Denialism Blog

Denialism Blog

  • Popular Woo Mongers Bankrupt…in Berkeley!

    The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Elephant Pharmacy, a “holistic” drug store has closed and will file for bankruptcy. Why should you care? Elephant was an upscale store based in the Bay Area, the epicenter for wooishness. If this type of business fails here, how well will woo do elsewhere?

    There’s something to be said for the idea that perhaps people know that woo doesn’t work, and maybe they cut back when the economy goes bad. Could the popularity of alternative medicine be a reflection of economic exuberance? Will individuals act more rationally when they have less money to spend?

    The comments on the Chronicle site are fun to read. Gives you an idea of the atmosphere here on alternative medicines.

  • MPR on Identity Theft

    I’ll be on Minnesota Public Radio this morning with LA Times consumer reporter David Lazarus, talking about identity theft. Here’s the preview and I’ll post the stream later. I’m going to be talking about my recent articles on identity theft: Identity Theft: Making the Known Unknowns Known and Towards a Market for Bank Safety.

  • Let's Just Hope There's No Lead in Your Toys Until 2010

    The toy companies that moved their production to China in order to save money apparently didn’t calculate the full costs of offshoring. Testing their products for lead is just too expensive, they argue. They have successfully lobbied to delay lead testing rules for children’s toys. Joseph Pereira and Melanie Trottman of the Journal report:

    Under pressure from manufacturers, federal regulators have postponed for one year certain testing requirements for lead and other toxic substances in toys and other children’s products.

    But unless Congress acts, retailers and manufacturers still won’t be allowed to sell products that don’t comply with tougher lead standards that are set to take effect on Feb. 10. “Congress will need to address that issue — the CPSC cannot,” Nancy Nord, acting chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, said in a statement.

    The stay allows manufacturers, which have been hit hard by the recession, to put off costly product testing for levels of lead, used to stabilize the plastic in products, and phthalates, which are chemicals used to soften plastic. The testing rules were supposed to have taken effect on Feb. 10 as well.

    So, let’s just hope that there’s no lead in the toys you buy your kids in the next year. Oops, wait a minute. There is lead in them. All you have to do is test to find it:

    Friday, the Center for Environmental Health, an advocacy group in Oakland, Calif., said it found several Valentine’s Day stuffed-animal toys sold by Rite Aid Corp. and Longs Drugs, a unit of CVS Caremark Corp., with lead exceeding the new national standards that take effect on Feb. 10. The lead levels found in one of the stuffed-animal toys were more than 15 times the new federal limit, the Center for Environmental Health said. “There should be something to back up a claim that the products are safe, but without testing and certification there’s no assurance,” said Charles Margulis, a spokesman for the group.

  • SF Chron: Ignore the Anti-Abortion Protestors

    In good Denialism blog form, the San Francisco Chronicle’s C. W. Nevius has urged readers to just ignore this week’s anti-abortion protest in San Francisco. He makes a good point:

    This is the fifth year in San Francisco for the “Walk for Life.” Bolstered by supporters who are bused in from all over – this year’s bus schedule lists departures from Yuba City, Bakersfield, Fresno, Reno, Clovis and Chico, among other cities – the anti-abortion group stages a march in liberal San Francisco and then expresses shock and disappointment when they are jeered and booed.

    It’s a scam and a setup. Nothing gets media attention like two groups facing off against each other. And, frankly, on the 36th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the anti-abortion groups are becoming a tired story. They claim huge numbers for this walk – their estimate last year was 25,000 walkers, although The Chronicle story had the total at 10,000 – but there isn’t much of a news hook unless there’s some controversy. They’d probably get more people if they marched in Indiana, but in San Francisco they can garner much more publicity.

    Amen! Stay inside on this Bay Area rainy day!

    A blog note: I apologize for the sparse blogging on Denialism Blog. The semester has just started for me, and I am teaching a new course that is taking a huge amount of time. MarkH is flying around the country interviewing. This week he was in San Francisco, where instead of blogging, we ate at Chapeau and the Slanted Door, and went to the gun show. Yes, the gun show. It was hilarious. We bought beef jerky there, considered getting a crossbow to shoot some Ligers, and stocked up on dental tools and compasses for survival post apocalypse.

  • Patrick McGoohan, Creator of The Prisoner, Dead at 80

    “All that remains is . . . recognition of a man.”

    Patrick McGoohan, the creator of one of my favorite television series, The Prisoner, has died at 80. The Prisoner was a challenging and entertaining series that explored civil liberties, privacy, individuality, and democracy. My favorite episodes were Free for All and A Change of Mind. The good news is that these and all the other episodes are available online free at AMC.

  • The Beautiful Truth

    Guess what? A natural therapy can cure cancer, but evil doctors don’t want to tell you about it, because the medical establishment wants to make money with Mosanto and Dupont rather than cure your illnesses! Watch all about it.

    Update: Sorry, I missed Orac’s successful attack on this thing. Thanks Science Pundit, for pointing it out.

  • The Ayn Rand Deprogrammer: A More Twisted Crime and Punishment

    Sciblings,

    I really appreciate all of the suggested texts submitted for the Ayn Rand Deprogrammer. If you visit the comment thread, you’ll see that the inevitable happened: Objectivists tried to hijack the discussion. I say ignore them. Eyes on the prize: a solid Ayn Rand Deprogrammer. Any distraction will slow us down, and delay publication of forthcoming projects, the Hayek Deprogrammer and the Milton Friedman Deprogrammer.

    I am going to bundle up all the good suggestions made by commenters. But here is one that no one else has found. Written in 1957, it is clear eyed and prescient book review of Atlas Shrugged appearing in Harper’s Magazine. I quote it in its entirety.

    Paul Murphy Pickrel: Review of Atlas Shrugged

    Ayn Rand’s new novel, Atlas Shrugged (Random House, $6.95), is longer than life and twice as preposterous. Of its 1,168 pages (plus two pages at the end “About the Author” that the prospective reader would be well advised to tackle first) I have read only 300; to read even so much was a triumph of Will over Inclination, but then Will knew when it was licked. From my 300 pages I did not discover why the book bears the title it does, but I found out everything else that I regard as necessary to know about it.

    As far as I got, only one idea emerged for me from Miss Rand’s book, and that one, in my opinion, pernicious. The idea is this: there are certain people of such extraordinary talent that they should be permitted unlimited license to work their will in the world. This would not have been a bad point of departure for a novel–Dostoevski, staring out with a character who believed the same thing, explored and developed the idea to write a great novel, Crime and Punishment. But, as far as I read, Miss Rand explored and developed nothing; she simply stated and restated and then stated again. Her characters have no spontaneity or individuality, they are simply creatures of her didactic purpose. The scenes do not unfold a story; they simply illustrate a point.

    Yet the book will probably give pleasure to some readers. It makes life wonderfully simple, and in a way that is agreeable to many of us, probably to all of us at some moment in our lives: according to its argument there is no contradiction or strain between man’s inner life and his social role, for unrestrained egoism solves all problems. In addition, Miss Rand is able to enlist some of the more disreputable human emotions–hatred, contempt, anger–in a pretty powerful way. Oddly enough, though I do not believe in her characters for a moment, I do believe in their wrath.

    I think Pickrel nails it with the comparison to Crime and Punishment. And his last sentences–the idea that he doesn’t believe in Rand’s characters, but in their wrath, is consonant with my experiences. Rand’s characters are Übermensch; in reality, people committed to this philosophy fall far short. They’re usually ineffectual people who blame the government for their problems. At the same time, their wrath, their hatred for government and for others is pathological.

  • 6 Cases of Shameless False Advertising

    are brought to you by mental floss. HT to Rebecca Tushnet via Frank Pasquale.

  • Berkeley Releases Study on San Francisco Cameras

    I am really proud of my colleagues here at UC Berkeley for performing a first of its kind (in the US) study of the efficacy of police surveillance cameras. Its findings are limited to San Francisco’s system, but it is valuable in thinking through whether and how surveillance cameras should be implemented. I have to be careful about characterizing it, but here is an article in the Chronicle on its findings, and the full report is here (8.9 MB PDF). The authors explain: “…The findings include a determination that while the program decreased property crime within the view of the cameras by twenty percent, other forms of crime, including violent crime, one of the primary targets of the program, were not affected.”

  • Monday, Monday, or "A day in the life"

    There’s no way a day can be entirely predictable, but I do like sharing a glimpse into the personal/professional life every once in a while. You see, the personal and professional can’t be so easily disentangled, and whether you are a physician, scientist, grad student, or barrista, you only have one “real life”.

    0600: Pager. Nurse reports Mrs. M. has a very high fever and foul-smelling urine. I order cultures and antibiotics, and wander sleepily toward bathroom.

    0605: Offspring bursts into bathroom excitedly. “Daddy, I had an accident and I was a little wet and I changed my diaper and my pyjamas all by myself and now I have to go potty and I’m going by myself and can you get out of the way cuz I have to go now and please turn on the lights so I can see and I’m not tired can you come cuddle?”

    0610: Cuddle in bed with four-year-old insomniac

    0630: Give up and watch Disney while eating waffles

    (the rest is predicted)

    0800: Arrive at office and look at pile on desk, despondently. Accept scolding from office staff.

    0830-1200: See patients at office

    12:30: Visit elderly patient with foul-smelling urine and fever.

    12:45: Visit dear friends in ICU, one of whom is getting a dose of chemotherapy, the other sitting next to her.

    1300-1630: Supervise medical residents in their outpatient clinic.

    1635-1700: Check back in with friends in ICU.

    1700-2100: Supervise residents in outpatient clinic.

    2200: Arrive home, tip-toe into precocious child’s room, kiss and tuck in.

    2220: Hang out with spouse, finally.

    2330: Fall asleep, hopefully.