Archive for category Science
Has the media gotten it right about vaccines and autism?
Posted by CyberLizard in Science on December 11, 2008
It’s a relief to hear an article from the mainstream media that makes Jenny McCarthy sound like the frickin’ idiot that she is. NPR had a piece on Morning Edition today; an entirely factual piece that makes no concessions to the whackaloonery spouted by the likes of Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey. In his intro, Steve Inskeep basically starts off by saying that there is no connection between vaccines and autism. The following article actually uses the phrase fear-mongering with regard to the coverage of the supposed controversy surrounding vaccines. The only frustrating thing is that the only thing that makes them take notice is that the “pro-vaccine forces” now have their own celebrity, in the form of Amanda Peete. One of the best things she does as a celebrity spokesperson is to explicitly say that she is not and expert and if people want to know about science, they should talk to a scientist. In this vein, she has teamed up with Dr. Paul Offit, author of Autism’s False Prophets, who provides some great commentary in this article.
I suggest you listen to the actual article, the text on the website appears to be a paraphrasing of the audio.
For some background on this whole subject, ScienceBlogs recently held a book club around Dr. Offit’s book, in which I was fortunate enough to participate. It’s a terrific source of factual information about the manufactuversy surrounding the vaccine-autism “debate”.
I’m hoping that this means that we have turned a corner and are starting to put the wingnuts like McCarthy back out on the fringes where they belong. It’s about time that the MSM has begun to embrace fact over fiction in this area. Let’s see if it’s catching.
Proof that science rocks!
Posted by CyberLizard in Science on December 5, 2008
GrrlScientist has brought to my attention yet another wonderful example of musical scientific magnificence. Take a look. Then go take this test. Let me know how you did. (I got 87% beeyachs! Hooray for high school chemistry!)
Just in time for Squidmas: PZ Myers come to Florida!
Posted by CyberLizard in Atheism, Blogging, Local & State, Science on December 4, 2008
I am completely geeking out here. The author of the Pharyngula blog, the communion-wafer descecrating, cracker-gate inciting professor of biology that everyone loves to hate, PZ Myers, is coming to Florida!!!!!!!11!!!1!eleventyone!1
In his words:
I’ll be speaking at the University of Central Florida on Friday, 5 December, at 7pm in Communications Building 101. Afterwards, we tentatively plan to adjourn to the Lazy Moon for refreshments — we can’t be certain because it’s a pizza place in a college town, so we may not be able to squeeze in, depending on how many show up. I’ll post an update if we have to move elsewhere.
On Saturday, 6 December, I’ll be speaking at Rollins College, at 6:30pm in Crummer Hall. I don’t have specific post-babbling plans there, yet, so perhaps someone can suggest something.
I’ve never been to hear a blogger speak before. My geekness is complete. I am totally going to see him.
Some thankfulness
Posted by CyberLizard in Science on November 26, 2008
It’s the day before Thanksgiving, so naturally thoughts turn towards self-reflection and thankfulness. One particular thing stands out this year. My sister-in-law is currently sitting in a hospital bed, 35 weeks pregnant, about to undergo an amniocentesis to determine if the baby’s lungs are developed enough to be delivered.
I am thankful that we live in a time where science, and particularly medicine, has developed to the point where a potentially life-threatening situation can be averted. I realize there are lots of valid concerns about the rate of c-sections and other interventions in birth; concerns which I share and have been vocal about. But what it really comes down to is that we all want our mothers to give birth to a healty baby in the safest way possible.
I am thankful that we have enlightened midwives, home-birth advocates, lactivists and others championing the cause of the mother and baby. And I am also thankful for a sophisticated and advanced medical establishment that can, in many cases, snatch life from the jaws of death and provide a net to catch those that would otherwise fall.
So to my sister-in-law, who will be sitting in the hospital this Thanksgiving, I give thanks that you are alive and well and for the minor miracles of technology that let you listen to that tiny little heart beating inside the tiny little being inside of you. I’m thankful that I am fortunate enough to be able to visit you this christmas and to meet my little niece.
Don’t let us down this early
Posted by CyberLizard in Politics, Science on November 6, 2008
I mean, you’re going to let us down at some point, Mr. President-elect. You’re human. It’s inevitable. But you don’t have to do it this soon! I mean, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as head of the EPA? How much more anti-science can you get than an antivaccine wingnut and a thimerosal /mercury conspiracy theorist?
As Orac points out:
…he has been launching despicable attacks against anyone who dares to call him for his antivaccine winguttery, accusing them of “hating mothers,” all the while cherry-picking studies, conspiracy-mongering, and ignoring the great mass of evidence that does not support his viewpoint.
So what’s the big deal? you say. EPA doesn’t deal with vaccines.
True enough. But RFK, Jr. has demonstrated himself on this issue not only to be prone to dubious science, but to have become a true believer in one of the most outrageous and dangerous forms of pseudoscience out there: antivaccinationism, or vaccine rejectionism. If you’re trying to build an administration ostensibly devoted to using the best science as the basis for public policy, and the EPA is one agency where that is incredibly important, you do not want someone who is so prone to pseudoscience and promoting misinformation not just when it comes to mercury in vaccines, but when it comes to the very area where he claims expertise, the environment, where he blames Katrina on global warming, for instance (not even Al Gore does that). Indeed, his assaults on fact and science are legendary, right up to describing the small Cuyahoga River fire (which lasted only 30 minutes and was never caught on film) as “exploding in colossal infernos.” Apparently, any “science” is good to him, as long as it appears to support his agenda. Add to that his “not in my backyard” hypocrisy in opposing wind power proposal off of Martha’s Vineyard, and it’s hard for me to comprehend how Obama could consider him for a post even for a moment.
Let us at least pretend that we’ve got a pro-science president for a little while longer. *sigh* I guess the political machine wears you down quickly. I’ll just keep my fingers crossed that he’ll change his mind. Stranger things have been known to happen.
I’m Sick
Posted by CyberLizard in Me, Science, WTF on September 19, 2008
We all knew that, why is that news? This is not my usual mentally-sick sickness I’m talking about. You know, the sickness that manifests in inappropriate jokes, black humor, snarky comments, biting sarcasm, et al. No, my sickness this time is caused by a little thing known as a virus. I’ve got a cold flu black death. I’m dying. All right, technically we’re all actively engaged in the process of dying. And the intellectual part of my brain is telling me that I’m not going to die anytime soon, much less because of this little bug. But that’s not what my body says.
Except, viruses don’t exist. The germ theory is an illusion. I have seen the light, and it comes in the form of the blinding stupidity of one Robert O. Young who tells us:
One must challenge everything in the modern construct of
immunology and what is said to be the immune system. The basis of modern immunology is founded on Louis Pasteur, the fraud, impostor, deceiver and self promoter. There is a serious problem to where every word and part of the anatomy must be questioned to find their use and function because of the fraud of Louis Pasteur.
I mean, how can one deny the brilliance of his logic when describing influenza:
For example, the word influenza means influence. Originally, influenza was said to come from the stars or heavens. The Avian Influenza is an influenza of a bird influence. More specifically, it is an influence of bird waste. The bird consumption industry in Southeast Asia is overcrowded to the point that the chickens are consuming their own waste, producing an over-acidification of the birds and workers that must work in the acidic air and waste.It could be more accurately called Acidic Bird or Chicken Excrement Influenza that is only contagious to those consuming acidic birds, like chicken or breathing chemically altered air from chicken excrement. Because chickens do not have a urinary tract system, like humans and animals they are more likely to absorb their own acidic urine into their tissues. I guess you could say that’s what makes chicken flesh or turkey flesh taste so juicy and why chicken or turkey flesh should never be consumed by humans!
Ahhh, the stupid, it burns more than the fever coursing through my body caused by the non-existant virus:
The word virus is originally Latin meaning poison, as in snake venom, (being too acidic). When a serious snake bite releases venom or acid into the skin and soft tissues, the small sweat vessels become so enlarged that red corpuscles can flow into the tiny seat glands, showing red skin patterns and allowing the venom or acids to escape through the skin. Acidity dissolves and enlarges blood vessels for the movement of acidic fluids or gases. Alkalinity constricts and normalizes the blood vessels.The point being that viruses are molecular liquids or gases (venom) that can be created by chemical imbalances in humans, plants and animals (by malnutrition or toxic acidic food and/or drink consumption), also created in humans, plants and animal glands, sometimes used in defense (snake venom) or emergency (overactive adrenals), also can be crystallized in laboratories, rarely, if ever crystallized in vivo, and foolish to call viruses contagious when viruses are nothing more than acidic liquids or gases from biological transformation or rotting matter.
The brilliant “scientist” leaves us with these thoughts to ponder:
As you contemplate the cause of the flu, cold or any so-called infection, may I suggest that each of us take personal responsibility for the consequences of our choices, rather than blame a phantom Avian Influenza virus, cold virus, flu virus, cancer virus or some non-existent HIV virus. If you get sick, it is your own fault and not the cause of some phantom virus that you can blame to cover your own lifestyle and dietary transgressions. Save your money and save your life by making alkalizing and energizing lifestyle and dietary choices. This is where true immunity is found — not in a vaccine or a drug which are all acidic and poisonous to the body but in living an alkaline lifestyle.
Sigh. So much for my attempts to lay the blame at the feet of microscopic little buggers for my illness. Instead it’s because I had that glass of lemonade.
Many thanks to Orac for introducing me to the truth about germs.
I won’t be buying a GM car anytime soon
Posted by CyberLizard in Politics, Science on September 17, 2008
Bob Lutz was the guest on the Colbert Report tonight (last night, it’s after midnight. whatever). He’s there to talk about the Volt, GM’s new electric car. Ok, cool. Except Mr. Lutz isn’t so cool. It would appear that he is a climate change denialist. Came right out and said he thought the planet might be warming, but didn’t believe the “CO
Well, he apparently felt the need to out do him self. When Colbert got into the “man talk” and asked him if the Volt was sexy, if it would get him laid, Lutz responded that it might, but that it would attract a different type of woman. What type is that, you may ask? “…a lot of no makeup, environmentally aware [mumble]” women. Say what? Maybe I’m overreacting, but that sounds like a slam to me. Given Lutz’s disregard for the environment it wouldn’t surprise me that his attitudes towards women get the same regard.
Some confirmation of what I’ve suspected
Posted by CyberLizard in Politics, Science, WTF on September 16, 2008
I have been struggling to find some logical reason for the Republicans refusal to acknowledge reality. The hypocrisy displayed by the republican party this election cycle is just astounding. Even when they are flat-out proven wrong, the right-wing pundits keep spouting the same garbage.
Fortunately, I’m not the only one to notice. Jonah Lehrer of the blog “Frontal Cortex” has a good summary of this phenomenon:
I think this experiment helps explains a rather disturbing amount of our political discourse. What it neatly demonstrates is that the main reason so many campaigns traffic in dishonest allegations and pseudofacts is that, when it comes to voters, the facts don’t really matter. Most of us are just partisan hacks:
Political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler provided two groups of volunteers with the Bush administration’s prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. One group was given a refutation — the comprehensive 2004 Duelfer report that concluded that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before the United States invaded in 2003. Thirty-four percent of conservatives told only about the Bush administration’s claims thought Iraq had hidden or destroyed its weapons before the U.S. invasion, but 64 percent of conservatives who heard both claim and refutation thought that Iraq really did have the weapons. The refutation, in other words, made the misinformation worse.
A similar “backfire effect” also influenced conservatives told about Bush administration assertions that tax cuts increase federal revenue. One group was offered a refutation by prominent economists that included current and former Bush administration officials. About 35 percent of conservatives told about the Bush claim believed it; 67 percent of those provided with both assertion and refutation believed that tax cuts increase revenue.
In a paper approaching publication, Nyhan, a PhD student at Duke University, and Reifler, at Georgia State University, suggest that Republicans might be especially prone to the backfire effect because conservatives may have more rigid views than liberals: Upon hearing a refutation, conservatives might “argue back” against the refutation in their minds, thereby strengthening their belief in the misinformation. Nyhan and Reifler did not see the same “backfire effect” when liberals were given misinformation and a refutation about the Bush administration’s stance on stem cell research.
I had to read this a few times to wrap my head around it. Basically, it shows that more people believed the lies after seeing proof of its fallacy than before. WTF?
He continues:
The Princeton political scientist Larry Bartels analyzed survey data from the 1990′s to prove the same point. During the first term of Bill Clinton’s presidency, the budget deficit declined by more than 90 percent. However, when Republican voters were asked in 1996 what happened to the deficit under Clinton, more than 55 percent said that it had increased.
Again with the denial of reality. Is this really so hard to comprehend:
Or how about this one? To difficult to process?
Yeah, right, “Drill, baby, drill”. Graph from ::Architecture 2030
Anyway, back to the analysis:
What’s interesting about this data is that so-called “high-information” voters – these are the Republicans who read the newspaper, watch cable news and can identify their representatives in Congress – weren’t better informed than “low-information” voters. (The sole exception was Republicans who are ranked in the top 10 percent in terms of political information. As Bartels notes, it’s only among these people that “the pull of objective reality begins to become apparent.”) These citizens According to Bartels, the reason knowing more about politics doesn’t erase partisan bias is that voters tend to only assimilate those facts that confirm what they already believe. If a piece of information doesn’t follow Republican talking points – and Clinton’s deficit reduction didn’t fit the “tax and spend liberal” stereotype – then the information is conveniently ignored. “Voters think that they’re thinking,” Bartels says, “but what they’re really doing is inventing facts or ignoring facts so that they can rationalize decisions they’ve already made.” Once we identify with a political party, the world is edited so that it fits with our ideology.
Sigh. Still, I feel the need to keep preaching, even if it is only to the choir.
The Oh of Pleasure
Posted by CyberLizard in Science, Sex on September 12, 2008
The headline caught my eye, I must say:
Stroking reveals pleasure nerve
Thank you, Jenny Carpenter, Science Reporter for the BBC, for this hard-hitting piece of investigative journalism.
A new touch-sensitive nerve fibre responsible for the sense of pleasure experienced during stroking has been described at a UK conference today.
Oh, it gets better:
The nerves tap into a human’s reward pathways, and could help explain why we enjoy grooming and a good hug, a neuroscientist has explained.
His team used a stroking machine to reveal the optimal speed and pressure for the most enjoyable caress. (emphasis mine)
I know a few people who would like to get their hands on that machine.
In order to isolate the touch-sensitive nerves responsible for the pleasure experienced during stroking, Professor McGlone designed a “rotary tactile stimulator” – a high-tech stroking machine.
“We have built some very sophisticated equipment, so the stimulus [of stroking] is very repeatable.”
Now this is the kind of science I can get into! Unfortunately, the article goes on to destroy my hopes and dreams:
Professor McGlone points out that these touch nerves are not responsible for the pleasure experienced from rubbing sexual organs, nor are they found in a person’s palms or soles.
Well, then, what’s the point?
Science in da’ house!
Posted by CyberLizard in Science on September 10, 2008
Since I’ve already introduced you to this science music, I figure I should broaden your horizons even more. It’s especially appropriate today because they just fired up the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) this morning. Enjoy.
Hat tip to GrrlScientist for reminding me about the big event today and its musical significance.
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