I just received a distressing email from Barbara Forrest, a tireless fighter against creationism in Louisiana. It’s distressing because it shows that the actions of the increasingly antiscience government of Louisiana are having repercussions.

The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB), a scientific society with over 2000 members, has chosen to boycott Louisiana for their annual conference because, basically, their creationist governor and legislature want to make sure kids in their state grow up without a basic scientific education.

Last year, the Louisiana government overwhelmingly voted to allow creationist materials to be used in the classroom, a clear violation of the First Amendment and an incredibly foolish decision with regards to children’s education. I wrote about it quite a bit at the time (here is when it was signed into law, as well as here, here, and most recently here).

Well, their chickens are starting to come back to roost. At the time, Governor (and amateur exorcist) Jindal was warned that putting a jack-booted heel to the neck of science would not be without ramifications. And now the SICB won’t have their conference in New Orleans, and they have specifically cited the actions of Jindal and the Legislature as the key part of their decision. They have even gone as far as to say that the conference — with nearly 2000 attending — will be in Utah instead, where science is held in higher regard.

That can’t have been an easy decision for the society; New Orleans is a city that needs money, and holding a fair-sized conference there would help. But I understand their decision. Jindal and the creationists in the Louisiana government are essentially holding the educations of their students hostage, so scientists and everyone in the reality-based community need to take action. It’s one thing to make your voice heard, but it’s another to speak with your wallet. Holding the conference in Louisiana would be tacitly acquiescing to the fundamentalists running the state.

I think this was the right decision, and I urge anyone who is considering running a science-based event to seriously consider states that hold science in higher regard. I hope that Louisiana teachers, parents, and students rise up and let their representatives know how they feel about science. I would hate to see the students suffer because of this, but the politicians in that state have already guaranteed that will happen.

The LA Coalition for Science has released a statement to the press about this as well. It makes me physically ill that the science education of these children has been put into this position by the creationists, forcing the hand of the SICB. But the larger issue at stake here is the future of science itself in Louisiana as well as other states, a future Jindal and the other creationists are trying to choke out of existence.

My friend Moriel has a new website called SmartAxe, an extension of her Smarter Than That site. She’s trying (and succeeding) in making science education fun and perhaps a wee bit silly.

For Valentine’s Day she took on an interesting topic… sex in space. I’ve had my own thoughts on writing about this, using various concepts — like "How do you have a candlelit romantic dinner in microgravity?" and "What about Newton’s Third Law?" — to tackle some fun science concepts. Moriel does the same thing at her site, and it makes for some good reading… so do it with the one you love. It’s worth it just to see the picture she posts at the bottom of the page.

What? Today is Darwin’s birthday?

I didn’t know. It’s not like he was Hubble or Galileo or Copernicus.

What, he was? Oh, for biology. Well, happy birthday anyway.

REALITY WINS IN COURT!

Three separate test cases were before special courts, all alleging that autism was caused by vaccines. The courts were set up by the government as part of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, done basically to look at the very rare cases where it was possible that vaccines caused some harm to the people inoculated. The cases started in 2007, and in all three courts, the rulings were basically identical: there is no cause to compensate parents of autistic children due to the vaccines those children received.

In other words, these three special courts all ruled that in these cases there is no scientific claim that vaccines cause autism.

In fact, in one ruling, a special master (the judge, essentially) said the parents of one troubled child had "been misled by physicians who are guilty, in my view, of gross medical misjudgment." The claims of links between autism and vaccines were also cited as "speculative and unpersuasive."

Damn straight.

My heart goes out to these parents, looking for some sort of reason why their children are autistic. I can hardly imagine what that must be like. But it is absolutely 100% critical that in our emotional and utterly human outreach for an explanation that we do not grasp at the wrong ones.

Vaccines don’t cause autism. The science is extremely persuasive, and I would even say conclusive.

However, as I have said before, the vocal antivaxxers will not be persuaded by this. They are impervious to reason, impervious to evidence, and impervious to facts. They are not looking at this rationally, they have a religious fervor and nothing can sway them from that. Here is a quote from one article on the new rulings:

“I think it is a mistake to conclude that, because these few test cases were denied compensation, it’s been decided vaccines don’t play any role in regressive autism,” said Barbara Loe Fisher, the [National Vaccine Information] center’s president.

That is complete nonsense. It’s not been decided based on these rulings, it’s been decided based on many scientifically-produced tests looking for any link between vaccines and autism. These rulings were based on a few test cases, and those were unpersuasive legally. Scientifically, the results are extremely persuasive, if you happen to live in the reality-based community.

The point being that vocal antivaxxers don’t have property anywhere near there. This ruling will only make them dig in further, and double their efforts to make sure that children all across the planet become victims to diseases which can kill or debilitate them, diseases which can be prevented by the simple effort of getting a shot.

These rulings are incredibly important, and definitely cause for celebration. But the two things we must always remember to do: have sympathy for the parents in these situations (but not so much that we are swayed by unreasonable arguments), and be vigilant. The antivaxxers will not go away, and we must keep fighting. It cannot be overstated: the lives of our children are at stake here. This is nothing less than a pending global health crisis.

OK folks, strap yourselves in. This is a good one.

So, an astrologer has cast a horoscope for Randi and found he makes a good skeptic.

Wait, what?

I know, this sort of thing has a potential for causing a catastrophic collapse of the space-irony continuum, but, assuming this is not satire, then prepare yourself for what must be the absolute, 100%, guaranteed rock-solid most ridiculous thing ever to have been attempted ever in the history of our Universe or any other.

A synopsis can be found here, too. But you might want to keep all sharp objects far away, and anything that might shatter when you start screaming.

Anyway, his basic synopsis is that Randi makes a good skeptic. Shocker, eh? So you see the problem: the astrologer knows about Randi, so he’s actually predicting nothing! He researches Randi before casting the horoscope, and then lo! Astrology predicted everything he found!

Right.

Now, Randi has a rebuttal:

The horoscope part starts about 5 minutes in.

That’s when things get really weird: turns out, the astrologer was using the wrong birthdate for Randi! He was off by 20 days and an entire sun sign. So Randi gave him the actual birthdate, and the astrologer recast the horoscope with the new date and new sign. And guess what? Go on, guess.

He predicts Randi makes a good skeptic!

Amazing (so to speak). Is that what you guessed? Astrology must be more powerful than I thought. All you have to do is already know everything about a person, and then make your conclusions. My obvious mistake was putting all that emphasis on the whole "pre" part of the word "prediction". I suppose it’s not so hard to make a prediction after the fact.

So, what have we learned here? Like the astrologer, we haven’t learned anything we didn’t already know. But maybe we do have more evidence for one thing…

The Ontario government’s health ministry has sponsored a commercial encouraging people to get vaccinated against the mumps.

Yay! I love Canadians. They must look south to us and cluck their tongues and shake their heads ruefully.

The campaign has an ad that’s a bit edgy. I’ve embedded it below, but it’s probably NSFW.

It’s pretty funny in a horrifying way (the look of shock and horror on the faces of the guys watching was OK, but nothing will ever beat the prison scene in "Hancock" for a reaction shot like that; you can search YouTube for it). I’d love to see the US gummint putting out ads like this, especially with measles outbreaks popping up around the world.

Tip o’ the needle to BABloggee p_mclellan.

At what point do we start to hold antivaxxers responsible? I ask, because we’re on the verge of a record year for measles in Australia: in Victoria, 11 cases have been reported in 2009 so far. That’s far more more than in 2006 and 2007 combined, and under extrapolation is as bad as an outbreak in 1999 where over 100 cases were reported.

As if that weren’t enough, Switzerland has had 22 cases reported in two days.

Is antivax rhetoric to blame here? The Australian article doesn’t say how many of these people were not vaccinated; several were adults, so they should have been vaccinated well before this craze of linking vaccines to health problems started up. But some kids were on that list, and I wonder if they were vaccinated, and if not, why not.

However, for the outbreak in Switzerland, it does look like antivaccination insanity is to blame:

Switzerland has been affected by measles outbreaks more than other European countries in recent years because of the relatively low level of vaccinations and the presence of educational and religious communities that decline vaccination.

The outbreak described here indicates that anthroposophic communities are an at-risk group, because many parents in these groups choose not to vaccinate their children with the MMR [measles, mumps, rubella] vaccine. Anthroposophy, based on the writings of the social philosopher Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), combines human development with an investigation of the divine spark found in all of nature. Anthroposophical doctors emphasize nature-based therapies that
support the body’s innate healing wisdom.

Antivaxxers. For whatever reasons they believe what they do, they’re wrong. A previously healthy 12-year-old girl died of measles-induced encephalitis in a Geneva hospital last week. In 2008, a child in Minnesota died due to a disease that was preventable through a vaccine. Measles is on the rise in the UK. And some people are all too happy to spread the lie that the vaccines are causing all sorts of health problems, when it’s been shown pretty conclusively that they aren’t.

This pernicious bit of antiscience has a body count. Kids are dying. And they will continue to do so unless we make ourselves heard. Vaccines do have a health risk, but it’s minuscule compared to the very real threat of measles, rubella, mumps, Hib, and many others.

Talk to your doctors. Do the research. Jenny McCarthy and her followers are wrong. How many children will get sick, how many will die, before everyone understands that?

Thanks to Cristiana Senni for the update about Switzerland.