Politics
catdynamics | November 18, 2015Skrekkur is an annual talent show for Icelandic schools, roughly 9-10th grade, and it has grown to become quite a big deal.
The winning act is usually stunning and original and very well executed, and I don't just say that 'cause my little cousins keep winning...
This year the winning performance, from Hagaskóli, was extraordinary, and not, as far as I know, featuring any of my cousins:
youtube video from Lára Hanna.
"I was ten years old when I was first called "whore"
I didn't understand why, now I understand
I was in the way, I was bossy,
I crossed the line, I tried to break out from my…
oracknows | November 17, 2015Now that's what I'm talking about! Yesterday, the Justice Department announced criminal charges and lawsuits against the sellers of several supplements! This is the ort of thing that is long overdue—incredibly so, in fact. Before I get to this specific case, let's discuss a little background.
One of the regular topics I write about, both on this blog and at my not-so-super-secret other group blog, is how supplement manufacturers take advantage of the lax regulation of dietary supplements in this country. It's a problem in our laws that we've had since the supplement industry and its lapdogs…
oracknows | November 17, 2015The other day, I suddenly realized that it's been a long time since I've written about the Polish expat doctor in Houston who treats patients with advanced brain cancer with a concoction that he dubbed antineoplastons (ANPs). I'm referring, of course, to Stanislaw Burzynski who, despite the fact that he has no training in medical oncology, has treated thousands of cancer patients with ANPs beginning back in the late 1970s. Somehow, despite the fact that he's never even come close to showing that ANPs are effective and safe against the cancers for which he uses it, the FDA has, with a brief…
oracknows | November 13, 2015The question of whether it is worthwhile to debate cranks, quacks, and advocates of pseudoscience has long been a contentious issue in the skeptic community. Those of you who've been reading my posts for a while know that I've always come down on the side that it is not a good idea One thing I've learned in my more than a decade of blogging, both here and at my non-pseudonymous other blog, is that advocates of pseudoscience love public debates. Indeed, whenever you see a skeptic agree to a public debate with an advocate of pseudoscience, it's a damned sure bet that it wasn't the skeptic who…
gregladen | November 9, 2015The Days When Democracy In America Was Bogus
First, three stories. One comes from other sources, not verified, but everyone at the time (it is said) knew it to be true. Political operatives in the Boston area used to visit the train yards during the days and hours before a local mayoral election. They would round up the numerous "bums and hobos" (now known as homeless people) living in the train yards. Those interested, which appear to have been most, would accept a bit of cash and a broken comb. The cash was their payoff. The comb was broken in such a way that if you set it next to the…
oracknows | November 6, 2015As a surgeon, I find Ben Carson particularly troubling. By pretty most reports, he was a skilled neurosurgeon who practiced for three decades, rising to the chief of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins. Yet, when he ventures out of the field of neurosurgery—even out of his own medical specialty—he routinely lays down some of the dumbest howlers I've ever heard. For example, he denies evolution, but, even worse, he's been a shill for a dubious supplement company, Mannatech. Worse still, when called out for his relationship with Mannatech in the last Republican debate, Carson lied through his teeth…
jdupuis | November 4, 2015As I've extensively chronicled, Canadian government science had some pretty rough years under the government of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
But Canada has a new government, a new prime minister in Justin Trudeau and a new cabinet. Kirsty Duncan, an actual scientist who worked on the IPPC, has been appointed Science Minister. Come to think of it, we have a Science Minister.
The roster of ministers in other science and technology-related portfolios is also very strong. Navdeep Singh Bains at Innovation, Science and Economic Development. Lawrence MacAulay at Agriculture and Agri-Food.…
pharyngula | October 28, 2015The NY Times has put together a lovely illustrated story about data collection on Greenland. The story is prettily terrifying, though. The ice is melting, and forming lakes of liquid water on the surface of the ice cap, which then drains away in fast-running rivers that cut deeper into the ice and then drain into holes that run even deeper into the glacier -- it's a dangerous place, and if you fall in, you'll be swept away and instantly dumped into a pit. It also means the ice sheet is porous and riddled with rot already.
In addition to the personal terror for the researchers, this work is…
oracknows | October 28, 2015No doubt, regular readers are probably somewhat surprised that I didn't discuss the antivaccine rally scheduled to be held in Atlanta last weekend that I wrote about last week. As you might recall, this rally consisted of two crappy tastes that taste crappy together, namely Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the antivaccine movement together with the Nation of Islam. Given that the Nation of Islam, besides being a truly crank religion on its own, of late has gotten very cozy with the Church of Scientology, thus amplifying the crank factor by orders of magnitude (at least).
Readers not familiar with…
gregladen | October 27, 2015There will be a third GOP debate on Wednesday night. If you don't have the right cable or satellite subscription, apparently, you are not welcome to attend. (Correct me if I'm wrong, in the comments section below.)
But who cares, really? It will be a low information event.
The debate will be split into two parts, lower and higher ranking candidates separately, but the debate involving the higher ranking candidates will include more of them, and only two have anything close to poll numbers that matter. Not that polls are everything, but if you are a candidate that has failed to break 10%…
oracknows | October 27, 2015I'm a clinician, but I'm actually also a translational scientist. It's not uncommon for those of us in medicine involved in some combination of basic and clinical research to argue about exactly what that means. The idea is translational science is supposed to be the process of "translating" basic science discoveries into the laboratory into medicine, be it in the form of drugs, treatments, surgical procedures, laboratory tests, diagnostic tests, or anything else that physicians use to diagnose and treat human disease. Trying to straddle the two worlds, to turn discoveries in basic science…
jdupuis | October 23, 2015As you can all imagine, I'm quite pleased to see the backside of the Harper government on their way out the door. Of course, the Liberals have promised a lot but only time will tell how serious they are about fixing the science-related stuff that they've promised to fix. I'll definitely be watching that and keeping track here on the blog somehow somewhere.
That being said, I was quite gratified that my various pro-science advocacy efforts in general and my war on science chronology post in particular were quite popular and widely used during the election campaign.
Obviously all the things…
oracknows | October 20, 2015If there's one thing that's amusing about the antivaccine movement, it's the disconnect between its members' perception of their own importance and the reality of it, which is that they tend to be a pretty pathetic, risible band. They post their blogs, full of the rage of Dunning-Kruger, thinking that they are putting forth the most sophisticated scientific arguments that real scientists, who have spent their entire professional life studying vaccines and autism, somehow missed and finding evidence of a link that no other scientist can. Of course, pesky things like rigorous study design tend…
catdynamics | October 16, 2015Well, that took longer than expected.
Anyone still out there?
Lots to talk about, eh?
oracknows | October 14, 2015One of the more depressing topics that I regularly write about includes of analyses of news stories of children with cancer whose parents decided to stop science-based treatment (usually the chemotherapy) and use quackery instead. There are, of course, variations on this theme, but these stories take form that generally resembles this outline: A child is diagnosed with a highly treatable cancer with an excellent cure rate. Standard science-based treatment is begun, but the child suffers severe side effects from the chemotherapy. After an incomplete course of chemotherapy, the parents, alarmed…
oracknows | October 13, 2015When last I discussed the cruel sham that is the tide of "right-to-try" laws that has been flowing through state legislatures to become law over the last year and a half. "Right-to-try" laws, as I pointed out when I first noted the earliest ones being promoted in Colorado, Louisiana, Arizona, and Missouri, referring to them as Dallas Buyers Club bills based on their seeming inspiration from that movie and pointing out how they are very, very bad policy that, contrary to the claims of its proponents, are far more likely to harm patients than help them. In every state in which such bills have…
oracknows | October 8, 2015Yesterday, I wrote about the winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Youyou Tu, who, after screening 2,000 herbal treatments from traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) for anti-malaria activity, finally discovered Artemisinin. She isolated it from the plant in which it is found, using modern chemistry to isolate it, purify it, and later chemically modify it to make it more active against malaria. Tu deserved the Nobel Prize for her years of screening. As I pointed out, contrary to how the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Tu is being spun, it is not a validation of TCM, but rather of…
jdupuis | October 4, 2015Serving the Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics under Hitler by Philip Ball and Planck: Driven by Vision, Broken by War by Brandon R. Brown are two of the best history of science books I've read in a very long time. And even though they're both about World War II, some seventy years in the past, they've both also very topical because they are both very much about the relationship between politics and science. In a sense, what comes first, the political chicken or the scientific egg. Are scientists responsible for how their work is put to use by their political "masters?" Do scientists…
aardvarchaeology | October 2, 2015In the past couple of months Sweden has started to receive large numbers of refugees from Syria, Iraq and a few other war-torn Middle-eastern countries. The ones who claim the right of political asylum are adequately cared for by the immigration authorities. But many don't claim that right. They may have more or less accurate information about other countries that offer better chances, so when they get off the train at Stockholm Central Station, they're basically tourists in the eyes of the law. And the municipality hasn't been able to care for them. Instead a major volunteer movement has…