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Menopause as an adaptation

I've talked about menopause before. One question in evolutionary anthropology is whether it is an adaptation, a derived trait in our species which emerged due to the force of natural selection, or simply a physiological byproduct of some other phenomenon. The key point is the peculiar asymmetry in male and female reproductive potentials; males decline gradually over time, while the general suite of female reproductive function simply shuts down at during middle age. Eric Michael Johnson reviews a new paper by the redoubtable Virpi Lummaa, Fitness benefits of prolonged post-reproductive…

Human morphological variation: height & weight

I have recently mentioned an analogy between the heritability of height & weight. That is, the proportion of variance of the trait which can be explained by variance in the genes. How closely do parents resemble offspring. A new paper in PLoS ONE, How Humans Differ from Other Animals in Their Levels of Morphological Variation, look at how this variation among human populations compares to other animals: Animal species come in many shapes and sizes, as do the individuals and populations that make up each species. To us, humans might seem to show particularly high levels of morphological…

Neandertals, rare big animals

There's a new paper on ancient DNA out, Targeted Retrieval and Analysis of Five Neandertal mtDNA Genomes: Analysis of Neandertal DNA holds great potential for investigating the population history of this group of hominins, but progress has been limited due to the rarity of samples and damaged state of the DNA. We present a method of targeted ancient DNA sequence retrieval that greatly reduces sample destruction and sequencing demands and use this method to reconstruct the complete mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) genomes of five Neandertals from across their geographic range. We find that mtDNA…

Not all causal relationships are created equal

You might have already see this chart relating obesity to time spent eating in The New York Times: The commentary accompanying the chart goes like so: On Monday, in posting some of the data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Society at a Glance report, I noted that the French spent the most time per day eating, but had one of the lowest obesity rates among developed nations. Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not. Jim Manzi dug deeper into the data and found something very interesting: I recreated the original analysis (minus the inclusion of the OECD average as a data…

Human evolutionary genetics is too sexy...

Say you have a abstruse paper such as, Accelerated genetic drift on chromosome X during the human dispersal out of Africa: Comparisons of chromosome X and the autosomes can illuminate differences in the histories of males and females as well as shed light on the forces of natural selection. We compared the patterns of variation in these parts of the genome using two datasets that we assembled for this study that are both genomic in scale. Three independent analyses show that around the time of the dispersal of modern humans out of Africa, chromosome X experienced much more genetic drift than…

Great Dying = Great Cooling?

This is really weird, New World Post-pandemic Reforestation Helped Start Little Ice Age, Say Scientists: Stanford University researchers have conducted a comprehensive analysis of data detailing the amount of charcoal contained in soils and lake sediments at the sites of both pre-Columbian population centers in the Americas and in sparsely populated surrounding regions. They concluded that reforestation of agricultural lands--abandoned as the population collapsed--pulled so much carbon out of the atmosphere that it helped trigger a period of global cooling, at its most intense from…

Evolution of Primate Regulation

Gene Regulation in Primates Evolves under Tissue-Specific Selection Pressures: Regulatory changes have long been hypothesized to play an important role in primate evolution. To identify adaptive regulatory changes in humans, we performed a genome-wide survey for genes in which regulation has likely evolved under natural selection. To do so, we used a multi-species microarray to measure gene expression levels in livers, kidneys, and hearts from six humans, chimpanzees, and rhesus macaques. This comparative gene expression data allowed us to identify a large number of genes, as well as specific…

Extraordinary sex ratios

Extraordinary Sex Ratios is the paper that William D. Hamilton seems most proud of if the effusive self-praise in the biographical preface can be trusted. In it Hamilton claims his theoretical insight peaked, and it was within this paper that his ideas exhibited the most pluralism of purpose as he began to perceive the shape of his future research. Extraordinary Sex Ratios also marks the beginning of Hamilton's long utilization of computer simulations to push through the impasses of analytic intractability and empirical unverifiability. On occasion he even claims that in this particular area…

Influenza virus, science background IV

[This is the last post in a series about viral and cell surface glycoproteins and their role in the influenza story. It's a slightly updated series from the archives on the old site. Links to all four posts: part I, part II, part III, part IV] In the first three posts of this series we have given an overview of what the cell surface looks like to the influenza virus and set out the ideas and vocabulary virologists use to discuss the sugar molecules on the cell's surface the virus hooks on to, the viral receptor. The many possible configurations of sugars on a cell's surface serve important…

Influenza virus, science background, III

[This is the third in a reprise from the archives about some of the science of the influenza virus. Links to all four posts: part I, part II, part III, part IV] An influenza virus does only one thing: tries to make many copies of itself. And it does it poorly, although prolifically. Instead of making exact copies it is liable to make inexact copies and this is one of the sources of genetic variation which produces the parallel "random experiments" characteristic of viral replication. Lots of the copies it makes are fine, but many are fatally flawed, and also many that are more or less…

Canadian Science Policy Advocate Interviews: Sarah Boon, Editorial Manager of Science Borealis

Welcome to the rebooted science interview series here at Confessions of a Science Librarian! The previous incarnation mostly concentrated on people in the broadly defined scholarly communications community, like Mark Patterson of eLife, Peter Binfield and Jason Hoyt of PeerJ or author Michael Nielsen. The series has been extremely irregular for the last few years so I thought my more recent involvement with Canadian science policy advocacy presented an interesting opportunity to start over. In particular, my participation in the recent iPolitics science policy series presented itself as a…

Modeling antiviral resistance, I: what's a model?

[A series of posts explaining a paper on the mathematical modeling of the spread of antiviral resistance. Links to other posts in the series by clicking tags, "Math model series" or "Antiviral model series" under Categories, left sidebar. Preliminary post here. Table of contents at end of this post.] The use of antiviral drugs to prevent or manage a pandemic with influenza/H5N1 is both a mainstay of national and international pandemic plans and a source of controversy. Will there ever be sufficient doses to make a difference? If there were, could they be deployed and administered in time? If…

Science Labs

There is a growing, glowing discussion about the usefulness of college science labs that was started with an anti-lab post by Steve Gimbel and responded to, with various degrees of pro-lab sentiment by Janet Stemwedel, Chad, Chad again, Chad yet again, Razib, Jeremy and RPM and numerous commenters on all of their posts (also check older posts on the topic by Sean Carroll and Janet). Of course, I felt a need to chime in. I teach labs, after all (and I took many as a student as well). The core of the problem is the very existence of the institution we call 'college'. Let me explain. There is…

A Huge New Circadian Pacemaker Found In The Mammalian Brain

If you really read this blog 'for the articles', you know some of my recurrent themes, e.g., that almost every biological function exhibits cycles and that almost every cell in every organism contains a more-or-less functioning clock. Here is a new paper that combines both of those themes very nicely, but I'll start with a little bit of background first. Daily Rhythms in Sensory Sensitivity If almost every biochemical, physiological and behavioral function exhibits daily cycles, it is no surprise that such rhythms have been discovered in sensory sensitivity of many sensory modalities -…

Family Planning Isn't a Condom and a Pamphlet

Note: I wrote a slightly different piece under this title on ye olde blogge back in August, but given the emphasis on discussion of contraception going on, I thought it was worth reiterating and mulling over further. When your specialty as a foster family is taking large sibling groups, you hear a lot of stuff you'd rather not. The typical comment involves forced sterilization, and it is hard sometimes not to have a little sympathy. Of the kids we've taken or been called about, we've had three groups of five and three of four, and almost all have involved very young mothers, sometimes with…

Nasty, Messy Things that Make You Late for Dinner: Energy, Environment, Reality

I had been mulling over precisely how to frame this piece for a while, when I read Erik Lindberg's "This Is a Peak Oil Story." which admirably gets at the essential point that I've been wanting to make - that our collective crisis comes to all of us at different times and different ways than we imagined, and that exemptions are only rarely granted. Lindberg writes eloquently of his own experience of trying to undertake change - and failing in large part because of the precise circumstances he is trying to address: I had imagined the rooftop farm thriving far into the future. Here, my…

Student guest post: Mission Impossible: Fighting Zoonotic Infections in Nicaragua

Student guest post by Brandon Woods A Dangerous Paradise From jungles with jaguars to crystal blue lakes with freshwater sharks, Nicaragua is one of the most beautiful and dangerous countries in Central America. The brilliant biodiversity attracts millions of tourists each year and the looming volcanoes that pepper the landscape can be an exciting yet unsettling sight. However, in reality much of the danger in Nicaragua comes from the risk of infectious diseases. For example, if you’re planning to travel to this tropical paradise anytime soon, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) states that…

A Huge New Circadian Pacemaker Found In The Mammalian Brain

If you really read this blog 'for the articles', you know some of my recurrent themes, e.g., that almost every biological function exhibits cycles and that almost every cell in every organism contains a more-or-less functioning clock. Here is a new paper that combines both of those themes very nicely, but I'll start with a little bit of background first. Daily Rhythms in Sensory Sensitivity If almost every biochemical, physiological and behavioral function exhibits daily cycles, it is no surprise that such rhythms have been discovered in sensory sensitivity of many sensory modalities -…

Does Tryptophan from turkey meat make you sleepy?

It's Thanksgiving tomorrow and the question (of the title of this post) pops up on the internets again. See SciCurious and Janet for the latest local offerings. Short answer: we don't know. But there is endless speculation about it, each taking into account bits and pieces of information that we know about tryptophan and related physiology. The hypotheses tend to focus on: a) Tryptophan itself, i.e., how it can get from food, through the intestine, through the bloodstream, to the brain and what it would do once there. b) Serotonin, as a product of tryptophan metabolism, and how it can be…

A Huge New Circadian Pacemaker Found In The Mammalian Brain

If you really read this blog 'for the articles', you know some of my recurrent themes, e.g., that almost every biological function exhibits cycles and that almost every cell in every organism contains a more-or-less functioning clock. Here is a new paper that combines both of those themes very nicely, but I'll start with a little bit of background first. Daily Rhythms in Sensory Sensitivity If almost every biochemical, physiological and behavioral function exhibits daily cycles, it is no surprise that such rhythms have been discovered in sensory sensitivity of many sensory modalities -…

Birds in the News 67 (v2n18)

Sleeping flamingos, Phoenicopterus ruber. Orphaned image, please contact me for proper credit. People Hurting Birds Avian pathologists have determined that the deaths of 63 birds in downtown Austin, Texas, this month were the result of natural causes. Texas A&M University pathologists examined nine of the birds found dead on 8 January and determined they died because of parasites and a drop in temperature, the Austin American-Statesman reported Friday. "These birds were heavily parasitized by multiple species of parasites," said Lelve Gayle, the executive director of the Texas…

Birds in the News 103

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Falconer Geoff Clayton with eight-year-old golden eagle Shirko as they attend the Inter-Governmental Conference on Migratory Birds of Prey in Loch Lomond. Image: PA [larger view] Birds in Science The ability to ramp up testosterone levels drives certain male sparrows to mate, but also makes them bad dads, a new study suggests. Researchers had thought that the total amount of testosterone might determine the mating habits and aggressive tendencies of male dark-eyed juncos, a type of sparrow. But the new study of juncos…

Birds in the News 102

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter A pair of Moluccan Red Lories, Eos bornea rothschildi (upper right and lower left (upside down)), and a pair of Rainbow Lorikeet, Trichoglossus haematodus haematodus (center; one bird is hanging upside down), near the north coast of Seram, Indonesia. Image: Kevin Sharp [wallpaper size]. Birds in Science The ability to ramp up testosterone levels drives certain male sparrows to mate, but also makes them bad dads, a new study suggests. Researchers had thought that the total amount of testosterone might determine the…

Birds in the News 139

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Juvenile male Blue-throated Hummingbird, Lampornis clemenciae, Cave Creek Canyon, AZ. Image: Dave Rintoul, June 2008 [larger view]. For comparison, an adult male of the species -- also read the comments section to learn more about how to identify juvenile males of this species. Birds in Science News A new analysis indicates that birds don't fly alone when migrating at night. Some birds, at least, keep together on their migratory journeys, flying in tandem even when they are 200 meters or more apart. The study, from…

Evolving spots

Here's what seems to be a relatively simple problem in evolution. Within the Drosophila genus (and in diverse insects in general), species have evolved patterned spots on their wings, which seem to be important in species-specific courtship. Gompel et al. have been exploring in depth one particular problem, illustrated below: how did a spot-free ancestral fly species acquire that distinctive dark patch near the front tip of the wing in Drosophila biarmipes? Their answer involves dissecting the molecular regulators of pattern in the fly wing, doing comparative sequence analyses and…

Answering Gay Marriage Arguments Again

I post some of what I write to both Positive Liberty and Dispatches from the Culture Wars, so sometimes I get comments left at one place and not the other. In response to a recent cross-posted item on the religious right and "special rights" rhetoric, I got this comment left at PL. I'm going to respond to it in detail at both places in its own post. The first thing you will notice about the comment is that it does not even attempt to engage the argument of my post. The post was about the inconsistency and incoherency of the religious rights's rhetoric of "special rights" when arguing against…

Comments of the Week #9: From Hydrogen to Humanity

“If the world wants you, it's gonna keep on coming till it gets you. And who am I that can fix it? Who am I that can change this if the world wants it so badly? Who am I to stop the end of the world if it keeps on coming?” -Patrick Ness It's been a wonderful and diverse week over at the main Starts With A Bang blog on Medium, and we've covered an awful lot of ground if you missed anything (or want a re-read), including: Using up the Universe's Fuel (for Ask Ethan), LEGOs for those with a little Curiosity (for our Weekend Diversion), An Elliptical Rotating Wrongly, M59 (for Messier Monday),…

First person in US to catch Ebola: The Meaning of Ebola Patient Two (updated)

The first person ever to catch Ebola in the United States is now in isolation at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. Don't panic, even if you live in Dallas. But also, don't fall into the hyperskeptical trap of assuming that because scientific authorities tell you everything is fine that concern is irrational. There are very rational reasons to be concerned. But you need to be smart about what to be concerned about. A couple of weeks ago, as you know, a man came to Dallas with pre-symptomatic Ebola, and became symptomatic there. This was the first case of a person being diagnosed with…

#Ebola UPDATE-Rate Of New Cases Rises, Note to Laurie Garrett, is there a case in South Africa?

New for August 16th I will try to keep new information and updates in the same post for a while until I have a chance to do a comprehensive re-overview of everything. The 16 August update from WHO indicates a large uptick in the daily number of cases. Over the two days of the most recent reporting period an average of 76 cases per day have been identified as confirmed, probable, or suspect, with a total of 76 deaths over that period of time. Good news is that the situation in Nigeria doesn't seem to be developing. There were no new cases over the this reporting period, and one death.…

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight / Where ignorant armies clash by night

I was going to write something much harsher than this; but then I chanced upon "ignorant armies" and hence was reminded of Dover Beach and it was so gloriously beautiful again that I can't bring myself to be unkind, at least for a while. So instead I'll just quietly point out that the vast slew of Trump stories are counter-productive. The one that triggered my... I'm being nice, aren't I? OK, my disapproval, was Trump has violated his oath to the Constitution. But it is just an example; there are many many others. The bit they are worrying about is "emolument"; and they're worried, for…

Another Round On Specified Complexity

There's a famous short story by Woody Allen called “The Gossage-Vardebedian Papers” that I like to reread from time to time. (It's very short, so follow the link if you've never read it before.) The story is told through the correspondence of Gossage and Vardebedian, as they argue about a game of postal chess in which they are engaged. There's one excerpt that keeps coming back to me, since it applies so perfectly in so many contexts: Received your latest letter today, and while it was just shy of coherence, I think I can see where your bewilderment lies. From your enclosed diagram, it…

Comments of the Week #30: From Mars to Aliens and Beyond

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” -Albert Einstein After a wide-ranging week here on Starts With A Bang, it's only fair to take a look at what conversations this has sparked among all of you, and to jump in where there's a good opportunity to add even more amazing stories about the Universe into the mix. In case you missed anything, this past week saw us cover the following topics: Could a manned mission to Mars abort? (for Ask Ethan), The ultimate fighter... of stains? (for our Weekend Diversion), The most elusive globular cluster,…

Segmentation genes evolved undesigned

Jason Rosenhouse has dug into the details of the evo-devo chapter of Behe's The Edge of Evolution and found some clear examples of dishonest quote-mining (so what else is new, you may be thinking—it's what creationists do). I've warned you all before that when you see an ellipsis in a creationist quote, you ought to just assume that there's been something cut out that completely contradicts the point the creationist is making; Rosenhouse finds that Behe gets around that little red-flag problem by simply leaving out the ellipses. I just want to expand a little bit on one point Behe mangles and…

The Big Bobby Fischer Movie

I saw the film Pawn Sacrifice the other day. It stars Tobey Maguire and Liev Schrieber as Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky. Serious chess movies don't come along very often, so I was excited to see it. I liked it! What's not to like about a movie where the actors deliver lines like, “They're playing a line of the Nimzo,” or “Fischer's playing the Benoni, he's never done that before. The Russians think it's suicide.” “Is it suicide?” “Oh yes...” Chess jargon? Cool! It's mostly accurate too, though they certainly took a few liberties here and there. I do fault them for two things,…

The Vacuity of “Natural Law,” Continued

It's been complete bedlam at my house lately. I made one of my periodical forays into cultural Judaism this past weekend by hosting a Passover seder. My parents, my brother and sister-in-law and their two kids (ages eight and ten) and some friends, eleven in all, packed into my small house. It was a lot of fun, but stressful too. The poor cats had a rough weekend, since they're morbidly afraid of anyone who isn't me. This was disappointing to my niece and nephew, who had been told that there would be cats to play with. But that's all behind me now, so it's time to get back to sneering…

Twenty Years After Darwin on Trial, ID is Dead

I just spent the last week working out of my New Jersey office, which is to say I was visiting the family for Thanksgiving. Before that I was spending a lot of time going over the page proofs and compiling the index for the BECB (the big evolution/creationism book, for those not up on the local slang). So it's nice to see that particular project work its way down the home stretch. It was probably sometime during 2006 when I first started thinking seriously about writing a book about my experiences at creationist conferences. When I first started mentally outlining the book I honestly…

Monty Hall and Interpretations of Probability

If I say that X has probability p, what does that mean? What sort of thing is X, and what does the number p represent? Philosophers have spilled a lot of ink on this question, with no clear answer emerging. Instead there are a handful of major schools of thought on the issue. Each school captures an important aspect of what we mean when we talk about probability, but none seems to provide a comprehensive account. One possibility is the so-called classical interpretation. It is classical because it shows up in the earliest formal treatments of probability, for example in the work of…

Fisking Turner

The stereotype about acedmics living in ivory towers does have a germ of truth to it. For the latest example, have a look at biologist J. Scott Turner's take on the ID situation. He was writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education. He begins: I'd never had a heckler before. Usually, when I'm asked to give a talk, I discuss my research on termites and the remarkable structures they build. Usually, I'm glad just to have an audience. x But what I'd learned from termites had got me thinking about broader issues, among them the question of design in biology: Why are living things built so well…

Climatology: The more things change...

Elizabeth Kolbert's interview in Yale's e360 magazine is a sobering read. But what's even more interesting than the light she sheds on the reasons why the polls keep finding the public is out of touch with the science is the stark reminder I came across in the article's comment section that we've blown the last quarter century. Greenpeace has posted a PDF of a 1983 New York Times story that, with only minimal edits of a few numbers -- replace the carbon-dioxide concentration, which was 340 ppm back then, with today's 387 -- could easily run today. I've converted the whole thing to HTML and,…

Shades of gray

Sometimes, issues demand nuance. This is a complicated world and there are a great many subjects that simply aren't reducible to binaries — we do a disservice to the subtleties when we discard them in favor of absolutes. And often I can agree that we need depth and breadth of understanding if we're to navigate a difficult situation. But sometimes the issues are black and white. Sometimes the answers are clear and absolute. And in those cases, attempts to bring out the watercolors and soften the story by blurring the edges do a disservice to reality. There are places where there are no…

Paired-pulse Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation For Smarties

There's a ton of super-interesting transcranial magnetic stimulation work coming out these days (e.g., here, here, here, here, here, and here) and much of it pertains to a very particular "paired-pulse" form of TMS (ppTMS). Before diving into the new work, I wanted a basic crash course on what we know (and what we don't) about how and why ppTMS works. If you're not familiar with the basic behavioral effects of TMS, check out this video. Unfortunately, the crash course I was looking for doesn't exist. So I've made one. Except where noted, the crash course below is largely derived from a…

Diplomatically Pissing into the Well of Truth.

I just found the time to read the two different versions of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group II's summary for policymakers, and I'm pissed as hell. I'd heard the reports about the epic battle between scientists and diplomats (the final score on that one was a 1-0 victory for the lions), but I wasn't prepared to believe that the report had been screwed with as badly as it was. The language that's been used in most of the reports has been pretty mild - most commonly, the diplomats are accused of "diluting" or "watering down" the language used in the report.…

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design Chapter 5: Part 1 - Honesty Matters

For my contribution to the Panda's Thumb's ongoing review of Jonathan Wells' new book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design (PIGDID), I will be reviewing chapters four and five. Chapter Four covers the record of evolution that is contained in the DNA of all living things, and Chapter Five discusses speciation. A full review of each of these chapters is going to take a while and wind up being rather long. I've divided the reviews up into chunks, and I'm going to post each chunk as I finish it. Comments are more than welcome, and might be helpful when the time…

How to review intelligent design: defending Hacking

Jason Rosenhouse, of Evolutionblog, has posted a rather snarky review of a book review by the historian and philosopher Ian Hacking that was published in The Nation. Jason titled his comment "How not to defend evolution". Here's my take on it. Jason thinks that Hacking was pretentious, that he was not careful in his use of language, and that he was wordy. The essay was 4600 words long. Jason's response is 1520 words of part one of a two parter. Hmm... The problem as I see it lies in the attitude of the sciences (and yes, I include mathematics amongst that tribe) to the humanities, and…

Video games: Are the myths true?

We learned from Alas, a Blog that Henry Jenkins has written an essay for PBS about video games, making the case that the public doesn't understand what the games are all about. Normally articles here on Cognitive Daily only report on peer-reviewed research, but in this case, we felt it was important to make an exception. We feel that Jenkins makes some misleading statements in his essay, and we'd like to take this opportunity to point our readers to some research showing why this is so. I've used indented quotations to give snippets from Jenkins' argument; my responses are in normal text.…

Isle Royale Travelogue Day 3: Rock Harbour to Mt. Franklin

This is another excerpt from our travel journal to Isle Royale. The first day is here; second day here. Photos by me, text by my husband. Tuesday May 27 Rock Harbour to Mt. Franklin and return I write this on the night it actually happened [hah], with Alice slowly peeling the tape off her feet behind me. [What can I say? My boots tend to give me blisters. You know, perhaps I should edit these more to avoid the TMI factor...] We're both beat from a long hike today, but her foot tape was a success. Sore muscles, but no blisters. [Yay!] We slept in this morning, I think mostly out of fear…

The psychology of Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) was one of the most outstanding filmmakers of the twentieth century. In a career spanning six decades, Hitchcock made 53 films, the best of which are at once suspenseful, exciting, disturbing, funny and romantic. The 'master of suspense' pioneered many of the techniques of the thriller genre, and remains highly influential to this day. He was, for example, one of the first directors to portray psychological processes in film narrative. However, his films were initially more popular with audiences than with critics, and it was not until the latter part of his…

From Metabolism to Oncogenes and Back - Part III

In the previous two parts I've described how cell biologists (and scientists in related fields) began to uncover the causes of cancer. Today I'll wrap things up with a recent discovery that goes full circle. But first lets have a recap and an expansion on some key points. I started this series of posts by describing the Warburg effect. This was first described by Otto Warburg about 100 years ago and led to the golden age of research into metabolism. Here's a summary of the principle as described in one of the papers that I'll be covering today: Otto Warburg noted that tumour cells, unlike…

The 2011 measles outbreak and vaccines in Nature

I was debating what to blog about last night, and it wasn't easy. We're in the midst of yet another embarrassment of riches, as far as topics relevant to this blog go. Then I noticed something that I considered to be quite appropriate, given that we are now right in the middle of the yearly autism quackfest known as Autism One in Chicago. This week, Nature published an issue with a special section devoted specifically to vaccines. The timing seemed just too deliciously appropriate to ignore. Think of it. In Chicago (well, Lombard), there is a collection of anti-vaccine cranks meeting to…

From dietary supplements to the emergency room

If there's one thing I've been consistent about, it's that, however ridiculous all the other woo I routinely discuss here is—homeopathy, reiki, reflexology, I'm talking to you and your friends—herbal medicine and supplements might have value because they might have a physiological effect that is beneficial in treating or preventing disease. Of course, if that's the case, it's because the herb or supplement contains chemicals that act as drugs. They're "dirty" drugs in that they are mixed with all sorts of other substances in the herb or supplement that might or might not have effects, which…