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Many mixed emotions

I've been checking in on people's happiness quotients, and I have many things to report. Mostly good, so if you are looking for trouble or just feeling misanthropic, don't go below the fold. Let me start with my friend elle (that is her secret code name). She has been living on the South Pole since the "beginning" of "winter" last year, almost a year ago. That has been quite an adventure and I'm sure over the long term she will be very happy to have done it. But at the moment I think she really really really wants to fly north. As soon as possible. Well, as best as I can reconstruct…

More of the consequences of not vaccinating...

...more outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases like pertussis: Erik Ferry thought little of the sniffles and cough his 12-year-old daughter came down with in February. But the coughs became more frequent and violent, and the bug hung on for days, then weeks. Concerned it was more than just a cold, Ferry took his daughter to the doctor, and a dose of antibiotics cleared things up. Only later did he learn that several of the girl's classmates at the East Bay Waldorf School in El Sobrante had the same symptoms. And it was only this month that Ferry, who lives in Berkeley, learned that a bout…

Random matrices in the news

Mark Buchanan wrote a cover article for the New Scientist on random matrices, a heretofore obscure area of probability theory that his headline writer characterizes as "the deep law that shapes our reality." It's interesting stuff, and he gets into some statistical applications at the end, so I'll give you my take on it. But first, some background. About two hundred years ago, the mathematician/physicist Laplace discovered what is now called the central limit theorem, which is that, under certain conditions, the average of a large number of small random variables has an approximate normal (…

An interesting take on the use of Holocaust denial in response to the Danish cartoons

As anyone who read my old blog knows, I have some very strong views on free speech, viewing it as the single most important basis of a free society. It is therefore not surprising that I recently commented on the Danish cartoon imbroglio, in which fundamentalist Muslims, outrage stoked by their Imams and by Muslim governments such as Saudi Arabia and Syria, have tried to impose their religious views on secular societies. One thing I noted is how the Iranian government, in their effort to try to claim that Europeans have a double standard, launched a contest asking for cartoons about the…

The Texas Medical Board goes after abortion providers, but Stanislaw Burzynski practices untouched for decades

Regular readers know my frustration with the Texas Medical Board. Why is it, I've often wondered, that Stanislaw Burzynski can keep peddling his unproven cancer treatment with seeming impunity for nearly four decades, with every attempt of the TMB over the last four decades seemingly being utterly ineffective? It's not as though Burzynski is alone. There are many other doctors who should, in the opinion of many, have their licenses revoked but keep practicing in Texas. Even when there's a doctor who is clearly an immediate threat to patients, it's hard to get the TMB to do anything. Ditto…

The George Washington School of Public Health and Health Services responds to allegations that it let Mark Geier mentor a graduate student in epidemiology

The other day, I wrote about how the George Washington University School of Public Health screwed up big time (there's really no other way to put it that doesn't involve liberal use of the f-bomb) by allowing vaccine-autism quack Mark Geier to assist a graduate student in epidemiology (who shall not be named, even though I know who it is—and whose naming will result in comments being deleted or edited) in the final thesis project for an MPH in epidemiology. I based my blog post on other posts by Autism News Beat and Reuben at The Poxes Blog. The reason I was so outraged and dismayed is…

Here we go again: The vile tactic of blaming shaken baby syndrome on vaccines, part 2

About a week ago, I wrote about something that really irritates me, namely that most despicable of antivaccine claims, which is that shaken baby syndrome is somehow a misdiagnosis for vaccine injury. It is a claim that, as far as I can recall, began when, for reasons that have continued to elude me more than a decade later, the antivaccine movement glommed onto the case of Alan Yurko, a man convicted of shaking his girlfriend's baby to death, and tried to get him freed based on the claim that the baby had really died from encephalitis caused by vaccine injury. The claim was so ridiculous as…

AutismOne 2013: A quackfest just as quacky as ever

Well, April is over, which means that Autism Awareness Month is almost over. While antivaccinationists are saying goodbye to April and whining about the very concept of "autism awareness," I can't help but realize that the autism quackfest known as AutismOne is less than a month away. Yes, every year around Memorial Day weekend, the glitterati of the autism quackery and antivaccine world descend upon an airport near Chicago's O'Hare airport (what a drag, given that it can take an hour to get to downtown from there at rush hour) in order to spin conspiracy theories about big pharma and the…

More sad news about a Burzynski patient

As much as I try, even when I'm on vacation in an undisclosed warm location near a beach (actually, our hotel room has a balcony overlooking the ocean), occasionally news finds its way to me. Part of it is because I still get the odd e-mail or two, and I do check my e-mail every so often on vacation in case something is exploding. In any case, an update to a story I wrote about last month has found its way to my in box, and, even on vacation, I can't resist a brief update. Right before Thanksgiving, when it was announced that Stanislaw Burzynski got off on a technicality, I discussed as part…

Weeding the Forest

Sharon Astyk hates Earth Day. Really hates it. There she was, publicly hating it on its 40th anniversary, no less. And most Earth Day programs send the same message. They say "you too can make a difference...and it will be convenient, mostly involve shopping and won't change your life. Here, take some baby steps, change your lightbulbs, plant one tomato" and come listen to some folkie music!" Well, that can't be right, can it? Sadly, yes. As I commented on another of Sharon's posts, Just saw a tv commercial for a compostable potato chip bag. According to the commercial, I can totally…

"Covered Benefit" Does Not Mean It's A Benefit That Will Be Covered

Perhaps you might have wondered why I don't blog so much lately. That would be because my full-time job these days is navigating the The Best Health Insurance System In The World!TM on behalf of my elderly mother. You may recall that a few weeks back, her wallet was stolen, necessitating cancellation of her existing Blue Cross insurance number and issue of a new number and card. If you will recall, I explained that it appeared to providers in the interim as if my mother had no coverage. Well, I finally received the new card with the new number. I spent a good deal of time this morning…

Silence Is The Enemy

By now perhaps you have heard of the Silence Is The Enemy project started by Sheril Kirshenbaum at The Intersection with help from Isis at On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess. From Sheril's post: Today begins a very important initiative called Silence Is The Enemy to help a generation of young women half a world away.Why? Because they are our sisters and children-the victims of sexual abuse who don't have the means to ask for help. We have power in our words and influence. Along with our audience, we're able to speak for them. I'm asking all of you-bloggers, writers, teachers,…

Cato on creationism

Cato defends children's liberty to be wrong. This is not the first time that Andrew Coulson has advanced this line of argument. Essentially, his claim is that the only way to end the wars over creationism would be to let children learn whatever they want in schools that their parents pay with other people's tax dollars. Doing otherwise, he insists, would be "illiberal, undemocratic, divisive, ineffective, and counter-productive." That "someone who agrees wholeheartedly that a natural process of evolution is the best explanation of how human beings came to be" finds this argument…

I shall be no friend to the appeasers

I'm in trouble now — I have drawn the ire of Massimo Pigliucci. I'd be chagrined if it weren't such an ineffectual criticism that is mainly Pigliucci doing a little foot-shooting. I've also annoyed Ronald Lindsay of the CFI (as well as several other people associated with CFI), but his criticism is even feebler. Somehow, CFI has the idea that ferocious criticism of CFI staff is to be discouraged — because we are generally on the same side, we're apparently supposed to be in solidarity on everything. That's not going to happen. I support the CFI; I criticize the CFI. I also support the NCSE;…

Paley's stone, Ussher's dates, and the "new" creationism

If you happen to be reading this blog, chances are you have at least heard of the "Watchmaker Argument" or "Argument From Design" before. The concept has a long philosophical history, but it is most often discussed in connection to William Paley who invoked the argument to open his book Natural Theology. For those unfamiliar with the work, Paley states that if you were to happen across a watch as you were crossing a field you would immediately recognize it as the product of a designer. So too, Paley argues, is design manifest and detectable in nature. I am not as concerned with Paley's watch…

Storm World

Everyone admires hurricanes, however grudgingly. When I hear someone described as "a force of nature," I envision a hurricane's hundred mile winds and waves whipped to such a frenzy that they merge with the air. The calm at the eye of the storm, the destructive potential, and the courage of the brave pilots and scientists who fly right through the walls of rain and cloud are the stone from which legends are carved. Of course, when that implacable power reaches our shores, admiration is in short supply, replaced by Job-like anger and despair. In Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the…

The downside of beauty

Well, I don't quite know about that, but that's the sort of take-away from a new paper in PLoS Biology which looks at the downsides of female attractiveness. A Cost of Sexual Attractiveness to High-Fitness Females: Adaptive mate choice by females is an important component of sexual selection in many species. The evolutionary consequences of male mate preferences, however, have received relatively little study, especially in the context of sexual conflict, where males often harm their mates. Here, we describe a new and counterintuitive cost of sexual selection in species with both male mate…

Intelligently designed law: Is "God framed me" a sound legal defense?

I've addressed the absurdity of Denyse O'Leary's analogy between arson investigations and biology before, but she can't seem to stop. Here is how she proposes to address why invoking design doesn't stop research: Suppose we say: If the fire marshall’s office (FMO) concludes that a fatal fire has been set deliberately, then they are just taking the easy way out, and they won’t be able to find out anything more about it. As she's stated it, yes. If the arson unit concludes that the fire was set deliberately, and then refuses to address who set the fire, indeed dismisses that as a problem of…

None dare call it eugenics!

There is some buzz recently about a lawmaker in Louisiana, John LaBruzzo, who is proposing to pay poor women to be sterilized. His logic seems naively reminiscent of Thomas Malthus. It any case, I will admit that I'm generally skeptical of the efficacy of these sorts of programs. But I think government sponsored eugenical projects are I think besides the point and miss the bigger picture. 2 years ago I reviewed a paper by Armand Leroi, The future of neo-eugenics. 2 years is ages in genome-time; it keeps getting cheaper. Notwithstanding the current low returns on investment in the…

A child is not a notch on the bedpost

Them folk are not like us folk. I really had to twist my brain to read this article from Touchstone on "contradeception", because I'm finding it hard to imagine how screwed up in the head you have to be to think that way. It's an article against contraception. When these quiverful zealots argue that they love kids, I can sympathize; when they say they are trying to outbreed non-Christians, I can sort of understand the logic, even though I think they're wrong; but this story…children are like an afterthought. The reason you shouldn't use contraception is because getting pregnant is public…

What do accommodationists do about creationist politicians?

Last week, Rick Perry made some factually false and deeply disturbing claims about how evolution is and ought to be taught in Texas. In the ensuing flurry of criticism (fueled by the fact that Perry simultaneously doubled down on his climate change denial), retired British biologist Richard Dawkins was invited to comment on the matter at the Washington Post's website. His piece opens by heaping bile on Perry and any political system that allows him to rise to a place of prominence, before repeating a typically Dawkinsian (somewhat florid, always passionate), but somewhat tangential defense…

What future have nukes got?

As you presumably know by now, the earthquake in Japan damaged a series of nuclear reactors at the Fukujima Daiichi plant. Due to damage from the earthquake and subsequent tsunami, safety systems failed and the reactors could not be shut down the way they were supposed. Hydrogen gas built up and several buildings surrounding the reactor cores have exploded, though the reactor cores themselves seem to be holding up (there is some reporting now that the core of one reactor may have been breached, but it's still unconfirmed whether that's true, or how extensive the breach might be if so). It'…

The secret life of babies

Years ago, when the Trophy Wife™ was a psychology grad student, she participated in research on what babies think. It was interesting stuff because it was methodologically tricky — they can't talk, they barely respond in comprehensible way to the world, but as it turns out you can get surprisingly consistent, robust results from techniques like tracking their gaze, observing how long they stare at something, or even the rate at which they suck on a pacifier (Maggie, on The Simpsons, is known to communicate quite a bit with simple pauses in sucking.) There is a fascinating article in the NY…

A fair point

Never let it be said that I don't acknowledge error. Ophelia Benson, responding in part to my earlier posts on the World Science Festival's science and faith panel, points out amistake I made: Meanwhile â Josh Rosenauâs claim, in his post on why there shouldnât be any atheist scientists on the panel Whoa, there. I can see how what I wrote implies that, but it wasn't what I meant, and thus I need to apologize and correct myself. My point was about Affirmative/New Atheists, not about all atheist scientists. Frankly, Francisco Ayala's religious views are fairly obscure, and according to some…

Unscientific America

If you are a regular reader of ScienceBlogs you will have already stumbled upon several reviews of Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future. Janet Stemwedel of Ethnics & Science probably has the most thorough reviews, while P. Z. Myers' 'exchange' with the authors, Sheril Kirshenbaum & Chris Mooney, had the most 'spirit.' Chard Orzel of Uncertain Principles put up a short & sweet positive impression which covers the major points in Unscientific America very well, as well as the overall thrust of the book. Of course as Chad noted If you read Sheril…

When good mutations swarm?

Evolution is a fact. Lineages change over time, and respond to selection pressures as well as being buffeted by stochastic processes. The arguments about the particular details of the process of evolution can be very vociferous. Scientists are human too, and great evolutionary biologists such as R. A. Fisher stooped to venomous insult when backed into a corner (see his disputes with Sewall Wright during the 1930s). But the superstructure of human foibles and follies rests upon a foundation of genuine scientific dispute, and attempts to refine models which map onto reality. For example…

Fear of a black president: Mississippi edition

The map to the left shows the counties which voted for Obama (blue) and McCain (red) in the 2008 election. The blue counties are part of the Black Belt, the area where blacks are a majority of the population because of the economic concentration of cotton culture during the 19th and 20th centuries. The McCain Belt, those counties where John McCain beat George W. Bush, is getting some press, but obviously it is interesting to wonder about areas where large black populations which increased turnout are likely masking the shift of the white vote for John McCain. I have already shown on a…

Academia vs Industry: an Updated Opinion

One thing that continually amazes me is the amount of email I get from readers of this blog asking for career advice. I usually try to just politely decline; I don't think I'm particularly qualified to give personal advice to people that I don't know personally. But one thing that I have done before is shared a bit about my own experience, and what I've learned about the different career paths that you can follow as a computer science researher. About six months after I started this blog, I wrote a post about working in academia versus working in industry. I've been meaning to update it,…

300 Years of Fossil Fuels and Not One Bad Gal: Peak Oil, Women's History and Everyone's Future

If you haven't seen this video by Richard Heinberg and the Post Carbon Institute, you should. In a lot of ways it is an excellent summary of the history of fossil fuels, entertainingly and creatively done. In some ways, it is extremely valuable as a basic educational piece. I'm very impressed with the clarity of this video, but it does have an odd gap in it - all of the human history of 300 years of fossil fuels doesn't have a single female person in it - not one. Women are addressed by implication when population is mentioned - but all the little hand-drawn people are men. There is a…

Chossat's Effect in humans and other animals

This April 09, 2006 post places another paper of ours (Reference #17) within a broader context of physiology, behavior, ecology and evolution. The paper was a result of a "communal" experiment in the lab, i.e., it was not included in anyone's Thesis. My advisor designed it and started the experiment with the first couple of birds. When I joined the lab, I did the experiment in an additional number of animals. When Chris joined the lab, he took over the project and did the rest of the lab work, including bringing in the idea for an additional experiment that was included, and some of the…

Birds in the News 58 (v2n9)

Orange-bellied parrot, Neophema chrysogaster, now numbering only approximately 200 individuals, is one of the world's rarest birds. Photographer: Dave Watts. Birds in Science Scientists have discovered that migrating dragonflies and songbirds exhibit many of the same behaviors, suggesting the rules that govern such long-distance travel may be simpler and more ancient than was once thought. This research is based on data generated by tracking 14 green darner dragonflies with radio transmitters weighing only 300 milligrams -- about a third as much as a paper clip. Green darners, Anax…

The Iowa Caucus Coin Toss: What happened and what it means

Was the Iowa Caucus outcome determined by a coin flip? We have seen several reports that Hillary Clinton won the Iowa Caucus by a coin toss, or by six coin tosses. Or some other number. We've also seen reports that six delegates were awarded to Clinton on the basis of coin tosses, implying that of the 44 delegates determined on Monday in Iowa a large percentage were chosen by the toss of an unfair coin, that somehow the Clinton campaign controlled the coin tosses causing them to all come out in her favor. And so on. After a barrage of these reports, we are now seeing a small number of reports…

Woodward in Washington D.C. Part One.

Thomas Woodward, author of the new book Darwin Strikes Back: Defending the Science of Intelliigent Design turned up at the Washington D.C. offices of the Discovery Intstitute last night. Since it's alays nice to have an excuse to hang out in the big city, I decided to check it out. There's rather a lot to report, so I'll break it up into two pieces. According to the bio read at the start of his talk, Woodward holds a PhD from the University of South Florida in the rhetoric of science. He is a professor at Trinity College in Florida, where he teaches history of science, communication, and…

What is an Agnostic? by Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell, a leading philosopher in his prime, was also a wonderful writer. And, it appears, many of my views were formed when I was but still Young in the Discipline of Philosophy by reading Russell. Here is an essay (stolen from here) from 1953, when I still was not, in which he expresses quite clearly what the differences and implications of being an agnostic are relative to atheists. He steadfastly refuses to call atheists rabid dogs or militant terrorists, however, though he was no milquetoast. I think, re-reading this after 40 years, that we might suggest that those who think…

The antivaccine movement resurrects the zombie that is the "autism epidemic"

If there's one thing that I've learned that I can always--and I do mean always--rely on from the antivaccine movement, it's that its members will always be all over any new study regarding vaccines and/or autism in an effort to preemptively put their pseudoscientific spin on the results. It's much the same way that they frequently storm into discussion threads after stories and posts about vaccines and autism like the proverbial flying monkeys, dropping their antivaccine poo hither and yon all over science-based discussions. At the risk of sounding like a hopeless suck-up to my readers, I've…

Bloviations and pontifications on the state of cancer research, part 2 (of 2)

In rapid succession after the last pontificating and bloviating article claiming that there will never be a cure for cancer because it would be too financially disastrous to the medical economy, I've been made aware of another pontificating and bloviating article decrying the state of cancer research today, entitled Curing Cancer: Running on Vapor, Remedy: More Brainpower, Less Hype, by George L. Gabor Miklos, Ph.D. and Phillip J. Baird, M.D., Ph.D. On first glance, it looks like a bold proposal for a necessary change of direction in our cancer research effort. Sadly, it doesn't deliver on…

The Trouble with Deepak Chopra, Part 2

Alright, I'll come right out and admit it up front. There was no part one to this piece. Well, there was, but it wasn't on this blog, and I didn't write it. PZ did in response to some really idiotic arguments from ignorance that Deepak Chopra (or, less pleasing to Dr. C, here) displayed as part of an "argument" (and I use the term loosely) that there is some mystical other quality that explains life other than genes. He paraded a litany of arguments that so conclusively demonstrated that he had no clue about even the basics of molecular biology that I as a physician cringed and hid my head in…

The woo-meister supreme returns, and he's brought his friends

Here we go again. You know, now that it's 2009, I had hoped that one of the most irritating people alive would continue his blissful quiet. I'm referring, of course, to Deepak Chopra, that Indian physician who demonstrates that a medical training is no protection whatsoever against pseudoscientific and anti-scientific thinking. Indeed, Chopra goes far beyond that in that, not only has he become a leader of the so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) movement, also sometimes called the "integrative medicine" (IM) movement that seeks to "integrate" treatments that range from…

Sh*t naturopaths say, part 2: Naturopathic education and science

Well, Naturopathic Medicine Week 2014 (or, as I like to refer to it, Quackery Week) is fast drawing to a close; so I figured I’d end it with one last post. Since several of you liked my post a couple of days ago Sh*t naturopaths say and agreed with me when I suggested at the end that I ought to make this a recurring feature on the old blog here. So, how better to finish off Naturopathic Medicine Week 2014 than with another installment of Sh*t naturopaths say. In fact, I might even have to make it a tag. After all, I’m sure naturopaths will continue to provide me with quackery to deconstruct,…

I like elephants, I just don't want one in my backyard

Over the last several hundred years, humans in North America have unwittingly selected the species that are going to be coexisting with humanity in the future. Rare native flora and fauna have disappeared, but some organisms have flourished in the modified landscape. White-tailed deer, coyotes, black bear, cowbirds, and other familiar (if somewhat "plain") animals are just a few of the native species that have adapted and even benefited from the presence of people while other species have been driven into extinction. Some researchers like Paul S. Martin, however, argue that we are living in…

Some Kind of Help is the Kind of Help...:Getting Things Done With Kids Who Can't Help

Along the theme of time - finding it, using it, fast, slow, in-between - I thought I'd re-run this post. I have a *lot* of experience with four little boys, one autistic, in getting things done around the kids ;-) - they help now a lot more, but sometimes this is still necessary, so I thought it might be worth rerunning my meditations on how that works. Asher will turn five this week, and Eli is ten now - and while Asher is now one of my primary aids, Eli is still sometimes a lovable hindrance, despite some improvement - but in a nice way, and we're used to it. Still, getting everything…

The Behe Cross Examination and DI Revisionism

As Wesley and I work on our book on the history of the Dover trial, one of the things we will have to incorporate and comment on is the absolutely frantic attempts by the DI to rewrite that history after the ruling came down. Watching their reaction evolve has been a source of great amusement to me. They were all for the school passing a pro-ID policy, sending lots of material to school board members to encourage them further. Once they realized that the board members had been so brazen about calling ID creationism and deliberating the issue in starkly religious terms (like Buckingham's…

Stetson Kennedy revisited, literally

Next month, the family Pharmboy is headed down to Beluthahatchee, Florida, to help celebrate the 90th birthday of famed human rights legend, Stetson Kennedy, the subject of some Woody Guthrie lyrics put to music by Billy Bragg and Wilco. Among ScienceBloggers, I've learned that Janet and Steinn are big Billy Bragg fans and Josh is a big Woody Guthrie fan, so it seems apropos to celebrate Mr Kennedy here. This is one post I've been meaning to move over here from the old blog, where it first appeared on 15 May 2006. [I'm currently on the road and I've somehow screwed up the code for…

Pinker v. Lakoff

George Lakoff has published two new political books, Whose Freedom?: The Battle Over America's Most Important Idea, and Thinking Points: Communicating Our American Values and Vision, as follow ups to his Moral Politics and Don't Think of an Elephant. I haven't read either of the new books (my New Year's resolution this year was to not read any more bullshit), but Steven Pinker has, and his review of Whose Freedom? in the New Republic (the review is behind a subscription wall, but you can read it in its entirety below the fold in this Gene Expression post) has sparked a reply from Lakoff, and…

Research with vulnerable populations: considering the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (part 2).

In an earlier post, I looked at a research study by Nelson et al. [1] on how the cognitive development of young abandoned children in Romania was affected by being raised in institutional versus foster care conditions. Specifically, I examined the explanation the researchers gave to argue that their work was not only scientifically sound but also ethical. In this post, I examine the accompanying policy forum article, Millum and Emmanuel, "The Ethics of International Research with Abandoned Children" [2]. Millum and Emanuel are in the Department of Bioethics at the Clinical Center of the…

More antivaccine stylings from someone who is Dunning-Kruger personified

I was measured, science-based, and reasonable in yesterday's post about the new American Cancer Society guidelines for screening mammography (which is obviously why that post garnered so few comments, thus teaching me my lesson yet again0, but regular readers know that I can be quite obnoxious and sarcastic and there's a reason why this blog is called Respectful Insolence. It's based on a quote from a character (a computer, actually) in a 35 year old British science fiction series. That character, Orac, is my namesake, and the adopted quote is, "A statement of fact cannot be insolent." Of…

Once more into the breach: The American Cancer Society publishes new mammography guidelines

One of the things that feels the weirdest about having done the same job, having been in the same specialty, for a longer and longer time is that you frequently feel, as the late, great Yogi Berra would have put it, déjà vu all over again. This is particularly true in science and medicine, where the same issues come up again and again and again, often with the same arguments on either side. Sometimes the same players are even involved. So it is with mammography recommendations. Indeed, I'm feeling déjà vu all over again right now, as I read headlines like Women advised to get mammograms later…

Cancer quackery, Republican presidential candidates, and political influence

Yesterday, I wrote about how pediatric neurosurgeon turned presidential candidate Ben Carson is an excellent example demonstrating how the vast majority of physicians and surgeons, even highly accomplished ones admired as being at the top of their professions, are not scientists and how many of them are disturbingly prone to buying into pseudoscience. In Dr. Carson's case, that tendency to believe in pseudoscience derives from his fundamentalist religion that led him to reject evolution and accept arguments against evolution every bit as ignorant as the ones Kent Hovind or Ken Ham serves up…

The decline of pseudoscience? More like the mainstreaming of pseudoscience

As hard as it is to believe, I've been spending a significant part of my time countering pseudoscience for close to 17 years, so long that it seems that I've always been doing it. Of course, that's not true; I didn't actually become involved in this seemingly never-ending Sisyphean task until I was in my mid-30s, which means that the majority of my life had been spent more or less blissfully ignorant that there are people out there who passionately believe, for example, that vaccines are dangerous and cause autism and that bleach enemas can reverse that autism or that there were quacks out…

When cluelessness about clinical research attacks

If you leave aside the problem with the Autism Omnibus trial, which has just entered its second week, that annoys me the most, namely a hypothesis so poorly supported by science and so badly argued by a panoply of nonexperts could make it so far in our legal system and possibly even endanger the Vaccine Injury Compensation System with 4,800 almost certainly frivolous claims that vaccines or the mercury in the thimerosal preservative in vaccines, you're left with the more minor annoyances that this whole trial brings. Foremost among these lesser annoyances, which, let's be frank, do not…