The 14-year-old gets it

Yesterday, I posted about a supposed "miracle" in which a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus supposedly opened its right eye. I see that Majikthise is also on the case, but she used a report from the New York Daily News as her source. The great thing about the article she found is that is shows that kids seem to be the most rational about this whole "miracle." For example, a 14-year-old seems to be the only one showing any signs of critical thinking:

"It's just a sculpture," said Wanda Aldea, 14, shaking her head. "I think somebody just scraped its eyelid off."

That girl looks like she may be a future contributor to the Skeptics' Circle; that is, if she can maintain that healthy skepticism into adulthood. The most amusing comment came from an 11-year-old:

Anthony Purvis, 11, silently stared at the statue for about 90 seconds and then turned to four of his boisterous friends and said, "If the other one pops open, I'm going to run. I'm out of here."

Indeed.

Sunday morning random links with my coffee

It's been a while since I did a link roundup for your reading and browsing pleasure. What better time to do it on a Sunday morning? So, here we go, in no particular order:

Literature

First off, it's great to know that the winners have been announced for the 2005 Bulwer-Lytton Contest. For those of you not familiar with the contest, it's a bad writing contest. The premise is that you have to imagine the worst novel ever written, and then write the opening sentence for that novel:

An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1834), which has been made into a movie three times, originating the expression "the pen is mightier than the sword," and phrases like "the great unwashed" and "the almighty dollar," Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the "Peanuts" beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, "It was a dark and stormy night."

The contest began in 1982 as a quiet campus affair, attracting only three submissions. This response being a thunderous success by academic standards, the contest went public the following year and ever since has attracted thousands of annual entries from all over the world.

I personally own three or four of the books containing entries from this contest. This year's winnner was Dan McKay of Fargo, ND:

As he stared at her ample bosom, he daydreamed of the dual Stromberg carburetors in his vintage Triumph Spitfire, highly functional yet pleasingly formed, perched prominently on top of the intake manifold, aching for experienced hands, the small knurled caps of the oil dampeners begging to be inspected and adjusted as described in chapter seven of the shop manual.

And the winner in the fantasy section:

"Why does every task in the Realm of Zithanor have to be a quest?" Baldak of Erthorn, handyman to the Great Wizard Zarthon, asked rhetorically as he began his journey began to find the Holy Hammer of Taloria and the Sacred Nail of Ikthillia so Baldak could hang one of Zarthon's mediocre watercolors, which was an art critique Baldak kept to himself unlike his predecessor, whom Zarthon turned into the Picture Frame of Torathank. (SSG Kevin Craver Fort Polk, LA)

And, finally, the science fiction section:

Long, long ago in a galaxy far away, in General Hospital born I was, and quite happy were my parents, but when a youngling still I was, moved we did. (Mary Potts Oneco, FL)

Little known is that I once submitted a couple of entries to this contest several years ago. I didn't even get a dishonorable mention. Bummer.


Around the blogosphere

Prometheus, in taking on people who think that they are just as qualified to evaluate complex data as physicians and scientists who have spent 25 years studying the question, tells us that if you want to drive the bus, you have to go to bus driving school. (This is essential reading for dealing with alties; sometimes, as un-PC as it might be, it is appropriate to tell someone that they don't know what they're talking about.) He also takes on Dr. Hornig's "autistic" mice that are often touted by mercury-autism advocates as an "animal model" for autism and its supposedly being caused by mercury.

The Columnist Manifesto tells us the difference between men and women is something he calls "eyedar" and thus solves one of the mysteries of the universe. He also give relationship advice regarding a question all men with a wife, significant other, or girlfriend dread.

The Mad House Madman tells us Ten Random Things I Asked My Interns to Do Today. Man, I don't want to get on the Madman's bad side.

Kathleen Seidel tells us just what lengths some will go to to silence those who don't agree with them and follows up dealing with the responses.

The Waiter tells us how he likes to see customers deal with the check and tipping and tells you when the server (and the entire restaurant staff, actually) wants you to leave. He also gives a lesson in slapping down one of those beautiful people with an undeserved sense of entitlement who happened to work in his restaurant. Meanwhile the Doorman gives advice on blogging, and the Bitter Waitress presents the Shitty Tipper Database.

Skeptico tells us why ad hominem attacks are not valid arguments. (I will likely be posting a bit about this myself next week using some of my Usenet experience.)

Via Brent, I discover a case of beermaggeddon.

Jason Rosenhouse continues his report on the Creation Megaconference.

Juspasenthru tells us about Nasty Lawyer Tricks. Essential reading for any physician.

Decorabilia (a future host of the Skeptics' Circle, by the way) provides a link to a pro-"intelligent design" rap song called "Agency." Ow. It hurts the ears. Inane lyrics. Bad rap, even worse than most rap. Oh, it's awful. I think my ears are bleeding. I wouldn't recommend William Dembski start using it. Eminem and 50 Cent have nothing to worry about.

Too much. I should have stopped while I was ahead.


Blatant plugs

This is where I try to use the minimal might of Respectful Insolence for good, pointing out blogs I've noticed recently. (It's almost as though I think that, now that I've passed 100,000 visits, someone is actually reading this stuff.) There have been a couple in the last month:

Brian has started a blog called Common Sense for the Biochemist, because, as he puts it, what is common sense to a biochemist?

Notes from RW is a medblog by a hospitalist in Arkansas.

More visions

I'm not sure if this qualifies as pareidolia or not, but there's yet another religious vision being reported in Hoboken, New Jersey. (Tip o' the hat to my wife for letting me know about this story.) Apparently, believers report that a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in a Nativity scene (I'm not sure why a Sacred Heart statue would be in a Nativity scene myself, but never mind) is "alive." They report that they've seen it open its right eye and turn its head towards the crowd:

Julio Dones' Catholic shrine has fronted a housing project in Hoboken for three decades, its statues of saints and crucifixes viewed as a positive diversion from area drug deals.

But these past two days, word that the shrine's Sacred Heart of Jesus statue spontaneously blinked its right eye twice and kept it open -- while its left eye stayed closed -- sparked more excitement there than ever. Both of the statue's eyes are normally closed, Dones said.

This has caused a pilgrimage to the area similar to the recent religious fervor that occurred because a stain in an expressway underpass in Chicago was thought to be a vision of the Virgin Mary or another incident in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, where a pattern on a window was also thought to be a vision of the Virgin. (My wife, who happened to be in Perth Amboy five years ago around that time, actually personally witnessed the Window Virgin. She told me it looked "like a smear that you get when you use Windex on a window that isn't completely dry.") The reaction has been the same:

Dones, a 52-year-old neighborhood preacher who attends the nearby St. Francis Roman Catholic Church and maintains the shrine year-round, said he first saw the blinking after a friend alerted him to it Thursday, around 2 p.m.

He said tears flowed from the eye, and that Jesus' head turned to the right.

"I felt a chill going up my body, the Holy Spirit coming upon me," he said. "I ... told the people to come see the great sight that just occurred. See, people don't understand what God does. God does things in mysterious ways."

Dones, who found the statue in the trash in Jersey City a year ago, said a woman who stopped by yesterday saw the right eye blink and began crying.

Yesterday afternoon, not everyone who stopped by said they believed. Some were amazed at the similarities in the Jesus statue's eyes and Dones' eyes. Dones is blind in his left eye, and his eyelid droops.

I'm sorry, but once again, as with the case of Underpass Virgin and Window Virgin, I just don't see what the faithful claim to see. My faith must not be strong enough, I guess. What I do see is an old, beat-up statue of Jesus with one of the eyelids broken off, leaving the eye exposed. Whether it was always that way or whether someone damaged it, who knows? Indeed, the fact that the open right eye now makes the statue look like Dones has to make you wonder about kids pulling a prank. But a bona fide vision? I don't think so.

I'm also not sure how to classify this particularly religious vision. I don't think it is pareidolia, because pareidolia is seeing an object in a vague pattern or form, like seeing the Virgin Mary on an expressway underpass stain or seeing a vision of Lenin in a shower. Perhaps a little research will lead me to a specific term to describe this sort of wishful thinking vision.

Studies don't matter to alties

I was, not surprisingly, correct when I said that the recent echinacea study would fail to persuade alties, no matter how well-designed it was or how much it built on previous negative studies, that this herb does nothing for the common cold. Much of their objections come from an appeal to ignorance:

Her brother immediately forwarded her a news article about the echinacea study, she said, but "it didn't really bother me." Why? "Well," she said, waving her hands and looking off into the distance, "I wouldn't be surprised if again in six months another study was published and it turns out that echinacea extends your life or something."

Not an entirely unreasonable thing to say about any one study, but it isn't just one study. I've addressed this issue before, and it's the preponderance of studies that matters. You can always dismiss one study (although this one was particularly well-designed and controlled), but this is merely the latest and best-designed of of several studies that have shown echnicacea does nothing for colds or cold symptoms above placebo.

Health food stores probably have nothing to fear as far as their echinacea sales go.

Confusion

I hadn't planned on posting much (if at all) this weekend, but I was perusing my RSS reader last night and noticed a couple of new posts on the blog of my fellow traveler, Andrew Mathis. He had posted a piece that, while appreciative for my listing him, demonstrated him to be somewhat perturbed that I had listed him under "liberal" blogs/websites in my blogroll:

We are not amused.

We are not liberal.

We should stop using the royal we, which should only be used by the Pope, the Queen of England, and people with tapeworms.

In earnest, I dislike the label "liberal." And not because Republicans tried to turn it into a bad word a decade or more ago. I dislike the label because I dislike liberalism. This is not to say that I dislike the tradition of freedoms that liberalism, in a more general sense, stands for. Rather, I dislike liberalism in practice as it has been used in American history.

Hmmm. This is a first in the history of this blog. I've never had anyone object to my classifications before. Of course, until quite recently, Respectful Insolence was such a tiny bit player in the blogosphere that no one noticed (or, if they did notice, gave a rodent's posterior) what I said about them or where I put them in my blogroll. In any case, Andrew's a friend and ally in the struggle against Holocaust denial, and I truly hate to do anything that disturbs him. He's also reminded me that "liberal" and "conservative" are inadequate labels. For example, consider me. I tend to be in favor of limited federal government, fiscal responsibility, strong national defense, and other tenets of "conservatism," but I tend to be a lot more "liberal" on social issues. Truly, such labels are inadequate.

Fortunately, I had planned on doing a little blog housecleaning of Respectful Insolence and the Skeptics' Circle archive site sometime this weekend anyway, part of which will likely involve revamping my blogroll and fixing a couple of broken links that I've been made aware of. It will allow me to reclassify him somehow. (How, I don't yet know.) It will also allow me to purge my lists of blogs that I formerly rather liked, like LaShawn Barber's Corner. LaShawn used to seem to be a fairly reasonable conservative to me, but she's recently gone totally off the deep end when it comes to comments by Representative Tom Tancredo about bombing Islamic holy sites in response to a new terrorist attack on the U.S., not to mention that she's becoming more arrogant, more right-wing, and, worst of all, a less entertaining read. Sad.

A cleanup of my blogroll is actually long overdue. In Andrew's case, I'll make him a deal. I'll figure out a more appropriate category for him if he agrees to try to update his blog a little more often. He's too good a writer to let big gaps pass between posts. (Besides, I love it when he takes on Holocaust deniers in his own inimitable fashion.) Sound fair?

The Skeptics' Circle reloaded

In less than a week, Be Lambic or Green will be hosting the 14th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle. Naturally, I have a keen interest in helping Mark succeed in presenting a truly fantastic edition, given that this will be the first Skeptics' Circle since the announcement at last week's Circle that I would be taking it over from St. Nate after his unfortunate impending departure from the blogosphere. (Aside to Nate: You called your recent hosting of The Carnival of the Godless your "second to last post." In my book that means you still owe your fans--like me--one last post, and we're going to hold you to that!)

Consequently, I urge all of you out there who do blogging that is appropriate for this carnival to send your best recent writing to Mark, according to his instructions here. Mark notes that he has rather heavy duty spam filters in place; if he doesn't acknowledge your submission, he wants you to leave a comment. Alternately, if you still don't get an acknowledgment, you can send the submissions to me, and I will forward them on. Guidelines for what we're looking for in posts contributed can be found here and towards the end of this post.

I will probably be tweaking and fine-tuning these guidelines in the future when I get around to it, but it's highly unlikely that I will make any radical changes. Basically, we want posts that use facts and/or science to examine and/or debunk myths or phenomena that are widely believed but have little or no basis in fact. Topics can range from evolution, psychic phenomena, quackery, pseudoscience, pseudohistory (such as my personal bête noire, Holocaust denial), or anything you can think of that would benefit from the application of critical thinking, skepticism, and science. There's a lot of, well, just plain bullshit out in the blogosphere that gets amplified as it gets passed from blogger to blogger, and the Skeptics' Circle was designed to serve as an antidote to this phenomenon.

Now that the initial shock of the transition is past, I thought I'd take the opportunity today to discuss some of my ideas for the future of the Circle. The three main areas I'd like to touch on include hosting, publicity, and the nature of this particular carnival.


Hosting

As with all blog carnivals, perhaps the most important factor is to find good hosts who are willing to go that extra mile to round up interesting, intelligently written, and entertaining posts, to organize them in an entertaining fashion, and then to publicize their edition of the Skeptics' Circle to the the hilt, which describes past hosts of the Circle quite well. I fully expect that it will also describe the future hosts whom Nate lined up before stepping down. To give you an idea of the quality of past hosts and past Circles, here is the schedule as it stands now:

February 3, 2005
The First Skeptics' Circle, hosted by Saint Nate's Blog.

February 17, 2005
The Second Skeptics' Circle, hosted by Respectful Insolence.

March 3, 2005
The Third Skeptics' Circle, hosted by Rhosgobel: Radagast's Home.

March 17, 2005
The Fourth Skeptics' Circle, hosted by The Two Percent Company.

March 31, 2005
The Fifth Skeptics' Circle, hosted by Science and Politics.

April 14, 2005
The Sixth Skeptics' Circle, hosted by SocraticGadfly.

April 28, 2005
The Seventh Skeptics' Circle, hosted by Thoughts from Kansas.

May 12, 2005
The Eighth Skeptics' Circle, hosted by Pharyngula.

May 26, 2005
The Ninth Skeptics' Circle, hosted by Saint Nate's Blog.

June 9, 2005
The Tenth Skeptics' Circle, hosted by Skeptico.

June 23, 2005
The Eleventh Skeptics' Circle, hosted by Anne's Anti-Quackery & Science Blog.

July 7, 2005
The Twelfth Skeptics' Circle, hosted by Unscrewing the Inscrutable

July 21, 2005
The Thirteenth Skeptics' Circle, hosted by Respectful Insolence

August 4, 2005
The Fourteenth Skeptics' Circle, hosted by Be Lambic or Green

August 18, 2005
The Fifteenth Skeptics' Circle, hosted by Atheism Guide

September 1, 2005
The Sixteenth Skeptics' Circle, hosted by Red State Rabble

September 15, 2005
The Seventeenth Skeptics' Circle, hosted by decorabilia

September 29, 2005
The Eighteenth Skeptics' Circle, OPEN

October 13, 2005
The Nineteenth Skeptics' Circle, hosted by Time to Lean (whose blog has even been mentioned in the Amazing One's newsletter!)

As you can see, Nate did a fine job of lining up quality hosts all the way up to September 15 (October 13's host was my find) before handing over the reigns, and there were some excellent editions during his tenure. I don't want to rest on Nate's (and, of course, past hosts') laurels, though. I'm looking for more hosts who will strive to carry on the evolving tradition of the Circle. So, what kind of blogger, specifically, am I looking for? First of all, the main theme of your blog doesn't necessarily have to be science, quackery, pseudoscience, or skepticism, but you should be the type of blogger who likes to write about one or more of these topics at least occasionally. Second, you should have an interest in skepticism and the application of critical thinking, science, and data to dubious claims. (If you regularly check out The Amazing Randi's weekly newsletter, you're probably already halfway there.) Third, you need to want to do it and to be willing to give it your best shot at doing it well. I can tell you from my own personal experience hosting the Skeptics' Circle, that hosting a high-profile blog carnival early on in the life of your blog is a great way to get noticed and help your blog take off. Indeed, I cut my teeth hosting the Skeptics Circle and went on to host Grand Rounds and Tangled Bank, and then the Skeptics' Circle again. It's also a hell of a lot of fun, and I'll help you in any way I can.

So how does one host a blog carnival like the Skeptics' Circle? There are two main styles of hosting blog carnivals. There's the good, old-fashioned straightforward style, as exemplified by St. Nate's recent hosting of the Carnival of the Godless; Grand Rounds as hosted by fellow surgeons Bard Parker or Aggravated DocSurg; or Tangled Bank as hosted by Buridan's Ass or About Town. This is the most commonly used style and is still often the best. However, some hosts don't wish to be confined to a simple listing and brief commentary about the submitted articles, however pithy the commentary may be. They choose to use somewhat more--shall we say?--creative styles of organizing and presenting, as exemplified by my hosting of the Skeptics' Circle and Grand Rounds. (Of course, it is possible to go off the deep end a bit using these sorts of gimmicks, as I admit that I probably did when I hosted Tangled Bank, but better to reach and fall flat on your face than not to reach at all, I say.) Other highly creative examples include Grand Rounds as hosted by the Mad House Madman, Maria, Polite Dissent, Mudfud; the Skeptics Circle as hosted by Brent; and Tangled Bank as hosted by Science and Sensibility. As you can see, the possibilities are limited only by your imagination, making this a great chance to strut your stuff in front of a wide audience.

How long does it take? Well, the straightforward approach will probably take a couple of hours the night before you post the carnival. The creative approach will take as long as you wish to dedicate to it.

Interested? Send a request to me at orac_usa@hotmail.com, and I'll see about getting you on the schedule. I want to line up hosts as far in advance as I can manage.


Publicity

The Skeptics' Circle has already become fairly well known, having been linked to regularly by such established bloggers, such as Pharyngula, Majikthise, and One Good Move, among others (to all of whom I'm grateful). (Unfortunately we've never managed to get Instapundit to link to us, as he does to Grand Rounds every week.) We've even been linked to twice by the Amazing Randi himself! (Of course, I'd love to have Randi link to us every edition; if anyone has an "in" with the Amazing One and wants to advocate for us, please contact me.)

Of course, more is better here. So, once again, if you have any new ideas of how to promote the Circle or know of any high-traffic bloggers who might be sympathetic to the ideals represented by the Skeptics' Circle, and thus willing to link to us regularly, please let me know, and I'll contact them, hopefully persuading them to let me add them to the publicity mailing list. Remember, the more publicity, the more incentive for people to host and host well, and the more incentive for bloggers to send in their very best writing and the better the Circle will become. The better and more widely read the Circle becomes, the more effective a weapon it becomes against the rampant credulity in the blogosphere.


The Nature of the Skeptics' Circle and Submitting Your Work

I wanted to finish this post with a few words on the nature of the Skeptics' Circle and what kinds of posts I would and would not like to see. First, let's dispose of the easy part, the types and formats of posts:

1. Submissions should come from bona fide bloggers. That means a weblog that is regularly updated in a format in which the articles have dates on them, preferably with more recent articles at the top. I realize that the boundaries between a website and a blog can sometimes be blurry, but I think most people recognize a blog when they see one.
2. Submissions should showcase the writing of the blogger submitting it. After all, the very purpose of this blog carnival is to showcase high quality skeptical blogging. That's why Instapundit-style simple links with little or no commentary or analysis are rarely, if ever appropriate. However, commentary that quotes significantly from another link is certainly acceptable, as long as a signficant proportion of the content comes from the blogger.
   
3. Submissions should be fairly recently written. Ideally, they should have been written after the last Skeptic's Circle, but within the last month is usually acceptable. If the article is particularly good, the host may of course show some discretion.
4. The blogs from which submissions come don't necessarily have to be devoted to science or skepticism, but should have some content of that nature.

I already touched on it somewhat in the introduction, but I'd like to expand upon it a bit. Nate has laid out the general guidelines here, here, and here. As Nate has said, appropriate topics include quackery, pseudoscience, urban legends, the paranormal, and dubious historical revisionism. I have a particular fondness to see posts on the nature of critical thinking, science, and how one evaluates the evidence, in other words, how we know what is valid and what is not. The Skeptics' Circle was also meant to be relatively apolitical, as St. Nate pointed out after some unpleasantness a couple of months ago. At that time, he decided he didn't want bloggers whose blogs are highly political. I tend to agree with St. Nate's original desire to keep the Circle relatively apolitical, but have always had a few concerns. Consider what I said weeks before the Skeptics' Circle was even a reality, back when I was a new, itty-bitty blogger:

St. Nate did not want political or ideological biases to come into it. I'm not sure how that will be possible, unless the topics are restricted to science and pseudoscience, and I'm not sure such a carnival should be so narrowly restricted. On the other hand, leaving things too wide open could potentially put each host of such a carnival in the uncomfortable position position of having to evaluate the arguments themselves, which might be too much work. Also, not all hosts would have the same capabilities in the same areas.

I still feel the same way, and now that I'm in charge I don't want to put our hosts in such a position. Hosting is supposed to be fun and challenging, but it should not become onerous, nor would I want the Skeptics' Circle to turn into a bunch of political rants. However, certain issues that are regular fodder for the Skeptics' Circle are already charged with political implications. The most prominent example, of course, is the conflict between biologists and science teachers and advocates of creationism trying to get "intelligent design" taught in the classroom. Another example is global warming, where there is a broad scientific consensus that global warming is happening and that human activity is contributing to it (although how much and what we should do about it are, of course, hotly debated questions). My point is that it's impossible to avoid politics completely, and a recent article in Slate pointed out that skeptics these days are almost by necessity dealing with politically charged issues like global warming, intelligent design, stem cell research, and end of life issues. The question is, should the Circle even try to remain apolitical?

My answer now is: yes, for now. The reason is simply because of the very nature of a blog carnival. It would be different if there were some sort of "peer review" of the articles with expertise in the relevant fields, but that's not what we have. We have different hosts every two weeks, with one person (me) being the only element of continuity. I have a great deal of knowledge about quackery and creationism, as well as the scientific method and critical thinking in general, but I feel far less comfortable wandering too far out of my area of expertise. I've been thinking of ways that I could add a backup means of "peer review" of questionable articles, and I hope to flesh them out soon. If I can pull that off successfully, I may very well let a little more politics slip in. But only if I can pull it off successfully. In the meantime, the Circle will stick to areas that can be evaluated using evidence, reason, and the scientific method. (Don't worry; politically charged or not creationist fallacies remain fair game because they are clearly pseudoscience--or antiscience, if you prefer--because they can be clearly debunked using evidence and science.) Certainly, I would appreciate input on this matter, especially from past hosts and regular contributors to the Circle.

I have, however, decided to loosen up a bit Nate's requirements for hosts that their blogs be apolitical. That requirement was instituted a couple of months ago after the previously mentioned unpleasantness. Now that things have been going relatively smoothly the last couple of months, I don't think it's necessary to continue to be quite so stringent. (Besides, the pool of apolitical bloggers dedicated to science and skepticism is relatively small.) Consequently, I'm now quite willing to cast a wider net and to consider interested bloggers whose writing is primarily political--if they think they can remain relatively objective in evaluating the submissions. I'm just a facilitator for the Skeptics' Circle, anyway. In reality, without contributors to provide high quality skeptical blog posts and hosts to present them in an entertaining and engaging way, there wouldn't even be a Circle. My thanks go out to all who have hosted, contributed, or publicized the Circle in the past, and I hope you will continue to support us in the future.

Which brings us back to this week. Mark wants submissions. Mark needs submissions. Mark's gotta gotta have them--by Wednesday, August 3, of course!

And, once again, if you're interested in hosting, drop me a line at orac_usa@hotmail.com.

Another one bites the dust

I was looking over the most recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, and what did I see? A study showing that Echinacea has no detectable effect above placebo when it comes to preventing or ameliorating the symptoms of colds. It's a nicely designed randomized blinded study that tested three different preparations of Echinacea and a placebo on healthy volunteers, who took the preparation and then were challenged with rhinovirus. There was no detectable difference between groups in the infection rate or measurements of cold duration and severity. None of the Echinacea groups were better than placebo.

Now that's the way you evaluate alternative remedies! For once, NCCAM has actually funded a study that, when added to earlier studies, pretty well puts the final nail in the coffin of this particular remedy. More interesting was an editorial by Dr. Wallace Sampson, who argues that, when it comes to alternative medicine, we should stick to putting resources into evaluating scientifically plausible remedies:

The inability of randomized clinical trials and systematic reviews to establish inefficacy in research into alternative treatments contributes to a recent loss of bearings. Researchers and advocates of alternative medicine present a mass of information with inadequate heuristics for making sense of it and insufficient standards for making use of it. Should there be studies of other echinacea species, of other parts of the plant, and of each extract of each part of each plant on each cold and each influenza virus? Should these studies be repeated in various combinations, with dose modifications? Why? The possible combinations increase geometrically. Since 1999, the NIH has spent almost $1.5 billion in grants for research into alternative methods. NCCAM has spent almost half that amount and has found no evidence of efficacy and little evidence of inefficacy. NCCAM has three more randomized clinical trials of echinacea that are currently active. As long as research sponsored by NCCAM and private foundations continues, advocates of alternative treatments can claim that a state of equipoise exists when, in fact, the issues should have been settled on the basis of previous knowledge.

It is time for reassessment. First, there is an answer to the question, "Why are we doing randomized clinical trials of folkway uses of herbs and sectarian remedies?" The answer is that proponents and evaluators have excluded plausibility from the equation. What is needed is knowledge-based medicine, with randomized clinical trials of treatments with histories that indicate some reasonable chance of efficacy. This approach mandates a medicine based on evidence that has passed through the sieve of plausibility and that is consistent with basic sciences, other applied sciences, and history — all molded by wisdom and common sense. NCCAM, if it is to justify its existence, must consider halting its search for active remedies through clinical trials of treatments of low plausibility.

Unfortunately, as I've learned dealing with alties, no matter how many negative studies showing no efficacy of their favored remedy over placebo are done, they always find a way to rationalize the failure of well-designed scientific studies. There has to come a point when we must conclude that the question has been pretty much answered and that we should put our resources into other areas of investigation that might yield more promising results.

Another Cablevision fan

Unfortunately, our power was out for several hours last night, which means I didn't finish the post intended for today. It looks as though the record heat in our neck of the woods caused a blackout in our town, because we really didn't get much in the way of storms predicted. In any case, few things are more fun than sitting around in a humid, sweltering house in the dark--which is why my wife and I went shopping and then out to dinner to escape the situation for a while. (Unfortunately, as Majikthise has pointed out, not everyone has the means that my wife and I do to escape the heat when there is no air conditioning.) Fortunately, the power was back on by the time we got home, but I was too tired to finish the planned post. Also fortunately, I had this lying around from a week or two ago, looking for an appropriate time to post, as well as the brief mention of Dr. Laidler's article.

After my little rant four weeks ago about Cablevision, I've found another Cablevision fan.

Since then, I've mellowed a bit on Cablevision, at least on the cable guy who came to my house. If you remember, when I called to complain that my picture was pixelating, freezing, and even disappearing, the "customer service" drone on the other end tried to tell me it was because I didn't turn the cable box off overnight to let it "update." When the cable guy came in, he immediately hit a service key combination on the box, looked at the signal strength and the number of errors the box was registering, and told me that my signal was so weak that he was amazed that I got any picture at all! He then proceeded to check our wiring and discovered that the guy who owned the house before us had split, re-split, and re-split again the cable again. Worse, at one point, he had hammered a moulding down over the cable, crushing it, which, according to him, can compromise signal transmission. (I was not surprised, as I had always assumed that the cable outlets in almost every room of the house were not the work of Cablevision.) His solution? He ran a new line in and unhooked the main line from all the splits. He even got rid of most of the splits in the line to our other TV. Unfortunately that leaves a bunch of useless cable connections all over the place. On the other hand, they were pretty much useless already, given the number of splits.

The result?

Beautiful HD pictures and sound on the HD channels and good to excellent quality pictures on all the others. It's still way more expensive than it's worth, but at least we're getting what we're supposed to be getting now, and I like Optimum Online too much to consider a switch to satellite (which would also cause my Internet bill to go up for not getting Optimum Online with a TV package).

Clearly, not every Cablevision employee in customer service is an idiot. But enough of them are to cause a lot of grief.

Hopefully tonight I'll have the time to finish the post I had originally intended for today. And sometime next week, if I get around to it, maybe I'll tell you why alties like to call me a "pharma shill" and other favored ad hominem attacks that cranks like to use.

On the uselessness of chelation therapy for autism, update

A while back, I commented on the uselessness of chelation therapy as a treatment for autism. Yesterday, Kathleen Seidel posted a preview of an excellent overview written by Dr. James Laidler explaining on what basis scientists and doctors conclude that chelation therapy is useless for treating autism. Dr. Laidler also points out how quacks use bogus "mercury testing" to convince parents that their autistic children have been "poisoned" and that they "need" chelation. Highly recommended reading.

Of note, Dr. Laidler also makes an interesting observation about the VAERS reporting system so beloved by mercury/autism advocates like the Geiers in "proving" a link between mercury and autism:

The chief problem with the VAERS data is that reports can be entered by anyone and are not routinely verified. To demonstrate this, a few years ago I entered a report that an influenza vaccine had turned me into The Hulk. The report was accepted and entered into the database.

Because the reported adverse event was so…unusual, a representative of VAERS contacted me. After a discussion of the VAERS database and its limitations, they asked for my permission to delete the record, which I granted. If I had not agreed, the record would be there still, showing that any claim can become part of the database, no matter how outrageous or improbable.

Since at least 1998 (and possibly earlier), a number of autism advocacy groups have, with all the best intentions, encouraged people to report their autistic children—or autistic children of relatives and friends—to VAERS as injuries from thimerosal-containing vaccines. This has irrevocably tainted the VAERS database with duplicate and spurious reports.

Consider this when examining any report that uses the VAERS database as its source.

Tanged Bank XXXIII

Tangled Bank XXXIII has been posted at Evolgen. It's time once again for your biweekly dose of the best science blogging out there. (OK, there is one exception to that description, a piece that drinks deeply--excuse the term--of antifluoridation conspiracy-mongering, something that RPM points out with an appropriately sarcastic General Ripper/Colonel Mandrake allusion. May I suggest that, after reading that article, you go and read this amusing piece by Nurse Kelly on antifluoridation conspiracy-mongering, to cleanse the palate? Or just read Nurse Kelly's article instead of that one?)

Now, go forth and be educated and entertained (after finishing up here, of course). While you're there, you could check out his interesting post about genetic diversity in the yeast used in winemaking. Evolgen is on the list of blogs I follow in my newsreader for a reason.

Academia in drug development

Being part of academia, I almost never think much of what sort of financial rewards that could result if I ever managed to develop a successful new drug, other than the altruistic benefit to humankind, plus perhaps a dollop of credit to myself and as many publications and speaking invitations as I can milk out of it. Certainly the potential financial rewards of developing a successful drug are rarely realized by academic investigators, who usually end up selling their patent rights to a pharmaceutical company for relatively little money. (The pharmaceutical does the expensive heavy lifting of getting the drug to market, while the academic researcher gets the line on his or her CV listing the patent.) Indeed, the most I ever made from my one patent was around $20,000 over several years, and the treatment never made it past all the hurdles necessary to become a viable, marketable drug. I also can't help but note that that's more than the vast majority of translational researchers ever make from their work, and it only came about because my Ph.D. thesis advisor was fair and generous enough to give me half the credit for a discovery I made while workign in his lab. In any case, I'm not really in it for the money. I'm in it for the intellectual stimulation, the chance to discover new things about cancer, and, if I'm really persistent, smart enough, and lucky enough, perhaps to improve an existing treatment or even discover a new treatment for cancer. I daresay that the same is true for most academic physicians.

Of course, pharmaceutical companies look at it a different way. They're in it for profit, and have to get their drug through all the regulatory hurdles and to market with enough time before its patent expires that they can actually make back the up to $1 billion it can take to develop the drug and still have time left to make a profit. That's part of the reason that it takes a different mindset to succeed in a biotech or pharmaceutical company. Indeed, scientists in the drug industry sometimes look down their noses at academia's attempts to develop drugs, as academia sometimes looks down its nose at attempts by biotech and pharmaceutical companies to do basic research.

Now, via In the Pipeline, I've discovered an example of an interesting example of a successful drug coming out of academia, namely the antiretroviral drug emtricitabine:

Gilead Sciences, Inc. (Nasdaq: GILD) and Royalty Pharma today announced that the companies have entered into an agreement with Emory University providing for the purchase of the royalty interest owed to Emory for emtricitabine, also known as Emtriva®. Under the terms of the agreement, Gilead and Royalty Pharma will make a one-time cash payment of $525 million to Emory in exchange for elimination of the emtricitabine royalties due to Emory on worldwide net sales of the product. The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close on or before July 29, 2005.

Gilead and Royalty Pharma will pay 65 and 35 percent, respectively, of the $525 million cash payment to Emory. Following this transaction, Gilead will be obligated to pay to Royalty Pharma royalty revenue based on all future emtricitabine net sales relative to Royalty Pharma’s contribution to the Emory royalty buyout. Gilead will continue to have obligations to pay certain royalties to GlaxoSmithKline, fulfilling Emory’s obligations under a previous agreement. Within 30 days of closing, Emory and certain inventors of emtricitabine may acquire interests in Royalty Pharma approximating up to 25 percent of the proceeds payable by Royalty Pharma in the transaction.

Wow. That's some righteous bucks those pharmaceutical companies are paying the Emory. According to the Emory's intellectual property rules, the University will get the lion's share, to be reinvested into its research programs, and the investigators will get a minority share. Still, according to Derek Lowe:

And the deal provides that the University itself gets 60% of that, with the rest to be split between Liotta, Raymond Shinazi (on the medical side), and former Emory researcher Woo-Baeg-Choi. That is 210 million dollars to be split between the three of them.

That's some incentive, even if the odds of my ever producing a drug or treatment that would net me that much money are probably only marginally better than my odds of winning the Mega Millions Jackpot. Heck, even my odds of ever producing another drug that would even bring me another relatively paltry $20,000 sometime in the next decade aren't all that promising. On the other hand, even if the odds are long, the investigator does at least share in the proceeds that come from his or her work, as long as he or she works for a university with a reasonable intellectual property policy. Compared to industry, that's not bad at all:

I can tell you that if I come up with a winning drug here in industry, I'll likely get promoted, and may well even see a bonus. But I will most definitely not see any seventy million dollars. Maybe this academic model for drug discovery has something to it after all. . .

Yeah, but what are the odds? It seems to me that drug development in academia is a bit like being an entrepreneur, except the odds of a big payoff are much lower--but so are the risks.

Apologies

Upon further reflection, I think that I might have to offer some humble apologies here.

Yesterday, I administered a blog slapdown to a particularly deserving blowhard named Karl for his simple-minded, fact-free, and logic-free attack on Skeptico and then on Skeptico, Autism Diva, and me. Apparently Karl didn't like our recent frequent blogging dedicated to debunking the scaremongering of RFK Jr. about a supposed link between mercury in childhood vaccines in autism. No, I'm not apologizing for administering said slapdown (which Karl richly deserved), although admittedly it was akin to using a Howitzer to eliminate an ant.

No, I'm apologizing to you, loyal reader, for in my irritation with Karl's many logical fallacies I subjected you to the inane rants in his blog Word Soup. Even though watching Karl melt down in the comments sections of the two posts linked to above under the onslaught of comments from readers of Skeptico and Respectful Insolence and then change the contents of his original post (for example, softening his offensive comment mocking autistic "unique snowflake personalities"--note that the way I quoted it was verbatim from the way it originally appeared) was highly entertaining (and probably is still highly entertaining), after a while it became more akin watching a car wreck. Karl's repeated refrain seems to be:

I don't play pseudo-science Google patty-cake with anonymous pseudo-scientists, sorry.

and

You seem to think this is either a lab or debate club. Too much academia I smell on you guys.

"Too much academia I smell on you guys?" What is this guy, Yoda? In any case, the above have to be two of the most pathetic excuses for not backing up one's opinions that I've seen in my long years of online discourse.

On the other hand, this addition to the part of his post where he bragged about the size of his penis is rather amusing:

That's sarcasm for egomaniacs, academics and experts so sheltered by institution or academia they can no longer properly process humor.

My penis is actually very, very, very small.

Ah, the truth at last! On the plus side, Karl did let me exceed my quota of Respectful Insolence for this month, much as RFK Jr. did last month.

On to better things. Of course, if anyone wants to leave one more comment for Karl, I'm not stopping you. I'm just sayin', you know?

Grand Rounds XLIV

Grand Rounds XLIV has been posted at a most unusual place, Pharyngula. Can pure science be reconciled with the art of medicine? Find out as PZ breaks down What Medbloggers Do.

It looks like Orac attracted another one

One of the occupational hazards of blogging is that sometimes people don't like what I say. I've had alties and creationists take their best shots and attracted some pretty fierce attacks in the comments section of various posts. Early on, I had a hard time letting any criticism that I detected pass without response. As Respectful Insolence got a little bit bigger and better established, leading to more people taking potshots at me, I learned to let it slide--most of the time, anyway. The rare times I haven't "let it slide" sometimes end up in the "Orac knows snark" section of my sidebar.

This time I don't feel like letting it slide. I admit it; sometimes an attack annoys me just enough that, if I happen to be in the right (or, more appropriately, wrong) mood, I have a hard time resisting making a response and administering a smackdown, even though my better nature tries frantically to warn me not to waste my time, like the robot in Lost in Space yelling, "Danger, Will Robinson!" Maybe it's because I had a rough day in clinic yesterday. Maybe it's because, for whatever reason, my tolerance for such silliness is lower as I write this than it usually is. Maybe it's because I was watching the remake of Dawn of the Dead on cable as I settled down to come up with today's post? Who knows? (What my occasional inability to resist giving these people the oxygen of attention--to "feed the troll," as we used to say on Usenet--says about me, I will leave the reader to decide; but sometimes a blogger's just gotta do what a blogger's gotta do. Besides, it's been two months since anyone's annoyed Orac enough to motivate him to lay down some of his trademark Respectful Insolence.) In any case, via e-mail I've become aware of just such an attack. Apparently a blogger named Karl doesn't like me very much, or at least my message when it comes to mercury-autism conspiracy-mongering. He also seems to like Skeptico or Autism Diva even less than me, viewing us all as "blowhards." I knew it was going to be a case of the pot calling the kettle black right away, though, when Karl started out:

As I kept digging into this Mercury/autism debate over the weekend, the more it started to bug me. And not just because of the possibility a government decision may have led to the poisoning of massive swaths of children. But because I loathe blowhards, and the more I read, the more I found the debate dominated by an odd collection of self-professed "skeptics" and experts.

Hmmm. By that criterion, it would appear that Karl must have a lot of self-loathing to deal with. As I started to read, I was wondering if Karl had perhaps found some major flaws in my arguments or those of Skeptico or Autism Diva that had angered him to the point that he felt that he had to respond in such an angry, sarcastic fashion, much the way I did when I first encountered the RFK, Jr. article.

I should have known better.

Instead, what followed was nothing but pure ad hominem attack, utterly devoid of a single intelligent piece of analysis, citation of a study, or reasoned argument showing the flaws in facts or logic that any of the three of us used. "Pot kettle black" indeed! For example:

But on the flip-side of that coin is a web of bloggers who fancy themselves skeptics and autism experts because they can post hyperlinks on blogger.com. Wherever someone pops up to suggest a Thimerosal/autism link, there they are, assailing & attacking like foamy mouthed yapping little hyenas.

They're like the Jessie Jackson of Mercury & Autism. Always hanging around. Not really experts. Most have no real credentials in the field. But golly, do they swarm and sting when someone suggests big pharma and Uncle Sam might have fucked up.

Being active on the issue - running sole-purpose blogs focused on an honest debate, the welfare of humanity, and data integrity - that's one thing. But the more I read these people's ramblings, the more I smelled something. And it wasn't honest skepticism.

Someone like Karl lecturing me on what what "honest" skepticism is reminds me , well, an entirely different Karl lecturing on avoiding leaks. Karl's also using a straw man fallacy. None of us has claimed or argued that Uncle Sam or big pharma has been above reproach. Indeed, whether or not Uncle Sam or big pharma has been perfectly well behaved or not has little to do with whether the data does in fact support a link between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism anyway. Vague conspiracy theories are tempting and fun (how many websites and blogs would disappear virtually overnight if such lunacy didn't exist?), but rarely shed any light on anything other than the paranoia behind them (unless there is real evidence of a coverup, which neither Karl nor even RFK, Jr. can produce). As they say, data talks and bullshit walks, but Karl doesn't seem to want to address the data. In fact, he assiduously avoids addressing the data, resorting instead to ad hominem attacks, after this appeal to ignorance:

Blowhards are always absolutists. Real, honest people don't fucking know. In fact the more an honest person learns, the more they realize they don't know. Therefore, if you actually know anything, you should be fucking uncertain and petrified.

Wrong again, Karl. Even if there is uncertainty, it's burying your head in the sand to say we should be "fucking uncertain and petrified." The uncertainty level about this issue is simply not high enough to justify your Chicken Little response. The Canadian and Danish studies, among others, show that it is highly unlikely that there is a link between mercury and autism. Do they entirely rule out a small effect of mercury in susceptible individuals? Not completely. But they do pretty well refute the contention of some activists that autism is a "misdiagnosis for mercury poisoning." In fact, contrary to Karl's rant, none of us three are absolutists, as a perfunctory reading of our posts on the subject would reveal to a truly neutral observer. I suggest that Karl read this or this and recall what I said (plus variants of the same thing on other occasions) if he doubts me:

For obvious reasons, it's impossible ever to do the gold standard study about this issue: a double-blinded randomized control trial comparing vaccination of babies with vaccines containing thimerosal and vaccines not containing it and follow the children prospectively to see if the babies receiving vaccines with thimerosal have a higher rate of autism than those receiving thimerosal-free vaccines. So what's the next best thing? Good epidemiological evidence has a way of trumping all the theoretical concerns, cell culture experiments, and even animal data, and the removal of thimerosal from vaccines two years ago provides an epidemiological experiment that is seldom possible to do with other diseases. It's a golden opportunity to test once and for all the hypothesis that autism is caused primarily by mercury in thimerosal in vaccines. If, after a decade of no thimerosal in vaccines, austism rates do not decline, that would be very strong evidence that mercury in vaccines is not and was not the cause of autism. In such as case, it would be very difficult indeed to say that there is a link between the two.

Yep. I sure sounded like a rigid dogmatic "blowhard" there, didn't I? How is what I've been saying any different from what Karl seems to approve of as one legitimate view:

Some suggest there's no link now, but note we need to watch autism levels to be sure.

In substance, what I said isn't different, other than in emphasis (namely, in that I express doubt that there will be evidence of a link in the future). But that didn't stop Karl. He apparently also missed this one by me:

Finally, I realize what I've said may have sounded dismissive, but it wasn't. It is a natural desire to look for causes for illnesses like autism or for people to blame, and, even with my skepticism, I wouldn't bet the farm that I might not be tempted to take the same path if I were ever to have an autistic child.

Gee, I sounded really absolutist there, didn't I? I'm sure it must have been a simple oversight on Karl's part that he didn't see the above or any of a number of qualifying statements I've made over the two or three months that I've been blogging on this particular topic. Yeah, that must be it.

Karl also can't resist throwing out a lot of other red herrings, his favorite seeming to be this little gem about Skeptico:

The way he rails against Kennedy reminded me of the absolutist vitriol fired at Michael Moore by free market fanatics. A google search of the name he uses to pen his reviews shows he contributed to the piece that circulated thrashing Moore's Columbine film. Why does that matter? I think his Kennedy tirades show his political stripes. He probably doesn't like Kennedy here because he's saying the same thing Moore repeatedly says:

Corporate America is fucking you.

Uh, no, Karl. The reason Skeptico doesn't like RFK Jr.'s Salon.com article is the same reason I've been lambasting RFK Jr. It's because RFK, Jr. misrepresents the data, confuses correlation with causation (his most egregious example being his repeated claims that autism was unknown before thimerosal-containing vaccines were introduced in the 1930's when a simple reading of the history of autism shows that there were no specific diagnostic criteria for autism before 1943 and that there are many descriptions of autistic-like syndromes from the 18th and 19th centuries), and intentionally feeds hysteria. (Hmmm. Come to think of it, maybe comparing RFK Jr. to Michael Moore isn't completely inappropriate.) It's the same reason both of us get annoyed by "intelligent design creationists" and quacks. Skeptico's politics are irrelevant (as are mine, yours, or even RFK Jr.'s, for that matter). What is relevant are our arguments and the data and reasoning we use to back them up. Really, Karl, if you want to be taken seriously, you need to address those, not speculate about Skeptico's politics. It's not even a matter of politics. I can easily cite a prominent lefty blogger who concluded that RFK Jr. is full of it, and a self-proclaimed flamingly liberal blogger who also doesn't buy into RFK Jr.'s fearmongering.

Now, on to Karl's most egregious ad hominem attack, this time about Autism Diva:

Is she Pharma astroturf (bogus blogs or PR designed to sway public opinion by pretending to be public opinion)? A high functioning autistic (or the mother of one) who can't stand the idea her "unique snowflake" personality might be the result of mercury poisoning? I'm still trying to decide. An expert? Not so much. Sure gets treated like one though.

Notice that, as was the case with Skeptico, Karl can't or won't address any of her arguments. But this time, besides the usual ad hominem attack that she must be a "pharma shill" (an ad hominem attack much beloved of alties, some of whom can't believe that someone who attacks their pet therapy could ever do so for reasons other than being in the pocket of big pharma), Karl launches another unique attack of a particularly nasty nature, namely his sarcastic crack about the "unique snowflake" personality of autistics.

Oddly enough, Karl probably went the easiest on me. Why, I have no idea. Nonetheless, he seems to have a rather distorted view of my beliefs, claiming I have an "utmost belief in the integrity of the U.S. Government, modern medicine, and the Pharm industry." Uh, no, not exactly, given some of the things I've said about this administration and Bill Frist. I just happen to be a big fan of science and evidence-based medicine, so much so that I've devoted my life to it. Come to think of it, you're using a red herring there again, Karl. What I have is an utmost distrust of people like RFK Jr., David Kirby, and J. B. Handley, all of whom have been demonstrated to exaggerate, distort, and cherry-pick data to come to their predetermined conclusions. Ditto the Geiers, whom you held up as examples of investigators showing a link. Did you know that David Geier owns a company whose purpose is to help parents sue for compensation from the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Board and that Dr. Mark Geier makes a good side living as an "expert witness" in vaccine cases, even though he is not qualified? Did you know that Dr. Geier was rebuked by the FDA for trying to merge data files in a way that would have compromised patient confidentiality and allowed the matching of names to conditions in the database, a breach that led to the revocation of his protocol by his Institutional Review Board? Or that the reason the IOM was not impressed by their findings is because of their shoddy research methods? Did you know that the Geiers are no more "unbiased" than the worst pharma shill you seem to think all of us to be in your fevered little tinfoil hat dreams?

Of course you didn't, because you didn't bother to find out. It wouldn't have fit into your little rant, would it?

At least at the end Karl does say one thing that I agree with:

Do I know autism? Nope.

Karl's made that much abundantly clear. He proudly trumpets his ignorance of the actual facts of the issue and instead seems to take great pride in boasting that he can identify "blowhards." In my book, though, "blowhard" is a good word to describe someone who blusters about things he obviously knows little or nothing about. Please, I encourage everyone to read Karl's article and then those of Skeptico, Autism Diva, and me (not to mention Prometheus and Citizen Cain), and decide for yourself who is and isn't a "blowhard." I never claimed to have the final answer on the question of whether mercury in thimerosal in vaccines causes autism, but I did use my training in science and clinical studies to evaluate the data and come to my conclusions. If Karl wants to try to refute them, he is, of course, perfectly welcome to give it his best shot. Will he, though? Flinging about ad hominems and claims of bias is easy. Looking at the data critically and--dare I say?--skeptically and coming to conclusions based on the it isn't nearly so easy.

Evolution in action

Unfortunately, due to the selective pressure of poachers looking for ivory, tuskless elephants are becoming more common in Asia.

Arthur Caplan finds the Hitler zombie in bioethics

In the most recent issue of Science, bioethicist Arthur Caplan points out how common flawed and overblown Hitler or Nazi analogies are during debates about stem cell research, end of life care, and clinical trials:

Sadly, too often those who draw an analogy between current behavior and what the Nazis did do not know what they are talking about. The Nazi analogy is equivalent to dropping a nuclear bomb in ethical battles about science and medicine. Because its misuse diminishes the horror done by Nazi scientists and doctors to their victims, it is ethically incumbent upon those who invoke the Nazi analogy to understand what they are claiming.

I couldn't have said it better myself. (Of course, Arthur Caplan does this kind of thing for a living and I don't; so it would be shocking if he couldn't say it better than I.) The Hitler zombie will not be pleased by his words, as biomedical debates have proven a fruitful hunting ground for him to find brains to snack on, and not just in the debate about thimerosal and autism. there are also the issues of stem cells, human clinical trials, genetic engineering and gene therapy, and end of life issues.

On a more serious note, let's look at one example in particular that Dr. Caplain mentioned, the Terri Schiavo case. How many times did you hear that the way authorities were rushing to "execute" Terri was reminiscent of Nazi Germany or even a step onto the "slippery slope" to a new Holocaust? There was apocalyptic imagery of "jack-booted" Gestapo coming to end her life. Indeed, it makes me wish I had come up with the concept of the Hitler zombie a few months before I did, as he would have had a field day with this case. Here's one example:

As Schiavo starves to death, we are entering a world last encountered in Nazi Europe. Prior to the genocide of Jews, Gypsies, and Poles, the Nazis engaged in the mass murder of disabled children and adults, many of whom were taken from their families under the guise of receiving treatment for their disabling conditions. The Nazis believed that killing was the highest form of treatment for disability.

And this article about Schiavo:

It was also used in Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Treblinka and the Soviet gulags. Stalin used starvation as a means of control. Nazi doctors experimenting on unwilling "patients" adopted all kinds of cruel techniques. One of those techniques was starvation and dehydration. It is recorded in the records of the Nuremberg Trials.

And this one:

Even before the rise of Adolph Hitler's Third Reich, the way for the gruesome Nazi holocaust of human extermination and cruel butchery was being prepared in the 1930 German Weimar Republic through the medical establishment and philosophical elite's adoption of the "quality of life" concept in place of the "sanctity of life." The Nuremberg trials, exposing the horrible Nazi war crimes, revealed that Germany's trend toward atrocity began with their progressive embrace of the Hegelian doctrine of "rational utility," where an individual's worth is in relation to their contribution to the state, rather than determined in light of traditional moral, ethical and religious values.

Yet another article about Schiavo invoking the Nazis:

Because evil has no reason, we once again see its ugly head in the shameful decision by people dressed in black like the Gestapo of Nazi Germany, giving way to the execution by starvation without a jury trial, required in all capital death cases.

And, finally, of course, such a discussion would not be complete without the gratuitious, outrageous, and overblown dropping of the H (for Hitler)-bomb (Mary Labyak apparently runs the hospice where Terri Schiavo was being cared for):

While Mary Labyak is not a leader of armies of soldiers and is not known to be targeting ethnic groups as Hitler did, she is actively involved in making hospice a place where the severely disabled can be eliminated, with government approval. Hitler also targeted the severely disabled, killing over "200,000 handicapped, mentally ill and other institutional patients who were deemed physically inferior" and used his government to accomplish that goal. Labyak uses her hospice to accomplish the same goal.

Labyak sits on the board of national level policymaking organizations which decide the future of hospice and health care. Labyak agrees with Hitler that there is a rationale for intentionally ending the lives of the NON-terminal, severely disabled and is pushing that agenda. Labyak sits on the board of an organization (Partnership for Caring) with DIRECT historical roots in the Euthanasia Society of America, founded in 1938 in New York, during the HEIGHT OF THE NAZI agenda of killing off the disabled, mentally ill and other ethnic groups, shortly thereafter to become THE HOLOCAUST!

If you do a Google search, you can easily find thousands of articles making or discussing that analogy (although at least one pointed out how dubious it was). And, indeed, if you don't know a lot about Nazi Germany and its euthanasia program it can all sound pretty persuasive. The problem is, it doesn't add up, as Dr. Caplan points out, and I'll try to expand upon a bit.

Nazis justified the T4 euthanasia program on two main grounds. The first and foremost purpose of the program was eugenic, to remove undesirable genetic traits from the Volk. Consequently, the Nazis killed the deformed, the disabled, and particularly the mentally retarded or those with mental illnesses. They used multiple methods, including starvation, intentional overdose with narcotics, lethal injection, and then ultimately gas chambers to achieve this end. (Of course, given that genetics was in its infancy, the Nazis not infrequently misidentified conditions as being genetic when in reality they weren't, one example being cerebral palsy, which is often due to birth trauma or cerebral anoxia.) Consistent with this vision was the mandatory sterilization of adults deemed to have "undesirable" genetic traits, a group that expanded to include Jews and other "racial undesirables," who as groups later became the victims of mass murder during the Holocaust. The second justification was to eliminate what the Nazis perceived as drains on the Volk in order to "free up hospital beds," "increase the food supply," and "free up personnel for the war effort," among other specific reasons they would group under this rubric. Indeed, some of the terms for the disabled the Nazis would use to justify this killing were "life unworthy of life" and "worthless eaters." Removing them by killing, according to Nazi ideology, would allow the "healthy" members of the Volk to devote themselves to pursuits that would contribute to society and the war effort, rather than "wasting" their efforts caring for the disabled.

Consider this in relationship to the Terri Schiavo case. What was at the very core of the arguments made by those advocating removing her feeding tube? Personal autonomy and the right to self-determination, about as un-Nazi-like a justification as you can make! (Indeed, referring to such analogies, one commenter in a blog said sarcastically about such comparisons: "Yep: Adolf Hitler, famous advocate for patient autonomy.") In essence, the state of Florida spent nearly a decade and millions of dollars trying to determine what it was that Terri herself would have wanted for herself if she ever fell into a permanent coma or the persistent vegetative state she found herself in, and even ordered the feeding tube reinserted when an appeal was made. Implicit in that search was the accepted right of an competent human adult to refuse medical care. Nowhere in the arguments for letting Schiavo die were appeals to wasted resources being used to keep her alive or threats to the genetic health of the nation. Consider further, then: What would the default have been if Michael Schiavo had failed to convince the courts that he was not lying when he reported that Terri's wishes were not to be kept alive in a coma or persistent vegetative state? It would have been to continue to keep her alive, as she had been kept alive for years before that. In contrast, in Nazi Germany, the justification for letting Terri die would have been that she was a drain on the Volk, and not a second thought would have been given to withholding food and water or even helping her along with a lethal injection as soon as it became clear that she was never going to recover.

Besides being a bad analogy, such arguments rely on a logical fallacy, that of the "slippery slope." In essence, this logical fallacy seeks to convince one that, if the proposition in question occurs, then it will set into motion a chain of causality that will lead to something truly horrific; in this case, if Terri Schiavo is allowed to die, it will lead to widespread involuntary euthanasia of the disabled. The reason that the slippery slope is almost always a logical fallacy is that the chain of causation is usually vague and it is not proven that if the disputed proposition were to become reality that the feared outcome would have a high probability of resulting. Given that the very basis for letting Terri Schiavo die is not anything like the justifications the Nazis used for involuntarily euthanizing the disabled, there is no strong evidence or reason to conclude that allowing her to die would move the United States towards the horror of the widespread involuntary "mercy killing" of the disabled, as some advocates of the disabled have claimed.

Does this mean that all Nazi analogies in the realm of bioethics are dubious? No, but I would argue that the vast majority are. I've addressed this issue before with respect to bad Holocaust/Nazi/Hitler analogies in politics, and I'll paraphrase what I said before for biomedical Nazi analogies: Whenever someone makes a Hitler or Nazi comparison, be it "Bush=Hitler" or "killing Schiavo=Nazi euthanasia" or a questionable Holocaust comparison, don't just accept it. Pin down the person making the analogy. Make him justify the analogy with history, facts, and logic. Ask him what historical events lead him to make that analogy. At least 95% of the time, you'll get either no answer (and you'll hopefully make the idiot making the analogy very uncomfortable); a meaningless answer or an obviously fallacious answer. The other 5% of the time you may actually get an answer that makes you wonder. In any event, when examining a particular bioethical issue, what should determine whether such an action is ethical or not should be the facts and ethics of the case, not any distorted Nazi analogy.

As Arthur Caplan argues:

There are many reasons why a practice or policy in contemporary science or medicine might be judged unethical. But the cavalier use of the Nazi analogy in an attempt to bolster an argument is unethical. Sixty years after the fall of the Third Reich, we owe it to those who suffered and died at the hands of the Nazis to insist that those who invoke the Nazi analogy do so with care.

I wish I could have put it so succinctly. When considering a bioethics issue, to determine what is and is not ethical should rely on the facts of the case and the ethics of the policy, not a bad analogy to a historical event.

Pinkoski's at it again

A while back, I mentioned a creationist cartoon in which evil "fallen" angels lead dinosaurs in an attempt destroy Noah's Ark. Now, via Jesus' General, I've discovered that the cartoonist responsible has a movie pitch:

The manager of the local bank is not a human being.

He is a demon, and he enjoys seeing people come in and sign for their high interest bank loans.

This demon loves money, and loves to see the pain it brings to peoples' lives when they have to default on their loans and lose their homes, etc.

Then one day FATHER TIME decides that this has gone far enough

He continues:

One of the awesome visual sequences in this movie will involve something that has never been done before in a movie, a battle between angels and dinosaurs attacking Noah's Ark

I have little doubt that such a sequence has never been committed to film before (although I can't for the life of me figure out what angels and dinosaurs battling over Noah's ark would have to do with demons cheating unwary borrowers with usurous rates). Now that sounds like an entertaining movie! I'd go and see it. Well, maybe I'd rent it when it comes out on DVD. Or maybe I'd watch it on cable.

But only if nothing else were on and I didn't have anything better to do.

Monday carnival barking: Better late than never

I didn't post this when it came out on Sunday because of my blog break, but St. Nate's second to last post, The Carnival of the Godless #18 has been posted, and, as usual, Nate shows us how it's done when it comes to the straightforward style of blog carnival hosting. It's getting really depressing to contemplate Nate's imminent departure from the blogosphere.

If this blog ever goes quiet for longer than a few days...

...one of these reasons might be the explanation (particularly #1 and #3).

Welcome back, Nick. I hope you manage to find time to update Blogborygmi more often.

Speaking of blogs going silent, given that I'm taking the weekend off, may I suggest to those new to the phenomenon that is Orac that they check out the "Essential Orac" on the sidebar? You won't regret it.

If that's not enough, check out Jason Rosenhouse's report on the 2005 Mega Creation Conference (plus part 2). It just goes to show that, "intelligent design" be damned, young earth creationism is unfortunately still alive and kicking. In a way, though, it's refreshing, because at least young earth creationists aren't disguising the true nature of their beliefs, the way "intelligent design" creationists do.

If that's still not enough, thanks to an e-mail from St. Nate, I've discovered a surprisingly good podcast called Skepticality. (I say "surprisingly" because most podcasts I've listened to from sources other than professional radio personalities have been frightfully amateurish.) It's listed in iTunes; so if you have iTunes 4.9 you can just subscribe to it from a link on the website. There's lots of good stuff there. I checked out a couple of their shows today in my office while doing some particularly dull number crunching from one of our experiments. One of the shows featured an interview with Michael Shermer, another an interview with James Randi. I see there's also an interview with fellow blogger Phil Plait there, but I haven' t had a chance to listen to it yet.

One thing that was quite amusing was a parody of those Bud Light "We Salute You" commercials: "We Salute You, Mr. Internet Politics Debater." ("No matter if you're a Republican, a Democrat, a Libertarian, or a wishy-washy fence-siiter, you make sure that your opponent looks like a fascist Nazi KKK hatemonger or a bleeding-heart, dope-smoking hippie socialist to your buddies.")

And if that still isn't enough, be sure to head on over to St. Nate's on Sunday to check out his turn at hosting the Carnival of the Godless. I still can't believe he's leaving the blogosphere. It's definitely a loss.

Never let it be said that I leave my readers hanging when I disappear from the blogosphere for a couple of days. (OK, maybe you'll be able to say it in August when I go on vacation, necessitating my longest blog break since I started, but other than that you can't say it.)

Until Monday, then...

The sorting hat says...

It's Ravenclaw!

I'm
a Ravenclaw!

That's a bit of a surprise, although I'm happy it wasn't Slytherin.

And, this, dear readers, is how I announce that I plan on taking the weekend off from blogging to try to finish the sixth Harry Potter book, a project that was sidetracked by hosting the Skeptics' Circle, and to do some data-crunching that I didn't quite finish during the week. I'm not sure that I'll pull it off, given that there's a fair amount of other stuff I have to do for work and home, but I'll give it a try.

Don't worry, though, I'll be back on Monday....probably.

I may have to read "Lord Foul's Bane" again...

...after seeing this. I wonder if Heatherly and Julie will take on the next five books in the first two Thomas Covenant trilogies. I haven't read those books in almost 20 years. They may be due for a reread.

(Via Be Lambic or Green)

Tributes to James Doohan

Via SciFi Daily, I've learned that James Doohan's ashes may soon be sent into space to join those of Gene Roddenberry:

The BBC is reporting that the ashes of TV's James Doohan, who died yesterday at age 85, will be sent into space, at his request. His agent, according to the Beeb, said Doohan and his wife, Wende, had discussed sending his ashes into space, following those of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. Space Services Inc. said Doohan's ashes could be on a Falcon 1 rocket launching from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base, tentatively scheduled for launch in September.

A very cool tribute indeed!

Even the normally snarky Joy of Tech has a tribute.

Farewell, Scotty. The universe just won't be the same without you, nor will the warp drive ever run as smoothly.

RFK, Jr. needs a dose of his own medicine

And Skeptico is just the guy to give it to him about his interview with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.

I didn't see the interview, given that I was busy getting this week's Skeptics' Circle ready that night, but a few readers e-mailed me about it. Sadly, it appears that Jon Stewart dropped the ball on this one. I realize he's just a comedian trying to be entertaining (although there are times when I get the feeling that he thinks he's something more than that), but what happened to his trademark sarcasm when it comes to dubious conspiracy theories? Maybe the Kennedy mystique shut it down. Or maybe he doesn't mind wild-eyed unsubstantiated conspiracy theories as long as they're wild-eyed unsubstantiated conspiracy theories theories that implicate the government and big pharma.

The Chubby Vegan

If vegan restaurants advertised the way fast food restaurants do.

Hmmm. The ad almost makes me want to check it out. Almost.

Proof that vegetarianism affects your brain

Proof that something, be it veganism, vegetarianism ,or just sheer lack of critical thinking that PETA pushes in its ad campaigns and advocacy (or a combination), can affect your brain is here:

Vote Pam Anderson for President

Pamela Anderson has done so much for animals, and she's such a stunning actress, that we jump at the opportunity to help her win something. Pammy has been nominated for a Teen Choice award for her new show Stacked, and we want all of you to join us in voting for her at teenpeople.com/teenchoice.

Pam Anderson? "Stunning actress"? In the same sentence?

Her acting is "stunning" only in how awful it is, and I'm not sure what Pam Anderson has ever really "done" for animals other than posing in a skimpy bikini made of lettuce leaves for PETA. Clearly, whoever wrote this is probably not getting enough protein! At least he isn't advocating harassment and intimidation of those whom PETA perceives as its enemies, as they have been known to do in the past. That's progress, I suppose.

On the other hand, even though there was no mention of Hitler, the Holocaust, or Nazis (as in PETA's previous ill-fated "Holocaust on a Plate" anti-meat ad campaign), the Hitler zombie was nontheless intrigued by this link mentioned by PETA2. If such a service existed, maybe he could find more nutritious brains to feast on than the rather thin gruel offered by the brains of Charlie Rangel, Frank LoBiondo, Abe Foxman, Dick Durbin, or Lenny Schafer.

The Thirteenth Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle: A Change is in the air

"Something's in the air," said Brent. He was sitting, along with other assorted in a dark, wood-paneled meeting room in the back of a familiar old tavern frequented by scholars and scientists, the smell of beer and brats mixing with the musty odor of the old wood paneling.

"What do you mean?" Orac looked up from his beer at the host of the most recent meeting of the Skeptics Circle just two weeks ago. He had enjoyed the western theme, although he still hadn't quite been able to figure out why Brent had made him show up in a western saloon in his scrubs, surgical hat, and booties. Somehow it just didn't fit with the Old West ambience. (Did they even have booties 125 years ago? Orac would have rather shown up dressed like Doc Cochran.) For his second turn at hosting, Orac had decided to return to the scene of the crime of the second meeting of the Skeptics' Circle (even though he realized he risked repeating himself too closely). But there was a purpose to his returning to the Circle's roots. Brent was right. Something was up. Orac even knew what it was that was actually going on. He had been sworn to secrecy, though, and hoped Brent wouldn't push the issue.

"Yep, sump'n's definitely up," Brent repeated to no one in particular, draining his beer and asking for another (and apparently reverting back to his old west persona from two weeks ago).

"Well, you know what they say about the number thirteen, and this is our thirteenth meeting." Orac couldn't resist baiting Brent with a comment that would provoke any member of the Circle worth his or her salt to start expounding upon why belief in such silly numerology supersition was utter crap, but for some reason Brent didn't rise to the bait.

Members of the Circle were slowly filtering in, and a low hum of conversation and debate was rising. Skeptics by and large tend not to be the most punctual lot, but the senior members had been emphasizing that this would be an important meeting; so by 9 PM sharp, everyone was there (and well on the way to running up an impressive bar tab) when St. Nate, Founder, proprietor and organizer of the Circle walked in. Indeed, a couple of newbies were there, too, shifting nervously in their seats, uncertain what would be expected of them. They would not have long to wait.

"Hi, everyone," said Nate, although Mark, the next scheduled host for the Circle, could not help but notice that he seemed at once subdued and elated, if that were possible. Nate took his place behind the podium and began: "Welcome one and all to what will be a very eventful meeting! You'd think from the fact that we're back here in this musty bar again that Orac must really like this place." A low murmur of chuckles arose; everyone knew this was Orac's favorite hangout. "But, on with the meeting!" Cheers arose, as everyone lifted their glasses in what had become the tradition first chug that signified the official start of the meeting (at least when Orac hosted).

Orac wiped the beer foam off of his upper lip. He had expected Nate to go on for a little while longer, allowing him to finish his brew! "First, I'd like to thank you all for coming," he said, taking his place behind the podium. It's been a half a year since Nate got the ball rolling, and in that time our little Circle has grown and become quite the event! I want you all to give yourselves a round of applause for your hard work!"

The Circle did just that.

"Next," he continued, "let's all raise a glass to our favorite fictional engineer, a character whose resourcefulness and prowess were inspirations to entire generations of geeks like me. Alas, James Doohan (a.k.a. 'Scotty') died yesterday."

Everyone bowed their heads for a moment of silence, then, in Doohan's honor, broke out the scotch.

Orac continued, "The last time I hosted, it was winter, and the big issue was a New York Times article by Michael Behe pushing "intelligent design" creationism. We all had a great time ripping it to shreds. This time around, there's a new pseudoscience in town, antivaccination pseudoscience. Believe it or not, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., of all people, is one of the big ones pushing the paranoid conspiracy theory that the CDC, WHO, and drug companies are all in cahoots to 'cover up' a link between mercury and autism. (I'm still taking heat from activists for the posts I made showing how weak the evidence for this 'link' is!) There was even a march on Washington yesterday by advocacy groups trying to get money out of the government on the basis of this fallacy. We touched on it a bit last meeting, but there was a boatload of interest in it for this meeting; so I'm going to lead off with it. Skeptico?"

Skeptico strode confidently to the podium. "Did you know that aliens at a pharmaceutical company are plotting to take over the world through vaccines? Really, they are. Just ask Ray Gallup!" He then went on to regale the Circle with the tale of a really bad novel about just this topic, leaving them in stitches. When the Circle had regained its composure and stopped laughing, Alyric pointed out that some of those pushing a dubious mercury-autism link were pushing the antithesis of science and skeptical thinking called "democratic objectivity," as if objective scientific knowledge were subject to opinion.

"Well, what do you expect," chimed in Citizen Cain, "given the way 'journalists' like David Kirby flub the California data and twist it to make it seem to support the supposed link between mercury in vaccines and autism."

"Yeah," added Autism Diva, "it's shameless the way they misrepresent that data! Of course, they also take animal data and claim that giving mice thimerosal-containing vaccines produces autistic mice. Never mind that they never explain just what the heck an autistic mouse is and forget to mention that even the behaviors they describe in these mice do not resemble autistic behavior! Next, they'll be claiming they have Rain Mouse."

Next, Kevin Leitch approached the podium to take his turn. "I've written a letter to a chelationist named Dr. Rashid Buttar, who claims that he has a cream that can transdermally chelate mercury and cure autism. Please allow me to read it here." And he did. And it was devastating, particularly this part: "Blimey! You’re one busy guy! Cures for autism, cancer and even old age! Now, I know many people would find this suspicious but not me. Anything that says they can ‘reshape my body’ without exercise or diet gets my vote! Can I still drink beer?"

"Of course," Orac said. "In fact, let's have another round for everyone!"

The Circle roared its appreciation.

"I'd like to have one more talk on this topic, if you'll indulge me," said Orac. "I found this guy, and he's good. I think we should let him in. You'll see why. His name is Prometheus."

Prometheus slowly, tentatively approached the podium. "As I have mentioned before, the more I look into the various autism-related 'alternative' hypotheses and therapies, the more amazed I become. And not amazed in a good way. 'Appalled' might be a better choice of words – occasionally 'disturbed' and 'disgusted' are appropriate choices, as well." He then launched into a blistering attack of how two of the biggest "scientists" pushing a link between mercury and autism go dumpster-diving in the VAERS database, producing a "garbage in, garbage out" result.

"Kind of like the folks who claim there had to have been a massive conspiracy to steal the 2000 election," said Jeff.

"You have a point, but just because a massive conspiracy probably wasn't necessary, that doesn't mean that the 2000 election actually was stolen," Nate couldn't resist pointing out. (He tended to prefer to keep the Circle relatively apolitical in the wake of some unpleasantness that occurred a few months ago.)

You know," whispered, Orac to Kevin and Nate, "this Prometheus guy's alright." The Circle agreed. Orac continued, "And this looks like a very good segue to my personal favorite topic, quackery."

"You know, of course," said Michelle, "that the boys of summer wear titanium necklaces. They really believe it helps their play."

"Yeah," laughed Skeptico, "hard to believe, isn't it?"

"Sports is such a ripe area for quackery," added Radagast, "just look at all the quackery and ridiculous claims out there involving exercise equipment!"

Lord Runolfr, always one of the more flamboyant members of the Circle in his medieval garb, couldn't help but point out, laughing, "That stuff reminds me of homeopathic Similesin, ineffective, but probably harmless."

"Or quantum touch," chimed in Beajerry, "just a repackaging of therapeutic touch, something that even an 11-year-old can debunk!"

"They're not harmless," hissed Orac. "They trick people who don't have the medical or scientific background to see through the fraud and delay their seeking effective treatment."

"Just like Adam Dreamhealer," added Anne. "He's even got newspapers writing glowing pieces about him. It just burns me up."

"At least with something like the question of whether Vitamin E can protect against heart disease, randomized double-blind trials can answer the question once and for all," said Skeptico. "People might even believe the results. But with this stuff, no matter what the science shows, believers will never accept it."

"In that, there is much about this sort of quackery that reminds me of creationism," said Orac, "which is as good an excuse to move on to one of my other favorite topics. You might think that, once indoctrinated into such beliefs, creationists can't be shown what real science is. But you'd be wrong--fortunately. That's why I'd like to introduce Matt."

Matt (a.k.a. Pooflinger) approached the podium, smiling. "You're going to like this," he said. "Let me tell you why I dumped young earth creationism and how it got me into loads of trouble with my teachers in the fourth grade." He then went into a hilarious tale, all vividly accompanied with wild gesticulations, of how, at a very tender age, he put his teachers on the spot about the creationism they were trying to teach him, concluding, "If you are a creationist with a skeptical child, you had better come up with a cohesive explanation for the world and not ever vary your answers. Otherwise, you'll end up with more kids just like me. Scary thought. If a couple of 'lost sheep' don't concern you, may I remind you that someone like me, once we turn from your illusions, dedicate our time to flinging turds at them everywhere we can. Under the weight of enough feces, any structure will eventually collapse."

The Circle gave him a standing ovation.

"No wonder he calls himself the Pooflinger," observed Orac drily. "Of course, that is often what we do as skeptics, metaphorically speaking, of course. Indeed, as a skeptic, I've been called worse, as no doubt all of you have too."

"I wonder if I could get him to fling some poo at the federal scientists thinking of shooting a bunch of barred owls in a rather dubious experiment to 'protect' spotted owls," said Mike.

"Nice," interjected PZ. "But I still have a bone to pick with you, Orac. You laid this article by Frederick Turner on me about the three sins I supposedly committed as an 'evolutionist,' and I had to demolish it. Why do you send me this stuff by such idiots?"

"Because you're so good at eviscerating their idiocy, of course, which is why I sent it to you in the first place. You did it so nicely in your usual inimitable style," said Orac, ducking. (PZ could be pretty rambunctious when provoked.) "Also, I figured the whole 'evolution=atheism' angle would get your attention. And it did. But fortunately young earth creationism is, for the most part, a thing of the past, at least as far as serious threats to the teaching of evolution go. What we really have to worry about is its bastard offspring, 'intelligent design,' where creationists say that lie must have been 'designed,' butgo through all sorts of logical contortions to claim that they don't mean God when they refer to a 'designer.'"

"Right you are," said Jan. "They just can't help themselves, lying about Darwin and trying to claim the mantle of science when they don't deserve it."

"The funniest thing about 'intelligent design' advocates" added J. M. O'Donnell, "is that they refuse to acknowledge the logical conundrum that their claims produce when they go through their usual contortions to deny that when they say 'designer,' what they really mean is 'God.'"

"It doesn't help how badly the media covers the whole debate," said Archy.

"Of course, it's disturbing that one religion that once accepted evolution without all this ID-iocy appears to be wavering," said Michael.

"Oh, I don't think that the Cardinal's op-ed piece was as big a victory for 'intelligent design' advocates as they would like to claim," said Orac. "But time is running short (and we're going to have to pay more if we run too late), so let's move on. What would a meeting of the Circle be without some good old-fashioned paranormal debunking. Mark?"

Mark, who will be hosting the Circle in two weeks' time, couldn't wait to provide a little taste of the sort of old-fashioned skepticism he'd like to see during his turn. So he weaved a tale of a haunted mansion in Massachusetts and the hilarious 'arcs of light' used as 'evidence' that there were ghosts there. He even included PowerPoint slides of some of the 'light anomalies' that looked to everyone else like bad photography. Calling Peter Venkman!

"Heh," said Nate, "those 'light anomalies' look like nothing more than just bad photography!"

"And on that note," said Orac, "I want to introduce our Founder, who has an announcement to make. However, first I have a little slideshow."

Orac launched into a multimedia slideshow and video show. These included highlights from some of everyone's favorite St. Nate moments, including "The Oft-quoted Charles E. Popplestone," "Quantum Rocks," "Alternative Ire," and "Modern Day Alchemists." He concluded with hilarious (and profoundly embarrassing) out-takes from Nate's hosting of the First Skeptics' Circle. When he finished, there was a brief moment of ponderous silence, during which nothing could be heard except the clinking of glasses and a random burp. It was as though the Circle was not quite sure whether more was coming or not, and when they realized Orac was finished, they erupted in applause.

"And, now, I give you St. Nate," bellowed Orac with a flourish.

Nate approached the podium to applause that echoed throughout the structure, shaking the floor, and temporarily drowning out the bad rap music coming from the main room of the bar. "Thank you everyone," he began. He then launched into an amusing discussion of the conspiracy theorists who believe that the moon landing was a hoax, very appropriate, given the recent anniversary of the first moon landing. After he finished his story, to the appreciation of the assembled Circle, he started hesitantly, "As Orac mentioned, I have an announcement. But first let me take the opportunity to thank all of you for your support and fine blogging!"

Here it comes, thought Orac.

"Unfortunately," continued Nate, "I've come to a difficult decision." He paused, suddenly uncertain. "I think it is the right decision, but it's not a happy decision." The Circle was silent, with their complete attention focused on their Founder. "Due to personal and professional reasons, I've decided to give up blogging. That means I can no longer continue as the President of the Skeptics' Circle."

And there it goes, thought Orac. The circle sat there, stunned. Before they could react, Nate continued, "I don't do this lightly, I assure you. I will host the 18th Carnival of the Godless, as I promised, and after that, on July 25, I will post my last blog entry. After that, I will turn the reigns of the Skeptics' Circle over to the capable hands of Orac, who has agreed to take over after my departure from the blogosphere. It's been a pleasure and an honor to work with so many distinguished experts throughout the internet. While I am stepping out of the blogosphere, I will keep up on the Skeptics' Circle."

"Thank you all, and keep critically thinking."

Here we go, thought Orac, as he approached the podium. "Like you," he said, "I was very sad to learn of St. Nate's intent to depart the blogosphere. However, he has told me his reasons, and I think I understand. He offered this to me because of my early support for the Circle. I have to admit that I hesitated a while before accepting, because of the high bar that has been set. In the end, however, I decided that I would give it my best shot. Little will change initially, but, over time, and with your help, I hope to build on the work Nate did to get this going. After all, he did the heavy lifting to get this organized; I only hope to keep it moving on an upward trajectory. But I'll need your help to pull it off. Our most pressing immediate need is for more hosts. Nate's done a great job of picking hosts and of lining up more hosts through the end of August, but I'd like to have hosts scheduled at least a couple of months further in the future if I can. So, please, especially those of you who haven't hosted before, now's the time to step up to the plate and show us your best stuff. And the rest of you, help me out by continuing to produce the same high quality skeptical blogging you've been doing all along!"

The Circle broke out into excited chatter at this news.

"Last call" shouted the bartender. Both Orac and Nate took this opportunity to leave the podium and plunge into the crowd, mingling, shaking hands, taking both farewells and congratulations. As usual, the Circle broke up into smaller groups and continued its boisterous fellowship and debate more informally. Over the next couple of hours, members filtered out one by one, until there remained only Nate, Orac, and the next host Mark.

"You know," said Nate, " you don't know what you're getting into."

"I'm afraid I'll find that out soon enough, although I'm looking forward to the challenge" replied Orac. "You'll be around for a while for advice?"

"Yeah. For a while, anyway," replied Nate. "By the way," he continued, "you told me you had a really bitchin' idea for how you were going to host this time around? I understand that it probably wouldn't have worked for such a somber occasion, but what was it?"

"You know, you would have made a good Ken Jennings. And that's all you're going to get me to say about my original idea. Period."


Note from Orac: Thanks to all the contributors to and supporters of the Skeptics' Circle, past and present. I'll be posting more next week on how things will be run. There won't be much in the way of changes for now, as Nate's already done the heavy lifting to get this thing off the ground and running smoothly. However, it's inevitable that I'll be making some tweaks over the next several weeks or months to try to make it even better, even if it means (gasp!) I have to blog less on my own main site. In the meantime, the next host will be Be Lambic or Green and the next meeting will be August 4. Oh, and if anyone hosting a blog carnival figures out what my original gimmick was going to be and wants to use it, do me a favor and at least give me props.

A day of mourning for Trek fans

James Doohan (a.k.a. everyone's favorite engineer "Scotty" on the original Star Trek) has died at age 85 from pneumonia and Alzheimer's disease. Little known about him was that he was also a veteran of D-Day on Juno Beach in Normandy. He was wounded in action, narrowly escaping death after being shot six times and losing a finger.

He will be missed. If I actually owned a bottle of fine old scotch, tonight would be the night to break it open and drink a toast to a dear departed friend.

It looks like I found Chris some friends

Yesterday, I wrote about a very disturbing caller to talk radio named Chris, who expressed no reservations about the use of torture on the families of terrorist suspects. I may be a little late to the game on this story, but it looks as though I've found Chris a kindred spirit in U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo, who speculated about (and apparently advocated) "taking out" or bombing Muslim holy sites such as Mecca if Islamist terrorists ever succeed in detonating a nuclear weapon in the U.S. Given a chance to back down, he has refused to apologize, saying:

When we bombed Hiroshima, when we bombed Dresden, we punished a lot of people who were not necessarily (guilty). Not every German was a member of the Nazi Party. You do things in war that are ugly.

Maybe so, but the actions he mentions were taken against targets with military value as part of a war against established nation-states at active declared war with the U.S., and even then the bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima resulted in widespread questioning of whether the death toll of civilians ended up being far higher than the strategic value of the bombing. Besides how repulsive the concept of bombing civilians and pilgrims in response to a terrorist attack would be, attacking these Muslim holy sites would do no harm to the terrorists, serving instead only to destroy most of the sympathy that we would have, as well as inflaming moderate Muslims, who might start to think that maybe al Qaeda is right about us. It would be the ultimate way of shooting ourselves in the foot.

Sadly Tancredo isn't the only one with whom Chris would feel at home. Look at what LaShawn Barber, who appears to have gone totally off the deep end on this issue (and also appears to have disabled TrackBacks and comments for her post), said. (In actuality, many of the comments under her post are actually far scarier than what Barber herself said.) In addition to Barber, there's a vocal contingent from the conservative blogosphere leaping to Tancredo's defense. Even if we accept the claim of these apologists that Tancredo was speaking hypothetically or that he was merely voicing an updated version of the M.A.D. doctrine of the Cold War, his remarks were ill-advised, ill-considered, and both morally and strategically stupid. Fortunately, there is at least one conservative, Hugh Hewitt, who is more in line with my way of thinking on this issue:

Let me be blunt: There is no strategic value to bombing Mecca even after a devastating attack on the U.S. In fact, such an action would be a strategic blunder without historical parallel, except perhaps Hitler's attack on Stalin. Anyone defending Tancredo's remarks has got to make a case for why such a bombing would be effective.

I'm still waiting to hear a good answer to that challenge from apologists defending Tancredo. For those who claim it's the M.A.D. doctrine all over again but then say we should consider threatening to bomb Mecca and then in the same breath say that we have to do it because the Islamofascists are fanatical and only understand force, consider this: M.A.D. depended on the assumption that both governments were in general reasonable and self-interested and that, consequently, neither the U.S. nor U.S.S.R. wanted to risk nuclear annihilation. In the struggle with al Qaeda terrorists, that assumption doesn't hold. Even the usually hawkish Captain's Quarters couldn't defend Tancredo's brand of idiocy, finding the concept of what he suggested morally repugnant:

I think the "ultimate response" to Tancredo's apolcalyptic fantasy is that we don't bomb civilians in response to terrorist attacks, no matter how seductive such a response might seem. The idea that the US would retaliate in such a manner should be repulsive to any rational person, no matter where they fall on the political spectrum.

Wise conservatives should distance themselves from wingnuts like Tancredo as quickly as possible. Tancredo scares me more than Chris does, because he's in an actual position of influence, even if not in setting U. S. military policy. Worse, as Donald Sensing points out:

That Tancredo does not set US policy and was speaking only for himself will be completely unknown to al Jazeera’s Muslim viewers and readers of Arab newspapers. Al Qaeda has an effective propaganda machine already, and stupid members of Congress like Durbin and Tancredo make their job all the easier and more effective. Idiocy, it seems, knows no partisan boundaries.

Tancredo may not sent U.S. policy now, but that doesn't mean that he might not rise to a position of more influence in the future. Certainly, he can count on the support of Chris and people like him. And that's what's scary.

If you think it's just about mercury when it comes to vaccines, you're wrong

Today in Washington, there will be a march, called (with unintentional irony) the Power of Truth march. Its organizers claim that it will be to "protest the use of mercury in vaccines" (never mind that the mercury was taken out of nearly all vaccines in the U.S. by early 2003 and in Denmark and Canada in the 1990's) and about raising awareness of the claimed link between mercury in childhood vaccines and autism. (In actuality, I suspect the real purpose of this march is to try to get legislation passed to allow lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies by parents of "mercury-damaged" children, but that's just my suspicion.) One thing the mercury-autism crowd goes out of its way to claim is that it's not "anti-vaccine." Speakers at this rally, such as David Kirby and Boyd Haley go out of their way to claim that they are not "anti-vaccination." Perhaps they even believe it. However, their rhetoric on the issue of mercury as a suspected cause of autism belies that claim, as does their association with others whose rhetoric is even more heated, calling autism a "silent Holocaust" and those who consider the evidence being touted as "proof" of a link between mercury in vaccines in autism "autism holocaust deniers." Even at best, their overheated hype of very weak to nonexistent evidence for mercury in childhood vaccines as an etiological agent resulting in autism encourages the real anti-vaccination crowd, making the anti-thimerosal activists in some cases "useful idiots" to the true cause of eliminating vaccines. At their worst, they encourage quackery and the peddling of bogus "cures" for autism like chelation therapy to desperate parents.

These thoughts came to mind when I came across this discussion on the James Randi Educational Foundation forums, where I discovered just how pervasive antivaccination attitudes are on some discussion boards. I had known this from my past involvement in debunking quackery on Usenet on newsgroups such as misc.health.alternative and on altie websites like Whale.to and CureZone, but I hadn't encountered it on this sort of forum before. For instance, on the parenting forum Mothering.com, there was this disturbing challenge about vaccines posted by someone using the 'nym Jen123 who was identified as a "Senior Member" (registration required if you want to see the actual forum):

Mercury seems to be getting tons of coverage. When that deal is settled and we win, we need to go after another ingredient. We'll dismantle the vaccine industry ingredient by stupid ingredient if we have to.

Who is with me?

Although this was written in a semi-facetious tone, subsequent discussion demonstrated that this woman was serious. To her, it's not just about mercury. It's about vaccines. Here is a sampling of the depressing replies:

Actually I believe that the chickenpox vax does have fetal tissues in it.**

Eh, every time we win on one though, they'll just throw another creepy ingredient in.

Yeah, what about aluminum? Formaldehyde is a carcinogenic. It boggles my mind that some people are ONLY worried about mercury when even without mercury they still contain carcinogenics and nuero/blood toxins (oh and antibiotics in some.) Yummy.

In another 50 years or so, they'll make the connecting b/w vaxxes and alzheimers, soon teenagers will be getting it with all the aluminium they are being injected with. I really believe our life span is going to be decreasing- everyone will have some sort of cancer, and will be dieing at a younger age. But no one agrees with me irl

This is the sort of the sort of antivaccination rhetoric that the mercury-thimerosal group doesn't want you to see. They claim they are not "anti-vaccination," and probably most of them believe that they aren't. However, right beneath the surface of all their attacks on mercury, just out of sight to the casual observer, full-blown antivaccination paranoia and conspiracy theories lurk, and certainly their "anti-mercury" advocacy provides aid and comfort to those who have more global problems with vaccination. Worse, the mercury-autism activists are willing to use their own autistic children as pawns, parading a 5-year-old "recovered" autistic as a speaker or putting T-shirts on children saying things like "poisoned by immunizations" or "Warning: Contains mercury," the while implying that parents of autistic children who don't buy into the mercury-thimerosal line are "big pharma shills" or even "child abusers."

These days, vaccination is a victim of its own success. In this country, diseases that once killed or crippled thousands are now vanishingly rare. Since these diseases are now so uncommon, thanks to vaccination, people have forgotten how horrible they were and now only see the very uncommon complications of vaccination and complications for which the evidence is dubious at best. Unfortunately, we know what can happen when vaccination rates fall; diseases once thought conquered can return. Remember that as you watch or read news accounts of this "Power of Truth" rally.

The problem is, this issue has become more about ideology and a need to find a scapegoat than about science. Scientifically, the question of whether mercury causes autism or not is very close to being settled once and for all in the negative. Indeed, if there is no dramatic decrease in the number of new cases of autism and ASDs over the next five years or so (as there has not been in Canada or Denmark), given that thimerosal has been removed from nearly all childhood vaccines, that would pretty much put the final nail in the coffin of the hypothesis that mercury causes autism--scientifically speaking. Unfortunately, I'd bet money that it won't put the issue to rest among activists. I've come out and said that, should there be a dramatic decrease in the number of new autism cases over the next five years, I would eat crow and admit that I was wrong. I wonder if David Kirby (who has recently misread fresh California statistics as showing a decrease in autism rates when the figures show nothing of the sort) or J. B. Handley (who states bluntly that "autism is a misdiagnosis for mercury poisoning") will make the converse promise. If autism rates don't fall dramatically in the next five years, will they admit that they were wrong and that autism isn't caused by mercury, at least not in the vast majority of children and then work on getting money and research dollars directed to more valid and promising areas?

Don't count on it.


**There are no fetal tissues in vaccines. The viruses used to make certain vaccines are cultured and maintained in human cell lines that were derived from a fetus. One of these cell lines has been around since the early 1960's. Big difference.

Grand Rounds XLIII

Grand Rounds XLIII has been posted at the blog of fellow surgeon Aggravated DocSurg; so I'm sending him some link love. Check out the best medical blogging this week.

Scary

On Friday, I was driving to work at the usual time, listening to the usual radio show I listen to most mornings. It's an entertaining show. Even though it follows a time-worn format of pairing a conservative with a liberal and watching them butt heads, thanks to the personalities of the pair, it's done in a highly entertaining way and has become part of my usual morning routine. This time around, the usual conservative half of the duo wasn't around and was being filled in for by another conservative from the station. A story came on about the chemist suspected of being the mastermind behind the London bombings, Magdy Elnashar, who was captured in Cairo and how he was being questioned by Egyptian authorities with British representatives "in attendance." The conversation turned to the use of torture and whether the British were in essence letting the Egyptians torture the suspect to get information that they would use. Eventually, it led to the question of how far it was acceptable to go in getting information and whether the U.S. and Britain were in essence "farming out" torture to countries like Egypt, to get around our legal prohibitions on such tactics.

It was at this point that a caller named Chris came on the air. Chris had to be one of the scariest callers I've ever heard, even back when I used to listen to conservative talk radio a lot.

Chris's basic attitude was that it was OK to do "whatever it takes" to get information out of this suspect, whatever the Egyptians wanted to do. It's well-known that Egypt has an authoritarian regime that is not averse to engaging in torture when it considers it in its interest to do so; consequently, the unease some of us have at leaving suspects in Egyptian custody (or the custody of any of a number of authoritarian regimes in the Middle East or elsewhere). In essence, leaving prisoners in the hands of such regimes is all too often an obvious means of getting around human rights restrictions that countries like the U.S. and Britain are bound by. Chris, of course, had no problem with that. Then, in order to see how far Chris thought we should be willing to go, the liberal half of the duo started asking him specifically what "whatever it takes meant" by using specific examples of torture techniques that Egypt has been accused of doing (paraphrased from memory):

After Chris had ranted a bit about how we have to do what it takes to get the information, the liberal half of the duo asked if it would be acceptable to "rough up" a suspect Andy Sipowicz-style to get information about the bombing.

"If that's what it takes," Chris said.

What about physical torture?

"If that's what it takes," Chris said.

What about torturing the suspect's wife in front of him to get information?

"If that's what it takes."

What about killing the suspect's wife in front of him?

"If that's what it takes."

What about torturing his children in front of him to get him to talk?

"If that's what it takes."

Chris's blithe advocacy of torture seemed to bother even the conservative half of the duo, who appeared to have decided at this point to try to give Chris an out by saying that Chris really didn't mean that torturing children in front of suspects was justifiable. Chris would have none of it. He reiterated that he had no problem with any of the above tactics to get information out of terrorists.

Thank heaven a commercial break came up.

I suppose neo-fascists like Chris have always existed in conservatism (and have always made me uncomfortable), but for some reason I seem to notice them a lot more now than I used to. Considering the existence of someone like Chris, who has no apparent qualms about advocating the use of torture and or even the intentionally torture of innocents (like a terrorist suspect's wife and children) as a tool to get information, I wondered how he could think the way he does, how the liberty and rights that the Founding Fathers fought a seven year-long war to secure could mean so little to him. Granted, in this case, it was not the U.S., but I doubt Chris's attitude would have been different towards our detention of suspects for so long without trial at Guantanamo Bay.

Maybe I'm reading too much into Chris, but let me speculate for a moment. The answer, I think, is that people like Chris divide the world into "us" (meaning the patriotic and righteous--as he imagines himself to be) and "them" (enemies). Knowing that he is on the side of the righteous, Chris is unconcerned that he would ever fall victim to the human rights abuses that he espouses for others, because he knows he has not done anything wrong. It never even enters his mind to him that his government might ever make a mistake, might arrest the wrong person, might allow the wrong person to be tortured for information about terrorists that he doesn't have. If the government has arrested someone, people like Chris reason, that person must be guilty of something. Also, because he considers "them" to be somehow not quite as human as he and not as deserving of the rights he takes for granted, Chris considers it entirely justified to imprison them without access to due process, all in the name of what he perceives to be the protection of innocent lives.

One of the ironic things I've noticed about people like Chris is that, for all their support of government heavy-handedness in dealing with criminal and terror suspects, in other areas they are usually extremely mistrustful of the government. They don't want the government taking their guns (with their favorite amendment seemingly being the Second Amendment); they don't trust the government to tax them fairly and administer social programs; they don't trust it to keep crime under control; they don't seem to trust the government to do almost anything, it seems. Yet, when it comes to identifying a regime that supposedly had weapons of mass destruction and launching pre-emptive war, many of them are all for it, believing the government's line about the rationale for war, no matter how tortured. They trust that the government got it right and label those who express doubt about the war or are outright dissenter as traitors. When it comes to identifying terrorists, they trust the government enough that they don't care if these suspects are detained without due process or even farmed out to authoritarian regimes for torture. In extreme cases like Chris, they don't even care if innocent people are tortured in the name of protecting us from terrorists. They'll advocate mass internment of groups of suspects if they are told it will make them safer.

People like Chris scare the hell out of me. They are anathema to what conservatism should be about, namely limited government and increased individual freedom. Unfortunately, either there are more of them out there than there used to be or they are simply more vocal. Either way, the more I hear from them, the more I fear for our civil liberties.

Kathleen Seidel's blog

Kathleen Seidel, proprietor of the excellent Neurodiversity website, now has a blog. Its' definitely worth checking out.

RINO sightings

The latest edition of RINO Sightings is up at World Wide Rant. If you're a conservative-leaning type who doesn't drink the Party Kool-Aid on issues like creationism, stem cell research, the war in Iraq, etc., this is for you.

The zombie returns (the Kentucky zombie, not the Hitler zombie)

Months before there was the Hitler zombie, another zombie managed to take up some posting space on Respectful Insolence.

The Kentucky Zombie.

True, the Hitler zombie was momentarily tempted to make another comeback to snack on the brain of Congressman Frank LoBiondo of New Jersey for saying that terrorists were more evil than Hitler because at least Hitler liked some people (tip o' the hat to Patridiot Watch):

Hitler, in his philosophy, was, you know, he hated Jews, he was murdering Jews, and there were some people he liked. But he never went to the level that these people are going to.

You know, even the Hitler zombie has standards, and LoBiondo seems to have too little brain matter to make it worth his while to get out of the grave. Either that, or the famished old Fuhrer snacked so much on his brain that there's nothing left. Heck, LoBiondo's stupidity is not even worth going on for more than one or two sentences about how utterly idiotic his comparison was.

This time, though, the Kentucky zombie will not be denied.

The Kentucky zombie story emerged about four months ago. It's about an 18-year old high school student named William Poole from Clark County in Kentucky who was arrested for "terroristic threatening" after his grandparents found a notebook that disturbed them. According to the boy, the notebook contained nothing but stories about zombies attacking a school. Why he claimed this is unknown, given that it doesn't appear that the stories were actually about zombies. According to the police, it was full of writings that to me sounded like bad fiction about a band of boys Poole called the "True Soldiers" or the "No Limit Soldiers" (NLS for short), who operated out of four zones, Clark County, Barbourville, South Carolina and New York City. In Poole's writings, the NLS spoke about taking over a school, how long it would take for the police to get there, etc. However, nowhere did he mention a specific school or a specific target, and everything was written in the past tense.

My main concern about this story was that a vague "terroristic threatening" law was being used to prosecute a young man who looks to be more in need of therapy than of jail. This police claim that the law states that the very nature of Poole's stories made them a felony as "terroristic threats" against a school. My conclusion was that the "terroristic threatening" law was a bad, bad law and a threat to free speech. Although some pointed out that the law didn't necessarily say what the police claimed it said, my point was that this was a distinction without a difference, as I said:

It is utterly irrelevant to me what the "original" intent of the terroristic threatening law was. I am concerned with how it is being used now. You can't deny that the post-9/11 hysteria has made it easier for a law like this to be expanded so easily and with so little opposition. And my very point was that the interpretation of the law has broadened to the point where it is being used for dubious purposes, like arresting William Poole. Notice that the "terroristic threatening" law is the only law under which Poole was arrested. If he were truly making threats and truly developing a conspiracy, there are plenty of other laws that he could be prosecuted under.

Later, Poole was rearrested for violating a restraining order and going near a school. He had been ordered as a condition of his parole not to go near any county schools but apparently went with a friend to an elementary school, where his friend needed to pick up his sister. He has been sentenced to six months in jail for violating a judge's order. The whole case became a national cause célèbre and sparked numerous rumors in Clark County, including that Poole had threatened to use deadly force against his family and the town and that his bail was arranged by CNN. I also note that Poole had shown his work to a teacher, who had warned him that he could be in trouble if others at the school ever saw it, an action that hardly seems like that of someone who was actually planning the violent takeover of a school.

Now, via Zero Intelligence, I've discovered that the grand jury has handed down an indictment. However, they've declined to indict Poole on the felony count of second degree terroristic threatening. Instead, they've indicted him on an attempt to commit terroristic threatening, a class A misdemeanor.

I have to confess to feeling a bit of satisfaction here that a grand jury wouldn't buy what the police and prosecution were telling them and knocked the charge down to the lesser attempt to commit terroristic threatening, which carries a maximum sentence of 12 months. Grand juries usually tend to rubberstamp whatever charges the prosecutor wants to bring, and seeing a grand jury refuse to go along with the prosecutor is often an indication of how weak the prosecutor's case is. In any case, if this case makes it to trial, I will be very interested in seeing the totality of Poole's writings, to see if my interpretation (that the police and prosecutors overreacted) is correct or if these writings really seem as though they represent an actual threat. Kentucky law. Thus far, only a few highly selected excerpts from the journals have been revealed by the police, and, as I pointed out, even those don't support a charge of terroristic threatening. Is it possible that, even in a post-Columbine, post-9/11 world, that the law will be able to avoid a miscarriage of justice that throws a disturbed young man who almost certainly needs therapy more than punishment into jail?

Stay tuned. Assuming there isn't a plea bargain that ends up sealing Poole's writings forever so that we can never judge for ourselves whether the police and prosecutors overreacted (an outcome I worried about three months ago), hopefully we'll soon find out.

New Harry Potter book shatters sales records

In the United States, the new Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince sold 6.9 million copies in the first 24 hours after its release:

Sales for the sixth installment of J.K. Rowling's fantasy series easily outpaced those for Potter V, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," which came out in 2003 and sold 5 million copies in the first 24 hours. Acknowledging that some stores quickly ran out of books two years ago, Scholastic has already increased the print run for "Half-Blood Prince" from 10.8 million copies to 13.5 million.

It's refreshing to see this sort of hysteria and hype around something as simple as a book:

Even allowing for deep discounts on the $29.99 release, "Half-Blood Prince" still easily generated more than $100 million in revenue. It's not only the richest opening in publishing history, but tops the combined estimated take for the weekend's top two movies, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Wedding Crashers.

"When a book beats out movies, we're in great shape," Holton said.

Indeed. (Maybe that's the reason Orac has noticed so many visits coming from searches about Harry Potter this weekend, which boosted my hit count way above what it normally is on a weekend.)

Orac got his copy over the weekend, but, unfortunately, has not yet had a chance to start reading it. He fears that his secretary, a bona fide Harry Potter fanatic, will have finished the entire book over the weekend and today will not be able to resist telling him things that happened that he would rather find out himself by reading the book.

100,000 hits!

Sometime yesterday afternoon, much to my amazement, Respectful Insolence passed the 100,000 hit mark. It happened about five times faster than in even my wildest dreams when I first started. Even cooler, the 100,000th visitor came from a Polish domain (tpnet.pl) and was doing a Google search on the terms "Severus Snape spoiler warning." So I guess you could say that Harry Potter led the 100,000th visitor to me.

I think that's worth a day of rest from substantive blogging for Orac, don't you, particularly with the Skeptics' Circle coming up? Thanks to all the readers who, for reasons I still can't figure out, seem to like what I'm laying down. And thanks to those who really don't like what I'm laying down but for some reason still show up, even if it's just to complain.

In the meantime, check out these three blogs I've been meaning to plug for a while now. First, there's Immunoblogging (from way down in New Zealand). Lots of good stuff in the skeptical mode, taking on "intelligent design" creationism and other threats to science with aplomb. Second, there's Photon in the Darkness, the blog of frequent Respectful Insolence commenter Prometheus. It deals mostly with mercury quackery. And finally there's Rockstar's Ramblings (more skepticism).

Finally, here are a few others that I've become a regular reader of in the last two or three months, all of which will be on my blogroll soon, if they are not already:

Red State Rabble (from whom I'd like to steal some of his anti-creationism "ads")
Autism Diva
Left Brain, Right Brain
Truth in Cosmetic Surgery Blog

I'll be back Monday, if the Skeptics' Circle doesn't get in the way. How fast can I get to 1,000,000? Well, at the current rate, I estimate it will take somewhere between 3-5 years. Geez, can I keep this up that long?

Unscrewing the Inscrutable

I've been quite remiss.

I forgot to mention that a few days ago, one of my favorite blogs, Unscrewing the Inscrutable, was relaunched as a spiffy new SCOOP blog. I have no idea what a SCOOP blog is (compared to a regular old blog), but apparently it lets the skeptics and freethinkers who generally frequent UTI have a forum and diaries à la Daily Kos. Maybe I'll have to try to make a diary of my own someday, after I finish up the Skeptics' Circle. In the meantime I'll send them the dozen or so referrals that are likely from my humble blog...

History Carnival XII

The History Carnival XII has been posted at Mode for Caleb. Good stuff. And I totally forgot to submit something to it. Argh!

Fun time-waster for geometry geeks

I have to recognize this geometry puzzle (1) because it's addictive and (2) because its creator comes from one of my alma maters, Case Western Reserve University. Yes, the puzzle is still a bit buggy (occasionally generating puzzles with no solution), but John promises to fix the bugs!

Professor Bainbridge obviously didn't read the paper

Professor Bainbridge, normally a pretty reasonable guy, unfortunately ran counter to his usual form the other day when he made a an ignorant and ill-informed statement with regards to the recent JAMA article showing that one third of major clinical studies are later found either to have been incorrect in finding a treatment effect for the intervention studied or to have found a treatment effect significantly stronger than what is found in later studies:

If it sometimes seems like health sciences professionals are constantly changing their minds about what's good or bad for you, maybe it's because some of them are just lousy scientists.

That statement is just so wrong on so many levels and exactly the sort of misinterpretation of the study that I feared when I first read it. The overall competence of most investigators (or lack thereof) has little or nothing to do with it, as Professor Bainbridge would probably have realized if he read the actual article, rather than just a CNN news report on it. As Dr. Ioannidis, the study's author and investigator, wrote (and whom I quoted in a lengthy piece I posted on this very study the other day):

We should acknowledge that there is no proof that the subsequent studies and meta-analyses were necessarily correct. A perfect gold standard is not possible in clinical research, so we can only interpret results of studies relative to other studies. Whenever new research fails to replicate early claims for efficacy or suggests that efficacy is more limited than previously thought, it is not necessary that the original studies were totally wrong and the newer ones are correct simply because they are larger or better controlled.

This phenomenon of early clinical studies being contradicted by later studies is not due to lots of scientists who are lousy researchers, as Bainbridge seems to be implying. No, I'm not arguing that there aren't some lousy researchers out there; only that this phenomenon is not primarily as a result of lousy researchers. It's simply the nature of the beast when it comes to clinical studies. Indeed, if you got rid of every "lousy researcher" out there, this phenomeonon would almost certainly largely persist, mainly because lousy researchers don't often manage to pass peer review for journals like The New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, or JAMA.* This phenomenon is mainly a function of how difficult clinical research is and how many confounding variables have to be controlled for, which often leads to later studies not agreeing with initial studies. Most doctors understand this; indeed, learning how to deal with conflicting literature is something that I wish medical schools would teach more effectively. It is also the reason that, when looking for the answer to a clinical problem, one has to look at the literature and studies in their totality, as the Cochrane Collaboration tries to do. In any case, if Professor Bainbridge had read the actual study (which, unlike many medical studies, is quite understandable by the educated lay person), I doubt he would have made such an ill-informed comment. If he can't get access to the original study, given that my institution has a subscription to JAMA, I'd be happy to e-mail him a PDF file of the original article.

Even worse, oddly enough, another blogger who supplied him a TrackBack somehow managed to relate this article to the Terri Schiavo case. I hate to tell Hennessy this, but this article says nothing with regards to the Terri Schiavo case, nor does it make the point that he seems to want it to make, namely that that experts are often "wrong in individual cases." In fact, it doesn't even address the issue of individual cases at all (particularly the diagnosis of something like a persistent vegetative state, which is no doubt what the blogger was implying the experts made a mistake about). It addresses only the issue of clinical studies about interventions that were later found to be either not efficacious or not nearly as efficacious as the early study showed! But never let a few facts stop you from making your ideological point, eh?

*Yes, I'll concede that the Wakefield study that claimed to find a link between the MMR vaccine and autism is an example of a lousy investigator managing to get a lousy study published in a high-visibility journal. Fortunately this doesn't happen that often, and when it does it often causes an uproar like the one that happened in the wake (sorry for the choice of words) of this study.

Bounty hunter update

About a week ago, I wrote about a woman named Claudia Santana, who was dragged out of her house by two moronic bounty hunters, driven more than 30 miles away from her home at high rates of speed, then dumped at a police station after the idiots who took her figured out that she wasn't the person she was after for. Basically, I lambasted the bounty hunters for their actions and concluded that they should be either arrested and tried for kidnapping or that Mrs. Santana should sue the pants off the bail bond company for whom they worked. Over the weekend, I noticed some referrals coming from here., which appeared to be some sort of bulletin board about guns and gun control. One person mentioned my post, and drew this response from someone named Burt Sienna:

What you posted is a blog thing...written by a guy no different from some of the folks here. What he has to say could be just as bogus as a Cham spirit guide sighting, just as skewed as a Taraka report.

OK, yes it's a blog thing, but I did link to several news reports about the incident. I didn't just pull this incident out of my ass, as Burt seemed to be implying. But Burt didn't appear to notice or care. One thing that came up later was a desire to hear the bounty hunters' side.

You know what? I agree. I'd love to hear the bounty hunters' side! I dearly want to hear how they could justify ignoring multiple forms of ID in favor of a blurry picture when Mrs. Santana didn't even look much like the suspect. (For example, Mrs. Santana has a mole on her cheek; the suspect does not.) I'd really like to know why, when it finally sank into their thick skulls that this was the wrong woman, they didn't behave honorably but instead threatened her:

After learning they had the wrong woman, the "supervisor" poked his head into the van, "and told me he was going to be very good to me," Santana said. "But if I started crying, he might change his mind and not let me go."

He took off her handcuffs, shoved her out of the van and threw her identification papers after her. Then the men jumped into the front seat and drove off, she said.

Yes, I'd love to hear the bounty hunters' justification for such vile behavior. Honorable men would have apologized abjectly and at least offered to give her a ride home (although I'm sure anyone in Mrs. Santana's position would probably decline). I'm sure you would probably like to hear the bounty hunters' side, too, particularly since I've now learned just how moronic at least one of bounty hunters really was:

These bounty hunters were so dopey that one of them walked into the Rutherford police station a few days after the botched abduction, carrying an unlicensed pistol loaded with illegal hollow-nosed bullets. Yep, he was arrested and faces five years in prison if convicted.

How can such people be allowed to run around carrying guns and rousting people out of their homes in the middle of the night without a warrant, on sketchy identification, and with no oversight? Worse, how can the mayor of Rutherford (the town whose police were called and who allowed the bounty hunters to take Mrs. Santana on such sketchy evidence) be so unconcerned that she has said that she "knows only what she read in the newspapers" about the incident. She's the frickin' mayor; she should haul the police chief into her office and demand answers!

Unfortunately, in the case of New Jersey (and a few other states), it's the law, or rather lack of law, regulating bounty hunters that allows them to operate in such a manner. In essence, there is no oversight or law covering bounty hunting. There have been multiple attempts to pass legislation to regulate bounty hunters in the state, but even efforts to require something as basic as criminal background checks and fingerprinting have failed thus far. There is presently a bill working its way through the New Jersey legislature that would would require that bounty hunters who want to operate in New Jersey be licensed by the State Police; have five years of experience with a law enforcement agency; pass a criminal background check; and have an office in the state. It may not be enough, but it's a start in terms of preventing such an abuse happening again. Hopefully, the publicity surrounding this case will finally give the legislature the kick in the pants it apparently needs to pass such common sense legislation.

And, despite my previously expressed dislike of jumping straight to litigation, this case still remains one example where legal action is warranted--nay, demanded. I still hope that the bounty hunters are arrested and tried for kidnapping and that Mrs. Santana sues the pants off the bail bond company and the Borough of Rutherford. She's being way too nice by only asking for an apology and that the bounty hunters lose their jobs. If it had been me or one of my family members, I'd be filing a complaint with the police and demanding that the prosecutor try these guys for kidnapping. If that failed, then I'd find the biggest, nastiest shark I could and go after the town and bail bond company.

Andrew Mathis slaps down a Holocaust denier

I have to hand it to my longtime comrade-in-arms, Andrew Mathis. Besides having done far more than I could ever hope to do in combatting Holocaust denial on the Internet and elsewhere (putting my meager efforts to shame), he knows how to deal with Holocaust deniers who threaten him. He's damned good at shooting down their lies as well.

Even better, he also likes to confront Holocaust deniers like David Irving in writing and in person, too.

Is Orac white trash?

I guess not...whew!

I am 14% White Trash.

I, my friend, have class. I am so not white trash. . I am more than likely Democrat, and my place is neat, and there is a good chance I may never drink wine from a box.

Take the
White Trash Test
@ FualiDotCom

Yes, Orac is in a weird mood this morning.

One week until the Skeptics' Circle

Some people say that thirteen is an unlucky number. Skeptics, however, realize that's a load of superstitious hooey. Next week, I'm hosting the 13th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle, and I'm looking for entries. As usual, I want to try to make this the best Skeptics' Circle yet (which is why blogging will probably be light until after it's over and posted), but I need your help.

I have a handful of good entries so far, but I realize from my past experience in hosting blog carnivals that many people don't think about submitting their work until the weekend before and the last couple of days before the deadline. (Yes, I've been guilty of that myself on occasion.) So, please, lay your best skeptical blogging on me at orac_usa@hotmail.com before 9 PM EDST Wednesday, July 20. The Skeptics' Circle will appear the following morning, Thursday, July 21. Guidelines for what sorts of posts I'm looking for are here.

One last note. I'm looking for posts that showcase bloggers' own writing. The posts submitted don't have to be long (like Orac's occasionally tedious screeds, for instance). Brevity and succinctness are to be admired. However, Instapundit-style "link-and-comment" posts are acceptable only if the blogger has used the link as a springboard to provide more commentary than just a sentence or two that doesn't really add anything to the link being commented on. That shouldn't be too hard, as I've seen lots of posts by skeptical bloggers (and I think you know who you are) that (I hope) will be submitted. If they're not and I don't have enough posts by Tuesday or Wednesday, I'll have no choice but to hunt them down, and you wouldn't want me to have to do that, would you?

So send 'em my way instead! And, as always, I highly encourage submissions by bloggers who have yet to be featured in a Skeptics' Circle.

Dealing with conflict

It occurred to me yesterday that I haven't done much straight medblogging in a while. I suppose you could count all my posts lambasting the thimerosal-autism crowd for conspiracy-mongering, shoddy science, and fear-mongering, but I'm not sure that really counts, certainly not after the Hitler zombie made an appearance, anyway.

Fortunately, hot off the presses, a new study from the Journal of the American Medical Association came to my attention yesterday, and it has relevance to a lot of medical news. Written by John P. A. Ioannidis, MD and entitled, Contradicted and Initially Stronger Effects in Highly Cited Clinical Research, this study took a rather clever but straightforward look at contradictory studies. Dr. Ioannidis looked at all original clinical research studies published in three major general clinical journals (JAMA, the New England Journal of Medicine, and Lancet) and selected high impact specialty journals. Articles published between 1990-2003 and cited more than 1,000 times in the literature were chosen for analysis. He then looked at the results of these highly cited studies and then compared them to the results of subsequent studies of comparable or larger sample size with similar or better-controlled experimental designs. For comparison, he also examined a set of matched studies that were not nearly as widely cited. He sets up the background here:

Clinical research on important questions about the efficacy of medical interventions is sometimes followed by subsequent studies that either reach opposite conclusions or suggest that the original claims were too strong. Such disagreements may upset clinical practice and acquire publicity in both scientific circles and in the lay press. Several empirical investigations have tried to address whether specific types of studies are more likely to be contradicted and to explain observed controversies. For example, evidence exists that small studies may sometimes be refuted by larger ones.

Similarly, there is some evidence on disagreements between epidemiological studies and randomized trials. Prior investigations have focused on a variety of studies without any particular attention to their relative importance and scientific impact. Yet, most research publications have little impact while a small minority receives most attention and dominates scientific thinking and clinical practice. Impact is difficult to measure in all its dimensions. However, the number of citations received by a publication is a surrogate of the attention it has received in the scientific literature and its influence on scientific debate and progress. Citations are readily and objectively counted in established databases. High citation count does not necessarily mean that these studies are accepted; citations may sometimes be critical of an article. Nevertheless, citation count is ameasure of how much a study has occupied the thinking of other scientists and has drawn attention—for good or bad.

I would tend to agree that citation count is not a bad rough estimate for how influential a study is. Dr. Ioannidis ended up choosing 49 highly cited studies. All the usual later refuted studies are there, including the Nurses' Health Study, which showed a decrease in cardiovascular events in women receiving hormone replacement therapy but was later contradicted by the Women's Health Initiative, a large randomized trial; the intial studies showing a benefit of vitamin E on cardiovascular health (the trial contradicting that study has recently been in the news); a study showing human IgM monoclonal antibody to endotoxin could decrase mortality in gram-negative sepsis, later contradicted by large studies; and the initial study showing a supposed benefit of nitric oxide in respiratory distress syndrome, also later contradicted. Of these 49 studies, Dr. Ioannidis noted that 45/49 studies claimed that the studied intervention was effective. Of these "positive" trials, 16% were contradicted by later studies; 16% reported much stronger effects than what subsequent studies reported; 44% were eventually replicated with results similar to the initial trial; and 24% remained unreplicated and "unchallenged" for now. There was no significant difference in these numbers in less widely cited studies, except that a lower percentage of them showed "positive" results.

What this study suggests is that at least 1/3 of widely reported clinical trials may either be incorrect or show a much larger effect due to an intervention than the "real" effect. Possible reasons for discrepancies between initial results and later trials may include publication bias (positive studies are more likely to see publication in high-impact journals than negative studies) or time-lag bias (which favors the rapid publication of interesting or important "positive" results). Also, high impact journals like JAMA and NEJM are always on the lookout for "sexy" findings, findings likely to have a strong impact on medical practice or that challenge present paradigms, which may sometimes lead them to overlook flaws in some studies or publish pilot studies with small numbers. Dr. Ioannidis' results are probably not surprising to most doctors, who have been trained to understand that no one single study can be the final word, no matter how seemingly compelling the results, but I rather suspect that the lay public will be shocked. Of course, as Dr. Ioannidis points out in the article:

We should acknowledge that there is no proof that the subsequent studies and meta-analyses were necessarily correct. A perfect gold standard is not possible in clinical research, so we can only interpret results of studies relative to other studies. Whenever new research fails to replicate early claims for efficacy or suggests that efficacy is more limited than previously thought, it is not necessary that the original studies were totally wrong and the newer ones are correct simply because they are larger or better controlled. Alternative explanations for these discrepancies may include differences in disease spectrum, eligibility criteria, or the use of concomitant interventions. Different studies on the same question are typically not replicas of each other. In fact discrepancies may be interesting on their own because they require careful scrutiny of the data and reappraisal of our beliefs.

On the other hand, he notes that, compared to all 14 studies whose results were contradicted or softened, the subsequent studies were either larger or better designed. More importantly, none of the contradicted treatments is currently recommended by medical guidelines, which implies that later studies usually do make up for spurious findings of initial studies.

I think the most important message for lay people to take home from this study is what I've been saying all along. With rare exceptions, you can't rely on any one study for the definitive answer to any clinical question. As Dr. Ioannidis put it, there is indeed no gold standard in clinical research. All a physician can do is to look at the preponderance of evidence and apply his/her best judgment. Moreover, we should all look at the results of highly touted studies with a bit of skepticism. It's when multiple studies start coming to the same conclusion that one can be more confident in the results.

One thing this study does highlight is the difference between evidence-based medicine and much of "alternative" medicine. Alties frequently accuse us "conventional" doctors of being "dogmatic" or otherwise unwilling to consider different ideas or treatments (specifically their ideas and treatments) about medicine and the treatment of disease. In actuality, it is alties who tend to be more dogmatic and unchanging. After all, if the results of 1/3 of seemingly very important papers over 13 years were later refuted, resulting in the abandonment on the basis of new evidence of accepted treatments once thought sound, doesn't that tell you something? It tells me that "conventional" medicine changes its treatments on the basis of new evidence and, more importantly, abandons treatments found to be ineffective or not as effective as newer therapies. It may not happen as fast as we'd like, but happen it does eventually. Contrast this to alternative medicine, where there are still alties pushing Laetrile (despite the fact that it was shown to have no efficacy against cancer in well-designed clinical trials 25 years ago) and chelation therapy for coronary artery and peripheral vascular disease (despite multiple randomized studies during the 1990's showing it to be no better than placebo). Indeed, it is not uncommon to see alties quoting work that is over 100 years old, conveniently ignoring the advances that have occurred since then. A prime example is altie favorite Antoine Beauchamps, about whom alties like Bill Maher like to repeat the myth that Louis Pasteur made a deathbed admission that Beauchamps was right and he was wrong about the germ theory of disease.

This study is also relevant to the thimerosal-autism debate. Mercury-autism hawkers like to point to early analyses of studies that appeared to show an epidemiological link between thimerosal exposure and autism rates. They make much of the fact that the relative risk for autism due to thimerosal in early studies started out seemingly high and then decreased with successive iterations until it was not significantly different than 1.0, using this observation to claim that such studies were "reworked," presumably as a result of a conspiracy or pressure to "cover up" a "connection." David Kirby also makes this implication in the PowerPoint presentation he includes on his website, in which he shows the Verstraeten study starting out with a relative risk of 7.6, decreasing to 2.6, and then to 1.0 over successive iterations as the study progressed and more subjects were added. However, it is not uncommon for relative risks to start out high (or, in the case of studies of protective agents, low) in early epidemiological studies of various risk factors for or protective factors against diseases and then to trend towards 1.0, as some of the studies in Dr. Ioannidis' article (such as initial studies showing cardioprotective effects of vitamin E or flavonoids) show themselves. It is not necessary to invoke any sort of implausible grand conspiracy between the CDC, WHO, FDA, and IOM to suppress a link between thimerosal and autism to explain the evolution of the data away from indicating a causal link. It's just the way such studies not infrequently play out, as smaller studies find a possible risk factor initially and then later, better designed, larger studies fail to confirm the same risk factor. So it has been with thimerosal and mercury. Early reports and preliminary analyses of studies were suggestive that thimerosal might be a contributory factor to autism, but the latest studies do not bear out the initial concerns, no matter how much the thimerosal-autism activists try to misrepresent, for example, the Danish study that showed no link. Fortunately, as this excellent overview of the controversy mentions, this issue should soon be resolved once and for all scientifically, given that no thimerosal has been in vaccines since January 2003, providing the ultimate epidemiological experiment to confirm the trend of the data for the last 5 years towards no connection. Unfortunately, science is probably irrelevant to the controversy, as Robert Carroll points out:

There is no way to close this issue of mercury and autism. Whatever data is available can always be mined for some gem that supports the conspiratorial theory and there is always hope that some future study will provide some support for the causal belief. No study will ever be able to show with absolute certainty once and for all that thimerosal or any other substance does not cause autism in some people some of the time.

Indeed. As I've pointed out, even if autism rates stay flat or continue to rise in the coming 5-10 years after the removal of thimerosal from childhood vaccines and multiple studies continue to fail to find a link, you can safely bet the farm that the conspiracy theorists will still be blaming it. The same is true of many other putative harmful agents. Science can never definitively prove a negative. It can only say that the overwhelming evidence is that there is no link.

What those not directly involved in research don't always know is that science can be quite messy while in progress. Medical research is no exception. This messiness is especially pronounced in clinical research, where there are so many more confounding variables than in most basic science research and study design is much more difficult to control. It should therefore come as no surprise that studies often disagree; true evidence-based medicine thus relies on the preponderance of evidence from controlled scientific trials evaluated in its totality, a synthesis the Cochrane Collaboration attempts to provide. That is the science of medicine. As physicians, we have to accept sometimes that there is no good data to apply to certain clinical situations and we have to rely on our experience and judgment. Deciding what to do in such situations is the art of medicine.

Better late than never: The Tangled Bank

The latest edition of The Tangled Bank has been posted at Technogypsy. Delayed due to a laptop meltdown and posted from a borrowed machine, it was worth the wait. Check this carnival out for the best science blogging from the last couple of weeks.

This is too delicious: The Vaccine Aliens

This is just way too amusing to let one blog hog it all; so I'm muscling in on Skeptico's turf for a moment. (Sorry, Skeptico; I hope you're not offended. I attribute this right up front to you. Thanks.)

Skeptico has a little fun discussing a novel by Raymond W. Gallup entitled The Vaccine Aliens. It's about a father whose child develops autism after getting the MMR vaccine and then who later stumbles upon a plot by shape-shifting aliens--yes, shape-shifting aliens--to destroy the human race with vaccines (no doubt plotting to add that evil thimerosal to all vaccines--even the MMR vaccine, which has never had it). I kid you not. I'm telling you, you can't make stuff like this up (but apparently Mr. Gallup can). A description:

"This story by Ray Gallup, set in a fanciful mode, carries a message elemental, truthful and powerful. A rapid and ominous deterioration is taking place in the health of our children, of which the increasing incidence of childhood autism is just one of the markers. Unless we identify and correct the causes of this deterioration, we may soon pass the point of no return as a society. There is no issue facing America today that carries greater urgency. As stated or inferred in Gallup's story, prime suspects in causing this health deterioration include current childhood vaccine programs as well as the cumulative effects of potentially toxic environ- mental and commercial chemicals in the air, food and water." Harold E. Buttram, MD, FAAEM"

I join Skeptico in soliciting casting suggestions for a movie based on this novel. Tom Cruise, of course, must play the father. There is no other good choice. I also agree that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. should have a role somewhere. But who else?

ADDENDUM: I forgot to ask: Who should direct the movie?

Cardinal Schönborn and evolution

The science blogosphere's been abuzz about Cardinal Schönborn's editorial last week that appeared to embrace intelligent design, which was followed a couple of days later by a New York Times article about how this statement may mean that the Catholic Church is moving away from its long (albeit somewhat grudging) acceptance of evolution as accepted by biologists. I hadn't weighed in yet, mainly because I really didn't think the article was that big a deal. I really didn't. However, with all the pro-ID sites crowing (also see 1, 2, 3) about how this supposedly means that the Catholic Church is coming around to their way of thinking, I finally thought I'd have to try to throw some cold water on them.

As a Catholic myself (albeit the stereotypical lapsed one), I wouldn’t worry that much about this editorial if I were you. ID advocates are reading far more into than is probably there and crowing about it way more than is justified. The Catholic Church has, ever since Pius XII reconciled the Church with evolution 50 years ago, has always preached a sort of “theistic” evolution that’s not all that different from intelligent design. For example, consider Pope Pius's frequently quoted words from Humani Generis:

For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter -- for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God. However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of faith. Some however, rashly transgress this liberty of discussion, when they act as if the origin of the human body from pre-existing and living matter were already completely certain and proved by the facts which have been discovered up to now and by reasoning on those facts, and as if there were nothing in the sources of divine revelation which demands the greatest moderation and caution in this question.

Note the terminology: The Church does not forbid. That is different than endorsing. Also, note that Pius requires that all "are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church." Even Pope John Paul II’s famous address in 1996 was not a 100% endorsement of evolution due solely to natural forces, as is clear if one reads it carefully It is more a grudging acquiescence and a statement that it is not incompatible with Catholicism to accept the science of evolution. This is the most frequently quoted passage used to show the Church's acceptance of evolution.:

Today, almost half a century after the publication of the encyclical, new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory.

However, ten years earlier the late Pope had also said, as the Cardinal also noted in his editorial:

All the observations concerning the development of life lead to a similar conclusions. The evolution of living beings, of which science seeks to determine the stages and to discern the mechanism, presents an internal finality which arouses admiration. This finality which directs beings in a direction for which they are not responsible or in charge, obliges one to suppose a Mind which is its inventor, its Creator.

This, of course, sounds not unlike "intelligent design." Some have claimed that the 1996 statement represents an evolution (pardon the term) in Pope John Paul II's thinking, but not necessarily. It should come as no surprise to anyone that the Catholic Church would see the hand of God in evolution. ("Stop the presses!" The Catholic Church states that God guides evolution!") The fact that it apparently does come as a surprise to some shows how little the press (and ID advocates) understand Catholicism.
The difference, of course, between the fundamentalist ID advocates and the Catholic Church is that the Church in recent years has usually been wise enough to view the involvement of God in evolution as a matter of faith, not science, and to teach it that way--as faith. In essence, the Catholic Church has generally taken the view that evolution and faith are not incompatible and that God used evolution as the process that would inevitably lead to the creation of plants, animals, and humans. It's usually left the science behind evolution to biologists and the teaching of science to those trained in biology. (Perhaps its encounter with Galileo finally taught it something, even if it took a few hundred years for the lesson to sink in.) Indeed, in Catholic high schools, you will find evolution taught as science in science classes and A.P. biology classes with nary a whisper about God or design (although certainly you will hear mentions of them them in catechism classes), and in pulpits you will occasionally hear a priest mention evolution. However, unless things have changed since I stopped going to Mass regularly, I've yet to see one mention a "designer's" influence on creation as anything other than a matter of faith and belief. I daresay that Catholic schools as a group probably teach the concepts of evolution better than most public schools, at least in districts where there is a large ID influence.

I rather suspect that a few prominent Cardinals (like Cardinal Schönborn) might have fallen under the sway of the Discovery Institute or other ID advocacy groups and are trying to influence the Church's previously mostly laissé-faîre policy with regard to its views on evolution. In short, this may just be one Cardinal getting his view out as part of a controversy going on among the Curia. It's also probably more a difference in emphasis rather than any significant change in Catholic doctrine. Where Pope John Paul II seemed content not to emphasize the Church's belief in God's guiding evolution, his successor may not be. I will concede, however, that Schönborn's blithe dismissal as "vague and unimportant" of Pope John Paul II's 1996 statement that evolution is not incompatible with Roman Catholic teaching is a bit disturbing, as is his statement that "any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science." The Church should not be dictating what science is and is not, nor should Cardinals be aping Discovery Institute boilerplate in their statements.

Nonethless, in the end, my guess is that Cardinal Schönborn or even Pope Benedict XVI is highly unlikely to change significantly the manner in which the Church deals with evolution in its schools or from its pulpits. The Church is one of the most highly conservative institutions in the world in that it is very slow to change and rarely does so except under great pressure. (For example, Vatican II was driven by the political, social, and technological changes of the time, which Pope John XXIII felt compelled to address.) Almost certainly, if the ID advocates of the Discovery Institute and others pushing bogus attacks on evolutionary theory and advocating the teaching of ID as an "alternative theory" to evolution in public schools in Dover, Kansas, Georgia, and elsewhere view this op-ed piece by a single Cardinal as an indication that the Catholic Church is about to join them in their quest to have ID taught in the classrooms of public schools, they will almost certainly be sorely disappointed. Indeed, unless the Pope himself endorses ID as science rather than faith, unless the Church orders its schools to start teaching ID as an “alternative” to evolution, or unless the Church officially joins forces with the fundamentalists pushing ID creationism, I really don't consider this editorial to be a major concern.

Let's put it this way. The Catholic Church has in essence accepted a version of theistic evolution that is not unlike ID for over 50 years. In that time, it hasn't pushed the teaching of ID as anything other than a matter of faith. Although it may not have always been able to resist the temptation to do otherwise in other areas of science, as far as evolution goes, the Church left the science to scientists; and, as far as I've been able to tell, it has not even taught ID as science or an "alternative to evolution" in science classrooms in its own schools during the last 50 years. Given that, what makes the ID advocates think that, just because one Cardinal, no matter how prominent, has published an editorial, the Church will suddenly join forces with fundamentalists, many of whom detest the Catholic Church to begin with, in pushing ID as an "alternative" to evolution? And in the unlikely event that preaching ID as an "alternative" to evolution in science does become official Church policy, there will likely be some fairly stiff resistance, at least in the U.S. One can only hope that Pope Benedict XVI has the wisdom of his predecessor when it comes to the relationship between faith and science.

Skippy needs 1,000,000 hits

Geez, talk about shameless.

Skippy the Bush Kangaroo is closing in on that magical 1,000,000 hit mark and is blatantly begging for more hits. He even somehow got Instapundit to mention it. Does he realize that, once he hits that mark, he has to engage in a death match with another million-hit blogger of opposite ideology?

To see that, I'll helpfully add the dozen or so hits that Respectful Insolence can bring him with this mention!

Hmmm. Orac wonders if he should try something similar to reach the 100,000 mark, given that he has only a little more than 4,000 hits to go to reach it... What do you think?

Grand Rounds XLII

Grand Rounds XLII has been posted at Shrinkette. Check it out!

Joel Stein is a moron

Today's previously scheduled post about a particularly annoying alternative medicine huckster whose infomercials finally got on my nerves too much has been preempted by a brief rant about one man's stupidity (and the fact that I didn't finish the original post in time to post it today). We will return to our regularly scheduled posts on medicine, science, and skepticism tomorrow.

In the meantime, via Stupid Evil Bastard, I was directed to this op-ed by Joel Stein. Apparently Mr. Stein thinks that adults who enjoy the Harry Potter novels are, as he so quaintly puts it in the title of his op-ed, "stupid, stupid, stupid":

I read 50 pages of the first "Harry Potter" book, and it seemed witty, imaginative and fast-paced. It also seemed like it was for children. It's about wizards and magic cats and evil stepparents, and has a reading-level that is only slightly above this column.

So what if Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was aimed primarily at children? You know what one of the hardest things to write in literature is? A good children's story that entertains adults as much as it does children. (It's the same with movies, too; films that appeal to children and can entertain the parents as well are rare commodities because they're so hard to do well.) No less a literary figure than J.R.R. Tolkien did it with The Hobbit, which served as the prequel to The Lord of the Rings. I'm not sure if Mr. Stein was dissing just The Hobbit or all of Tolkien's work when he asked of Tolkien, E. B. White, and C. S. Lewis: "Isn't it a clue that you should be ashamed of reading these books past puberty when the adults who write them are hiding their first names?" However, I do wonder if he would say the same thing about E. L. Doctorow? In any case, the very statement shows the utter depths of his idiocy and vacuousness, particulary since he dismisses the Harry Potter in essence only because it was intended as a children's book and in spite of his recognition that it is "witty, imaginative, and fast-paced"! Gee, wouldn't a book that is "witty, imaginative, and fast-paced" be entertaining to read? And why does the fact that it's "about wizards and magic cats and evil stepparents" automatically make it only for children? Did it ever occur to Mr. Stein that perhaps the imagination and wit of J. K. Rowling's writing might--just might--possibly be one reason why her books turned out to be so popular among adults as well as children?

Not satisified with displaying his arrogance and stupidity for all to see, Mr. Stein had to go on to bury himself deeper by trying to use the popularity of the Harry Potter books as an indictment of the entire Baby Boomer generation:

After a generation of boomers choosing to remain in a state of stunted adolescence — wearing jeans, smoking pot and cranking their BMW stereos to blast Eminem songs they clearly don't like — the next generation has opted for a stunted toddlerhood. Adults see "Finding Nemo" without bothering with the socially accepted ruse of dragging an unwilling 11-year-old nephew along. Grown men play video games and couples go to Disneyworld on their honeymoon, often for reasons other than having sex in Cinderella's castle with the dwarfs watching. You need a wad of Disney Dollars for that one, by the way, 50th anniversary or no 50th anniversary.

There may be many reasons to disparage the Baby Boom generation (and they've probably all been used at one time or another), but the popularity of the Harry Potter books is not among them. I wonder if Mr. Stein would also direct his bile at all those adults who've watched, for example, The Wizard of Oz almost every year when it's on TV for the last 40 or 50 years. I would also point out to him that it wasn't just children who enjoyed those serials from the 1930's-1950's, such as Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon movies, and that my grandmother used to love the old Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies until she was well into her 80's.

Stein has also clearly not even checked out the later books. J. K. Rowling grew as a writer as the Harry Potter series progressed. The third book contained a clever plot device involving time travel. In addition, the fourth and fifth novels no longer read like children's books and contained multilayered plots more emotional resonance in which Harry has to learn how to deal with death, particularly the end of the fifth book.

If Mr. Stein were to make fun of me for enjoying the latest Harry Potter novel, I'd look him right in the eye, smile, and tell him I have an M.D., a Ph.D.; treat patients with cancer; and run a laboratory that studies tumor angiogenesis. Then I'd mention that reading this book is one of the things I enjoy in my limited spare time before inquiring of him what his level of education is and what great works of literature he's read lately for pleasure while preparing to appear on such erudite works as VH1's I Love the '80's (or I Love the '90's or I love whatever decade). What, Mr. Stein? You mean to tell me that you don't frequently read Herman Melville, Shakespeare, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Leo Tolstoy, or the like for pleasure in your spare time? I'm disappointed.

Finally, I'd turn my back on him and resume enjoying the novel.

80 years after the Scopes Trial

I can't believe I forgot to mention this, but 80 years ago yesterday, the Scopes Monkey Trial began. I had even had a placeholder entry prepared for yesterday, as a reminder from a post I wrote a couple of months ago, but somehow I missed it while contemplating what to post today. Thanks to St. Nate for reminding me, even though I missed my own reminder.

In the summer of 1925, a young teacher named John Scopes was tried and, after a famous trial that lasted several days, found guilty of teaching evolution in violation of the Butler Act on July 21, 1925. You'd think that such antiscientific sentiment would have abated over the years, but you'd be wrong. True, in the eighty years since 1925, we've developed antibiotics, jet travel, molecular biology, cancer chemotherapy, and have gone to space and the moon. We've developed technological marvels undreamt of 80 years ago. Despite all that, however, unfortunately somehow we haven't moved beyond the attempts of religious ideologues to impose their religious beliefs upon science. Indeed, depressingly, the antiscientific attacks on evolution today sound much the same as they did 80 years ago. Oh, creationism has "evolved" into "intelligent design," mainly because even creationists realized that arguing that the earth was only 6,000 years old contrary to mountains of scientific evidence that indicates it is much older and arguing that the fossil evidence was not what science said that it was turned out to be a nonstarter that ran afoul of the First Amendment's prohibition against government endorsement of a specific religious belief if taught in public schools. Consequently, creationism morphed into the concept of "intelligent design," which argues that life is too complex to have evolved without the intervention of a "designer." Worse, ID advocates produce no actual scientific research to support their concept and that they frequently mangle and misrepresent the theory of evolution as it is presently understood and the scientific evidence that supports it, all the while agitating and politicking to convince schoolboards to teach ID as an "alternative" to evolution in science classes. All of this makes ID a unique threat to he teaching of science.

Of course, ID advocates don't see it that way. For example, I was perusing my referral logs a couple of days ago (as I am wont to do from time to time) when I came across a several referrals from a pro-intelligent design blog Telic Thoughts. Curious (as I am whenever I see multiple hits coming from the same site), I investigated and found myself mentioned in the comments of this post. Oddly enough, it was a post about threats to science, specifically animal rights activists and their opposition to any use of animals in research, their threatening and vandalism of research labs, and their intimidation of those whom they perceive as being involved in animal research, something that Brian O'Connor documents on a routine basis at his blog Animal Crackers. As such, I can't help but agree that these extremists are a threat to scientific research. No doubt MikeGene thought that he was defending science and trying to align ID on the side of science when he concluded:

PETA, which is only one of many animal rights groups trying to put an end to research that involves animals, has an annual budget of 16 million dollars. Compare this to the ca. 1 million dollar budget the Discovery Institute devotes for its ID-related activities.

Oops. Sorry. And you were doing so well up until this. (OK, well, maybe not, given that you mentioned that this was the point of your article relatively early on.) I'd argue that ID is more of a threat to science for the simple reason that it is more insidious. Animal rights extremists are pretty obvious and blunt in their tactics. People don't like being intimidated and recognize these groups for the ideologues they are. Also, the less radical and more reasonable among them have a valid point: that we should treat animals with as little cruelty as possible. The more radical among them are so loony (advocating, for instance, that animals should never be used for research, meat, or clothing and that they should have rights equal to that of humans) that they are unlikely to garner wide support; indeed, sometimes even "mainstream groups" like PETA end up resorting to a less violent variety of the sorts of intimidation and harassment that more radical groups like the Animal Liberation Front take to violent extremes. In contrast, when intelligent design advocates push the teaching of their brand of creationism in public schools in science classes, they are guaranteeing that entire generations of American high school students have an erroneous view of what science is and how it is done. They don't see it this way, but it is no coincidence that they want to teach their pseudoscience to youth. What students learn in high school in terms of attitudes towards science and what constitutes good science is likely to stick with them through adulthood and is difficult for even a university education to erase. ID advocates know this, which is why they want to push their pseudoscience on the young. It's all well and good that they argue against animal rights extremists shutting down scientific research. It's hard for a scientist to disagree with that. But it's a red herring then to use that criticism of animal rights activists to argue that ID is not a threat to science. It is.

Finally, before wrapping up. I do have to admit that the comment about me that drew my attention to this article in the first place hurt a little:

I think I have resoundingly proved my point, noting that you can certainly describe PZ Meyers as one of the most ‘active’ ID critics (many posts on his blog are dedicated to it) and there it is, the incident you’ve described being criticised on his blog. I think there is sufficient evidence to state, given myself, Orac and PZ Meyers (representing a scale as well, with Orac being the least prominent ID critic, I’d be in between as I post several places on ID and PZ Meyers being a mainstream prominent one) all talking about different issues.

"Least prominent ID critic"? Ouch. True, I don't dedicate nearly as big a proportion of my blog to taking on ID creationists as PZ does, nor is my blog anywhere near as widely read as his, but can anyone argue that it's not a major theme of my blog? "Least prominent"? Oh, well, I guess that means I'll just have to try harder.

In the meantime, while I'm coming up with ways to try harder, it is useful to contemplate whether the Scopes Trial was temporary victory or whether it was even a victory at all:

But for some historians Scopes was no victory for Darwinism. The prosecutor, populist politician William Jennings Bryan, was seen as speaking for the "common people". Those people, repelled by an alien, arrogant, scientific world that seemed opposed to them and their values, developed a separate society increasingly bound to strict religious laws. Before the trial, evolution had not been an important issue for these people. Now it was. For many Americans, being in favour of evolution is still equated with being against God.

Sadly, today, much the same rhetoric and attitudes abound. ID advocates portray evolution as atheistic or "godless" even though there is no inherent conflict between belief in God and accepting the science behind evolution, equating its critics with godlessness and the arrogance of the "elite" looking down upon the faithful. Even worse, in the court of public opinion, they appear to be winning.

Battlestar Galactica

I admit it. I'm an SF geek. You've probably figured it out by my fairly frequently references to The Lord of the Rings, Doctor Who (both the classic series from 1963-1989 and the new version that started airing this year), Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, and, of course, Blakes 7, a major character from which inspired my 'nym. (It also pains me to no end that there has been no Region 1 DVD release of Blakes 7, leaving me the choice of keeping the poor quality tapes I made 10-15 years ago when the show aired in Cleveland at 6 AM on Saturdays or buying a region-free DVD player and paying through the nose to have the DVDs sent from the U.K. I love the show, but I don't think I love it enough to go that far, although, come to think of it, a region-free player would be a nice thing to have regardless. Come on BBC America, release Blakes 7 in the U.S.!)

But I digress.

One show I hadn't much gotten into until recently is the retooled resurrection of Battlestar Galactica. I had caught it occasionally, but, because it was on Friday nights at 10 PM and because I'm frequently exhausted on Friday nights, I often fell asleep on the couch either before it came on or sometime shortly after it came on. It looked intriguing (from seeing the first 20 minutes of episodes). Well, this weekend, I lost my Battlestar Galactica virginity, so to speak. (Also, because my wife has been away visiting her parents for the last week, I was re-learning how pathetically bored and lonely I would be without her.) Besides NBC's showing the last three episodes of season one last night, I stumbled on the fact that a newly-added channel to our cable package, Universal HD (which offers HD programming from NBC and Universal Studios) is running a Battlestar Galactica marathon all weekend, all in glorious 1080i HD-TV. (Once you go HD, you don't want to come back, not to mention that UHD shows almost no commercials during the show. Of course, one disadvantage of HD is that you can see every crevice and pockmark in Edward James Olmos's face, but I'll put up with that gladly.) In fact, now that I know the show is shown in HD on this channel Sunday nights at 8 PM, I may skip the SciFi Channel's airing of it altogether.

Nahh, probably not. The series is too addictive, and, if I'm home on Fridays (and conscious at 10 PM), it'll be hard for me to resist checking it out. Waiting until Sunday will probably not be an option.

In any case, it's become clear to me as I've filled in most of the gaps in my viewing and finally watched the season finale that Battlestar Galactica is, quite simply, the best SF show presently on television. Nothing currently on the air (or even on the air in the last couple of years) that I'm aware of comes even comes close, with the possible exception of the new version of Doctor Who, and that show is only available to those living within broadcast range of the Canadian border. I was a fan of the original series. However, it should be noted that I was a teenager back then. I realize now that the series was pretty cheesy, although, having seen a couple of episodes recently, I still like it mainly for its campy fun.

The new Galactica is much darker and much richer than the original. Perhaps the biggest (and most effective) change from the past is that the Cylons are now capable of masquerading as humans and infiltrating the battlegroup. Their ability is so effective that it takes sophisticated tests to distinguish Cylon from human. Indeed, major character, Boomer, is revealed to be a Cylon infiltrator, even though she won't acknowledge it at first and, when finally forced to, tries to deny that she will in the end do what the Cylons require (which she does, but I won't tell you what it was). Also, in this version, Commander Adama believes that earth is a myth, but claims that he knows where it is to keep hope alive, and the civilian President, slowly dying of terminal breast cancer, is having religious visions that tell her she is the fulfillment of prophecy as the "dying leader" who will lead the people to the "promised land," bringing her into direct conflict with Adama. Another interesting change is that, while the humans practice a polytheistic religion, the Cylons actually appear to believe in a monotheistic religion that tells them they must destroy their creators, the humans. Finally, the production values on the series are top-notch, with a retro-tech, dingy feel.

The season finale was quite satisfying, with a number of major cliffhangers, not the least of which is the question of whether Adama will survive the wounds he suffered in an assassination attempt by an imbedded Cylon. I can't wait for the premiere of the second season this Friday to see how these all play out. I admit it; I'm now hooked.

Maybe next week, by which time I will hopefully have had the chance to watch the last three episodes of the new Doctor Who that my mother sent me, completing the season, I'll do a rundown on the new version and why it's as good as anything during the John Pertwee, Tom Baker, or Peter Davison eras of the old series. In the meantime, more of the usual skepticism, alt-med, creationism, etc...

Racist Mexican stamps?

Over the 4th of July weekend, I became aware of a story about a set of new Mexican postage stamps featuring a black comic book figure with stereotypically thick lips and a flat nose with ape-like features, similar to the way blacks were frequently caricatured in cartoons during the early 1900's, These stamps have set off a controversy over the apparently racist images, having offended many in the U.S. Mexicans appear not to appreciate why blacks in the U.S. might not find the 1940's character Memin Pinguin quite as charming as many Mexicans do:

But Mexico, which has few blacks and considers racism much less of an issue, is baffled at the US reaction. It said the stamps were a harmless tribute to a popular Mexican cartoon.

"I find it odd not to understand this celebration of popular Mexican culture and this tribute that the Mexican post office is making to Mexican cartoonists," presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar said. (From this Reuters story.)

Leave it to Nicky Goomba to try to show Mexicans why some Americans might be offended by a stamp with an old-fashioned racist image by giving them a proposed taste of their own medicine. I wonder if it will work. The sad thing is, the Mexicans who defend these images probably genuinely don't consider them to be racist, much as most white Americans in the early 1900's probably didn't consider the picaninny, coon, or Tom caricatures of blacks that were so prevalent at the time (and persist to some extent even today) to be racist. They just considered them "cute" or "lovable," if they considered them at all.

For an attempt at a defense of these stamps (as indefensible as they appear to be), though, see Fred on Everything. I'm not sure this was intentional or not, but Fred actually shows us just how racist, how Samba-like Memin Pinguin is drawn by including scans of the covers of several issues of the Mexican comic book Judge for yourself. Unfortunately, while accusing those complaining about the stamps of, in essence, race-baiting and hypersensitivity, Fred is not above engaging in a bit of race-baiting himself, claiming that "we have trained our blacks, or a great many blacks, to believe that they should get anything—jobs, promotions, acceptance into college, and immunity from criticism—just by being black" and blaming Jesse Jackson and "hucksters" for stiring up a tempest in a teapot.

Personally, I think the covers Fred posted look pretty damned racist myself. None of the non-blacks on the covers are drawn the same way as Memin is, and you can't convince me that Memin doesn't look a lot like these images.

A machine that fought fascism

I had had something entirely different lined up to post today (it was even all written a couple of days ago!), but somehow my heart just wasn't in it; it was not entirely serious. It'll have to wait until tomorrow or Monday. I was actually a bit depressed by the partisan finger-pointing that my simple expression of solidarity yesterday morning provoked. I honestly hadn't expected that, at least not on the very day of the bombings, while people were still trapped in the bombed-out subways. (I expected a lag of a day or two before the partisan blame game began.) Fortunately, I found something that got me over it a bit. I've had this lying around for a three weeks since I first saw it, never having found a good time to post my little commentary. In the wake of the terrorist bombings in London yesterday, I can' t think of a better or more appropriate time to mention this.

A little while back, Anthony Cox of Black Triangle waxed rhapsodical about a sculpture of a Spitfire fighter plane at the Jaguar factory where Spitfires were made during World War II.

It was indeed a magnificent machine, and I rather like this stylized representation. Without the Spitfire and the brave pilots who flew them to defend Britain against the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain in 1940, the war would have been lost before the U.S. ever entered it. For months, Britons endured almost nightly raids on their major cities, and the doughty Spitfire pilots were all that stood between Britain and defeat. The R.A.F. was pounded nearly to the breaking point due to the nightly sorties and the damage caused by attacks on its airfields, but in the end Britain endured. The Germans decided that they couldn't break their defenses and that an amphibious invasion of Britain was no longer feasible. By early 1941, Hitler's attention shifted towards planning the invasion of the Soviet Union. Because the British held on so tenaciously and because of Hitler's impatience and unwillingness to wait to invade the Soviet Union, Hitler plunged Germany into a two-front war that ultimately it couldn't win.

This sculpture reminds me that Britain has been through far worse than what these terrorists, including the Battle of Britain and 30 years of bombings by the IRA. They will endure this as well and emerge stronger for it, as they always have. This experience has led Londoners to be far better prepared to deal with such incidents than we are. I remember the typically blasé reaction of my British postdoc who recently resigned from my laboratory and is scheduled to move back to London in a couple of weeks as she said to me yesterday, "We've been through much worse."

July 7, 2005: We are all Britons

From Shape of Days, via Waking Up Costs:



Anyone who's a regular reader of this blog knows what an Anglophile I am, which is why, today, it is true, at least for me.

To my British readers

While getting ready for work, I just heard on the radio what happened this morning while we Yanks slept. I flipped on the TV and was greeted with horrific images from central London. Although the causes aren't clear and all of our broadcasters here (with the exception of Fox News, of course) are qualifying their speculations, certainly these explosions in the Tube and on double decker buses smell like a coordinated terrorist attack, particularly given the multiple locations and the fact that it occurred during the morning rush hour.

To all my British readers, I offer my best wishes, sorrow, solidarity, and hope that the explosions are over. If this is indeed a terrorist attack, as it seems to be, I also hope the bastards who did this are caught and punished. (I have a personal stake in this, because a postdoctoral fellow of mine, who is British, recently left my lab and is scheduled to go back to London with her husband in about a week.)

The Skeptics Circle XII

The 12th Edition of the Skeptics' Circle has been posted at the UTI Annex.

Yep, pardners, this week's session looked to be in a heap o' trouble when Brent's server went down hard and stayed down. But fortunately the Annex was near the Skeptics' Circle Saloon, where the meeting went off without a hitch:

This was shapin' up to be a rip-roarin' Circle. St. Nate opened the roll away window in the poker room and Circle members crowded close while he refilled their glasses and passed out bottles.

Yep, it sure was. My head is still poundin' a-somethin' fierce.

But it's not pounding so much that I won't be ready, two weeks hence, to take my second turn at hosting the Skeptics' Circle, after having been honored to have the chance to host the Second Edition way back in February. It's not too early to start sending me your best skeptical blogging at orac_usa@hotmail.com. I'll post more reminders as the date approaches. I'll also acknowledge all submissions; so if you don't hear from me in a day or two after sending me your entry, please send it again.

Sue the bastards!

I didn't know that things like this were permitted, but apparently they are. As reported over the last couple of days, last week a New Jersey woman named Claudia Santana was taken from her home by bounty hunters who had mistakenly identified her as a fugitive named Claudia Patricia Rincon, who was wanted for embezzlement of $69,000 and had jumped bail. Mrs. Santana is a law-abiding married mother of two who had never been in trouble with the law before. Worse, she even called the local police for help, and, rather than either clearing or arresting her themselves, the police sided with the bounty hunters! The account:

She says she showed them all her identification, which they took. Then, she called 911 and Rutherford police responded. Outside one of the men showed an officer that same blurry photo.

Claudia Santana, Victim: "He showed it to him and the police officer said, 'oh yeah, that's her' - meaning me."

As her two children slept along with her mother, Santana says she was handcuffed and led to a van on the street, with her husband screaming in protest, and the Rutherford police officers doing nothing.

Her husband followed them in his car to the Dover Police Station, even though they drove 85 MPH most of the way. Then look how these brave, heroic bounty hunters behaved after they found out that they had taken the wrong woman:

In Dover, the men parked outside the police station. The "supervisor" bounty hunter went into the station with all of Santana's identification and came out 10 minutes later.

"He said, 'I'll be good to you, but if you keep crying, you'll make me upset, and I'll change my mind,'" Santana said.

The man took her handcuffs off and "I jumped out of the van," Santana said. "They didn't explain it was a mistake. He kept saying he's doing me a favor."

And then the two men drove off, she said, leaving her outside the police station.

"He left me in the street," she said.

Utterly disgraceful, particularly since it's more than a 30 mile drive from Rutherford to Dover. (Fortunately, her husband had managed to keep up.) In any case, the bounty hunters who treated Mrs. Santana this way are scum, plain and simple.

I'm sure that someone out there will correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that bounty hunters couldn't enter private residences to apprehend a bail jumper without first notifying local police of their plans. It's clear that laws vary from state to state and what I've learned of New Jersey laws is that they are very lax about bounty hunters. That clearly needs to be changed.

What's even worse about this case is that Mrs. Santana ended up in the U.S. because she had fled from her native Columbia, where her grandmother had been killed by guerillas. She thought she had escaped having to worry about armed men breaking into her house late at night to take her away.

Three things need to happen now:

1. The bounty hunters responsible for this need to be arrested, charged with abduction, and hopefully locked up for a long time as an example to other bail bondsmen not to go too far. Yes, mistakes happen, but there should be a severe penalty to pay for such reckless disregard for verifying a fugitive's identity. These morons clearly demonstrated such reckless disregard by relying on a blurry picture and ignoring the multiple forms of identification Mrs. Santana showed them to prove that she was who she said she was. As Mrs. Santana said, ""It sounds like the 'Twilight Zone' scene that nobody believes who you are. If you have IDs and that's not enough, what else can you do, what else can you show?" I don't give a crap for the bounty hunters' likely defense that they have to assume that the suspect's ID is forged. These guys aren't the police. If they can't easily show that the ID is forged or otherwise invalid, then they shouldn't be able to arrest the suspect, particularly if the crime the suspect was charged with was nonviolent.
   
2. The Rutherford police who let the bounty hunters take Mrs. Santana on such a flimsy pretext need to be disciplined if they violated law or policy. Regardless of whether these police made a mistake, as a matter of policy, police should be required to insist upon better evidence from these freelancers before letting them take a suspect.
   
3. If #1 doesn't happen, then Mrs. Santana should hire a lawyer immediately and sue the pants off the bail bond company (Mantis Recovery Service of Philadelphia) and the Borough of Rutherford. There are few times when I advocate this, but this is about as lawsuit-worthy an offense as I can think of. If there is any justice in the world, Mrs. Santana will win a fat settlement and bankrupt the company. (Indeed, this sounds like a case for Ron Kuby.)
   

There is no reason that bail bondsmen/bounty hunters should not be constrained by the same Constitutional prohibitions that limit the power of the police. Unfortunately, such does not appear to be the case.

How to blog about interesting cases without running afoul of HIPAA

This is very pertinent to me and any other doctor-bloggers who on occasion discuss interesting cases on their blogs or use patients as examples, as I've done in the past. Apparently, if you follow these rules, you should be able to continue doing so without running afoul of HIPAA privacy regulations.

The Hitler zombie smells thimerosal

Deep within a dark crypt, far beneath the ground, it slept. The air was thick and musty, and the crypt utterly silent, so silent that its heartbeat would easily have been heard, if it actually had a beating heart and if any ears were there to hear. Not a photon of visible light could penetrate the gloom, producing the kind of darkness that would drive a person insane within minutes due to total sensory deprivation. So it remained for weeks.

Then there was a stir, ever so slight, almost imperceptible, but just enough to move a small volume of dank air, producing a rare brief breeze. The tomb fell silent again.

The hunger grew. The Hitler zombie had fed well on the brains of many politicians, gorging on the brain centers controlling rational thought and sense of proportion, driving them to make ill-considered and inflammatory comparisons to Hitler, the Nazis, or the Holocaust that the brain damage from its feasting would either prevent them from recognizing as ridiculous or that they would later regret. Sated, it had finally retreated to its resting place craving only release from its hell, the real sleep of the dead that feeding on brains briefly allowed it.

Unfortunately for the not quite living Führer, politicians' brains are a poor source of nourishment, even for an undead monster that had caused the deaths of tens of millions during life. It was soon hungry again, despite its primeval desire for eternal rest. It needed to hunt. Deep within the sulci of its rotting white matter, it craved something different than the same old brains that were prone to use the same old fallacious Nazi, Hitler, or Holocaust analogies, something that might sustain it longer and allow it to sleep as dead for longer. A creature of sheer instinct and minimal residual intelligence, it just couldn't quite know what. Nearly two years ago, drawn by the rising level of ridiculously overblown rhetoric eminating from PETA, it had visited PETA's world headquarters and feasted mightily on the brains of several of PETA's leaders. The result (besides a big mess) was the infamous Holocaust on a Plate advertising campaign. Next it found one Karen Davis, Ph.D., whose brain was most satisfying to eat, resulting in an essay entitled A Tale of Two Holocausts. It had been a marvelous feast, those brains, so unlike the monotonous brains of politicians, whose only thought was power and how to use the Hitler analogy as a weapon against their enemies. The creature craved something like that again.

The Hitler zombie stirred again, this time more forcefully. It sensed similar rhetoric, rhetoric similar to what it desired. If the Hitler zombie had more sentience, it would have been surprised, as this rhetoric was coming from a most unexpected source indeed, groups advocating for autistic children. Most incongruously, they were decribing autism in increasingly horrific terms. In their unshakable and self-righteously mistaken belief that thimerosal in childhood vaccines was causing an "epidemic" of autism, activist groups were increasingly (and probably unwittingly) demonizing even the very victims of autism, calling the "epidemic" an autism "tsunami" (showing an enormous lack of respect for the more than hundred thousand dead), and even going so far as to call some of its victims "walking biohazards," "an equal opportunity disaster," or even "government mercury vaccine poisoned kids." The rhetoric was clearly accelerating to what the Hitler zombie instinctually knew would inevitably be the ultimate bad analogy, the very reason for its tortured existence. For the rhetoric to reach that end, all it would require is a little feeding, and the Hitler zombie existed only to feed.

The time was ripe. The Hitler zombie rose and started clawing his way through the dirt to the surface. It didn't take long for it to find Mark Blaxill of Safeminds.org and an altie named Dr. Mercola.

It fed deeply and well.

Mr. Blaxill then wrote this letter to Time Magazine, likening autism to a "silent holocaust," an analogy that Dr. Mercola echoed on his own website, also likening it to "pharmaceutical terrorism." The "silent holocaust" analogy spread, and was soon found in a number of publications by organizations that claimed that autism was caused by the mercury in thimerosal. The Hitler zombie was temporarily sated.

It was not enough. The Hitler zombie enjoyed this new use of the tired old Nazi/Holocaust gambit (if an undead creature such as he could be said to feel any sensation resembling "pleasure"), but still hungered for more brains and more of the analogy. It craved another receptive brain on which to feed to produce these fallacies.

The Hitler zombie hunted again.

It did not have far to look. It somehow found its way to Sacramento and to the Schafer Autism Report. It shambled into Lenny Schafer's office, leaving a trail of maggots and bits of rotting flesh behind it. "More braaaiiins!"* it croaked through rotting lips, and fed again. Lenny did not even try to run. Soon after, e-mailed to thousands of subscribers was the usual Schafer Autism Report. However, embedded in the e-mail was this headline, referring to an article that supposedly debunks the widely cited Danish study that failed to find a link between thimerosal and autism:

Danish Studies Roundly Clobbered
Autism holocaust deniers lack the science

Deep in the collapsing skull of the shambling undead creature, what little consciousness of the dictator that remained enjoyed this analogy immensely. Instinctively, he appreciated the dual-pronged fallacious use of the Nazi Holocaust analogy. Besides implying that autism and autistic spectrum disorders (conditions that, although often devastating, can still also be compatible with a relatively normal life for many of their victims) were akin to the Holocaust, to the intentional killing of millions of people and the attempt to wipe out European Jewry as a matter of Nazi government policy, this particular analogy had the additional irony of also equating anyone who questioned the thimerosal-autism link, anyone who looked at the scientific studies on this issue and concluded that the mercury in thimerosal-containing vaccines was not the cause of autism, with that most vile variety of anti-Semites and Nazi apologists, Holocaust deniers! Such a monumentally exaggerated analogy that simultaneously equated autism with with industrialized mass murder while also equating those who questioned an autism-thimerosal link with Holocaust deniers was not only a gross insult autistics and their parents (not to mention any who happen to disagree that mercury causes autism), but a trivialization of the Holocaust. Indeed, to the Hitler zombie, these ironies were just as delicious as the brains it had just consumed.

But there was yet another irony in this nasty analogy for the Hitler zombie to savor as it digested Lenny Schafer's brain in its putrifying intestines. People using idiotic Holocaust analogies (like Mr. Blaxill, Dr. Mercola, and Mr. Schafer) probably fail to recall that the earliest mass murders of the Holocaust occurred during the T4 euthanasia program, in which the Nazis decided to eliminate what they termed "life unworthy of life." Specifically, children and adults who were mentally ill, mentally retarded, or disabled were the targets. Indeed after 1939 in Nazi Germany, psychiatric hospitals and nursing homes gradually became feared places; families with the means to do so tried desperately to get their children out of them. Many who could not received vague and mysterious letters informing them that their family member had died of "natural causes" and that the body had been cremated for reasons of "hygeine." It is impossible to know how many autistics died through the intentional starvation, lethal injection, or in the gas chambers used this phase of the Holocaust because, before Dr. Leo Kanner described the condition in detail and developed specific diagnostic criteria for autism in 1943, autistics were usually classified as schizophrenic or mentally retarded. However, because these two groups were among the primary targets of the Nazi T4 program, it is not at all unreasonable to speculate that many autistics were probably victims of the Nazi regime's desire to rid the Volk of the mentally "defective." Likening autism to the Holocaust was thus doubly insulting to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust. Indeed, it even came uncomfortably close to resembling the very rhetoric that the Nazis were so fond of when it came to the mentally ill and retarded ("worthless eaters" and "life unworthy of life").

Savoring the vicious and mindless fallacies behind such a comparison, the Hitler zombie found its way back to its crypt and slept. It was starting to like the smell of thimerosal, and one day it would be back for more. Perhaps Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. would be its next victim...



*Translated from German, of course!

Disaster strikes the Skeptics' Circle

Via Pharyngula, I discovered earlier this evening that that lovable atheist duo, Brent and DarkSyde, are experiencing some rather serious technical difficulties, which have left their excellent blog Unscrewing the Inscrutable offline since Friday. Unfortunately, they've been offline for four days now. That's an eternity in blog time to be offline. Fortunately, they can still post temporarily from their alternate site, the UTI Annex. But, then, unfortunately, not that many people know about their alternate site. I certainly didn't.

In any case, even more unfortunately, Unscrewing the Inscrutable was scheduled to host this week's Skeptics' Circle. Brent's still going to host, but if he's still offline on Thursday he may have to post it to the UTI Annex. Another problem is that he doesn't have very many submissions yet, and the utter disaster that has befallen his blog has prevented him from issuing a call the weekend before the carnival, which in my experience is when a host gets most of his submissions.

So help Brent out. You still have until Wednesday night to send examples of your best skeptical blogging to brent.rasmussen@gmail.com. The guidelines are here.

Tom Cruise uncontrollable

A while back, I wrote about Tom Cruise and how Scientology has warped his brain, as evidenced by his interview with Matt Lauer. Now, via Black Triangle, I've found another version of the transcript, which I like much better. I think the pictures add so much to the transcript of the interview, don't you?

Grand Rounds XLI

Grand Rounds XLI has been posted at Medical Connectivity. Time yet again for the best of the medical blogosphere to strut its stuff. Be sure to check it out.

Creationist spam from Babu Ranganathan

Damn you, Babu Ranganathan.

I was in the middle of writing today's blog entry, when, running in the background, my e-mail client told me that fresh e-mail had arrived. And what should greet me? Not one, not two, but three pieces of unsolicited e-mail from Babu Ranganathan. I started working on a response, and, before I knew it, it was too late to finish the piece I had intended to post today. I guess it'll have to wait until tomorrow or Thursday; such is the blog life, I'm afraid.

Some background is in order here, not the least of which is to tell you just who Mr. Ranganathan is and why he annoyed me. About a month ago, Mr. Ranganathan published an article in Intellectual Conservative defending "intelligent design" (ID) creationism entitled, Entropy: Enemy of Evolution? It was filled with the usual creationist canards about how evolution is somehow incompatible with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, a canard debunked so frequently that I no longer go into much detail. Instead, I simply refer creationists here, here, and here whenever they are foolish enough to use this easily debunked fallacy.

I had previously been a fairly regular reader of this website, and was sorely disappointed that they would publish such a piece of nonsense. However, PZ had already demolished his article; consequently I didn't blog on it. Instead, I simply wrote an e-mail to the editor of Intellectual Conservative complaining about the article, pointing out a few of its fallacies, and concluding sarcastically that the left has little to worry about as far as Intellectual Conservative's "slowly tearing down the left's reputation as the exclusive haven of intellectual thought" if Mr. Ranganathan's article was the sort of antiscientific drivel it was using as ammunition for its attacks.

And I wonder why I never received a reply or even an acknowledgement. I guess these e-mails over a month later are my acknowledgement. Normally, I view private e-mails sent to me to be just that--private. I will not post them to my blog without the author's permission. However, there are two exceptions to this rule. One is for abusive or threatening posts. The other is for unsolicited mass e-mail or mailing lists that I did not request to be on. So it is with Mr. Ranganathan, whose statements in the e-mails are extreme examples of creationist nonsense.

The first e-mail is entitled Conservative theologian reconsiders hell and will not be discussed. (I have no idea why Mr. Ranganthan thought I would be interested in his meanderings about hell, but apparently he did.) The third e-mail is in effect a rehash of his original article in which he repeated yet again the Second Law fallacy, entitled Evolution, Entropy, and Open Systems. There's no need to deal with it, given that PZ already demolished the very same arguments here. The second e-mail, however, was entitled Common misconceptions about evolution still being taught. Too bad Mr. Ranganthan seems enamored of a few misconceptions of his own:

Another misconception is that any kind of change is possible among living things. Modern science, however, has shown that there are genetic limits to evolution or biological change in nature. All biological variations, whether they are beneficial to survival or not, are possible only within the genetic potential and limits of a biological kind such as the varieties among dogs, cats, horses, cows, etc.

However, variations across biological kinds such as humans evolving from ape-like creatures and apes, in turn, evolving from dog-like creatures and so on, as Darwinian evolutionary theory teaches, are not possible unless Nature can perform genetic engineering so as to change the over-all genetic information and program in species.

Ugh. Where to start? It's the typical creationist of the lowest order. He's in effect ceding the fact that evolution occurs, but is denying speciation. In essence, he is denying what bugs creationists the most about the Theory of Evolution, namely common descent. Unfortunately for him, he's making a fool of himself, as common descent is one of the most strongly supported pillars of evolution. But wait, Mr. Ranganathan can't wait to bury himself even deeper:

The common belief among evolutionists is that random mutations in the genetic code over time will produce entirely new sequences for new traits and characteristics which natural selection can then act upon resulting in entirely new species. Evolutionists consider mutations to be a form of natural genetic engineering.

No, Mr. Ranganathan, biologists consider mutations to be a mechanism that produces genetic and phenotypic variation, which is the raw material on which natural selection acts, nothing more.

However, the very nature of mutations precludes such a possibility. Mutations are accidental changes in the sequential structure of the genetic code caused by various random environmental forces such as radiation and toxic chemicals.

Almost all true mutations are harmful, which is what one would normally expect from accidents. Even if a good mutation occurred for every good one there will be thousands of harmful ones with the net result over time being disastrous for the species.

Oh, please. How many times do we have to shoot this one down? Most mutations are neutral, as the vast majority of DNA is not transcribed and translated into functional proteins, meaning that most mutations have no effect on phenotype. For those mutations that do have a functional effect on a protein, whether they are neutral, beneficial, or detrimental depends a lot on the environmental circumstances the organism finds itself in. Moreover, beneficial mutations, although considerably less frequent than harmful ones, are by no means rare in nature or in humans.

Most biological variations occur as a result of new combinations of previously existing genes - not because of mutations which are rare in nature.

Repeat after me: Mutations are not rare in nature.

Furthermore, mutations simply produce new varieties of already existing traits (i.e. varieties of hair color, texture, etc.). Sometimes mutations may trigger the duplication of already existing traits (i.e. an extra finger, toe, or even an entire head!). But mutations have no ability to produce entirely new traits or characteristics (i.e. causing hair cells to turn into feathers, wings, etc.).

Wrong. Evolution does not only select pre-existing genetic variation. Mutations add new variation into populations that natural selection can act on, such as resistance to chemical pesticides not found in nature. Yes, natural selection does work mostly on preexisting variation, but mutations are the main mechanism by which variation is introduced into populations in the first place. Over the span of hundreds of millions of years, mutation can be a powerful force to introduce new variation. But wait, there's more:

It is not at all rational to believe that the gradual accumulation of random and chance mutations in the sequence of the genetic code caused by random environmental forces such as radiation will produce over time entirely new gene sequences to program for entirely new and more complex species.

Would it be rational to believe that by randomly changing the sequence of letters in a cookbook that you will eventually get a book that teaches you how to build an atomic bomb? Of course not! And if the book were a living being it would have died in the process of such random changes.

Such changes in a book or in the genetic code of species cannot occur by random or chance alterations. It would require intelligent planning and design to change one book into another or to change the DNA of a simpler species into the DNA of a more complex one. The random forces of the environment are simply not capable of doing the latter for the genetic code in species.

Ugh. This is argument from incredulity at its worst. Basically, Mr. Ranganathan is saying that, because he can't conceive of a mechanism by which such complexity could have come about through evolution, that means it couldn't have happened without a "designer." That's all well and good if you're a theologian, but just throwing up your hands and saying "a 'Designer' (which we all know to be a code word for God) did it" is not science. Indeed, whether or not there is a "Designer" is not something science can ever prove or disprove, which is why most scientists consider such questions to be outside the realm of science. Moreover, I'd guess that the Designer, assuming He exists, couldn't care less whether Mr. Ranganathan can conceive of the mechanisms He uses to create new species or considers them "rational" or not. (Nor could scientists, for that matter.) Mr. Ranganathan's attitude to me seems more arrogant that even the worst arrogance he attributes to "evolutionists," as he seems to be assuming that just because he can't imagine how evolution could generate complex species must automatically mean that complex species couldn't have come about through evolution alone. Sorry, Mr. Ranganathan, but nature does not limit itself just to what you can conceive, believe, or understand!

Furthermore, a partially-evolved and useless organ waiting millions of years to be completed via random mutations would be a biological hindrance, obstruction, and liability - not exactly a suitable candidate for natural selection assuming, of course, that random mutations could ever get an organ to a partially-evolved stage.

In fact, how could species have survived over supposedly millions of years while their vital organs were still evolving? There is no evidence in the fossil record of partially-evolved species (i.e. no half-evolved dinosaur, elephant, camel, etc.).

Wrong again. There are many examples of plausible mechanisms by which very complex organ systems such as the eye, ear, and others could evolve. Just because an organ hasn't attained its full functionality does not mean that it might not give an organism a competitive advantage over those without the organ (or with a less developed version). For example, simply being able to perceive light and dark could conceivably be advantageous over not having that ability. Moreover, he's repeating the same old "no transitional fossils" canard that creationists love so much and that has been debunked so many times.

Finally, after much tortuous logic-busting, straw men arguments, and evidence of nothing more than his own ignorance of biology, Mr. Ranganathan concludes:

Science cannot prove we're here by creation, but neither can science prove we're here by chance or macro-evolution. No one has observed either. They are both accepted on faith. The issue is which faith, Darwinian macro-evolutionary theory or creation, has better scientific support.

Bullshit. First, the straw man. Science is not trying to "prove" we're "here by chance or macroevolution"; rather, it is trying to understand the mechanism through which the diversity of life arose. That's it, and that's enough. As for the second, he's half correct. No one has observed creation, but evolution most definitely has been observed before. He's also half-correct for the third. Creation is accepted by faith, and that's OK, given that it's a religious belief. However, evolutionary theory is not accepted on faith. Science doesn't work that way. I understand Mr. Ranganathan's confusion, given his faith-based approach to everything, but evolution is not a religion, his implication to the contrary notwithstanding. Indeed, evolution is one of the most robust and strongly-supported theories in science, right up there with the Theory of Relativity, and creationists' attempts to represent it as "just another belief system" are disingenuous at best and outright deceptive at worst.

But enough! I've already given this guy more attention than he deserves and allowed myself to be distracted from a piece I had wanted to post today. Maybe I should have just forwarded his drivel to PZ. However, I doubt he would have been nearly as nice as I have been about deconstructing his mess of bad logic, bad science, and outright misinformation about the scientific evidence supporting evolution.

ADDENDUM: Looks like I spoke too soon. Apparently PZ did get a copy of the same spam, and he decided to debunk the other idiotic thing that Mr. Ranganathan said that I didn't know enough about to take on (and didn't have time last night to do the background research on to do the debunking myself)! Quoth he:

Let me just say that nowhere in that paper is there even a hint of Lamarckism; it's very much standard evolutionary biology. It's ironic to read a clueless twit like Ranganathan telling scientists to stop doing something they know far better than he. Babu is fast becoming the Emily Latella of creationism.

Indeed he is. Thanks, PZ. It makes me wonder to whom else Mr. Ranganathan sent copies of this spam. Apparently Mr. Ranganathan wants us evilutionists to see his idiotic arguments. He must have some masochistic tendencies to send this tripe to people who are bound to shoot it down and tell him just how ignorant he is. Either that, or he just wants attention, regardless of whether it's positive or negative.

Fourth of July thoughts

Back in May, I was in Bethesda at a meeting. Because of my interest in World War II history and because I hadn't been to Washington since its completion, I was very interested in seeing the World War II Memorial; so one afternoon I hopped on the Metro and headed down to the Mall to check it out. It provided the material for some photoblogging on Memorial Day. On my way back, I thought it might be fun to wander by the White House before heading back to the Metro. So I did.

I had been in front of the White House at least two or three times before this. Pennsylvania Avenue has changed since September 11, 2001. Traffic is no longer permitted, and there are ugly cement barricades blocking either end of the street on the block that where the White House is located. This day, there were fewer people in front of the White House than any during any of my previous visits that I could recall. The pedestrian mall that Pennsylvania Avenue had become was quiet and almost deserted, except for a few tourists and some souvenir vendors.

And this woman:

There she was, a shabbily dressed old woman missing a couple of teeth, standing next to her small booth full of anti-nuclear slogans, horrific pictures of dead children, and polemics aimed against the United States and the President in particular (although, oddly enough, she seemed to direct more bile at George H. W. Bush than at his son, the current occupant of the White House). A small group of tourists and high school students on a class field trip, curious, surrounded her, and she was haranguing them about all the evils the United States has done from the beginning of its history. On one of her signs, was a message saying that she had been there since 1981.

Why didn't I remember her from my previous trips to Washington? Could it have been because it had never been as deserted on a day that I happened to wander in front of the White House before? Or had I noticed her before and simply forgotten?

I wondered who she was, what drove her. I certainly didn't agree with her apparent premise that the United States is the root of most evil in the world, which the signs she displayed seemed to imply she believed. So, too, did her words to the tourists and students who gathered around, to whom she went on and on about slavery, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Gulf Wars I and II, the displacement of Native Americans, and all other transgressions, real and perceived, of the U.S. throughout its history. It was also clear to me that the Hitler zombie had probably had a bit of a snack on her brain, as there were some bad Nazi analogies flying about, not to mention some equally bad Soviet analogies. Yes, she is a crank. But she is a crank who has stayed either in front of or across the street from the White House more or less continuously for nearly 24 years. She is also the kind of crank that I can't help but admire in some strange way, even though I disagreed strongly with her unrelenting hatred of so many U.S. policies.

When I got home, I did some digging. This woman's name is Concepción Piccotto. She is a naturalized citizen, who was born in Spain and emigrated to the U. S. at the age of 18. She's had a rough life, including a very bitter separation and custody battle back in the 1970's, which is what started her activism. For reasons known only to her, she planted herself in front of the White House on June 3, 1981 to protest nuclear weapons and call for nuclear disarmament. She has been there ever since, through Presidents Reagan, Bush père, Clinton, and Bush fils.

She also seems to have some paranoid ideation, as demonstrated in this interview:

Oh, yes, yes. They have arrested me many times. I have that on the website too. Arrested, gassing by police. They use lasers on me, this one night, it was about three or four days ago, on my face and my body — unbelievable what they're doing. And gas, a lot of gas. And they have sort of — might be a laser — because mainly they do it at night-time when I'm sleeping here to rest a little bit. It's like paralyzing my arms and my legs. Like when you hurt your elbow, that sensation, it hurts like that. Oh, it's painful, very painful! Sometimes you can scream, and I do, periodically.

There is no doubt that the police have arrested and harassed her on occasion, and it wouldn't surprise me if, over 24 years, they were occasionally rougher than they should have been when they did. However, I highly doubt that the police use lasers or gas on her at night to paralyze her arms and legs. She may have been harassed on occasion, forced to decrease the size of her signs, and ultimately forced to move across the street to Lafayette Park. She may have had to go to court to protect her First Amendment rights to free speech and to petition the government for redress of grievances. Nonetheless, she is still there, planted right in front of the seat of power in the free world, haranguing tourists and students now, just as she did during the Reagan Administration.

And that got me thinking.

What is it that I most love about my country? Sure, it's my home, and one can't help but love one's home. Yes, I value the ideals that are behind the Constitution, even if we may fail to live up to them with a depressing frequency and even though these days far too many seem ready to give up our Constitutional rights in the name of increased security. But what is it that makes America America, that makes America worth supporting and defending? On this Fourth of July, the answer came to me as I remembered my encounter with this strange and persistent woman who is still protesting nuclear disarmament well over a decade after the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War; who has demonized every occupant of the White House since Ronald Reagan; who apparently sees nothing good that the U.S. has done and everything bad; who remains a gadfly to the current occupant of the White House; and who will almost certainly continue to pester whoever succeeds George Bush as President in January 2009.

Unwittingly and unintentionally, Conchita Piccotto has shown me what is great about America. Can you imagine any other government on earth that would tolerate such a protest in front of the very seat of the executive branch of government for 24 years? Certainly not any regime in the Middle East. Certainly not Russia. Certainly not China, where someone like Conchita would have been tossed into a real gulag decades ago. I'm not even entirely sure how many European democracies would put up with such an irritant for so many years without somehow finding a way to remove her permanently from such close proximity to their seat of government. And, no, it's not because of the good will of the police or any President that Conchita remains there protesting. It is because our Constitution gives her the right to be there, and that right has been upheld through the courts in spite of periodic efforts of the police and the U.S. Park Service to remove her every few years. Even the terrorist attacks of September 11, which would have seemed to be the perfect excuse for the government finally to ban her from protesting in front of the White House once and for all (in the name of security and the war on terror, of course), failed to dislodge her.

That is the beauty of our system and our Constitution, despite their flaws. They do not rely on the good will of anyone or any government institution. The Constitution was written by men who understood that we cannot rely on the government to protect our freedom; rather, the government must be limited, lest it inevitably encroach on our freedom. Indeed, one of the things that most disillusioned me most with the brand of conservatism that is now ascendant in this country was how rapidly it was willing to start abrogating our Constitutional rights in the name of an amorphous "war on terror." Also disturbing and unconscionable is the tendency of the right to label anyone questioning the war in Iraq or the diminution of our civil liberties in the Patriot Act and other laws and policies passed in the wake of the September 11 attacks as somehow unpatriotic or, even worse, "treasonous." I cannot and will not associate myself with such rhetoric. To me, it is the critics of dissent that are so quick label those protesting the policies of the U. S. on any issue, the war or others, who are truly un-American. When such rhetoric takes hold is the time I fear for our rights, not when I see an old woman like Conchita annoying tourists who have come to see the White House. Indeed, seeing her gave me hope that we will weather the current difficulties with our Constitutional rights more or less intact, even after the Patriot Act or the attempts to pen in protestors at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions.

In fact, as a patriot, I hope that Conchita Piccotto remains in Lafayette Park for many years to come, preaching her adamant opposition to the policies of the U. S. I want as many tourists and high school students as possible to see her, as an object lesson that in the U.S. peaceful dissent, even harsh dissent planted right at the very doorstep of the White House, is tolerated. She is civics lesson more perfect than any that any teacher could give. Indeed, Conchita is the best reminder out there that I can think of on this Fourth of July 2005 of what the real stakes are when it comes to protecting our liberty from encroachments by our government in the name of the war on terror and what our soldiers have fought and died for throughout the 229 years since the Declaration of Independence was written. If the government ever succeeds in booting her from her place on Pennsylvania Avenue across from the White House, it will be a sad day indeed for our Republic.

Fireworks displays are no fun for Fido

Unfortunately, this is all too true for our dog. She's become afraid of fireworks, and this weekend has been long because of it, with our neighbors lighting off fireworks all over the place.

I'm dreading tonight...

Tom Tomorrow on "supporting the troops"

Ouch.

Tom Tomorrow cuts a bit close to the bone when it comes to ways to support the troops.

RINO sightings

A special 4th of July edition of RINO Sightings has been posted at Decision '08. Enjoy!

If you're going to base a religion on the writings of a science fiction writer

Orac has mostly finished its diagnostic scan of its circuitry and is effecting repairs to prevent such silliness as this from recurring. This is a test post:

Given my recent post about what lunacy Scientology has led Tom Cruise into, I kept wondering why a religion based on the writings of a bad science fiction writer has become so popular. (And make no mistake about it, L. Ron Hubbard was an awful science fiction writer. I actually read Battlefield Earth--Lord knows why--and it barely reached the level of acceptable SF pulp. In a way, Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream seems almost to have been written as a parody of this very novel.)

Now, via Yet Another Weird SF Fan, I discover that I'm not the only one who's pondered this. But, better than that, someone has decided to do something about it. Yes, Hog On Ice has proposed a different SF writer upon whose writings to base a religion: Philip K. Dick.

Quoth Steve:

Tom worships L. Ron Hubbard, a bad science fiction writer. Whether he realizes it or not. Why not have a religion that worships a GOOD science fiction writer? I'm thinking of Philip K. Dick. We'll kick their ass.

Indeed.

Although I like YAWSFF's other proposed prophets, Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein (although I've always been partial to Asimov over Heinlein myself), I had a couple of ideas myself. How about Alfred Bester? (OK, he probably wasn't prolific enough to provide an adequate quantity of writings upon which to base a religion, but he did write two of the best short novels in SF.) Another possibility: Arthur C. Clarke. His novel Childhood's End seems custom made to base a religion upon. Perhaps an even better possibility: Greg Bear. His Blood Music (very similar in theme to Childhood's End, just with a lot of modern molecular biology thrown in) and Darwin's Radio (plus its sequel Darwin's Children) seem sufficiently apocalyptic and the latter two propose the next stage of human evolution. Better yet, Bear isn't in his 80's, like Clarke. Perfect.

Any of these are orders of magnitude better SF writers than L. Ron Hubbard.

Of course, if we want a really obnoxious and cantankerous prophet who'll totally kick L. Ron's ass left, right, up and down, there's still always Harlan Ellison, isn't there?

The Mighty Thor gets hammered?

I admit it. I'm in a bit of a strange mood today. If you're looking for the more serious blogging goodness that is usually Respectful Insolence (well, attempts at blogging goodness, anyway), today ain't the day. Today, Orac must have a short somewhere in that plastic box of circuits and blinking lights that makes up its structure, because it feels like posting odd things like this.

I've collected comics more or less continuously for around 30 years now. My longtime favorite was (and still is) Fantastic Four, which is why I can't wait until the movie comes out next week (although as nice as Jessica Alba may be to look at, I think she's too young to play Sue Storm--not to mention the joke going around about taking such a beauty and making her play the Invisible Woman). It actually looks promising, though; and I will have to check it out. However, another of my favorites is the erstwhile God of Thunder. Yes, I collected The Mighty Thor for a long time, before they went overboard last year with the plotline, destroying Asgard, killing nearly every character, and ending the series.

In any case, my longstanding geekiness and love of the comic led me to find this slideshow of Thor getting "hammered" to be oddly hilarious. It's certainly warped. However, I have to give whoever took the picture credit for a fair amount of creativity in posing the figurine.

Come to think of it, given the plotline through which Marvel decided to end The Mighty Thor's 42-year run, maybe it was the writers and artists who were getting "hammered" last year when they conceived and executed the final storyline. (OK, the storyline wasn't bad; I just think they went overboard in several ways. Certainly, some of it seemed to have been conceived and/or written by someone under the influence of the same sort of stuff that Thor was when the slideshow was made.)

ADDENDUM: Horrified by what it has just posted (well, as "horrified" as it is possible for a megacomputer to be), Orac has started running a series of self-diagnostic routines on its processors. It will take several hours, at least. Hopefully a complete set of diagnostics will be finished and acted upon by tomorrow, so that a special Fourth of July post can be completed and posted without any further silliness, and also so that normal blogging on science, alternative medicine, and, yes, perhaps even another post or two on mercury-autism activism can resume on Tuesday.

Live 8 blogging

St. Nate has some cool Live 8 blogging going on, complete with quite a few pictures of the Philadelphia show. (Dr. Charles did the same thing pre-show, but hasn't yet posted any show pictures.) It makes me wonder if maybe I made a mistake in not hopping a train to Philly to check out the festivities. I also didn't know that the Kaiser Chiefs were there. They're definitely an up-and-coming band to watch. And, of course, one of the elder statesmen of R&B, Stevie Wonder, was there. On the other hand, I had no particular desire to see the Black-Eyed Peas or Bon Jovi. The best acts (U2, the reunited Pink Floyd) seemed to be reserved for London.

St. Nate also wonders if it all made any difference:

The cynic in me wants to say it was nothing more than just a show, but another part of me wants to believe that maybe this will make a change, that the universal language will have a long-reaching effect that transcends the debates of the G-8.

I don't know the answer to that one, but the ten concerts certainly were perhaps the biggest spectacle in the history of modern music.

I wanna rock

I haven't done one of these silly web quizs in a while for the simple reason that I thought I had exhausted most of the interesting ones. Then, via Ahistoricality, I find this one. Like him, I was a bit skeptical at first. There's no mention of the Beatles, for instance, nor are there quite a few other important bands. In my case, I wondered where the hell was The Clash? (Although I suppose Rancid could stand in, given how much early Clash wannabes they are, which is probably why I like them.) Bob Dylan? The Who? Jethro Tull?

Oddly enough, though, it came out pretty close to my musical tastes, with one exception. Punk is not a "medium" influence on me! It should be at least "high," if not "highest"! How could I get that, while choosing The Ramones, Rancid, The Sex Pistols, and others? How could I get that when I noticed the glaring omission of The Clash (a.k.a. The Only Band That Matters) on the quiz? I'm guessing it's because I'm not a big fan of some of the bands they probably considered "punk" (Third Eye Blind, The Hives, etc.--the Hives are OK, but nothing fantastic, and Third Eye Blind just plain sucks).

Oh, well...We dinosaurs need to keep rocking on!

Your Taste in Music:

80's Alternative: Highest Influence

Classic Rock: Highest Influence

90's Alternative: High Influence

Progressive Rock: High Influence

80's Pop: Medium Influence

80's Rock: Medium Influence

Adult Alternative: Medium Influence

Punk: Medium Influence

Ska: Medium Influence

Old School Hip Hop: Low Influence

How's Your Taste in Music?

Congratulations to a fellow surgeon-blogger

Dr. Bard-Parker at A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure celebrated the completion of his second year of blogging yesterday, and so it's time for me to send a hearty "Congratulations!" his way. When I first dipped my foot into the blogosphere, it wasn't long before I discovered Dr. Bard-Parker there, blazing a trail for surgeon-bloggers to follow after him with his fine writing. If you haven't checked out his recurring series, Tales from the Trauma Service, please do so now. It goes to show just what a unique contribution a surgeon-blogger can make. (It also reminds me why I got out of taking trauma call six years ago.)

Dr. Bard-Parker also makes this observation:

Despite the great pleasure I derive from this endeavor there have been times that I have considered hanging it up. It is conventional wisdom that if you keep blogging for a year then the chances of it sticking around are higher. But I have found this past year to be more of a struggle some times. But just when I'm ready to quit, I find something that catches my eye.

Even though I'm only a little more than halfway through my first year of blogging, I have to heed his observation. I, too, derive great pleasure from my little blogging hobby. In contrast, however, so far my problem has been that, most of the time at least, there are more things that I've wanted to comment about than I have time to write about well (or even just adequately). It's been pretty rare that I've sat down to face my computer and had nothing to write about, and in fact I have a long list of potential topics to blog about saved for when I'm short on ideas. One thing blogging has done for me is to make me more of an observationalist. Whenever I see something interesting or have an experience that teaches me something, I jot down a note an d add it to my list of future blog topics. However, the experience of an elder statesman (as far as surgeon-bloggers go) makes me wonder if this will always be the case. Will there come a time when I have trouble finding topics to comment about (or time to comment about them) or a time when I start feeling as though I've repeated myself one too many times on various topics.

Time will tell. I also sincerely hope that Dr. Bard-Parker resists the urge to hang up his blogging keyboard.

In the meantime, to all my fellow Americans, have a great 4th of July weekend. Given that my wife is out of town visiting family and friends, I'll probably have a lot of lonely free time to use to get some grunt work done for my job (monthly report, yearly report, preparation for my yearly evaluation, and some of the paperwork necessary for me to go up for promotion to Associate Professor this year), some serious yardwork, and to fill up next week's blogging bill. (And, no, I'm not going to tell you now what the topics will be; you'll just have to check back every day to find out.) I'll also be using some of that time to try to plow through at least a few of the 11 episodes of the new Doctor Who that my mother has kindly sent to me, after having been so generous as to tape them for me. (Living in Detroit, she has the advantage of being able to receive CBC from Windsor. Of course, she's a fan too; so she didn't mind taping all those episodes.)

I've been tagged again

I was looking over my Technorati page a while ago and noted that Michelle Francl of Quantum Chemistry had tagged me with the Book Meme nearly three weeks ago! Thanks to the unprecedented flood of referrals from my little tirade last week about the RFK Jr. article a couple of weeks ago, I actually hadn't noticed any referrals from Michelle, at least not initially. After I did notice, other topics always seemed to keep getting in the way of answering her call. The long holiday weekend seems as good a time as any to take care of loose ends like this that I've had on the back burner and wanted to get to.

I don't do every meme (or even most of them) that people try to tag me with. Some of them I find to be downright silly and not worth my time to do, no matter how much I might like and/or respect some of the bloggers who try to tag me with them. However, given how much I love to read, I don't mind doing this one at all. Now that things are finally settling down and getting back to normal around this blog, I thought this would be a fine time to take on this meme. So here we go:

Number of books I own. I really have no idea how many books I own. I haven't counted them in years, probably decades. It has to be hundreds. Probably not over a thousand, though, because over the years I've gotten rid of a lot of books that I read that weren't that good. Even books I thought to be mediocre at best or even downright awful were hard to part with, though, but moving four times in four years between the years (in 1996, 1997, 1999, and 2000, to be precise), two of which were moves of hundreds of miles, was a major motivator to get rid of them. There's no doubt that over my lifetime I have owned thousands of books.

Last book I bought. History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving by Deborah E. Lipstadt. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten around to reading it yet because I'm still working on Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw by Norman Davies. Even more unfortunately, I don't think I'll get to it that soon, because the new Harry Potter book is coming out in a mere two weeks, and I'm afraid Harry Potter will probably trump my desire to savor the details of the trial that forever showed David Irving to be a Holocaust denier. I just hope I can finish Rising '44 before that, because I can't wait to see if my predictions for the sixth Harry Potter book were correct.

Last book I read for the first time. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling.

Five books that mean a lot to me:

The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. This one goes without saying, as anyone who's been a regular will know. My all-time favorite novel, and the work that first got me into epic fantasy. Many have tried, but no one has yet surpassed the master. It's the only book (or trilogy of books) that I've read completely more than five times. I also routinely pick them up and read a chapter or two here and there when I'm in the mood.

The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide by Robert Jay Lifton. This is the one, more than any other, that got me interested in the Holocaust and the role of physicians in conceiving and carrying out the atrocities of Nazi Germany. Fortunately, it's now available online free at the Mazal Library. This is the definitive work (so far) on how physicians trained to heal could become willing instruments in the machinery of death in the T-4 euthanasia program and at Auschwitz. Here, too, was what gave me some of the background needed to do my small part in combatting Holocaust denial.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. It may sound silly, but I read this book at a very young age, and it had a profound effect on my reading habits for the rest of my life. It was probably the first book that got me interested in science fiction, an interest that continues to this very day. It's been decades since I last read it. Maybe I should read it again now.

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. I actually trace back a little of my interest in critical thinking to this set of three novellas set in a post-apocalyptic earth (the atomic war was called, appropriately enough, the great Simplification), where simple monks struggle to keep ancient knowledge, including science and history, alive in a new Dark Ages.

Handbook of the Hospital Corps United States Navy 1939. This one means a lot to me for sentimental reasons. My late uncle was a Navy corpsman in the last year of World War II, and I keep his old corpsman manual as a remembrance. It's also a fascinating historical document, full of instructions on how to give morphine and other medications, take care of wounds major and minor, field-dress the corpses of soldiers killed in battle for the trip back to the U.S., and a variety of other medical information of the period. To show how important corpsmen were, the 1953 edition of the Handbook included this tribute:

Out of every 100 men of the United States Navy and Marine Corps who were wounded in World War II, 97 recovered .

That is a record not equaled anywhere anytime.

Every individual who was thus saved from death, owes an everlasting debt to the Navy's Hospital Corps. The Navy is indebted to the corps. The entire nation is its debtor for thousands of citizens are living normal, constructive, happy and productive lives who, but for the skill and toil of the Hospital Corps, might be dead or disheartened by crippling invalidism.

So, to the 200,000 men and women of the Hospital Corps, I say on behalf of the United States Navy:

"Well Done. Well done, indeed!"

Without your service, the Navy's Medical Corps could not have achieved the life-saving record and the mind-saving record its physicians and surgeons and psychiatrists achieved. That others might live, your fellow corpsmen have given their lives; 889 of them were killed or mortally wounded. Others died as heroically from disease they were trying to combat. In all, the Corps' casualty list contains 1,724 names, an honor roll of special distinction because none among them bore arms.

The hospital corpsmen saved lives on tall the beaches that the Marines stormed. Corpsmen were at the forefront of every invasion, in all the actions at sea, on all carrier decks. You were on your own in submarines and the smaller ships of the fleet, performing emergency surgery at times when you had to take the fearsome responsibility of trying to save a life by heroic means or see the patient die. Your presence at every post of danger gave immeasurable confidence to your comrades under arms. Their bravery was fortified by the knowledge that the corpsmen, the sailor of solace, were literally at their sides with the skill and means to staunch wounds, allay pain and to carry them back, if need be, to safe shelter and the ministrations of the finest medical talent in the world.

You corpsmen performed fox-hole surgery while shell fragments clipped your clothing, shattered the plasma bottles from which you poured new life into the wounded, and sniper's bullets were aimed at the brassards on your arms. On Iwo Jima, for example, the percentage of casualties among your corps was greater than the proportion of losses among the Marines. Two of your colleagues who gave their lives in that historic battle were posthumously cited for the Medal of Honor. One of the citations reads: "By his great personal valor in saving others at the sacrifice of his own life (he) inspired his companions, although terrifically out numbered, to launch a fiercely determined attack and repulse the enemy force." All that he had in his hands were the tools of mercy, yet he won a memorable victory at the cost of his own life.

No wonder men and women are proud to wear the emblem of the Hospital Corps! It is a badge of mercy and valor, a token of unselfish service in the highest calling the saving of life in the service of your country.

Your corps' men and women toiled, often and dangerously, never less vitally, in areas remote from battle: In hospitals, on hospital ships, in airplanes, in laboratories and pharmacies and dispensaries. They helped, and are helping (for the task is far from over) in the salvage of men's broken bodies and minds that is the grim product and perennial aftermath of war. Some of you contributed skills in dental technology, some engaged in pest control to diminish unfamiliar diseases, others taught natives of distant islands the benefits of modern hygiene, even to midwifery and everyday sanitation.

Scores of corpsmen, made prisoners of war, used their skill and strength to retain life and hope in their fellow captives through long years of imprisonment and deprivation.

Whatever their duty, wherever they were, the men and women of the Hospital Corps served the Navy and served Humanity, with exemplary courage, sagacity and effort. The performance of their duties has been "in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service." That, to any man or woman, is the highest of praise. The corps has earned it an continues to earn it.

For, as I said, the task is not yet completed. Thousands of the War's casualties will long need the ministrations of physicians, nurses, and the Hospital Corps before they can return to normal peacetime pursuits. Hundreds may have to be cared for as long as they live; that these unfortunates are so few is in large measure due to the prompt, skillful aid accorded our wounded and stricken, by your corps.

Illness and accident will add to these numbers, of course. There will always be the sick and injured, and there will always be need for trained personnel to help restore them. The Navy's best laboratories are forever engaging in research to combat disease, to speed the healing of torn flesh and broken bones, to devise new aids for the maimed to lead a normal life. And so I am impelled to address this message not only to the men and women of the corps who have completed their service to the Navy, but to those who are joining-or rejoining-in that inspiring career.

It is no easy profession, even in peacetime. There is danger in the test tubes and culture racks as menacing as in the guns of an unvanquished enemy. The Hospital Corps is never at peace. It is forever on the firing line in the ceaseless war against disease and premature death. That is why the corps' emblem is truly "the red badge of courage," a designation to all the world that the person who wears it has been self-dedicated to the service of humanity.

Customarily the "Well done" signal is reserved for the closing phrase of a message of congratulations, but I placed it in the forefront where, in this instance, it most fittingly belongs. I repeat it, here with the postscript that in earning its "well done" the Hospital Corps is assured no other unit in the Navy did better in the degree of essential duty inspiringly performed.

Five bloggers to tag (apologies if they've already been tagged and I didn't notice it):

St. Nate: Hopefully, he will be able tear himself away from his Betta Setting and putting his new apartment together momentarily, that is, unless he's going to the Live 8 Concert this weekend. (I had momentarily contemplated jumping a train to Philly to check it out, but decided against it. Maybe it's old age; I'm much less tolerant of enormous crowds than I used to be.

Autism Diva: She's done some commentary on books like Evidence of Harm by David Kirby (which she didn't much like), but what books does she really value? Besides, you can't really say you're an experienced blogger until someone's tagged you with a meme (even if she did say once she was "anti-meme").

Skeptico: What books made Skeptico Skeptico?

Dr. Charles: A well-read man like Dr. Charles should certainly be able to give a fascinating answer to this meme, perhaps after he's recovered from attending the Live 8 show in Philadelphia today. Besides, two other bloggers (Michelle and Hedwig) have already tagged him, and he hasn't responded yet.

The Mad House Madman: Just as soon as he's recovered from his jet lag, of course.

The History Carnival XI

The History Carnival XI has been posted at Siris. As usual, it's a fine collection of blogging about history, lovingly arranged by the host, who asks this about my submission:

If the Hitler zombie feeds on politicians' brains, how does it manage to find enough food to keep going?

A very good question. However, it is perhaps because there isn't much nutrition in any one politician's brain that explains why the Hitler zombie is so voracious and keeps eating so many of them! Also, remember, the Hitler zombie doesn't limit itself to just politicians' brains, as we shall see in the future...

It's the first of the month, and you know what that means...

June has been an eventful month around the ol' blog. Halfway through the month, Orac jumped full-bore into the mercury-autism debate, laying into the one-sided and deceptive article by RFK Jr on the topic. It was the first big splash this blog has ever made in the blogosphere (but, alas, no Instalanche) and, given the continued developments due to RFK Jr.'s story led to multiple followup posts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) expanding upon the deficiencies of the arguments used by those claiming that mercury in thimerosal causes autism in general and in RFK Jr.'s article in particular and linking to others who found similar sorts of deficiencies and biases in the Salon.com article. There was a flood of new visitors that lasted about 10 days, but now things are finally returning to more or less the state they were in before the RFK Jr. article, with maybe slightly more numerous average daily visits than before. In the process, I learned a lot, made contact with a lot of other excellent bloggers, some of whom either have autistic children or have and ASD themselves. I also managed to piss off a fair number of activists, one of whom I could almost imagine rubbing his/her hands and salivating as he/she wished that my next child should be autistic, so that I would have to "eat [my] very ignorant and uneducated words," as he/she so charmingly put it.

It was quite educational and, if I do say so myself, resulted in some of my better work. However, as the story has faded in intensity, so too will my blogging on this particular topic. No, that doesn't mean I won't continue to revisit it from time to time (particularly if activists actually succeed in getting Congressional hearings this fall; that would be too fat and juicy a target), but it does mean that whole weeks may actually manage to go by without my mentioning the thimerosal or autism. I do have one or two pieces in mind that I'll probably finish up over the weekend and post sometime next week, but after that, unless something new that I can say something useful and interesting about comes up, I'll be trying to move on for a while. (Whether I'll succeed or not is another matter entirely, of course, given the way events have an uncanny knack for dragging me back to these topics). There's so much more out there that needs critical thinking skills applied to it.

While the frenzy due to my foray into mercury-autism hysteria was going on, though, Orac, mischievous computer that he is, still somehow managed to have a little fun by unleashing a new creation, a dreaded undead eater of politician's brains (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). This zombified creation has gone back into his crypt for now, but he just might be coming back sooner than I had planned, thanks to an e-mail sent to me the other day about an unholy (and quite unexpected) confluence of two of my major blog topics. Stay tuned.

So, now that June's over, how best to inaugurate July? Regular readers already know the answer to that question, but those of you who are new, perhaps having decided (I hope) to stick around and become regular Orac-philes after first encountering Respectful Insolence through my posts on the mercury-autism controversy, probably don't. Indeed, you may not want to know. Of course, that never stopped Orac before. Come, new readers, it's time for you to be initiated into one of the greatest mysteries of Orac!

Yes, no matter how much the antivaxers and alties might like to use him as a weapon to mock Orac, by ancient tradition (of, oh, seven months or so), the first of every month is dedicated to the de facto mascot of this blog, and so it shall continue. Orac did not abandon him last month when his involvement in debunking overblown conspiracy theories about thimerosal-autism links was in its infancy, brought on by some hysterical articles at the Huffington Post on the topic, nor will he do so this month. Yes, even at the risk of driving away the new readers who've decided to stick around after first encountering this blog because of posts on the thimerosal/autism controversy or of puzzling (or even horrifying) new visitors coming over here from the History Carnival today, it's time once again for Orac to indulge his computational circuitry's odd obsession with that huge green, white, and orange Fleet Pharmaceuticals mascot and defender of colon health, the one with the hat whose shape and function you really don't want to contemplate too carefully.

EneMan returns!

July 2002

July 2004

July 2005

You know, it just occurred to me that of late the Hitler zombie seems to be trying to displace EneMan in the role of blog mascot. The current mascot, however, will not be so easily displaced, nor will he give up his hallowed place in the Respectful Insolence pantheon without a fight, even if he is limited only to monthly appearances. EneMan is a lot tougher than he looks, and it'll take more than an undead Führer to drive him away. Perhaps someday he will have to battle the Hitler zombie for the right to be the permanent mascot of this blog. Now that would be a smackdown I'd like to see! Certainly, given the function of EneMan's hat, I know I wouldn't want to try to eat his brain if I were the Hitler zombie. Of course, the Hitler zombie is a zombie; so perhaps the thought of what EneMan's hat is used for would not bother him in the least--assuming he retains any ability for thought at all. For now, however, EneMan reigns supreme.

But I digress again.

And, once again, for those of you new to the phenomenon that is EneMan, here is a list of all of his previous appearances, so that you can catch up and then say that you, too, have been touched by the wonder that is EneMan:

June 2005
May 2005
April 2005
March 2005
February 2005
January 2005
EneMan's first appearance (December 2004)

Yes, like the Hitler zombie, EneMan will return. However, unlike the case for the Hitler zombie, you can predict exactly when EneMan will next make an appearance: August 1.