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I was wondering when we'd reach the point where the accumulation of knowledge available in any given field exceeded the ability of the human mind to completely grasp in a useful manner.

In medicine, that point was reached many years ago, but few care to admit it:

"To estimate the time that it might take a new entrant to the subspecialty [echocardiography] to read all the previous literature, we assumed that he or she could read five papers an hour (one every 10 minutes, followed by a break of 10 minutes) for eight hours a day, five days a week, and 50 weeks a year; this gives a capacity of 10 000 papers in one year. Reading all papers referring to echocardiography (search 1) would take 11 years and 124 days, by which time at least 82142 more papers would have been added, accounting for another eight years and 78 days. Before our recruit could catch up and start to read new manuscripts published the same day, he or she would - if still alive and even remotely interested - have read 408 049 papers and devoted (or served a sentence of) 40 years and 295 days. On the positive side, our recruit would finish just in time to retire."

Fraser AG, Dunstan FD. On the impossibility of being expert. BMJ. 341(dec14 1):c6815-c6815. http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c6815

BTW, here's something a little more recent(2011).

Studies reported a wide range of different populations, interventions and outcomes which preclude an overall synthetic meta-analysis. Preliminary data from prospective studies show an association between low vitamin D levels and subsequent depressive symptoms. Data from trials are mixed, with the largest RCT showing no beneficial effect of supplementation on depressive symptoms, while most smaller studies (6/9) show a positive effect of vitamin D supplementation on depressive symptoms, indicating likely publication bias.

Conclusions There is limited research on the role of vitamin D to reduce depressive symptoms and it currently provides a mixed picture â" it is likely that more research will be needed.

This kind of thing happens all the time in science. A hypothesis gets popular, a bunch of small labs test it out. Only the labs who get positive results publish, so it looks like there's a lot of supporting data for the hypothesis. That leads to larger grants for larger labs to study the issue. These larger studies are more rigorous, and they fail to replicate the results found by smaller labs.

This is how nonsense like vitamin C for colds gets perpetuated. People swear by it, but it does nothing. I see no reason to believe that vitamin D for depression will be any different.

The real reason to be cautious (read: refuse) routine influenza vaccination is the risk of acquiring Guillain Barre syndrome. This disabling neurological disease has been linked with several batches of flu vaccines, in 1976 and possibly in 2009. In the 2009 analysis, the unadjusted risk ratio was 2.8-fold, but after statistical "adjustment" it fell to a less significant number. The sources for these are, respectively, the US CDC and the British Medical Journal. There is chatter in the lay press about absence of risk, but these sources are as reliable as one can get.

As a health care worker, I can tell you that all of the consent forms I have been offered with the vaccine mention this possibility (sometimes couched in terms that are not meaningful unless you already know), and that none of the hospital executives I have asked have been willing to indemnify the recipient against this risk.

The bottom line question is therefore: if the risk of acquiring this life-changing disease from routine vaccination is in fact not increased, and if mandatory vaccination of health care workers is in the public interest, why would an indemnification fund not be established to care for all vaccinated individuals who acquire Guillain Barre syndrome? Yes, there are spontaneous cases, but at least in the USA the government provides hemodialysis for everyone who acquires kidney failure. Given that precedent, the vaccination issue is easily resolved. Oh, wait, there is a budget deficit....

Following links several layers down from the original article lead to this one that cites the doubling :
http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e536

This article is from 2012, so not part of the analysis from the other paper listed that is from 1999.. But as both analyze the results of previously performed studies one meta-analysis of another meta-analysis might not have been appropriate anyway. They do come up with different conclusions. As the one linked to here is from a decade later that the other one, it may be that it is bases on studies done after the the other paper was published.

Starches break down to glucose. sugar (sucrose) breaks down to fructose and glucose. Glucose can be used by most of the cells in the body. Fructose is mainly processed by the liver (a few other things can use it). Again calories are not all the same.

It is easier to get a fatty liver from consuming sucrose or fructose (or alcohol for that matter), than from consuming starch (which is still harmful in excess). http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Heart_Letter/2011/September/abundance-of-fructose-not-good-for-the-liver-heart
You are more likely to get gout too: http://www.bmj.com/content/336/7639/309

If you don't have an active lifestyle consuming lots of starch is likely bad for you, but consuming lots of sugar or fructose is a lot worse.

For a similar serving, spaghetti has about the same glycemic index as apples, for double the carbs, and pasta is low fructose. So if it weren't for the other nutrients eating al-dente spaghetti (GI goes up if you over-boil ;) ) would be healthier than apples- especially since you only need to eat half the amount for the same calories. And if you can get similar nutrients from other sources (berries) you can skip the apples. Apples aren't that nutritious a food. Even potatoes are more nutritious. If you want a lower glycemic index for your potato - consume them cold ( https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/25731/1/Kinnear_Tara_S_201011_MAST_thesis.pdf ). Then you end up with more resistant starch (however that may make you fart more ;) ). Or switch to yam/sweet potatoes.

For reference: http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Glycemic_index_and_glycemic_load_for_100_foods.htm

A regular DNA test has about 1/10000 success rate, but I would think that one can run a more thorough test (for a cost) that is much more precise than that. DNA doesn't have that collision rate.

That's the theoretical rate based on calculating the genetics of the population; it assumes that you run the scan perfectly. In fact labs make mistakes and cross contamination happens. This is something where the basic principle of science; actually do the experiment and see; must override the theory.

When people actually the lab error rate for genetic tests they get numbers like 1.7 in 1000 measured false positive rate. If you know a set of results where independent blind testing of the Dutch police DNA system has returned better results, please point to your peer reviewed study which shows so. I believe that most police labs aren't even subject to blind testing, so an even higher error rate should be expected.

Part of the problem with this sort of thing isn't just that it only works when it isn't widely known. Even if it is only marginally known, it will make criminals take security systems (even real ones) less seriously because they know there's a decent chance the system is fake. Since there's evidence that criminals already have poorer impulse control and less are less risk averse than the general population http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/294626-overview, http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/71/6/720.full, http://web.utk.edu/~wneilson/EcLett-Crime.pdf, this is likely to make them more likely to break in general. This will make alarm systems be less effective deterrents. Essentially this is very close to defecting in the n-player version of the prisoner's dilemma.

Even if it does deter people, it could easily lead to more and more intimidation required to get criminals to take the threat seriously, which could lead to an arms race of ridiculous looking security measures. Overall, this seems socially irresponsible.

Abstract
Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus' health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.

Here's the link to make sure you don't think I am just a troll

Not saying the U.S. system is better (I just lost all my savings paying my wife's health costs) but I'm not sure if I ever wish to be treated in an NHS hospital.

If a UK citizen wanted to piss away their life savings on healthcare, they could do just that, as private healthcare is also available in the UK. It's very cheap too, as it has to compete with the NHS and out culture isn't (yet) as litigious.

In any case, medical error is responsible for between 44,000 and 98,000 deaths in the US every year, so there would be plenty of fodder for a US version of the Daily Fail.

I am unhappy to see such a low-quality reference for this article, when the official press release from the journal is available and the full article itself are available online and

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial License, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non commercial and is otherwise in compliance with the license. See

Most of the objections raised in the comments above are answered in the article, which looks to me to be about as high quality as is possible given the differences between the treatments used. Making accusations of "lying" before you have read the full article is unethical.

The main weakness pointed out by the authors was that the compliance with the treatment protocols was reported by the adolescent participants, not by the machines or the professionals providing the treatment. Another was that some 13% of the participants who were supposed to receive treatment as usual were merely put on waiting lists, although that may be treatment as usual in some places; but the real kicker here was that excluding them made the treatment as usual even less effective! There have been plenty of previous studies comparing treatment with non-treatment that find treatment more effective, but testing treatments for depression is very tricky because pretty much anything is beneficial, even telling people they are taking part in an experiment and then doing nothing else, but this article reports “[w]e have carried out two small studies of computerised interventions for depressive symptoms; one showed a significant effect compared with placebo and the other was significantly more effective than a waitlist control.”

I know it is futile to ask people to read an article before they comment on it, and I know it is equally futile to ask people who submit articles such as this to post links to original articles instead of second or third sources, but here goes: If you are submitting an article about an article in a scientific journal, please include a link to the original article in the original journal instead of a newspaper article based on a press release announcing the publication of the article. Thank you. And if you are drinking from the Firehose and come across something like this, at least vote it down, and better yet, submit a better article to replace it.

I am unhappy to see such a low-quality reference for this article, when the official press release from the journal is available and the full article itself are available online and

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial License, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non commercial and is otherwise in compliance with the license. See

Most of the objections raised in the comments above are answered in the article, which looks to me to be about as high quality as is possible given the differences between the treatments used. Making accusations of "lying" before you have read the full article is unethical.

The main weakness pointed out by the authors was that the compliance with the treatment protocols was reported by the adolescent participants, not by the machines or the professionals providing the treatment. Another was that some 13% of the participants who were supposed to receive treatment as usual were merely put on waiting lists, although that may be treatment as usual in some places; but the real kicker here was that excluding them made the treatment as usual even less effective! There have been plenty of previous studies comparing treatment with non-treatment that find treatment more effective, but testing treatments for depression is very tricky because pretty much anything is beneficial, even telling people they are taking part in an experiment and then doing nothing else, but this article reports “[w]e have carried out two small studies of computerised interventions for depressive symptoms; one showed a significant effect compared with placebo and the other was significantly more effective than a waitlist control.”

I know it is futile to ask people to read an article before they comment on it, and I know it is equally futile to ask people who submit articles such as this to post links to original articles instead of second or third sources, but here goes: If you are submitting an article about an article in a scientific journal, please include a link to the original article in the original journal instead of a newspaper article based on a press release announcing the publication of the article. Thank you. And if you are drinking from the Firehose and come across something like this, at least vote it down, and better yet, submit a better article to replace it.

The cited article is not informative. Read the original source at http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e2598
It answers most of the questions in the comments.
You can view the trailer or learn more about the game as such at http://www.sparx.org.nz/

I think you have it for life if you have aquired it, but for type 2 diabetes, loosing weight (and exercising) is the primary treatment, and according to the widely used Norwegian Electronic Doctor's Manual (NEL) almost all cases can be prevented by preventing obesity (: They reference an article here, amongst others, for this claim. The goals of therapy is stated to be to reduce the condition to a non-symptomatic one if possible, and this is what weight loss and exercise seems to achieve (but medicines might also help, and acute cases needs medical intervention).

Regarding weight loss as treatment, I'm not sure if this resource is available for free everywhere, but it's also clearly stated here and here. Wikipedia also references an article on this.

That's of course not to mention all those other things that a healthy diet and working out does for your body. Seems like an attractive package for just about everyone (:

The JME isn't an Australian journal, it's published here at the British Medical Journal. One of our most widely publicised articles in fact (yes I do work at the BMJ as a developer). You can read the editor's response here as to why it was published.

Conclusion: Our results suggest that feet are impenetrable to the alcohol component of vodka. We therefore conclude that the Danish urban myth of being able to get drunk by submerging feet in alcoholic beverages is just that; a myth. The implications of the study are many though.

It's not that simple. Research is showing a correlation to the large number of vaccines as a child and autism. We don't know for sure.

Horseshit.

The doctor who made that claim has been shown as being fraudulent.

There is simply no reputable evidence to believe this. But it's still propagated by people who refuse to accept that the evidence was fabricated -- but now that people believe it, you can't get rid of it.

On the other hand, the French eat a lot of fat and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or the Americans.

Myth, for what it's worth (and I know it was a joke). It turned out to be due to under-reporting of heart attacks by French doctors.

No, that was debunked. There is no real evidence that saturated fat causes heart disease. It's not a paradox.

The effect of the under-reporting is small, but if you look at the correlation between heart attack rates and the relevant fat intakes then a small effect is all that's needed to bring the correlation into line with the rest of the world. I wish it were true that "[t]here is no real evidence that saturated fat causes heart disease", but sadly that's just wishful thinking. The French case actually reinforces this, because it shows that the causal model has predictive power; that's good science.

On the other hand, the French eat a lot of fat and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or the Americans.

Myth, for what it's worth (and I know it was a joke). It turned out to be due to under-reporting of heart attacks by French doctors.

No, that was debunked. There is no real evidence that saturated fat causes heart disease. It's not a paradox.

"Fact: Speed, 35 in a 25, 50 in a 40, is not necessarily the major factor in accidents."

Citation, please? The sources I find claim that there are substantial differences in safety for pedestrians hit at 20, 25, 30, and 35mph, never mind the ability of the pedestrian and driver to avoid the crash in the first place when lower speed allows more time to avoid the collision. Yeah, I know, you said "not necessarily", weasel words to make your claim actually content-free and uncontradictable.

http://www.bmj.com/content/339/bmj.b4469.full
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8406569.stm
http://www.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/research/pub/hs809012.html

Interesting that you should bring up New Hampshire. They offer the option to trade your own convenience for your own (alleged) risk; they are not offering you the option to trade on someone else's risk. They're not encouraging antisocial behavior.

Eat enough legumes (the seeds/bean part) raw and there's a good chance of death.

Yes, but the topic was grains.

It's more nutritive to let a ruminant eat the grasses/grains and then eat the ruminant (not to mention the energy and input costs involved with industrial crop growing).

This is an utterly ridiculous statement. In terms of dry mass, the Feed conversion ratio of ruminants is about a factor 30 when going from grain to meat. So instead of not utilizing 1% of the grain, you throw away 97%.

Gliadin, a gluten protein and the cause of celiac disease, is an indigestible protein that ... causing inflammation, even in non-celiac individuals.

The wikipedia article on Gliadin does not state that it is indigestible, only that it is not attacked by stomach acids. From the Triticae glutens article, I get the impression that certain forms of gliadin (a small fraction of the gluten) are indigestible, but then, nutritional fiber is also indigestible, so that isn't really a problem. The article on celiac.com is written by an editor. The abstract of the original article, Gut 2007;56:889-890 doi:10.1136/gut.2006.118265 does not make strong statements about the health implications of non-CD individuals, other than " we hypothesise that the innate response is common in patients with and without CD, whereas the adaptive response is exclusive of susceptible patients with CD." (we hypothesize = not confirmed by the study)

Here's a good sumary of the trouble with eating high amounts of carbohydrates.

No scientific studies cited. I see various links to other blogs; links to FDA and the American Diabetis Association are called "our government suggests" and "mainstream opinion", as if that makes them untrustworthy. Why should I believe an arbitrary blogger's theory?

A high omega 6/3 fats ratio in the diet promotes many diseases and should be avoided.

OK, this is a scientific paper (and I didn't see it refuted from a quick google). Interesting; I din't know that there was such a difference between unsaturated fatty acids.

The pesticides, fungicides, antibiotics, colouring, preservatives, etc., present are obviously not good for you.

I could agree with you on the first three, but not on the latter two. For the colorants one could say that they don't serve a real purpose (so why take the risk), but I'd say food preservatives have made food a whole lot safer by preventing spoilage of otherwise perishable products.

There's a theory that some chronic back pain is due to low-virulent bacterial infection, and you can cure it with a course of the right antibiotics: http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/42/12/969.full

I won't be surprised if that's true. Periodontal bacteria has been linked to heart disease, and antibacterial mouthwash reduces the risk of preterm deliveries ( http://www.thehealthage.com/2011/02/anti-bacterial-mouthwash-reduces-risk-of-preterm-deliveries/ ).

It took a while for people to find out and prove that helicobacter pylori was responsible for many cases of chronic gastritis and gastric ulcers.

Not all bacteria are harmful and not in all cases. It can get quite complex - the same bacteria might be fine in one person or fine when with other bacteria. Nowadays some doctors are even resorting to fecal transplants to cure certain gastrointestinal problems: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/12/fecal-transplants-work/
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2011/10/31/fecal-transplants-have-the-ick-factor-but-research-suggests-they-work/

Hence many of these chronic problems actually being caused by bacteria or an imbalance in bacterial ecosystems would not be surprising to me.

I doesn't look very plausible to me that insurers are wary of people coming in 20 years and asking for compensation for their cancer, which they'll have a very tough time proving as caused by radioactivity

Judges are members of general public and not nuclear scientists (or statisticians for that matter). Being subjected to around 100mSv of ionising radiation increases your chances of developing cancer by around 9% (under the linear no threshold model, cumulative yearly exposure). All people have about 30% chance to develop cancer anyway. But it's a high number (higher that limits in nuclear industry) where everyone subjected to it would want compensation, were actually less than 9% of people are viable.

After http://www.bmj.com/content/331/7508/77?view=long&pmid=15987704

The confidence interval is wide, however, and findings are also compatible with no reduction, as well as with greater reductions[emphasis mine] of risk at low doses.

Correspondingly, Natonal Research Council http://wayback.archive.org/web/jsp/Interstitial.jsp?seconds=5&date=1183490379000&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nap.edu%2Fexecsumm_pdf%2F11340.pdf&target=http%3A%2F%2Fweb.archive.org%2Fweb%2F20070703191939%2Fhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.nap.edu%2Fexecsumm_pdf%2F11340.pdf writes:

According to Brenner and Elliston’s calculations, “a 45-year-old adult who plans to undergo 30 annual full-body CT examinations [about 360mSv total exposure] would potentially accrue an estimated lifetime cancer mortality risk of 1.9% (almost 1 in 50)

And later in paper suggest why LNT model is very probably wrong and why it is widely used.

I fail to see how solar captors on roofs or in the deserts shut down large extents of arable land.

Small installations have pitiful energy efficiency, especially for electricity generation, not every country has deserts to use as solar power plants (most of Europe doesn't). Suggesting that Europeans can use Sahara for this is a pipe dream to put it lightly, first we would have to move other nations from there... I don't say "abandon solar, it won't ever work", I say "Solar hasn't proven itself, it's immature technology, let's stop polluting with fossil and killing people with hydro, build nuclear instead while developing alternatives like fusion and solar". When we will have solar power plants that can average 90% load averaged over a year, we should stop building nuclear and go full solar (if it won't require obscene amounts of terrain).

Renewable energy never have benefited from such massive investments, which is too bad imho.

Maybe not, but renewable energy is a concept how old? 20 years? NP may have had huge public funding in the past, but are you telling me that we should waste it just because there is a possibility that in future we will have better alternatives? We should be closing fossil fuel power plants now (because of many reasons). The only power source viable to replace them without endangering or outright killing thousands of people every year is, perhaps counter-intuitively, nuclear.

However we've been inches from a major disaster, and you're advocating multiplying the existing nuclear reactors park a hundred-fold

Bear in mind that Fukushima was a very old design and that we already produce well over 10% of global electricity with nuclear. If we had increased 100 fold the number of reactors we have, we would have more than 4 times the total energy we need (including petrol for cars, coal for heating, etc.). H

And that's leaving out psychosis altogether.

http://www.bmj.com/content/330/7481/11

Prospective cohort study of cannabis use, predisposition for psychosis, and psychotic symptoms in young people
Conclusion: Cannabis use moderately increases the risk of psychotic symptoms in young people but has a much stronger effect in those with evidence of predisposition for psychosis.

That's geopolitical consultant, you insensitive clod ;-). Pushing for the downfall of a superpower so you can flood a desperate, depressed region with tobacco - you've got to hand it to her, she's worse than any fictional supervillain.

Ken Clarke's achievement is almost more disturbing, as he went from being a pro-tobacco health secretary (the competition in the NHS which the BMA have just spoken up against, again, started with him) to 10 years as a director of British-American Tobacco before making a return into today's government. The only problem he had with Thatcher was that he never had the chance to take over her position. Some people regard him as a more moderate and reasonable Tory; I regard him as one of the most clever but most nasty.

Indeed, I work for the BMJ, and we're all about evidence-based medicine - it's quite alarming to realise just how much medicine is only a step up from received wisdom and folklore.

I think a lot of people would be surprised to know that he's been on something of an anti-vaccination crusade, especially when it comes to flu shots.

The threat from influenza is overstated,and according to the available evidence flu vacccines are not useful for the general population or for the elderly. (There may be a benefit for the immune-compromised.) That makes widespread flu vaccination at best a waste of resources, at worst an exposure to risk of various side-effects without gain.

Understanding this is not not the same as being opposed to vaccinations against more deadly diseases. I never get a flu shot; but I got my Tdap booster a few months ago. And even though it made me feel like crap for a day or two, for serious diseases like tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis it's worth the risk of a reaction.

He basically is of the position that the whole campaign to inoculate people against H1N1 is in and of itself a conspiracy.

The WHO actually changed the definition of a pandemic in May 2009 so that H1N1 would qualify, removing the qualification that an outbreak must cause "enormous numbers of deaths and illness". And it estimated that 2 billion H1N1 cases were likely -- 1 out of 3 human beings on the whole planet -- even after the winter season in Australia and New Zealand showed that only about one to two out of 1000 people were infected.

It did this while taking advice from people with financial and research ties with Big Pharma companies that produced antivirals and vaccines; one researcher who wrote key guidelines had been paid by Roche and GlaxoSmithKline.

There is definitely questionable behavior, conflict of interest, and lack of transparency here. Business as usual for Big Pharma.

You certainly ought to get kids vaccinated again polio, MMR, and other real threats for which effective vaccines are available. Influenza, however does not appear to fit into that category.

I think a lot of people would be surprised to know that he's been on something of an anti-vaccination crusade, especially when it comes to flu shots.

The threat from influenza is overstated,and according to the available evidence flu vacccines are not useful for the general population or for the elderly. (There may be a benefit for the immune-compromised.) That makes widespread flu vaccination at best a waste of resources, at worst an exposure to risk of various side-effects without gain.

Understanding this is not not the same as being opposed to vaccinations against more deadly diseases. I never get a flu shot; but I got my Tdap booster a few months ago. And even though it made me feel like crap for a day or two, for serious diseases like tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis it's worth the risk of a reaction.

He basically is of the position that the whole campaign to inoculate people against H1N1 is in and of itself a conspiracy.

The WHO actually changed the definition of a pandemic in May 2009 so that H1N1 would qualify, removing the qualification that an outbreak must cause "enormous numbers of deaths and illness". And it estimated that 2 billion H1N1 cases were likely -- 1 out of 3 human beings on the whole planet -- even after the winter season in Australia and New Zealand showed that only about one to two out of 1000 people were infected.

It did this while taking advice from people with financial and research ties with Big Pharma companies that produced antivirals and vaccines; one researcher who wrote key guidelines had been paid by Roche and GlaxoSmithKline.

There is definitely questionable behavior, conflict of interest, and lack of transparency here. Business as usual for Big Pharma.

You certainly ought to get kids vaccinated again polio, MMR, and other real threats for which effective vaccines are available. Influenza, however does not appear to fit into that category.

I'd love to see definite proof of Wakefield being yet another pseudo-scientist

It's not that he's a pseudoscientist: many pseudoscientists are sincere but misguided. Wakefield FABRICATED EVIDENCE to MAKE MONEY. But here's your proof: it's long, but as you say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5347.full
http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5258.full

I'd love to see definite proof of Wakefield being yet another pseudo-scientist

It's not that he's a pseudoscientist: many pseudoscientists are sincere but misguided. Wakefield FABRICATED EVIDENCE to MAKE MONEY. But here's your proof: it's long, but as you say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5347.full
http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5258.full

Take a look at what happened in Australia when guns were banned.

What? Gun nuts produced far more FUD about banning guns? Or where the previous ten years before the ban there were 13 mass killings, and there were NONE in the ten years after?

I find it interesting that one of the local TV station's call letters in Tucson is "KGUN".

Too bad the Fox News crowd and other right wing paranoid freak tea baggers can't figure out that there are far more people killed in the United States by gun toting fools than any "terrorist" could ever hope to match. Since 9/11, there have been tens of thousands killed in gun violence in the United States (over 90,000 firearms related murders when extrapolated over nine and a half years). Maybe these idiots should recognize that gun violence needs far more attention than plane passengers X-rayed crotches. Seriously, there are third world countries that are far safer to live the United States. You are far less likely to die from a gun crime related death in Israel (even from terrorism... even from bombs... even surrounded by enemies) than you are in the United States. Idiots like you are the reason so many people die. You stick your head in the sand whenever the truth about firearms is mentioned.

If you want to protect your country from the government join the army... it is made up of normal citizens who are just as patriotic as anyone else, and who want the best for their country.

My GOD! Go to the top of this thread you idiot. http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5347.full The side with a lack of facts is the side that made this lie up about vaccines causing autism.

Here's Brian Deer's publication at the British Medical Journal. Although lengthy (and apparently the first of a series to come), it has a lot of critical details about how this was fixed. It also has 124 citations through the article -- now that's journalism! This guy tracked down subjects all the way over in the United States:

Child 11 was among the eight whose parents apparently blamed MMR. The interval between his vaccination and the first "behavioural symptom" was reported as 1 week. This symptom was said to have appeared at age 15 months. But his father, whom I had tracked down, said this was wrong. "From the information you provided me on our son, who I was shocked to hear had been included in their published study," he wrote to me, after we met again in California, "the data clearly appeared to be distorted." He backed his concerns with medical records, including a Royal Free discharge summary. Although the family lived 5000 miles from the hospital, in February 1997 the boy (then aged 5) had been flown to London and admitted for Wakefield’s project, the undisclosed goal of which was to help sue the vaccine's manufacturers.

Sadly, CNN couldn't even bother to have a single citation to the actual source text that is uncovering this. Of course they have all sorts of links internal to their site ... gotta keep those page clicks up, don't want eyeballs over at the BMJ.

Don Imus' wife has been beating this junk science trashcan lid for years, and making loads of money off of the Wakefield fraud too. If anybody listens to that show I am curious to know if it was mentioned.

Child 11 was among the eight whose parents apparently blamed MMR. The interval between his vaccination and the first "behavioural symptom" was reported as 1 week. This symptom was said to have appeared at age 15 months. But his father, whom I had tracked down, said this was wrong.

"From the information you provided me on our son, who I was shocked to hear had been included in their published study," he wrote to me, after we met again in California, "the data clearly appeared to be distorted."

He backed his concerns with medical records, including a Royal Free discharge summary. Although the family lived 5000 miles from the hospital, in February 1997 the boy (then aged 5) had been flown to London and admitted for Wakefield’s project, the undisclosed goal of which was to help sue the vaccine's manufacturers.

Sadly, CNN couldn't even bother to have a single citation to the actual source text that is uncovering this. Of course they have all sorts of links internal to their site ... gotta keep those page clicks up, don't want eyeballs over at the BMJ.

Here's a link to the paper in the British Medical Journal, complete with pictures!

Funnily enough, that's almost an identical list to the off-duty doctor who relieved a pneumothorax on a plane a few years back. Basically, a passenger suffered a collapsed lung - pressure in the chest cavity was building up, stopping the lung expanding, it can happen when there's a change in pressure.

He used vodka to sterilise the chest and equipment, cut into the chest and used a urinary catheter, plus a wire coathanger to jam it into the cavity. A condom with the closed end cut off (ie a cylinder of latex) was attached to the end of the tube and dunked in a bottle of water to create a one-way valve, allowing the air to escape without reintroducing it or any bacteria (hopefully).

True story, great hack. Saved the guy's life. Citation.

The only possible reason you've heard

absolutely no science to back that statement up.

is either because you are deaf, dumb, or lazy. The research is pretty clear. Flying causes skin cancer, but has little to no effect on the incidence of other kinds of cancer. Thirty seconds of google-fu brings up:

http://www.cancerhelp.org.uk/about-cancer/cancer-questions/airline-staff-and-cancer

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC124549/

http://oem.bmj.com/content/57/3/175.abstract

From the other poster who replied to my post:

http://jech.bmj.com/content/60/11/910.extract

Over the past 150 years, the age of puberty onset has fallen substantially across many developed countries. Although trends are apparent in both sexes,1 the evidence in females (where biological markers are clearer) suggests that, for instance, in northern Europe the age at menarche (first menstruation) fell during the 1800s, then further reduced by up to 3 years over the last century (fig 1). Factors contributing to this fall include a combination of public health successes and changes in social structures. Thus, successes such as improved childhood nutrition and health status through reduction in childhood infections have been major factors accelerating the onset of puberty

so unless you're very old it shouldn't be that noticeable.

Actually, there are significant concerns about early puberty. For example just one reasonable reference in a quick search.

Lots of potential boogey men here but it does seem to be a real phenomenon.

Wearing a cycle helmet may increase your risk of a collision, because drivers leave less of a gap when overtaking cyclists with helmets than those without.

Research

Robinson shows that, despite significant increases in helmet-wearing, there was no greater improvement in cycle safety than for pedestrian safety over the same period. On the other hand, there were substantial reductions in cycle use, amounting to a significant loss of the health and other benefits of cycling. Robinson says: "This contradiction may be due to risk compensation, incorrect helmet wearing, reduced safety in numbers (injury rates per cyclist are lower when more people cycle), or bias in case control studies."

Research

Paul Hewson finds no detectable relationship between helmet-rates and on-road cycle safety in Great Britain. A second article, also by Hewson (this one published in Accident Analysis and Prevention journal), reaches the same conclusion for child cyclists. Hewson emphasises that this doesn’t necessarily mean that helmets are ineffective; an alternative explanation is that there might be some benefits for particular groups and/or for particular types of cycling, and he points out that his own data cover on-road cycling only. However, he also argues that road safety professionals have no grounds for being involved in helmet promotion, given the lack of detectable benefits for on-road cyclists.

Research

A report on children’s cycling from the National Children’s Bureau includes a very useful appendix surveying the literature on helmets. It states, “Those of us who cycle should be under no illusion that helmets offer reliable protection in crash situations where our lives may be in danger. Neither should we believe that widespread adoption of helmet wearing would see many fewer cyclists killed or permanently disabled. The evidence so far suggests otherwise.”

[The citation is currently unavailable]

You will be able to find counter views, but don't accuse me of being a neo-con just because I demonstrated the law of unintended consequences by citing research concerning cycling helmets. I'm sure you look like a twat wearing yours and have spent years explaining to colleagues and friends how your brain is now invincible because you're wearing one, by way of justification.

In all seriousness, take care on the roads. I've got a 4x4 and sometimes you cyclists are difficult to see, even with your silly hats and high visibility pants.

Both my asthma and rhinitis are histamine responses, in particular by mast cells . Histamines trigger the inflammatory response, which is the immune system kicking in. IgE antibodies inspire the mast cell release, apparently, and I have IgE antibodies that are extremely sensitive to Eastern White Pine, English Plantain, and several other grasses and trees. Not so much ragweed, go figure.

I have particularly aggressive H1 receptors, which are primarily found (from Wikipedia) in "smooth muscle, endothelium, and central nervous system tissue"

Since these receptors are found in my lungs, in the brnchial tubes, it is rational to beleive that transplanting my lungs to someone else will give them my receptors. and since the receptors will generate histamine when triggered by allergens. And I would expect histamine to work the same in the recipient as it did in me, though I have not quite understood the role of IgE antibodies, and if they cause or are the result of the mast cell triggering. It is a safe bet that some of my antibodies will accompany a transplanted lung (or both), so the recipient will get some, and how those survive the transplant process is unknown to me.

BTW, the story is two years old...

The FDA frowns on off-label marketing:

There's a huge difference between off-label marketing and off-label use of a drug by a physician. Of course the FDA frowns on off-label marketing; the ability to market a drug for a particular use is precisely what FDA approval is for.

Whatever you're talking about is off point. And also wrong.

It's not off point at all. The parachute example is a well-known, satirical critique of evidence based medicine.

http://www.bmj.com/content/327/7429/1459.abstract

It's also not wrong. Yes, the first AIDS drug (AZT) was tested against placebo, and yes, later drugs are tested against other, existing drugs. But the presumption that Drug A is better than Drug B and Drug B was better than placebo therefore Drug A is better than placebo is not evidence-based medicine. That's the kind of intuitive assumption that evidence-based medicine proponents decry.

The point is that, ultimately, we can't base everything on randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind trials. The line gets drawn at various places, and that's actually okay.

You are correct that where there's evidence it should be used. And where a bad therapy is used despite evidence against it, we have malpractice suits and medical board disciplinary hearings to correct it.

But evidence-based medicine is not the be all and end all of medical care, nor can it be.

And there's evidence that there's often lots of financial incentive to go through the trouble:

Botox is a special case. The company that makes 90% of the stuff has kept the process of producing it a trade secret. Therefore, it has an ongoing financial incentive to make new uses. That is not the usual route for drugs, however. Once a generic is available there usually isn't a lot of incentive to go through the time-consuming, expensive process of FDA approval for a new indication, even if there are good studies supporting it.

Further, even if that were a counter-example (which it isn't), it's hardly evidence that there is 'often' a financial incentive to go through the trouble of getting FDA approval for a new use.

'Perhaps offering 25% of cuts will concentrate minds in these establishments on what is important for the tax-payer to fund and what is a frivolous waste of money.'

Whoosh! (or am I missing your irony?). That particular 'frivolous waste of money' is from the Christmas issue of the BMJ, where it's traditional to publish Ig Nobel-worthy studies of not exactly serious intent ('Methods: Three authors (DC, HJMacM, AP) searched the internet for episodes of soap operas shown in the United States in which a character was unconscious for at least 24 hours after an injury or medical event. The initial search strategy used Google, with the search terms "soap opera" and "unconscious" or "coma."').

See also:

http://www.bmj.com/content/331/7531/1498/reply

('The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute').

The year before they had an investigation into the psychology of Gollum:

http://www.bmj.com/content/329/7480/1435/reply

Somehow, I don't think a great deal of money was spent on these studies. Of course the specifics of the savage cuts the ConDem coalition has planned for us are likely to be based on an equally superficial reading of the situation, and their extent has as much to do with implementing a particular political agenda (deliberate decimation - in a more than Roman sense - of the public sector) as it has to do with genuine economic necessity. Excellent article here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/oct/02/john-lanchester-comprehensive-spending-review-george-osborne

'The idea is that instead of being grumpy that some of them have lost their jobs, everybody who is still in work will instead be grateful, relieved and suitably cowed. It will be a change in direction for the British state, and will give a clear way forward for the Conservative party as it returns to its traditional identity as the party of the smaller state. "If they can't do it now," a Tory friend told me, "when can they do it?" In other words, there will never be a more opportune moment for the party to set out its stall to cut spending. Hence the tearing-off-the-arm eagerness to seize the opportunity.'

Cuts are necessary, but at the proposed levels (several times worse than anything Margaret Thatcher dared to try) there's a very serious risk of creating a new, greatly extended recession, while incidentally destroying the public services that help hold the country together (not to mention damaging UK science for years to come).

'Perhaps offering 25% of cuts will concentrate minds in these establishments on what is important for the tax-payer to fund and what is a frivolous waste of money.'

Whoosh! (or am I missing your irony?). That particular 'frivolous waste of money' is from the Christmas issue of the BMJ, where it's traditional to publish Ig Nobel-worthy studies of not exactly serious intent ('Methods: Three authors (DC, HJMacM, AP) searched the internet for episodes of soap operas shown in the United States in which a character was unconscious for at least 24 hours after an injury or medical event. The initial search strategy used Google, with the search terms "soap opera" and "unconscious" or "coma."').

See also:

http://www.bmj.com/content/331/7531/1498/reply

('The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute').

The year before they had an investigation into the psychology of Gollum:

http://www.bmj.com/content/329/7480/1435/reply

Somehow, I don't think a great deal of money was spent on these studies. Of course the specifics of the savage cuts the ConDem coalition has planned for us are likely to be based on an equally superficial reading of the situation, and their extent has as much to do with implementing a particular political agenda (deliberate decimation - in a more than Roman sense - of the public sector) as it has to do with genuine economic necessity. Excellent article here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/oct/02/john-lanchester-comprehensive-spending-review-george-osborne

'The idea is that instead of being grumpy that some of them have lost their jobs, everybody who is still in work will instead be grateful, relieved and suitably cowed. It will be a change in direction for the British state, and will give a clear way forward for the Conservative party as it returns to its traditional identity as the party of the smaller state. "If they can't do it now," a Tory friend told me, "when can they do it?" In other words, there will never be a more opportune moment for the party to set out its stall to cut spending. Hence the tearing-off-the-arm eagerness to seize the opportunity.'

Cuts are necessary, but at the proposed levels (several times worse than anything Margaret Thatcher dared to try) there's a very serious risk of creating a new, greatly extended recession, while incidentally destroying the public services that help hold the country together (not to mention damaging UK science for years to come).

How does it affect the long-term health of the country? Are you saying that not £0.01p of the budget is wasted? Perhaps offering 25% of cuts will concentrate minds in these establishments on what is important for the tax-payer to fund and what is a frivolous waste of money.

Simon Singh is an idiot if he thinks he can make libellous comments about the BCA *without having the proof to back up what he says*. There is the concrete defence against libel cases in the UK - be able to prove what you say. Simple.

1) The judges ruled that Sing's comments fell under 'fair comment', an expression of his opinion that was allowed under freedom of expression, whether or not what he said was actually true. See http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2010/350.html

2) The BCA was asked to show the evidence it had that Sing was wrong - ie. that chiropractors could treat common childhood illnesses. The evidence was examined in the British Medical Journal and found to be a load of crap - half the studies they cited had nothing to do with chiropractic, they misrepresented the conclusions of others and the remaining had basic methodological errors making them invalid: http://www.bmj.com/content/339/bmj.b2766.full?view=long&pmid=19589818

So far from being an idiot Sing was proven completely right - not only he can make 'libellous' comments against chiropractic because of free speech laws but those comments were actually proven to be correct.

There have also been recent allegations that the WHO played up the dangerous nature of the H1N1 influenza virus (which got "pandemic" status) in order for some corporations to profit financially Pandemic, Scandal Allegations

any stats on suicide success rate in countries with lotsa guns vs countries with fewer guns ?

Suicide rates per 100,000, averaging male and female rates: UK 7.55, U.S. 10.55, India 10.65, China 13.9, Switzerland 18.25, Japan 25.3.

Guns per 100 residents: China 3.5, India 4.0, UK 5.6, Switzerland 46.0, U.S. 90.0. Japan's rate of firearms ownership is nearly nil.

(The numbers given are numbers of guns, not gun ownership rates; the U.S. number is distorted by ownership of multiple guns being common. 38% of households and 26% of individuals own at least one firearm.)

So, no, we do not have a higher suicide rate than countries with few guns. Try again.

someone with with a sudden yearning to die and a gun will probably shoot themselves.

You do not understand the nature of suicide. One does not take one's own life on a passing whim.

In Japan, despite the absence of guns, people manage to kill themselves highly effectively by jumping off high places or in front of trains.

Since dehydration is commonly regarded as the primary cause of a hangover (and is, in fact, the solvent which allows nutrients to be effective in the first place), I reject the results of their flawed study. They did not even attempt to test the effectiveness of re-hydration.

- that's your quote.

(just as a side note for various reasons I know something about re-hydration, and the most efficient way to do it is not with pure water, methodology also includes re-introducing electrolites. Yes, solutions of salts and sugars are used, not pure water, that's first.)

I don't see you understand that this study was comparison of many other studies done on the subject. If you think the water was not taken into consideration, you believe that everyone around you is so much dumber than you are, luckily, we will show how you are mistaken in this believe right now. The studies selected for comparison were the most significant, they were published, they had control groups

From the published article:
Table of studies that were compared in this study.

One of the included studies was published by Ylikahrij.

Pay attention: During the challenge the participants did not receive food but could drink water freely.

The other published by Kaivola. Pay attention:
Challenge was done in small groups; restrictions on non-alcoholic beverages and food intake not reported

Bogin: No analgesics or water were allowed after alcohol challenge

Muhonen: Participants were patients in hospital for detoxification

Laas: After alcohol challenge soft drinks, water, and a low fat lunch were offered; no caffeine intake

Wiesse: A meal was taken before alcohol challenge

Pittler: A meal was taken before alcohol challenge

Moesgaard: Participants were recruited at a private party; no restrictions on food and drink reported

---

In any case, you have not conducted an independent research on this matter, you are in fact refuting the findings that are not only reported by this particular comparison study, but by the underlying 8 other medical studies.

Out the the 15 studies that were considered, the above 8 were chosen because they were conducted in a manner compatible with a real study, it is discussed in the 'Methods' section of the publication.

You can go ahead and dismiss all of this work, cited above, the methods, the approaches, but you cannot seriously suggest that it is either trolling or redundant.

But you will, because you are trolling. Cheers, I am gonzo.

I will show in a second, but first: you are trolling because you have no information to refute the study, you did not conduct your own and did not publish it in a peer reviewed medical journal, and you will not be able to quote one that refutes this study. With these facts at hand, stating that you have the truth and that the truth is that this study is wrong, that's trolling.

In the Introduction section:

Other symptoms in varying combinations may include lightheadedness, nausea, and concentration difficulties. The symptoms seem to be due to a combination of ethanol's main metabolic product acetaldehyde, congeners including methanol, endocrine and immune system disturbances, dehydration, and sleep disturbance.1

From wikipedia (just for kicks)
As to the first question: Hypoglycemia, dehydration, acetaldehyde intoxication, and vitamin B12 deficiency are all theorized causes of hangover symptoms.

So for all of your blubbering about 'creating a straw man', you are the one who created one. The study is quite different from what you are making it out to be. You are not trolling? Well, if you think you are not, you are then deluded.

so we have conceded something now, you are saying it's not a troll but maybe redundant. I may agree that it could be redundant, but where one step was made towards understanding, more steps are possible.

Consider the following:
British Medical Journal published a review on hangover remedies by Max Pittler of the Peninsula Medical School at Exeter University.

It concludes No compelling evidence exists to suggest that any conventional or complementary intervention is effective for preventing or treating alcohol hangover. The most effective way to avoid the symptoms of alcohol induced hangover is to practice abstinence or moderation.

So let's see, a scientific review concludes that avoiding drinking is a good enough 'remedy against a hangover', but I, restating this in a story about discovering booze that supposedly does not lead to a hangover, am considered a troll or at best redundant?

Well then, many things in life could be considered just as redundant, for example your commentary on why my comment is a troll, after my comment is already moderated as one (and I did not ask for an explanation, we are on /., it is obvious that most moderators here are not really up to the job.)