Why Dont You Blog?

I know I should have learned my lesson long ago and I promise to stop responding to Parabiodox’s baiting after this post… (At least I will try).

Previously, I made a post about Christian humour in which I commented that the expected answer to a ranting comment would be “Atheists (agnostics etc)” rather than the Abrahamic religions I previously claimed. Now, I never meant this to imply Atheists were the same as agnostics, and if anyone did take away that impression from my (lengthy) post than I apologise wholeheartedly.

I am fully aware Atheism is not Agnosticism, and personally I do not find “agnosticism” a reasonable viewpoint which can be counted as an opinion. Agnosticism is (remember this is my personal viewpoint!) a good point of view for something about which you have no opinion. I am agnostic as to the existence of life on a planet orbiting Beta Canis Major for example. I am not agnostic about the existence of Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, Leprechauns, Pixies, Elves, Orcs, Gobilins, Demons, pink Unicorns or all manner of imaginary nonsense. What on Earth gives a particular religion special privileges about it’s claims to the existence of one (or more) deities? I will return to this.

Popularity: 46% [?]

Popularity: 46% [?]

It seems I am not alone in getting some satisfaction out of seeing McKeith have to admit she is not a doctor.
“Back off, man; I’m a scientist.” also picks up the topic with its “Bless” post.

The post picks up on McKeith saying how she feels “bullied” and she claims ” I’m entitled to use ‘Dr’ because I have a PhD in Holistic Nutrition, which I studied for four years to get.” Now that is funny. Obviously she is joking…

Anyway, the Back off, man; I’m a scientist makes the reasonable comments:

This is a woman who goes on TV and makes “an obese woman cry, in her own back garden, by showing her a tombstone with her own name on it, made out of chocolate”, who said to another “‘Do you want to see your daughter get married and have babies? Because the way things are going you’ll have a heart attack at 40″.

She’s made a career out of making fat people cry, so just let the satisfaction flow.

Well Said that man!

Popularity: 39% [?]

Popularity: 39% [?]

Ben Goldacre of Bad Science must have strange scientific mindreading skills. Today, he started by echoing my thoughts on “Oh, not another diet charlatan article.” He accepted that he’s done the diet thing to death.

However, the case he wrote about today has more life-threatening implications than whether a ludicrous fake-PhD doctor can con a gullible fraction of the televsion public into believing that she’s got any idea what they should eat. (Gillian Keith)

He took issue with Patrick Holford who claims that Vitamin C is more effective than AZT on Aids patients and is about to embark on a tour of South Africa, where there more than enough problems to do with belief that vitamins will cure AIDs and that anti-AIDs medication is dangerous.

Lack of access to AIDs medicines is one of the most serious health problems in the world. The South African government has been struggling to rewrite the rules of global trade to get access to these drugs for people who cannot afford them. Along comes a senior minister who doesn’t believe that HIV causes AIDs or that anti-retrovirals are the key to keeping people alive. And now, a tv diet guru (who can sweep the board at bad science Bingo, according to Goldacre) is going along to gather more adherents to these dangerous beliefs.

Is this too obvious to say? Until the development of AZT and new variants, an AIDS diagnosis was a death sentence, even for the richest people in the world, i.e people who could eat the best of everything (and imbibe vitamins from a permanent drip, if they so choose.)

Getting enough vitamins and getting enough to eat are pretty good indiicators of how generally healthy one is and how strong the non-HIV-infected person’s immune system is likely to be. But, a virus that attacks the immune system is a virus that attacks the immune system. It’s not a cold.

AIDs doesn’t kill everyone who contracts it anymore, it certainly doesn’t kill the Biblical swathes of Westerners predicted in the 1980s. This isn’t due to better nutrition. It’s due to medicine. Leading people to believe otherwise comes close to deliberate murder.

Popularity: 22% [?]

Popularity: 22% [?]

Just a quick rant here. Today I was in Boots (the Chemist) and I was looking through the impressive array of non-chemist goods they sell. Out of idle curiousity I wandered to the travel / holiday area and, sadly, found my self comparing brands of insect repellent based on either claims or percentage DEET in the ingredients.

Then I noticed on the adjacent shelf a line of items for keeping you cool in hot weather. Basically they were loads of aerosol cans with instructions about how to use them - simply put spray on skin from about 20cm and allow to dry. Selling for a bargain £1.85 for 125ml, with big signs hyping them up, I was intrigued. Initially I wondered what modern technology was contained in these cans which would rapidly cool people’s skins - without CFC. Then I read the ingredients. A single item.

Aqua.

The pure madness. Spray cans of water going for nearly 10 times the rate they were selling 1l bottles! There were hundreds of these things - and based on the gaps in the layout, lots had actually been sold. Wow. The sheer marketting cheek to sell people cans of water at a massive mark up stuns me.

A sad sign that so many people seem to have bought them.

Now I am aware that some people wont believe me about this, so I searched the Boots website. I cant find the exact product which annoyed me so much (it was boots “own brand”), but this is a similar version which I didnt see in the shop so cant comment on.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Popularity: 21% [?]

Well, readers of Saturday’s newspaper (or the website www.badscience.net) may be forgiven for thinking that Ben Goldacre, scourge of the charlatan, has gone soft. (Read the article online)

Taken brutally out of context, and subjected to skim reading, this article look almost like an approval of homeopathic remedies to treat all manner of ailments. The print version is a worse offender (missing the phrase “Bring on the placebos” - at least in my newspaper), but generally speaking about 60% of the people I have shown the article to so far think it was basically saying that “modern medicine has had its chance, now we need to try the homeopathic stuff.”

Shocking.

I hope I am not alone in being dismayed by this. To me, the article read like a sly dig at homeopathy - basically pointing out the fact it does nothing and has no real evidence to support it working - but on re-reading, and after speaking to others it may have been a bit too sly.

From speaking to people who have already bought into the snake oil sales pitch of homeopathy, this article was too close to support for them to see the reality. The only thing I can hope is that 99.9% of badscience’s audience are not that way inclined. (Although from the feedback on mobile phone towers I am not so sure…)

Popularity: 16% [?]

Popularity: 16% [?]