[slackline]

Making matter of the light...

O. J. Pike, F. Mackenroth, E. G. Hill, S. J. Rose (2014) A photon–photon collider in a vacuum hohlraum Nature Photonics:AOP

Imperial College Press Release

[slackline]

Cause and Effect in obesity

[johnx2]

Cause and Effect in obesity

interesting but, hmmm. This is a piece about an article in JAMA which discusses the hypothesis that sugars/simple carbs are the main cause of rising levels of obesity.

They get a bit unstuck, I think, when considering interventions/diets. The line  "We wouldn’t discard a potentially lifesaving cancer treatment based on negative findings, if the research subjects didn’t take the drug as intended." is a real alarm bell ringer. The author knows perfectly well that analysis should be on 'intention to treat', ie on assigning someone to one or another of the diets being tested. Whether or not they stick to it is part of what's being tested. Indeed, part of their criticism of calorie controlled diets is that people don't stick to them. So the fact they're muddled (or deliberately muddle) these points makes me, I dunno, go hmmmm.

(I'd want to do a mars bars vs pies crossover trial myself and would volunteer for either arm. Be difficult to blind unless you could eat without noticiing. Something I am entirely capable of doing.)

[Oldmanmatt]

. Be difficult to blind unless you could eat without noticiing. Something I am entirely capable of doing.

Blindfold, Clothes peg on nose, purée everything and rub Chilli on your tongue before eating...

[slackline]

"Sewage epidemiology" suggests recreational drug use is (unsuprisingly) higher than estimated


Original paper (paywalled)

[slackline]

Odds-Ratios are a catastrophe 

[slackline]

Odds-Ratios are a catastrophe 

No doubt compounded by...

Does your doctor understand risk?

[Oldmanmatt]

My reading for those boring summer shifts...

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-04-quantum-physics-i-spring-2013/

[psychomansam]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/blackest-is-the-new-black-scientists-have-developed-a-material-so-dark-that-you-cant-see-it-9602504.html

Very cool picture

[tomtom]

This is so cool. Using snow storms to visualise flow patterns from wind turbine blades.

http://www.safl.umn.edu/featured-story/super-large-scale-flow-visualization-natural-snow

Watch the vid clip...

[tomtom]

And good news. Owen Paterson is no longer Environment Minister \o/. Bad news is we don't know who will be next... Shirley not another climate sceptic...

[psychomansam]

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jopy.12104/abstract
This study investigates how obedience in a Milgram-like experiment is predicted by interindividual differences. Participants were 35 males and 31 females aged 26–54 from the general population who were contacted by phone 8 months after their participation in a study transposing Milgram's obedience paradigm to the context of a fake television game show. Interviews were presented as opinion polls with no stated ties to the earlier experiment. Personality was assessed by the Big Five Mini-Markers questionnaire (Saucier, 1994). Political orientation and social activism were also measured. Results confirmed hypotheses that Conscientiousness and Agreeableness would be associated with willingness to administer higher-intensity electric shocks to a victim. Political orientation and social activism were also related to obedience. Our results provide empirical evidence suggesting that individual differences in personality and political variables matter in the explanation of obedience to authority.

This one goes out to all the affable middle class clean spoken teachers who are too polite to strike, or to strike without individually informing the school, because they don't want to cause an inconvenience. SUCK MY DICK!

[slackline]

http://www.howdoeshomeopathywork.com/ 

[AMorris]

http://www.howdoeshomeopathywork.com/ 

Haha brilliant, I was all ready to sigh loudly at that too

[lagerstarfish]

an excellent web-resource for all healthcare professionals

[psychomansam]

Indeed. Except that it's badly wrong.
No, don't sigh yet.
I know it's just a stunt, but I think it would be far more effective if they followed up the one line of 'information' with a simple caveat paragraph explaining the placebo effect and then a little more on the facts. This would be quite helpful in combating this particular form of faith, as well as others. As it is, they just have some small and obscure links.

[Stubbs]

But the website is about homeopathy not placebo. For a treatment to 'work' it would have to perform better than a placebo.

It's good to see if you type how homeopathy works that website also ranks above the British homeopathy website.

[slackline]

Indeed. Except that it's badly wrong.
No, don't sigh yet.
I know it's just a stunt, but I think it would be far more effective if they followed up the one line of 'information' with a simple caveat paragraph explaining the placebo effect and then a little more on the facts. This would be quite helpful in combating this particular form of faith, as well as others. As it is, they just have some small and obscure links.

That doesn't make it "wrong" though.  It means its lacking information you think it could have provided to explain why homeopathy doesn't work.

It sounds as though you didn't  actually click through and read the "small obscure links".  The 10:23 campaign that is linked is quite comprehensive in its description of the problems associated with homeopathy.  There isn't a huge amount of detail about the placebo effect itself, but it is mentioned along with a comprehensive Lancet review from 2005 (little point in linking to it since it will be pay-walled for most) but if after reading the information they do provide someone wants to know more they have a key word that they can put into one of them search engine things to find out more.

Most proponents and believers of anything, not just homeopathy, will ignore things that don't align with their beliefs anyway, so its mostly a small simple website that will amuse those who already know this and it is unlikely to change anyone's point of view, even if the full text of the Lancet review were made freely available.

[psychomansam]

Indeed. Except that it's badly wrong.
No, don't sigh yet.
I know it's just a stunt, but I think it would be far more effective if they followed up the one line of 'information' with a simple caveat paragraph explaining the placebo effect and then a little more on the facts. This would be quite helpful in combating this particular form of faith, as well as others. As it is, they just have some small and obscure links.

That doesn't make it "wrong" though.  It means its lacking information you think it could have provided to explain why homeopathy doesn't work.

It sounds as though you didn't  actually click through and read the "small obscure links".  The 10:23 campaign that is linked is quite comprehensive in its description of the problems associated with homeopathy.  There isn't a huge amount of detail about the placebo effect itself, but it is mentioned along with a comprehensive Lancet review from 2005 (little point in linking to it since it will be pay-walled for most) but if after reading the information they do provide someone wants to know more they have a key word that they can put into one of them search engine things to find out more.

Most proponents and believers of anything, not just homeopathy, will ignore things that don't align with their beliefs anyway, so its mostly a small simple website that will amuse those who already know this and it is unlikely to change anyone's point of view, even if the full text of the Lancet review were made freely available.

I have read through their website thoroughly, but the unconverted are unlikely to and I'm a little more positive than you as to the opportunity for effecting a conversion.
Conversion to rationality and away from obscure faiths is something which is effected by the constant drip, drip, drip of truth and rationality. It's a long road to Damascus and since divine intervention isn't on our side, the slowly and softly approach is more helpful and I think surprisingly worthwhile for most*.

n=1. A relative of mine is post-religious but not degree educated and still has a habit of falling for quackery. It often just takes an email with some links and a conversation and they are back in the light of the true way.

 *As an aside to the scientifically minded, I think the issue here is that causation is complex and gradual. People fail to correlate the first, tenth or thousandth drop in the bucket with the bucket eventually overflowing. We frequently underestimate the effects of peer pressure and of information from apparently authoritative sources for instance. 

[slackline]

We're agreed its not "wrong" then?

There are hundreds of thousands of examples where the scientific methods has been put to good use and benefited many.

Yet religion, homoeopathy and other faith-based things still persists.  Why? For the very reasons you cite and reading shit on the web won't change that in any great hurry, since the information is already out there to debunk most things and if people were bothered they would go out and read it. 

Personally I no longer care for 'converting' / 'enlightening' / 'educating' people about science or anything else (e.g. GNU/Linux).  If they're interested I'm happy to talk, but I realised a while ago that ranting on and on about what I think is 'right' is as bad as any other preacher (I might fail at keeping my mouth shit sometimes, but I do make a conscious effort to reign myself in these days).

A Phd student here at work who's topic was comparing homoeopathy to the standard treatment for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).  At a University.  The same University I graduated from. I'm ashamed.

[JamieG]

I knew I was shit at climbing, but not that i was climbing on shit!

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00284-014-0643-3

[Stubbs]

Limestone is just old shit and skeletons too.

[tomtom]

I knew I was shit at climbing, but not that i was climbing on shit!

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00284-014-0643-3

For those without access to the PDF...

Blah blah blah blah
Diagram Diagram
Blah blah blah blah

Conclusions

Our results indicate dispersal of microorganisms from
climbing shoes, hands, and environmental sources, with less
input from human sources on climbing holds compared to
other built environments. Because human-associated
microbial communities typically contain a higher abundance
of human pathogens and/or opportunistic pathogens
[32], one might infer that, due to the greater environmental
signature detected here, climbing holds potentially pose less
of a health risk compared to other indoor environments. In
summary, all twelve holds examined contained evidence of
microorganisms associated with fecal material. Sequences
associated with fecal microorganisms represented roughly
9 % of all sequences, including as many as 43 % of the
sequences associated with a single climbing hold. While this
does not necessarily represent a significant risk, climbers
should take precautions, for example, by washing their
hands both before and after climbing.

[tomtom]

For anyone with an interest in Volcanism, Iceland etc... great site here with 3d interactive maps of the recent earthquake activity..

http://baering.github.io/

[Yoof]

Why rocks move!