Politics
oracknows | December 21, 2012Quacks despise science-based medicine in general, but there are certain specialties that they detest more than others. Arguably, the specialty most attacked by quacks is psychiatry. Many are the reasons, some legitimate, many not. In particular, Scientologists despise psychiatry, even going so far as to maintain a "museum" dedicated to psychiatry that they charmingly call Psychiatry: Industry of Death. It's so ridiculously over-the-top, a virtual self-parody, that it almost inadvertently undermines attacks on psychiatry frequently leveled by Scientologists and quacks.
Let's face it,…
oracknows | December 18, 2012One of the oldest topics I've dealt with on this blog, a topic that I've been writing about on and off (unfortunately, mostly on) about the antivaccine movement. Ever since I first discovered about a decade ago that, yes, there are people ignorant enough about science and medicine that they actually think that vaccines are harmful and cause autism, as well as actually believing that it is a good idea not to vaccinate their children against even deadly diseases like the measles, polio, Haemophilus influenzae type B (HiB), and more. As a group, hiding behind the risible claim that they are "not…
sa smith | December 18, 2012Thanks to this, we now have this:
Five female health workers vaccinating children against polio have been shot dead in Pakistan in a series of attacks blamed on Islamist militants. One victim was a 17-year-old schoolgirl volunteer.
...
... Pakistan, where there has been a severe backlash against immunisation for polio and other diseases since the CIA used a Pakistani doctor, Shakil Afridi, to set up a fake vaccination programme as the agency closed in on the al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in his hiding place in the town of Abbottabad, in the north-western province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, last…
drorzel | December 17, 2012As I'm sure you wish you hadn't heard, there was another school shooting in Connecticut on Friday, one that was hellishly awful even by the standards of such things. The Internet, of course, instantly exploded with the depressingly predictable standard response. And it's hard to put into words just how depressing it is that there's a standard response to this-- The Onion pretty well nailed it back in July, but amazingly, they managed to do it again this time.
I shut social media down for most of the day-- and, anyway, I was home with a sick SteelyKid-- but the usual flamewar was still in full…
oracknows | December 6, 2012There's a phenomenon known as off-label prescribing. Basically, to prescribe something off-label is to prescribe it for an indication that is not FDA-approved but that is supported by considerable evidence. For example, it could involve using an FDA-approved drug for an indication that is not within its approval, for an unapproved age range (such as children), or at an unapproved dose or in an unapproved form. Although the FDA has the power to approve drugs for specific indications, it doesn't actually have the power to regulate the practice of medicine, which means that physicians can use…
aardvarchaeology | December 4, 2012For over 20 years I have received Pax, the journal of the Swedish Peace Society. I have always read it as a matter of duty. Rarely has it interested me much. I am a passive pacifist -- a passivist, as a radical relative of mine once wrote me from prison, where he had been put for vandalising a fighter plane.
Now Pax has been discontinued. I won't miss it. I'll just continue to pay my membership dues and a monthly donation to investigate the Swedish arms industry. In fact, I'm going to hike the donation up to compensate for inflation.
jtoney | December 2, 2012From the moment I learned about the impending "fiscal cliff," I was skeptical. Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) recently wrote in an email blast with a subject line "An Artificial Crisis" something that should be shared widely.
Washington and the talk shows are captivated by talk of the “fiscal cliff”: the combination of automatic spending cuts and revenue increases scheduled to take effect at the end of the year. Unfortunately, this is the wrong conversation for America to be having.
The fiscal cliff is an artificial crisis created by renegades who used America’s statutory debt limit to hold the…
drorzel | November 29, 2012In the comments to yesterday's post about college admissions, Joseph Yoon quoted my statement that "I'm somewhat sympathetic to claims that Asians have a difficult position in higher education," and shot back with:
I wonder if you will feel more strongly about this in 10 years when your kids are near college. Will you advise them to not check the Asian box if it decreases their chances?
As a general matter, I try to avoid responding to comments when my initial reaction is "Oh, go fuck yourself." But I'll make an exception here, because I think it goes to a more general issue about college…
sa smith | November 28, 2012Whos next, David Bowie??
Dan Savage will be THIS THURSDAY, November 29 at 7 pm:
The event will be held at 7 p.m. Nov. 29 at the Oklahoma Memorial Union’s Molly Shi Boren Ballroom, according to the event’s Facebook page. Free food will be provided at 6:30 p.m. before Savage’s keynote at 7 p.m. A moderated question and answer, meet and greet and book signing will follow the keynote, said Alexis Taitel, chair of the CAC Speakers Bureau and international studies junior.
I hope the kids who need to hear Savage go...
Judge Jones, THE Judge Jones, will be DECEMBER 6 at 7 pm:
OU College of Law,…
drorzel | November 28, 2012In which the skewing of a data plot in Ron Unz's epic investigation of college admissions makes me more skeptical of his overall claim, thanks to the misleading tricks employed.
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Steve Hsu has a new post on a favorite topic of his, bias against Asians in higher ed admissions. This is based on a giant article by Ron Unz that I don't have time to read, and illustrated with the graphic that's the "featured image" for this post (which I will also reproduce below for the convenience of RSS readers).
What does this show? There's a tangle of colored lines representing the fraction of…
oracknows | November 23, 2012Whenever I blog about atrocities against science like the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), I'm frequently asked how just such an edifice designed to promote pseudoscience could have come to be as a full-fledged center in the National Institutes of Health. The answer is simple and boils down to woo-loving legislators. In the case of NCCAM, the primary driving force to create it, promote it from an office (originally the Office of Unconventional Medicine and then later renamed the Office of Alternative Medicine) to a full center, and protect it from all…
illconsidered | November 20, 2012Dave Roberts notes the connection between the two right wing reality bubbles of climate change denial and Romney landslide predictions.
But as we saw on Election Day, sometimes reality can come along and snap the spell of wishful thinking. It happened the week before Election Day too. That’s when a super-charged storm slammed into the east coast, leaving hundreds of thousands without homes or power. Sandy brought a heavy dose of reality and served as a kind of exclamation point on a year filled with droughts, wildfires, and floods — the hottest year ever recorded.
According to climatologists…
milhayser | November 16, 2012
"This is a map of the United States, with the spatial distortion reflecting the population sizes of different counties and the relative contribution of electoral college votes."
Along with President Obama, statistician Nate Silver emerged triumphant on election night, after calculating a 90% chance of victory for Obama and correctly predicting the outcome of every state. Chad Orzel allays suspicions of witchcraft on Uncertain Principles, writing that "statisticians have been refining the process of public opinion polling for something like a hundred years." Silver's projections for Obama…
denialism | November 14, 2012While I realize Joe Walsh lost his election bid, it is still worth emphasizing that his infamous statements about abortion are false, especially considering efforts like those in Ohio to pass a "heartbeat bill". Abortion is sometimes necessary to save the life of the mother. Via the Irish Times we hear the sad story of a woman being allowed to get sicker and sicker, while a non-viable but "living" fetus kills her.
“The doctor told us the cervix was fully dilated, amniotic fluid was leaking and unfortunately the baby wouldn’t survive.” The doctor, he says, said it should be over in a few…
jtoney | November 14, 2012Yes, a crisis does bring out the best, and the worst, in people. I consider myself amongst the lucky in New Jersey. Millions of homes were affected by Hurricane Sandy, including damage by severe flooding and fallen trees as well as loss of power and heat. Our home was not damaged, our family was safe, and we endured (only?) seven days and seven long dark nights without power, heat or hot water. Our area in Union County was virtually shut down for a week. Suddenly gas and food became scarce commodities. This dark time inspired many volunteer groups, including our own University students…
oracknows | November 13, 2012Regular readers probably know that I'm into more than just science, skepticism, and promoting science-based medicine (SBM). (If they're regular readers of my other, not-so-super-secret other project, they might also realize that they've seen this post before elsewhere. I had to stay out late for a work-related event and decided to tart it up and recycle. So sue me.) I'm also into science fiction (hence the very name of this blog, not to mention the pseudonym I use), computers, and baseball, not to mention politics (at least more than average). That's why our recent election, coming as it did…
stoat | November 13, 2012Well, he should stop eating so many pies then, no?
More seriously, how about saying instead, "well we don't like it, but its the law, and we believe in the rule of law". I'm with that evil right-wing bastard Timmy.
Refs
* Abu Qatada release: Cameron 'fed up'
drorzel | November 12, 2012Over at Slate, John Dickerson has a piece expressing amazement that "numbers guy" Mitt Romney was so badly misinformed about the election. While I'll admit to a certain amount of schadenfreude about the general bafflement of the Romney campaign and the Republicans generally, this particular slant (which Dickerson isn't the only one to take, just the latest in a series) is more annoying than entertaining.
You would think that the 2008 economic meltdown, in which the financial industry broke the entire world when they were blindsided by the fact that housing prices can go down as well as up,…
jtoney | November 12, 2012This article was co-authored with Felice Vazquez, Esq., Special Counsel to the President, Kean University.
What, really, do our children learn in school?
While standardized tests and teacher accountability are the buzzwords of the day, our schools may be missing one of the most important lessons our children must master in order to reach their highest potential: how to get along.
After all, the playground and cafeteria can be more challenging -- and interesting -- than the traditional classroom. These are places where children learn how to understand each other's emotions and motivations,…
