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A deviously clever plan to destroy Darwinism once and for all

Every so often, real life intrudes on blogging, preventing the creation of fresh Insolence, at least Insolence of the quality that you've come to expect. This is one of those times, and it doesn't help that it's a holiday week plus a week I was traveling. So I dug way back into the archives, back to five years ago, for a little gem that reminds me that I really should write about evolution more. As the AACR meeting showed me this year, it's actually highly relevant to cancer research. Besides, if you haven't been reading at least five years, it's almost certainly new to you! Well, well, well…

Dr. Bob Sears vs. Seth Mnookin: Measles outbreaks, AB 2109, and lacking the courage of one's convictions

It would appear that Dr. Bob Sears, author of The Vaccine Book, is in the news again. Specifically, he's brought himself back into the spotlight by publishing in that wretched hive of scum and quackery, The Huffington Post, a fallacy-filled attack on a bill in California, AB 2109, designed to tighten up the process for obtaining philosophical exemptions from vaccination requirements for school entry and improving the process of informed consent for parents seeking such exemptions. In this, Dr. Sears has solidly aligned himself with the worst elements of the antivaccine movement. Sadly, it is…

Compare and contrast

I've spent nearly seven years and an enormous amount of verbiage writing about the difference between pseudoscience and science, between cranks and skeptics, between denialists and scientists. Along the way, I've identified a number of factors common to cranks and denialists. For example, two of the most prominent characteristics are a tendency to cherry pick studies and evidence and--shall we say?--a major "inconsistency" in how they deal with data. If a study appears to support their viewpoint, it doesn't matter how small it is, how preliminary it is, how poorly designed it is, or how weak…

Ben Carson's alternative cancer cure testimonial for Mannatech

Over the years, I've frequently made the points that the vast majority of physicians are not scientists and, in fact, that many of them suffer from a severe case of Dunning-Kruger when it comes to science. Even going back to the very early history of this blog, you can find examples, the most common of which seemed to be physicians denying evolution and embracing creationism. Of these, the doctor I wrote about most frequently back in the day was the creationist neurosurgeon Michael Egnor, but with the onset of the 2016 Presidential race there's been a new creationist neurosurgeon in town with…

"Natural" doesn't necessarily mean better

If there's one fallacy that grips the brains of proponents of "natural healing," "holistic medicine," or, as the vast majority of it is, quackery, it's an appeal to nature. Basically, the idea that underlies the appeal to nature is a profane worship of nature as being, in essence, perfect, with anything humans do that is perceived as somehow being "unnatural" being viewed as, at the very least, inferior and at the very worst pure evil. We see it in the pseudoscientific stylings of cranks like The Food Babe, whose epic appeals to nature are legendary in their stupidity, particularly her…

Pseudoscience attracts pseudoscience over evolution in medicine

One thing that's become obvious to me over the last few years that I've been engaged in dealing with various forms of pseudoscience, alternative medicine, and conspiracy theories is that people who are prone to credulity to one form of pseudoscience, the paranormal, or other crankery tend to be prone to credulity towards multiple forms of crankery. For example, Phillip Johnson, one of the "luminaries" of the "intelligent design" creationism movement is also a full-blown HIV denialist who doesn't accept the science that demonstrates that HIV causes AIDS. Another example is Dr. Lorraine Day,…

Your Friday Dose of Woo: The Emperor of the Woo-niverse

Due to my activities at the Society of Surgical Oncology meeting in San Antonio, somehow I didn't manage to crank out a bit of that Insolence, Respectful or Not-So-Respectful, that you all crave. So, given that this is Friday, I thought I'd to a "rerun" of a bit of classic woo. This one's a little newer than the reruns I usually do, only a little less than two years old. So, if you've been reading less than two years, it's new to you! Maybe I'll even post another one later. Ever since I started this little vanity bit known as Your Friday Dose of Woo, lo, these nearly three years ago, when I…

The clueless cite the ignorant to argue against vaccines

Remember Medical Voices? It's a group that I first discovered a year and a half ago that represented itself as a group of physicians and medical professionals who wanted to produce the "most comprehensive educational center on the Internet for physicians seeking the truth about vaccines." Of course, it didn't take me long to realize that MV was packed to the gills with the usual characters, antivaccine loons all, people such as Sherri Tenpenny, DO; Mayer Eisenstein, MD, JD, MPH; Harold Buttram, MD; and Leo Rebello, MD, ND, PhD. So copious were the utter nonsense, pseudoscience, misinformation…

Your Friday Dose of Woo: The Emperor of the Woo-niverse

Ever since I started this little vanity bit known as Your Friday Dose of Woo, lo, these nearly three years ago, when I introduced the waiting blogosphere to the woo-tastic quantum homeopathic stylings of Lionel Milgrom, I've occasionally wondered if I had started out with too much woo. I mean, Milgrom is a really hard act to follow, so densely does he blend together the most amazing hard core homeopathic woo combined with quantum pseudoscientific posturings that put Deepak Chopra to shame, all tied together with the most awesomely dense, yet ultimately meaningless, equations that look like…

Your Friday Dose of Woo (on Wednesday): A homeopath "explains" energy

Damn you, PZ! Not only are you muscling into my territory (what, aren't creationism and atheism enough?), but you had to subject me to the most mind-numbing example of why homeopaths are the most clueless purveyors of pseudoscience there are! Behold, Dr. Charlene Werner, an optometrist (apparently) and a homeopath. I warn you, however. If you have any understanding of physics or chemistry whatsoever or if you've ever read (and liked) Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time (or anything else he's ever written), sit down now. Take a deep breath. Heck, crack open a bottle of wine and down at…

The Huffington Post's war on medical science is noticed

One of the advantages of having been a blogger for nearly five years is that you gain a sense of perspective after having written about various issues over and over for a long time. True, the disadvantage is that it sometimes becomes difficult to think of something new to say about longstanding issues. Even so, it's still quite useful, every so often, to take a look back over a longstanding issue of interest to the blog (more like a festering sore that keeps getting worse), and a new article in Salon.com gives me a perfect excuse to do just that. The topic has been a frequent topic on this…

After a year's absence (except in reruns), the monster returns...for real

In nondescript dressing room in a nondescript studio in a nondescript office building in in a nondescript industrial park, a short, pudgy 63-year-old man with the stereotypical demeanor of a particularly boring economist was trying to squeeze into a pair of shorts. "Why oh why did I agree to do this?" he muttered in a whining drone. He continued to struggle to get into the black shorts, virtually identical to the ones worn by English schoolboys and still worn by Angus Young of AC/DC on stage. Even though Young is over 50, somehow he managed to get into them, and so will I, thought the man.…

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Holy Koranic Dr. Emoto, Batman!

If there's one thing I've learned about woo in the more than a year and a half that I've been doing this regular Friday feature, it's that there's definitely a religious element to virtually all woo. In essence, it requires believing in something that cannot be demonstrated scientifically, often despite science outright refuting it. For example, there have been several "victims" (I mean subjects) for this Friday feature that have been explicitly fundamentalist Christian in nature1, 2, 3, 4, even a parody of such beliefs. Of course, if you're a New Age-type woo, you wouldn't call it "…

More nonsense about bacterial resistance: Why a little medical knowledge is a dangerous thing in the hands of "intelligent design" creationists

It's been a while since I've visited the cesspool that is Uncommon Descent, a.k.a. Bill Dembski's home for wandering sycophants, toadies, and lackeys. There's a good reason for this; I just get tired of the sheer stupidity that routinely assaults my brain every time I make the mistake of taking a look at UD's latest attempt to try to refute evolution. Worse, there's lots of other pseudoscience there these days, from the promotion of the use of cancer therapies that haven't been subjected to clinical trials yet to anthropomorphic global warming "skepticism." Yes, every time I peruse the posts…

The monster strikes again

In the quiet and still of the crypt, something stirred. It was barely perceptible at first, but became more definite. It lived again. In the depths of what remained of its mind, only sheer instinct prevailed. It had fed long and well recently, and had returned to its crypt to digest its unholy meal. Some primeval instict told it that it was still being hunted. How it knew this it is impossible to know, but a sense of urgency had led it back to to the safety of its crypt to ride out the storm. The peace of eternal rest denied it, it could still occasionally have a brief taste of that rest only…

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Spiritually guided surgery

Let's get one thing straight. There's just no way on earth that I can imagine topping last week's Your Friday Dose of Woo. I can only be as good as my source material lets me be (well, maybe a bit better), and Toby Alexander and his "DNA Activation" represented such unbelievably potent, bizarre, and concentrated woo that I can't imagine that I'll find its like anytime soon again, much less find something that tops it. Even if I were to find woo more potent than Toby's, it would probably rend the fabric of the space-time continuum. Of course, given his "multidimensional spectra of DNA…

Battling quackery in "conventional" medicine

Grant crunch time again yesterday. That means it's the perfect time once again to dig up something from the archives of old blog and repost it here. This particular piece originally appeared on January 12, 2005, just shy of one month after I started blogging. I'm guessing once again that, because not many people were reading back then, most of you probably haven't seen this before, and that those of you who have probably don't remember it. Once again, I'd be interested in feedback from those who haven't seen this before now that my readership around 10-20 times what it was back then. The only…

April 30: In commemoration of Führerstodestag

Today is Führerstodestag or "Death of the Führer Day," I join my friend Andrew in wishing Holocaust deniers out there a very happy Führerstodestag! If there is indeed a hell, Adolf Hitler must surely be rotting in it. In commemoration of Führerstodestag, I'm resurrecting a blast from the past, my post about this topic from my old blog published one year ago today. It's my way of wishing Holocaust deniers and Hitler-admiring Nazis everywhere a happy Führerstodestag! 60 years ago today: The end of the Führer Sixty years ago today, the capital of the thousand year Reich, Berlin, was in…

Taking woo in the military to a whole new level: Deploying acupuncturists to Iraq

Several months ago, I wrote a post about the experimentation with acupuncture by an Air Force physician, Col. Robert Niemtzow. In the post, I started with an admittedly exaggerated vignette--a story, if you will--of a soldier whose leg was shredded by a mortar in battle. When the medic came to treat his wounds and get him ready for transport, this soldier was in for a surprise, because after applying a tourniquet to his leg, this medic offered him not morphine for his pain but acupuncture. At the time, the military acupuncture program spearheaded by Col. Niemtzow was not proposing anything…

Was Nazi science good science?

I've long had an interest in World War II history. Ever since I was around 11 or 12 years old, a major portion of my reading diet has consisted of books and articles about World War II. Back when I was young, my interest was, as you might expect, primarily the battles. The military history of World War II fascinated me, and I build many, many models of World War II fighter aircraft and warships when I was in my early teens. (No cracks about how the airplane glue obviously affected me, although it is true that back then it was real airplane glue, chock full of toluene and lots of other organic…

Disingenuous responses to straightforward questions

In yesterday's post, in which I discussed the President's Cancer Panel report on environmental toxins and cancer, I criticized one of the reactions to it, specifically that of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), even referencing a truly hilarious Daily Show clip in which Jeff Stier, Associate Director of ACSH didn't exactly come off looking particularly good. (Let's just leave it at that.) Apparently my criticism didn't sit too well with Gilbert Ross, MD, the Medical/Executive Director of ACSH, because he actually showed up in the comments, apparently wounded that I would point…

Old wine in a new skin: The Society for Integrative Oncology issues guidelines for breast cancer

It should come as a surprise to no one that I'm not exactly a fan of "integrative oncology"—or integrative medicine, or "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM), or whatever its proponents want to call it these days. After all, I've spent nearly ten years writing this blog and nearly seven years running another blog dedicated to promoting the scientific basis of medicine, and just this year managed to publish a lengthy commentary in a high impact journal criticizing the very concept of integrative oncology. Unfortunately, it seems to be the equivalent of the proverbial pissing in the…

Complementary and alternative medicine: The New York Times and the elephant in the room

When I first started blogging, I liked to refer to myself as a booster of evidence-based medicine (EBM). These days, I'm not nearly as likely to refer to myself this way. It's not because I've become a woo-meister of course. Even a cursory reading of this blog would show that that is most definitely not the case. So what's changed? Basically, I've come to the realization that EBM is an imperfect tool. Don't get me wrong, EBM goes a long way towards systematizing how we approach clinical data, but there's one huge flaw in it. (I can just see a quack somewhere quote-mining that sentence: "Orac…

Cancer research: Playing it safe versus taking risks

If there's one thing that cancer researchers, indeed most biomedical researchers in the U.S., know today it's that the research funding climate sucks right now. Indeed, after the completion of the near-doubling of the NIH budget in 2003, during which time it was flying high, the NIH budget in essence crash landed--hard. Paylines, which had been well over the 20th percentile (meaning that over 20% of grant applications in any give deadline cycle were funded) plummeted to near single-digit ranges almost overnight. Indeed, I almost fell victim to this myself in 2004. The initial score on my R01…

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Kissing whales healing dolphins, or: Two great woos that taste great together--again

I'm tired. I apologize in advance if I'm not as--shall we say?--energetic as usual this week. I'm sure you'll understand. After all, I just spent the last three days subjecting myself to the most toxic and concentrated woo known to humankind. If you're a regular reader here, you clearly know what I'm talking about, namely Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey's "Green Our Vaccines" rally on Wednesday in Washington, D.C. Fortunately, it wasn't as large as attended. Although its organizers claim that 8,000 showed up, more realistic estimates were maybe around 1,000. Maybe. Even better, the media hardly…

Mercury and autism: RFK Jr. drops another stinky one on the blogosphere

I had wanted to let this cup pass, but couldn't, not after several readers e-mailed it to me and I went and experienced its inanity first hand. As Michael Corleone said in The Godfather, Part III: "Just when I thought I was finally out, they drag me back in again!" In this case, it was Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. who did the dragging. Yes, RFK Jr. has dropped one more steamy, stinky turd on the blogosphere. No, it's not nearly as big and stinky as the first one that he dropped back in June, but that's almost certainly only because it's a short blog piece, rather than a full feature article for…

Nobody promotes antivaccine nonsense in my state…without receiving some Insolence (2016 election edition)

Remember the scene in The Blues Brothers where Jake and Elwood are sitting in the Bluesmobile and come across a Nazi rally taking place on a bridge? Jake says with utter disgust, “I hate Illinois Nazis,” before driving over the bridge, forcing the Nazis to flee and jump into the river below. That’s basically the way I feel towards Michigan antivaccine activists. What’s even worse, though, is when out-of-state antivaccine agitators show up to give aid and comfort to our own homegrown antivaccinationists, which is what happened this week. I'd never actually drive a car at a bunch of them to…

A victory and a more substantial defeat for the cruel sham known as "right to try"

I’ve referred to so-called “right to try” laws as a cruel sham.on more than one occasion. Since 2014, these laws, all based on a template provided by the libertarian Goldwater Institute, have been proliferating at the state level with the help of lobbying by the aforementioned Goldwater Institute and a concept that makes it pitifully easy to caricature opposition to these laws as wanting to heartlessly snatch away from terminally ill patients the last chance at life while laughing and twirling one’s mustache like Snidely Whiplash. Not surprisingly, state legislatures all over the country have…

"Right to try": A miserable failure thus far

I’ve frequently called “right to try” laws that are popping up in various states like so much kudzu, to the point where 31 states have passed them in a little over two years, an amazing pace, a cruel sham, given how incredibly unlikely they are to help a single patient. Basically, state-level right-to-try laws are the brainchild of the libertarian Goldwater Institute and all based on a template that it produced. Their purpose is not, as the Goldwater Institute claims, to help patients, but rather to weaken and ultimately neuter the FDA’s power to regulate drug approval and thereby help to…

Aaargh! Physicists! Again!

A while back, two physicists, Paul Davies and Charles Lineweaver, announced their explanation for cancer with a novel theory, which is theirs, that cancers are atavisms recapitulating in a Haeckelian reverse double backflip their premetazoan ancestry. They seemed very proud of their idea. I was aghast, as you might guess. They even claimed that human embryos go through a fish/amphibian stage with gills, webbed feet, and tails in a pattern of Haeckelian development. They do not understand evolution, development, or cancer, facts that were apparent even in the absence of their admission that…

Why do bad things happen to good people?

The problem of evil has become a topic of discussion again. I don't think I've blogged about theodicy in any depth since 2006, so I guess it's time to take it up again. In brief, the problem of evil is classically posed as a question of why evil should exist in the world if there is an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent deity. By straightforward logic, one can argue that the existence of evil is evidence against the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent deity. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes, there are a lot of theodicies - attempts to defend the…

Quote of the Day: Scientific Results Should Be Vetted First and Foremost...

...by scientists, not journalists. From Genomicron: A primary tenet of journalism is that it present a balanced view of the story and not make any subjective judgments. The fact that the scientific community has semi-objective methods for determining the reliability of claims (such as peer review and the requirement of repeatably demonstrable evidence) should not impinge on this. It is therefore important to present "both sides" of every story, even if one side lacks any empirical support and is populated only by a tiny minority of scientists (or better yet, denialists and cranks). It's not…

I See Stupid People: The Salt Lake Tribune Edition

Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post writes: George Pyle , an editorial writer for the Salt Lake Tribune, complains in the Tribune's editorial blog that I did not include his paper's Sunday editorial in my Wednesday column about editorials from all over the country expressing outrage about Bush's signing statements. The Tribune wrote: "Congress and the courts must rein in this presidential power grab. To do otherwise would be to court tyranny." And yes, in 2004, the Tribune endorsed Bush. Of course, if the Salt Lake Tribune had actually done some critical reporting (along with any other…

Good Science Movies

Our Benevolent Seed Overlords ask: What movie do you think does something admirable (though not necessarily accurate) regarding science? Bonus points for answering whether the chosen movie is any good generally.... Here's my list (which I might update): 1) Apollo 13. The heroes aren't the big, famous stars. The heros are the nerds. They don't beat someone up to save the day, or roar in inchoate rage like Mel Gibson, they use reason and logic to solve the problem. 2) From The Earth to the Moon (#15). It's not technically a movie, but it shows how the Apollo astronauts were taught to be…

Once Again, the Guard Is Deployed in the Wrong Place

I've made this point before: when you use the National Guard as a backdoor draft, instead of civil defense and disaster relief, people suffer. From Kansas: The rebuilding effort in tornado-ravaged Greensburg, Kansas, likely will be hampered because some much-needed equipment is in Iraq, said that state's governor. Governor Kathleen Sebelius said much of the National Guard equipment usually positioned around the state to respond to emergencies is gone. She said not having immediate access to things like tents, trucks and semitrailers will really handicap the rebuilding effort. The Greensburg…

Pandemic Flu Preparedness in Boston

Tonight, at 6:30pm, at the Boston Public Library, there's a meeting "Preparing Boston Residents for Pandemic Flu." I'm going, but with a great deal of pessimism. The reason I'm pessimistic, as I've said so many times on this blog, every year roughly 36,000 U.S. residents die from 'ordinary' influenza. We know how to make the vaccine. We could, if we so desired, produce sufficient vaccine. We know whom we should be vaccinating to maximize the vaccine's effectiveness (and, no, we don't routinely vaccinate those people--5 to 18 year olds). And doing all things things would be the needed…

Links 8/24/11

Links for you. Science: Smart people accept evolution (I have a different take, in that 'smartness'--which to me is actually just educational attainment--mirrors political leanings and socioeconomic status, which themselves are correlated) Evolution doesn't fit our generalities NIH solicits opinions (from you) on biomedical workforce (more info here) What is in a name? A case study of genomic epidemiology w/ Bacillus cereus and Bacillus anthracis Other: An Empty Regard (must-read) Our Brave New Marketing World Are we replacing robots with Chinese people? My Conversation with Andrés Duany:…

Links 8/11/11

Links for you. Science: IonTorrent: longer reads, longer homopolymers? The Attacks on Climate Science Education Are Picking Up Steam How people in science see each other (hysterical) The Mangled Web of Scientific Misinformation Other: 102 Things NOT To Do If You Hate Taxes What You Need When You're Poor: Heritage Foundation Hasn't a Clue Marshall Auerback: A Beer(s) Hall Putsch From the Rentiers? most of the kids are alright Password Strength Letter to Senator Kerry on Social Security Comments Do Liberals Understand American Politics? (Willis makes a very good point, although he seems…

Links 7/29/11

Links for you. Science: Scientists Retract Report on Predicting Longevity On idiocy Genome data sharing goes global - how not to let the most selfish publish the sexy bits Annals of Stupidity Update-More on the GOP Hates Science beat Other: The Burger Economy It is the official position of this blog that Jesus Loves Manatees. Bonfire of the Manatees (I like manatees) "One of the easiest ways to differentiate an economist from almost anyone else in society" When Patents Attack The Price is...ummm....errrr.... Wrong (Part 2) The Souls of White Folk The Only Social Security Reform Worth…

Links 6/19/11

Links for you. Science: Felisa Wolfe-Simon Does NOT Get It And now, from the Insane Clown Posse wing of the climate change debate... Cheap vaccine eradicates new cases of meningitis A The Noble Priesthood and Other Lies We Tell Ourselves The Government's Addiction Expert Says We Like What We Like Because We Like It The "triumph" of New Age medicine? The Atlantic strikes again UPDATE: Methods Behind BGI's Madness (interested in China's desire to set up its own Genbank; maybe this will lead to improvements at NCBI?) Other: OUR ABORTION WAS DIFFERENT: WHEN THE ANTI-CHOICE CHOOSE Ga.'s farm-…

Links 4/5/11

Links for you. Science: Why is aspirin toxic to cats? F.B.I. Seeks Help Cracking Code in Victim's Notes (of course, if it's just insane babble or doodles....) How to Get Tenure at Almost Every Other Research University Antimicrobial soap ingredient found to accumulate in fish Other: Why I'm Boycotting The Huffington Post, And I Hope You Will Too Harry & David files Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Women Under the Budget Knife Expelling Care from the Teacher-Child Relation Back at You, Glenn Beck If hype were broadband, the U.S. would be No. 1 Neo-Liberalism Can't Beat the Tea Party: But MMT Can Our…

Pigmentation loci, TPCN2 and ASIP

Sandy pointed me to letter to Nature by a group which has done some earlier pigmentation work, Two newly identified genetic determinants of pigmentation in Europeans: We present results from a genome-wide association study for variants associated with human pigmentation characteristics among 5,130 Icelanders, with follow-up analyses in 2,116 Icelanders and 1,214 Dutch individuals. Two coding variants in TPCN2 are associated with hair color, and a variant at the ASIP locus shows strong association with skin sensitivity to sun, freckling and red hair, phenotypic characteristics similar to those…

Organ donation & brown people

OK, most of you know some genetics. You know that immunological profiles are very diverse, and you know that because of the mathematics of this diversity matches aren't easy. The problem increases in magnitude when you can not look within your ancestral population because the combinations will tend to draw from the modal alleles within that population. If that isn't clear: many small minorities in the United States are faced with the prospect of very long odds when it comes to tissue matches because of low numbers. This means proactive drives are necessary, as a matter of life & death…

Belief-O-Matic

The Lord Our God is One! Check out my results from the Belief-O-Matic below.... 1. Unitarian Universalism (100%) 2. Secular Humanism (98%) 3. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (88%) 4. Liberal Quakers (84%) 5. Nontheist (75%) 6. Theravada Buddhism (68%) 7. Bah�'� Faith (65%) 8. Neo-Pagan (65%) 9. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (58%) 10. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (58%) 11. Reform Judaism (50%) 12. New Age (45%) 13. Taoism (45%) 14. New Thought (45%) 15. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (43%) 16. Sikhism (40%) 17.…

Links 3/20/11

There's a big parade today. But if you're not going, then here are some links for you. Science: Genome Assembly Information Herds on the Street: Why messaging traders are like scared fish Shark Cleaning Stations Identified Felisa Wolfe-Simon (of arsenic infamy) is no more convincing in person than in print The story behind the story of my new #PLoSOne paper on "Stalking the fourth domain of life" Other: Book Squad 911: When your library's underwater, who you gonna call? Report from Central Falls, RI: How Do You Change a School's "Culture?" Why Do We Hate Rebecca Black? Grant Hill on the Fab…

Links 1/21/11

It's snowing. Big whoop. Links for you. Science: Meet Dicty the amoeba - the world's smallest farmer On sharing genes with friends The rise of genetic architecture Are synthetic associations a man-made phenomenon? Other: Americans Are Far Less Conservative Than the Right Wing Claims: New research suggests that only a quarter of self-identified "conservatives" may actually be true conservatives on the issues. Many aren't conservative at all. Steve Jobs Bought Human Liver Like Foie Gras Shoup to O'Toole: The Market for Parking Is Anything But Free (a good wonky smackdown) Life with an STD…

Links 1/13/11

Thank goodness it's...Thursday. Crap. Some links to get you through. Science: Oldest Homo sapiens fossil? Journalistic vaporware A Fistful of Teeth - Do the Qesem Cave Fossils Really Change Our Understanding of Human Evolution? How many species of elephant? (with bonus rants) Other: How a Different America Responded to the Great Depression (economically, Americans were more liberal back then. Most uncivil) U.S. Still Richly Rewarding Banksters-- Demonizing Schoolteachers What Newark Schools Need Contrary to the NYT's Assertion, Japan Does Not "Face a Looming Demographic Squeeze" Charlie,…

William Kristol and Nepotism

I had no idea how deeply involved nepotism was in the New York Times' decision to hire William Kristol as an op-ed writer. From the Greenwald: The NYT should be very proud of itself. Of course, Kristol was hired at the NYT because his dad, Irv, was really good friends with former NYT Executive Editor Abe Rosenthal, whose son, Andy, currently runs the NYT Op-Ed page. Andy and Bill followed in their dad's footsteps by becoming good friends (and in every other sense), and Andy then hired his friend, Bill (son of his dad's friend), as the new NYT Op-Ed writer. So this is typically what one gets…

Some Polling Data About Science Funding

By way of a post about the popularity of healthcare, I came across some polling results from a survey that asked people whether funding for various things should increase, decrease, or stay the same. The results: (click to embiggen) I suppose the good news is science funding is middle of the pack. And I suppose the bad news is science funding is middle of the pack. Of course, this has to be taken with a boulder of salt, since it's not clear that respondents have any idea how much is really spent--that is, respondents could be basing their answers on complete false notions of spending…

I Didn't Know This About Newfoundland

(from here) Occasionally, The Boston Globe isn't worthless and actually increases stuff the Mad Biologist knows. Take this piece about Newfoundland: As recently as the 1940s, Newfoundland was a self-governing British dominion completely independent of Canada. When it became clear that Newfoundland would be better off joining a larger nation, most Newfoundlanders began looking south. They wanted to attach themselves to the United States, not Canada. Hunh. But those damn crafty Canucks! Bastards: Polls taken in 1947 report that 80 percent of Newfoundland's population wanted to become…