The Queen of Code [Greg Laden's Blog]

From FiveThirtyEight:

You probably don’t know the name Grace Hopper, but you should.

As a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy, Hopper worked on the first computer, the Harvard Mark 1. And she headed the team that created the first compiler, which led to the creation of COBOL, a programming language that by the year 2000 accounted for 70 percent of all actively used code. Passing away in 1992, she left behind an inimitable legacy as a brilliant programmer and pioneering woman in male-dominated fields.

Hopper’s story is told in “The Queen of Code,” directed by Gillian Jacobs (of “Community” fame). It’s the latest film in FiveThirtyEight’s “Signals” series.

Actually, I’m sure the readers of this blog DO know the name Grace Hopper. But anyway, this is a great film.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1xJtb7Y

From FiveThirtyEight:

You probably don’t know the name Grace Hopper, but you should.

As a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy, Hopper worked on the first computer, the Harvard Mark 1. And she headed the team that created the first compiler, which led to the creation of COBOL, a programming language that by the year 2000 accounted for 70 percent of all actively used code. Passing away in 1992, she left behind an inimitable legacy as a brilliant programmer and pioneering woman in male-dominated fields.

Hopper’s story is told in “The Queen of Code,” directed by Gillian Jacobs (of “Community” fame). It’s the latest film in FiveThirtyEight’s “Signals” series.

Actually, I’m sure the readers of this blog DO know the name Grace Hopper. But anyway, this is a great film.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1xJtb7Y

In other news, supplements are truly placebos [denialism blog]

My favorite news story of the week, supplements don’t contain anything at all apparently. Why should we be surprised that big placebo is selling placebos?

The authorities said they had conducted tests on top-selling store brands of herbal supplements at four national retailers — GNC, Target, Walgreens and Walmart — and found that four out of five of the products did not contain any of the herbs on their labels. The tests showed that pills labeled medicinal herbs often contained little more than cheap fillers like powdered rice, asparagus and houseplants, and in some cases substances that could be dangerous to those with allergies.

…

Industry representatives have argued that any problems are caused by a handful of companies on the fringe of the industry. But New York’s investigation specifically targeted store brands at the nation’s drugstore and retail giants, which suggests that the problems are widespread.

Heartwarming.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/16TiOsW

My favorite news story of the week, supplements don’t contain anything at all apparently. Why should we be surprised that big placebo is selling placebos?

The authorities said they had conducted tests on top-selling store brands of herbal supplements at four national retailers — GNC, Target, Walgreens and Walmart — and found that four out of five of the products did not contain any of the herbs on their labels. The tests showed that pills labeled medicinal herbs often contained little more than cheap fillers like powdered rice, asparagus and houseplants, and in some cases substances that could be dangerous to those with allergies.

…

Industry representatives have argued that any problems are caused by a handful of companies on the fringe of the industry. But New York’s investigation specifically targeted store brands at the nation’s drugstore and retail giants, which suggests that the problems are widespread.

Heartwarming.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/16TiOsW

Climate Scientist Andrew Weaver Wins Key Law Suit [Greg Laden's Blog]

Andrew Weaver is a Canadian climate scientist with numerous publications. The National Post is a Canadian newspaper generally recognized as having a conservative and Libertarian leaning. Between 2009 and 2010, the Post published four articles that seemed defamatory of Dr. Weaver’s reputation as a scientist. Weaver sued the post over this, and yesterday, the B.C. Supreme Court agreed that the articles were in fact defamatory. The defendants in the case were Terence Corcoran, Financial Post editor, Peter Foster, National Post columnist, Kevin Libin, a contributor to the Financial Post, National Post publisher Gordon Fisher, and the National Post Inc. Justice Emily Burke ruled:

I conclude the defendants have been careless or indifferent to the accuracy of the facts. As evident from the testimony of the defendants, they were more interested in espousing a particular view than assessing the accuracy of the facts.

A PDF of the ruling can be found here

Andree Lau of the Huffington Post writes:

The newspaper defended itself by saying the statements were about Weaver’s public actions and words, not his character.

The judge disagreed, saying, “The reality is the combination and cumulative effect of these articles is such as to adversely impact on Dr. Weaver’s reputation and integrity as a scientist.”

Yesterday morning, Weaver posted on his Facebook page:

I am absolutely thrilled with today’s BC Supreme Court judgment in my libel case against the National Post, Terence Corcoran, Peter Foster, Kevin Libin and Gordon Fisher.

I initiated the lawsuit in April 2010 after the National Post refused to retract a number of articles that attributed to me statements I never made, accused me of things I never did, and attacked me for views I never held.

I felt I had to take this matter to court to clear my name and correct the



public record. This judgment does precisely that.

I look forward to the defendants publishing a complete retraction and removing the offending articles from electronic databases. I further look forward to them withdrawing consent given to third parties to re-publish the articles and to require them to cease re-publication.

Weaver’s remarks mirror the B.C. Supreme Court’s directive.

Lawrence Torcello is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Rochester Institute of Philosophy. He has researched and written about the attacks on climate science and climate scientists by various entities (see “Climate Science Denialists Target Academic in Hate Campaign”). I asked Torcello to comment on the Weaver case, and he told me:

Andrew Weaver’s legal victory over Canada’s National Post is an important precedent in the emerging world of climate change litigation. The court’s ruling reflects an understanding that the press has a primary responsibility to report facts and disentangle propaganda. The decision affirms that facilitating smear campaigns against scientists and other academics is devoid of journalistic merit. We can expect critics of the court’s decision to claim it puts too great a burden on news outlets to police how their stories are used across social media; that it will have a chilling effect on journalism. To the contrary, defamation tactics against scientists are calculated to undermine the public’s trust in legitimate expertise and to intimidate researchers into media silence. Media outlets that facilitate disinformation campaigns against science and scientists make the work of responsible journalists more difficult. News sources that continue to take their professional obligations seriously should be cheered by this ruling. It is ethically important that scientists not be intimidated into silence but instead fight back against defamatory assaults on their character. In a world threatened by climate change the public’s safety depends on the ability of politicians and others to discern and be informed by credible experts. Dr. Weaver and other researchers taking a legal stand against defamation tactics should be commended for reminding us that science is not the only realm where facts matter.

Dr. Peter Gleick, of the Pacific Institute, told DeSmogBlog, that this is…

…a victory for climate scientists everywhere. [There is] an extremely long history of efforts by climate deniers and contrarians to attack not just climate science, but climate scientists: to smear their scientific reputations, to distort their statements, and to make false and defamatory accusations. [Defamation] has been a standard tactic for years, especially as the science of climate change has continued to strengthen and solidify. While I’m sure the ruling will not stop the continued assault on climate science and scientists, it should certainly put people on notice that there is a responsibility to avoid such irresponsible attacks and a real cost for failing to do so. I hope this ruling has that effect.

In the US, there is a parallel law suit in process, filed by Dr. Michael Mann against the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the National Review, Mark Steyn, and Rand Simberg. For details on that suit see these posts and this search on the Climate Science Search Engine. Obviously, Canadian legal decisions have no role in establishing precedence in US courts, but the Andrew Weaver suit’s outcome does bode well for the idea advanced (above) by Dr. Torcello. Strategies employed by anti-science, especially anti-climate science, individuals and organizations are potentially costly, not only in the harm they do to stewardship of the planet, but also to the overall quality of journalism, and in some cases, the individuals and organizations that carry out that form of political activism.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1ztaVow

Andrew Weaver is a Canadian climate scientist with numerous publications. The National Post is a Canadian newspaper generally recognized as having a conservative and Libertarian leaning. Between 2009 and 2010, the Post published four articles that seemed defamatory of Dr. Weaver’s reputation as a scientist. Weaver sued the post over this, and yesterday, the B.C. Supreme Court agreed that the articles were in fact defamatory. The defendants in the case were Terence Corcoran, Financial Post editor, Peter Foster, National Post columnist, Kevin Libin, a contributor to the Financial Post, National Post publisher Gordon Fisher, and the National Post Inc. Justice Emily Burke ruled:

I conclude the defendants have been careless or indifferent to the accuracy of the facts. As evident from the testimony of the defendants, they were more interested in espousing a particular view than assessing the accuracy of the facts.

A PDF of the ruling can be found here

Andree Lau of the Huffington Post writes:

The newspaper defended itself by saying the statements were about Weaver’s public actions and words, not his character.

The judge disagreed, saying, “The reality is the combination and cumulative effect of these articles is such as to adversely impact on Dr. Weaver’s reputation and integrity as a scientist.”

Yesterday morning, Weaver posted on his Facebook page:

I am absolutely thrilled with today’s BC Supreme Court judgment in my libel case against the National Post, Terence Corcoran, Peter Foster, Kevin Libin and Gordon Fisher.

I initiated the lawsuit in April 2010 after the National Post refused to retract a number of articles that attributed to me statements I never made, accused me of things I never did, and attacked me for views I never held.

I felt I had to take this matter to court to clear my name and correct the



public record. This judgment does precisely that.

I look forward to the defendants publishing a complete retraction and removing the offending articles from electronic databases. I further look forward to them withdrawing consent given to third parties to re-publish the articles and to require them to cease re-publication.

Weaver’s remarks mirror the B.C. Supreme Court’s directive.

Lawrence Torcello is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Rochester Institute of Philosophy. He has researched and written about the attacks on climate science and climate scientists by various entities (see “Climate Science Denialists Target Academic in Hate Campaign”). I asked Torcello to comment on the Weaver case, and he told me:

Andrew Weaver’s legal victory over Canada’s National Post is an important precedent in the emerging world of climate change litigation. The court’s ruling reflects an understanding that the press has a primary responsibility to report facts and disentangle propaganda. The decision affirms that facilitating smear campaigns against scientists and other academics is devoid of journalistic merit. We can expect critics of the court’s decision to claim it puts too great a burden on news outlets to police how their stories are used across social media; that it will have a chilling effect on journalism. To the contrary, defamation tactics against scientists are calculated to undermine the public’s trust in legitimate expertise and to intimidate researchers into media silence. Media outlets that facilitate disinformation campaigns against science and scientists make the work of responsible journalists more difficult. News sources that continue to take their professional obligations seriously should be cheered by this ruling. It is ethically important that scientists not be intimidated into silence but instead fight back against defamatory assaults on their character. In a world threatened by climate change the public’s safety depends on the ability of politicians and others to discern and be informed by credible experts. Dr. Weaver and other researchers taking a legal stand against defamation tactics should be commended for reminding us that science is not the only realm where facts matter.

Dr. Peter Gleick, of the Pacific Institute, told DeSmogBlog, that this is…

…a victory for climate scientists everywhere. [There is] an extremely long history of efforts by climate deniers and contrarians to attack not just climate science, but climate scientists: to smear their scientific reputations, to distort their statements, and to make false and defamatory accusations. [Defamation] has been a standard tactic for years, especially as the science of climate change has continued to strengthen and solidify. While I’m sure the ruling will not stop the continued assault on climate science and scientists, it should certainly put people on notice that there is a responsibility to avoid such irresponsible attacks and a real cost for failing to do so. I hope this ruling has that effect.

In the US, there is a parallel law suit in process, filed by Dr. Michael Mann against the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the National Review, Mark Steyn, and Rand Simberg. For details on that suit see these posts and this search on the Climate Science Search Engine. Obviously, Canadian legal decisions have no role in establishing precedence in US courts, but the Andrew Weaver suit’s outcome does bode well for the idea advanced (above) by Dr. Torcello. Strategies employed by anti-science, especially anti-climate science, individuals and organizations are potentially costly, not only in the harm they do to stewardship of the planet, but also to the overall quality of journalism, and in some cases, the individuals and organizations that carry out that form of political activism.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1ztaVow

Bill Maher is an astonishingly anti-science anti-vax crank [denialism blog]

This weeks Realtime with Bill Maher was just about the most perfect example I’ve seen yet that maybe reality doesn’t have a liberal bias. Due to the measles outbreak becoming a hot-button issue, and the realism that his smoldering anti-vaccine denialism would not go over well, our weekly debate host decided to instead unleash all of his other incredibly stupid, unscientific beliefs about medicine instead.

This was astonishing. And because his panel, as usual, is composed largely of political writers and journalists, there was no one to provide a sound scientific counterpoint to the craziness. The sole non-crazy person (on this topic) was the conservative guy!

What a turn around for liberalism. It turns out, the problem hasn’t been that conservatives hold the key to anti-science crazy, we just haven’t had a good issue to expose the anti-science of the left wing for a while. Maher goes into a list of things he decides are examples of failures of “Western” medicine (because Eastern medicine has figured out cancer or something).

1. The vaccine schedule is too much to fast – straight out of the anti-vax denial playbook! Human beings of course can handle thousands upon thousands of antigenic exposures daily. It’s called living on a planet where everything on it is trying to kill everything else all the time. It’s why we have an immune system.

2. Then in a feat of mental gymnastics only an unthinking crank can manage, he jumps into the hygiene hypothesis! He says he’s “not so sure that people who get a lot of them [vaccines] have as “robust” an immune system.” He then goes on to say we’re seeing more allergies and autoimmune disease, maybe vaccines or “environmental factors” are to blame. Our children suddenly aren’t getting enough antigenic exposures! Our immune systems need to be challenged in order to grow and become strong. This is a fascinating feat of mental gymnastics. The antigen exposure of vaccines is “bad”, but somehow the antigen exposure from, say, measles is “good”. Granted those who have had actual infections develop stronger responses to those infections, there is no evidence that getting these childhood illnesses is protective from other illnesses, or against autoimmune disease. There is no reason to think that exposure to specific viral disease antigens would be protective for autoimmunity. The immune system just doesn’t work that way, and the hygiene hypothesis is about routine exposure to common antigens.

3. None of his doctors have ever asked about his diet, because in his mind, what you eat is the most important thing ever. I can understand this for a couple of reasons. For one, Maher is thin. Generally if patients are thin, seemingly taking care of their bodies, a physician won’t typically interrogate them on their diet. If you then get a screening cholesterol panel that shows a high LDL and low HDL or triglycerides, the physician may start asking questions about diet, recommending exercise, more vegetables, less meat etc. Doctors aren’t here to micromanage your life, we are here to address problems, caution against the more harmful behaviors, and provide general recommendations for which there is good evidence. But in Maher’s mind, which seems to be the mind of the toxin fanatic, the only path to good health is through diet, so a doctor that doesn’t buy into this particular nonsense is a bad doctor. The reality is, there is not great data on which diet is best. There is no evidence that some foods are “super”, or carry some life-extending property. None of the claims made by the promoters of these foods has evidence of the caliber Maher is demanding from vaccines, and most of them have no evidence at all.

A good rule of thumb is, if a website uses the word “super” as a prefix, they’re full of it. Worse, the toxin hypothesis is nonsense. Toxins are not a significant source of human disease (at least not in Hollywood). Humans are extraordinarily good at detoxifying foods, and just because your eating plant material – the diet he promotes – doesn’t mean you’re not eating toxins. Plants are full of toxins they’ve developed over the years to prevent pests from consuming them and their fruit. It just happens that when a human eats a tomato, or chocolate, or one of the many plants we’ve genetically-modified through breeding and selection to suit our diets or learned to process since the birth of agriculture, we have an effective means of detoxifying them. Worse they make claims that non-toxic chemicals are actually toxic. Like glucose! The fuel your own body naturally makes to feed your brain is routinely castigated on the natural foody websites as a killer. This is the chemical your own body turns all these super-foods into! The inability to understand basic physiology is just wonderful.

You want non-toxic? Eat meat. It’s just protein, water and fat, just like us (although even a complete non-toxin like water can of course be toxic at high enough exposure). If you’re feeling sadistic and want to see the toxic effect of a superfood, feed these human foods to a non-omnivorous animal like a cat. They’ll get sick. Many of our “super foods” which the morons on these websites sell as “detoxifying” or laud their anti-oxidant properties (another bogus and unfounded diet hypothesis), are actually full of various plant toxins which we have no problem with because we have awesome livers. So thank your liver, and don’t buy into this toxin nonsense.

Finally other reasons he feels like he’s never heard a doctor ask this (because we do) is he’s either not listening, or maybe he sees a crappy doctor? So whoever is this magical “Western” doctor that Maher sees, please just ask this silly crank about his diet during the next visit so we don’t have to hear this tired nonsense anymore that doctors don’t care about diet. We do, we just don’t buy into the silly unfounded nonsense of the toxin hypothesis which is likely his real complaint.

4. “We overdid antibiotics” – This could be a fair point, however, the doom and gloom about antibiotics not working anymore and our whole medical system collapsing is a bit overblown. After all, most of the antibiotics we have developed over the years were discovered, not invented. We have been taking chemicals developed in the environment by various organisms and using them to suit our purposes. However, the targets of those chemicals have been engaged in this evolutionary war for millennia before we ever even got into it. Bacterial resistance is not “new”, or something created just by humans. We have to see this problem as an eternal struggle that’s been going on between micro-organisms for eons, and if we’re going to participate in it, we have to continue to innovate, just as life has, since the beginning. There is no “winning” here. There will never be a time when we can say we have solved bacterial resistance or have a perfect antibiotic, because we’re learning more and more we have to live with our bacteria in our biome, we can’t kill them all. We just have to keep working, keep innovating, and keep learning so we learn to develop antibiotics that are more specific, more targeted, and yes, more cautiously applied so we can continue to benefit from the ability to control these ubiquitous organisms that help us, are part of our normal physiology and function, but also occasionally overgrow and kill us.

5. “Not one country in the world does nearly as much surgery we do” – I recuse myself as I have conflict of interest.

6. “I’ve heard on the news endlessly 2 drinks a day is good for you, I think no drinks a day is good for you.” And again Maher would be wrong. For one, no real medical authority has come out and said, “drink 2 drinks a day.” I’m sorry that the news misled you.e I have no doubt there’s a bunch of crummy journalism out there that could be interpreted this way, but it’s not the medical establishments fault that science and medicine reporting is so full of bogus nonsense. This is still a controversial medical issue. The data from sources like NHANES show that there may be a protective effect for alcohol consumption with 1-2 drinks a day. This has been seen in multiple other studies, and in other countries. The effect is more profound in men. It might disappear if you eliminate co-morbidities (in other words some people may not be drinking because of health issues making the teetotaler data look worse). Ultimately doctors can’t really recommend you drink, but we typically won’t castigate you for drinking 1-2 drinks a day because the health effects are likely small, and for 1-2 drinks a day, their might be a slight cardiovascular protective effect. Prospective trials suggest 2 maybe even too many. So I would rate this as a major straw man argument. As a doctor I would say, 1-2 drinks a day is probably not harmful, but no one should be drinking saying “this is for my health”.

7. We are Ok with aspartame, and GMOs! / and “One word, Monsanto” – and here we have it, Bill Maher’s clearest example of total crankery, his complete hysteria over GMO. There is a moment then when the conservative John McCormack buts in and points out there is no evidence that GMOs are harmful, and Maher and his panel of ignoramuses are shocked into silence, and one panelist gives this weighty sigh and covers her face in horror and Maher simply sighs. No, Bill Maher, it is we that should be asking you to justify your foolishness here, McCormack, the conservative who should supposedly be the one without the liberal bias of reality asked the right question. Where is your data? Where is the proof? There is no evidence, and worse, no even plausible mechanism by which he can describe the current GMO foods on the market to be harmful to humans. Despite consumption of billions by billions, you can’t point out one sickness or death. Instead they can only resort to the classic denialist correlation trope, which is exactly what the anti-vaxers have done for decades. And if someone wants to talk about the Seralini rat study, please don’t bother. Another retracted paper being the sole source of proof for a bunch of denialists, where have we heard this before?

Finally Maher complains, “we can’t ask any questions.” The classic cry of the persecuted crank! The same whiny response you see from the 9/11 truther, the climate science denialist, or any other individual who has found their ludicrous ideas has bought them some much needed societal shame. No on is telling them they can’t ask questions, but when you repeat the same question, that has been answered, and answered, again and again, and you don’t listen, eventually we are going to lose our patience and say enough! The debate is over! Vaccines do not cause autism. Enough with your crankery. Enough with the harm that has come from this bogus skepticism. We have an outbreak now. We are tired of hearing this question which has been answered and the accompanying obstinance has caused real-world harm.

Maher in this episode performs an astonishing Gish-gallop proving, once again, he deserves to be called out for denialism. Can we drop the notion that liberalism is somehow protective against anti-science? Do we remember when he tried to blame cell phones for colony collapse disorder? (I couldn’t resist going to the old blog for that) Maher is resentful that his anti-vax nonsense is compared to global warming denialism. This is exactly like global warming denialism because all denialism ultimately comes down to the same tactics. I think we’ve a good example here of conspiracy (in one word! monsanto!), moving goalposts, cherry-picking, and a whole host of logical fallacies in his little Gish gallop. Let us dismiss him as a spokesman for science. He’s too easily impeachable as an anti-science crank.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1KsPesl

This weeks Realtime with Bill Maher was just about the most perfect example I’ve seen yet that maybe reality doesn’t have a liberal bias. Due to the measles outbreak becoming a hot-button issue, and the realism that his smoldering anti-vaccine denialism would not go over well, our weekly debate host decided to instead unleash all of his other incredibly stupid, unscientific beliefs about medicine instead.

This was astonishing. And because his panel, as usual, is composed largely of political writers and journalists, there was no one to provide a sound scientific counterpoint to the craziness. The sole non-crazy person (on this topic) was the conservative guy!

What a turn around for liberalism. It turns out, the problem hasn’t been that conservatives hold the key to anti-science crazy, we just haven’t had a good issue to expose the anti-science of the left wing for a while. Maher goes into a list of things he decides are examples of failures of “Western” medicine (because Eastern medicine has figured out cancer or something).

1. The vaccine schedule is too much to fast – straight out of the anti-vax denial playbook! Human beings of course can handle thousands upon thousands of antigenic exposures daily. It’s called living on a planet where everything on it is trying to kill everything else all the time. It’s why we have an immune system.

2. Then in a feat of mental gymnastics only an unthinking crank can manage, he jumps into the hygiene hypothesis! He says he’s “not so sure that people who get a lot of them [vaccines] have as “robust” an immune system.” He then goes on to say we’re seeing more allergies and autoimmune disease, maybe vaccines or “environmental factors” are to blame. Our children suddenly aren’t getting enough antigenic exposures! Our immune systems need to be challenged in order to grow and become strong. This is a fascinating feat of mental gymnastics. The antigen exposure of vaccines is “bad”, but somehow the antigen exposure from, say, measles is “good”. Granted those who have had actual infections develop stronger responses to those infections, there is no evidence that getting these childhood illnesses is protective from other illnesses, or against autoimmune disease. There is no reason to think that exposure to specific viral disease antigens would be protective for autoimmunity. The immune system just doesn’t work that way, and the hygiene hypothesis is about routine exposure to common antigens.

3. None of his doctors have ever asked about his diet, because in his mind, what you eat is the most important thing ever. I can understand this for a couple of reasons. For one, Maher is thin. Generally if patients are thin, seemingly taking care of their bodies, a physician won’t typically interrogate them on their diet. If you then get a screening cholesterol panel that shows a high LDL and low HDL or triglycerides, the physician may start asking questions about diet, recommending exercise, more vegetables, less meat etc. Doctors aren’t here to micromanage your life, we are here to address problems, caution against the more harmful behaviors, and provide general recommendations for which there is good evidence. But in Maher’s mind, which seems to be the mind of the toxin fanatic, the only path to good health is through diet, so a doctor that doesn’t buy into this particular nonsense is a bad doctor. The reality is, there is not great data on which diet is best. There is no evidence that some foods are “super”, or carry some life-extending property. None of the claims made by the promoters of these foods has evidence of the caliber Maher is demanding from vaccines, and most of them have no evidence at all.

A good rule of thumb is, if a website uses the word “super” as a prefix, they’re full of it. Worse, the toxin hypothesis is nonsense. Toxins are not a significant source of human disease (at least not in Hollywood). Humans are extraordinarily good at detoxifying foods, and just because your eating plant material – the diet he promotes – doesn’t mean you’re not eating toxins. Plants are full of toxins they’ve developed over the years to prevent pests from consuming them and their fruit. It just happens that when a human eats a tomato, or chocolate, or one of the many plants we’ve genetically-modified through breeding and selection to suit our diets or learned to process since the birth of agriculture, we have an effective means of detoxifying them. Worse they make claims that non-toxic chemicals are actually toxic. Like glucose! The fuel your own body naturally makes to feed your brain is routinely castigated on the natural foody websites as a killer. This is the chemical your own body turns all these super-foods into! The inability to understand basic physiology is just wonderful.

You want non-toxic? Eat meat. It’s just protein, water and fat, just like us (although even a complete non-toxin like water can of course be toxic at high enough exposure). If you’re feeling sadistic and want to see the toxic effect of a superfood, feed these human foods to a non-omnivorous animal like a cat. They’ll get sick. Many of our “super foods” which the morons on these websites sell as “detoxifying” or laud their anti-oxidant properties (another bogus and unfounded diet hypothesis), are actually full of various plant toxins which we have no problem with because we have awesome livers. So thank your liver, and don’t buy into this toxin nonsense.

Finally other reasons he feels like he’s never heard a doctor ask this (because we do) is he’s either not listening, or maybe he sees a crappy doctor? So whoever is this magical “Western” doctor that Maher sees, please just ask this silly crank about his diet during the next visit so we don’t have to hear this tired nonsense anymore that doctors don’t care about diet. We do, we just don’t buy into the silly unfounded nonsense of the toxin hypothesis which is likely his real complaint.

4. “We overdid antibiotics” – This could be a fair point, however, the doom and gloom about antibiotics not working anymore and our whole medical system collapsing is a bit overblown. After all, most of the antibiotics we have developed over the years were discovered, not invented. We have been taking chemicals developed in the environment by various organisms and using them to suit our purposes. However, the targets of those chemicals have been engaged in this evolutionary war for millennia before we ever even got into it. Bacterial resistance is not “new”, or something created just by humans. We have to see this problem as an eternal struggle that’s been going on between micro-organisms for eons, and if we’re going to participate in it, we have to continue to innovate, just as life has, since the beginning. There is no “winning” here. There will never be a time when we can say we have solved bacterial resistance or have a perfect antibiotic, because we’re learning more and more we have to live with our bacteria in our biome, we can’t kill them all. We just have to keep working, keep innovating, and keep learning so we learn to develop antibiotics that are more specific, more targeted, and yes, more cautiously applied so we can continue to benefit from the ability to control these ubiquitous organisms that help us, are part of our normal physiology and function, but also occasionally overgrow and kill us.

5. “Not one country in the world does nearly as much surgery we do” – I recuse myself as I have conflict of interest.

6. “I’ve heard on the news endlessly 2 drinks a day is good for you, I think no drinks a day is good for you.” And again Maher would be wrong. For one, no real medical authority has come out and said, “drink 2 drinks a day.” I’m sorry that the news misled you.e I have no doubt there’s a bunch of crummy journalism out there that could be interpreted this way, but it’s not the medical establishments fault that science and medicine reporting is so full of bogus nonsense. This is still a controversial medical issue. The data from sources like NHANES show that there may be a protective effect for alcohol consumption with 1-2 drinks a day. This has been seen in multiple other studies, and in other countries. The effect is more profound in men. It might disappear if you eliminate co-morbidities (in other words some people may not be drinking because of health issues making the teetotaler data look worse). Ultimately doctors can’t really recommend you drink, but we typically won’t castigate you for drinking 1-2 drinks a day because the health effects are likely small, and for 1-2 drinks a day, their might be a slight cardiovascular protective effect. Prospective trials suggest 2 maybe even too many. So I would rate this as a major straw man argument. As a doctor I would say, 1-2 drinks a day is probably not harmful, but no one should be drinking saying “this is for my health”.

7. We are Ok with aspartame, and GMOs! / and “One word, Monsanto” – and here we have it, Bill Maher’s clearest example of total crankery, his complete hysteria over GMO. There is a moment then when the conservative John McCormack buts in and points out there is no evidence that GMOs are harmful, and Maher and his panel of ignoramuses are shocked into silence, and one panelist gives this weighty sigh and covers her face in horror and Maher simply sighs. No, Bill Maher, it is we that should be asking you to justify your foolishness here, McCormack, the conservative who should supposedly be the one without the liberal bias of reality asked the right question. Where is your data? Where is the proof? There is no evidence, and worse, no even plausible mechanism by which he can describe the current GMO foods on the market to be harmful to humans. Despite consumption of billions by billions, you can’t point out one sickness or death. Instead they can only resort to the classic denialist correlation trope, which is exactly what the anti-vaxers have done for decades. And if someone wants to talk about the Seralini rat study, please don’t bother. Another retracted paper being the sole source of proof for a bunch of denialists, where have we heard this before?

Finally Maher complains, “we can’t ask any questions.” The classic cry of the persecuted crank! The same whiny response you see from the 9/11 truther, the climate science denialist, or any other individual who has found their ludicrous ideas has bought them some much needed societal shame. No on is telling them they can’t ask questions, but when you repeat the same question, that has been answered, and answered, again and again, and you don’t listen, eventually we are going to lose our patience and say enough! The debate is over! Vaccines do not cause autism. Enough with your crankery. Enough with the harm that has come from this bogus skepticism. We have an outbreak now. We are tired of hearing this question which has been answered and the accompanying obstinance has caused real-world harm.

Maher in this episode performs an astonishing Gish-gallop proving, once again, he deserves to be called out for denialism. Can we drop the notion that liberalism is somehow protective against anti-science? Do we remember when he tried to blame cell phones for colony collapse disorder? (I couldn’t resist going to the old blog for that) Maher is resentful that his anti-vax nonsense is compared to global warming denialism. This is exactly like global warming denialism because all denialism ultimately comes down to the same tactics. I think we’ve a good example here of conspiracy (in one word! monsanto!), moving goalposts, cherry-picking, and a whole host of logical fallacies in his little Gish gallop. Let us dismiss him as a spokesman for science. He’s too easily impeachable as an anti-science crank.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1KsPesl

Sexism is derailing mathematicians from an early age [Pharyngula]

A study of students in Israel by Victor Lavy and Edith Sand has discovered a surprising result…or maybe not so surprising to you, but I was rather shocked. Math teachers score girls’ performance lower when they know their identities.

In math, the girls outscored the boys in the exam graded anonymously, but the boys outscored the girls when graded by teachers who knew their names. The effect was not the same for tests on other subjects, like English and Hebrew. The researchers concluded that in math and science, the teachers overestimated the boys’ abilities and underestimated the girls’, and that this had long-term effects on students’ attitudes toward the subjects.

For example, when the same students reached junior high and high school, the economists analyzed their performance on national exams. The boys who had been encouraged when they were younger performed significantly better.

They also tracked the advanced math and science courses that students chose to take in high school. After controlling for other factors that might affect their choices, they concluded that the girls who had been discouraged by their elementary schoolteachers were much less likely than the boys to take advanced courses.

But…math. Isn’t that one of those incredibly objective disciplines in which questions all have a right answer and a best method, and there’s no wiggle room for adjusting a score? Just like all of science — there’s no subjectivity here at all.

No, when you’re evaluating how well students think, there’s always lots of room for taking student knowledge into account. I teach genetics, and it’s a good example: I grade exams with my nice brief key by my side, and when students come up with the same answers I do, it’s easy and fast. But when they don’t, I have to look much more closely. Did they just make an arithmetic error in the last step? Did they understand the basic concepts, but just fail to integrate them all? Did they demonstrate a complete lack of comprehension of basic Mendelian principles? I have to see some sign of understanding in the work to make the effort to track through the problem more carefully, and it would be tempting to, for instance, know that this student did poorly on their last exam, so it’s not worth the effort to try and figure out what dumb mistake they made this time.

(I take steps to avoid that trap: I grade papers anonymously, not looking at the name on the first page.)

But I have a hard time imagining taking a negative attitude towards a math problem on the basis of the solver’s sex. Apparently it’s common enough that it actively skews assessments downward, though.

I’m familiar with the Swedish study that showed a pervasive bias against women scientists on the job market, but it’s clear the problem goes much deeper: women are being discouraged from going into math as early as middle school.

The paper also tried to puzzle out what was going on with these teachers, and found some other interesting correlations.

Older and single teachers seem to favor boys over girls: the coefficient of a dummy indicator of being older than 50 years old is positive and significant (0.206, SE=0.104), and so is the estimate of the indicator for single teachers (0.315, SE=0.202). The estimated coefficient for teachers from Europe-North America origin is negatively and significantly correlated with teachers’ biases (-0.204, SE=0.113). The other individual characteristics that we examined are being married (positive but insignificant) and the number of children and the proportion of daughters, both of which have negative coefficient but not significantly different from zero.

So older teachers are more biased in favor of boys; there’s hope that that effect will diminish as a newer generation of teachers takes over. I don’t think we can insist that teachers get married.

I also wondered about the effect of the teacher’s sex on this problem. Buried deep in the paper is an interesting revelation: they couldn’t look at that because all of the teachers in their sample were women. We learn two things from that, of course: that women can propagate sexist attitudes (no surprise), and that teaching is a deeply gendered profession. The gender distribution in the teaching profession also has to be sending a message to girls and boys.

Here’s the authors’ conclusion.

We also find that favoritism of boys among math and science teachers has an especially large and positive effect on boys math test score and on their successfully completion of advance math and science studies in high school; the respective effect on girls is negative and statistically significant. The estimates of the direct-subject effect in math are of special interest because of the considerable gender gap in math achievements and its impact on future labor market outcomes. Moreover, since this gap in math achievement partly results from teachers’ stereotypical biases against girls in mathematics, eliminating these biases will go a long way toward reducing the math achievements gender gap, and it will also decrease the gender gap in enrollment in advanced math studies. The impact on the various end of high school matriculation outcomes carries meaningful economic consequences because these high stakes outcomes affect sharply the quantity and quality of postsecondary schooling and impact earnings at adulthood as well.

Another message we should take away from this: teaching is important. All you primary school teachers out there are shaping society as a whole.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1A1dRJF

A study of students in Israel by Victor Lavy and Edith Sand has discovered a surprising result…or maybe not so surprising to you, but I was rather shocked. Math teachers score girls’ performance lower when they know their identities.

In math, the girls outscored the boys in the exam graded anonymously, but the boys outscored the girls when graded by teachers who knew their names. The effect was not the same for tests on other subjects, like English and Hebrew. The researchers concluded that in math and science, the teachers overestimated the boys’ abilities and underestimated the girls’, and that this had long-term effects on students’ attitudes toward the subjects.

For example, when the same students reached junior high and high school, the economists analyzed their performance on national exams. The boys who had been encouraged when they were younger performed significantly better.

They also tracked the advanced math and science courses that students chose to take in high school. After controlling for other factors that might affect their choices, they concluded that the girls who had been discouraged by their elementary schoolteachers were much less likely than the boys to take advanced courses.

But…math. Isn’t that one of those incredibly objective disciplines in which questions all have a right answer and a best method, and there’s no wiggle room for adjusting a score? Just like all of science — there’s no subjectivity here at all.

No, when you’re evaluating how well students think, there’s always lots of room for taking student knowledge into account. I teach genetics, and it’s a good example: I grade exams with my nice brief key by my side, and when students come up with the same answers I do, it’s easy and fast. But when they don’t, I have to look much more closely. Did they just make an arithmetic error in the last step? Did they understand the basic concepts, but just fail to integrate them all? Did they demonstrate a complete lack of comprehension of basic Mendelian principles? I have to see some sign of understanding in the work to make the effort to track through the problem more carefully, and it would be tempting to, for instance, know that this student did poorly on their last exam, so it’s not worth the effort to try and figure out what dumb mistake they made this time.

(I take steps to avoid that trap: I grade papers anonymously, not looking at the name on the first page.)

But I have a hard time imagining taking a negative attitude towards a math problem on the basis of the solver’s sex. Apparently it’s common enough that it actively skews assessments downward, though.

I’m familiar with the Swedish study that showed a pervasive bias against women scientists on the job market, but it’s clear the problem goes much deeper: women are being discouraged from going into math as early as middle school.

The paper also tried to puzzle out what was going on with these teachers, and found some other interesting correlations.

Older and single teachers seem to favor boys over girls: the coefficient of a dummy indicator of being older than 50 years old is positive and significant (0.206, SE=0.104), and so is the estimate of the indicator for single teachers (0.315, SE=0.202). The estimated coefficient for teachers from Europe-North America origin is negatively and significantly correlated with teachers’ biases (-0.204, SE=0.113). The other individual characteristics that we examined are being married (positive but insignificant) and the number of children and the proportion of daughters, both of which have negative coefficient but not significantly different from zero.

So older teachers are more biased in favor of boys; there’s hope that that effect will diminish as a newer generation of teachers takes over. I don’t think we can insist that teachers get married.

I also wondered about the effect of the teacher’s sex on this problem. Buried deep in the paper is an interesting revelation: they couldn’t look at that because all of the teachers in their sample were women. We learn two things from that, of course: that women can propagate sexist attitudes (no surprise), and that teaching is a deeply gendered profession. The gender distribution in the teaching profession also has to be sending a message to girls and boys.

Here’s the authors’ conclusion.

We also find that favoritism of boys among math and science teachers has an especially large and positive effect on boys math test score and on their successfully completion of advance math and science studies in high school; the respective effect on girls is negative and statistically significant. The estimates of the direct-subject effect in math are of special interest because of the considerable gender gap in math achievements and its impact on future labor market outcomes. Moreover, since this gap in math achievement partly results from teachers’ stereotypical biases against girls in mathematics, eliminating these biases will go a long way toward reducing the math achievements gender gap, and it will also decrease the gender gap in enrollment in advanced math studies. The impact on the various end of high school matriculation outcomes carries meaningful economic consequences because these high stakes outcomes affect sharply the quantity and quality of postsecondary schooling and impact earnings at adulthood as well.

Another message we should take away from this: teaching is important. All you primary school teachers out there are shaping society as a whole.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1A1dRJF

Some Notes on Gender Bias in Elementary School Math [Uncertain Principles]

I’ve seen a lot of reshares of this report about the long-term effect of gender bias in elementary math, which comes from an NBER working paper about a study of Israeli schools. The usual presentation highlights one specific result, namely that on a math test graded by teachers who knew the names of the students, boys outscored girls, but a blinded test saw girls outscore boys.

This sounds pretty damning, but also kind of puzzling– is there really that much room for partial credit in elementary school math? Looking at the actual paper (which you can get emailed to you if you have a .edu address) clears things up a bit. The relevant scores are on two very different tests: the blind-graded one was a national exam given to fifth-graders, and the non-blinded one was a mid-year exam given in sixth grade to students in a particular district (they have the same teachers for fifth and sixth grade). That’s a lot less damning than the initial impression– these are two very different tests, graded by entirely different sets of people. The paper doesn’t go into any detail about the format and content of these tests, which seems like a pretty important question– it would be interesting to see some follow-up from people in math education about how directly comparable these are.

The other important caveat to the story as frequently presented is that the gender effect varies widely. It’s not that every teacher is systematically “over-assessing” boys– in fact, they say that the math results are, on average, gender neutral. But they have “quite a large heterogeneity” among teachers– there’s a truly awful set of histograms at the very end of the paper showing the distributions (seriously, did they get one of the fifth-graders in the study to make these ugly graphs?). This is, in fact, the thing that lets them get to the meat of the paper, which is a study of the long-term effects. Because there’s a wide variation among teachers they can look at the difference between fifth-graders who had a teacher whose scores show a big gender gap, and those whose teacher was more neutral.

And that genuinely is bad (and, incidentally, strengthens the case that what they’re measuring with the score gaps is something real). They report a significant and long-term negative effect on girls who wound up with teachers who have larger gender gaps– they’re less likely to take more advanced math, less likely to go into STEM subjects, etc. This is an important and interesting result, but kind of gets buried under the “math teachers grade boys higher than girls” stuff.

So, what do they know about the teachers? They report that large gender gaps are more likely for older (they use a dummy regression variable for teachers over 50), un-married teachers. Which is not too terribly surprising. They also mention in passing that most of the math teachers in their sample also teach Hebrew, which might be a part of the problem, depending on how much weight those receive– someone who really wants to be teaching Hebrew but is stuck also teaching math might well be doing a lousy job on the math part.

So, anyway, a slightly less damning indictment of elementary school teachers than it might initially appear, but also a clear demonstration of a very real problem. Biased math instruction starts early, and has long-lasting effects.

(I did a bunch of Twittering about this this morning, but that’s a terrible medium, and it was very early, so I figured I should type up something longer in a less ephemeral location.)

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1AFphnM

I’ve seen a lot of reshares of this report about the long-term effect of gender bias in elementary math, which comes from an NBER working paper about a study of Israeli schools. The usual presentation highlights one specific result, namely that on a math test graded by teachers who knew the names of the students, boys outscored girls, but a blinded test saw girls outscore boys.

This sounds pretty damning, but also kind of puzzling– is there really that much room for partial credit in elementary school math? Looking at the actual paper (which you can get emailed to you if you have a .edu address) clears things up a bit. The relevant scores are on two very different tests: the blind-graded one was a national exam given to fifth-graders, and the non-blinded one was a mid-year exam given in sixth grade to students in a particular district (they have the same teachers for fifth and sixth grade). That’s a lot less damning than the initial impression– these are two very different tests, graded by entirely different sets of people. The paper doesn’t go into any detail about the format and content of these tests, which seems like a pretty important question– it would be interesting to see some follow-up from people in math education about how directly comparable these are.

The other important caveat to the story as frequently presented is that the gender effect varies widely. It’s not that every teacher is systematically “over-assessing” boys– in fact, they say that the math results are, on average, gender neutral. But they have “quite a large heterogeneity” among teachers– there’s a truly awful set of histograms at the very end of the paper showing the distributions (seriously, did they get one of the fifth-graders in the study to make these ugly graphs?). This is, in fact, the thing that lets them get to the meat of the paper, which is a study of the long-term effects. Because there’s a wide variation among teachers they can look at the difference between fifth-graders who had a teacher whose scores show a big gender gap, and those whose teacher was more neutral.

And that genuinely is bad (and, incidentally, strengthens the case that what they’re measuring with the score gaps is something real). They report a significant and long-term negative effect on girls who wound up with teachers who have larger gender gaps– they’re less likely to take more advanced math, less likely to go into STEM subjects, etc. This is an important and interesting result, but kind of gets buried under the “math teachers grade boys higher than girls” stuff.

So, what do they know about the teachers? They report that large gender gaps are more likely for older (they use a dummy regression variable for teachers over 50), un-married teachers. Which is not too terribly surprising. They also mention in passing that most of the math teachers in their sample also teach Hebrew, which might be a part of the problem, depending on how much weight those receive– someone who really wants to be teaching Hebrew but is stuck also teaching math might well be doing a lousy job on the math part.

So, anyway, a slightly less damning indictment of elementary school teachers than it might initially appear, but also a clear demonstration of a very real problem. Biased math instruction starts early, and has long-lasting effects.

(I did a bunch of Twittering about this this morning, but that’s a terrible medium, and it was very early, so I figured I should type up something longer in a less ephemeral location.)

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1AFphnM

Have astronomers pinpointed dark matter Galaxy X?

This image is a 2007 supercomputer simulation illustrating dark matter satellites as bright clumps around our Milky Way galaxy. Image via stanford.edu

As recently as January 2015, astronomers were speculating about Planets X beyond Pluto – extra planets within our solar system – but so far none have been found. Dark matter hunters this week announced what may be better success at locating a previously unseen dark-matter-dominated dwarf galaxy, which they believe lies on the far side of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. They’ve been speculating about this little galaxy, nicknamed Galaxy X, for several years. Evidence for it came originally from a 2009 analysis of ripples in the Milky Way’s outer disk. The latest study by these same astronomers – led by Sukanya Chakrabarti of Rochester Institute of Technology – points to a cluster of four young, pulsating stars approximately 300,000 light-years away. Those stars might mark the location Galaxy X. The team announced their discovery in a paper accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters on February 5, 2015. Chakrabarti said:

I decided to see if I could actually find the thing. It was a difficult prediction to test because it was close to the plane [of our Milky Way galaxy], and therefore difficult to see in the optical.

If it exists, Galaxy X is a satellite galaxy to our Milky Way. Large galaxies like the Milky Way are thought to have many satellite galaxies that are too dim to see, dominated by dark matter, the mysterious unseen substance thought to make up 23 percent of the mass of the universe.

Chakrabarti and her team found the four stars – known as Cepheid variable stars – by analyzing data collected by the European Southern Observatory’s survey VISTA, whose infrared capability lets astronomers peer into unexplored regions close to our galaxy’s plane that are inaccessible via visible light. The stars are located in the direction of the southern constellation Norma. Cepheid variables are a well known species of star to astronomers, who use them as standard candles to measure distances across intergalactic space. According to Chakrabarti, these are the most distant Cepheid variables found close to the plane of the Milky Way.

The team believes the four newly discovered Cepheid variable stars are associated with the dark-matter dominated dwarf galaxy predicted in Chakrabarti’s 2009 analysis of ripples in the outer disk of the Milky Way. That study had specified a mass and location for the unseen galaxy. Radiation from the four Cepheid variables let Chakrabarti derive accurate distances and test her prediction. Chakrabarti said:

These young stars are likely the signature of this predicted galaxy. They can’t be part of our galaxy because the disk of the Milky Way terminates at 48,000 light-years.

The discovery of the Cepheid variables shows that our method of finding the location of dark-matter dominated dwarf galaxies works.

It may help us ultimately understand what dark matter is made up of. It also shows that Newton’s theory of gravity can be used out to the farthest reaches of a galaxy.

Bottom line: In 2009, astronomers led by Sukanya Chakrabarti of Rochester Institute of Technology predicted an unseen dark-matter-dominated dwarf galaxy orbiting our Milky Way – nicknamed Galaxy X. Now they say they’ve found four Cepheid variable stars – 300,000 light-years away – that might mark Galaxy X’s location.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1ySWaHM

This image is a 2007 supercomputer simulation illustrating dark matter satellites as bright clumps around our Milky Way galaxy. Image via stanford.edu

As recently as January 2015, astronomers were speculating about Planets X beyond Pluto – extra planets within our solar system – but so far none have been found. Dark matter hunters this week announced what may be better success at locating a previously unseen dark-matter-dominated dwarf galaxy, which they believe lies on the far side of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. They’ve been speculating about this little galaxy, nicknamed Galaxy X, for several years. Evidence for it came originally from a 2009 analysis of ripples in the Milky Way’s outer disk. The latest study by these same astronomers – led by Sukanya Chakrabarti of Rochester Institute of Technology – points to a cluster of four young, pulsating stars approximately 300,000 light-years away. Those stars might mark the location Galaxy X. The team announced their discovery in a paper accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters on February 5, 2015. Chakrabarti said:

I decided to see if I could actually find the thing. It was a difficult prediction to test because it was close to the plane [of our Milky Way galaxy], and therefore difficult to see in the optical.

If it exists, Galaxy X is a satellite galaxy to our Milky Way. Large galaxies like the Milky Way are thought to have many satellite galaxies that are too dim to see, dominated by dark matter, the mysterious unseen substance thought to make up 23 percent of the mass of the universe.

Chakrabarti and her team found the four stars – known as Cepheid variable stars – by analyzing data collected by the European Southern Observatory’s survey VISTA, whose infrared capability lets astronomers peer into unexplored regions close to our galaxy’s plane that are inaccessible via visible light. The stars are located in the direction of the southern constellation Norma. Cepheid variables are a well known species of star to astronomers, who use them as standard candles to measure distances across intergalactic space. According to Chakrabarti, these are the most distant Cepheid variables found close to the plane of the Milky Way.

The team believes the four newly discovered Cepheid variable stars are associated with the dark-matter dominated dwarf galaxy predicted in Chakrabarti’s 2009 analysis of ripples in the outer disk of the Milky Way. That study had specified a mass and location for the unseen galaxy. Radiation from the four Cepheid variables let Chakrabarti derive accurate distances and test her prediction. Chakrabarti said:

These young stars are likely the signature of this predicted galaxy. They can’t be part of our galaxy because the disk of the Milky Way terminates at 48,000 light-years.

The discovery of the Cepheid variables shows that our method of finding the location of dark-matter dominated dwarf galaxies works.

It may help us ultimately understand what dark matter is made up of. It also shows that Newton’s theory of gravity can be used out to the farthest reaches of a galaxy.

Bottom line: In 2009, astronomers led by Sukanya Chakrabarti of Rochester Institute of Technology predicted an unseen dark-matter-dominated dwarf galaxy orbiting our Milky Way – nicknamed Galaxy X. Now they say they’ve found four Cepheid variable stars – 300,000 light-years away – that might mark Galaxy X’s location.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1ySWaHM