Science

ApostAZ podcast #8 is out: Episode 008 Atheism and Sam Kinnison!!! in Phoenix- Go to atheists.meetup.com/157 for group events! Discussion of Matthew 10:10’s Energeticism. (Matt: you have an open invite to be on the show and discuss it) Basics of Evolutionary Psychology. http://www.mixx.com/s… Billboards and Photos.This is really #9, and #8 is the “lost” podcast, thanks to the burglary of Brad’s home and theft of his computer. My comments on energeticism may be found at the Phoenix Atheists Meetup Group message board. I’ve got a copy of Matthew’s book but haven’t been able to get past the first chapter.

Barack Obama has supplied his answers to the fourteen questions from Sciencedebate 2008. John McCain has said that he will also be supplying answers. UPDATE (September 17, 2008): John McCain has also supplied his answers to the Sciencedebate 2008 questions. Click here to see their answers side-by-side.

Since the Helicobacter pylori bacterium was discovered and proven to be the cause of gastric ulcers, it has been disappearing from the developed world as it’s treated with antibiotics. But multiple studies are now showing that there can be negative side-effects from its disappearance, including acid reflux, asthma, and obesity. H. pylori helps regulate stomach acidity, the byproduct of which is sometimes ulcers. But when it is taken out of the picture, stomach acidity can increase and cause esophageal reflux disease, a disease which has increased to match the decrease in ulcers as H. pylori has been eradicated. The asthma mechanism is less clear, but may be from H. pylori stimulating immune response. The evidence supporting the link is that U.S. children aged 3-13 who have H. pylori are 60% less likely to have asthma than those who do not. The obesity connection is also not definitively established, but people without H. pylori produce more grehlin (which makes you feel hungry) than those who have it. (Via “The twists and turns of fate,” about the work of Martin Blaser, a microbiologist at New York University School of Medicine, in The Economist, August 23, 2008, pp. 68-69.)

Science writer Simon Singh (author of The Code Book on yesterday’s list of science books) is a columnist for The Guardian, for which he wrote a column critical of chiropractic titled “Beware the spinal trap.” The British Chiropractic Association sued him for the column, and it was withdrawn from the Guardian’s website. Svetlana Pertsovich has posted the offending column from Internet cache on her website in Russia, James Steinberg has posted it at his blog, and I’ve included it below. UK libel law is still in need of reform. Beware the spinal trap Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all but research suggests chiropractic therapy can be lethal Simon Singh The Guardian, Saturday April 19 2008 This is Chiropractic Awareness Week. So let’s be aware. How about some awareness that may prevent harm and help you make truly informed choices? First, you might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that, “99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae”. In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body. In fact, Palmer’s first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra. You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact they still possess some quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything. And even the more moderate chiropractors have ideas above their station. The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments. I can confidently label these treatments as bogus because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world’s first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions. But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic. In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors. More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures. Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection. Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: “Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck.” This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Professor Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher. Bearing all of this in mind, I will leave you with one message for Chiropractic Awareness Week - if spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market. · Simon Singh is the co-author of Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial www.simonsingh.net UPDATE: The part about chiropractic-induced stroke is of interest to me, as I had once heard of a case of chiropractic manipulation leading to blindness. When I mentioned it at a dinner of skeptics in Tempe, Arizona in 1987 that included James Randi and Jim Lowell of the National Council Against Health Fraud, both of them suggested that this was impossible because the optic nerves don’t come anywhere near the spine. But nobody at the table (including me) thought about the possibility of spinal manipulation inducing a stroke causing damage to the visual system. This article from a chiropractic journal discusses cases of visual loss as a result of spinal surgery as a sort of tu quoque defense of chiropractic for similar problems, citing this article: Myers M, Hamilton S, Bogosian A, Smith C, Wagner T Visual loss as a complication of spine surgery. Spine June 15, 1997;22(12). So perhaps my remark from 21 years ago is vindicated? UPDATE (November 4, 2009): Simon Singh gave an overview and update on his case on June 3. Simon Singh fought against the libel claim despite the state of UK law, and has successfully won the right to appeal in October. UPDATE (April 16, 2010): Simon Singh won his appeal, and the BCA dropped their suit.

From Cocktail Party Physics by way of Stranger Fruit… bold the ones you’ve read, asterisk the ones you intend to read: Micrographia, Robert Hooke The Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin Never at Rest, Richard WestfallSurely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, Richard Feynman Tesla: Man Out of Time, Margaret Cheney The Devil’s Doctor, Philip Ball The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard RhodesLonely Hearts of the Cosmos, Dennis Overbye Physics for Entertainment, Yakov Perelman 1-2-3 Infinity, George Gamow (I’ve not read this, but I’ve read Mr. Tompkins in Paperback) The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene Warmth Disperses, Time Passes, Hans Christian von Bayer Alice in Quantumland, Robert Gilmore Where Does the Weirdness Go? David Lindley A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson A Force of Nature, Richard Rhodes Black Holes and Time Warps, Kip Thorne A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking (I listened to it on tape on a drive to the Dallas CSICOP conference in 1992)Universal Foam, Sidney PerkowitzVermeer’s Camera, Philip Steadman The Code Book, Simon Singh The Elements of Murder, John Emsley Soul Made Flesh, Carl Zimmer (I’m currently reading this)Time’s Arrow, Martin Amis The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments, George Johnson Einstein’s Dreams, Alan LightmanGodel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter The Curious Life of Robert Hooke, Lisa Jardine A Matter of Degrees, Gino Segre The Physics of Star Trek, Lawrence Krauss E=mc<2>, David Bodanis Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, Charles Seife Absolute Zero: The Conquest of Cold, Tom Shachtman A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, Janna Levin Warped Passages, Lisa Randall Apollo’s Fire, Michael Sims Flatland, Edward Abbott Fermat’s Last Theorem, Amir Aczel Stiff, Mary Roach Astroturf, M.G. Lord The Periodic Table, Primo Levi Longitude, Dava Sobel The First Three Minutes, Steven Weinberg The Mummy Congress, Heather PringleThe Accelerating Universe, Mario Livio Math and the Mona Lisa, Bulent Atalay This is Your Brain on Music, Daniel Levitin The Executioner’s Current, Richard Moran Krakatoa, Simon Winchester Pythagorus’ Trousers, Margaret Wertheim Neuromancer, William Gibson The Physics of Superheroes, James Kakalios The Strange Case of the Broad Street Pump, Sandra Hempel Another Day in the Frontal Lobe, Katrina Firlik Einstein’s Clocks and Poincare’s Maps, Peter Galison The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker An Instance of the Fingerpost, Iain Pears Consilience, E.O. WilsonWonderful Life, Stephen J. Gould (haven’t read this, but I’ve read all of his books of collected Natural History articles) Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard Fire in the Brain, Ronald K. Siegel The Life of a Cell, Lewis Thomas Coming of Age in the Milky Way, Timothy Ferris Storm World, Chris Mooney The Carbon Age, Eric Roston The Black Hole Wars, Leonard Susskind Copenhagen, Michael Frayn From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne Gut Symmetries, Jeanette Winterson Chaos, James GleickInnumeracy, John Allen Paulos The Physics of NASCAR, Diandra Leslie-Pelecky Subtle is the Lord, Abraham PaisI’d add some Oliver Sacks and A.R. Luria (neuroscience case studies), V.S. Ramachandran’s A Brief Tour of Consciousness, Charles Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, and some philosophy of science like Larry Laudan’s Science and Relativism (nicely written in the form of a dialogue between advocates of different views), Philip Kitcher’s The Advancement of Science, Thomas Kuhn’s The Copernican Revolution, John Losee’s A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, and Ian Hacking’s Representing and Intervening. There are lots more to list, but those are a few that I’ve read. My science reading has leaned very strongly towards cognitive psychology, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science, which is only weakly represented on the above list, and on the creation/evolution debate, which isn’t really represented on the above list at all, except by Darwin himself. Now John Lynch can tell me that I really need to read Origin of Species. UPDATE (August 28, 2008): Enhanced with P.Z. Myers’ additions: Ascent of Man, Jacob BronowskiBasin and Range, John McPheeBeak of the Finch, Jonathan WeinerChance and Necessity, Jacques MonodDr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation, Olivia Judson (reading now) *Endless Forms Most Beautiful, Sean CarrollEvolution: The Triumph of an Idea, Carl ZimmerGenome, Matt RidleyGuns, Germs, and Steel, Jared DiamondIt Ain’t Necessarily So, Richard LewontinOn Growth and Form, D’Arcy Wentworth ThompsonPhantoms in the Brain, VS RamachandranThe Ancestor’s Tale, Richard DawkinsThe Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution, Elisabeth LloydThe Eighth Day of Creation, Horace Freeland JudsonThe Great Devonian Controversy, Martin RudwickThe Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, Oliver SacksThe Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay GouldThe Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment, Richard LewontinTime, Love, Memory, Jonathan WeinerVoyaging and The Power of Place, Janet BrowneWoman: An Intimate Geography, Natalie Angier ...

Yesterday while getting my car serviced, I noticed that Toyota’s brochure about its latest vehicles says on the back that “Moving Forward is in our DNA,” and became annoyed. “X is in our corporate DNA” has become an incredibly popular marketing buzzphrase lately, and I’ve heard it said for some value of X in almost every vendor presentation I’ve heard this year. My thought yesterday was that I don’t really care if X is in the genotype if it isn’t expressed in the phenotype. If the company really wants to make the point that X is a core competency or value, saying “it’s in our DNA” isn’t really an accurate way of putting it. So this morning I did a search to see if any biologists have commented on this buzzphrase, and was pleased to see that Keith Robison commented on it last December: The question posed is this: what do companies asking this really mean, or more specifically what might it mean that they don’t intend (very Dilbert-esque). Presumably they are trying to make a statement about deeply embedded values, but what does it really mean to have something in your DNA? For example, do they mean to imply: A lot of our company is unfathomable to the human mindThere’s a lot of redundancy hereOften we often repeat ourselves often repeatedly, often repeating repetitiously.We retain bits of those who invade our corporate DNA, though with not much rhyme or reasonA lot of pieces of the organization resemble decayed portions of other pieces of our organizationSome pieces of our organization are non-functional, though they closely resemble functional pieces of related organizationsMost of our organization has no immediate impact on routine operations, or emergency onesMost of our organization has no immediate obvious purpose, if anyOur corporate practices are not the best designable, but rather reflect an accumulation of historical accidentsNow, many of these statements may well be true about a given company, but is that what you really want to project?This gives me some great ideas on how to respond the next time I hear a vendor use the phrase. ...

Corey Fincher and Randy Thornhill of the University of New Mexico have published a report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society in which they hypothesize that patterns of behavior that promote exclusivity act as a response to disease transmission, including both religion and language. They looked at the average number of religions per country and how disease-ridden each country is, and found a positive correlation between number of parasitic diseases and number of religions. The number of religions per country studied ranged from 3 to 643, with an average of 31; the number of parasitic diseases ranged from 178 to 248, with an average of 200. They also found that people in countries with more religions and diseases were less mobile–they moved shorter differences–than countries with fewer religions and diseases. Does this mean that religion is a response to disease, prompting people to keep to themselves and be less mobile, or does it mean that religion acts similarly to disease (prompting people to behave in that same way)? (Via The Economist, August 2, 2008, p. 83.) ...

A new peer-produced skeptical website, De-fact-o, has popped up to provide skeptical, fact-based evaluation of claims of history, politics, science, health, environment, religion, pop culture, conspiracy theories, questionable quotes, fake photos, and more. There’s a page per claim, and the claim is rated true, false, mostly false, probably false, or unknown. The site is reminiscent of (and not yet as comprehensive as) Snopes.com, but I hope to see it grow substantially with member-produced content. The articles I’ve checked out appear to be well-done. Those who register on the site can comment on articles, vote on their accuracy, and write new ones, but unlike Wikipedia, approval from the site owners is required before new articles get posted. All articles on the site are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). I would have preferred a Creative Commons license, myself, due to some oddities of the GFDL (see the Wikipedia article on the GFDL, which is where the term is linked to from this paragraph). ...

Chris Anderson’s book, The Long Tail, showed how the Internet has made it possible for business models that focus on small niche markets rather than mass markets to be successful. While a bricks-and-mortar bookstore will typically have at most a couple hundred thousand titles and make most of its money from bestsellers, Amazon.com can list millions of titles and makes a quarter to a third of its revenue from the “long tail” of books that are not in the top 100,000 sellers. One might think that putting science journals online would mean that more obscure articles would get greater readership, but a study by James Evans published in Science argues that as more journals are published online, fewer articles are being cited, and those that are tend to be more recently published. While the ability to search online by keywords means that an author of a scientific paper is unlikely to overlook any published paper containing those keywords, it also means that authors are less likely to look at other articles published in the same issues or run into articles that may be related in the big picture but don’t contain the selected keywords. Evans found that for each additional year of back issues available online, the average age of articles cited in that journal fell by a month. He predicts that for the average journal, adding five years of back issues online results in a drop in the number of articles cited per year from 600 to 200. The concern here is similar to the concern about online social networks that become narrowly focused–that people are missing exposure to ideas that they might have previously come across, now that they can select more specifically the items they want. I’m not sure how seriously to take this concern. In my own case, I don’t feel like the Internet is causing me to overspecialize, rather it’s providing me with access to all sorts of information I wouldn’t previously have run into. I don’t feel like the Internet is in danger of subdividing into sections of compartmentalized information the way that Bill Bishop’s book, The Big Sort, suggests people are forming physical like-minded clusters of neighborhoods. I wonder if Evans would have found different results if, instead of looking at journal citations, he looked at the role being played by electronic publications such as blogs and mailing lists, where I suspect there is increasing interdisciplinary cross-pollination. (Via The Economist, July 19, 2008, p. 89.)

Science writer Kate McAlpine (aka Alpinekat) has put out a YouTube video of “Large Hadron Rap.” The LHC begins operation with a test on August 9, and the first protons are expected to circle the entire track in early September. The New York Times has the background on the LHC and the rap video. (Via Podblack Cat.) UPDATE (August 10, 2008): The Economist has a good article on what the Large Hadron Collider has the potential to discover–not just the Higgs boson, but supersymmetric particles with names like neutralinos (making up dark matter), and creating tiny short-lived black holes that will generate Hawking radiation and possibly win Hawking a Nobel prize. ...