Skepticblog

The long green sporocyst is visible inside this snail, extending all the way up into its larboard eyestalk.

Today we have a look at an especially horrible little beast from the parasite department. Parasites come in all shapes and sizes, but what’s most interesting about the best of them is the jaw-dropping life cycles that some of them have developed. Leucochloridium paradoxum (aka the green-banded broodsac) is one of my favorite examples.

This little fellow is a flatworm that lives inside birds, and subsists off of their bodies from the inside out. It has developed a neat trick for getting the next generation of little flatworms into other birds. There’s one way out of a bird: through its droppings. The problem is that birds don’t typically eat other birds’ droppings, so at first glance, this seems to be a poor choice for spreading one’s seed. (continue reading…)

Yes, I know – this is old news. That the Huffington Post is a cesspit of anti-scientific propaganda. This recent item, however, is bad even for Huff Po standards. If I were writing a textbook on propaganda and wanted to craft an extreme example in order to clearly demonstrate the features of propaganda, I could not have done a better job than Nalini Chilkov. She is promoting the book of Hollie and Patrick Quinn, You Did What? Saying No to Conventional Cancer Treatment.

Chilkov tells her readers how Hollie was diagnosed with breast cancer while pregnant at age 27. After telling us over and over again how intelligent, educated, and well-informed Hollie and her husband are, we are informed that Hollie decided to treat her breast cancer entirely with alternative cancer treatments. And now, 8 years later, she is perfectly healthy and has two wonderful children.

First, let me say that I am very happy for Hollie and Patrick and I sincerely wish that Hollie has nothing but the best of health. This story is actually somewhat personal for me as my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer earlier this year, and now she is doing very well after standard treatment. So I understand, not just as a physician but as a husband, how difficult it is to face this diagnosis and the treatment options.

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You’ve probably seen them many times: stretchy rubber bracelets, with a small credit-card style hologram attached. They seem to be everywhere. People in all walks of life are wearing them. What are they for?

Supposedly, wearing this rubber band around your wrist dramatically boosts your strength, balance, and flexibility. The secret is that there’s a hologram stuck to it. Didn’t know that holograms had that ability? Neither did we.

Here are the claims about what the rubber bands do and how they do it.

• Your body has an energy field.
• Power Balance has determined what the optimum frequency should be.
• A hologram is printed on mylar and embedded with that frequency.
• Bringing this hologram into your body’s energy field will tune it to that same frequency.
• This tuning of your energy field dramatically improves your balance, strength, and flexibility, by as much as five times.

Wow! Isn’t that amazing? (continue reading…)

The “Quantum Flapdoodle” of Deepak Chopra and his notion of the deity as a nonlocal quantum mind

Do you believe in God? In most surveys, about nine out of ten Americans respond in the affirmative. The other ten percent provide a variety of answers, including a favorite among skeptics and atheists, “which God?,” spoken in a smarmy manner and followed by a litany of deities: Aphrodite, Amon Ra, Apollo, Baal, Brahma, Ganesha, Isis, Mithras, Osiris, Shiva, Thor, Vishnu, Wotan, and Zeus. “We’re all atheists of these gods,” goes the denouement, “some of us go one god further.”

I have debated many a theologian who make the traditional arguments for God’s existence: the cosmological argument (prime mover, first cause), the teleological argument (the universe’s order and design), the ontological argument (if it is logically possible for God to exist then God exists), the anthropic argument (the fine-tuned characteristics of nature), the moral argument (awareness of right and wrong), and others. These are all reasons to believe if you already believe; if you do not already believe these reasons ring hollow and have been refuted by philosophers from David Hume to Daniel Dennett.

This last spring, however, I participated in a debate with a theologian of a different species—the New Age spiritualist Deepak Chopra—whose arguments for the existence of a deity take a radically different tact. Filmed by ABC’s Nightline and viewed by millions, Deepak hammered out a series of scientistic-sounding arguments for the existence of a nonlocal spooky-action-at-a-distance quantum force. Call it Deepak’s God 2.0. (continue reading…)

The title of this post is from a Futurama episode in which a man responds to an accident victim gathering a crowd in the street, “I have a degree in homeopathy.” A robot present responds with the quote above – nicely concise and to the point.

It raises a serious issue, however – granting degrees and licenses for disciplines (especially health-related disciplines) that lack a scientific backing. This issue comes up often, as it has recently in the UK with a proposal to register practitioners of traditional medicine. A group of young professionals called the Voice of Young Science decided to protest this proposal by offering diplomas in “old wives’ tales” to anyone who could answer some basic questions (like an apple a day keeps who away?). In a statement they said:

“We are confronted with the possibility of misdiagnosis, the failure to provide suitable medical treatment and dangerous drug interactions, which the scheme is more likely to enhance than prevent.

“There is no public benefit from these proposed regulations and the DH [department of health] must not adopt them.”

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[Continued from Part I]

Speaking personally, I must say it’s a joy to watch the growth of the skeptical subculture, humming with its proliferation of cons and pub nights and vibrant online portals. And yet, much of that scene is related only indirectly to the cause I work to advance. At some risk of being misunderstood: it’s not my goal to grow a social community, even though I am part of it.

My area of primary interest is more specific. As a (relatively junior) contributor to the specialized field of skepticism, I care most about active efforts to investigate fringe science topics, share the findings, and promote science literacy as widely as possible. After decades of work, this research and educational outreach effort eventually became the seed for a thriving subculture, but it is not synonymous with that subculture.

This is a distinction that could save a lot of flame wars:

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Photo by Becky Wetherington

A couple of days ago rock musician George Hrab (host of the Geologic podcast) wrote to me to share a post written by an old friend of his — a kind review of a recent Hrab show, which I’m happy to share here.

The most interesting aspect of the post (and the reason George passed it along) is the blogger’s reaction to the people he met at the show: an unfamiliar community of people called “skeptics.” As a person of faith, “Myklor” finds these skeptics alien and fascinating — and ultimately (I’m happy to say) endearing. (He does not, incidentally, distinguish between skepticism and atheism — a fine point in a social setting, to be sure, given that many skeptics are both.)

It was all a bit surreal. By now, I was well aware of George’s involvement in this universe, but it was trippy to have unknowingly stumbled into one of their “to-do’s.” The traveling skeptic girl was awfully sweet and very cool, much like George; as were the other skeptical folks who were now beginning to drift in. Lots of smiles and mutual experience and excitement, and in-jokes and “Oh my God! So you’re JesusBlows9437? I love your posts on the message boards!” (continue reading…)

I was asked the other day (it wasn’t the first time) what advice I’d have for young people who want to be science communicators and promote critical thinking. Hmmm… I thought for a minute, because I wanted to give a useful answer, not a canned answer like “Study hard, get a degree, read Carl Sagan.” While those may be fine ideas, they’re hardly the steps to becoming an effective communicator.

Here is the advice I finally gave. (continue reading…)

We can add one more study to the pile of evidence showing no association between exposure to thimerosal (a mercury-based vaccine preservative) and autism. The article: Prenatal and Infant Exposure to Thimerosal From Vaccines and Immunoglobulins and Risk of Autism, is published in the latest issue of Pediatrics, and shows no association between prenatal and infant exposure to thimerosal and three forms of autism – autism, autism spectrum disorder, and regressive autism.

No one study can ever be definitive, but now we have a large body of evidence from multiple studies showing a lack of association between thimerosal and autism. This won’t stop the dedicated anti-vaccinationists and mercury militia from continuing their anti-vaccine propaganda, but hopefully it will further reassure those who actually care about the science.

Background

This has been a long and complex story, so let me review some of the background. Diagnosis rates of ASD have been climbing for the last 20 years, prompting some to search for an environmental cause. The existing anti-vaccine community, not surprisingly, blamed vaccines. This was given a tremendous boost by the now-discredited study by Andrew Wakefield concerning MMR (which never contained thimerosal) and autism. When the evidence was going against MMR as a cause, attention turned to thimerosal in some vaccines. This notion was popularized by journalist David Kirby in his book, Evidence of Harm.

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My recent post “The War Over ‘Nice’” (describing the blogosphere’s reaction to Phil Plait’s “Don’t Be a Dick” speech) has topped out at more than 200 comments. That’s a lot by Skepticblog’s standards. In addition, many further responses have reached me through Twitter, blog posts, email, and direct conversation.

I’m not quite sure how to feel about all that. Certainly I expected some controversy. (After all, I was writing about a controversy.) But quite a few of the critical responses take up a theme that seems… well, kind of strange to me. Many readers appear to object (some strenuously) to the very ideas of discussing best practices, seeking evidence of efficacy for skeptical outreach, matching strategies to goals, or encouraging some methods over others. Some seem to express anger that a discussion of best practices would be attempted at all.  (continue reading…)