Invention Firm invented 60M scam, say feds; Sloppy Science
Date: Saturday, September 29, 2007 @ 13:50:03 UTC
Topic: Legal
From KeelyNet.com: It's a challenge to transform an invention from an idea to a
product on a store shelf. Just recently, a federal judge ordered the
operators of multiple questionable invention promotion firms to pay $60
million in connection with a scheme that defrauded 17,000 inventors.
For fees of $895 to $1,295, PTI and its related businesses promised to
evaluate the marketability and patentability of inventors' ideas. But
the firms gave virtually all inventions positive evaluations, so the
assessments were meaningless, the Federal Trade Commission reported.
PTI charged inventors up to $45,000 for alleged legal protection
and assistance to obtain commercial licenses for their inventions. The
inventors were also told that PTI would help them earn substantial
royalties from their inventions. But investigators said PTI neither
helped consumers license their inventions nor enabled clients to earn
any royalties. Consumers who have complaints about PTI should call the
FTC at (202) 326-2926 for more information. Other inventors should
question the assurances of any promotion firm before entering into a
contract, the FTC added.
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Sloppy Science
A recent Wall Street Journal write-up discussed
the findings of one Dr. John Ioannidis, who has posited that most of
the thousands of peer-reviewed research papers published every year are
full of flawed findings and analysis. The vast majority of mistakes, he
says, aren't purposeful, but stem from miscalculation, poor study
design or self-serving data analysis. The summary to his widely-cited
essay states, "Simulations show that for most study designs and
settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true.
Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings
may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias." The WSJ
article claims that "To root out mistakes, scientists rely on each
other to be vigilant. Even so, findings too rarely are checked by
others or independently replicated. Retractions, while more common, are
still relatively infrequent. Findings that have been refuted can linger
in the scientific literature for years to be cited unwittingly by other
researchers, compounding the errors." An ironic question to ask: Is Dr.
Ioannidis study subject to the same flaws he ascribes to the rest of
the scientific community? If his findings are true, what does this mean
for hot-button topics such as Global Warming? -
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