To quote Michael Shermer, I “investigate paranormal claims, pseudoscience and fringe groups, and cults and claims of all kinds between science and pseudoscience, and non-science, and junk science, voodoo science, pathological science, bad science, non-science, and plain old nonsense.”
I often hear people ask what’s the harm in homeopathy? After all, if there’s really nothing in it, then it’s not inherently harmful. But while that’s true, it can lead people away from real medicine. This may be what happened to Penelope Dingle, who died of bowel cancer in 2005. An investigation turned up that she was being treated by a homeopath when she developed symptoms.
Counsel assisting the coroner told the court her condition was not diagnosed until two years later at which point her homeopath told Mrs Dingle her cancer could be cured with alternative therapies.
Mrs Dingle then refused treatment from doctors who told her she had a reasonable chance of recovery if she underwent chemotherapy and an operation.
If this is true, then I think it is quite fair to say that Penelope Dingle was killed by homeopathy.
Autism tests from the womb may not be far off. Contrary to what vaccine deniers would have us believe, autism is inherently genetic. That’s not to say that there can’t be any environmental factors involved as well but there none required to explain autism. And given that researchers have already identified 300 genes associated with autism, the fact that some people are simply born with a predisposition towards it, cannot be denied.
Now researchers are suggesting they may have a complete map of all the genes responsible for the condition within two years and that we may soon be capable of testing for autism in newborns or even possibly at the embryonic stage.
Here’s a recent clip from Bill Maher’s show, Real Time, where he superbly criticizes climate change deniers:
Maher knocks it out of the park in this clip. I just find it mind-boggling that Maher has thus far been unable to apply the precise reasoning he shows here with regards to climate change to the field of medicine, which Maher insists he has a greater understanding of than virtually every medical professional on the planet.
1. If Cat Stevens wants to sing out, he can’t sing out. If he wants to be free, he’ll have to abandon Islam – Yusuf Islam aka the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens may soon be banned from Australia thanks to a member of the Australian Parliament, Peter Kavanagh. The reason Kavanagh doesn’t want Stevens/Islam to perform in the country is that he’s publicly stated that he wants Salman Rushdie to die because of the Islamic fatwa against Rushdie over his book, The Satanic Verses:
“Yusuf has evaded on this matter for years,” he said. ”I call on the Minister for Immigration to deny Mr Yusuf a visa to enter Australia unless he publicly and categorically states that he does not and will not support the murder of any person for the expression of views, no matter how offensive.”
In other words, he wants the artist who once sang Peace Train to publicly condemn violence. I’m sure that will happen any day now. Yup, any day now.
In a South Australian legal first, the Supreme Court this afternoon gave the Women’s and Children’s Hospital the right to give a 10-year-old boy – a member of the Jehovah’s Witness faith – transfusions as part of his cancer treatment.
The decision, in line with similar rulings from around the world, paves the way for hospitals to take action in future debates with religious parents.
Sorry kid but you’re just going to have to wait a while before going to heaven.
Every Halloween batshit insane Christians organize what they call “Hell Houses.” These are modern day equivalents to the jeramiads of the so-called Great Awakening and the morality plays of the Medieval age, where they attempt to scare the living shit out of children in order to frighten them towards Jesus.
But the emotional manipulation being used here is both repulsive and almost laugh out laugh ridiculous as its so transparent that any child not already brought up to be an insane fundamentalist Christian would have to be incredibly gullible in order to fall for this crap.
Five female anchors at Al-Jazeera, the Arabic news network, have quit after being pressured by executives to wear more modest clothing. Lest you think Al-Jazeera is anything like Naked News, you should know that these anchors usually don’t wear anything sexier than a blouse under a suit jacket.
I guess these women should just be grateful Al-Jazeera allows them to speak at all, right? It sounds like we need another boobquake.
2. Australian officials investigating $cientology’s slave wages – I look forward to hearing Spokesman Tommy Davis reversing the accusations of these ungrateful asshole former members who felt they were above making a few thousand dollars a year and that it was really the accusers who criminally underpaid $cientology.
Janette Lang, who worked for the church for seven years, says the most she was paid in a year was $3,114 in 2001.
Yeah, but that was back in 2001. I mean wasn’t that like equivalent to a bajillion dollars today?
3. Are our airports being protected with pseudoscience? – Airport security has begun using a program called Screening Passengers by Observation Technique (SPOT) where TSA employees supposedly learn how to identify suspicious travelers:
SPOT is supposed to help pick out people who are trying to hide their cruel intentions. The pushy, cranky guy behind you in line who’s yelling at his kid = no. Sneaky terrorists trying to look innocent = yes.The problem, of course, is that there’s no evidence this system works any better than a lie detector. Which, just to be perfectly clear, means it doesn’t work.
While we’re at it maybe we should start using dowsing rods to detect bombs.
4. Crazy Christian bringing Jesus to high schools – Bradlee Dean of “You Can Run But You Cannot Hide Ministries” convinces schools to let him “perform” for the kids with a rock concert with an anti-drug and anti-sex message only to then turn around and proselytize to them. Oh, and did I mention that Dean believes in killing gay people:
5. Ellie Wiesel calls for censorship – I share Orac’s disappointment over Wiesel’s call for the censorship of Holocaust denialist rhetoric. Not only do idiots have the fundamental right to voice their idiocy but even if this could be morally justified, it’d only help spread Holocaust denial as then scumbags like David Irving would have an excuse to argue that their views are being censored. Irving and his cohorts would shout, if we’ve got truth on our side, what do we have to hide? And he wouldn’t be wrong. We don’t have anything to hide.
In case Wiesel hasn’t noticed, Holocaust denial was been successfully relegated to the fringe and shows no signs of that changing. I fear Wiesel is far too emotionally attached to this one issue and is just guilty of applying special pleading here.
6. The Little Black Book of Scams available for free – If you follow the link, it will take you to a .pdf file containing a 46-page e-book exposing all kinds of common scams. Because we’re all capable of being fooled by con artists, I highly recommend everyone check this out.
Earlier this year, The Lancet retracted Wakefield’s 1998 “study,” something that almost never happens. Around that same time his 2009 “monkey study” was withdrawn by the journal Neurotoxicology. And now his 2000 American Journal of Gastroenterology paper is being retracted as well:
On 28 January 2010, the UK General Medical Council’s Fitness to Practice Panel raised concerns about a paper published in the Lancet by Dr Wakefield et al. (1). The main issues were that the patient sample collected was likely to be biased and that the statement in the paper, that the study had local ethics committee approval, was false. There was also the possibility of a serious conflict of interest in the interpretation of the data. The Lancet has now retracted this paper (1). This paper in the American Journal of Gastroenterology (AJG) (2) also includes the 12 patients in the original Lancet article and therefore we retract this AJG paper from the public record.
Wow. I wonder when was the last time a researcher had not one but two studies retracted only a few months apart. The last five months have been disastrous for Wakefield. Seriously, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, put this guy on suicide watch.
While discussing his new show “Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman,” actor Morgan Freeman corrects the anchor who refers to him as a “man of god” and tells her he’s a “man of faith.” Now, I don’t really care for his definition of the word faith but it seems pretty clear here that he’s saying he’s an atheist. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Philip K Dick was brought back to life as a fully autonomous conversational android.
A team of roboticists, computer scientists, designers, and science fiction fans built a “robotic portrait” of the sci-fi author. The project was a collaboration between Hanson Robotics, the University of Memphis, and the Automation and Robotics Research Institute (ARRI) at the University of Texas, Arlington. The android used cameras to track visitors and turn to face them while talking. It used speech recognition and speech synthesis software to listen and respond, and AI routines that drew on Dick’s body of work to hold a natural conversation with visitors.
But for all we know the original Phillip K. Dick was a Replicant too.
2. Muslim apostate in tiny island nation of The Maldives may face death penalty – Going against Islamic law in The Maldives is unconstitutional. Mohamed Nazim did though when he publicly declared himself to be not a Muslim. The penalty for his apostasy is death unless he “repents.” This is not what one should expect from a so-called “religion of peace.”
They found that a single vaccination with the antigen a-lactalbumin prevents breast cancer tumors from forming in mice, while inhibiting the growth of existing tumors.
Human trials could begin within a year.
If successful, it would be the first vaccine to prevent breast cancer, reports CBS Cleveland affiliate WOIO.
4. The vaccine denial movement claims another victim – Andrew Wakefield’s former employer, the Royal Free Hospital in North London, has been ordered to pay £500,000 in damages because they carried out an operation that was ‘not clinically justified’ on a 5-year-old child named Jack Piper.
High Court papers alleged that the colonoscopy procedure performed on Jack in 1998 was ‘not clinically indicated or justified’. They also claimed the ‘principal reason’ for the surgery was to further research into links between autism and bowel conditions rather than Jack’s clinical needs.
The documents also claimed that Jack’s parents were not warned of the risks of the procedure or the ‘controversial and uncertain’ link between autism and bowel conditions. This meant the surgery was performed ‘without lawful consent’ and was an ‘assault’ on Jack.
Oh, the irony. If I had a dollar for every time a vaccine denier insisted that doctors irresponsibly used children as guinea pigs by giving them untested vaccines and that parents were not properly warned of the risks I’d be a rich man. And yet I don’t expect to hear any vaccine deniers to address the Jack Piper incident at all unless to make excuses such as claiming this is just a hoax created by “Big Pharma” to make discredit their movement. It’s funny though how they’re doing fighting for “the children” only when those children are allegedly harmed by vaccines but show no concern whatsoever for any child directly harmed by their position.
I often hear people ask what’s the harm in homeopathy? After all, if there’s really nothing in it, then it’s not inherently harmful. But while that’s true, it can lead people away from real medicine. This may be what happened to Penelope Dingle, who died of bowel cancer in 2005. An investigation turned up that she was being treated by a homeopath when she developed symptoms.
Posted by mjr256 
