Search Content

Displaying results 601 - 650 of 895

Despite the massive measles outbreak in the Minnesota Somali community, antivaxers double down

I've written several posts about a tragic phenomenon in Minnesota. Specifically, there's been a major measles outbreak among the Somali immigrant community in the Minneapolis area, the largest group of Somali immigrants in the country. Actually, this outbreak is not the first outbreak among this community. There was another, smaller one in 2012. Both involved primarily children in the Somali immigrant community who were not vaccinated. The last recorded case of measles in Minnesota was on July 13 in a white child who was also unvaccinated, but officials need to wait at least 42 days (two full…

When the next big outbreaks happen, they'll probably happen in Texas

Back in the day, I used to write posts with titles like When the outbreaks occur, they’ll start in California. I even wrote a followup, When the outbreaks occur, they’ll start in California, 2014 edition. The reason, of course, was that California was one of the epicenters of vaccine hesitancy as well as the home to some high profile antivaccine-sympathetic physicians, such as Dr. Bob Sears (who’s known for making Holocaust analogies about bills tightening school vaccine mandate requirements) and Dr. Jay Gordon (who’s known for continuing to claim, against all evidence, that vaccines cause…

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders: Embracing "integrative medicine" quackery?

One of the most frequent claims of supporters of so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM), which goes by the Orwellian name "integrative medicine," is that it represents "integrating" alternative medicine with science-based medicine to produce the "best of both worlds." Of course, when I think of the best of both worlds, I usually think of The Best of Both Worlds, which might well be appropriate, except that, unlike the case when the Borg assimilate a species, when science-based medicine is forced to assimilate quackery, the quackery changes it, making it weaker, not stronger…

My new project launching today: The Quisling Qourner: A group blog on the library/publisher relationship

Reader Beware: Please note the date of publication of this post. It's been really gratifying over the last year to see how my DSCaM scholarly communications empire has grown. From it's small beginnings, Dupuis Science Computing & Medicine has craved out a small but important niche in the discount APC publishing community. And I really appreciate how the scholarly communications community has encouraged my career progression from publisher of a journal at Elsevier to Chief Advisor on Science Libraries for the Government of Canada to last year's huge launch of DSCaM. And the DSCaM empire…

What One Hardy Papaya Can Tell Us About Ending World Hunger

This Op-Ed just published today in the NY TImes. Here it is with links and a few edits. A REPORT by the National Research Council last month gave ammunition to both sides in the debate over the cultivation of genetically engineered crops. More than 80 percent of the corn, soybeans and cotton grown in the United States is genetically engineered, and the report details the "long and impressive list of benefits" that has come from these crops, including improved soil quality, reduced erosion and reduced insecticide use. It also confirmed predictions that widespread cultivation of these crops…

Sleep Schedules in Adolescents

Earlier this year, during the National Sleep Awareness Week, I wrote a series of posts about the changes in sleep schedules in adolescents. Over the next 3-4 hours, I will repost them all, starting with this one from March 26, 2006. Also check my more recent posts on the subject here and here... I am glad to see that there is more and more interest in and awareness of sleep research. Just watch Sanjay Gupta on CNN or listen to the recent segment on Weekend America on NPR. At the same time, I am often alarmed at the levels of ignorance still rampant in the general population, and even more…

From the dentist's chair, remembering how they cried wolf

"Snazzy safety glasses," I said to the dental hygienist who was just about to ask me to open wide.   Something about the pink rims caught my eye and led me to a remark that showed my age: "I remember when dentists didn't wear gloves, or masks, or eye protection." I not only recall the bare hands of my dentist circa 1970-1980, I also remember the hullabaloo from dentists when new federal regulations were proposed in 1989 requiring them to provide such protection for their hygienists.   At the time, the term "AIDS' was less than 10 years old, and exposure to HIV in the U.S. was considered a…

Temple Grandin is wrong on vaccines and autism

Temple Grandin is undoubtedly one of the most famous women with autism of our time. Trained in animal science, Dr. Grandin is a widely read author and noted speaker on autism. April is National Autism Awareness Month, and Dr. Grandin has a new book out, "The Autistic Brain." Together, this must have seemed like a good time for the New York Times to interview her. Unfortunately, the interview is superficial and not very illuminating, and what Dr. Grandin does say is disappointing. Her take on vaccines and autism, which apparently is elaborated upon in her new book: Q: In your new book, “The…

The Epidemic: Typhoid at Cornell

In the United States, we tend to take our clean drinking water for granted. Even though there are periodic concerns which bubble up about pharmaceuticals or other chemicals in our water supply, we typically believe--with good reason--that we have little to fear when it comes to contamination from microbes. Our drinking water, while far from perfect, is heads and shoulders above what it once was--something many of us forget or have never realized. There have been notable breakdowns, such as the 1993 outbreak of Cryptosporidium in Milwaukee that sickened over 400,000 individuals, but these days…

Sleep Schedules in Adolescents

Earlier this year, during the National Sleep Awareness Week, I wrote a series of posts about the changes in sleep schedules in adolescents. Over the next 3-4 hours, I will repost them all, starting with this one from March 26, 2006. Also check my more recent posts on the subject here and here... I am glad to see that there is more and more interest in and awareness of sleep research. Just watch Sanjay Gupta on CNN or listen to the recent segment on Weekend America on NPR. At the same time, I am often alarmed at the levels of ignorance still rampant in the general population, and even…

House Republicans resurrect GOPcare and make it even worse

Back in March, House Republicans pulled the unpopular and highly problematic American Health Care Act from consideration, and House Minority Leader Paul Ryan declared “Obamacare is the law of the land.” Now, however House Republicans are trying again to undo the Affordable Care Act. Last week, Representative Tom MacArthur (R-NJ) introduced an amendment designed to win over the hard-line House Freedom Caucus, who opposed the original AHCA because it didn’t do enough to roll back existing law. As the New York Times’ Margot Sanger-Katz summarizes, the amendment would allow states to receive…

Occupational Health News Roundup

At Bloomberg BNA, Stephen Lee reports that with fears of deportation looming, undocumented immigrants are becoming afraid to access legal remedies when they’re injured on the job. The article notes that such immigrants are disproportionately employed in hazardous jobs and while they account for just 15 percent of the overall workforce, they account for 18 percent of occupational fatalities. Lee writes: Sofia, a Mexican fieldworker in Santa Rosa, Calif., has a workers’ compensation case in the works after hurting her arm and shoulder pulling vine roots, requiring surgery. But she says she’s…

"Perfect nails, poisoned workers" and where is the law?

[Update below (5/15/15)] by Cora Roelofs, ScD Kudos to Sarah Maslin Nir for shedding light on the working conditions faced by nail salon workers in her recent two-part New York Times exposé “Perfect Nails, Poisoned Workers.” I and others across the country have been working to document and illuminate the effects of the systematic failures that produce the unhealthful conditions faced by these workers and, many times, their employers as well. As described in our investigation of nail salon conditions in Boston, despite tremendous evidence of bad conditions and symptoms related to work in these…

Recent Archaeomags

British Archaeology #122 (Jan/Feb) has a good feature on the origins of Roman London, presenting and collating evidence from excavations in the 90s and 00s for a military camp immediately post-dating the AD 43 invasion of Britain. The editors have slapped a silly headline on the thing though, playing up a short passage about human heads deposited in the Walbrook stream as if this were the main issue dealt with in the piece. The unsigned last page discusses the important work of Raimund Karl (in The Historic Environment: Policy & Practice Oct 2011; read it on-line), who has compared the…

Brexit means Brexit?

Post-referendum thoughts, and indeed Say no to Brexit refer. But so do Timmy's NO, DON'T LET MPS HAVE A VOTE ON BREXIT (Timmy is very shouty, as you'd expect) and The Brexit Conundrum - Freedom Of Movement Means Only Hard, Or Clean, Brexit Is Possible (so perhaps it is the ASI that is shouty. Well, you know what they're like). Before we get into all the messy and unpleasant politics, here's a picture. Chamois against the Pelvoux, seen from where the glacier Jean Gauthier used to be. You should see my close-up of a marmotte. Anyway, onwards. [Far too late update: I've now added the question…

Canada's Attacks on Free Speech

As a follow-up to my last post on threats to free speech from the left, it may be instructive to look at some very disturbing trends going on in our neighbor to the north. Canada has increasingly squashed free speech in the name of protecting minorities from offense. For instance, it is now illegal in Canada to make any statement in opposition to homosexuality. Just last week, a Quebec man was fined $1000 for telling one man that his traveling companion was a "fifi", a French slang term for gay. The man filed a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission, saying that the comments…

Where Does All the Sulfur Go?

Environmental regulations have greatly reduced the amount of sulfur in gasoline.  This has created many benefits.  But did you ever wonder what happens to all that sulfur?  Perhaps not, if it was never clear to you why you should care. The reason you should care is this:  Sulfur is present in coal and in most liquid fuels.  When it is burned, it oxidized, much as the carbon is oxidized.  Carbon becomes carbon dioxide; sulfur becomes sulfur dioxide.  When sulfur dioxide enters the atmosphere, it becomes a strong acid: sulfuric acid, which is battery acid.  This is one factor that contributes…

Pew: Global Warming Dead Last Among Public Priorities

Call it a case of extreme optimistic bias: Many climate advocates point to polls that show when the public is asked directly, a majority say they are "concerned" about global warming and favor action. But what's missing from this poll assessment is where global warming sits relative to other political priorities. When you examine this comparison, public support for action turns up as soft, even among Dems and Independents, suggesting that it will be very difficult for Obama to rally the needed public input to pass meaningful legislation through Congress. One way to assess the strength of…

Repost: Novelist reinvents ethology

From the old blog: Tom Wolfe, whose works often show a considerable pretentiousness in my opinion, has a piece in the New York Sun entitled "Darwin meets his match" [old link dead, so this will have to do]. In this he adduces Zola and Weber, and most of all the 1950s American sociologists whose works stressed status seeking and display, to show that there is something missing from Darwinian theory. Like social dominance ethology and psychology never happened, right? Darwin talked about social dominance and submission several times, and much of Weber's dialectic comes from the tradition of…

Ignore Subpoenas...

...That is probably bad advice.  Never take legal advice from someone who is not your lawyer.  The only thing worse than taking legal advice from someone who is not your lawyer, is to take legal advice from somebody else's lawyer. With that disclaimer out of the way, I am going to tell you what I find particularly galling about the href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070309/national-security-letters">FBI "National Security Letter" scandal.  Yeah, it shows that we can't trust our own law enforcement agencies.  But we knew that already.  So why do I find this issue to be…

Book review: And the Band Played On.

Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic. St. Martin's Press, 1987. There are a few books on my shelf that I can read any given number of times without being bored or impatient. One of these is And the Band Played On, a painstaking work of journalism that never feels laborious in the reading -- despite being in excess of 600 pages. Randy Shilts, who was a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle reporting on AIDS in the early 1980s, assembled an intricate chronological telling of the early unfolding of the AIDS epidemic, from the first glimmerings of…

Sex and The Science Baby

A breakthrough infant formula for babies 0 to 12 months * The first infant formula with BIFIDUS Bâ¢--beneficial cultures like those found in breastmilk to help support Baby's healthy immune system1 * Gentle 100% whey COMFORT PROTEINS® designed to be easy to digest * Complete nutrition in a milk-based formula * DHA & ARA for Babys brain and eye development There's a classic saying in the advertising industry: "Sell the sizzle, not the steak." Gerber's "Good Start Protect Plus" baby formula commercial, shown in the video above, is an example. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the…

Chance, Stochasticity, Probability and Evolution

John Wilkins has replied to Larry Moran on the role of "chance" in evolution (incidentally, Moran replies to Wilkins on the same topic, but a different post by Wilkins). Here's what Larry wrote: Nobody denies the power of natural selection and nobody claims that natural selection is random or accidental. However, the idea that everything is due to natural selection is the peculiar belief of a relatively small number of people, of whom Richard Dawkins is the most outspoken. A great deal of evolution is the result of chance or accident, as is a great deal of the rest of the universe. It's…

On dealing with journalists

The ScienceBlogs are abuzz with discussion of how scientists should handle the media. The concern from scientists seems to focus on the fear of being misquoted, and the journalists are responding by pointing out that misquotations are rare, and that when they occur, they rarely are substantive. The problem is that what the journalists mean by a misquotation is different from what a scientist means. Consider the case of Jack Balkin. He describes how he tried to explain to a reporter for the AP why Arnold Schwarzenegger would not be able to run for President or VP without a…

Quoth Dr. Suzanne Humphries: Vaccines are "disease matter"

Every so often, someone will take a great deal of umbrage at my use of the term "antivaccine." The assumption behind criticism directed at me (and others) when we use such terms is that we throw the term about without a care, using it as a weapon unjustly and incorrectly to smear parents who are in reality "pro-safe vaccine." Of course, what antivaccine activists and their apologists don't realize (or conveniently forget) is that I view the term "antivaccine" as having a fairly specific definition, and it's not simply to describe anyone who questions the efficacy or safety of vaccines. If…

Comments of the Week #147: from spacetime's nature to the strangest moon of all

"Sometimes I even now feel like a stranger in my country. But I knew there would be problems because I had seen the world... Freedom is good, but it is not easy." -Katarina Witt Yes, as always, as another week goes by at Starts With A Bang! there have been a huge number of great stories we've covered. In addition, we've now recorded sixteen Starts With A Bang Podcast episodes thanks to your Patreon support, and if you're local to the Pacific Northwest, we have some fun events coming up, including a public talk at 7:30 at OMSI on February 20th on the controversy over the expanding Universe, a…

On Science and Politics

The ascendancy of Donald Trump to the presidency, the selection of his cabinet and senior advisers, and the actions of the GOP-dominated legislative branch have all raised new serious questions and concerns about the role of science, research, and analysis in national law and policy. These concerns have been worsened by elements of the new administration’s proposed budget that severely cut or eliminate core federal science efforts, Congressional hearings and actions that have been perceived to promote ideological viewpoints over scientific findings, presidential executive orders that attempt…

Occupational Health News Roundup

At Reveal, Amy Julia Harris and Shoshana Walter investigate an increasing criminal justice trend in which defendants are sent to rehab, instead of prison. On its face, the idea is a good one, especially for people struggling with addiction. However, the reporters find that many so-called rehab centers are little more than labor camps funneling unpaid workers into private industry. The story focused on one particular center, Christian Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery (CAAIR) in Oklahoma. Started by chicken company executives, CAAIR’s court-ordered residents work full-time at Simmons Foods…

Sleep Schedules in Adolescents

Earlier this year, during the National Sleep Awareness Week, I wrote a series of posts about the changes in sleep schedules in adolescents. Over the next 3-4 hours, I will repost them all, starting with this one from March 26, 2006. Also check my more recent posts on the subject here and here... I am glad to see that there is more and more interest in and awareness of sleep research. Just watch Sanjay Gupta on CNN or listen to the recent segment on Weekend America on NPR. At the same time, I am often alarmed at the levels of ignorance still rampant in the general population, and even more…

Black Hole Q&A

"Black holes are where God divided by zero." -Stephen Wright Yesterday, I told you about all the evidence for the Black Hole at the center of our galaxy. In particular, we see multiple stars orbiting a single point that emits no light of any type at all. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, the comments became very active. So let's take a look at some of what was said, and let's see what we can further learn about black holes from answering your questions. I see the stars orbiting on their own orbits, but I mean, all orbits seem quite different to me, there´s no central point they are orbiting…

Gunz: constitutionalism and majoritarianism

As the increasingly sparse readership of this blog will have noticed, I'm writeing less and less about science - science is hard, and increasingly GW science isn't terribly interesting, whatever James may say - and becoming increasing interested in the fringes of politics and philosophy, in which any old fool can have an opinion, and usually does. But as a terrible warning to anyone feeling too clever, my image for this post is a "welcome" leaflet for Emma chapel, doubtless thought to be very deep by those who commissioned it, but felt to be less than tactful by many others. Recently, gunz…

Links for 2009-10-13

The Ostrom Nobel -- Crooked Timber "To amplify what Kieran has just said - political scientists are going to be very, very happy today. I had seen Lin cited as a 50-1 outsider by one betting agency a few days ago, and had been surprised that she was at the races at all, given that economists tend (like the rest of us) to be possessive of their field's collective goodies. I'm delighted to see that my cynicism was completely misplaced." (tags: economics Nobel blogs crooked-timber social-science politics) Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy / Blog posts / Princesses and cats: Kij Johnson's…

Something in the Air - Kissing, Lapdancing, and a Response called Flehmen

A post on kissing by fellow SciBling Sheril caught my eye, and I figured, why not pick a friendly argument as my inaugural post at Pure Pedantry (sorry, Jake). She pointed out a recent SciAm writeup summarizing work by a team of kiss-intrigued researchers, including psychologist Gordon Gallup, PhD, of SUNY, and quips: "You see, kissing undoubtedly allows us to find out all sorts of information about our partner. We're exchanging pheromones. In fact, when we're engaged, our bodies release a cocktail of chemicals related to social bonding, stress level, motivation, and sexual stimulation. We…

Eight reasons you won't persuade me to believe in a god

I have been challenged by Jerry Coyne, who is unconvinced by my argument that there is no evidence that could convince me of the existence of god. Fair enough, I shall repeat it and expand upon it. The question "Is there a god?" is a bad question. It's incoherent and undefined; "god" is a perpetually plastic concept that promoters twist to evade evaluation. If the whole question is nebulous noise, how can any answer be acceptable? The only way to win is by not playing the game. There's a certain unfairness in the evidence postulated for god. I used the example of a 900 foot tall Jesus…

Holocaust denier David Irving has found his calling

Thus far, the first decade of the 21st century not been good to that man who is arguably the world's most famous Holocaust denier, David Irving. The decade began its very first year with his crushing defeat in the libel lawsuit he instigated against Holocaust historian Professor Deborah Lipstadt, a defeat so resounding that it accomplished exactly the opposite of what he had intended: It ended with the judge concluding that he was, in fact, an "active" Holocaust denier (not just a Holocaust denier but an active Holocaust denier) Unfortunately, it cost Prof. Lipstadt and supporters a couple of…

Would you learn the philosophy of science from a creationist?

Yesterday, I attended a discussion led by a philosophy professor after a matinee showing of God's Not Dead. It was a strangely skewed group: about half the attendees were local pastors or wives of pastors. Also, not to my surprise, most of them didn't care for the movie. It was too over the top, it paid short shrift to serious theology, some of the scenes (especially the death scene) made them uncomfortable and wasn't true to how Christians actually respond to death. So that was good. Of course, I had to point out that the caricatures of atheists were also unrepresentative. One guy wandered…

Closure on the Obokata/STAP affair

I've been following the story of stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency (STAP) cells with considerable interest, and there's a good reason for that: from the very beginning, it contradicted how I'd always thought about cell states, and if it were true, I'd have to rethink a lot of things, which was vexing. But on the other hand, empirical results always trump mental models, so if the results held up, there was no question but that I'd have to go through that uncomfortable process of reorganizing my preconceptions. It would be OK, though, because there'd be a great prize at the end.…

Massive measles outbreak in Romania: A warning to the US?

When it comes to the measles, antivaxers love to repeat a series of talking points. One is that measles is not a dangerous disease and was considered a normal part of childhood 50 or 60 years ago. This is what I like to refer to as the "Brady Bunch" gambit, mainly because antivaxers who try to make this argument often invoke an episode of The Brady Bunch from 1969, Is There a Doctor in the House?, in which all six kids contract the measles within a day of each other. Their illness is played for laughs, with the kids shown playing board games and enjoying having a few days off from school,…

Who's to blame for Sci-Hub? Librarians, of course!

And by blame, I mean "blame." Yesterday the flagship journal of the AAAS, Science, published a series of feature and editorial articles on Sci-Hub, the unauthorized article sharing site. Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone The frustrated science student behind Sci-Hub My love-hate of Sci-Hub It's a Sci-Hub world data set Overall, the articles are pretty good descriptions of the Sci-Hub phenomenon and relatively even-handed, especially coming from one of the big society publishers like AAAS. There was one bit in the main article, Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone, that really…

Kevin in China, part 9 - What Really Happened That Night, or, The Night Of Too Many Toasts!

Here is a little tangent to Kevin's adventure. You may recall from one of the previous installments (Kevin in China, part 6 - The Mystery Snake) that there was an evening that Kevin does not remember very clearly, due to great hospitality of his hosts and the high alcohol levels of the wine served at dinner. You may also recall that another American was present at that dinner - Vanessa. Unlike Kevin, she remembers that evening very well and here is her lucid report: This is Vanessa, the "guest-star" of Kevin's Pinqian report. He was kind enough to include my name amongst his email list;…

“Alternative facts” on worker injuries in poultry plants

I can thank the Trump Administration for one thing. I now have a new phrase to describe how the poultry industry distorts information about working conditions for its employees: alternative facts. Last fall, the National Chicken Council, National Turkey Federation and U.S. Poultry & Egg Association made a wild pronouncement about their industry’s work-related injury rate. They asserted their injury rates are at an all-time low and have declined by 81% since 1994. The trade associations' news release said: “Perhaps more than any other industry, the poultry industry has focused its energies…

A Call For A Presidential Debate On Science!

Several dozen nonpartisan organizations have joined together to ask for a Science Debate in the current campaign. The debate would address major issues in science, engineering, health and the environment This is part of an effort that has been going on for several election cycles, with a certain degree of success. More than 10 million scientists and engineers are represented by the organizations that have joined in this effort. They have provided a list of twenty major issues, and are encouraging journalists and voters to press the candidates on them during the 2016 U.S. Presidential…

My Review of Hillary Clinton's Book Part I

Before discussing What Happened by Hillary Clinton, the nature of the political conversation demands that I preface this review with some context. First, about me. I supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election because I did not want Donald Trump to be president. During the primary, which was not the 2016 election, I seriously had a hard time deciding between the various candidates (Clinton and Sanders). On an issue by issue basis, I preferred Sanders' position over Clinton. However, on the issues about which I have an informed view (climate change and energy related, and…

The Mythical Republican Climate Pivot

Every now and then, I hear someone giving the Republican Party credit for finally starting to get on board with 20th (or even 19th) century science, and 21st century eyeballs, to accept the idea of climate change. That is annoying whenever it happens because it simply isn't ever true and never will be. Media Matters for America has a piece critiquing a recent Politico assertion that the tide is turning. Here is some of what they say, click through to the rest. ... Politico's story...offers two main examples to support its argument: First, the bipartisan House Climate Solutions Caucus "has…

Alabama Judges

I don't know what the deal is with Alabama judges, but Tom Parker of the Alabama Supreme Court seems to want to follow in Roy Moore's footsteps. After a recent case that he had recused himself from went against what he'd hoped, he wrote an op-ed piece blasting his fellow justices for "surrender[ing] to judicial activism." It was a death penalty case where the man convicted was a minor at the time of the crime, and Parker was the state prosecutor in the case so he had to recuse himself. On appeal, the Court changed his sentence to life in prison because the US Supreme Court had ruled in the…

ADF's Latest on Gay Marriage and Benefits

The ADF has put out a white paper (PDF file) on gay marriage amendments around the country, which shows their fanatical obsession with gay sex in big, bright colors. The white paper would make a terrific test case for a class in political rhetoric, examining how language is used to poison the well in a political debate. I'll give some examples. They begin by citing completely irrelevant studies. For instance, they cite a statement from the Georgia Supreme Court Commission on Children, Marriage and Family Law. That statement concludes: Research clearly indicates that family structure matters…

How to lose friends and alienate people by disrupting the brain

Oscar Wilde once said, "One can survive everything nowadays, except death, and live down anything, except a good reputation." All well and witty, but for those of us who aren't Victorian cads, reputation matters. It's the bedrock that our social lives are built upon and people go to great lengths to build and maintain a solid one. A new study shows that our ability to do this involves the right half of our brain, and particularly an area called the lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC). Disrupting the neurons in this area hampers a person's ability to build a reputation while playing psychological…

Sociobiology 2: Theoretical foundations

Wilson and Wilson begin by reviewing the reasons why sociobiology of the 1970s was rejected. They focus on the arguments against group selection. Levels of selection In the period in which sociobiology was first proposed under that label (from now on, the term sociobiology refers to this period, as outlined in Ullica Segerstråle's Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond), there was an ongoing debate over whether gene-level selection was the sole form of selection, or whether some kind of group selection was also in play. W&W argue that,…

They say that about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as though it were a bad thing

Why is it after a three day weekend, it always feels as though I have to "catch up"? After all, it's only one day more than the average weekend, and I didn't really do anything that different. A little yard work, out to dinner, a bit of grant writing, a bit of chilling, that's it. Maybe it's because pseudoscience and quackery never rest, while, my never-sleeping, computer-inspired moniker notwithstanding, I do. I have to, particularly as age creeps up on me. In any case, right before the Labor Day weekend, I felt a disturbance in the antivaccine crankosphere. It began Wednesday, with a post…

Quoth Vox Day: Antivaxers are more educated. Quoth the study Vox cites: Not exactly...

Vaccines and the antivaccine movement were in the news a lot in 2015. The year started out with a huge measles outbreak originating at Disneyland over the holidays last year and dominated news coverage in the early months of 2015. This outbreak had enormous consequences. It galvanized public opinion such that something I had never thought possible before, least of all in the hotbed of the antivaccine movement that is California, became possible. After a prolonged debate, the California legislature passed SB 277, a law that, beginning with the 2016-2017 school year, eliminated nonmedical…