Respectful Insolence

Idiotic comment of the week

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

In a nod to fellow ScienceBlogger Ed Brayton, with his hilarious Dumbass Quote of the Day, I hereby inaugurate the "Idiotic Comment of the Week," culled from this very blog. I don't guarantee that I'll do it every week, but when I see neuron-necrosing idiocy below and beyond the usual call of pseudoscientists and quackery boosters who occasionally like to try to match their "wits" (such as they are) with my reality- and science-based commenters, usually to hilarious effect, I'll give it the "honor" it deserves. This week, despite highly intense competition (thanks to a recent infestation of new anti-vaccine trolls even dumber than the old bunch of anti-vaccine trolls), this particular comment sank below all the rest with its sheer unrelenting level of utter ignorance:

May I make a suggestion? ....wash your hands, exercise, eat well, live healthy, & fight off bacteria and viruses the old fashion way (like humans have done for 50,000 years.)

Yeah, because that worked so well, say...350 years ago. Back in London in the 1600s, John Graunt compiled one of the earliest examples of vital statistics. In 1662, he published Natural and Political Observations Mentioned in a Following Index and Made Upon the Bills of Mortality. In this book, Graunt was the first to attempt to construct life tables and mortality tables based on the numbers of births and reported deaths in London. As a tercentenary tribute stated:

300 years ago John Graunt, a London draper, published some "Natural and Political Observations on the Bills of Mortality." These observations represent the 1st, as well as an extremely competent attempt, to draw scientific conclusions from statistical data. The present study illustrates Graunt's careful scientific approach, his ability to extract the essence from what by modern standards are distinctly untrustworthy demographic data, and his intuitive appreciation of the amount of interpretation his findings would tolerate. Based upon ratios and proportions of vital events and consideration of the way in which these changed in different circumstances, his analysis is amazingly free of major statistical errors. His statistical understanding was consideration. He is responsible for the 1st scientific estimates of population size, the concept of the life table, the idea of statistical association, the 1st studies of time series, and a pioneer attempt to draw a representative sample. Graunt's book continued to be worthy of reading today, for it laid the foundations of the science of statistics.

So what did John Graunt find?

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Let's go back to the days of the Founding Fathers...

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

...back when they believed that humors were responsible for your health. Oh, yes, I know it's now "politically or medically incorrect" now to practice medicine the way they did in the days of our Founding Fathers, but that's because the socialist libero-Nazis took that away from us. After all, remember who else didn't answer medical questions.

That's right. Hitler!

We must take back our country and the medicine of the Founding Fathers, lest our organs organize against us and the government be given the power to remove your appendix and eat it in front of you and your children!

Genius!

Read the comments on this post...

Desiree Jennings "cured" of her "vaccine-induced dystonia"?

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:00:46 -0500

Remember how I promised that I'd do my next installment of my blogging Suzanne Somers' pile of idiocy, namely her own book, before the end of the week?

Plans change, and neurons melt, which they did in response to reading the first several chapters of Suzanne Somers' book.

Don't worry, though. I'll definitely try to get back on track with my--shall we say?--extended multipart review by Monday. Sometimes, though, when you're blogging, news drives what you do, and news is driving my decision to forego the pleasure and pain of the next installment of my "fun with Suzanne Somers" series, at least for a couple of days. What, you may ask, was so important that I delayed this most important project, a project that strikes home more than most, given that I treat breast cancer for a living?

It's the Desiree Jennings story again.

You remember Desiree Jennings? She's the young woman who received a seasonal flu vaccine in August and later developed what is being represented as dystonia but is almost certainly not. The other day, her VAERS database report was found, which casts even more doubt on her story, given that the neurologist who examined her when she presented concluded that there was a strong psychogenic component to whatever it was that was wrong with her. What has been brought to my attention is that, after promoting Jennings as evidence that the flu vaccine is harmful, deleting its page asking for donations for her, and then deciding to support her again, it looks as though Generation Rescue is going full mental jacket in supporting her again. Indeed, it looks as though GR has hooked Jennings up with a character I've discussed numerous times on this blog. More on that later. In the meantime, check out her website, where she tells her story and touting her "cure":

Had I known the full risks of my own flu shot back in August ... had I been properly educated ... I may have never suffered the painful consequences. Even more importantly, after I got injured, I felt I was written off by most of the medical community simply because they couldn't figure out what was truly wrong.
Now, I want to make sure you get the education you need in the coming weeks and months. I will be speaking more candidly about my treatment with the help of my Doctor who is assisting in my recovery.

Uh-oh. Who is this doctor? Take a guess. No, it's not a competent doctor. Indeed, it's a doctor who has gotten in a lot of trouble with his medical board. He's known for urine injection therapy, among other things, and has charged tens of thousands of dollars to apply his quackery to cancer patients. Do you know of whom I speak yet? Longtime readers, I bet, can guess.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

An Age of Autism commenter destroys yet another irony meter

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:01 -0500

riley'smom is very unhappy with Amy Wallace:

I wrote Ms. Wallace a private email. I intentionally wrote it directly to her private email and DID NOT post it in the comments section of Wired Mag. I asked her about her one sided-biased interview with Mr Offit and asked if she planned to NOW do a fair and balanced report as many were questioning her porfessional reasoning. I also asked her how it felt to be one of Offit's whores...that perhaps she and Amanda Peet should get together and compare notes on how Ms Peets career was doing since she joined the Offit band wagon.
I received an email back form her thanking me for my input and that she takes this "very seriously". A few days later...I receive another email from the Rants Department of Wired Mag wanting to publish my email and saying they needed my name, phone number, and home address in order to do so. (Yea, I don't think so, I'll get put on a list of terrorist with the likes of Bin Laden that have threatened the very delicate nature of Mr Offit and Ms Wallace)

I wrote back telling them this was a private email to Ms Wallace and I did not want it published, period. I also mentioned that if by chance they decided to go against my wishes and publish my email in any shape or form, they will be speaking to my lawyer. She had no right to forward my email onto anyone as it was sent to her privately. If I wanted the world to read it I would have posted in the comments section of Wired.

Sure, because AoA sooooo respects the privacy of private e-mails, as it did for Gardiner Harris of the New York Times, certain reporters from the L.A. Times, and yourse truly. I'd take riley'smom more seriously if she had criticized AoA as well for breaching the privacy of e-mail, which it regularly does. Indeed, those of us who counter the idiocy regularly laid down by AoA have learned a hard lesson, namely, "If someone associated with AoA ever e-mails you, assume that anything you write in the exchange is likely to be made public."

As for the post itself, it's just J.B. spewing the same pseudoscientific nonsense that I've slapped down over and over. The only difference is that he appears to be going for Orac-ian verbosity. Well, they always say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Read the comments on this post...

The 123rd Congregation of the Skeptics' Circle...

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:00:00 -0500

The 123 Congregation of the Skeptics' Circle will now come together over at Blue Genes, in which Simplicio is schooled in skepticism. Sort of.

Go. Read. Don't be like Simplicio.

Next up to host the Skeptics' Circle will be Beyond the Short Coat. Start getting your skeptical blogging skills wound up to participate in this biweekly orgy of skepticism!

Read the comments on this post...

The anti-vaccine movement, cranks, and "pseudo-expertise"

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:00:55 -0500

Over the last week or so, I've been confronted full bore with cranks, staring down the barrel, if you will, of a crank shotgun, one barrel being the anti-vaccine movement in general (with J.B. Handley and his misogyny being the buckshot, so to speak) and the other being Suzanne Somers and her despicable cancer quackery. Indeed, over the last five years, I've subjected myself to some of the most outrageous bits of unreason, conspiracy mongering, and pseudoscience. Be it the anti-vaccine movement, quacks, 9/11 Truthers, Holocaust deniers, creationists, or any of a variety of other bits of pseudoscience, I've come to appreciate that what distinguishes believers in such nonsense seems to be, as Prometheus so aptly put it, the arrogance of ignorance. Even so, there seems to be more than that going on, and leave it to, of all things, an article in the L.A. Times by James Rainey entitled Childhood vaccines, autism and the dangers of group think. It's an article looking at Amy Wallace's excellent article for WIRED entitled An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All, which documented how the arrogance of ignorance has led the anti-vaccine movement to endanger public health, and the exceedingly (and typically) nasty reaction the anti-vaccine movement with which the anti-vaccine movement responded, particularly J.B. Handley's misogyny.

There are two key passages in Rainey's article that tell the tale, a tale that is no surprise to skeptics, in particular skeptical bloggers like my self:

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Has Desiree Jennings' VAERS report been found?

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:16 -0500

The other day, I wrote about an unfortunate young woman named Desiree Jennings, who claimed to have had a rare neurological disorder known as dystonia as a complication of being vaccinated for seasonal flu, when it appears that her condition is likely to have at least a strong psychogenic component and is unlikely to be due to the vaccine. Despicably, the anti-vaccine group Generation Rescue tripped over itself to exploit Jennings' case and use it as "proof" that vaccines are dangerous and, by extension, that their fantastical claims that vaccines cause autism are plausible. Even after questions were raised about Jennings', yesterday Generation Rescue announced that it's still supporting her and has even issued a press release saying so. They've even provided a link to a search of the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database for dystonia reported after vaccination.

That gave a blogger named Rene Najera at the Baltimore Disease Prevention Examiner an idea. Indeed, he may have found Jennings' entry in the VAERS database, and, if it is indeed Jennings, it strongly suggests that her dystonia was not related to the flu vaccine. How did he do it? It was ridiculously simple. He noted that, as Generation Rescue claims, there are indeed 67 entries for dystonia in the VAERS database. However, only five of them since 1990 occurred after the flu vaccine. That's a small enough number that allowed easy perusal of individual records after the initial search. One record appears to fit Jennings' case. It described someone aged 18-29 who was vaccinated for seasonal flu in August and developed problems in September that led him or her to be admitted to rule out Guillan-Barré syndrome, lupus, or MS:

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Holocaust Denial on Trial podcast

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:00:00 -0500

As regular readers know, one of my interests outside of medicine is the phenomenon of Holocaust denial. Granted, I haven't written as much about it lately as I used to, but that doesn't mean I've lost interest. Actually, I think it may be because I seem to be encountering fewer and fewer major issues of Holocaust denial, although the Bishop Williamson case did draw my ire earlier this year, and I have been perturbed by Holocaust denier David Irving's traveling anti-Semitism show that's now slithering its way through the U.S. and is now in the eastern part of the country.

One thing that I have found, however, is an excellent podcast about Holocaust denial run by Holocaust Denial on Trial, the website that documented David Irving's bogus libel trial against Deborah Lipstadt and now serves as a clearinghouse for news about Holocaust denial. Topics include Dr. Michael Shermer being interviewed on Why There Are Holocaust Deniers and Deborah Lipstadt discussing The Ethical Challenge Posed by Holocaust Denial. The only problems I have with the podcasts are that there are too few of them and there hasn't been a new one since April. Fortunately, my contacts tell me that more are on the way and should be recorded within the next few weeks.

In the meantime, here's the podcast feed link to subscribe. After all, what's the good of having a moderately high traffic blog if I can't pimp my colleagues' and friends' projects?

Read the comments on this post...

Another celebrity anti-vaccine moron: Billy Corgan

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 06:00:01 -0500

Oh, hell. I actually used to like Smashing Pumpkins back in the 1990s. Unfortunately, its leader, Billy Corgan, has just revealed himself to be as medically ignorant as Jenny McCarthy in a recent blog post:

If you follow some of the links I have been supplying as of late, you'll notice many are focused on the propaganda build up to our day of reckoning with the Swine Flu virus. I say 'propaganda' because, in my heart, there is something mighty suspicious about declaring an emergency for something that has yet to show itself to be a grand pandemic. merican President Obama has declared a national emergency about this virus, which he in his own words said was, at this point, a preventative measure. So, why declare an emergency if there isn't one?

Note the conspiracy-mongering. Note the utter lack of understanding of what a pandemic is, although maybe the use of the term "grand pandemic" may be Billy's way of weaseling out of that criticism. In any case, there was a very simple reason why President Obama declared the emergency. Such a declaration gives Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius the authority to bypass federal rules when opening alternative care sites, such as offsite hospital centers at schools or community centers if hospitals seek permission. If the number of cases of flu overwhelms the medical system, this is a power that HHS needs. No conspiracy. No grab for power. The declaration also allows hospitals to bill for off site services that they can't normally bill for.

Billy then launches into the quack Miranda warning:

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Blogging Suzanne Somers Knockout, part 1: How cancer testimonials mislead

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:00:02 -0500

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid. After a prolonged wait, it's finally here:

Yes, my promotional copy of Suzanne Somers new book Knockout: Interviews with Doctors Who Are Curing Cancer--And How to Prevent Getting It in the First Place. (The Dalek was included because, well, I was just feeling perverse when I took this picture.)

I can only say that, after having perused the next couple of chapters after Chapter 1, I can already feel my brain melting and oozing out through my ears, screaming as the neuron-necrosing stupidity liquifies it. I've also noticed that, by and large, this book is written in grade school level language with short chapters. This observation has led me to change my original plan, which was to blog this book chapter by chapter as I read it. Instead, I think I'll probably break the book up into chunks of 2-3 chapters at a time, with the exception of certain quacks whom she interviews, at least a couple of whom will deserve their own taste of not-so-Respectful Insolence. In the meantime, while my brain is recovering from the first onslaught, it occurs to me in retrospect that my first couple of posts on this book were rather haphazard because I didn't immediately realize that I could read the whole first chapter on the Random House website. Later, I found other aspects of Somers' story of her "whole body cancer" misdiagnosis. So I decided that I would take the first three posts I did, cobble them together, Frankenstein monster-style, add some more commentary, and make this post the "official" first installment of my project of blogging Somers' Knockout. I apologize if you're annoyed because you've seen parts of this before, both here and elsewhere, but I think it's important to start this project in a more informed, coherent fashion that I did. I also hope that there are enough changes and rearrangements that you will find this worth reading. Later this week will come the next installment, which will be all new; that is, if my brain survives.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

On why misogynists shouldn't mess with the Goddess...

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:00:43 -0500

...Isis shows us why by calling out the anti-vaccine movement in general and J.B. Handley in particular, for sexist attacks on Amy Wallace, who wrote the excellent article for WIRED about how the anti-vaccine movement endangers public health.

True, I did e-mail her for advice in letting feminist bloggers know about this nastiness, being interested in how so many women in the movement could tolerate such behavior from its male members, but Isis took it from there. (Warning, part of the post may be NSFW.)

Also calling out J.B. Handley and other members of the anti-vaccine movement for their misogyny was blog bud Abel Pharmboy. It's only fair to point out that he blogged this story before I did.

Read the comments on this post...

Dystonia from a flu vaccine? Almost certainly not.

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:00:01 -0500

Several of my readers have been writing in with links and stories about the case of Desiree Jennings, a 28-year-old cheerleader who was apparently healthy until sometime in August, when she received the seasonal flu vaccine. A typical news story on Jennings can be seen here:

I'm not a neurologist, which made me reluctant to take this on, but right from the beginning something didn't seem right. I had never heard of a case of dystonia that looked anything like the above, particularly the part where walking backwards reversed (if you'll excuse my word choice) her jerky motions or where she could run but not walk. Moreover, it seemed highly unlikely that a vaccine could cause such a problem. However, I didn't have the expertise to take this on; so I waited a while in the hope that someone who does have the expertise would do so eventually.

Fortunately, Steve Novella did. His observations:

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

A brief time out for self-congratulation and thanks...

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

I just looked over my statistics for the month of October 2009, and I was shocked. Pleasantly shocked, but shocked nonetheless.

Why do I say that?

I say that because traffic from October 2009 is more than twice the traffic from October 2008. Moreover, it's not an anomaly. Although there have been fluctuations in traffic over the last year, so far the trend has been steadily upward, so that I've more than doubled my traffic since this time last year. Not bad, not bad at all. Actually, it's more than that. It's friggin' unbelievable. If, when I started this thing nearly five years ago, someone had told me I'd eventually hit traffic levels as high as they are now, I'd have told him he's out of his mind.

Why traffic has increased so much over the last year, I have no idea. I haven't really been doing anything different than I've been doing all along, at least radical. Changes in this blog have been slow and evolutionary (as is appropriate), not revolutionary over the years, and I'm under no delusion that somehow I've gotten twice as good at blogging as I was a year ago. I'd love to think that, but clearly that's not true. Still, whatever the cause, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you, my readers. Whatever the reason, somehow there are a lot of you out there who like what I lay down on a daily basis here.

I only hope I'm managing to persuade a few mavens of pseudoscience, such as anti-vaccinationists, to come back over to the light of reason and science. Again, I'm under no delusion that I'm likely to have influence very many on the "other side," but if I've only influenced a handful it will have been worth it.

Read the comments on this post...

Submit! Submit to the Skeptics' Circle

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:00:00 -0500

It's almost here, and it's almost time!

The 123rd Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle is fast approaching. This time around it will be here on Thursday, November 5. That means skeptical bloggers out there don't have much time to get their best recent work to Colin at Blue Genes for inclusion.

Guidelines for what we're looking for when it comes to submissions to the Skeptics' Circle can be found here. Instructions for submitting to this week's Skeptics' Circle are here.

Don't let Colin down! Bury him in submissions! (Not literally, of course, which would be hard. How do you bury someone in electronic text?)

Read the comments on this post...

Best Halloween costume ever?

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:01 -0500

I'd say this is definitely a contender:

ADDENDUM: Sorry, I just assumed everyone knew what these guys are. If you don't, here are a couple of classic Sesame Street videos to demonstrate the Yip Yip Aliens in action:

Read the comments on this post...