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Did the "CDC whistleblower" William W. Thompson apologize to Andrew Wakefield in a text message?

Orac post-publication note: There is reason to believe that one point I made below could well be incorrect. However, even leaving that point out, there are still many reasons to doubt the authenticity of the text exchange I discuss below. See the first 10 comments for a discussion. Unlike AoA and other antivaccine groups, if I am wrong about something, I will admit it and discuss what might have led me to an incorrect conclusion. Oh, and I missed something obvious (see comment #11). D'oh! There’s something that’s been bothering me the last couple of days. I tried not to blog about it, but the…

Understanding Michele Bachmann in the context of Human Evolution

This barking dog is not very smart. But it could make a good Republican. The only thing harder to understand than Michele Bachmann is the Republican Party. Bachmann is hard to understand in this way: How can a person with her mind be an elected member of congress?!?!??? The Republican party is hard to understand in this way: How can a party that is trying to become more rather than less relevant keep putting Michele Bachmann on the podium in places like the National Party Convention and, most recently, at CEPAC??!?!?!? ~ A timely repost ~ I can't explain any of this, but I can at…

The CDC whistleblower William W. Thompson: One last word

I know that when last I commented, I expressed the desire to move on from the topic of the CDC whistleblower case after having covered it for a week. And so was my intent. However, this being a holiday in the US and my having had an odd experience on Friday led me to think that one last update is in order. Those not familiar with the story can recap here: Brian Hooker proves Andrew Wakefield wrong about vaccines and autism Hey, where is everybody? The “CDC whistleblower” manufactroversy continues apace The CDC “whistleblower” manufactroversy: Twitter parties and another “bombshell” e-mail A…

Feeling Sorry For Myself Therapy: An update on my knee

I'm a bit preoccupied with my recent injury and not blogging about much else, so I might as well update you on The Knee and all it entails. Warning: Self referential commentary and icky stuff below the fold. Friends, you already know much of this. People who don't know me, you don't want to read this. This is for the in between people. There will be no discussion of needles, because I'm done with the needles, so E.W., you're cleared to proceed if you wish. Not all the people who went into the hospitable two weeks ago on the same day I did made it out alive, or at least so I assume. I'm…

A medical school only to train physician-scientists?

This story, first brought to my attention by Drugmonkey, is something that I've been meaning to blog about since I first saw it. The reason, of course, should be obvious, given that my career is an example of the end product that the medical school described is going to be designed to produce: that of a physician-scientist: The Scripps Research Institute and Scripps Health are working to set up what they hope will be the nation's first medical school entirely geared to training physicians for dual careers in research and patient care. [...] The Scripps institute must raise $150 million in…

Woo for cancer: Say it ain't so, Steve!

Yesterday was a rather long day, starting with a long commute in the morning, followed by a long day in the office mainly doing grant paperwork, and capped off by getting home late. Even so, I couldn't ignore this particular story for two reasons. First, it's about so-called "alternative" medicine. Second, it's about Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer and the creative, if at times arrogant and abusive, creative genius behind Apple's recovery from the brink of bankruptcy 11 years ago to its current situation, where its computers are cool; its operating system rocks; and it rules over the…

CVS, tobacco, and knee jerk reflexes

Now we come to a post in which Orac unloads a bit about one of his pet peeves. It is a post that will likely piss a few people off on "his" side. If it does, so be it. He does this now because yesterday something happened that irritated the crap out of me because it put on display one of the less appealing characteristics of the skeptical movement, a tendency to obsessively focus on what it views as important at the expense of losing touch with the big picture. It is a story about knee jerk responses to which we all (myself included) fall prey. Yesterday it was widely reported in the media,…

The CEO of Aetna embraces quackery

Everyone hates health insurance companies. At least, so it seems. Personally, I've had my issues with such companies myself, particularly when having to deal with them when they refuse to cover certain medical tests for my patients. Fortunately for me, surgical oncology is a specialty that doesn't have a lot of tests or treatments that are frequently not covered, particularly for breast cancer surgery, which means that I don't have to deal with insurance companies that much. It's a wonderful thing for a doctor. Still, for all the complaining about insurance companies, if there's one good…

Naturopathy, functional medicine, and other quackademic medicine at the University of Kansas Medical Center

It's been a while since I've done this, but somehow now seems to be the right time, particularly after doing such a long post yesterday on the intellectually dishonest promotion of "brave maverick" cancer doctor Stanislaw Burzynski. Unfortunately, dubious clinics like the Burzynski Clinic are not the only place where I find highly questionable medicine. Sadly, as I've discussed many times, there is a phenomenon known as "quackademic medicine," in which quackery is administered and studied in actual academic medical centers. Indeed, it's hard for me to believe that it was nearly years ago that…

The "myth" of placebo effects

Heidi Stevenson amuses me. The reasons are legion. Be it the time when Heidi lectured scientists on anecdotal evidence (which she values far more highly than scientists, of course, declaring it the "basis of all knowledge"); launched a vile and nonsensical attack on Stephen Barrett; argued against prior plausibility with using a straw man argument so massive that if it were set on fire (which she did) it could be seen from space; or made an even more idiotic argument to try to "prove" that wi-fi signals and EMF cause autism, Heidi never fails to deliver the stupid in mass quantities of black…

Oh, no, antiperspirants cause breast cancer! Well, not really...

As I've said before recently, I have mixed emotions regarding Breast Cancer Awareness Month. On the one hand, I look forward to it because it provides us with a pretext to get out science-based messages about breast cancer and to highlight a lot of the cool science that we do at our cancer center. On the other hand, the quacks see an opportunity in Breast Cancer Awareness Month to spread their message too. That message, not surprisingly, generally involves attacking science-based modalities for the detection and treatment of breast cancer and promoting their "alternative" methods. For example…

An antivaccine activist complains about a pro-vaccine conference

A week and a half ago, a conference was held at the NYU Langone Medical Center, Confronting Vaccine Resistance: Strategies for Success. It featured speakers and panelists whom I admire quite a bit, including Paul Offit, the man who is to antivaccine loons Satan, Darth Vader, Voldemort, and Sauron all rolled up into one. Also featured were Richard Pan, the California state senator who co-sponsored SB 277, which passed and is now a law that bans nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates; bioethicist Arthur Caplan, a strong advocate for vaccines; Dorit Reiss, a law school professor and…

Inevitable and orderly? Hardly!

To some, the universe is a place that has been fine-tuned to be "'just right' for life," a place where human beings (or at least organisms that are upright bipeds with binocular vision, large eyes, and grasping hands) are an inevitable consequence of evolution. I've never found such arguments (the anthropic principle and a teleological "march of progress" in evolution, respectively) to be compelling, but there are some who still advocate such arguments. Paul Davies is one such advocate, and he has just published an opinion article in the New York Times called "Taking Science on Faith" in…

Is all animal research inhumane?

I received an email from a reader in response to my last post on PETA's exposing of problems with the treatment of research animals at UNC. The reader pointed me to the website of an organization concerned with the treatment of lab animals in the Research Triangle, www.serat-nc.org. And, she wrote the following: Some people may think that PETA is extreme. However, the true "extreme" is what happens to animals in labs. If the public knew, most would be outraged. But, of course our government hides such things very well. Those researchers who abuse animals in labs (which is ALL…

We can't cure the disease by praising the symptoms

Karl Giberson, who I've bashed once or twice, has a fresh new pile of nonsense on the Huffington Post. Jerry Coyne has already tackled it, but it pushes a few of my buttons, so I've got to say my piece, too. To summarize the Giberson nonsense briefly, he claims that Intelligent Design creationism is not dead, but is thriving, and in order to defeat it, we need to shut the atheists up who are making people choose between gods and science. I disagree with every bit of it. ID is not only dead, it was stillborn. No one believes in it; it is a sterile abstraction with no evidence that was cobbled…

Clinical trials do still work, but need to evolve

As I write this, I'm winging my way home from TAM, crammed uncomfortably—very uncomfortably—in a window seat in steerage—I mean, coach). I had thought of simply recounting the adventures of the contingent of skeptics with whom I'm associated who did make it out to TAM to give talks at workshops and the main stage and to be on panels, but that seemed too easy. Also Orac is just too damned egotistical, and, besides, it's a four hour flight. Even so, I would be remiss if, before delving into the topic of today's post, I didn't praise Steve Novella, Harriet Hall, and Mark Crislip, for their…

The costs and benefits of the latest, greatest cancer drugs

I'm currently in Las Vegas anxiously waiting for The Amazing Meeting to start. Believe it or not, I'll even be on a panel! While I'm gone, I'll probably manage to do a new post or two, but, in the meantime, while I'm away communing with fellow skeptics at TAM7, I'll be reposting some Classic Insolence from the month of July in years past. (After all, if you haven't been following this blog at least a year, it'll be new to you. And if you have I hope you enjoy it again.) This particular post first appeared in July 2008. Last week, The New York Times started a rather unusual series in its…

David Kirby's "logic": The hepatitis B vaccine may increase the risk of multiple sclerosis, so it's obvious that vaccines cause autism

It's really hard to take David Kirby seriously any more. Well, actually, it's been hard to take him seriously for at nearly four years now, ever since he wrote his paean to antivaccinationists, Evidence of Harm, in which no conspiracy-mongering related to mercury as an alleged cause of autism was too out there, too ridiculous, for Kirby to parrot. Since then, he's become antivaccine apologist number one, the go-to guy for the antivaccine movement whenever the twisting of science, logic, and reason was needed to spin an event or a study that refutes the "vaccines cause autism" hypothesis. He's…

Two great obesity articles from the NYT and what they mean for you

A few weeks ago Tara Parker Pope wrote The Fat Trap for the NYT and once I read it I started sending it to other doctors I know. It is a great summary on the current knowledge of why we get fat, and more importantly for those of us that already are tipping the scales, why is it so damn hard to take that weight back off. (I'll discuss Young, Obese and Getting Weight Loss Surgery nearer the end) Beginning in 2009, he and his team recruited 50 obese men and women. The men weighed an average of 233 pounds; the women weighed about 200 pounds. Although some people dropped out of the study, most…

100 Kinds of Foster Parents

If you've thought about foster parenting at all, even for a couple of minutes, you probably grasp that someone has to do it. Because the truth is that kids whose parents can't care for them has been a global problem for all of human history. It is a problem that could get better or worse with various interventions, (and I am 100% in favor of any interventions that make my work less necessary), but it is never going away. As I said in my last post, you won't stop being needed just because you aren't there. While you've probably thought broadly that foster parents have to exist, you…

The Future of Our Disabled Children

I wrote this in 2008 - now Eli is a 5'9, 120lb almost-teen.  We're getting ready to celebrate his bar mitzvah in a few months, which will be an adaptive celebration of not only what Eli can do, but also what our community has done for him over the years.  Adolescence and autism combine with some pretty significant challenges, but Eli is also doing well and becoming an interesting and delightful big person.  It seemed to bear repeating, since so many of us deal with these kinds of challenges and worries. Yesterday morning, Eli put on snowpants and boots before he went outside.  This was a big…

If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we cure cancer?

Why haven't we cured cancer yet? If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we cure cancer? If we can harness the atom, why can't we cure cancer? How many times have you heard these questions, or variants thereof? How many times have you asked this question yourself? Sometimes, I even ask this question myself. Saturday was the two year anniversary of the death of my mother-in-law from a particularly nasty form of breast cancer, and, even though I am a breast cancer surgeon, I still wonder why there was nothing in the armamentarium of science-based medicine that could save her from a several…

Let's do some real science for a change! The NCCAM Strategic Plan 2011-2015

I've made no secret about the fact that I am not a fan of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). I consider it a useless, redundant center within the National Institutes of Health because it does nothing that could't be done as well or better in the institutes and centers of the NIH that existed before woo-friendly Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) created NCCAM's precursor and then saw to it that it grew to a full center, with a budget in the $125 million a year range. Personally, if something has to be cut fromt the government in this time of fiscal austerity, I…

"Obama's fixin' death panels for your mama," the misogyny gambit, and other idiotic responses to the updated USPSTF mammography recommendations

I knew when I first heard about them that the new United States Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommendations on breast cancer screening would be controversial. I tried to discuss these guidelines and the issues involved in a calm and rational way, relatively devoid of Insolence, Respectful or not-so-Respectful, yesterday, pointing out that screening guidelines were clearly due for revision but also recognizing the problems with the USPSTF recommendations and valid criticisms of them. In the end, I concluded that, among the critics, the ASCO discussion of the proposed guidelines…

What a fine belated blogiversary present: The return of the microfascists (and their micro brownshirts and microtruncheons)

Believe it or not, I missed my own blogiversary. It's true. It was two days ago. For some reason, as the date approached I got the idea that it was the 13th, when in fact this blog was born on December 11, 2004 on a dreary Saturday afternoon when, after reading the TIME Magazine story about how 2004 was supposedly the "year of the blog" and, given my long history on Usenet pontificating on various topics, on a whim, I decided that I'd dip my toe into this thing called the blogosphere. Thus was Respectful Insolence⢠born, and I've never looked back since. Since then, this thing has grown…

Making it up as you go along: So-called "functional medicine" is pure quackery

I often describe "integrative medicine" as integrating quackery with medicine because that's what this inadvertently appropriately named branch of medicine in essence does. The reason, as I've described time and time again, is to put that quackery on equal footing (or at least apparently equal footing) with science- and evidence-based medicine, a goal that is close to being achieved. Originally known as quackery, the modalities now being "integrated" with medicine then became "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM), a term that is still often used. But that wasn't enough. The word "…

The Final and Complete List of All Entries Submitted for The Open Laboratory 2009

The Deadline has passed! There are a total of over 700 submissions for OpenLab 2009. Thank you all for submitting your and other people's blog posts. I at least opened every one of them, and already read many of them and the overall quality looks very high. SciCurious is ready (here is her post), judges are ready, and the judging process is about to begin. And while you are waiting for results, you can read all the submitted entries right here! And once you are done reading them all, you can go back to the 2006, 2007 and 2008 editions and read them as well. And keep checking in every now…

Random Variables

The first key concept in probability is called a random variable. Random variables are a key concept - but since they're a key concept of the frequentist school, they are alas, one of the things that bring out more of the Bayesian wars. But the idea of the random variable, and its key position in understanding probability and statistics predates the divide between frequentist and Bayesian though. So please, folks, be a little bit patient, and don't bring the Bayesian flamewars into this post, OK? If you want to rant about how stupid frequentist explanations are, please keep it in the…

Sal Strikes Again! Fourier Transforms and Advanced Creation Science

Astute readers will remember a couple of encounters I had with Sal Cordova from Uncommon Descent a few months ago (here, in the comments, and here). Not too long after that, Sal made a fairly big deal about the fact that he was returning to grad school, and had to stop blogging at UD because the dastardly darwinists would damage his academic prospects if he continued. He played the standard creationist-martyr role, poor guy, persecuted by all the horrible non-believers. Naturally, it didn't last long. He's got his own blog now, called "Young Cosmos", where he writes his usually pathetic…

I'm on the Fence Regarding Sciencedebate 2008

If you visit ScienceBlogs regularly, you've probably read about ScienceBloglings Sheril Kirshenbaum's and Chris Mooney's proposal for a presidential debate about science. There's a lot I like about this proposal, but the reality of what could happen bothers me. First, what I like about the idea. For much of the last two and half years, I worked at a non-profit organization that focused on infectious disease policy and programs. Science policy--and politics--are important. The idea that every political candidate would actually have to devise a science policy, and perhaps even be judged by…

Sunday Sermon: The Unbeliever and Christians

Here's an excerpt from an essay by Albert Camus "The Unbeliever and Christians." It was originally given as a speech to Dominican monks of Latour-Maubourg in 1948. Just imagine giving this speech to the Southern Baptist Convention. It would be...interesting. Here's the speech (translation by the Mad Biologist; italics mine): And now, what can Christians do for us? To begin with, give up the empty quarrels, the first of which is the quarrel about pessimism. I believe, for instance, that M. Gabriel Marcel would be well advised to leave alone certain forms of thought that fascinate him and…

Some Democrats Never Learn

While Iraq was the national backdrop for the 2006 elections, individually many campaigns succeeded (or did better than they had any right to do) due to a desire to end corruption (e.g., the Ohio state elections). Yet Rahm Emanuel, head of the DCCC, and the Congressional Black Caucus ('CBC') just don't seem to get that. First, Rahm Emanuel. In Mark Foley's old district (FL-16), David Lutrin, a progressive liberal, was poised to run against Mark Foley. He certainly wouldn't have been a favorite to win, but then again, many successful Democrats didn't look like winners in early 2005 either.…

The Divide Between the Liberal Arts and Science

It's the 4th of July, and the Mad Biologist doesn't work on yontif, so here's something from the archives about scientific literacy (or illiteracy, actually). Surprisingly, I actually agree with Nicholas Kristof (originally published Dec. 8, 2005). Nicholas Kristof actually made sense today. He described on the widespread ignorance of science and math, even among those typically considered well-educated. Says the Great Solon (italics mine): One-fifth of Americans still believe that the Sun goes around the Earth, instead of the other way around. And only about half know that humans did not…

The Closer the End Gets, the Louder the Screeching Is

Hunter has a superb piece on the declining (or perhaps negligible) authority of the punditocracy. Hunter writes: I have never (and I do mean, never) gotten the impression that anyone among the upper echelons of the press understands just how badly their long-term credibility has been damaged by their uncritical kowtowing to administration propaganda when it comes to the Iraq War. I've never gotten the impression that they comprehend just how much their brand credibility was torn to ribbons, and how to this day there are large segments of the population -- the segments of the population that…

I See Stupid People: The Michael Egnor Edition

To prevent brain damage, the Surgeon General recommends that statements by Michael Egnor be read using approved devices such as the StupidView9000 Orac bravely dives deeper into the Discovery Institute's creationist drivel, and reports on the continuing ignorant idiocy of Michael Egnor. I don't know what's worse: Egnor's willful ignorance, or his pseudo-victimization complex. Let's deal with the ignorance first. In an interview with Casey Luskin, Egnor states (italics mine): EGNOR: Well, it's a pretty funny claim on the part of Darwinists. It's sort of like Al Gore claiming that he…

Blondes have more fear

Blonde children exhibit more fear response? A new paper reports: ...Hair pigmentation was found to be significantly associated with behavioral inhibition in the sense that blond children exhibited higher fear scores. As in American samples, blue-eyed children had a higher fear score than did other children, but this difference was not statistically significant. Jerome Kagan has reported these sort of findings before. Coloration is a funny trait, for example, there is now evidence that Europeans are highly constrained on one locus which affects complexion, while being high polymorphic on…

You Have to Know Stuff: The Cathleen Black Edition

A few months ago, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg hired a new Chancellor of Schools, Cathleen Black. After 95 days on the job, she was dismissed. Black had been very successful in managing Hearst Magazines and had risen to the rank of president at Hearst. But all that managerial experience--and, no doubt, those critical thinking skills--still didn't prevent her from being hopelessly out of her depth: Though Mr. Bloomberg chose Ms. Black for her management acumen, the education officials said she had become a feeble figure within the department, frequently sitting silently in high-…

Levitt full nelsons Fuller

Norm Levitt throws an excellent broadside against Steve Fuller (yes, it is a polemic, but a delicious one!). Update: Ron in the comments suggests we be cautious about accepting Levitt's jeremiad in its totality. He concludes: And from our own point of view, we must view the whole universe, including those parts which the candle of our scientific knowledge does not reveal. In this effort, religion, understood as the rational ordering of our values, ethics, wisdom and compassion, is an indispensable guide. A does not imply Z here. That is, I cautioned that Levitt's piece was a "polemic" and…

Secularism does not find validation in holy affirmations. Duh.

Stanley Fish is at it again. He's found an author, Steven D. Smith, who has written a book that appeals to his inner cenobite and has written another dismissal of secular reason. And once again, his problem is that his view of the universe is a millimeter deep and most marked by dumb incomprehension. I'm not going to mess around with his lengthy apologetics, because where Fish flops is in his premises. Apparently, Smith is arguing that there are no legitimate secular arguments for anything of significance; they all work by smuggling in non-secular presuppositions, without admitting it. It's…

Smart people got no babies.... (?)

RPM comments on some issues relating to human genetics. First, he points to the article about how conservatives are going to outbreed liberals, etc. etc. etc. The problem with this article is that the Left & the Right have been around since the late 18th century and history marches Leftward even though one assumes the Right has been breeding at a higher clip for the past 8+ generations. What gives? First, there is a heritable component to political orientation. That is, a proportion (around 0.5) of the variation in of conservatism or liberalism within the population is attributable…

Colored folk - we ain't all the same

Shelley Batts has a post, Whites-Only Scholarship as "Reverse Affirmative Action". Shelley sayeth: ...In order to ensure that universities, and students, benefit from a diverse education, often pro-active techniques are utilized to recruit minorities. When the race war comes all of us colored folk will be marked by our skin or our countenance as The Enemy. But, today the reality is that various People of Color have rather different interests in some areas, and that within each group there are schisms of interest due to class (e.g., what does the Indian doctor have to do with the Indian…

The Gates Arrest: The Police As an Occupying Forceâ

For those who haven't heard, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested by the Cambridge Police (the charges were later dropped). According to Gates' attorney: Professor Gates was driven to his home by a driver for a local car company. Professor Gates attempted to enter his front door, but the door was damaged. Professor Gates then entered his rear door with his key, turned off his alarm, and again attempted to open the front door. With the help of his driver they were able to force the front door open, and then the driver carried Professor Gates' luggage into his home. Professor…

The Failure of Macho Investment Strategies

Recently, some people have been asking if Wall Street, Big Shitpile and the other elements of the Great Pandimensional Economic Clusterfuck of 2008-2009 would have been as bad if women were more common on Wall Street. My answer: absolutely not. What follows are some personal experiences as to why I think this. Many years ago (OK, around 2000), when people, by and large, still respected Wall Street and investment bankers*, I was often told I was being wimpy for putting most of my 401(k) money into U.S. securities and bonds (GIRLIE MAN!), instead of stocks and other high-risk, high-yield…

Some Thoughts on TEH SWINEY FLOO!! Policy, the Lesson of PCV7, and That Murderously Incompetent Atlantic Article

Before I get to the horrendous Atlantic article about vaccination, it's worth reviewing the Mad Biologist's Pentultimate Postulate of Vaccination (What? You don't know it?): Effective vaccination is not about protecting you, it's about protecting other people from you. To put it another way, the best way for you not to get influenza is to not come into contact with people who have it--and standing next to a vaccinated person dramatically decreases those odds. So onto the PCV7 vaccine. The PCV7 vaccine confers immunity to the seven most common types of Streptococcus pneumoniae, a bacterium…

CPAC, Creationists, and...Giraffes?

Creationists say my head will explode. OH NOES!!!! Driftglass bravely dove into the shallow end of the gene pool that is the Conservative Political Action Conference, which he describes perfectly: For all nine-minutes of bullshit, faux-introspection chin-music that came from the Right about change, future and vision after they got hog-slaughtered in the last two elections, if you want to know what is really at the corrupt, oozy heart of the American Conservative movement (and its filthy little avatar, the Republican Party) look no further than their ideological trade show: the Conservative…

How Does the Obama-McConnell Plan Create 750,000 Jobs Per Month?

Or for that matter, any of the other tax cut silliness or fiscal austerity madness. Because to lower unemployment to where it was in early 2007 over the next eighteen months, that's what we'll have to do. The Slacktivist lays out the numbers: Now, from 2007 through early 2009 the American economy saw some 8 million or so layoffs. These people were not fired, they were laid off. The arithmetic involves large numbers, but it is not complicated. The economy gained 8 million unemployed workers and lost 8 million job openings. Those 8 million people could not just go get another job because…

Navel-Gazing, Courtesy of Nature Network

My friends and colleagues at Nature Network (yes, I am a member of their auspicious group, although I have yet to start a blog there), have been passing a meme around amongst themselves. Martin Fenner is the culprit who started this whole thing off, so go yell at him about it. Anyway, in an effort to reduce NN's inbreeding coefficient, I have decided that this is a perfectly good meme for the greater blogosphere, or at least for ScienceBlogs, especially since it is navel-gazing at its best, and who doesn't enjoy picking through their own belly-button lint? What is your blog about? Well, my…

Obama's Ridiculous Airline Security Proposal: Fly Naked

tags: airline security, homeland security, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Lagos Murtala Muhammed International Airport, LOS, President Obama, politics Helping Airport Security: Fly Naked. (orphaned image) By now, you all are aware that yet another privileged young extremist man, 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, boarded an airplane bound for the United States with the intention of blowing the plane up and in doing so, ending hundreds of innocent civilian lives. If you know that, then you also know that several passengers and the authorities caught Abdulmutallab as he tried to…

Birdbooker Report 93-94

tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books "How does one distinguish a truly civilized nation from an aggregation of barbarians? That is easy. A civilized country produces much good bird literature." --Edgar Kincaid The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and…

New paper on H5N1 virulence gene

The headlines are exciting: Chinese scientists identify deadly gene in H5N1. The story is also upbeat: Chinese scientists have identified a gene in the H5N1 bird flu virus which they say is responsible for its virulence in poultry, opening the way for new vaccines. [snip] "We can now understand how this virus becomes lethal and the molecular basis for its pathogenicity," Bu Zhigao at the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute told Reuters. The science also turns out to be interesting, but on its face not the breakthrough the story implies. Maybe as we learn more we will find it is the key to…