standard scientific literatures, done by renowned experienced psychologists and psychiatrics, who were involved in this clinical trial study” (see p. 156). These individuals were not named, so we must assume they were authors. Although there are widely accepted standardized questionnaires that could have been used in the study, a more important concern was that the raw scores were not reported. Each symptom category consisted of only two questions, with a possible range of scores from 2 – 14. All measurements from the No-Treatment Group were on the first day of the study, Day 0 (baseline), with no follow-up. In contrast, measurements from the Biofield Energy Therapy Group were obtained on Day 90 (after treatment on Day 0) and on Day 180 (after a second treatment on Day 90). Significance for all 14 symptoms was p <0.0001, but the raw scores were not reported for either group. And we don’t know how scores for the No-Treatment Group might have changed over time. For example, Table 2 reports lower scores (a negative Mean ± SD) for the symptom “Stress and confusion” for the Treatment Group at 90 and 180 days, compared to the baseline No-Treatment Group (on Day 0).
90 days          −4.086 ± 0.7664

180 days         −6.114 ± 0.7230



3. Table 3 lists measurements for the functional biomarkers, which are the clearest evidence for unverifiable data (or error). Many of these are highly implausible, because their values are out-of-range of typical physiological levels (to an extent beyond what is seen in pathological conditions). It is unclear why these values were considered an improvement in overall health and quality of life (p. 154, 161). Concrete examples are given below.


                      No-Treatment       Treat, Day 90              Treat, Day 180

Oxytocin       88.05 ± 6.39    451.44 ± 32.93***    257.46 ± 27.62***
(pg/mL)

***p<0.001 vs. Controls
normal values, mean = 145.0 pg/mL, SD = 52.9 (Hoge et al., 2008).


17-β-estradiol  97080 ± 10140  134300 ± 17520   100250 ± 12120
(pg/mL)

Estradiol values were collapsed across male and female participants (both aged 20–45 years) and were converted from ng/mL {perhaps the units listed in Table 3 were wrong}

normal values
Male: 10 to 50 pg/mL
Female (premenopausal): 30 to 400 pg/mL

https://www.mountsinai.org/health-library/tests/estradiol-blood-test 

 

The reported levels of plasma catecholamines (below) are well beyond pathological levels, according to two separate sources.

                             No-Treatment      Treat, Day 90            Treat, Day 180


Norepinephrine     4540 ± 140      9240 ± 570***     8920 ± 570***
Dopamine             382.44 ± 6.5   1662 ± 102.3***   2000 ± 0.0***
(pg/mL)



A) normal values

Norepinephrine (pg/mL)
Seated (15 min):    177.5 to 811.2 pg/mL

Dopamine (pg/mL)
Seated (15 min):    > 36.7 pg/mL

NOTE: Small increases in catecholamines (less than 2 times the upper reference limit) are usually the result of physiological stimuli, drugs, or improper specimen collection. Significant elevation of one or more catecholamines (2 or more times the upper reference limit) can result from a neuroendocrine tumor.

https://ltd.aruplab.com/Tests/Pub/0080216


 

B) normal values

Norepinephrine    70 to 1700 pg/mL
Dopamine             0 to 30 pg/mL

Higher-than-normal levels of blood catecholamines may suggest:

Acute anxiety
Ganglioblastoma (very rare tumor)
Ganglioneuroma (very rare tumor)
Neuroblastoma (rare tumor)
Pheochromocytoma (rare tumor)
Severe stress

https://www.ucsfhealth.org/medical-tests/catecholamine-blood-test





In the final example, Klotho is an anti-aging biomarker, but the values are much below normal.

                       No-Treatment       Treat, Day 90            Treat, Day 180
Klotho            2.25 ± 0.04      11.09 ± 0.39***     17.67 ± 0.99***
pg/mL

normal values α-Klotho (pg/mL)

                                    Mean    SD     Ref Interval (5th–95th %ile)
Age 18–35 (n = 167)     932.6    575.6    392.6    2291.8


Espuch-Olivet et al., 2022.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9101232/




4. The paper presents supernatural phenomena as real (p. 155, emphasis is mine): 

“The Trivedi Effect® is a unique and scientifically proven phenomenon in which a healer can harness the inherent intelligent energy from the universal energy field and transmit it anywhere on the planet through neutrinos (biophotons).6 A renowned religious spiritual healer using biofield energy to transform the characteristics and behavior of living beings and nonliving materials through unique (thought intention) biofield energy transmission process by his physical presence and long-distance (distant healing) to heal the physical body and mind and bring emotional and spiritual balance.7” 
• The Trivedi Effect® has not been scientifically proven. Citation #6 provided no data to support this.
• There is no justification given for neutrinos to be equated with biophotons.
• It is possible that “ultraweak photon emissions” can be imaged from the human body, according to Kobayashi et al. (2009), but no evidence for this was provided in the current paper. 
  


5. On its website, Wiley endorses the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines and provides links to the Core Practices for journals and publishers:

https://www.wiley.com/en-us/network/publishing/research-publishing/editors/committee-on-publication-ethics-cope-101

 

As I have demonstrated, the claims in Trivedi et al. (2023) are beyond the realm of empirical science, and a reputable medical journal should not publish them. Wiley, as a supporter of COPE, should subscribe to ethical standards in peer review and follow the official guidelines for considering whether a retraction is appropriate. 

Sincerely,

[my real name]

 

Links and References

ARUP Laboratories. Catecholamines Fractionated, Plasma. https://ltd.aruplab.com/Tests/Pub/0080216 [retrieved on 07/22/2024]

COPE. Retraction guidelines. https://publicationethics.org/retraction-guidelines [retrieved on 07/23/2024]

Divine Connection. Guruji Mahendra Kumar Trivedi is an Enlightened and miraculous being with Divine Embodiment, gifted to transform living organisms at the genetic level & non-living materials at the atomic level. https://divineconnection.org/about-guruji-trivedi [retrieved on 07/22/2024]

Espuch-Oliver, A., Vázquez-Lorente, H., Jurado-Fasoli, L., de Haro-Muñoz, T., Díaz-Alberola, I., López-Velez, M. D. S., ... & Amaro-Gahete, F. J. (2022). References values of soluble α-klotho serum levels using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay in healthy adults aged 18–85 years. Journal of clinical medicine, 11(9), 2415. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9101232/

Hoge, E. A., Pollack, M. H., Kaufman, R. E., Zak, P. J., & Simon, N. M. (2008). Oxytocin levels in social anxiety disorder. CNS neuroscience & therapeutics, 14(3), 165-170. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1755-5949.2008.00051.x

Kobayashi, M., Kikuchi, D., & Okamura, H. (2009). Imaging of ultraweak spontaneous photon emission from human body displaying diurnal rhythm. PLoS one, 4(7), e6256. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0006256

Mount Sinai. Estradiol blood test. https://www.mountsinai.org/health-library/tests/estradiol-blood-test [retrieved on 07/22/2024]

UCSF Health. Catecholamine blood test. https://www.ucsfhealth.org/medical-tests/catecholamine-blood-test [retrieved on 07/22/2024]

THE WILEY NETWORK. Committee On Publication Ethics (COPE) 101 For Editors. https://www.wiley.com/en-us/network/publishing/research-publishing/editors/committee-on-publication-ethics-cope-101

-- end of letter --

 

Footnotes

¹ The h-index is a metric that considers an author's productivity and the citation impact of their publications. [ADDENDUM July 30 2024: according to Wikipedia. Others say it's easily manipulated (see first comment).]

² The tables are not pretty.

Why are "Love Languages" so popular, when they're completely inaccurate?

I joined an online dating site a few months ago.¹ Besides being asked about my sun, moon, and rising signs (?), I was puzzled by the following question.²

My love language? I'm supposed to choose only one answer? 

Gary Chapman has been a pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, NC for 50 years. In 1992, he published a book based on his experience of advising heterosexual couples on the best ways to have a harmonious marriage. His notion of 5 Love Languages is based on conservative Christian gender roles, although subsequent editions are “less blatantly misogynistic.” Nonetheless, the popularity of his ideas extends well beyond this initial demographic and has (ironically) invaded very Queer spaces.

Anyone can take the The Love Language® Quiz. I quit after the first question because it forces you to choose between “a loving note/text/email for no special reason” and a hug. Under any and all circumstances. 

Even my cat has more than one love language. There are three, which vary according to her needs:³

• petting
• play
• food

And as humans, why must we limit ourselves to the five choices above, when the possibilities are endless? Here are some examples.⁴

New Love Languages
by James Folta and Kasey Borger

Deciding Where to Eat
Let your stressed-out partner know you’re for real by choosing a spot to eat. This is a love language that every single person desires, but almost no one can express. Looks like it’s frozen pizza again.

Talking About Your Commute
There is an extremely high concentration of individuals with this love language in New York and LA. Going on and on about trains, or highways, or traffic, or “I think it took me 25 minutes last time, but this time it took 35 — weird” is the only way this group can show their sweetie they care.

Explaining How You Feel About Facebook
Some people can only express their love by unpromptedly exclaiming that they’re going to delete their Facebook, and for real this time. Studies show this can be hard to discern as a love language because it is insufferable.

 

...and my personal favorite:

Replying to But Not Liking Tweets
This is a dark and horrific way to express affection, but we must begrudgingly acknowledge it.

Love Languages on a Likert Scale

As any decent social psychologist will tell you, The Love Language® Quiz has poor psychometric properties, meaning that the validity and reliability of the measurement instrument is very low. A remarkable number of studies have investigated the concept of love languages, and there is no empirical support for the idea, as recently reviewed by Impett, Park, and Muise (2023). A major issue is the way that Chapman frames his questions (as forced choices between two options). Instead, rating each item on continuous Likert-type scales reveals no correlation between scores on the quiz and scores on the continuous measure. “These findings discount the notion that each person has a primary love language and illustrate that people value all five love languages but perhaps in different contexts,” said Impett and colleagues.

So why are Love Languages so popular?

“If I had to pick one reason why I think many couples find Chapman’s book to be helpful,” says [co-author Haeyoung Gideon] Park, “it is not because they learned their own or their partner’s love language but because it gets people to identify any currently unmet needs in their relationship and opens up lines of communication to address those needs.”

 

Footnotes

¹ I'm not saying which one. I'm in a demographic that absolutely no one cares about.

² Clearly, I do not belong in my own demographic.

³ Sometimes, she enjoys more than one at the same time (e.g., petting while eating).

⁴ When forced to choose, my preferred love language is Sarcasm and Hyperbole, which does not make me popular with the online dating set.

Reference

Impett EA, Park HG, Muise A. (2023). Popular Psychology Through a Scientific Lens: Evaluating Love Languages From a Relationship Science Perspective. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 2023 Dec 7:09637214231217663.

 

- click to enlarge Table - 

 

Table 1.  Impett, Park, and Muise (2023).

I'm thinking about moving this blog...

 ...to another platform.

 

Hi, it's been a while. I haven't written anything this year. My last post was December 31, 2022.

The main reason is that I've had to deal with more loss and grief in my life. Someone close to me was diagnosed with cancer, endured months of radiation and chemotherapy, and died anyway.¹ I've also had some deflating garbage to wade through at work. My enthusiasm for doing anything has been rather low.

Besides all that, Blogger is a terrible platform for blogging. The interface changed a while a back and ever since then, composing in the little box has been unpleasant. It takes forever to get the formatting and spacing right. I could modernize the look from a “classic” theme ² to one that has a “Layout” view...

 

...but that doesn't improve the writing experience.

So. I already have a WordPress blog. I may start posting there. The old neurocritic.blogspot.com site would become an archive of posts from 2006 – 2022.

 

The bigger question is whether I have anything relevant to say any more. 

 

Footnotes

¹ ...less than three months later. If you ask me, the cause of death WAS the treatment (and its side effects). 

² “Hey there, 2004 wants their Rounders template back.” An SEO Guy even blogged about 11 Huge Reasons to AVOID Blogspot in 2023.

³ There are other platforms, sure. In a hilarious meta-example, a post on Medium provided a tutorial on Substack, which started as a platform for e-mail newsletters (whether monetized or not). But it also has a very blog-like look — here's Margaret Atwood's, for example. Now they have Substack Notes, which is in the running as yet another Twitter replacement. Here's a thread on dumplings.