Envoronment
February 8, 2012
erv
Zinc supplements for severe childhood pneumonia More woo, or a way to save some childrens lives?
Respectful Insolence
An animal rights zealot faces her comeuppance I was going to write about that article about massage therapy and the gene expression changes it causes, but when I went to look up the actual paper and found out, to my great disappointment, that our institution still doesn't...
February 7, 2012
Respectful Insolence
The vilest antivaccine lie that won't die: Shaken baby syndrome as "vaccine injury" Way back in the day, when I first encountered antivaccine views in that wretched Usenet swamp of pseudoscience, antiscience, and quackery known as misc.health.alternative, there was one particular antivaccine lie that disturbed me more than just about any other. No,...
February 6, 2012
Pharyngula
Dear Jezebel There's a reason I promote atheism and skepticism coupled with feminism, and it's not because I'm trying to foist a feminist ideology on skepticism. It's because skepticism drives me to consider discrimination and injustice as wrong, not just in an...
erv
Why havent we cured cancer yeeeeeeeeet? Tumors evolving resistance to therapy... $&#@!!
USA Science and Engineering Festival: The Blog
Epidemics? Typhoid Fever? Festival Author Julie Chibarro Discusses her Novel Deadly Sitting elbow to elbow with strangers in the movie theatre is nothing new to the average American. However, when you are cramped in a packed theatre and you hear a cough every now and then while watching the movie Contagion, well that's another story. Even if you are viewing this movie in the comfort of your home, your mind will start to wonder about the thousands of hands that could have touched this disk you received in your mailbox this afternoon from Netflix. Then it begins..."What have I been exposed to?" My irrational fear as well as fascination about epidemics first grew after the movie Outbreak and now once again with Contagion. Lucky for me, I will have the opportunity to meet author Julie Chibbaro at this year's Festival. Julie Chibbaro is a Festival Featured Author and in her blog post below she offers a little glimpse into her new novel Deadly. In Deadly, Chibbaro digs deep into the typhoid fever epidemic in the early 1900's and the life of the notorious Typhoid Mary.
Respectful Insolence
"Energy chelation" therapy: Scientific criticism meets common tropes of CAM apologists It's amazing how fast six months can pass, isn't it? Well, almost six months, anyway, as it was five and a half months ago that I wrote about a particularly execrable example of quackademic medicine in the form of a...
February 4, 2012
Class M
Calling it like it is Two examples of why blogs are better than mainstream news coverage, when it comes to confronting reality and doing something about it, one from the climate wars, one from the front lines of women's health. First, Andy Revkin, a former...
February 3, 2012
Respectful Insolence
Placebo effects are "proof" that God exists? A couple of weeks ago, I made the observation that there seems to have been a--shall we say?--realignment in one of the central arguments that proponents of "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) and "integrative medicine" (IM) make. Back in the...
February 2, 2012
Respectful Insolence
Microsoft, Merck, and Bill Gates: Eugenicists? Since I wrote about a man who is arguably the biggest seller of quackery on the Internet, namely Joe Mercola, yesterday, I thought I'd turn my attention to someone who is arguably another of the biggest promoters of quackery on...
February 1, 2012
Dean's Corner
New Anthrax Scare in Pakistan Color-enhanced scanning electron micrograph shows splenic tissue from a monkey with inhalational anthrax; featured are rod-shaped bacilli (yellow) and an erythrocyte (red) Credit: Arthur Friedlander A university professor has allegedly mailed anthrax to the Pakistani prime minister's office in...
Pharyngula
Big Charity It must be tough running a charity. You've got a cause you care deeply about, and you're constantly juggling the game of having to spend money (in administration, advertising, staff) to raise money (for the cause!), and worse, of...
Respectful Insolence
Joe Mercola: Proof positive that quackery sells For as many benefits as the Internet and the web have brought us in the last two decades, there are also significant downsides. I could go into all the societal changes brought about by the proliferation of this new technology,...
January 31, 2012
Respectful Insolence
The annals of "I'm not anti-vaccine," part 9 (The first volley of 2012) One of the most common retorts that antivaccine activists like to make, usually in the most wounded, self-righteous tone with the most wounded, disgusted expression on their faces that they can manage, is that they are "not antivaccine but rather...
January 30, 2012
Respectful Insolence
Thanks, CWRU, for forcing me to get the paper bag out again It's rare that I have much in the way of reluctance to leap into writing about a topic. Any regular reader of this blog should know this to be true, given the topics I regularly take on and how often...
January 29, 2012
Dean's Corner
Ritalin's Fallacy Diffusion MRI Tractography in the brain white matter. Some drugs work well because they are designed to hit a single, well understood target. Consider penicillin. In a simplified sense, penicillin destroys a single enzyme that bacteria need to divide...
January 27, 2012
Tomorrow's Table
Nothing more fun than making discoveries Nothing more fun than making discoveries in nature and then seeing them used for the public good
Respectful Insolence
Vaccines are "transhumanism" that subverts evolution? In the more than a decade since I first discovered, to my shock, that there are actual people out there who not only don't believe that vaccines are safe despite overwhelming evidence that they are but in fact believe that...
January 26, 2012
Greg Laden's Blog
Vaccines Save Lives I would have used a different script, in part, but the animation is good and it makes the point. Hat Tip: Deanna Joy Lyons...
Respectful Insolence
Still more evidence that Morgellons disease is most likely delusional parasitosis, 2012 edition It's been nearly a year since I last discussed a most unusual malady. Part of the reason is that the opportunity to discuss it hasn't occurred recently; usually I need some spark or incident to "inspire" me to write about...
January 25, 2012
erv
Perfluorinated Compounds (PFCs) in the bloodstream can interfere with vaccine response Environmental chemical has a negative impact on vaccine responses-- expect anti-vaxers AND 'toxin gambit' wooers to spontaneously explode.
Respectful Insolence
$#*! skeptics say Ha! I must admit, I've said probably about 50% of these things at one time or another, maybe more: Hmmmm. Maybe I need to come up with new "shit." Oh, and, by the way, I've been mentioned on PZ's blog...
Respectful Insolence
If this is true, the Dutch must be drinking in lots of information! If there's one thing about homeopaths, it's that they're indefatigable in their dedication to their unique brand of pseudoscience. They're also endlessly protean in their ability to induce their explanations for how homeopathy is supposed to "work" to evolve into...
January 24, 2012
erv
HIV Snake Oil 'cure' leads to arrests in Uganda Snake-oil salesmen arrested for selling $210 'miracle cure'.
Respectful Insolence
Tactics and tropes of the antivaccine movement I've been an observer and student of the antivaccine movement for nearly a decade now, although my intensive education began almost seven years ago, in early 2005, not long after I started blogging. It was then that I first encountered...
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“Lying is exclusively for doctors I have to see for something once and don't trust, or don't have a relationship with. My regular docs have all the info, and I have no problem giving them all the gory details.” Staceyjw on Your daily healthy imagination question: Have you ever lied to your doctor? Why?
Top Lists
- 1Planning for Irene : Casaubon's Book
- 2'Not responding well to vaccines'-- Separated by a common language : erv
- 3Shrimp on treadmills, laundry-folding robots, and the problem of ridiculing research : The Pump Handle
- 4"Excuse me, there's some food in my bugs!" : Greg Laden's Blog
- 5No place to sit down : Greg Laden's Blog
- 1An animal rights zealot faces her comeuppance
Orac 02.08.2012
- 2Still more evidence that Morgellons disease is most likely delusional parasitosis, 2012 edition
Orac 01.26.2012
- 3More trouble for Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski
Orac 01.20.2012
- 4Andrew Wakefield: Recognized as the Great Science Fraud that he is
Orac 01.14.2012
- 5The vilest antivaccine lie that won't die: Shaken baby syndrome as "vaccine injury"
Orac 02.07.2012
From NYTimes.com
Latest science stories | More at nytimes.com
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- 3Joy Reidenberg, Anatomist, Builds a Following on ‘Inside Nature’s Giants’
- 4G.E. Ends Bid to Create a Supply of Technetium 99m
- 5Scientist at Work Blog: Better Lives in Better Coffee
Latest science posts
SB Basics
Synthetic Biology
Some engineers use cranes and steel to make their designs reality, but synthetic biologists engineer using tools on a different scale: DNA and the other molecular components of living cells. Synthetic biology uses cellular systems and structures to produce artificial models based on natural order. Read these posts from the ScienceBlogs archives for more:
Pharyngula May 30, 2007
“Playing God”
The Loom January 31, 2008
"Frankenstein Was Here": Synthetic Biology as Graffiti
Discovering Biology in a Digital World July 2, 2006
Build your own virus
