I was going to give this a rest for a while, but this is too good not to post a brief note about. Posted in the comments of my piece debunking the Geiers’ pseudoscience and their laughable “scientific” article claiming to show a decrease in the rate of new cases of autism since late 2002, when thimerosal was removed from vaccines completely other than some flu vaccines was this gem of a comment, by one MarkCC, which stated the essence of what was wrong with the Geiers’ so-called “statistical analysis” of the VAERS database:
24 blogging: Holy crap!
Holy crap! They killed off… {Spoiler below the fold–if you’re in a time zone west of Eastern Standard, haven’t yet seen the episode because of the time difference, and don’t want to know what happens at the end of the episode, don’t read below the fold. You’ve been warned!}
The Geiers go dumpster-diving yet again
Curse you, Mark and David Geier. I’m getting tired of having to subject my scientific and critical thinking skills to the assaults on science and reason that you routinely publish in dubious journals to use as weapons in your apparently never-ending crusade to extract as much money as possible out of vaccine manufacturers and the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Dissecting your pseudoscientific claims causes me pain, not so much that I’m driven to take a hiatus from blogging, as Matt was by Kent Hovind’s creationism, but almost. I had hoped to let this cup pass, given how much I’ve written …
It’s worse than I thought
A while back, I mentioned how the budget proposed in the President’s budget for the NIH for fiscal year 2007 was flat. It turns out that, for those of us in the field of cancer research, it’s worse than that. Making the rounds at our cancer institute is an e-mail from one of the higher-ups, which points out the following sobering facts about the budget for the National Cancer Institute (the FY 2007 proposed budget for HHS can be found here, particularly page 34): The President’s budget proposal submitted to Congress will keep funding for the National Institutes of Health …
Drat! These pesky scientific facts won’t line up behind my beliefs!
So, what do you do when those pesky scientific facts won’t line up with your beliefs, be they beliefs that evolution doesn’t explain the diversity of life, that mercury causes autism, that global warming isn’t happening, or whatever your faith-based scientific belief might be? Click on the image, and White House Situational Science Advisor tells you exactly how to avoid such annoying conflicts. Best quote: “Situational science is about respecting both sides of a scientific argument, not just the one supported by facts.” Heh.
Friday random ten (on Saturday)
The Friday Random Ten is a bit of a blog tradition that many bloggers periodically indulge in, including fellow ScienceBloggers PZ, Chad, and John. However, Orac, ever the contrarian, likes to indulge in this practice on Saturdays (when he does it at all). So, without further ado, take a plunge into a very small sampling (0.08776%) of Orac’s music collection that happened to come up randomly on a shuffle play set for my entire iTunes library: The Harbinger Complex, I Think I’m Down (from: Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era). Suede (I refuse to call them “The London …
I’m not so sure about this result
Personally, I was hoping for either the Babylon 5 or Battlestar Galactica crew. Besides, the second Matrix movie was a big letdown after the first one, and the third Matrix movie totally sucked. You scored as Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix). You can change the world around you. You have a strong will and a high technical aptitude. Is it possible you are the one? Now if only Agent Smith would quit beating up your friends. Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix) 75% Millennium Falcon (Star Wars) 69% Enterprise D (Star Trek) 63% Deep Space Nine (Star Trek) 63% Babylon 5 (Babylon 5) 56% Serenity …
Comments on the old blog
A quick announcement: I’ve been having a bit of a comment spam problem on the old blog, which is now mothballed and is only maintained as an archive site. Consequently, over the next few days to weeks, I am going to march through all the posts and disable comments. I hate comment spammers.
PZ’s Blog-Fu is strong…
Just when I think I’m starting to get a lot of regular traffic, leave it to PZ to show me that I’m still a bit of a peon. Normally, I get around 1,500 visits a day, but what happens when PZ links to me, as he linked to yesterday’s post about RFK, Jr. and his conspiracy-mongering? Nearly 4,000 visits, and the spike still hasn’t subsided. Nothing like that to show a guy his true place in the blogosphere, eh? Of course, if that had happened six months ago, it would have been a ten- or twenty-fold spike in my usual …
A “Well, duh!” study
Occasionally, while perusing EurekAlert!, I come across studies that I like to call “Well, duh!” studies because they seem to come to conclusions that are mind-numbingly obvious. For example, this one: If women want the best possible service at a clothing store, they had better be looking fashionable and well-groomed before they hit the mall. A new study found that well-dressed and groomed women received the friendliest and, in some cases, fastest service from salesclerks. Researchers secretly observed interactions between customers and salesclerks at three large-sized women’s clothing stores, timing how long clerks took to greet customers, and rating the …