Denialism Blog

Month: April 2008

  • Is injecting yourself with a human pregnancy hormone a good idea?

    Certainly not! But unfortunately we need to look a little more closely.

    It’s been a while since I’ve posted on hard-core woo, and I miss it, so here’s a little tip for you: if a diet sounds too good to be true, then it is. Weight loss is very hard, unless you are very sick. In fact, a colleague of mine ran into a friend who had lost a lot of weight and said, “You’re OK, aren’t you?” As an internist, when I see dramatic weight loss, my first thought is cancer, not a wildly successful new diet. But all of us overweight types wish there were an easy way.

    There isn’t. A friend of mine heard about a diet that involves extreme calorie restriction along with injections of human chorionic gonadotrophic hormone (hCG). My first thought was if you restrict yourself to 500-800 calories per day, it doesn’t matter what you inject—you’re going to lose weight. But as is the usual pattern with woo, each time you try to rebut it, there is a new claim. For example, when you point out that starvation diets will always make you lose weight, they say that this one makes you not hungry. When you say that it sounds dubious, they say that it not only makes you not hungry, it causes you to somehow lose weight where you want it, and keep it where you like it.

    So what experts are behind this revolutionary diet? Well, the biggest proponent appears to be Kevin Trudeau, the infomercial guy who keeps going to jail for fraud. What kind of claims is he making?
    (more…)

  • There is no pro-science political party

    With the news that in addition to John McCain both Clinton and Obama have now pandered to anti-vaccine denialism I think it’s time to reiterate there isn’t a political party in this country that has a truly sound grasp on sound science. And in this instance it is clear that both sides are more than happy to pander to the denialists.

    The fact is that there is no link between vaccines and autism. As time has gone on the denialists move the goalposts further and further back as the evidence for a link becomes increasingly unlikely. First it was thimerosal, and now 6 years after its removal from childhood vaccines we continue to see an increase in autism diagnoses. And what about that epidemic? It’s not really an epidemic.

    This is one of the problems of medicine that occurs time and again with denialists. As our diagnostic criteria change, as our tests become more sensitive, as our screening becomes more rigorous, the appearance of many diseases and disorders tends to increase. Cranks routinely latch onto this as evidence we’re getting sicker, or are being poisoned by fluoride, or vaccines, or alien lizards running Monsanto, but the fact is when these public health interventions are rigorously studied, the link simply is not there. Autism is no exception. As the diagnostic criteria were widened, the stigma of diagnosis decreased (the damn Freudians decided to blame it on bad mothers so it wasn’t exactly a diagnosis that was sought out), and more social services and money were addressed to the disorder the population of children diagnosed with the disorder has widened. All attempts to link the autism with vaccines scientifically have failed, and the methods used by the anti-vaccine crowd to spread this myth are denialist to the last drop. They allege outrageous conspiracies implicating everyone from the CDC to the FDA to the average family doc. They cherry pick the scientific literature for every tiny little scrap they can twist to fit their position and ignore the rigorous international studies demonstrating no link. They put their faith in fake experts like the Geiers and crank journalists like David Kirby. They are the kings of moving the goalposts as exemplified in their unwillingness to admit that thimerosal had nothing to do with autism or their recent pathetic attempt to link mitochondrial disorders to autism in light of the Hannah Poling case. Logical fallacies are their bread and butter.

    Vaccines are arguably the most effective life saver that evidence-based medicine has ever developed. Fear of vaccines in parents is natural. Utilizing a technology that puts your child at risk, even the astronomically small risk associated with vaccination, to prevent an illness they may never get interferes with the basic primal instincts of parents to protect their children from any harm. That and shots are scary. They make kids scared and upset.

    Rational people realize that the benefits outweigh the risks, that the ride to the doctor is probably more risky than the jab, and vaccination is the responsible decision for a parent to make. And while I sympathize with the parents of autistic children who think vaccines are to blame the science is simply not on their side. The anti-vaccine cranks exploit this completely understandable but irrational fear in normal parents of harming their children, and in doing so are actively harming public health. The science-based medicine denialists then typically offer any number of unproven crank cures with which, for a price, you can experiment on your children. Testimonials abound, scientific evidence of their efficacy or a physiologic basis for the intervention is nowhere to be seen.

    I am incredibly disappointed with both candidates for failing so thoroughly to stand up for science in this instance. I think it’s an excellent example of why ScienceDebate2008 is such an important objective. Science is not conservative or liberal, Democratic or Republican. And if we are interested in the voice of science wielding influence on public policy we have to realize that we have to act as an independent voice of reason. Citizens who think science is important and should inform public policy must become their own constituency. Having a presidential debate on science will make it clear that there is a large body of people in this country that value science and what it offers to society, and we demand to be listened to by both political parties.

  • Repeat after me: "Correlation does not imply causation"

    The post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy is one of the great weapons in the arsenal of denialists. The reason it works so well is it makes sense. As my readers know, my daughter is dealing with a nasty respiratory virus. One of the doctors told my wife, who is not a medical professional, that kids with this virus go on to develop asthma. My wife was not pleased to hear this. What the doc didn’t tell my wife was whether or not there is a causal relationship between the infection and asthma. It is also true that kids who get RSV end up going to school.

    Asthma is a common illness. RSV is more common. Some prospective studies have followed children who have had RSV and looked at the rates of asthma, and found them to be rather high. The problem is, most children get RSV. It is very difficult to prove that a ubiquitous virus has a causal role in a common respiratory disease. The best study would follow similar children with and without RSV, but where do you find kids without RSV? How do you know that kids who don’t have clinically apparent RSV infections aren’t just resistant to respiratory disease in general? That being said, there is a fascinating literature on the effect of RSV on the lungs and the immune system. I’m actually becoming a living laboratory as we speak.

    Human beings can’t help being susceptible to the causation/correlation fallacy. It’s probably hard-wired. But we can watch out for it and maintain a skeptical eye on claims of causation.

  • Open letter to Douglas M. Steenland, president and CEO, Northwest Airlines

    Dear Mr. Steenland,
    I would contact you using more conventional means, but getting through to even a minor lackey at your company is next to impossible. Thank you in advance for reading this.

    I hate your company. They are perhaps the most difficult company I have ever dealt with as a consumer, and I won’t be sorry to see them go, although I doubt it will change anything.

    Let me give you a little background.

    In December, my in-laws planned a family trip for their 50th anniversary. I’ll spare you some of the details, but let me give you the basics—an elderly couple, and two young couples with children show up early for their flight to meet the cruise ship. Airplane breaks, new airplane is called in, with time to spare to meet ship. Once on new plane, NW realizes that the cabin crew has “timed out” and we need a new one. They finally arrive, and then NW realizes that flight crew has timed out. After waiting for new flight crew, we get in line for de-icing. We arrive in San Juan just in time to see our boat leave without us. Northwest’s response was as expected—horrible. They did try to put us up in a hotel, but it didn’t accept kids, so we couldn’t stay there. There are more details, but I’ll spare you. The level of incompetence to allow such a thing to happen is hard to fathom. If I sent a patient to surgery, and after getting on the table, the nurses found they were off the clock, and then after finding new ones, the surgeons had to leave, until the surgery was finally postponed…well, you can follow the analogy.

    So, my wife and I decided to take a vacation alone together—no children. Just before we were to leave, my daughter got a terribly contagious respiratory illness and was hospitalized. I called Northwest and I was informed that we cannot have a refund. I tried to explain that given our situation and the amount of planning for work and child care, we are unlikely to be able to use the tickets in the next year. I was passed to a supervisor twice, and chided like a child for being annoyed that I was asked to listen to the same script multiple times. I was given the direct number for customer care, which isn’t accepting calls. I was told I have to email, and when the supervisor gave me the email address, it started with “www.”. When I explained that that is a web address, not an email address, she discontinued the conversation with this angry doctor-blogger.

    Clearly, Northwest doesn’t care a bit about their customers. I’m shocked, shocked to find a large American company only cares about taking customers’ money, and not about pleasing and retaining them. Shocked.

    I would appreciate, but of couse do not expect, a response.

    Sincerely, but angrily,

    Peter A. Lipson, M.D.

    P.S. Please buy something nice with my 2000 bucks. I hope it looks good on you.

  • Greenpeace Founder Explains Departure: Group Abandoned Science

    An oped in today’s Journal by Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace, argues that he left the organization because it abandoned scientific justifications for its advocacy. Moore argues:

    At first, many of the causes we championed, such as opposition to nuclear testing and protection of whales, stemmed from our scientific knowledge of nuclear physics and marine biology. But after six years as one of five directors of Greenpeace International, I observed that none of my fellow directors had any formal science education. They were either political activists or environmental entrepreneurs. Ultimately, a trend toward abandoning scientific objectivity in favor of political agendas forced me to leave Greenpeace in 1986.

    The breaking point was a Greenpeace decision to support a world-wide ban on chlorine. Science shows that adding chlorine to drinking water was the biggest advance in the history of public health, virtually eradicating water-borne diseases such as cholera. And the majority of our pharmaceuticals are based on chlorine chemistry. Simply put, chlorine is essential for our health.

    Having no formal science education myself, I don’t know what to think of where he goes next: to a discussion of banning phthalates in consumer products. In both California and the European Union, regulators have acted to prohibit phthalates in some consumer products. In other areas of consumer protection, California and the EU are ahead of other political bodies, and so, I’ve always assumed that the ban was justified by some finding of consumer risk. Moore seems to think the bans aren’t justified, and that Israel and the EU are going back on the bans:

    Phthalates are the new bogeyman. These chemicals make easy targets since they are hard to understand and difficult to pronounce. Commonly used phthalates, such as diisononyl phthalate (DINP), have been used in everyday products for decades with no evidence of human harm. DINP is the primary plasticizer used in toys. It has been tested by multiple government and independent evaluators, and found to be safe.

    […]

    The antiphthalate activists are running a campaign of fear to implement their political agenda. They have seen success in California, with a state ban on the use of phthalates in infant products, and are pushing for a national ban. This fear campaign merely distracts the public from real environmental threats.

    We all have a responsibility to be environmental stewards. But that stewardship requires that science, not political agendas, drive our public policy.

  • Psedonymity, anonymity, credibility, and the Overlords

    One of the hot topics around here lately is authority and anonymity. It’s a terribly difficult philosophical question—-how can you ever trust a source of information that is second hand? And yet ultimately we all are forced to do it most of the time.

    A potent weapon in the denialist arsenal is the fake expert. The profusion of these charlatans makes identifying trustworthy sources even more important. We have many ways of doing this. We often use our intuition, a powerful but notoriously dicey skill. Sometimes we go by word-of-mouth. Sometimes, we go to established sources of authority, such as the CDC or the Mayo Clinic. Is ScienceBlogs a trustworthy source?

    Absolutely! and Not at all!

    One factor in our favor is the high percentage of real experts who blog under their own names and have verifiable credentials. Another is the fact that most writers here cite primary and secondary sources with links, so that you can follow up on the evidence yourself. Finally, Sciencebloggers often disagree with each other. You will rarely see cranks and fake experts allowing for dissent. Take, for instance, uber-cranks like Joe Mercola and Gary Null. They run “medical” websites. But the information they give out is very thinly veiled propaganda. When you follow their citations to their source, you rarely find credible sources, such as well-known medical journals. Instead, you find unpublished papers by other quacks, or quote-mined statements from reputable journals. Most of the blogs here, even when we’re not at our best, give links and citations that any energetic reader can follow and verify, and the comment sections are open to allow for our own vilification. You’ll rarely if ever see fake experts allowing a lot of unmoderated comments on their websites.

    In looking to see if authorities are trustworthy or not, look for some of these signs—a willingness to be questioned, real citations, substantive information that doesn’t read like some college kid made it up after a night of hard partying. Read, but read with intelligence. And chances are, if someone wants to sell you something that sounds too good to be true, well…

  • Today Is a Big Day for Denialism

    …because today, the first lobbying disclosure reports are due to be filed with Congress under new rules that flowed from the Jack Abramoff scandal. The new law requires quarterly reports, lowers the dollar amount of activity that triggers reporting requirements, and (my favorite), requires trade associations to identify their members in certain circumstances.

    Let me expand on this last requirement–trade associations and coalitions (such as the American Chemistry Council, the Chamber of Commerce, and the like) now have to identify the actual companies behind lobbying efforts when their member companies contribute more than $5,000 and have some involvement in planning the lobbying activities.

    This is very important because it is these trade association and coalitions that are chief purveyors of denialist tactics, and they mask the advocacy of their membership. As a result, it will be much easier to link companies with actual lobbying positions and tactics. This will make it harder for companies to hide behind their coalitions, which are often shameless and accountable to no one. It’s one more imperfect step towards more accountability in business lobbying, and you can download the filings here.

  • Update—kiddo heading home

    We’re heading home from the hospital soon.We’ve gone from, “Daddy, I don’t want to cough anymore…it’s too boring,” to, “Daddy, do pirates have convertibles?”

    But infectious diseases have lots of consequences. I’m starting to get a tickle in my throat and a bit of a cough. I have asthma, and this could really set it off. My father has a type of immunity problem, so he can’t come around her for a while.

    My wife and I planned our first vacation alone together since we were married. Unfortunately, that vacation starts at the end of the week. The kiddo can’t stay with my folks while she’s shedding RSV, so I guess we’ll enjoy springtime in the Midwest.

    But at least I have my curious, funny, adorable daughter back.

    BTW, thanks for all the kind comments. While I don’t believe anyone’s prayers will help my kid, it helps me to know that folks care. Damn, I guess I’m an evil atheist who hates children and puppies (but likes veal).

  • PETA Sponsors Fake Meat Competition

    John Schwartz reports in the Times that PETA:

    …said it would announce plans on Monday for a $1 million prize to the “first person to come up with a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices by 2012.”

    I love it! This, in my opinion, is great news. Now the question is, how will the left accept it? Will they call PETA’s petri-dish meat “frankenfood?” Is laboratory-designed food made by lefties more healthy than laboratory-designed food by big agribusiness?! Only time will tell, but it will be fun to watch.

  • Blogger still under fire

    If the uber-fascist wing of the anti-vaccine movement had any scientific credibility, it wouldn’t need to throw around subpoenas. That is what is (still) happening to the author of the Neurodiversty blog (hat tip again to LizDitz).

    I’m sitting here in the hospital with my sick daughter. She has all that modern medicine has to offer, and is thankfully doing well. If she weren’t, my reaction wouldn’t be to abandon science and start slinging blame—she fell ill to a common virus, and that’s that. I certainly wouldn’t start legal action against people who disagree with me. That’s crazy.

    In science, evidence is what makes an argument. Legal threats don’t change physical reality. All they do is intimidate. And if legal intimidation is all the support your crazy hypothesis can gather, then it’s time to give up and go home. Instead of suing bloggers, go home and spend time with your family—that’s how you can help them best.