Netflix Special on VW - “Hard NOx”

Miss_Athanatos

Veteran Member
Joined
Oct 21, 2015
Location
Kansas
TDI
2015 Golf SportWagen 6-speed manual; 2016 3500 Ram Tradesman 4X4 6.7L Cummins 6-Speed manual
I've not watched the episode yet but find the monkey reference a little disturbing just because of how it appears to have been set up. However, after reading up a little on it, it appears that it was well sanctioned and approved by the car manufacturers and the scientific bodies that should have all stood up and walked away from the proposal of the test. Here's the CNN article link: http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/29/investing/volkswagen-daimler-bmw-monkey-testing-diesel/index.html
The dramatization they did for the documentary is misleading. I belong to an organization called AALAS (American Association for Laboratory Animal Science), and that sort of setup shown is not what you would see in an animal study. Typical animal handling used in labs was not observed. NHPs usually have terrible viruses and a propensity to bite people, making serious protective gear necessary for moving and handling the NHPs.

There's nothing essentially wrong with testing the Clean Diesel emissions against the ordinary diesel emissions by making the NHPs breathe the NOx as it comes out of the refining vessel. What was wrong with the study was that Clean Diesel technology did not work on the road, so it was moot as to whether the effects were more or less harmful than ordinary diesel emissions.

Also, I would like to point out that none of the NHPs were reported to have died during the experiment or been euthanized after the experiment...indicating that no great measurable ill effect was suffered by the NHPs due to the study.
 

kjclow

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Apr 26, 2003
Location
Charlotte, NC
TDI
2010 JSW TDI silver and black. 2017 Ram Ecodiesel dark red with brown and beige interior.
Oh, no doubt, no doubt. But the science allegedly quantifying the effects of second hand smoke into numbers of casualties was deeply flawed. A second wrong not making a right. Similar to this diesel case.
OK, now I see your point and agree.
 

bizzle

Veteran Member
Joined
May 21, 2013
Location
Southern California
TDI
2015 GSW SEL (totaled), 2013 Touareg Executive
Yes, that could possibly have been what was going on and my timeline could be wrong. However, that explanation does not reconcile in the least to the context of the interview with Dr. Ayala in the documentary. You can't have Dr. Ayala say they were testing and corresponding on the Clean Diesels (2009+ model years) for 60 months and then roll that testing back onto the 1.9/2.0 L 4 cyl. DIs VW put on the market starting in 1995, since those did not have an aux system to limit NOx. If you're going to bump the 60 mos. back to 2007 when the emissions standards were restricted further, that still doesn't make sense in the context, since again, the TDIs didn't have aux systems to limit NOx until 2009. :)
I'm not referring to the earlier diesels. You keep talking about the timeline and starting the testing from when the cars were released to the public but the 2009 "clean diesels" were undergoing testing for years before they were released.
 

kjclow

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Apr 26, 2003
Location
Charlotte, NC
TDI
2010 JSW TDI silver and black. 2017 Ram Ecodiesel dark red with brown and beige interior.
Also, weren't they commercially available in mid 08?
 

fastalan

Veteran Member
Joined
Jan 1, 2010
Location
Richmond BC
TDI
2010 Golf TDI Wagon
I don't have access to the video. Does anyone know which mode was the engine emission system running in the monkey test? Cheat mode or treadmill mode?
 

Miss_Athanatos

Veteran Member
Joined
Oct 21, 2015
Location
Kansas
TDI
2015 Golf SportWagen 6-speed manual; 2016 3500 Ram Tradesman 4X4 6.7L Cummins 6-Speed manual
I'm not referring to the earlier diesels. You keep talking about the timeline and starting the testing from when the cars were released to the public but the 2009 "clean diesels" were undergoing testing for years before they were released.
Yes, I agree with you about testing preceding the release of the 2009 model year TDIs. Thanks for clearing up the confusion. I did not get what you meant to convey with your original comment. For clarity, the reason I put the start of the timeline after the public release of the 2009 model year was because that seemed to correspond better to Dr. Ayala's comments than any other interpretation. I did not intend my comment to come across as argumentative with you.
 

Miss_Athanatos

Veteran Member
Joined
Oct 21, 2015
Location
Kansas
TDI
2015 Golf SportWagen 6-speed manual; 2016 3500 Ram Tradesman 4X4 6.7L Cummins 6-Speed manual
I don't have access to the video. Does anyone know which mode was the engine emission system running in the monkey test? Cheat mode or treadmill mode?
From the information conveyed in the documentary, the emissions system would have been reducing the NOx as it properly should during the study, because they had the Beetle used run on a dyno (to the best of my recollection).
 

Miss_Athanatos

Veteran Member
Joined
Oct 21, 2015
Location
Kansas
TDI
2015 Golf SportWagen 6-speed manual; 2016 3500 Ram Tradesman 4X4 6.7L Cummins 6-Speed manual
Also, weren't they commercially available in mid 08?
I imagine they were available in 2008. Typically car makers introduce new model years starting some time in the previous year...so it's reasonable to assume that the 2009 model year would have been released to the public in 2008.
 

turbobrick240

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Nov 18, 2014
Location
maine
TDI
2011 vw golf tdi(gone to greener pastures), 2001 ford f250 powerstroke
Damn Germans just aren't happy unless they are gassing something.

I can't understand how the VW executives didn't realize how horrible the optics of putting primates in gas chambers would be. Just sadistic, junk science as far as I'm concerned.
 

Miss_Athanatos

Veteran Member
Joined
Oct 21, 2015
Location
Kansas
TDI
2015 Golf SportWagen 6-speed manual; 2016 3500 Ram Tradesman 4X4 6.7L Cummins 6-Speed manual
I didn't interpret you as being argumentative. I haven't had a chance to watch the documentary, by the way, so I'm just speculating about what the timeline might be.
If you get a chance to watch it, come back and let me know what you think, tho. I am truly interested.
 

bizzle

Veteran Member
Joined
May 21, 2013
Location
Southern California
TDI
2015 GSW SEL (totaled), 2013 Touareg Executive
I can't understand how the VW executives didn't realize how horrible the optics of putting primates in gas chambers would be. Just sadistic, junk science as far as I'm concerned.
They didn't consider it because "they" didn't do the research. The car manufacturers spent research dollars toward scientists conducting research and this was but one research project those researchers did with some of the funding.

If you get a chance to watch it, come back and let me know what you think, tho. I am truly interested.
I'll probably watch it tonight or tomorrow.
 

Miss_Athanatos

Veteran Member
Joined
Oct 21, 2015
Location
Kansas
TDI
2015 Golf SportWagen 6-speed manual; 2016 3500 Ram Tradesman 4X4 6.7L Cummins 6-Speed manual
I can't understand how the VW executives didn't realize how horrible the optics of putting primates in gas chambers would be. Just sadistic, junk science as far as I'm concerned.
I don't see how it's junk science to bombard a primate with NOx from two different diesel engines to see if the different concentrations make a difference in health of the animals. It's a bit hyperbolic and misleading to use the term "gas chambers" regarding this study simply because it's VW funding the study in order to taint a reader's interpretation with images of (censored name of a German fiend). Besides that, other diesel auto makers have done similar studies with particulate matter and NOx from diesel engine emissions on humans. To my recollection, they found only people who were fat or already had health problems were ill-affected during the study.
 

turbobrick240

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Nov 18, 2014
Location
maine
TDI
2011 vw golf tdi(gone to greener pastures), 2001 ford f250 powerstroke
They didn't consider it because "they" didn't do the research. The car manufacturers spent research dollars toward scientists conducting research and this was but one research project those researchers did with some of the funding.


I'll probably watch it tonight or tomorrow.
You should watch the video before commenting. VW exec's were intimately involved with the bogus primate research.
 

turbobrick240

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Nov 18, 2014
Location
maine
TDI
2011 vw golf tdi(gone to greener pastures), 2001 ford f250 powerstroke
I don't see how it's junk science to bombard a primate with NOx from two different diesel engines to see if the different concentrations make a difference in health of the animals. It's a bit hyperbolic and misleading to use the term "gas chambers" regarding this study simply because it's VW funding the study in order to taint a reader's interpretation with images of (censored name of a German fiend). Besides that, other diesel auto makers have done similar studies with particulate matter and NOx from diesel engine emissions on humans. To my recollection, they found only people who were fat or already had health problems were ill-affected during the study.
It was a bogus study, much like most all of the "research" performed by Mr. Mengele. Just a cruelty inflicted unnecessarily, and without any benefit to society.
 

bizzle

Veteran Member
Joined
May 21, 2013
Location
Southern California
TDI
2015 GSW SEL (totaled), 2013 Touareg Executive
You should watch the video before commenting. VW exec's were intimately involved with the bogus primate research.
I've read numerous articles about the research. I also have things to say about the likelihood or extent to which executives would be "involved" in a research project but I'll save it for after the documentary if that's in fact what this is and not just re-enacted drama.
It was a bogus study, much like most all of the "research" performed by Mr. Mengele. Just a cruelty inflicted unnecessarily, and without any benefit to society.
Now you're just spouting incendiary nonsense.
 

turbobrick240

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Nov 18, 2014
Location
maine
TDI
2011 vw golf tdi(gone to greener pastures), 2001 ford f250 powerstroke
Well, I don't consider fumigating monkeys with diesel exhaust from a vehicle manipulated on a VW supplied dynomometer in order to show fraudulent emission results to be real science. The head researcher who unwittingly(?) performed the bogus study agrees.
I don't care if they were nasty, people biting, disease riddled monkeys or not. That sort of abomination of science is beyond unethical, it's downright sick.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/01/28/business/german-carmakers-diesel-monkeys.html?referer=http://www.google.com/

http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/29/investing/volkswagen-daimler-bmw-monkey-testing-diesel/index.html
 
Last edited:

bizzle

Veteran Member
Joined
May 21, 2013
Location
Southern California
TDI
2015 GSW SEL (totaled), 2013 Touareg Executive
Most of what you are saying is inaccurate and the rest is subjective.

Having just watched the beginning and last 15 minutes (where the documentary links VW to ****** and then sandwiches the content with alluding to **** gas chambers...huzzah!) discussion about the study (and I already read numerous articles regarding the study previously), the executives did not have "intimate" involvement. They had "limited" involvement in the form of an executive authorizing the purchase of a dyno and a different executive delivering the tested Beetle, none of which amounts to the implication of your statements that they were somehow directly involved in conducting NOx testing on non-human primates as if executives playing researchers in white lab coats were doctoring results.

Instead, that's standard operating procedure when a trade group commissions a research team to conduct research on its behalf. None of the research could have been conducted on living animals without institutional review. I sit on an Institutional Review Board (IRB) at my university where I represent the interests of vulnerable subjects (prisoners, juvenile delinquents, and other justice affected humans, etc.) but universities also have an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee that serves a similar purpose when approving testing on animals. In those discussions, we have to weigh the value of the research against the rights of (and possible harm to) the participants before approving a protocol. If we don't approve it, the research can't be conducted. If research is conducted without approval, it can't be published in a reputable journal.

Testing NOx impacts on primates is arguably a worthy endeavor unless one is flatly opposed to animal research. The issue that arose, and the one the lead researcher was opposed to, was that the study design involved testing a manipulated vehicle. That is, the results are important but they don't have scientific validity--they don't tell us anything about "clean diesel" as it was sold to the public. I assume he didn't want to release the study because he didn't want his research being used to promote clean diesel that wasn't actually clean, but all we *know* is that he refused to publish his findings once he found out an independent variable had been manipulated.

Making comparisons to **** gas chambers and inhumane torture gussied up as research is simply an incendiary, rhetorical device in my opinion. The use of non-humans in research is a hotly debated topic so I won't fault one's personal opinion about that aspect. As it sits, however, the problem with the study was the fact that VW manipulated a variable which seems distinct from your objections to it. Regardless, VW's role in the study was to fund it, provide the tools and vehicles to test, and then monitor the results. They didn't have anything to do with the study itself in the way that is being implied in this discussion, ie, personally gassing monkeys.

It's also important to note the differences between perspectives regarding animal research among Germans versus those same issues among Americans (Germans staunchly opposed to it with strict laws/guidelines controlling it), which is likely why they commissioned a US research lab to conduct the experiment.
 
Last edited:

turbobrick240

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Nov 18, 2014
Location
maine
TDI
2011 vw golf tdi(gone to greener pastures), 2001 ford f250 powerstroke
I won't waste any more of my time on this. I'll just say that any real scientist with any sense of ethics would be disturbed by this study. And I'm not opposed to animal research when it is conducted in an ethical manner for a just cause.
 

bizzle

Veteran Member
Joined
May 21, 2013
Location
Southern California
TDI
2015 GSW SEL (totaled), 2013 Touareg Executive
I won't waste any more of my time on this. I'll just say that any real scientist with any sense of ethics would be disturbed by this study. And I'm not opposed to animal research when it is conducted in an ethical manner for a just cause.
You aren't wasting your time so much as wasting mine.

I am a "real" scientist and a deciding member of an institutional review board approving/disapproving studies according to current legal and ethical principles.

You, on the other hand, continue to commit logical fallacies (the latest being a No True Scotsman) and hinge your argument on subjective premises (what constitutes "just cause?") cloaked in objective terminology.

If you think that your position of, "VW started from N***s and they ended up as N***s" is anything other than argumentative and inflammatory without adding anything to the conversation, you and I won't be able to come to some sort of agreement.

I wasn't even trying to give you a hard time, but the problem is you are conflating three separate points and I think the documentary does a disservice by encouraging that.

There are three points:
1. VW manipulated the testing variables, rendering the test invalid
2. This study involved animal testing. Specifically, gassed monkeys which is reminiscent of point #3.
3. VW has a particular history that Germany has difficulty handling/acknowledging.

I agree with #1, #2 is problematic for some but not all people, and the reason it's a big deal is less about the testing procedure and more to do with point #3, which is what I am objecting to.
 
Last edited:

turbobrick240

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Nov 18, 2014
Location
maine
TDI
2011 vw golf tdi(gone to greener pastures), 2001 ford f250 powerstroke
The recent revelations around this pseudo scientific, perversion of science animal experimentation have cemented one thing in my mind- I will not purchase another new VW group auto. The cars may be great, but the corporate culture is deranged, and I will not support them economically.
 
Last edited:

Mythdoc

Veteran Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2017
Location
Tennessee
TDI
2011 Touareg, 2015 Q5, 2015 Golf
^^I feel the same way. I need to feel good about how I spend my little amount of consumer dollars. The monkey experiment is just another reminder that the corporate culture of VW group was indeed deranged, as you put it. But I also “earned” the apology money, the extended warranty, and the other features of the settlement, and I intend to make use of them. After the Q5, it is hard to imagine having another VW company vehicle.

If you have a chance, watch the other episodes in the Dirty Money series. Whether it is payday lending, drug companies ratcheting up the prices of drugs by a factor of ten or a hundred times, etc, these episodes get into an area that is well worth considering because relatively poorly appreciated by our society: 1) plenty of things that are legal are still wrong to do; 2) forgiveness instead of permission is not really a viable basis for society, and other observations of this type.
 

Miss_Athanatos

Veteran Member
Joined
Oct 21, 2015
Location
Kansas
TDI
2015 Golf SportWagen 6-speed manual; 2016 3500 Ram Tradesman 4X4 6.7L Cummins 6-Speed manual
I think what bizzle is saying here is accurate. There's a lot of hyperbolic reaction going on over the experimentation on the NHPs. I don't have any idea how anyone would get IACUC approval for study protocols if the experiment included "gassing" the NHPs with diesel exhaust, much less get the study published afterward. All this moral outrage against VW over this primate testing is so misplaced.

What is especially interesting is that people are more morally outraged over a legitimate animal study than they are/were over the widespread fraud committed by VW. Not many seem particularly concerned that VW isn't going to have to answer for the fraud either, since everyone's been blinded by the EPA settlement. Business as usual, eh?
 

01JettaInTX

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 28, 2004
Location
Dallas, TX area
TDI
2000 Jetta GL TDI; 2001 Beetle TDI; 2003 Jetta GLS TDI
From the information conveyed in the documentary, the emissions system would have been reducing the NOx as it properly should during the study, because they had the Beetle used run on a dyno (to the best of my recollection).
The Beetle on the dyno in the "Hard NOx" flick was a 1999 or 2000 model.
I thought they said they tested a 2013, no?

If that's the case, the mock-up in the video was not even close to accurate.
I'm betting the monkeys in glass boxes with pure exhaust pumped directly to them was a bit of a stretch, too.
 

Mythdoc

Veteran Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2017
Location
Tennessee
TDI
2011 Touareg, 2015 Q5, 2015 Golf
What is especially interesting is that people are more morally outraged over a legitimate animal study than they are/were over the widespread fraud committed by VW. Not many seem particularly concerned that VW isn't going to have to answer for the fraud either, since everyone's been blinded by the EPA settlement. Business as usual, eh?
The monkey experiment does not outrage me *more* than the fraud. They are separate instances of the same mentality: that “a little cheating” is just how we do business these days. The monkey test *might* have been justifiable if the test was not rigged (since the Beetle was on a dyno). But the test was rigged, so the monkeys breathed Ford F-250 exhaust for no scientific reason but a fake result. That is cynical and heartless, but not *more* cynical and heartless than defrauding their own customers and an entire world’s worth of air breathers.
 

Miss_Athanatos

Veteran Member
Joined
Oct 21, 2015
Location
Kansas
TDI
2015 Golf SportWagen 6-speed manual; 2016 3500 Ram Tradesman 4X4 6.7L Cummins 6-Speed manual
The Beetle on the dyno in the "Hard NOx" flick was a 1999 or 2000 model.
I thought they said they tested a 2013, no?

If that's the case, the mock-up in the video was not even close to accurate.
I'm betting the monkeys in glass boxes with pure exhaust pumped directly to them was a bit of a stretch, too.
Yeah, that dramatization was just designed to piss people off at VW.
 

Miss_Athanatos

Veteran Member
Joined
Oct 21, 2015
Location
Kansas
TDI
2015 Golf SportWagen 6-speed manual; 2016 3500 Ram Tradesman 4X4 6.7L Cummins 6-Speed manual
The monkey experiment does not outrage me *more* than the fraud. They are separate instances of the same mentality: that “a little cheating” is just how we do business these days. The monkey test *might* have been justifiable if the test was not rigged (since the Beetle was on a dyno). But the test was rigged, so the monkeys breathed Ford F-250 exhaust for no scientific reason but a fake result. That is cynical and heartless, but not *more* cynical and heartless than defrauding their own customers and an entire world’s worth of air breathers.
Yes, I hear what you're saying. I don't mean to indicate yourself in particular in my comment. I was attempting to refer to the numerous individuals online who have commented on different news articles because animal testing was involved. I never saw so many people commenting on Dieselgate until it involved the lab animal testing.

The test results stand independent of the conclusions drawn as to whether Clean Diesel on the road is a real thing or a good thing or not. The test results were likely gathered and logged in accordance with the standards of these sorts of studies. The results would have been real and good. Any conclusions drawn from the study as to how beneficial or neutral VW TDIs were to the health of animals and humans would have been what was scrutinized and found lacking.
 
Top