I for one salute Gavin Newsom for refusing to waste government money on bottled water.
I have never bought bottled water. It’s silly to spend good money on bottled water when throughout this country it’s possible to drink clean potable water for free or a tiny fraction of the cost of bottled water – and it’s far more environmentally sound.
Penn and Teller, of all people, covered this issue the best.
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Mingle2 – Online Dating
I actually try to be less potty-mouthed since I joined science blogs. I’m trying to differentiate myself from PZ.
Tara points out that we missed a nice little article in Science last week about our friends at AidsTruth. They discuss their ongoing efforts to counter HIV/AIDS denialism on the Web.
Launched by AIDS researchers, clinicians, and activists from several countries, AIDSTruth.org offers more than 100 links to scientific reports to “debunk denialist myths” and “expose the denialist propaganda campaign for what it is … to prevent further harm being done to individual and public health.” The site also has a section that names denialists and unsparingly critiques their writings, variously accusing them of homophobia, “scientific ignorance of truly staggering proportions,” conspiracy theories, “the dogmatic repetition of the misunderstanding, misrepresentation, or mischaracterization of certain scientific studies,” and flat-out lies. “There was a perceived need to take these people on in cyberspace, because that’s where they operate mostly, and that’s where the most vulnerable people go for their information,” says immunologist John Moore, an AIDS researcher at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York City.
Peter Duesberg, a prominent cancer researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, whom colleagues have pilloried ever since he first questioned the link between HIV and AIDS in 1987, remains unswayed by the Web site, which he derides in an e-mail interview as a “scientifically worthless mix of ad hominems, opinions, intolerance, and religious energy–instead of a theory and facts.” Duesberg maintains that “many essential questions” about what he calls the “HIV-AIDS hypothesis” remain unanswered.
Aww, poor Duesberg. They’re persecuting him! It’s religious dogma! I’m like Galileo!
In reality, there is very little ad hominem attack, but at a certain point, it’s hard not to point out that he’s a monster. In fact, AidsTruth is a nice resource for debunking the claims of the major HIV/AIDS denialists with essays from top researchers, real science papers, and very thorough analyses of how the denialists are using the tactics. And there’s good evidence they’ve had an impact:
To the delight of Jefferys and others, a Supreme Court judge in Australia in April cited a debunking article on AIDSTruth.org in a closely followed case that involved a man convicted of endangering life for not revealing he was infected with HIV to sexual partners. The man appealed, claiming that no studies prove HIV causes AIDS. His defense consisted of two “expert” witnesses, one of whom was extensively questioned about allegations that she had misused a researcher’s results on sexual transmission of HIV. The questions were inspired by an editorial posted on AIDSTruth.org. The judge concluded that neither defense witness–both of whom are branded as denialists on AIDSTruth.org–was qualified to express opinions on these questions. “There’s a constant concern that by rebutting these things, you’re giving them more credence–there’s a thin line between slaying the monster and feeding it,” says Jefferys. “The judge’s decision made the Web site seem really worthwhile.”
He also seems to understand the nature of the crank:
“The denialists tend to be grotesquely inaccurate,” says Richard Jefferys, an activist with the Treatment Action Group in New York City who also helped start the site. “It’s almost like the more outrageously inaccurate the claim is, the more they repeat it.”
Maybe it’s because they were kind enough to host my crank HOWTO! I’m flattered.
Bible Belt Blogger brings us this excerpt from the Family Research Council’s “Dear Praying Friends” letter:
Surgeon General Nominee under Fire – Dr. James Holsinger, President Bush’s nominee for Surgeon General, has been harshly condemned by pro-homosexual activists for a 1991 paper he wrote for the Methodist Church describing male gay sex as unnatural and unhealthy. Sen. Barak Obama (D-IL) attacked Holsinger and President Bush saying, “…The Surgeon General’s office is no place for bigotry…that would trump sound science.” But Holsinger’s work catalogued the obvious. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) reports that of over 600,000 American men with AIDS, the largest category is men who practice homosexuality. Other diseases such as hepatitis, cancer, gonorrhea, and syphilis are increasingly prevalent in the homosexual community. Dr. Holsinger’s credentials are impeccable. He served as Kentucky’s health secretary, chancellor of the University of Kentucky’s medical center, has taught at several medical schools and spent over three decades in the Army Reserve, retiring in 1993 as a major general. Holsinger is being subjected to character assassination for doing precisely what a Surgeon General should do, bring health facts to light. (see Resume, Negative Effects, Fairness)
Pray that Dr. Holsinger will receive an honest and fair hearing from the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
May the larger effort to make approval of the homosexual lifestyle a qualification for public office not succeed (Pr 6:16-18; 17:15; Ps 31:11-13; Zec 8:16-17; Eph 4:25; Rev 12:10).
For those of you interested, here is what Holsinger wrote about homosexuals here – and see our previous discussion. It’s interesting, many religious groups have refused to endorse or challenged Holsinger. Notably, Fred Phelps and his band of merry Baptists is supportive of Holsinger’s nomination. You know it’s bad when you need support and the only people who show up are either the KKK, or the crazy preacher who holds up the “God Hates Fags” signs.
This is also why I consider the Family Research Council a denialist organization. In support of Holsigner’s bad science they have claimed that such research is sound, citing such research as this. Such research is by no means the mainstream view of medical science, is actually quite the opposite of what most doctors and medical experts believe, and Box Turtle Bulletin shows why Holsinger’s report is the classic compilation of cherry-picked data, misrepresentation and lies about scientific findings.
It would be one thing if the just said they don’t like gays or that they believe it’s immoral. So what? People are going to be bigots, there is very little one can do, and it at least would be an honest position. But it’s completely different when groups like these try to suggest that science is on their side when it clearly is not. It is completely absurd to assert that there are scientific reasons homosexuality should be immoral or is fundamentally unhealthy, and such misrepresentations and lies are a testament to the “values” these family organizations truly hold to. That’s why the fake family values organizations aren’t just bigots, they’re denialists too.
Write you senator, oppose this nomination, the Surgeon General should not be a homobigot.
And Cordova has used the conflict between molecular and fossil data to attack evolution.
Sigh. To busy to write about everything wrong with this. Go ahead and use this as an open thread to mock Cordova for being a predictable, quote-mining, dishonest creep. Also note, in line with perfect crank behavior, they’re still harping about junk DNA, and the findings in marsupials that they still don’t understand.
It’s up at Relatively Science.
Swing by and show them some love.
Hooray for science! The New England Journal reports on the imminent eradication of the Guinea worm.
For those who haven’t heard of this nasty little parasite, it is a really horrible infection to get. It starts with the ingestion of Dracunculus medinensis infected water. The larvae, when freed from their copepod carriers, migrate from the GI tract, copulate, work their way to the skin, and the adult worms then cause a painful, burning blister as they emerge. The human host, seeking relief, will often seek to immerse the blister in water – and when it bursts the cycle continues as the larvae are released.
Humanity can thank the Carter Center, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, the CDC, and World Health Organization for the following graph:
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Those who are interested in the Colony-Collapse Disorder phenomenon will probably enjoy this paper from PLoS entitled “What’s Killing American Honey Bees?” It lays out the history of mass bee die-offs – which have been recorded extensively by apiarists, and discusses whether or not major concern needs to be paid to the problem.
I still suspect that rather than this being a new problem it’s likely part of a normal pattern of fluctuation that has been observed in the record. While this swing is extreme, it’s early to suggest that this is an impending or prolonged disaster based on the history of such die-offs.
Some winter losses are normal, and because the proportion of colonies dying varies enormously from year to year, it is difficult to say when a crisis is occurring and when losses are part of the normal continuum. What is clear is that about one year in ten, apiarists suffer unusually heavy colony losses. This has been going on for a long time. In Ireland, there was a “great mortality of bees” in 950, and again in 992 and 1443 [3]. One of the most famous events was in the spring of 1906, when most beekeepers on the Isle of Wight (United Kingdom) lost all of their colonies [4]. American beekeepers also suffer heavy losses periodically. In 1903, in the Cache valley of Utah, 2000 colonies were lost to a mysterious “disappearing disease” following a “hard winter and cold spring” [5]. More recently, there was an incident in 1995 in which Pennsylvania beekeepers lost 53% of colonies [6].
Often terms such as “disappearing disease” or “spring dwindling” are used to describe the syndrome in which large numbers of colonies die in spring due to a lack of adult bees [7,8,9]. However in 2007, some beekeepers experienced 80-100% losses. This is certainly the extreme end of a continuum, so perhaps there is indeed some new factor in play.
It’s a very good summary and because it’s PLoS, it’s free for all.
Greg Laden writes a very nice tangled bank. It’s a model for what a good carnival post should look like I think. And he was kind enough to link our discussion of Uncommon Descent’s remarkable ability to predict the past.
Definitely worth a click.
Nature reports on this new paper that shows a major conflict resolving the fossil and molecular records of mammalian evolution. It’s entitled, “Cretaceous eutherians and Laurasian origin for placental mammals near the K/T boundary” and the major finding is that mammals seem to have evolved largely after this boundary based on their discovery of fossil evidence of a new mammal. This isn’t a new finding for the fossil record, but this study represents the largest fossil-based evolutionary tree to date.
However, this conflicts with the molecular record (the editorial gets the lead author’s name incorrect – it’s Beninda-Emonds – nature news coverage here) which constructs a evolutionary tree of 99% of mammals suggesting more than 40 mammals survived the Cretaceous period – ended by the mass extinction of the dinosaurs at the Cretaceous/Tertiary (K/T) boundary 65 million years ago . Their finding suggested that the end-cretaceous extinction event may not have provided the impetus for the expansion of mammalian species implied by the fossil record.
It’s an interesting debate as the molecular and fossil records tend to conflict when it comes to the dates of branching along the evolutionary tree. And, because it’s a debate, it’s just a matter of time before it’s quote-mined by the evolution denialists at Uncommon Descent. In particular, I would be concerned with passages such as these from the nature editorial.