Author Archive for tigtog

And still they defend him

Published
by
tigtog
1 week, 4 days ago
in Ethics, Health, Medicine and Parenting
. 19 Comments

The Times: MMR doctor Andrew Wakefield ‘abused his position of trust’

The doctor who first claimed that the MMR vaccine could cause autism has been found guilty of a series of misconduct charges, that include putting children through painful and unnecessary tests, a disciplinary hearing has ruled today.

Dr Andrew Wakefield showed “a callous disregard” for the suffering of children and “abused his position of trust” as a doctor in carrying out a study which sparked the biggest vaccine scare in a generation and has been blamed for the resurgence of measles in Britain, the General Medical Council (GMC) found.

He was also found to have brought the medical profession “into disrepute” after he took blood samples from youngsters at his son’s birthday party in return for payments of £5 and failed to disclose vital conflicts of interest around his work – which has since been discredited.

Along with two former colleagues who were also involved in the study on 12 children, originally published in the Lancet medical journal in 1998, Dr Wakefield now faces being suspended or struck off the medical register if this verdict is confirmed by GMC later this year.

The findings from the 1998 Wakefield et al study on 12 children have failed to be replicated in subsequent studies involving millions of children. He failed to disclose conflicts of interest to the editors of The Lancet before his original paper was published in 1998 (he had received £55,000 before the study even began from lawyers representing parents wanting proof that the MMR had caused autism in their children, and had patented an alternative ’single shot’ measles vaccine for his own personal gain). In the decade since the publication he received 8x his medical salary from fees as an “expert” provided through the UK legal aid system meant to assist people in poverty. The flagrant procedural flaws in the study (the children were not a random sample of cases from one hospital, the families had been specially recruited from already-existing anti-MMR activist groups, and their medical histories were manipulated and misrepresented) right from the off make its approval for publication by The Lancet’s peer review system look none too clever either, although of course peer review is never proof against blatant fraud (that’s what subsequent replication-attempt studies tend to reveal).

The original Wakefield study is as debunked and discredited as it is possible for a piece of unethical cherry-picking “research” to be. Yet the article goes on to describe how supporters of Dr Wakefield attended the GMC hearings to heckle the chairman read out the panel’s verdicts and cheer as Wakefield addressed reporters afterwards. Continue reading ‘And still they defend him’

’tis the season of secular consumerism

Published
by
tigtog
1 month, 3 weeks ago
in Consumerism and Music
. 43 Comments

… and I’m a bit over all the red holly/green conifer/snow imagery. Here’s two songs that have a more sunburnt country feel to them:

Eric Bogle’s Shelter gives tributes to our land “dressed in green and gold”:

And here’s Tim Minchin’s White Wine in the Sun, about how it’s possible to enjoy Christmas traditions even when you’re not religious, because in the end it’s all about family:

What do the rest of you like as Aussie summer/Xmas songs?

Saturday Salon

Published
by
tigtog
2 months ago
in Miscellaneous
. 30 Comments

An open thread, where at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.

(Sorry for the lateness!)

Pinch me

Published
by
tigtog
2 months, 3 weeks ago
in Media, Medicine and Sociology
. 33 Comments

Fairfax has a piece on myths about obesity that is sensible and properly science-based, and which they are promoting in the banner area of the front page? Maybe there’s something to all this approaching-2012-apocalypso after all.

The layout is better in the dead-tree edition, where the SMH felt no need to illustrate it with a headless torso as they have done in the web version (at least it’s not an OMGDeathFatz headless torso this time).

Gary Egger and Sam Egger originally published a version of this article in Australian Family Physician, and the gist is this:

We assessed the best available evidence on weight loss and maintenance and used this to compile a 20-statement survey – with true or false responses – which we then gave to two groups of people: 173 GPs and 129 truck drivers and tradesmen.

We found doctors were almost as confused as truckies and tradies. The doctors disagreed with most of the supporting evidence on 40 per cent of our questions, the others on 49 per cent.

Another failing of the web edition is that it does not reproduce the table of results for the survey which is shown in the dead-tree edition. Here’s the data in the table seen in the dead-tree version reproduced manually using a spreadsheet:
Continue reading ‘Pinch me’

Not-so-evil internets: making kids better writers

Published
by
tigtog
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Education, Language, Parenting and Technology
. 47 Comments

Techdirt: Even More Research: Technology Is Making Kids Better Writers, Not Worse

Every few months or so, we read about some freaked out reporter/columnist/pundit/politician complaining about how the internet and texting are destroying kids’ ability to write. Yet, pretty much every study on the subject has found the opposite to be true. Study after study after study after study after study have all found that kids today are better writers than in the past.

Clive Thompson writes about even more research on the subject, talking to a professor who suggests that, rather than “the death of writing” this is a renaissance:

“I think we’re in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization.”

The studies indicate that because everyone is doing so much more writing in these computerised days, people generally are getting better at it (the next time you read some poor writing online, remember that without the internet they probably wouldn’t be reading recreationally at all, let alone writing). Not just that, kids who grow up doing it are even better at judging the different audiences for different communication styles and adjusting their writing to suit the perceived audience (aka the rhetorical skill of kairos).

There is an associated philosophical shift – more and more people are writing for an audience rather than writing as simple correspondents to the people they are engaging in discussion/debate – they know that many more people will read their words than just those directly involved. Indeed, one study reports that some college students are far less enthusiastic about class writing assignments because only the teacher will see the work.

Many commentors on the Techdirt post mention that their writing may have improved, but their penmanship has badly deteriorated since they switched to computers. I know that I can’t handwrite for very long any more without getting hand cramps, and I used to be one of those people that wrote pages and pages for essays in exams. Does anybody here still do lots of handwriting?

Some Alzheimer’s genes identified

Published
by
tigtog
5 months ago
in Language, Life and Medicine
. 17 Comments

It’s 16 years since the last genetic identification of Alzheimer’s factors. This is potentially huge, as at least 1 in 4 cases of Alzheimers are known to have a strong genetic component, and it has long been suspected that other gene clusters are very important factors in the development of the disease.

The most exciting part – two of the three genes found appear to be crucial in cleaning up the protein deposits that form a type of plaque in the brain which interferes with neuronal function in cases of Alzheimer’s Disease. i.e. it could be possible to devise a form of gene therapy for people currently showing signs and symptoms of Alzheimer’s.

But even before such therapies can be developed, people who know/believe that they have a genetic predisposition to Alzheimer’s can look to other strategies to manage their risk –
Continue reading ‘Some Alzheimer’s genes identified’

Vale Ted Kennedy

Published
by
tigtog
5 months, 2 weeks ago
in History, Life and USA
. 82 Comments
Senator Ted Kennedy, 1932-2009

Senator Edward Kennedy, 1932-2009

Since there’s already been a few off topic comments on other threads, here’s a dedicated one so you can keep it all in one place.

There’s little doubt that had he survived a little longer, he would have made sure that he was in the Senate to vote for the Obama administration’s healthcare reform legislation, even if they needed to wheel him in strapped to a gurney. Given the way that debate is going, his vote could well be crucial, and now it will be handed to a gubernatorial appointee. What else will change without his voice in Congress?

Pet historical peeve: why are so many news reports saying the he entered the Senate/politics after JFK’s assassination? He entered the Senate in 1962, having won a special election for the seat once held by JFK before he resigned it to become president. He was too young in 1960 to be constitutionally eligible for the Senate, so he had to wait until 1962.

Video Of The Day: from The Onion on Google and privacy

Published
by
tigtog
5 months, 3 weeks ago
in Ethics and The Web
. 4 Comments


Google Opt Out Feature Lets Users Protect Privacy By Moving To Remote Village


There’s been a slew of articles lately about Google and privacy, and recently one about Google monstering poor little media conglomerates. Just paranoia (or competitors panic-mongering), or is there a legitimate concern regarding a looming information monopoly?

Jeff Jarvis offers a non-Google-specific differing view on the whole principle of privacy in Transparency benefits us all, even when it hurts: Continue reading ‘Video Of The Day: from The Onion on Google and privacy’

Vale Les Paul

Published
by
tigtog
5 months, 4 weeks ago
in Life and Music
. 38 Comments

les_paul

There will be tributes all over the web for the next few days. Would rock music as we now know it be even possible without his perfecting of the solid-body electric guitar?

Please link to the best tributes you come across in comments below, or name (and ideally link to a video of) your favourite riff or solo played on a Les Paul guitar (Gibson Goldtop not compulsory).

Elsewhere: Tim Dunlop

Well now, there’s a surprise

Published
by
tigtog
5 months, 4 weeks ago
in Health and Medicine
. 36 Comments

The AMA is opposed to a pharmacy chain’s plan to provide walk-in clinics staffed by nurse practitioners.

How much of this objection is being fueled by the fairly obvious prediction that a lot of people off sick from work would rather spend the minimum of time outside a comfy bed and would be willing to pay out of their own pocket to be quickly seen by a nurse practitioner to get that employer-required medical certificate rather than wait for hours to see a GP? I can see how cutting into that particular income stream would be irksome, but being irked is not a sufficient reason to block an expansion of healthcare services.

The idea that nurse practitioners would necessarily miss things that a doctor would note and send on for further diagnosis strikes me as ridiculous. Nurse practitioners have a system of note taking that would uncover where a need for further tests and referral for a more specialist opinion were required, just like GPs do. The threshold of where in the diagnostic process the need for referral up the specialist chain was required probably would kick in at a slightly lower threshold for nurse practioners than for GPs, but the system for referring up the chain would be otherwise exactly the same. An entirely valid parallel system for feeding patients needing specialist care into the specialist system, in other words.

crossposted from Hoyden About Town

Yar

Published
by
tigtog
5 months, 4 weeks ago
in Ethics, International, Law and Politics
. 27 Comments

The Pirate Party has been officially registered in the UK and is thus now eligible to field candidates in elections.

That is all.

Where now for the CPRS?

Published
by
tigtog
6 months ago
in Climate change, Environment and Government
. 74 Comments

So, the Greens aren’t too sad that the Rudd government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) was blocked in the Senate – indeed they were a key component of that blocking. From the GreensMPs website:

“The collapse of the Continue Polluting Regardless Scheme provides Australia with a great opportunity to move ahead with ambitious action on the climate crisis,” Australian Greens Deputy Leader, Senator Christine Milne, said.

“The CPRS would have locked in failure on the climate crisis with its inexcusably weak emissions target and its $16 billion handout to polluters. Three in four Australians support the Greens’ decision to reject the bill if the Government refused to toughen it up.

“The collapse of the CPRS opens the door to a suite of other measures that can be implemented immediately, before an amended CPRS returns to the Parliament, in order to begin reducing Australia’s emissions without delay.”

The Greens are probably mostly correct that the proposed measures were too timid, but was their strategy of blocking this bill in hopes of getting a more effective one the right strategic choice? Xenophon agrees with them that the targets were too low, with extra opprobrium for what he considers unnecessarily expensive plans.

Family First’s Fielding voted with the Greens to block because he still isn’t convinced that human activity is causing global warming at all. (Question for the Senator: is it possible for humans to ameliorate the effects of phenomena they don’t actually cause? e.g. floods, fires, earthquakes? Yes? Why not do something in this situation then?) The Senate Nationals seem to be of the same mind.

So now the Government have to turn to the Senate Liberals to get this bill through, and those Senators appear to favour waiting to see what the rest of the world has to say in Copenhagen (at the U.N. Climate Change Conference) rather than have Australia show any initiative in implementing our own effective scheme.

So there’s two camps of people standing on separate principles arguing that the CPRS was wrong wrongitty wrong either because it gutlessly didn’t do enough to make a difference or was recklessly diverting scarce resources into a non-existent problem, while various pragmatists are mourning a lost opportunity to at least take a first step in cutting emissions. What can we expect regarding emissions targets now?

One for the WTF files: SMH cartoon on QANTAS “overbooked babies” error

Published
by
tigtog
6 months, 1 week ago
in Activism, Feminism, Law and Media
. 71 Comments

WTF SMH? WTF Simon Letch?

Screen capture from SMH

Screen capture from SMH - 6-08-2009_3-52-40PM

Why represent women planning to engage in political action as smugglers? In their underwear? And barefoot?

What the hell is your point? That women are being treated like they should be barefoot and in the kitchen and not engaging in political activity when corporations can torpedo their plans for protest with a “computer says no” response? Hey, that might be a good point. Shame that the news story underneath just mentions a “national homebirth rally” without any description of what the government is planning to do that has instigated the protests.

So, if that was the possibly useful point of your cartoon, then why dilute that by showing a woman as someone wanting to smuggle infants clandestinely instead of travelling openly as the carer of an infant? And then dilute it even further by engaging in casual sexualisation with the underwear? Could you have trivialised this whole issue more if you’d employed a thinktank to brainstorm it with you?

Also, to all the other sub-editors engaging in headlines about tantrums and dummy spits? Continue reading ‘One for the WTF files: SMH cartoon on QANTAS “overbooked babies” error’

Utegate in LOLcats!

Published
by
tigtog
7 months, 1 week ago
in Blogging, Levity and Politics
. 7 Comments

For anyone who hasn’t been quite sure of exactly what went down in Parliament over the last few weeks, check out the fine summary of Bekk’s brilliant LOLcat epic: Utegate as told by LOLcats

Below is just one sample image:

Tip o’ the tweet to @flopearedmule

(crossposted from Hoyden)

SF Saturday: Recommended reading for a teen boy?

Published
by
tigtog
8 months, 1 week ago
in Books, Writers & Writing and Technology
. 97 Comments

FoxBase Alpha, originally uploaded by RobWMy son is currently absolutely fascinated by the idea of space propulsion systems and orbital habitats. He has just possibly been playing too much Halo.

He’s full of questions and schemes for writing his own stories/future world. He’s got to the point where he’s rapidly out-pacing the knowledge of two admitted SF-geek parents about these things, because we’re not totally immersed in that tech. We thought Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey might be a good start, just because the tech described is generally thought to be within realistic bounds for this century sometime.

What would readers recommend as some of the best novels out there that actually deal with the hard science of space travel, and that are still a rattling good read?