Martin Gardner

When I was about 10 or 12 I went to my Dad’s office with him at CDC. He had to work on a project and I thought it was cool to hang out at his office in a real laboratory. I have a feeling that I was a lot like Noah an I was probably asking him far too many questions. Rather than just shut me out completely he looked for something that would keep my interest and yet still allow him to have an independent thought. He had a book on his desk that he handed me to read while I waited for him to finish his project.
The book was Aha Gotcha by Martin Gardner. It was a really fun read about several mathematical paradoxes and logical fallacies. Gardner used some very simple stick figures to illustrate each problem. This made it very appealing for a geeky little boy. The science was very deep but the cartoons made it fun to read.
This book was my first introduction to the concept of critical thinking. I frequently fall back on the lessons I learned by reading it. Gardner teaches us to not accept things at face value and look a little deeper into the problem and try to find the real solution and not just the paradox that you first perceive. I get a little chuckle when I see a magic trick and realize that I know the core of trick thanks to Gardner.
I was saddened by the news that Martin Gardner had died this weekend. I need to be sure that I do my part to make sure his legacy lives on. Yesterday I pulled my dad’s copy of Aha Gotcha off the shelf and thumbed through it. I’m gonna make a point to share it with my kids tonight.

Dad, Can we listen to another one of those “I’m Brian Dunning” programs?

I don’t remember what exactly prompted it, but Sunday evening we were on the way home from my mom’s house and the kids got started talking about evolution. At some point one of the younger two said that we evolved from monkeys. Then they got into a debate over whether it was monkeys or apes. I had to interject and tell them both that they were on the right track, but that neither one of them were technically correct. I did my best to explain that monkeys, apes and humans all had a common ancestor, but that it wasn’t a modern ape or monkey.
I got my wife hooked on listening to the Skeptoid podcast a year or so ago. She suggested that we let the kids listen to Brian Dunning’s explanation of this common misconception. So with a little searching on the iPhone I downloaded a few episodes. The kids enjoyed the first so I just let it run through a couple episodes. It made for a very nice and educational ride home.
Well yesterday I had Noah and Eve in the car and I had the radio on. Noah piped up and asked, “Dad, Can we listen to another one of those ‘I’m Brian Dunning’ programs?”. Not to be one to stand in the way of a 9 year-old and a 7 year-old who are curious about science, I handing him the iPhone and let him listen to a few episodes. After we got home he kept my phone and ran upstairs and listened to a few more. He was really excited that Brian actually had a video podcast too. So he probably spent and hour watching and listening to Skeptoid and InFact before he went to bed.
I listen to a lot of podcasts, particularly a lot of podcasts that focus on science and skepticism. I enjoy them all but several of them are not safe for children. It’s a shame because as I’ve demonstrated with this little story there is a market for at least a few kids. I want to thank Brian Dunning for doing such a great podcast and keeping it accessible to all ages. I encourage you all to check it out too, no matter how old you are.

Fear of Science Will Kill Us

How Stuff Doesn't Necessarily Work

Years ago I had a friend try to explain to me how a clutch-less manual transmission works. I wasn’t quite getting the picture so I googled it. The first website that was suggested was http://www.howstuffworks.com/. The explanations were sufficiently “dumbed down” that you didn’t need to be a mechanical engineer to understand them, but technical enough that they satisfied my curiosity. The pictures and even the animations worked very well to give supporting explanations and imagery. So I bookmarked the site on my browser and began using it for just about any topic when I needed to break things down to more easy to understand terms. I was even pleasantly surprised that their section on telecommunications has come in handy in explaining to other engineers certain aspects of our job. So I signed up for their email newsletter. A couple times a week I would get updates to the site. It was a neat way to keep up on the latest technology and other topics.
Well I recently sent an email requesting that they unsubscribe me from that newsletter. I don’t know if they hare under new management or what but the focus of the site seems to have drastically changed. I’m kind of a stickler for certain things. Staying on topic is one of them. I don’t like it when politics strays into religion. Nor do I like it when religion strays into politics. I got annoyed when a channel called the History channel started airing programs about UFOs and ghosts. How in it world does either qualify as history? I now have a very similar criticism with howstuffworks.com.
In my mind, before you give any pixel space at all to a topic on a site called How Stuff Works you have the burden of proving that it works. So I really got annoyed when last week they did a feature on the most compelling ghost photos. Huh? Why in the world would this qualify as how stuff works? So I got poking around and also found that they had a whole sections on complimentary and alternative medicine, the paranormal, and even reincarnation and other religious and mythological topics. I decided to read a few to see if they gave more than just the token sceptical treatment on the last few paragraphs. In a few instances they did give some skeptical treatments. One even gave a link to a lecture by Michael Shermer. But I still felt they gave these topics too credulous coverage.
In today’s page they had a cover story about acupuncture and hypnosis treatments for infertility. The benefits to infertility are only based on the fact that hypnosis and acupuncture reduce stress levels. Perhaps I missed it but nowhere in the article did they point out that just about anything else that lowers your stress levels would have that same effect, yoga, meditation, or just playing with a puppy.
I’m not gonna be one of those who disingenuously claims that I’m “never gonna go to this site again.” But now that they have tipped their hand and shown a desire to post anything that’ll get them web hits, regardless of weither it "works" or not, I can’t say I’d endorse it with the same enthusiasm as I used to. And they definitely will not be the final authority on any of my research from now on.

For Good Reason

One of my favorite podcasts lately has been Point of Inquiry. DJ Grothe has great guests and he does a great job of showing multiple different approaches to rational thinking. So it was with mixed emotions that I heard the news that DJ would now be President of the James Randi Education Foundation. I suspected that this would mean fewer episodes of Point of Inquiry.
Well I was pleasantly surprised to see DJ is hosting a new podcast for the JREF called For Good Reason. Check it out. I just finished listening to it and I enjoyed it. This episode had an interview with James Randi about the future of his organization as well as some information about some scams that have hit the news lately. I don’t know if DJ will be able to continue to be able to host both podcasts but I look forward to future episodes.
One small disappointment: In the intro to the podcast there is a segment by Jamie Ian Swiss. It’s brilliant but has a few not safe for work words. I loved the podcast but would have loved it more if I could have been able to recommend to my kids and family members without having to give this caveat. I think many podcasts in this genre disqualify themselves from a large audience, school children, by not exercising a little restraint when it comes to their language.

Appeal to Anti-Authority

If you’ve been following my blog for more than a few posts you’ll know that periodically I like to talk about logical fallacies. I just think it’s helpful to recognize the flaws in our thinking and make sure that we understand why the logic is incorrect and how to recognize it.
A commonly used logical fallacy is the appeal to authority. Just because somebody with authority in one field voices his opinion in a field outside his expertise does not make him an authority in that field. I’ve grown quite weary of the numerous Albert Einstein quotes being used to support things besides physics. His opinions on politics and religion hold no more weight than yours or mine. His opinions on physics however, are within his expertise and hold a little more weight. But even then there should be evidence to back up his claims and not just a pronouncement by a famous scientist.
What has me upset lately is that I see that many people are embracing an odd variation of this fallacy. I’ll call it “appeal to anti-authority”. In its simplest form the more credible somebody’s authority and evidence the more likely they are to be wrong. And the converse is also true. The more humble somebody’s experience the more likely they are to be right. Take this ad as an example. The advertiser is asking us to not trust our dentist, the real authority, and instead trust a single mom’s procedure to whiten teeth.
I just don’t know how to even respond to this twisted anti-logic. Should I now avoid going to my local garage when I have car trouble? Perhaps I should seek out somebody who explicitly has not had any training in Toyota Tundras to fix my check engine light. Yet this is exactly what many people do and it really scares me. Rather than trusting thousands of immunologists and getting vaccinated they are trusting the anecdotes of actors and putting kids at risk of catching serious diseases. Rather than trusting the evidence presented by thousands of climatologists they choose to believe the talking heads, most of whom don’t even have degrees in journalism let alone anything that grants then any authority on scientific matters.
I saw a series of books the other day at the library. The all started with the line “The Politically Incorrect Guide to…” I find it very sad that more and more Americans are accepting something being politically incorrect as proof that it is true. Something being politically accepted or politically incorrect is irrelevant to the truthfulness of the claim. What does the evidence say? I don’t care who believes the claim or who is offended by it.

“...the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. “
Carl Sagan

Baloney Detection Kit

This is a very well done video that explains the basics of skepticism. Thanks to teacherninja for point this out to me.

Vigilant Realism

A few weeks ago Victoria pulled me aside to watch and interview with Barbara Ehrenreich on The Daily Show. Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. A few years ago Ehrenreich was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was overwhelmed with well meaning people telling her to avoid any negative emotions and to stay positive. She began to look deeper into this cult like attitude that so many people have that you can jinx your health, relationships, and your carrier if you don’t always keep a positive attitude.
Not many of us enjoy being around a cynic all the time. Don’t mistake Ehrenreich’s criticism of the giddy optimism promoted by so many as cynicism. It isn’t. She merely points out that being unrealistic about things can be far worse than just the occasion outward sign of frustration of negativity.
Last month while reading Emotional Awareness the Dalai Lama and Paul Ekman pointed out that optimism can be just as destructive as pessimism if it prevents us from seeing events as they really are. Ehrenreich builds on this theme and shows case after case where people have been deluded by their own optimism. She goes in dept to point out how destructive this mindset can be. Blinded by optimism we set reason and rational reactions aside.
This book pulled from and added to many of the books and issues that I’ve been studying for the last few years. She tackled many of the peddlers of irrational optimism like, Oprah, Rick Warren, Joel Olsten, Zig Ziglar and many others.
Unfortunately we live in a time when a book that is literally about nothing more than wishful thinking is a best seller and celebrities and actors are seen as authorities on just about any topic just because they can share a personal anecdote. I’m sorry a personal anecdote is where science starts, not where it ends. Just because Suzanne Summers feels better after a colonic doesn’t make it science and foregoing real treatments can kill you with or without a positive attitude.
I really enjoyed seeing a book that was so passionately pro-science and anti-magical thinking get such good press. I couldn’t put it down.

“A vigilant realism does not foreclose the pursuit of happiness. In fact, it makes it possible.” Barbara Ehrenreich

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.

Lie To Me

So I’m typically well behind the curve when it comes to television I simply don’t watch enough to stay up to date. I typically prefer reading over TV hands down. On the rare occasion that I get some free time that I want to blow in front of the tube I am reminded of the Bruce Springsteen song “57 Channels and Nothing On.” Being so colossally underwhelmed by what I’ve found on TV hasn’t really inspired me to give it much of a second chance.
At my lovely bride’s behest I sat down and watched a couple episodes of Lie To Me. I have always been a fan of the work of Dr. Paul Ekman. I think his analysis of facial expressions and human emotion is absolutely amazing. Years ago I read his book Emotions Revealed. I found the universal nature of human expression to be highly fascinating. I didn’t realize it at the time but the lead character in Lie To Me was deliberately modeled after Ekman. In fact, the entire premise of the show revolves around Ekman’s research.
The characters and story are, of course, fictionalized but I think this is a very effective way to put real science out in front of a popular audience. In the few episodes I’ve seen I’ve found the characters to be very deep and relatable. Without this any story would get boring quickly no matter how accurate the science. I’ve blogged before about how real science is truly marketable and how irritated I get when bad science is used as a lazy excuse to tell a story. I’ve truly been impressed with how this series has stuck to real science to tell their story in a very entertaining way.

Quote of the Day

"There is no place for dogma in science. The scinetist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any error."
J. Robert Openheimer

Junk Science

I think science is very cool. I’m not talking about technology or any of the applications of what science has discovered. Sure airplanes are cool. MRI machines are cool and on and on, but what I’m talking about is the process of science. I’m fascinated by the fact that human beings have developed a process that we can learn test and get answers to things that we didn’t understand before we started.
I reject the popular concept of scientists as just a bunch of know-it -alls sitting around gloating about everything that they already know. As Tyson said in my post the other day, “If you aren’t at the drawing board every day you aren’t in the game!” Science isn’t the list of facts that we collect it’s the process for learning those facts.
In Junk Science: How Politicians, Corporations, and Other Hucksters Betray Us By Dan Agin Ph. D., Agin shows many of the ways that science gets perverted by politicians, the media, religious leaders and the scientists themselves. The book is very thorough and covers many of the recent popular scientific discoveries and media controversies. Agin gives his take on what real science is behind the discoveries and then explains where and when those involved went from real science to bad science and then to junk science.
He make clear distinctions too. In order for it to be called real science it has to follow all of the rules. It puts away presuppositions, uses strict controls to avoid unintentionally biasing the results, is open and encourages others to duplicate their process and find any mistakes, and many other things. Bad science is frequently just when some of those protocols and procedures get sloppy. If the input gets sloppy the output can no longer be trusted.
Most of the book focused on the last category, junk science. All too frequently people with agendas other than honest discovery use a process that some observers mistake for science. My daughter gets a kick out of these so-called Ghost Hunters who walk around with insterments they don't really know how to use and then when something, anything happens that they don't understand they call it, "something significant". Sometimes these people have financial motives for going to the dark side(Andrew Wakefield and the Anti-vaccination movement) sometimes religious motives (Michael Behe and the Discovery Institiute) and frequently political motives (the Global Warming denialists). But regardless of their motives they all too frequently start with their conclusion and then look for evidence to prove it. This is backwards. With this attitude they are no longer doing science. They are doing junk science.
Again believes as I do that science deserves more respect than it gets in the public perception. I worry that in many ways we are going backwards. We are allowing religion and politics to define and even to trump science. I think that all three can have a place in a civilized society. I have no problem with a civilized debate on how to respond to a scientific discovery. But let’s not corrupt the science or deny it just because it may not be morally or politically what we’d like to do.
Science is just now starting to understand some processes that may have profound impacts on humanity. Stem cell research, for instance. Now I understand many of the ethic and moral concerns that have been raised by those opposing it. I agree that this should be the subject of vigorous debate. But leave the science alone. It stands outside the debate and should not be a part of it. Years ago doctors discovered a link to testosterone and hair loss. Identical twins where one had been castrated and the other had not the intact twin lost his hair and the castrated twin did not. Now is anybody recommending castration as a way to stop hair loss? Not that I’m aware of. You see in that case we had the science and we understood it. But we simply chose not to act upon it for social, political, or ethical reasons. But the science was not corrupted to make the arguments. In my opinion we need to have similar respect for the science behind many of the issues that are happening today. We can’t even begin to have a decent political discussion on global warming because so much effort is being spent on denying the science. The same goes for stem cells and several other top hot button issues. Let’s take the first step and accept the science as valid. Then we can have an honest discussion about how to react to the discoveries or even if we need to react at all.
It took me a while to get through this book, primarily because it is so thorough. I have no criticism at all of his points or his logic. If you’d like to read more on this subject I’d recommend reading Voodoo Science by Robert Park first. It isn’t quite as though but it’s easier to read and covers many of the same themes. Then come back and read Junk Science.

Argument From Ignorance

DragonCon with Aaron

Last Saturday, Aaron and I went down to DragonCon. It’s a science-fiction, fantasy and pop culture convention. As I grow older I don’t enjoy crowds nearly as much as I used to. So I have avoided these types of scenes for quite sometime. (I’ve been more claustrophobic at a movie theater than I’ve ever been in a cave.) However, a few years ago I got involved with an online community of skeptics, critical thinkers and rationalists. Piggybacked with all the actor autograph sessions, how to make cool costume classes and Dungeons and Dragons game sessions they a have a science and skepticism track too. This is only the second year for it and I wanted to get a chance to meet and talk with some of the folks I’ve been emailing, blog commenting, facebooking, listen to their podcasts and otherwise internet stalking for the last several years. So I braved the crowds and the chaos and Aaron and I went down.

I could only manage to squeeze in one day of the lectures so we were running back and forth to make sure that we saw the ones I wanted but I also had to make sure that Aaron didn’t feel like I was forcing him to sit through something he felt was boring. So I had to throw in several hours of shopping for costumes and looking at mangas and comic books. That was actually very fun too, but I was pleasantly surprised that Aaron had such a good time hanging out with me at the skeptical events and lectures.

The first lecture that we attended was Seth Shostak from the SETI institute. I’ve been listening to his podcast, Are We Alone for a few years. I’ve seen him on Colbert Report and so I knew that he’d be entertaining. Seth did a great job of explaining the “real” search for aliens and really showed that science and reality can but just if not even more interesting than the science fiction being show in neighboring rooms of the same hotel.

Next we saw Richard Saunders do a great little presentation targeted at teaching kids how to be critical thinkers. They did a live dowsing experiment and Aaron actually got to participate. I was very impressed with the relatively simple way that they showed the importance of making sure that any tests and experiments are blinded. Then they showed the added layer of making the test double blind. Saunders did a great job of making skepticism seem fun. All too often skeptics get portrayed as being cynics. Saunders and everybody else did a great job of debunking that notion.

Between lectures I was able to talk to the folks at the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. I would have loved to have stayed through Sunday to have seen their live taping of their podcast but I just couldn’t fit it into my already hectic schedule. I thanked them for saving me from talk radio. I like listening to news and information rather than just listing to music while I work and years ago their podcast was one of the first that I found to fill the void after I started boycotting the noise, illogic and repetition coming from talk radio.

The last lecture before we heeded home was a panel discussion With Seth Shostak, Joe Nichol, and Phil Plait that was moderated by Pamela Gay. Each panelist talked for about ten minutes about their own area of expertise and then opened the floor for questions. The questions were the most enjoyable part of the discussion. A few folks from the regular DragonCon crowd had wandered in and I’m not sure it was exactly what they expected. The phrase “alien hunter” was in the lecture description. All the members of the panel did a great job of explaining that it’s not that we don’t believe, belief has nothing to do with it. We just haven’t seen enough evidence to convince us that flying saucers are real.

Shostak made the comparison of aliens visiting Earth to Spaniards visiting America. 50 years after the Columbus everybody in America had mounds of evidence that Spaniards were here. It’s been 50 years since the first flying saucer and alien abduction stories jumping into the culture. Why don’t we have a comparable body of evidence? I thought the analogy was perfect and actually rather funny.

I knew that I would enjoy the skeptic events, but I was again, really surprised how much Aaron enjoyed them. Victoria and I have always been science geeks. We hardly watch any TV and the shows the kids really like are educational stuff on PBS. We check out Nova videos from the library. Even the few fiction series that we watch have a high level of science and rationality to them. I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised that Aaron would enjoy it. After all he’s been hanging out with me for the last 15 years. I guess I just didn’t realize that so much was rubbing off.

Idiot America

Well I finally finished reading Charlie Pierce’s Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. Life got in the way of my reading schedule and in spite of how good the book was I had a hard time fitting it into my schedule.
After the first introductory chapters Pierce really got in stride and set aside much of the humor in favor of just a realistic portrayal of several different examples of America surrendering to emotion and what feels right rather than what actually was right. Whether it’s a dinosaur museum with saddles on the dinosaurs so they would be Biblically correct, a room full of terrorism experts whose opinion on Iraq was completely ignored because it didn’t fit the politics, an Island in Alaska that is literally disappearing because of global warming, a Supreme Court Justice referencing a fictitious T.V. character as evidence to support his position on torture, etc, etc, Pierce shows that somehow we’ve gotten things all screwed up. We’ve been mistaking religion for science, science for politics, and politics for entertainment.
This book really hit a nerve with me because I like to look at all issues objectively. I try to look at both sides of the issue before I take position. And even once I take a position I try stay flexible enough to change that position if more evidence arises. Lately I’ve been in a few internet and email discussions about politics and in every case the hardest people to have a rational discussion with were those that had put things in the wrong order. Just like in any conversation you have o at least agree on which language we are going to speak. You can’t have a science discussion is one party wants to use the language of religion, on the language of politics and the other the language of science. It would be just as hard if the three parties were speaking French German and Japanese. Yet time and time again you see exactly these arguments being made. Pierce effectively demonstrates the problem with this type of reasoning.
The scariest parts of the book are when experts in a certain field are called in for initial consultation and then quickly ignored when their advice conflicts with the conclusion that they had already made. The most dramatic example of this was when Al Qaeda experts we asked to provide justification for invading Iraq and they told the Pentagon that Iraq would be the wrong target. They were dismissed and their opinion was not sought again.
My biggest criticism with the book was that it did have a strong liberal slant. Much of this was unavoidable since any critique of government would be dominated by the party that is in charge. Although I do believe that the Republicans have been most guilty of forcing the evidence to fit their pre-drawn conclusion there is also plenty of blame to throw around. I can think of several examples of politicians on the other side of the aisle making similar errors in reasoning, many times on the same issues that Pierce describes. Anytime an author comes across overly sympathetic for one side and overly critical of the other he looses a little bit of credibility in my opinion. To be fair he did criticize some liberals, Jesse Jackson for instance, but the bulk of the criticism was at conservatives. I would have also liked for him to have examined the cult of the celebrety. Jenny McCarthy is a prime example. Her autism activism is seriously diverting attention away from those who really do know what they're talking about and peolpe are dying becasue of it.
I’d recommend this book to anybody who wants to better understand some of the flawed decision making that goes on in our country. Parts of it will have you laughing, parts will have you crying, and parts will have you fuming made. And sometimes all this happens in the same paragraph.

Autism's False Prophets

The book currently on my reading list is about a subject very close to me. The book is Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine and the Search for a Cure by Paul A. Offit M.D. To begin with, my father was a microbiologist at CDC and we used to discuss his work a lot. I even did a science fair project using some of the data that CDC collected. Although I am far from being an immunologist, I do have a working knowledge of the theory and the processes. So when Offit describes certain aspects of his work I understand the concept pretty quickly. Secondly, for the last fifteen years or so I’ve had a personal interest in the search for a cure for Autism. My brother-in-law is autistic. So this field is not just an academic pursuit for me. It’s somewhat personal.
If you are not familiar with the controversy around autism this book would be an excellent primer. Though far more than just a primer, it goes into great detail of the history of vaccines, the testing they do to insure and keep them safe, and the ongoing checks and balances in the field. In comparison to the patient, detailed, extensive research done on vaccines those who proclaim that vaccines are unsafe appear at best to be amateurs who are letting personal profit, opinion, bias, or just an unrealistic optimism cloud their judgment and research. Far from just being ad hominem attacks on his opponents, Offit takes each study and points out the flaws, deviations from protocol, biases and conflicts of interest.
Offit does an amazingly thorough job of explaining the big picture concept of vaccinations. If you think that the airplane, the internet, cars or any other technical marvel has most changed our world in the last century, Offit will convince you that they all come in as distant seconds in any comparison that includes vaccines. Quite literally, many of us would not be here today if it were not for the life-saving ability of vaccines.
There is a group of people out there who base their opinions on emotion, flawed research, conspiracy theories and the hope against hope that they can find a cure. While I share their frustration, I deplore their tactics. Offit details where many of these groups sidestep logic and proper scientific procedure and truly join the ranks of the lunatic fringe. Jenny McCarthy self describes those on her side as an “angry mob”. The prologue to the book details several of the death threats that he and his family have received in response to him testifying in favor of vaccines. How ironic that those claiming to be all about saving lives are threatening the lives and safety of an immunologist and his children.
To spoil the ending for you; there is zero correlation between the MMR vaccines and autism. None. Zero. There is zero correlation between the preservative Thimerosal and autism. None. Chelation therapy is expensive and deadly and does not cure autism. Vaccines work. They save countless lives every single year.
If you get your news on this subject from Oprah, Jenny McCarthy, politicians with an agenda, or your Homeopath you will likely disagree with most of this book. However, if you prefer to trust respected scientist in the field, decades of research, and thorough evidence-based research you will enjoy reading this book. Offit won’t convert Jenny McCarthy with this book. But, if you are still open-minded, and able to be swayed by the evidence he will show you the facts and the research and let you connect the dots yourself.

“The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, it’s that they know so many things that just aren’t so.”
Mark Twain

Unspinning the Spin

This is probably one of the most timely books that I've ever read. UnSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation is written by two of the editors for factcheck.org. I've been a fan of Factcheck for several years. I really enjoy their non-partisan analysis of the factual claims made by politicians. This book details the steps they take to get to the truth behind the deceptive claims made by advertisers and politicians. I'd recommend this book to anybody who is interested in learning how to find the truth. If, on the other hand, you are comfortable in just accepting that what you already believe has to be true then you might take issue with this book. It challenges the reader to evaluate the claims that they believe in even more than the ones that they disagree with. So if you are comfortable with voting for someone just because of the letter that the TV station puts behind their name then you might just want to leave this one alone.
Shortly after finishing the book I went down stairs and began watching the vice-presidential debate between Palin and Biden. Sure enough, both of them jumped into the same spin and deception that the book had cautioned against. One candidate spun the opponents position as voting for a tax increase when the facts behind the vote clearly show voting for a decrease, just not as big of a decrease as their side was asking for. Only in the twisted world of Washington spin-doctors is an vote for a decrease considered a vote for an increase. This book gives the reader the tools to identify such deception.
During the debates the deception was not limited to one side or the other. Neither side had a sincere allegiance to the truth. They just wanted you to believe their interpretation.

On the subject of debates: I was on the Debating team in high school. So, I'm familiar with what a real debate is intended to be. These political debates are nothing more than joint press conferences. I don't really understand the role of the moderator. The candidates just talked about whatever they wanted to after the time was turned over to them. Palin was asked a question on the mortgage crisis. She talked for 5 minutes on her energy policy. Biden was asked about Pakistan and he talked about Afghanistan. Palin was asked what programs she would scale back because of the Wall street bailout bill. She talked for another 5 minutes about the problems she saw with Obama's Plan and never even approached answering the moderator's question. Gwen Ifill might have well said, "I know you're both just going to ignore the question anyway so each of you talk for 5 minutes about whatever floats your boat". In my debate competitions if I've have pulled this type of diversion I'd have simply lost all my points for that question. As correct as the information I had given about the energy policy I'd have gotten a big whoppin' zero since the question wasn't about energy policy.
Both of the the major parties are trumpeting "change" as a major part of their platform. So far all I have seen in the ads and the first two debates is just more of the same, distortions, spin and propaganda. I want to thank factcheck.org and other organizations like them for helping me to see the facts behind the political nonsense that is shovelled out by those who want to represent me in Washington.

Memory

One Sunday, several years ago I attended my sister's Ward so I could be there for the blessing of my niece. It was a nice day and most of my family and extended family were there. After the service one of my in-laws stopped me and told me that she knew of a company that was hiring technicians. On her suggestion I applied and was accepted at the company that I now work for. I remember this event very clearly. It was very important to me both because it was my sister's first child and it was the because it is the moment that changed my career path from barely scraping by at REI to becoming and engineer for AT&T.
But there is one big problem. In spite of how my brain remembers it it simply couldn't have happened. You see my niece is only 8 years old now and I've been working at this job for 9 1/2 years. How could I have more seniority at this company than my niece has on this Earth if her birth proceeded my employment there?
In the past couple years I've been studying quite a bit about false memories and how fluid our memories actually are. Our brain is not the running video of our lives that we'd sure like it to be. Instead it grabs emotions and concepts and sometimes it links event by the emotions and feeling felt and combines them into the same event. This little trick of our brain has caused people to even confess to crimes that they didn't commit. When I first read about this phenomenon I didn't quite believe it. Perhaps just like everybody thinks they are better drives than the rest of the world, I thought that I was a better "rememberer" than everybody else. This memory of my niece's blessing has forced me to reconsider how fallible my memory actually is.
Logically I have come to the conclusion that I had gone to my sister's Ward a second time, a few years before my niece was born and that was when I got the tip about the new job. I can't for the life of me figure out why I would have been there, but I'd be willing to bet that since I forgot why my brain filled in the blanks by combining the two trips and now I remember then as just one event. Even though I know they could not have happened as one event I still can't separate the two.
Just something to consider the next time you take a stand and are absolutely positive that something happened exactly the way you remember it.

Debunked

Have you ever been in a position where you totally agree with someone's message you just really wish they could have delivered it better? I find myself in this position quite frequently. For instance, I agree with most libertarian party platforms but the candidates they choose frequently come across as out of control nutcases. Ron Paul's constant overstatements and hysterical twisting of the fact in the primaries is a prime example.
Well I'm also finding myself in that position with the current book I'm reading. Debunked by Richard Roeper takes on many of the more popular conspiracy theories of the first part of the 21st Century. He handles everything from the 9/11 conspiracy crowd to the folks who think that "American Idol" is rigged. Roeper clearly has his head firmly on his shoulders and isn't easily swayed without large amounts of evidence. He uses language like "skeptical toolkit" and "baloney detector" which are catch phrases in the skeptical community and show that he is educated on how to recognize a baseless claim when he sees one. He does a pretty good job of addressing the claims of all of these conspiracy theories in the same language and style that the conspiracy nuts use.
I guess that's the problem I'm having with the book. Much of it is written in the same style as the emails that spread the conspiracy in the first place- right up to the use of all caps and multiple exclamation points. I also don't see the need for the profanities that grace nearly every single page. It paints an image that the author is just angrily pounding on he keyboard and yelling at the monitor. I feel like I've been yelled at for the last fifteen minutes after when I finish a chapter.
The conspiracy emails typically string a bunch of vague facts in line and then coax the reader into drawing the conclusion that they are therefore linked. Roeper takes these theories and using their own twisted logic puts it right back in their laps and then asks them leads them to accept his conclusion in the same, in-your-face, way.
Although undeserved, skeptics already have a bad reputation of being cynical and negative. Roeper's style adds snarky and confrontational to the list. There are several skeptics who are very fun to talk with, non-confrontational, and would make much better spokesmen than Roeper. My concern is that next time a media representative wants to get a skeptical point of view for their story they might assume that all skeptics will treat them like Roepertreats those who disagree with him. The reporter may choose to avoid getting the skeptical viewpoint altogether or at the very least give it less air time than if the skeptic was more pleasant.
Again, I agree with Roeper's analysis of the claims in this book. And I recognize the sarcasm and satire of the book. I just think he could have made his points a little more... professionally.

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.