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How much did federal officials know about air quality at Ground Zero?

As Jori Lewis notes in the case study about World Trade Center recovery workers' health and safety, those who showed up at Ground Zero on the days and weeks after 9/11 got some misleading information about the risks they faced. Most notably, the EPA issued reassuring statements about the air quality - when, according to a 2003 EPA Inspector General report, the agency had insufficient data and analyses to support calling the air there safe. More accurate information might have increased the use of respirators and delayed people's return to homes and offices in the vicinity of Ground Zero. Now…

At least two dozen workers dead from fire in Bangladesh factory that produces for US brands

by Elizabeth Grossman In an incident that brings to mind the Triangle factory fire that took place in New York almost 100 years ago, the fire that broke out on December 14th on the 9th and 10th floors of the building housing the Ha-meem Group's "That's It Sportswear" factory in the Ashalia industrial district outside Dhaka, Bangladesh killed at least two dozen workers, and injured scores more. Electrical short-circuiting is a primary cause being investigated for the fire that occurred Tuesday while a reported 200 to 300 of the factory's approximately 5,000 or more workers were on lunch break…

Occupational Health News Roundup

The same day that NPR and ProPublica published their investigation into the dismantling of the workers’ compensation system, OSHA released its own report, “Adding Inequality to Injury: The Cost of Failing to Protect Workers on the Job.” The agency writes that the failure of employers to prevent millions of work-related injuries and illnesses each year coupled with changes to workers’ compensation systems is exacerbating income inequality and pushing many workers into poverty. The report states: For many injured workers and their families, a workplace injury creates a trap which leaves them…

Science Online and in Real Life

The Sciece Online meeting wrapped up yesterday afternoon, though the associated conversations and socialization carried on late into the night. I got to meet a lot of people I've only previously known as cartoon avatars, and spent a surprising amount of time talking about rugby. One of the things that stands out about the meeting, and that lots of people raved about, is the "unconference" style, where there aren't formal presentations, but moderated discussions. This wasn't all that surprising to me, because it's essentially identical to the more casual sort of panel at a science fiction…

Conservative groups spend up to $1bn a year to fight action on climate change?

Well, of course, this is trivially true, in the sense that $0 is "up to $1bn" and the report doesn't suggest that it could be more than $1bn. I got this from the Graun which continues to irritate by pointlessly and stupidly failing to link to the original study. I assume they do this because, like the mediaeval church, they regard themselves as gatekeepers and priests of knowledge: we should only be allowed their interpretation, and not see the original for ourselves. But enough ranting. There's a note at the bottom which says This headline on this article was amended on 21 December 2013 to…

Physics for Future Presidents by Richard Muller

Every time I mention the idea of teaching physics to a wider audience than just physics majors, somebody brings up Richard Muller's course, "Physics for Future Presidents," at Berkeley. So, I was pleased to find out that he has turned the course into a book, also titled Physics for Future Presidents, with the subtitle "The Science Behind the Headlines." I was going to try to cadge a free copy from his publisher, but our default local Borders is closing, and they were offering deep discounts on all their stock, so I just bought a copy. The book is framed as a sort of memo to somebody who will…

Newsflash: World Accepts Darwinism

The British Council, a Royally Chartered organization involved in education, has completed a survey which indicates that there is "a broad international consensus of acceptance towards his theory of evolution." From the press release: The research, conducted by Ipsos MORI, surveyed over ten thousand adults across ten countries worldwide including Argentina, China, Egypt, India, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Great Britain and the USA. The results show that the majority of people polled have heard of Charles Darwin with the highest levels of awareness in Russia (93%), Mexico (91%),…

The Gene for Running Fast or Far

Jamaican sprinters make people who are not really thinking about this jump, like pole vaulters, to the conclusion that there must be a gene for running fast that somehow evolved ... like Olympic Beach Volley Ball seemingly from sterile sand ... despite the numerous hurdles for such an event to happen. Such is the nature of amateur science. As much as I'd like to make a contribution to this discussion right now, I'm engaged in other activities that preclude a knee-jerk reaction. So for now, I offer this repost of an earlier piece on running and genetics. As a wet blanket. Enjoy the wet…

The Decent Human Beings' Guide to Speaking at Atheist Conferences

Thanks to PZ for the format/inspiration! Be self-aware. You are the speaker in a room filled with dozens, hundreds, thousands of people. Especially at atheist/skeptic conferences, we are all very interesting people, but out of those dozens/hundreds/thousands of people who could have been chosen to give a presentation, you were chosen. Your opinion and your words are most likely highly valued, because other people want to hear them. Other people want to learn from you. Other people look up to you. Other people have not had the exact same life history, education, experience that you have…

Eddington, Neutrinos, and the Changing of Meaning by Context

I'm writing a bit for the book-in-progress about neutrinos-- prompted by a forthcoming book by Ray Jaywardhana that I was sent for review-- and in looking for material, I ran across a great quote from Arthur Stanley Eddington, the British astronomer and science popularizer best known for his eclipse observations that confirmed the bending of light by gravity. Eddington was no fan of neutrinos, but in a set of lectures about philosophy of science, later published as a book, he wrote that he wouldn't bet against them: My old-fashioned kind of disbelief in neutrinos is scarcely enough. Dare I…

Richard Powers: World's Fair Advisory Board Nominee #3

"When we don't know what we are after, we risk passing it over in the dark." -- Three Farmers on their Way to a Dance Nominee #1: Karl Iagnemma Nominee #2: Chris Ware Nominee #3: Richard Powers Richard Powers, like the other nominees, is a creative ambassador in the broadest and most noble sense. He goes beyond false distinctions between humanities, sciences, arts, culture, and whatever else. He transcends the need to be labeled as one or another. Stephen Burt at Slate notes the same thing: "After reading Powers, C.P. Snow's once-famous complaint about the "two cultures"--scientists and…

The problem with Twitter

Every day it seems there's a new essay or post about social networking fatigue, virtual connectivity's isolating effects, and the threats posed by rapid-fire media. Most of all, though, it's about the problem with Twitter. My "25 random things I hate about Twitter" post attracted an usually large amount of traffic, including several visits from those who were alerted to the piece via Twitter, but that was written at least half in jest. Now allow me to share with you some more carefully considered criticisms. The problem with Twitter is not that it's useless. As überTwitterfan Coturnix has…

Human grid cells tile the environment

HOW does the brain encode the spatial representations which enable us to successfully navigate our environment? Four decades of research has identified four cell types in the brains of mice and rats which are known to be involved in these processes: place cells, grid cells, head direction cells and, most recently, border cells. Although the functions of most of these cell types are well characterized in rodents, it remains unclear whether they are also found in humans. A new functional neuroimaging study, by researchers from University College London, published online in the journal Nature,…

The PTSD Trap - War, culture, and the overdiagnosis of PTSD

My story in the April 2009 Scientific American story, "The Post-Traumatic Stress Trap", just went online. Here's the opening: In 2006, soon after returning from military service in Ramadi, Iraq, during the bloodiest period of the war, Captain Matt Stevens of the Vermont National Guard began to have a problem with PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder. Stevens's problem was not that he had PTSD. It was that he began to have doubts about PTSD: the condition was real enough, but as a diagnosis he saw it being wildly, even dangerously, overextended. [snip] "Clinicians aren't separating the…

The "Lost Women": science popularizers and communicators of the 19th century

Today's Guardian has a very interesting (though long) article by Richard Holmes, author of The Age of Wonder, about the unsung women of science. In the Guardian piece, Holmes shares some of his research for his forthcoming book, The Lost Women of Victorian Science: [M]y re-examination of the Royal Society archives during this 350th birthday year has thrown new and unexpected light on the lost women of science. I have tracked down a series of letters, documents and rare publications that begin to fit together to suggest a very different network of support and understanding between the sexes.…

How Dangerous is Manganese in Drinking Water?

Occupational exposure to manganese has been in the news lately, with law suits by welders who claim neurological disease caused by manganese exposure. Now two scientists at Swedenâs Karolinska Institute have written a paper in which they argue that current guidelines for safe levels of manganese in drinking water are based on a misinterpretation of a twenty-five year old study, and that newer evidence suggests that at least for infants and other vulnerable populations, the current guideline values are not adequately protective. In a paper available online at Environmental Health Perspectives…

Serious flaws revealed in longevity genes study

When an article was published in Science last week reporting that DNA samples from exceptionally long-lived individuals differed detectably from those of normal individuals, it got plenty of positive attention from the mainstream media. However, the buzz from experts was rapid and telling: my colleagues in the statistical genetics community weren't excited about the results, but immediately, profoundly skeptical. For people who've spent years doing genome-wide association studies (GWAS), several things stand out as unusual from this paper: the very large effect sizes of the identified SNPs (…

Andreas Moritz is a cancer quack

The Prime Quack has been identified: Andreas Moritz. He has admitted to getting Wordpress to pull Michael Hawkins' blog, and is also threatening me, now. Michael Hawkins, You may blame me for having your blog pulled. WorldPress had to remove your blog because otherwise it would have faced a hefty lawsuit, given the nature of the defamation campaign you had launched against me, and having positioned your blog link second place on the search engines. http://www.google.com/search?q=Andreas+Moritz&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a I…

Unnecessary Bioterrorism Hysteria

A recent post about the looming specter of bioterrorism by William Lind due to 'biohacking' seems overblown to me. But before I get Lind, what I find particularly disturbing about hyping a non-existent bioterror threat is that it makes combating infectious disease--the stuff that kills millions worldwide--much harder due to unnecessary regulations and restrictions. Onto Lind: For years, I have warned in these columns and elsewhere that the future weapon of mass destruction we should most fear is not a nuke. Rather, it is a genetically engineered plague, a plague no one has ever seen before…

Dave Munger Gives the Inside Scoop on ResearchBlogging

As everybody's talking about, the snazzy new version of ResearchBlogging.org launched on Tuesday. Powered by Seed Media Group Technology, ResearchBlogging now has a host of new features, including multi-language capability, subject-specific RSS feeds, and profiles of registered users. ResearchBlogging was the brain child of Dave Munger, a writer, a science educator, and half of the genius behind our most popular psychology blog, Cognitive Daily. (That's Dave at right, hiking in Pasayten Wilderness in Washington State, the largest wilderness area in the lower 48 states.) We sat down with…

W. P. Scott Chair in E-Librarianship at York University

Here's an amazing and fairly unique opportunity for a research-minded librarian who wants to significantly advance her or his research program. The appointment is for up to three years and the starting date is somewhat flexible. Here's the terms of reference for the position: Each appointment to the Chair will be a limited term appointment for up to three years. A committee will be established to undertake a search for the Chair. The selection will be based on the quality of the proposed research program along with evidence for the successful completion of the research proposal. The…

Nanotubes: The Next Asbestos?

The story of asbestos in this country ought to serve as a cautionary tale: A seemingly miraculous fiber was widely introduced into common consumer products; only after it was already in millions of homes did the general public realize that it causes a particularly terrible form of cancer. Now, treating victims and cleaning up contaminated communities is costing billions of dollars, while thousands of people endure the toll of a debilitating and deadly disease. Nanotechnology is another innovation that promises to bring consumer products to a whole new level â and, once again, it looks like…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Virtual Smart Home Controlled By Your Thoughts: Light switches, TV remote controls and even house keys could become a thing of the past thanks to brain-computer interface (BCI) technology being developed in Europe that lets users perform everyday tasks with thoughts alone. Spectacular Deep-water Coral Province Discovered Off Ireland's West Coast: NUI Galway researchers, during a recent deep-water expedition, have confirmed the existence of a major new coral reef province on the southern end of the Porcupine Bank off the west coast of Ireland. The province covers an area of some 200 sq. km and…

Marriage, adultery, and the law

[MAJeff here. I'll remember this one of these times.] Apparently, John Edwards had an affair. I've been out of the news loop and haven't been following it other than what I see in a few blog comment sections. I'm honestly not all that interested in the sex lives of the powerful; I'm more interested in the social reaction. So, I'm going to talk about a few things that I've seen, and tie those into issues of marriage and sex regulation by the state. One thing I've heard is, "at least he didn't break the law." Well, depending upon where his trysts took place, Edwards may have broken the law.…

KITP: making planets stick

Exoplanets Rising continues theoretical rumination, as we contemplate formation, migration, water delivery and evolution Johansen and Lissauer on oligarchic models before lunch. Then Mayer on collapse of Too Big Too Fail blobs before Chambers and Raymond return to rocks bashing into each other. Finish with Mardling looking at the subtleties of tidal evolution. Ok, Showman and Dobbs-Dixon did the whole giant circulation thing early this morning, but I wasn't here for that. It is all online if you like that sort of thing. Good review by Anders on dust bunnies and the irritation dust causes.…

September Pieces Of My Mind #1

Google Play Music's randomiser has recently served me up with two songs about extremely talkative girlfriends. In the Spongetones' "My Girl Maryanne" the singer finds the woman's chattiness adorable. In Gap Dream's "Immediate Life Sentence" he finds it annoying and concludes the song "I don't need to get laid that bad, I'll just stay home and get high". The crappy one of Sweden's two big pop-sci monthlies has been using freebie trinkets in its marketing for at least 30 years now. They sent me the alarm clock I used in high school. Now they're trying to entice me to subscribe with a little…

Exit Pachi, pursued by no-one

We interrupt your regular diet of Willie Soon for a brief break (the S+B controversy, 2003 is seeing active work). IPCC agrees on Acting Chair after R.K. Pachauri steps down said the IPCC press on the 25th. That PR is not merely coy but completely silent as to the reasons why he stepped down; coy but uninformative is the letter he sent to Bankymoon on the 24th which shyly refers to "the current circumstances" without specifying them, and announces that he has "taken the decision to step down", which is what you say when you're forced to resign but don't have the courage to say "resign" (note…

The Problem of (Quantum) Moderation: On Many Worlds

I've written before about the problem of having in-between views on controversial subjects in blogdom. This is something that also comes up in Jessica's excellent entry on online culture, and has been scientifically demonstrated in political contexts. I'm somewhat bemused, then, to see the same thing happen in a physics context. A while back, I got an email asking about quantum foundations that read in part: I'm very keen to understand why you and Andrew Thomas reject [the Many-Worlds Interpretation of QM]. I'd be very happy if you'd take a few minutes to try to describe why you think MWI is…

Science Is Not Irreducibly Complex

The poor coverage of science in the media is an evergreen topic in blogdom, to the point where I've mostly stopped clicking on links to those sorts of pieces. This ScienceProgress post about newsroom culture bugged me, though, and it took me a while to figure out the problem. The author worked as a reporter in North Carolina over the summer, covering science topics, and writes about his dissatisfaction with the journalistic template: I had one editor who required that I give him my story pitches using six words or fewer. But the message wasn't even simply to shorten; it was to make it punchy…

ScienceOnline2010 - Saturday Night Banquet at the Radisson

Note: If you've read all of this at the conference website and just want to pay, CLICK HERE. For those of you attending ScienceOnline2010, I'm the one tending to the Saturday night banquet at the headquarters hotel, The Radisson at Research Triangle Park. The banquet will be held following the Saturday 16 January sessions beginning at 7 pm. The dinner was a great success last year with about 135 of the registrants attending and was a great way to unwind and continue some of the discussions we began. This year, the supper will be followed by the Ignite session. For those who don't know,…

A Brief History of Light

So what exactly is light, anyway? It's a tough question. Isaac Newton thought it was composed of streams of microscopic particles he called corpuscles. Really it wasn't a bad idea. Light rays travel in straight lines just like fast moving projectiles, light bounces off objects in a manner not entirely unlike a ricocheting bullet, and if you try hard enough you can even explain refraction in terms of particles being slowed in matter online the lines of a ball bearing sinking in molasses. But it's pretty hard for the particle view to explain diffraction and interference, which are both very…

Why Perfect Pitch isn't always perfect

There are lots of people who, with training, can identify musical notes when they know the starting point -- when they hear a song starting with "C," they can name the rest of the notes in the song. But much rarer is the ability to identify musical notes without any context. This is what people are talking about when they talk about "perfect pitch" or "absolute pitch." Let's do a quick test to get a rough sense of how many CogDaily readers have absolute pitch. Listen to this note: Now, what note is it? Obviously these results won't be perfect, but they should give us a general idea. I'll…

A simple toy, and what it says about how we learn to mentally rotate objects

One of Jimmy's favorite toys as a toddler was a simple little bucket of blocks. There were three shapes: a rectangular prism, a triangular prism, and a cylinder. The bucket's lid had three holes: a square, a triangle, and a circle (The picture at right was the only one I could find online -- this sort of toy has gotten much fancier in recent years). For an adult, it's a simple matter to properly sort the shapes by placing them into the corresponding holes, but for a toddler, it's a real challenge. It took months before Jim was able to put any of the blocks through the holes, despite…

Science Scout badge tally.

You may recall a couple years ago when the Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique started issuing badges. Now, the Science Scouts have a spiffy new webpage and many new badges ... and there are rumors (or should I say rumours) that actual, physical badges, suited for stitching onto sashes or lab coats, will be available. So it seems like a good time to review the badges I have earned thus far as a Science Scout. The "talking science" badge: I don't need to explain this one, right? Even before I had a blog about matters scientific, I talked science. At…

Could Kos be more of an idiot? No.

The answer is no, given his position on the Kathy Sierra case and the death threats she received and the online savaging to which she was subjected. Kos attacks calls for a bloggers' code of conduct. This is actually the one point where I tend agree with him. It wouldn't help the situation and would be a muzzle on free speech, although I can understand why Sierra might have called for such a code. Unfortunately, it would not have stopped what happened to Sierra. If Kos had stopped there, I might actually have found myself in the uncomfortable position of actually agreeing with him on…

Lott claims NAS panels are biased

I've been reading Lott's new book, The Bias against Guns. Chapter 3 is entitled "How the Government Works against Gun Ownership". The heart of the chapter is on pages 53--55, where he argues that the National Academy of Sciences stacks its panels against guns. His first example is their panel on firearms research. He argues that the panel was set up "to examine only the negative side of guns". Lott writes: Rather than comparing how firearms facilitate both harm and self-defense, the panel was only asked to examine "firearm violence" or how "…

Obesity inversely correlated with European ancestry among African Americans

It is well known that different ethnic groups vary when it comes to diseases such as Type II Diabetes. Or, more specifically they vary in terms of risk, all things equal (if you use an online Type II Diabetes calculator you'll see immediately as they sometimes have a parameter for ethnicity). American blacks for example are heavier than American whites. This seems to be true even when you control for socioeconomic status (though as Oprah once said, "You don't need to do a 'study' to figure that out"). There has been research on genetic loci correlating to obesity in European populations…

Open Lab, Closed. Now the work begins...

And it is over! The submission deadline has just passed. No more submissions will be accepted for the 2010 edition of the Open Laboratory. I have lined up an impressive list of reviewers who will immediately start receiving their first judging lists and the complex process of winnowing down almost 900 entries into the final 50 essays/stories, one poem, one piece of art (for the cover) and one cartoon/comic strip. As usual, the book will be published with lulu.com and we'll try to have the book ready roughly in time for ScienceOnline2011 (we always say that, I know, but this time we'll really…

Reconsidering Climate Change Literacy & Communication

Last week I participated in a two-day workshop at NSF on climate change education. The meeting brought together researchers in science education, communication, and informal learning; representatives from government agencies such as NOAA, the EPA, and NASA; and organizations such as the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society. The presentations and discussions focused not only on school-based settings but also on public engagement campaigns, the news media, and the role of science centers and museums. Among several participants, there was an emphasis on three…

Yet another misleading alt-med cancer testimonial

They call them Necromancers. Necromancers have an uncanny ability to resurrect an old thread by commenting on it months, even years, after the last comment. Unfortunately, as hard as it is to believe, the version of Movable Type used by Seed to power our blogs does not have a preference panel that allows us to turn off our comments on posts after a set amount of time, for instance three months. Consequently, every so often I"m plagued with Necromancers bringing long deceased comment threads back from the dead to the annoyance of all. Of course, the most annoying Necromancers are the one who…

Birds in the News 109

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Winter in NYC means the return of migratory White-throated Sparrows, Zonotrichia albicollis (this bird is in its first winter plumage). There are thousands of these birds in Central Park and in the other parks here, subsisting on grass seeds along with crumbs and other foods that people give them. Image: Kevin T. Karlson [larger view]. Birds in Science Divers exploring a water-filled sinkhole in the Bahama Islands recently recovered one of the world's largest and most pristinely preserved collections of animal and…

A Primate is Born

   Our newborn takes after his father.The following is something of an impromptu experiment in live birth twittering. It started out simply as a means to update friends and family, but as events transpired we received some unexpected international attention. The entire labor lasted 47 hours, involved three different locations and two surgeries. This after we had carefully planned for a natural birth with no interventions. Thank you to the hundreds of people in at least eight countries who followed our story and sent messages of support. Special thanks to Henry Gee, Senior Editor of…

It's that time again: "Broken" peer review

Having spent the last couple of days dealing with pure woo, such as germ theory denialism and naturopathic quackery, I think now's as good a time as any to move on to a more serious topic. One of the most important aspects of science is the publication of scientific results in peer-reviewed journals. This publication serves several purposes, the most important of which is to communicated experimental results to other scientists, allowing other scientists to replicate, build on, and in many cases find errors in the results. In the ideal situation, this communication results in the steady…

Deepak Chopra tries his hand at a clinical trial. Woo ensues.

Of all the quacks and cranks and purveyors of woo whom I’ve encountered over the years, Deepak Chopra is, without a doubt, one of the most arrogantly obstinate, if not the most arrogantly obstinate. Sure, a quack like Mike Adams wins on sheer obnoxiousness and for the sheer breadth of crankery to which he ascribes, which includes everything from quackery, to New World Order conspiracy theories, to Scientology-like anti-psychiatry rants, to survivalist and gun nut tendencies, but he's so obviously unhinged, as well as intermittently entertaining, that he doesn't quite get under the skin the…

The No-Waste Food Preservation Plan

40% of all food produced worldwide, and nearly half of all food produced in the US goes to waste.  When you break down the realities of food waste, you see that in the developing world, much of the waste is due to lack of ability to preserve food - no refrigeration means that sheep you slaughtered is waste if all of it isn't eaten or dried or otherwise preserved immediately.  Lack of energy to run grain dryers means that rain at the wrong time results in moldy grain, etc... In the Global North, however, the vast majority of food is wasted not in the field, but in the process of getting to our…

Aging in men: An evolutionary perspective

Many years ago, Mel Konner, Marjorie shostak, and Boyd Eaton wrote "The Paleolithic Prescription: A program of diet and exercise and a design for living." (It is hard to find these days. To find it and related titles on Amazon, look for this book first, and track the PP down via the author name Konner.) (Added: You can probably get the The Paleolithic Prescription here.) Richard G. Bribiescas is professor of anthropology and ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University, where he also serves as deputy provost for faculty development and diversity. He is the author of Men:…

Keeping The Carbon In The Ground Elsewhere: Developing Nations

John Abraham has an interesting post up at the guardian called "Global warming action: good or bad for the poor?" It is a response to a post by a group of guys who tend to write annoying stuff about climate change (you can go to John's post for that information). Here, I want to make a brief comment related to John's excellent post. The crux of John Abraham's post is this, in two parts: 1) Some have argued that mitigation against climate change is bad for "the poor" (read: people in developing countries) because they have a right to go through the same phases of technological and social…

Trained Judgment and the Scientific Audience

Preface | Pt. 1 | Pt. 2 | Pt. 3 | (Sidebar 1) | Pt. 4 | Pt. 5 | Pt. 6 Pt. 7 | (Sidebar 2a) | (Sidebar 2b) | Pt. 8 | Pt. 9 | Conclusion I wrote earlier (here, to be precise) that there are numerous ways a picture can manipulate its viewers, but most break down into two: a modification of an image after it's taken or staging an image before it's taken. The first way a picture can manipulate its viewers--modifying an image after it's taken--is mostly seen as downright deception and corruption. Someone takes a picture of Fabio and Photoshops George Bush's head on it. It is easy to dismiss and…

Mike Adams turns his mad science skillz to analyzing a flu vaccine. Hilarity ensues.

It's always jarring when I go to a scientific meeting, in this case the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting, imbibe the latest clinical science on cancer, and then check back to see what the quacks are doing. On the other hand, there was a session at this year's ASCO on "integrative oncology" (stay tuned for an...Insolent...discussion of it sometime in the next few days after I get a chance to watch the videos again and look up the papers cited in support of woo), so maybe it isn't as jarring as it once was to come back into the real world. Thus I saw in my Google Alerts…

The real way to prevent cancer

Long, long ago, seemingly in a galaxy far, far away, I first encountered quackery on the Internet. Because I am a cancer surgeon, naturally I gravitated towards cancer quackery at first. Believe it or not, it was quite some time after that before I started to take an interest in what has become a major focus of this blog, the antivaccine movement and the misinformation it spreads. Both are equally damaging in their own way. True, these were back in the deep, dark days when I used to cruise various Usenet newsgroups, ranging from alt.revisionism (Holocaust denial), sci.skeptic (of course!),…