Three men make a tiger

Quantum of nonsense Part I - A Crash course in quantum theory

2012-02-17T19:01:00.005Z

This is the first part of a two parter, discussing the use of the world 'quantum' by quacks. And rather than just jump into why they're quacks, I thought I'd split the post into two and give a brief history of quantum theory. Believe me, it's far stranger and more enjoyable than anything a purveyor of woo could spin. And I put some cute kittens in for good measure.

Quantum mechanics is weird - Discoveries in this field have been wonderfully counter-intuitive, prompting the legendary Niels Bohr to state "..those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.". In fact, so profound are some of the questions it raises about reality that the ineffable Richard Feynman once said "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.". Because the subject is so incredibly jaw-droppingly at odds with what we're used to in our macroscopic world, the fact that the microscopic behaves quite differently dazzles people.

But it is this very dazzling property that has made purveyors of nonsense grasp it, and use it as a stamp to justify their outlandish claims. The field of quantum mysticism and quantum healing is the use of modern physics terms to lend weight to a loose connection of new age and spiritual jargon, totally mangling the beautiful science in the process - Works by Deepak Chopra, Robert Anton Wilson, Gary Zukev et al have offered quantum mechanics as some kind of magical deus ex machina to explain away any gaping holes in their new ages drivel. Only here's the kicker - invoking quantum mechanics to 'explain' these, or indeed any human experiences is so stupid, it's not even wrong. So I decided to write a post condemning these utter quacks, when I came to the realisation that starting off that way might deny my readers an insight into the utterly crazy world of quantum mechanics. So I decided to split the post into two, with the first part a quick crash course into the brain shaking world of the very small and some other time I shall do a follow up on why new-agers and quacks love the word quantum and how they get it wrong everytime....

Einstein reacts to Deepak Chopra's latest take on Quantum healing...

Lighting the way

Our weird and wonderful story begins in the 17th century with the thoughts of the original action man of physics one Sir Isaac Newton - Newton was thinking about light, as a polymath is wont to do when he's not looking for bible code and inventing cat flaps. How exactly does light travel from one place to another, and what exactly IS light ?


Newton - Would often be found musing over Optics and less often over the hottest trends in wig fashion

Newton thought very hard about this - he knew light had energy and that it travelled. Musing over this, he came up with his Corpuscular theory of light. His idea was that light was made up of little tiny particles called corpuscles. These little bundles travelled at some finite velocity and didn't require any medium in which to move. There was a little sticking point though - Newton's theory didn't account for some phenomena like diffraction, the spreading out of light as it hits an obstacle, in much the same wave a ripple in a pond spreads out when it encounters a rock. His theory wasn't seriously challenged until about 100 years later by Thomas Young. Young was a renaissance man like Einstein, and was famous for discoveries in the field of engineering, medicine and Egyptology in addition to his impressive physics credentials. Show off. Anyway, Young realised that there was another way for energy to propagate - wave motion. Imagine it like a slinky if you will - if you shake one end, the motions travels down the length of it and imparts energy at the other end, despite the fact the actual slinky has not itself moved location.

Slinky dog - Subtly teaching us about wave mechanics, the crafty informative bugger..

The beauty of Young's idea was that it described light phenomena wonderfully - it predicted diffraction, reflection, refraction and a whole host of other ideas. There was now no doubt that light behaved like a wave and up until the early 20th century there was no reason to think otherwise. The particle theory of light was done and dusted. Going back to our slinky analogy, it's useful to note the one thing waves need that particles don't; a medium to propagate through. The plastic / metal of the slinky is the medium. Sound waves travel through the medium of air and water waves through water. Without these media, they simply cannot travel. For this reason, physicists assumed that there must be a medium between the sun and the earth which allowed light waves to travel through it. They called this hypothetical medium aether when they were feeling verbose, and just "the aether" in hallowed hushed tones when they wanted to be mysterious, probably while wearing cloaks and engaging in some Gregorian chanting.

We are the physicists and we seek the aether!

Just one small problem...

There was just one slight problem - the aether didn't exist. This was shown by the famous Michelson-Morley experiment, the most famous null result in physics. The ramifications of this experiment and a curious derivation from Maxwell's equations led a young patent clerk from Germany named Albert Einstein to a truly wondrous theory called special relativity in 1905, a fascinating area with an intimate relationship to quantum mechanics but at the moment we'll leave it be and jump to the world's most obscure light bulb joke.


Wait for it....

"How many Max Plancks does it take change a light bulb?

Never heard that one before eh? In 1900 Max Planck was a desperate man - he had been commissioned in 1894 by an electric company to improve the efficiency of their light bulbs. To do so he had to consider a theoretical construct known as a black body, a perfect emitter and absorber of radiation. To reconcile theory with experiment, Planck inadvertently made a radical assumption; rather than allowing the system to have a continuum of energy emitted, he instead assumed the energy could only be emitted in discrete packets called 'quanta'. Planck viewed the solution as a purely formal one and didn't think too much of it. Yet what he had effectively done was show that energy could only be emitted in discrete levels or 'steps', totally overturning the classical idea of energy being a smooth continuous 'ramp'. At the same time, Planck's solution solved a problem in physics known as the ultraviolet catastrophe, where the power emitted by a black body became infinite in the UV range. With Planck's solution, the problem disappeared and his theory matched experiment. Many physics textbooks claim Planck's work on blackbodys was motivated by this problem but in fact his motivation was light bulbs. Seriously, one could not make that up.

From Hand waving to mind blowing...
A "quanta" merely refers to a discrete packet, so it was apparent Planck's solution had 'quantised' energy. At this point no one gave this quantisation of results much notice, including Planck himself. They figured it was some problem with the model. Models, after all, are approximations of reality. But for Einstein, this actually solved a problem he'd been musing on called the photoelectric effect. This effect is observed when high energy light, even at low intensity, causes a metal to eject electrons. But curiously, lower energy light, even at high intensity couldn't dislodge them. This makes no sense in classical physics - if you imagine light like a wave lapping away at a sea cliff; a lot of little waves have the same cumulative effect as a few powerful waves. Yet this wasn't happening - only certain energies were doing it, intensity didn't matter. Einstein solved the puzzle by deducing that the light was arriving in packets which we know call photons. If one of these packets had enough energy, an electron was emitted. Einstein had used Planck's guess to solve a totally unrelated problem, and had begun to show that light was a particle.

So here was Einstein in 1905 postulating that light was a particle, and making a pretty damn convincing case for it. But this kind of flew in the face of previous experiments and theory - Young had shown light was a wave. Maxwell's equations worked, and relied on light having wave properties. Waves and particles are mutually exclusive, what in the name of Schrodinger's fond regard for animal welfare was going on ?

Is this really the only way to demonstrate the madness of macroscopic observer effect Dr. Schrodinger ?!

The current explanation to this conundrum is one of the most mind-blowing results in all of physics - Light is both a particle and a wave at once, and will display the properties of either / or depending on how you choose to measure it. In essence, light is neither a wave nor a particle but somehow both.

Stop for a second - if that isn't making your logical brain go into convulsions, think about it again - it is something of a paradox of modern physics. What's more, there is a further principle which physicists call complementarity that essentially states something equally weird - while the wave and particle nature co-exist, any attempts to measure the properties of one state destroys all information about the other state. More correctly, the twain properties can never be measured at the exact same time.

This is deeply weird, and equally, deeply wonderful.

Mind: Blown.

This behavior isn't limited to 'just' wave-ticles of light. French aristocrat (queue infamous joke) and physicist Louis De Broglie reasoned that matter should also have wave properties associated with it. This was shown to be the case - that matter itself has wave like properties. The reason we don't observe them is that unless the object is truly very very tiny, they are not visible to us in our macroscopic world. However, this could still be tested with small particles like electrons and even neutrons, even though these are ostensibly particles. The same credo of complementarity held of course; attempts to view the dual properties at once faltered, destroying information about one of the states. This crazy concept is called wave-particle duality, and is a cornerstone of quantum theory. Despite its apparent outlandishness, it has been verified time and time again by experiment. If this is melting your brain slightly, rest assured that is only indication that you are correctly grasping the enormity of that finding. As the inimitable Niels Bohr said..

Niels bore, the third most famous and great Dane after Hans Christian Anderson and Scooby Doo

Einstein takes his quantum ball home

Now, physics up to this point had been deterministic. If you knew all the variables, you'd be able to always predict the output. But new quantum theory suggested that at the very, very small end of the scale, events were probabilistic. These probabilities were related to the square of the wave function,

Ψ, of the system. Werner Heisenberg also showed that there was an inherent uncertainty in some variable pairs, such as position and momentum and energy and time - there would always be an uncertainty in these measurements as they involved the interaction of the system and the measuring device. This relationship was verified and is now known as the uncertainty principle.

These ideas taken together for the basis of what is called the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, which postulates..

A system is completely described by its wave function $Ψ$
$Nature is essentially probabilistic$
$It is impossible to know the value of all system properties at once (uncertainty)$
$Matter exhibits wave-particle duality, both cannot be measured at once ($ complementarity $)$
$Quantum mechanical systems will reproduce classical results for large systems / particles$

This interpretation of quantum mechanics is the most common, but there are others, differing mainly on the nature of the wavefunction. Now, a system can be in a superposition of all possible states, but the act of measuring them forces the system to collapse down to a single measured state. This bizarre behaviour is called wavefunction collapse, and is still a hotly contested question. In the Copenhagen interpretation, the measurement 'forces' the system into one state, where as the in the 'Many worlds' interruption, each possible state exists in a different universe. There are dozens of interpretations of Quantum mechanics - note that the the predictive power is beyond dispute, but the philosophical question of what these results imply about nature itself is still a thorny issue.

But ironically, the man who had lead the world into the quantum revolution loathed the new formulations - Einstein did not at all approve of the probabilistic interpretations, preferring a version of the ensemble interpretation which argues the wave function doesn't apply to an individual system but only to groups of them. This is when Einstein famously argued "God does not play dice!". Legend has it that Bohr muttered he should stop telling God what to do.

Bohr and Einstein had a series of debates, and every example he gave Bohr was able to counter. Finally, Einstein along with some colleagues came up with the EPR paradox - a quantum system has a wave function, but if this system is split into two, the system still maintains one wavefunction between them. Then, if you performed a measurement on one of them, even separated by vast distances, the other would be forced into a state too. Einstein and his co-authors argued that there must be a class of 'hidden variables' that told each particle what to do. QED, thought Einstein, as the other idea meant that non-local effects could instantly travel seemed utterly absurd on the face of it.

Smug Einstein - QED, bitches!

Only nature conspired against Einstein when it turned out non-locality was exacted what happened. These particles sharing a wavefunction became known as entangled entities, and were shown to violate the classical notion of locality. In the Copenhagen interpretation, this would be explained as instant wavefunction collapse. Einstein maintained until his death in 1955 that quantum mechanics was an incomplete theory. Erwin Schrodinger had an equally great misgiving about the Copenhagen interpretation, and highlighted the insanity of trying to apply multiple states to macroscopic objects.

"One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter, there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small that perhaps in the course of the hour, one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges, and through a relay releases a hammer that shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The wavefunction of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts."

This is the basis of the infamous Schrodinger's cat experiment, which takes issues with the observer's role in wave function collapse. There are as many interpretations of this thought experiment as there are interpretations of quantum mechanics.

Nice kitty, GET IN THE DAMN BOX!

Class dismissed - some concluding remarks

The world of the very tiny behaves nothing like the world we know, and at small enough scales quantum effects dominate. What puts the limit on this scale ? The limit is related to a constant of nature we know as Planck's constant. It is given by..

h = 6.626 x 10^-34 J / s

To write this out in normal notation, it would look like...

h = 0.0000000000000000000000000000000006626 J / s

Planck's constant is tiny but utterly dominates in quantum realms, and perhaps were it bigger we'd be far more familiar with quantum effects.

Stay tuned for Part II - Quantum Quackery!

It's the end of the world as we know it - and I feel fine!

2012-02-08T13:29:00.004Z

A rant about John Cusak grimmacing, why the world isn't ending in 2012 and some adventures in base 12. Yes, it's the requisite 2012 post! Also I've just found out I've been shortlisted for a blog award from The Skeptic magazine which is a great honour - thanks so much for your nominations and support!

To say the Mayans were an odd lot may be a tiny bit of an understatement. One minute happily making major advances in mathematics and astronomy, the next casually ripping the still beating heart out a living child's chest to celebrate the new year, which is what I imagine a party in Rick Santorum's house might be like. But the Mayans will be all over the news this year, despite the fact the society collapsed sometime between around the 8th century. Why is this ? Because, the popular press will tell you, the super accurate ultra astronomer Mayans predicted the end of the world in December 2012! And you know, it was in that awful 2012 movie so there must be something to it! Exclamation mark!

An entire movie based on John Cusak looking mildly annoyed about some CGI. I've ranted on it before..

Only the Mayans said no such thing - not even anything sounding like it.The Mayan calendar was a little different to ours, rooted in base 20 (vigesimal) / base 18 calender. Before you have panicky flashbacks to logarithms and cry out loud "Dear God, MATHS! Why Dave, WHY?!" worry not, it's not too confusing - bases are simply the number to which you count before you start the cycle again; on a 12 hour clock it's 12, then back to 1. Our hour system is in base 24, our minute and second system in base 60, our week system in base 7, out month system in base 12 and so on - which, if you think about it, is kind of crazy. Anyway, the Mayans just used different bases. A b'ak'tun on the Mayan calendar corresponded to about 144,000 days or 394.3 years.

All your base 12 are belong to us!

We set our dates from the year we assume Christ to have been born, so any time after is AD and before is BC. What's daft is that there is no zero AD - our calendar goes from 1 BC to 1 AD, which is a pretty daft oversight; This is in part due to the fear in primitive Christian minds of the number zero -essentially, the early Christian church adopted the philosophy of Aristotle, who was perhaps the crappiest scientist of all time (I'm going to get hate mail for that one as he did some good things, but come on, the guy thought flies had four legs..). The Mayans were not afraid of zero, and were clever enough to include it. They instead started their count from when the feathered serpent created the world according to their religious teachings; a date we'd called the 11th of August, 3114 BC or 0.0.0.0.0 to the Mayans. On the eve of the 20th of December 2012 and the dawn of 21st of December 2012, the following will happen on the Mayan date system

12.19.19.17.19 --> 13.0.0.0.0 - Happy New B'ak'un!

Yup. That's it. The calendar will shift to a new b'ak'un. So didn't the Mayans predict widespread chaos, destruction, giant serpents made of fire firing around on hover boards with laser death rays ?

Hoverboard and laser death ray out of shot

No actually. All they predicted was a huge party. In fact, the Mayans would have been pretty baffled by the very suggestion the world was ending. In fact, even in Mayan forecasting they exists records predicting far beyong the 13th (current) B'ak'un - one date refers to a time that corresponds to October 21st, 4772AD. Another cheerfully refers to a future date about 41 octillion years in the future!

So if the Mayans weren't predicting the end of the world, where did we get that nonsense from ?! That's a damn good question, and one that's not entirely clear to answer. The simple answer seems to be a total misunderstanding by the New age community in the late 1960s which became more and more reinforced since then with the publication of several books. I won't name these for fear of giving the authors more publicity than they deserve but Wikipedia, as usual, as a good article on it here.

So in short, you can relax... well, until the Earth is swallowed by the sun in about 5 billion years time...

Let's see you make a movie about THAT John Cusak!

But if you wanted to panic people, here's some likely scenarios to end the world...

Asteroid collision

Nuclear holocaust

Total existence failure

Supernova

Pandemics

Republican presidency

20 years since the X case - Ireland's eternal shame

2012-02-06T18:12:00.001Z

Today makes 20 years since the X case. 20 long years of hand waving, moralising, procrastinating, faffing about and delaying. 20 long years since a 14 year old girl was raped repeatedly by a man who impregnated her - and 20 years since the Irish state made a mockery out of justice and put religious considerations before the victims rights, before eventually doing the decent thing under massive social pressure.

International readers of my blog might wonder what the X case is, and indeed so might some of the younger Irish readers, so allow me to recap. In December 1991, a young girl is raped by a family 'friend' who impregnates her. The pregnancy and rape are reported to the Irish police in January 1992. The family decide to travel to the UK to procure an abortion, and ask the Irish police if they require DNA evidence from the foetus.

So far, the family have done everything right - their daughter has been the victim of a depraved act by a evil sadist. Remember, rape is not a crime of passion, it is a crime of power - In fact, the court judgements call the perpetrator "an evil and depraved man". They are doing everything in their power to protect their daughter, and bring the heinous individual to justice. Surely one would think the Irish state did all in their power to assist ?

No. No they did not, to Ireland's eternal shame - The guards asked the DPP (director of public prosecutions) if such evidence would be helpful. The DPP sought clarification with the attorney general (AG), one Harry Whelelan. He immediately issued an injunction and demanded the family return to Ireland. Why the hell did he do this ? How could someone do so callous after such hardships had already fallen a family ? He did it because of a constitutional amendment passed in 1983 which said quite simply -

The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.

This amendment essentially gives equal right to a living mother and a ball of cells with the potential to perhaps one day becoming a living being - but the constitutional amendment was much darker than that. Abortion was already a crime in Ireland since 1861 - why propose a constitutional amendment in that case ?

Only one reason - to ensure that abortion NEVER became legal in Ireland. Abortion opponents were afraid the Irish supreme court might one day allow it in certain cases, and forced the clause into the constitution. Yes, you read that correctly - the change was an attempt to strangle any reasonable future examinations of the abortion questions. And that included medical grounds, like ecoptic pregnancies and cancerous ovarian tumours. This was the legal equivalent to "no swapies". If that seems to you like a disgusting assault on reason it is perhaps because it is. It is exactly the same as using "shut up!" to win an argument. The 1983 referendum was bitterly contested, but backed by the Catholic church, it was passed - the results are stark.

In favour of the change - 66.9 %

Opposed to change - 33.1%

Voter turn-out - 53.67%

In essence, the Yes vote and low voter turn out corresponds to 35.9% of the voting public essentially gagging informed discussion or revision of Irish's heavily Catholic inspired ethical provisions. I wasn't alive in 1983 - but if you were, and if you voted for the change, Shame on you - I have no words for how much your narrow minded bigotry disgusts me. This amendment was intended to silence any discourse on what is a difficult subject, an attempt to sweep human rights under the rug for the sake of religious considerations. Of course, many senior bishops and members of the catholic church rallied the faithful to the polls. This, as we shall see later, is common practice in Ireland referenda.

A large chunk of the Irish population take reproductive and moral direction from a subset of people who never have sex (at least not with consenting adults) and wear silly hats. . Good move, people of Ireland!

Of course, this very amendment returned to bite us on the ass and showcase Irish hypocrisy with the X case - The family came to court in Ireland in February 1992. A clinical psychologist testified the girl was dangerously suicidal - she wanted to throw herself under a train to 'solve' the problem, to be less of a hassle. When your draconian laws make a 14 year old girl feel like she is to blame for a crime committed against her, there is something remiss - worse, her every move was being picked apart by the Irish media who in some quarters, even blamed her for 'tempting' the perpetrator, who had systematically abused her since he was a preteen. It is hard to believe that this happened within living memory.

Children - Should stop tempting rapists, according to sections of the Irish media...

The high court was unmoved - in a judgement lacking any sense of compassion whatsoever, the 'honourable' Justice Costello said

I am quite satisfied that there is a real and imminent danger to the life of the unborn & that if the court does not step in to protect it by means of the injunction sought, its life will be terminated.

In other words, Justice Costello correctly understood that a 14 year old rape victim did not wish to carry the product of that rape to term. He even acknowledged she was truly suicidal. What a hero. His judgement could have instead read something like "the Irish state has decided that the potential of a ball of cells lacking at this time even a basic nervous system but which might one day become a living being has equal rights to the victim who IS a living being with a fully functioning nervous system and set of emotions. That she will likely die directly or indirectly die doesn't matter once the catholic church and article 40.3.3 is satisfied."

The judgement was appealed to the supreme court in March 1992, and luckily this time the court ruled that her suicide risk was too great to uphold the high court ruling - she travelled to the UK but had a miscarriage before undergoing abortion. You might wonder what happened to the rapist - His name was Sean O'Brien, and he was sentenced to 14 years for the crime, reduced to 4 years on appeal. If this pathetic sentence wasn't enough, he went on to attack a 15 year old, and was sentenced to a measly 3.5 years. The mind boggles. The Irish people, both pro-choice and pro-life, took to the streets and the outrage at the indignity the victim at the centre of the X-case was forced to endure steeled the more liberal Irish into demanding change.

The bigots weren't quite done yet though - they tried to pass the 12th amendment which would have banned even suicidal girls from getting abortions abroad. Luckily this didn't pass. Instead, the 13th amendment was which allowed free passage for abortion if the mother's life was at risk. In 1992 the 14th amendment was passed, which for the first time in Irish history allowed free access to information about abortion. You read that correctly - up to until 1992 it was a crime in Ireland to even provide information on abortion.

If you think for one second this shows a political softening towards abortion, do not be deceived. In 2002, Fianna Fail and the PDs tried to introduce an even more draconian ban on abortion, information and access in the form of amendment 25. It was only very narrowly defeated.

Sure, if we're screwing them on everything else we may as well screw them on their reproductive rights too!

So here we are, 20 years later. And depressingly, we are nowhere nearer to providing legislation on the X case. Irish women still have to travel abroad for abortions, and despite the European court of human rights slamming Ireland on the issue just last year, we have continued to bury our head in the sand. "An Irish solution for an Irish problem" indeed. Yet there are signs of change. A 2010 poll found that 60% of young people are in favour of abortion access. Today, a group of marchers have descended onto the Dail to express their wish that Ireland finally grab the hot potato and legislate for the X case. This might be baffling for my international readers - but remember, Ireland was once upon a time firmly Catholic. Contraception was once illegal, in line with Catholic teaching. My aunt's legal case finally relaxed those laws, but not until 1970s! Divorce was only allowed in Ireland in 1997, passed by a teensy margin - 50.28% to 49.72% . That campaign was heavily church backed and Mother Teresa and the Pope lectured the people of Ireland to keep it divorce free. Essentially, the Catholic church have seen Ireland as one of the bastions of the faithful, the "holy isle". But any moral authority the church had has been eroded with its collusion and cover ups over child abuse.

Abortion is simply the last hurdle on the course, and it is unsurprising the church actively fund and campaign against it was a system of disinformation. It is exactly what they have done with every moral debate in Ireland since they began, and I've written about such dishonest tactics before.

Since 1967, 100,000+ women have travelled to the UK alone for abortions. Making it illegal here does not stop it happening, it just pushes it elsewhere and increases the difficultly in obtaining it. The pro-life argument is entirely disingenuous for this very reason - If you are opposed to abortion, by all means refrain from having one but you have ZERO right to inflict your position on others, nor to stifle reason with your brand of morals. I can fully understand apprehension on such a difficult issue, but I have no truck with attempts to silence and misinform people on what amounts to a deeply personal and difficult choice. The law as it stands is full of contradictions, equivocations, and outright conflicts. Something needs to be done - Since the X case, we've had the

The A case ,The B case, The C case and the C case...

This just poses the question of whether the Irish government is waiting for an entire alphabet of cases to pass before it does something?

Today's supreme court ruling was brought to you today by the letter....

I have contacted Action on X and once I find out who they recommend e-mailing / writing to I will put it up here. Please check back soon....

3 men and their damn tiger's first birthday - Thanks You! Feedback welcomed....

2012-01-24T16:04:00.004Z

Happy new year folks - By now I trust most of you have recovered from your hangovers / extreme debauchery over what our American friends call 'the Holiday season'. I hope my guide to alcohol served some practical use and none of you got arrested or killed anyone. Unless you did kill someone, in which case you'll probably been arrested already. Anyhow, I digress - lots of things are a foot here and I have a few original stories in the pipeline - apologies they're taking so long but I'd prefer to release well researched pieces at a slower rate than re-hash questionable ones. In the interim I'd like to thank you for reading and sharing this little site, it's been far more successful thus far that I'd hoped and I'm lucky to have a small but appreciative audience. So here's a little round up of some of the highlights this year for me, and I would love your feedback about future content!

Getting my PhD and starting the blog
I defended my thesis on February 16th 2011, and graduated in November. My research was on dosimetry and treatment models for phototherapy. My motivation to start this blog was realising through the course of my time as an undergrad and doctoral student how shockingly bad much of media coverage of science and health stories actually is. The more I read scientific papers, the more it dawned on me that media spin on these findings and discoveries were entirely at odds, like a game of sophisticated Chinese whispers. Aghast, I donned a costume and decided to fight these injustices....

Have cape, will request citations

Ok fine, the costume is ridiculous but hear you me, floppy hats are coming back. Anyway, the disconnect between science and media is jarring - not only perpetuating inaccuracies, but oftentimes fundamentally misrepresenting research and findings or spreading outright falsehoods. This is tragic, as science isn't some arcane religion that exists only in the ivory towers of academia (although they'd make a good secret base), but rather something everyone can appreciate that will improve all our lives. This blog is my way of correcting some of those wrongs in my own little way.

Writing for the JREF
In the circles of doubters, the name Randi is more than just a mildly amusing sex pun - James Randi is the archetype of skeptical thought, carefully challenging purveyors of woo-ology. I was deeply honoured in March 2011 to have an article on Churnalism published on the James Randi educational foundation's (JREF) website and your feedback was wonderful. If you haven't seen it already, you'll find it here.

The legend that is Randi: Kinda looks Like Santa

Writing for the The Journal
Thejournal.ie is a fantastic and widely read Irish website, and I was honoured to be asked to write for them on science and health matters. I wrote opinion pieces on homeopathy and nuclear power. The reactions to the former ran the entire gambit from total agreement to some rather amusing threats. These threats are now gone from the comment section, as is my reaction which I quote here..

"Madam, thank you for enquiring as to whether my mother is proud of me or not. I have duly contacted her and she affirms this is the case. On your second point I do need to seek further clarification though - I wish to know whether this is a regular threat, or a homeopathic threat, which would be watered down to the extent where there is no trace of actual threat left. I am confused, as according to your philosophy you may view the latter as more potent. Yours, David Robert Grimes.

Sadly, I did not get a decent screen capture of her erudite reply comprised mainly of four letter words in all caps. I was honoured when that piece was selected as one of the top ten reads of 2011 so thank you all for taking the time to read my ramblings to thanks to the journal for running it.

Debunking in other media
To be fair this isn't a common occurrence, despite my perfect face for radio. But this year I have been asked onto a few radio slots to debunk some common misconceptions. This is great, as it means a wider audience get to hear the skeptical viewpoint, rather than the churnalistic press releases. This clip below is from Phantom FM, where I was invited onto speak about the 'Happiest' day of the year following my post on the subject here.

Compare the policy
This one might seem slightly off-topic; what does Irish election information site www.comparethepolicy.com have to do with science or skeptical thought ? Well, I would argue an awful lot - clear access to data allows people to make better decisions. Critical thinking is not limited to intellectual pursuits, it helps us make better choices in everyday life. The site was a tongue in cheek non-partisan attempt to compile the policy documents of the major Irish political parties in easy to read formats. It was the brain child of Danny 'Teegan' Murray and myself, and gained popularity around the Irish general election. While Teegan and I will never win awards for website design, it helped people make their selections amidst all the double talk of a general election and we're happy with that.

We felt a reward was in order for informed voting....

Your support in the Kate Fitzgerald / Irish Times fiasco
On comparethepolicy.com we thanked the unstoppable Kate Fitzgerald for her support,enthusiasm and promotion.Sadly, Kate took her own life in August 2011 and that unstoppable force ceased. Before she died, Kate wrote a piece about depression and the treatment of employees with mental health issues. It was printed anonymously in the Irish Times. Weeks later, Kate's identity was revealed, and her employers (a powerful PR firm) pressurised the Irish Times into burying the story, literally striking her moving piece from the records. Not only that, but the IT proceeded to issue a grovelling apology to Kate's former employer, the communications clinic, and in the process smeared Kate as a liar, despite all evidence to the contrary. This is still ongoing, and urge you to read Kate's original words and the background to the story here. You readers were appalled and your support was overwhelming - it made it easier for me, for Kate's friends and Kate's family and I thank you sincerely for that. Thousands have seen this story now, thanks to Ben Goldacre, Mark Little and others kindly retweeting it. Rest in Peace Kate - you will never be forgotten, and your words have helped many and will help many more, despite the attempts by some to derail that.

Speaking with other science communicators and sceptics
But one of the nicest things for me so far in writing this blog is that I've meet and touched base with other science communicators and sceptics. On January 21st I gave a talk entitled "Lies, damned lies and statistics" in Blackrock Castle for Cork Skeptics, and I will be doing a similar one for Dublin Skeptics in early February.

Speaking to the Cork Skeptics in Blackrock - cape out of shot

The Future - What do YOU want to see ?
So there you have some of my personal hightlights since the birth of this blog last year - thank you for reading, and hopefully it'll continue to improve. So right now what I'd like to do is welcome YOUR suggestions on board. What can be improved, and what topics would YOU like to see covered ? I'm open to all suggestions, even 'POST MORE PICTURES OF CATS' as long as those cats can be connected to scientific thought!

Your feedback would mean a lot, thank you and please do feel free to offer your ideas, opinions and criticisms!

Getting wasted 101 - some amazing alcohol anecdotes and fantastic facts

2011-12-29T19:18:00.005Z

This post is all about alcohol, how it affects us and some interesting facts you may not have heard. I've tried to hyperlink any references in the main text where required. It's written for an Irish audience but is applicable throughout the western world. For those of you who have been so supportive regarding my previous post on the Kate Fitzgerald / Irish Times fiasco, thank you so much for your support during this difficult time. Kate is no longer with us but many of your comments touched me deeply, and indeed I think Kate's family too. Merry X-mas, Dave

The festive season is upon us, and for the Irish in particular that means copious consumption of various alcoholic beverage, or as we call it "business as usual". It is also the season of "Drink aware" adverts which try to be helpful by reminding us of such useful things as our consumption levels and drink driving limits, in terms of the 'Standard drink'.

Scrooge-like as it seems, this bugs me - not because the sentiment isn't appreciated, nor because I have some subconscious urge to play Dionysus but rather due to the fact that the standard drink is largely a myth; a misconception based on the idea that biology can be standardized when in fact personal variations matter hugely. So in the X-mas spirit, allow me to present "Getting wasted 101" and come delve haphazardly into psychopharmacology with me.If that sounds eerily reminiscent of that time some mischief maker slipped you a tab of LSD instead of an after dinner mint, worry not, this is entirely educational.

Like, Gee Scoob! This after dinner mint is making me feel CRAZY!

Getting drunk in the first place
Whether your chosen poison is beer, wine, spirits or abnormally high concentrations of mouth wash, the culprit for inebriation is always alcohol - specifically the ethanol in that alcohol. As you consume it, it affects various neurotransmitter systems in the brain, the chemical messengers of the central nervous system. Alcohol inhibits some of these systems, slowing the messages down from some chemical messengers. Oddly, it also enhances the messages from other neurotransmitters like serotonin. This is important as serotonin is a really bloody weird chemical in our brains that regulates everything from our sex drive to our moods, explaining some of the euphoric effects of intoxication. The net effect is one of depressing the central nervous system, which results in delayed reactions, stupor and in all likelihood, bad dance moves.

Bad dance moves. Not to be confused with vaguely rhymatic drunken stumbling

On a side note, it's worth talking about drunken sexual adventures and misadventures - this is a beautiful example of the duality of alcohol on our nervous system. Those of you who studied or performed MacBeth (or 'the Scottish play' to our more superstitious thespian friends) might remember the Porter's speech;

Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine.

Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes;
it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance:

therefore, much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery:
it makes him, and it mars him;

it sets him on, and it takes him off;

it persuades him, and disheartens him;

makes him stand to, and not stand to;

in conclusion, equivocates him
in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him.

The porter is playing here on the equivocal nature of booze - provoking desire but removing performance, or in a slightly more musical hall-esque style, standing to..and not standing to! Wink, wink! Hey, you come here for the science bit but don't say I don't give you culture and textual studies in the mix.

But how true is this ? We all know alchol impairs judgement and control, and everyone knows horror stories about that. But what IS surprising is that alcohol actually suppresses testosterone production in men - this reduces sex drive and performance. As testosterone is pretty damn important for maintaining an erection, drinking does indeed produce the infamous "whiskey dick", the inability in healthy men to sustain an erection. Even if the man can overcome (no pun intended..) this annoyance, it tends to lead to an anorgasmic state - in other words, the ability to perform but not the ability to climax. In short, alcohol suppresses male sexual desire and decreases performance.

What of the fairer sex ? Strange as it may seem, alcohol increases testosterone production in females, and increases sex drive. While men under the influence are less aroused, women drunk are actually MORE prone to arousal. As alcohol impairs judgement and inhibition, this also means a corresponding rise in questionable sexual (mis)adventures, regardless of gender.

Getting sober - Liver to the rescue!
Spare a thought for your liver; it's the bodily superhero that breaks down poisons and excess chemicals into forms you can excrete. Ethanol is broken down or metabolised in a pretty complex process, but essentially this process has the following four stages

Ethanol is broken down to acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde is highly unstable, and doesn't live that long. This is a good thing, as it reacts with bodily tissue otherwise as a form of free radical production and can be carcinogenic or cancer causing. In fact, it's the presence of acetaldehyde which can be damage the neural cells of developing fetus, a big reason why pregnant women are advised not to drink, unless they're actively hoping for brain damaged offspring. Acetaldehyde is likely responsible for some aspects of hang overs, and in high enough levels can damage liver and kidneys, so the body breaks this down quick as it can.
Acetaldehye is broken down into acetic acid. Oddly, this stage explains why Asians get drunk quicker than Caucasians but more on that later
Acetic acid to acetyl-CoA
Acetyl-CoA is then processed by the critic acid cycle to become our normal waste products of carbon dioxide (which we exhale) and water, which we sweat or urine, explaining another mystery of alcohol consumption.

So to be sober, all the alcohol you consume has to be metabolised, which is does mainly in the liver through the cycle above. Actually in reality, some alcohol is also processed by the gastrointestinal (GI) tract but the bulk of alcohol handling is taken on by the liver. You might be wondering why we evolved such a convoluted process for dealing with alcohol, and the answer to that is that our body naturally creates alcohol when food stuffs ferment in your stomach and gut, roughly 3g a day which we deal with by the exact same process.

Measuring intoxication
There are many supposed ways to measure intoxication - American TV seems to indicate that the ability to say the Alphabet backwards or walk a straight line implies sobriety -this is unfortunate for me, as both are things I find practically impossible even when utterly sober. In fact, I know Professors who find the alphabet hard work in the forward direction but I digress; the real test is blood alcohol content (BAC). This is essentially a measure of how much alcohol you've absorbed into your blood stream - the kind that the liver hasn't started dealing with yet, and is having the time of its life fiddling around with your nervous system, brain function, and resistance to stealing traffic cones while your liver deals with the backlog.

He also walks the line

BAC can be expressed a few different ways, the most straight forward of which is is a a percentage of your entire blood stream. So, for example a BAC of 0.01 means 0.01%, or one hundredth of one percent of your blood contains alcohol. A BAC of 0.1 means a tenth of a percent of your blood contain alcohol etc. The following chart is stolen from Wikipedia (thanks Jimmy Wales, your cheque is in the mail!) to give an example of what happens to your body at various BAC levels

I quite like the term "General lack of behavior" - I think this would be a good synonym for 'death'

So straight off the bat it's clear that having a blood alcohol percentage of 0.5% is likely going to result in a rather severe case of death, so try to avoid that one.

What factors influence intoxication and metabolistic rate ?
This is the important part for many of us - how long does it take alcohol to metabolise, and how drunk will it make us ? According to the (industry sponsored) drinkware.ie your liver can process roughly a standard drink an hour. What exactly a standard drink is becomes a pertinent question, but we'll tackle that under a different heading. But does the claim hold ?

Eh.. sometimes. But not really. Alcohol is extremely idiosyncratic - it affects different people in very different ways, and even the same person will show different responses to the same drinking patterns depending on a wide variety of factors. Let's look at some of these intoxication / metabolism factors now.

Body Weight - The greater your body weight, the more water it contains. This is significant, as greater amounts of body water greatly reduce the absorbion of alcohol. Imagine adding a cup of cordial to a 1 litre bottle of water, then imagine adding that same quantity to a 2 litre bottle of water - same idea. A person with a lower body mass will get drunk quicker than a person with a greater one.
Gender - Women have smaller body masses, ergo less water content and it follows that alcohol could be expected to hit them harder. Indeed, this is the case - it might be a double whammy for women, as they have less of the alcohol metabolising enzyme ADH in their stomach, meaning a less efficient alcohol clean up system (metabolism) and a lower threshold for intoxication.
Food consumption prior to ~~boozing~~ responsible drinking - The rate at which alcohol is absorbed is a big factor in the inebriation caclulation; about 20% of the alcohol is absorbed in the stomach and the remainder in the GI tract, and the liver can only handle a certain amount at a time - this means the more gradual the introduction of alcohol, the quicker the liver can process it. As you'd expect, more food means a more huge difference in intoxication and metabolistic rate.
Drinking velocity - Following on from the last point, the more gradual the introduction of the alcohol, the more efficient the metabolistic process. Shotgunning a beer will make you drunker than casually drinking the same beer. It is also a waster of good beer, and only considered acceptable at parties where the beer, and company, is of a sufficiently low level.
Genetics - Remember when I said Asians get drunk easier than Caucasians ? This is become most Caucasians have two enzymes for processing alcohol, whereas 50% of Asian men do not. This means they will get drunk quicker, and take longer to sober up. Genetic factors also influence the amount of ADH in your stomach, your mass, build and - at the risk of sounding obvious - your gender. Genetics then play a huge role in ease of intoxication and metabolistic rate.

These are just some of the factors influencing intoxication and recovery rate, some of which we can influence, some of which we cannot. So how much ethanol can the liver deal with at a time ? This is also hugely variable, and depends on liver size, ADH levels, and a host of other factors.

A whiskey chaser or three is going to have VERY different effects on these two...

What the hell is a standard drink ?
Errr... good question. And this is my bone of contention with the very concept of 'standard drink' - there isn't one. Have a look at the what the clear cut graphic says from the Irish campaign.

Despite the trendy graphic, all booze is NOT created equal

Ignoring the dubious comparison, are these all the same ? Well, that's easy to test; A litre is a volume of 10cm x 10cm x 10 cm which yields 10^-6 m^3 or 0.000001 m^3. To a good approximation the density of all the above alcohols is close to water, so it can be shown that 1 litre of any alcohol is roughly a kilogram. Now we're ready to play the numbers game.

Beers can vary hugely in their alcohol content. If you're drinking an awful American larger (but why would you do such a thing?) you're looking at as low as 3.5% whereas if you're proudly skulling Belgian brews it's more like 7.5%. This would be between 9.94g and 21.3g alcohol - a pretty big difference. Taking a rough average of 4.5%, that's still 12.78 g. And where exactly can one acquire EXACTLY 284ml of beer anyway ? Glasses and bottles tend to be about 300ml, raising the alcohol content somewhat of a typical beer to 13.5 g. For a pint, that's about 25.56 g.
Wines also vary hugely. From 12% to 22.5% for a fortied wine. So for a 100ml 'small' glass, that's an alcohol mass of 12g to perhaps 22.5g for a port. If the average wine has an alcohol content of 14% that's 14g. But typically, wine is sold in snipes of about 185ml, which would be about 25.9 g alcohol.
Spirits vary too, but typically they're at the 40% mark. This translates as about 14.2g of alcohol in shot or spirit mix.

So this indicates a little bit of a disconnect with reality - the 'standard' drink is little more than an advertising fabrication - a convenient fiction that tend to downplay the actual alcohol content of the drinks. With the exception of spirits, the measures counted are not typical pub measures, and are in fact understatements of the amount of alcohol typically consumed.

Oh GOD! All I've known is a LIE! How long until I'm sober ?!
Take it easy Sparky. There is no sure way of knowing - the common thread of these random alcohol facts has been that biology and circumstances make all episodes of drinking different. That said, there has been some studies done on the rates of metabolism but be very careful drawing any averages from these, as the range is simply too great for it to be meaningful. In 1977 Wilkinson et al did a study on fasting volunteers to see how quickly booze left their system. Better still, the researchers got these starving men to rapidly down varying number of drinks - so basically, speed drinking on an empty stomach. A graph from their result is shown here

Speed drinking on an empty stomach - it's ok, it's for SCIENCE! Tell that to the cops...

Annoyingly, I cannot get full access to the original paper and every country has a differing definition of 'standard drink' (see?! SEE?! Standard my ass!) but assuming the drink refers to American standard drinks, that's 13.7 g of alcohol per drink. So in essence, Wilkinson and his co-workers got volunteers to shotgun between 13.7 g of alcohol and 54.8 g of alcohol with no food whatsoever, and this is the result obtained. Obviously with lower consumption rate and some food the curves would be much smaller. Amazingly enough, Even shotgunning 27.4g of alcohol kept the men just under the legal limit, but it would take at least 4 hours until the men who shotgunned double this could start their engines without being arrested. Remember, this is NOT a sure fire indication! The only way of knowing is to have your BAC measured. So if in doubt, don't drive.

So is there anything that can speed up alcohol metabolism ? Curiously, yes, there is one thing. Fructose, the sugar found in some fruits. The effect is very complicated but has been measured and verified. Still, this doesn't mean that wolfing down a rake of dates or corn syrup will cure you instantly of drunken-ness. In a nutshell, your liver is not a huge fan of fructose and this might cause its own issues.

Gargling corn syrup is not an approved path to sobriety!

What to take home from all this
So we've now learnt a few things about alcohol for this X-mas season. Let's do a speed re-cap of all the pertinent points

If you're a white guy in a multi-cultural drinking competition, try to pick an Asian opponent - odds are good he only has half the enzymes for digesting it as you do.
Don't drink and drive - you'll likely spill most of it and it's expensive
Really, don't drink and drive - hang on 'til it wears off
Women get friskier with drink, men less frisky and more dysfunctional - catch 22.
You can make starving people shotgun drinks in the name of science.
Your liver is pretty important so don't mess it up.
Fructose can speed up alcohol metabolism but don't bank on it. Fructis, on the other hand, is a shampoo. Neither are great for your liver.
Alcohol is idiosyncratic. People are different. Thus, standard drink is an oxymoron.
The porter in MacBeth is a device for continuing the theme of equivocation that runs through out the play. He also knows a thing or two about the effects booze on sexual performance.
"I wasn't drunk, I was on a serotonin buzz" is not entirely a valid excuse.
Stolen glassware can serve as a make-shift X-mas gift.

Be safe, have fun, but don't do anything (too) silly. Alcohol is great, but be around friends, don't take undue risks and always respect the power of booze. In the right amounts, it's a wonderful addition to a eve (or afternoon, or lunch, or morning..) in or out, but to excess, like all things, it's a killer.

Remember also also that alcohol is the number one and perhaps only date rape drug - please see my first ever post for details if you're curious or surprised. Protect yourself, be aware and if you are consensually doing something crazy, use protection. Remember to that if you find drink is controlling you rather than you controlling it you may need help - please don't suffer in silence, have a peek at this site.

Happy New Year folks!

As usual, if I've made any mistakes, fire them to my twitter - @drg1985 or just use the comment form!

Famous Last Words - Media Transparency, Kate Fitzgerald and the Irish Times

2011-12-05T17:08:00.003Z

I wanted to do a piece on media transparency for some time, but I never imagined that the death of someone I love very much could be the catalyst for this, nor did I foresee quite how disappointed I would be with publications I had previously thought were illustrious; publications I thought valued integrity and accuracy over all else. It turns out I was sorely mistaken. In August just gone, my beautiful and dear friend Kate took her own life; she was 25. The night before she died, she took the time to compose this poignant and erudite plea for better understanding of mental health. It was sent to my national paper of record, the Irish Times. It was printed under the condition of anonymity, and the piece you see below is how it appeared. I beseech you to read it, her words are far more important than anything I'm ever likely to write.

Kate's original article, as it appeared on September 9th

By the time this appeared in print, Kate was already dead. Katherine Chase Fitzgerald was someone who my meagre words alone can never adequately describe. Kate was one of the most intensely complex people I knew. She was at once passionate, fiery, creative, cuttingly intelligent, unflappably sarcastic and unwaveringly loyal. Throughout her life, Kate had campaigned for mental health awareness - it made sense her final letter to the world was one asking for compassion and understanding, not just for her but for everyone who suffers with depression. It was typical Kate that even in death, she was looking out for others. She was determined her loss and ours could be prevented in others. Many weeks later, the Irish Times ran an interview with Kate's parents, Tom and Sally. It spoke of their wish for others to learn from this terrible and tragic affair and to get help - a rather beautiful piece which you can read here.

In an ideal world, Tom and Sally's sincere wish that Kate's wish for a better understanding of mental health would have been fulfilled. There was no reason it shouldn't have been - the article touched many, many people. It became the most shared and read story on the Irish Times. Letters on message boards praised Peter Murtagh's piece, and many relayed how they were both heartbroken and inspired by it. In short, Kate had raised awareness of something important, something that always motivated her - she had, even in death, helped others. Kate's story was and is something that it is impossible not to notice.

But that was not the end of the story - Kate's former employers, also couldn't fail to notice the story. The company in question are called the Communications clinic - and they have their hands all over Irish media and politics. The communications clinic are a PR firm, representing several huge clients and with a vast media chain at their disposal. Under the auspices of media pundits Terry Prone and Anton Savage, they have a virtual monopoly on Irish media, and especially old media. But their remit does not extend to new media, and the online paper The Broadsheet published this article, linking the chain together.

Immediately after this, The Communications clinic went into damage limitation mode. This may be understandable, but their method of doing so was anything but - in short, they used influence and contacts to pressurise both the broadsheet and the Irish Times into retracting articles. Not legal pressure, as nothing Kate had said was accusatory and you cannot libel a company - they simply implied Kate was unstable and a liar. Broadsheet detail it well here.

Let me digress for a moment; I'm a scientist. As such, I'm motivated by facts, figures, what is real - in essence, truth. My interest in media is in its use for speaking to people, communicating with them and sharing ideas. Unusually for a woman in PR, Kate also had a keen appreciation of truth - she had integrity. Once, I'd written a science article for a certain newspaper - they ended up running someone else's article. Usually I wouldn't have minded so much, only the article they chose to run was full of utter rubbish and betrayed a total lack of basic research and a number of outright fabrications. I remember yowling down the phone to Kate about the responsibility of media to be accurate, and other such scientist-y complaints. Kate's advice was simple - yes, it was stupid, but the only way I was going to make a change was if I kept writing, kept trying - the truth would always out eventually. I stammered something unbelievably stupid along the lines of "maybe that's how it works in your... <stammer>... flashy media world!". Kate laughed. Then I did too. Every time Kate called me from work for advice on something science related, she'd salute me with "Greetings from the flashy media world!".

But that's just it - she took the time to call me, and other experts before running anything - she was meticulous and careful not to print nonsense or lies, despite the obvious temptation of doing so in her line of work. Kate was not wont to fantasy or fabrication - she had no desire to smear people or places - despite her diplomatic skill she was searingly honest in her dealings with people. Even her final note to the world is rational and careful. Yet despite this, the Irish Times bowed to pressure and edited what was in effect Kate's suicide note. In doing so, they removed all lines that made any reference to her employer. And utterly changed the context, butchering Kate's last words.

Worse than this, they didn't make it clear they had edited the article - eagle eyed viewers from the broadsheet spotted it, forcing them to concede they had edited it. This is not integrity - this is cowardice. Kate submitted that article in good faith, and in good faith in should have remained. The perceived gripes of a company who were unnamed and unslandered should not have over shadowed the last words of a woman I loved - particularly as those words were powerful, moving and of deep importance.

Is this the influence of a private company powerful enough to have articles by dead writers with no right of reply edited in retrospect, because it may make them look bad by association ? Last Saturday was Kate's memorial service - we gathered to celebrate her life, to be together and remember. I was playing and singing at it, including something I had written for it. I was nervous, and on some level afraid of letting her down. But when I saw this in the Times that morning, frustration set in and a sense of outrage and almost made me forget how nervous I was.

The Irish Times, who apparently think it's ok to smear a dead girl with no right of reply.

I could not believe what I was reading - a crass and pathetic smearing of a girl who was no longer with us; a girl who had named no one, not even herself. Kate Fitzgerald was many things, but a liar was not one of them. Factual inaccuracies ? Had the Times chosen the more careful phrase "could not be verified" or some such, one could forgive a lot. But "significant assertions... not factual" smears that meticulous and honest girl as a fantasicist or liar. The apology also has the gall to insinuate she had made allegations against her friends, when she had done no such thing. She never named her employer, stating clearly she didn't blame anyone, merely pleading for better understanding. And even more appalling, apparently this apology came without an iota of legal threat. I wrote a letter to the times, asking to clarify which elements were not factual. They have not yet responded. Today, the editor wrote a frankly ridicolous piece to try and rationalise this utterly cowardly act, claiming that 'furthers details' had emerged requiring the article to be amended, and further implying some might be seeking retribution.

Nothing could be further from the truth - those of us that loved Kate don't care about vendettas, nor is this about seeking to attribute blame. This is merely about leaving her last words to the world as they were intended.

So is that how the Irish Times seek to handle the story of a girl who died before her time ? A girl who trusted them with her last words, and whose last wish was the altruistic hope people could learn something from this tragedy ? Or does placating media cronies matter more than the truth ? Shame on you, Irish Times. As the paper of record the onus is on you to report the facts, not parley with PR companies. I am disappointed. I know Kate would be too.

Media transparency is a vital thing - were Kate alive now, we'd be watching the case with interest, swapping opinions. I think she'd be fascinated by how the 'new' media like blogs and internet papers have been more forthcoming with facts than the old media. But that is a side issues - Please don't let Kate's message be forgotten in all this mess; as of today, even the butchered article is gone, replaced by text declaring a legal retraction, despite the fact the Times themselves claim no legal representation was made. This is why I have chosen to upload Kate's article as it originally stood - it is too late for Kate, but it may not be too late for someone else - please share it.

RIP Kate - 1986 - 2011. I will never forget what you taught me.

Edit: 17th Dec 2011 - Yesterday Kate's Parents spoke to the Broadsheet. I advise you all to read it. It's at http://www.broadsheet.ie/2011/12/16/let-kate-have-the-final-word/ and if you are disgusted with the behaviour of the IT, let them know by e-mailing kosullivan@irishtimes.com and by adding your voice to the chorus of disappoval at www.facebook.com/irishtimes . My letter to Kevin O'Sullivan can be found in the comments

"Contagion" - A win for science in movies...

2011-10-25T04:40:00.002+01:00

Just a quick review of "Contagion" and movie science in general; still in Australia but will write a few more in depth pieces when I'm back home next month. In the interim, enjoy and avoid 2012...

Given that I'm sufficiently nerdy to write a science and medicine blog, it may be considered surprising that I tend to despair at movies which play the science card, mainly because of what I call the Deepak effect - taking concepts in science and applying them haphazardly / willfully misconstrued / utterly nonsensical to areas which they do not describe, nor often even apply to. I name this ignominiously after that bastion of new-age quackery Mr Chopra himself, who makes a fortune linking quantum mechanic concepts to human happiness despite the fact the principles simply don't apply*. My personal favourite example of this is an absolute howler from 2012 when the'scientists' work out why the weather is changing so quickly..

"The neutrinos have mutated!"

This is perhaps the most ridiculous line in the history of cinema. I admit I let out a rather loud "Seriously, what the fuck?!" when I saw this, attracting curious stares in the cinema and reducing my date to tears laughing. Joke was on her however, as I spent the next 45 minutes babbling about fundamental particles. Women love fundamental particles. Here's Physicist / Comedian Dara O'Brien explain why my derision was so heartfelt...

Related to this is "sea of buzzwords" syndrome - throw together a series of technical jargon with no real explanation as to why you're doing it, nor indeed any real understanding of what those terms mean. While a script writer might think these terms sound cool, any individual familiar with the terminology instantly sees how bloody stupid the dialogue actually is. I'll concede this can be kind of charming; you know in Star Wars when Han Solo brags that he did the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs ? Well, the parsec is actually a unit of distance, not time - this is kind of like boasting you've done a 4 kilometer walk in less than 5 kilometers. True perhaps, but not impressive - what WOULD be impressive is doing a 5 kilometer walk in less than 4 kilometers, in which case that rascally Corellian would be justified in his egotism.

I did the Star Wars trilogy in LESS than four movies and they were THIS long!

Sometimes movies invoking science are just plain stupid with no saving graces. Let's just not mention a certain movie starring Bruce Willis, a giant rock and a horrible song by Aerosmith....

So it is with a sense of surprise that I can't recommend 'Contagion' highly enough - I saw it with my good friend Kerri last week in Australia just before it was released in Europe. Had I know it was a 'science' flick I might have had second thoughts before going in but I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised. 'Contagion' not only boasts an incredible cast but also a genuinely engaging plot with clever direction.

Laurence Fishburne plays a doctor. Surprisingly, he doesn't offer anyone any blue OR red pills...

More relevant to this blog, the science of epidemiology is actually well respected and better still, well explained. Terminology like the rate of reproduction of a virus (the R0 rate) are well explained, and the transmission routes and strain origins are very faithful to the reality of epidemics.

Another refreshing aspect was that the unrealistic cliche of the lone scientific genius working in isolation is utterly absent from this movie. Instead, it depicts a much more realistic interplay of researchers and health groups like the WHO, CDC and numerous academics working in parallel to try and get to the bottom of the issue. Real science is collaborative, and it is a massive compliment that 'Contagion' not only shows this reality but that it adds to the drama rather than detracts from it.

In fact, the science in Contagion is so well done that even New Scientist have given it the nod of approval.

What was also refreshing was that the film also took an amusing swipe at the typical alternative medicine tripe. I don't want to spoil anything, but it beautifully showcased the charlatan angle and for once presented the doctors and scientists here as the good guys, which makes a change from the normal.

I walked out of the cinema deeply impressed and my fellow nerd Kerri concurred; not only did I really enjoy the movie as a work of art, I came out fascinated by technical aspects like transmission and mortality rates. In short, inspired on several levels. The makers of this film have managed to prove something I've long suspected - chiefly that the reality of science and medicine is so much more dramatic, engaging and exciting than any flimsy image we can concoct. Often reality is much more magical and mind-boggling than the fiction and I cautiously hope that rather than scriptwriters sacrificing science and realism for drama, they realise that the the science can actually add to that very sense of drama and wonder.

*One of these days I'll write a blog specially about Chopra and quantum mechanics.. just you wait..

20 nifty tricks to argue like a charlatan

2011-07-28T13:08:00.005+01:00

For scientists, skeptics, debaters, or indeed anyone who values useful information over shrill soundbites, there is little more infuriating then crass manipulation of the facts to mislead an audience. Purveyors of woo and snake oil are particularly skilled at this cynical sideshow, but they are by no means alone in the practice which all too frequently raises its ugly head in politics too. And when constructive debate breaks down along ideological barriers, you can be sure the quality of discussion suffers. When discussions arise, those with a vested interest are adept at sidetracking the debate with enough petty logical fallacies to fool an audience into thinking their claims have some merit. “What beastly intellectual cowardice!” I hear you mutter. And I concur.

But just for a moment, let me play advocatus diaboli. Perhaps we should look at their techniques and admire the smoke and mirrors approach to discussion that can leave the most well informed earnest orator flummoxed and flustered. Let's give these rogues their due, and identify some of their little tricks, in the hopes we can catch them out at their own game.

So for your viewing pleasure, I present..

20 nifty tricks to argue like a charlatan

Use circular reasoning liberally – Circular reasoning is purely tautological but because you're repeating your assertions it'll just reinforce your message it for the less astute in the audience. “The bible is the literal truth because God wrote it and we know that because the bible says it!”

Construct straw man arguments – If you can't rebut an argument, misappropriate your opponents position and pummel it to great applause. Essentially, if you can't attack your opponents position with a decent retort, make a mock-up of their position and trounce that instead. Odds are your audience mightn't notice, particularly if you insinuate something shocking. “Obama's health care reforms will bring in death panels for old people so protest at your town halls

Use ad hominem attacks to reinforce your thesis - Remember that smearing your opponent can be a sure way to turn the audience against him, provided you exploit their prejudice. “My opponent may be an expert on this subject. But he is also homosexual who associates with known socialists. Is this the kind of person we want to be taking advice from?!”

Construct false dilemmas – There is usually a spectrum of valid views on a subject. Many of the less extreme views require careful nuanced reasoning to explain - screw that; go nuclear. Fool the audience into thinking that the choice is a binary one. “You are either with us or with the terrorists!”

I'm afraid it's not that simple, Lord Vader...

Argue from purely anecdotal evidence – No matter how much the evidence is against you, simply quote a coincidental success story and cite this as proof of your position. This also works if you're trying to argue that something is endemic when it isn't - merely keep restating your experience, no matter how untypical it may be. “I had a headache and when I took some homeopathic remedy it cured it! Therefore it proves homeopathy works!”

Use statistics badly to draw inane conclusions – Incorrect use of statistics is rife in everyday life and even in academia. Exploit this to your advantage. If in doubt, make up some figures too - it's unlikely anyone will be able to check in the immediate aftermath, and that may be enough time to flummox the opponent. “50% of people die in hospitals - it's obvious that if you're sick, a hospital is as likely to kill you as keep you alive!”

Don't be afraid to cite sources that are utterly discredited – Also works with sources that are partisan, utter junk or patent nonsense. Quote any disseminate of pseudo scientific garbage to back up your point. “I know the MMR vaccine is the cause of Autism - Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy keep giving information on it!"

Jenny McCarthy - Immunologist ?

Implement faulty cause and effect – Post hoc ergo propter hoc for all you Latin majors. If an event followed another one, argue that the preceding one MUST have caused it if it suits your argument. You don't even need evidence of correlation, just an order of events. The best thing is this can be used for anything you like - the actual order sometimes isn't even important. “Hurricane Karina happened after the legalisation of abortion - this just goes to show that God hates abortion.”

Confuse the issue – Don't be afraid to muddy the waters to strengthen weak conjecture. Also works wonders when you don't understand the issue well enough to argue it, or when the issue requires a large degree of technical understanding and fine nuance. “Nuclear weapons can kill. Doctors use radiotherapy to KILL cancer. So of course Nuclear power must be made illegal!”.

Simplify every thing to the point of pure stupid – Make simple bold statements with no regard to the complexity of the issue at hand. “Medicine can kill people, so it is bad. Reiki doesn't kill, so we should all get Reiki instead.”

Set Reiki hands to 'Stun'

Engage the slippery slope argument – Interpret any move by your opponent as the beginning of a slippery slope. This engages the audience's fear and they become resistive to any sensible statements made by your opponent “If we allow scientists to study embryonic stem cells today they'll be murdering babies for their organs tomorrow!”

Make plenty of bogus analogies – An unwarranted and pointless comparison can often fool the unwary. The more outlandish the better. Better still if you can play the victim too. “The attitude to alternative medicine from the skeptic community today is like the repression of Jews during world war 2!”.

Thought terminating cliches are your friend – If you're arguing something really dodgy there is a chance that your audience will experience at least a mild cognitive dissonance over it. Reassure them with an empty statement that terminates their critical evaluation “Ah, but the lord moves in mysterious ways”

The Lord moves in Mysterious ways. U2 say "she moves in mysterious ways". The Lord is ergo a woman. QED

Selectively focus on the negative traits to extrapolate a nonsense conclusion – Emphasis the negative to win some votes. Ignore any valid observations to the contrary “Water drowns people and erodes the landscape. We should therefore ban water”.

A red herring is not just a pretty bird - If you're on the defensive, use the red herring argument to distract your opposition. I could try and concoct a functional example but I think South Park's Chewbacca Defense is all you need to illustrate. “The Chewbacca defense".

An argument from ignorance can be a blessing– Know little or nothing about the topic at hand? That doesn't matter, you can speak from ignorance with authority. “Scientists don't know exactly how life on Earth arose, so God must have done it.".

Always beg the question– If you make an argument based around an unproven or presumptuous conclusion, you'll back foot your opponent who will have to scramble to correct your assertion. “Since the killing of a person is an act of murder, euthanasia is obviously murder"

Be non sequitar!– Done well, this can utterly throw your opponent. Make an statement and immediately say something that doesn't follow.. “I wore my lucky green shirt on Tuesday, so it was probably why I passed my exam the week after".

Non sequitar guy. But no master of the english language - the word is "inexplicable" ...

Appeal to tradition - Just because somethings been done for years does not make it correct or immune from criticism. But you may be able to fool an opponent by appealing to tradition or cultural heritage. “If Chinese medicine is mainly ineffective, why then have the Chinese used it for thousands of years?".

If all else fails, accuse others of engaging in a conspiracy - when the vast bulk of scientific and other evidence is contrary to your point of view, just allege a conspiracy or hoax. ““All publishing climatologists maintain man is contributing to global warming. Isn't it obvious it's all just a conspiracy to get more funding?!"

For those of you over the legal drinking age, feel free to play a simple drinking game based on this; watch a defender of nonsense debating a skeptic and take a shot whenever they engage any one of these tricks. I personally advise against it for the heightened chance of acute liver damage. Of course, all these tools are disingenuous and ultimately vapid but time and time again there will be trotted out to defend dodgy ideas and faulty logic. But depressing as that might be, they can only succeed in fooling the public if we're not sharp enough to see the flaws in the reasoning and not outraged enough to point it out, or not wise enough to see when we ourselves fall into these logic traps.

The tricks might be fundamentally hollow, but it's up to us to catch them out and make others aware. Otherwise these tricksters can ply their unethical trade with impunity.

Your Dogma is chasing my Karma - a suggestion to skeptics

2011-07-23T12:50:00.006+01:00

One of the reasons I love science is its utter objectivity. Science doesn't care about your petty prejudices, political persuasions or reckless religiosity - it remains steadfast and unconcerned. Creationists can scream 'til they're blue in the face that the earth is less than 10,000 years old but it won't magically shave off an odd 4 billion years from the age of the Earth. Homeopaths can claim all they like about their elixirs but it won't change the fact that their concoctions are just water. Science is an objective tool - we can run the same experiments, and verify the same result is found. Skepticism, defined by Wikipedia as a "...questioning attitude of knowledge, facts, or opinions/beliefs stated as facts,or doubt regarding claims that are taken for granted elsewhere" is an integral part of science for evaluating evidence. Critically this means remaining objective - an active skeptic in the scientific sense attempts to falsify their own ideas by testing it or looking for counter examples. They must examine all plausible interpretations and test them. Crucially, it is a terrible mistake to only look to evidence that supports your position and disregard evidence at odds with it.
I'd like to think it is promising that many people are identifying themselves as skeptics. But are we honestly applying that label with all the intellectual honesty and rigour it entails ?

If creationists want the Earth to be <10,000 years old, they'd best invent time travel.....

About that I'm not as sure as I once was. Recent events have left me feeling more than a little disillusioned with the 'skeptic community'. Please be aware dear reader that I don't mean to disparage the skeptic community; many in the skeptical community have done great work in spreading understanding of critical thinking and the scientific method. But if the skeptical community wish to help others think for themselves, is it up to them to apply the same standards to their own discourse. But I note with sadness a certain dogma creeping into skepticism. This is worrying - again from wikipedia dogma is "authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted, or diverged from, by the practitioner or believers". It is the very antithesis of skepticism and yet recent comments from leading lights in the community have shown this very trait. To reduce skepticism to something resembling a religion would be a insult to intellectual honesty, and with that in mind I'm (hesitantly) offering my humble opinion on not only the whole "Elevatorgate" fiasco but rather the cracks that were and are already in the foundations of this noble movement that I cannot in good conscience ignore.

Digression - When I was a kid I thought "dogmatic" literally translated to "automatic dog".

By now pretty much everyone knows the elevatorgate story. If you don't know it, there's plenty of blogs on the issue. I'll get straight to what pains me about the whole furore, and please note I am not setting out to offend anyone. I inevitably will, but I do not mean to single people out for attack - we are all human, and emotions can get in the way of harsh critical analysis. The first red flag for me was dangerous error of making assumptions and assertions without evidence. This is the very anti-thesis of skepticism. Yet the whole elevator-gate affair was riddled with assertions and assumptions that were constantly overlooked. Rebecca Watson herself stated the she was "sexually objectified" rather than found to be sexually attractive. This is a assertion without any basis and perhaps a massive overstatement - she was asked for coffee politely and she politely refused. She has EVERY right to feel uncomfortable. But she has no basis to assert the intentions of the proposer. He may have been quite genuine and friendly, or perhaps socially inept. He may indeed have been hitting on her, but Watson insists she was sexually objectified, which she defines as "dismissing a person’s feelings, desires, and identity, with a complete disinterest in how one’s actions will affect the “object” in question". This is unsupported conjecture and she has zero basis for this drastic condemnation.

Initially this was my issue with the event - Watson was well within her rights to feel uncomfortable, emotions are entirely subjective. Indeed, from her accounts it seems to be a clumsy come on. But it is profoundly against the ethos of skepticism to make such a laden example when there is an absence of evidence either way. Watson could indeed be absolutely right - but equally she could be utterly wrong. The essence of the issue is without evidence, what Watson said was not a skeptical statement as it relied on assumption and assertion. Of course the issue IS emotive, and Watson could be at least initially excused for overstating the case.

But what I do have a problem with is constructing straw men arguments - this is exactly the sort of behavior that skeptics bemoan when it is done to us so it is both hypocritical and intellectually vapid to use such tactics in our own discussions. When Stef McGraw suggested a different interpretation of Rebecca Watson's anecdote, Watson dismissed it as the "anti-woman rhetoric my audience was engaging in". This is not only a straw man dismissal, it is also an ad homimen attack. Worse, Watson included McGraw along side those calling for her to be raped from a pulpit position. At best this was terribly thought out juxtaposition, at worse it was positively odious slur. In either case it is classic straw manning - misrepresenting another's position rather than addressing it truthfully is a terrible faux pas for self-proclaimed skeptics to make. Curiously, Watson did the same thing to Rose St. Clare and Paula Kirby when presenting with their differing opinion.

Straw man argument - an argument without a brain...

Nor was it limited to the main protagonists - plenty of commentators took unwarranted and unfair pot shots. My friend the Irish female scientist Zenbuffy eloquently summed up her thoughts on the matter in this blog. Immediately afterwards she was attacked by Jennifer Ouellette in Scientific American for "diminish(ing) the experiences and emotions of your sisters in skepticism. Remain open to the possibility that you, too, might be unconsciously influenced by cultural baggage." This was snide, condescending and prompted Zenbuffy to ask Ouellette if she had actually bothered to read her blog. Ouellette has since deactivated the link but Zenbuffys reflections on the matter can be seen here. Similarly, Paula Kirby received flak for politely stating her point of view. There is a certain dark irony that despite this being ostensibly about female empowerment, it seems that women can be staggeringly vicious to their fellow women over different viewpoints. This hardly encourages women to be skeptics does it ?

Worse were the other commentators who expounded a weak false dichotomy - you're either with us or a misogynist. This is intellectually false in every way and I cringed to read it - Whether or not you think Richard Dawkin's comments were well judged or not, I very much doubt the man is a hater of women. Nor do I agree with the vitriol spewed upon Prof. Dawkins - Dawkins has done so much for public understanding of science, more so than the vast majority of the skeptic community ever will do in their time. I read several comments from well known skeptic writers and activists, claiming they will boycott Dawkins and his future works, including Skepchick "I will no longer recommend his books to others, buy them as presents, or buy them for my own library. I will not attend his lectures or recommend that others do the same". That is frankly pathetic - you can dislike the man if you wish (I personally am a huge fan) but to dismiss his work shows to me that this rift is deeper than just a spat - it shows so called skeptics are more interested in the man than the message. It shouldn't matter a damn if Dawkins was Satan himself (see what I did there?!) who eats cute little babies for breakfast - either his work is solid after skeptical examination or it isn't. And if the work is solid, you do not have to like the man. It shouldn't even come into the picture. The fact that the comments made against him were so acidic indicates that cult of personality > actual substance. The implication that one was sexist or misogynistic if they didn't fully support Watson was frankly insulting and intellectually empty.

WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW?!

There's also the fallacy of invalid comparisons abounding, and hyperbole without proper context. Exactly the kind of thing my debating coach used to chide us for, and I now give out to students for. Yet for example, Dr. Phil Plait said "to a woman, being alone on that elevator with that man was a potential threat, and a serious one." But there are always potential threats - the question should be how likely is a particular threat ? Stranger rape is terrifying but relatively rare - most men (and women) are not sexual predators. As it is phrased it is more scaremongering than illuminating. But there was something curious about the whole thing - women were constantly depicted as weak potential victims, men as potential predators. Yes, both scenarios can and do occur. But then we're back to the question of perception of risk versus actual risk. Plait described the elevator scenario as "potential sexual assault". Which of course it is, in the same way that going for a walk is a potential death scenario. Sadly, almost all rapes are perpetrated by people known to the victim. For those interested in the figures try here, here and here. It is estimated by the FBI that 90,000 male - female sexual assaults occur in the US annually. Surprisingly, it is also estimated that 100,000 - 140,000 male - male rapes occur in US prisons annually. These are terrible crimes, but this approach is not a healthy one as it commits the fallacy of argument from exception and is so emotive it strangles attempts to critically evaluate the actual issue at hand.

People are many things, a thrilling combination of psychological and biological quirks. To assign them characteristics based solely or even chiefly on gender is far from scientific. Unless they are in someway biological, it is simply ridiculous to make statements alluding to "women" or "men" in general. How can one person speak for 3+ billion others ? People are individuals first and foremost. Trying to shoehorn the entire spectrum of human emotions and reactions into two categories based on mutations of the 23rd chromosome is plainly ridiculous yet it didn't stop many authors speaking generally about how men or women should act.

An unscientific attempt at characterizing people based on an accident of birth ? That rings a bell..

This brings me to my biggest gripe with the skeptic community - the entire argument has become dogmatic and utterly pointless. Feminism in the form of female equality is something I support (see previous post about protesting for pro-choice in Ireland) but is it not something consistent with skepticism - the truth is any ideological movement based on ideals and aspirations has dogma, and as such is separate to skepticism. It is equally laudable, but it is impossible to marry the philosophy of skepticism with ideologies.

This doesn't just apply to feminism - it applies to any other ideologies you or I subscribe to - humanist, environmentalism, human rights etc. Of course we should aspire to these goals, but forcing them onto the intellectual tool of skepticism is short sighted and doomed to failure - even inside these ideological arenas there is a great deal of assertion, subjectivity and dogma . I find myself in full agreement with Paula Kirby who is "saddened to see the movement tearing itself apart over something that I do not see as central to atheist activism in the first place, and reluctant to do or say anything that might add fuel to the flames." Admittedly the quote I am using refers to atheism rather than skepticism but Kirby's credentials in skeptics circles are rock solid. There is nothing to stop people being both feminist AND skeptical. But drawing parallels between an ideology and a method of inquiry is fallacious. This is how dogma gets into movements - and the irony of dogma getting into skeptical movement shouldn't be lost on skeptics.

By the same measure I think it's time Plait's "Don't be a dick" mantra is treated in much the same way. Though laudable as it may be, "being a dick" is subjective, dogmatic and just begging to be abused. It allows all manner of straw man arguments and the censure of valid critical approaches. It has net effect of sacrificing true skepticism for a more populist form where certain topics and viewpoints are taboo. Essentially a party-line for skeptics. I've seen this argument used to witch-hunt and demean valid questioning and as decent as the thought behind it was, I simply can't see a way to make it compatible with honest skepticism. It turns out I'm not the only skeptical thinker who has noticed this. Other writers have talked about it before me.

Don't be a dick - bet you thought I'd do something crass there..

So let me ask any skeptics who might be reading this - is the skeptic community clinging to dogma rather than cold clinical reasoning ? Indeed I asked some of my fellow scientists and colleagues their opinion on the skeptic community. Despite these people being professional skeptics, many of them told me they found the 'community' off-putting - The general consensus was that the skeptic community were more interested in the 'community' aspect than the 'skepticism' aspect. As one colleague noted "all those who are scientific are skeptical. But it hardly seems all those who are skeptical are scientific." Interestingly the opinions of my female colleagues towards Watson's side were almost universally negative. Many of them felt she had misrepresented other women and several felt patronised by skeptic writers presuming to tell them, as women, how they should feel and that they were anti-women if they felt otherwise. In essence they did not like the concept of these people speaking on their behalf.

I admit to being partially in agreement there - many popular skeptic writers displayed a staggering lack of integrity or a knee jerk reaction unbecoming of critical thinkers. If my scientific colleagues who are in principle supportive of the skeptical movement can harbour such negative feelings towards it, spare a thought for how an outsider might feel, particularly when the issue garnered so many headlines.

Perhaps I might digress a moment to rely a personal anecdote? When this story first broke, I heard about it from a science writer I respected and followed on twitter. He posted some searing condemnation of Dawkins and repeated the "not buying.." mantra. I found that surprising - a scientific writer disparaging a noted academic over what amounts to issue unrelated to their scientific credentials ? He followed up with nasty tweets about sexism in skepticism and those oppressing Watson. I politely suggested the issue may be a storm in a teacup and that perhaps it has more to do with social ineptitude than gender - the author's response was utterly unexpected. Instead of replying to me either to agree or disagree, or perhaps point out the flaw in my reasoning (which I would have been open to), he retweeted my comment to his 9000+ followers with a disparaging comment tacked on. I was upset and surprised - I replied that he was entitled to his opinion, but I didn't see how a condescending attitude would benefit anyone. He retweeted this with another barb, and then sent me a message belittling me. Essentially he painted me as a clueless sexist and some of his followers decided to take cheap shots also. This was particularly hurtful given that my last blog post was about a women's rights issue in Ireland which I actively support. I am a mere scientist, and not a 'blog personality' with thousands of followers on twitter. I don't have a column in any scientific dispatch. I don't have my own youtube channel with lots of fans. I'm so damn busy trying to do actual science (and music) that I probably never will. But I apply the principles of skepticism everyday, even if it means throwing out a cherished theory in my own research. I try to teach students critical thinking - not what to think, but how to think. I do my utmost to keep my integrity, and I do not think that is it acceptable to abuse others for or assume their intentions. I lost my respect for that science journalist sadly - to publicly misrepresent someone else is not becoming of a scientist, journalist or skeptic of any stripe. I really expected more. In a similar vein I lost respect for the journalist who took a pot shot at Zenbuffy ( here.). Like her, I am a small timer who writes for a handful of readers. But I will strive to be as objective as I can, and to maintain my own integrity. It is just rather hard when a community who supposedly exist to support this aim are actively antagonistic towards it.

There are many fantastic skeptics I have met - but the loudest voices in this fiasco seem to be the most polarizing ones. Perhaps it is time to question if these voices are really Representative of skeptic thought. So I pose this and leave it with you, dear reader. Skepticism is a method of enquiry, an attitude of investigation - does it really need a social club ? Particularly if this network cannot apply the principles it claims to uphold to itself. This is the crux of the issue - Skepticism will survive without a dedicated skeptic community. But a skeptic community will not survive without skepticism.

A literal storm in a teacup ?

Abortion - Misconceptions and outright fabrications

2011-07-03T13:32:00.002+01:00

Let's be frank - Abortion is an emotive issue. There are a myriad of different views between the two extremes constituting an entire spectrum of beliefs. Nor is there anything wrong with this; people have the right to their own opinions. But people do not have a right to their own facts - any position justified with bold faced fabrication and truth bending is not only intellectually dishonest, it merely spreads disinformation and muddies the water, obscuring informed debate. And yet the cynic in me thinks that this may be precisely the goal.

I personally am pro-choice. I have come to this decision after many years of researching the topic, and separating the facts from the fictions. I also think it's shameful Ireland buries its head in the sand regarding the issue and in true hibernian fashion ignores the elephant in the room. So yesterday I attended a pro-choice counter rally to the well funded "Rally for life" and as we lined the streets to peacefully protest for the rights of Irish women to make their own choices, we were met by some real friendly people from the anti-choice brigade. Like this lady ...

Apparently that's the Virgin Mary and Jesus. I initially thought she was holding up an ad for Johnson's baby lotion.

And this cheerful guy.....

He was slightly taken aback when I asked him which poundshop he got his plastic blue cross in...

There was also another anti-choicer carrying the sign "NO TO ABORTION! NO TO SODOMY! NO TO NORRIS!". The mind boggles. I've stolen these photos from my friend Jess and you can see more at her awesome blog here.It was clear that the vast majority of the "Rally for life" marchers were of a Catholic bent from the rosaries, crosses and pictures of Jesus being thrust at us. There were a number of very aggressive men and women screaming at us, calling us murderers and all manner of other slander as well but all credit to the Gardai and my fellow protesters for maintaining the peace and not taking the bait. This brings me to the crux of the issue - the right to your own opinion, but not your own facts.

Fabrications about abortion are always rife at events like this, and in this blog I want to tackle the most prominent myths about abortion that get oft repeated as facts. Namely the myths go something like this -

Women who have abortions are at higher risk of psychological damage
Women who have abortions are at higher risk of cancer
Women who have abortions are more likely to be infertile.

These are science and medical myths well within the scope of this blog, the triumvirate of anti-choice nonsense. Each is particularly insidious as they all allude to justifying anti-choice for the benefit of women when in reality they're the complete opposite and serve only to mask the reality of the situation. Youth defense Ireland, for example, make all three of these claims in their propaganda. So let's exam these claims to see exactly why they're false.

Claim 1: Women who have abortions are at higher risk of psychological damage

Put simply, this claim states women who opt for an abortion rather than carrying to term or adoption suffer all manner of mental maladies, such as depression, suicide and other problems. For example, here's Breda O'Brien from Catholic think tank the Iona institute in the Irish Times baldly stating that abortion leads to suicide. Scary stuff. And utter nonsense.

This is at heart a scientific claim, and can thus be tested. All you'd have to do is study a large group of women who have abortions and see if they're more likely to have mental issues than a control groups who don't. And that is precisely the methodology used by a group of doctors in Denmark, who tracked the psychological health of 365,550 women including 84,620 who'd had abortions. The results ? No increase in psychological damage, nor any elevated risk of suicide. You can read the actual study from the New England Journal of medicine here.

Nor is this the only wide scale study debunking the alleged existence of what anti-choice activists call Post-abortion-syndrome (PAS); Brenda Majors studied this in depth and found zero evidence that PAS exists. As long as the woman was not depressive before the abortion, "elective abortion of an unintended pregnancy does not pose a risk to mental health". The same results were uncovered by a study in the British medical journal and several other studies. Dr. Nada Stotland has published extensively on the topic, including a paper for the Journal of the American Medical Association entitled "The myth of the abortion trauma syndrome" in which the legend of PAS is firmly put to bed; "Currently, there are active attempts to convince the public and women considering abortion that abortion frequently has negative psychiatric consequences. This assertion is not borne out by the literature: the vast majority of women tolerate abortion without psychiatric sequelae".

PAS ? Faux Pas seems more apt.

Conclusion - Claim is nonsense

Claim 2: Women who have abortions are at higher risk of cancer

The second claim in the canon usually tries to claim women who have abortions are are risk for higher rates of cancer. Usually anti-choice protesters try to claim breast cancer is linked to abortion, and again it's rather easy to debunk this old chestnut. Rarely was so scaremongering a claim on such flimsy ground. This is made rather clear by the definitive paper on the subject "Breast cancer and the politics of abortion in the united states" and indeed, much research has gone into the subject to quell the misinformation. Research by bodies including the WHO, US cancer society, National cancer institute, American college of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Royal college of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists all show zero relationship between abortion and cancers, particularly of the breast.

Conclusion - Claim is nonsense

Claim 3: Women who have abortions are more likely to be infertile

Yet another scary claim with no proof at all. An abortion will NOT affect future fertility. Studies like this one and this one pure the lie to that notion.

Conclusion - Claim is nonsense.

It is clear the terrifying claims that anti-choice activists make are counter to what the actual science and medicine tells us, and as such, should be disregarded from any debate on the subject. I find these notions repugnant, as the masquerade as being for the protection of women when in fact they're nothing of the sort. This kind of underhand tactic is highly disingenuous - if you are religiously against abortion, that is your right - but don't pretend you are against abortion because you wish to protect women. Moreover, I would encourage people to actually challenge individuals repeating these dodgy claims. Regardless on what your personal beliefs may be, if we truly want informed debate on issues as nuanced and complex as abortion then attacking false assertions head on is a vital step.

Pope Benedict - Does it for the chicks, apparently...

Happiness is..... measured in units of 1/K apparently...

2011-06-17T11:39:00.004+01:00

Good news everyone! A formula by the evident polymath Cliff Arnall PROVES today is the happiest day of the year. The story has been published in several publications which ostensibly purport to be newspapers, so it must be true right? Arnall's modesty is endearing - “Whether it’s a sunny day, a childhood memory, or something as effortless as eating a delicious ice cream, I wanted my formula to prove the key to happiness can really be that simple.” This is incredible, and opens up all sorts of new avenues for research. In much the same way as Max Planck didn't realise the paradigm shifting implications of his quantisation of energy levels, Arnall does not yet see the true importance of his work. So let's get to work immediately!

A formula for happiness so important it by-passed peer review!

Let's get to work immediately. First thing to do is ascertain just what are the units of happiness ? Dr. Arnall must have accidentally overlooked this part, but no worries, we can do a swift dimensional analysis and calculate them for ourselves! But what exact units do you measure being outdoors, in nature, or engaging in social activity in ? Or childhood memories ? Or harder still, holiday expectation ? Perhaps Dr Arnall overlooked a few things. It's not a problem - we'll assume that being outdoors and in nature are binary conditions, so either 0 or 1. Social interaction is given by a cardinal number of people you interact with. Childhood memories is a constant depending on your memories types - 1 for good memories, 0 for no memories, -1 for bad memories. Temperature is measured in Kelvin, but holiday expectation isn't as clear. However, for the formula to work the units on the bottom of the equation must match so we'll assume is the anticipated summer temperature. Plugging all this in leads us to finding number one.

FINDING NUMBER 1 - The units of happiness or K^-1, or 1/K.

The units are clearly inverse temperature units, or 1 / Kelvin. However, the new unit needs a proper title. A friend suggested happiness is measured in puppies so 1 puppy = 1 K^-1. This stunning piece of science leads to a staggering counter intuitive finding

FINDING NUMBER 2 - Happiness is INVERSELY proportional to temperature

The hotter it is, the unhappier we are. As temperature approaches absolute zero we become infinitely happy.

Fascinating. But the most useful application of the scale is that it allows us to compare expected happiness values! So let's take a few scenarios and contrast them to see the staggering predictive power of the formula. Let's take a simple case, and make some basic assumptions about the temperatures etc..remember to use units of Kelvin, as using Centigrade of Fahrenheit will mess up the final answer.

So going for a hike with some friends is approximately a centipuppy of happiness. What about fighting the Vietnam war with a platoon of 57 men ?

This just proves what we've suspected all along but could never prove... torching a village is Vietnam is ten times happier than going on a nature hike! And even better, being executed in a soviet Gulag is even happier again!

Of course the more astute reader (or any reader with more brain activity than a starfish) will have noticed this formula is total nonsense, and indeed Ben Goldacre has written before about this very media whore / insult to science. This particualar serving of tripe was written and reguritated to increase sales of Walls ice-cream. On one hand, it's quite amusing that some people actually believe this but in reality it does a greater dis-service to real science by implying to the public that this passes for real research. This has the net effect of clouding what science is really about and gives the impression that the majority of scientific pursuit is whimsical and out of touch. The reality is quite the opposite but to be fair, the papers that run this kind of tripe tend to be the same that open articles with lines like "Boffins believe..." or "Eggheads have discovered...." which already makes it clear what kind of attitude they have to science, reasoning that it's some irrevelant archaic and arcane practice rather than a system of understanding everyone can get something from.

I'm taking bets the Daily Star will run this again next year though...

I'm actually a lesbian [Citation Needed]

2011-06-14T11:48:00.002+01:00

I hope that got your attention. And if you haven't been following the story here's a brief summation - Syrian gay activist Amina Arraf, author of a popular blog "A gay girl in Damascus" has transpired to be in reality a 40 something American called Tom MacMaster. This upset a lot of Arraf's followers, including owner of LezGetReal.com Paula Brooks who helped supply information that led to MacMaster's online outing. In a deliciously stupid turn of events that one simply couldn't make up because it's just too daft, it has been revealed that Paula Brooks is actually retired construction worker Bill Garber. One couldn't make this up, and as to the motivations behind it ? The mind boggles


The lesbian blogger is..Old man Whitters? "And I wudda got away with it too, if it wasn't for you meddling kids!"

Many are outraged by the audacity of such posturing, and understandably they feel betrayed in some cases. Whether this feeling is justified, the truth of the matter is that nonsense and fabulist material has been on the internet since its inception and will likely be so for time immemorial. I'm not that interested in the emotional investment factor or the 'morality' of using a sock puppet identity. I'm more interested in how people are so taken in and why we haven't learnt from prior experience. Snopes have a great article on false blogs, and recently it has been the subject of legal wranglings. None of this is even that new - The term 'sockpuppet' in this context has been in common parlance since 1996.

And why shouldn't he ? You invented him!

Wikipedia has this definition for sock puppet;

A sockpuppet is an online identity used for purposes of deception within an online community. In its earliest usage, a sockpuppet was a false identity through which a member of an Internet community speaks with or about himself or herself, pretending to be a different person,^[1] like a ventriloquist manipulating a hand puppet. In current usage, the perception of the term has been extended beyond second identities of people who already post in a forum or blog to include other uses of misleading online identities. For example, a New York Times article claims that "sockpuppeting" is defined as "the act of creating a fake online identity to praise, defend or create the illusion of support for one's self, allies or company."[2]

What surprises me isn't that people make fake identities and sock puppets - that is a byproduct of the relative anonymity the Internet offers. Even at the age of 13 I was well away that if user handle HoTGRL4u asked "wanna cyber?" the probability that 'she' had a penis approached one. No, what surprises me is people's willingness to believe even the most outlandish of stories without a single iota of evidence to support them. It's as if the mere act of putting something online somehow imparts it with credibility. But here's the kicker..

It doesn't. Not one little bit.

So why am I writing about such a topic in this, a science / medicine blog ? Because the ability to evaluate the veracity of material is paramount to making an informed choice on contentious matters of science and health. Online one will find thousands of websites ranging on topics ranging from vaccinations to nuclear fusion and all too often suspect claims are made, motivated more by an ideological agenda than by any basis in fact. A website or blog is never adequate 'proof' of anything unless it presents information that can be easily verified or falsified. When information is presented as fact, it must be presented in context and with citations to reliable sources. The Internet is awash with information, some of which is exceptionally useful and some of use is absolute dross. Being able to separate the useful from the positively awful is a skill that everyone should have in these days of Internet for everyone. I'll try to blog more about this in future when I find the time.

But in the interim, there is a wikipedia credo for dealing with suspect information that I think we should all bear in mind...

[Citation needed]

Lovingly lifted from the wonderful XKCD.COM, original is here. Go visit!

Oh the bitter Herbs......

2011-05-25T17:53:00.001+01:00

My 2c on the EU directive for herbal medicine. Thanks to Prof. William Reville of the Irish Times / UCC for casting his expert eye over this...

The European Directive on Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products has of late provoked the ire of advocates and practitioners of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). From the impassioned furore, one might be forgiven for thinking that the directive is a sudden new and draconian imposition. But the directive has in fact been in force for 7 years, brought in after a number of deaths and accidents involving herbal medications. It is hardly draconian either - instead of demanding proof of efficacy through independent clinical trials as with any other medical product, the legislation simply asks those wishing to supply a herbal product to provide anecdotal documentation it doesn't harm and has a track record of at least 15 years usage. The deadline for registration of existing products has just past, and this is being presented as an attack on herbal practitioners. A vocal number of herbal advocates have claimed this legislation is a ploy by big pharmacy to drive them out of business but this entirely predictable claim is a straw man argument - the issue here is regulation, pure and simple.

Despite the claims of some practitioners, there does not seem to be any grounds for thinking the public are against regulation. A study conducted in April by the Irish Medicines Board found that 77% of consumers think that herbal health products should be regulated, and that they would inform their physician if they were taking any. A wise move - several herbal products on the market can interact negatively with conventional treatments and even exacerbate conditions. For example, the widely used St John's wort interferes with oral contraceptives and HIV medication, reducing their effectiveness. This is not to say that there is anything wrong with the St. John's wort; clinical trials indicate that it can be effective in the treatment of depressive disorders, but like any medication it has contraindications that need to be careful studied and regulated. Anything that has a biological effect, from the mundane to the exotic, is likely to have some side effects. Herbs and traditional medicines are not exempt from this credo.

An oft repeated claim is that because herbs are 'natural' they are 'safer' than conventional medication. Even ignoring the somewhat subjective interpretation of the word natural, this is an utter fallacy - natural is in no way synonymous with benign or even beneficial. Aristolochia, often used in traditional Chinese medicine, can destroy kidneys and can be carcinogenic. Kava, used for some herbal stress medicines, can dangerously alter liver function. It was banned in the UK after killing three and necessitating a further 6 liver transplants. Foxglove, Wolfsbane, Hemlock, and Arsenic are just some examples of naturally occurring fatal poisons. There are countless other examples which indicate the folly of conflating 'natural' with 'safe'. What is important to note is that prepared correctly, they all have some medicinal value - but the therapeutic index (the margin of error between a therapeutic and lethal dose) is often very narrow. A case in point is foxglove - it contains digoxin, which forms the active ingredient for the treatment of certain heart problems. The range between the beneficial and the detrimental is quite small, and lots of peer reviewed research went into not only finding this range but examining the mechanism of action to better understand what was happening. Not only did the pioneering researchers do that, but they found that starting with standardized plant preparations gave dangerously inconsistent amounts of digoxin. They extracted this active ingredient so dose could be exactly weighed and monitored resulting in a usable medicine. Herbalists often object to this practice, claiming without any evidence that isolated extracts are somehow inferior to the whole plant.

But the problems of lack of regulation aren't solely confined to medical risk. They also leave the door wide open for exploitation and fraud. In May 2010 the US Government accountability office (GAO) released a report entitled "Herbal Dietary Supplements: Examples of Deceptive or Questionable Marketing Practices and Potentially Dangerous Advice". Posing as elderly customers, GAO staff contacted sellers with a viewpoint to determining whether questionable selling practices were a wide scale problem. What they found was shocking in both nature and extent - several practitioners claimed to be able to cure ailments such as cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer's. As if this conduct wasn't bad enough, several herbalists further gave staggeringly bad medical advice, such as discontinuing medical prescriptions in favour of untested products. The GAO also sent 40 samples of products to their labs for testing. 37 of these had higher than expected trace levels of lead, cadmium and arsenic. The complementary medicine market is a big one ; NCCAM estimates that Americans spend €33.9 billion a year on it. The figure in Europe is likely to be similar if not higher. In a market with high profits, no liabilities and no regulations it is easy to see why practitioners of CAM oppose moves to change this. This isn't to say that all these employees are deliberately engaging in deception - their beliefs may be sincere but that doesn't make them correct.

This raises an interesting point. There are hundreds of herbal medicines on the market and unravelling those with some degree of efficacy from the many that are ineffective is difficult. The scientific gold standard for effectiveness is the double blind trial, where some patients are given a placebo and some the ingredient to be tested. Neither the subjects nor the medical testers are aware which group has which. This means an unbiased analysis can be performed. So far, only a small percentage of herbal remedies have been tested, and in this small group an even smaller fraction have been shown to have any actual benefit. The remainder either have no medical benefit or are actively damaging. Herb 'cocktails' offered by some herbalists are even more of a risk to health through interactions. And worse, there is no evidence they work but plenty to suggest they can expose users to potentially toxic doses and negative interactions.

In the realm of science and medicine, anecdotal evidence is no evidence at all, and for good reason - oftentimes reality is at odds with the common perception and only fair objective analysis can give any real answers.Therein lies the rub - either a given product has medicinal effect or it does not. If there is a medical effect, then of course it should be regulated to avoid side effects. If there is no medical effect, then claiming the product is a medicine or remedy is disingenuous and the product useless. Herbal advocates cannot have it both ways - either their product is biologically active or not. And if it is biologically active, then it should be regulated as any other medicine. Herbal medicine has much to contribute to health science, but it must do so in the frame work of peer review and careful analysis to ascertain not only what works and what doesn't but what harms and what heals. This must be based on evidence, not appeal to antiquity. The new legislation should in theory address this, but even a cursory glance reveals the loophole in the logic - the legislation gives undue deference to tradition by accepting anecdote rather than examining the truth.

Perhaps the real problem with the herbal medicines directive is not that it is too harsh, but far too lenient.

Somehow I don't think...

2011-05-07T15:46:00.000+01:00

...that this product can live up to the lofty claims it makes on the advertising front.

CURSE YOU MICKEY MOUSE ! I'm BLIND!

25 years of Chernobyl - A retrospective

2011-05-07T15:24:00.001+01:00

This was a little piece I wrote on the anniversary of Chernobyl this year. It was lined up to be an op-ed piece in an Irish weekend newspaper but news of Royal weddings got in the way. So I present it here for your reading pleasure after the fact...

25 years ago in the sleepy Soviet controlled village of Pripyat, Ukraine, an event occurred that branded a word onto the world's collective conscience. In the early hours of the morning, the plant was rocked by an explosion, resulting in nuclear waste products being strewn over a wide area. Since then, Chernobyl has become a word that conjures up fear, loathing and invokes a wide range of impassioned reactions. Discussion on the issue is overrun with fearful rhetoric, and the very name tends to galvanise people. Any time the subject of nuclear power comes up, opponents tend to cite Chernobyl as some kind of proof that it is inherently flawed and more dangerous than other forms of power generation. Whispers about detrimental health and environmental effects terrify people to the point that rational discussion about the events and aftermath of Chernobyl and indeed nuclear power are difficult and emotive. This was entirely understandable; an event like Chernobyl had never occurred before so assuming the worst was understandable - there was simply a shortage of information on how things would transpire. But now, a quarter of a century later, with the benefit of hindsight and over two decades of intense scientific research, it is time to reexamine the disaster and its consequences in light of what we now know.

The first step is to understand what happened at Chernobyl on that infamous day - the explosion happened when engineers at the plant were running an experiment to test and improve the reactor cooling rates. Due to a combination of bad engineering and poor design, a power spike occurred. This raised the steam temperature which resulted in an initial explosion. Seconds later, there was a second explosion. This second explosion was the result of a criticality accident, when nuclear fuels and products mix outside of the designed areas and undergo nuclear fission. This explosion effectively stopped the nuclear chain reaction, but expelled a high volume of nuclear byproducts. Contrary to safety regulations, the roof had been made with bitumen, a flammable material. This began to burn, along with the graphite control rod. The resulting fire exposed radioactive material beyond the confines of the plant. The fire brigade arrived to put out the fire - amazingly, they were not given any protective gear, nor indeed were any precautions taken. They battled the flames for hours and successfully subdued most of them. Sadly for their bravery, many of them died soon after from radiation sickness. It was only days later that the town of Pripyat was evacuated, and that didn't occur until a detection site at a nuclear plant in Sweden registered above normal background levels, forcing the Soviets to admit the situation. The transformation of Pipyat into an exclusion zone and the shocking culpability of the soviet authorities are well known, but before the health effects can be discussed, It is helpful to have a clear picture of what radiation is, and why over-exposure is damaging.

Radiation refers to any energetic particle or waves which travel through a medium. Generally 'radiation' refers to what is called ionizing radiation - particles or waves with enough energy to knock electrons out of atoms / molecules. Ionizing forms include X-ray, Gamma rays, and Alpha articles. Radiation can also refer to non-ionizing forms of radiation, like radio waves, microwaves and visible light. Radiation is all around us all the time and has been since the dawn of humanity. There are background levels of radiation everywhere, and doses we can easily endure with no ill effect but over-exposure to ionizing forms of radiation can have detrimental consequences as it can remove electrons from atoms / molecules. When an atom / molecule is stripped of an electron, they become electrically unpaired and as a result highly chemically reactive. These particles are known as free radicals, which tend to react with whatever organic material happens to be around and can cause cell damage. While the human body does have mechanisms for dealing with this damage, damaged cells can sometimes evade these protection mechanisms and proliferate with the end result being carcinogenesis or the formation of cancer. Single large doses can accelerate the normal physiologic process of apoptosis (programmed cell death), resulting in tissue which is unable to function correctly. This condition is called acute radiation syndrome (ARS) and the severity is dependant on dose with effects ranging from nausea to death. In radiobiology, absorbed dose is a predictor of health effect - the e gray (Gy) measures the amount of energy absorbed by an object per kilogram of mass. However grays on their own don't fully tell us what the biological effects are, as different types of radiation have different levels of impact. Alpha radiation has roughly 20 times the effect of gamma radiation on human tissue for example. Different tissue also various weighing factors. These can be combined in a unit that allows quantification of the biological impact of radiation exposure. This unit is called the sievert (Sv). It is s a large unit, so often doses are given in millisieverts (mSv) which is one thousandth of a sievert and microsievert (uSv) which is one millionth of a sievert. In Ireland, the background radiation dose will be about 2-3mSv a year. In parts of Europe and Asia the background rate can be as high as 50mSv per year. A single dose of 1000 mSv or 1 Sv would be enough to induce temporary nausea , vomiting and even bleeding. A single dose of 10 Sv would almost certainly kill rapidly. Severity of damage is not just dependent on the dose and type of radiation, but also the rate this is delivered at. A patient undergoing radiotherapy for cancer gets doses in the order of 20,000 mSv in the healthy tissue surrounding the tumour but as this is spaced out over several days it gives exposed tissue time to repair and replace.

Chernobyl was without question the worst nuclear power accident of all time. Exposure at the core immediately after the events would result in about 30 Sv per hour, certainly a fatal dose. The fire fighters and rescue workers that battled the blaze directly were directly exposed to massive doses and many consequently died. Apart from the health effects some radioactive fuel was expelled into the atmosphere, allowing it spread radioactive iodine 131. Iodine 131 doesn't live for long (a half life of 8 days) but it can be absorbed by the thyroid and can cause thyroid cancer. But how many health effects can be attributed to the disaster ? Fittingly, the latest report from the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) dealing specifically with Chernobyl has recently been published. The report makes for harrowing reading in so much as it makes clear much of disaster was avoidable. It also contains information on the cost to human health from the disaster. 134 Plant workers and clean up workers were exposed to dangerously high levels of radiation with minimal protection and suffered ARS. Of these 28 died. There were 15 fatal cases of thyroid cancer in children, which could have been avoided with iodine tablets. Those who imbued radioiodine immediately after the disaster are at elevated risk of thyroid cancer, which is quite treatable with a 92% 30 year survival rate. No increase has been observed in solid cancers or birth defects. The Chernobyl forum concludes the greatest threat to survivors is the risk to mental health from exaggerated fears about radiation, noting ".. designation of the affected population as “victims” rather than “survivors” has led them to perceive themselves as helpless, weak and lacking control over their future. This, in turn, has led either to over cautious behavior and exaggerated health concerns, or to reckless conduct, such as consumption of game from areas still designated as highly contaminated, overuse of alcohol...and unprotected promiscuous sexual activity". These are conclusions people often find surprising, expecting the health toll of Chernobyl to be much greater. That this toll is considerably less than people might expect does not take away from the tragedy or make the soviet response any less dreadful; Chernobyl cost the lives of at least 43 people and some of those exposed in 1986 may yet die early. That the authorities attempted to conceal the accident and didn't evacuate immediately or issue iodine tablets is no less dire. That the disaster occurred at all is damnable. Despite the enormity of the accident, all of those 43 lives could have been saved if proper precautions had been followed.

Some take issue with these figures; the Russian non-peer reviewed publication Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment claims 985,000 died as a result of the accident. Similarly, Greenpeace have claimed a figure of over 200,000 deaths. However, a subsequent investigation by the Oxford journal Radiation Protection Dosimetry exposed this as an utter shambles. George Monbiot of the Guardian explains "A devastating review in the journal Radiation Protection Dosimetry points out that the book achieves this figure by the remarkable method of assuming that all increased deaths from a wide range of diseases – including many which have no known association with radiation – were caused by the Chernobyl accident. There is no basis for this assumption, not least because screening in many countries improved dramatically after the disaster and, since 1986, there have been massive changes in the former eastern bloc. The study makes no attempt to correlate exposure to radiation with the incidence of disease." By contrast, the UNSCEAR reports are meticiously researched and conducted by several bodies, including the World Health Organisation. The important thing to take home is the dichotomy between what people expect and what actually is. This cognitive dissonance between the reality and the collective consciousness is jarring, but understandable. The spectre of the Cold War left the impression of imminent nuclear destruction on the psyche of the world. The events of Chernobyl occurred during this fraught period, and naturally public understanding conflated an explosion at a nuclear plant with a nuclear explosion. This is understandable but unfortunate, as the mechanism behind nuclear weapons is entirely different to nuclear power and one cannot simply turn a nuclear plant into an atomic bomb. This is turn must make us reevaluate our attitudes to Chernobyl; while is was undoubtedly a tragedy, it must be looked at in context if we are to have informed debate on nuclear power.

These questions are even more relevant now, with the problems at Fukushima. As of yet the accident at Fukushima has thankfully not claimed any lives but that has not stopped a predictable knee-jerk reaction against nuclear power, as Chernobyl did before; Several nations have questioned the viability of nuclear power. But dismissing nuclear power out of hand is not a good course of action. Nuclear energy is complicated and has some disadvantages, but it is clean, efficient and doesn't burn fossil fuels. With a rising world population and depleting oil reserves, dismissing nuclear energy based on a magnified fear is foolish and premature. This does not mean ignoring renewable energy, but recognising that renewable technologies suffer from the flaw they do not produce constant output and we cannot store electricity for long periods. To be pragmatic we need constant energy producers like nuclear in tandem with research into improving renewables. We also need to maintain perspective - the worst nuclear disaster in history at Chernobyl claimed 43 lives. By contrast when the Vajont hydroelectric dam failed in 1963, over 2000 people perished. Over ten times worse was the failure in 1975 of Banquio dam, where over 26,000 people died and vast tracks of land destroyed. Another 145,000 died from the resulting famines and epidemics. These are not stated to rubbish hydroelectric power, merely to give perspective and highlight the fact all energy technologies have some degree of risk. To demonise nuclear power is remiss, given the numbers indicate that accidents involving renewable and fossil fuel plants claim many more lives. Radioactivity is invisible and threats we cannot see are frightening but a misplaced sense of radiophobia should not be the underlying motivation in deciding how to best power our world.

The Iconic Pripyat Ferris Wheel. At least there's no queues.....

Feeling Randi ?

2011-04-25T22:04:00.001+01:00

I apologise for the terrible , terrible pun. I also extend my regret for the massive delay in post new material. Sorry about all that, real life got in the way.. if you count teaching and playing guitar for musicals as real life. Anyway, in the gaping interim of time since my last post, the legendary James Randi and his stellar organisation honoured me greatly by commissioning a little piece on churnalism and bad science from me. You'll find it here, all feedback welcome!

Randi suggests you head over to his awesome site......

Figuring Fukushima - On radiobiology and nuclear power

2011-03-20T14:21:00.002Z

This post won't be as flippant as my usual outpourings given I'm not quite up to the Gilbert Gottfried singularity on offending people. Just a little discourse on radiation...

Unless you've been living in a bizarre time warp or have encased your head in concrete / attempted a home lobotomy, you can't have failed to notice that Japan is in the middle of a humanitarian crisis after a magnitude 8.9 earthquake and the resultant tsunami. The sheer scale of the damage done is unreal, and the human displacement staggering. Sadly, the death toll continues to rise. In the midst of all this chaos, the spectre of a nuclear accident has almost overshadowed the frankly immense natural disaster. A few people have asked me to explain the biological impact of Fukushima and radiation in general - I'll try to avoid a technical digression onto the design and just stick to the medical physics, given that's my limited sphere of knowledge. So here is the idiot's guide to radiation. I have included a few on my own humble thoughts on nuclear power at the end and links to how you can donate to Japan at the end of the post.

What exactly is radiation ?
Radiation refers to any energetic particle or waves which travel through a medium / space. Generally 'radiation' refers to what is called ionizing radiation - particles or waves with enough energy to knock electrons out of atoms / molecules. Ionizing forms include X-ray, Gamma rays, and Alpha articles. Radiation can also refer to non-ionizing forms of radiation, like radio waves, microwaves and visible light. The concept that visible light is a form of radiation strikes some people as strange given the often times negative associations of the word radiation but it is utterly true to say. Radiation is all around us all the time and has been since the dawn of humanity.

Good God! Radiation EVERYWHERE!!

Why can Ionizing radiation become a problem?
Ionizing radiation can remove electrons from atoms / molecules. So why is this a bad thing ? Aren't there loads of electrons just floating around anyway? Well yes, so I'll explain. And here, to paraphrase L'Oreal adverts of yesteryear, comes to science. When an atom / molecule is stripped of an electron, they become electrically unpaired and free to float around. As a result, they are highly chemically reactive. We call these particles free radicals. Free radicals tend to react everywhere and just love messing about in biological tissue, reacting with whatever organic material happens to be around. The end result can be cancer. So free radicals are not exactly ideal to have running about in biological tissue.


The New Radicals, however, are just fine for biological tissue. You get what you give.

How is radiation dose measured?
Put as simply as possible, the damage from ionizing radiation is directly related to the energy absorbed. Energy is measured in units called Joules (J) and mass is measured in the kilograms (kg). The gray (Gy) is a quick way to express the energy per kilogram (J/kg) deposited into any material but it only tells part of the story when you consider humans; Different biological tissue responds differently to radiation and indeed to different types of radiation. To quantify this, we have to use weighing factors for both the type of tissue AND the type of radiation to calculate the absorbed dose. This new measurement we call the sievert (Sv) and it is the unit most often discussed when we talk about the effects of radiation on human tissue. In practive, the sievert is a big unit, we often times we use the microsievert (1 uSv = 0.000001 Sv) or the millisievert ( 1 mSv = 0.001 Sv). Pretty much everything we do results in some radiation exposure. Even eating a single banana results in a dose of 0.1 uSv. This is sometimes referred to, semi tongue in cheek, as BED: the banana equivalent dose. But don't let this radioactivity put you off delicious bananas - all food has some radioactivity. Over a year, you'll imbue over 0.4 mSv naturally occurring radiation from food. Obviously this isn't so bad, but it raises the question - what is bad ?

This banana's minuscule radioactivity has not damned his enthusiasm for cheer leading

What are the limits ?
So what exactly is the 'safe' radiation level and when does exposure become detrimental ? Well, stolen from the excellent BBC article (they even interview a medical physicist, sometimes my faith in journalism is rewarded!) here are some typical levels.All thanks to BBC for the graphic...

Stealing from the BBC is not only fun, it's informative!

These are exposures over time, but what about acute exposure ? Note these are measured in millisievert (mSv), and 1 Sv = 1000 mSv = 1000000 uSv. This means a one sievert dose is a thousand millisieverts or a million microsieverts. It's important to be clear on the scale, as there's a huge difference between getting one or the other! Single doses above 8 Sv (8000 mSv, 8000000 uS) are almost always fatal. Doses at Fukushima at their maximum were 0.4 Sv / hr. High, but less than half that required to cause radiation sickness. The problems at Fukushima are also thankfully self - contained. But unless you're the kind of person who enjoys rolling around in high level nuclear waste, odds are you'd be more concerned about chronic exposure

What about chronic exposure ?

Given the majority of people don't go swimming in nuclear fuel, the main fear is the effects of Chronic exposure. Ionizing radiation can cause free radicals which can cause cancer. But at what levels do we have to start worrying ? Well, that is a point of major contention. Some schools of thought claim we should always limit our exposure to radiation. Another claims that low levels of radioactive exposure are actually beneficial for us, a theory called radiation hormesis. But as is generally the case, until we know for sure we err on the side of caution and go with the conservative estimate. In this case it's called the Linear no-threshold model (LNT) for exposure. Essentially, it assumes there is no 'safe level' and the effects of exposure are linear - so if a certain amount of exposure produces one new case of cancer per thousand people exposed, the LNT model assumes that 1/1000th of that dose will produce one extra case of cancer in every million people exposed. Opponents point out that we happily tolerate the natural background level while agreeing overexposure is not healthy. It is still an area of active research so I'm afraid I can't give you any thing definite only that we err on the side of caution. The guardian also had a good guide here

The newly introduced Ionizing radiation warning symbol. Subtle.

Conclusion and opinion

And so endeth my very basic introduction to radiobiology. While we fixate on Fukushima I do have to wonder if the engineering woes at the plant are a distraction from the real tragedy of thousands dead and displaced. There has been some rather shrill cries from anti-nuclear power campaigners that this somehow vindicates their position. I would have to disagree - the failure at Fukushima will unlikely cause any long term health issues. The plant itself was 40 years old and scheduled to be decommissioned this year. Comparisons to Chernobyl by some were utterly inaccurate and far from helpful. Chernobyl was a scale 7 disaster in an obsolete plant caused by human error and compounded by a soviet cover-up attempt. At one stage after the explosion at Chernobyl the radiation level on site was 10-30 Sv / hr and unconfined. Fukushima, by contrast, has a modest failure, fail safes and a low potential health threat.

Nuclear energy can be complicated and has some disadvantages, but it is relatively clean, efficient and doesn't burn fossil fuels. With a constantly rising world population and depleting oil reserves, I am not sure we can afford to dismiss nuclear energy as an option. This does not mean ignoring renewable energy, but recognising that renewable technologies (wind, tide, etc) suffer from the flaw they do not produce constant output and we cannot store electricity for long periods. This is why we still need constant energy producers like nuclear. We also need to maintain perspective - the disaster at Chernobyl was assessed in health terms by the World Health Organisation in 2006. The conclusion ? Chernobyl caused 57 direct deaths and up to 4000 additional cancers predicted as a result. The latest UNSCEAR studies finds these estimates were overstated. In addition, no further birth defects or solid cancers were detected in the population near Chernobyl in the past 20 years. The most common cancer estimated to be related to the disaster is Thyroid from radioactive iodine - a cancer which thankfully can be easily treated and has a 92% 30 year survivability. By contrast when the Vajont hydroelectric dam failed due to a natural disaster failed in 1963, over 2000 (some sources say 2600) people perished. Over ten times worse was the failure in 1975 of Banquio dam, where over 26,000 people died and vast tracks of land destroyed. Another 145,000 died from the resulting famines and epidemics. I do not state this to rubbish hydroelectric power, merely to put things in perspective regarding disasters. To demonise nuclear power seems a little knee jerk, given the hard numbers indicate that accidents involving renewable and fossil fuel plants claim many, many more lives.

In any case, let us not forget the disaster that has just affected Japan. If you can donate, please do.

Doctors without borders

Google Japan appeal

Non-believers giving aid

Detox This!

2011-02-27T19:58:00.002Z

--A short rant about what a detox is and why detox products do not work--

There used to be a show on Channel 4 in the UK called 'Extreme Celebrity Detox'. What was particularly impressive about this evidently divinely inspired piece of dross was that every word in the title was misleading. For starters, doing Tai Chi and yoga removes bugger all bodily toxins so detox it was not. Then the celebrities were hardly celebrated; the highest profile guests were Jack Osbourne (famous for being the son of the 3rd best vocalist in Black Sabbath) and Rebecca Loos (famous for letting David Beckham play offside on her pitch and injecting herself with more silicon than a PC World) so there's another misnomer. But the word 'extreme' was a super overstatement. You've probably never heard of Harold McCluskey, but he would be crown champion of any extreme detox competition ever held. So who exactly was he ?


This is Harold McCluskey. That probably doesn't really answer the question - bear with me...

Harold McCluskey worked as a chemical operations technician in Washington state. In 1976 the then 64 year old McCluskey was working diligently in a Plutonium finishing plant when the glove box he was working on exploded, dowsing his face in concentrated nitric acid, reisin, and shards of glass. And something else too - Highly Radioactive Americium 241. About 500 times the safe dose limit, the highest dose ever recorded in a human. He was rushed to hospital ,decontaminated and sealed off under the auspices of physician Dr. Bryce Breitenstein (which sounds like a made up name, but I am assured is not..) at a dedicated decontamination facility. Amazingly, McCluskey lived, treated by a process called chelation therapy. This is true detoxification - the chelating agent is given for a particular toxin (in this case Americium or some other metal) and this agent binds with the poison to form a biologically inert and execrable version. This lets the nasty pass with ease without killing the patient. Essentially, an antidote to heavy metal poisoning .

Sadly, chelation therapy is useless against the Heavy metal of Poison.

So what happened to McCluskey ? Well, he recovered and became known as the 'Atomic Man'. He would occasionally tour with his doctor and by all accounts was good natured about it, though his local minister had to convince people he was safe and there was no need to avoid him. He even spoke in favour of expanding and improving nuclear power. He died 11 years later from a pre-existing heart condition and at autopsy not a trace of cancer was found. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Harold McCluskey should have won Extreme celebrity detox.

This little ~~antidote~~ anecdote leads me down a meandering path to a point. A little search on the web for 'detox products' lists oodles of items you can purchase which claim to 'cleanse' your system. Let me be crystal clear about this, and subtly be damned - None of them work. Save your cash and drink a few glasses of water instead. Why is this ? Detoxification is the medicinal removal of toxins in your body that your body cannot deal with. These products do not detoxify and even if they did, they'd be no use if you're just partying too hard - any treatment claiming to cleanse is ripping you off. If you want to see how much, check our Sense about Science's report on the subject here. There is a detox system which, however, is very effective for those who have burnt the midnight oil (and possibly drank some) and it's free - It's called your liver. Your kidneys help out too. That's their job - to filter all the junk you over indulge in. Treat them nice and give them the credit they deserve - they're doing all the hard work, not some miracle cure from Boots the chemist at €5 a pop.

I don't know about you, but I find it difficult to argue with emoticons.

Yes, you may feel like death after a night of binge drinking. But unless you have actually been doing something silly like breaking open thermometers to drink the liquid mercury inside and actually need urgent chelation therapy a detox product is going to make not one lick of difference except making your wallet lighter.

20 Science and Medical Myths

2011-02-02T20:53:00.006Z

Assuming you're not a sociopathic hermit with all the social skills of lobotomised hamster, there's a good chance you've been to some form of social engagement in your life. And one great thing about a good gathering is good conversations - sometimes though, you hear something that triggers a distant alarm bell. Is that true ? I must check that. Of course, half the time we forget. And then maybe we hear it again. And again. Then after a while, we tactitly assume it is true and repeat it. But if it is wrong, are we just perpetuating falsehoods? The following is a list in no particular order of things I have either heard at parties, or at some stage, in some form, implictedly assumed to have some merit. Each of them a juicy tidbit on science, technology or medicine that gets repeated so much it is ingrained in our collective consciousness. They share one thing in common - they are all, without exception, falsehoods. Here's a list of 20 such claims that I have heard at least once in the year. So in no particular order and with no real rhyme or reason....

1. You should never wake a sleepwaker - Sure, waking a sleep walker may result in them being disorientated and confused. But waking anybody can render them a little confused, whether they're idly lying in on a weekend or ambling around in a walking coma. Sleepwalking is a REM sleep disorder and as a parasomnia is damn interesting; there have been cases of sleep walkers writing semi-coherent emails, having sex with strangers and even murdering people (not all at the same time .. yet) so on balance , the disorientation they may feel is somewhat less dangerous than other sleepy stunts they may pull. Even though it observing may be much more hilarious as a spectator sport, walking them gently is probably more humane

2. You only use 10% of your brain - Somewhere right now there is a neurologist hearing this and cringing. This little piece of lore is so oft-repeated that it is almost accepted as fact but it does a massive disservice to our brains to accuse them of being so lazy. We use practically all of our brains, but usually not all at once. This can be observed looking at a PET scan or fMRI image. So why has this myth endured so long ? One of the big reasons is that it is constantly trotted out by psychics and those with a vested interest in obscuring rational thought. "The hidden 90%" rubbish serves as a convenient Deus ex machina for those trying to peddle nonsense and they have succeeded admirably.Despite this, one could be forgiven for suspecting that people who part with their hard earned cash for psychics may be using less than their whole mental capacity.

Amazingly, even this man uses most of his brain. Notice how I avoided the juvenile 'bender' joke; it's all class here...

3. Water in Sinks washes down the other way in different hemispheres - The claim here is that due to the Coriolis effect, water drains down sinks and basins in different directions of rotation depending on the hemisphere of the Earth it is measured in. This one is almost plausible; the Coriolis effect does describe the apparent deflection of an object in a rotating reference frame but in reality, this effect is minuscule except for huge bodies of water. The shape of the basin is essentially what decides the direction water goes down. You can test this in very fancy hotels by repeatingly flushing toliets and observing your results. I tried this with a friend; the most common result is that we were asked to leave the hotels the next day.

4. Sugar makes kids hyperactive - This is one classic example of getting it wrong. In all double blind trials, sugar has had no effects whatsoever on the hyperactivity of children. Interestingly, studies did show that parents and teachers rated children who they thought had been given sugar as more active, despite the fact the children were controls who had been given no sugar - a beautiful display of both observer effect and testament to why double blind tests beat anecdotal observation; people tend to look only for evidence that confirms their hypothesis, which is textbook bad science. A good scientist, by contrast, looks for data to invalidate their hypothesis.And a tired parent, it seems, looks for a convenient scapegoat rather than entertain the possibility they may have been birth to the devil.

5. Pennies dropped off skyscrapers can kill / crack pavements open - At first glance, this looks almost true; acceleration due to gravity over a long distance can produce some pretty scary velocities at impact. The kinetic energy at impact is half the velocity squared by the mass. The mass may be little but the velocities are huge, so the end product is a big scary number, right ? Well not quite - that may happen in a vacuum but in reality, falling objects are falling through a fluid (air) are limited by terminal velocity, which happens when the force gravity exerts on the object is matched by the air drag the object creates, meaning a penny for example couldn't hit the ground any faster than 55-65mph; not enough to do damage. The verdict ? A very cheap but utterly ineffectual assassination method.

6. Swimming after eating causes cramps and drowning - Nay, not true. In any case, even with a cramp, a swimmer wouldn't actually drown. Though studies HAVE shown an increase in water mortality when large amounts of alcohol have been imbued. Which is kinda what you'd expect really, as drunks don't make the most graceful movers at the best of times.

7. The Twin towers came down in a controlled explosion - It's not a proper college party discussion until someone trots this out but to prove the WTC towers didn't fall in a controlled explosion is rather straightforward. For starters, controlled demolition starts at the bottom, not the top, of large structure. Otherwise it would achieve little save strewing debris everywhere. On top of that, numerous groups ranging from structural engineering organisations to popular mechanics have, after rigorous investigation, reached the same engineering conclusions: The WTC towers fell because of a fire induced, gravity driven collapse. But, the conspiracy theorists scream, if controlled explosives didn't bring down the WTC, what else could have ?! Oh I don't know.. perhaps someone FLEW A BLOODY PLANE INTO THEM? Speculate all you want about the motives of those flying the planes, but the engineering is fairly solid.

September 11th Attacks - obviously masterminded by a secret cabal of Jewish - Pagan - Neo-Con - Facist - Muslim - Templar - Illuminati - Freemason - Liberal - Bilderburg - NWO - Lizard People - scientologists. OBVIOUSLY.

8. HIV does not cause AIDS - This little gem is often repeated by AIDS denialists, claiming (usually) that HIV is a harmless passenger virus and that AIDS is caused by drug use and specifically, the use of antireteroviral drugs - the class of medicine used to treat AIDS. This view has been well and truly debunked but in certain places it still has an impact; in South Africa, this incorrect assertion has lead to the deaths of an extra 330,000 people when the government under Thabo Mbeki invited several HIV/AIDS denialists to join his Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel, claiming AZT caused AIDS. Doctors and medical scientists responded with the Durban declaration which stated categorically that HIV lead to aids. Finally, years later, this one seems to be dying down but curiously.....

9. AIDS Was created as a man made biological weapon - Ladies and gentlemen, presenting the most pointless biological weapon ever; it takes too long to kill, may or may not kill / disable, is relatively difficult to transmit and impossible to control. If AIDS were man made, it would be up there with trying to use your testicles as ammunition in a slingshot as dumbest weapon ever. There is a wealth of scientific information on the birth of HIV/AIDS and it's been in the human population since as early as 1930 so the iatrogenic theory is right out the proverbial window. Note to potential biological weapon developers - Ebola is WAY more effective. Just sayin'.

10. A coin on a train track will derail the train - Not a hope. Bigger objects can cause serious trouble though - The South shore passenger train in Indiana jumped track in 1999 after three youths left bricks on the track. Luckily no one was hurt. But small coins cannot derail a train yet plenty of people have died trying this by making a poor judgement on when the train is actually arriving. Moral of the story: if you intend to smash pennies using a freight train, invest in a timetable. Though in Ireland, that may be of somewhat limited use. Another word of warning; high speed trains can shoot the coins off the track like high speed projectiles. So invest in a suit if armour too for good measure. It may not save your life but it will look awesome.

All this for a souvenir penny......

11. It takes 7 years to digest chewing gum - Poor chewing gum gets a bad reputation for pretty much everything. While chewing gum is mainly indigestible, it goes through the digestive system at the same rate as anything else and is expelled in the same way. Whether the expelled waste is as a result more consistent is an area of research that is currently lacking. Thankfully.

12. If you handle a baby bird, its mother will reject it - Not true. In fact, most bird have a lousy sense of smell and won't care either way. Wildlife advice is generally return the nestling to the parents / nest as quickly as possible, or leave it in such a place as it can be readily found by the parents. It is useful to determine if the bird is a nestling or fledgling - if it's the former, returning to nest is vital. If the latter, leaving it be should be alright. And if it's a seagull, give it a smack for good measure.

13. Homeopathy is a genuine medical treatment - Homeopathy has failed every major test it has been subjected to. Firstly, the mechanism of action is laughable - that highly diluted concentrations of an agent can be curative has no merit whatsoever when the dilutions are so massive none of the original substance is left. Homeopaths argue (and it is quite funny to watch them do so) that water has memory, which they provide zero evidence for and violates known physics anyway. Finally, there is the little fact that in every major study, homeopathy has failed by doing no better than placebo. Miserably. Die hard believers will cite individuals studies that might show some weak effect for a minor ailment but invariably these reports have low participants and high drop outs with subjective reporting, which screws the statistics - a technique called cherry picking the data. The more powerful tool of meta-analysis (which basically gets all studies together and weighs them) conclusively shows homeopathy doesn't work. It doesn't stop homeopaths defending it and rubbishing science, but why would it when they are trying to protect a livelihood which allows them sell vials of water / sugar pills at massive prices to gullible buyers?

14. Use of date rape drugs is common and rising - Seemingly not, unless you count alcohol as a drug; which, technically, it is. This has been covered in this blog in some depth here.

15. You can see the great wall of china from space - This could potentially be true, if you brought some form of telescope into space with you. But even from low earth orbit (LEO) you'd need a visual acuity of 20/3; roughly 7.7 times normal. So that's a resounding 'no'. From LEO, even as near as the moon it's impossible to see. In fact, the wall would have the same apparent width as a human hair viewed from 3.2km away. Some astronauts have claimed to see the great wall when in fact they were observing the Grand canal of China, near Beijing. The genesis of this legend predates space exploration by some time, being first recorded in writing in 1754. Strangely enough, certain cameras in LEO can just about pick it up, as camera lens operate in a much different fashion than human optics. If you really want to see the Wall from space, rather than going into orbit and setting up a camera, we recommend you just use Google Earth like everyone else.

16. Evolution states we evolved from apes - It is truly sad that in this day and age, there is still those who deny as abundantly observable a scientific theory as evolution. And to compound this, there is a lot of misunderstanding about evolution. Much of that misunderstanding is deliberately fostered by those with a religious agenda as it offends their particular holy text; allow me to stop there and ram that point home - science, which bases itself upon observable and testable evidence, disagrees with some arbitrary, self-contradictory and unverified text written aeon's ago and somehow this means science is wrong. Well that's an iron clad argument no doubt. Anyway, before I type myself into an incoherent fury, let's get back to the myth - that evolution states we evolved from apes. In fact, evolution claims no such thing and never has; rather, evolution states we share a common ancestor with other primates who are distinct cousins to us, but never that we descended from them. Though looking at certain intelligent design proponents, one would be forgiven for making this mistake...


No caption required - or indeed, even advisable.

17. MMR Vaccination causes Autism - This is the stuff nightmares are made of; it really is worth reading a little about how to the whole debacle came about. It's covered very well over at Bad Science and the wikipedia article. Indeed, I've mentioned it in passing in a previous entry. But in a nutshell, a doctor with zero ethics named Andrew Wakefield (who, it turns out, received money to make false claims..) decided, with zero evidence, to claim a link between MMR vaccination and autism; the media eventually get wind of this and have a field day, vaccination rates fall (as low as 60% in London at one stage, below herd immunity levels) because anxious parents don't want to risk autism - so their kids get measles, mumps or rubella and die instead. Good move. Wakefield is eventually struck off the register as the research shown to be fraudulent and vaccination rates have steadily increased but this is sometimes still repeated. This one is pure nasty - and should always be challenged. Screw being polite, if someone mentions this one, correct them - do not back down. This is precisely the sort of nonsense that results in dead kids. And while we're on vaccinations....

18.HPV vaccine has killed women - No, it hasn't. And it couldn't anyway. This absolute piece of tripe was first touted on the great bastion of medical research that is the Oprah Winfrey show. I've ranted about it before here so I'll spare you the repeat and me the hernia. But I do get angry - usually these myths are fun, harmless. These kind of ones are malignant and detrimental to all involved and really, they should be challenged more often. A piece of idiocy repeated enough eventually becomes accepted as fact, and while that may be just amusing with some things, it's downright dangerous with others. Still, to paraphrase an old idiom, you can lead an Alternative health advocate to reason but you cannot make them think.

19. Cell phone can cause brain cancer - There is zero evidence for this and loads of evidence against it. When you put a phone to your ear, there's a thermal effect - notice your ear gets warm, as does the handset. This is harmless, so investigations tend to focus on non-thermal effects. Specifically, can mobile / cell use cause cancer and is Wi-fi detrimental to health. The answer is a clear no - the energies involved (microwave / radio wave) are simply not high energy enough to ionize, and hence can't cause cancers. In depth studies have confirmed this and it seems that at lower than ionizing levels, we're simply not that sensitive to electromagnetic waves - which is a damn good thing, because our own sun and earth give off a hell of a lot of them. Visible EM radiation (or light) has a lot more energy than radio waves (about a billion times more per photon) and microwaves (about a million times more) to put things in perspective.So if you worry a little about your wifi / cell phone, then worry about a billion times more about turning on your house lights.

20. Stem cells all come from unborn babies - Yikes. This one always generates controversy and pro-life / pro-choice antipathy. It needn't. There are in essence two types of stem cells; embryonic and adult cells. Embryonic stem cells can differentiate into all forms of human cell while adult stem cells act more like repair mechanisms, replenishing existing specialized cells. As you can imagine, the potential for these cells to treat disease is practically unlimited but there is a controversy, due in a large part of confusion between Adult and embryonic stem cells, and how these cells are gathered. Adult stem cells are more widely researched and come, as you may guess, from adults. On a side note, most Embryonic stem cells are gathered from excess embryos created for IVF treatments which are due to be destroyed anyway, which is why the controversy seems to me misplaced - it seems more pro-waste than pro-life. But I digress as the militant pro-life brigade may take offense, and they only seem to value the sanctity of life when it is in embryonic form.

This is a human blastoctye where Embryonic stem cells come from - Available at your local fertility clinic, no need to shoot up a family planning centre! Well, unless you're really bored or something.

And so ends my list. There are loads I've forgotten and some are wilder than others, but it's interesting to look into them. I find if in doubt, the urban legend reference site Snopes.com is meticulously researched and always worth a read.

Now ladies and gentlemen; YOUR nominations for most widely heard but totally wrong factoids?! Let's hear them!!!

And the world's greatest threat to scientific understanding is... Oprah?!

2011-01-16T02:53:00.001Z

On paper, I should be an Oprah fan; she's intelligent, liberal and very outspoken. She has, to her credit, raised issues which other shows did not at the time, though albeit on a tabloid talk show - But exposure is after all exposure, even if it is aimed at the daytime TV demograph; housewives, bored students, household pets who have figured out how to use the remote and if certain Disney movies are to be believed, toys that have gained sentience and come to life when their owners are out. But despite all this, I feel my blood boil each time Oprah appears on the little box in my living room. I've even been known to yell at the little box when she says certain things in a seemingly irrational manner that would convince any passing anthropologist I was from one of those remote tribes who had never seen a TV before and believed that someone was trapped inside it. Yes, I do come off that crazy at times. For those of you lucky enough to not know me personally, I'll clarify that blood boiling sensation is not motivated by an irrational fear response to differing levels of melanin. Nor is it because I am intimidated by her having one X chromosome up on me. The truth of the matter is I dislike Oprah because of her repeated scientific and medical garbage.

Tom always asked for Oprah's medical advice when he needed a laugh...

"What?!" I hear some of you say. "Oprah wouldn't do that!". Alright, before I am assassinated by the more rabid members of the Oprah fan club allow me to state quite clearly and baldly three crucial points. Firstly, much of the medical advice given on Oprah's show is absolute and demonstrable tripe. In fact, much of it would be more likely to kill you than cure you. Secondly, Oprah gives an air of respectability to people with vested interests and dangerous wares that shouldn't be entertained and finally that Oprah's championing of absolute drivel and shocking inane approach to complex issues diminishes the very understanding it disingenuously claims to champion.

Let me wipe the froth from my mouth and try to elaborate on those three points lest I choke on my own vitriol. It is well established that the medical content of Oprah's show is at best ludicrous and silly and at worst positively negligent. The fact that the medical advice given by Oprah is absolute mindless new-age dross is well known and I won't rehash it too much. That it is often frankly dangerous is also well known There was an excellent article in Newsweek about it in 2009 (Available here) and an equally fantastic entry about it over at Science based medicine. I could re-list all the shockingly stupid and dangerous ideas that have been brought to the mainstream by Oprah, who seems to think that gushing anecdotes trumps critical thinking and actual reasoning / investigation but I'll move on to the second point.

Fans of Oprah may argue that these are not 'her' views, but rather the views of her invited guests. But that argument is crippled by a few facts; for starters, Oprah herself frequently endorses the view point of her guest, defending them from criticism on the show. She also champions these daft beliefs - for example, when she had actress and self-help guru (I use that term in the 'shameless charlatan' sense) Suzanne Somers hawking her 'bio-identical hormones', Oprah lavished praise on her and started using the medically unsound procedure herself, before lashing out at the medical establishment with "We have the right to demand a better quality of life for ourselves, ..and that's what doctors have got to learn to start respecting." Consider the biscuit well and truly taken by that sense defying stand against... well.. it's not actually very clear. Think Shakespeare's 'full of sound and fury, signifying nothing...' and you're on the right track*. Oprah has had numerous snake oil salesmen and women on her show virtually uncontested - but to cite one example with tragic consequences, Oprah has also given a repeated pulpit to Jenny McCarthy. McCarthy, a playboy bunny, who just so happens to believe her son is autistic (actually, in 2010, McCarthy released a statement claiming her son no longer had autism or had been cured.. let's just skip over the fact that this isn't possible and concede that Jenny McCarthy's ability to diagnose is a distant, distant, distant second to her ability to look good in various states of undress) AND his autism (or, more accurately, not autism) was caused by vaccination. This is an old, misinformed, thoroughly debunked view - a view that has claimed the lives of children whose parents were more inclined to listen to people like Jenny McCarthy and Oprah rather than the the legions of medical scientists telling them otherwise. For Oprah to give this frankly dangerous scaremongering an airing without even a pretense of challenging was beyond reckless. Worse still, McCarthy now writes for Oprah's magazine / website and propagate this odious, malignant and utterly wrong factoid.


Jenny McCarthy: Some experience in the field of cosmetic surgery, not so hot on immunology / hotdog garnishing.

It's not like this was a one-off incident either - McCarthy isn't Oprah's only regular guest with some bad science - Dr. Christiane Northrup, for example, told an audience member on Oprah that the HPV vaccine could kill. From whence Northrup divined this fallacious yet terrifying statement wasn't clear - presumably from her Tarot cards, as she informs Oprah viewers that she believes she can diagnose through them. I wasn't even aware there was a tarot for the cervix though now I think about it, I would like to see it. Dr Oz, Oprah's frequent medical guest, endorses an entire range of 'energy' treatments, using 'energy' in a way guaranteed to make any physicist cry. Oprah's website is even worse, advising all sorts of alternative treatments and therapies, each of which are unified by the sole fact there is not one iota of evidence any of them work, and indeed, those which have been examined have been found to not work. I'll stop myself on this point now for fear of inducing severe hypertension - interestly, if I was black, Oprah and Dr. Oz would no doubt tell me that high blood pressure is caused by genetic memory of being a slave. Yes, they have done this. You can read about it here, but I probably don't need to tell you it has been vigorously removed of bunk a long time ago. Sadly for me, my ancestors were more likely to have been viking slave traders than slaves so If I ever feel a compulsion to drink beer from a horn or pillage a monastery that's due to my own mental instability so arguing genetic memory in court wouldn't hold much Wōden.. eh.. water.

The latest in medical diagnostic technology. I do not recommend Googling tarot cards and cervix if you've eaten recently.

All this brings me neatly onto my last point - Oprah debases science, and not just medical science, though it does soil that on a more regular basis. In 2006 Rhonda Byrne collected a series of meaningless cliches, tautologies and dodgy pop science together, threw in a glob of pseudo-spiritual claptrap and released 'The Secret' which Oprah immediately championed. It became an ultra seller, and even spawned (for once, I think this word is exceptionally fitting) an equally vacuous DVD. The secret's central tenet is (stolen from Wikipedia) "focused positive thinking can have life-changing results such as increased wealth, health, and happiness". Basically, if you are not happy it's because your thoughts aren't happy. And if you want something, just think it and expect it and you'll get it. You're all intelligent people, I don't have to tell you this is not only gibberish, but frankly insulting - ever see those starving African kids on TV ? It's actually their own fault, they're not thinking positively enough. If they just wanted that food a little more than the universe would hear them! If your blood is getting a little hot, rest assured it only proves your brain is actually functioning.

A line from 'The secret' - "the discoveries of quantum physics … are in total harmony with

the teachings of 'The Secret'.. I never studied science or physics at school, and yet when I read

complex books on quantum physics I understood them perfectly because I wanted to understand them."

Damn. If I had ONLY known that before I did my undergrad and PhD I could have saved myself a lot

of time! I'll let the Chaser's war explain it in practice...

This could all be dismissed as rubbish if Oprah hadn't sang it's praises. Oprah said about it "the energy you put into the world -- both good and bad -- is exactly what comes back to you. This means you create the circumstances of your life with the choices you make every day." I could tell you more about various scientific concepts Oprah has either misunderstood, rubbished, or metaphorically slaughtered and then danced on it's grave singing 'I'm a little teapot' (again, metaphorically - I should hope) but I shan't do that - Instead, I'll complete this point staying with the secret with a sobering example of what happens when you exploit people's credulity and trust. In 2007 Kim Tinkham, deeply inspired by Oprah's love of the secret decided to forgo conventional treatment for her breast cancer and go with Oprah endorsed new age secret-esque crap. This was in the face of doctors pleading with her to get conventional treatment which would have almost certainly saved her life if not her breasts. But Kim Tinkham was a true believer, if it was good enough for Oprah, well why not for her ? She even appeared on Oprah's show, expounding her new treatment with Robert O Young, who claimed cancer was caused by excess acidity. He touted her as 'cured' of cancer, and had her on his website as a testimonial.

Kim Tinkham died of the same breast cancer in December 2010, at the age of 51.

Meanwhile, Oprah continues to expound the virtues of 'the secret' and alternative medicine, and pour doubt and scorn on conventional science and medicine.

It is not my intention to point the finger of blame. But Oprah has a huge viewership. She is revered and respected, and has the clout to bring in any expert on any subject at the click of her fingers. She can change this, she can genuinely educate - she has the right of editorial, the power rests with her. Why then does she continue to chose such insincere, delusion, self promoting quacks ? This is a woman with the power to make a book a best seller with the so called Oprah effect. Even more sobering, Oprah's endorsement of Obama generated over a million votes and may have won him the election. The woman is a king maker, a self proclaimed educator - She in essence has the ear of a sizable portion of the western world.

Is it too much to ask that she gives people the real facts from real experts about the things that really matter ? If she really does care about human life, health and understanding as much as she claims it shouldn't even be a question.

For best results, take sparingly with a large dose of salt

A hard pill to swallow - Irish youth & date rape drugs

2011-01-13T17:41:00.002Z

Drink spiking is a terrifying concept every young person will be familiar with; the importance of watching your drink and guarding it closely has been rammed home, lest some ill intentioned individual adds their drugs to our drugs for nefarious purpose. This in itself is a deeply uncomfortable thought, and quite understandably drives people to panic. Everyone knows someone with a drink spiking story, a cautionary tale of some creepy individual lacing an innocent drink with some illicit substance, rendering the victim helpless. From the sheer amount of anecdotal warnings and horror stories, it seems like the threat of spiking is real, high and ever increasing. The message seems clear; if you want to protect yourself from date rape, you'll watch your drink.

Media warnings in recent years have harped about the use of Rohypnol and GHB (Gamma-hydroxybutyrate, for those who dislike ambiguity in their chemical nomenclature ) at pubs, clubs and parties for the express purpose of sexual misconduct. And indeed, some of the facts about these drugs seem rather disconcerting; The former is a drug designed to induce muscle relaxation and sleep, and in high enough doses can cause memory loss, the latter is commonly used as an anaesthetic . Both drugs are central nervous system depressants.

Scary stuff. There's just one issue with this scenario; it doesn't seem to be happening. Before I go any further, let me clarify that this statement is not equivocal to saying date rape doesn't occur; sadly it does, and is far too often under reported. What we're specifically interested in determining is just how real and widespread the drink spiking problem seems to be. The best way to do this is to read through the evidence and recorded cases to cut through the media hyperbole and see the realities in front of us. There has been a lot of investigation on the topic, none more so than in our neighbours the United Kingdom. In fact, no fewer than 3 large scale investigations have been undertaken there alone. The procedure goes something like this; a suspected drink spiking case occurs and the victim is taken to hospital, where they are immediately given a blood and urine test to find any traces of date rape drugs like Rohypnol, GHB, Ketamine and any recreational drugs like alcohol, cannabis, cocaine and ecstasy. These tests are performed quickly, before the drugs have time to metabolize and leave the body.

So what have the studies found? Let's start with the biggest study undertaken on drink spiking; in their 2005 paper with the mouthful of a title “Toxicological findings in cases of alleged drug-facilitated sexual assault in the United Kingdom over a 3-year period “ forensic scientists Michael Ham and Fiona Burton analysed 1014 cases of sexual assault where drink spiking had been suspected. The results were clear; the drug most commonly found was alcohol, often in abundant quantities. Close behind that, the study found a large degree of voluntary illicit drugs were co-factors; these included taking ecstasy, cocaine, cannabis, heroin, speed and Ketamine of their own choice. There was also 21 cases in the 1014 where a sedative may have been used, but more often in not in conjunction with alcohol and other recreational drugs meaning self-administration was most likely. There were of course cases where people were given pills without knowing what they were and took them, but this is distinct from the concept of having one's drink unknowingly spiked.

Other studies were broadly similar; a study on drug facilitated sexual assault (DFSA in police lingo) by the Met police between 2004 and 2005 analysed 120 cases and found alcohol the factor in 119 of them, often to dangerous levels. Yet again recreational drugs appeared in the mix. Wrexham Maelor Hospital also undertook a study of 75 cases of suspected drink spiking and found no date rape drugs whatsoever; they did find 65% of the women in the study were double the limit, and 25% were three times over the alcohol limit. Despite all subjects in the study denying illicit drug use, over a fifth tested positive for cocaine and speed; drugs that are not administered by slipping them subtly into drinks. The studies weren't all UK studies of course; there was also an Australian study of 97 patients admitted with alleged drink spiking in 2009; None of them tested positive for date rape drugs. 28% of them had used illicit drugs and again alcohol played the dominant role.

The trend here is very clear; the problem isn't Rohypnol or GHB; it's alcohol. Our culture of binge drinking is endemic. Alcohol action Ireland reports that Irish consumption of alcohol rose 46% between 1987 and 2001, well out of sync with the population rise. Liver damage in young women has rose massively correspondingly. Not only are we culturally drinking ourselves to death, our choice of drink has changed; wine and beer have been replaced in some sections by shorts and mixers; drinks that can be mixed to essentially taste like the mixer while still having a huge alcohol content. Very few would dispute the fact we have terrible judgement and recall of the amount we actually drink. But it seems we're culturally in denial; alcohol is so implicitly tolerated that we'd prefer to find other demons to pin our woes on, even if this means ignoring the evidence. It is so common that it is easy to forget basic facts about it; such as it is one the the most idiosyncratic drugs imaginable; an adverse reaction can happen at any time with any amount, depending on factors we rarely think of, such as amount of food ingested, level of hydration, pre-existing infections or cuts in the stomach / digestive track and so on. People also grossly underestimate the effects of alcohol when mixed with other illicit substances, or even with prescription medicines. For example, alcohol with even a mild legal benzodiazepine (a class of drug that includes many sedatives, hypnotics, anxiolytics, anticonvulsants and muscle relaxants etc) can cause many side severe effects, from increased sedation to poor motor effects to respiratory suppression or even death. Illegal drugs and alcohol have equally potent side effects.

But there is a further social reason we blame date rape drugs in some cases; we don't like to take the blame when those adverse reactions do occur, and it is sometimes easier to pass responsibility onto some unknown agent. As Dr. Hywel Hughes of the Maelor hospital said “Claiming their drink has been spiked may be used as an excuse by patients who have become incapacitated after the voluntary consumption of excess alcohol.” These sentiments are echoed by Dr Mark Little of the Australian study; “People don't realise how alcohol affects them, and they often don't remember how much they've drunk or what happened to them, so they think their drink was spiked. It's also more socially acceptable to think their drink was spiked than that they just drank too much”. Despite this, there still seems to be a shirking of blame in some cases; it is worth noting that in that study, despite the in depth toxicological screen and analysis, 38% of the patients continued to maintain their drinks were spiked. But then again, over a quarter of this group lied about or forgot about what other drugs they had taken and the amount they drank. Sometimes when one hears hoof beats, it is actually a horse and not a zebra.

At the risk of sounding sinister, look at DFSA from the point of view of a predator; they want a victim who is pliable, dis-inhibited, perhaps mildly sedated and ideally will not be able to remember events clearly. They certainly could use GBH or Rohypnol, but why would they bother paying large amounts to obtain these restricted and potentially fatal drugs, when alcohol achieves the exact same result without the illegality and potential risk of an alternative date rape drug. It is also far more socially acceptable to ply someone with drink than slip them sedatives, and very hard to distinguish regrettable drunken sex from rape in a court or even in memory, providing a further incentive for a potential predator to use alcohol as his drug of choice over other options which incur more expense and risk. This is an uncomfortable truth but if we're doing to have any truck with reality we have to take it on board.

The problem isn't drink spiking; it's drink itself. And until we learn some modicum of moderation, we will always be putting ourselves in harm's way.