"If science disagrees with your ideological/philosophical/ethical/political viewpoint, it is science that is wrong, not your subjective opinion."
--A thoroughly sarcastic Jen McCreight on BlagHag.
I'd stopped reading her for a while, but I'm swiftly catching up and kicking myself for missing the excellence. Keep it up, Jen!
GOOD!
A science writer who is being sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association is to fight on after a preliminary judgment against him was overturned on appeal today.Simon Singh was sued by the BCA after he wrote an article in the Guardian criticising the association for supporting members who claim that chiropractic treatments – which involve manipulation of the spine – can treat children's colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying.
Singh described the treatments, for which he said there is not a lot of evidence, as "bogus" and criticised the BCA for "happily promoting" them.
The whole case has underscored and drawn attention to the fact that scientific scrutiny and frank language should take precedence over libel laws. In the court of (scientific) inquiry, if your claims are without merit, you should be more careful about making them.
And in case you think there was any question of the quacks' intentions, the British Chiropractic Associate sent a pointed warning to all of its members:
Date: 8 June 2009 09:12:18 BDT
Subject: FURTHER URGENT ACTION REQUIRED!
Dear Member
If you are reading this, we assume you have also read the urgent email we sent you last Friday. If you did not read it, READ IT VERY CAREFULLY NOW and - this is most important – ACT ON IT. This is not scaremongering. We judge this to be a real threat to you and your practice.
Because of what we consider to be a witch hunt against chiropractors, we are now issuing the following advice:
The target of the campaigners is now any claims for treatment that cannot be substantiated with chiropractic research. The safest thing for everyone to do is as follows.
1. If you have a website, take it down NOW.When you have done that, please let us know preferably by email or by phone. This will save our valuable time chasing you to see whether it has been done.When you have done that, please let us know preferably by email or by phone. This will save our valuable time chasing you to see whether it has been done.
So, do you think they have anything to hide, there, folks?
And remember, these people were advocating spinal manipulations on infants. You think that isn't a bit barbaric?
Via RichardDawkins.net.
I'm mostly posting this for my own reference.
A while back, Abbie "ERV" Smith trashed Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute (which is approximately a weekly occurrence for her), but in doing so made the best argument as to why creationism and Evolution don't belong in the same classroom. Money quote:
These people (creationists) have absolutely no interest in 'teaching both sides.' They want to teach their side, their creation myth, nothing else. They blockade themselves in their churches and their religious schools and religious camps and nobody gets through with an outside opinion. Filtering questions?? Common!! I would ask Chris (Mooney), why hasnt he promoted his book on 'The 700 Club'? He says we need to plead with the Religious Right to come back to reality, so why doesnt he go on 'The 700 Club' and do just that? Well, the same reason why I cant leave my 'ivory tower' to speak at local anti-evolution churches. I might want to go, but theyarent letting me in.In short, the argument people like Mooney and his cohort Sheril Kirshenbaum make in favor of accommodation--that rationalists and pro-evolution forces need to find some way to meet the creationists halfway--is doomed from the start. THEY don't want to budge, and we shouldn't play the game on their turf. Let them come to us.
The Iowa-born plant scientist died Sunday at age 95. From the WSJ:
"On the day Norman Borlaug was awarded its Peace Prize for 1970, the Nobel Committee observed of the Iowa-born plant scientist that "more than any other single person of this age, he has helped provide bread for a hungry world." The committee might have added that more than any other single person Borlaug showed that nature is no match for human ingenuity in setting the real limits to growth."The man is responsible for stemming starvation around the globe, and deserves a statue someplace. Seriously.
If you haven't heard, there's a movie coming out soon called Creation based on the life of Charles Darwin. From Roger Ebert's blog, in which he emphasizes that his actual review of the film will await its October release:
"I expected the film to be focused on Darwin's theory of the origin of species and the controversy it provoked in mid-19th century, but it is primarily about his domestic life, centering on Down House, Bromley, where he and his wife Emma lived from 1842 until until his death in 1882. There they had ten children, three of whom died young. The film is much concerned with his grief at the loss of Anne (1841-51) who was one of the brightest and most delightful, and whose direct questions perhaps helped embolden him to publish On the Origin of Species in 1859, after a 20-year delay."Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education, thinks highly of it.
"Most of the people watching the movie think of Darwin as a cardboard figure – especially the stern, elderly Victorian guy with a long white beard in the black coat. They aren’t going to think about Darwin as a tall and vigorous man very much devoted to his pretty wife, with a houseful of noisy children who adored him. In my experience, much of the public, following the Creationists, thinks he wrote one not-very-good book, and is unaware that Darwin devoted his life to science, conducting experiments and making observations and being held in high regard by his contemporaries. In particular, Darwin as a passionate, loving human being is far from how most Americans picture him. And that’s too bad, because cardboard cutouts aren’t real – and the real is so much more interesting. I like to think that someone seeing this movie will be stimulated to read one of the many biographies found on the movie’s excellent website (www.creationthemovie.com), or otherwise easily accessible. "Dr. Scott does make one important point: Creation does not yet have a North American distributor. But we live in hope:
"If a bomb like Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed can get a distributor, a well-made movie with an excellent script, actors, direction, and cinematography like Creation surely should."Seriously. Go see it, people.
And this headline was guaranteed to get my attention...
"Great tits enjoying the warmer weather -- so far."
C'mon, you know you want to...
Via Pharyngula.
This thing dribbles a ping-pong ball, for crying out loud.
Via Running the Gauntlet Naked.
If you don't know who Simon Singh is, read my previous blog post. Singh is being sued by the British Chiropractic Organization Association for libel for daring to suggest their claims of treatment not only don't hold up to scientific scrutiny, but are also actively harmful to normal, healthy patients. In solidarity, I just found the following button on Orac's blog and have decided it would fit in nicely with the rest of my decoration:
Being the passionate believer in free speech and a dreadfully rude believer that you should back up your scientific/medical claims with data and not lawyers (or if you use the latter, you'd better produce the former), I can do not otherwise.
Cheers!
I'd prefer the term evolutionary traits, actually. Don't give the designer dumbfucks any credibility, and all. Evolutionary design is a contradiction in terms [end rant].
You know, I think "Hyena Clitoris" or "Pseudopenis" would make great names for a rock band, but MTV would probably chicken out over having them on the air.
Via Skepchick.
C'mon, you know you wanna...
(Note: this shows still, ultrasound photos of a friggin' fetus playing Red Rosie in the womb.)
Via Sullivan.
A new series by NPR seeks to answer that. Money quote from part 1:
"Sigmund Freud declared God to be a delusion, and others maintained that God, if there is such a thing, is beyond the tools of science to measure.But now, some researchers are using new technologies to try to understand spiritual experience. They're peering into our brains and studying our bodies to look for circumstantial evidence of a spiritual world. The search is in its infancy, and scientists doubt they will ever be able to prove — or disprove — the existence of God."
Podcast is here. Oh, how I love science.
Neatly summarized in under 6 minutes.
Via Unreasonable Faith.
One of the smartest takes you'll read:
"Most Americans believe there are gradations of life. Some living things are more alive than others, and so the later in the pregnancy it gets, the more uncomfortable people become with the idea of ending it. But in reality they believe both that a life stirs very early on and that a one-week-old embryo is more "killable" than a nine-month-old fetus. For them, determining whether "life" begins at conception really doesn't determine anything."Or, as George Carlin said (yeah, I quote him a lot, but I love the guy): "People say life begins at conception? I say life began about a billion years ago, and it's a continuous process."
"The fact is that the embryo goes through a continuum. At conception it is plainly not a human being in any reasonable sense. At birth it is a human being in every sense. In between you have a grey area, as it gradually becomes more and more human-like. Any sharp line you try to draw will inevitably be a bit arbitrary, and doubtless there are difficult moral questions to be answered as we approach plausible line-drawing points. The fact remains that the sort of stem-cell research that is being seriously proposed is unambiguously on the “morally acceptable” side of the line."Which is why people who oppose stem cell research are completely off base. There is no moral quandry to be had. It's not human, we're not killing babies, we're going to destroy it anyway. The greatest crime is not letting those cells be put to good use in the first place.
"British scientists say they have developed a stem procedure that will reverse the most common cause of blindness, age-related macular degeneration.The procedure, pioneered by the Institute of Ophthalmology at University College London and Moorfields eye hospital, involves replacing a layer of degenerated eye cells with new ones obtained from embryonic stem cells, The Sunday Times of London reported."
Bonus reading material: Waldman is also the guy who made Rick Warren look bad in this wonderfully dry-witted post.
From the Daily Mash, which is apparently Britain's answer to the Onion:
"An NHS hospital which used untrained receptionists to treat patients still performed better than homeopathy, research shows."If you wanna know what homeopathy is, go here.
"Never get in a scientific debate with a cute, sweet chick with 'SCIENCE!' plastered across her boobs."
--Abbie Smith, ERV.
(especially when that cute sweet chick REALLY knows her stuff.)
From the Chronicle of Higher Education.
1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media.Via Skepchick.
2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work.
3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection.
4. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal.
5. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries.
6. The discoverer has worked in isolation.
7. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation.
Oh, my heart bleeds piss for the likes of Jenny McCarthy. (end sarcasm). Money quote:
"It was abundantly clear that petitioners' theories of causation were speculative and unpersuasive," the court concluded in one of a trio of cases ruled on Thursday.The ruling was anxiously awaited by health authorities and families who began presenting evidence in June 2007. More than 5,500 claims have been filed by families seeking compensation through the government's Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. The claims are reviewed by special masters serving on the U.S. Court of Claims.
Let me get this straight, 55 hundred people believe this enough to file for a government hand-out? This is, was, and will be a farce until a lot more EVIDENCE crops up to suggest any relationship. In the meantime, I want to see someone in the press ask Jenny McCarthy to her face why she shouldn't be called a baby-killer for discouraging people from immunizing their kids.
There's a great book called Autism's False Prophets which should be mandatory reading in medical schools. When you go to Amazon.com and type in "autism," this book shows up at #10 in the search. McCarthy's little book of woo and lies shows up at #5. Sometimes I despair for my species.
In advance of Darwin Day this Thursday, here's a site where you can view major books both by and about Charles Darwin for free. The Google--it's wonderful!
So you believe in a benign and loving god, do you? Attenborough says he's asked all the time why he doesn't give credit to God:
"They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds."I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in East Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball.
"The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs.
"I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator."
And this quote should be carved in a mountain someplace:
"Evolution is not a theory; it is a fact, every bit as much as the historical fact that William the Conqueror landed in 1066."Via Pharyngula.
