• Competition is the key to private space exploration, says NASA. (via Agence France-Presse)
• Another female DC delegate is shut down when she tries to speak out against an abortion ban in her district. (via Jezebel)
• What’s in the sky? It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s an annular solar eclipse! (via Scientific American)
• Fugitive penguin found in Tokyo Bay. (via BBC)

Featured image credit: WisconsinKow

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Please accurately describe the featured image:

A) It’s the Eiffel tower with two crabs waving flags at it!
B) It’s my dreams of being a circus clown lying broken on the floor!
C) It’s just some ink smeared around, in card ten of the Rorschach test.

If you picked C, you’d be a winner! (The prize is +1 internet points and a big internet hug.) Rorschach tests are inkblots. Ten of them, each printed on a card. They do not come with instructions. There are no instructions. The test is an adaptation of a parlor game. The test is a projective test, meant to diagnose pathology and personality, from the dustbin of psychology. It’s been tossed away with penis envy and homosexuality-as-a-mental-disorder. Or so I thought. Turns out, Rorschach tests are still being administered. Let’s talk skeptically about that.

Card 3: Two waiters! A butterfly! The digestive system (the red ink in the upper corners)!

Herman Rorschach created the inkblot test in the 1920′s, with the standard deck of 10 cards. That was the only standardized thing about it. Patients were handed one card after another, and expected to describe what they saw. Based on the description, you could be diagnosed. Seem fishy?

Others agreed, and fifty years later, John Exner created a standard system for analyzing responses to the Rorschach cards. Seriously, for fifty years, everyone was basically inventing their own way to interpret their clients. Exner’s system involves rating responses on 100 different criteria. Did the client look at the whole inkblot? Did he/she see what everyone else did? Was the color of the blots discussed? Then all of these assessments get turned into a profile, that spits out a diagnostic result.

Card 2: Rhinoceroses butting horns! Women in beehive hairdos!

Unfortunately, Exner’s method fails the two tests of a useful diagnostic measure: reliability and validity.

Reliability means that if Doc John and Doc Jill both administer the test to Patient Lee, they should each come up with the same diagnosis. In the same vein, if Patient Lee stares at inkblots in 2011 and again in 2012, he should get the same results. Doesn’t happen.

To be valid, the Rorschach test has to do what it says it does: accurately say who has mental illness and who doesn’t. Again, no dice. Like most projective tests, it’s likely to give you a false positive–telling you your brain is wonky when it’s fine–called overpathologizing. This is really bad–nothing like wandering around and paying money to treat something you don’t have.

So why, WHY are we still administering Rorschach tests? Why are we training new students how to use them? Eighty percent of surveyed clinical psychologists administer them at least occasionally. Forty two percent give them regularly or always. They give these tests on their clients dime, when the entire establishment knows they don’t give the same results across time or practitioners, don’t actually measure mental illness, and tend to tell healthy people that they have a disorder. Why has this continued? Why isn’t anyone throwing fits?

Card 1: This looks exactly like a human pelvic bone. I can't see anything else.

Because…reasons.
As biological and neurological research has taken off, and testing has become increasingly standardized, diagnosis has appeared to become something anyone with training in correctly scoring a test can do.  We’re getting closer to being able to spot mental illness via the brain and brain waves. Projective tests are something the psychology establishment has a corner on–because so much is (wrongly) left up to the interpretation of the administrator, it’s something that feels like it cannot be taken away–even if all the evidence says it should be.

Universities keep teaching their grad students to administer the Rorschach test, because it’s another line on their resumes. If the old establishment is still using it, the next generation of students will keep learning it. And we will keep describing the puppies, pigs, people, and pelvises we see in hundred year old ink spots. Let’s end that. The Rorschach test does not work, and there’s real harm and monetary loss if we keep pretending it does.

Other discredited projective tests you should ignore: Szondi Test, playing with anatomically correct dolls to diagnose sexual abuse, graphology, the Hand Test, and the Luscher Color Test.

Featured images via Wikimedia Commons

Credit to: Lilienfeld, S.O, Wood, J.M., & Garb, H.N. (2001) Picture This. Scientific American.

• A chimp hides rocks under hay to throw at zoo visitors–indicating that he is capable of social planning and deception. [via Scientific American]
• Blast explosions may trigger chronic traumatic encephalopathy in veterans, just as football players experience trauma from tackles. [via The New York Times]
• A call for geeks to rise up in politics and political discussions. [via The Guardian]
• Jay-Z supports marriage equality, too. [via Feministing]

Featured image: Thomas Lersch, Creative Commons.

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Like an increasing number of people, I identify as an atheist/agnostic (depending on the day). As such, I don’t believe that human are imbued with an immortal soul. I’ll use the phrase “selling your soul” to mean selling out or turning on what you believe in, but I don’t take it literally.

Last week I heard an episode of Freakonomics, an economics podcast. The episode was titled “Soul Possession,” and it looked at the economics of purchasing a soul. That was interesting and all, but I was more taken in by the story of a man who has been trying to sell a soul for 10 years and couldn’t find a seller. He was surprised that despite making the offer to atheists, no one took him up on it for a decade.

This got me thinking, Would I sell my soul? Like I said, I don’t believe that I have one. But the thought of it still gives me the willies. What does it say about me? I know intellectually that this would be a financial windfall; money for nothing. But, I don’t know…

Would you sell your soul if you believed you didn’t have one? Does the thought kind of weird you out? How much would you ask for it? If you bought a soul, would you resell it?

Featured image credit: Molly DG

• We don’t know how to discuss sexual health like adults, and that’s a problem. (via The Lay Scientist)
• This horrible Republican doesn’t give a crap if women die having back alley abortions. (via Jezebel)
• Nerds and Politics. (via The Guardian)
• Teacher rants about Jesus and the apocalypse in class and a student gets it all on video. (via Houston Press)

Featured image credit: ProgressOhio

Got a link you think we should know about? Contact us here.

As the series finale to my absolute favorite TV show of all time nears, I feel compelled to write a review. Spanning eight seasons, it would truly be impossible to do it all justice in one blog post. This is the show that a relatively young age solidified my conviction that yes, TV shows and other nontraditional media can have artistic value. I’ll try to be somewhat objective, but I can’t promise this will be free of the fact that I am a long-time adoring fan. While my critical eye is much more developed now, fully setting aside the wonder of a 14 year-old fan girl becoming lost in a fictional universe just won’t cut it.

House shines largely because of its titular antihero, brilliantly acted by Hugh Laurie. While it was on air, especially in its earlier seasons, House garnered high ratings and was very well critically received.  Which surprises me, to be perfectly honest. The show’s content received some controversy, but not nearly as much as you’d expect. There were some cheap-shot shock moments, but they were overwhelmed, at least in my mind, by content more deeply subversive  to an American primetime TV audience.

The central character is an avowed and brash atheist. Where else did you see that on primetime TV? And sure, he’s an ass with loose morals, which one could argue perpetuates stereotypes of atheists, but he’s no Straw Man. His ideas are respected; regularly are lives trusted to his intelligence, narcissism and the requisite impulsiveness be damned. And all of this — everything in the show, in fact, save a few blatantly out-of-character one-offs in awkwardly timed episodes — is justified by marvelously interesting, three-dimensional characters.

The show’s record with respect to science is stellar. Realism? No, not by a long shot. The formula requires a bizarre and nigh-impossible medical scenario to unfold every week, scarcely held back by the wits and convictions of the diagnostic team. It is inherently unrealistic, and though they do have real medical consultants working with the writers, they are going to fudge a detail for the sake of plot once in a while. Overall, though, they do maintain a respect for the technical material they are working with. And most importantly, their respect for science philosophically — sincerely and on a practical, life and death level — is unparalleled by any other fiction to grace a major network.

Each mostly formulaic episode is the skeleton on which the meat of characters and philosophies grow during the 45 minute span. And, boy, does it ever dig into philosophy — not only that, the characters are inseparable from the philosophy. Almost every episode features competing ideas around life, death, ethics and truth in situations designed to bring those stakes to an emotionally relatable situation. One could argue the characters are only a vehicle for their philosophy, or one could argue the philosophy was there to serve character development. And that’s the beauty of it. They’re truly inseparable.

While many characters are extreme, they’re all human. House doesn’t rely on stereotypes spouting straw men to have the Conversations About Big Ideas while Someone Is Dying. The writers have an understanding of human psychology and emotion that either isn’t possessed by the majority of TV writers or perhaps simply goes unused do to lack of chutzpah to deal with anything so complicated, messy and at times unsettling. Yes, eight times a day we see a bloodied corpse. How many times do we see someone [SPOILER] in tears, wondering if there’s going to be anyone to pull the plug when their time comes? Or wresting with the guilt and secrecy of illegally killing a powerful man vaguely promising genocide? [end spoiler] House is a breathing ethics lab that manages to twist the dilemmas into your heart with characters that simply feel like there’s a real person behind those names.

Obviously, I wholeheartedly recommend this series from start to finish. It engages big ideas in bold ways and practically dares you to, too. There are a few lazy hiccup episodes in season 4 and season 8, and those prompt more than an eye roll for their gender-stereotypes and inconsistent characterization, and while they are legitimately bad, the work as a whole far outshines them. There’s been much talk of the ending that will be glowing on our screens so soon. I don’t know exactly what to expect, but I do know one thing: no matter what they do, they can’t ruin it. It’s been too good, too valuable in its own right that no single, last episode could mare it.

• ADHD may be better treated by behavioral therapy than drugs in the long term. [via Scientific American]
• Surveys in China suggest that money and happiness are linked in only a limited way. [via Wired]
• Best illusion of 2012: the disappearing hand trick. [via NewScientist]
• Adverse effects are likely underreported in chiropractic studies. [via The Guardian]

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Featured image: Michael Dorausch, Creative Commons.

Cast your mind back to the distant year of 1999.

It was the year that featured the introduction of the Euro, the launch of Napster.com, and most importantly, the release of Sonic Adventure for the Sega Dreamcast, a move which ushered in a new renaissance for videogaming, and ensured Sega’s dominance over the coming decade.

Sort of.

It was also the year in which doctors in England wrote 158,000 prescriptions for the drug methylphenidate hydrochloride, or as it’s more commonly known, Ritalin.

By 2010, that number had more than quadrupled, to slightly over 661,000, most of which are used to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ‘ADHD’.

But why are so many more prescriptions apparently necessary, barely a decade later? Has the number of children with ADHD really increased by that much? And if so, why? And who’s to blame? And if there’s nobody to blame, what am I going to do with all these angry slogans I’ve already written? Do you know how much a rhyming dictionary costs these days?

To understand why, we first have to understand what ADHD actually is, and how it has been studied over the years.

ADHD is a developmental disorder (a disorder that occurs in childhood, that slows or otherwise impedes a child’s mental development). The primary symptoms are hyperactivity, and problems in maintaining attention to any one thing. It is diagnosed in between 2 and 16 percent of school-aged children, though that statistic is based on an American study.  It is also a chronic disorder, meaning that it persists into adulthood. 4.7% of American adults are thought to live with ADHD.

Incidentally, that’s 1.2% higher than the amount of the U.S. population thought to be homosexual. Get it together, gays! You’re never going to take over the world at this rate!

At the moment, there isn’t a single known cause for why children get ADHD. However, based on existing research studies, diet, environment, and genetics are all thought to play a role. In particular, Twin Studies (studies of pairs of twins, not studies of the movie ‘Twins’) have shown that genetics is a factor in 75% of cases of ADHD.

However, this lack of a single reason to point to, combined with the (false) perception that ADHD is a relatively new disorder, has led some people to assume misdiagnosis must play a role in the current explosion of Ritalin prescriptions.

These people may have a point. In private medical practice, it’s certainly not unheard of for a doctor who earns commissions on prescriptions to prescribe unnecessarily, but reliable statistics on medical corruption are few and far-between, so we won’t dwell on that for now.

More pertinently, we might investigate misdiagnosis by looking at research into the disorder.

For many years, ADHD was thought of as ‘An American Condition’, because very few children outside of the U.S.A and Western Europe were ever diagnosed with it. Because of this, some people came to the conclusion that it was a condition fabricated out of neurotic Westerners’ fears for their children.

In reality, this was simply due to the fact that the vast majority of research into ADHD over the past 40 years has been conducted in America, meaning that medical professionals living there were naturally far more aware of the condition that in most other places.

Aan analysis performed by Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, found that in 30 studies conducted since the 1980′s, the prevalance in ADHD of children outside of the U.S. was “at least as high in many non-US children”. In particular, a study into children from a large variety of ethnic groups by Limpopo University in South Africa found ADHD rates “very similar to those reported in Western countries, which suggests that ADHD is caused by the same fundamental neurobiological processes, probably caused by genetic factors expressed independently of cultural differences”.

Now, they might have been bribed. I don’t know. I wasn’t there. But as far as I know, there is no such thing as ‘Big Limpopo Pharma’.

So, barring some kind of global, decades-spanning, Canada-based conspiracy, we may have to discount misdiagnosis for now.

Based on these statistics, it seems overwhelmingly likely that there has always been the same amount of children with ADHD, but for some reason doctors in the U.K. and U.S. are now prescribing them medication on a much, much larger scale.

To answer this, we have to remember that these doctors, and these children, don’t exist in a vacuum.

Both the United Kingdom and the United States have been in a recession for several years now, with the economic sitaution remaining dire. People in both countries work more, on average, than almost any nation in the world. The U.K. conservative government has massively cut funding to healthcare services in recent years, and, well, the less said about the U.S. healthcare system, particularly in relation to poor people, the better.

As well that, we also have to consider that it takes an enormous amount of time, money, and effort it takes to properly treat any developmentally challenged child. Many parents simply don’t have the resources to allow them to choose therapeutic treatments for their children, and have to turn to  medication as a way of managing their child’s behaviour.

It’s understandable, but that doesn’t stop it being dangerous, much like a jaguar.

A variety of drugs are used to treat ADHD, and their long-term effects aren’t well-understood. More worrying is the fact that international guidelines for their use vary wildly, with the U.S. recommending medication in almost all cases, while the U.K’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (they’re N.I.C.E. guys) say that their use should be restricted to all but the most severe cases.

This is a complicated problem, with a relatively simple cause.

Poverty.

Drugs aren’t the best solution, far from it, but until we significantly increase the funding of public healthcare, and improve working conditions to the point where people who have children with special needs are able to devote more time to them, the only option will be the cheapest option.

And anyone who’s ever eaten at McDonald’s can tell you why that’s a bad thing.

***

Photo by ADHD Center

When it comes to the use of woo in video games you really don’t have to look far to see its reaches; whether unproven notions are being used as plot devices, game-play elements or just sprinkled throughout the story it’s generally forgivable, even when a man sitting on  a bridge in Pokémon Black/White asks you whether for every hundred psychic frauds there’s a real mindmonger out there.

Dowsing is a favorite of Nintendo, appearing in The Legend of Zelda and Pokémon, and the concept of chi is used in its generous helpings throughout games that invoke ninjas and other forces that invoke that old ‘willpower magic’ thing. What is rare however, is seeing a real-life conspiracy theory woven throughout a game’s main plot. Ladies and gentlemen, The New World Order, apparently exposed for what it truly is by a series of video games about the descendants of assassin’s and templars!

At risk of  exhausting your tolerance for my Assassin’s Creed commentaries I’m here to discuss the conspiracy theory laden throughout the AC series, take a peek at its spread and whether its implementation lends itself to the franchise or threatens to pop it like an over-inflated, paranoid balloon.

The New World Order conspiracy theory is one of the great examples of the grand conspiracy: an widespread plot that involves many governments and many more people to keep their mouths shut, sometimes for generations. Undoubtedly, there are a couple of things that could explain skeptics dismissing the huge claims of this conspiracy theory. But are you, my dear skeptic, part of the conspiracy or just closing your eyes to the truth?

Of course if you were a famous figure such as say… Lady Gaga, or Jay Z, then of course you’d be part of the conspiracy. You’re in the public eye, you make triangles with your hands and you’ve said the words ‘new’, ‘world’ and ‘order’ separately in obscure stages of your career. You, my friend, are part of the conspiracy. Now go and wash that blood off your hands!

Of course, if you’re someone like me, blogging about how Assassin’s Creed isn’t real and how the disclaimer at the beginning of the game making it clear the work is fictional, means the work is fictional… well, you’re blind to the truth, as I was so passionately told when I blogged about this topic over on my personal blog.

For background, if you haven’t already clicked the Lady Gaga and Jay Z links above and discovered it for yourself; the New World Order has purportedly been working away for a couple of hundred years now, with its ranks including the Freemasons as well as many other public figures or groups whose dots join in the right way. The New World Order seeks to do the same thing that they do every night, try to take over the world! And they have been fighting for this by making significant cultural and historical breakthroughs while working in secret.

Now, if you take that in for a second you’ll realise an inherent flaw with this plan. Namely, that operating in secret doesn’t really lend well to partaking in activities that practically capture the attention of the entire world.

And if you’ll forgive me for my Pinky & The Brain reference you may continue to see parallels with this underground authoritarian order and numerous Saturday morning cartoon villains; the most striking being their inability to keep themselves from letting slip their plans to every single hero who comes to fight them. And whether it be Lady Gaga’s hand movements, the eyed pyramid on the US dollar bill, or, and this is my favorite part, displaying horned creatures that are obviously supposed to resemble Baphomet, (a goat-headed demon with prominent man-boobs that’s been bosom buddies with Lady Gaga, the Freemasons, and the AC-relevant Knights Templar) the NWO is constantly leaving its calling card, just to let everyone know about the secrets they’re desperately trying to keep.

And really, they wonder why some people are skeptical.

So, in the computer-generated and generally well-written world of Assassin’s Creed, the Knights Templar and The Assassins that fought against them have crossed generations up to the modern age, one constantly fighting for the New World Order to be instated and the other for it to be stopped. I think you can probably guess which way round the groups find themselves.

In Assassin’s Creed II specifically, it is revealed that in the universe of AC there are many historical events that can only be explained for their relevance by cultural figures possessing one of the apples of eden. These artifacts allow control of people around them, or at least they do when Ezio (the protagonist in 3 of the games in the series) uses them, although from the way that this supposedly allowed Gandhi to rise and Tesla to make his breakthroughs it seems more like the Pick of Destiny than the millennium rod.

I apologize wholeheartedly for those dated Tenacious D and Yu-Gi-Oh references by the way.

But while in the present the application of the enthusiastic numerology and the black and white motivations of some two-dimensional characters is quite obnoxious, it has quite the opposite effect in the story lines that take place in earth’s history. Ezio Auditore’s encounter with the Pazzi conspiracy that takes the lives of his family is heartbreaking and well-written, whereas Desmond Miles, the series’ protagonist in the present, seems to be stuck in the middle of a bad fan fiction that was accidentally written in to the main series.

When you add to this the fact that good vs evil is a theme that’s employed universally through fiction, the way the real lives of historical figures are woven into the fabric of conspiracy make for a nice lemon twist in the story’s already tasty direction (yes, it’s bad metaphor time again). In contention, in the present story line the most depth you get from a character on the side of the Templars is a good ‘grrrr’, and even that doesn’t seem sincere.

[image credits: vigilantcitizen, assassin's creed wikia, illuminati-news]

I have been having backaches for a week, and hearing my whines, a well-meaning friend recommended the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) called Acupuncture.

Acupuncture originated from China and can be traced back for at least 2,500 years. In TCM, it is believed that there are patterns of energy flow (Qi) throughout the body that are essential for health. Disruptions of this flow are believed to be responsible for disease. Acupuncture is used to correct these “disruptions” at identifiable points close to the skin.

Growing up in South East Asia, almost everyone I know have used/is still using TCM to treat everything from fevers to fertility. It seems like even our government endorses it. On the Ministry of Health website, TCM practitioners are listed alongside doctors, nurses and pharmacists as ‘Healthcare Professionals’.

Feeling somewhat placated by the government, I made an appointment at the recommended clinic.

The clinic was situated at the posh part of town, it looked clean and distinguished with many certificates adorning the walls, just like a doctor’s office. A nurse took down my particulars and I was shown into the room.

The “doctor” was a man who looked to be in his late fifties, wearing a white doctor’s coat, looking deceptively like a real doctor. However, it became apparent that he was not one when I was told to stick my tongue out for my diagnosis.

After checking my pulse, he told me that I have insomnia, back and neck aches (this I know), because my Qi was out of balance (this, I do not know). I was given a hospital gown to change into and was told to lie on the comfortable clinic bed.

Soon, needles were slowly placed into my back. Each felt like a sting from little angry red ants. Following the mini stabbing, short bursts of electric pulses were sent to my problematic areas via the needles. This is called Electroacupuncture.

It was over after twenty uncomfortable minutes, and just like that my bad Qi was gone. As he was prescribing a cocktail of herbs for me to take as medication, he also brought up the “fact” that acupuncture could also be used to help in weight loss. He assured me that his patients had high success rate.

Instead of being offended at indirectly being called fat, I asked him how would acupuncture fix my “weight problem”.

According to him acupuncture would help in making it easier to lose weight and maintain that loss if I was willing to change my lifestyle (since acupuncture is an adjunct therapy). He’ll insert needles into specific points on my body and my ears to release endorphins, which will make it easier to deal with stress.

Less stress = Happier life = No trigger for overeating/binging on fattening foods.

Hah. If only it was that simple.

There are still no concrete evidence that Acupuncture works. Most of the positive results reported for acupuncture are too small to be of clinical relevance and may be the result of inadequate experimental blinding, or can be explained by placebo effects.

Researchers have also pointed out the difficulty in designing an adequate scientific control for any placebo effect acupuncture might have due to its invasiveness.

Personally, it has been a week, and my back is still aching. According to my friend though, the treatment did not work because I had no faith in it.

Oh Dr. Faith, you heal all wounds.