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Japan nuke news 19: Robots and reactors

Ana's Feeed starting Sunday mid day through last night: TEPCO press conf. (NHK): Since the accident, we have caused a huge amount of trouble and inconvenience to residents and anxiety to the greater population in general ... Residents have been asked to evacuate and they would like to return home and we would like to assist the govt in planning for their return. Therefore, we release this plan: To achieve cold shutdown in 6-9 months via 2 steps: 1) reducing radioactive material (3 months) and 2) controlling the release of radioactive elements (3-6 months) 3 areas of focus will be: cooling,…

Strange insect encounter: Carrion Beetle with Mites

I've heard of "carrion beetles" but this is more like a "carry-on beetle": Amanda and I were outside the cabin in Cass County, Minnesota last week, cutting pieces of plywood for sub flooring, and we saw this creature among the debris. At first I thought it was some kind of wasp covered with tiny spiders, but on further investigation it turned out to be a beetle covered with mites. When we first saw it, there were many more mites than in this photo, and they were virtually roiling on the insect's surface. It looked almost as though the insect was foaming. We captured it for later…

Dirty poor people living in slime: Missionaries and American Idol

Actual missionaries As you may have noticed, I have written a series of posts about missionaries in eastern Zaire in the 1980s and early 1990s, focusing on my own personal experiences. These seven posts represent only a small number of these experiences, but they are more or less representative. They are meant to underscore the down side of missionary activities in Central Africa. To some extent, the negatives you may see in these essays are part of the reason for missionary activity being illegal in many countries (although the reasons for those laws varies considerably). It is my…

It is an icky world

I woke up to an icky world this morning. After painfully clearing my lungs and scarfing down some medication, I scanned the TV channels for news. and the blogosphere for inspiration. The TV was giving me mainly god, while the blogosphere was giving me measles, pandemics, murdered sea lions, and this poor eagle with its beak snapped off. TV land was still in it's pre-day stage (which runs an hour later here in the Midwest). Therefore, fully half or more of the stations were busy peddling Christianity. I learned that it was easier to accept faith and know that God has a plan than to…

Opposition to Antievolution Bills in Florida

From the National Center for Science Education The antievolution bills recently introduced in the Florida legislature continue to elicit opposition. The bills closely resemble a string of similar bills in Alabama -- HB 391 and SB 336 in 2004; HB 352, SB 240, and HB 716 in 2005; HB 106 and SB 45 in 2006 -- as well as a model bill that the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, the institutional home of "intelligent design" creationism, recently began to promote. Asked by the Miami Herald (March 13, 2008) whether "intelligent design" constituted "scientific information" in the…

When flame meets straw (man, that is)

It gives me no pleasure to do this, but sometimes even friends let loose with such jaw-droppingly bad arguments that it is impossible for me not to redirect a bit of the old Respectful Insolence in their direction. So it was earlier, when I saw an unreasonable article by an otherwise reasonable guy sneak into my newsfeed. If you want to see an example of a bad analogy, watch Dr. Kevin Pho have at it in a post entitled We've Tried Single Payer Health Care, and It Has Failed. Quoth Kevin: Based on an agreement in 1787, the government is responsible to provide free health care to Native Indians…

Bonus pre-Christmas Friday Woo: Give the gift of woo for Christmas, courtesy of Duke University

It occurred to me. For someone looking for last minute Christmas gifts for the credulous, perhaps the Chi Machine, which I mentioned this morning, won't fit the bill. One thing about it is that it's too limited in what it can do, and if I'm going to give the gift of woo for Christmas, I really want to give the gift of woo. That's why I'm really grateful to a regular reader who, for reasons that will become obvious, will probably want to remain nameless, who turned me on to another great gift for the holidays. Even better, it comes from a most unexpected source. Yes, with the help of Duke…

Saturday afternoon lazy troll feeding

See what happens when I actually manage to keep myself from checking my blog for nearly 24 whole hours? The trolls take over. Well, they're not exactly trolls. Trolls often don't believe in what they post; they merely post it to get a reaction, for example, like rabid Hillary Clinton opponents posting on pro-Clinton discussion forums. However, true believers invading the discussions on blogs that oppose their viewpoint can produce much the same result as trolls who troll just for the sake of getting a reaction. Think creationists or fundamentalist Christians posting on Pharyngula or HIV/AIDS…

Investor's Business Daily has as much as 100 lies on every page

Via RealClimate, James Hansen refutes the Investor's Business Daily's claim that he endorsed global cooling in 1971: Mr. McCaslin reported that Rasool and Hansen were colleagues at NASA and "Mr. Rasool came to his chilling conclusions by resorting in part to a new computer program developed by Mr. Hansen that studied clouds above Venus." What was that program? It was a 'Mie scattering' code I had written to calculate light scattering by spherical particles. Indeed, it was useful for Venus studies, as it helped determine the size and refractive index of the particles in the clouds that veil…

The call of the rake

I really don't know where to begin with this anti-Lancet piece by Michael Fumento. Should I start with the way Fumento describes Kane's paper as "so complex" that it "may cause your head to explode" while being utterly certain that Kane has demolished the Lancet study? Or with his assertion that I've been ignoring criticism of the Lancet study? Or with the way he quote mines me? Or that after again and again arguing that Lancet was wrong because they included Falluja when they should have left it out, he is embracing Kane's argument that they were wrong because they excluded Falluja? Or…

Skeptic's Handbook: not novel, not right

Jeremy Jacquot has written a three part debunking of the claims in Joane Nova's "Skeptic's Handbook": Part 1: increasing CO2 won't make much difference, Part 2: warming has stopped and ice cores show that CO2 increases do not cause warming, and Part 3: the hot spot is missing. If all this seems familiar, it's because Nova's handbook is just a rehash of David Evans' wrong-headed column in the Australian. (Nova is Evan's partner and shares the same beliefs about global warming.) The constant repetition of such discredited arguments has James Hrynyshyn wondering if there is any point: For the…

The Iraq war - A humanitarian disaster

The Iraq Family Health Survey, conducted by the Iraqi government and the World Health Organization, found that there were about 400,000 excess deaths in Iraq up to June 2006 associated with the invasion. The second Lancet survey conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins and Al Mustansiriya University found that there were about 650,000 over the same time period. Both surveys missed the most violent period in Iraq -- if we project forward to the current day I estimate that the net cost of the war so far has been between 750,000 (using IFHS) and 1,250,000 (using Lancet2) deaths. So how on…

Spagat's cherry picked graph

Michael Spagat is back with another attack on the Lancet study. Most of it is stuff we've seen before, like absurd assumptions he makes for Main Street Bias, and the false claim that Soros funded the study. But there is some new stuff, including this (L2 is the second Lancet study): The above graphic shows results from three mortality surveys. The first is the Kosovo study of Paul Spiegel and Peter Salama: War and Mortality in Kosovo, 1998-99: an epidemiological testimony", published in the Lancet in 2000. This paper is cited in L1, L2 and the MIT paper that is a companion piece to L2.…

Darby's slipping into the Twilight Zone

The other day, I mentioned an atheist named Larry Darby who happened to be an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. I was perturbed because this clown was coming far too close to my neck of the woods for comfort, and the stench of his vileness offended me. Because Darby is an atheist, not surprisingly fellow ScienceBloggers PZ and Ed both noticed his making news lately, although Razib had the far more interesting take on this clown when he pointed out that the racialist radical right actually has more atheists in it than one might expect. He's quite correct. Having waded into the cesspools that…

Over the Counter Drugs Getting More Scrutiny -- Does that mean anything?

A couple of weeks ago, as I'm sure you heard, the FDA held an advisory committee meeting that concluded that there should be no use of cough/cold products for children under 6. There is a good amount of evidence that the drugs (including antitussive, expectorant, nasal decongestant, antihistamine and combination products) were not effective and are harmful in some cases. Now what happens? A couple of signs: Most manufacturers took all under 2 cough/cold medicines off the shelf. Many, like Wyeth who makes Dimetapp and Robitussin have recalled Children's Dimetapp and some Robitussin to replace…

Sleeping Naked Is Green: How an Eco-Cynic Unplugged Her Fridge, Sold Her Car, and Found Love in 366 Days by Vanessa Farquharson

This book review was originally posted by GrrlScientist on Living the Scientific Life. tags: book review, Sleeping Naked is Green, green living, environment, Vanessa Farquharson Carbon footprints, global warming, green living -- are these phrases an inconvenient truth that keep you awake at night, wondering how you can live in a more environmentally friendly way? For many people, merely contemplating these things is enough to make them give up trying to help the earth before they even start! But before you allow yourself to become discouraged, there is a book out there that will inspire you…

Blogging for University Honors Credit. A Success - I think.

I'm currently teaching Introduction to Psychology which has a number of university honors students who are required to do extra work in a certain number of their courses each semester in order to get 'honors credit.' The University leaves it up to me as to what they students should do to get this credit. I decided, along with my students, to let them explore the psychological literature through blogging. Each week they pick a relevant piece of literature (in this case - aggression, attractiveness, and political psychology) and write a short blog post about it. I've found the blog to be a…

Interview: Dr. Justin Schmidt, of the Schmidt Pain Index

A few weeks ago Andrew from Zooillogix suggested that we jointly interview entomologist Justin O. Schmidt, creator of the infamous 'Schmidt Pain Index.' Both Andrew and I had found the index fascinating since it cataloged in (literally) excruciating detail the subjective feeling of being stung by a bevy of venomous insects, rating them on a scale from 0 to 4. We were finally able to track Dr. Schmidt down and send him a few quick questions to pick his brain about venoms, pain, his work at the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Tucson. Thanks very much to Dr. Schmidt for being such a great…

Happy Belated, Isaac, Me

I wrote this on nearly the same day last year, and since I've been reading some Asimov lately, thought I would repost. The dates have been changed for relevance. On January 2, 2008, Isaac Asimov would have been 88 years old. Simultaneously, on the second, I turned 29 (edited). Asimov died of AIDS from a tainted blood transfusion in 1983, a little known fact, even among his fans. It wasn't publicized until his wife, Dr. Janet Jeppson wrote a bit about it in the epilogue of Asimov's memoir It's Been a Good Life, published in 2002. Why wasn't it addressed until then? The following letter…

Are You Doing Climate Change Research in the Rockies? Take This Survey

Found this on ECOLOG this morning: Dear Colleagues: We are writing to invite your participation in a survey of wildlife responses to climate change in the Rocky Mountains. Results of this important project will help frame policy decision making, media reports to the public, and the direction of future science and management programs. Climate change is no longer a matter of "what if" or "when." The scientific community agrees: a growing body of evidence indicates that human activities are causing unprecedented disruptions to the global climate system. Furthermore, it is clear that these…

5 Minerals Every Dabbler Should Know

While I was away, the rest of the geoblogosphere spent some time creating a list of 50 minerals to see before you die, and then ticking off which ones they've done; Dave Schumaker put together a neat tag cloud to display the results. Intimidated by the length of this list, Callan, Kim, EffJot, Geology Happens, and Silver Fox have come up with shorter, more focused lists of the 5 minerals they would introduce to earth science n00bs. They are mostly focused on minerals that are "important" in the sense that they play significant roles in geological processes. As a geophysicist and mostly-…

Senate Passes Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act

Last Thursday (April 24), the Senate unanimously passed the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA, H.R. 493) in a landmark vote. The goal of this bill is "to prohibit discrimination on the basis of genetic information with respect to health insurance and employment," and it therefore would help fill this gaping hole that exists in our current protection of employees' and patients' rights. The bill was passed by the House roughly one year ago by a vote of 420-3, and although it was scheduled for debate in the Senate, it wasn't voted upon until last week. Now, the Senate has…

Do You Want to Be Able to Crap Gold?

Molecule of the Day has a post up about isotopically-enriched food that caught my eye for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the idea is wildly outrageous, and, secondly, this is something that actually gets joked about quite a bit in an NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) lab. Any given element can come in various isotopes, which differ in the composition of their nuclei. The nuclei of different isotopes of the same element have the same number of protons, but they vary in their number of neutrons. Because the number of neutrons in a nucleus does not significantly affect the chemical properties…

Bin Laden Dead, Raising More Questions Than Answers

Source. In a rare late night statement in the East Room of The White House Sunday, President Obama announced that Bin Laden is dead. This historic announcement raises more than questions than answers. How will this affect terrorism abroad and in the US? How will this affect our relationship with Pakistan? Did Bin Laden have a legacy plan for this possibility for the global network of cells? What has been the cost, in lives and treasure, for this historic step, and the ripple effects in the future? Will this strengthen our domestic security? What will be the effect on the 2012 Presidential…

Fido, M.D.?

Photo by Bruteitup. A DOG or cat owner spends roughly $10,000 on the care and feeding of his pet over its lifetime. (Dogs cost more per year, but cats make up for it by living longer.) What does he get for this investment? Surveys indicate that what most pet owners mainly want is companionship, unconditional love and a play pal. In recent years, however, we have also begun to regard pets as furry physicians and four-legged psychotherapists. Hal Herzog, Op-Ed in The New York Times ("Fido's No Doctor, Neither Is Whiskers") No one would question the emotional value of pets as our companions,…

What's next Greenpeace, burning books?

In the early hours of a Wednesday morning two weeks ago, three Greenpeace activists made their way past the perimeter fence at Ginninderra Experiment Station in Canberra, Australia, and destroyed a crop of GM wheat using weed strimmers. A spokeswoman for Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the national science agency which runs the station, said the damage was estimated to run A$300,000. In a statement released by Greenpeace Australia Pacific, activist Laura Kelly stated that "We had no choice but to take action to bring an end to this experiment". Both…

How we got here

It's been 25 years since Gould's Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History crystallized the debate over the importance of contingency in evolution, most famously illustrated by his metaphor of "replaying the tape of life". If we could roll back the history of life on earth and restart it in the pre-Cambrian, would we see the same forms arise again? Would we have dinosaurs a few hundred million years later, and bipedal intelligent apes after a half billion years? Gould's answer was no -- that the role of chance was too great, and because the forms of life do not represent…

Hitching a Ride on a Drosophila Genome

Not all regions of the genome are equal in the eyes of evolution. For example, natural selection is more effective on genes in regions of higher recombination. We have known this for a while. The connection between recombination rate and natural selection was nicely refined when it was shown that DNA polymorphism is lower in regions of low recombination and higher in regions of high recombination (see Begun and Aquadro). This could be due to higher mutation rates in regions of high recombination (and vice versa), greater reach of selective sweeps in regions of low recombination (the…

The Greatest Mystery In All Of Physics

Because this is me, I must start with a lot of disclaimers. First, the title is catchy, but many would disagree with the mystery I've identified. Even I might. So, please try to avoid flaming me for my choice. Second, very shortly I will post "The Most Elegant Solution In All Of Physics," a post that might allow one to argue that what I'm about to identify as the greatest mystery isn't a mystery at all! Groundwork laid, here we go.... In physics, there is this quantity "mass" that we use to describe how much "stuff" there is in a particle. Technically speaking, "mass" is the energy…

So, it turns out it is called "Counterknowledge"

"Counterknowledge," I would have thought, includes things like how a particular customer likes her eggs, or if another customer gets antsy if he does not get his refill right way. You know, like in a diner. Counter knowledge. But it turns out that Counterknowledge is stuff like creationism, creation science, Scientology, alternative medicine, and so on. The Telegraph has a review of a book by Damian Thompson with the title "Counterknowledge." A synopsis from the publisher: We are being swamped by dangerous nonsense. From 9/11 conspiracy theories to Holocaust denial, creationism to…

If you do something wrong, you should be fired or killed.

If you do something wrong, you should be fired or killed. Whether you should be fired or killed has nothing to do with what you did, but rather, the context in which you did it. If you do something wrong in the presence of a legal gun owner with a Conceal Carry permit and a loaded weapon, you simply need to die. If, on the other hand, you have a job and do something wrong, the only possible outcome is your being fired, no matter what it was you did. If the thing you do wrong happens in a context in which you have a job AND are in the presence of a gun-holding conceal-carry permitted person…

The Wondrous Mystery of Valet Parking

So, Lizzie1 and I drove up to the restaurant in downtown Minneapolis and spotted the Valet Parking sign. I wanted to valet park because downtown, we'd have to park in a ramp2 anyway, so the cost would be the same or less, and much more convenient and comfortable on this slightly chilly winter night. Plus some kid would get a tip; Some kid saving for college or whatever. And as we got closer, we saw that the Valet Parking sign had a big arrow on it pointing down the street. So we drove slowly down the busy downtown street, looking for somebody or something resembling a valet. Then, we…

Skeptics and Atheists Should be Relatively Happy about Twilight and New Moon

My review. The last movie of this genre I watched had Christopher Lee as the Werewolf Hunter. In this movie, the Werewolves engaged in a periodic orgy in which a newly converted nubile female would would be converted into a wolf-like form to have repeated dog-like copulations with a male vampire-wolf counterpart under the observation of the king and/or queen vampire and a dwarf. Or something like that. I came in during the middle of the movie and never quite got it. But it was obvious, and this is always true in traditional vampire and werewolf movies, that the Catholic Church is very…

Why didn't Darwin discover Mendel's laws?

Perhaps we are all subject to falling into the trap of what I call the Hydraulic Theory of Everything. If you eat more you will be bigger, if you eat less you will be smaller. Emotional states are the continuously varying outcome of different levels of a set of hormones, forming "happy" or "stressy" or "angry" cocktails. Your brain is a vessel into which life pours various elixirs. Too much of one thing, and there will not be enough room for something else. Even political arguments are hydraulic. The 'balanced' middle view between two arguments is like the mixture of contrasting primary…

Every child is a casualty...

... when it comes to Creationist Home Schooling. Two dozen or so atheists, skeptics, scientists, and secularists visited the 2010 Home School Science Fair at Har Mar Mall, Roseville Minnesota. We witnessed (if I may borrow that term) twenty six home school project posters. The presentations varied considerably in their sophistication, overall quality, and complexity of the work represented, and most of this variation is easily understood as the outcome of the wide age range of the children who produced them. Some were impressive, some were cute, some were more scientific, some were less,…

A mystery explained

I was wondering why Vox Day, that lunatic, was asking me my definition of science—it turns out that that same day he posted the request, he was publishing a screed against science in WorldNutDaily. His lack of an adequate definition doesn't seem to have stopped him from condemning science, whatever he thinks it is. For if all knowledge is inherently good, then it is a moral imperative to scientifically determine the relative intelligence of Asians and Zulus once and for all. But is everyone really comfortable with the possibility of determining that men are, in scientific fact,…

I hope you've washed the slime off, University of Oregon

I don't know what's going on here, but the University of Oregon got slimed last night. A truly odious little being slithered his way into the University grounds and left a stench that won't soon dissipate. Sadly, David Irving, notorious Holocaust "revisionist" (translation: Holocaust denier) gave a talk last night at the University of Oregon. True, he wasn't invited by the university, but thanks to the fact that the founder of ultra-right wing Pacifica Forum is a retired UO professor and that retired professors can invite speakers to university facilities, David Irving spoke last night:…

Noooo! Antivaccination nonsense in Michigan!

You know, I keep trying to get away from this topic for a while. But, as Michael Corleone said in The Godfather, Part III, "Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in." I suppose it is unfortunately a measure of the success that antivaccinationists have been having with their public relations effort this year that this stuff keeps popping up everywhere like some mercury- and "toxin"-crazed Whac-A-Mole⢠that I can never seem to stay quiet more than a couple of days on the topic lately. Sometimes I ignore it, even when it's David Kirby. Sometimes I can't. This time I can't, because…

The scammers responsible for Airborne are forced to cough up $23.3 million

I saw this and was going to write about it, but it turns out that Abel Pharmboy at Terra Sigillata beat me to it. Basically, the makers of Airborne have been slapped down bigtime for false advertising: WASHINGTON--The makers of Airborne--a multivitamin and herbal supplement whose labels and ads falsely claimed that the product cures and prevents colds--will refund money to consumers who bought the product, as part of a $23.3 million class action settlement agreement. The company will pay for ads in Better Homes & Gardens, Parade, People, Newsweek, and many other magazines and newspapers…

May All Your Standards Be Simple and Evolvable

I was in a roundtable yesterday talking about Health IT with a bunch of very smart people in the bay area. It was sort of a briefing of ourselves and others about the real issues underpinning what it would take to generate real disruptive innovation in health technology and health costs. The vast majority of the conversation centered on payment reform, which is outside my ambit. But we did spend some time talking about health data standards, and the problem of getting standards that are so geared to the existing market-dominant companies that they actually froze out new market entrants. My…

The Frozen Addicts

The title of this post comes from a description coined by a California neurologist who, in 1982, began investigating a bizarre disease outbreak: patients with bent and twisted bodies, faces stiffened to the point that some were drooling uncontrollably, even in the summer heat resembling bodies frozen to rigidity. As Dr. William Langston investigated further he discovered all six of these living statues had used a new form of synthetic heroin, new to the Bay Area that July. Alarmed, Langston called a press conference to warn of bad drugs on the streets.. But he - along with state and…

Coming out

Hi! My name is John. I've got a PhD in evolutionary biology, and I've spent much of the past decade writing about evolutionary ideas, as applied to everything from literary criticism, to language, to anti-terror policy, and even on occasion to biology. And I've got a confession - I've never read the Origin of Species. Do I shock you? Good. I am not proud of this (really, I'm not), but if my professional life has been less stellar than it might have been, it's not for want of reading Darwin. Here's why. Darwin was working at the dawn of biology. He had none of the specialist knowledge and…

A Few Reasons To Be Optimistic About the Future

(Information and statistics purloined from The Edge's 2007 World Question ) Violence has declined precipitously over the course of recent human history, says Chris Anderson, curator of the TED Conference. According to the 2005 Human Security Report "the number of armed conflicts in the world [has] fallen by 40% in little over a decade," as have the number of deaths per conflict. Need more convincing? Consider this: Roughly 30 percent of the male population in hunter-gatherer societies died violent deaths. "Percentage of males who died in violence in the 20th century complete with two world…

Liberals are stupid, conservatives are Marxists

Why am I politically liberal? Is it because liberal ideals conform to my own sense of morals about how a just society should function? According to some, that idea is laughably wrong. Let me share with you an exchange from facebook: Me: The michigan house passed the doctor tax. Time to write and call your state senator to remind them that taxing the person providing the service you need is really freakin' stupid. Conservative friend: You've gotta LOVE those Democrats in Lansing...just keep taxing and spending and taxing and spending....If this fucking thing passes the senate and governor…

Hey, fake autism experts---put up, or shut up!

It's just disgusting.  Autism spectrum disorders are an important health problem (although not the "epidemic" claimed by some).  While real scientists and clinicians (and parents) are looking for causes and treatments based on evidence, fake experts are pulling "answers" out of their backsides.  Studies of families with autism have shown specific genetic defects associated with autism, and while this applies only to a small percentage of cases, it is an example of a good lead.  Even if a minority of people with autism have similar genetic defects, these findings can lead to more generalizable…

Who does Oprah go to for women's health advice?

One of Oprah's favorite resources for women's health is Dr. Christiane Northrup, a gynecologist with bizarre ideas about health and disease. On the air, she has disputed the connection between HPV and cervical cancer, an uncontroversial scientific fact. Her un-belief in an important scientific fact is disturbing, but if you dig around her published writing a bit, it's even scarier. This doctor is to women's health what Dick Cheney is to human rights. Northrup on fibroids Uterine leiomyomas, better known as fibroid tumors, are common, non-cancerous tumors of the uterus. They can be…

Not-so-silent stupidity

In case you were worried that the Huffington Post had "gone legit" with regards to medical reporting, fear no more. Barry Sears, creator of a popular diet book, has written a searingly stupid piece called We're Fighting the Wrong Epidemic. Like Gaul, it is divided into three parts: wrong information about influenza; an invented medical condition with enough truth to sound plausible; and a pitch. Barry doesn't get the flu And it's not because of his splendid diet. He really doesn't get it. I'm up to my eyeballs in influenza A at a time when flu season should be but a memory. The H1N1 flu…

Specification tests

One of the disagreements between Lott and the NAS panel is on the question of whether the models fit the data. Joel Horowitz explains the problem in Appendix D of the report. For people who don't like equations, I'll try to explain the issue with some pictures. The graphs below show straight lines (these are the models in our example) fitted to two different data sets. While the line is roughly the same distance from the data points in both cases, the one on the left is bad fit, while the one on the right is a good fit. The points on the left lie on a curve and not a straight line…

A couple of cranks: Compare and contrast

It was a busy day yesterday, and I had less time than usual to attend to the blog, but that's OK. This random thought popped into my head after spending the last three days writing about Stanislaw Burzynski, first reviewing Eric Merola's hagiography and infomercial about him, then seeing how well the BBC did in its news series Panorama in covering the patient-endangering phenomenon that is the Burzynski Clinic, and, finally, noting that what Burzynski said about his clinical trials doesn't necessarily jibe with what his SEC filings about his research institute say about them. Looking to move…

Eric Merola and Stanislaw Burzynski's secret weapon against The Skeptics™: Fabio Lanzoni (I kid you not)

So now we know. Back when it was announced that the second Burzynski movie by Eric Merola would be screened at the Newport Beach Film Festival on April 27, Merola announced that there would be a "special celebrity guest." Those of us who have been following Burzynski for a while scratched our heads, not knowing who it could likely be. We considered and rejected multiple possibilities: Suzanne Somers, Ralph Moss, and many others. Well, now we know who would be giving the celebrity endorsement for the Burzynski Clinic, and, no, it's not Josh Duhamel. It's Fabio Lanzoni: Yes, that Fabio. The…