palmd | April 30, 2009I'd like to remind everyone that the PalCast, after a brief hiatus, is up and running again. Given the chaos of life and work (and the fact that work is likely to get even busier very, very soon) the schedule may be a tiny bit erratic, but tune it...you might like it.
The PalCast (coined by Isis the Scientist) is my weekly (more or less) podcast about medicine, real life, and anything else I feel like. The link above allows you to add it to listen in any way you prefer, including iTunes. I'm promoting it because I like it...I don't have sponsors or anything (although if Peet's Coffee wants…
palmd | April 30, 2009Physicist Matt Springer might not know much about borborygmi, shifting dullness, or a succussion splash, but the man knows his science.
You've got to read his piece on poop. You won't regret it.
palmd | April 30, 2009The time is now. The gauntlet of idiocy rests at our feet. Shall we turn and walk away, or shall we bend down, pick it up, and accept the challenge? What? What's that you say? Turn from the forces of darkness?
ARE WE NOT WO/MEN?!?
We must not turn from the task before us. The Huffington Post has spit in the eye of reason, and worse, has aided in the proliferation of horridly deceptive health news, thinly-disguised infomercials, and frankly dangerous lies.
We have nothing left but our honor, and our honor demands vendetta.
Now, before you start sharpening your knives, I'm actually asking…
palmd | April 29, 2009Pursuant to my policies, I am reprinting an email, with identifying details redacted. I thought it would make for a nice conversation.
A few comments first. The tone and intent of the letter is, I would say, very nice. The content, however suffers from all kinds of being wrong, and contains great examples of common logical fallacies (don't forget to point them out!). Still, thank you very much for writing.
http://scienceblogs.com/whitecoatunderground/2009/04/naturopath_challen…
I don't expect any kind of acknowledgement, actually I frankly expect you'll just hit the delete key with the…
palmd | April 29, 2009Here at ScienceBlogs we have a (very) informal agreement to try to avoid profanity-laden titles. Personally, they don't bother me at all, but I can see the point---there are lots of folks who probably don't want their feed reader to pop up with what I'm about to say.
What the FUCK hath swine flu wrought????
I warned you that swine flu would bring out the charlatans. In the course of hours to days, a virtual zombie army of immoral, idiotic, evil fucking quacks has risen to fan your fears and take you cash.
It's really hard to overstate this, but the people who engage in this fact- and…
palmd | April 28, 2009Minnesota's dimwitted gift to humanity, Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R--but did you have to ask?) had this to say regarding swine flu (H/T Steph Z):
I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence.
Leaving aside that it was Gerald Ford who presided over the last pandemic, if you are a real American, you will answer this question:
What is so fucking interesting about it?
palmd | April 28, 2009We have a lot to cover today, but first things first: the Big Question. If you'll cast your memory way back (thanks, Van) you'll remember that a good question to ask altmed followers is the one of abandonment: what would it take for them to abandon a modality? Well, the answers are in, and the one's who answered just didn't get it. For example:
[T]he question was: "Can you please give specific examples of alternative medicine theories and modalities that have been abandoned because they have been found to be ineffective?"
The short and honest answer to this is no-- I cant. But my reason…
palmd | April 27, 2009I tuned into a CDC conference call this afternoon. It was interesting. As is often the case with emerging diseases, what we don't know vastly outweighs what we do. For the best public health information in the blogosphere, and the best flu updates, go to Effect Measure.
The CDC emphasized that it's quite early and things are changing by the hour. So far 40 cases have been identified in the U.S., all of them mild, with one requiring hospitalization because of underlying medical problems. It is assumed that many more cases will be identified, and it would be unusual if at least some were not…
palmd | April 27, 2009It's going live shortly, the wifi gods willing.
Conference here.
Tweet at http://twitter.com/palmd
palmd | April 26, 2009With all the news abuzz about swine flu, it's important to remember a few things. Influenza can be very, very dangerous, but it's still just a virus, and one that we know quite well. There have been a number of flu pandemics in the last century, the most famous (and most deadly) being the "Spanish flu" of 1918-1919. That pandemic was a perfect storm. Soldiers moved back and forth between Europe and the U.S., and military bases in the U.S. weren't much better than the Western Front. Soldiers on U.S. bases lived in crowded, cold, wet conditions, and the flu moved through them rapidly,…
palmd | April 26, 2009So far, it looks like the US Gov't is on top of this one. If you're interested in following along with the story, I strongly suggest following the Effect Measure blog. The writers know their stuff, and so far, government websites aren't all that much health.
Some basics:
As you remember, the flu virus changes over time due to "antigenic drift" and we need to make new vaccines every year. Sometimes, often due to multiple strains co-infecting the same animal, the influenza genome undergoes a more dramatic change called "antigenic shift". Influenza A is commonly found in birds, pigs, and…
palmd | April 25, 2009I used to teach at a hospital downtown. While on rounds, I'd often ask my residents and students where they were born, and get answers such as, "Alabama", "Kerala, India", "Damascus, Syria". Inevitably, they'd ask me where I was born, and I'd point to the floor and say, "Right here".
"You mean in Michigan?"
"No," I'd explain, "I mean right here in this hospital."
So I have a certain pride about my hometown. I like Detroit, and although I, like many others born there, don't live in the city, I always hope for a recovery. So it saddens me whenever I see news stories that paint my natal…
palmd | April 24, 2009The other day, I wrote about the fake health experts at the Huffington Post. Prominent among them is "Dr" Patricia Fitzgerald. Now, we already talked about how writing a health piece in a major media outlet and using the title of "Dr" can be deceptive; the reader is likely to assume you are a medical doctor. In Fitzgerald's case, she isn't anything resembling a medical doctor, or even a health expert.
Like many of HuffPo's so-called health experts, she's selling something. While I'm all for capitalism, she presents herself as something she is not---a legitimate doctor. Let's examine what…
palmd | April 24, 2009So, this whole animal rights extremism thing isn't really my thing---I'm not a researcher, and I think the ARA's like ALF and PeTA are all fucking nuts. Still, they're bad, bad nuts, so I have to care. Out in California, they've been threatening researchers and committing senseless acts of violence. That's why you have to visit this LA Times Poll.
For details:DrugMonkey
PZ
palmd | April 23, 2009I'm no expert on interrogation. From what I've read, most of these experts find torture to be a modality with minimal utility, but I'm sure there are those who want to keep it around. My personal opinion is that it is horridly immoral, and rather difficult to justify. The "ticking bomb" scenario is vanishingly rare, and I'm sure out in the field, certain things are done from time to time without government approval. It is important to separate what the government overlooks, and what the government explicitly endorses. Still, these are issues for someone else.
What bothers me is all this…
palmd | April 23, 2009It's no secret that I think the Huffington Post is an teeming den execrable pseudoscientific snakes. Still, when it comes to fanning the vaccination manufatroversy, they are really off the deep end. Take the latest piece of dreck on Jenny McCarthy, GoD (Google Doctorate). It's written by the infamous "Dr." Patricia Fitzgerald, and this is where I get cranky. Worse than all the drivel spouted by Jenny is HuffPo giving their imprimatur of authority to Fitzgerald. Let me 'splain.
Look, there's a lot of ways to legitimately gain the title of "doctor". The most common are to go to a…
palmd | April 23, 2009Orac isn't known for his sound bites. He tends to write pieces which, in the blogosphere, might be considered rather long, and for good reason---he has a lot to say, and he says it well. But sometimes there is a gem of insolence that is so apt, it must be reshared:
But what really makes this analogy so brain dead is that it was the very epidemiological methods that have so consistently failed to find any correlation between vaccines and autism that led scientists to realize that smoking is strongly correlated with cancer. Jim [Carrey], while accepting the epidemiology linking tobacco smoke…
palmd | April 22, 2009Yes, that's right, the Huffington Post, that broadsheet of blarney, that tabloid of medical trumpery has done it. Not content to risk our mental health by lending legitimacy to all kinds of pseudoscientific charlatans, they just let Jim Carrey write a piece on vaccines and autism. Yes, the boyfriend of uber-fukwit Jenny McCarthy has drunk her Kool Aid, but that's no surprise. I'll leave a good fisking to others, because a few of the commenters showed signs of higher cortical function, and this deserves some coverage.
Take this one for example:
I think Jim and Jenny McCarthy are instilling…