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How to fish for atheists

It's easy. Bait your hook with stupid. It's true, we're a sucker for that stuff, although it does have a downside. We'll come up, swallow the bait, follow the line to its source, devour the poor fool holding the pole, and then waddle off, all fat and smug. It's our nature, we can't help it. So, for instance, an Indiana politician who is considered a potential presidential candidate, Mitch Daniels, talks about atheism. People who reject the idea of a God — who think that we're just accidental protoplasm — have always been with us. What bothers me is the implications — which not all such folks…

Diversity and Problem-Solving

There are so many reasons to despair about human diversity. There's Iraq, Kenya, the immigration debate, the research of Robert Putnam. It seems that, in tragic example after tragic example, humans react to diversity by splintering into tribalisms, regressing to an Us vs. Them mentality. So that's why The Difference, a new science book by Scott Page, is so uplifting. The basic premise of the book is simple: when it comes to group achievement, diversity often trumps ability. To prove his point, Page draws on a variety of data, from the anecdotal to the experimental. But much of the book is…

Embodied Cognition

It took a few centuries, but it looks as though psychology and neuroscience are finally moving beyond the dualisms of Descartes. Here is the always interesting Boston Globe Ideas section: The brain is often envisioned as something like a computer, and the body as its all-purpose tool. But a growing body of new research suggests that something more collaborative is going on - that we think not just with our brains, but with our bodies. A series of studies, the latest published in November, has shown that children can solve math problems better if they are told to use their hands while thinking…

Science Critics

In response to my call for science critics, a position analogous to a music critic or art critic except that they review the latest science papers, a commenter wrote the following: "Why don't we have science critics?" We do. It's called peer review. My response is that peer review is necessary but not sufficient. (I've discussed the limitations of the peer review process before.) As every scientist knows, lots of crap gets published in journals. (In fact, it's possible that most published research findings are false. ) The job of a science critic, like all critics, would consist of two…

Experiments in Ethics

If the trolley problem is not known to you, I would recommend Kwame Anthony Appiah's Experiments in Ethics. It is one of those works which combines brevity with density, a feast of ideas laid out before you which is nevertheless consumable in a minimal span of time. And Appiah is an engaging writer to boot, switching seamlessly between informal and elevated registers. I suspect the last is a reflection of his interactions with younger people in the form of graduate students in concert with his British philosophical training. In Experiments in Ethics Appiah takes the tack of an…

KPC, Antibiotic Misuse, and the Coming Lawsuits

A couple of weeks ago, after I posted about a very serious emerging bacterial threat, KPC, I received an email from a reader with an elderly relative in the hospital with a very serious case of pneumonia caused by KPC. What he* told me is shocking. The relative, who has had repeated hospital stays and a previous MRSA infection, was in the hospital for a week before any laboratory cultures were performed. That's right, a patient with practically every major risk factor for a multidrug resistant infection wasn't tested for a week. So this patient wasn't isolated, exposing other ICU patients and…

Tuesday Tidbits: Testing the volcano-earthquake connection in Chile ... and more!

Some news for a busy Tuesday: The crater at Poas volcano in Costa Rica, taken February 25, 2010. Image courtesy of OVSICORI by Federico Chavarria. After the MSNBC debacle, it is nice to see some good articles on why the Chilean earthquake was overall less disastrous than the Haitian earthquake, why the tsunami wasn't as large as predicted and why these earthquakes are not abnormal. There are a lot of factors involved - the location, depth, preparedness, wealth - so the comparison can be very telling in terms of both geologic and societal issues. The other scientific fallout from the Chilean…

Yellowstone Update for 2/11/2010: It is getting rather quiet

The Great Earthquake Swarm at Yellowstone that ushered in 2010 seems to be dying down, at least according to the USGS earthquake reports and analysis of the seismicity by the University of Utah and YVO. The daily updates on the earthquake swarms by Utah has ended. Looking at the earthquake over the last 7 days (see below), you can notice three things quickly: (1) since 2/6, there are much fewer quakes compared to a week and a half ago; (2) any sign the earthquakes were getting shallower seems to have ended; and (3) they seem to be generally smaller (< M1.5). Now, what does that mean? Like…

Friday Flotsam: Yellowstone slows down, Pakistan eruption clues, NASA images and "Volcano Hell"

News! Pakistan is home to the world's tallest mud volcano in the region of Balochistan - and its somewhat near the reports of an "eruption" earlier this week. Guess what? Since Wednesday evening, seismicity at Yellowstone has dropped precipitously. The last batch of earthquakes on February 3rd were also back to deeper levels - 8-9 km depth - compared to the potential shallowing earlier in the week. I'm sure the caldera will keep us on our toes, but as of now, it seems to have settled down a bit. Over in Pakistan, there is mounting evidence that the recent "volcanic" eruption reported as, in…

The worst job in the world

Are the fundies imploding? Look at this summary of their own assessment of the status of the evangelical priesthood: Another article reveals even more telling statistics based on a survey of 1,050 evangelical Pastors (note these are evangelical pastors not liberal pastors): 89% considered leaving the ministry at one time. 57% said they would leave if they had a better place to go—including secular work. 77% felt they did not have a good marriage! 75% felt they were unqualified and/or poorly trained by their seminaries to lead and manage the church or to counsel others. This left them…

FEMA and volcanoes

So, as I am apt to do from time to time, I was wandering the interweb and stumbled across the FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) for Kids website. Naturally, I thought, what do they have to say about, oh, I don't know, volcanoes. Well, was I in for a doozy! FEMA, in its infinite wisdom, has this to say about volcanoes (for kids, mind you): [A] volcano is a mountain that opens downward to a pool of molten rock below the surface of the earth. Oh. My. Word ... but wait, there's more! The ash can cause damage to the lungs of older people, babies and people with respiratory problems. Yes…

Bill Donohue always acts like a spoiled little child

It's hard to believe, but Mother Teresa is getting her own US postage stamp. She was a horrible woman who practiced the Christian ideal of poverty as a virtue by doing her very best to keep as many people poor and miserable as possible — and I hate to see the post office promoting her delusional cult. I sure won't be buying any of them, but I just know that much of my incoming hate mail will be plastered with them after September. Having a stamp is not enough for Bill Donohue, however. He is stamping his little foot and demanding that the Empire State Building be lit up in blue and white in…

Waiting game at Chaiten

So, August rolls in and who would have thought in early May we'd still be talking about the Chaiten eruption with such intensity. Jorge Munoz of the SERNAGEOMIN is wondering whether the current eruptive activity and seismicity at Chaiten is a precursor to the end of the "first cycle" (as he calls it) of activity that started in May or that this is all leading up to another major explosive eruption (the "plugged volcano" scenario). The most puzzling part of the current activity is the high amount of seismicity: 105 earthquakes over the last few days, some of them up to magnitude 4. The…

‘Brights’

Since it was brought up in the comments, I thought I'd bring back my statement on the "Brights." There’s a lot of noise on the net right now about The Brights, the idea that we can invent a pleasant new name for godless atheists and thereby improve our image. It’s being pushed by luminaries like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. Here’s a nice quote that summarizes my opinion: Perhaps the best of the available euphemisms for atheist is nontheist. It lacks the connotation of positive conviction that there is definitely no god, and it could therefore easily be embraced by Teapot or Tooth…

A nakedly sexist attack from the creationist Discovery Institute

After Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Faye Flam took the Discovery Institute to task for their Hitler obsession and constant violations of Godwin's law, Disco. 'tute fellow Richard Weikart struck back, insisting, "I have spoken with intelligent Darwinists who admit point-blank that they do not have any grounds to condemn Hitler." This is patent bullcrap, but that's nothing new for the Seattle-based belief tank. Weikart didn't, of course, say which scientists he'd heard say this, so there's no way to independently verify his claim. Flam flew to the fracas again, wondering why creationists…

The Proper Way to Hang a Confederate Flag (repost)

Recent news events require a repost of this Classic TfK from March, 2007: As art or as political statement, I have no beef with the installation shown here. It is an artwork produced by John Sims entitled "The Proper Way to Hang a Confederate Flag." Neo-Confederates disagree. The Mary Brogan Museum of Art and Science refused a request to remove the artwork: The request was made by Bob Hurst, commander of the Tallahassee camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Mr. Hurst said the exhibit violated a Florida law that makes it illegal to "mutilate, deface, defile or contemptuously abuse" the…

Education is the silver bullet

While answering a question for Science and Religion Today ("Is it of greater importance for America to have more scientific experts or less scientific illiteracy" – short answer: both, but if I must, I'd choose scientific literacy), I started toying around with these data on graduation rates in different generations:      Based on the General Social Survey, I plotted the percent saying they completed at least high school, college or junior college, and grad school against their birth year. The drop off for college and high school right at the end is probably just a sign that some people take…

KS-Gov.: Tom Holland writes a letter

I just got a copy of this letter, sent by Tom Holland, the Democratic candidate for Kansas Governor, to the Kansas Chamber of Commerce: Members of Kansas Chamber of Commerce and Industry Executive Board, Thank you for contacting my campaign regarding your endorsement process for Kansas Governor. Out of respect for your organization’s time, I wanted to inform you that I am not seeking, nor would I accept, an endorsement from the Kansas Chamber of Commerce. I firmly believe that the Chamber’s rhetoric during this past legislative session was unbecoming of any organization whose mission is…

Deep thought

I don't care that Gen. McChrystal and his aides got drunk and talked smack. I care that they were dumb enough to do so on the record with a reporter, and I care that McChrystal is behind schedule on in implementing his plan to win in Afghanistan. Neither speaks to his competence, or his staff's competence. It's disappointing that it's easier to fire someone for doing something boneheaded but inconsequential than to screw up professionally. Look, McChrystal and Vice President Biden were on opposite ends of an internal administration debate about Afghanistan last year. McChrystal wanted…

SkeptiCal recap

Last Saturday, we put on the first ever SkeptiCal: Northern California Science and Skepticism Conference. It was pretty awesome. The organizers included Bay Area Skeptics and Sacramento Area Skeptics, and we managed to fill a 200 seat auditorium by advertising to our members, other northern California skeptics groups, some email alerts to JREF, CSI, and Skeptics' Society members, and helpful plugs by prominent podcasters and bloggers. Shortly before Genie Scott flew off to receive the highest honor granted by the National Academy of Sciences, she gave a talk about the relationship of science…

Point Counterpoint

In May, 2008 creationist bigot Martin Cothran complained at the Disco. 'Tute blog about John Derbyshire reviewing a shitty movie without having watched it: That's right: Derbyshire reviews "Expelled" without actually having seen it. This is a man who has friends he has never met, and who can review movies he has never seen. It is perhaps fortuitous that Bill Buckley, the founder of National Review, recently passed from among us: this is a talent I am not sure he would have fully appreciated. This ability to judge a movie without having to suffer the indignity of actually watching it surely…

George H. W. Bush on civility in politics

In a radio interview today, George Herbert Walker Bush complains about the "lack of civility in politics": The Republican elder statesman said, "It's not just the right." He complained, "there are plenty of people on the left." While he said he does not believe in personal name-calling, he singled out MSNBC personalities Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow calling them "sick puppies." "The way they treat my son and anyone who's opposed to their point of view is just horrible," Mr. Bush said. "When our son was president they just hammered him mercilessly and I think obscenely a lot of the time…

Christopher Maloney is still a QUACK!

He's still complaining. Maloney is the naturopath in Maine who makes inflated claims about the efficacy of his magic drugs, and who still pops by here and now then to protest feebly, and he's still making stuff up elsewhere. It also turns out that he has a page warning the world about me and you readers. The infamous PZ Myers asked those who visit his blog to repeat this message all over the internet. He chose me because of false accusations from a local freshman, who blamed me for getting his insipid little clone blog kicked off the internet. Since Myers runs a thing called the endless…

How the Hui became Han(ish)

I was doing some digging around on the genetics of Central Asia and stumbled upon the data that 7% of the mtDNA lineages of the Hui, Muslims who speak Chinese, are West Eurasian. This is opposed 0% for the Han, and 40-50% for the Uyghur. No surprises. But then I thought, what sort of exogamy rates would result in the Hui becoming, operationally, 90% Han during their stay in China? I think 10% is a conservative proportion for how much total genome content they have that is West Eurasian because the historical records suggest a male bias in the migration (so mtDNA would underestimate the…

Who are the conservative Democrats? (part 2)

A question below: I'm curious about the demographics of this category, specifically their geographic distribution, religion and ethnicity. First, I limited the sample to whites to remove confounds of ethnicity. Interestingly, in the GSS in the period between 1998-2008 24% of black Democrats/lean Democrats considered themselves conservatives, as opposed to 18% of whites. This surprised me, I generally remove blacks from he GSS sample in politics so had no data to fill in the gap where intuition lay. It does reiterate my suspicion that personal assertions of political ideology are less…

God makes you chill

Neural Markers of Religious Conviction: Many people derive peace of mind and purpose in life from their belief in God. For others, however, religion provides unsatisfying answers. Are there brain differences between believers and nonbelievers? Here we show that religious conviction is marked by reduced reactivity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a cortical system that is involved in the experience of anxiety and is important for self-regulation. In two studies, we recorded electroencephalographic neural reactivity in the ACC as participants completed a Stroop task. Results showed that…

Motivated minorities win!

Extremely readable OA paper in PNAS, Behavioral experiments on biased voting in networks: Many distributed collective decision-making processes must balance diverse individual preferences with a desire for collective unity. We report here on an extensive session of behavioral experiments on biased voting in networks of individuals. In each of 81 experiments, 36 human subjects arranged in a virtual network were financially motivated to reach global consensus to one of two opposing choices. No payments were made unless the entire population reached a unanimous decision within 1 min, but…

I get email

Sometimes these kooks reveal that they even read the blog…somewhat obsessively and angrily. This one seems to be a follow-up to yesterday's email, and I think he's unhappy that I put up that other crank's letter and not his. I'm sorry, but I don't even remember what his previous letter's point was, and if this one is any indication, it was another spittle-flecked disjointed ramble, and I'm afraid I don't read those with much attention. However, since he really wants to join the pantheon (a very crowded pantheon) of irate readers, I'm happy to oblige. Don't get any ideas, though, all you other…

Salt your way to health

As it turns out, in my own neck of the woods there is a small woo-factory. I came upon it when I saw an internet add extolling the virtues of salt, as long as it's expensive salt. The author of the article turns out to be a doctor in my very metropolitan area. There is so much woo here that it may take a few posts to get through it all. The article is called "Salt Your Way to Health" and is featured on the website for a company that just happens to sell, well, fancy salt. There is a bit of a cage match going on with my internal writer and internal scientist. To properly deconstruct and…

Basics: How can chromosome numbers change?

There in the foaming welter of email constantly flooding my in-box was an actual, real, good, sincere question from someone who didn't understand how chromosome numbers could change over time — and he also asked with enough detail that I could actually see where his thinking was going awry. This is great! How could I not take time to answer? So here's the question: How did life evolve from one (I suspect) chromosome to... 64 in horses, or whatever organism you want to pick. How is it possible for a sexually reproducing population of organisms to change chromosome numbers over time? Firstly:…

Worlds Greatest Pathological Language: TECO

I've got a real treat for you pathological programming fans! Today, we're going to take a quick look at the worlds most *useful* pathological programming language: TECO. TECO is one of the most influential pieces of software ever written. If, by chance, you've ever heard of a little editor called "emacs"; well, that was originally a set of editor macros for TECO (EMACS = Editor MACroS). As a language, it's both wonderful and awful. On the good side, The central concept of the language is wonderful: it's a powerful language for processing text, which works by basically repeatedly finding text…

Programs are Proofs: Models and Types in Lambda Calculus

Lambda calculus started off with the simple, untyped lambda calculus that we've been talking about so far. But one of the great open questions about lambda calculus was: was it sound? Did it have a valid model? Church found that it was easy to produce some strange and non-sensical expressions using the simple lambda calculus. In order to try to work around those problems, and end up with a consistent system, Church introduced the concept of *types*, producing the *simply typed lambda calculus*. Once types hit the scene, things really went wild; the type systems for lambda calculi have never…

Greater than the Sum of its Parts: Why Being the Parent of Many Isn't as Hard as You Think

My children made me try a chocolate-covered gummy bear the other day. Now a chocolate gummy bear is not a local, sustainable or home-grown food, and frankly, I don't like gummy bears (the only good use I ever had for them was in college, where nothing would keep posters on cinder-block walls without damaging the walls like a gummy bear melted on with a lighter), and I'm not that big a chocolate person. But the kids kept telling me that this was better than either the low-quality chocolate used to cover them or gummy bears. I tried one, and they were right - it was better, an official…

More on Division by Zero

Some of the commenters to yesterday's post raised some interesting questions on the subject of dividing by zero. So interesting, in fact, that I felt the subject deserved another post. My SciBling, revere, of Effect Measure: writes the following: OK, I shouldn't jump in here because I'm an epidemiologist and not a mathematician, but, what the hell. All I can do is be wrong (which I am used to). Some algebraists do permit division by zero, but only in the case 0/0. Thus, Rotman in Advanced Modern Algebra, Revised Printing, p. 121, has this definition: Def.: Let a and b be elements of a…

John Roberts, Abstraction and Broad Principles

I had lunch on Saturday with my friend Dan Ray, a frequent commenter here and a con law teacher, and we had an interesting discussion about John Roberts and the issue of the level of abstraction at which you view a given claim when it comes before the court. This was an issue during his confirmation hearings, though I'm sure a lot of people missed the significance of it. Sen. Biden questioned Roberts about this issue and the exchange went as follows: BIDEN: I asked Justice Ginsburg a question about . . . the Michael H. [v. Gerald D.] case. . . . You and I both know how you determine history…

Favorite Movie Lines

Since half the blogs on the net seem to be making lists of their favorite movie quotes, I thought I'd add some of mine. Some movies are just goldmines of great lines - Caddyshack, almost any Kevin Smith movie, Bull Durham. Herewith some of my absolute favorites, without the title of the movie so you can guess where they come from. "Wouldn't it be great if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive? If needy were a turn on?" "You know, I've been doing some of the most important thinking of my life today. I wonder of this is the right time to tell you about it . . . I figured out why I'…

Robert Wright Bashes the New Atheists on Foreign Policy

Writing at the Huffington Post, Robert Wright has a very bad post up about the New Atheists and foreign policy. Let's have a look" It must strike progressive atheists as a stroke of bad luck that Christopher Hitchens, leading atheist spokesperson, happens to have hawkish views on foreign policy. After all, with atheists an overwhelmingly left-wing group, what were the chances that the loudest infidel in the western world would happen to be on the right? No essay that starts like that is likely to have anything interesting or insightful to say. Atheists are overwhelmingly left-wing on…

Diary of a Sad Physicist

Writing a blog is for me (1) amusing and (2) amusing. Can anyone take anything that I write on a blog seriously? Well sometimes people do. Many eons ago (okay, I lie, it was 2005), I wrote a post about the then new "h-index." The h-index is an attempt at trying to find a better way of "ranking" citation counts. As such, it is, of course, nothing more than another meter stick in the long line of lazy tenure committee metric sticks. But it's also fun! Why is it fun? Because calculating any "metric" is fun for people like me who spent their childhood involved in such mind expanding tasks…

Scientists Should Be Skeptical of Funding Through the Stimulus Package (updated)

David Goldston, writing in Nature, echoes a point I have been trying to make about the science provisions of the economic stimulus package. He lists some reasons why scientists should be wary of getting our funding this way: First, being included in the stimulus measure could turn science spending into a political football. In general, federal support for science is something pretty much everyone in both parties agrees should be maximized, even if they haven't always followed through by providing the cash. The fight over the stimulus bill could erode that consensus, creating problems for the…

A better model for funding astronomy?

The current way we fund astronomy research in this country is horribly flawed. There must be a better way. Let me suggest one that I believe that we should consider. Now, yes, you are all going to be cynical and say, "Rob thinks it's flawed because he's had trouble getting funding, and the main flaw is that he doesn't have any funding." While it is true that I have been burned by the system, and am admittedly bitter about that, I think that there are rational arguments for my case. Let us consider the boundary conditions. Let's assume that there is some drive to continue to perform…

Homing in on magnetoreception

The question of how birds migrate long distances has long baffled researchers, and there are various hypotheses about which navigational cues birds use when migrating. Over the years, it has been suggested that migrating birds use smell, visual cues such as the position of the sun, the geomagnetic field, or a combination of these. It is, for example, known that induced magnetic fields and electrical storms disrupt the navigational abilities of homing pigeons, but exactly how the birds detect, perceive and interpret a magnetic field remains a mystery. A recent study led by Todd Dennis, of…

Medical ghostwriting and the role of the 'author' who acts as the sheet.

This week the New York Times reported on the problem of drug company-sponsored ghostwriting of articles in the scientific literature: A growing body of evidence suggests that doctors at some of the nation's top medical schools have been attaching their names and lending their reputations to scientific papers that were drafted by ghostwriters working for drug companies -- articles that were carefully calibrated to help the manufacturers sell more products. Experts in medical ethics condemn this practice as a breach of the public trust. Yet many universities have been slow to recognize the…

The fixed mindset of the anti-vaccine activist

One of my interests in skepticism and critical thinking has been the similarity in the fallacious arguments, approach to data, and general behavior of those who are--to put it generously--not so skeptical or scientific in their approach to life. I'm talking about believers in the paranormal, quacks, anti-vaccine activists, conspiracy theory mavens, Holocaust deniers, creationists, anthropogenic global warming denialists, and cranks of all stripes. Indeed, it is this similarity in mindset that led Mark Hoofnagle to coin the term "crank magnetism," a perfect description of how people who…

Déjà vu all over again: Another Internet survey on vaccinations

It is an article of faith among the antivaccine movement that vaccines are degrading the health of our children, such that vaccines cause autism, asthma, diabetes, and a number of other chronic diseases. You won't have to look far on most antivaccine websites to find claims that today's children are the sickest in history and insinuations, if not outright statements, that vaccines are at least part ofthe cause. If you've been following the antivaccine movement as long as I have (more than a decade) or even if you've only been following it one tenth as long, you are probably aware that one of…

Nicholas Gonzalez: The latest victim of the pharma assassins?

The conspiracy deepens. What conspiracy? You ask. Haven't you heard? Big pharma is out killing alternative medicine doctors! Or at least that's what you'll be told if you venture towards the deep dark underbelly of quack websites. Up until now, the most prominent "victim" was autism quack, Jeff Bradstreet, who, according to police, committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest in the woods of North Carolina but who, according to antivaccine advocates and "autism biomed" quacks, must have been assassinated by a big pharma black ops team. Or something. After all, as we know, the FDA had…

Your Friday Dose of Woo: EneMan answers Poopdoc

Unfortunately, I was way too busy this week to come up with a new edition of Your Friday Dose of Woo. However, there's still stuff to be mined from the ancient history of this blog, stuff that most of you, my readers, have probably not seen. This one, for instance, dates back nearly two years (September 2, 2005) and features this blog's mascot, everybody's favorite real colon cleansing product. In this installation, our mascot shows the woo being sold by a colon-cleansing altie for the product of his action that it is. Rrrrr. As you may recall, last month's appearance of everybody's favorite…

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Old MacDonald had a farm, ee-i-ee-i-o, and on his farm he had some (more) woo, ee-i-ee-i-o

I want to apologize to Abel Pharmboy in advance on this one. This is the second time in less than three months that I've invaded his territory to a certain extent in Your Friday Dose of Woo, specifically his The Friday Fermentable feature. Last time around, I couldn't believe it when I encountered some serious farm woo particularly common in wineries known as biodynamics, which involved burying various animal parts (among other things) on the farm in order to promote its life force. Who said that the best woo is found only in medicine? Certainly not me. At least, not anymore. This time around…

Update on the case of "Coma Man" Rom Houben: Facilitated communication is still woo

A couple of months ago, I wrote about a case that demonstrated conclusively just how easily even respected researchers can be taken in by psuedoscience. Of course, I was not alone. A number of others, including Steve Novella, James Randi, bioethicist Art Caplan, Hank Schlinger, and myself, recognized the reports that a Belgian man named Rom Houben, who had been in a coma for 23 years, was actually conscious and could communicate with the help of a "facilitator" named Linda Wouters was in fact nothing more than the example of the quackery known as facilitated communication. This is a…

Threats to science-based medicine: Pharma ghostwriting

There is no doubt that the infiltration of quackademic medicine into medical schools in this country represents a profound threat to science-based medicine. By mixing mysticism, non-science, and pseudoscience along with science-based medicine, medical schools are in essence endorsing quackery and elevating it to the same level as science-based and science-tested modalities. Worse, they're running the risk of training a generation of medical students accepting of this "integrating" woo with science, who can't recognize highly implausible treatments or recognize obvious quackery. By letting…

Your Friday Dose of Woo: The Color of Woo (Green, Of Course!)

Like most people, I like making money. True, it's not the main goal of my life (otherwise I definitely wouldn't be in academics), but, all in all, it's better to be comfortably off than to be poor. And, as I've said before, although I could make more in private practice, I don't do too badly as an academic surgeon. I can afford a decent house, a nice car, computers, and gadgets, and still save for retirement. Of course, key to that is not spending beyond my means, as some at my income level somehow still manage to do, but wouldn't it be nice if you could access forces and powers that would--…