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The Feeling of What Happens

The "Revelation" as described by St. John, though likely inspired through the use of hallucinogens (see The Mystery of Manna). The title for this post comes from a terrific book by the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, but I think it's appropriate for a discussion on faith, feeling and reason. Francis Collins' nomination as Director of the National Institutes of Health has effectively gotten people talking about religion, science and what, if anything, each should have to do with the other. I recently brought up Sam Harris' critique of the editor's at Nature for their praise of Collins' book…

The Science of Makeup

I couldn't help but be intrigued that my stiffest competition for winning the $10,000 Blogging Scholarship was a makeup blogger. What is it about cosmetics that is so appealing? Why do people wear makeup, and what might have caused early man to play around with blush and lipstick? Well, like everything else in life, a lot can be explained by science. Makeup has been around for centuries. The earliest records of makeup use date back to around 3000 BC when ancient Egyptians used soot and other natural products to create their signature look. Evidence suggests that the origins of makeup may go…

Scientific Misconduct and the Autism-MMR Vaccine Link

A series of articles just published in The Sunday Times reports that it appears likely that Andrew Wakefield falsified much of the data that was used in the 1998 Lancet article that first identified the MMR vaccine as a potential cause of autism. If the charges leveled by the paper are remotely accurate, Wakefield is guilty of homicide - perhaps not legally, but certainly morally. If previous claims made by the paper are accurate, Wakefield may have acted for financial gain. If even a fraction of the accusations leveled by The Times are true, Wakefield engaged in absolutely outrageous…

Scientists and the Public - What's Our Responsibility?

Hunt Willard spoke at the NC Science Blogging Conference about "Promoting Public Understanding of Science". Willard is the director of the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy. He made a distinction between getting people to actually understand the science itself - which he felt was really hard to do - versus getting them to understand the implications of science. He felt it was very easy to get people on the bandwagon with implications. I'm not sure, however, that you can do an adequate job of getting people to understand the implications of this or that bit of science without…

This is The Patriarchy: When Talking to the Master, Speak in a Civil Tone

Earlier this summer, a famous cheesesteak purveyor here in Philadelphia put up a sign in his establishment that read "This is America: When Ordering, Speak English", thus touching off a controversy that raged for weeks. Owner Joey Vento was eventually served with a complaint claiming he was in violation of two sections of the city's anti-discrimination laws. Vento's sign was just one manifestation of the xenophobia sweeping the nation these days, politely euphemized as "immigration controversy". It's also a stark illustration of how the dominant group (in this case, moneyed Republican…

Fitness

Fitness. Of the many concepts of evolution, this is perhaps one of the more widely misunderstood. It comes from the unfortunate slogan written by Herbert Spencer and urged on Darwin by Wallace and others: survival of the fittest. People think it means the strongest, or the most aggressive, and that it means evolutionary theory is a tautology. We'll look at these in a bit. but first, what does it really mean in evolutionary biology? Fitness is a property of a competing variant in a population. It means that X, whatever it might be biologically, is increasing in its frequency in a population…

Atheists have conquered America by being really good at trivia

The Pew Forum surveyed Americans on their knowledge of religion, and discovered that the group most generally knowledgeable about world religions was…those unshriven hellbound godless folk. This does not sit well with many believers, who have long preferred to relegate atheists to a hell of total unawareness of the gods, smugly assuming that if only we knew what they knew, we'd be True Believers in god in general and their specific, narrow sect in particular. That we might actually know what they believe and not only choose to not believe, but also to regard their superstitions as ridiculous…

Selection of Antidepressants: Desvenlafaxine (Pristiq)

I haven't gotten back to the "selection of antidepressants" series.  Mostly that is because, alphabetically, the next one is supposed to be citalopram.  While href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citalopram">citalopram (Celexa™) is a perfectly fine antidepressant, it is kind of boring. So to spice things up a little bit, I'm going to jump ahead to href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desvenlafaxine" rel="tag">desvenlafaxine.  This is a drug that is in development by href="http://www.wyeth.com/" rel="tag">Wyeth.  They plan to market it with the brand name, href="http://www.wyeth…

"Scientific Consensus" and other dirty words

Many of the commenters on my earlier post about the so-called wisdom of crowds, "Science is not a democracy," have expressed distaste for the phrase "scientific consensus." I don't really share that distaste, and here's why. To me, it's like being disturbed by the phrase "electoral college." You may detest the way our nation's electoral system works; you may not trust the outcomes it produces; but there is an established system, and the electoral college is part of it. You can object to the existence of the electoral college and criticize its characteristics, and you can try to change the…

Why Blog About Science?

This week's "Ask a Science Blogger" question is, "What makes a good science teacher?" I don't know how to answer that. I've had many science teachers, some of whom were very good, some of whom were very bad, and most of whom fell somewhere in between. And they were all different. The only thing I can think of that the good ones had was a knowledge of the material and the ability to communicate it effectively, but that's pretty much the definition of a good science teacher (or a good teacher in general), so giving that as an answer for what makes a good science teacher would be pretty…

What's encoded in your genome

So in previous posts I've written: How to think about biology, Life is full of machines and Life and information. I guess I'm on some philosophy of Biological study kick. Now I'll put the pieces of the puzzle and talk about what those proteins encode in the typical mammalian organism. This will go a long way to explaining how these machines promote what has been called evolvability. But what is evolvability? Here I am using the term as the ease of which a system can evolve phenotypically in response to natural selection. Going back to my first essay, I had emphasized the idea that the…

President Obama on education.

In last night's address to the joint session of Congress, President Obama said: The third challenge we must address is the urgent need to expand the promise of education in America. In a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity - it is a pre-requisite. Right now, three-quarters of the fastest-growing occupations require more than a high school diploma. And yet, just over half of our citizens have that level of education. We have one of the highest high school dropout rates of any…

An astoundingly dumb bit of CAM apologia from thousands of miles away

One of the benefits of blogging is that it's broadened my horizons. Although the vast majority of what I write about happens in my very own country, the United States, nonetheless I frequently learn about things happening in many other countries, some that I wouldn't necessarily pay a lot of attention to. But when something happens in a country, not matter how far away, that interests me, sometimes it'll interest me enough to write about it. This is particularly true when it's a story about how other countries deal with the pseudoscientific bunch of quackery that comprise most of the…

Naturopathy invades the heartland

Many are the times I've referred to homeopathy as The One Quackery To Rule Them All. Because homeopathic remedies diluted greater than 12 C (12 serial hundred-fold dilutions) have been diluted more than Avagadro's number, they are incredibly unlikely to have even a single molecule of starting compound in them. That makes them water. Given that the vast majority of homeopathic remedies are, in fact, only water, they are the perfect quackery, and any effects due to homeopathy are nonspecific and placebo effects. More recently, I've pointed out that, because you can't have naturopathy without…

Which is right: 'In your face' or staid professionalism?

I'm looking forward to the moment in a few weeks from now when Desiree Schell and I sit down and have a serious public conversation about approaches to promoting skepticism and science-based reasoning and policy. We'll also discuss New Atheism and Accommodationism, I assume. As you know, Desiree hosts the highly popular radio program and podcast "Skeptically Speaking." This may be the first time she's engaged in a public conversation with some crazy New Atheist blogger anywhere other than on her own home turf (we'll be talking on Atheist Talk Radio, with Mike Haubrich hosting). It…

Anderson Cooper transcript

The transcript of last night's Anderson Cooper segment is available. My assessment: it was a pro-religion/pro-creationism show that gave undue reverence to nonsense. Tom Foreman, one of the reporters, was a pandering fool. Anderson Cooper was an obliging tool. Most of the interviewees were conventionally clueless. I've put a few choice bits below the fold. There was a good amount of footage dedicated to Ken Ham, his creation science museum, and a family of ignorant homeschoolers who said evolution was not science. On the other side, the side of good science? MIKE NOVACEK, PROVOST, AMERICAN…

Another teen endangered by "alternative medicine"

If there's one thing that gets my blood boiling almost above all else when it comes to quackery, it's when parents subject children to it. The result has been copious blogging about cases, such as that of Daniel Hauser, Katie Wernecke, and Abraham Cherrix, all of whom refused chemotherapy for treatable cancers. I've also discussed Madeline Neumann, a 12-year-old girl whose parents, based on their religion, allowed her to die of diabetic ketoacidosis rather than save her life by allowing physicians to administer insulin and fluids. They thought prayer would save her. It didn't. The following…

The invasion of Haiti by well-intentioned but useless woo continues apace

Pity the poor Haitians. Not only is their nation dirt poor, but to kick off 2010, they suffered an earthquake that killed approximately a quarter of a million people, left at least 300,000 injured, and resulted in 1,000,000 homeless. Huge swaths of its capital of Port au Prince and Léogâne, among other cities, had been leveled. The devastation was (and remains) almost beyond comprehension, and it will be years, if not decades, before Haiti can recover. Disease and hunger are rampant. In the immediate aftermath, looting and violence were common. Unfortunately, disaster seems to attract…

Don't get sick in July?

Dave Munger and others have been spearheading an effort to promote the acceptance of a specific logo that science bloggers (ScienceBloggers, included) can use to let the reader know that the topic of a blog post is a discussion of real, peer-reviewed research. Use of the logo, which I've used for this post, means a blogger is not just commenting on research that's been reported in the media, but rather has gone, so to speak, straight to the horse's mouth to look up the original peer-reviewed journal article. It's a worthy effort, and I plan on going back through the last few months of…

The "Jenny McCarthy effect": More credulity towards autism quackery

I was thinking of calling this post Jenny McCarthy and Julie Deardorff: Two crappy tastes that taste crappy together, but I've already used that joke with Jenny McCarthy and Oprah Winfrey. Besides, Julie Deardorff isn't nearly as famous as Oprah, although, as I've discussed before, she's probably even more credulous than Oprah towards the lastest dubious feel-good story about autism. Of course, this means that Deardorff and McCarthy are custom-made for each other, and, unfortunately, the antivaccination columnist for the Chicago Tribune has finally hooked up with the former Playmate of the…

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Soundscapes on the brain

I had thought about taking the day off after celebrating the 100th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle yesterday, but a skeptic's work is never done, and, besides, my wife's out of town for a couple of days. Given the choice of television, working on my program's section of our cancer center core grant or one of the two other grants I'm currently juggling, or blogging, I wonder what appeals to me more. Hmmmm.... Ah, screw it. I've been living my work nearly every waking hour for the last few days. Heck, I even got stuck at work fairly late last night because of the bane of being s surgeon,…

Where the Buffalo Roamed: A Historical Photo Essay

Some folks say that bison belong here, not the ’burbs. The great herds once covered the plains, shaping the prairie in their nomadic graze. They were a keystone species, holding the ecology of the plains in a state of equilibrium. Native Americans who lived on the plains depended on the bison for survival, using the animals as a primary source of materials and food. Hides were used as clothing and shelter, bones were used as weapons, tools, and farming impliments. It may have been the most healthy lifestyle on earth at the time, at least nutritionally, if height is a judge of health. These…

Anti-vaccine activists try out a new metaphor

If there's one thing that the loons over at the anti-vaccine crank blog Age of Autism might actually be somewhat good at, it's leaping on a news story and trying to liken it to their unshakable pseudoscientific belief that vaccines cause autism. Unfortunately for them (and fortunately for our our amusement), the merry band of anti-vaccine activists over there is so utterly, irredeemably bad at constructing a coherent and logical metaphor that whenever they try the result comes out something like these two posts: If President Obama Had Been Talking About the Autism "Spill" Olmsted on Autism…

Here we go again: The vile tactic of blaming shaken baby syndrome on vaccines, part 3

I was a bit angry yesterday. I’m never happy when I see the overarching narrative that prescientific and pseudoscientific beliefs are equivalent and worth doing clinical trials on them. But the irritation I feel when I see examples of journalists credulously swallowing that narrative whole and regurgitating it in mainstream publications like the Wall Street Journal is nothing compared to the anger that is provoked when I see one of the worst antivaccine lies of all being promulgated by a person known for promoting it. The person is Christina England. The tactic is trying to blame the…

A question for Ben Stein: Why are you singling out Darwin and ignoring the true inspirations for the Holocaust, Pasteur and Koch?

Nasal drone Ben Stein, as you would be hard-pressed not to know if you are a regular reader of ScienceBlogs, is hosting what looks to be a truly execrable crap-fest called Expelled!: No Intelligence Allowed. The movie basically consists of two themes: (1) Whining about "intellectual oppression" by those evil "Darwinists" directed against any valiant "intelligent design" creationist or anyone else who "questions" Darwin and (2) lots of blaming the Holocaust and other atrocities (but mainly Hitler and the Holocaust) on "Darwinism," replete with lots of shots of Nazis, Ben Stein clumsily emoting…

A Reply to Former House Science Chair Sherwood Boehlert

On May 3, as part of the annual AAAS Forum on Science & Technology Policy, retired Congressman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), the former chair of the House Science & Technology committee, gave the keynote William Carey lecture (full text). In his address, he devoted several pages of his speech to our Policy Forum article at Science and our Sunday Outlook commentary at the Washington Post. We've long admired Congressman Boehlert's work on science, technology, and the environment, and we deeply respect his commitment to scientific advice and bi-partisan policy making. The scientific…

The nonsense that is "Vaccine Injury Awareness Month"

Normally, these days I greet the month of October with a mixture of anticipation and dread. The anticipation stems from October's position as Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Now that somehow I've managed to have a variety of responsibilities with respect to how breast cancer is managed at our cancer institute, suddenly I find that I'm sometimes called upon to do media appearances, and Breast Cancer Awareness Month is one time we can use to get our message out about breast health and breast cancer detection and treatment, not to mention to highlight for the local media some of the cool research…

A "personal case" for homeopathy, part 2

Given that this is the last weekday before the end of 2011 and this quite probably will be my last post of the year (that is, unless something so compelling pops up over the weekend that it tempts me more than I can resist), I wondered what would be a good topic. Then, readers started sending me a link to the perfect topic, and I agreed that it represents a loose end that I should try to take care of before the year is up. So take care of it I will. Right before Christmas, a homeopath named Judith Acosta, who bills herself as a "licensed psychotherapist, classical homeopath, and crisis…

The Worst Parts of Scientific Life

The lack of posts in the past 3 days was caused by our departmental retreat, that takes place on the cape (i.e. Cape Cod) in March ... we usually aim to have the retreat during a blizzard, however this year we only had mild rain. All the talking and drinking with my peers in the Cell Biology department, made me think of a couple of posts that appeared in my previous blog ... The Worst Things About Science. So here they are (in no particular order): 1 - Being scooped. There is nothing worse than working your ass off for 4 years (much of it in the coldroom) when BANG! a paper comes out making…

Why Are You So Angry?

Thegoodman really, really wants to know. If you do not consider yourself a failure, that is great. Why then are you so angry about this situation? If it has worked out well for you, what is driving your passionate hatred for our patriarch society? Like many gender discussions/arguments, your approach has made me feel guilty for being a man. This doesn't accomplish anything positive since I soon get defensive because I cannot help it that I am a man and I shouldn't feel guilty about just as you shouldn't feel guilty for being a woman. This is hilarious in so many ways. Let's recap. I…

Agriculture produced its own biological intolerance

I'm talking about coeliac disease: Coeliac disease is caused by a reaction to gliadin, a gluten protein found in wheat (and similar proteins of the tribe Triticeae, which includes other cultivars such as barley and rye). Upon exposure to gliadin, the enzyme tissue transglutaminase modifies the protein, and the immune system cross-reacts with the small-bowel tissue, causing an inflammatory reaction. That leads to a truncating of the villi lining the small intestine (called villous atrophy). This interferes with the absorption of nutrients, because the intestinal villi are responsible for…

Does Relocalization Make You Stupid?

I made myself swear that I would not argue with any of my fellow Science bloggers for one full week after my arrival here, no matter what. Fortunately, my first week wound up yesterday, and with the arrival of Greg Laden's essay on the political and intellectual dangers of relocalization, I've got good fodder for my first donnybrook ;-). Actually, I agree with Laden's concern about relocalization of political power on a number of points - my issue is more with how he frames the discussion, as one in which local policies are inevitably more subject to, well, stupidity. That said, I agree…

Your Friday Dose of Woo: The hills are alive with the sound of woo

After posting about the Donnie Davies, an alleged "youth minister" in Houston who has garnered a lot of attention throughout the blogosphere for his website in which he provides a hilariously off-base list of "gay bands" to avoid and "safe" bands, I was perusing my Folder of Woo, looking for this week's target, but it was hard. After all, whether Donnie is a big hoax or not, whether his atrocious video saying that "homosexuality is a choice" and that "God hates a fag" is meant to be satire or not, he was going to be hard to top. In fact, I don't think I'll even try. However, Donnie did…

So why am I a *Christian*, specifically?

Warning:: There is no science whatsoever in this post. If that's going to annoy you, give this one a pass. In a previous post, I said what role I thought religion and spirituality still could play in the modern, scientific world. All of that applied to any sort of religion or spirituality, and was not specific. However, I have claimed to be a Christian. A lot of people have been asking for me to explain just what I mean by that, since the things I have said seem to contradict most peoples' notions (Christians and non-Christians alike) of what it means to be Christian. So why do I say that…

Bad science about GMOs: It reminds me of the antivaccine movement (revisited)

I never used to write much about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) before. I still don't do it that often. For whatever reason, it just hasn't been on my radar very much. That seems to be changing, however. It's not because I went seeking this issue out (although I must admit that I first became interested in genetic engineering when I was in junior high and read a TIME Magazine cover article about it back in the 1970s), but rather because in my reading I keep seeing it more and more in the context of anti-GMO activists using bad science and bad reasoning to justify a campaign to demonize…

On Galileo

Yesterday's post on Rick Perry's Galileo gaffe has gotten a lot of attention, much supportive, but some critical. On twitter, historians of science Rebekah Higgit and Thony Christie have helped me sort out some of the threads. I don't think this alters any of the basic results, but it's worth teasing out some of the history, both for its own sake, and for whatever relevance it may actually have to contemporary politics. The contentious lines argued that Perry's "opening passage, like his comments on evolution, seem to forthrightly endorse the legitimacy of letting religious and political…

Right to Expressive Association and Government Subsidy

In discussing a legal case involving the University of North Carolina and their refusal to fund a Christian fraternity (the university later reversed themselves) the other day, Reed Cartwright asked a reasonable question: I don't see how this is any different than the city of Berekely refusing to subsidise the Boy Scouts because they discriminate. It seems to me that there exists pretty clear precident that allows government entities to not provide freebies to discrimatory organizations. That is why I am confused that UNC thought that it was going to lose. I didn't have time then to fully…

Pairing Science and Atheism Redux

Last week, I posted a long argument for why I believe pairing science and atheism is a poor strategic choice for scientists. The response to that article has I think been largely positive, but I do want to address the criticisms of it now that I have had a chance to read all the comments and posts about it. Let me state clearly, though, that I think all of the counter-arguments are legitimate. The world is a complicated place, and I have no special insight into its workings. Further, if any people find my arguments pejorative, I apologize. It was my intent that this discussion be conducted…

A horrifying breast cancer "testimonial" for "holistic" treatment, finale

(NOTE: The videos of Robert O. Young's interview with Kim Tinkham have been removed, as I predicted in this post that they would be. Fortunately, I downloaded copies before he managed to do that. Part 6 appears to be still there--for now.) (NOTE ADDED 12/7/2010: Kim Tinkham has died of what was almost certainly metastatic breast cancer.) I hate stories like this. I really do. I hate them with a burning passion that makes it hard for me to see straight when I first find out about them. They make me want to grab a shotgun and go looking for the quack responsible. It's a good thing I've never by…

It's not just acupuncture; it's laser acupuncture!

Why, oh, why do I keep perusing NaturalNews.com? Why do I subject myself to wave after wave of neuron-apoptosing stupidity of a magnitude that even activation of NF-kappaB, Akt, and neuronal cell survival signaling pathways can barely keep the killing stupidity at bay? I guess it's because it provides such good blog fodder for a skeptical blog dedicated to science- and evidence-based medicine. On the other hand, it often gives me a headache to read its contents. Really, it does. I mean, looking at how Mike Adams, the Woo-meister Supreme and Chief Tin Foil Hat responsible for the lunacy there…

A horrifying breast cancer "testimonial" for "holistic" treatment, part 3

(NOTE ADDED 12/7/2010: Kim Tinkham has died of what was almost certainly metastatic breast cancer. Also note that, when it was publicized on the Internet and on the blogosphere that Tinkham's cancer gave every indication of having recurred and she was dying, her "practitioner" Robert O. Young removed the videos embedded below from YouTube.) Remember Kim Tinkham? She's the woman who was diagnosed with Stage III breast cancer about three years ago. At the time, she became infamous because she showed up on Oprah Winfrey's show, back when Oprah was in her "Secret" phase and proceeded to alarm…

Tooth Fairy science about traditional Chinese medicine, promoted in the Wall Street Journal

They are winning. I’ve spent nearly ten years on this blog and nearly seven years at my not-so-super secret other blog (where I will likely crosspost this over the weekend) discussing the infiltration of quackery into medicine, both in academic medical centers and, increasingly, even in community medical centers. There’s a term that I wish I had coined but do frequently use to describe this infiltration: Quackademic medicine. Over the last 30 years or so, what was once quackery, rightly dismissed in a famous 1983 editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine as a “pabulum of common…

Poppa was a Rolling Stone...who likes homeopathy?

Old fart that I am, I’ve been a fan of The Rolling Stones since the mid-1970s, when I was in junior high school. Over the years, I’ve accumulated pretty close to all of their studio albums—and even bought multiple remastered versions of classics like Exile on Main Street and Beggar’s Banquet—and got access to the rest when I discovered the joy of streaming through Apple Music. Granted, the Stones went through a rough patch, creatively speaking, in the 1980s (the less said about Under Cover and Dirty Work, for instance, the better) and nothing they’ve done since the late 1970s has lived up to…

You can't write that number; in fact, you can't write most numbers.

In my Dembski rant, I used a metaphor involving the undescribable numbers. An interesting confusion came up in the comments about just what that meant. Instead of answering it with a comment, I decided that it justified a post of its own. It's a fascinating topic which is incredibly counter-intuitive. To me, it's one of the great examples of how utterly wrong our intuitions can be. Numbers are, obviously, very important. And so, over the ages, we've invented lots of notations that allow us to write those numbers down: the familiar arabic notation, roman numerals, fractions, decimals,…

Book Review: The Manga Guide to Statistics

I recently got an offer from someone at No-Starch Press to review the newly translated book, The Manga Guide to Statistics. I recieved the book a couple of weeks ago, but haven't had time to sit down and read it until now. If you haven't heard of the "Manga Guides", they're an interesting idea. In Japan, comic books ("Manga") are much more common and socially accepte than they typically are in the US. It's not at all unusual to see Japanese adults sitting in the subway reading Manga. Manga has a very distinctive artistic style, with its own set of common artistic conventions. The Manga…

The Difference Between Good Science Reporters and Most Political Reports Is...

...most good science reporters like science. Most political reporters don't like governance. One of the important things about going to scientific conferences for scientists is 'catching up.' While part of that is genuine social interaction with friends (when else are you going to see friends from graduate school who now have jobs on the opposite coast?), there's also a lot of gossipy-type information exchange: who has a new job, what jobs are coming open, difficulties in getting tenure or funding, and so on. Sometimes, there's even juicy gossip that is utterly personal (not that one…

What David Horowitz's Academic Freedom Might Look Like

Rightwing nut David Horowitz just finished celebrating Islamofascist Awareness Week. One of the goals of Horowitz's exercise is to intimidate faculty and students into political correctness*. A while back, while reading Hanna Rosen's God's Harvard, this description of how one faculty member at Jesus mill Patrick Henry College**, Bob Stacey, was fired for teaching those heretical philosophers Kant and Plato struck as the kind of campus Horowitz would like: Just before class, someone pointed out the window, where you could still see the outlines of last night's moon. "Please take your seats…

I See Stupid People: The Bob Kerrey & Warren Rudman Edition

I'm always astonished how so many people can think that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11, that the sun revolves around the earth, or that intelligent design is a valid theory. Another idiocy that can joined this esteemed list is the belief that Social Security will go bankrupt. Bob Kerrey and Warren Rudman have an op-ed piece in the Washington Post about getting the deficit under control where once again they claim that entitlements are going to increase out of control. First, they confuse the issue by conflating (and combining) Social Security and Medicare. This is incredibly…

Since Afarensis Did It...

...I might as well too. By some weird transcendental quirk of fate, I was planning on moving to this blog ">my skewering of Sally Jenkins' now-infamous column about ID next week. Afarensis has just reposted a very nice takedown of the silliness. Below are my thoughts at the time on Jenkins' idiocy. I usually like Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post, but today's column can only be described as sheer idiocy. Thankfully, the News Blog has dealt with most of the obvious criticisms, so I don't have to (it gets really old after a while). Before I address just how poorly Jenkins…

How New Anti-Abortion Laws Will Hurt, Maim, and Murder Women

There's been a spate of abortion restrictions passed by state legislatures around the country. And they'll have tragic consequences for women's health (italics mine): Indiana recently defunded Planned Parenthood clinics throughout the state. The new law makes any organization that performs abortion ineligible for state funds. Lack of clarity in the state's antiabortion law is affecting hospitals, too. Since its enactment, doctors in hospitals have stopped terminating pregnancies that pose a high risk to the health and life of a woman for fear of losing Medicaid patients. According to…