If it’s not one thing, it’s another


I woke up this morning with terrible sharp pains in my knee — I guess I’d been sleeping too hard. Naturally, an article titled Assessment of the efficacy of alkaline water in conjunction with conventional medication for the treatment of chronic gouty arthritis: A randomized controlled study caught my eye. Maybe it wasn’t about sleeping in an awkward position at all, but rather, I hadn’t been drinking sufficiently alkalized water! That would be easily fixed. I waded through all the statistics to get to the final summary diagram.

Mechanism diagram of alkaline water treatment for chronic gouty arthritis.

I am reassured that my tibia and fibula, and that unexpected third lower limb bone, have not yet begun to regress and break up into little tarsal bones. I don’t know about whether I’m full of pink and purple crystals, but who knows? Maybe my knee crystals were triggered into deaghtin citcliaell geucis.

This paper was the work of the Guangdong Provincial Hydroelectric Hospital & Paper Mill. How can you not trust it?

Comments

  1. marner says

    I woke up this morning with terrible sharp pains in my knee — I guess I’d been sleeping too hard.

    I too have had several “sleep infuries”.

  2. Alan G. Humphrey says

    OK, who’s been GMOing the citrus DNA with the vertebrate DNA to get that bone-wrapped half grapefruit monstrosity in the upper left of that dAIgram™?

  3. says

    Of course there are three bones in the lower leg. They correspond to the three bones in the lower arm, as shown.
    Really, you see problems everywhere these days. Trust the Alins afcti uls. You’ll soon see improvements to your Unserton.

  4. angoratrilobite says

    Do my bones have sparkles? Does everyone have stealth hands in their legs and where is the citrus bone located? I have so many questions!!

  5. Reginald Selkirk says

    This is a dramatic success for AI image generation. The number of fingers on the hand is correct!

  6. says

    Makes me wonder if they even know what’s in the stomach waiting for that alkaline water. But at least they’re not trying to inject it directly into their joints…that I know of.

  7. laurian says

    As Professor Myers awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

  8. birgerjohansson says

    Laurian @ 8
    Excellent! Evolution has solved the problem of providing large arthropods with oxygen!
    Now PZ only needs to absorb some heroes with superpowers* and he will be the new Perfect Cell.
    .
    * Dragon Ball Z . I recommend the fan-based parodies made by Team Four Star at Youtube.

  9. birgerjohansson says

    How the hell can anyone fear AI will take contol of the world? It is like being afraid of Peter Sellers in ‘Being There’. There is an appearence of sapience, but it is angstrom-thin.

  10. birgerjohansson says

    Regonald Selkirk @ 6
    But does the hand have any black supporters with MAGA hats?

  11. cardinalsmurf says

    I see some excellent mining opportunities right under those kneecaps. Your knees could be worth millions! Untapped riches await!

  12. jack lecou says

    Makes me wonder if they even know what’s in the stomach waiting for that alkaline water.

    Or what’s waiting in the glass. Alkaline water…with lemon is a thing. Makes it taste better, you see. I don’t think you need to wonder about whether these people know what words mean.

    The, erm, illustration gives me Voynich Manuscript vibes.

  13. ealloc says

    So what exactly is going on to make such a publication possible? Who benefits?

    The “Guangdong Provincial Hydroelectric Hospital” does not exist, and likely the corresponding author does not either. (I googled the name, but just found someone at UCLA – seems a different person).

    Is it someone working for the journal padding their editorial work?

  14. drsteve says

    birgerjohansson @ 10

    I thought that movie ended with Peter Sellers on his way to taking over the US, if not the world, which was exactly what was so disturbing about it. Angstrom-thing appearances of sapience can be enough to sway a lot of people. (Here insert snide remarks about Reagan and Trump).

  15. John Morales says

    I clicked on the link, first thing I saw at the top:

    “As a library, NLM provides access to scientific literature. Inclusion in an NLM database does not imply endorsement of, or agreement with, the contents by NLM or the National Institutes of Health.
    Learn more: PMC Disclaimer | PMC Copyright Notice”

    Therefore:

    How can you not trust it?

    Because of the disclaimer?

  16. nomdeplume says

    Surely injecting bleach would get rid of those pink growths on the mutated bones?

  17. John Morales says

    [OT]

    nomdeplume, there’s a Chinese technique called ‘velveting’.
    Two main methods. One of them uses an alkaline solution for the meat.

    (Basically, the secret to many stir-frys)

  18. AstrySol says

    ealloc @15

    The “Guangdong Provincial Hydroelectric Hospital” does not exist, and likely the corresponding author does not either. (I googled the name, but just found someone at UCLA – seems a different person).

    The hospital definitely exists, it just doesn’t have any English presence. Here is a (probably safe, at least the org “Dxy” hosting the site is reputable in China) page in Chinese describing the hospital: https://y.dxy.cn/hospital/5259. Only the top-notch hospitals in China have good English presence (many of their staff probably studied abroad), most of them do not have any at all.

    The name of the corresponding author (the first one, not the last one) is also extremely common in both Chinese and (even worse) English so that doesn’t help, either. The doctor specializes in “treating gout with traditional Chinese medicine” so take that however you will.

    These kind of dAIgrams are not uncommon, especially in (probably pay-to-publish) articles from China because there is a perverse incentive to publish in “international journals” in most places: you need publication to be promoted, and if you get to publish in an international journal, in most cases it’s counted as better than publishing in domestic ones.

    How do you get an illustration in an English manuscript when you don’t know much English at all? Previously people probably will just give up and try multiple domestic ones, but now, there is a way. I would even suspect how they get the English text (not just this figure) but I don’t have time to go through this “alkaline water” BS.

  19. warriorpoet says

    Why isn’t anyone talking about the real problem here? That poor person’s hand is on backwards.

  20. says

    That image made me want to claw my eyes out. It is an offense to anyone who barely passed the primary school teaching of human anatomy.