Science
oracknows | October 18, 2016Back when advocates of “alternative” medicine were busily trying to legitimize their quackery by first renaming it “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), long before CAM “evolved” into “integrative medicine,” they really believed that if their favorite woo were to be studied scientifically it would be shown to be efficacious. Thus was born the Office of Alternative Medicine in the NIH, which later became the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), which more recently became the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), thus utterly…
oracknows | October 13, 2016I knew it. I just knew it. I knew I couldn’t get through October, a.k.a. Breast Cancer Awareness Month, without a controversial mammography study to sink my teeth into. And I didn’t. I suppose I should just be used to this now. I’m referring to the latest opus from H. Gilbert Welch and colleagues that appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine last night, Breast-Cancer Tumor Size, Overdiagnosis, and Mammography Screening Effectiveness. Yes, it’s about overdiagnosis, something I’ve blogged about more times than I can remember now, but it’s actually a rather interesting take on the issue.…
oracknows | October 11, 2016What is it about Florida and quacks? It’s as though it’s the Wild West there when it comes to regulating the practice of medicine. There, quacks can get away with almost anything, or so it would seem. After all, Brian Clement, who isn’t even a doctor and isn’t even really a naturopath either, has been practicing his quackery for decades, even going so far as to travel to Ontario to look for new marks among the indigenous peoples and to Europe and the UK, leading to at least one preventable death and to a young mother with incurable breast cancer to waste her precious remaining time and effort…
oracknows | October 9, 2016There's a misconception that I frequently hear about evidence-based medicine (EBM), which can equally apply to science-based medicine (SBM). Actually, there are several, but they are related. These misconceptions include the idea that EBM/SBM guidelines are a straightjacket, that they are "cookbook medicine," and that EBM/SBM should be the be-all and end-all of how to practice clinical medicine. New readers might not be familiar with the difference between EBM and SBM, and here is not the place to explain the difference in detail because this post isn't primarily about that difference. The…
oracknows | October 6, 2016A frequent topic of discussion on this blog is the concept of overdiagnosis. It’s a topic I’ve been writing about regularly since around 2007 or so and is defined as the detection in an asymptomatic person of disease that, if left alone, would never progress to endanger that person’s life or well-being within his or her lifetime. The problem with overdiagnosis is that it pretty much always leads to overtreatment, the treatment of overdiagnosed disease that is not health- or life-threatening. The key shortcoming in our knowledge that leads to overtreatment is that, once we detect disease with…
oracknows | October 3, 2016Whenever I refer to quackademic medicine and how the infiltration of quackery into medical academia has led to unethical clinical that are not only pseudoscientific wastes of money but potentially downright harmful to patients, two always come to mind. The first is the trial that tested the late Nicholas Gonzalez’s protocol for advanced pancreatic cancer, comparing it to standard-of-care chemotherapy. His protocol basically involves a combination of supplements (up to 150 a day), various vegetable juices, and, yes, the infamous coffee enema—several a day, actually. It’s basically a mystical,…
oracknows | October 2, 2016I first became more interested in dubious stem cell clinics nearly two years ago, when I learned that hockey legend Gordie Howe was undergoing stem cell therapy in Mexico to treat his stroke. Being from Detroit, I imbibed the hockey madness of this town growing up, and know that Detroiters hold Gordie Howe in incredibly high esteem. Prominent in stories about Howe were two companies: Stemedica Cell Technologies, a San Diego company marketing stem cell treatments for all manner of ailments, and Novastem a partner company in Mexico that uses Stemedica products. Also prominent in the stories was…
oracknows | September 29, 2016I’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…
oracknows | September 27, 2016I’m sure that most of you watched the Presidential debate on Monday night, just as I did. Over the years, these debates have always always painful for me to watch, given the candidates’ tendency to answer the question they want to answer rather than the question actually answered; to find ways to spew prepackaged talking points into answers, whether they’re related to the question or not; and, above all, to see how much spin they can get away with. Particularly annoying is when they pander to their base with particularly brain dead bon mots. Candidates from both parties do it, of course, but…
gregladen | September 21, 2016Sciencedebate.org has managed a seemingly impossible task. They developed 20 distinct (but often interrelated) questions about science policy, based on vast amounts of public input, and then got all four presidential candidates to address them. Congratulations to Sciencedebate.org. This is important, and I know that was not easy to do. The questions, and answers, are here.
Here are my reactions to the candidates responses for some of the questions.
1. Innovation. Science and engineering have been responsible for over half of the growth of the U.S. economy since WWII. But some reports…
gregladen | September 20, 2016The fiery history of blowing shit up mostly accident but then discovering something good. Generally, good for blowing stuff up, but with purpose.
gregladen | September 19, 2016"?There are two types of nation" a recent Nature editorial begins; "...those that use the metric system and those that have put a man on the Moon."
Such a pro-American jingoistic statement must be deep British irony. Anyway, the editorial continues ...
The reliance of the United States on feet and pounds, along with its refusal to embrace metres and kilograms, baffles outsiders as much as it warms the hearts of some American patriots. But it is time for the country to give up on the curie, the roentgen, the rad and the rem.
This is about measuring radiation. There are several ways of…
gregladen | September 13, 2016Ever been to a CON? Like, ComiCON, or CONvergence? One of the best parts of a CON is the science, often involving panels with interesting science experts, or perhaps even a film or two.
Well, Twin Cities denizen Ryan Johnson founded and organized a new thing, which is set up as a film festival, to provide these fantastic CONnish features in a very attractive package. Admission is by the day, and thus less expensive than the average convention. Also, you can get a 15% discount if, when you go online to buy your tickets, you use the code "laden"
The Northstar Science Film Festival is a new…
drorzel | September 10, 2016Another in the sadly delayed wrapping-up of my photo-a-day project. These are all pictures from a hike in the Vischer Ferry Nature Preserve over in Clifton Park. We took the kids over there one time, but a thunderstorm started coming in before we got very far. While the kids were at my parents', I decided to go over one afternoon and take a more thorough walk around the place. This ended up going quite a bit longer than I had expected, as I misremembered part of the trail map, but I got some good photos out of it.
344/366: Fake Jungle
Part of the old Lock 19 from the Erie Canal, cosplaying…
oracknows | September 5, 2016Believe it or not (and you probably won’t believe it), but I never intended to post today, as it’s a holiday, and I had to write my usual level post for my not-so-super-secret other blog. But then one of you had to send me this:
I couldn’t resist at least a quick comment on this.
That’s right. Kent Hovind, one of the world’s most famous young earth creationists and frauds (given that he went to jail for tax evasion) is marrying Marry Tocco, Michigan’s own most annoying antivaccinationist and someone about whom I’ve written several times, most recently in 2014. In the video, he goes on about…
oracknows | September 1, 2016Last night was one of those nights where I was working late because I was asked to do a panel discussion on breast cancer last night. Such are the perils of being a breast cancer expert, I guess. That doesn’t mean I don’t have time for an uncharacteristically brief notice of some particularly dumb bit of antivaccine nonsense. Just as I said in yesterday’s post, such things are like waving a cape in front of the proverbial bull. Even worse, it’s a lawyer. Let me just put it this way. When I discuss the law, I’m very circumspect. I’m not a lawyer, which means that I am acutely aware of my…
drorzel | August 31, 2016It's been a while since the last Forbes links dump, but since it's the last day of the month, I figure I might as well sum up a bit. Only two posts, but they have a connection that I'll expound on a bit to make up for the lack of material...
-- Can A Tesla Model S Really Accelerate Faster Than Gravity?: I got pointed to a story about the 0-60mph time for a Tesla, and said "That seems fishy..." After climbing back out of the Google rabbit hole, I tried to explain why that seemed unlikely to me, and the funny timing thing that might explain the result.
-- The Hardest Thing To Grasp In Physics?…
oracknows | August 30, 2016One of the great things about having achieved some notoriety as a blogger is that readers send me links to articles that the believe will be interesting to me. They usually come in waves. For instance, after anything having to do with Stanislaw Burzynski, “right to try,” particularly egregious antivaccine idiocy, and the like hits the news, I can be sure that well-meaning readers will send me or Tweet at me about the same article several times. (So don’t take it personally if I don’t respond; I get hundreds of e-mails a day.) Sometimes they’re wrong and its something that I have no interest…
oracknows | August 25, 2016I’ve mentioned on quite a few occasions that there’s a quote attributed to philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer that is much beloved of cranks:
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
I also like to point out that Schopenhauer probably never said this and just how silly the thought behind this quote is when you think about it. Unfortunately, as I was perusing Twitter yesterday, I couldn’t help but think of this quote, but not in the way quacks and cranks usually intend. Rather, I was thinking of…
oracknows | July 20, 2016I’ve frequently said that a tendency towards pseudoscience knows no political boundary. For example, antivaccine views, contrary to common belief, are not detectably more prevalent on the left than on the right, as I’ve discussed on more than one occasion. It’s just that for so many years, antivaccine beliefs were associated in the media with crunchy, back-to-nature lefties, and still are to some extent. (I’m talking to you Jill Stein.) However, last year the battle over SB 277, the new California law that eliminates nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates, and the Republican…