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Self-healing and self-delusion. Guess which one Mike Adams engages in?

I know I spent a fair bit of time last week slapping down Mike Adams, creator of NaturalNews.com website. In reality, he richly deserved it, as he has richly deserved it many times in the past. Indeed, were I so inclined, I could devote this blog to nothing but the deconstruction of the quackery and woo laid down each and every day by Mike Adams and his merry band of quacks, much as Kim Wombles does with the anti-vaccine propaganda blog Age of Autism through her blog Countering Age of Autism, but I'd eventually get tired of it and so would you. Sometimes I do get tired of it. This is not one…

Why I Hate Earth Day II: The Road to Hell in Baby Steps

A number of commenters to my previous post argued that I'm being unfair to Earth Day - of course, there's greenwashing. of course people are cashing in, but underlying the greenwashing, there's something good and serious and worthwhile there and I'm being churlish to deny it. And in some ways, I agree that both points are true - I am a little churlish about Earth Day, and there are some good things about it. For example, because Earth Day is an established "holiday," (it comes in after Mother's Day and Valentine's Day and probably before Father's Day and Groundhogs Day in minor holidays by…

Rachel Mastrapa - Paving the Way for Astronomical Discoveries

By Dr. Rachel Mastrapa; Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe, SETI Institute, and Gail Jacobs Rachel Mastrapa studies the surface processes of icy Solar System bodies by interpreting their infrared spectra. The majority of her work involves performing the ground truth measurements in the laboratory including calculating the complex indices of refraction of single composition ice samples. These measurements are then used to construct model spectra to interpret the chemical composition of observed spectra. She also studies the subtle changes seen in ice mixtures that are not…

Just Another Salem

You may recall that distressing story of discrimination against atheists in Oklahoma—it worked out well in the end, but the family involved was raked through the coals first. I recently received some email that is purportedly written by the defendant in that case, Chuck Smalkowski. I haven't been able to get more information to verify it, but it doesn't seem to be anywhere else on the web, and the mail does trace back to an origin in Hardesty, OK, so I'm accepting it as legitimate. It's Smalkowski's own perspective on the events in his trial. You might also want to read this account by…

Driving The Patriarchy: Demonic Males, Feminism, and Genetic Determinism

Behaviors are not caused by genes. There is not a gene that causes you to be good, or to be bad, or to be smart, or good at accounting, or to like bananas. There are, however, drives. "Drives" is a nicely vague term that we can all understand the meaning of. Thirst and hunger are drives we can all relate to. In fact, these drives are so basic, consistent and powerful that almost everyone has them, we share almost exact experiences in relation to them, and they can drive (as drives are wont to do) us to do extreme things when they are not met for long periods of time. While eating…

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Dead scientists rolling over in their graves

Pity poor Nikola Tesla. A sure sign of the most potent woo is when the woo-meister responsible claims to base it on the work of a great scientists, particularly a great scientist who's been dead well over 60 years. Like Nikola Tesla. The deader the scientist is and the longer he or she's been dead, the more sure the woo-meister can be that only the few actual scientists who pay attention to woo and bother to refute will have the necessary background knowledge to refute it. Moreover, the longer ago the scientist lived, the less chance of any pesky relatives caring enough to tell the woo-…

Homeopathic plutonium? Now there's a hot time in the old town tonight!

In keeping with Homeopathy Awareness Week (which still runs until June 21), I can't resist commenting on this gem of a story that was sent to me the other day. I mean, we're talking super duper heaving shopping in the very heart of London. It turns out that the Helios Homeopathy Shop right in Covent Garden will fix you up with homeopathic plutonium if you need it: Dr Fiona Barclay, a chemist at RGB Research in west London, made this discovery. Her company specialises in selling collections of the periodic table elements (with the exception of those elements that are illegal or are so very…

Is "value-based' health insurance really "value-based" or is it just an excuse to make patients pay more?

And now for something completely different... Unfortunately, it's all too easy to find new woo-filled claims or dangerous, evidence-lacking trends to write about. Heck, I did it just last week. Examining certain other health-related issues from a science-based perspective is more difficult, but I feel obligated to do it from time to time, not just for a change of pace but to stimulate the synapses and educate myself—and, I hope, you as well—about areas outside of my usual expertise. As much as I enjoy bringing a science-based perspective to topics like cancer quackery, vaccines, and all…

Scientia Pro Publica 21: Darwin's 201st Birthday Edition

tags: Scientia Pro Publica, Science for the People, biology, evolution, medicine, earth science, behavioral ecology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, blog carnival Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux). Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power) -- Sir Francis Bacon. Welcome to the 21st edition of Scientia Pro Publica, the blog carnival devoted to nurturing and encouraging an online community of blog writers who communicate with the public about science, environment and medicine. Since it was the 201st anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, I think it is important to…

I Can Save the World Better Than You, Nyah Nyah!: A Short History of the Peak Oil Movement and Reflections on Wizards, Transition and the Interstices of Reason

Let us start with persona, since one goes to any prizefight to see the metaphorical battle of two created characters, embodying sides, virtues, faults. In this Corna... John Michael Greer, owner (by a whisker over Bob Waldrop) of the finest beard in Peak Oildom, Archdruid, moral descendent of Toynbee and Gibbon, considerer of declines in centuries, not weekends. No Zombies for Greer - we are Rome, and we might as well deal with it, dammit. And in this Corna...Rob Hopkins, beardless founder of the Transition movement, permaculturist, endless energetic optimist and municipal leader, student…

We've heard this story before: Raising loads of cash for unproven treatments

Being a cancer surgeon, I realize that my tendency is to view my blogging material through the prism of cancer, particularly breast cancer, my specialty. it's easy to forget that there are diseases every bit as horrible, some arguably even more so than the worst cancer. When I think of such diseases, it's not surprising that amyotropic lateral sclerosis (ALS), commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease after its most famous victim. It's a progressive degenerative neurologic disease that affects the motor neurons, resulting in progressive muscle weakness throughout the body. Eventually, victims…

Well look who's anti-evolution as well as anti-vaccine and anti-medicine...

One of the things that I've noticed over the last (nearly) nine years blogging about pseudocience, quackery, and conspiracy theories is that a person who believes in one form of woo has a tendency to believe in other forms of woo. You've probably noticed it too. I've lost count of the examples that I've seen of antivaccinationists who are into other forms of quackery, of quacks who are 9/11 Truthers, of HIV/AIDS denialists who are anthropogenic global warming denialists, and nearly every combination of these and many other forms of pseudoscience, pseudohistory, and denialism. Several years…

Another Week of GW News, September 16, 2012

Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Another Week of Climate Instability News Sipping from the Internet Firehose... September 16, 2012 Chuckles, COP18+, IAC, Death Valley, Bottom Line, GCF, Ecocide, Cook, TV Weather Fukushima Note, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy Melting Arctic, Fauna, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food: Crisis, Fisheries, Prices, Food vs. Biofuel, GMOs, GMO Labelling, Production Hurricanes,…

Is Sharyl Attkisson feeling the heat over her irresponsible reporting of the Alex Spourdalakis case?

Yesterday, I did a bit of navel gazing about how cranks, quacks, and antivaccinationists have a penchant for attacking skeptics at work in order to try to intimidate them into silence. Reading the post over again, I realize that it came across perhaps more whiny than it should have, but I guess I was just in that sort of mood when I wrote it. One thing that I didn't discuss, though, is how attacks like this have traditionally been a very reliable indication that that I'm on the right track with respect to the quackery being called out. When I write my usual, run-of-the-mill posts about…

Secular horror?

Remember Melinda Barton and that awful piece on the Raw Story? It was taken down, and now it's back up with a few changes, I think. The editors asked me to submit a rebuttal. It's online at the Raw Story now, along with that lovely icon to the right ("Secular Horror"?). You can read it there, or if you are so annoyed at the Raw Story that you never ever want to visit their site again, I've put a copy below the fold. I'll just add that the first comment over there makes me regret being nice. No, I do not retract or regret anything I originally said about Barton's hacky work, and that is not…

Waking Experience Affects Sleep Need in Drosophila

There is nothing easier than taking a bad paper - or a worse press release - and fisking it with gusto on a blog. If you happen also to know the author and keep him in contempt, the pleasure of destroying the article is even greater. It is much, much harder to write (and to excite readers with) a blog post about an excellent paper published by your dear friends. But I'll try to do this now anyway (after the cut). Paul Shaw is a friend, and Indrani Ganguli is a good, good, good friend. Faculty and graduate students in biology are usually a pretty smart lot. A subset of those, as self-…

Waking Experience Affects Sleep Need in Drosophila

There is nothing easier than taking a bad paper - or a worse press release - and fisking it with gusto on a blog. If you happen also to know the author and keep him in contempt, the pleasure of destroying the article is even greater. It is much, much harder to write (and to excite readers with) a blog post about an excellent paper published by your dear friends. But I'll try to do this now anyway (after the cut). Paul Shaw is a friend, and Indrani Ganguli is a good, good, good friend. Faculty and graduate students in biology are usually a pretty smart lot. A subset of those, as self-…

A year of books

I did this last year and the year before and it seemed like an interesting and maybe even useful thing to continue this year. Trends in my reading this year? An increase in books on social media and a bit down in terms of science and fantastic fiction. A lot of that has to do with working on the My Job in 10 Years book and the reading I've been doing for that. A lot of it also has to do with the reading I did for the Sunburst Award. I was on the jury for the 2009 award (winners!) and so I did a ton of reading for that in the first half of the year. That didn't leave me that much time for…

Comments of the Week #165: From the size of stars to doubting LIGO

“Many people today agree that we need to reduce violence in our society. If we are truly serious about this, we must deal with the roots of violence, particularly those that exist within each of us. We need to embrace 'inner disarmament,' reducing our own emotions of suspicion, hatred and hostility toward our brothers and sisters.” -Dalai Lama XIV From subatomic scales to very human ones to the largest conceivable ones in the cosmos, we do our best to cover the entire Universe here at Starts With A Bang! There's always so much to discuss that we're never going to lack for potential topics,…

The University of Wollongong issues a PhD in antivaccine pseudoscience

I remember my PhD thesis. In particular, I remember the years of work that went into it. I remember being grilled (with good, constructive intent) by my thesis committee a couple of times a year as I worked on it. I remember the many, many hours spend writing it. And, above all, I remember the hour-long seminar I had to give, followed by a couple of hours defending my thesis. The PhD thesis defense is usually the most stressful thing that PhD candidates go through on the path to earning their degree. Certainly it was for me. Of course, the PhD thesis defense does contain a bit of an element…

Another week of GW News, July 25, 2010

Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Another week of Climate Instability News Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck YearsJuly 25, 2010 Note, Chuckles, Surrender, COP16+, BASIC Group, CEM, Asian Adaptation, Anthropocene Warm Lakes, Oxygen, Subsidies, Post CRU, Anderegg, Monckton's Shame, Pepsigate Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Land Grabs, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes…

Another week of GW News, February 27, 2011

Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Another week of Climate Instability News Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck YearsFebruary 27, 2011 Chuckles, COP17+, G20, Vulnerability, Cablegate, Sock Puppets, Pakistan Subsidies, E&E Threat, Cook, Post CRU Melting Arctic, Methane Feedback, Geopolitics Food Crisis, Agro Corps, Food Prices, Food Riots, Food vs. Biofuel, IP Issues, GMOs, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs,…

"Liquid biopsies" for cancer: not ready for prime time

I've written many times about how the relationship between the early detection of cancer and decreased mortality from cancer is not nearly as straightforward as the average person—even the average doctor—thinks, the first time being in the very first year of this blog's existence. Since then, the complexities and overpromising of various screening modalities designed to detect disease at an early, asymptomatic phase have become a relatively frequent topic on this blog. Even more than ten years ago, I noted that screening MRI for breast cancer and whole body CT scans intended to detect other…

Teaching Scientific Method

This is an early post of mine concerning the approaches to teaching science. It was first published on March 15, 2005. I have employed both of the methods described in this post since then. The jigsaw puzzle works much better as it is more fun. I have described how it actually went in the classroom here: A few days ago, PZ Myers of the Pharyngula fame (not the pharyngula stage, though - much more advanced in development) wrote a post (that links to this article about creative ways to teach scientific method: "I found that I had to teach the nature of science at both the undergraduate…

Answering other arguments of animal rights extremists

I hadn't really planned on writing anymore about animal rights extremists. The topic seemed as though it had played out over the few days. But those who've followed this blog know that I'm nothing if not tenacious when I grab onto a topic, and sometimes certain topics demand several posts. More importantly, over the last few days, I've had a minor infestation of animal rights extremists into my blog. Heck, Camille Marino even made an appearance. However, one animal rights apologist has been particularly persistent, someone named Douglas Watts, who's been a particularly persistent pest,…

Four misleading cancer testimonials and "reverse balance"

I was doing my usual browsing of the web yesterday in search of topics for today's post when I came across an excellent article by a colleague and friend of mine, Dr. Rachael Dunlop, who nailed it in a post entitled Anti-vaccination activists should not be given a say in the media. In the article, Dr. Rachie nailed a point that I and other skeptics have been trying to make time and time again, namely how the press all too frequently inserts false balance in stories about medicine, particularly vaccines. As Dr. Rachie put it, we don't give equal time to flat earth believers. My favorite…

Academia: Slowing down the search for cures?

I was very happy with NEWSWEEK recently, specifically because of its lengthy expose of Oprah Winfrey and her promotion of pseudoscience, mysticism, and quackery on her talk show. However, I haven't always been that thrilled with NEWSWEEK's coverage of medicine and science. For example, NEWSWEEK's science columnist Sharon Begley has gotten on my nerves on more than one occasion, most recently when she castigated doctors for not enthusiastically embracing comparative effectiveness research, making the unjustified slur against physicians that they "hate science." Indeed, she even managed to…

M.D. Anderson enters the blogosphere--and goes woo

Did you know that acupuncture is very much related to astrology? No, it's not just because both of woo. Rather, it's likely true that the whole concept of "meridians," those invisible "channels" through which our life energy (a.k.a. qi) allegedly flow were indirectly based on astrological signs, which had been used to guide points used by ancient healers for bloodletting. Indeed, far from being "ancient wisdom," by the middle of the second century, needling had been mostly abandoned and even banned by the Imperial Medical Academy in China and prohibited in Japan, only to be resurrected by…

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Another model goes woo

What is it about celebrity models and credulity towards woo? Very early in the history of this blog, we first encountered Suzanne Somers, someone who underwent lumpectomy and radiation therapy for breast cancer, as well as radiation, but eschewed chemotherapy for "alternative" medicine. Guess to what she attributed her survival? Then she got into bioidentical hormones, even though it's generally a bad idea to pump yourself full of huge doses of estrogen far beyond anything ever used for hormone replacement therapy if you're a breast cancer survivor. (Her luck in not having induced a…

Birds in the News 140

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Female black-chinned Hummingbird, Archilochus alexandri, Cave Creek Canyon, AZ. Image: Dave Rintoul, June 2008 [larger view]. More images from Dave's recent Arizona vacation. Birds in Science News The fossil record suggests that much of the biodiversity we see arose quickly in response to ecological opportunities: abundant resources combined with few, or no, potential competitors. As the niche became more crowded, the rate of speciation decreased. This process is known as density-dependent diversification. But can…

Brian Martin again: Criticizing Judy Wilyman's antivaccine thesis is suppression of dissent

One of the cool things about being a longtime blogger in the skeptical world with a reasonably high profile is that I've met, either virtually or in person at various skeptic conferences, a wide variety of people from all over the world. One place in particular that has a vibrant skeptic movement is, of course, Australia, and I've been happy to meet skeptics such as Rachael Dunlop, Jo Benhamu, Richard Saunders, Eren Segev, and several others. I know that, whenever I finally manage to make that trip to Australia that I've been meaning to make for years, there will be people I know to meet up…

Pity poor Peter Duesberg; even Medical Hypotheses has dissed him

Pity poor Peter Duesberg. Back in the 1980s, he was on the top of the world, scientifically speaking. A brilliant virologist with an impressive record of accomplishment, publication, and funding, he seemed to be on a short track to an eventual Nobel Prize. Then something happened. The AIDS epidemic happened. Something about the AIDS epidemic led this excellent scientist in the late 1980s to fall directly into pseudoscience and crankery by latching onto and promoting the idea that HIV does not cause AIDS. Of course, at the time scientists didn't yet know a lot about the virus and how it slowly…

Books: 'Bonobo Handshake' by Vanessa Woods

To get disclaimers out of the way, first, Vanessa Woods (on Twitter) is a friend. I first met her online, reading her blog Bonobo Handshake where she documented her day-to-day life and work with bonobos in the Congo. We met in person shortly after her arrival to North Carolina, at a blogger meetup in Durham, after which she came to three editions of ScienceOnline conference. I interviewed Vanessa after the 2008 event and blogged (scroll down to the second half of the post) about her 2009 session 'Blogging adventure: how to post from strange locations'. At the 2010 conference, she was one of…

Birds in the News 64 (v2n15)

Six flamingos, Phoenicopterus ruber, bored with people-watching at the Caldwell Zoo in Tyler, Texas. (Can you see all six birds?) Image appears here with the kind permission of the photographer, Michael C. Hamilton (contact). Birds in Science A new study of global avian biodiversity published in the free open access journal, PLoS Biology, provides the first strong evidence that avian species' range areas are smallest in the tropics and larger in temperate and polar regions. A smaller range area means that many different types of creatures can be accommodated in the same space, explaining…

MMS (a.k.a., bleach) for autism: Just when I thought I was out...

The clip above says it all with respect to "miracle mineral solution" (a.k.a. MMS). Just when I thought I was out...they pull me back in. And, as Yoda would probably put it, back in I am one more time. (How's that for mixing movie allusions?) Let's recap. MMS is bleach. Specifically, it is a 28% sodium chlorite in distilled water that generates chlorine dioxide when diluted with citric acid-containing or other acid-containing foods, as instructed. This is a chemical used for water purification that a quack—yes, quack—named Jim Humble has touted as a miracle cure for just about everything…

Symmetry breaking and genetic assimilation

How do evolutionary novelties arise? The conventional explanation is that the first step is the chance formation of a genetic mutation, which results in a new phenotype, which, if it is favored by selection, may be fixed in a population. No one sensible can seriously argue with this idea—it happens. I'm not going to argue with it at all. However, there are also additional mechanisms for generating novelties, mechanisms that extend the power of evolutionary biology without contradicting our conventional understanding of it. A paper by A. Richard Palmer in Science describes the evidence for an…

Illumina launches personal genome sequencing service for $48,000

The buzz leading up to this week's Consumer Genetics Show in Boston suggested that a major announcement would be made by the CEO of genomics technology provider Illumina, Jay Flatley. Illumina provides the most popular second-generation sequencing instrument currently on the market, the Genome Analyzer II, and has been making noises about moving into the personal genomics industry since at least the beginning of the year, so the announcement itself was not exactly a shock: Illumina is launching a personal genome sequencing service. The launch comes with a new website, the appealingly titled…

The annals of “I’m not antivaccine,” part 23: "Vaccine injury" and waterboarding

It's hard to believe that it's been nearly seven years since I started a recurring series that I like to refer to as The annals of "I'm not antivaccine." Indeed, this will be the 23rd entry in this particular series, whose purpose is to analyze why you shouldn't take it seriously when certain antivaccine activists deny that they are antivaccine. Not surprisingly, examples of reasons why we should not take the denials of these people seriously include their tendency towards the most histrionically exaggerated analogies and metaphors, such as saying there is "no such thing as a safe vaccine,"…

Comments of the Week #158: from event horizons to time travel

“Time travel used to be thought of as just science fiction, but Einstein's general theory of relativity allows for the possibility that we could warp space-time so much that you could go off in a rocket and return before you set out.” -Stephen Hawking As always, there's been a new fantastic week of articles here at Starts With A Bang, punctuated by our new podcast this month, on the physics of time travel! Have a listen (or download it and take it with you) and thank our Patreon supporters for making it possible! Now, what was this past week all about? Come enjoy some fabulous stories if…

Quantum Physics for Artists

I need to preface this entry by saying two things. First, I'm no quantum physicist. This is intended to be an introduction for the lay reader. Readers who are well versed in particle physics will no doubt be alarmed by my reductionism. So be it. You have to start somewhere. I would encourage those of you interested in delving deeper to read Michio Kaku's 2006 book Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos. Second, nothing bugs me more than getting hooked on a blog about, say, macramé and finding that the author has suddenly become obsessed…

Birds in the News 137

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Regulus calendula, with insect egg or pupa in its beak. Image: Dave Rintoul, KSU [larger view]. News of Birds in Science A fascinating paper was just published by some of my colleagues in the top-tier journal, Science, that analyzes the largest collection of DNA data ever assembled for birds. This analysis effectively redraws avian phylogeny, or family tree, thus shaking up our current understanding of the early, or "deep", evolutionary relationships of birds. For example, one of the most…

Woodward in Washington D.C. Part Three

We left off with Woodward about to launch into his favorite talking points. Let's have a look. Number One: Haeckel's Embryos. Woodward spent a few minutes gushing about how Icons of Evolution author Jonathan Wells represented a “great success story” of ID. He referred everyone to an essay over at the DI (which I refuse to link to) in which he responded to all of his critics, at least according to Woodward. He gave the familiar patter about how Haeckel's inaccurate embryo drawings are nonetheless used routinely in textbooks right up to the present day. The most interesting element here…

Gwyneth Paltrow's goop: Psychic Vampire Repellent as female "empowerment"

Back in the day I used to do a weekly feature every Friday that I used to call Your Friday Dose of Woo. For purposes of the bit, woo consisted of particularly ridiculous or silly bits of pseudoscience, quackery, or mysticism, such as the Quantum Xrroid Consciousness Interface. Amazingly, I managed to keep that up for a couple of years, but over time I started sensing that I was getting a bit too repetitive. The same bits of pseudoscience kept recurring. Over time I had to dig more and more to find suitable bits of woo that amused me enough to inspire me to ever more over-the-top heights of…

A rebuke to the antivaccine movement: A hundred million cases of disease prevented and millions of lives saved by vaccines

As hard as it is to believe, I've been blogging nearly nine years. Indeed, my nine-year anniversary is coming up in just over a week. It's been almost a decade! Early on during near-decade that I've been laying down bits of Insolence, Respectful, and Not-So-Respectful, I developed an interest in the antivaccine movement. Antivaccinationism, "antivax," or whatever you want to call it, represents a particularly insidious and dangerous form of quackery because it doesn't just endanger the children whose parents don't vaccinate them. It also endangers children who are vaccinated, because vaccines…

Another Week of Climate Disruption News, January 5, 2014

This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Information is not Knowledge...Knowledge is not Wisdom January 5, 2014 Chuckles, COP20+, COP19, Sherwood, Post-2013, Pre-2014 Bottom Line, Global Legal Framework, Cook Fukushima: Note, News Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica Food: Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Land Grabs, GMOs, Production Hurricanes, Notable Weather, New Weather GHGs, Aerosols, Volcanoes Ozone, Temperatures Paleoclimate, Oceans, Biosphere…

Vaccine fearmongers versus Steve Novella

I'm envious of Steve Novella. Well, just a little, anyway. The reason is that he's somehow managed to annoy David Kirby and the anti-vaccine contingent enough to provoke what appears to be a coordinated response to his debunking of anti-vaccine propaganda. For that alone he deserves some serious props. You may have wondered why I haven't written much about Amanda Peet giving an interview in which she pointed out that she had looked into the matter and had found no reason to believe that vaccines caused autism or were unsafe. In the same interview, she referred to parents who don't vaccinate…

24: The On Call Edition

Finally. My week on call, including the entire holiday weekend, is over. It started out pretty bad and didn't get all that much better. I suppose I should be grateful that at least I was getting sleep again by this weekend. In any case, I thought that one particular day was almost worth of a 24-style treatment. OK, it's not as exciting as watching Jack Bauer kick terrorist butt, but, given that Jack isn't coming back until January, it'll have to do. So, without further ado, I present select episodes from: 24: The On Call Edition (a.k.a. a bad day in the life of an academic surgeon) (Note:…

Another Week of GW News, August 16, 2009

Sipping from the internet firehose... This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup skip to bottom Another week of Climate Disruption News Sipping from the internet firehose... August 16, 2009 Bonn, CPRS Vote, Volt 230, Clean Energy Summit Melting Arctic, Geopolitics, Antarctica, Methane, Carbon Tariffs, Real Climate, Bonner, Late Comments Food Crisis, Food vs. Biofuel, Food Production Hurricanes, GHGs, Carbon Cycle, Temperatures, Feedbacks, Clouds, Ozone, Paleoclimate, Glaciers, Satellites…

When skepticism about medicine devolves into nihilism

A couple of weeks ago, the ever-inimitably sarcastic master of pus himself, Mark Crislip, posted an excellent deconstruction of a very disappointing article that was published in the most recent issue of Skeptical Inquirer, the flagship publication of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI). I say "disappointing," because I was disappointed to see SI (Skeptical Inquirer, not Sports Illustrated) publish such a biased, poorly thought out article, apparently for the sake of controversy. I've been an SI subscriber myself for several years, and usually enjoy reading the magazine, although of…

"The Tripoli Six" campaign

The science blogosphere is responding magnificently to the dire circumstances of six medical colleagues, on trial for their lives in a courtroom in Tripoli, Libya. Declan Butler, Nature's senior correspondent who wrote the story in the world's premier science journal this week, is collecting the blogosphere links and stories over at the science social bookmarking site, Connotea. In less than 24 hours since we began to rally our colleagues in the blogosphere there have been more than 30, many right here in the Science Blogs stable, but also in some of the highest traffic blogs on the net:…