As you might suppose, I’m not a proponent of rejecting science or clinical trials, per se. Rather, I’m a critic of how people trust them broadly, while remaining ignorant of common systematic faults in how they are used. Science has become a kind of secular religion, and just as dangerous to the promotion of knowledge in society.

John Ioannidis’s work provides one good point of reference for why we all need a horse-pill sized dose of skepticism about studies we come across. Another good one is Judith Curry’s research on false positives.

I’ve seen too clearly how rubbery the statistics and claims can be in clinical trials, all while parading under the banner of science.

Maybe I’m a lover of what clinical trials will be able to tell us in thirty years. But today I mostly see flabby science, and that’s before the media gets hold of it, and long before the average non-scientist tries to make sense of what they heard in the media.

Conducting strong studies in the healthcare field often requires a ton of manpower and money, which means so much of the current hardcore research is dominated by pharmaceutical companies and government grants, each driving their own dump-truck of smelly biases and agendas.

Top domain experts are in the best position to reliably discern what is known, what is unknown, and what is still in that gray area between the two. Yet these same experts commonly promote ideas later shown to be bunk. That should be more than a little disconcerting to anyone who places a lot of confidence in the science available to us today.

My view is that the clinical trial, as a methodology of applying reason rigorously, is still in its teenage years if not its infancy. So what do I do in the interim? Enjoy the game. Scoff at things that don’t seem to pass the smell test, scientifically or philosophically.

And I’m irreverent toward anything that seems like a religious trust in science, and I am more inclined to trust people who show a healthy skepticism about the ways science is conducted and who recognize just how little we truly know about anything within about 90 yards of the leading edge of science.

Did I mention some people treat science like religion? “But there are STUDIES…” Uh-huh.

To me lately clinical trials often seem more like a sport than a science. I’m no longer in a league, so instead I root for my team, mock the opposition, and enjoy the show.

I’m glad you’re doing the research you do, and are as aware as you are of the pitfalls in the process. I look forward to seeing where you go with it! Now, where’s my popcorn….

Participating in an eight-week mindfulness meditation program appears to make measurable changes in brain regions associated with memory, sense of self, empathy, and stress. In a study that will appear in the Jan. 30 issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, a team led by Harvard-affiliated researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) reported the results of their study, the first to document meditation-produced changes over time in the brain’s gray matter.

“Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day,” says study senior author Sara Lazar of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program and a Harvard Medical School instructor in psychology. “This study demonstrates that changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing.”

See the full article for much more.

She has written about her successes with the practice. An excerpt:

I teach in a public school. You might wonder if the practice has caused controversy. Certainly, my first two years were fraught with worry that a student might misinterpret the practice to his parents, and I doggedly corrected students who called it “karma” or “some weird Buddhist crap.” A number of parents over the years have thanked me for teaching their kids “an important life skill,” and a few offered, preemptively, to defend me should a problem arise.

The school and community have so supported the practice that I was recently awarded a grant through the local Education Foundation to run a meditation group at the high school.

Students have told me repeatedly that they come to depend on Stillness. On days I am particularly rushed, I might launch into some directions, but they always pull me back: “You forgot ‘peace time!” or “What about Stillness, Mrs. B?” or, my favorite, “Can we do 20 minutes today? I really need it.”

In recent years, I’ve broadened our practice, allowing every six weeks or so an extended period of 20 minutes, sometimes silent, sometimes with a guided full-body scan. And as a reward at the end of the year, I’ve invited my sister-in-law, a yoga teacher, to lead each class in some soothing poses.

Students have told me that they use stillness on the bus before football games, in the middle of the lunchroom when someone “said something stupid that made me want to punch him out,” and at night when they can’t sleep. They regularly download the songs I play or make me cds of music they think will work well. They return after graduation to say they’ve taken yoga or mediation classes at college. The biggest compliment I’ve ever received was when a tough guy – you know the type, too cool for school and always ready to challenge authority – re-emerged after a 20-minute session mumbling dreamily, “Mrs. B., you have the best voice.”

His friends razzed him mercifully, but he was stalwart in defending Stillness: “Dude, shut up! I am so chillaxed after that. We should have a whole class of just her talking about that ‘blue healing breath’ or whatever that thing is.”

See her full article for much more.

Honoring “The Chosin Few” in the Korean War from 27 November 1950 on into December 1950. The battle of Chosin Reservoir. It was intensely brutal combat in temperatures sometimes down to minus-35 degrees in the mountains. A frozen Hell.

Honored warriors there were from the US Marines, the US Army, the Republic of Korea (the “ROKs,” South Korea), and the British Royal Marine Commandos. But don’t forget, the ill-equipped (and tyrannically led) communist Red Chinese troops fought bravely against these UN forces, sometimes fighting down to the very last man. UN forces retreated but Chinese forces were shattered; no one won.

War sucks. We as human animals seem to worship it, romanticize it, love it, and continue it. I confess: combat service has defined my own life; I will never be the same. But war is at its root insane, inhumane and immoral. Will we ever get over it? Can we as a species survive while acting this way?

My reply:

I’ve heard that something like 80% of serious libertarians originally came to these ideas via Ayn Rand’s novels — though their intellectual development hardly stopped there, of course — so perhaps it’s not surprising that many people, especially those who aren’t familiar with the genre, associate her ideas with libertarianism.

The Hickman criticism is unfortunately a case of critics dropping any semblance of intellectual context. Her journal entries about Hickman were written during an early period in her development as a philosopher, when she was going through a Nietzschean phase. So she admired the radical strengths of an Übermensch, while acknowledging his faults? How scandalous! Presumably Nietzsche would come in for even more criticism on this front, but somehow he remains perfectly respectable.

Interestingly, as Ronald Merrill observes in The Ideas of Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead is at root a dramatization of the female protagonist Dominique’s (and thus Rand’s own) progression from nihilism (loving Keating) to Nietzscheanism (loving Wynand) to Objectivism (loving Howard Roark) — culminating in the portrayal of an ideal man who “neither sacrifices himself to others nor others to himself.”

And so the criticism of Rand as a Hickman “admirer” amounts to saying her philosophy is too Neitzschean when, in fact, she explicitly grew to reject Neitzscheanism in favor of her own philosophy which eschews sacrifices in any form. Her two primary novels are quite explicit about this — which the Hickman criticism ignores entirely. Could one be any less fair in one’s criticism of a philosopher?

I do believe Rand had some bat-shit moments, to use your phrase. I also think it’s a mistake to give in too easily in our defense of her. Sometimes simply restoring a little intellectual context, and reading her actual words, is enough to reveal her as far more thoughtful than her critics would suggest. Given her truly massive role in promoting libertarian ideas, we do ourselves a disservice if we are too quick to push her to the back of — or throw her under — the intellectual bus.

I truly believe we undermine our cause if we’re too quick to allow some of the more ridiculous criticisms to take root.

Among other things, living in a new country always entails discovering new brands of my favorite ingredients — which can be good or bad, depending on what I find. Presently I have three different brands of butter in my fridge. Lately I eat a lot of butter because it’s better for your brain as well as your heart. And I only buy real butter, no blends, “light” butters, or margarine.

Today while making my eggs I noticed that, even while cold, an Italian butter labeled burro prateria (“grassland butter”) by Brazzale S.p.A. smells incredibly sweet and fragrant. That inspired me to smell another brand I bought in a pinch last week, an Irish butter by Kerrygold, which entirely lacks that sweetness and frankly has overtones of manure, once I stop and smell it closely.

I am fascinated by the difference. I had never even paid much attention to the smell of butter. I would assume the sweet brand smells sweet for a reason — and not because they added sugar (which they didn’t, and it wouldn’t change the smell even if they did). I wonder if it was made from cows raised on a healthier free-range diet, for example. In any case, I take the smell as a very good sign of its quality.

This inspired me to actually taste the butter directly, by putting a small slice in my mouth rather than just using it as a way to cook other stuff. And the Italian Burro tastes incredibly clear and creamy, while the Irish Kerrygold tastes strong and faintly unpleasant. In fact, the Burro tastes so good I can eat it straight from the package. The actual flavor isn’t that sweet, just very clear, smooth, pleasant. It’s a minor kind of delicacy, and reminds me of the first time I tried cocoa nibs or unsweetened licorice tronchetti.

So what does the butter in your refrigerator smell like? For fellow butter connoisseurs, what is your favorite brand of butter and why?

The last seven minutes of the show will include a segment featuring Michael Strong and Magatte Wade, discussing how Free Cities will reduce poverty and create jobs, hope, and prosperity in the developing world.

The work to develop such cities is being spearheaded by the Free Cities Institute, but on the program Stossel actually refers to it as the “Free Cities Project.” So I’m creating this blog post to help point interested parties — as well as Google — to the correct website to find more information.

To learn more about these important initiatives, please visit the site for the Free Cities project (or, more formally, the Free Cities Institute).

UPDATE – The video of their interview is now available online.

With that in mind, Robert Bidinotto‘s novel Hunter: A Thriller hit the spot. I found the writing crisp, the characters interesting, and the interplay of plot and theme to be tight and compelling. I was far more moved than I expected to be, particularly by the love relationship between Dylan Hunter and Annie Woods. They wrestled with real challenges, and seeing how they resolved them reminded me why I like romantic realism so much: it inspires you to want to live your own life as fully and heroically as possible.

Bidinotto’s mastery of his craft is evident. As a sometimes-writer myself, I got the feeling a few times that he must have really enjoyed the writing process, because in certain passages I got the distinct sense of a sharp mind at work and at play. I think he must’ve loved writing this book.

Ayn Rand wrote, “Don’t work for my happiness, my brothers — show me yours — show me that it is possible — show me your achievement — and the knowledge will give me courage for mine.” I read the novel intermittently over the course of about three days, and on the last morning, as I finished the final chapter, my feeling toward the author was: Thank you for showing us your achievement.

It has given me courage for mine.

I’d heard people talk about being inspired by their kids before, and didn’t really believe it as I hadn’t had the experience. But last night, Tovar inspired me.

I’d been exploring issues of autonomy and self-regulation with Shannon, as well as how we can be better parents, so that was my mental frame as I went in to cuddle him last night. As often happens when we go in after bedtime, he was playing outside his bed with the lights a bit bright, and jumped in fear at knowing that he’d been “caught” doing what he “wasn’t supposed to”, even though we’ve been very accepting of his playing before sleep, and never yelled or said anything harsher than “Please get in bed, it’s bedtime”.

This reaction had been bothering me for awhile, so after sharing a bit with Tovar about how I was doing and what had been going on for me that evening, I asked him about it. Keep reading »

On a related note, the entire concept of keeping a journal like that of your child’s formative years just rocks.

What determines whether a soul has basic trust? Basic trust is the effect on the soul of a particular aspect or quality of Being that we call Living Daylight. We call it this because if one’s perception is subtle enough to visually see and kinesthetically feel the substance of one’s consciousness, it actually looks like daylight, and is felt as an alive consciousness. It is experienced as something boundless, in the sense that it is not bounded by one’s body but rather is experienced as something that everything is made of. It is a universal sense of presence in that it pervades everything and is everywhere. The first level of experiencing it is to perceive that it is everywhere; the second level is to see that everything comes out of it; and the deepest level is to know that everything is made of it. At this deepest level, everything in the universe is seen to be originating in, bathed in, and constituted by Living Daylight.

This is definitely in the territory of the mystical, but I like Almaas’s ability to explain mystic experiences through less-mystical origins (e.g., pointing out that we’re essentially looking at the nature of our own consciousness, here).

I’m getting a ton out of slowly making my way through his new book The Unfolding Now. I hope to publish a fuller review of this book at some point, because it’s been quite profound so far.