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I kept a blog during my sabbatical year
when I taught in England. I now write a blog devoted to science and
pseudoscience.
AIDS Denialism
Lies Other Science Teachers Told You
Large Hadron Collider Update
Bogus Medicine at Chemeketa Update
Bogus Medicine at Chemeketa
Life is Getting Better
Global Warming Skepticism
Chemeketa Biodiesel
Cold Fusion Confusion Again
Exercise Your Mind and Body
Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc... NOT!
Creation and Intelligent Design at Chemeketa
Misuses of the Laws of
Thermodynamics
Cold Fusion Confusion
Large Hadron Collider
More Enemas on Film
They Don't Want You to Know about This Enema
Facilitated Communication Jails Innocents
Kinesio Tape is Nothing Special
Dumb Career Advice
November 5, 2009
When I was in high school in the '80s,
Ryan White was
in the news as a boy who had contracted
HIV through a blood
transfusion and developed
AIDS. At the time,
the cause of AIDS and its methods of transmission were not well
understood, at least by the general public. As a result, there was a
bitter legal and political battle over his enrollment in a public
school. Much has changed since then and most people understand the
cause (HIV) and its methods of transmission.
I honestly thought that any serious debate over the science of
AIDS ended about 20 years ago. Unfortunately, there are
some
public figures who deny HIV as the cause of AIDS or promote
cures that are not supported by science. One tragic example in the
United States is
Christine
Maggiore, an HIV positive person who refused to take anti-retrovirals.
Both she and her young daughter died of AIDS-related pneumonia.
While this stupidity only hurt her family and those who were
persuaded by her in the USA, the
AIDS
tragedy in southern Africa has been fuelled by Ms. Maggiore and
like-minded AIDS deniers. There are
1.4 million AIDS
orphans in South Africa alone.
November 3, 2009
This is a reasonable guess, but it
is often not true. Digital multi-meters and scales often list 2 of
the last digit as their error. Digital thermometers are often +/- 1
°C while they report tenths of °C. Also, the error in using digital
calipers will depend on the object you measure (how squishy) and how
you measure (crooked or straight), so the error can vary
tremendously. Stopwatches typically measure 1/100 s, but the user
error is typically 1/10 s.
This is absurd. You could certainly build a meter stick with
increments of 1/10 mm. Can a person seriously distinguish 1/100 mm
(10 micrometers) with the naked eye? It’s a good idea to try to
interpolate, but it’s not always possible.
This is not always a good idea. Let’s try the following calculation:
Given a = 1 and b = 7.0000000000000
a/b = 1/7.0000000000000 = 0.1428 = 0.1
(a/b)*b = 0.1*7.0000000000000 = 0.7
a = 0.7
So now we have 1 = 0.7. Let’s keep going:
Given c = 2.0000000000000
a*c = 0.7*2.0000000000000 = 1.4 = 1
(a*c)/c = 1/2.0000000000000 = 0.5
a = 0.5
So now we have 1 = 0.5. If you keep going, you can turn any number
into any other number with a sufficient number of calculations while
rounding as you go. Don’t do it. You can round at the end, but
don’t round in the middle of a calculation.
October 21, 2009
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is
nearly ready after
several expensive and lengthy setbacks. Some interesting and
stupid ideas have sprung up as people speculate on the possible
results of this experiment.
Last year,
Walter Wagner and Luis Sancho filed a lawsuit to prevent the
startup of the LHC out of fear that it could make a black hole and
kill everyone! Fortunately,
the judge ruled that the court did not have jurisdiction. Even
if it did have jurisdiction, the
evidence that this could not happen (we'd already be dead if it
could) is overwhelming.
Another development is that because of the bad luck in the
particle physics community over the last 20 years, some
actual scientists have hypothesized that the future Higgs bosons are
coming back from the future and sabotaging the experiments that
created them. I'm not sure if this is the basis of a science fiction
story or some kind of hoax, but I don't think it is science.
September 24, 2009
It didn't take much digging for me to find out that the one natural
remedy proven effective (see below) merely duplicates an existing
drug. According to
a post in
Science-Based Medicine, the active ingredient in red rice yeast
is "identical to the prescription drug Mevacor (lovastatin). So it
isn’t an alternative to prescription drugs, it’s just an alternative
way of providing the same thing." But it's worse. The dosages in red
rice yeast aren't controlled (hey, it's natural so it must be
safe!), so consumers have no way of assuring that the dose is large
enough to be effective, but not too large to cause significant side
effects. It is also more expensive than the drug itself.
September 15, 2009
Chemeketa is offering a non-credit class in "Medicinal Herbalism".
This is certainly a misnomer. Evidence in support of "Medicinal Herbalism" is
often based on tradition, anecdotes, or intuition. These
could be the beginning of a scientific investigation,
but they should not be used as evidence in support of these remedies.
The National Center for
Complementary and Alternative Medicine publishes
research summaries.
Here are their featured results as of today:
| Ginkgo |
Ineffective at preventing dementia and
Alzheimer's |
| Glucosamine/Chondroitin |
Ineffective at reducing pain or
structural damage from arthritis |
| Echinacea |
Ineffective at preventing colds, reducing
severity of colds, or reducing duration of colds |
| St. John's Wort |
Ineffective at treating depression |
| Red Yeast Rice |
Effective at reducing LDL (bad)
cholesterol |
| Chromium Picolinate |
Ineffective at treating metabolic
syndrome |
Either this will be a very short class, or lots of bogus treatments
will be presented.
July 16, 2009
News reports of war, murder, and genocide give us the idea that
violence is breaking out all over. The
murder of one of my students in May helps feed this perception.
While this and many others are horrible tragedies, is it really true
that modern life is tougher? Let's look at some
statistics collected by Steven Pinker of Harvard. The chance of
male death from homicide in a hunter-gatherer society is between 15%
and 60%. At this rate, there would have been 20 times as many
homicides in the 20th century compared to what actually occurred. In
other words, we would need 20 times the number of Hitlers, Stalins,
Osama bin Ladens, Charles Mansons, etc. to keep up with our violent
past. Modern life has many challenges (see below), but this is one
we are surmounting.
June 29, 2009
I believe that skepticism is a virtue. What this means to me is that
the burden of proof should be placed on the person who makes a
scientific claim, and a high standard of evidence should be demanded
before an idea is deemed scientifically true.
There is currently a debate in the public sphere regarding
whether or not human induced global warming exists, and if so, what
we should do about it. It is outside my role as a scientist to make
any judgment regarding what should be done about it, but it is
within my role to discuss what is scientifically true regarding
global warming.
Since I am not a climate scientist, I must look to experts in the
field to produce summaries of the current science. The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) serves this
purpose. Here are
their latest findings:
- "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal."
- "Most of the
observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th
century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic
greenhouse gas concentrations."
April 30, 2009
Some colleagues and I did some research on biodiesel:
Recent news reports state that Chemeketa plans to
partner with industry and seek federal money to train students in
biodiesel technology.[1]
While the details of this proposal have been kept secret so we
cannot make informed comments, we, as scientists, believe that there
are many issues with the industry as a whole that we hope you will
consider in making future decisions, especially in light of
Chemeketa’s stated commitment to economic, social, and ecological
sustainability. We have sought answers to the following broad
questions regarding biodiesel:
1. What is the net gain/loss of
energy in production of biodiesel?
2. What is the net effect on the environment,
assuming a substitution with petroleum?
3. What is the effect on food supply and prices?
What is the net gain/loss of energy in its
production?
The answer to the first question is that there is
clearly a net gain in energy from its production. The biodiesel
energy output far exceeds the fossil fuel energy input (fertilizers,
farm equipment, etc.) in a ratio of approximately 3 to 1.[2]
While the net energy gain from ethanol production is small, the
significant net energy gain from most sources of biodiesel has not
been questioned by any reputable research.
But there is simply not enough farmland on the
earth to grow enough biofuel crops to significantly change fossil
fuel consumption. Even with 1,000 barrels coming from each
square mile of crops, and every inch of arable farm land in the
world dedicated to growing biofuel crops, we would only be able to
obtain 20% of the oil necessary to match world consumption today -
and world consumption continues to increase as the amount of
suitable arable farmland decreases.[3]
What is the net effect on the environment,
assuming a substitution with petroleum?
This is a difficult question to answer because
much depends on how markets respond to the diversion of food to
fuel. If there are no conversions of wilderness to farms in response
to a reduction in supply of food and there are no increases in
energy use in response to an increase in supply of energy, then
there will be a significant reduction in net CO2
emissions.[4]
But there are serious concerns that the first
assumption is unreasonable. A University of Minnesota report says
that “land conversions pump out 17 to 423 times more carbon than the
annual savings from replacing fossil fuels with the biofuels.”[5]
One of the researchers said that “any biofuel that uses productive
land is going to create more greenhouse gas emissions than it
saves.”[6]
Even if the United States or local economy does not convert
wilderness to cultivated land in response to biofuel demands, the
same cannot be said for other regions of the world.
What is the effect on food supply and
prices?
While the market for food has many variables and
cannot be predicted with certainty, any diversion of productive land
to fuel (ex: canola, soy) necessarily reduces the supply of food in
a global economy with both increasing population and increasing per
capita consumption. Biodiesel technologies that do not do so are not
commercially viable at this time (ex: algae, agricultural waste),
not available locally (ex: jatropha[7]),
or extremely small scale (ex: restaurant waste).
Conclusion
Significant biodiesel production using existing
technology is neither ecologically nor economically sustainable.
Further research should be done to explore methods that meet
sustainability criteria.
April 21, 2009
It's more of the same, this time on
60 Minutes. Scientists generate "excess heat", can't explain it,
and can't reproduce it. Some of their research is funded by private
industry or government, and this is used as a reason to legitimize
their work. The fact that research is funded by naive investors or
government officials does not make it correct! Martin
Fleishmann, one of the original cold fusion researchers, was
described in the program as being "hounded out of science", when in
fact he and his team
spent £12 million
without finding anything new.
February 25, 2009
There are
numerous products that claim to use mental exercise to improve
brain function. Some
recent research shows that these products are
more
hype than substance. I say to buy these products and do these
exercises if you enjoy them, but don't plan on avoiding Alzheimer's.
There does appear to be some evidence that
recess is good for learning. What is unfortunate is that recess
seems to be getting more limited and controlled. My 8 year old
daughter is not allowed to run at recess during bad weather!
February 20, 2009
Many pseudoscientific claims are based on the "post hoc
ergo propter hoc" fallacy. The
Skeptic's Dictionary
calls it "the mistaken notion that simply because one thing happens
after another, the first event was a cause of the second event."
The Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccine happens to be given
at an age near that when signs of autism can first appear. This led
some to believe that the MMR vaccine causes autism. The alleged
causation had a plausible mechanism because the vaccine
contained
thiomersal, a preservative which contained mercury, a neurotoxin.
A very small study (12 patients) was conducted by
Andrew
Wakefield and others. The results were published in the
prestigious UK journal The Lancet. It led to the conclusion
that the MMR vaccine caused autism because 8 of the 12 patients were
alleged to have developed autism symptoms within days of receiving
the vaccine. Despite the small sample size and
lack of replication by numerous larger and better studies, this
led to lower percentages of people vaccinating their children in
both the USA and UK. Despite the removal of thiomersal in many
countries and states,
autism
rates continued to increase.
There have been some interesting developments in the last few weeks.
A special court in the USA
ruled against three families seeking compensation for claims of
vaccine-induced autism. Ten of the original thirteen authors of the
Lancet paper have removed their names, and
Dr. Wakefield's original research has been found to be fraudulent.
What's sad is that
children have died from measles in the UK and that could easily
happen in the USA, should anti-vaccination trends continue. As OJ
Simpson said, it's time to find the "real killers."
February 11, 2009
"You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor."
-Exodus 2:16
Chemeketa's Campus Crusade for Christ is
presenting the movies "Icons
of Evolution: Science or Myth?" and "Expelled:
No Intelligence Allowed". My field is Physics, and I address its
relationship with this "controversy" below.
These movies make many false claims, and I'll let those with more
expertise provide the evidence.
Icons of Evolution? from the National Center for Science
Education
Expelled Exposed from the National Center for Science Education
Index of Creationist
Claims from TalkOrigins
15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense from Scientific American
Evolution FAQs from TalkOrigins
Understanding Evolution from UC Berkeley
15
Evolutionary Gems from Nature
If you would rather watch TV than read, you
might want to see the NOVA program
Intelligent
Design on Trial. It discusses evolution and creation/ID in the
context of the
Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, where two
pro-creation/ID school
board members lied under oath.
January 21, 2009
There are commonly held views among the general public that the laws
of thermodynamics falsify the scientific theories of cosmic and
biological evolution. These views are not supported by scientific
evidence.
One view unsupported by evidence is that the big bang couldn’t
possibly be correct because it violates the
first law of thermodynamics. The claim is that there is
obviously a lot of energy now and there couldn’t be any energy
before the big bang. The total energy apparently increased thus
violating the first law of thermodynamics.
For this alleged violation to be true, we must know both the
total energy of the universe both before and after the big bang and
show that they are different (putting aside objections that there is
no such thing as “before the big bang”). No serious scientist claims
to know with certainty the total energy of the universe “before the
big bang.” But even if one assumes that the energy is zero “before
the big bang”, a calculation of the total energy of the universe
based on classical physics also yields a total energy of zero! This
was shown in
a paper written by E. Tryon in a 1973 article in the journal Nature
(and not refuted to date). How can that be so with all the stuff
moving around (kinetic energy), light energy, etc.? It turns out
that the negative gravitational potential energy balances out the
positive energy and the net sum is zero. A relativistic calculation
of the current total energy of the universe is problematic, but it
in no way yields a calculation that refutes the big bang through the
first law. Even if we assume we can know the total energy of the
universe both before the big bang and at the present time, there is
no proven violation of the first law of thermodynamics.
Another view unsupported by evidence is that the
second law of thermodynamics prohibits the evolution of
chemicals to primitive organisms or of primitive organisms to more
complex organisms, an apparent decrease in entropy.
There are two important objections to the "life violates the
second law" argument. First, there is no
calculation that shows that complex life forms are lower
entropy than less complex forms or non-living things. Hand waving
metaphors are no substitute for a proper
calculation. Second, life forms are not closed systems. They
continuously exchange energy and particles with their environments,
so the second law has nothing to say about them unless you
include their environments in the calculation.
Evolution has not been proven to violate the second law of
thermodynamics.
January 5, 2009
Nuclear fusion is the process of two or more separate nuclei
combining to form a new nucleus which is then held together by short
range nuclear force. As the nuclei are positively charged and
therefore electrically repulsive, fusion normally requires high
speed (high temperature) to occur. For small atoms, this releases a
great deal of energy and is of interest as a weapon (hydrogen bombs)
and energy source. Progress on fusion as an energy source has been
frustratingly slow.
In 1989, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleishmann from
the University of Utah announced that they had created
low temperature
fusion using electrolysis of heavy water with a palladium
cathode.
Steven Jones at Brigham Young University did similar work. This
work has characteristics of pseudoscience:
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The researchers took their work directly
to the public before peer review.
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Most early attempts to replicate the
work ended in failure.
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The field has not made significant
changes or advances in the last 20 years.
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The field of research has retreated into
a small group of "true believers" who complain that their work
is being suppressed.
Portland State University's
John
Dash and his team performed some research on the topic. While I
was there as an undergraduate from 1997 to 1999, I talked to his
students and listed to their presentations. They avoided the term
"cold fusion" and instead used the term "excess heat". I could never
pin them down on what exactly one needed to do to produce it.
Pons and Fleishmann
moved to
France and spent £12 million on
research without any definitive findings. Jones later became a
founding member of "Scholars for
9/11 Truth" and was pushed out of BYU in 2007.
So what is the lesson here? I think that it was
worthwhile for people to try these things, but I also think that
these people exempted themselves from the rules of science. Being
open-minded also means being open to the possibility that an
experiment is faulty and a hypothesis is false.
December 1, 2008
The Large Hadron Collider
(LHC) lies on the border between France and Switzerland. Scientists
plan to smash protons together at unprecedented speeds some time in
2009. This device is 17 miles in circumference and costs several
billions dollars to build and run. This might seem like a very
expensive and strange thing to do, but here are some of the possible
physics problems that might be solved:
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Is there a
Higgs boson,
and if so, what are its properties? In other words, why do
particles have mass?
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Are electromagnetic and nuclear forces
different manifestations of a
single force?
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What are the properties of
dark matter
and dark
energy?
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Are there detectable spatial dimensions
beyond three?
The unenthusiastic reader might respond with
questions of practicality. How could these experiments possibly
improve my life (provide cheaper fast food, make me better looking,
make my car faster, etc.)? I have two responses:
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Scientific advances, such as in the
field of
quantum
mechanics in the early 20th century, are the foundation for
many important and practical technologies. The electron
microscope, based on quantum mechanics, is an essential tool for
medical research. The computer as we know it would not be
possible without an understanding of quantum mechanics.
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Research in physics is inherently no
more and no less important than research in other academic
fields such as medieval literature, archaeology, philosophy,
etc. These things should be studied because we want to know
about them.
In other words, this research
will probably be useful, and even if it isn't, we should do it
anyway.
November 11, 2008
A movie called The Beautiful Truth will open on Friday.
This film claims that
Gerson therapy,
consisting of a special diet and coffee enemas, will cure cancer.
The web site for the film directs the reader to
www.gerson.org. I visited the
“research” page and followed a few links.
The
first
article’s abstract states, “there is almost no scientific
support for this regimen.” The research itself consists of case
studies of 6 (yes, you read that right) cancer patients. There was
no control group. It was not double-blinded (sham coffee enemas).
Another bit of research is
a
report on German army nutrition. It does not test or even
mention Gerson therapy. Much of the research is self-published or
published in popular magazines (no peer review). Is this the best
the proponents can cite?
The
American Cancer Society has the following to say about Gerson
therapy:
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There have been
no well-controlled studies published in the
available medical literature that show the Gerson
therapy is effective in treating cancer.
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Continued home
use of enemas may cause the colon's normal function
to weaken, worsening constipation problems and
colitis.
This would be much funnier if it
didn’t
kill people. I hope that this is my last entry about enemas on
film.
November 4, 2008
Salem's
Progressive Film Series includes a documentary called Food
Matters. I watched the trailer and visited
their web site. Here are
some of their own words:
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In this
groundbreaking documentary you'll learn how to..
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Conquer
Cancer naturally without chemo or radiation
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Overcome
Depression and Mental Illness without the nasty
side effects
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Prevent &
Cure Heart Disease & High Cholesterol no matter
what your genes
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Wow, those are some pretty
extraordinary claims. Of course, the producers don't really
want to tell you either, because it will cost you $30 plus shipping
to buy a DVD. If you do attend or purchase this film, be sure to
look for the double-blind placebo-controlled studies published in
peer-reviewed journals.
After switching to their
prescribed diet which will cure your cancer and mental illness, you
will of course need to "detoxify".
The first step in this program, I swear I am not making this up, is
to take some herbal laxatives
(warning, unpleasant content) and then shove water up your butt. Have I sold
you on this "natural" program, yet?
Food Matters reminds me
of Kevin
Trudeau, who sold a book called Natural Cures They Don't Want
You to Know About. He was convicted of criminal fraud and fined
$5 million.
October 29, 2008
Most bad science is basically unethical marketing. You have
something that is useless or no better than anything else out there
and you sell it at a premium. What's even worse than depriving
people of their money is depriving people of their freedom.
Facilitated communication is a technique where someone with a
communication disability (autism, etc.) receives help typing. This
technique sounds wonderful, but it is controversial because there are questions about who is
actually doing the communicating. Here is
what the
American Psychological Association has to say in 1994:
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Peer reviewed,
scientifically based studies have found that the typed language
output attributed to the clients was directed or
systematically determined by the therapists who provided
facilitated assistance.
-
Studies have repeatedly
demonstrated that facilitated communication is not a
scientifically valid technique for individuals with autism or
mental retardation.
Despite these strong statements,
this technique has been used to generate false accusations of abuse.
Just last year,
a man in Michigan was put in jail after an accusation generated by
facilitated communication. It reminds me a lot of the "satanic
ritual abuse" and "repressed memory" bullocks from years past. The
only thing exposed by these accusations is the sick minds of the
accusers.
Facilitated communication is
wasting tax
dollars, fleecing families of autistic people, and putting
innocent people in jail.
October 23, 2008
Like many sports fans I watched a lot of the summer Olympics.
Since the Americans won the gold medal in women's beach volleyball,
the event was covered well and I was forced to watch for many hours.
What you might have noticed was that Kerri Walsh was wearing a
strange black thing on her injured shoulder. It is called Kinesio
tape, which was developed by Kenzo Kase, a chiropractor. The
profession of the developer immediately put my mental quack detector
on red alert, so I've done some reading.
I went to
their web site and found their "research" in support of their
product. The
first article is simply awful science. It consists of 9, yes you
read that right, 9 people who had their blood flow measured before
and after application of the tape. The blood flow increased in 5 out of 9 people, just above
random chance. There was no mention of the uncertainty in the
measurements. There were not control groups with other types of tape
or no treatment.
It is further claimed that this "increased blood
flow" will aid healing. It makes me want to go to their store
and heal their necks with a samurai sword.
I found
one article critical of this tape. Needless to say, Kinesio tape
"has not been shown to be any more effective than traditional taping
or no treatment." Hey, that doesn't move merchandise!
October 20, 2008
I am starting a blog devoted to
science and pseudoscience. What inspired me to start this was an
article from cnn.com.
The article by Rachel Zupak discusses the
supposed
effect of zodiac sign on career. The article makes no mention of
whether or not the results were statistically significant. How many
people were surveyed? Can the results be reproduced? As usual,
nearly everything said about every zodiac sign applies to everyone.
Are you inquisitive? Wow, that's what your sign says! If you have
common sense, are open-minded, and are resourceful, then you must be
fill in your zodiac sign here. At least they should put the note "for
entertainment purposes only" at the top of the article.
Another article by the same author on
careerbuilder.com discusses how
your favorite color determines your perfect job. The "evidence"
consisted of the author taking the color preference test three times
and confirming that the feedback was correct. The feedback consisted
of the observation that she enjoys working independently,
being creative, using her imagination, and constantly learning
something new. We must be soul-mates or identical twins separated at
birth because that describes me exactly. Wait, that describes you,
too? Must have been identical triplets. |