The Panic Virus

When Seth Mnookin and his wife found out they were expecting their first child they got all sorts of unsolicited advice form friends and family about vaccines and their safety. He decided to investigate for his personal reasons and in the process felt it would be an intriguing topic for a book. In an interview he stated that his original intent was to just present the controversy. However, after finding that all of the evidence was on one side he turned the book into an expose’ on those that preach fear at the expense of logic, evidence and children’s safety. The Panic Virus is that book.

The anti-vaccination groups out there are really good at getting you to ignore the logic and the lack of evidence. They focus on a few heart breaking stories of kids who were diagnosed with autism at roughly the same time they were vaccinated and then try to get use to connect the dots and link the two. The stories are truly heart-breaking but no matter how sad they are that doesn’t prove that the vaccines caused these kids’ conditions. What makes Mnookin’s book stand out over the many others out there is that he fights fire with fire. Rather than just focus on the statistical and epidemiological evidence that shows absolutely no casual link with vaccines, Thimerosal or mercury; Mnookin bests the antivaxers at their own game. He tells much more emotional stories of children being crippled or dying of Polio, Pertussis and Measles because they were not vaccinated. Jenny McCarthy has stated that she is just fine with this kind of collateral damage.

The Panic Virus is a brilliant and timely history about the manufactured controversy about vaccine safety. From the initial Lancet report all the way to Dr. Wakefield’s complete and thorough discreditation, Mnookin shows that vaccines are safe and effective and do not cause autism.

My only criticism of the book is the same that I’ve had with others too. I have become so familiar with this topic that I was waiting for him to tell me something new. I‘ve grown used to reading articles daily on autism and vaccines. I have news aggregators send me any story with the word Andrew Wakefield in the body. But I had to take a step back and look at the book from the perspective of somebody not as familiar as I was. It is a great resource.

I encourage anybody who has an questions at all about the safety of vaccines to please read this before you hesitate to vaccinate your children. You should be convinced by the evidence that getting vaccinated is much safer than not vaccinated. And if that’s not enough the evidence of fraud, shoddy research, dishonesty, conflict of interest and foul play by the anti-vaccination community should sway you the rest of the way. And if there is still any doubt left in your mind the heart-breaking stories of children dying from easily preventable illness should completely tip the scales.

Bad Universe

So one of my favorite astronomers, yes I have more than one favorite astronomer, appears that he is getting a series based on his book and blog.

Very cool! I might have to actually get something besides broadcast TV.

Fear of Science Will Kill Us

Questions for my Intelligent Designer

1. Why did you invent so many ways for things to fly? Birds, insects and bats all have very different means of flying. Wouldn't it have been more intelligent to figure out which was the most efficient method and make everything fly the same way?

2. Why do dolphin fins, bat wings, and my hands all have very similar skeletal structure? What is so intelligent about making basically the same design perform three drastically different jobs?

3. As a man what purpose do my nipples serve? Don't get me wrong. I've kind of grown used to them. I'm just curious what you had planned for me to do with them since male mammals don't lactate.

4. Why is human reproduction so ridiculously inefficient? In her life time an average human female will produce several hundred eggs and only a very small percentage will ever be fertilized. Don't get me started with human males. Millions of sperm die for every one that wins the race.

5. Would it have hurt for humans to have those cool closable nostrils like seals and otters? I've never been a very good swimmer but if I had nostrils like that I could do a lot better.

6. And speaking of seals, if they're gonna spend so much time in the water, wouldn't it have made more sense for them to have blow-holes like whales and dolphins?

7. Why did I have to have my wisdom teeth pulled? They never came in all the way and even if they had, it's not like I have to chew on sticks to get to the soft stuff in the middle.

8. Why did you design my eyeball with the rods and cones behind all the blood vessels? Wouldn't it be more intelligent to put the blood vessels behind the photo-receptive cells?

9. What's the design advantage of making me breath and eat using the same tube? Was this just your way of giving Heimlich something to invent?

10. Why did you design so many thousands of fossils that look as if life was evolving? As an engineer when I design something I sign my work. You seem to have signed your work “Evolution”.

Nonsense Intolerance cont.

As I’ve stated before I have a pretty low tolerance for nonsense masquerading as science. Well last Thursday I hit DEFCON 4.
On the way home from work I stopped by the library to pick up a few books that I had on hold. I also noticed that Victoria had a few on the shelf too. So I picked them up. One of them was a DVD titled simply “Brain”. The cover looked like a National Geographic type program. It looked interesting. I even had a pleasant conversation the librarian about how interesting it looked. After dinner Victoria suggested that we sit down as a family and watch it.
It started off just fine. Slick computer graphics showed cutaways of the brain. They then moved over to interview scientists who were doing research on that particular part. The format kind of reminded me of the Universe series that we really love. So the format felt comfortable. The first half hour of the program was just fine. I take issue with a little bit of the ethics of using this type of brain science to improve combat forces but the science was well done. Then it took a turn off the deep end.
The last half hour was about ESP. They extensively interviewed the unremarkable cold-reader, John Edward and explored his so-called psychic ability as if it was a foregone conclusion. That’s when I really blew my top. The first step to investigating any phenomena is to see it the phenomena really exists. You don’t speculate as to how something works until you’ve determined that it works. But that is exactly what Dr. Dean Radin did. And they gave him the last ten minutes of the show to spout his nonsense.
I completely lost it during one scene. Radin had speculated that during one of his readings Edward’s heart rate would synchronize with his subjects. When he tested it and found that their heart rates did not synchronize he interpreted this clear defeat by claiming that he must be syncing with the person who had passed on. Unbelievable! His test failed completely and he interprets the results as a success. But not just any success, a success that is unfalsifiable. How in the world could we test to see if Edward is syncing with a person who has crossed over? Radin has obviously convinced himself that psychic phenomena is real and all of his results, positive or negative are interpreted to support that forgone conclusion. The kids were laughing at me by this point. I was not reserving any comment and they thought it was funny that I was yelling at the TV. “You do know that they can’t really hear you, don’t you, Dad?”
I was patiently waiting for the token skeptical response. They had it. It was about a 15 second shot of the cover of Skeptical Inquirer with overdubbing that said little more than some in the scientific community question Dr. Radin’s research. That's it? Something as controversial as psychics and you can only spare 15 seconds and one still graphic.
After the program was over Victoria noticed that the program was produced by the History channel. If there is a more inappropriately named TV channel I can’t think of it. A close second it ABC Family. What in the world does a program on ESP have to do with History? But this is the same station that has marathons on UFO stories, etc.
So afterword I took advantage of the teaching moment to talk to the kids about what psychics really do. I showed them a few youtube.com videos of psychics being tragically wrong and having no remorse about the consequences of their wild guesses. I then took out a deck of cards and showed them how I could steer the kids into picking the card I had chosen and making them think that they had chosen it. I then showed them a video of Dr. Richard Wiseman doing a psychic prediction and explained to them exactly how it works.
Hey I’d think it was really cool if ESP really existed. But it’ll take more than these con artists and their carefully selected rubes to prove it to me. Shame on the History channel for giving an once of credibility to these con artists and pretending that there is any scientific validity to ESP.

Denialism

Over the past year I've read several books on this theme. All too often people will ignore data and evidence that does not support their preset conclusions and opinions. Whether it's political, ideological, religious or just hard to swallow people resist accepting evidence that will require them to actually change their behaviour or way of thinking.
In Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives author and science journalist Michael Specter covers several specific areas where people do exactly that and become denialists. Whether it's the benefits of vaccines, the safety of genetically modified foods or the nonsense behind the whole vitamin and alternative medicine craze, Specter shows that time and again we ignore the data and the real evidence and in its place accept unverified personal stories from friends and co-workers. Compelling as they may be these personal allegories are just that. And they are poor substitutes for evidence.
Specter points out that denialism is an infection that knows no political restrictions. Conservatives and liberals alike are just as prone to denying overwhelming data when it doesn't support their political ideology.
One of the side effects of reading several books on the same topic is that I have a hard time distinguishing what I learned from what book. Several of the specific cases and evidences cited in this book were also cited in other books I've read. Parts of the book dragged a little for me but only because it was a re-reading of things I've already covered extensively.
One of the topics that I was surprised that Specter didn't cover in this book was global warming. He responded when interviewed on The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast and asked why he didn't devote a chapter to it. He wanted to restrict the topics he covered to areas where more people might be sitting on the fence. He wanted to only address the issues where he hopped that he could actually change peoples' minds. He went on to state that the science behind anthropogenic climate change was so conclusive that he didn't expect his book to change the opinion of anyone who still believed that it was not a reality. Even some of the most hardened skeptics have changed there mind on this topic when they just weighed the massive amount of evidence supporting it.
Denialism is a serious problem. I fear that the marginalizing of science and evidence and the demonizing of intellectualism is seriously hindering technological and social progress. If we really want to solve the major issues of the 21st Century we have to start behaving more rationally.

"If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence."
Bertrand Russell

I disagree with Russell on one slight point here. I've seen far too many times when people have clung to their beliefs even when the evidence was overwhelming.

Not again...

Take a second to read this article. It's good to see someone finaly give a skeptical report of facilitated comunication. FC is a cruel farce that just will not go away. In test after test after test it has been shown that the patient cannot answer simple questions when the facilitator does not know the answers. Show a patient a card with a word and a picture on it and even spell out the word for them and they can re-type the word with the facilitator’s assistance. Then take the facilitator out of the room, when another card is shown and the word spelled. Bring the facilitator back in and the patient cannot spell the word. The only reasonable conclusion here is the most obvious one, the facilitator is just using the patient’s hand like a Ouija board pointer and typing the word herself, not the patient. Since she didn’t see or hear the word she can’t answer the question.

This is a particular thorn in my side because as I’ve said before, my brother-in-law is severely autistic and primarily non-verbal. No single medical breakthrough would trill me more than the ability to sit down with him and have a meaningful conversation. Unfortunately, FC is not that breakthrough. I believe that most facilitators are self-deceived, but some of them know full well it is a scam and are selling parent’s false hope in order to make a buck. It really chaps my hide to see once again some idiot reporter give a totally credulous report of a non-medical breakthrough. An eight year old can look at what is going on here and see right past it, but somehow reporters at MSNBC who call themselves "Dr" are completely taken in.

The Men Who Stare at Goats

A few months ago I listened to an interview with the author Jon Ronson about his new documentary book The Men Who Stare at Goats. The interview was very lighthearted and so I thought the book would be a fun read. As I read one chapter after another what started out as a lighthearted view of some of the silly stuff that our tax dollars have paid for soon turned into a very disturbing expose’ of the insanity that goes on under the moniker of Special Ops.
The book is a story about Ronson’s investigation of the US military’s experiments on all sorts of pseudoscientific projects. Soon after Vietnam the military began to reconsider much of its fighting strategy. Nothing was taken off of the table. With the assistance of a few men with some downright crazy ideas they began to serious talk about the formation of a special ops battalion that had Jedi powers. They even referred to themselves as warrior monks and honestly believed that they could psychically influence their enemies to surrender just by using their mind, comforting colors and subliminal sounds. The most advanced of these “warrior monks” believed they could literally walk through walls and psychically stop the heart of an enemy just by concentrating hard enough, hence the title of the book. Ronson spent two years trying to track down the one guy who he was told had actually killed a goat by starring at it only to find out that the best he could do was to make a hamster behave oddly.
These chapters were funny and a little bit amusing. The later chapters took a far more serious tone. Rosnon shows that many of the very same people who thought they could star a goat to death were also behind a group that thought they could remote view, or psychically project their vision and get advance intelligence. One of these “viewers” left the military and started predicting all sorts of prophecies on am radio shows. Eventually one of his failed predictions led to the mass suicides of the members of the Heaven’s Gate cult.
Some of the more perverse of these psychic techniques were adapted by the more mainstream military and intelligence departments. Ronson interviews a British citizen who was captured by the US military and subjected to all sorts of torture and abuse for two years while he was held captive at Guantanamo Bay. Ronson was able to show a pretty convincing link between these activities and some of the original proposals set forth when they tried to for the battalion of “warrior monks”.
In the process of doing some background research and fact checking the book I noticed that this book is being made into a movie staring Ewan McGregor and George Clooney. The movie is billed as a comedy. It’d have to be a very dark comedy. Also none of the names of characters match the real people named in the book. I can only assume that the names were changed for the movie or that the movie will be only loosely based on the book.
My biggest criticism of the book was its lack of footnotes and sources. I have a big bias towards heavily footnoted books.
I have a big problem with people and organizations that don’t base their actions and opinions on facts and reason. This book is a bright light on those in the US Military who wish to wage war based on illogic, superstition and magical thinking.

An Open Letter to Larry King

Dear Mr King,
Tomorrow night you will be interviewing a very dangerous woman. Jenny McCarthy and her ridiculous stance against vaccines are endangering and have cost human lives. I would encourage you to cancel this interview and not to give her the pulpit to preach her nonsense to your audience. If a celebrity were to go on a campaign, writing book after book claiming that seat belts cause injuries it would be irresponsible for you not to call them out on it. That is exactly what Jenny McCarthy is doing except rather than life-saving seat belts it is the life-saving device vaccines that she has targeted for her expletive laced ire.

If you decide to still give her access to your prime time audience may I suggest a few questions?

1) Now that Dr. Andrew Wakefield has been proved to have serious conflict of interest problems as well having faked his data that supports the link between autism and the MMR vaccine, why are you continuing your campaign in spite of the massive evidence that you have been deceived by Dr. Wakefield?

2) Recently when questioned about the increase of measles and other vaccine preventable deaths you responded,
"I do believe sadly it’s going to take some diseases coming back to realize that we need to change and develop vaccines that are safe. If the vaccine companies are not listening to us, it’s their f___ing fault that the diseases are coming back. They’re making a product that’s s___. If you give us a safe vaccine, we’ll use it. It shouldn’t be polio versus autism."
Are you seriously blaming the vaccine producer for the death of a child that didn't even use the product? I have a headache but I haven't taken any aspirin. Is it therefore Bayer's fault that I have a headache? I don't follow your logic here.

3) Pittsburgh is currently having an outbreak of measles. What would you say to the mothers of those patients, "Hey, at least they're not autistic."? Have you visited the bedside of any of these victims who are dying as martyrs for your cause?

4) Are you familiar with the website Jennymccarthybodycount.com? Do you have any response to their claims?

5) The last time were on the show you gave a list of vaccines to one of the doctors present and asked if all of them were really necessary. He responded by asking you which of those diseases you would like your son to contract. You didn't answer his question then so I'd like to hear your answer now. Of all the vaccine preventable illnesses out there which would you willingly put your child at risk of contracting? Polio? Measles? Haemophilus influenzae type b?

6) Years ago you were rather vocal about your son being an Indigo Child, that he was the next step in human evolution and had an indigo colored aura. Do you think that history helps or hinders your credibility as you now try to go head to head with doctors, scientist and immunologists to tell them what really causes and cures autism?

7) I am truly grateful that your son's condition is improving and becoming more manageable. However rather than thinking that you have cured him of autism, is it possible that his condition hasn't really gotten better but, that you are just growing used to the routine and things are going smoother than at first? Have you also considered the possibility that he may have been misdiagnosed? Either of these seems much more likely than a Playboy centerfold with no medical training at all just discovered the cause and cure of autism.

Mr. King, any one of these questions would be a welcome change from the slow easy pitches over the middle of the plate for which you have become so notorious. I will be watching tomorrow and I look forward to reviewing your interview favorably. But considering CNN's past treatment of this issue I won't be holding my breath.

Michael

Trick or Treatment cont.

I’ve just finished reading Trick or Treatment. Since I’ve made it a little bit of a hobby to stay informed about the science or lack thereof behind many alternative treatments, I can’t really say that much of the information in the book surprised me. However, the thorough history of these treatments’ origins gave me a better understanding of why so many people choose to believe in these treatments even after the foundations that they are built on have shown to have no basis in fact or evidence.

Their evaluation was primarily limited to acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic and herbal medicines. Each was given a very good historical overview. Then they started looking into the actual trails to test each treatment. With most of them the treatments were found to have little to no effect beyond that of placebo. In evidence-based science research if you find an anomalous effect and to try to isolate that effect to test it the effect gets stronger as you increase your protocols and the test can be duplicated by other researchers. In nearly all of the tests of acupuncture, homeopathy and chiropractic the results were indistinguishable from placebo and any anomalous effects disappeared once the proper controls were in place. So clearly if these treatments are working at all they are not working because the water had a memory of the arsenic it used to contain, the innate intelligence can travel up and down the spine, or the chi’i can flow better along the meridians.

The one treatment they authors did find more effective than placebo was the herbal treatments. This was not, however, an endorsement. Unlike the other three treatments discussed in the book herbal treatments actually have active ingredients. Those active ingredients may indeed have positive effects. They also have side-effects. (I always get a kick out of the infomercials for homeopathic remedies that brag about having no side effects. Of course they don’t have any side effects. They have no effects at all.) The inconsistent dosages and lack of controls that would be put on these products otherwise make herbal treatments the most dangerous of the ones reviewed.

My personal concern is not that any of these treatments themselves would be harmful. The real danger comes from the fact that while the patient is busy trying these alternative treatments they are forgoing the evidence-based treatments that could really help them.

Rather than just seeming like a couple of guys who had an axe to grind the authors genuinely come across as open-minded seekers of evidence. In fact one of the authors used to be a practicing homeopath. He became disillusioned with his trade after he tried to recreate Hahnemann’s original experiment that was supposed to have cured malaria. After numerous trials he was forced to conclude that there must have been some mistake in Hahnemann's original work. Since that experiment was the foundational experiment in the whole “like cures like” philosophy of homeopathy, the author was forced to question the entire field. His research not only convinced him that homeopathy is just a placebo, it was a very expensive one to boot.

In the last chapters the book calls for stricter government control and labeling of all treatments that may take the place of traditional medicines. My libertarian views normally restrict me from endorsing big government solutions. However, these treatments clearly represent a danger to the taxpayers when they are taken in place of more tested, evidence-based treatments. I wouldn’t want the government to restrict them entirely, but I see no problem with stricter labeling laws.

Several years ago a guy I know was diagnosed with leukemia. He is an alternative medicine practitioner. He has gone to India to study several different forms of treatment. He is even a believer that the Earth has acupuncture meridians and that we can fix the climate problems by simply placing large needles in the Earth at exactly the right point. (I wish that last sentence was a joke, but it isn’t). As detached as his beliefs were I really though that he wouldn’t be around much longer once he was diagnosed with leukemia. The last time I spoke with him his leukemia was in full remission and it wasn’t because of any alternative treatment. It was because he took his doctor’s recommendation and had a very aggressive, mainstream treatment that included radiation treatment and chemotherapy. I am so thankful that he did not risk his own life with alternative treatments.

Note:
There are different ways to Romanize the pronunciation of the Chinese word 気. I’ve seen it spelled ki, qi, chi, and chi’i. for these posts I simply used chi’i because that was the one the authors chose. Technically it is pronounced 気.

Trick or Treatment

It's been a while since I've reviewed a book on my blog. Primarily, because I really haven't read much in the last couple months. I have been reading, but most of the books have been on how to play the guitar and not really good subject of book reviews. Victoria checked out a few book that she thought I'd like. Wanting a little break from the guitar, I started reading the first one yesterday.
Trick or Treatment is a very thorough study of several of the more popular trends in alternative medicine. The first chapter is a history of the scientific method and a lesson on how we discover what works and what doesn't. The authors focus on what they refer to as evidence-based medicine. All the anecdotes and sales pitches mean nothing if the treatments don't stand up to rigorous scientific testing. Lets put the superstition, snake oil and wishful thinking aside and focus strictly on the facts.
The remaining chapters of the book deal with the top four of alternative therapies; acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic and herbal remedies. So far I've only read the chapter on acupuncture. But if they handle the other chapters as thoroughly as they did acupuncture I know I will enjoy them.
I was very pleased that the authors did not start out with an agenda. Their only loyalty is to the evidence. Honestly, I was a little surprised that they had anything positive to say about acupuncture at all. After finding no evidence of the alleged mechanism of acupuncture, chi'i, I expected them to just conclude that the entire practice was based on a flawed understanding of human physiology. While they admitted there is no evidence of chi'i and that the very nature of acupuncture negates a true double-blind test they did say that in certain cases it does promote pain relief. Until somebody figures out a way to truly double-blind test acupuncture it may be impossible to tell weather this is a real effect of the treatment or if it is placebo.
I'll give a complete review after I finish the book. In a day and age when Jenny McCarthy is telling us to just trust her "mommy instinct" and not vaccinate our kids it is refreshing to read a book that bases its conclusions on evidence and not just emotion, anecdotal evidence and superstition.

Retraction

It appears that my praise of CNN was premature. Yesterday they posted every article they could dream up about Autism. And sure enough they jumped well into the world of logical fallacies and Fantasyland. Most of the views and opinions expressed on the 20 plus article “special report” were from parents. Although I sympathize with their emotions, their inability to detach themselves from the emotions involved biases their judgment. CNN was irresponsible in reporting so much opinion and supposition as if it were fact. Autism is a serious issue, yet rather than take it seriously CNN chose accept the conspiracy theories.

The poster child for illogical reasoning is Playboy Playmate, Jenny McCarthy. She didn’t even read her conspiracy theory websites completely before she rushed to judgment on her son’s autism. There has been a growing concern for decades that a preservative in vaccines, thimerosal has been a cause of autism. Study after study after study has shown no such link. Nevertheless, thimerosal has been removed from most vaccines since 2002 and the rate of autism has been steadily on the increase. This is statistical proof that this preservative had no effect on autism. McCarthy takes a quantum leap of logic and then claims that it’s the vaccine itself that caused her sons autism, even without the thimerosal.

The biggest logical fallacy I read in all of these articles is the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. A rough translation of the Latin is that since A happened after B, B must have caused A. Sometimes this correlation is correct so it seems logical. I broke my leg after falling 15 feet onto a pointy rock. I’m pretty sure that fall and that rock are what caused the break too. However sometimes this correlation is just that, a correlation. The sun rises in the east a few hours after I wake up. My waking up must cause the sun to rise. I realize that sounds absurd, but read these articles and see how many people think that their child’s vaccine caused their autism just because they both happened at about 18 months. For the record, I know at least one autistic man who did not get vaccinated and yet still showed symptoms at 18 months. Using the same logic that these parents did I could make the claim that his lack of a small pox vaccination caused his autism.

I was rather surprised at the number of cases where children had autism as well as multiple other disorders. Multiple stories referred to autism as a “life threatening condition”. This surprised me because in my personal experience Denny is fit as a fiddle physically. McCarthy’s son, as well as others, have seizures and other serious conditions. Little to no effort was made to distinguish between these people’s autism and their other conditions. We have a good friend whose young son may be autistic. I can imagine that she would be scared to death if she read these articles without any other balancing source of information. She’d probably think that her son would be walking around having seizures all the time and wearing diapers for the rest of his life.

Most of the articles relegate the token, logical, scientific point of view to the last couple chapters if they said anything at all. Yes, fear mongering, illogic and softball questions from Larry King are all still alive and well at CNN. A few more articles this and you may top Fox’s ratings for the "Alien autopsy". I hope you guys sell the advertising spots you were looking for. That’s all this autism “special report” looked like to me. I stopped getting my news from mainstream sources like CNN years ago. Sure, I still use CNN to let me know what’s on the radar. But then I dig deeper before I rush to judgment. Even though many sources have abandoned the concept, it is still possible to find factual, logic based information with a little something that the mainstream has abandoned, journalistic integrity.

Wikipedia actually has a very factual and logical page on Autism. If you're concerned about the public editing aspect of Wikipedia feel free to browse the 100s of cited sources.

SHAM

Why are Americans so dysfunctional? You'd think with the thousands of books, radio show, and TV programs that try to teach us how to help ourselves become better people that eventually we would start to show some signs of progress. But where is the progress? In Sham: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless Steve Salerno makes a very compelling case that the self help actualization movement, SHAM, is actually causing America to be more dysfunctional.
Think about this for a second. What do these people all have in common; Laura Schlesinger, Phil McGraw, Tony Robbins, and John Gray? Well for starters all four have written books on how to have happy marriages and they've condemned extra-marital affairs. All four are also guilty of the behaviors that they preach against. Salerno goes into extensive detail into every major player in this movement. Far from just being a series of ad hominem attacks, Salerno shows considerable evidence that these gurus have no desire to practice what they preach. They simply want to make themselves rich by pontificating their opinions to anybody who will listen. The multitude of other would be gurus are waiting for the Midas touch of SHAM endorsements in order to make it big; a mention or appearance with the career-make herself, Oprah.
Salerno's most damning evidence that SHAM is exactly that, a sham, comes from his own experience working in the publishing industry. He found research that determined the most likely person to buy a new book in this genre' is somebody who had bought a similar book in the last few months. This begs the question; if the previous book was so effective then why do they need another? And another? And another? This is truly an industry that depends on repeat customers. Advice, advice and more advice yet nobody ever gets healed.
I've never quite understood continuing to pay for a complete lack of results. Why do we accept a lack of result in some businesses and excuse it in others? If I took my truck into the shop because it didn't start and they took my money and gave it back and it still didn't start I'd pitch a fit to get my money back and find another shop. However, if somebody buys a book that "guarantees" a happy marriage, weight loss, or balanced chakras Americans seem to just keep going back to the same gurus, throwing money at them and in the end just getting further and further from the stated goals of the books they are buying. Why? I just don't understand.
We live in a world where people accept Jerry McCarthy's "mommy instinct" over overwhelming scientific evidence that vaccinations do not cause autism, Laura Schlesinger’s advice to stay close to your family even though her own mother was dead and decaying at home for weeks before Schlesinger even found out, Tony Robbins’ advice on how to have a happy marriage that was published while he was having an extra-marital affair and divorcing his wife, etc. etc. etc.
Personally I think that the whole concept of this genre' is based in selfishness. Most of the books are about "me". What do "I" deserve? What's wrong with "me". How can "I" fix this? This whole concept seems counter-intuitive to me. I usually feel better when I'm not so focused on myself. Next time you feel like you need a self-help book go out and do something for somebody else. Go give blood, volunteer to read to kids at a local elementary school, bake some cookies for the neighbors, buy lunch for a coworker, find a charity that you can spend a little time helping out. This is just my advice but it has worked well for me. Hey maybe I could get a book deal out of this.
This book is a bright spotlight that has lit up an industry that has been operating in relative shadows for far too long. It's about time that we started demanding results from this product. And if we don't get the promised results we should find somewhere else to get our advice.

Global Warming Denial

As I was reading my Sunday School lesson for this week I first came across the following phrase in 1 Nephi 19:23
"...for I did liken all scriptures unto us, that it might be for our profit and learning."
We are taught that we shouldn't just think about what was going on at the time these words were written but that we should also apply the same lessons and logic to our day. So, with this in mind I continued on reading the scriptures that the guide had suggested. Sometimes I find scriptural support for my political opinions but typically it's not nearly as direct as this one.
Mormon 8:31
"Yea, it shall come in a day when there shall be great pollutions"... "when there shall be many who will say, Do this, or do that, and it mattereth not, for the Lord will uphold such at the last day. But wo unto such, for they are in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity."
Now let me think. If I liken this scripture to our day, who could this scripture possibly be speaking about? What group of people is out there and inspite of the "great pollution" is claiming that it mattereth not what we do about it?
I've always had very little patience for those who want to deny that global warming is happening. Apparently I'm in good company.

Fantasy Prone Personality

A few months ago I was surfing around on the Coast to Coast AM website. It’s great entertainment. You know the routine, Ghost pictures, alien autopsies, mummified mermaids. I thought it was a kind of funny that there were very few kooky ideas that didn’t make it onto the site.
I also checked a few of the external links from the site. If I was at a ghost hunting site they would have links to Bigfoot sites. The Bigfoot sites would have links to alien abduction site and 9-11 conspiracy sites. It was almost as if in order to believe in ghosts you had to accept the whole gambit of weird ideas. It’s very rare that I would find somebody who believed one woo-woo idea and rejected the rest.
I read a paper written by a neurologist that described something called the Fantasy Prone Personality (FPP). The idea is that when we were children there is part of our brain that creates fantasies. Perhaps the rest of our brain vetting out if our fantasies are real or not teaches us rationality. Perhaps this is the source of creativity in our brains. At any case most of us outgrow this belief in fantasy as a child. But to varying degrees many of us do not.
Dr. Novella points out that people with FPP are more susceptible to hypnosis and have a strong desire to believe things without evidence. I think this is exactly why so many of these kooky ideas seem to be joined at the hip.
What brought this up is a local talk radio show that a friend of the family has been doing for a few years. I heard about The Dr. Chris Green Show a couple a years ago and just recently decided to listen to it. Dr. Chris seems to be suffering from FPP. He believes that the entirety of mainstream medicine is a global conspiracy. He recommended that a woman with ovarian cancer come in to his office for a homeopathic detox rather than get a biopsy. On September 11th his whole show was pretty much and “amen” to Alex Jones’ 9-11 conspiracy theories. Well today he made the claim that Autism is a side-effect of Irritable Bowel Syndrome which is caused by the MMR vaccine. If I didn’t know better I’d just laugh and accept that this is parody and satire. It isn’t.
I suppose that listening to things like this can be intriguing. I personally am much more intrigued by reality. Yesterday I watched Monster of the Milky Way: A Super-massive Black Hole. Chris can keep all his woo-woo doctrines. I’m much more fascinated by these types of factual tales.

Live and Let Live?

Yesterday my wife and I had a rather awkward situation. While eating lunch with our daughter an acquaintance bumped into us. In the course of the conversation we told her that Rachel has had a stubborn ear infection. This acquaintance then proceeded to go on for several
uncomfortable minutes criticising mainstream medicine and encouraging
us to go visit a chiropractor for her ear infection. I was as
respectful as i could be, but politely said that some of the "adjustment"
procedures used have been proven to be very dangerous especially on
children and that we would stick to what our doctor recommends. Her
family honking for her to hurry up and end the conversation was a
welcome disruption. I was having a good day and just didn't feel like
debating whether or not chiropractic was as real science or not in a
Chick-fil-a playground.

For the most part I take a live and let
live philosophy when it comes to others' beliefs, no matter how far
fetched or different from mine that they may be. Unless I can see any
real damage or harm that could come from their believes I tend to
respect them. It is only after they feel the need to "convert" me totheir beliefs that I feel the need to criticise them.
Now here comes the rub. At what point is it acceptable for me to challenge somebody else's
faith that I don't share? Perhaps it's a Christian Scientist friend
whose child is very sick from something that a simple treatment of
penicillin would cure. Or maybe a Jehovah's Witness who is refusing
blood products. Or a friend is recommending that somebody forgo a
surgical procedure for cancer in favor of homeopathic treatments. Or
maybe it's simply resorting to prayer instead of other treatments.

All of these are fictitious examples, some more than others, but I gave them just to illustrate the seriousness of my real dilemma.

At what point is it immoral for me to sit back and not voice my opinion
and try to help out, knowing that it will challenge their faith and
potentially our relationship?
I have yet to meet anybody who agrees
entirely with my philosophy on everything and I personally hope I never
do. What in the world would we talk about? But I am curious about when
it is appropriate for me to voice my concerns about others'beliefs and when it might be more moral for me to not antagonize my friends and family.
Like
the example I've shared this has become an issue several times for me
in the not to distant past. There were times when I stayed quiet that I
wish I had spoken up and there weretimes when I spoke up that I wish I had just not interfered.
Advice?