What Is Your Animal Personality?
brought to you by Quizilla and Orac
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Anne a Horse?
Hmmm,.. somebody is wondering who I am? and like the testimonials they won't give their name.....
What Is Your Animal Personality?
brought to you by Quizilla and Orac
What Is Your Animal Personality?
brought to you by Quizilla and Orac
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
"Intelligent Design" Is Not Science
Excellent article in today's latimes.com: "Intelligent Design" Is Not Science.
It's religion!
By Henry Weinstein, Times Staff Writer
A federal judge, saying "intelligent design" is "an interesting theological argument, but … not science," ruled Tuesday that a school board violated the Constitution by compelling biology teachers to present the concept as an alternative to evolution.
The ruling came after U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III heard 21 days of testimony in a closely watched trial that pitted a group of parents against the school board in the town of Dover, Pa.
In October 2004, the board had required school officials to read a statement to ninth-graders declaring that Charles Darwin's ideas on evolution were "a theory … not a fact," and that "gaps in the theory exist for which there is no evidence."
"Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view," the statement said.
Jones, a church-going conservative who was appointed to the federal bench by President Bush in 2002, said the statement was clearly designed to insert religious teachings into the classroom. He used much of his 139-page ruling to dissect arguments made for intelligent design.
Legal experts described the ruling as a sharp defeat for the intelligent design movement — one likely to have considerable influence with other judges, although it is only legally binding in one area of Pennsylvania.
The "overwhelming evidence" has established that intelligent design "is a religious view, a mere relabeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory," Jones wrote.
Public remarks by school board members, he said, made clear that they adopted the statement to advance specific religious views.
Testimony at the trial included remarks from a board meeting, where one of the backers of the intelligent design statement "said words to the effect of '2,000 years ago someone died on a cross. Can't someone take a stand for him?' " the judge noted.
Supporters of intelligent design argue that biological systems are so complex that they could not have arisen by a series of random changes. The complexity of life implies an intelligent designer, they say. Most of the movement's spokesmen take care not to publicly say whether the designer they have in mind is equivalent to the God in the Bible. On that basis, they argue that their concept is scientific, not religious.
But Jones said the concept was inescapably religious.
"Although proponents of the [intelligent design movement] occasionally suggest that the designer could be a space alien or a time-traveling cell biologist, no serious alternative to God as the designer has been proposed by members" of the movement, including expert witnesses who testified, Jones wrote.
Remarks by board members that they had secular purposes in mind — to improve science teaching and to foster an open debate — were a "sham" and a "pretext for the board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom," he wrote.
Anticipating attacks, Jones said his ruling was not the "product of an activist judge."
He said school board officials had lied in their testimony and excoriated them for not bothering to understand what intelligent design was about before making their decision. He rebuked what he called the "breathtaking inanity of the board's decision."
"This case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case" on intelligent design, he wrote.
The school district will not appeal the ruling, said Patricia Dapp, who was elected to the Dover board this year. The supporters of intelligent design have been voted out of office, and eight members of the board now oppose the concept, she said.
The Dover trial, in which Jones heard testimony from leading advocates of intelligent design as well as experts on evolutionary theory, was one of several battlegrounds for intelligent design in the last year.
In January, a U.S. district judge in Georgia ruled that the school system in Cobb County, near Atlanta, had violated the Constitution by requiring stickers to be placed on biology textbooks casting doubt on the theory of evolution.
This month, a federal appeals court in Atlanta considered arguments in the case, with at least one judge expressing doubts about the lower court ruling.
In Kansas, the state Board of Education has changed the definition of science to permit supernatural explanations.
That reliance on the supernatural was key to Jones' rejection of the Dover school board's position.
Intelligent design arguments "may be true, a proposition on which this court takes no position," he wrote, but it "is not science."
"The centuries-old ground rules of science" make clear that a scientific theory must rely solely on natural explanations that can be tested, he wrote.
That portion of the decision won praise from Kenneth R. Miller, a biology professor at Brown University in Providence, R.I. He was the lead expert witness for the parents in the case and is the author of biology textbooks used in college and high school classrooms.
Miller testified that it was crucial that scientific propositions be able to be tested.
To illustrate his point, Miller, an avid fan of the Boston Red Sox, testified that when his team beat the New York Yankees in the 2004 baseball playoffs, a fan might have believed "God was tired of [Yankee owner] George Steinbrenner and wanted to see the Red Sox win."
"In my part of the country, you'd be surprised how many people think that's a perfectly reasonable explanation for what happened last year. And you know what? It might be true. But it certainly is not science … and it's certainly not something we can test," Miller said.
Supporters of intelligent design denounced Jones' ruling along the lines the judge had predicted.
"The Dover decision is an attempt by an activist federal judge to stop the spread of a scientific idea … and it won't work," said John West, associate director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute. The institute, based in Seattle, is a major backer of the intelligent design movement.
"Anyone who thinks a court ruling is going to kill off interest in intelligent design is living in another world," West said.
Richard Thompson of the Thomas More Law Center, the lead lawyer for the school board members, called the ruling an "ad hominem attack on scientists who happen to believe in God."
"The founders of this country would be astonished at the thought that this simple curriculum change [was] in violation of the Constitution that they drafted," he said.
But Lee Strang, a constitutional law professor at Ave Maria School of Law in Ann Arbor, Mich., which advocates a greater role for religion in public life, said that given Supreme Court precedents and the evidence that Dover school board members had religious goals in mind, Jones' ruling was inevitable.
The Supreme Court in 1987 barred the teaching in public schools of what backers called creation science. The concept of intelligent design emerged after that ruling, Jones noted in his ruling.
Douglas Laycock of the University of Texas School of Law said the ruling would probably have considerable influence because it came after a trial in which "both sides brought in their top guns" to testify.
The judge's detailed ruling "will be quite persuasive to other judges and lawyers thinking about provoking a similar case elsewhere," he said.
Marci Hamilton, a professor at Cardozo School of Law in New York, who is an expert on religious freedom issues, agreed that the ruling could have broad ramifications.
"These are tough times to rule against a religious group," Hamilton said. "This decision sends a message to judges that it is not anti-religious to find things like intelligent design unconstitutional."
Eric Rothschild, one of the plaintiffs' lawyers, called the ruling "a real vindication of the courage [the parents] showed and the position they took."
The testimony, he said, had demonstrated that "the emperor had no clothes. The judge concluded that intelligent design had no scientific merit" and could not "uncouple itself from religion."
Source: Reuters
It's religion!
By Henry Weinstein, Times Staff Writer
A federal judge, saying "intelligent design" is "an interesting theological argument, but … not science," ruled Tuesday that a school board violated the Constitution by compelling biology teachers to present the concept as an alternative to evolution.
The ruling came after U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III heard 21 days of testimony in a closely watched trial that pitted a group of parents against the school board in the town of Dover, Pa.
In October 2004, the board had required school officials to read a statement to ninth-graders declaring that Charles Darwin's ideas on evolution were "a theory … not a fact," and that "gaps in the theory exist for which there is no evidence."
"Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view," the statement said.
Jones, a church-going conservative who was appointed to the federal bench by President Bush in 2002, said the statement was clearly designed to insert religious teachings into the classroom. He used much of his 139-page ruling to dissect arguments made for intelligent design.
Legal experts described the ruling as a sharp defeat for the intelligent design movement — one likely to have considerable influence with other judges, although it is only legally binding in one area of Pennsylvania.
The "overwhelming evidence" has established that intelligent design "is a religious view, a mere relabeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory," Jones wrote.
Public remarks by school board members, he said, made clear that they adopted the statement to advance specific religious views.
Testimony at the trial included remarks from a board meeting, where one of the backers of the intelligent design statement "said words to the effect of '2,000 years ago someone died on a cross. Can't someone take a stand for him?' " the judge noted.
Supporters of intelligent design argue that biological systems are so complex that they could not have arisen by a series of random changes. The complexity of life implies an intelligent designer, they say. Most of the movement's spokesmen take care not to publicly say whether the designer they have in mind is equivalent to the God in the Bible. On that basis, they argue that their concept is scientific, not religious.
But Jones said the concept was inescapably religious.
"Although proponents of the [intelligent design movement] occasionally suggest that the designer could be a space alien or a time-traveling cell biologist, no serious alternative to God as the designer has been proposed by members" of the movement, including expert witnesses who testified, Jones wrote.
Remarks by board members that they had secular purposes in mind — to improve science teaching and to foster an open debate — were a "sham" and a "pretext for the board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom," he wrote.
Anticipating attacks, Jones said his ruling was not the "product of an activist judge."
He said school board officials had lied in their testimony and excoriated them for not bothering to understand what intelligent design was about before making their decision. He rebuked what he called the "breathtaking inanity of the board's decision."
"This case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case" on intelligent design, he wrote.
The school district will not appeal the ruling, said Patricia Dapp, who was elected to the Dover board this year. The supporters of intelligent design have been voted out of office, and eight members of the board now oppose the concept, she said.
The Dover trial, in which Jones heard testimony from leading advocates of intelligent design as well as experts on evolutionary theory, was one of several battlegrounds for intelligent design in the last year.
In January, a U.S. district judge in Georgia ruled that the school system in Cobb County, near Atlanta, had violated the Constitution by requiring stickers to be placed on biology textbooks casting doubt on the theory of evolution.
This month, a federal appeals court in Atlanta considered arguments in the case, with at least one judge expressing doubts about the lower court ruling.
In Kansas, the state Board of Education has changed the definition of science to permit supernatural explanations.
That reliance on the supernatural was key to Jones' rejection of the Dover school board's position.
Intelligent design arguments "may be true, a proposition on which this court takes no position," he wrote, but it "is not science."
"The centuries-old ground rules of science" make clear that a scientific theory must rely solely on natural explanations that can be tested, he wrote.
That portion of the decision won praise from Kenneth R. Miller, a biology professor at Brown University in Providence, R.I. He was the lead expert witness for the parents in the case and is the author of biology textbooks used in college and high school classrooms.
Miller testified that it was crucial that scientific propositions be able to be tested.
To illustrate his point, Miller, an avid fan of the Boston Red Sox, testified that when his team beat the New York Yankees in the 2004 baseball playoffs, a fan might have believed "God was tired of [Yankee owner] George Steinbrenner and wanted to see the Red Sox win."
"In my part of the country, you'd be surprised how many people think that's a perfectly reasonable explanation for what happened last year. And you know what? It might be true. But it certainly is not science … and it's certainly not something we can test," Miller said.
Supporters of intelligent design denounced Jones' ruling along the lines the judge had predicted.
"The Dover decision is an attempt by an activist federal judge to stop the spread of a scientific idea … and it won't work," said John West, associate director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute. The institute, based in Seattle, is a major backer of the intelligent design movement.
"Anyone who thinks a court ruling is going to kill off interest in intelligent design is living in another world," West said.
Richard Thompson of the Thomas More Law Center, the lead lawyer for the school board members, called the ruling an "ad hominem attack on scientists who happen to believe in God."
"The founders of this country would be astonished at the thought that this simple curriculum change [was] in violation of the Constitution that they drafted," he said.
But Lee Strang, a constitutional law professor at Ave Maria School of Law in Ann Arbor, Mich., which advocates a greater role for religion in public life, said that given Supreme Court precedents and the evidence that Dover school board members had religious goals in mind, Jones' ruling was inevitable.
The Supreme Court in 1987 barred the teaching in public schools of what backers called creation science. The concept of intelligent design emerged after that ruling, Jones noted in his ruling.
Douglas Laycock of the University of Texas School of Law said the ruling would probably have considerable influence because it came after a trial in which "both sides brought in their top guns" to testify.
The judge's detailed ruling "will be quite persuasive to other judges and lawyers thinking about provoking a similar case elsewhere," he said.
Marci Hamilton, a professor at Cardozo School of Law in New York, who is an expert on religious freedom issues, agreed that the ruling could have broad ramifications.
"These are tough times to rule against a religious group," Hamilton said. "This decision sends a message to judges that it is not anti-religious to find things like intelligent design unconstitutional."
Eric Rothschild, one of the plaintiffs' lawyers, called the ruling "a real vindication of the courage [the parents] showed and the position they took."
The testimony, he said, had demonstrated that "the emperor had no clothes. The judge concluded that intelligent design had no scientific merit" and could not "uncouple itself from religion."
Source: Reuters
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Always be skeptical
Have you ever visited the Scientific Assessment?
I did today and this post directed me to Skepsisfere, where I found some interesting links and tips how to
The article gives you some quick tips to identify wrong knowledge and false theories.
I did today and this post directed me to Skepsisfere, where I found some interesting links and tips how to
recognize when someone is making a serious critique to theories and when the person simply is a quack.As a layman it is hard to understand a scientific theory.
The article gives you some quick tips to identify wrong knowledge and false theories.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Susan Clancy on recovered memories, alien abductions, and how to believe weird things
Over at Reason I found this informal and fascinating interview by Kerry Howley.
It's about recovered memories and the increasing claims of alien abduction.
I also recommend visiting How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens and read the first chapter (PDF).
It's about recovered memories and the increasing claims of alien abduction.
Claims of alien abduction have become increasingly common over the past thirty years, Clancy reports, as has a general belief in the existence of extraterrestrial life. Recruiting people who truly believed they were abducted by extraterrestrials, she found a way to study memory creation without directly engaging the bitter debate over recovered memories of abuse. And listening to their grotesque and often sexually explicit accounts, she could be reasonably sure that the memories she was studying were not vivid recollections of traumatic abuse, but imaginative reconstructions of the latest Spielberg flick.Susan Clancy makes a serious attempt to understand how people come to believe in something that is obviously false and she found that recovered memories is only imagination.
Reason: You are convinced that most people who believe they have been abducted by aliens are normal people, and that every one of them with vivid memories got them in therapy. How does that happen, exactly?Normal people truly believe they've been abducted by aliens because they've experienced intense and emotional memories. But it's all in their imagination.
Clancy: I do think these people are fundamentally normal. The belief in alien abduction is much less weird when you consider the process by which the belief is acquired. It doesn't happen overnight. Nobody wakes up and says, "Holy shit, I was abducted last night, they took me, there were rotating vibrating devices and then they extracted my sperm." People say, "I have these weird experiences. I wonder what it could be?" They look for explanations and at some point they'll say, well, maybe I was abducted. I know it sounds weird but it's just like what Whitley Strieber wrote about, or it's just like what happened to Betty and Barney Hill. There are a lot of people out there who believe aliens are real and a lot of people who believe aliens have been on earth—look at the Roper polls and the Time/CNN polls—and it's not that weird that some people would say, maybe I've been abducted.
I also recommend visiting How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens and read the first chapter (PDF).
Sunday, November 20, 2005
The kids decided not to teach Intelligent Design in U.S. Schools
I found this unintelligent piece over at fantasy world – the author George Konig predicts science will remove from the schools within ten years. He does not mention any names of the scientists who have given up and any reasonable person would consider his claim to be nonsense.
I propose his article to be something like this (short version):
The kids decided not to teach Intelligent Design in U.S. Schools
There are several excellent articles on Evolution and Intelligent Design to mention like evidence for evolution and Survival Of The Flimsiest.
Most creationists’ and believers of ID have already given up on the hypothesis of Intelligent Design because of lack of proof. Researchers did not know what to look for, and because the hypothesis was not testable, they made no research published ever.
They finally had to accept evolution as a fact because of scientific findings in the last twenty years and because of evidence for historical evolution like genetic, fossils, anatomical etc.
Due to the unwillingness of religious people in the education field to accept Evolution - for their own personal reasons - the debate have and will continue until the court in Pennsylvania put and end to all the nonsense.
In fact, many people of faith accept evolution as the scientific explanation for biodiversity.
End of article!
Proponents say Intelligent Design provides scientific answers for gaps and inconsistencies in the theory of evolution. They think an unnamed "designer" or "Goddidit" fills in the "gaps" and "problems" in Darwin’s Theory of evolution.
However, problem with science has always been that a new discovery will lead to thousands of new questions.
With Intelligent Design, we do not need to find out and we could stop learning.
On the other hand, we could accept that "Science is hard."
The scientific community will not accept teaching pseudoscience in schools, and they will fight back unintelligent arguments like Goddidit with reasonable arguments, I think.
I propose his article to be something like this (short version):
The kids decided not to teach Intelligent Design in U.S. Schools
There are several excellent articles on Evolution and Intelligent Design to mention like evidence for evolution and Survival Of The Flimsiest.
Most creationists’ and believers of ID have already given up on the hypothesis of Intelligent Design because of lack of proof. Researchers did not know what to look for, and because the hypothesis was not testable, they made no research published ever.
They finally had to accept evolution as a fact because of scientific findings in the last twenty years and because of evidence for historical evolution like genetic, fossils, anatomical etc.
Due to the unwillingness of religious people in the education field to accept Evolution - for their own personal reasons - the debate have and will continue until the court in Pennsylvania put and end to all the nonsense.
In fact, many people of faith accept evolution as the scientific explanation for biodiversity.
End of article!
Proponents say Intelligent Design provides scientific answers for gaps and inconsistencies in the theory of evolution. They think an unnamed "designer" or "Goddidit" fills in the "gaps" and "problems" in Darwin’s Theory of evolution.
However, problem with science has always been that a new discovery will lead to thousands of new questions.
With Intelligent Design, we do not need to find out and we could stop learning.
On the other hand, we could accept that "Science is hard."
The scientific community will not accept teaching pseudoscience in schools, and they will fight back unintelligent arguments like Goddidit with reasonable arguments, I think.
Saturday, November 19, 2005
Side effects caused by Chinese medicine
Chinese medicine are promoted as natural and safe, but some may contain harmful substances not declared on the label like sibutramine and methylphenidate.
There is a great article over at BBC about the potential side effects of using Chinese medicine:
There is a great article over at BBC about the potential side effects of using Chinese medicine:
It is estimated that 6,000 stores across the country offer treatment for conditions ranging from eczema to the menopause.Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4429414.stm
But the industry, although growing in popularity, is largely unregulated.
At the Herb Garden store in Leigh on Sea, Essex, an undercover reporter from the Five Live Report was two weeks ago sold a herbal slimming pill and told it contained rhubarb and honeysuckle.
Tests showed it contained fenfluarmine - an illegal pharmaceutical considered to be so dangerous that it is banned in most countries worldwide, including the UK.
The owner of the store, Anna Yang, was prosecuted earlier this year for illegally selling the same drug.
She was fined £30,000 with another £20,000 in court costs.
The maximum sentence for selling an illegal medicine is two years imprisonment.
Prescription-only
The BBC reporter was also sold two other prescription-only drugs - Danthron - a specialist laxative which has cancer causing properties and is only recommended for use with terminally ill patients, and Sibutramine - prescribed in cases of extreme obesity.
Ms Yang said that she was concerned about the BBC's allegations.
She said she was reliant on assurances from suppliers as to the contents of the products and had been in touch with the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.
She added that the products had now been withdrawn from sale.
Danny Lee-Frost, head of enforcement at the MHRA, said: "There are huge amounts of money to be made in this area.
"The main motivation is money."
He said unscrupulous traders were putting patient's lives at risk.
The BBC has learned that several practitioners are currently facing prosecution, and another 63 stores are being investigated.
David Woods visited Ms Yang in 2000 for acupuncture on his painful knees.
He said: "She said I should lose a bit of weight and it would help my knees.
"She said she had these new pills, really good pills and would I like some? So I said yes.
"It ended up to be the equivalent of a class A drug."
Heart problems
Since taking fenfluarmine David Woods has had a permanently damaged heart.
"My heart used to slow down and speed up. I honestly thought I was dying. I have nothing to thank her for. Nothing."
Dr Karl Metcalfe, a consultant physician at Southend hospital said he has treated nine of Anna Yang's former patients but fears there may be more as some people may not have reported symptoms to their GPs.
"For a medically qualified person to be issuing these drugs would be reprehensible.
"For a non medically qualified person to be doing it is well very alarming and quite clearly criminal."
Kidneys removed
In a separate case, Sandi Stay, of Hove, had to have both her kidneys removed after taking Aristochlia, a cancer causing herb which is banned across the UK.
Mrs Stay said she went to a Chinese medicine store and was given the herb to treat her psoriasis.
In her case the store which she claims sold her the drug was found not guilty because the jury accepted the store had taken measures to ensure its medicines did not contain Aristochlia.
Dr Mark Thursz, a consultant physician at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington said he had seen a huge rise in the number of patients being referred to him with liver failure or hepatitis after taking Chinese herbal medicine.
He said: "Many people believe herbal remedies are safe, but they should be seen in the light as conventional remedies in that they can adverse reactions.
"When you get a box of pills you get a long list of potential side effects.
"You don't get that with herbal remedies because practitioners try to make you believe they are safe."
Under current regulations Chinese medics are treated as shop keepers rather than traders, so in the same way a butcher prosecuted for selling bad meat would be allowed to continue trading so are they.
Dr Jidong Wu, of the Association of Traditional Chinese medicine is calling for tighter regulation.
He said "dodgy and fake" practitioners were damaging the image of Chinese medicine.
Monday, November 14, 2005
What kind of humanist are you?
I discovered this test over at Be Reasonable and here are the results:
You are an atheist, a rationalist, a believer in the triumph of science and of reason over libido. You can’t stand mumbo jumbo, ritual, spiritual nonsense of any kind, and you refuse to allow for these longings in others.
Astrologers, Scientologists and new–age crystal ball creeps are no different in your view from priests, rabbis and imams. They’re all just weak–minded pilgrims on the road to easy answers. Nature as revealed by science is awesome enough for you, but it’s a nature that needs curbing and taming by us on our evolutionary journey to perfection.
Your heros are Einstein, Darwin, Marx and — these days — Gould, Blakemore, Watson, Crick and Rosalind Franklin. Could you be hiding a little behind those absolutist views, worried that, if you let in a few doubts and contradictory ideas, the whole edifice might crumble? Loosen up a bit and try to enjoy the amazing variety of human belief systems. Don’t worry — it’s unlikely you’ll end up chanting your days away in some distant mountain cult.
What kind of humanist are you? Click here to find out.
Hardhat
You are an atheist, a rationalist, a believer in the triumph of science and of reason over libido. You can’t stand mumbo jumbo, ritual, spiritual nonsense of any kind, and you refuse to allow for these longings in others.
Astrologers, Scientologists and new–age crystal ball creeps are no different in your view from priests, rabbis and imams. They’re all just weak–minded pilgrims on the road to easy answers. Nature as revealed by science is awesome enough for you, but it’s a nature that needs curbing and taming by us on our evolutionary journey to perfection.
Your heros are Einstein, Darwin, Marx and — these days — Gould, Blakemore, Watson, Crick and Rosalind Franklin. Could you be hiding a little behind those absolutist views, worried that, if you let in a few doubts and contradictory ideas, the whole edifice might crumble? Loosen up a bit and try to enjoy the amazing variety of human belief systems. Don’t worry — it’s unlikely you’ll end up chanting your days away in some distant mountain cult.
What kind of humanist are you? Click here to find out.
Sunday, November 13, 2005
The anti-MMR campaign dismissed by Science
Dr Michael Fitzpatrick wrote an excellent article called When quackery kills available over at Spiked.
It is about the death of a five-year-old autistic boy in the USA following mercury chelation and how campaigners continue to blame medical and scientific authorities for poisoning children with vaccines. Journalists endorse the anti-MMR campaign without critically examining the claims of its promoters and the scientific evidence against the autism link. Or could it be, that they just don't understand science
The false belief in the MMR-autism link has caused parents to feel guilt over giving their children the vaccine, and it unfortunately made some parents decide not to have their children vaccinated. Instead they believed in anecdotal evidence delivered by fellow parents, who saw with their own eyes that their children became autistic after receiving the MMR vaccine. I will give you one good example why anecdotal evidence is unreliable:
Galileo presented the view that the Earth revolved around the sun and rotated around its own axis, but people could see with their own eyes that the sun rose in the east and set in the west. They believed what they saw, and concluded the earth was the center of the universe and the sun revolved around the earth and not opposite. However, their observation did not prove Galileo was wrong. The people were not aware that association does not prove causation. Scientific research is required, and what you see is not always evidence of truth.
MMR protects children against three potentially serious diseases and now this Cochrane review concludes that the truth about MMR is that it does not cause autism. How much more research do we need?
The entire review (PDF):
Vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella in children.
It is about the death of a five-year-old autistic boy in the USA following mercury chelation and how campaigners continue to blame medical and scientific authorities for poisoning children with vaccines. Journalists endorse the anti-MMR campaign without critically examining the claims of its promoters and the scientific evidence against the autism link. Or could it be, that they just don't understand science
The false belief in the MMR-autism link has caused parents to feel guilt over giving their children the vaccine, and it unfortunately made some parents decide not to have their children vaccinated. Instead they believed in anecdotal evidence delivered by fellow parents, who saw with their own eyes that their children became autistic after receiving the MMR vaccine. I will give you one good example why anecdotal evidence is unreliable:
Galileo presented the view that the Earth revolved around the sun and rotated around its own axis, but people could see with their own eyes that the sun rose in the east and set in the west. They believed what they saw, and concluded the earth was the center of the universe and the sun revolved around the earth and not opposite. However, their observation did not prove Galileo was wrong. The people were not aware that association does not prove causation. Scientific research is required, and what you see is not always evidence of truth.
MMR protects children against three potentially serious diseases and now this Cochrane review concludes that the truth about MMR is that it does not cause autism. How much more research do we need?
The entire review (PDF):
Vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella in children.
Sunday, November 6, 2005
Kevin Trudeau accused of violating customer privacy.
This week Consumer Health Digest has a new matter on Kevin Trudeau:
The New York State Consumer Protection Board (CPB) has warned that consumers who purchase Kevin Trudeau's book, "Natural Cures 'They' Don't Want You to Know About," may have their contact information sold to telemarketers, junk mailers, and other direct marketers. In a news release, CPB's chairman said that consumers were not notified that this might happen. [Without notice to consumers, Kevin Trudeau is selling customer names & addresses from infomercial orders: Consumers also being hit with unexpected charges for Trudeau newsletter and discount purchase programs. CPB press release, Oct 27, 2005] http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/trudeaucpb.html Trudeau's attorney (David Bradford) stated that Trudeau didn't promote the idea that buyers can "opt out" of their information being used, but they can be excluded by notifying the Trudeau's company. [Agency: Natural cures guy selling names. Associated Press, Oct 27, 2005]
Saturday, November 5, 2005
Interview With Kevin Trudeau
This interview with Kevin Trudeau stress that Trudeau's book is based only on his opinions. He is a non-expert and a sales representative with no medical skills.
From the interview with Kevin Trudeau:
From the interview with Kevin Trudeau:
ZAHN (voice-over): Ironically, Trudeau says its his lack of medical training that allows him to reveal these natural cures, cures some readers say aren't actually in the book.More here.
(on camera): But, Kevin, even you have to concede you haven't won a legion of fans.
Let me read to you something a reader, Christina Miller (ph), had to say about your book.
TRUDEAU: Sure.
ZAHN: She contacted the FTC to say -- quote -- "I recently purchased the book and feel like the whole thing is a huge scam. The book has vague information urging the reader to join the Web site for a fee for specific information. However, when you join the Web site, after you give your credit card info and your order is processed, then you get the disclaimer stating brand names cannot be mentioned, as promised. Also, the things that are promised upon joining are not available."
TRUDEAU: One person.
ZAHN: Well, I got a whole bunch of them.
TRUDEAU: Now, hold on.
ZAHN: Respond specifically to what...
TRUDEAU: No.
ZAHN: ... Christina Miller (ph) is saying.
TRUDEAU: Let's -- let's not mislead the public, Paula. Don't mislead the public. Three million people bought this book. The majority, overwhelming majority, of people that read my book are writing me letters by the tens of the thousands, thanking me.
ZAHN: What you're saying, I'm sure, is true. But there are enough of these letters, that we have been given copies of it. I just want you to respond to specific criticism that these people feel hoodwinked, that, once they pay a fee...
(CROSSTALK)
ZAHN: ... to get on the Web site, they don't feel that the information that you promise in the book is there for the taking.
TRUDEAU: How do you respond to the criticism from somebody who goes to the movies, sees an Academy Award-winning picture, and says, unwatchable? How do you respond to that?
ZAHN: But it's not a question of people saying that they don't like what they read. They don't think the information you have promised...
TRUDEAU: No. You're misleading...
ZAHN: ... in the book is there.
TRUDEAU: You're misleading people. The majority of people, Paula, believe that the information I promise is in the book.
ZAHN (voice-over): On Internet book-seller Amazon.com, "Natural Cures" averages two-and-a-half stars out of five in reader reviews, with some readers satisfied, others, clearly not.
Monday, October 31, 2005
SkepticWiki - the Encyclopedia of Science and Critical Thinking
The Skepticwiki is available!
Subject Index:
Aliens and UFOs
Alternative and Complementary Medicine
Book Reviews
Frauds and Scams
History and Pseudohistory
Illusions and Delusions
Logic and Logical Fallacies
Media
New Age
People
Psychic Phenomena and the Paranormal
Racism Myths
Religion and Philosophy
Science and Pseudoscience
Jargon and Slang
Websites
I often turn to Wikipedia if I want to start learn something new or get an overview of a matter. But this article got me wondering how good it is to use as a reference source. Any non-expert can make a contribution, so I wouldn't rely on it as the only resource for important work. Wikipedia could still be my first, but not the last.
Subject Index:
Aliens and UFOs
Alternative and Complementary Medicine
Book Reviews
Frauds and Scams
History and Pseudohistory
Illusions and Delusions
Logic and Logical Fallacies
Media
New Age
People
Psychic Phenomena and the Paranormal
Racism Myths
Religion and Philosophy
Science and Pseudoscience
Jargon and Slang
Websites
I often turn to Wikipedia if I want to start learn something new or get an overview of a matter. But this article got me wondering how good it is to use as a reference source. Any non-expert can make a contribution, so I wouldn't rely on it as the only resource for important work. Wikipedia could still be my first, but not the last.
Sunday, October 30, 2005
The Cajun Cowboy has spent $200,000.00 on alternative therapies
I went to his webpage some while ago and read his story.
Mr. Buttar is treating him with Chelation Therapy, Ozone Therapy and other alternative therapies trying to boost his immune system.
Fact is that his cancer has not been affected by the treatment.
However, he had very little to show for his money (with his own words) he is continuing the treatment.
Mr. Buttar is treating him with Chelation Therapy, Ozone Therapy and other alternative therapies trying to boost his immune system.
Fact is that his cancer has not been affected by the treatment.
However, he had very little to show for his money (with his own words) he is continuing the treatment.
Friday, October 28, 2005
Alien abductees prone to false memories
It is a widespread story that alien beings have traveled to Earth from some other planet and are doing reproductive experiments on a chosen few. If you believe in this nonsense, then you probably have been hit by "false memories".The term confabulation is often used to describe the "memories" of people claiming to have been abducted by aliens. Proposed explanations of the abduction phenomenon can be found here.
Here's a great article that appeared in Yahoo. The article explain that we're dealing with false memories rather than evidence of life in other planets:
LONDON (Reuters) - Do you have memories of being abducted by aliens and whisked away in a spaceship?You wouldn't be alone. Several thousand people worldwide claim to have had such close encounters, researchers say. But in a new study, a psychology expert at London's Goldsmiths College says these experiences are proof of the frailty of the human memory, rather than evidence of life in other galaxies.I'd like to hear what fellow skeptics are thinking about recovered memory these days.
"Maybe what we're dealing with here is false memories, and not that people are actually being abducted and taken aboard spaceships," says Professor Chris French, who surveyed 19 self-proclaimed alien abductees.
Several of the abductees reported being snatched from their beds or cars by alien creatures around four feet high, with spindly arms and legs and oversized heads, French said.
Some men said they were subjected to painful medical examinations by the aliens, during which their sperm was extracted.
Many of the alien experiences could be explained by sleep paralysis, a condition in which a person is awake and aware of the surroundings but is unable to move.
Sleep paralysis often leads to hallucinations and 40 percent of people experience the state at least once in their lives, French said.
A rich imagination was also at play. Several of the alien abductees were already prone to fantasising and also claimed to have seen ghosts and have psychic or healing abilities.
"People have very rich fantasy lives," said French, who is due to present his findings at a public seminar at London's Science Museum on Wednesday.
"So much so that they often mix up what's happening in their heads with what is going on in the real world."
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Cool stuff, go check it out
I found this cool stuff via Pharyngula. It's a place where you can create a map, share photos and get others to add themselves and make comments. It's easy and fun and if you want to join, click over to the AntiQuackery Map and feel free to add yourself to the members list and say hello.
Saturday, October 22, 2005
Behe's testimony in The Dover Trial
Mike Argento offers some further information about Behe's testimony in his excellent article Behe's 15th-century science on Wednesday, October 19, 2005.
< blockquote >
HARRISBURG — Dr. Michael Behe, leading intellectual light of the intelligent design movement, faced a dilemma.
In order to call intelligent design a "scientific theory," he had to change the definition of the term. It seemed the definition offered by the National Academy of Science, the largest and most prestigious organization of scientists in the Western world, was inadequate to contain the scope and splendor and just plain gee-willigerness of intelligent design.
So he devised his own definition of theory, expanding upon the definition of those stuck-in-the-21st-century scientists, those scientists who ridicule him and call his "theory" creationism in a cheap suit.
He'd show them. He'd come up with his own definition.
Details aside, his definition was broader and more inclusive of ideas that are "outside the box".
So, as we learned Tuesday, during Day 11 of the Dover Panda Trial, under his definition of a scientific theory, astrology would be a scientific theory.
Astrology?
Who knew that Jacqueline Bigar, syndicated astrology columnist, was on par with Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe?
Eric Rothschild, attorney for the plaintiffs, asked Behe about whether astrology was science. And Behe, after hemming and hawing and launching into an abbreviated history of astrology and science, said, under his definition, it is. He said he wasn't a science historian, but the definition of astrology in the dictionary referred to its 15th-century roots, when it was equated with astronomy, which, according to the National Academy of Science, is a science.
So, taking a short logical leap, something Behe would certainly endorse since he does it a lot himself, you could say that intelligent design is on par with 15th century science.
Sounds about right.
Actually, that's not quite fair. It shortchanges astrology. For example, my personal horoscope for Tuesday, formulated by the aforementioned famous scientist Bigar, said, "Confusion could be your middle name, but many other people feel confused too".
Nailed it.
Most of the confusion — and it just wasn't me — was brought on by Behe's second day on the witness stand. He talked about blood clotting — it's pretty complicated — and some guy named Dr. Doolittle and some other stuff dealing with Cytochrome c and gene duplication and exon transfer.
I don't think he was referring to the Dr. Doolittle who spoke to the animals. Or maybe he was. It's not exactly clear. As he referred to one of Dr. Doolittle's claims — and I'm pretty positive it had nothing to do with the Push-Me-Pull-You — he said, "If you think about it for a minute, it's easy to see what's going on here".
And then, in case you had no idea what he was talking about, he explained in terms that made it even more impenetrable.
After a while, he set into a pattern.
He'd say critics of his idea always misunderstand him, take things out of context and misrepresent what he means.
And then, to respond to them, he misunderstood what they said, took their words out of context and misrepresented what they said.
He would point to studies that seemed to support the evolutionary view of how things developed — articles written by scientists who accept the theory of evolution and who, consequently, don't think much of Behe — and say they support his views.
He'd expound at great length and then, as he would wind down, he'd say, "Now, here's the point ...".
And whatever his point was would be wrapped in so much verbiage you needed a backhoe to get to it.
By the time you kind of grasped what he was saying — I think, essentially, that Dr. Doolittle didn't know anything about talking to animals — he was off talking about what a wingnut Francis Crick turned out to be. Crick was one of two scientists who discovered the double-helix structure of DNA, winning a Nobel Prize. Later, Crick came up with a notion about how life started on this planet called "Directed Panspermia." His idea was that aliens reduced life to its smallest components, or something like that, and shot them to Earth via rocket ship.
I guess the point is being a scientist and a wingnut are not mutually exclusive.
As the cross-examination continued, another pattern developed. Rothschild would show Behe, on a big screen in the courtroom, a quote from "Of Pandas and People" and ask him a simple question about it.
The quote said, "Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact — fish with fins and scales, birds with feather, beaks and wings, etc.".
Rothschild asked him whether he believed that statement said intelligent design meant life began abruptly on this planet.
It apparently was a trick question because Behe had a hard time answering it.
"I disagree," the scientist said.
And then, he explained what he thought the quotation meant, which wasn't what it said.
This went on for a while. Every time Rothschild would ask Behe about a statement, some he wrote himself, he'd say he'd have to disagree that it said what it said.
I expected Rothschild to ask Behe whether he was able to read and understand the English language.
At one point during Rothschild's cross-examination, the lawyer asked the scientist whether he was co-authoring a book, a follow-up to "Of Pandas and People," with several other intelligent esign moolahs. He said he wasn't.
The lawyer showed him depositions and reports to the court, quoting two of the other authors as saying he was a co-author.
Behe said that he wasn't a co-author of the book but that the statements by those guys weren't false. He said one of the authors was "seeing into the future."
Rothschild asked, "Is seeing into the future one of the powers of the intelligent-design movement"?
Behe didn't answer.
He didn't have to.
Seeing into the future is the province of that other science — you know, astrology. < /blockquote >
< blockquote >
HARRISBURG — Dr. Michael Behe, leading intellectual light of the intelligent design movement, faced a dilemma.
In order to call intelligent design a "scientific theory," he had to change the definition of the term. It seemed the definition offered by the National Academy of Science, the largest and most prestigious organization of scientists in the Western world, was inadequate to contain the scope and splendor and just plain gee-willigerness of intelligent design.
So he devised his own definition of theory, expanding upon the definition of those stuck-in-the-21st-century scientists, those scientists who ridicule him and call his "theory" creationism in a cheap suit.
He'd show them. He'd come up with his own definition.
Details aside, his definition was broader and more inclusive of ideas that are "outside the box".
So, as we learned Tuesday, during Day 11 of the Dover Panda Trial, under his definition of a scientific theory, astrology would be a scientific theory.
Astrology?
Who knew that Jacqueline Bigar, syndicated astrology columnist, was on par with Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe?
Eric Rothschild, attorney for the plaintiffs, asked Behe about whether astrology was science. And Behe, after hemming and hawing and launching into an abbreviated history of astrology and science, said, under his definition, it is. He said he wasn't a science historian, but the definition of astrology in the dictionary referred to its 15th-century roots, when it was equated with astronomy, which, according to the National Academy of Science, is a science.
So, taking a short logical leap, something Behe would certainly endorse since he does it a lot himself, you could say that intelligent design is on par with 15th century science.
Sounds about right.
Actually, that's not quite fair. It shortchanges astrology. For example, my personal horoscope for Tuesday, formulated by the aforementioned famous scientist Bigar, said, "Confusion could be your middle name, but many other people feel confused too".
Nailed it.
Most of the confusion — and it just wasn't me — was brought on by Behe's second day on the witness stand. He talked about blood clotting — it's pretty complicated — and some guy named Dr. Doolittle and some other stuff dealing with Cytochrome c and gene duplication and exon transfer.
I don't think he was referring to the Dr. Doolittle who spoke to the animals. Or maybe he was. It's not exactly clear. As he referred to one of Dr. Doolittle's claims — and I'm pretty positive it had nothing to do with the Push-Me-Pull-You — he said, "If you think about it for a minute, it's easy to see what's going on here".
And then, in case you had no idea what he was talking about, he explained in terms that made it even more impenetrable.
After a while, he set into a pattern.
He'd say critics of his idea always misunderstand him, take things out of context and misrepresent what he means.
And then, to respond to them, he misunderstood what they said, took their words out of context and misrepresented what they said.
He would point to studies that seemed to support the evolutionary view of how things developed — articles written by scientists who accept the theory of evolution and who, consequently, don't think much of Behe — and say they support his views.
He'd expound at great length and then, as he would wind down, he'd say, "Now, here's the point ...".
And whatever his point was would be wrapped in so much verbiage you needed a backhoe to get to it.
By the time you kind of grasped what he was saying — I think, essentially, that Dr. Doolittle didn't know anything about talking to animals — he was off talking about what a wingnut Francis Crick turned out to be. Crick was one of two scientists who discovered the double-helix structure of DNA, winning a Nobel Prize. Later, Crick came up with a notion about how life started on this planet called "Directed Panspermia." His idea was that aliens reduced life to its smallest components, or something like that, and shot them to Earth via rocket ship.
I guess the point is being a scientist and a wingnut are not mutually exclusive.
As the cross-examination continued, another pattern developed. Rothschild would show Behe, on a big screen in the courtroom, a quote from "Of Pandas and People" and ask him a simple question about it.
The quote said, "Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact — fish with fins and scales, birds with feather, beaks and wings, etc.".
Rothschild asked him whether he believed that statement said intelligent design meant life began abruptly on this planet.
It apparently was a trick question because Behe had a hard time answering it.
"I disagree," the scientist said.
And then, he explained what he thought the quotation meant, which wasn't what it said.
This went on for a while. Every time Rothschild would ask Behe about a statement, some he wrote himself, he'd say he'd have to disagree that it said what it said.
I expected Rothschild to ask Behe whether he was able to read and understand the English language.
At one point during Rothschild's cross-examination, the lawyer asked the scientist whether he was co-authoring a book, a follow-up to "Of Pandas and People," with several other intelligent esign moolahs. He said he wasn't.
The lawyer showed him depositions and reports to the court, quoting two of the other authors as saying he was a co-author.
Behe said that he wasn't a co-author of the book but that the statements by those guys weren't false. He said one of the authors was "seeing into the future."
Rothschild asked, "Is seeing into the future one of the powers of the intelligent-design movement"?
Behe didn't answer.
He didn't have to.
Seeing into the future is the province of that other science — you know, astrology. < /blockquote >
Friday, October 21, 2005
Astrology is scientific theory, courtroom told
Astrology is scientific theory, courtroom told
13:30 19 October 2005
NewScientist.com news service
Astrology would be considered a scientific theory if judged by the same criteria used by a well-known advocate of Intelligent Design to justify his claim that ID is science, a landmark US trial heard on Tuesday.
Under cross examination, ID proponent Michael Behe, a biochemist at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, admitted his definition of "theory" was so broad it would also include astrology.
The trial is pitting 11 parents from the small town of Dover, Pennsylvania, against their local school board. The board voted to read a statement during a biology class that casts doubt on Darwinian evolution and suggests ID as an alternative.
The parents claim this was an attempt to introduce creationism into the curriculum and that the school board members were motivated by their evangelical Christian beliefs. It is illegal to teach anything with a primarily religious purpose or effect on pupils in government-funded US schools.
Supporters of ID believe that some things in nature are simply too complex to have evolved by natural selection, and therefore must be the work of an intelligent designer.
Peer review
Behe was called to the stand on Monday by the defence, and testified that ID was a scientific theory, and was not "committed" to religion. His cross examination by the plaintiffs’ attorney, Eric Rothschild of the Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton, began on Tuesday afternoon.
Rothschild told the court that the US National Academy of Sciences supplies a definition for what constitutes a scientific theory: “Theory: In science, a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.”
Because ID has been rejected by virtually every scientist and science organisation, and has never once passed the muster of a peer-reviewed journal paper, Behe admitted that the controversial theory would not be included in the NAS definition. "I can’t point to an external community that would agree that this was well substantiated," he said.
Behe said he had come up with his own "broader" definition of a theory, claiming that this more accurately describes the way theories are actually used by scientists. "The word is used a lot more loosely than the NAS defined it," he says.
Hypothesis or theory?
Rothschild suggested that Behe’s definition was so loose that astrology would come under this definition as well. He also pointed out that Behe’s definition of theory was almost identical to the NAS’s definition of a hypothesis. Behe agreed with both assertions.
The exchange prompted laughter from the court, which was packed with local members of the public and the school board.
Behe maintains that ID is science: “Under my definition, scientific theory is a proposed explanation which points to physical data and logical inferences.”
"You've got to admire the guy. It’s Daniel in the lion’s den," says Robert Slade, a local retiree who has been attending the trial because he is interested in science. "But I can’t believe he teaches a college biology class."
The cross examination will continue Wednesday, with the trial expected to finish on 4 November.
13:30 19 October 2005
NewScientist.com news service
Astrology would be considered a scientific theory if judged by the same criteria used by a well-known advocate of Intelligent Design to justify his claim that ID is science, a landmark US trial heard on Tuesday.
Under cross examination, ID proponent Michael Behe, a biochemist at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, admitted his definition of "theory" was so broad it would also include astrology.
The trial is pitting 11 parents from the small town of Dover, Pennsylvania, against their local school board. The board voted to read a statement during a biology class that casts doubt on Darwinian evolution and suggests ID as an alternative.
The parents claim this was an attempt to introduce creationism into the curriculum and that the school board members were motivated by their evangelical Christian beliefs. It is illegal to teach anything with a primarily religious purpose or effect on pupils in government-funded US schools.
Supporters of ID believe that some things in nature are simply too complex to have evolved by natural selection, and therefore must be the work of an intelligent designer.
Peer review
Behe was called to the stand on Monday by the defence, and testified that ID was a scientific theory, and was not "committed" to religion. His cross examination by the plaintiffs’ attorney, Eric Rothschild of the Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton, began on Tuesday afternoon.
Rothschild told the court that the US National Academy of Sciences supplies a definition for what constitutes a scientific theory: “Theory: In science, a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.”
Because ID has been rejected by virtually every scientist and science organisation, and has never once passed the muster of a peer-reviewed journal paper, Behe admitted that the controversial theory would not be included in the NAS definition. "I can’t point to an external community that would agree that this was well substantiated," he said.
Behe said he had come up with his own "broader" definition of a theory, claiming that this more accurately describes the way theories are actually used by scientists. "The word is used a lot more loosely than the NAS defined it," he says.
Hypothesis or theory?
Rothschild suggested that Behe’s definition was so loose that astrology would come under this definition as well. He also pointed out that Behe’s definition of theory was almost identical to the NAS’s definition of a hypothesis. Behe agreed with both assertions.
The exchange prompted laughter from the court, which was packed with local members of the public and the school board.
Behe maintains that ID is science: “Under my definition, scientific theory is a proposed explanation which points to physical data and logical inferences.”
"You've got to admire the guy. It’s Daniel in the lion’s den," says Robert Slade, a local retiree who has been attending the trial because he is interested in science. "But I can’t believe he teaches a college biology class."
The cross examination will continue Wednesday, with the trial expected to finish on 4 November.
Thursday, October 20, 2005
Key Facts About Avian Influenza (Bird Flu) and Avian Influenza A (H5N1) Virus
The disease has spread to birds in Europe, where it's been confirmed in Turkey and Romania in recent weeks, as well as in Russia. We could expect human cases of H5N1 flu in Europe, so the threat has to be taken seriously.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides background information about avian influenza, including recent outbreaks, the viruses, and the risk to human health here.Bird flu is an infection caused by avian (bird) influenza (flu) viruses. These flu viruses occur naturally among wild birds and they usually do not get sick from them. However, bird flu is very contagious among birds and can make some domesticated birds, including chickens, ducks, and turkeys, very sick and kill them.
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Kevin Trudeau's shady past
Take a look at Kevin Trudeau's past by searching The Smoking Gun archive, read the psychiatric report and a letter written by his mother.
Also read:
Kevin Trudeau in Washingtonpost.com
Kevin Trudeau's book is still on Best-Seller lists
Also read:
Kevin Trudeau in Washingtonpost.com
Kevin Trudeau's book is still on Best-Seller lists
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Psychic seeks $32m Saddam reward
I wonder why somebody believes the United States went to a Brazilian psychic for help finding Saddam?And what if the the plaintiff was suing, say, Iraq or Liberia?
Would the court have taken this claim seriously?
News.com.au, From correspondents in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - October 07, 2005:
A BRAZILIAN court will consider a psychic's claim that the US Government owes him a $US25 million ($32 million) reward for information he says he provided on the hiding place of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Brazil's second-highest court, the Superior Court of Justice, decided today the Brazilian justice system could rule on the matter and told a court in the psychic's home state of Minas Gerais to judge the case.
The lower court had earlier told Jucelino Nobrega da Luz it could not take up his claim and it would have to be judged in the US, but the higher tribunal ruled otherwise.
"The Minas Gerais court will work with the claim," a spokesman for the Superior Court of Justice said.
"Jucelino da Luz alleges that the US armed forces only found Saddam based on his letters that provided his exact location, the very hole where he was hiding in Iraq. So he filed a court case to claim the reward."
The US Government offered the reward for Saddam in July 2003 after the US-led forces occupied the country. He was captured in December of the same year.
The court said Mr da Luz sent letters to the US Government from September 2001, describing Saddam's future hiding place – a tiny cellar at a farmhouse near Tikrit. He never received a reply.
"His lawyers attest that the author has an uncommon gift of having visions of things that will come to pass. ... Via dreams, he sees situations, facts that will happen in the future," a court statement said.
In case the court upholds the claim, it will be sent via diplomatic channels to the US State Department.
Saturday, October 1, 2005
Evolutionary theory is holding up day after day to scientific tests
Evolutionary theory is more complete than any other commonly accepted theory. Nevertheless we spend a lot of time to teach students about gaps and problems in Darwin's Theory, but no time about the problems with atomic or gravitational theory. We keep teaching students about electrons because we don't completely understand the nature of quarks.
Evolution is a way of understanding the world that hold up day after day to scientific tests. Problems exist in Darwinism, and some details are sure to be refined over time - but it's not failings of the theory of evolution, only small and technical gaps.
Proponents of ID use these gaps as an excuse to propose ID as an alternative theory to Darwinism. ID supporters want to avoid the scientific review process by political action in a court case. Why can’t they go through the same processes as scientists do to get their ideas heard? Does ID have an excuse from the process of peer-reviewed study? Proponents of ID must demonstrate how hypotheses can be tested by experiment or observation. Getting a scientific theory of any kind accepted takes time. The problem is that ID isn't a theory - ID isn't falsifiable and therefore only a hypothesis. In addition, it bothers me why nobody discusses gaps and problems in ID.
ID isn't Science.
ID is a masked effort to replace science with theology.
Evolution is a way of understanding the world that hold up day after day to scientific tests. Problems exist in Darwinism, and some details are sure to be refined over time - but it's not failings of the theory of evolution, only small and technical gaps.
Proponents of ID use these gaps as an excuse to propose ID as an alternative theory to Darwinism. ID supporters want to avoid the scientific review process by political action in a court case. Why can’t they go through the same processes as scientists do to get their ideas heard? Does ID have an excuse from the process of peer-reviewed study? Proponents of ID must demonstrate how hypotheses can be tested by experiment or observation. Getting a scientific theory of any kind accepted takes time. The problem is that ID isn't a theory - ID isn't falsifiable and therefore only a hypothesis. In addition, it bothers me why nobody discusses gaps and problems in ID.
ID isn't Science.
ID is a masked effort to replace science with theology.
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Central Tenets of Evolution Theory
New Analyses Bolster Central Tenets of Evolution Theory
Pa. Trial Will Ask Whether 'Alternatives' Can Pass as Science
By Rick Weiss and David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, September 26, 2005; Page A08
When scientists announced last month they had determined the exact order of all 3 billion bits of genetic code that go into making a chimpanzee, it was no surprise that the sequence was more than 96 percent identical to the human genome. Charles Darwin had deduced more than a century ago that chimps were among humans' closest cousins.
But decoding chimpanzees' DNA allowed scientists to do more than just refine their estimates of how similar humans and chimps are. It let them put the very theory of evolution to some tough new tests.
If Darwin was right, for example, then scientists should be able to perform a neat trick. Using a mathematical formula that emerges from evolutionary theory, they should be able to predict the number of harmful mutations in chimpanzee DNA by knowing the number of mutations in a different species' DNA and the two animals' population sizes.
"That's a very specific prediction," said Eric Lander, a geneticist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Mass., and a leader in the chimp project.
Sure enough, when Lander and his colleagues tallied the harmful mutations in the chimp genome, the number fit perfectly into the range that evolutionary theory had predicted.
Their analysis was just the latest of many in such disparate fields as genetics, biochemistry, geology and paleontology that in recent years have added new credence to the central tenet of evolutionary theory: That a smidgeon of cells 3.5 billion years ago could -- through mechanisms no more extraordinary than random mutation and natural selection -- give rise to the astonishing tapestry of biological diversity that today thrives on Earth.
Evolution's repeated power to predict the unexpected goes a long way toward explaining why so many scientists and others are practically apoplectic over the recent decision by a Pennsylvania school board to treat evolution as an unproven hypothesis, on par with "alternative" explanations such as Intelligent Design (ID), the proposition that life as we know it could not have arisen without the helping hand of some mysterious intelligent force.
Today, in a courtroom in Harrisburg, Pa., a federal judge will begin to hear a case that asks whether ID or other alternative explanations deserve to be taught in a biology class. But the plaintiffs, who are parents opposed to teaching ID as science, will do more than merely argue that those alternatives are weaker than the theory of evolution.
They will make the case -- plain to most scientists but poorly understood by many others -- that these alternatives are not scientific theories at all.
"What makes evolution a scientific explanation is that it makes testable predictions," Lander said. "You only believe theories when they make non-obvious predictions that are confirmed by scientific evidence."
Lander's experiment tested a quirky prediction of evolutionary theory: that a harmful mutation is unlikely to persist if it is serious enough to reduce an individual's odds of leaving descendants by an amount that is greater than the number one divided by the population of that species.
The rule proved true not only for mice and chimps, Lander said. A new and still unpublished analysis of the canine genome has found that dogs, whose numbers have historically been greater than those of apes but smaller than for mice, have an intermediate number of harmful mutations -- again, just as evolution predicts.
New Analyses Bolster Central Tenets of Evolution Theory
"Evolution is a way of understanding the world that continues to hold up day after day to scientific tests," Lander said.
By contrast, said Alan Leshner, chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Intelligent Design offers nothing in the way of testable predictions.
"Just because they call it a theory doesn't make it a scientific theory," Leshner said. "The concept of an intelligent designer is not a scientifically testable assertion."
Asked to provide examples of non-obvious, testable predictions made by the theory of Intelligent Design, John West, an associate director of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based ID think tank, offered one: In 1998, he said, an ID theorist, reckoning that an intelligent designer would not fill animals' genomes with DNA that had no use, predicted that much of the "junk" DNA in animals' genomes -- long seen as the detritus of evolutionary processes -- will someday be found to have a function.
(In fact, some "junk" DNA has indeed been found to be functional in recent years, though more than 90 percent of human DNA still appears to be the flotsam of biological history.) In any case, West said, it is up to Darwinists to prove ID wrong.
"Chance and necessity don't seem to be good candidates for explaining the appearance of higher-order complexity, so the best explanation is an intelligent cause," West said.
Simple and Hard
The controversy that has periodically erupted around evolution can be attributed at least in part to the fact that it is both simple to understand and hard to believe.
Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, working independently in the early- to mid-1800s, each came up with the concept of "natural selection." Each sought to explain the astounding diversity of life he found in exotic places, Darwin in the Galapagos Islands and Wallace in Brazil.
Their idea was this:
By some accident of nature whose workings neither man could explain, an organism may exhibit a variation in shape, color or body function new to the species. Although most of these new traits are damaging -- probably lethal -- a small fraction actually help. They may make it easier to hide from predators (like a moth's coloration), exploit a food source (an anteater's long tongue), or make seeds more durable (the coconut's buoyant husk).
If the trait does help an organism survive, that individual will be more likely to reproduce. Its offspring will then inherit the change. They, in turn, will have an advantage over organisms that are identical except for that one beneficial change. Over time, the descendants that inherited what might be termed the "happy accident" will outnumber the descendants of its less fit, but initially far more numerous, brethren.
There are two important consequences of this mechanism.
New Analyses Bolster Central Tenets of Evolution Theory
The first is that organisms will tend to adapt to their environments. If the planet's atmosphere contains lots of oxygen but very little methane gas, living things are going to end up tolerating oxygen -- and possibly even depending on it. But do not expect to see many methane-breathers.
This appearance of "perfect fit" makes it seem as if organisms must have been the product of an intelligent force. But this appearance of perfection is deceiving. It gives no hint of the numberless evolutionary dead ends -- lineages that, according to the fossil record, survived for a while but then died out, probably because changes in the environment made their once-perfect designs not so perfect anymore.
The second result of Darwin and Wallace's mechanism is that over time it will create species diversity. As additional "happy accidents" alter an organism's descendants over millions of years, those descendants will come to look less and less like other organisms with which they share a common ancestor. Eventually, the descendants will be able to mate only with each other. They will be lions and tigers -- each a distinct species, but both descended from the same ancient cat.
What is hard to understand about this process is that it is essentially passive. The mechanism is called "natural selection" because the conditions at hand -- nature -- determine which accidents are beneficial and which are not. Organisms do not seek ends.
Giraffes do not decide to grow long necks to browse the high branches above the competition. But a four-legged mammal on the savannah once upon a time was endowed with a longer neck than its brothers and sisters. It ate better. We call its descendants giraffes.
That a mechanism driven by random events should result in perfectly adapted organisms -- and so many different types -- seems illogical.
"Even today a good many distinguished minds seem unable to accept or even to understand that from a source of noise, natural selection alone and unaided could have drawn all the music of the biosphere," Jacques Monod, a French biologist and Nobel Prize winner, wrote in 1970 in the book "Chance and Necessity."
Natural selection was really hard to accept in Darwin's day. But it has become easier with the discovery of genes, DNA and techniques that have made it possible to watch natural selection happen.
DNA is a stringlike molecule made up of paired beads called nucleotides. It carries the instructions for making proteins and RNA, the chief building materials of life. Individually, these instructions are called genes.
The random changes Darwin knew must be happening are accidents that happen to DNA and genes. Today, they can be documented and catalogued in real time, inside cells.
Cells sometimes make errors when they copy their DNA before dividing. These mutations can disable a gene -- or change its action. Occasionally cells also duplicate an entire gene by mistake, providing offspring with two copies instead of one. Both these events provide raw material for new genes with new and potentially useful functions -- and ultimately raw material for new organisms and species.
Richard E. Lenski, a biologist at Michigan State University, has been following 12 cultures of the bacterium Escherichia coli since 1988, comprising more than 25,000 generations. All 12 cultures were genetically identical at the start. For years he gave each the same daily stress: six hours of food (glucose) and 18 hours of starvation. All 12 strains adapted to this by becoming faster consumers of glucose and developing bigger cell size than their 1988 "parents."
The second result of Darwin and Wallace's mechanism is that over time it will create species diversity. As additional "happy accidents" alter an organism's descendants over millions of years, those descendants will come to look less and less like other organisms with which they share a common ancestor. Eventually, the descendants will be able to mate only with each other. They will be lions and tigers -- each a distinct species, but both descended from the same ancient cat.
What is hard to understand about this process is that it is essentially passive. The mechanism is called "natural selection" because the conditions at hand -- nature -- determine which accidents are beneficial and which are not. Organisms do not seek ends.
Giraffes do not decide to grow long necks to browse the high branches above the competition. But a four-legged mammal on the savannah once upon a time was endowed with a longer neck than its brothers and sisters. It ate better. We call its descendants giraffes.
That a mechanism driven by random events should result in perfectly adapted organisms -- and so many different types -- seems illogical.
"Even today a good many distinguished minds seem unable to accept or even to understand that from a source of noise, natural selection alone and unaided could have drawn all the music of the biosphere," Jacques Monod, a French biologist and Nobel Prize winner, wrote in 1970 in the book "Chance and Necessity."
Natural selection was really hard to accept in Darwin's day. But it has become easier with the discovery of genes, DNA and techniques that have made it possible to watch natural selection happen.
DNA is a stringlike molecule made up of paired beads called nucleotides. It carries the instructions for making proteins and RNA, the chief building materials of life. Individually, these instructions are called genes.
The random changes Darwin knew must be happening are accidents that happen to DNA and genes. Today, they can be documented and catalogued in real time, inside cells.
Cells sometimes make errors when they copy their DNA before dividing. These mutations can disable a gene -- or change its action. Occasionally cells also duplicate an entire gene by mistake, providing offspring with two copies instead of one. Both these events provide raw material for new genes with new and potentially useful functions -- and ultimately raw material for new organisms and species.
Richard E. Lenski, a biologist at Michigan State University, has been following 12 cultures of the bacterium Escherichia coli since 1988, comprising more than 25,000 generations. All 12 cultures were genetically identical at the start. For years he gave each the same daily stress: six hours of food (glucose) and 18 hours of starvation. All 12 strains adapted to this by becoming faster consumers of glucose and developing bigger cell size than their 1988 "parents."
When Lenski and his colleagues examined each strain's genes, they found that the strains had not acquired the same mutations. Instead, there was some variety in the happy accidents that had allowed each culture to survive. And when the 12 strains were then subjected to a different stress -- a new food source -- they did not fare equally well. In some, the changes from the first round of adaptation stood in the way of adaptation to the new conditions. The 12 strains had started to diverge, taking the first evolutionary steps that might eventually make them different species -- just as Darwin and Wallace predicted.
In fact, one of the more exciting developments in biology in the past 25 years has been how much DNA alone can teach about the evolutionary history of life on Earth.
For example, genome sequencing projects have shown that human beings, dogs, frogs and flies (and many, many other species) share a huge number of genes in common. These include not only genes for tissues they all share, such as muscle, which is not such a surprise, but also the genes that go into basic body-planning (specifying head and tail, front and back) and appendage-building (making things that stick out from the body, such as antennae, fins, legs and arms).
As scientists have identified the totality of DNA -- the genomes -- of many species, they have unearthed the molecular equivalent of the fossil record.
It is now clear from fossil and molecular evidence that certain patterns of growth in multicellular organisms appeared about 600 million years ago. Those patterns proved so useful that versions of the genes governing them are carried by nearly every species that has arisen since.
These several hundred "tool kit genes," in the words of University of Wisconsin biologist Sean B. Carroll, are molecular evidence of natural selection's ability to hold on to very useful functions that arise.
Research on how and when tool kit genes are turned on and off also has helped explain how evolutionary changes in DNA gave rise to Earth's vast diversity of species. Studies indicate that the determination of an organism's form during embryonic development is largely the result of a small number of genes that are turned on in varying combinations and order. Gene regulation is where the action is.
Consequently, mutations in regulatory portions of a DNA strand can have effects just as dramatic as those prompted by mutations in genes themselves. They can, for example, cancel the development of an appendage -- or add an appendage where one never existed. This discovery refuted assertions by Intelligent Design advocates that gene mutation and natural selection can, at most, explain the fine-tuning of species.
"The mechanisms that make the small differences between species are the same ones that make the big differences between kingdoms," said Carroll, author of a book, "Endless Forms Most Beautiful," that describes many of these new insights.
Although the central tenets of evolution have done nothing but grow stronger with every experimental challenge, the story is still evolving, Carroll and other scientists acknowledge. Some details are sure to be refined over time. The question to be answered in Harrisburg is whether Intelligent Design has anything scientific to add for now, or whether it belongs instead in philosophy class.
Pa. Trial Will Ask Whether 'Alternatives' Can Pass as Science
By Rick Weiss and David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, September 26, 2005; Page A08
When scientists announced last month they had determined the exact order of all 3 billion bits of genetic code that go into making a chimpanzee, it was no surprise that the sequence was more than 96 percent identical to the human genome. Charles Darwin had deduced more than a century ago that chimps were among humans' closest cousins.
But decoding chimpanzees' DNA allowed scientists to do more than just refine their estimates of how similar humans and chimps are. It let them put the very theory of evolution to some tough new tests.
If Darwin was right, for example, then scientists should be able to perform a neat trick. Using a mathematical formula that emerges from evolutionary theory, they should be able to predict the number of harmful mutations in chimpanzee DNA by knowing the number of mutations in a different species' DNA and the two animals' population sizes.
"That's a very specific prediction," said Eric Lander, a geneticist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Mass., and a leader in the chimp project.
Sure enough, when Lander and his colleagues tallied the harmful mutations in the chimp genome, the number fit perfectly into the range that evolutionary theory had predicted.
Their analysis was just the latest of many in such disparate fields as genetics, biochemistry, geology and paleontology that in recent years have added new credence to the central tenet of evolutionary theory: That a smidgeon of cells 3.5 billion years ago could -- through mechanisms no more extraordinary than random mutation and natural selection -- give rise to the astonishing tapestry of biological diversity that today thrives on Earth.
Evolution's repeated power to predict the unexpected goes a long way toward explaining why so many scientists and others are practically apoplectic over the recent decision by a Pennsylvania school board to treat evolution as an unproven hypothesis, on par with "alternative" explanations such as Intelligent Design (ID), the proposition that life as we know it could not have arisen without the helping hand of some mysterious intelligent force.
Today, in a courtroom in Harrisburg, Pa., a federal judge will begin to hear a case that asks whether ID or other alternative explanations deserve to be taught in a biology class. But the plaintiffs, who are parents opposed to teaching ID as science, will do more than merely argue that those alternatives are weaker than the theory of evolution.
They will make the case -- plain to most scientists but poorly understood by many others -- that these alternatives are not scientific theories at all.
"What makes evolution a scientific explanation is that it makes testable predictions," Lander said. "You only believe theories when they make non-obvious predictions that are confirmed by scientific evidence."
Lander's experiment tested a quirky prediction of evolutionary theory: that a harmful mutation is unlikely to persist if it is serious enough to reduce an individual's odds of leaving descendants by an amount that is greater than the number one divided by the population of that species.
The rule proved true not only for mice and chimps, Lander said. A new and still unpublished analysis of the canine genome has found that dogs, whose numbers have historically been greater than those of apes but smaller than for mice, have an intermediate number of harmful mutations -- again, just as evolution predicts.
New Analyses Bolster Central Tenets of Evolution Theory
"Evolution is a way of understanding the world that continues to hold up day after day to scientific tests," Lander said.
By contrast, said Alan Leshner, chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Intelligent Design offers nothing in the way of testable predictions.
"Just because they call it a theory doesn't make it a scientific theory," Leshner said. "The concept of an intelligent designer is not a scientifically testable assertion."
Asked to provide examples of non-obvious, testable predictions made by the theory of Intelligent Design, John West, an associate director of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based ID think tank, offered one: In 1998, he said, an ID theorist, reckoning that an intelligent designer would not fill animals' genomes with DNA that had no use, predicted that much of the "junk" DNA in animals' genomes -- long seen as the detritus of evolutionary processes -- will someday be found to have a function.
(In fact, some "junk" DNA has indeed been found to be functional in recent years, though more than 90 percent of human DNA still appears to be the flotsam of biological history.) In any case, West said, it is up to Darwinists to prove ID wrong.
"Chance and necessity don't seem to be good candidates for explaining the appearance of higher-order complexity, so the best explanation is an intelligent cause," West said.
Simple and Hard
The controversy that has periodically erupted around evolution can be attributed at least in part to the fact that it is both simple to understand and hard to believe.
Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, working independently in the early- to mid-1800s, each came up with the concept of "natural selection." Each sought to explain the astounding diversity of life he found in exotic places, Darwin in the Galapagos Islands and Wallace in Brazil.
Their idea was this:
By some accident of nature whose workings neither man could explain, an organism may exhibit a variation in shape, color or body function new to the species. Although most of these new traits are damaging -- probably lethal -- a small fraction actually help. They may make it easier to hide from predators (like a moth's coloration), exploit a food source (an anteater's long tongue), or make seeds more durable (the coconut's buoyant husk).
If the trait does help an organism survive, that individual will be more likely to reproduce. Its offspring will then inherit the change. They, in turn, will have an advantage over organisms that are identical except for that one beneficial change. Over time, the descendants that inherited what might be termed the "happy accident" will outnumber the descendants of its less fit, but initially far more numerous, brethren.
There are two important consequences of this mechanism.
New Analyses Bolster Central Tenets of Evolution Theory
The first is that organisms will tend to adapt to their environments. If the planet's atmosphere contains lots of oxygen but very little methane gas, living things are going to end up tolerating oxygen -- and possibly even depending on it. But do not expect to see many methane-breathers.
This appearance of "perfect fit" makes it seem as if organisms must have been the product of an intelligent force. But this appearance of perfection is deceiving. It gives no hint of the numberless evolutionary dead ends -- lineages that, according to the fossil record, survived for a while but then died out, probably because changes in the environment made their once-perfect designs not so perfect anymore.
The second result of Darwin and Wallace's mechanism is that over time it will create species diversity. As additional "happy accidents" alter an organism's descendants over millions of years, those descendants will come to look less and less like other organisms with which they share a common ancestor. Eventually, the descendants will be able to mate only with each other. They will be lions and tigers -- each a distinct species, but both descended from the same ancient cat.
What is hard to understand about this process is that it is essentially passive. The mechanism is called "natural selection" because the conditions at hand -- nature -- determine which accidents are beneficial and which are not. Organisms do not seek ends.
Giraffes do not decide to grow long necks to browse the high branches above the competition. But a four-legged mammal on the savannah once upon a time was endowed with a longer neck than its brothers and sisters. It ate better. We call its descendants giraffes.
That a mechanism driven by random events should result in perfectly adapted organisms -- and so many different types -- seems illogical.
"Even today a good many distinguished minds seem unable to accept or even to understand that from a source of noise, natural selection alone and unaided could have drawn all the music of the biosphere," Jacques Monod, a French biologist and Nobel Prize winner, wrote in 1970 in the book "Chance and Necessity."
Natural selection was really hard to accept in Darwin's day. But it has become easier with the discovery of genes, DNA and techniques that have made it possible to watch natural selection happen.
DNA is a stringlike molecule made up of paired beads called nucleotides. It carries the instructions for making proteins and RNA, the chief building materials of life. Individually, these instructions are called genes.
The random changes Darwin knew must be happening are accidents that happen to DNA and genes. Today, they can be documented and catalogued in real time, inside cells.
Cells sometimes make errors when they copy their DNA before dividing. These mutations can disable a gene -- or change its action. Occasionally cells also duplicate an entire gene by mistake, providing offspring with two copies instead of one. Both these events provide raw material for new genes with new and potentially useful functions -- and ultimately raw material for new organisms and species.
Richard E. Lenski, a biologist at Michigan State University, has been following 12 cultures of the bacterium Escherichia coli since 1988, comprising more than 25,000 generations. All 12 cultures were genetically identical at the start. For years he gave each the same daily stress: six hours of food (glucose) and 18 hours of starvation. All 12 strains adapted to this by becoming faster consumers of glucose and developing bigger cell size than their 1988 "parents."
The second result of Darwin and Wallace's mechanism is that over time it will create species diversity. As additional "happy accidents" alter an organism's descendants over millions of years, those descendants will come to look less and less like other organisms with which they share a common ancestor. Eventually, the descendants will be able to mate only with each other. They will be lions and tigers -- each a distinct species, but both descended from the same ancient cat.
What is hard to understand about this process is that it is essentially passive. The mechanism is called "natural selection" because the conditions at hand -- nature -- determine which accidents are beneficial and which are not. Organisms do not seek ends.
Giraffes do not decide to grow long necks to browse the high branches above the competition. But a four-legged mammal on the savannah once upon a time was endowed with a longer neck than its brothers and sisters. It ate better. We call its descendants giraffes.
That a mechanism driven by random events should result in perfectly adapted organisms -- and so many different types -- seems illogical.
"Even today a good many distinguished minds seem unable to accept or even to understand that from a source of noise, natural selection alone and unaided could have drawn all the music of the biosphere," Jacques Monod, a French biologist and Nobel Prize winner, wrote in 1970 in the book "Chance and Necessity."
Natural selection was really hard to accept in Darwin's day. But it has become easier with the discovery of genes, DNA and techniques that have made it possible to watch natural selection happen.
DNA is a stringlike molecule made up of paired beads called nucleotides. It carries the instructions for making proteins and RNA, the chief building materials of life. Individually, these instructions are called genes.
The random changes Darwin knew must be happening are accidents that happen to DNA and genes. Today, they can be documented and catalogued in real time, inside cells.
Cells sometimes make errors when they copy their DNA before dividing. These mutations can disable a gene -- or change its action. Occasionally cells also duplicate an entire gene by mistake, providing offspring with two copies instead of one. Both these events provide raw material for new genes with new and potentially useful functions -- and ultimately raw material for new organisms and species.
Richard E. Lenski, a biologist at Michigan State University, has been following 12 cultures of the bacterium Escherichia coli since 1988, comprising more than 25,000 generations. All 12 cultures were genetically identical at the start. For years he gave each the same daily stress: six hours of food (glucose) and 18 hours of starvation. All 12 strains adapted to this by becoming faster consumers of glucose and developing bigger cell size than their 1988 "parents."
When Lenski and his colleagues examined each strain's genes, they found that the strains had not acquired the same mutations. Instead, there was some variety in the happy accidents that had allowed each culture to survive. And when the 12 strains were then subjected to a different stress -- a new food source -- they did not fare equally well. In some, the changes from the first round of adaptation stood in the way of adaptation to the new conditions. The 12 strains had started to diverge, taking the first evolutionary steps that might eventually make them different species -- just as Darwin and Wallace predicted.
In fact, one of the more exciting developments in biology in the past 25 years has been how much DNA alone can teach about the evolutionary history of life on Earth.
For example, genome sequencing projects have shown that human beings, dogs, frogs and flies (and many, many other species) share a huge number of genes in common. These include not only genes for tissues they all share, such as muscle, which is not such a surprise, but also the genes that go into basic body-planning (specifying head and tail, front and back) and appendage-building (making things that stick out from the body, such as antennae, fins, legs and arms).
As scientists have identified the totality of DNA -- the genomes -- of many species, they have unearthed the molecular equivalent of the fossil record.
It is now clear from fossil and molecular evidence that certain patterns of growth in multicellular organisms appeared about 600 million years ago. Those patterns proved so useful that versions of the genes governing them are carried by nearly every species that has arisen since.
These several hundred "tool kit genes," in the words of University of Wisconsin biologist Sean B. Carroll, are molecular evidence of natural selection's ability to hold on to very useful functions that arise.
Research on how and when tool kit genes are turned on and off also has helped explain how evolutionary changes in DNA gave rise to Earth's vast diversity of species. Studies indicate that the determination of an organism's form during embryonic development is largely the result of a small number of genes that are turned on in varying combinations and order. Gene regulation is where the action is.
Consequently, mutations in regulatory portions of a DNA strand can have effects just as dramatic as those prompted by mutations in genes themselves. They can, for example, cancel the development of an appendage -- or add an appendage where one never existed. This discovery refuted assertions by Intelligent Design advocates that gene mutation and natural selection can, at most, explain the fine-tuning of species.
"The mechanisms that make the small differences between species are the same ones that make the big differences between kingdoms," said Carroll, author of a book, "Endless Forms Most Beautiful," that describes many of these new insights.
Although the central tenets of evolution have done nothing but grow stronger with every experimental challenge, the story is still evolving, Carroll and other scientists acknowledge. Some details are sure to be refined over time. The question to be answered in Harrisburg is whether Intelligent Design has anything scientific to add for now, or whether it belongs instead in philosophy class.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Deepak Chopra v. Michael Shermer
Deepak Chopra and Michael Shermer are debating Skepticism In eSkeptic:
Is Skepticism a Negative or a Positive for Science and Humanity?
Gadflies Without a Sting - The Downside of Skepticism
Shermer responded at the end of Deepak’s essay:
The Power of Positive Skepticism - A Reply to Deepak Chopra
Shermer also replied that positive skepticism is a way of thinking that leads to deeper understanding, and it is a vital tool in the science kits of practicing scientists.
Is Skepticism a Negative or a Positive for Science and Humanity?
This debate was initiated by Deepak Chopra after he and Michael Shermer exchanged blogs on HuffingtonPost.com (where they are both bloggers) on the topic of Intelligent Design. Deepak expressed his doubts about Intelligent Design Theory as it is presented for public school consumption, but suggested that there is scientific evidence of intelligent consciousness in the universe, as evidenced by findings from quantum physics.The following essay was submitted to Skeptic by Deepak:
Shermer posted a response in which he employed the philosopher Daniel Dennett’s evolutionary metaphor of cranes and skyhooks (in his book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea), where cranes build from the bottom up (natural selection) and skyhooks are invoked to explain design from the top down (intelligent design). Shermer suggested that Deepak’s intelligent consciousness is just another form of skyhook.
Gadflies Without a Sting - The Downside of Skepticism
Shermer responded at the end of Deepak’s essay:
The Power of Positive Skepticism - A Reply to Deepak Chopra
Shermer also replied that positive skepticism is a way of thinking that leads to deeper understanding, and it is a vital tool in the science kits of practicing scientists.
Intelligent Design on Trial
On day 1 Dr. Miller said about intelligent design: Intelligent Design is a new anti-evolution movement that has been presented as an alternative to an older formulation known as "creation science." It argues that an unnamed "designer" must have been responsible for much of the process, although it presents no evidence for the actions of such a designer. Theological explanations may be correct, of course, but they cannot be tested by methods of science and are therefore not science.
On day 2 Callahan, one of the plaintiff in the case, explained the school didn't order biology books because the originally chosen was "laced with Darwinism." She felt as though the school board was placing religious ideology in the schools and trying to influece her daughters religion.
Todays coverage of the Dover Case:
Witness in evolution trial slams school board - MSNBC
The Dover school board showed a clear bias against teaching Darwinian evolution before it voted to require students to be exposed to “intelligent design” in science class, a former board member testified Tuesday.
Former Teacher Testifies in Evolution Case - Technewsworld.com
A former physics teacher testified that his rural school board ignored faculty protests before deciding to introduce the theory of "intelligent design" to high school students.
"I saw a district in which teachers were not respected for their professional expertise," Bryan Rehm, a former teacher at Dover High School, said yesterday.
Evolution teacher testifies - Boston Globe
Robert T. Pennock, a professor of science and philosophy at Michigan State University, testified on behalf of families who sued the Dover Area School District. He said supporters of intelligent design don't offer evidence to support their idea.
"As scientists go about their business, they follow a method," Pennock said. "Intelligent design wants to reject that and so it doesn't really fall within the purview of science."
Witness in Pennsylvania 'intelligent design' trial says school board... - WSVN-TV Miami Beach
Witness in Pennsylvania 'intelligent design' trial says school board ignored science teachers' protests
Anti-evolution bias cited at trial - The Olympian
Aralene "Barrie" Callahan, who was once on the Dover school board and now is among the challengers, said she believed the policy to teach intelligent design was religion-based.
Former teacher sues over 'intelligent design' in school; reporters subpoenaed - Star Tribune
In October 2004, the Dover school board voted 6-3 to require teachers to read a brief statement about intelligent design to students before classes on evolution. The statement says Darwin's theory is "not a fact'' and has inexplicable "gaps,'' and refers students to an intelligent-design textbook for more information.
Prof Testifies in Evolution Debate - SF Gate
The concept of "intelligent design" is a form of creationism and is not based on scientific method, a professor testified Wednesday in a trial over whether the idea should be taught in public schools.
Speaking Freely is the new blog of the ACLU of Pennsylvania with daily updates on the Dover Case.
Monday, September 26, 2005
Kevin Trudeau in Washingtonpost.com
Gene Weingarten wrote a piece on Kevin Trudeau that is worth reading:
It's Enough to Make You Sick
But this health book will cure you of gullibility
By Gene Weingarten - Sunday, September 25, 2005; Page W64
I just finished reading the No. 1 national best-selling advice book in America: Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You to Know About, by Kevin Trudeau. I think I can safely say it is not a "good book," though I admit my standards may be a little high. I am defining a "good book" as one that is not actively trying to kill you.
Trudeau argues that most doctors are idiots, puppets of the evil pharmaceuticals industry. Together they are engaged in a shocking conspiracy with the FDA and FTC to keep you ignorant about simple, inexpensive natural cures that exist for virtually all diseases and that could keep you alive well past 100. It's all a fraud, says Trudeau, whose expertise appears to be that he, himself, has been convicted of fraud. (Don't look to the book for details about this last item. It involved a credit-card scam.)
Gene Weingarten on Trudeau, read the rest and enjoy!
It's Enough to Make You Sick
But this health book will cure you of gullibility
By Gene Weingarten - Sunday, September 25, 2005; Page W64
I just finished reading the No. 1 national best-selling advice book in America: Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You to Know About, by Kevin Trudeau. I think I can safely say it is not a "good book," though I admit my standards may be a little high. I am defining a "good book" as one that is not actively trying to kill you.
Trudeau argues that most doctors are idiots, puppets of the evil pharmaceuticals industry. Together they are engaged in a shocking conspiracy with the FDA and FTC to keep you ignorant about simple, inexpensive natural cures that exist for virtually all diseases and that could keep you alive well past 100. It's all a fraud, says Trudeau, whose expertise appears to be that he, himself, has been convicted of fraud. (Don't look to the book for details about this last item. It involved a credit-card scam.)
Gene Weingarten on Trudeau, read the rest and enjoy!
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Intelligent Design in Court
Pennsylvania school has to defend its policy at requiring students to hear about ID in biology lessons on evolution. Court has to decide the fundamental question: Is ID religion or Science. If they come up with the right answer, it could finish the long lasting "Teach both side"-discussion. Intelligent Design is by definition religion and it has nothing to do in science classes.
Intelligent design faces first big court test
Parents sue after alternate to evolution added to science curriculum
By Reporter Alex Johnson - MSNBC - Sept. 23, 2005
A federal judge in Pennsylvania will hear arguments Monday in a lawsuit that both sides say could set the fundamental ground rules for how American students are taught the origins of life for years to come.
At issue is an alternative to the standard theory of evolution called "intelligent design." Proponents argue that the structure of life on Earth is too complex to have evolved through natural selection, challenging a core principle of the biological theory launched by Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species” in 1859. Instead, contend adherents of intelligent design, life is probably the result of intervention by an intelligent agent.
Intelligent design has been bubbling up since 1987, when the Supreme Court ruled that public schools could not teach the biblical account of creation instead of evolution, because doing so would violate the constitutional ban on establishment of an official religion.
Critics deride intelligent design as creationism gussied up for the courts; advocates say it is an explicitly scientific construct that makes no supposition about the identity or nature of the designer.
The disagreement has led to anguished public debates and hearings before local school boards for almost 20 years. While judges have considered smaller questions barnacled to the issue, the trial that opens Monday is believed to be the first time a federal court has been asked to decide the fundamental question: Is intelligent design religion or science?
Finally, a chance for a definitive ruling
The Pennsylvania case "is probably the most important legal situation of creation and evolution in the last 18 years," said Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, which opposes challenges to the standard model of evolution.
"This will be the first legal challenge to intelligent design, and we’ll see whether they have been able to mask the creationist underpinnings and basic orientation of intelligent design," she said. Regardless who wins, "it will have quite a significant impact on what happens in American public school education."
The suit, brought by 11 parents, challenges the Dover Area School District’s adoption last year of an addition to the science curriculum directing teachers — in addition to teaching evolution — to tell students about intelligent design and refer them to an alternative textbook that champions it. Three opposing board members resigned after the vote.
The parents contended that the directive amounted to an attempt to inject religion into the curriculum in violation of the First Amendment. Their case was joined by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation for Church and State, with support from Scott's organization.
The school board is being defended pro bono by the Thomas More Law Center, a Christian law firm in Ann Arbor, Mich. The case is being heard without a jury in Harrisburg by U.S. District Judge John Jones III, whom President Bush appointed to the bench in 2002.
Science organizations have generally turned their backs on forums in which they have been challenged to defend Darwinian evolution, on the theory that engaging the intelligent design school in any way is to take its ideas too seriously. For example, when the Kansas Board of Education held hearings this year on new science standards that criticized evolution, science groups boycotted.
The Pennsylvania case, however, gives scientists the chance to go on the attack, forcing intelligent-design advocates to defend their beliefs. But because local school boards have almost complete latitude to set the content of the curriculum, the plaintiffs must navigate a narrow path.
It isn't enough for them to discredit intelligent design — indeed, that is almost irrelevant to the legal question. Instead, what they must do is show that the school board’s decision would have an unconstitutionally religious purpose and effect, Scott said.
Even so, Scott and others make no bones about their principal motivation: Intelligent design as science is bogus, they insist, and teaching it is a grave disservice to students.
"Intelligent design is simply the most recent version of creationism, which is admittedly a religious concept," said Alan Leshner, chief executive of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science and publisher of the journal Science. "There is no scientific basis to intelligent design."
Debating the terms of the debate
This is where things get sticky, because it all boils down to a basic argument over just what is evolution and what is religion.
Advocates have labored for years to have intelligent design be taken seriously as science. Although many of the leading thinkers in the movement openly acknowledge their Christian faith, they also sport Ph.D.s in hard science and maintain that their suppositions are rooted in principled observance of the scientific method.
And they generally have no problem with much of evolutionary theory, which can — in part —be stated as the change of species over time. Evidence, they agree, amply bears out this observation, which is known as micro-evolution.
Where they dissent is in what's known as macro-evolution — the transformation over time of a species into another species. The distinction is drawn in "Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins," the alternative text endorsed by the Dover school board:
"Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact — fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks and wings. Some scientists have arrived at this view since fossil forms first appear in the rock record with their primitive features intact, rather than gradually developing."
In other words, their argument is not so much with evolution per se as it is with what they see as the failure of evolution to account for how it all started. It is perfectly reasonable as science, they believe, to explore whether an outside agent triggered diversity of complex biological structures seemingly engineered to sustain life on Earth.
Intelligent-design supporters are careful to say they don't know who or what that outside agent was, but to the large majority of biologists, that’s beside the point: Science is concerned with the natural world, while intelligent design supposes an agent independent of the natural world.
You can teach such concepts, Leshner and Scott say; indeed, you should — just do it in philosophy and religion and literature classes. Don't do it in science classes, because, by definition, that's religion. It isn't science.
"If we human beings evolved as a result of natural cause, are we special to God? Does life then have some sort of purpose?" Scott asked.
They’re legitimate questions, but "these are issues that are outside of science," she said. "These are not issues that should be part of the science curriculum."
Intelligent design faces first big court test
Parents sue after alternate to evolution added to science curriculum
By Reporter Alex Johnson - MSNBC - Sept. 23, 2005
A federal judge in Pennsylvania will hear arguments Monday in a lawsuit that both sides say could set the fundamental ground rules for how American students are taught the origins of life for years to come.
At issue is an alternative to the standard theory of evolution called "intelligent design." Proponents argue that the structure of life on Earth is too complex to have evolved through natural selection, challenging a core principle of the biological theory launched by Charles Darwin’s “The Origin of Species” in 1859. Instead, contend adherents of intelligent design, life is probably the result of intervention by an intelligent agent.
Intelligent design has been bubbling up since 1987, when the Supreme Court ruled that public schools could not teach the biblical account of creation instead of evolution, because doing so would violate the constitutional ban on establishment of an official religion.
Critics deride intelligent design as creationism gussied up for the courts; advocates say it is an explicitly scientific construct that makes no supposition about the identity or nature of the designer.
The disagreement has led to anguished public debates and hearings before local school boards for almost 20 years. While judges have considered smaller questions barnacled to the issue, the trial that opens Monday is believed to be the first time a federal court has been asked to decide the fundamental question: Is intelligent design religion or science?
Finally, a chance for a definitive ruling
The Pennsylvania case "is probably the most important legal situation of creation and evolution in the last 18 years," said Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, which opposes challenges to the standard model of evolution.
"This will be the first legal challenge to intelligent design, and we’ll see whether they have been able to mask the creationist underpinnings and basic orientation of intelligent design," she said. Regardless who wins, "it will have quite a significant impact on what happens in American public school education."
The suit, brought by 11 parents, challenges the Dover Area School District’s adoption last year of an addition to the science curriculum directing teachers — in addition to teaching evolution — to tell students about intelligent design and refer them to an alternative textbook that champions it. Three opposing board members resigned after the vote.
The parents contended that the directive amounted to an attempt to inject religion into the curriculum in violation of the First Amendment. Their case was joined by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation for Church and State, with support from Scott's organization.
The school board is being defended pro bono by the Thomas More Law Center, a Christian law firm in Ann Arbor, Mich. The case is being heard without a jury in Harrisburg by U.S. District Judge John Jones III, whom President Bush appointed to the bench in 2002.
Science organizations have generally turned their backs on forums in which they have been challenged to defend Darwinian evolution, on the theory that engaging the intelligent design school in any way is to take its ideas too seriously. For example, when the Kansas Board of Education held hearings this year on new science standards that criticized evolution, science groups boycotted.
The Pennsylvania case, however, gives scientists the chance to go on the attack, forcing intelligent-design advocates to defend their beliefs. But because local school boards have almost complete latitude to set the content of the curriculum, the plaintiffs must navigate a narrow path.
It isn't enough for them to discredit intelligent design — indeed, that is almost irrelevant to the legal question. Instead, what they must do is show that the school board’s decision would have an unconstitutionally religious purpose and effect, Scott said.
Even so, Scott and others make no bones about their principal motivation: Intelligent design as science is bogus, they insist, and teaching it is a grave disservice to students.
"Intelligent design is simply the most recent version of creationism, which is admittedly a religious concept," said Alan Leshner, chief executive of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science and publisher of the journal Science. "There is no scientific basis to intelligent design."
Debating the terms of the debate
This is where things get sticky, because it all boils down to a basic argument over just what is evolution and what is religion.
Advocates have labored for years to have intelligent design be taken seriously as science. Although many of the leading thinkers in the movement openly acknowledge their Christian faith, they also sport Ph.D.s in hard science and maintain that their suppositions are rooted in principled observance of the scientific method.
And they generally have no problem with much of evolutionary theory, which can — in part —be stated as the change of species over time. Evidence, they agree, amply bears out this observation, which is known as micro-evolution.
Where they dissent is in what's known as macro-evolution — the transformation over time of a species into another species. The distinction is drawn in "Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins," the alternative text endorsed by the Dover school board:
"Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact — fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks and wings. Some scientists have arrived at this view since fossil forms first appear in the rock record with their primitive features intact, rather than gradually developing."
In other words, their argument is not so much with evolution per se as it is with what they see as the failure of evolution to account for how it all started. It is perfectly reasonable as science, they believe, to explore whether an outside agent triggered diversity of complex biological structures seemingly engineered to sustain life on Earth.
Intelligent-design supporters are careful to say they don't know who or what that outside agent was, but to the large majority of biologists, that’s beside the point: Science is concerned with the natural world, while intelligent design supposes an agent independent of the natural world.
You can teach such concepts, Leshner and Scott say; indeed, you should — just do it in philosophy and religion and literature classes. Don't do it in science classes, because, by definition, that's religion. It isn't science.
"If we human beings evolved as a result of natural cause, are we special to God? Does life then have some sort of purpose?" Scott asked.
They’re legitimate questions, but "these are issues that are outside of science," she said. "These are not issues that should be part of the science curriculum."
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Pseudovidenskabeligt ernærings-FUP
Godt gået til Ekstrabladet for denne artikel:
Slankeguru giver forkerte råd
Lene Hansson vejleder hver uge fede danskere på TV3 - men der er ingen dokumentation for hendes principper
- Ekstrabladet d. 19.09.05 af Lisbeth Langwadt - 10:47 - 19. sep. 2005
På plakater i hele landet kan man se kostvejleder Lene Hansson give en hotdog og en kakaomælk et lag tæsk som reklame for TV3-programmet 'Du er, hvad du spiser'.
Men måske burde deltagerne og seerne i stedet give Lene Hansson en i skallen for at trække dem gennem ulideligt mange fanatiske og forkerte råd om, hvordan de kan tabe sig. Et vægttab de kunne opnå uden Lene Hanssons selvbestaltede metoder blot ved at følge sund fornuft.
Med tarmskylninger, syre-base-forhold og adskillelse af stivelse og protein må deltagerne finde sig i en ny livsstil, som bygger på decideret forkerte koncepter. 152.000 seere følger 'Du er, hvad du spiser', og over 10.000 har sikret sig Hanssons bog af samme titel.
Deltagere bliver vildledt
Camilla Udsen, ph.d., fødevarepolitisk medarbejder i Forbrugerrådet supplerer:
- Hun giver ingen dokumentation i sine bøger eller programmer. Hun konstaterer bare, at sådan er det.
- Hendes principper er udelukkende baseret på hendes egne værdier, siger Per Brændgaard Mikkelsen, cand.scient. i human ernæring og leder af Suhr's Slankeskole.
- Hendes kostråd baserer sig helt grundlæggende på forkerte principper. Det er et stort problem, for så får deltagerne i programmerne og hendes læsere ikke en bedre forståelse for kost. De bliver snarere vildledt, supplerer Camilla Udsen.
Lene Hansson er uddannet receptionist, har arbejdet som stewardesse, er aerobicinstruktør, reiki-healer og Bach-terapeut. Hendes ernæringsvejlederuddannelse er en kombination af amerikanske studier og forskellige alternative uddannelser.
Det er pseudovidenskab
Lene Hansson mener, at man altid skal spise protein og stivelse hver for sig - de må ikke indgå i samme måltid. Stivelse er den slags kulhydrat, som findes i kornprodukter og kartofler.
- Det passer simpelthen ikke. Kroppens systemer kan sagtens klare protein og stivelse samtidig. Ellers ville alle, der spiser kartofler til en bøf, blive syge og fede. Faktisk er der store fordele ved at spise det sammen - så udnytter man proteinerne bedre, siger Brændgaard Mikkelsen.
Morgenmad er også bandlyst af Lene Hansson. Indtil kl. 12 er kun frugt tilladt. Og det på trods af, at utallige undersøgelser har vist, at de fleste mennesker føler mindre sult i løbet af dagen og dermed spiser færre kalorier samlet set, hvis de får et solidt morgenmåltid.
- Hendes koncept er pseudovidenskab. Men hun bruger et ordforråd, der lyder videnskabeligt og rationelt. Det er med til at gøre folk forvirrede og skeptiske over for, hvad de skal tro på. Og så holder de også op med at lytte til de fornuftige, officielle råd, siger Camilla Udsen.
Jeg synes, beviset ligger i resultaterne
- Lene Hansson, eksperterne siger, at mange af dine teorier er forkerte. Hvad siger du til det?
- Ingen af dem har siddet med klienter i 20 år, som jeg har. Hvorfor skal alting bevises videnskabeligt? Jeg synes, beviset ligger i resultaterne. Ud af deltagerne i de seks første programmer, er der kun en, som ikke stadig lever efter det.
- Men eksperterne har vel ret i, at vægttab handler om at spise sundere og få færre kalorier?
- Jeg er ikke helt enig. Jeg går ind for en ændring af livsstilen, som så fører til vægttab. Jeg bruger syre-base-teorien, fordi det illustrativt viser folk, at deres kost indeholder for meget af det forbudte. Hovedbudskabet er, at man skal spise frugt og grønt, dyrke 30 minutters motion hver dag, spise varieret og være positiv.
Tarmrens og syre-base
- Hvis det er hovedbudskabet, hvorfor skal man så ud i alt muligt med syre-base og tarmrens?
- Tarmrens ligger i det koncept, TV3 har købt fra England. Syre-base-kosten er noget, jeg har valgt at tage med.
- Men forbrugerne bør vel støtte sig op ad kostråd, som bygger på fakta?
- Det er jo det, man har gjort fejlagtigt i mange år. Der er kommercielle interesser blandet ind i det. Så hvor neutrale er de officielle råd?
Tykkere og mere syge
- Men hvem skal forbrugeren så tro på? Dig?
- Der er ikke én retning, der virker for alle. De budskaber, Ernæringsrådet og Suhr's er kommet med gennem årene, har ikke hjulpet os. De har tværtimod gjort os tykkere og mere syge. Det, Suhr's underviser i, har ikke fornyet sig i 70 år.
- Det kunne jo være, fordi der er noget om det?
- Nej, for så ville folk jo ikke blive mere overvægtige og syge.
Volapyk og få kalorier
Selv om eksperterne ikke giver meget for Lene Hanssons metoder, kan du godt tabe dig ved at følge hendes råd:
- Man taber sig, når det samlede kalorieindtag er lavere, end det antal kalorier man forbrænder. Og med Lene Hansson får man - foruden en masse volapyk - faktisk få kalorier, siger Per Brændgaard Mikkelsen.
- Deltagerne i programmerne lever ekstremt usundt, så det er klart, de taber sig, når de får færre kalorier og begynder at dyrke motion. Men de ville også have tabt sig uden at gå op i syre-base-balance osv., supplerer Camilla Udsen.
FUP ELLER FAKTA
Lene Hansson: Du skal opretholde din 'indre pH-værdi' ved at spise en rigtig kombination af syre-base-fødevarer.
Sundhedspanelet: Det er en gammel myte inden for alternativ ernæringsteori. Fakta er, at kroppen har et særdeles effektivt justeringssystem. Den eneste måde, du selv kan optimere det, er ved at være fysisk aktiv.
Lene Hansson: Du må kun spise frugt indtil kl. 12, og spis det altid på tom mave.
Sundhedspanelet: Vrøvl. De fleste mennesker har brug for et solidt morgenmåltid med havregryn eller groft brød. Frugt mætter ikke nok, så det kan forårsage, at man overspiser senere på dagen.
Lene Hansson: Din fordøjelse bliver bedre, hvis du ikke blander kulhydrat og protein, fordi hver fødevaregruppe kræver forskellige fordøjelsesenzymer, der kan ødelægge hinanden, hvis de blandes.
Sundhedspanelet: Forkert. Kroppen kan sagtens fordøje kulhydrat og protein samtidig -det bliver du ikke tyk af.
Lene Hansson: Kroppen har en døgncyklus. Mellem kl. 04-12 må du kun spise frugt og saft. Fra 12-20 kan du indtage fast føde. Fra 20-04 må du kun få frugt og saft.
Sundhedspanelet: Sludder. Man optager mad, efter man har indtaget det. Så man kan ikke sige, at døgnet er delt op i en 'indtagelses-' og 'optagelsesproces'.
Lene Hansson: Faste og tarmskylninger kan afhjælpe forskellige sygdomme.
Sundhedspanelet: Det er en myte, at kroppen ikke selv kan komme af med gift- og affaldsstoffer. Fedme forsvinder ikke af fanatiske tarmskylninger eller faste. Den eneste vej er sunde kostvaner og færre kalorier.
Slankeguru giver forkerte råd
Lene Hansson vejleder hver uge fede danskere på TV3 - men der er ingen dokumentation for hendes principper
- Ekstrabladet d. 19.09.05 af Lisbeth Langwadt - 10:47 - 19. sep. 2005
På plakater i hele landet kan man se kostvejleder Lene Hansson give en hotdog og en kakaomælk et lag tæsk som reklame for TV3-programmet 'Du er, hvad du spiser'.
Men måske burde deltagerne og seerne i stedet give Lene Hansson en i skallen for at trække dem gennem ulideligt mange fanatiske og forkerte råd om, hvordan de kan tabe sig. Et vægttab de kunne opnå uden Lene Hanssons selvbestaltede metoder blot ved at følge sund fornuft.
Med tarmskylninger, syre-base-forhold og adskillelse af stivelse og protein må deltagerne finde sig i en ny livsstil, som bygger på decideret forkerte koncepter. 152.000 seere følger 'Du er, hvad du spiser', og over 10.000 har sikret sig Hanssons bog af samme titel.
Deltagere bliver vildledt
Camilla Udsen, ph.d., fødevarepolitisk medarbejder i Forbrugerrådet supplerer:
- Hun giver ingen dokumentation i sine bøger eller programmer. Hun konstaterer bare, at sådan er det.
- Hendes principper er udelukkende baseret på hendes egne værdier, siger Per Brændgaard Mikkelsen, cand.scient. i human ernæring og leder af Suhr's Slankeskole.
- Hendes kostråd baserer sig helt grundlæggende på forkerte principper. Det er et stort problem, for så får deltagerne i programmerne og hendes læsere ikke en bedre forståelse for kost. De bliver snarere vildledt, supplerer Camilla Udsen.
Lene Hansson er uddannet receptionist, har arbejdet som stewardesse, er aerobicinstruktør, reiki-healer og Bach-terapeut. Hendes ernæringsvejlederuddannelse er en kombination af amerikanske studier og forskellige alternative uddannelser.
Det er pseudovidenskab
Lene Hansson mener, at man altid skal spise protein og stivelse hver for sig - de må ikke indgå i samme måltid. Stivelse er den slags kulhydrat, som findes i kornprodukter og kartofler.
- Det passer simpelthen ikke. Kroppens systemer kan sagtens klare protein og stivelse samtidig. Ellers ville alle, der spiser kartofler til en bøf, blive syge og fede. Faktisk er der store fordele ved at spise det sammen - så udnytter man proteinerne bedre, siger Brændgaard Mikkelsen.
Morgenmad er også bandlyst af Lene Hansson. Indtil kl. 12 er kun frugt tilladt. Og det på trods af, at utallige undersøgelser har vist, at de fleste mennesker føler mindre sult i løbet af dagen og dermed spiser færre kalorier samlet set, hvis de får et solidt morgenmåltid.
- Hendes koncept er pseudovidenskab. Men hun bruger et ordforråd, der lyder videnskabeligt og rationelt. Det er med til at gøre folk forvirrede og skeptiske over for, hvad de skal tro på. Og så holder de også op med at lytte til de fornuftige, officielle råd, siger Camilla Udsen.
Jeg synes, beviset ligger i resultaterne
- Lene Hansson, eksperterne siger, at mange af dine teorier er forkerte. Hvad siger du til det?
- Ingen af dem har siddet med klienter i 20 år, som jeg har. Hvorfor skal alting bevises videnskabeligt? Jeg synes, beviset ligger i resultaterne. Ud af deltagerne i de seks første programmer, er der kun en, som ikke stadig lever efter det.
- Men eksperterne har vel ret i, at vægttab handler om at spise sundere og få færre kalorier?
- Jeg er ikke helt enig. Jeg går ind for en ændring af livsstilen, som så fører til vægttab. Jeg bruger syre-base-teorien, fordi det illustrativt viser folk, at deres kost indeholder for meget af det forbudte. Hovedbudskabet er, at man skal spise frugt og grønt, dyrke 30 minutters motion hver dag, spise varieret og være positiv.
Tarmrens og syre-base
- Hvis det er hovedbudskabet, hvorfor skal man så ud i alt muligt med syre-base og tarmrens?
- Tarmrens ligger i det koncept, TV3 har købt fra England. Syre-base-kosten er noget, jeg har valgt at tage med.
- Men forbrugerne bør vel støtte sig op ad kostråd, som bygger på fakta?
- Det er jo det, man har gjort fejlagtigt i mange år. Der er kommercielle interesser blandet ind i det. Så hvor neutrale er de officielle råd?
Tykkere og mere syge
- Men hvem skal forbrugeren så tro på? Dig?
- Der er ikke én retning, der virker for alle. De budskaber, Ernæringsrådet og Suhr's er kommet med gennem årene, har ikke hjulpet os. De har tværtimod gjort os tykkere og mere syge. Det, Suhr's underviser i, har ikke fornyet sig i 70 år.
- Det kunne jo være, fordi der er noget om det?
- Nej, for så ville folk jo ikke blive mere overvægtige og syge.
Volapyk og få kalorier
Selv om eksperterne ikke giver meget for Lene Hanssons metoder, kan du godt tabe dig ved at følge hendes råd:
- Man taber sig, når det samlede kalorieindtag er lavere, end det antal kalorier man forbrænder. Og med Lene Hansson får man - foruden en masse volapyk - faktisk få kalorier, siger Per Brændgaard Mikkelsen.
- Deltagerne i programmerne lever ekstremt usundt, så det er klart, de taber sig, når de får færre kalorier og begynder at dyrke motion. Men de ville også have tabt sig uden at gå op i syre-base-balance osv., supplerer Camilla Udsen.
FUP ELLER FAKTA
Lene Hansson: Du skal opretholde din 'indre pH-værdi' ved at spise en rigtig kombination af syre-base-fødevarer.
Sundhedspanelet: Det er en gammel myte inden for alternativ ernæringsteori. Fakta er, at kroppen har et særdeles effektivt justeringssystem. Den eneste måde, du selv kan optimere det, er ved at være fysisk aktiv.
Lene Hansson: Du må kun spise frugt indtil kl. 12, og spis det altid på tom mave.
Sundhedspanelet: Vrøvl. De fleste mennesker har brug for et solidt morgenmåltid med havregryn eller groft brød. Frugt mætter ikke nok, så det kan forårsage, at man overspiser senere på dagen.
Lene Hansson: Din fordøjelse bliver bedre, hvis du ikke blander kulhydrat og protein, fordi hver fødevaregruppe kræver forskellige fordøjelsesenzymer, der kan ødelægge hinanden, hvis de blandes.
Sundhedspanelet: Forkert. Kroppen kan sagtens fordøje kulhydrat og protein samtidig -det bliver du ikke tyk af.
Lene Hansson: Kroppen har en døgncyklus. Mellem kl. 04-12 må du kun spise frugt og saft. Fra 12-20 kan du indtage fast føde. Fra 20-04 må du kun få frugt og saft.
Sundhedspanelet: Sludder. Man optager mad, efter man har indtaget det. Så man kan ikke sige, at døgnet er delt op i en 'indtagelses-' og 'optagelsesproces'.
Lene Hansson: Faste og tarmskylninger kan afhjælpe forskellige sygdomme.
Sundhedspanelet: Det er en myte, at kroppen ikke selv kan komme af med gift- og affaldsstoffer. Fedme forsvinder ikke af fanatiske tarmskylninger eller faste. Den eneste vej er sunde kostvaner og færre kalorier.
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Pseudoscience by Deepak Chopra
The Huffington Post is delivering the opinion by Deepak Chopra about Invisible Neurology: "Why Does Pain Hurt?"
I am no "psychic", but I risk predicting that Mr. Chopra will not accept the 1-million dollar challenge offered James Randi. Mr. Deepak already has millions of dollars earned by spreading pseudoscience.....
This invisible neurology answered the question of why pain hurts very easily: If everything is conscious at a deep level, then there is no "raw" or unconscious data. The transformation of neural impulses into thoughts and sensations was just a twist from object to subject. Consciousness penetrates both observer and observed.and more...
This is one area where we have the best chance of bringing consciousness into science, because the invisible neurology that underlies acupuncture and Ayurveda -- not to mention many forms of hands-on healing -- produces results. This is demonstrable,...Can anyone explain to me how we can block pain by local anaesthetic if everything is conscious?
I am no "psychic", but I risk predicting that Mr. Chopra will not accept the 1-million dollar challenge offered James Randi. Mr. Deepak already has millions of dollars earned by spreading pseudoscience.....
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Science museums live by the rules of science
Challenged by Creationists, Museums Answer Back
By CORNELIA DEAN
Published: September 20, 2005
ITHACA, N.Y. - Lenore Durkee, a retired biology professor, was volunteering as a docent at the Museum of the Earth here when she was confronted by a group of seven or eight people, creationists eager to challenge the museum exhibitions on evolution.
They peppered Dr. Durkee with questions about everything from techniques for dating fossils to the second law of thermodynamics, their queries coming so thick and fast that she found it hard to reply.
After about 45 minutes, "I told them I needed to take a break," she recalled. "My mouth was dry."
That encounter and others like it provided the impetus for a training session here in August. Dr. Durkee and scores of other volunteers and staff members from the museum and elsewhere crowded into a meeting room to hear advice from the museum director, Warren D. Allmon, on ways to deal with visitors who reject settled precepts of science on religious grounds.
Similar efforts are under way or planned around the country as science museums and other institutions struggle to contend with challenges to the theory of evolution that they say are growing common and sometimes aggressive.
One company, called B.C. Tours "because we are biblically correct," even offers escorted visits to the Denver Museum of Science and Nature. Participants hear creationists' explanations for the exhibitions.
So officials like Judy Diamond, curator of public programs at the University of Nebraska State Museum in Lincoln, are trying to meet such challenges head-on.
Dr. Diamond is working on evolution exhibitions financed by the National Science Foundation that will go on long-term display at six museums of natural history from Minnesota to Texas. The program includes training for docents and staff members.
"The goal is to understand the controversies, so that people are better able to handle them as they come up," she said. "Museums, as a field, have recognized we need to take a more proactive role in evolution education."
Dr. Allmon, who directs the Paleontological Research Institution, an affiliate of Cornell University, began the training session here in September with statistics from Gallup Polls: 54 percent of Americans do not believe that human beings evolved from earlier species, and although almost half believe that Darwin has been proved right, slightly more disagree.
"Just telling them they are wrong is not going to be effective," he said.
Instead, he told the volunteers that when they encounter religious fundamentalists they should emphasize that science museums live by the rules of science. They seek answers in nature to questions about nature, they look for explanations that can be tested by experiment and observation in the material world, and they understand that all scientific knowledge is provisional - capable of being overturned when better answers are discovered.
"Is it against all religion?" he asked. "No. But it is against some religions."
There is more than one type of creationist, he said: "thinking creationists who want to know answers, and they are willing to listen, even if they go away unconvinced" and "people who for whatever reason are here to bother you, to trap you, to bludgeon you."
Those were the type of people who confronted Dr. Durkee, a former biology professor at Grinnell College in Iowa. The encounter left her discouraged.
"It is no wonder that many biologists will simply refuse to debate creationists or I.D.ers," she said, using the abbreviation for intelligent design, a cousin of creationism. "It is as if they aren't listening."
Dr. Allmon says even trained scientists like Dr. Durkee can benefit from explicit advice about dealing with religious challenges to science exhibitions.
"There is an art, a script that is very, very helpful," he said.
A pamphlet handed out at the training session provides information on the scientific method, the theory of evolution and other basic information. It offers suggestions on replying to frequently raised challenges like "Is there lots of evidence against evolution?" (The answer begins, simply, "No.")
When talking to visitors about evolution, the pamphlet advises, "don't avoid using the word." Rehearse answers to frequently asked questions, because "you'll be more comfortable when you sound like you know what you're talking about."
Dr. Allmon told his audience to "be firm and clear, not defensive." The pamphlet says that if all else fails, and docents find themselves in an unpleasant confrontation, they excuse themselves by saying, "I have to go to the restroom."
Eugenie C. Scott, who directs the National Center for Science Education and is conducting training sessions for Dr. Diamond's program, said that within the last year or so efforts to train museum personnel and volunteers on evolution and related topics had substantially increased. "This seems to be a cottage industry now," Dr. Scott said.
Robert M. West, a paleontologist and former science museum director who is now a consultant to museums, said several institutions were intensifying the docents' training "so they are comfortable with the concepts, not just the material but the intellectual, philosophical background - and they know their administrations are going to support them if someone criticizes them."
At the Denver science museum, the staff and docents often encounter groups from B.C. Tours, which for 15 years has offered tours of the museum based on literal readings of the Bible. The group embraces young-earth creationism, the view that the earth and its plants, animals and people were created in a matter of days a few thousand years ago.
"We present both sides from an objective perspective and let the students decide for themselves," said Rusty Carter, an operator of the group.
Mr. Carter praised the museum, saying it had been "very professional and accommodating, even though they do not support us." A typical group might have 30 or 40 people, he added.
Kirk Johnson, a paleontologist who is the chief curator at the museum, was philosophical about the group. "It's interesting to walk along with them," he said.
Participants pay the admission fee and have as much right as anyone else to be in the museum, Dr. Johnson said, but sometimes "we have to restrain our docents from interacting with them."
John G. West, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, whose researchers endorse intelligent design, said he was not aware of organized efforts to challenge museum exhibitions on evolution. He added, "It is not unheard of for museum exhibits to be wrong scientifically."
Dr. Scott, who trained as a physical anthropologist, said that in training docents she emphasized "how the public understands or misunderstands evolution and some of the misconceptions they come in with." She hopes to combat the idea that people must choose between science and faith - "that you are either a good Christian creationist or an evil atheist evolutionist."
"It's your job," she told docents, "not to slam the door in the face of a believer."
At the American Museum of Natural History, which is about to open what it describes as "the most in-depth exhibition ever" on Darwin and his work, curators and other staff members instruct volunteer "explainers" on the science behind its exhibitions, according to Stephen Reichl, a spokesman. If visitors challenge the presentations, the explainers are instructed to listen "and then explain the science and the evidence."
Sarah Fiorello, an environmental educator at the Finger Lakes State Parks Region who took part in the Ithaca training session in August, said she was now prepared to take the same approach. When she describes the region's geological history on tours of its gorges, visitors often object - as even a member of her family once did - that "it does not say that in the Bible."
Now, she said, she will tell them, "The landscape tells a story based on geological events, based on science."
Dr. Durkee also said she found the session helpful. "When you are in a museum, you can't antagonize people," she said. "Your job is to help them, to explain your point of view, but respect theirs.
"I like the idea of stressing that this is a science museum, and we deal with matters of science."
By CORNELIA DEAN
Published: September 20, 2005
ITHACA, N.Y. - Lenore Durkee, a retired biology professor, was volunteering as a docent at the Museum of the Earth here when she was confronted by a group of seven or eight people, creationists eager to challenge the museum exhibitions on evolution.
They peppered Dr. Durkee with questions about everything from techniques for dating fossils to the second law of thermodynamics, their queries coming so thick and fast that she found it hard to reply.
After about 45 minutes, "I told them I needed to take a break," she recalled. "My mouth was dry."
That encounter and others like it provided the impetus for a training session here in August. Dr. Durkee and scores of other volunteers and staff members from the museum and elsewhere crowded into a meeting room to hear advice from the museum director, Warren D. Allmon, on ways to deal with visitors who reject settled precepts of science on religious grounds.
Similar efforts are under way or planned around the country as science museums and other institutions struggle to contend with challenges to the theory of evolution that they say are growing common and sometimes aggressive.
One company, called B.C. Tours "because we are biblically correct," even offers escorted visits to the Denver Museum of Science and Nature. Participants hear creationists' explanations for the exhibitions.
So officials like Judy Diamond, curator of public programs at the University of Nebraska State Museum in Lincoln, are trying to meet such challenges head-on.
Dr. Diamond is working on evolution exhibitions financed by the National Science Foundation that will go on long-term display at six museums of natural history from Minnesota to Texas. The program includes training for docents and staff members.
"The goal is to understand the controversies, so that people are better able to handle them as they come up," she said. "Museums, as a field, have recognized we need to take a more proactive role in evolution education."
Dr. Allmon, who directs the Paleontological Research Institution, an affiliate of Cornell University, began the training session here in September with statistics from Gallup Polls: 54 percent of Americans do not believe that human beings evolved from earlier species, and although almost half believe that Darwin has been proved right, slightly more disagree.
"Just telling them they are wrong is not going to be effective," he said.
Instead, he told the volunteers that when they encounter religious fundamentalists they should emphasize that science museums live by the rules of science. They seek answers in nature to questions about nature, they look for explanations that can be tested by experiment and observation in the material world, and they understand that all scientific knowledge is provisional - capable of being overturned when better answers are discovered.
"Is it against all religion?" he asked. "No. But it is against some religions."
There is more than one type of creationist, he said: "thinking creationists who want to know answers, and they are willing to listen, even if they go away unconvinced" and "people who for whatever reason are here to bother you, to trap you, to bludgeon you."
Those were the type of people who confronted Dr. Durkee, a former biology professor at Grinnell College in Iowa. The encounter left her discouraged.
"It is no wonder that many biologists will simply refuse to debate creationists or I.D.ers," she said, using the abbreviation for intelligent design, a cousin of creationism. "It is as if they aren't listening."
Dr. Allmon says even trained scientists like Dr. Durkee can benefit from explicit advice about dealing with religious challenges to science exhibitions.
"There is an art, a script that is very, very helpful," he said.
A pamphlet handed out at the training session provides information on the scientific method, the theory of evolution and other basic information. It offers suggestions on replying to frequently raised challenges like "Is there lots of evidence against evolution?" (The answer begins, simply, "No.")
When talking to visitors about evolution, the pamphlet advises, "don't avoid using the word." Rehearse answers to frequently asked questions, because "you'll be more comfortable when you sound like you know what you're talking about."
Dr. Allmon told his audience to "be firm and clear, not defensive." The pamphlet says that if all else fails, and docents find themselves in an unpleasant confrontation, they excuse themselves by saying, "I have to go to the restroom."
Eugenie C. Scott, who directs the National Center for Science Education and is conducting training sessions for Dr. Diamond's program, said that within the last year or so efforts to train museum personnel and volunteers on evolution and related topics had substantially increased. "This seems to be a cottage industry now," Dr. Scott said.
Robert M. West, a paleontologist and former science museum director who is now a consultant to museums, said several institutions were intensifying the docents' training "so they are comfortable with the concepts, not just the material but the intellectual, philosophical background - and they know their administrations are going to support them if someone criticizes them."
At the Denver science museum, the staff and docents often encounter groups from B.C. Tours, which for 15 years has offered tours of the museum based on literal readings of the Bible. The group embraces young-earth creationism, the view that the earth and its plants, animals and people were created in a matter of days a few thousand years ago.
"We present both sides from an objective perspective and let the students decide for themselves," said Rusty Carter, an operator of the group.
Mr. Carter praised the museum, saying it had been "very professional and accommodating, even though they do not support us." A typical group might have 30 or 40 people, he added.
Kirk Johnson, a paleontologist who is the chief curator at the museum, was philosophical about the group. "It's interesting to walk along with them," he said.
Participants pay the admission fee and have as much right as anyone else to be in the museum, Dr. Johnson said, but sometimes "we have to restrain our docents from interacting with them."
John G. West, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, whose researchers endorse intelligent design, said he was not aware of organized efforts to challenge museum exhibitions on evolution. He added, "It is not unheard of for museum exhibits to be wrong scientifically."
Dr. Scott, who trained as a physical anthropologist, said that in training docents she emphasized "how the public understands or misunderstands evolution and some of the misconceptions they come in with." She hopes to combat the idea that people must choose between science and faith - "that you are either a good Christian creationist or an evil atheist evolutionist."
"It's your job," she told docents, "not to slam the door in the face of a believer."
At the American Museum of Natural History, which is about to open what it describes as "the most in-depth exhibition ever" on Darwin and his work, curators and other staff members instruct volunteer "explainers" on the science behind its exhibitions, according to Stephen Reichl, a spokesman. If visitors challenge the presentations, the explainers are instructed to listen "and then explain the science and the evidence."
Sarah Fiorello, an environmental educator at the Finger Lakes State Parks Region who took part in the Ithaca training session in August, said she was now prepared to take the same approach. When she describes the region's geological history on tours of its gorges, visitors often object - as even a member of her family once did - that "it does not say that in the Bible."
Now, she said, she will tell them, "The landscape tells a story based on geological events, based on science."
Dr. Durkee also said she found the session helpful. "When you are in a museum, you can't antagonize people," she said. "Your job is to help them, to explain your point of view, but respect theirs.
"I like the idea of stressing that this is a science museum, and we deal with matters of science."
Sunday, September 18, 2005
A collection of selected skeptical links. Enjoy!
I've collected some interesting links on my way, that I would like to share:
Skeptical websites:
Superstition Science Fact or Fiction
This website is maintained by Mario Di Maggio and his TOC is worth reading.
He defines himself as a bright - I'm an atheist and I don't believe in God, but it's actually not the same as a bright:
A skeptic moment with Tim Kammer
Better Avoid That Black Cat -- It's Friday The 13th
Tim Kammer is a member of the Seattle Society for Sensible Explanations, check out their Web site. They promotes science, critical thinking and sensible explanations for alleged paranormal events.
Mystery Investigators
Using the Method of Science to Investigate the Strange and Mysterious.
Audio and Video Clips:
James Randi
Phil Plait, The Bad Astronomer
James Randi Multimedia
An ABC News Special examines the supernatural and our willingness to be deceived. James Randi is the guest.
Richard Dawkins Multimedia
About Richard Dawkins
Michael Shermer Multimedia
Skeptical websites:
Superstition Science Fact or Fiction
This website is maintained by Mario Di Maggio and his TOC is worth reading.
He defines himself as a bright - I'm an atheist and I don't believe in God, but it's actually not the same as a bright:
A "Bright" is someone whose worldview is free from supernatural or mystical elements. "Atheist" is someone who denies God's existence, or one who doesn't believe in God. While "Atheist" is the negation of "Theist" (sounding like it starts from the "max position" and then disproves God), "Bright" doesn't involve the word "Theism" at all.(explained here)
A skeptic moment with Tim Kammer
Tim Kammer has been asking questions and questioning answers from childhood. It was when he saw a PBS documentary debunking Bermuda Triangle myths that Kammer realized adults don’t always tell the truth.His schedule is astro on monday, Psychic on tuesday, Mythical on wedneysday, Quack on thursday and Space Alien on friday. Enjoy!
Better Avoid That Black Cat -- It's Friday The 13th
Tim Kammer is a member of the Seattle Society for Sensible Explanations, check out their Web site. They promotes science, critical thinking and sensible explanations for alleged paranormal events.
Mystery Investigators
Using the Method of Science to Investigate the Strange and Mysterious.
Audio and Video Clips:
James Randi
Phil Plait, The Bad Astronomer
James Randi Multimedia
An ABC News Special examines the supernatural and our willingness to be deceived. James Randi is the guest.
Richard Dawkins Multimedia
About Richard Dawkins
Michael Shermer Multimedia
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