Blogs / Bad Astronomy

A new study shows that copper bracelets don’t relieve arthritis pain.

Now, you might think "wire they even doing that," but the study was well-grounded, conducted thoroughly, and had little resistance. I think it strikes a cord, and so I’m willing to plug it.

I even hope they make it into a movie. It could be directed by Stanley Cupric.

Note added after posting: I see that James Randi his own self wrote about this today on Swift as well. Great minds, yadda yadda. Thanks to Travis Roy for pointing this out.

Tip ore the hat to Fark.

Fighter for truth and science Ben Goldacre tweeted a link to a nifty blog post showing just how safe the Gardasil HPV vaccine is. Using easy-to-understand graphics, the post (on the very nice Information is Beautiful blog) makes it very clear that comparing the good it does to the very tiny risk, Gardasil is a monumental achievement. Actually, just all on its own it’s a big advancement in the fight against cancer. The post also puts it in place among other low-risk dangers like getting hit by lightning or being killed in an earthquake. I like that; I myself have compared it with dying from falling off a chair.

Also, there is a website called the Vaccine Information and Awareness Service (gotta love that URL) which provides a great repository of info about the truly awful shenanigans of Meryl Dorey and the (ironically-named) Australian Vaccination Network, the loudest and — amazingly, given how reality-free these people tend to be — perhaps least-accurate antivax group in Australia. It’s a good place to go when you hear the latest health scare nonsense from the AVN. I’m glad so many people are rising up against the voices of scare-mongering and antiscience. They pose a real health threat, as far too many people have learned.

While I’m at it, my friend and pediatrician Joe Albietz has another slam-dunk article about the awful antivax nonsense being spread about the H1N1 vaccine.

Young Earth creationists can be sneaky. First, years ago, they loudly proclaimed their religious beliefs. Then when they got smacked hard in the courtrooms when they wanted to teach religion in schools, they evolved: they changed their snake oil to Intelligent Design and tried again.

And again they got whooped. ID was shown to be creationism in disguise — what some might call a bald-faced lie — so that again fundamentalists could attempt to teach religion in the classroom, despite the Constitution of the United States.

I have wondered aloud what they would do next. After all, when facts are slippery things, able to be misused as openly and ridiculously as so many creationists do, then clearly they won’t just give up. They’ll move on to the next deceptive technique.

And now I have to wonder if we’re starting to see it. Could this new tactic be: telling the truth?

Greg Fish of the blog World of Weird Things clued me in to a post on the execrable Answers In Genesis website talking about black holes. In this essay, creationist astronomer Jason Lisle discusses the topic with clarity and actual accuracy. He uses decent analogies, doesn’t let them run away from him, and makes a good case for the existence of black holes.

Wha wha whaaaa?

Of course, in the end, he says this:

Black holes provide an observable confirmation of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Such physics is the basis for several young-universe cosmologies, which allow light from the most distant galaxies to reach earth in thousands of years or less. Scientific discoveries, such as black holes, are not only interesting, but they give us a small glimpse into the thoughts of an infinite God (Psalm 19:1).

Well, he certainly drops the ball there, letting it fall down (ha! haha!) a black hole. Cosmologies which abuse basic physics to change enough to allow a young Universe tend to be wrong in their basic assumptions.

But the point here is that the article itself is pretty much factually correct, making me wonder what’s going on here. Maybe the folks at AiG are hoping that by writing an article not filled with fallacious reasoning, they’ll reap the benefits of Google links (though not from me, since I put a rel=nofollow in the above link to the site). It’s hard to say. But given the sheer amount of nonsense on their site, it’s hard to ascribe noble motives to them.

And let me add an irony: on that page is a description of dark matter. I find that humorous, because dark matter was originally proposed to solve the mystery of how individual galaxies in clusters can move so quickly but still stay bound to the cluster itself. The gravity from the visible matter in the cluster was too weak to hold on to such rapidly-moving galaxies, and therefore, if the clusters are to not fly apart over the age of the Universe, there must be invisible matter holding them together.

So dark matter was originally proposed because we know the Universe is old. Of course, now we know that dark matter has influence all over the place, and would have been found even if we hadn’t studied clusters. But the irony still tickles me.

Anyway, what do we do here? Well, if creationists want to actually describe the Universe for what it really is, then I guess we let them… as long as they do so, pardon the pun, faithfully. But as soon as they step over that broad, broad line into territory clearly denied by the evidence, then they need to be called on it.

Eternal vigilance.

Recently, science writer Simon Singh was sued by the British Chiropractic Association for having the audacity of telling the truth in a newspaper article about chiropractic: while it may have some small efficacy when treating back problems, there is exactly zero good evidence that it can treat illnesses, and in fact can be very dangerous when people get their neck manipulated.

The Australian Skeptics posted Simon’s original article so that it would get more attention. And it worked, kinda: like a fly to honey, one chiropractor took offense at what was written, and decided to send them a nearly logic-free letter. That’s fine, and pretty much what I expect from a vocal alt-med devotée. As justified, Eran Segev, president of the Australian Skeptics, responded.

All well and good, until…

… two weeks after responding we received a letter from the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC) indicating Mr Ierano [the chiropractor] has lodged a complaint against Australian Skeptics. The letter attached to the complaint was the same one that Australian Skeptics had received and responded to.

Well, that’s a bit odd! I mean, why go to the trouble to pursue legal action against someone responding to your claims when it should be easy to present a simple rebuttal based on the evidence that chiropractic works?

… oh, right.

What’s funny is that originally, the BCA (the group suing Simon in the UK) tried to defend their position, and presented a poorly-researched, off-topic press release that somehow managed to make them look worse. Apparently, that’s a theme amongst chiropractors trying to support some of their less reality-based claims.

And while I’m using a light-hearted tone here, I’ll note that this is a very serious issue: there are people out there trying to stifle free speech. It’s that simple. The UK libel laws are draconian and designed to shut up any protest, making scientific objections and investigations into potential and real quackery very difficult. As Eran says on the AS page:

Australian Skeptics sees this complaint as lacking any merit even if it did not include some factual errors (e.g. the claim that a British court ruled Simon’s article is biased). We have prepared a detailed response to the HCCC and will be defending our right to publish articles relating to any scientific issue, as long as they are backed by scientific evidence.

Good on ya, mate!

Hey look, it’s a disgusting clip of My Close Personal Friend Adam Savage™!

Adam and Jamie made this short video to raise awareness about H1N1, the swine flu. Discovery Channel also put together a nice page with a list of five myths about swine flu.

There are more myths about the swine flu, of course, especially about the vaccine for it. These myths need to be busted too, so go read what pediatrician Dr. Joe Albietz has written about it. And then ask your doctor if you should get the vaccine when it becomes available. I’ll be getting one, and so will my whole family.

If you read the skeptical blogs, then you probably already know that actor-turned-über-evangelist Kirk Cameron and the bananaman himself, creationist Ray Comfort, are going to hand out copies of Darwin’s Origin of Species with an extra 50 pages claiming that Darwin led to Hitler, racism, misogyny, Windows Vista, cats and dogs living together, and Vegemite.

This stuff is the usual pack of creationist misinformation, distorted facts, and out-and-out lies that you can find debunked almost everywhere on the web (like here, and here, and here).

While I don’t lean towards insults and yelling myself, I can understand the sentiment. But sometimes, I think gentle mockery is the best way to go. It’s hard to imagine TMZ being understated, but in fact I like what they did here. They ended that article perfectly.

Tip o’ the banana peel to A.M.

I was saddened to hear last week that actor Patrick Swayze had died. I get grief for it, but "Roadhouse" is a favorite movie of mine, and of course his skit with Chris Farley on SNL is a classic. I hear Swayze was a good man, and his death from pancreatic cancer is a loss to us all.

But some people are gaining from it; they’re ghoulishly using his death to promote their own agendas, and in some cases it’s truly horrid.

Take, for example, the website Natural News, an "alternative medicine" website which prides itself on promoting health threats like antivaccination nonsense and other provably wrong claims. They have published a particularly obnoxious and loathsome article that says Swayze’s death was caused not by his cancer, but by his chemotherapy.

This is, to be quite clear, utter crap. The author, Mike Adams, goes on and on piling one awful logical fallacy on top of another. He makes a list of people who died "after chemotherapy", never talking about how chemotherapy saves thousands of lives every year. And even saying "after chemotherapy" is misleading. After all, everyone dies after being born, so why not say that the absolute biggest cause of death is birth?

He also leaves out the simple fact that if these people hadn’t received chemotherapy, they’d have died sooner. And, of course, he doesn’t say how many people die after trying "alternative" therapies.

But why let the facts get in the way of vitriol and propaganda? I could go on, but just go and read Skeptical Teacher for a very blunt and NSFW article on this.

Of course, not to be outdone in promulgating manure, Suzanne Somers decided to pipe up with what could be an award-winning quotation of bad thinking:

Somers, who has a book about cancer coming out next month, said: "Why couldn’t they have built [Swayze] up nutritionally and gotten rid of the toxins?"

Hey, maybe because that doesn’t stop cancer? Is that a good enough answer?

It’s time to stop pussyfooting around this kind of dangerous medical garbage — as Swayze said in "Roadhouse", it’s time to not be nice.

Antiscience advice like this from Mike Adams, Suzanne Somers, Jenny McCarthy, and others can and will lead to people dying if they act on it. These people are dispensing medical advice that is complete nonsense. Detoxifying the body won’t cure cancer, using herbs won’t cure cancer, aligning your chakras won’t cure cancer. If you have cancer, or know someone who has been diagnosed, please please please go to a board-certified and experienced doctor or oncologist. Don’t listen to celebrities, and don’t listen to alternative quacks.

Don’t even listen to me. Listen to your doctor. Medical science — stressing the word science — is and will be your best bet to take care of yourself.

[Update : I forgot to add links to Orac, who has quite the opinion on Mike Adams and Suzanne Somers.]