The Rogues Gallery

Doctors Drop Unvaccinated Patients

Mike Lacelle — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:32:27 +0000

The decision to vaccinate a child shouldn’t really be a hard one to make. In fact, I don’t really think it should be a decision at all. Vaccines have been proven time and time again to be both very safe and extremely effective. And yet some people still choose not to have their children vaccinated. Personally, I think that’s a very bad decision.

There is SO MUCH bad information out there regarding vaccines, it’s very disheartening. Of course there’s good information, but the bad info is much easier to find. And it’s presented in a way that appeals to that person’s very basic instinct: to shield their child from possible harm. So as I think about it, it seems to me that most (if not all) of these people are doing it for what for them seems like a good reason

The problem is that they not only compromise their child’s health based on faulty information, but they contribute to a loss in herd immunity. This leads to the cases we hear in the news about vaccine preventable diseases affecting communities with low vaccine compliance. These cases are almost entirely avoidable.

Doctors have always taken the matter seriously, but recently, many pediatricians have been parting ways with patients of theirs who refuse to vaccinate. A story in The Wall Street Journal earlier this week reported on a rise in doctors refusing or “firing” patients who do not comply to the CDC and AAAP’s vaccine schedule.

In a study of Connecticut pediatricians published last year, some 30% of 133 doctors said they had asked a family to leave their practice for vaccine refusal, and a recent survey of 909 Midwestern pediatricians found that 21% reported discharging families for the same reason. By comparison, in 2001 and 2006 about 6% of physicians said they “routinely” stopped working with families due to parents’ continued vaccine refusal and 16% “sometimes” dismissed them, according to surveys conducted then by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

I completely agree with the pediatricians’ decision not to see unvaccinated children. Having an unvaccinated child in a doctor’s waiting room full of other children, some sick, is downright dangerous. Both for the unvaccinated child and the other people present.

There’s also an issue of trust. If parents don’t trust their doctor’s medical advice on one subject, why would they trust them on another? There should be a high level of trust there between doctor and patient.

When and if I have children, this will absolutely be one of the factors in choosing a pediatrician. I want to be able to trust that my child’s health is in good hands, and what better hands than someone’s who is willing to give up a select group of patients for the safety of the majority of her or his other patients? I’ll be looking for a doctor who practices science-based medicine.

So what do you guys think? Do you agree with the decision these doctors are making? There is certainly an argument to be made for both sides.

photo by: UNICEF Sverige

SGU Bloopers – Together they form Voltron!

Mike Lacelle — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 12:57:00 +0000

I’ve been working with the rogues behind the scenes for a few years now, and one of my tasks has (had) been to convert the raw audio tracks into SGU 5×5 episodes. During that time I took it upon myself to grab out some funny behind the scenes clips that never made it to the final podcast.

Here’s a clip that happened during a recording of 5×5 in December of 2009.

For those of you who are wondering, 5×5 isn’t gone. It’s actually going to make a comeback very, very soon. So stay tuned. I will be doing the edits so I’ll be posting some more clips on here as they come in.

Habitable Zone Less Habitable?

Bob Novella — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:36:02 +0000

The hunt for exoplanets has been heating up for years, aided by new technologies and refined methods for finding smaller and smaller planets that may harbor life.

Integral to this hunt is the concept that the ideal planet’s orbit will be in a habitable zone that is far enough away from its parent star that water doesn’t completely evaporate and close enough for liquid water to exist.

In fact, a new earth-sized planet was recently found that was smack-dab in the middle of this Goldilocks zone and our current best candidate for an earth-like planet that could support life as we know it.

This zone however may not be as capacious as we once thought.
It looks like the heat from a star is not the only limiting factor for the survivability of liquid water. Tidal forces can also have a similar effect. This is called Tidal Heating.

The decline of a star’s gravitational pull on a planet means that some parts of a planet are tugged to a greater or a lesser degree than other parts. This not only deforms the shape a planet’s oceans but also its rocky interior (and even its atmosphere).

This constant kneeding of rock makes the planet hotter, potentially turning a wet world into a dessicated Venus-like planet. In fact, these worlds are being called Tidal Venuses.

To read more on this fascinating topic, check out this link

Want Your Palm Read?

Evan Bernstein — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 14:43:55 +0000

I know I am dating myself, but one of the most memorable lines from any of the hundreds of Bugs Bunny cartoons (which spans over 70 years worth of material) is, while dressed as a “swami”, he asks the antagonist character …

“Do you want your palm read?”

The brute holds out his hand and Bugs proceeds to paint his palm with red paint. Classic stuff for those of us old enough to remember such humor steeped in antiquity.

As the cartoon world clearly knew back in 1949 that swami’s and palm reading and phrenology (reading “bumps” on the head) and other childish notions were excellent vehicles to deliver humor, you would think that in modern times, the human race would continue to laugh off the fantasy of anti-scientific newage such as divination by reading palms.

Welcome to 21st century China, where ancient superstitions, antiquated habits, prejudices against people with certain blood types or certain last names, any many other forms of pseudoscience are alive and well. So what’s the latest news-making nonsense coming out of China these days?

That’s right … Palm Reading!

Reading the palms of children, to be more specific. According to this Reuters article, in a province in northern China, parents are paying 1200 yuan ($190US) to have their children’s palms read. According to the reports, these readings can …

“determine the children’s innate intelligence and potential.”

Funny they should use the wording “innate intelligence”, which is the purported vitalistic component of chiropractic. One might dismiss it as a mere coincidence, but the notion that “innate intelligence” exists at all is a column which has been built exclusively for the Parthenon of Woo. Science has can not detect “innate intelligence”, and until someone comes up with a scientifically valid means of doing so, it does not exist.

It is also funny how the counterbalance in the article, a quote from a “pediatric expert”, offers the following retort:

“This technology remains unaccounted for.”

How weak. First, its not “technology” at all. It is a combination of mysticism and cold-reading. Second, it is not unaccounted for. Palm reading is well accounted for, and it simply doesn’t work. It is fortune telling. There is no evidence whatsoever for the validity of palm reading.

But this is China, and China is a big place with tons of people and ancient cultures and traditions that will never let go of their ingrained and cherished sacred cows. Take a look at this article for more on the wackiness of Chinese culture.

America and other countries around the world all have their own brands of cultural pseudoscience and woo, but the notion of palm reading strikes a chord of infantile thinking and humor steeped in ridiculousness the likes of which Bugs Bunny would still be proud of today.

The Search for a SuperSolid

Bob Novella — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:19:57 +0000

The hunt is on for a new quantum state of matter called Supersolidity.

This state has never been conclusively observed but it would resemble another quantum state that has…superfluidity.

A superfluid is incredibly cool (barely above absolute zero in fact). It has zero viscosity which means it can actually climb up an out of a container. It can also flow through the tiniest pores of any container it’s in.

You may think that a supersolid would be super due to it’s incredible density but that’s not the case.

If you want more details. Checkout this article from my favorite science news-site Physorg.

Enjoy

Email Of The Year (So Far)

Evan Bernstein — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 06:41:15 +0000

A recently received email reads, unedited, as such …

“I don’t like your attitude on the show. You said the Chem-trails are not real. I have seen them myself and have taken many pictures. I have also seen footage of a weatherman in Oregon saying that the military was doing experiments and laying the chem-trails. Why would you be so sure that they are not real. Who are you?? A bunch of snotty punks that never leave your office? I bet the whole show is there to make real people who seek real truth; look stupid. The “experts” like you claim to be, lie all the fucking time; and so do the people on your show. Thats why you dont have the guts to put up a phone number for calls. I bet you are funded by the goverment, or drug companies or something. No normal people are so arrogant. You are not the “experts” of anything, except lies.”

Wow, that’s quite an email. Allow me to reply one sentence at a time.

“I don’t like your attitude on the show.”

Unsubscribe.

“You said the Chem-trails are not real.”

Yes.

“I have seen them myself and have taken many pictures.”

You saw contrails, not “chem-trails”.

“I have also seen footage of a weatherman in Oregon saying that the military was doing experiments and laying the chem-trails.”

Argument From Authority (a very poor one, to boot)

“Why would you be so sure that they are not real.”

Evidence, lack thereof.

Who are you??

I see where the question mark from the prior “question” went.

”A bunch of snotty punks that never leave your office?”

Ad Hominem.

“I bet the whole show is there to make real people who seek real truth; look stupid.”

Only those who regularly botch their punctuation.

The “experts” like you claim to be, lie all the fucking time; and so do the people on your show.

Asshole Fallacy.

“Thats why you dont have the guts to put up a phone number for calls.”

(212) 384-1000

“I bet you are funded by the goverment, or drug companies or something.”

Something.

“No normal people are so arrogant.”

(Fill in your own thought, I really have no idea what this means.)

“You are not the “experts” of anything, except lies.”

Lies indeed, especially exposing the people who spout and regurgitate them.

iKnowledge

Mike Lacelle — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:24:42 +0000

I love learning about new things, or learning even more about things I already know. Sometimes I wish I could just get away for a week or two to a cabin in the woods and sit by a fireplace in a comfortable chair with a huge library of books and just read and learn 24/7. There are many times throughout the year, especially around the beginning of new school semesters, that I go through my local colleges and universities’ part-time learning course lists and think about enrolling in one or two. But I have 2 jobs and live outseide of the city. I always tell myself that I’ll take on a course or two one day when I have less things going on.

And then I discovered iTunes U. What a great idea. It’s basically a library of free courses in various formats (video, audio, eBook) offered from educators around the world. From schools like Oxford, Harvard and Yale.

iTunes U has been around for a little while now, but they recently released the iTunes U iOS app.

The free iTunes U app gives students access to all the materials for your course in a single place. Right in the app, they can play video or audio lectures. Read books and view presentations. See a list of all the assignments for the course and check them off as they’re completed. And when you send a message or create a new assignment, students receive a push notification with the new information.

I’ve already started a list of courses I want to go through in iTunes U. And they have lots to choose from. Everything from iOS app creation to philosophy to history. I just started Harvard University’s Justice with Michael Sandel. I’m 3 “episodes” in and I’m really enjoying it and learning a lot. There’s lots of cool science courses too and I’m going to go through one of those next. And I’ve always been interested in American history. So many to choose from. My brain is a sponge and it’s ready to absorb knowledge.

I wonder if I could convince Steve to put up a course on skepticism and critical thinking on there. Looks like we’ll have to grow him yet another clone. Or will we?….

She’s Not Negative. See? She’s Smiling.

Mike Lacelle — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 15:12:22 +0000

Check this out. I recently found this on a few feeds in my Google Reader setup. Stare at the 3 dots on the nose of the woman in this image for about 30 seconds. Then look at some sort of white space (a blank piece of paper, or a white background on a computer screen) and blink your eyes really fast.

Pretty awesome huh? Well, at least I think it is. I found this on Wikipedia (the best source of completely reliable information evar!) and it seems to fit, it’s called “Negative Afterimage“.

Negative afterimages are caused when the eye’s photoreceptors, primarily those known as cone cells, adapt from the overstimulation and lose sensitivity.Normally the eye deals with this problem by rapidly moving small amounts (see: microsaccade), the motion later being “filtered out” so it is not noticeable. However if the color image is large enough that the small movements are not enough to change the color under one area of the retina, those cones will eventually tire or adapt and stop responding. The rod cells can also be affected by this.

When the eyes are then diverted to a blank space, the adapted photoreceptors send out a weak signal and those colors remain muted. However, the surrounding cones that were not being excited by that color are still “fresh”, and send out a strong signal. The signal is exactly the same as if looking at the opposite color, which is how the brain interprets it.

I love optical illusions, things that trick your eyes and brain. Like that spinning girl that Steve wrote about a couple of times on Neurologica. If anyone has any good ones to share, post them in the comments.

The Shadow of the Hole

Bob Novella — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 02:55:54 +0000

Scientists may soon have a direct image of the black hole in the center of our galaxy.
Using a virtual telescope as big as the earth, they may have for the first time a
picture of the actual shadow a black hole.

Scientists met recently to discuss this project. It has probably one of the coolest
names for a telescope project: The Event Horizon Telescope.

Obviously building a real telescope as big as the earth would be just a tad expensive and time-consuming. It’s called a virtual telescope because it uses a common process called interferometry to combine the individual images of many telescopes into one image. The cool thing is that if you have enough telescopes, the resulting image is comparable to the image of one ginormous telescope that’s as big as the distance that separates all of them.

In the case of the Event Horizon project, there are 50 radio telescopes around the world that, when combined, will give us an image as if we had one radio telescope as big as the earth. It will be far and away the most detailed picture of the center of our galaxy and our very own supermassive black hole that’s ever been taken.

This is no small feat considering that the 4 million solar-mass black hole that’s in the center of our galaxy is 26,000 light years away and only as big as Mercury’s orbit. That’s 153 quintillion miles away. Imaging it is like seeing a grapefruit on the moon. You may think: ”but black holes devour everything, even light, they’re by definition invisible.”

True, but we can see the immediate vicinity around it.

Dimitrios Psaltis Associate Professor of Astronomy and Physics at the University of Arizona recently said:

“We expect to see the swirling of matter going into the black hole in real time, What we’re really hoping to see is how the black hole is fed.”

It’s even better than that though. The glowing matter around a black hole should clearly delineate it’s shadow. This shadow is actually the silhouette of its event horizon which is the boundary in space-time around the hole such that once you cross it, there’s no coming back even if you’re traveling at the speed of light.

So what may we see with such a view? Lotsa cool stuff:

real-time flaring events occurring near the black hole
rotation of the supermassive black hole
accretion disk dynamics.
extreme relativistic effects predicted to be acting on the volume of space surrounding it

This leads us to Einstein and a test of General Relativity. This theory predicts that this shadow should be perfectly circular. If it’s not, then he’s got some splainin to do and we may find that General Relativity needs some modification. Really though, is there any doubt that this billionth test of his theory will succeed? It would be kinda cool if we found some special case and some new physics but I’m not holding my breath.

Still though, I’ve never been this excited by the prospect of seeing a shadow.

“Apollo 16 Found Alien Shipwreck” – Psychics

Mike Lacelle — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:32:54 +0000

This just in: it turns out that the Apollo 16 mission was our first encounter with alien life/technology.

According to a “psychic R&D operation” based in Austin, TX called Tranception Inc., the Apollo 16 astronauts deserve the Congressional Space Medal of Honor for the first ever alien encounter with some ”shipwreck elements”.

Here, you can read the letter (PDF) sent by Tranception Inc. to everyone from NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden Jr. to Microsoft and Google.

If you are wondering what makes me think that the debris field surveyed, filmed and photographed by the crew of Apollo 16 during its EVA-3 is a “shipwreck”, please refer to EXHIBIT “E”, in that a total of eight Controlled Remote Viewers (six professionals and twotrainees) worked that target using standard CRV single-blind protocols and they all describeelements of a “shipwreck” or at least contact with “structures” and/or “people”, “biological”, “alien”, technology, their plight, etc.

Well there you have it folks. There’s no arguing with that awesome bit of logic. This is definitely proof of our encounter with aliens.

The Apollo 16 mission doesn’t need the whole alien shipwreck angle to make it great, it was pretty damn awesome to begin with. Apollo 16 launched on April 16, 1972 and was manned by astronauts John Young, Charles Duke and Ken Mattingly. Their primary mission was to collect samples from the lunar highlands then believed to have been the result of volcanic activity. The samples proved that hypothesis incorrect. The mission included over 20 hours of moonwalks and returned 211lbs of lunar samples. They safely landed in the South Pacific on April 27, 1972.