university of florida

Hallelujah! The mainstream press finally notices quackademic medicine!

oracknows — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 05:00:41 +0000

Hallelujah! The mainstream press finally notices quackademic medicine!

I've been writing about a phenomenon that I like to refer to as "quackademic medicine," defined as the infiltration into academic medical centers and medical school of unscientific and pseudoscientific treatment modalities that are unproven or disproven. I didn't coin the term. To the best of my knowledge, Dr. Robert W. Donnell did nine years ago. However, I adopted it with a vengeance, so much so that a lot of people think I coined the term. In any case, I first began sounding the alarm about the infiltration of quackery like acupuncture, "energy medicine," naturopathy, homeopathy, chiropractic, and others from near the very beginning, but I didn't really start warning about it in a big way until the first iteration of my Academic Woo Aggregator, which listed all the academic centers that I could find at the time, what "complementary and alternative medicine" (i.e., CAM, or "complementing" medicine with quackery) modalities. I counted 45 at the time. Within less than a year I gave up trying to keep the Woo Aggregator up to date, because there was just too much. Depressing, I know.

By the time I wrote my (in)famous article for Nature Reviews Cancer on "integrative oncology" in 2014, I counted a high proportion of National Cancer Institute-Comprehensive Cancer Centers were either affiliated with academic medical centers into quackademic medicine or had "integrative medicine" themselves. (Remember, CAM morphed into "integrative medicine," which is represented as the "best of both worlds" but in reality is the "integration" of quackery with real medicine.) By the time I gave a talk on integrative medicine last fall, I counted well over 60 North American institutions, many of them highly respected, offering quackery. It is this development that I've been doing my small part to combat for over a decade now and that Science-Based Medicine has been combatting for nine years. It seemed like a long, lonely batte. Many people didn't believe us, and many physicians are "shruggies" in that they realize that modalities like acupuncture and naturopathy are quackery but don't care enough to speak out against it. Sometimes it takes rubbing their nose in it by showing them what is really said in integrative medical centers to get a reaction. I was particularly amused by the reaction of Dr. Toby Cosgrove, CEO of the Cleveland Clinic was shocked—shocked!—to find out that the director of his Wellness Institute, Dr. Daniel Neides, had antivaccine tendencies, as evidenced by an op-ed that he wrote. That's what happens when you allow pseudoscience to take hold at an institution like the Cleveland Clinic, and, make no mistake, quackademic medicine reigns supreme there.

Interestingly enough, Toby Cosgrove features in an article that I've been waiting to see in a mainstream publication ever since I've been at this, in this case STAT News, where yesterday was published an article entitled Medicine with a side of mysticism: Top hospitals promote unproven therapies by Casey Ross, Max Blau, and Kate Sheridan. Basically, it's the highest profile article I've yet seen on quackademic medicine. True, it's not the New York Times, but it'll definitely do. The reporters do a very good job cataloguing the quackery being promoted by 15 major academic medical centers with little or no evidence to support it.

My only complaint is that I wish it could have been more comprehensive. There's a lot more quackery in academic medical centers than even Ross, Blau, and Sheridan realize. A lot more. Believe me, I've been at this for years, and I know. My other minor nit pick is that the list of alternative therapies offered by these medical centers doesn't strikes me as missing some things. For example, I know the University of Michigan offers more than just acupuncture. The co-director of the Integrative Medicine Program is a friggin' naturopath, fer cryin' out loud! Given that naturopathy is a cornucopia of quackery ranging from homeopathy to traditional Chinese medicine to many, many others, I find it hard to believe that the Integrative Medicine Program only offers acupuncture, particularly given that U. of M. offers an integrative medicine fellowship. And don't even get me started on the anthroposophic medicine offered at U. of M., as I've already ranted about it. Let's just put it this way. It doesn't get much quackier than anthroposophic medicine. (Cough! Cough! Rudolf Steiner!) Also, U. of M. studies acupuncture, nutrition, herbal medicine, spirituality, mind-body therapies, and energy medicine. They have to offer such treatments in order to be able to study them.

I don't mean to be too hard on the reporters. This is a far better article than I've seen in a major mainstream media source. Usually, I'm seeing people like Nancy Snyderman doing credulous pieces in which she waxes poetic about how awesome integrative medicine is and how all hospitals should be offering it. I hope they'll just consider it constructive criticism, hopefully for next time.

I can't resist getting into the good stuff of the article by starting in the middle, given my mention of Dr. Cosgrove:

Asked about the Cleveland Clinic’s promotion of reiki, Dr. Richard Lang, the recently named interim director of the clinic’s Wellness Institute, said he hadn’t had a chance to think about it. “I don’t know that I could give you a plus or minus on that,” he said. Lang served as a vice chair of the wellness institute for nearly a decade before taking the top post.

Notice something? Dr. Daniel Neides is no longer the director of the Wellness Institute. Cosgrove actually fired him! Funny how it only came out in this article in passing, and that only someone who had paid attention to the story. In any case, I've mocked the reiki pamphlet that the Cleveland Clinic has on its website and how it describes channeling "healing energy" from the "universal source." It basically accepts the quackery that is reiki, which is basically faith healing that substitutes Eastern mysticism for Christian belief, as real. (There's a reason the Catholic Church doesn't like reiki in its hospitals; it recognizes another religion when it sees one.) Guess what? It's still there on the Cleveland Clinic website! Apparently the Cleveland Clinic is still offering it for cancer, infertility, Parkinson's disease, chronic pain, and more. If there's one thing this article is good at, it's letting advocates of quackademic medicine hang themselves with their own words, such as here, where STAT notes how he disavowed the antivaccine article in January. They cite Dr. Cosgrove's doubling down on quackademic medicine in the wake of Dr. Neides' article.

I also like how shining the light on the embrace of "energy medicine" by many of these academic medical centers makes their leadership very uncomfortable—as well it should:

MedStar Georgetown quietly edited its website, citing changes to its clinical offerings, after a reporter asked why it listed the energy healing practice of reiki as a therapy for blood cancer. Cleveland Clinic struggled to find anyone on its staff to defend the hospital’s energy medicine program, ultimately issuing a statement that it’s “responding to the needs of our patients and patient demand.”

And the director of an alternative medicine program at another prestigious hospital declined to speak on the record — out of fear, he said, that his remarks would be construed as “fake news” and stir a backlash.

The rise of alternative therapies has sparked tension in some hospitals, with doctors openly accusing their peers of peddling snake oil and undermining the credibility of their institutions.

Good. But my reaction to that bit about "fake news"? WTF? Is this the new excuse spokespeople are going to use to get out of answering questions that they don't want to answer? Be that as it may, I would quibble here, too, but not so much because the reporters got it wrong. They didn't. I realize that I'm not a reporter. One huge difference between a reporter and me is that I can editorialize to my heart's content. It's what I do here. They cannot. From my perspective, the problem is not that the rise of alternative therapies at academic medical centers has caused tension and backlashes. The problem is that the rise of alternative medicine at prestigious academic medical centers hasn't provoked nearly as intense and prolonged a backlash as it should, because these "integrative medicine" programs are selling snake oil under the name of prestigious medical schools, such as Yale, Harvard, Stanford, and many others. Physicians who practice science-based medicine should be up in arms at the first sign of this quackery entering their hospitals, but, alas, the vast majority of them are shruggies. In a way, I can understand it. What do docs who speak out against quackery medicine get in return for their trouble? Well, Steve Novella was sued. I've been the target of a ten month campaign of online defamation by Mike Adams. Before that, I've had people complain to my state medical board for my online activities, and antivaccine activists tried to get me fired from my job. I'm not alone, either. Standing up for science makes waves, and waves make trouble.

One very important point is driven home in this article. Several quackademic docs are quoted defending their practice by saying that alternative medicine is never offered without conventional medicine, dropping meaningless platitudes that will be familiar to readers of this blog like:

“Here at UF [University of Florida], we do not have alternative medicine. We do not have complementary medicine. We have integrative medicine,” said Dr. Irene Estores, medical director of the integrative medicine program at the University of Florida Shands Hospital in Gainesville, Fla.

Ugh. Double ugh. Has there been a more smarmy, more disingenuous defense of "integrative medicine." My response is: Bullshit. You "integrate" alternative medicine with medicine. Also, as they say, integrating cow pie with apple pie doesn't make the cow pie better; it makes the apple pie worse. That's exactly what's happening at UF and all these programs.

It's also not true in a lot of cases that these universities don't ever promote or use alternative medicine other than with real medicine. I've pointed this out myself. Rather, there's money to be made, and these quackademic medicine centers are going after it. I've already discussed how the Cleveland Clinic was selling a homeopathic detox kit on its website. Unfortunately, the Clinic is not alone:

But while those cautions may come through in the clinic, the hospitals also promote alternative medicine online — often, without any nuance.

Duke’s Integrative Medicine store, for instance, sells “Po Chai Pills” that are touted on the hospital’s website as a cure for everything from belching to hangovers to headaches. The site explains that taking a pill “harmonizes the stomach, stems counterflow ascent of stomach qi, dispels damp, dispels pathogenic factors, subdues yang, relieves pain.” None of that makes sense in modern biomedical terms.

Thomas Jefferson University Hospital’s website touts homeopathic bee venom as useful to relieve symptoms for arthritis, nerve pain, and other conditions. The site does tell patients that the biological mechanism for the treatment is “unexplained” but asserts that studies “have been published in medical journals showing homeopathic medicines may provide clinical benefit.”

You know, there was a time, early on, when I would be shocked at finding an academic medical center using or selling homeopathy. Indeed, early on in the history of my Academic Woo Aggregator, I would call sites "super woo sites" if they offered reiki or homeopathy. Obviously, it's because reiki is faith healing, and homeopathy is what I like to call The One Quackery To Rule Them All. These days, practically all of them offer reiki, and a disturbing number of them offer homeopathy. Granted, in the case of homeopathy it might not be obvious that that's what's being offered. Just think of it this way. Naturopathy is infiltrating medical schools and organizations like the Society for Integrative Oncology, and, wherever you find naturopaths, there's a very good chance you'll find homeopathy, because you can't have naturopathy without homeopathy. Homeopathy is a big part of naturopathic training. Indeed, I bet there are more than two of the fifteen hospitals offering homeopathy under the guise of naturopathy.

So how does TJUH defend offering homeopathy? Prepare to groan:

Asked about the therapy, Dr. Daniel Monti, who directs the integrative health center, acknowledged that the data is “largely anecdotal,” and said the hospital offers the treatment only rarely, “when there are few other options.” But those caveats don’t come through on the website.

In other words, there's no compelling evidence, but Dr. Monti offers it anyway. Meanwhile, another director of another integrative medical program, this one at Duke, opines:

The counterargument: Modern medicine clearly can’t cure everyone. It fails a great many patients. So why not encourage them to try an ancient Indian remedy or a spiritual healing technique that’s unlikely to cause harm — and may provide some relief, if only from the placebo effect?

“Yes, as scientists, we want to be rigid. But me, as a physician, I want to find what’s best for a patient. Who am I to say that’s hogwash?” said Dr. Linda Lee.

"Who am I to say that's hogwash?" You're a friggin' DOCTOR, that's who! It's your job to tell patients when a treatment is hogwash and to try to guide them to science- and evidence-based treatments. But how do you determine what's hogwash and what's not? Hmmmm. If only there were a method to figure out what's best for a patient. What would that method be...? I wonder... Oh, yes!

Science.

Also, the "appeal to the placebo" is a tired old trope. For one thing, invoking placebo effects requires lying to patients. For another thing, because, as larger, more rigorous clinical trials of alternative medicine modalities fail to find benefit above and beyond placebo, increasingly apologists for integrative medicine are increasingly falling back on the claim that placebo effects can heal. Note the double standard here. No pharmaceutical or device would ever be approved by the FDA if its manufacturer were to acknowledge that it does no better than placebo and to fall back on attributing whatever perceived benefits it has to placebo effects. Yet that is exactly the standard of evidence that defenders of "ancient Indian remedies or a spiritual healing technique" want you to accept for their woo. The bottom line is that placebos don't heal, and thinking doesn't make it so. Indeed, I argue that integrative medicine is the resurrection of medical paternalism, in which the doctor knows best and can even lie to the patient if he thinks it in the patient's best interest. This is, of course, in marked contrast to the "patient-centered" care and "empowering" image that integrative medicine practitioners like to portray.

If there's one area where the reporters were a bit too credulous, it was on acupuncture. This is common. A lot of doctors are too credulous about it too. That does not excuse this howler:

And while the evidence of its [acupuncture's] efficacy is not ironclad, neither is the evidence for various pharmaceutical therapies that are routinely provided by hospitals and covered by insurance. Some of those solutions, such as opioids to treat pain, have resulted in addiction and harm to patients.

Can you say "false equivalence"? Sure, I knew you could. Sorry, guys. You were doing so well, but that won't stop me from being a little...Insolent...when I see something that makes me cringe when I read it. Acupuncture is a theatrical placebo, nothing more. In contrast, we know how opioids work, as well as the risks and benefits. Again, if you haven't been following these issues for years and aren't familiar with the corruption of language that integrative medicine has engendered, it's very, very easy to accept explanations like this one:

They note, too, that traditional doctors sometimes stray from proven treatments, for instance when they prescribe medicines off-label for conditions the drugs have not been approved to treat.

“We do use things that aren’t necessarily 100 percent evidence-based, but I would argue that’s also true within all of medicine,” said Dr. Jill Schneiderhan, co-director of the University of Michigan’s integrative family medicine program. “I feel like it’s not black and white.”

No, medicine is not black and white. It's never been black and white. Interpreting scientific evidence to apply it to individual patients is especially not black and white. Yes, sometimes we use treatments on patients that aren't entirely evidence-based, but that's because there are factors other than science that impact treatment, such as patient desires and values. Leaving that aside, there's the difference. For most medical treatments, there is science behind it that produces scientific plausibility. In contrast, for much of alternative medicine, there is little or no scientific plausibility. Homeopathy, for instance, in which remedies are diluted to the point where there is unlikely to be a single molecule left, has about as close to zero plausibility as can be imagined. Ditto "energy healing," which is based on mysticism, not science. When there is little or no scientific plausibility, what you end up seeing in clinical trials are noise and bias, not a real signal. Yet, integrative medicine routinely mistakes that noise and bias for a signal.

Sadly, as this article shows, it's popular too. Nearly all the directors of integrative medicine programs interviewed reported that their patient volume has been growing. It just goes to show that many academic medical centers are more than willing to sell snake oil to attract patients. This is what skeptics are up against.

Worse, depressingly, it's not getting better. Remember how I said that this was the first article in a major mainstream news media outlet that was close to as skeptical about integrative medicine as I would like? It turns out that's not true. It's the first one I can remember, but as I was doing searches related to this post, I came across this article from USA Today from 2008 with a very similar headline, Top Hospitals Embrace Alternative Medicine. It's basically the same article, only not as skeptical, with human interest story anecdotes about how alternative medicine helped people. But the overall message is the same: Top medical centers are embracing this. One difference is that it seems to assume there's something to alternative medicine, in contrast to the STAT article, which emphasizes the patient demand and the financial incentive. Either way, the problem is the same. Nine years later, if anything, it's worse.

oracknows Wed, 03/08/2017 - 00:00

Categories

Education

Hi.

Perhaps I am relying too much on rumour and TV stories, but I have always had the impression that the USA is the right place to see patients (and heirs) in litigation with healthcare providers.

Is there any story of people feeling defrauded when they seek healthcare and receive reiki, magic water, etc. from a hospital or clinic?

I'm sure that CAM-friendly patients would actually like this, but... the rest of us who need treatment rather than appeasement? is there a scandal waiting to happen?

“Yes, as scientists, we want to be rigid. But me, as a physician, I want to find what’s best for a patient. Who am I to say that’s hogwash?” said Dr. Linda Lee.

Dr. Lee is either FOS or didn't learn a damn thing in med school, residency and fellowship.

Compare what Dr. Lee says to this part of the Hippocratic Oath:

...I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.

Quackademic medicine and quackademic physicians like Dr. Lee clearly have no respect or appreciation of those scientific gains.

Asked about the therapy, Dr. Daniel Monti, who directs the integrative health center, acknowledged that the data is “largely anecdotal,” and said the hospital offers the treatment only rarely, “when there are few other options.”........................ My interpretation of that, is; homeopathy is offered as an alternative to at least one appropriate FDA approved med. If that's correct, it's scandalous.

"Who am I to say that’s hogwash?” said Dr. Linda Lee.

Someone who allegedly has basic knowledge of chemistry and physics, that's who you are. And that's all you need to know that homeopathy and reiki are, to use your term, hogwash.

I'll stipulate that some forms of woo are harder to spot--they aren't so implausible on their face, and you actually have to have some detailed knowledge to know why they won't work. But even a layman who has a high school level understanding of chemistry and physics should know that homeopathy and reiki contradict lots of basic science.

Yes, the US is the Capitol of Medical Litigation.

With that said, my impression, which is without evidence, it is just an impression, is that lawsuits against quacks are quite rare. The patients often go to them with a predetermined, positive view of whatever they are going for, and the quacks are quite good at making the patients happy. If the patients are happy, they rarely sue even if the outcome is bad. This is what is really wrong with the tort system. It is almost universally ineffective at enforcing quality except in the most egregious of cases.

I was approached once by a plaintiff's attorney with regard to a form of quackery with which I was unfamiliar. I ended up sending him to Stephen Barrett. I hope he got what he needed from him.

The tort system isn't about enforcing quality. It never was and isn't for that purpose.

The tort system is about damages. It's about getting compensation for a wrong. If you want to improve quality, you have to do that before the wrong occurs, before damages happen.

I review malpractice cases. In almost every case I've reviewed, there either was no causation or fault on the part of the nurse or the facility (or the physician though I don't testify to that one way or the other, naturally) or the fault is so pervasive and systematic to make the case a total train wreck. I'm talking about persistent and systemic issues such as failures to follow/enforce policies and procedures, to utilize good nursing practices, and to document in a consistent and appropriate manner.

It's usually very bad or much ado about nothing, and not much in the middle.

Dr. Finfer is right in that happy patients don't sue. Given the article of faith that believers in woo take, that is the woo treatment failed it was everything's fault but the treatment, this is hardly surprising.

And given that victims of con artists rarely want to report the crime to authorities, it's hardly surprising that the ones who wake up are equally reluctant to sue and show the world what a fool they were made of.

It'll happen eventually. Some family will decide to sue a quack. But it will be hard. The family will have to show the quack violated the law in some way and so much quackery is unregulated. You have to show that the quack's treatment or advice caused the harm, that's going to be very hard to prove under our legal system.

After all, the case against Dr. Burzynski was a slam dunk, wasn't it?

I agree. The cases that I have reviewed are either nothing or unmitigated catastrophes, mostly preventable. There is very little in between. In general, if I feel that I have legitimate questions about a case, I won't take it. I have no interest in wasting my time in battles over stuff like that.

I have also notified a pattern. A case will arrive with the plaintiff's attorney stating that he or she has a theory....

These theories are often outrageous, framed in a way that gives them a chance of producing money, but, if enforced, would create a practice standard that would paralyze any laboratory attempting to do more than a handful of specimens per day. I, of course, will have nothing to do with such cases, and I am finding this to be increasingly annoying. I am sure there are people out there who will take these cases, and I can only describe them as unscrupulous.

Orac writes,

Also, as they say, integrating cow pie with apple pie doesn’t make the cow pie better; it makes the apple pie worse.

MJD says,

Integrating rhubarb pie with strawberry pie, sometimes, makes the rhubarb/strawberry pie better.

Integrating alternative-medicine with science-based medicine, (e.g., patient requested only) may provide a therapeutic synergy.

Finally, I like French's classic yellow mustard on my 100% American beef hot dog even though I know said mustard has no nutritional value.

MJD@9: Do I need to remind you that cow pies are made in cows, not of cows?

The real satire is that the conventional medical system itself is the third leading cause of the death in the US. According to a study by Dr. Starfield of Johns Hopkins, in hospitals alone, this hallowed system causes:

--12,000 deaths/year from unnecessary surgery
--7000 deaths/year from medication errors in hospitals
--20,000 deaths/year from other errors in hospitals
--80,000 deaths/year from infections acquired in hospitals
--106,000 deaths/year from non-error, adverse effects of medications

That totals 225,000 deaths per year from iatrogenic causes. http://www.drug-education.info/documents/iatrogenic.pdf
JAMA 2000 v284(4):483

A more recent study by Johns Hopkins researchers found that the conventional medical system causes over 250,000 iatrogenic deaths per year--and they didn't even include deaths from properly prescribed and administered FDA approved drugs, which considering Dr. Starfield's study, would likely have increased iatrogenic deaths to over 350,000. US BMJ 2016; 353 :i2139

Physician, heal thy own system, and stop worrying about the people who, quite understandably, are seeking out alternatives to your deadly quackery.

"NWO Reporter", since you like to talk the talk, here is a challenge to help you walk the walk:

1. Please never (as in for the rest of your life) see anyone with an MD, DO or NP degree, nor anyone who works in the office of an MD, DO or NP (such as a PA or RN/LPN). Feel free to see all the naturoquacks, chiroquacks, quackupuncturists and reiki scammers you want.
2. Never go to an ER or hospital ever again.
3. Never call 911 ever for help (because, you, know, paramedics work with MDs and DOs).
4. Never use an FDA-approved medication (prescription or OTC) ever again (but feel free to buy sugar water homeopathic solutions all you want)

Please give us yearly updates how you're doing and, after you do die, have your next of kin tell us how you died and how old you were when you died and your cause of death.

Also, you should never drive a car, because some 50,000 people a year die in car accidents.

Also, please don't procreate, because doing so condemns your children to certain death.

@Chris Hickie-- If you come up with any evidence to refute the conclusions in #11, let me know. In the mean time, steer clear of nutritional supplements--they kill more people every year than all the squash blossoms in the world combined! :D

In other quackademic news..

Orac's 'old friend', James Lyons**-Weiler, will be giving a free lecture on the causes of autism based on his Skyhorse book at NYU Law***.
Someone nearby should go. I can't.

** Skyhorse's top honcho is Tony Lyons - coincidence?
*** Mary Holland works there

As a former alt med consumer , i.e. "Recovering chump," I can attest to how difficult it is/ was to make a complaint.
First, I didn't know how, second, I was cheated out of my time money and hope, and I didn't see how a claim would hold up. Third, I had a lot of guilt for making bad choices.4th, my friends still believe in the alt med baloney, and I wasn't ready to let go of them too. So it was much easier to just fade away from those beliefs. It took a very long time to figure out how to still be friends while leaving out the woo. And they still don't think it's woo.woo. It's like, I imagine it would be if all my friends were. Trump believers--it's difficult and it takes time to make new friends.

@MJD #9:

Integrating rhubarb pie with strawberry pie, sometimes, makes the rhubarb/strawberry pie better.

First, demonstrate that your rhubarb isn't actually bullshit.

Go on. Try it.

As a former alt med consumer , i.e. "Recovering chump," I can attest to how difficult it is/ was to make a complaint.
First, I didn't know how, second, I was cheated out of my time money and hope, and I didn't see how a claim against a practitioner would hold up in a legal process.Third, I had a lot of guilt for making bad choices. Fourth, my friends still believe in the alt med baloney, and I wasn't ready to let go of them too. So it was much easier to just fade away from the b.s. rather than confront people.. It took a very long time to figure out how to still be friends while leaving out the woo. And they still don't think it's woo. It's like, I imagine, it would be if all my friends were Trump believers.
It's difficult and it takes time to make new friends when you're ill. I'm not one of the worried well --cancer is a real thing.

This guy is so old....this was already discussed here last year:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2016/05/16/do-medical-errors-really-k…

It's a valiant effort at damage control, for sure. Maybe if it ever gets published in a peer reviewed medical journal, it could be taken seriously.

Denice Walter writes (~# 14),

...will be giving a free lecture on the causes of autism.

MJD writes,

On a related topic, it's the second time I've been denied to speak at the Annual Autism Society National Conference and Exposition.

This year I submitted a proposal wherein I'd speak on a topic that's both informative and thought provoking (i.e., Autism Patents and Beyond).

@ Oracs minions,

Any suggestions on a topic for next year?

Here's the rejection:

Thank you for submitting a presentation abstract for the 49th Annual Autism Society National Conference and Exposition. Please understand that it is a constant balancing act as we strive to offer a broad-based program covering the whole spectrum and all aspects of the entire lifespan at the conference. Each proposal was given careful and deliberate consideration by a panel of reviewers in addition to our staff. This year was particularly difficult as we received an incredible amount of paper submissions. Regrettably, exceptional proposals are turned away each year for the simple reason that we have limited speaking slots and cover a wide-breadth of topics.

Your proposed abstract entitled “Autism Patents and Beyond” was not selected. But, we would like you to consider allowing the Autism Society to leverage your skills, background and knowledge in the future. There may be other opportunities for you to get involved (e- newsletter articles, blog, web content, Google chats, local trainings/conferences etc.) which may be a good fit for you in the future.

Once again, thank you for your submission, we sincerely hope you will consider engaging with the Autism Society again by submitting an abstract for the 2018 Call for Papers and we would, of course, love to see you at this year’s conference in Milwaukee, July 12 - 15, 2017!

If you have any questions, please feel free to email Rose Jochum, rjochum@autism-society.org

NWO can you come up with the figures of how many times sciencebased medicine had saved these people before they became part of your statistics?

In other quackery news, tomorrow the appeals in the death of Ezekiel Stephan will be heard. Ezekiel died because his parents gave him quack remedies instead of seeking proper medical care. They were convicted of failure to provide the necessaries of life, but were given very short sentences. The Stephans are appealing their conviction and the Crown is appealing the too-short sentences.
Orac wrote about the case a few times.

I may attend the appeal hearing if I can get confirmation it really will go ahead tomorrow (hard to do for anyone outside of "the media"). The hearing will essentially be speeches by the lawyers to a panel of three judges. Since the original trial, Tamara Lovett has been convicted of the more serious charge of criminal negligence causing death in fairly similar circumstances, and the Raditas have been convicted of first degree murder because they did not properly treat their son's diabetes. All of these kids would almost certainly have survived if they had received proper medical care starting a few days before their deaths.

MJD, did you inform her, that you are considered a Loon?

Dear God! You didn't write the application in third person did you?

MJD @9: French's yellow mustard contains 55mg of sodium per 5g (1tsp) serving. It also contains turmeric (likely as a coloring), vinegar and mustard.
Therefore mustard has nutritional value.

Have a balloon.

MJD: What you got wasn't a "denial." It was a rejection.

They happen all the time. There is no conspiracy to prevent you from speaking at this or any other convention. You simply didn't wow them with your proposal.

Starting from a factual basis is usually a good way to get towards wowing a review board.

Asked about the Cleveland Clinic’s promotion of reiki, Dr. Richard Lang, the recently named interim director of the clinic’s Wellness Institute, said he hadn’t had a chance to think about it. “I don’t know that I could give you a plus or minus on that,” he said. Lang served as a vice chair of the wellness institute for nearly a decade before taking the top post

He's been there nearly a decade and never thought about what they offered?

Panacea writes (~#25),

Starting from a factual basis is usually a good way to get towards wowing a review board.

MJD says,

I've been asked by Cambridge Scholars Publishers to submit a proposal for a book on environmental science.

Here's the title:

There's no place like home - Global Warming - Thinking Patents

Please advise...

On a related topic, it’s the second time I’ve been denied to speak at the Annual Autism Society National Conference and Exposition.

Well, that should give you a clue.

This year I submitted a proposal wherein I’d speak on a topic that’s both informative and thought provoking (i.e., Autism Patents and Beyond).

The don't want to give you a free platform to sell your $200 book that is, by your own description, a bunch of copy/paste from the USPTO.

Do the right thing and rent a booth. You'll only have to sell 10 or 12 copies to break even, including hotel and air fare. You'll make a fortune.

Any suggestions ... for next year?

Leave them alone?

Physician, heal thy own system, and stop worrying about the people who, quite understandably, are seeking out alternatives to your deadly quackery.

Nope. How about:
Physician, heal thy own system, because you're appropriate worried about people who – perhaps understandably all things considered, are seeking out alternatives and get duped into useless and sometimes even deadly quackery as a result.

See, it's BS to say hospitals "cause" 225,000 deaths per year. If hospitals failed to prevent 80,000 deaths from infections acquired in hospitalization, that's not 'causing' them. The people who died were in the hospital because they were sick, mostly with conditions which made them especially vulnerable to infection. This is how my mom died. She went into the hospital after suffering injuries in a fall, and being weak and with diminished lung capacity from a history of smoking, after being bedridden for a couple weeks she contracted pneumonia. I was bitter as hell because the doctors should have known she was vulnerable to this, but apparently the 'managed care' of her HMO didn't cover the proper preventative procedure. That's a failure of socio/economic/political forces impacting the administration of healthcare, not a problem of medical science "quackery", and has no relevance in justifying any sort of Alt Med.

Then there's the 106,000 deaths from "non-error, adverse effects of medications", a big-seeming raw number (if accurate) but what's the risk factor compared to the total number of medications prescribed and taken by the population in that year? And, how many of the prescriptions involved in death were really "non-error". If the meds did indeed have "adverse effects" how many of those were the product of inadequate records on contra-indicating conditions or drug interactions? Again, I have personal experiences: my partner's best friend almost died in the hospital earlier this year when – again, after a fall – they didn't know she had a condition that led the iron they were giving her for anemia to cause renal failure, because that somehow hadn't made it onto her chart. Of course, that problem would have been just as likely to occur if she'd been treated by a naturopath. After she turned for the worse, the hospital MDs figured it out, and got her into emergency dialysis before it was too late. I have no confidence an ND would have done the same.

These are IMHO inexcusable failures, but preventing them is a matter of addressing funding and policy issues. Chris Hickie's highway death analogy is only partly accurate. Both driving and going to the hospital haveinherent risks that can't be addressed by improved practices, but the levels of inherent are quite different. Hospital deaths could be drastically reduced by hiring more professional staff to monitor infection risk, and establishing a comprehensive computerized national health record database that would present everything a treating practitioner needs to know on their tablets when they enter the patient's name. In contrast, even if we made the massive expenses of completely rebuilding our road infrastructure for maximum safety, and maintaining the roads in top condition, and banning all gasoline powered vehicles, and mandating state-of-the-art crash safety for every vehicle on the road, we'd still have plenty of fatal crashes as long as people drink or lose concentration. And the resources required to make those changes to driving are orders of magnitude more unlikely to ever be realized than those required to make the changes to hospital medicine I discussed...

Maybe if sbm advocates were more open about the problems in healthcare delivery that undermine the effectiveness of medical science, and more vocal in calling for reform, crap-slinging slimeballs like NWO Reporter would have a harder time propagandizing sCAMs. Speaking of which, I'm wondering when/if Orac will address the likelihood of increased medical tragedy from the GOP backed "replacement" for the ACA...

@ doug

The Stephans were worse than Tamara Lovett and the Radita's because they were trying to protect their DIY-Alt-Med-based family wealth by keeping Ezekiel away from any and all health prrofessionals, and possibly even using him as a guinea pig to generate a testimonial for the 'immune boosting' magic of Truehope OLE. Of course, none of that came out at trial or in the news coverage, and the differing sentences probably reflect the relative defendants' wealth and influence, rather than their actual venality. Lovett is a genuine all-round nut-job/screwup. The Stephan clan's only excuse is snake-oil hard-sell greed.

If NWO Reporter uses the search box on the top of the box she will find our host's analysis of the third leading cause claim and the problems with it.

@ MJD #27:

If they solicited a book from you that tells me all I need to know about their level of academic rigor and prestige.

But to answer your question I have to ask one of my own: how much are they charging you to publish?

Turns out appeal court sitting details are published on the web, and the Stephan case is still sch'd for tomorrow (3 hours allotted time). Guess I better go toss my warm pants in the wash and try to get the blood stains out - going to be about -22°C in the morning.

Sadmar, I think the Raditas are the most despicable, since Alex was tortured to death over a period of years. The Stephans may well have be trying to use Ezekiel for financial gain, but I really doubt any wealth they might have had any influence on their sentences. I suspect their appeal of conviction will be dismissed. Hard to say how the Crown appeal of the sentences will turn out. If Tamara Lovett had been sentenced by now there would be precedent for the appeal court to consider, but she won't be sentenced until June at the earliest. Her conviction for criminal negligence, with a potentially very long prison sentence, may influence the court to consider sentences for the Stephans at or near the upper end of the range for the failure conviction. I don't know if the decision of the appeal court will be delivered tomorrow or at some later date.

According to a CBC article up this morning, only the conviction appeal will be heard today and the court's decision is not expected for some time. The Stephan's are inviting supporters - perhaps I will have the opportunity to growl menacingly at some of them.

Panacea writes (~ #32),

If they solicited a book from you that tells me all I need to know about their level of academic rigor and prestige.

MJD says,

It is disheartening to hear a professor (aka. Panacea) denigrate the academic level of this/any college graduate.

Panacea asks (~ #32),

...how much are they charging you to publish?

MJD says,

It doesn't matter, the information and perspectives described therein contain the true value.

@ Panacea,

It's time to disclose your true identity so I can send a free copy of the book to your university library.

To make sure that you'll be the first one to open the book, I will randomly place three $10 dollar bills in the pages.

A couple of days ago, I got a popup ad from Oregon Health Sciences Unversdity's Pain Clinic. Announcing that it was introducing Rolfing. Notably, it didn't say "pain control", just "pain"!

Given how rough rolfing is, I'd be surprised if it didn't cause pain. :-)

sadmar @29: Have you read The Checklist Manifesto, by Atul Gawande? He advocates for the use of checklists in medicine (specifically in surgical procedures) and he's got some decent data (and I'm sure there's more data by now).

One of the things he specifically wanted a checklist for was to prevent VAP (ventilator associated pneumonia) and I think also central-line infections.

It's a good read.

@MJD: Considering I've already gotten you dead to rights on plagiarism in a past discussion, you wouldn't have a degree from my institution. Regardless, you don't have to have a college degree to publish something through a reputable press, depending on what you're publishing. If you're going to publish something in the sciences, you usually need some credentials.

Your dodge of my question says, "they're charging me too much and I'm embarrassed to say how much."

Keep your thirty dollars. It sounds like you've been fleeced enough.

Re Rolfing: my SIL had it done once for her fibromyalgia.

Once.

Panacea Writes (#39),

Considering I’ve already gotten you dead to rights on plagiarism in a past discussion, you wouldn’t have a degree from my institution.

Michael J. Dochniak says,

Are you calling MJD a cheater?

Impossible, I'm going to tell him the next time I hear from him. :-o

Orac writes,

WTF?

An upset MJD says,

I agree!

MJD: Why, yes. I am calling you a cheater.

The article: "Physicians who practice science-based medicine should be up in arms at the first sign of this quackery entering their hospitals, but, alas, the vast majority of them are shruggies."

Shruggies? I like that word. This is a good noun to describe a an apathetic physician with "woo" lassitude.

Personally, I think "woo" should never be tolerated. It is always immoral to give people false hope. Moreover, it is an insult to science to believe something works without a good indication; homeopathy is the prime example.

I think you should write an article on this Jim Humble affair with chlorine dioxide. He has the audacity to call it "magical mineral solution" although it contains nothing that could properly be classified as a mineral.

This guy seems to have a cult of distributors like that Kalcker guy and that Rivierra girl. Andreas Kalcker's anecdote about his dog recovering spectacularly from a few drops of MMS is painful to hear. I think people could get hurt with this stuff.

I'm sure Orac would have been leading the righteous charge against Dr. Semmelweis, had his blog been around back in the day. After all, Semmelweis's bogus innovation of chlorine hand washing was contrary to the status quo scientific standard of care--he deserved to have his reputation mercilessly smeared and to be run out of the medical industry for the greater good. Meanwhile, the suffering and death continued. Even to this day, apparently--considering that infections acquired in hospitals kill 80,000 people every year in the US alone.

Better that patients be given false hope with the sacred standard of care than to make their own potentially faulty choices. Thank goodness the medical industry is backed by hundreds of billions of dollars now, to keep cranks like Semmelweis in check. http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/12/375663920/the-docto…

Just because Semmelweis ended up being correct does not mean everyone who bucks the consensus is. As Carl Sagan once wrote:

The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

Or, as Michael Shermer wrote in Why People Believe Weird Things:

For every Galileo shown the instruments of torture for advocating scientific truth, there are a thousand (or ten thousand) unknowns whose ‘truths’ never pass scientific muster with other scientists. The scientific community cannot be expected to test every fantastic claim that comes along, especially when so many are logically inconsistent.

Or, as I wrote 12 years ago:

For every Galileo, Ignaz Semmelweis, Nicolaus Copernicus, Charles Darwin, Louis Pasteur, etc., whose scientific ideas were either ignored, rejected, or vigorously attacked by the scientific community of his time and then later accepted, there are untold numbers of others whose ideas were either ignored or rejected initially and then were never accepted--and never will be accepted. Why? Because they were wrong! The reason the ideas of Galileo, Semmelweis, Copernicus, Darwin, Pasteur, et al, were ultimately accepted as correct by the scientific community is because they turned out to be correct! Their observations and ideas stood up to repeated observation and scientific experimentation by many scientists in many places over many years. The weight of data supporting their ideas was so overwhelming that eventually even the biggest skeptics could no longer stand. That's the way science works. It may be messy, and it may take longer, occasionally even decades or even longer, than we in the business might like to admit, but eventually in science the truth wins out. In fact, the best way for a scientist to become famous and successful in his or her field is to come up with evidence that strongly challenges established theories and concepts and then weave that evidence into a new theory. Albert Einstein didn't end up in the history books by simply reconfirming and recapitulating Newton's Laws. Semmelweis and Pasteur didn't wind up in the history books by confirming the concept that disease was caused by an "imbalance of humours" (although Semmelweis probably did hurt himself by refusing to publish his results for many years; his data were so compelling that it remains puzzling why he did not do so). I daresay that none of the Nobel Prize winners won that prestigious award by demonstrating something that the scientific establishment already believed. No! They won it by discovering something new and important!

Unfortunately, to most lay people who don't have a strong background in science, the scientific method, or the history of science, such trickery can sound convincing on the surface. For example, you have a quack like Hulda Clark claiming she has a cure for cancer and AIDS and then claiming that the scientific establishment can't accept it. Add a dash of paranoia about big medicine and big pharma "suppressing" her "cure," and it's a potent brew of deception. This ploy is particularly appealing to Americans, because our whole national psyche has in its core a tendency to root for the outsider, the underdog. Alties, pseudoscientists, and cranks tap into that deep-seated sympathy we tend to have for the persecuted outsider and use it to their advantage. It's the same with creationists, who use every well-deserved debunking they get as evidence that they are a "threat" to the established scientific order. The only way to combat such deceptive comparisons is to point out again and again Shermer's dictum that "heresy does not equal correctness" and try to keep the discussion on the hard evidence.

Also, the case of Semmelweis is more complex than quacks generally describe it. Part of the problem is that Semmelweis discovered that requiring practitioners to wash their hands when going from the morgue to the delivery room greatly decreased the incidence of puerperal fever decades before Louis Pasteur demonstrated germ theory to the point where physicians and scientists started to accept it. Thus, part of the reason why Semmelweis encountered so much resistance from his colleagues was because at the time he made his observations, there was no known scientific mechanism to account for his observations. In fact, his observations actually conflicted with the dominant concepts of the time, namely that diseases were due to imbalances of the four humors or caused by miasmas (“bad air”). In fact, it’s not unreasonable to speculate that if germ theory had been developed before Semmelweis, his observations would likely have been rapidly accepted as evidence supporting germ theory.

Also, physicians did not, contrary to the quack narrative, universally reject Semmelweis' findings. For instance, in the UK, the response was much more favorable, and he turned down a position as professor of obstetrics at the University of Zurich, which presumably wouldn't have offered him the position if it were so opposed to his findings. It also didn't help that Semmelweis let his outrage get the better of him to the point where he wrote increasingly angry letters to prominent European obstetricians, even going so far at times to denounce them as irresponsible murderers, comments that surely didn't endear him to the medical community or make it more receptive to his findings. Indeed, it has been suggested that Semmelweis could have had an even greater impact if he had been able to communicate his findings more effectively and to avoid antagonizing the medical establishment so severely, even given the level of opposition from entrenched viewpoints.

It's interesting, although not surprising, that the medical community allowed its anger about Semmelweis's condemnations to override objective scientific judgment.

I think you should write an article on this Jim Humble affair with chlorine dioxide. He has the audacity to call it “magical mineral solution” although it contains nothing that could properly be classified as a mineral.

Try this http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/?s=Jim+Humble

Heheh.

For the clueless boring NWO troll repeating nonsense we have dealt with repeatedly:

Trollin' Trollin' Trollin'
Trollin' Trollin' Trollin'
Trollin' Trollin' Trollin'
Trollin' Trollin' Trollin'
Rawhide!
Trollin' Trollin' Trollin'
Though the threads are swollen
Keep them comments trollin',
Rawhide!

Move 'em on
(Head em' up!)
Head em' up
(Move 'em on!)
Move 'em on
(Head em' up!)
Rawhide!
Cut 'em out
(Paste 'em in!)
Paste'em in
(Cut em' out!)
Cut 'em out
Paste 'em in,
Rawhide!
Keep trollin', trollin', trollin'
Though they're disaprovin'
Keep them comments trollin'',
Rawhide
Don't try to understand 'em
Just rope, laugh, and ignore 'em
Soon we'll be discussin' bright without 'em

Nice diversion from the issue, Chris! That is, if anyone can stifle their yawns long enough to read it. :)

Yawn. You are the one boring us with old rotted baseless arguments we have seen for more than a decade.

Trollin’ Trollin’ Trollin’
Trollin’ Trollin’ Trollin’
Trollin’ Trollin’ Trollin’
Trollin’ Trollin’ Trollin’
Rawhide!
Trollin’ Trollin’ Trollin’
Though the threads are swollen
Keep them comments trollin’,
Rawhide!

Then I'm sure you've been boring people with hypocrisy as a diversion for more than a decade as well. Anyway, truncated and repetitious diversions aren't nearly as effective--so you know.

Snicker. Orac did reply with something he wrote over a decade ago. I told the troll is was old stale nonsense that has been dealt with multiple times.

By the way, there is a vast trove of books about medical history. The most recent one of note is about the doctor that the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia is named after: Dr. Mutter's Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine.

The last chapters in that book reveal that Semmelweis was not the only physician who made the connection between sanitation and spread of disease. There were a few others, and some met with similar resistance (including Florence Nightingale, who used actual statistics to become convinced, read https://www.amazon.com/Trick-Treatment-Undeniable-Alternative-Medicine/dp/0393066614/).

It is said that the big difference with Semmelweis was that he was kind of a jerk, so perhaps more people wrote about him. Which is apparently your method of getting noticed. In the future just post the PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers to support your claims, or just go away. Because repeating the same idiocy over and over and over again is quite boring.

I have an idea, just get off of teh internets, wander down to your local public library and read the above referenced books.

So Semmelweis was "kind of a jerk," and that hindered his ability to persuade others to his position. Have times changed in that regard? Is it now the case that vociferous derision and ridicule is the best way to persuade others to your position? Or is that more of a last resort--when the real weight of the evidence is not on your side?

Granted, there is only so much you can do when the conflicts of interested endemic in medical research have been exposed over and over again, leading to an inevitable loss of all credibility--regardless of how reasonably the conclusions are conveyed, or how expertly someone conveys that anyone who doesn't believe them is stupid.

"It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.” Dr. Marcia Angell, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/jan/15/drug-companies-doc…

Or is that more of a last resort–when the real weight of the evidence is not on your side?

No, it's a last resort when dunderheads like you won't accept the overwhelming scientific evidence that vaccines don't cause all the things you claim they do.

Or "dunderheads" like Dr. Marcia Angell--who has reviewed more medical research in depth over her career than all the "Science Moms" and science bloggers combined?

We saw the quote the first dozen times you posted it. You see, that mindless repetition that you do is what annoys people. It's become very, very tiresome.

Perhaps it was posted among the two comment threads you removed on other posts, since I only see it one other time on this thread. :)

Or "dunderheads" like Dr. Ioannidis, who has found that it's more likely for a research claim to be false than true? Why Most Published Research Findings Are False, http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0…

You might want to search this blog for Ioannidis' name to see what I've written about him (including about that article). You might be surprised what you find. Or not. Suffice to say, I'm a big fan of Ioannidis and have been for at least ten years. Also, that article you cite doesn't mean what you think it does, at least not in terms of reliability of the medical literature overall. Certainly it is foolish to cite it as justification for thinking that vaccines cause autism.

And what of the conclusions of Dr. Marcia Angell? Do they mean what I think they mean? :)

Exactly. Exasperation at someone who perseverates over the same talking points over the course of weeks does sometimes lead to annoyance, and annoyance sometimes does lead to intemperate language. :-)

NWO Troll, you are a dunderhead who cannot figure out how to use the handy dandy search box on the upper right of this page to find the articles that discuss Angell and Ioannidis (several on the latter, he did not say what you think he says). Good grief you are really boring us by bringing up the same old nonsense over and over and over again!

But, Orac, the NWO troll thinks it is to h..a...r...d to search this blog. Just like it is just too hard to actually find real arguments to support his claims because all he has are the same lame tropes that have been repeated for years. Ones that he got from the silly websites he frequents (probably starting with John Scudamore).

We should probably pity the poor little NWO troll because it is too difficult for him to think for himself... it is just too h...a...r....d. But no, it is just time to laugh at his repetitive nonsense stuck in his welded shut scull.

@Chris, I'm quite certain I and other readers can examine what Angell and Ioannidis have to say and form their own conclusions, without relying on the author of this blog to act as a perception intermediary. :)

In other words, it is as I suspected. You are afraid to see what I've written about John Ioannidis' work. No surprise there.

The other readers know how to search this blog for articles about their writings, and figure out that your conclusions are idiotic. So you are still just....

Other readers know how to use a perception intermediary rather than rely on their own judgment? I'm afraid you are correct there, in some cases. Fortunately, fewer and fewer cases these days, though. :)

@Chris,

Rats. You beat me to the punch on Nightingale.

She wrote her original "Notes on Nursing" advocating the right things (fresh air, clean sheets, light) without fully understanding why they were useful. But her resistance left when she looked at the evidence.

And if anyone should understand statistics, she should. She is not only the Mother of Modern Nursing, she is the Mother of Statistics.

Sorry, Panacea. :-)

I liked that her story parallels to often touted Semmelweis bit, but unlike him, she was persuaded by her statistics. And she used pie charts!

The troll does not understand how science change, and her story is so much better that the silly one he and every other anti-science troll used. Statistics is something that changes the course of scientific thought, not "mavericks bucking the system." Something he would learn if he read the two books I posted. But he chooses to stay willfully ignorant, and not realizing why we think he is a fool.

Two of the more notorious cases of known massive medical fraud occurred with the so-called "Swine Flu epidemics" of 1976 and 2009. The 1976 fraud was covered by 60 minutes in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8elE7Ct1jWw

The 2009 Swine Flu fraud was covered by Sharryl Attkisson, then a CBS reporter. In the summer of 2009, the CDC quietly stopped Swine Flu cases in the US. Through FOIA requests, Attkisson discovered that, before the CDC had stopped counting cases, they had learned through actual test results that almost none of the cases they had counted as Swine Flu was, in fact, Swine Flu--or any kind of flu at all. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/swine-flu-cases-overestimated/

And what better way to cover up a lie than to tell a gigantic lie? Here, a 2009 WebMD article gives the CDC’s peculiar position: “Shockingly, 14 million to 34 million U.S. residents — the CDC’s best guess is 22 million — came down with H1N1 swine flu by Oct. 17 [2009]." http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/news/20091112/over-22-million-in-us-h…

Just another example of why no information emanating from the CDC can be trusted.

Sharyl Attkisson? Hahahaha. Sorry. I couldn't help but laugh. She's long been antivaccine, dating back at least ten years ago, when she was still a CBS reporter. (Indeed, based on some good reasons, I suspected her of feeding information to antivaxers about her reporting on the down low.) Search for her name here, and you'll see numerous examples documented over the last decade or so. The reason I laugh is to see you impugn the CDC as being unreliable when Attkisson's reporting on vaccines and health issues is the very definition of unreliable.

Yes...the 60 minutes story is equally hilarious. Do you have any evidence to refute Attkisson's findings--that before the CDC stopped counting Swine Flu cases in 2009, most of the actual tests results were negative?

I’m quite certain I and other readers can examine what Angell and Ioannidis have to say and form their own conclusions, without relying on the author of this blog to act as a perception intermediary.

Yes we have and twits like you love to abuse those articles revealing your ignorance about vaccine science even more.

Can NWO troll say "cherry picking"? And still to lazy to use the search box. Hilarious!

Cherry pick!
(Head em' up!)
Move goalposts!
(Move 'em on!)
More insults!
(Head em' up!)
Rawhide!
Cut 'em out
(Paste 'em in!)
Paste'em in
(Cut em' out!)
Cut 'em out
Paste 'em in,
Rawhide!
Keep trollin', trollin', trollin'
Though they're disaprovin'
Keep them comments trollin'',
Rawhide
Don't try to understand 'em
Just rope, laugh, and ignore 'em
Soon we'll be discussin' bright without 'em

NWO Reporter, are you just thread hopping to avoid the untenable positions you keep putting yourself in? Because I see a lot of unanswered questions, starting with that FOIA gaff of yours.

@NWO Reporter:

Sharyl Attkisson is also notorious for panicking about a stuck delete key on her laptop that she thought was a hack attack by the Obama administration:
http://www.vox.com/2014/10/31/7140247/the-right-is-convinced-obama-hack…
She's about as sharp as a billiard ball.

So, did you find the 60 minutes piece about the 1976 Swine Flu fraud as hilarious as Orac did?

Did you come up with any evidence to refute Attkisson’s findings that, before the CDC stopped counting Swine Flu cases in 2009, most of the actual tests results were negative? Or is that evidence still MIA, buried under the usual mountain of ad hominem?

@ Chris,

I like using the story of Semmelweiss, Nightingale, and germ theory to illustrate the importance of infection control with my students. It's a compelling story, and it brings home the whys very clearly to them.

Do you also discuss with your students that 80,000 people die every year from infections acquired in hospitals--today, in the modern days of medicine?

NWO Reporter,

I’m quite certain I and other readers can examine what Angell and Ioannidis have to say and form their own conclusions, without relying on the author of this blog to act as a perception intermediary

What is your evidence that we rely only on a perception intermediary to get acquainted with the scientific literature?

Alain

Did you come up with any evidence to refute Attkisson’s findings...?

Yep.They are Attkisson's findings. That's good enough for me.

Your logical fallacy is: ad hominem. "A logical fallacy is a flaw in reasoning. Logical fallacies are like tricks or illusions of thought, and they're often very sneakily used by politicians and the media to fool people." https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem

NRO Reporter: could you please inform us of (1) the number of people who die every year due to infections that are not acquired in hospitals compared to the number who die every year due to infections that are acquired in hospitals, and (2) whether or not any sentient being should be surprised that people are more to be acquire infections if they are surrounded by sick people? Thanks.

Don't demand that others do your research and make your arguments for you. Maybe hospitals don't have proper isolation and sterilization protocols. Maybe they have them, but don't follow them. It sounds like you are trying to suggest that 80k+ deaths every year are inevitable from infections acquired in hospitals. If so, make a case for it if you like.

@ NWO Troll

Yes, I discuss the risks of death and disability from infection with my students.

I do it in professional, clinical manner, with the goal of teaching them how to prevent as well as administer treatments to care for infections.

Now buzz off troll. The adults in the room are talking.

Yep.They are Attkisson’s findings. That’s good enough for me.

Someone has prior form of making crap up and stove-piping other people's scammy fabrications, they're going to keep making crap up. After a certain point, it is not cost-effective to provide that person's latest fabulations with a detailed rebuttal.

@NWO Reporter
Did you ever check what was Marcia Angell's position on vaccines ?

I have a theory about why ppl get into woo.

A few yrs ago I had frozen shoulders and the pain was unbelievable. I couldn't lift my arms, couldn't walk my dogs or put my clothes on w/o help. My ortho doc gave me shots and I went to PT but nothing worked.

He finally booked me to have manipulation under anesthesia to break up the capsules. A week before that procedure I went to a hypnotist to help me sleep better since the pain was keeping me up and sleep meds make me a little crazy. Before he started he asked if there was anything else I wanted to address and I said, kind of flippantly, "yeah, if you can cure my frozen shoulders that would be great."

When I came out of my little trance state my shoulders were pain free. I could raise my arms, swing them side to side--hallelujah! I still had weakness but no pain. I cancelled the MUA and yrs later I am still fine.

Now, my theory is that the problem was probably psychological. I can't say why it might have happened at that particular time, but I don't think it was a physical (as in organic or traumatic) problem.

I have since come across some ppl in my family who have had conversion disorder (one diagnosed and one with me guessing). One of my nieces is literally wheelchair bound and has nothing "wrong" with her. She went from healthy to having the symptoms of cerebral palsy over several months. An aunt when she was younger had a limp and what they called a "dead arm" back in the 50s. Doctors found zero wrong with her. Then she had a born again experience and was "healed."

So...my theory is that quackery "works" in psychological disorders being cured by psychological means, even if the reasoning brain has no idea this is happening. Can acupuncture cure cancer? No. But can it help someone quit smoking or with tension headaches? Sure if the emotional brain believes that it's real and doing some amazing mojo to it. and the headaches are not from tumors or whatever.

Does this make sense?

A sad day for public science advocacy

oracknows — Thu, 05 Nov 2015 08:30:53 +0000

A sad day for public science advocacy

I've been at this blogging thing for more than a decade now. Looking back on those years, I find it incredible that I've lasted this long. For one thing, I still marvel that there are apparently thousands of people out there who still like to read my nearly daily musings (or, as George Carlin would call them, brain droppings) after all these years. More importantly, being a public advocate for science is a rough business, as I've documented over the years. Back when I first started out, I was completely pseudonymous and anonymous. I kept my real name relatively secret. It was less than five months after I started blogging that the doxxing began, starting with a man named William O'Neill of the quack group the Canadian Cancer Research Group, who sent e-mails threatening to sue to my department chair, division chief, cancer center director, and, of course, me. I admit that it freaked me out and almost ended my blogging career right then and there. Fortunately, my chair, the late great Steve Lowry (who is missed) thought nothing of it and supported me. Since then, every so often someone, be it an antivaccine activist (most commonly) or a cancer quack (less commonly) or an HIV/AIDS denialist (only once) has tried to make trouble for me at work or elsewhere. I've gotten used to it.

I'm relatively small potatoes, though, and, as I have a demanding day job and can't go "all in" advocating science, I probably will remain so. When a science advocate's prominence rises, the attacks from the antiscience side become more relentless and frightening. Paul Offit knows this, having endured death threats from antivaccine activists. Michael Mann knows this, having endured a concerted effort by anthropogenic climate change denialists to discredit him professionally and personally. Edzard Ernst knows this, having been targeted by the Quacktitioner Royal himself. Indeed, he was just awarded the Maddox Prize—and deservedly so!—because of what he's endured standing up for science. Kevin Folta knows this, having been targeted by the "Food Babe Army," followers of Vani Hari, who has become the queen of food pseudoscience and fear mongering, for his tireless refutation of her fear mongering about "teh ebil chemicalz" in food and, of course, genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

Unfortunately, the pressure has been so great that Folta made this announcement on his Facebook page yesterday afternoon (click to embiggen if the type is too small):

A sad day for public science advocacy: Kevin Folta announces that he is ceasing his public advocacy.

This is a depressing development. Yet another public advocate of science has been driven to give up the fight because of the harassment of anti-science forces. Kevin was one of the foremost voices countering anti-GMO pseudoscience, and now he is gone. I'm not criticizing him for his decision. I really can't blame him for deciding that his advocacy just wasn't worth the price he was paying. Consider the price. Besides having to deal with anti-GMO activists harassing him online, he had to deal with numerous complaints to his administration about his science advocacy. I've had but a taste of what I know Folta has been going through. Periodically, some antivaccine crank or cancer quack will "complain" to my department chair, dean, or cancer center director. At first, they'd ask me what it was about; now I don't even hear about them. Indeed, the last time the topic came up in a discussion with my department chair he confirmed that he periodically gets complaints from people trying to make trouble for me at work.

The worst incident occurred five years ago, when Jake Crosby wrote a profoundly dishonest blog post accusing me of an undisclosed conflict of interest, in essence that I was in the pocket of Sanofi-Aventis and a shill. His rationale was that I was studying a drug made by Sanofi-Aventis as a possible cancer treatment and Sanofi-Aventis makes vaccines. Or something. His logic wasn't exactly what one would call coherent. Be that as it may, as a result, a lot of antivaxers wrote complaints to my dean and the board of governors of the university. Fortunately, my university supported me. My dean even called me to ask me if I felt threatened. I told her that I didn't feel physically threatened, but clearly I was being threatened with other harm. Since then, there hasn't been an attack at work that has caused me more than momentary annoyance, and the administration has learned that such complaints are usually nothing.

As I said, I'm small potatoes. Imagine having to endure what I endured five years ago, but on a much more frequent basis, along with a steady drip-drip-drip of other complaints. Imagine having to deal with being smeared on NaturalNews.com, the Food Babe's website, and basically all over the Internet as a shill for Monsanto. Imagine being the subject of an intentionally harassing fishing expedition in the form of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request:

After receiving a FOIA request from US Right to Know—a nonprofit dedicated to exposing “the failures of the corporate food system“—the University of Florida notified Folta, a food and agricultural science professor at the university, that he would have to turn over all of his e-mails relating to correspondence with 14 different firms involved in agribusiness. His options: Submit all of his emails and allow lawyers to sift through them independently, or spend hours doing it himself alongside legal counsel.

The request is a response to public arguments by Folta that genetically modified foods are safe. Folta compares the strength of the scientific consensus on GM safety to the consensus on climate change and vaccines, and US Right to Know—or USRTK—believes the food and agricultural industries may be pressuring Folta and other scientists into voicing such arguments.

On January 28, US Right to Know sent out a FOIA request targeting 14 scientists at four universities, including Folta, requesting that they all turn over their email correspondence with industry representatives. Gary Ruskin, the executive director of USRTK, says the move is essential for uncovering the food industry’s efforts to manipulate scientists into advancing pro-genetically-modified propaganda.

No, the move was "essential" for nothing of the sort. The only purpose of Ruskin's intellectually dishonest FOIA request was to harass the universities where scientists defending GMOs work, to chew up resources and the scientists' time, and, if Ruskin was lucky, to find something he could distort to make it look as though a scientist were in the pocket of Monsanto. Indeed, it's hard not to conclude that Ruskin was lying through his teeth when he told Keith Kloor that the scientists targeted had been chosen for their involvement in GMO Answers, an industry sponsored website that posts answers to public questions about the safety of GMOs, or genetically modified organisms. After it was pointed out that some of the scientists had no relationship with the website, Ruskin changed his story and claimed that they were targeted for making public statements against California Proposition 37, which would have required the labeling of GMO-containing foods.

Of course, whenever you search through thousands of e-mails, you are virtually guaranteed to find something that you can use against your target. Ruskin knew this, and he did indeed find something after Folta complied with the request. It turns out that the University of Florida accepted a one-time unrestricted educational grant from Monsanto of $25,000. This is not an uncommon sort of grant from companies, be they pharmaceutical companies or other companies, and "unrestricted" means just that: The company giving the grant provides the funds for the the institution receiving them to use without preconditions. As Steve Novella has documented, this small grant was used to pay for "travel expenses, snacks, and other minor expenses associated with scientists outreach activities." The finding resulted in a hopelessly biased article in the New York Times by Eric Lipton in September. It was clearly a hatchet job designed to discredit him. In response, besides her usual nonsensical bloviating, the Food Babe promised to file an FOIA of her own.

I can only guess how the harassment has escalated over the last couple of months. Having no "inside information," I can only speculate based on Folta's statement that he's "under a lot of pressure on many fronts" that perhaps his family is tired of the harassment. Another possibility, as unfortunate as it would be if that possibility were true, is that the University of Florida is pressuring him to shut up. Yes, universities generally support freedom of speech and academic freedom, but not all of them do so to the same extent, and when supporting a faculty member's academic freedom results in too much pushback, even the most dedicated university might have second thoughts. Pressure could be exerted in many ways, particularly given that Kevin Folta is the chairman of the Horticultural Science Department, which, believe it or not, probably makes him more, not less, vulnerable to pressure, because unlike tenured faculty, who are incredibly difficult to fire (and intentionally so), department chairs generally serve at the pleasure of the dean. The university might not be able to get rid of Folta from the faculty, but it wouldn't be too difficult to threaten his position as chair, either subtly or not-so-subtly.

I'm not saying that this is what happened. I openly admit that I'm speculating about what might have happened based on my experience with how universities work, which might not even quite apply, given that I am most familiar with how medical schools work. In fact, I really hope that this is not what happened. I hope that the University of Florida actually did support Folta completely, making his decision to withdraw from public advocacy unrelated to pressure from his administration. Again, I can't blame the guy for deciding to withdraw, knowing just a little of what he was facing and having had only a taste of it myself in comparison. Indeed, I recently found out that his home address was published in a local Gainesville Craigslist anti-GMO ad aimed at Folta's mother and asking her if she was ashamed. So it's quite possible, likely even, that this sort of harassment is what tipped the balances in his decision. Only Kevin Folta knows for sure what factors led him to make his decision.

Over the years, I've noticed many traits that various antiscience cranks share in common, be they antivaccinationists, quacks, anthropogenic global climate change denialists, or anti-GMO activists, and that is an obsession with ad hominem attacks. They can't win on the science because science doesn't support them; so they attack the man—or woman. The tactics they use include online harassment, harassment of families, legal thuggery (as Steve Novella recently suffered), and, of course, harassing them at work by contacting their supervisors or administration. The idea behind this last tactic is to annoy the offending skeptic's boss to the point where he pressures the skeptic to knock it off. This tactic is depressingly effective when the skeptic works for a private company that can fire an employee at will, less so against academics. That's not to say that it never works against academics, but universities tend to value academic freedom and freedom of speech for faculty. Of course, if harassment of one kind doesn't work, maybe another type of harassment might. If harassment at a science communicator's day job doesn't work, maybe a bogus lawsuit or online public attacks might. Whatever the tactic, the idea is to intimidate the critic to silence, or at least to make speaking up so painful that the critic thinks twice about it. At the very least, other scientists who see what happened to, say, Dr. Folta might decide speaking up is just not worth the consequences. Again, that's the idea.

I wish Dr. Folta well and thank him for all that he's done in the service of science. I also hope that a day comes when he decides he can re-emerge and re-enter the conversation.

oracknows Thu, 11/05/2015 - 03:30

Categories

Education

These tactics are those of people who know they are losing the struggle. Biotechnology is here to stay and sooner or later the public and yes, even the members of the Food Babe Army are going to realize they are being lied to. I even feel a little sorry for the FBA members because they are some of the real victims. They are paying to be frightened, paying for useless supplements and paying for useless books.

Something is terribly wrong with a system that allows a level of harassment that essentially results in silencing speech. This is alarming and I’d like to know more about what led to Folta’s decision; whether it’s strictly personal or more along the lines of what you speculate about?

I think I’ll write the U of F and express my dismay at their seeming lack of support.

There should be a mechanism in the FOIA to prevent such harassment as well. One person’s right-to-know should not remove another’s right to free speech.

That's terrible about Folta: I'm sure that Mikey will be congratulating himself about it in the next 5 or 6 posts. Food Babe will be thrilled with herself.

Fortunately, the legal tactic doesn't seem to be working ( Novella, Deer) HOWEVER that can disrupt people's lives for months or years as well as cost money in some jurisdictions.

Beautifully written, as always Orac.

Up here we have a fee for information searches of this type (for gov't related info). If the search time is over a certain level, the requesting party is charged a fee based on the estimated length of the task. Some think that is unfair, but other crank organisations have routinely and regularly dug for "dirt" in this manner.

There should be a mechanism in the FOIA to prevent such harassment as well. One person’s right-to-know should not remove another’s right to free speech.

I agree that there should be protection against the harassment, but I think it should come from the institution being FOIA'd, not the act itself. It's not inconceivable that there are circumstances under which exactly the same request really would be for information the public had a right to know.

And drag though it might be for the University of Florida to make a cause out of it, I'm sure they'd find the organizational and financial resources to push back if institutional self-interest were at stake.

Yep, those jerks will stop at nothing to make life impossible for people who they deem to be their enemies. Even "small potatoes" are targets of attacks that turn out to be annoyances which end up having a chilling effect on said "small potatoes."

A couple of months ago, someone posted all of my personal information on the "Vaccine Resistance Movement" Facebook page and I got a few interesting phone calls, and one where I was threatened not to go to Texas or I'd be shot on sight. (I've been to El Paso numerous times since then.) I'm still blogging, and I'll still write about the stupidity of antivaxxers the world over. It's on them if they do something bad, not on me.

But that's just me. I'm sure Dr. Folta thought long and hard about this, and I don't criticize or question his logic. That said, I'm afraid Vani Hari et al will now see this as a good way to silence dissent.

Vani Hari already knows siccing her "Food Babe Army" on critics is an effective tactic. Her gloating is likely to be epic. Also, no doubt he feared for his family, given that anti-GMO activists had taken to publishing his home address.

Corporate money are corrupting our system on every level from a little science like this to our government where you look there is a trail of money behind these things. If you be promoting something and you got perks for it then you are going to be not writing it independently. You can not be calling for shots when you are paid in some form by the special interest like Monsanto. Everyone knows what Monsanto is and who does not is just not informed or has been directly or indirectly connected to the company. GMOs are very controversial the least to say and when this guy took money from the company which makes gmos and he writes about gmos but does not disclose it then we have no transparency and independence.

Everyone knows what Monsanto is

ALL HAIL MONSATAN!

GMOs are very controversial the least to say

Wait, so the bare fact that something is controversial means that it is evil and involved in a nefarious conspiracy? Homosexuals are pretty controversial. Are scientists who study various facets of homosexual behavior mere puppets of Big Gay?

As I note in detail elsewhere, even our highly esteemed and entirely splendid host is being called a GMO/ vaccine shill and "Murdoch blogger".**
Anyone can say this : doesn't mean its true.

** Adriana Gamondes - AoA.

The funny thing is, the agreement between ScienceBlogs and NatGeo ended at least a year ago. Do you see any NatGeo logos or anything else linking Sb to NatGeo? They're gone because we are no longer affiliated in any way that I'm aware of with NatGeo. Other than a cash infusion that kept Sb going through some hard times, the whole NatGeo thing turned out to be a bust. We were hoping for opportunities perhaps to write for NatGeo; they never really materialized, with maybe one or two exceptions. The site never got a revamp. Oh, well...

The pressure might be internal, as well. I am an avid reader of science and skepticism blogs, which inevitably bring up the anti-science crowd regularly. Some are mostly or even entirely dedicated to debunking the nonsense that spews from that quarter.

While I enjoy reading these, the practical effect is that I am regularly exposed to some very, very dumb ideas and the people behind them. Even though I am not personally being targeted, just knowing how self-willingly some people wallow in ignorance is depressing. I find that, every few months, I have to take a break from reading them, or it actually begins to affect me.

The Heather Dexter dust-up is a prime example; while it is great to see such ignorance exposed to the world, it is infuriating to be keenly aware that there are children being made to suffer so needlessly. Worse, she is proud of it. And even worse, others of the same ilk are proud of her, too.

These are people living a life of privilege beyond what was available to the richest person in the world 150 years ago. and that is how they choose to live it? In paranoia, ignorance, and denial? It's just so frustrating, and it doesn't even affect me directly. I can't even begin to imagine what it is like for Dr. Folta.

@ Orac:

I know but think of the matrix of interconnecitons Gamondes can dream up if she only avoids that fact.
At least she didn't illustrate the article as is usual.

Long-time lurker writing in to (hopefully) clear up some FOIA issues. I'm actually a lawyer, though I do not play one on TV, who deals exclusively with my state's public information act. Given that U of F is not a federal agency, the request for Folta's e-mails almost certainly came through the Florida equivalent of the federal FOIA. States can and do try to put some limits on frivolous public information requests by setting fees, requiring the requestor to pay for the costs of obtaining the information, sending the request to the state attorney general's office for review, etc. I'd assume Florida has some safeguards in place, but it's more a matter of knowing what options are available because this stuff is complicated. You don’t know how often I hear from other attorneys who have no idea what they’re doing.

@darwinslapdog: unfortunately, the idea behind FOIA is that more information from public agencies is better, and the motives of the requester don't figure in. It can be and is abuse, but I don't see that changing (the most common abuse is not actually to attack critiques but by businesses to find out information about competitors).

Mike@10: Oh cry us a river. Your total lack of concern for the malicious silencing of critics speaks volumes. You ain't got the wits or stones to bring evidence to a science fight, so you harass their families and employers instead.

Protip: nobody here trusts large profit-driven businesses like Monsanto or GSK further than they can throw them. That's why they're told to show hard evidence for their claims and even then are still regulated up the wazoo. How about calling out the more outrageous, unrestricted, and also very profitable graft going on right under your own noses in the "healthy living" movement, like the Food Fraud and Noxious News? Or are you all proud of your double standards?

Sally @ #16. Some states, like the one I'm in, will hand everything, baby AND bathwater, to whomever requests it. Sucks up vast amounts of my time, and all we ever get out of it is bad press, because the requesters have a nasty agenda.

Before anyone goes and checks my travel itinerary, I have not been to El Paso "numerous" times since that doxxing thing happened. Just a couple. Geez!

The thing about Dr. Folta and his "COIs" is that what he wrote was true. If he were straight-up lying to us about GMOs and was getting all of his money from Monsanto, then that would be totally different than educating us about GMOs and getting money via grants given to his school or via reimbursements for talks.

COIs are in the eye of the beholder, as we can clearly see.

Sadly, I am all too familiar with the kind of harassment and terrorism that is used to shut up those who speak the truth. I have been blogging about fraud and scams for over a decade, and have been sued multiple times by companies who wish to silence me. The suits have ranged from nuisance suits all the way up to a suit demanding $270 million.

These people know the tactics are effective. Others who are interested in the topics I write about have stopped writing because they fear these lawsuits. They're expensive and time consuming (the $270 million lawsuit took 5 years and almost $200k in attorneys fees to clear my name).

All of the suits against me have been baseless and unethical, but they have scared others, and they have definitely decreased my desire to speak out about frauds and scams.

If those of us speaking the truth all stuck together and refused to back down, the harassers would lose their power. But that's easier said than done. After a while, you just start to feel like there is no point to fighting the fight when the costs are so high.

COIs are in the eye of the beholder, as we can clearly see.

Indeed, BS Hooker wrote in a journal devoted to scientific ethics about alleged pro-vaccine conflicts of interest while falling to disclose his own conflicts of interest: Hooker made exactly the same dishonest representation of his conflicts of interest,/i> as he did when his actions resulted in the retraction of his recent article in Translational Neurodegeneration.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4128611/

Sally wrote:

Long-time lurker writing in to (hopefully) clear up some FOIA issues. I’m actually a lawyer, though I do not play one on TV, who deals exclusively with my state’s public information act. Given that U of F is not a federal agency, the request for Folta’s e-mails almost certainly came through the Florida equivalent of the federal FOIA. States can and do try to put some limits on frivolous public information requests by setting fees, requiring the requestor to pay for the costs of obtaining the information, sending the request to the state attorney general’s office for review, etc. I’d assume Florida has some safeguards in place, but it’s more a matter of knowing what options are available because this stuff is complicated. You don’t know how often I hear from other attorneys who have no idea what they’re doing.

That does not seem to be the case here. This is how Folta describes it at his blog:

So, for to meet this request, my university has to pull all of my emails after 2012 and have legal types go through them, one-by-one, to make sure nothing they turn over has sensitive information. It is going to cost a fortune.

[snip]

Second, it is enormously expensive. Universities have funds set aside for such things, but in the days of lean budgets, it is unfortunate that tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars have to go to malicious nuisance requests. These are not investigating specific impropriety, they are looking for something to cause harm to reputations of public scientists. It is a taxpayer-funded fishing trip for a "gotcha", nothing more.

The threats, harassment, and ultimate silencing of our few voices of rational thought is terrifying. I've read what happens to bloggers who've been targeted; I had to google "swatting" the first time I saw it and it was appalling. I don't know how to counter all the crazy or protect advocates but I sure wish someone could find a way.

I'll keep sharing and supporting the amazing ones we have left and the brave new voices to come.

Food Babe can't even spell FOIA.

Just once I'd like to see Yoga-Mata Hari and the others of her ilk stand up in a court of law defending themselves from a libel suit.
Here is the broad definition of libel from a Cornell University webpage:
"Definition: Libel is a method of defamation expressed by print, writing, pictures, signs, effigies, or any communication embodied in physical form that is injurious to a person's reputation, exposes a person to public hatred, contempt or ridicule, or injures a person in his/her business or profession."
I'm not a lawyer, but it looks like a good fit to me.
Since many of those creeps make money off their own lines of foods, "supplements", etc., I wonder if there is some aspect of trade law that might apply.
Attorneys out there,please comment.

Ironically, the Wall St. Journal (which has published numerous op-eds on the dishonesty and idiocy of the anti-GMO movement) apparently sees nothing wrong with FOIA fishing expeditions designed to intimidate scientists, as long as they disagree with the science in question.

A regular columnist is applauding the House Republican gambit to subpoena e-mails of climate change scientists, on the theory that this will reveal politically motivated manipulations of data, because these people couldn't genuinely be convinced of harmful man-made climate alterations.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-next-climate-scandal-1446594461

Speaking of FOIA harassment, when will subpoenas be forthcoming from the "whistleblower scandal" types, demanding every e-mail ever sent by anyone to, from and within the CDC?

“Folta compares the strength of the scientific consensus on GM safety to the consensus on climate change …”

Orac,

What’s your take on the French meteorologist being fired for questioning the ‘hype’ around climate change?
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/03/europe/france-weatherman-sacked-climate/

Do you think NOAA should continue to refuse to comply with the Congressional subpoena for emails and internal correspondence relating to NOAA’s ‘no global warming pause’ finding?

A mob is only as wise as its dumbest member. And, sad to say, these mobs often aren't that wise even at the top.

"These are people living a life of privilege beyond what was available to the richest person in the world 150 years ago. and that is how they choose to live it? In paranoia, ignorance, and denial? It’s just so frustrating, and it doesn’t even affect me directly. I can’t even begin to imagine what it is like for Dr. Folta."

So well stated. In a parallel vein, I have often chewed my tongue off at the realization that the internet, the most valuable information tool in the history of mankind is most commonly used to view Kardashians.

Ugh.

*Language warning*

Bugger. Buggery, buggery, bollocks.

Sorry about that...just needed to vent. The world just got a little less sane. :(

I have been following Kevin Folta's science advocacy for quite some time, first with enthusiasm, then with growing dread as the attacks against him got worse and worse. I feared this day was coming. I appreciate your thoughtful and sympathetic post today - on one hand it is such a sad thing, but on the other hand, how can one blame Kevin Folta for toning down? He has a responsibility to his family and to his students.

But there's no doubt this is a loss, on two fronts. We lose a rational, sensible advocate of science, but also - who knows how many fans of Folta (like myself) will now think twice about taking up the baton? Just today I lectured my class on myths about food and farm, inspired by Kevin Folta's example, but at what cost to bring the same message to the broader community?

"But there’s no doubt this is a loss, on two fronts. We lose a rational, sensible advocate of science, but also – who knows how many fans of Folta (like myself) will now think twice about taking up the baton?"

Not to mention the third front, which is the psychotic loons who are threatening people will feel emboldened to escalate such tactics due to the perceived 'victory'.

But there’s no doubt this is a loss, on two fronts. We lose a rational, sensible advocate of science, but also – who knows how many fans of Folta (like myself) will now think twice about taking up the baton?

That's exactly what antiscience bullies like The Food Babe, Gary Ruskin, and various antivaccinationists who've tried to intimidate me to silence want. It's part of why they do it. If they manage to force a man like Folta to be so worried about his his family and career that he concludes his only viable option is to retreat to private academic life, not only do they remove a thorn from their side but they send a message to anyone else thinking of following in Folta's footsteps. Animal rights activists are particularly good at this because they go beyond Internet harassment, to face-to-face physical harassment by holding noisy protests outside of researchers' homes.

I am just pseudonym and wrote in local sceptic org's forum where I made personal list of hoaxes that should get our yearly national hoax-prize. I mentioned (generally) D vitamin pills that were just measured hoax (too little D-vitamins were found). But that was only tenth on my list. No companies mentioned.

Soon local dietary supplement seller had my pseudonym with another one (just reader who wrote on Science-magazine forum) listed on his website that he's gonna sue us. Actually he said he is "considering" to sue us. He hanged us loose noose.

But I was not afraid. Friends and net-friends were amazed and laughing. Later the seller said that he had talked with his lawyer and gave up.

But this episode showed us that freedom of speech is in danger here too.

@Old Rockin' Dave: I'm not an attorney, but the short answer is that it's hard for someone who is a public figure to sue for libel in the U.S. The bar is high, and rightly so. That, in turn, also protects those who speak up from losing frivolous suits - though not from being sued.

Let me know if you want the long version.

OK, I'll bite

@ SN

What’s your take on the French meteorologist being fired for questioning the ‘hype’ around climate change?

Well, in a first pass, doesn't look good for freedom of speech.

On the other hand, he did speak using his credentials as the TV weatherman; not while doing his job, but still making it clear where his job was during interviews he did to promote his book. So his employer has some rights to decide if he wants to keep an employee who is embarrassing him.
Something similar did happen before, but with an IT guy from a French private TV company, after he criticized a controversial law about media copyright.

And as it happens, this weatherman's opinion is based on some questionable interpretation of some facts.
As an example (from CNN):

In it, he also questioned the findings of leading climate scientists, and argued that France actually benefited from a number of advantages linked to a warming climate, such as better weather and improved grape harvests.

Well, my view of the recent French summers and winters is not that pink-tainted. If by better weather you mean canicule and drought, and if grapes are the only fruits you care for, yeah, sure.
He is also asserting that warmer winters would mean less flu cases, and less lethal outcomes from the flu. That's bullshit.
Last winter was warm, but that didn't stop the flu from killing people. More than usual (to the tune of 18,000 more), according to the quotes in an article in Le Monde (in French).

AFAIK, no-one stopped him from publishing his book or giving interviews. That would be censorship. A little xkcd strip summarizes well the distinction, as I see it.

tl;dr: I'm not that comfortable with someone losing his job for his opinion, but since he was arguably making a fool of himself and using his job as a position of authority, I think his employer was within his rights to tell him to go find his own soapbox.

The posts about Heather Dexter's medical neglect resulted in reports to CPS and her blog post being taken down. These were good things for the safety of her children as well as the children of her blog's readers. I think this is probably the same thing the FBA's foot soldiers believe they are doing.

The leadership is where the fault lies. Food Babe rouses her rabble for the sole purpose of turning a profit. But the ignorant masses of her army are likely much more similar to us minions than is comfortable to acknowledge.

The leadership is where the fault lies. Food Babe rouses her rabble for the sole purpose of turning a profit. But the ignorant masses of her army are likely much more similar to us minions than is comfortable to acknowledge.

"Ignorant" being one of the key differences. About some things, not all, obvi. But I have in fact thought about the fact that if I really did believe that GMOs were a monstrous corporate evil, set on poisoning everybody and enslaving farmers and so on, it would be wrong not to fight tooth and nail against GM technology. Same goes for the anti-vaxxers, too. The problem is that they are wrong about what they believe. Objectively so. Because of ignorance. (Which is one of the three poisons.)

One other difference is that I do my own damn bidding. :-)

re " psychotic loons who are threatening people will feel empowered"

'Fraid so.

Unfortunately, I know a little about sceptics being sued for telling the truth. In 2008, a physicist wrote to a public radio station which allowed an altie free rein making outlandish medical claims resulting in the aforementioned loon inviting him on air to "debate"- he did so and wrote about his host and his fabled doctorate on his blog which GOT HIM SUED.
After several years, the case was thrown out.

An hiv/ aids realist more recently wrote about an opportunist who misled people about the virus and meds. He was sued as well. Eventually another blog's legal team assisted him and the case was thrown out.

In Folta's case, his critics are mercenary entrepreneurs who have mountains of gall to talk about money exchanging hands in any way. They make loads of money. IN fact, Adams's worth would be hard to determine because I believe he registers his companies in Taiwan. He has multiple businesses sprawling over the internet for years. Ms Hari is also on her way to becoming financially successful with a book deal.

I think that sceptics should find ways to publicise these business operations in great detail- only today I heard a woo-meister call out his troops so that they would ferret out corruption in science. They should start with him ( although what he does isn't science).

To show you the kind of person Folta is:

About three years ago I taught a freshman seminar about how we lay people deal with claims in the media having to do with food. I'm decidedly a non-expert, an English teacher and part-time farmer, so I teach students how to be skeptical, how to seek out sources they can rely on.

Two of my students pursued a group project on GMOs. I told them about Folta's website and they contacted him. And he answered. This full-time professor and busy public speaker took the time to write a response to an inquiry from two college freshmen in Maine.

I'm shocked and horrified by what is happening to him now.

Orac, please consider printing and sending this column to the new U. of Fl. president. It might help to counter pressure the bunk they have been receiving. The 2 nasty commentors nonsense just might be eyeopening as well. My booth at the Haile Market will have an I support Folta sign for a few weeks. Thanks for writing this.

If you want to see despicable, check out the Food Babe's Twitter feed:

People on the right side of history don't quit. #FoodBabeArmy— Food Babe (@thefoodbabe) November 5, 2015

And:

Awww. Nice mention of the terror we evoke... However, I just want to be clear, I am not against Biotechnology. I... https://t.co/L04cfd1Hz2— Food Babe (@thefoodbabe) November 5, 2015

Food Babe is a bully. Telling someone they're wrong (as you believe it to be) is fine; sending attacks and harassment designed to silence is not fine.

It's the difference between making rude jokes on the internet about people, and stalking/threatening to kill people - one is annoying, but legal, the other is profoundly eff'ed up and wrong. FB is the latter.

The funny thing is, the agreement between ScienceBlogs and NatGeo ended at least a year ago.

More than two, if AoA's own commentariat is to be believed.

It might have been that long ago. Time flies, you know. I'd have to dig deep into my e-mail archives to determine the date NatGeo and Seed let their agreement lapse.

What a shame, although in retrospect not a surprise.

Dr. Folta was one of the speakers at a McGill University science symposium about a month ago, as was Dr. Offitt (as was Orac a few years ago, I believe). Since this whole FOIA e-mail "scandal" was just breaking at the time, he felt compelled to preface his presentation (and take away valuable time) with an explanation. He got choked up at several points and apologized, explaining that all the hostility and threats were taking their toll on him and his family. It really humanizes the issue when you hear from the victim himself about the effects of bullying. He's not some guy on the internet; he's a real human being.

It's even more of a shame considering how entertaining a speaker he proved to be, a natural performer. Rather than hide behind the podium and merely read out loud the content of PowerPoint slides (as all the other speakers did), he wore a headset mic and wandered the stage, engaging the crowd, being both informative and funny when appropriate. He took a poll at the end and several people admitted they had changed their minds about GMOs based on his all-too-brief presentation.

It's too bad his natural talent to teach and entertain and his easy rapport with audiences will be wasted.

Food Babe is a deluded individual with a hoard of gullible followers. The same is true of Dr. Mercola and the Weston A. Price Foundation. Even when presented with irrefutable facts contradicting their statements, they choose not to believe them. Why? Because to do so would undermine the credibility they have managed to create in the minds of their followers, who apparently lack the skills required to do their own research and to discriminate. By changing their opinion on a topic, they also run the risk of losing fanatical followers to another purveyor of half-baked nonsense, only too eager to feed the emotional fervor of the scientifically illiterate. The whole thing is like a bad B movie from the 1950s where rivals stir up the primitive peoples of a foreign land or planet with truth on the one hand and deliberate deception on the other. The only difference is that our real world deceivers are so dense, they often believe their own bull.

A bit off topic, but I wonder how the anti-GMOers are going to react to treating cancer with genetically modified immune cells:

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-34731498

Two follow-up points:

Dr. Offit, not Offitt. I hate misspelling names.

The McGill symposium speakers are always professionally videotaped, multi-cam, and the content of the entire two-day event is posted on the McGill website. I urge anyone interested to find the video of Dr. Folta's appearance.

Link to the videos of the 2015 McGill speakers:

https://www.mcgill.ca/science/events/trottier-symposium/webcast

And what an all-star lineup in 2010: Orac, Goldacre, Randi and Shermer. Wish I was a skeptic back then; i wouldn't have missed this.

https://www.mcgill.ca/science/events/trottier-symposium/2010

Lighthorse #50

You beat me to it! I popped in to post a link to that story and ask the same question.

I suspect there will be a lot of handy wavy and "Ooooh look! A squirrel!"

@Murmer #53: And let's not forget Bullwinkle J. Moose!

@Lighthorse and Murmur: Go Wassamatta U!

Some good news about harassment of scientists.“Charges laid against B.C. man who called for death of ex-Fukushima researcher” http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/charges-laid-again…

More commentary on "DG" ( misspelled) at AoA-

" How do these people sleep at night? They have actually offed doctors who treat children and yet they snivel about accountability questions"

They can " still see the black rectangle with inner yellow lines that is National Geographic" ( app) so therefore....

Very sad.

Sad to see Kevin Folta bowing out. Personally, I gained good understanding of science, GMO science, how science works, how science interacts with industry, etc from Dr Folta. So, here's a big thank you to Kevin.

Also, a thank you to Orac for the immeasurable knowledge and understanding you impart.

It is horrible that a scientist can be bullied by quacks. I am frustrated that we seem to be slipping into a dark age where pseudoscience is more believable than real science.

I was not aware of this guy and his talks. But being a follower of the GMO debate, it looks like I've missed something, and his pulling out of the debate sounds like a blow against objectivity.

Here in Germany, being anti-GMO is mainstream. Being anti-GMO has so much going for it: you get the feel-good factor, and they congratulate themselves for standing up to the multinationals and for showing "Zivilcourage" (roughly: kicking against the pricks, having the guts to stand up to authority). This is absolutely laughable, because you could easily get flayed alive over here for expressing a pro-GMO opinion.

I will resist the temptation to go on about the role of the media in this, suffice it to say that one of their number noted once that many of them consider bias in these matters to be a virtue.

It is a bad thing when scientists get harassed. However, it is also a bad thing when people concerned about Monsanto ( remember the Schmeiser case? ) are bullied with a lot of name calling when they express concern about GMOrganisms. I am not an anti-vaxxer. I am not a climate change denialist. I am not an HIV denialist. But, apparently, in the eyes of this author, I am some sort of nut case because I am suspicious about Monsanto and Monsanto's related companies and products and the really awful politicians associated with the company. When I read that Monsanto tests the proteins produced by their genetic modifications for allergic response, I am cheered. But when I realize what a ruthless company Monsanto is, I don't know how much trust to put in their data. On balance, I suspect that the foodees are a little crazy, but I knowing that Monsanto controls much of the food that I eat does not cheer me at all. Knowing that Monsanto modifies plants so they can put more of their brand of herbicide into the biosphere does not cheer me at all either.

No, you're not a crank because you're concerned about Monsanto's business practices. However, anti-GMO activists often conflate Monsanto's less-than-savory business practices with the conclusions of the actual science. Indeed, that's what you're doing here. They are not the same. Whether Monsanto is a horrible company or not is a separate question from the science that supports GMO safety, much of which has been done by independent scientists and institutions other than Monsanto. Also, I didn't say that anti-GMO activists were antivaccinationists, creationists, HIV/AIDS denialists, and anthropogenic climate change denialists. I said that they were like antivaccinationists, creationists, HIV/AIDS denialists, and anthropogenic climate change denialists, because they are. They use the same sort of fallacious arguments, and their first instinct seems to be to discredit the person rather than the argument.

I stand by my comparison of anti-GMO activists to antivaccinationists, creationists, HIV/AIDS denialists, and anthropogenic climate change denialists.

Shorter story:
Folta couldn’t take the heat, so he got out of the kitchen.
His desire for comfort and protection exceeded his passion.

At least Folta kept his job, unlike the Frenchman in #28.

SteveP: "it is also a bad thing when people concerned about Monsanto ( remember the Schmeiser case? ) are bullied with a lot of name calling when they express concern about GMOrganisms."

I remember the Schmeiser case, which some anti-GMOers cite as an example of Monsanto allegedly bullying a farmer over accidental "contamination" of his crop by a GM plant. The reality is that Schmeiser deliberately selected Roundup-resistant canola plants at the edge of his property, saved the seed, planted 1,000 acres worth of GM canola and refused to pay Monsanto Canada the license fee to which it was entitled. He lost a Supreme Court judgment which found that he had violated patent rights, the same as would have happened if he'd deliberately used a non-GM patented variety without paying a required fee.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeiser

Orac: "I didn’t say that anti-GMO activists were antivaccinationists, creationists, HIV/AIDS denialists, and anthropogenic climate change denialists."

There's a great deal of overlap between these groups, as a bit of Google research will indicate. The correlation is proportional to the degree of illogic and conspiracy-mongering used in anti-GMO arguments.

Correct, but people can also compartmentalize. They can be total cranks in one area and reasonable in others. It is true, however, that there is a phenomenon that has been dubbed "crank magnetism" in which susceptibility to one form of woo seems correlated with susceptibility to other forms of woo, but most people do compartmentalize to a fair degree.

SN, what a load of crap. Folta chose to keep his personal life from affecting his professional life. Whereas: the Frenchman you talk about allowed his personal life to affect his professional. Just because Folta has moved away from publicly fighting for truth does not mean his passion has dimmed.

Also, some people just aren't cut out for enduring the sort of harassment Folta received. If I were to suffer that level of harassment, complete with multiple abusive FOIA requests, I don't know how long I could continue to do what I do. I've suffered my share, but it hasn't been unrelenting in the way it had become for Folta. It comes and goes, with long breaks in between where the only harassment I suffer consists of random insults from the antivaxers. I can deal with that without even thinking about it. I generally just ignore it. However, abusive FOIA requests, ads targeting one's family, and the like, these things are much harder to ignore.

Don't you love it when anonymous commenters sneer at science advocates for caving in to cowardice?

Shorter story:
Folta couldn’t take the heat, so he got out of the kitchen.
His desire for comfort and protection exceeded his passion.

See Noevo, In fact you are completely and utterly ignorant about why Kevin decided to take a break from his public advocacy of science.

But then you are just one more ignorant science denier.

It is a lot easier to stay in the game when you have no hard built reputation to lose.

On a lighter note ( for your reading pleasure):

TMR presents Nora Nightmare -
Teaching a "Skeptic" What "Critical Thinking" Really Means

the sceptic is Brian Dunning.

The post and comments illustrate a bit of what sceptics are up against

Oh, I saw that. I was tempted to apply some not-so-Respectful Insolence to it, but decided (at least for now) that other things interested me more.

Don’t you love it when anonymous commenters sneer at science advocates for caving in to cowardice?

I don't actually. (Yes, yes I know you were being ironic)

But you are correct. It is a lot easier to make disparaging comments when you use a pseudonym or a series of pseudonyms and the comments cannot be sheeted home.

In the past few years I have made the decision that I really need to stand by all the public comments I make. This is now the only place where I don't use my full name attached to any comments I make. That is for historical reasons, rather than anything else. Perhaps I should change here? My identity here is possibly the second worst kept secret on the internet.

I have decided that as a well-established and well-published scientist, I want these charlatans to know how I specifically think of them. Posting under your own name also means you think twice before writing something. Would I be comfortable saying that to the person's face?

I accept there is a risk, but unlike Orac, I am in the comments section so a lot less visible. I have, more than a decade ago now, had a threatening phone call to my home address. That is why the home phone and a lot of other stuff is no longer in my name. People can call me and threaten me on my mobile if they like. I have also had some interesting e-mails (including from that imbecile Clifford G Miller and I do hope he is reading this) over the years and know that a former Head of Department got some. But there has been nothing like the sustained attacks that Kevin Folta has received over the past 6 months.

I really feel for Kevin.

This is just a post to allow Orac to approve my comments.

I really should be putting my full name to these things.

However, anti-GMO activists often conflate Monsanto’s less-than-savory business practices with the conclusions of the actual science.

Yes! Some activists oppose GMO agriculture on the basis of Monsanto-et-al's business practices alone, without going to the unscientific scare stuff about 'Frankenfood' dangers. And they do, at least, have a case worth considering. I feel sorry for these folks though, because they get drowned out by the GMO-poison bullslingers, and as a whole the movement for progressive agricultural economics has becomes so conflated with naturalistic fallacy nonsense that third parties and the public can't separate them.

This kind of thing is not just an anti-science problem. Many (most?) legit social movements are targets of co-optation by extremist cranks. In the 70s and 80s, InCAR would try to take over civil rights demonstrations, SWP fringies would try to take over strikes and labor demonstrations. This year, self-styled 'Anarchist' thugs tried to turn police violence protests in Berkeley into brick-tossing and fire-setting melees.

The genuine cooks are often bolstered by agent-provocateurs. It was a truism in the anti-Vietnam war movement that the guy at meetings talking the most hard-line violence was almost certainly a Fed. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the anti-GMO forums have been infiltrated with folks working for a 'dark' PR arm of the bio-tech industry, pushing for more 'Poison! Poison! Conspiracy!' craziness.

The anti-war protests I went to as a young-un in the 70s, and the Democratic-Socialist labor activists I worked with in the 80s had people doing crank monitoring, working to keep the crazies away from the rank-and-file, and clarify the difference in message and purpose to all. Without that kind of diligence, legit protest can easily go off the rails. In this, it strikes me that the anti-corporate-Ag activists with legit beefs against 'Big Biotech' have been utter failures, too ready to cozy up to anti-science CTs, and self-promoting messianic opportunists like Vandana Shiva. Sad, sad, sad. :-(

"Correct, but people can also compartmentalize. They can be total cranks in one area and reasonable in others. It is true, however, that there is a phenomenon that has been dubbed “crank magnetism” in which susceptibility to one form of woo seems correlated with susceptibility to other forms of woo, but most people do compartmentalize to a fair degree."

" Over the years, I’ve noticed many traits that various antiscience cranks share in common, be they antivaccinationists, quacks, anthropogenic global climate change denialists, or anti-GMO activists, and that is an obsession with ad hominem attacks."

So, in your universe, describing people with opposing views to yours is "susceptibility to woo"? I guess that technically that is not an ad hominem, but it is hardly any better.

One point you did not seem to notice was that the people currently profiting from GMO technology do not have a stellar record as far as working towards a sustainable world agriculture system.

Creating, for example, herbicide resistant GMO crops as a ploy to sell more herbicide is hardly what I would call a laudable activity. In fact, I think that it may actually be considered unethical and unintelligent by future generations of human beings.

My gut reaction is that the overall risk to humans from GMOs may be low at this point in time, but the cavalier attitude about creating new GMO products for relatively quick profit echoes things like fossil fuel energy, chrome plated bumpers (think hexavalent chromium poisoning of the environment) and Freon refrigerants. Just saying...

@Dorit Reiss, #37:
It sounds like it hinges on just how much of a public figure Folta, Orac, et al, are.
But even public figures can be libeled. The columnist Westbrook Pegler libeled the journalist Quentin Reynolds, as much a public figure as anyone at that time, and Reynolds won the largest libel award in US history at that time. Corporations can sue for defamation, and I can't think of anything more public than doing business with general consumers. The first example I dug up was an auto dealership. Pretty public.
I would think that a scientist defending his science would not be considered as much of a public figure, with a few obvious exceptions.
There's also the matter of intent. If the intent was to harm the targeted individual by attacking her livelihood, I would think that would also override the public figure issue.

To ChrisP #74:

“It is a lot easier to stay in the game when you have no hard built reputation to lose.”

I was thinking exactly the opposite.

That is, it is a lot easier to stay in the game when you HAVE a hard built reputation to lose, a hard built reputation to defend.

It’s why you have a crazed Richard Dawkins all over the place, or a pathetic P.Z. Meyers all over here.

There’s also the matter of intent. If the intent was to harm the targeted individual by attacking her livelihood, I would think that would also override the public figure issue.

No. In order for a (limited-purpose or general) public figure, to make a showing of defamation, it is necessary to demonstrate "actual malice," which – despite its name – has nothing to do with why the statement was made.

^ I don't know offhand whether tortious interference could cover some of this territory, but there's still the question of actual damages.

@ Chris Preston:

I figured that you - as ChrisP- were Chris Preston of other locales.

I'm a semi-pseudo, using 2 of my 4 names: I know too much about harassment and therefore am careful. I'm not sure but I might be traceable- under my full name- because I bought and sold properties a few years ago- all written up on the net . I wouldn't want *certain* people to know where I live.
I am self-employed and don't have a layer of institutional protection surrounding me.

I am not Denice Walter of Hobart, Tasmania -btw- I hope no one bothers her.

From my current perspective, I think I should have used my 2 last names - both masculine personal names- because it sounds so incredibly, hilariously, innocuously whitebread - Walter "Howard"**
but my feminism wouldn't let me. Now I think otherwise.

People often react to whether you're male or female rather than to what you say.

** or suchlike

@ SteveP - I don't think I've ever encountered a person (or organization, website, etc) who could reasonably be considered an "anti-GMO activist" who's objections didn't boil down to the fallacious and pseudoscientific appeal to nature. The anti-corporate angle only gets trotted out after someone calls them out on the science, and even most of that is either wrong or applies to modern agribusiness in general (or even all businesses in general.) The fact that they not only believe easily-refuted misinformation without bothering to fact-check, but generally continue to repeat it even after they've been corrected, is itself evidence that they are basically looking for excuses to justify their pre-existing antipathy to something they don;t understand rather than making a reasoned argument. After all, that's why they're called "anti-GMO" and not "anti-Monsanto" or "anti-capitalism."

Of course, people who care enough about GMOs to be considered "activists" are in the minority - the bigger problem is that the misinformation they deliberately perpetuate trickles down to the the general public, who don't care enough to look up the facts but are worried enough to, for example, support anti-GMO legislation or pay more for products that say "no GMOs" on the label (and that, of course, is the dirty little secret of the anti-GMO lobby - its just as motivated by money as Monsanto is.) You, for example, seem to be a reasonable person, and yet you've already repeated several incorrect or misleading anti-GMO talking points. Dangerous Bacon has already pointed out that the Schmeiser case isn't the indictment of Monsanto that it's so often assumed to be. Be honest now, because I'm genuinely curious - did you actually read the case before you left that comment? If not, what had you been told about it, and by whom, and why did you believe them? If you did read it, on what do you base your not-quite-an-assertion that it demonstrates unethical business practices on the part of Monsanto?

The rest of your comments fall under the "apply to agriculture and/or business in general" category. "The people currently profitting from GMO technology do not have a stellar record as far as working towards a sustainable world agriculture system?" Do tell! Neither do the people who currently profit from the sale of cars, or houses, or furniture, or practically anything else that gets manufactured in the modern world, including most of the trendy new "eco-friendly" products. How come nobody's using the bald fact that companies sell products in order to make money as de facto evidence that those products are tainted/unsafe/something man was never meant to tinker with - unless the product is GMOs? The answer, of course, is that all of those other products are familiar and therefore assumed to be safe (even when they're not) while GMOs are, to most people, unfamiliar, the product of a technology they don't understand, and therefore assumed to be dangerous (even when they're not.) Information (or misinformation) that confirms this intuition is taken at face value, while information (or misinformation) that challenges it is ignored. It's that approach to reality that antivaxxers, anti-GMO activists, climate denialists, etc, share, and that scientists and skeptics have to actively fight against - not because we're somehow above it, but precisely because we're just as susceptible to it as anyone else.

It is my understanding that the funding of the one man, US Right To Know organization's funding comes from the Organic Consumers Association. A group aligned with Adams, Mercola, etc. http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/glp-facts/organic-consumers-assoc…

This is why I am so scared to publish my pro-vaccine children's book...(still WIP)

I am going to go crazy anonymous when I start a site dedicated to attacking CAM.

"I stand by my comparison of anti-GMO activists to antivaccinationists, creationists, HIV/AIDS denialists, and anthropogenic climate change denialists."

Anti-science people also stand by the comparison, often linking GMOs and vaccines. Read this piece from Greenmedinfo, for example called "Connecting the Dots: GMOs and Vaccines."

http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/connecting-dots-gmos-and-vaccines

@ ChrisP

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the anti-GMO forums have been infiltrated with folks working for a ‘dark’ PR arm of the bio-tech industry, pushing for more ‘Poison! Poison! Conspiracy!’ craziness.

If so, it seriously backfired. Europe* is not going to adopt anytime soon GMOs, neonicotinoids or what-have-you. Public opinion is very entrenched against them and politicians from all sides are deeply committed to keep the ban on them.
It would actually be politic suicide to appear the sightliest pro-GMO.

* Well, France for sure, very certainly Germany, and I'm pretty sure most of Western Europe countries.

"the cavalier attitude about creating new GMO products for relatively quick profit echoes things like fossil fuel energy, chrome plated bumpers (think hexavalent chromium poisoning of the environment) and Freon refrigerants."

I'm not sure how developing golden rice to prevent blindness in the Third World from vitamin A deficiency, GM papayas to save the livelihoods of Hawaiian farmers, genetic modification to save the lives of children with leukemia and so on, all fit into your quick-buck scenario.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28454-gene-editing-saves-life-of…

It would be nice if the anti-GMO crowd would take each case on its merits and not shout "Monsanto!" as an all-purpose philosophy.

@ Yvette:

Right.
Gamondes hawked Brogan's piece at AoA a few days ago. Similarly, TMR's latest project, web television/ telethon - video # 103- discusses the GMO-vaccine connection and Seneff's brilliant prediction that soon 50% of children will have an ASD. ( I only watched about 22 minutes. Even I have limits)

Here in Finland situation is that many immigration experts/scientists are now silenced. Themselves.
They can't stand on hate speech and harassment or even threats they get through social media, phone or mail if they happen to say something in tv/radio/newspaper. Many experts are quite young women so that they are more timid, I think.

Also some foodstuff scientists have got nearly as much harassment or hate as above so that they don't like chat/debate in internet forums any more. It's also waste of time.

What gets me is the temerity of those who will not listen to reason -- I'm assuming because they are so convinced they are right and we are wrong. Of course, there are those who know that's the situation and simply don't care because they make money doing what they do in the organic food industry, public speaking, books, etc. But those who simply dismiss plain and simple facts without regard for them and actually believe the crap the organic food industry spouts is astounding. Either they're addicted to venting outrage or they have such an utter lack of humility that if they draw a conclusion (even based on whacked-out website info), it cannot be wrong. There have been a number of anti-GMO studies that gave me pause -- until I looked into them and found them to be without merit. And that's been a recurring theme.

People often react to whether you’re male or female rather than to what you say.

Yes it is indeed interesting the way people react to the perceived persona on the internet. Sadly, posters who are perceived to be female get exceedingly bad treatment from some people.

After the episode mentioned above, I started commenting on the internet under pseudonyms. It was even more complicated that not wanting people to find out who I was and harass me. It was because I was commenting on medical blogs like this one. I think I might have mentioned that I have two children with disabilities. I was doing this more to protect them than me. Now they are young adults and it is less of an issue. One thing that I have learned is that the overwhelming majority of those who make threats over the internet are simply cowardly blowhards. That doesn't mean there may not be a risk and all hate mail sent to my e-mail address (of which there has been hardly any lately) ends up in the hands of the police. I also have the advantage of spending most of my time in the antipodes. While I am sure the frequency of loons is probably not less here, the lower population means they are not as thick on the ground.

Back to the opening point, I do find that there is a certain deference passed my way on account of the fact that it is clear there are topics that I know stuff about and I am not just some random dude posting on the internet. I noticed that with lilady as well. The combination of what she wrote along with the fact that she was so passionately proud of being an RN meant that even the die-hard antivaxxers took her seriously.

Being out there as yourself on the internet is not for everyone. It is a brutal, brutal place at times. I have largely retreated from the climate change discussions, in part because the science deniers there are the most uncivil and vitriolic Gish gallopers I have ever run into. I am much less knowledgeable about atmospheric physics than I am about biochemistry and it is just too much hard work.

I enjoy your posts and observations Denice, so keep them coming.

@ ChrisP

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the anti-GMO forums have been infiltrated with folks working for a ‘dark’ PR arm of the bio-tech industry, pushing for more ‘Poison! Poison! Conspiracy!’ craziness.

That wasn't me, but Sadmar.

Having met some of the people who push the "poison, poison, Conspiracy!" in real life, I have no doubt they exist on the internet. There is no need for conspiracy theories that they are biotech infiltrators.

I agree with most everything you write, but since I'm new to your blog, I'm totally flummoxed by your use of the term "anthropogenic global climate change denialists." I assumed that because you were pro-science that you would be pro-research on this front. The alarmists told us back in the early nineties that their state-of-the-art, 1980s computers had come up with this model that we must worship as if it were an idol. If that idol is threatened in anyway, the scientists and advocates receiving grant money would do everything in their power to be sure that the model created by the 1980s computers would not be questioned. I distinctly remember them carefully laying out all the scenarios that might happen because of this disturbance in the Force, including the weather actually becoming colder and the polar ice becoming thicker, all due to "global warming." With only a few years behind them, they declared the "science is settled." What? We have the Theory of Relativity, the Theory of Evolution but this new global warming thing is a FACT? This is when I became a skeptic and when I knew that we had been had.

They have been forced by the real weather to change the name, they are trying their best to manipulate data, but eventually the reality deniers will again change to the next "the sky is falling we are all going to die" scheme. This is the way it is and always has been since humans began.

I don't believe that GMOs are that bad, gluten-free is a scam, vaccinations save lives and New-Agers are all nuts, but please, if I misinterpreted your phrase and assumed that you are one of those sheep that follow the glowing cloud of the warmers, I apologize.

Anthropogenic climate change denialists deny the scientific consensus using cherry-picked studies, misinterpretation of existing studies, deceptive arguments, and outright misinformation. They quite rightly fall into the same category as antivaxers, creationists, quacks, and anti-GMO cranks. That doesn't mean they are antivaxers, creationists, quacks, and anti-GMO cranks (although there is not infrequently considerable overlap between these groups), but that they are cut from the same pseudoscientific, conspiracy theorist cloth. Oh, and you also have no idea what a theory is in science. Hint: It's not a half-assed guess, the way we use it colloquially. In science, a theory is at the highest level of certainty and takes considerable evidence from multiple lines to reach that level of certainty.

Also, whenever someone refers to someone defending the scientific consensus as "one of the sheep"—come on, say "sheeple"; you know you want to!—it's a damned good indication of belief in pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. If my saying that offends you, I do not apologize.

Chris: I thought it awfully bizarre anyone mistook my comment for something you'd say. To clarify:
A 'conspiracy theory' claims 'X' actually happens/happened, and is generally outrageous. I only suggested a plausible possibility. Of course, there are oddles of genuine “Poison! Poison! Conspiracy!” folks out on the net. The goal of agent provocateurs is to push social movements farther toward the margins, especially into illegality, for the purpose of discrediting them. It's hardly a conspiracy theory that such folks have routinely employed throughout history: the anti-war movement, the labor movement. During the police shooting protests in Berkeley this last year, two plain-clothes Berkeley cops were caught red-handed participating in vandalism and trying to turn peaceful protestors toward violence. However, as I also noted, 'authentic' crazy fringers were doing the same thing at another location.

There was a joke on the left that near the end of the Vietnam War, most of the attendees at meetings of the remaining small violent cells were infiltrators from different agencies who didn't know each other were also under-cover. But that's hardly how it goes usually. Generally, looking at any POed politicized crowd, you're mostly seeing the real thing – but in some cases, the craziest talkers of provocation are out to discredit that rest of the crowd.

Of course, to you, anti-GMOs have no credit to begin with. But as several comments have noted, GMOs ag is already facing strict limits in Europe. The anti-GMO movement here is big enough that there's a real potential for some states at least to pass legislation the biotech firms don't want. If activists behind a position are seen to be materially dangerous loons, the wind can go out of the sails of their political goals.

Have you ever noticed that the most extremist nominally anti-pseudoscience comments here on RI are left by drive-bys, and the regulars will reply telling them to chill a bit, and back away from the edge? Like some of the really disgusting misogynist stuff about The Food Babe? Vani Hari probably has fans who would troll sites like this of their own accord, seeding hatred against Hari with a sock puppet, as a means of trying to make her legit critics look bad to fence sitters. Having really evil-sounding enemies is also a great way to rally the base. If such 'bad folk' on the other side don't actually exist (in enough numbers) a smart PR operative will make them up.

I hadn't really though about this in relation to any science-vs.-woo issue until I read that Prof. Folta has apparently received public threats on the Web of violence against himself, his lab, and his family. Of course, as you know, online anonymity lets many a timid pipsqueak IRL play blowhard bully bas-ass in comment threads. Still, for all the passions engaged for various woos, and all the vitriol heaped on some science-defenders, to me GMO just doesn't seem like the issue, nor Folta the guy to be genuinely targeted for that level of scary harassment.

Say Folta's credibility testifying against GMO legislation is shot after the Lipton piece runs in "the newspaper of record". and he's getting enough soto voce internal flack at his uni that he's ready to cool it anyway, and go back to the research and teaching that's his first love. Provoking virulent public attacks against him would generate sympathy for pro-biotech scientists, and delegitimate the anti-GMOs to 'neutrl' observers. Sure, some pro-science folks might be intimidated from speaking up, but others will be strengthened in their resolve not to be bullied. You just started using your real name, yes?

Again, I'm not saying I think biotech PR guys are pouring gas onto the fire, only that, by numerous historical precedents, there would be a rationale for them to do so...

And here we have the typical dishonesty of the GMO-fanboy:

"I’m not sure how developing golden rice to prevent blindness ....., all fit into your quick-buck scenario."

So what proportion of the GMO market consists of golden rice?
50%?
10%?
Oh, it's more like 0%.

So why bring it up?

Objections to GMOs can be valid - GMOs that are *not* designed to be healthy (that's pretty much 100% of what is actually being grown in reality), they are *not* designed to be good for the environment, they are *not* the most productive cultivar, they encourage excessive pesticide use, and they have caused the evolution of pesticide-resistance in weeds and insects.

Additionally, at least one GMO has caused deaths and harm to many thousands.

Kevin Folta was happy to deny any such harm has happened, he equated GMOs as carrying the same risk as any other organism (despite the fact they are effectively novel organisms which are not being passed through the same kind of safety testing as novel pharmaceutical products), and he equated GM with traditional sexual reproduction, which is utter bullshit.

No sympathy.
The GMO industry is a monster that is seeking to corporatise our food supply and in the process is careless about our safety.

Sadmar, you really need to try and get your point across in fewer words.

To address a few of your comments.

1. Anti-GM has no credibility with me on the science front. However, I do think there are legitimate questions to ask about deployment of specific GM technologies, just as there is for deployment for other technologies that come out of research, including medical research. Science and application are two different things.

2. Agent provocateurs among the anti-GM crowd. Frankly, there would be no point. The anti-GM crowd have got up to illegality all on their own.

3. Europe is a complex case. All of the GM crops that have been proposed have passed scientific review, but they get blocked based on political positions, many around trade. For example, all of the soybean traits get approved for import, but so far not 1 canola trait has been. The simple answer is that Europe is close to self sufficient for canola, but needs soybean to feed their livestock. If GM crops were not first seriously commercialised in the US, there may have been more application of the technology in Europe. Some European leaders pandered to the original groundswell of opposition, because it suited their trade agenda and meant they could fob off the WTO. Now they have become trapped by expectation.

@ Chris Preston:

Thanks for that.

Interestingly, I have occasionally been called 'Denis' by commenters. Right- me, ( the other) Chris and the rest of the guys.

I suppose I am successful because I haven't been sued or harassed yet.

What you said about the loon quotient in the antipodes vs the northern hemisphere-
I always wonder about that because they are quite vocal- the Perth Group hiv/ aids, the Wellness Warrior, the anti-vaxxers... we even had a chiro visit who has a Natural Hygiene maven..

so the "lower population means that they're not as thick on the ground" as you say
but I can assure you that they're just as thick otherwise.

Additionally, at least one GMO has caused deaths and harm to many thousands.

This what your talking about?
http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/gmodeath.asp

Additionally, at least one GMO has caused deaths and harm to many thousands.

No such thing has happened.

Additionally, at least one GMO has caused deaths and harm to many thousands.

Godzilla is not typically regarded as genetically modified.

Craig: "So what proportion of the GMO market consists of golden rice?
50%?
10%?
Oh, it’s more like 0%"

So why bring it up?"

Must I remind you that golden rice and the other examples were mentioned because they cannot be pigeonholed as examples of corporate excess? For example, the licensing agreement for golden rice means that about 99% of farmers in the proposed growing areas (those making under US$10,000/year) would be able to use the technology royalty-free and save the seed for future crops.

"(A recent study), published in the journal Environment and Development Economics, estimates that the delayed application of Golden Rice in India alone has cost 1,424,000 life years since 2002. That odd sounding metric – not just lives but ‘life years’ - accounts not only for those who died, but also for the blindness and other health disabilities that Vitamin A deficiency causes. The majority of those who went blind or died because they did not have access to Golden Rice were children."

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/golden-rice-opponents-sh…

Craig: "Oh, it’s more like 0%"

And you know why. Golden rice has been kept off the market because of fearmongering by anti-GMOers who are desperate to prevent any biotech agricultural success that cannot be demonized by yelling "Monsanto!" Test fields of golden rice and other GM crops have been destroyed by anti-GM activists, while they and their supporters claim that the crops haven't been sufficiently tested. Meantime, randomly crossed "traditional" hybrids (including those whose genomes have been jumbled up via radiation) undergo no safety testing at all before coming to market. That doesn't bother Greenpeace and its allies.

Irony (a particularly sick form of it) abounds.

"The GMO industry is a monster that is seeking to corporatise our food supply"

Ooh, a "monster"!!!

This sort of bizarrely overheated rhetoric (along with the shocked, SHOCKED discovery that pesticide use leads to pest resistance) is what we've come to expect from diehard anti-GMOers, who've somehow failed to notice that agribusiness has had major corporate players and pesticide resistance has been a serious problem for decades before anyone invented genetically modified crops.

And you're calling _me_ dishonest? Seriously?

Thanks for posting though. It helps that you've emphasized anti-GMOer parallels with antivaxers (no-testing-is-ever-enough, proponents are tools of big corporations, bogus claims of harm etc.).

Craig's arguing that "at least one GMO has caused deaths and harm to many thousands" probably involves the supplement L-tryptophan and an outbreak of eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome that anti-GMOers have tried to link to genetic modification. The claim does not hold up.

http://academicsreview.org/reviewed-content/genetic-roulette/section-1/…

The subject came up in an earlier comment thread. Summary: the Japanese supplement company managed to kill people with its L-tryptophan, so they tried to blame the bacteria they were using in their fermentation vats for producing an unexpected toxin, rather than their own incompetent filtration / purification process.

Courts were not convinced.

"Dangerous Bacon

November 8, 2015
Craig’s arguing that “at least one GMO has caused deaths and harm to many thousands” probably involves the supplement L-tryptophan and an outbreak of eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome that anti-GMOers have tried to link to genetic modification. The claim does not hold up.

http://academicsreview.org/reviewed-content/genetic-roulette/section-1/…"

What on earth do you mean "doesn't hold up"?

- Was it a GMO? Yes.
- Did it kill and injure thousands? Yes.

If being pro-GMO means you have to demonstrate Denial in the face of these facts, you have no claim to being in the Science-Right on this issue.

"they tried to blame the bacteria they were using in their fermentation vats for producing an unexpected toxin, rather than their own incompetent filtration / purification process.

Courts were not convinced."

What courts?

Why did this *convenient* filtration procedure failure only affect one strain of their GMO?

Did they, or did they not, destroy the entire strain in response to the incident?
How does this tally up with the bullshit about it being a "filtration" issue?

"Dangerous Bacon

Must I remind you that golden rice and the other examples were mentioned because they cannot be pigeonholed as examples of corporate excess?"

...and nor can they be pigeonholed as examples of commercially-exploited GMO.

Let's stick with the GMOs that are actually being used to make money: they have encouraged pesticide overuse, and they have caused organisms to evolve
- not only pesticide resistance
- but also resistance to engineered toxins produced by the GMO itself.
Additionally, we have the small issue of gene-transfer into non-cropped species - weeds that now contain novel genetic material. What could possibly go wrong with that...?

It's bizarre the lack of caution or indeed scepticism being exhibited by GMO fan-boys.

– Was it a GMO? Yes.
– Did it kill and injure thousands? Yes.

EMS also occurred with non-GM L-tryptophan. It was in fact caused by the huge doses of L-tryptophan that were recommended by the ignorant health 'gurus'.

So the answer remains none.

@ Sadmar

My apologies for mis-attributing your and ChrisP's posts. I blame lack of sleep and my aging brain.

Read Craig pamphlets and tell me he is an agent provocateur.
In France, his views are mainstream. No amounts of "virulent attacks" will promote any form of lasting sympathy for scientists, especially whose tainted by any hint of a link to corporate interests.
"He accepted money from Monsanto" will always supersede in the public opinion anything you can come up with.
You pointed to ChrisP publishing under his name. But that's anecdotal, and you should have known better.
I know I got tired of being called an agent orange. Monsanto and the other big six can defend themselves, they got the money for it.
And most people are shruggies like me, not active proponents like was Kevin Folta.

It's just a pity assh0les like Craig and his green friends are happily putting us academic/non-corporate scientists in deep sh!t, ruining our research and sometimes our life, while all their puny acts only result in reinforcing BigAgro monopoly on the agribusiness.
Actually, in this light, you could be right, Sadmar: since the anti-GMOs actions mainly resulted in closing down local enterprises and disrupting academic laboratories, and didn't do much to impede the giant Monsanto, which is happily selling plenty of pesticides and non-GMOs seeds in Europe, one could wonder who Craig is really working for.

If you are not questioning the unsafe and opaque practices of the agribusinesses, then it is *you* that are tarring yourself with their brush. *Your* bad choice.

By refusing to accept that valid criticisms can be made of the way GMOs are being released into the biosphere, into the foodchain, and into our foodstuffs, you are aligning yourselves with the corporate lobby that has (in the USA at least) successfully spent up big to avoid scrutiny and to avoid any proper regime of safety testing of the novel products produced via GM.

By refusing to accept that valid criticisms can be made of the way GMOs are being released into the biosphere

And those would be?

successfully spent up big to avoid scrutiny and to avoid any proper regime of safety testing of the novel products produced via GM.

What percent of GM safety studies are conducted exclusively with agribusiness?

Craig: "Let’s stick with the GMOs that are actually being used to make money"

Oh, so you don't want to address the matter of golden rice, kept off the market due to campaigning and vandalism by anti-GMOers, while suffering and death from vitamin A deficiency continues in the Third World?
I can understand your not wanting to talk about that, or about the GM papayas that saved the day for Hawaiian farmers, or myriad other biotech applications that save lives in health care, in favor of ranting about how Corporate GMOism Is Infiltrating Our Biosphere, or some such.

Craig is unfortunately typical of the hardcore anti-GMOer who is ignorant (perhaps deliberately) of problems in agriculture like pest resistance that long predated genetic modification. In any case he refuses to be educated about them, or to learn that gene transfer between organisms happens commonly in nature without it being the End Of The Worruld As We Know It.

Having nonsense like this pollute the discussion makes it harder to have rational debate about actual issues. For instance, how do we convince farmers to place greater reliance on good agricultural practices like crop rotation, and not to depend heavily on the latest herbicide-resistant crop introduction?

Meantime,research into crops imperiled by disease and pests, for which we need genetically engineered varieties that don't have to be doused with large quantities of pesticide (like their non-GM counterparts)**, is being impeded by activists using false claims, scare tactics and ludicrously bad pseudo-research (i.e. Seralini, Carman).

**for instance, see opposition to Bt brinjal (eggplant), whose introduction has spared farmers from having to spray toxic chemicals twice a week to control rampant pests. As a result, health problems from all that pesticide exposure have markedly decreased. Meantime, anti-GMO activists who self-righteously cruise the organic product aisles at Whole Foods don't seem to care what happens to Third World farmers.

http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/06/11/bbc-panorama-program-b…
http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/08/14/activists-threaten-ado…

By refusing to accept that valid criticisms can be made of the way GMOs are being released into the biosphere, into the foodchain, and into our foodstuffs, you are aligning yourselves with the corporate lobby that has (in the USA at least) successfully spent up big to avoid scrutiny and to avoid any proper regime of safety testing of the novel products produced via GM.

You seem to forget what we didn't accept was the examples you provided that there was some inherent danger in GM as a breeding technique. I note that you don't even try and defend the claims you made, but simply change tack to a new claim.

You also seem to have failed to notice that several posters, myself included, have noted that there are issues worth discussing around the deployment of some of these technologies. Instead of addressing any of those, you simply rant about how the GM lobby has spent up big to avoid scrutiny. Seriously? There is far more scrutiny of GM food (ironically finding no problems) than there is of any other technology used in the food business.

Craig should spend some time reading the Applied Mythology blog but he probably won't. There are some interesting data there about how much pesticide is used on organic crops from the state of California. I just see the same old tired appeals to natural fallacy, conspiracy and no real analysis or nuance. Bertrand Russell said that passionate opinion in these matters is directly proportional to the lack of evidence (paraphrasing).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding was that gene transfer is one of the things that is researched pre-approval and is surveiled post-approval.

"Chris Preston

EMS also occurred with non-GM L-tryptophan. It was in fact caused by the huge doses of L-tryptophan that were recommended by the ignorant health ‘gurus’."

Oooh! I recognise that argument, I've seen it before - "Climate has always changed, so why blame humans for it changing now".
It's amazing how otherwise intelligent people suddenly become incredibly dumb when their cherished beliefs are challenged.
GMO-credulousness is a prime example.

Huge doses were not the problem with GM L-tryptophan. The problem was it was a novel organism and it produced a toxin that killed and injured thousands due to GM products being under-regulated.

"JDK:
....how much pesticide is used on organic crops from the state of California. I just see the same old tired appeals to natural fallacy, ...."

Hilarious.
Wants to talk about fallacies, kicks of with one of his own.

Take a step back and indulge in some self-criticism:
- are people entitled to question and criticise the goals and methods of a profit-driven industry?
- if your position is so sound, why are your "arguments" containing so much Denial, Deflection and Abuse?

"AdamG

November 9, 2015
By refusing to accept that valid criticisms can be made of the way GMOs are being released into the biosphere

And those would be?"

QED.

Oooh! I recognise that argument, I’ve seen it before – “Climate has always changed, so why blame humans for it changing now”.

I didn't see that argument in his comments--what I saw was evidence that the EMS is associated with the use of tryptophan (both GMO and non-GMO) rather than with the use of GMO-Tryptophan specifically.

Do you have any evidence that EMS is uniquely or even most frequently associated with GMO-tryptophan?

Do you have any evidence that EMS is uniquely or even most frequently associated with GMO-tryptophan?

Remember, it has to specifically be the fifth Showa Denko strain.

Craig: There is plenty to criticize in the profit driven methods of any enterprise and Big Organic has no immunity to this. Why do organic items source from India and Mexico and South America? Because Organic distributors don't want to pay farmers for the extra risk the farmers take in growing organic so find cheap farming elsewhere to maximize the return on selling organic. And yes, look it up, organic means pesticides - mineral based and pyrethrins, etc but pesticides. The control of food production is not where you think it is and much of what you think about farming is incorrect. Go to the link here http://appliedmythology.blogspot.ca/

Craig: "Take a step back and indulge in some self-criticism:
– are people entitled to question and criticise the goals and methods of a profit-driven industry?"

Yes. Which is why for example Whole Foods (whose revenue is not far behind that of Monsanto) is not exempt from criticism for its exploitation of phony GMO safety issues while issuing loads of recalls for food products whose contamination/hazards have nothing to do with GMOs.

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/product-recalls

It misses the point (spectacularly) to place emphasis on something supposedly being Bad because a corporate entity we don't like takes part in it (note that this is the same tactic antivaxers commonly use in condemning vaccines because "you can't trust Big Pharma").

By all means, take a whack at Monsanto or Merck when they do something underhanded. But don't pretend that an entire technology is irretrievably tainted by being associated with a profit-making endeavor.

http://appliedmythology.blogspot.ca/2015/10/taking-on-merchants-of-food…

the link here refers to a recent book against the Fear Babe and her misinformation campaign(s). I'll be looking for it. Kevin Folta wrote the preface.

Another one bites the dust to quackademic medicine

oracknows — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 04:00:00 +0000

Another one bites the dust to quackademic medicine

One of the most depressing things I regularly write about is, of course, the antivaccine movement. However, nearly as depressing to me is to watch the steady march of what I view as medical pseudoscience or even outright quackery into what should be bastions of science-based medicine, namely academic medical centers. As I’ve discussed many times before, it’s gotten to the point where a medical school, in order to remain accredited, has to teach a certain amount of so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), or, as it’s increasingly called, “integrative medicine” (or, as I like to call it, “integrating” quackery with science-based medicine). Of course, there are huge differences between how medical schools implement this requirement, with some trying to remain as science- and evidence-based as possible and others wholeheartedly embracing what I like to refer to as “quackademic medicine.” Medical schools that, sadly, fall into the latter category number among some of our best, including Cornell University (which is where Dr. Mehmet Oz himself is in charge of the Integrative Medicine program of the Weill Cornell Medical College and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center embraces quackademic medicine), Harvard University (Ted Kaptchuk), Yale University (David Katz), and UCSF, among others.

Still, periodically, I see credulous articles touting how this medical school or other has embraced quackery. This is yet another such article, which, although a few weeks old, popped up in my Google Alerts. It was entitled Exploring medical and healing options: Alternative medicine goes mainstream in the US. It’s a profoundly depressing article. You’ll see why in a minute. It starts out with a patient anecdote, which is typical for credulous stories of this type:

Kim Ricci is lying on her back on a table with hair-thin needles stuck in the hollows of her ears, five on each side. Several more puncture her wrists.

Ricci, 50, says she was surprised when her doctor suggested she get acupuncture to relieve the pain and discomfort she was experiencing after her breast-cancer surgery.

She was even more surprised when the therapy worked.

In other words, keep those acupuncture needles away from my lymphadematous arm!

The article notes, as I noted recently, that the University of Florida has embraced quackademic medicine. In particular, apparently the UF Health Cancer Center at Orlando Health has started an integrative medicine program last year, and at the University of Florida “course in alternative medicine is about to become part of the curriculum.” Worse:

At the University of Central Florida's College of Medicine, students are learning how to make unconventional therapies part of conventional treatment plans.

"It heartens me to see more doctors starting to treat the whole person rather than just cutting them and giving them medicine," said Diane Robinson, a neuropsychologist and the program director of integrative medicine at the cancer center.

Ugh. There it is, the “whole person” trope. As I’ve said many many times before, that’s a false dichotomy. Treating the “whole person” does not—I repeat, does not—require embracing quackery, pseudoscience, and mysticism. Yet, that’s exactly what promoters of such quackademic medicine would like you to believe, that you can’t treat the whole patient without accepting quackery. Yet, that’s the argument that Diane Robinson makes. Thus far, it would appear that UF Health Cancer Center at Orlando Health offers the usual woo, but nothing more quacky than acupuncture (which is, depressingly, quacky enough) and healing touch.

They also offer something I haven’t seen before, something that falls under the category of “mostly harmless,” but what’s not harmless is the rationale for it:

Modeled after the labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral near Paris, France, the labyrinth is located on the fourth floor terrace of UF Health Cancer Center at Orlando Health. We were the 2nd hospital in the country to begin offering a labyrinth for its patient/families, staff and local community. The labyrinth is an ancient healing tool used as a walking meditation or embodied prayer. Ninety-eight percent of walkers report feeling more peaceful after walking this simple path.

Walking the labyrinth can have a calming and restorative effect on blood pressure and stress levels.

I’m sure that it very well might be calming to walk the labyrinth, but this sort of language has no place in an ostensibly science-based cancer center. It’s as though UF is trying to become the University of Arizona.

Particularly pernicious is how supporters of “integrative medicine” have co-opted “diversity” and respect for other cultures in such a way as to justify anything that can be considered CAM or “integrative medicine”:

At UCF's College of Medicine, Dr. Lisa Barkley, assistant dean for diversity and inclusion, said, "We teach our medical students to incorporate complementary methods into their care plans along with more traditional approaches. It's important they understand other perspectives, alternatives and cultures."

Personally, I find this attitude condescending to other cultures. Just because someone doesn’t come from a white, “Western” culture does not mean that person is more susceptible to quackery. Worse, Dr. Barkley seems not to understand what does and doesn’t constitute good evidence, because later in the article, she’s quotes thusly:

This is exactly how Orlando Health's Robinson wants doctors and patients to use alternative therapies, she said, adding that good scientific evidence is emerging to support many alternative methods.

Acupuncture, for instance, has been shown to bring pain relief in animal studies, which would rule out a placebo effect.

Massage, yoga and mindfulness are also "very well supported by science for relieving pain, tension and stress," she said. However, other areas, including light, energy or magnet therapies, are "very questionable."

"Some treatments are not studied and not tested," said UCF's Barkley, who cautions medical students to note the line between evidence-based treatments and quackery.

Ugh. That’s a trope that really irritates me. It irritates me when Barrie Cassileth uses it. It irritates me when Lisa Barkley uses it. I realize that both Barrie Cassileth and Lisa Barkley think themselves to be science-based. They think that the modalities that they like to “integrate” with science-based medicine are somehow “different” from all that “quackery” that they disparage, but at their heart, they aren’t. That’s the problem. Much of that “science-based” CAM is based on exactly the same pseudoscience, the same pre-scientific beliefs, the same religious mysticism as the “evidence-based” CAM that they tout.

They just won’t admit it. And so the infiltration of quackademic medicine into academic medical centers and medical schools continues apace.

oracknows Mon, 06/30/2014 - 00:00

Tags

complementary and alternative medicine

medicine

Quackery

quackademic medicine

University of Central Florida

university of florida

complementary and alternative medicine

medicine

Modeled after the labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral near Paris, France

If the architects who had the labyrinth included in the design of the cathedral did it as a gesture of rebellion against the catholic authorities, it worked beyond their wildest dreams. I mean, they set up a pagan cult inside the cathedral, and now it's being exported oversea.
If it was just a cool design, to give something for the visitors to look at, it worked, too.

has been shown to bring pain relief in animal studies, which would rule out a placebo effect.

Because animals are too dumb to notice someone is taking care of them. That's why we were never able to tame horses, dogs, cats, birds...
Oh, wait.

Massage, yoga and mindfulness are also “very well supported by science[...]"

So much supported they are not alt-med at all. Well, unless given an esoteric explanation (using words like quantum and chakras)
Err, not sure about "mindfulness". What is it?
*googling*
Ah, "pleine conscience". A form of relaxation using meditation. Sounds OK, although I have a bad feeling the explanation is going to use "quantum" at some point.

I hate this need to add spiritual mumbo jumbo to an otherwise perfectly reasonable exercise regimen. When the instructor started talking about the spleen's meridian (and the liver's, the kidneys',...), it spoiled Tai Chi for me.

"sigh". I guess "adding spiritual mumbo jumbo" is a good summary of what "integrative medicine" is about.

Geez! Another one of the various institutions I've trained or worked at has fallen for this crap! At this point I think SCAM has infiltrated them all!

A labyrinth? Really? Somebody thought this was a good idea?

I get that some people would find walking in a labyrinth to be relaxing. But other people would start to panic if they get lost in the labyrinth, and that would probably have the opposite effect of what was intended. And if it's difficult or impossible to get lost in this labyrinth, that defeats the purpose of a labyrinth.

nothing more quacky than acupuncture (which is, depressingly, quacky enough) and healing touch

Healing touch belongs with homeopathy in the category of alleged medical treatments that any intelligent layman should know is bogus. Many forms of woo, including acupuncture, have been debunked because people with actual training in one or more relevant areas have performed studies demonstrating that the form of woo in question is, at best, no better than a placebo. Rare is the woo that is so obviously bogus that a nine-year-old girl's science fair project suffices to refute it.

I read that as Orlando's Heath Robinson. I was hoping for a really impressive machine involving lots of improbably pulleys and gears, and boots on the ends of sticks.

"improbable"

@Eric Lund

It is impossible to get lost in a labyrinth - this is what distinguishes it from a maze.

A labyrinth? Really? Somebody thought this was a good idea?

I get that some people would find walking in a labyrinth to be relaxing. But other people would start to panic if they get lost in the labyrinth, and that would probably have the opposite effect of what was intended. And if it’s difficult or impossible to get lost in this labyrinth, that defeats the purpose of a labyrinth.

Not to mention the risk of getting eaten by a minotaur.

Darn you, TBruce -- beat me to the punch (line).

Almost certainly the labyrinth is like the one many churches have (it is a craze of the last couple of decades to have labyrinth and I suspect a lot written about the antiquity of the current church use is complete hogwash) in that it is just a pattern on the floor. There is one in El Camino Hospital right in front of the information area, it may be calming for people waiting (or to keep the children occupied).

http://www.elcaminohospital.org/About_El_Camino_Hospital/Newsroom/Video…

When I took neuroanatomy class at Berkeley from Marian Diamond, she had just come back from a trip to China and was very impressed by acupuncture. This was around 1977. She showed the class slides she had taken of acupuncture being used. She had a hazy theory that the needles were somehow producing anaesthesia by flooding the nervous system with stimulation, but she admitted a major problem with that theory was that the acupuncture meridians did not correspond to nerves. I asked why it couldn't be placebo effect. "Belief can be a powerful thing," I said.

And to answer that, she pulled up a slide of a row of chickens in deep acupuncture sedation, as evidence it could not be placebo effect because animals won't have beliefs or expectations. I wish I had known then that chickens have a peculiar reflex by which they can be put into a trance-like state. Google "hypnotizing chickens" for lots of information about that. It's a real phenomenon, and you don't need any needles to do it.

On the whole placebo effect in animals thing, people also tend to conveniently forget about observer interpretation, and how that plays into the placebo effects recorded.

@Erp

Almost certainly the labyrinth is like the one many churches have [...] in that it is just a pattern on the floor.

For the Chartres cathedral, it is exactly this.
The French version of this WIkipedia article has a more detailed paragraph on the labyrinth. It was apparently made in the 12th century.

Apologies, I should have mentioned it in my previous post.

I was interested in alternative medicine when I was in medical school, long before it was taught as a subject. However, it was the dawn of the internet and I started reading about it on a newsgroup since blogs had yet to be invented. The believers were both completely clueless and already trying to sell their beliefs and then a couple of contributors named Orac and PJ Moran started contributing well written and reasoned posts which brought me back from the dark side.

I think that I could have made more money selling crap, though.

A few years ago, I spied a labyrinth in a woo-drenched Northern California town ( see Ukiah labyrinth/ OPAL) but am pleased to learn that it is part of an actual science-based project involving measurement of the earth's wobble.

But I'm sure most locals use it woofully.

The proponents of CAM love to hint that Western medicine is hostile to their methods for less-than-savory reasons, usually racism, cronyism, and/or greed. This puts them in the light of "fighting the good fight" against stuffy, outdated ideas.

I find this extremely frustrating, since the scientific outlook is actually the MOST egalitarian one; as long as your ideas can be proven to have merit, it doesn't matter where they come from. The problem is that the truly positive social changes over the last half-century have ingrained an attitude of "old ideas are bad" in a large part of our society, and the scientific method has become tainted by association. It's seen as cold and uncaring -- and in a sense it is, since all it is only concerned with what is true, not what is fair or just. But many people are simply unable to separate their view of how they think the world should work with how it actually does work.

Striving to demonstrate why CAM methodologies don't work can't be the answer; if showing something to be scientifically implausible would convince people not to use it, CAM wouldn't exist in the first place. Clearly, its proponents are not concerned with evidence or data. Maybe the solution is to convince people that "true" and "good" are orthogonal concepts, that being clinical is not the same as being uncaring -- that, in fact, it is being MORE caring, because it can actually help.

Stella B.,
Some people have made a great deal of money literally selling crap (probably NSFW).

Most of us do what we can, others can what they do...

Kreb @16 -- According to an article I read yesterday, exchanges have been set up where you can get hopefully healthy poop for transplantation as a treatment for chronic C. Difficile infection.

This sounds a little suspicious at first, but apparently re-booting the intestinal fauna by a fecal transplantation can almost instantly cure certain gut problems which kill thousands of people annually. The FDA is insisting on regulating it as an experimental treatment. It would seem that they should refocus their regulatory zeal elsewhere, e.g. to the "good" Dr. Burzynski.

"mindfulness"

Well, there's probably no one authoritative definition or method, which is what makes it problematic. However in it's essence, it should be just training your mind to watch itself and exert some self control instead of, you know, letting your imagination run wild and flapping around like a chicken with its head cut off. It's not that different from what you more or less learn as part of other activities.

Mindfulness training just provides specific exercises to help strengthen or habituate you to being focused and reflective... that is, to the extent that it's stripped of romanticized indulgences. It may help people cope with pain, but it's more about relieving the suffering that's brought about by being 'mindless'.

That's my take anyway. It's both more prosaic and requires more effort than people let on.

OT- but are the mindless meanderings of bigoted woo-meisters ever TRULY OT @ RI?
I think not.
PLUS I've been away and I apparently missed it

It appears that dear Mikey-poo doesn't like immigrants and thinks that they spread diseases.( Natural News, yesterday)

(-btw-this is the same guy who cherishes anti-vax woo-meisters and parents)

It appears that dear Mikey-poo doesn’t like immigrants and thinks that they spread diseases.

My standard reply.

"It heartens me to see doctors treating the whole person" Come on. If you (Diane Robinson, neuropsychologist) didn't like how doctors were treating their patients, why didn't you say something years ago? Or bring it up at medical schools? A doctor doesn't have to use woo to treat "the whole person" they can say hello and take a decent history.

From my experience, mindfulness can be a form of cognative behavioral therapy, which is a evidence-based treatment for some mental health issues. It can be full of woo, or it can be pretty woo-free, but still fuzzy-friendly.

Modeled after the labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral near Paris, France, the labyrinth is located on the fourth floor terrace of UF Health Cancer Center at Orlando Health. We were the 2nd hospital in the country to begin offering a labyrinth for its patient/families, staff and local community. The labyrinth is an ancient healing tool used as a walking meditation or embodied prayer. Ninety-eight percent of walkers report feeling more peaceful after walking this simple path.

The other 2% found themselves teleported across universes to Amber.

A local hospital has a labyrinth from 2007. For anyone who's been lost in the corridors of the hospital itself, an additional maze out in the courtyard is just adding insult to injury.

"Mindfulness training just provides specific exercises to help strengthen or habituate you to being focused and reflective… that is, to the extent that it’s stripped of romanticized indulgences."

I took a mindfulness class a few years ago, at the urging of my physical therapist. Much of it was just what you suggest: learning techniques to focus and to avoid anxiety-provoking thoughts.

And then there was the qi, which we "gathered in" as part of doing tai chi... that finished me off.

Has anyone ever explained why "treating the whole person" requires (to put it bluntly) denying reality?
I have probably related this before, but about 25 years ago I exchanged notes with the head of the Canadian Holistic Medical Association. I questioned why "treating the whole person" seemed to incorporate a whole lot of woo (phrased differently, of course). His answer basically was "We're looking into that."
Haven't heard back from him (or any one else, for that matter). Guess they're still looking.

@ hdb

The other 2% found themselves teleported across universes to Amber.

Note to self: find time to read Zelazny again.

Damn it it is all too depressing.

Science is getting a bad name. One particular branch is responsible, constant appeals to authority and the constant use of disgusting ad homs has finally blown back into their faces but unfortunately all science has suffered. The take up of science subjects in secondary and tertiary education has taken a dive in my country as a result.

The most alarming aspect I see is the re-emergence of measles as a public health threat. It is all unnecessary and as I said totally depressing.

Well off to my astronomy blogs where the constant appeals to authority are absent, where scientists respect each others views, make their finding known, show their methods for peer review and debate without hurling vicious ad homs. Oh and before anyone misinterprets that last sentence this particular brand of science is not the one I believe to be at fault. Hell from time to time even the commentators here can be civil.

I wish you luck in your endeavours Orac but I think I may spare myself the torment of reading how magical thinking is winning the war in future. Oh and thanks for all your articles on cancer quackery they have been useful in educating many beyond this blog.

Labyrinths werent just decoration, they were used for prayer stations, which i suppose is relaxing.
also in northern europe a tradition has it that the devil moves in straight lines. So walking a labyrinth would mean the devil could not follow your trail and would no longer trouble you.
later tests showed that whilst it may be effective for demons it is not effective against tax collectors or double glazing salesmen and so they fell out of favour.

However it might work against woomeisters. The chips on their shoulders make them less manouverable.

@Herr Doktor Bimler and Helianthus,

Unfortunately, La Tertulia (?) is no longer open in Santa Fe.

It used to be a good place to go for paella and other Spanish dishes.

Dedicated @26 -- There's actually no branch of internet science that is entirely free of invective. Just get on an astronomy blog that discusses the "Electric Universe" or plasma cosmology -- there's a community of believers out there who are sure that all of conventional astronomy and astrophysics are wrong. We (the professionals) call them cranks, when we bother with them at all -- and they certainly fit the description to a T. They, on the other hand, call us hidebound, brainwashed, etc.

The kudzu of quackademic medicine infiltrates the University of Florida

oracknows — Thu, 08 May 2014 05:00:40 +0000

The kudzu of quackademic medicine infiltrates the University of Florida

One of the themes of this blog since the very beginning of this blog is the threat to scientific medicine represented by a phenomenon that I like to call quackademic medicine. Although I did not coin the term, I frequently use the term and have done my best to popularize it among skeptics to describe the infiltration of pseudoscience into academic medicine, be it in the form of fellowships, research and clinical trials studying prescientific magic like homeopathy or "energy medicine," or even the offering of such services under the auspices of an academic medical center, thus putting the imprimatur of science on pseudoscience, prescientific vitalism, and outright quackery.

Here we go again.

It happened when I came across a press release. For some reason, academic medical centers are often proud enough of these programs integrating quackery into their cutting edge scientific medicine that they issue press releases about them. This time it's the University of Florida in Gainesville, hot on the heels of approving a new chemistry building to do—oh, you know, actual science—doing the releasing in a press release entitled New UF Health program blends holistic therapies, modern medicine. As it typical of such propaganda, it's chock full of the same deceptive language inherent in "integrative medicine," whose proponents represent it as the "best of both worlds," when in reality it represents the contamination of science-based medicine with pseudoscience. This is what I mean:

Acupuncture, meditation, massage — practices once considered “alternatives” to conventional medicine — are now becoming mainstream in hospitals and medical schools nationwide, and University of Florida Health’s Integrative Medicine Program is leading the way by expanding its services for patients.

As research continues to validate many of these ancient practices as effective treatments for chronic pain, nausea and stress, they’ve earned a new name that represents this unique partnership of conventional and holistic treatments: integrative medicine. This summer marks the one-year anniversary of the integrative medicine program at UF Health, led by the first fellowship-trained integrative medicine physician in Gainesville, Dr. Irene Estores. The program provides patients and staff with services such as guided imagery, medical acupuncture and yoga.

“Integrative medicine addresses the needs of the whole person — mind, body, spirit — in the context of community,” said Estores, the program’s medical director. “We’re coming back to our roots and honoring what was effective in other healing traditions and using that to be able to be more effective in caring for our patients.”

Ack! Not the "holistic" trope. Not the "taking care of the whole person" trope. Not the "integrative medicine is becoming mainstream" trope. As I've said many times before, being a good "holistic" physician and taking care of the "whole patient" do not require embracing pseudoscience or quackery. That is the false dilemma at the heart of integrative medicine and put on steroids by its practitioners like Dr. David Katz. Apparently the occasion for this press release was the one year anniversary of the founding of the integrative medicine program at UF. Sadly, the only thing that amazes me is that the program is that recent, that it's only been in existence for a year. That puts UF behind the curve. Unfortunately, UF appears to be making up for lost time, as it's offering integrative medicine services all over the UF hospital system.

The sad thing is, the integrative medicine program appears to have grown out of a potentially useful activity, Shands Arts in Medicine, an arts in health care program. Personally, I don't mind art programs in medicine. Art beautifies the patients' surroundings, and making art can be a fun activity for patients to help them take their minds off their illness. I do, however, have a bit of an objection to "art therapy." Art's a wonderful thing, but it's not really a specific therapy for anything. I really hate to see art be the impetus for woo like this, but the UF integrative medicine program grew out of its art program. Where did the money come from? Wealthy donors, who made "several key donations," of course.

If there's another thing I've learned from this is that employee wellness programs can be an excellent Trojan horse to get integrative medicine into academic medical centers:

The Integrative Medicine Program is also unique in that it’s an outgrowth of UF Health Shands Arts in Medicine, one of the largest arts in health care programs in the nation, Mullen said. After years of providing services such as massage and yoga to staff but not having the resources or medical expertise to provide these services to patients, Arts in Medicine received several key donations that helped establish the program.

The medical director is Irene Estores, MD, and I find her biography quite telling. She was a trainee in Andrew Weil's integrative medicine program at the University of Arizona. She's also a Bravewell fellow as well as an acupuncturist. How an MD would ever want to learn the quackery that is acupuncture, I have yet to figure out, but acupuncture is what I like to call the "gateway woo," which leads to additional interest in quackademic medicine. Even though it's nothing more than a theatrical placebo, people tend to be more willing to believe acupuncture works because it involves an actual physical act of sticking needles into people. Never mind that the explanations for how acupuncture "works' involve epic handwaving and special pleading, even as they try to brush aside the vitalistic origins of acupuncture, in which the thin needles stuck into non-existent meridians are somehow supposed to redirect the flow of "qi" (or life energy), to therapeutic effect.

So, yes, of course UF offers medical acupuncture. Pretty much every quackademic medical program offers acupuncture. It also offers meditation, massage, "wellness coaching" (whatever that is in practice), an a variety of other modalities that range from potentially evidence based to, well, integrative medicine consultations, with everything that goes with them:

Recommendations may include use of dietary supplements and botanicals, changes in eating and physical activity, mind-body procedures such as meditation, acupuncture and massage, and referrals to practitioners of other healing systems such as Traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurveda (a holistic medicine system from India), or homeopathy.

Homeopathy? Seriously? Homeopathy is The One Quackery To Rule Them All, and "integrative" doctors at UF are willing to refer patients to homeopaths. The same is true of practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurveda, but to a slightly lesser extent. Even though both medical systems are based on prescientific vitalistic thinking, for sheer ridiculousness it's hard to beat homeopathy and its law saying that diluting a remedy can make it stronger, particularly how so many homeopathic remedies are diluted away to nonexistence. In any case, homeopathy is something that no science-based medical school or academic medical center should have anywhere near it. While it's true that there don't appear to be any homeopaths actually working for UF (unlike a few places I've encountered), it's also true that integrative practitioners at UF will use them, which is almost as bad. A science-based practice would never refer a patient to a homeopath to receive his magic water under pretty much any circumstances.

I suppose, then, it shouldn't be too surprising that Dr. Estores characterizes her involvement in integrative medicine thusly:

Irene’s interest in integrative medicine grew out of self-exploration of other healing and belief systems, the deepening of her spiritual practice of prayer, self-reflection and meditation, and a mindful experience of both the good and bad things that have happened in her life as an individual and as a physician. She considers her practice of medicine as a vocation and a spiritual path.

Beware a physician who says medicine is a spiritual practice, who came to their beliefs through "explorations" and the "deepening of her spiritual practice." While it's true that religion coupled with a desire to help people often drive people to become physicians and that some physicians talk about a "spiritual" side to medicine, relatively few are the physicians who let it drive them into embracing practices that are not science-based to the extent that acupuncture, TCM, and homeopathy are not science-based. Dr. Estores' story does, however, suggest the close connection between religion, faith, spirituality, or whatever you want to call it and the embrace of non-science-based treatments like acupuncture. Unfortunately, more and more, this sort of mystical pseudoscience is exactly sort of quackademic medicine that is infiltrating medical centers like UF.

oracknows Thu, 05/08/2014 - 01:00

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Is this the same Florida university that tried to start up a chiropractic school several years ago?

I don't get it...shouldn't there be a host of doctors and scientists at UF that would oppose this sort of thing? Are MD's like you really in the minority? Is everyone too busy to bother fighting this sort of stuff?

@tgobbi

You're close, it was actually Florida State University.

http://imgur.com/SJbiUGu <--- campus map created by other faculty in protest of said chiro school.

http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1021206,00.html

Orac's last paragraph inspires me to ask:
is quackademic ( I also love the word!) medicine more welcomed in areas which are more populated by more conservative religious groups?

Andy @2: In many cases, it doesn't really matter what the doctors think. If the university's board of trustees (or equivalent body) wants it, it will happen. If some wealthy donor gives the university a bunch of money to create such a program, it will happen. If there is research money to be had looking into this stuff, it will happen (this is perhaps the most pernicious thing about NCCAM and OCCAM). If the university in question is state supported (which UF is) and the state legislature wants it, it will happen. Faculty don't really run universities anymore, particularly not R1 universities or state universities (UF is both).

@Andy

What Eric said. Money drives the creation of these programs. For the most part, the other physicians may not even know about the program's creation, and if they do, most are "shruggies" who figure there's no harm in it and don't really care, largely because they don't know anything about it or why it's wrong. it doesn't help that prestigious universities and hospitals like Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital and so on offer this stuff. It gives the impression that there must be something to it since they offer it.

The key to changing things is to give the administration of these places heat about it.

Unfortunately, the UF administration has always had more concern about the almighty dollar than they ever have for their faculty. There are some fine scientists at that institution and I'm sure this burns some of them up. I know a bunch of folks there who have just sort of thrown their hands up in the air when it comes to administrative maneuvering. They haven't been able to have an impact and are resigned to being rolled over.

This was probably approved after someone was shown the likelihood of profitability, donor revenue, etc. (not to mention the pandering to the scientifically and medically illiterate).
UF is not immune to questionable decisions made by those who sit around board room tables and only care about one thing - money.

I have some experience with some branches of conservative Christianity. They were highly skeptical of new age spirituality or foreign (Chinese, Indian) mysticism. They tended to add prayer and placing of hands to science based medicine.

is quackademic ( I also love the word!) medicine more welcomed in areas which are more populated by more conservative religious groups?

Anything New Agey is as likely as not to be condemned in such circles, I'd say. This guy is mainly on about yoga, but acupuncture and reiki are in there.

Narad, I know about that
but what I'm getting at is if these quackademic places set up in American cities where there are many evangelicans ( as opposed to the usual heathens and Anglicans/ Episcopalians) Notice that she talks about 'prayer' etc. This is a southern place, no?

I agree with Orac's last paragraph- quackademic medicine is an (evidence-free) belief system, more akin to religion not science. Anyone who really believes in it (acupuncture, homeopathy, naturopathy, chiropracty, aromatherapy, reiki, etc. ad nauseum) is intellectually unfit to practice medicine. Anyone who promotes it without believing in it is doing it for the money and is therefore ethically unfit to practice medicine. Either way, I would not want one of these quacks anywhere near me if I were ill.

is quackademic ( I also love the word!) medicine more welcomed in areas which are more populated by more conservative religious groups?

It depends on the type of alt med under discussion. Fundamentalists may be skeptical of Eastern mysticism and such, but they are neutral to supportive of other kinds of woo like homeopathy or touch therapy, and they are especially prone to the "pray harder" trap.

The Kellogg brothers, best known today as the founders of the cereal company that bears their name, were top rank woo pushers in their day, and religious nuts as well. The Road to Wellville is based on their careers as woo pushers. One of the alleged benefits of their Corn Flakes was reduced masturbation, although I suspect (N=1) that this claim is false.

This is a southern place, no?

Gainesville is in northern Florida, so yes, it is a Southern place. Southern Florida (especially Miami) is not culturally Southern, but the part north of the I-4 corridor (Tampa-Orlando-Daytona Beach) is definitely the South, and Gainesville is well north of Tampa and Orlando.

Having grown up in the South I can say that most of the conservative Christians I have encountered think of all Eastern mysticism as some sort of 'voodoo' or commie plot. I doubt they would be lining up. However, the upper middle class, well educated, money to burn, hippie types will be out the door wanting some of that 'integrative' medicine. Particularly the sort of semi-affluent stay-at-home mommy brigade and blog types. I have noticed that most of the 'mommy' groups on FB or similar range from accepting of woo to actively promoting its use among the members. Another good reason not to join mommy groups. The first being that I have committed the cardinal sin of going back to work after having my child. And the second, I didn't breastfeed him. Not for lack of trying, I am aware of the health benefits, but a lack of production of the necessary milk. So add to that I am a scientist who heavily supports vaccination and I am virtual pariah amongst the mommy groups. Oh well, back to work.

@Eric Lund. "(this is perhaps the most pernicious thing about NCCAM and OCCAM)"
Now I'm really bummed. I knew about NCCAM but until your post didn't know about OCCAM. Sad that the lesson of Steve Jobs and other less famous cancer patients and CAM victims have not been learned from whatever government committee spawned this bit of money grabbing. "Evaluation of Homeopathic Treatment for Hot Flashes in Non Metastatic Breast Cancer" is actually in phase III testing.

Fundamentalists may be skeptical of Eastern mysticism and such, but they are neutral to supportive of other kinds of woo like homeopathy or touch therapy....

Homeopathy is open to attack. All vitalism is.

Before we get too excited about proving a connection between the US South, evangelical religion, and alternatives to medicine, please consider that the Cleveland Clinic cannot reasonably be thought of as being in the south. The theory also does not hold up when trying to explain the popularity of homeopathy in London.

As a Gainesville-area resident, I find a couple of minor factual points in this piece which need clarifying.

First of all, the Shands hospital, though on a corner of the UF campus, is mostly an independent project (UF has a small [~10%] ownership stake, which facilitates sharing of programs and personnel, but relatively little say-so).

The internal politics of Shands are widely considered a nightmare, from top to bottom, and most health care workers in the area with a choice take jobs as the commercial or VA hospitals or smaller practices around the area. Through a multitude of shell organizations, Shands apparently played a major role in the shutting-down of the county-own hospital, but a lot of details seem to have been successfully hushed up.

The current president of UF is a (Jeb!) Bush appointee, whose first move on arrival was an attempt to squash the faculty union; he failed at that, but succeeded in effectively making all support workers de facto temps. Both UF and Shands respond very eagerly to big donors, but barely at all to community, labor, or student concerns.

The Arts in Medicine project, which emphasizes programs for children, has an excellent reputation, and lots of talented local creatives volunteer for it happily.

The Arts in Medicine project, which emphasizes programs for children, has an excellent reputation, and lots of talented local creatives volunteer for it happily.

Then it's sad to see it so corrupted by quackery.

@ Mephistopheles O'Brien:

I'm not guessing that woo is purely a fx of conservatism BUT that woo in more conservative areas might emphasis *prayer* whilst one in hippie-er LA might talk chakras and chi.

Actually it was the quote about Estores that sparked my curiosity: it seems tailored for a certain audience.

As you might know, alt media woomeisters try to incite both ends of the political spectrum- health choice is for the libertarians and Gaia-ness is for the liberals. Don't ask me about how they manage to keep this balancing act straight:
however one mercenary dork calls himself a "progressive libertarian" - so go figure.

Wow, in only a three week period both my current employer (CCF) and my residency program (UF) have released big news in "integrative" BS. I am so proud (sarcasm). Unfortunately I think this trend will only continue. I am not quite sure if my med school and fellowship locations have given in yet, but I don't have much hope.

It's time to play Translations:

'Recommendations may include use of dietary supplements and botanicals, changes in eating and physical activity, mind-body procedures such as meditation, acupuncture and massage, and referrals to practitioners of other healing systems such as Traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurveda (a holistic medicine system from India), or homeopathy.'

Translation:

Drink some orange juice, sniff some flowers, eat less and exercise more, and reduce stress. If those things don't help, then we'll frighten you into getting better with all these scary needles, and if that doesn't work we'll twist your arms and make you drink tea that tastes as bad as it smells. If all else fails we'll throw up our hands and give you some guru water.

Right!

I am ashamed of my degrees today. BS '93, MS '95, PhD '97, University of Florida. NOOOOO!

Dollar Dollar bills ya-all. Hospitals and other instutions of health care and not governed or run by Doctors of Medicine they are run by CFOs, Business and marketing types who see this type of alternative care going to another facility view the loss of revenue. Science and the actual quality care will be the baby with the bath water.

I am ashamed of my degrees today. BS ’93, MS ’95, PhD ’97, University of Florida.

Hey, I've got an X'90 (they really list those in the alumni magazine). Top that.

A Southerner's perspective:

I don't think it's fair at all to stereotype the religious from the South as more accepting of alternative medicine. I'm one of them and I'm VERY science/evidence based when it comes to human medicine AND veterinary care for our animals. Having worked at a University Hospital and having many friends who work at this hospital, most of them are very pro-vaccine, and pro-evidence/science based medicine.

My observation is that a lot of the nurses/other healthcare workers who are anti-vaccine, and lean more toward holistic medicine are the ones with lower education levels. I've started asking some of these people if they have had microbiology, immunology, or vaccinology and I haven't had one of them to say they have.

One of the reasons I started reading this blog was to counter the woo on veterinary forums. The woo is REALLY bad on veterinary social media sites. I so wish there were more people like the readers of this blog to counter the craziness on these forums, especially dog breed forums. I got tired of fighting and gave up. I personally don't think religious affiliation, income, nor geographical location has as much influence as maybe lack of education.

#11: "This is a southern place, no?"

No, as a matter of fact.

Gainesville--not the county or region, just the small university city--is a small community of liberals [sometimes nearly to the point of fanaticism], in the middle of the rest of NorthEast Florida.

With scatterings of conservatives here and there, of course (remember Terry Jones of Dove World Outreach Center? --but they left.)

So while the overall region's politics may be conservative, and it may sometimes appear that the area is conservative when taken as a whole--looking at national election results, etc--Gainesville itself is seriously to the left.

So my biases are clear, I approve of most of Gainesville's political agenda. I'm in the county, and wish I could benefit from a lot of the city's legislation. So I'm not saying this in criticism. But really, especially in contrast to the surrounding rural FL, Gainesville is crazy liberal.

A black woman, a white boy, and a PhD

terrasig — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:02:56 +0000

A black woman, a white boy, and a PhD

Twenty years ago this morning, I had to defend a body of work that contained this paragraph on page 24:

HeLa cells are a human cervical carcinoma cell line having a doubling time of 24 hr and were obtained from Dr. Bert Flanegan, Dept. of Immunology and Microbiology, University of Florida. HeLa cells were maintained as subconfluent monolayer cultures in minimal essential media (alpha modification; GIBCO) with 10% fetal bovine serum (GIBCO) at 37° under a humidified atmosphere containing 5% CO₂. Cells were maintained in logarithmic growth by subculturing every other day using 0.05% trypsin/0.02% EDTA and reseeded at a density of 5 X 10⁵ in a 75cm² tissue culture flask.

And with that, nothing more was said about the cellular system that led to the awarding of my PhD.

I am embarrassed by the omission of any reference to the 31-year-old Black woman from rural Virginia, Ms. Henrietta Lacks, whose aggressive cervical cancer allowed Dr. George Gey at Johns Hopkins to isolate and propagate the first, immortalized human cancer cell line.

I also find it telling that my advisor and my committee made no requests of me to better document the cells I used - no citation of the original paper by Gey's group or even the American Type Culture Collection source of the cells for Dr. Flanegan's lab downstairs.

Each Spring, we now hold memorial services on medical school campuses around the world to honor cadavers and their families who make first-year medical school anatomy dissection laboratories possible.

While cell culture gifts are much more detached, and usually anonymized, I've often thought that we basic scientists should take similar steps to honor those who have made our work possible.

This is one of the reasons that I am such an enthusiastic supporter of the upcoming book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot and why her 2006 New York Times Magazine cover story on human cells and tissues led me to seek her out to learn more about the origins of HeLa.

When I first started telling Rebecca how HeLa cells had spawned my doctoral work, I went through my CV and re-read some of the older papers where I had used the cell line. Much of my dissertation work on DNA topoisomerase IIα appeared in a 1991 paper in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. But I forgot that I also used HeLa cells as a source of human genomic DNA for the first paper from my first independent laboratory (in Molecular Pharmacology in 1995), co-authored with my first PhD student and first technician.

I note the journal names specifically because JBC was co-founded in 1905 by my 'nymsake, John Jacob Abel, and Mol Pharm is a journal of the American Society of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET), the organization established in late 1908 by a group led by Abel.

So while I have already acknowledged with "Abel" the history of my discipline, I find it only appropriate today to reflect on the life and legacy of the woman whose suffering gave rise to an unknowing gift, one that has touched the lives of thousands of scientists like me.

terrasig Fri, 11/13/2009 - 04:02

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Really? Seems a bit extreme to me. Even if IRBs allowed for naming of donors, it would have been completely infeasible to describe each of the CABG patients whose leftover saphenous vein, IMA and radial arteries were used for my primary cell cultures.

HeLa cells have an interesting story, but what about all the other immortalized cell lines that we use in the lab? How about all those primary cell cultures? It seems odd selecting one person to put on a pedestal.

Not just an interesting story. A fable, with a moral.

Jonathan: "extreme" or just you can't be bothered with acknowledging your work is made possible by others. "infeasible" or unwilling?

Over the course of three years, I think I used between 40 and 50 different primary cultures. Ignoring for a second the *enormous* ethical issue with naming the anonymized patients who donated these bits of tissue (the sort of thing an IRB would shut down a lab for in the UK) it would have doubled the size of my thesis. All sentimentality aside, I was doing pharmacology, not social science.

I also find it a double standard. Why should HeLa cells receive this distinction but not whoever was behind the A549 cell line? Or the BEAS-2B? Or any of the hESCs? You try doing the same with one of the hESC donors and see where that gets you? Given the way the NIH ethics rules have been written, you'd probably be blacklisted from receiving grant funding in the future.

Who were those rules (and the other IRB rules anonymizing patients) written by? Heartless men in white coats or the bioethics community? Have you ever met people who work in bioethics/ELSI? I have, they're not the heartless white coat types.

Hi, Jonathan - my call for acknowledgment of cell donors was primarily intended for tumor lines but you raise a good point about the far more common, and numerous, donations of normal tissue from people who don't die. I would never, never, ever suggest that we violate ethics regarding the identity of tissue donors and I'm sorry if my writing was unclear in that regard.

Perhaps what I'm proposing is not clear: I'm not asking that an author devote 10 years of her life to expertly crafting a 300+ page book on each and every person whose cancer cells gave rise to an immortalized cell line. I'm just asking, as I do of my students, that one take a moment to acknowledge in dissertations and papers, the original source of the cells. My larger call, for some sort of memorial service as is done for cadavers, might be considered maudlin by some, but I think is very important for basic scientists to understand that much human suffering was associated with the tools they now use. Places like M.D. Anderson and the NCI are, for example, places where dozens if not more human cell lines were established. Would it kill anyone there to have an annual, 30-60 min memorial service to honor donors of biological tissues, many of whom are no longer with us?

I have to disagree strongly with Jonathan that a double standard exists for HeLa cells vs A549s. I thought I knew the HeLa story too but realized, upon serving as a scientific reviewer for Rebecca's manuscript, that my knowledge barely scratched the surface of just how special these cells and this story were. It was the first immortalized human cell line and led to an amazing series of studies that fueled two Nobel Prizes, contributed to the development of the polio vaccine, and illustrates the chasm in racial attitudes in medicine that continues today. The cells are a connection to an embarrassing time in our history when tissues were taken from disadvantaged groups without consent, when blacks could not get care in white hospitals and, even at Hopkins, there were separate clinics, bathrooms, and water fountains for the "colored." This was not the 1890s but rather the 1950s, when my Mom and Dad were in high school.

Moreover, the cells have been used in about 60,000 publications and have taught us innumerable lessons about the need for cell culture hygiene due to their ability to contaminate other cultures and completely outgrow original lines. I could go on but when the book becomes available in February, I'd like to buy a copy for Jonathan so that we may continue this discussion.

(btw, A549s have been pretty important, too, especially in the field of epidermal growth factor biology - they were isolated at NCI in 1971 from a 58-year-old white man with adenocarcinoma of the lung - one member of the team was the internationally-recognized cancer biologist and current head of oncological sciences at Mt. Sinai, Stuart Aaronson.)

Medical sociologists are now pointing out that our past cavalier (and unethical) attitude toward clinical trials subjects continues to impact a great deal on recruitment strategies, particularly among African Americans patients. There remains a tremendous degree of misunderstanding and mistrust of the establishment that makes it challenging for the study of health disparities. The CISCRP Everyday Medical Heroes program is just one public awareness campaign ongoing to recognize the importance of clinical trials participants (which include the donors of primary tissue for your work).

20th anniversary of the disappearance of Tiffany Sessions

terrasig — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 15:02:01 +0000

20th anniversary of the disappearance of Tiffany Sessions

Twenty years ago, University of Florida junior, Tiffany Sessions, disappeared from her townhouse complex in Gainesville, Florida. What happened to her remains a mystery today.

The photo to the left shows Ms Sessions on the left as she appeared in 1989 with the photo on the right age progressed to how she would've appeared last year.

Please accept my apologies in advance for those put off by yet another bit of disproportionate public attention given to the fate of a pretty blonde young woman gone missing. While a graduate student, I lived for two years in the same complex as Tiffany up until five weeks before she disappeared. Along with a few dozen other UF students, we shared the same running route that bordered the pasture of the university's agricultural institute, out to Williston Rd., and then near the I-75 interchange. Some thought that she was abducted somewhere along her run, particularly with the proximity to this major north-south interstate, but others say she was last seen talking with someone in a car in the complex parking lot.

Her mother, Hilary Sessions, ha[s] viewed more than 170 dead bodies in the 240 months (and unfortunately, still counting) since she disappeared. [source]

Her father, Patrick Sessions, last week launched a website and blog dedicated to collecting news stories and clues about the missing woman, who would now be 40 years old. This morning at 10 a.m. EST, the Alachua Country Sheriff's Office was to have held a news conference potentially releasing information on a new lead in the case.

When this blogger thinks of all he has done over the last 20 years, including becoming the father of a priceless daughter, he feels a tremendous sense of loss for Tiffany's family - for what Tiffany was to them and what she would have become. Several other UF families have experienced the loss of their children but none have had to live with two decades of uncertainty.

We still remember. And we wish for Tiffany's family closure and much peace.

From Patrick Sessions:

"I'm hoping that you all will think about this and if you were in the Gainesville area or have any information about what happened to Tiffany, or if any of your friend's do, to please go to the links on the site and let the appropriate people know," Sessions said. "I really need your help and I really appreciate if you could pass this on. We can use social media to help solve this case and bring hope to many parents with missing children."

Deputies are asking anyone with information about this incident or any other missing persons orhomicide case to call Detective Bob Dean at the Alachua County Sheriff's Office at (352) 367-4161. Callers can also remain anonymous and be eligible for a reward of up to $1,000 for information leading to an arrest by calling Crime Stoppers at 372-STOP (7867). For those that prefer the internet, anonymous tips may be left on the web site at http://www.alachuasheriff.org.

ALACHUA COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE
SADIE DARNELL, SHERIFF
P.O.BOX 1210 GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA 32602
OFFICE (352) 367-4050 - FAX (352) 374-1816

terrasig Mon, 02/09/2009 - 10:02

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I don't think anyone will give you a hard time for this. But since you brought it up....

In November 2001 a neighbor of mine went missing. This was very close in time to one of these missing blond girl news fiascos in I think California. The blond CA girl was all over the national news in a big way as I recall. My neighbor, an African American 12 year old kid, was on the local news for a day or two. And that was it.

Thankfully, she was found alive and rescued the following January. She had been kidnapped by a 'stranger' (i.e., this was not a custody thing) who was a neighbor in the same apartment building, who also went missing at the same time. Somehow this clue did not work for the police at the time.

In 2002, another neighbor, again a young African American girl, was sitting at a table in her family's apartment two blocks northwest of my house. A gang-related shooting occurred nearby, and a stray bullet penetrated the house and killed Tyesha. Locally, Tyesha is a kind of hero, and much has been done and much has been made of this, but you know what would have happened if she was a blond girl from California. We'd have "Tyesha's law" or something.

None of this matters to the importance of remembering Tiffany, and I do not mean to take away from that at all. I wish her family peace.

Yes there is an uproar when media attaches significance to one disappearance rather than another. But they do not evaluate them even with all the publicity.

There is an ongoing problem of disappearing college students. Brian Shaffer, Maura Murray, Michael Negrete, and Justin Gains are examples. These disappearances have been noted for more than a hundred years beginning in 1880's France.

Abduction, murder, and accidents are top news. But occasionally one of them returns in an altered mental state, Ahmad Arain, Matthew Wilson, and Hannah Upp did that. None of the media has thought that they may all be connected by a simple problem of physiology capable of causing mental breaks for knowledge workers. Grad students qualify for this problem.

There is little in the story that points to abduction. She might be still alive. If this is true she could be in a mental institution or among homeless. There have been missing students and adults found in those places recently.

How sad ... I'm glad you posted.