That well-known right winger, Alexander Cockburn, confesses his sins on the climate change religion.
Category Archives: Science And Society
We Need Science In Medicine
One of the prevailing myths of modern life (I use the word here in the sense of something that everyone believes, not necessarily something that is false) is that cholesterol causes heart disease and stroke, and that reducing it will reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke. But the recent Vytorin issue should give us cause to question this conventional wisdom.
Whenever I’ve looked at the research, I’ve never been able to see any clear indication that taking cholesterol-reducing medication actually reduces risk, per se–all that the clinical studies that I’ve seen seem to indicate is that cholesterol reduction is taking place. But correlation is not causation. It could be that both high cholesterol and vascular disease are caused by some third factor that hasn’t been identified, and that in reducing cholesterol, whether by diet or medication, or both, we are treating a symptom rather than a cause.
My point is, that I don’t know the answer. But I don’t have a lot of confidence that the medical community does, either. And I remain wary of taking medications with unknown side effects and potential for interaction with other things I ingest, when the benefit is unclear. And I write this as someone who lost both parents to heart disease (my father’s first heart attack occurred when he was about forty five, and he died from a second one about a decade later). But they also had much different lifestyles than I did–they grew up with poor diets during the depression, they both smoked like chimneys, and they were both overweight. So I don’t necessarily believe that genetics is destiny, at least in this case.
Yenta Science
Is there a scientific basis to EHarmony?
Breaking The Aging Contract
Derek Lowe is more hopeful than many of his colleagues.
Irrational Economics
Michael Shermer, who has a new book out
[Update a little after noon]
More evolutionary psychology: why the pill has reduced the need of men to marry.
I’ve often pointed out that the people who really change society are not the politicians and ideologues, but the engineers.
[Update in the afternoon]
I thin that the first article provides a good example of why, despite their irrationality, socialism and wealth redistribution schemes are so intrinsically appealing to so many, and why they won’t die out, despite their manifest empirical failures. Too many people would prefer that everyone be poor than that a lot are wealthy while a few are superwealthy. Which is sort of depressing, because it means that the ideological wars over this will go on as long as human nature remains what it is.
“Who Says Nothing Exciting Ever Happens In Canada?”
That’s Joe Katzman’s comment at this interesting post by Donald Sensing on a major asteroid impact in North America thirteen thousand years ago.
…the worst consequence of the cataclysm was the mass extinctions of the late Pleistocene that have heretofore been attributed to overhunting by the Clovis peoples of the continent. The extinctions were additionally blamed on the Younger Dryas. The new impact theory, though, says that the comet’s multiple explosions (caused by its breakup in the high atmosphere) themselves caused the extinctions: “at least 35 genera of the continent’s mammals went extinct
“Who Says Nothing Exciting Ever Happens In Canada?”
That’s Joe Katzman’s comment at this interesting post by Donald Sensing on a major asteroid impact in North America thirteen thousand years ago.
…the worst consequence of the cataclysm was the mass extinctions of the late Pleistocene that have heretofore been attributed to overhunting by the Clovis peoples of the continent. The extinctions were additionally blamed on the Younger Dryas. The new impact theory, though, says that the comet’s multiple explosions (caused by its breakup in the high atmosphere) themselves caused the extinctions: “at least 35 genera of the continent’s mammals went extinct
“Who Says Nothing Exciting Ever Happens In Canada?”
That’s Joe Katzman’s comment at this interesting post by Donald Sensing on a major asteroid impact in North America thirteen thousand years ago.
…the worst consequence of the cataclysm was the mass extinctions of the late Pleistocene that have heretofore been attributed to overhunting by the Clovis peoples of the continent. The extinctions were additionally blamed on the Younger Dryas. The new impact theory, though, says that the comet’s multiple explosions (caused by its breakup in the high atmosphere) themselves caused the extinctions: “at least 35 genera of the continent’s mammals went extinct
Eat Your Salmon
More evidence that Omega-3 is good for you:
Fish oil and its key ingredient, omega-3 fatty acids (found in fatty fish like salmon), have been a mainstay of alternative health practitioners for years and have been endorsed by the American Heart Association to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.
Fatty acids like DHA are considered “essential” fatty acids because the body cannot make them from other sources and must obtain them through diet. Years of research have shown that DHA is the most abundant essential fatty acid in the brain, Cole said, and that it is critical to fetal and infant brain development. Studies have also linked low levels of DHA in the brain to cognitive impairment and have shown that lower levels may increase oxidative stress in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients.
Based on the positive results, the National Institutes of Health is currently conducting a large-scale clinical trial with DHA in patients with established Alzheimer’s disease. For those patients, Cole said, it may be too late in the disease’s progression for DHA to have much effect. But he is hopeful that the NIH will conduct a large-scale prevention clinical trial using fish oil at the earliest stages of the disease — particularly because it is unlikely that a pharmaceutical company will do so, since fish oil in pill form is readily available and inexpensive.
There are a lot of other reasons to be consuming Omega-3. This is just one more.
Child Abuse
Political correctness is damaging young boys:
Research by Penny Holland, academic leader for early childhood at London Metropolitan University, has also concluded that boys should be allowed to play gun games.
She found boys became dispirited and withdrawn when they are told such play-fighting is wrong.
But you can bet kids will continue to get suspended for as little as drawing pictures of guns.
Remember this the next time someone complains about a Republican war on science. Yet another reason to get the government out of the schools.