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Resistance training leads to change in the nervous system, but possibly not in the brain. Relevant research

Err... I can't believe you're asking for citations? Really? I can understand some healthy skepticism but there are actually SCIENTIFIC PAPERS published on this. But, let me help you out... I searched first for "china scientific fraud" and found that there were papers on this subject but I clicked on the first, non-scientific, paper:

http://www.ibtimes.com/chinas-...

The money quote:

Just last month, BioMed Central, an open-access publisher based in Britain, retracted 43 papers, most of them from Chinese researchers, after discovering that reviewers who had supposedly signed off on the studies were made up by agencies hired by the original authors.

I liked their phrase better, so I searched for "china scientific credibility" and figured that I'd find you some more information though, to be honest, I've no idea why you want it as it's obvious you're not actually a scientist or following science with any great enthusiasm...

Here's one about the "credibility paradox" that China faces. Zhang is Chinese, by the way.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

It's so prolific that China had to BAN dishonesty in scientific research... Ban it, by law... They just banned it recently, as in very recently. Who knows if it has actually had any real-world results? I'm thinking that "probably not" is a good answer. That should not be misread to make it seem as if I'm claiming this research is fraudulent. See below as to why I'm a bit skeptical about it having any major, real-world, long-term, impact. The link to cite that for you too:

http://bigstory.ap.org/article...

It baffles me that you have no idea and would ask for citations. They've plagiarized a ton of stuff, fabricated stuff, and made stuff up out of whole cloth and, by most accounts, that's actually due to governmental pressures. Some are inclined to believe that it is cultural. Being a bit of a pragmatist, I don't see why it can't be both. However, that's not my area so I probably am not qualified to speculate as to the reasoning.

At any rate, WTF are you going to actually *do* with a citation? This is Slashdot, not Wikipedia, and you're not a scientist - I know because this is endemic across the entire board of studies, you'd know about it if you were a scientist or even just an enthusiast. Either way, there's a whole shit-ton more articles (and actual published research) on China's reputation in all things science.

Obviously, the NSA put a backdoor in the random number generator.

On a more serious note, people can be trained to flip coins.

Sorry, but the length guide is *not* sufficient.

While it's more specific than sequence homology predicts, it's less specific than the laser focus it's portrayed as having.

I understand the need to portray it as being as close to perfect as possible to preserve funding (and the research *should* be funded!), right now, the best method we have of ensuring that off-target mutations do not occur is via post-sequencing.

See these papers regarding "Dammit, I missed!":

New Sequencing Methods Reveal Off-Target Effects of CRISPR/Cas9
https://www.genomeweb.com/sequ...

Unbiased detection of off-target cleavage by CRISPR-Cas9 and TALENs using integrase-defective lentiviral vectors
http://www.nature.com/nbt/jour...

Analysis of off-target effects of CRISPR/Cas-derived RNA-guided endonucleases and nickases
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

CRISPR-Cas9 Specificity: Taming Off-target Mutagenesis
http://www.genecopoeia.com/res...

Digenome-seq: genome-wide profiling of CRISPR-Cas9 off-target effects in human cells
http://www.nature.com/nmeth/jo...

Quantifying on- and off-target genome editing
http://www.cell.com/trends/bio...

CRISPR/Cas9 Guide
https://www.addgene.org/CRISPR...
Salient quote: "The randomness of NHEJ-mediated DSB repair has important practical implications, because a population of cells expressing Cas9 and a gRNA will result in a diverse array of mutations (for more information, jump to Plan Your Experiment). In most cases, NHEJ gives rise to small InDels in the target DNA which result in in-frame amino acid deletions, insertions, or frameshift mutations leading to premature stop codons within the open reading frame (ORF) of the targeted gene. Ideally, the end result is a loss-of-function mutation within the targeted gene; however, the “strength” of the knock-out phenotype for a given mutant cell is ultimately determined by the amount of residual gene function."

P.S.: And you know as well as I do that the 'P' in "CRISPR" stands for "Palindromic".

Huh? So splicing should use lesser-specificity technology like zinc fingers when CRISPR has shown provably better results? Even with the ongoing patent wars over CRISPR, if you honestly think Sangamo et. al. are going to win over big pharma then I've got a bridge to sell you.

Here, I'll even do your homework for you, you clueless fucking dipshit:
Compare this http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... to this http://www.genecopoeia.com/res... and tell me any problems with CRISPR are worse than ZNF.

Or are you suggesting that the energy value of food is really equivalent to how much a given quantity raises the temperature of water when it's burned??

Yep. They are both processes of oxidation and most of that energy goes toward keeping your body warm. Metabolism has been called "slow fire" and that's not inaccurate.

Energy is energy, it just gets converted to different forms. Calories are a unit of energy, so strictly speaking food doesn't "contain" them except as potential for work.

only eat at certain times of the day based op when you wake up and when you go to bed.

Um, whut? No. That's some astrology level of bullshit there.

And yet, there's actual, peer-reviewed science that backs it up. In Nature, even. And it works in mice, too. Eat earlier in your active cycle, when your activities will use the circulating fats and sugars, and your salvage systems won't store them away.

Did you even read what I wrote?

In order for your claimed anecdotes to be accurate you have to argue that people are not good at deluding themselves. This is demonstrably inaccurage.

You claim that it is good for that portion of the population. Back it up with data.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

Basically if you select a random person from the population and BMI says they're obese, then chances are they're oobese. And if it says they're not obese there's actually a decent chance they're obese anyway.

So it's way over one side on the ROC curve. It almost always diagnoses someone as obese when they are in fact obese, but it misses quite a lot of those.

If it says you're obese it has a 95% chance of being right for men and 99% for women.

The article is a confused mishmash of different topics.

1. They present nothing wrong with the basic method used by Atwater, despite calling it "outdated". Discrepancies like the issue with nuts having 20-30% fewer calories than thought isn't due to a flaw in the Atwater method, it's due to them not actually being tested - they were simply grouped together with legumes and the calories just estimated based on fat, carbohydrate and protein present in them. The solution has nothing to do with there being "something wrong with the calorie" - the solution is that they need to test better and get better data.

2. Individual differences are generally small, and the only potential for significant deviation from the norm is towards those who get unusually few calories, not unusually many. I don't have time to dig up the numbers yet again right now, but they're in the ballpark of the average person's digestive system consuming ~94% of the protein that they eat, 97% of the fats that they eat and 99% of the carbohydrates that they eat. So a person's digestive system could potentially be much less efficient than average in some regard - although that's not normal - but it can't be much more efficient than average. You can have some more relevant variation on the breakdown of fiber to SCFAs but that's only a very small portion of daily calories. This excuse that the article is pushing people towards of "my body is just a much more efficient digester than the average person, that's why I'm fat" is simply not realistic.

3. Like in #1, there can be a difference between cooked and uncooked food in terms of availability of various nutrients - but again, this is not a problem with the concept of calories, it means that labels need to be accurate in regards to the preparation method. And it has very little impact on meat, contrary to the article's emphasis; it's mainly a plant thing (see the example of the nuts above). The human body is exceedingly good at breaking down cell membranes (animal cells), but not so great at getting through cell walls (plant cells), and it has more effect on non-caloric nutrients (many types of vitamins and minerals) than caloric ones. A lot of the energy loss in cooked meat is simply a fraction of the meat destroyed or otherwise lost (such as grease) in the cooking process. A steak shrinks dramatically when you cook it because it's losing ~45% of its water and a ~30% of its fat in the cooking process. The same steak has fewer total calories cooked, but more calories per gram.

4. Of course how you prepare food has an effect on what sort of nutrients it has, but since when is this news? Broiled, fried, steamed, etc - your mind is immediately jumping to pictures of how healthy that preparation method is when you see those words, isn't it? When you eat meat do you leave the skin on or take it off? Do you cut off gristle? Do you not expect these things to change the ratio of fats and proteins in the meat? We all know that how you fix a meal is going to influence the final picture. You don't calorie count a prepared meal by looking up the raw ingredients, you look up the prepared meal as a whole.

5. Their conflating the issue of cooked rice with the above about "cooking freeing up calories" is totally off mark, and actually backwards. Many types of starches (not just rice - potatoes, for example) partially convert from digestible starch to indigestible starch after cooling for several hours after cooking. There could be a general point to be made about how people should be better informed about the many ways in which preparation can alter the number of calories (though we already are generally rather aware of this), but it's not that the concept of the "calorie" is broken.

6. Metabolic consumption has nothing to do with the calories present in food. And yes, there are variations in basal metabolic rate. But the standard deviation is only 5-8%. Variations in metabolism from exercise betwe

There is another state religion that denies evolution. This religion is being taught in all public schools. This is so because it is also uniformly taught in higher education. It forms the central dogma of what are called "the social sciences". As anti-science, this religion is far more damaging than the "dinosaurs and man walked side by side" theocrats because it actually informs most of what we call "public policy" at the Federal level. It is exemplified by (though hardly limited to) the widely praised writings of Harvard professors Richard "Dick" Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould who, together with other fellow travelers, attempted to get Edward O. Wilson ejected from Harvard because Wilson dared posit evolution might apply to signiicant aspects of human social behavior, as well as to that of other organisms.

Those who weren't around in the late 1970's watching all this might not be aware of exactly how virulent and organized -- let alone wrong-headed -- the attacks were.

But one thing is for certain: The dogma that human biodiversity is an insignificant consideration in the social sciences is under increasing attack by the scientific evidence and, at the same time, it is ever more influential on public policy.

So-called "creationism" as theocratic anti-science threat is a red-herring.

Put simply - if we actually have to ask whether such an ability exists... ...it doesn't.

There have been several studies now which show a statistically significant psi effect, though too small to be practical.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

1. The Zika virus has been Africa and Southeast Asia since forever.

2. They don't seem to have microcephalic cases like Brazil has.

3. The virus was introduced into Brazil sometime around 2015.

4. 2015 Brazil sees a 10x increase in microcephalic cases.

So far that seems compelling that Zika is causing the cases. But why aren't we seeing the same thing in Africa or Asia? It's not like the Zika virus in Brazil has had thousands of years to mutate into a version that causes microcephaly, but not the original strain in Africa and Southeast Asia. It's the same virus.

It's not like the people in Brazil don't have the same "immunity" that people in Africa and Southeast Asian people have -- a large percentage of the Brazilian people *have* West African ancestors where the Zika virus has been found.

Here's an alternate hypothesis: some kind of chemical has been introduced into Brazil in 2015 that's causing the birth defects. Maybe a pesticide that hasn't been properly tested, or a morning sickness drug that wasn't tested.

Citations:

For pesticides and birth defects: http://www.counterpunch.org/20... http://americanpregnancy.org/p... and http://www.beyondpesticides.or...

Pesticides and microcephaly: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm... and http://www.gmls.eu/beitraege/1...

For morning sickness drugs: http://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/...

Non-sequitur. Whether or not our brains could have evolved the way did without meat (baloney), has nothing to do with whether or not being a vegan now is "stupid from a physiological standpoint."

First of all, there's no scientific reason that one should avoid meat (with the exception of meats cured with nitrites.)

Second of all, it's not baloney. We were hunter-gatherers long before we began planting crops. Before we began planting crops, plants that we consumed just didn't have the energy density that they do today. Not only that but wild plants just don't have the micronutrients needed for our own survival, as our livers aren't capable of producing 8 required amino acids, and most plants don't have enough vitamins B12, A, D Iron, and Zinc, and wild plants especially don't. Most importantly however, is that plants lack creatine, which is why brain development in the early days wouldn't have been possible.

Whitepapers:
http://journals.cambridge.org/...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
Also essential for muscle growth:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

So there you have it, three well cited sources for why it's bad from a physiological standpoint.

While I'm sure PETA propaganda says otherwise, but PETA is definitely wrong, likewise so are you.

In fact, if you want a wake up call for why vegetarians can't survive on wild plants, look here:

https://www.geneticliteracypro...

Non-sequitur. Whether or not our brains could have evolved the way did without meat (baloney), has nothing to do with whether or not being a vegan now is "stupid from a physiological standpoint."

First of all, there's no scientific reason that one should avoid meat (with the exception of meats cured with nitrites.)

Second of all, it's not baloney. We were hunter-gatherers long before we began planting crops. Before we began planting crops, plants that we consumed just didn't have the energy density that they do today. Not only that but wild plants just don't have the micronutrients needed for our own survival, as our livers aren't capable of producing 8 required amino acids, and most plants don't have enough vitamins B12, A, D Iron, and Zinc, and wild plants especially don't. Most importantly however, is that plants lack creatine, which is why brain development in the early days wouldn't have been possible.

Whitepapers:
http://journals.cambridge.org/...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
Also essential for muscle growth:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

So there you have it, three well cited sources for why it's bad from a physiological standpoint.

While I'm sure PETA propaganda says otherwise, but PETA is definitely wrong, likewise so are you.

In fact, if you want a wake up call for why vegetarians can't survive on wild plants, look here:

https://www.geneticliteracypro...

Citation on the mines causing radioactive contamination?

Ask and ye shall receive. http://www.nti.org/analysis/ar...

http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/energy/...

http://toxtown.nlm.nih.gov/tex...

http://cumulis.epa.gov/supercp...

http://thestarphoenix.com/busi...

http://masecoalition.org/navaj...

http://worstpolluted.org/proje...

http://technology.infomine.com...

http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...

http://forgottennavajopeople.o...

http://www.sric.org/uranium/do...

https://www.researchgate.net/p...

http://nuclear-news.net/2011/0...

http://thestarphoenix.com/busi...

Sorry to be a wet blank here, but these were not the first blooms in space; the Soviets did it back in 1982

Plant growth, development and embryogenesis during Salyut-7 flight, Adv Space Res. 1984;4(10):55-63.

(info courtesy nasawatch.com)

Subtle differences in the biology of lab animals and humans have caused at least one other clinical trial to turn into a disaster.

How the fuck can an educated person write "loose weight"?

This is still a speculation. The drug does seem to be called BIA 10-2474, according to recruitment materials from the drug testing company. There is only circumstantial evidence that this is a fatty acid amide hydroxylase (FAAH) inhibitor. The speculations are based on patent filings by the pharmaceutical company which ordered the trial (Bial) and the general description that the drugs was "meant to act on the body’s endocannabinoid system". FAAH is an enzyme that among other things degrades endocanabinoids. The rational is that if you slow the degradation of endocanabinoids you will experience less pain (works on mice). So far nobody who is in position to know it has made a statement as to the specific mode of action of the drug or its chemical structure.

According to fairly vague statements it seems that they were doing a dose escalation study, where different groups of people are given increasing doses of the compound in order to determine the point where the side effects start to show up. The people who got injured were in the group that received the highest dose. Usually this is done very carefully so you can stop before the side effects become severe. However, the response to drugs is not always in linear relationship with the dose and a small increase over a certain threshold may produce very severe adverse effects. This is always worked out in advance on lab animals (mice, rats, rabbits, etc). In the patent application they only cite testing in mice. Subtle differences in the biology of lab animals and humans have caused at least one other clinical trial to turn into a disaster. Of course there is always the possibility that somebody screwed up the dosing and gave them more than they should have received.

The whole knives thing is just a red herring. Having a gun or not doesn't determine whether someone is more or less likely to want to kill someone else. But it does make them a lot more effective at it. Which is why they use them. Which is why guns were invented in the first place. They end a life much faster, much more reliably, with much less effort on the part of the attacker, than a knife.

To be more specific, the mortality rate for a treated gunshot wound to the heart is 24,5%, while for a stab wound to the heart it's 11.5%. Stab wounds to the chest that did not hit the heart in the study had a tiny 0.8% chance of death. There are lots of different studies from all over the world, this is just one example: knives are a very ineffective way to kill someone compared to guns. And it takes a lot more work and personal involvement. You're never going to see a situation where someone bursts into a crowded movie theater with a knife and stabs to death dozens of people

Even blunt objects used in assaults cause higher mortality rates than knives.

There are around 150 strains of HPV, #16 and 18 causes the most human cancers, If a person hasn't been immunized by age 13, the chances are they are all ready infected, and will have an increased risk of getting a HPV cancer later in life.

There was a strong association in genital HPV infection between husbands and wives as expected from a sexually transmissible disease. However, the high prevalence of the infection among the virginal women indicated that transmission of HPV by nonsexual modes was common. Genital HPV infection is ubiquitous and in women is not exclusively a venereal disease. Is genital human papillomavirus infection always sexually transmitted?

HPV is a sexually transmissible disease, a common cold is a sexually transmissible disease by the same criteria; I wish I had a nickel for every cold I've gotten or given to my spouse over the years.

HPV is not easily avoided,

. However, the high prevalence of the infection among the virginal women indicated that transmission of HPV by nonsexual modes was common. Genital HPV infection is ubiquitous and in women is not exclusively a venereal disease. Is genital human papillomavirus infection always sexually transmitted?

ubiquitous (not comparable)
        Being everywhere at once: omnipresent.
                To Hindus, Jews, Muslims and Christians, God is ubiquitous.
        Seeming to appear everywhere at the same time.
        Widespread; very prevalent.

How are you going to know someone is clean unless you do a blood test, a lot of people carry the viruses without having hat any outbreaks. HPV is commonly considered a sexually transmitted disease but;

However, the high prevalence of the infection among the virginal women indicated that transmission of HPV by nonsexual modes was common. Genital HPV infection is ubiquitous and in women is not exclusively a venereal disease. Is genital human papillomavirus infection always sexually transmitted?

Human papillomaviruses (HPVs) are estimated to be the most common sexually transmitted virus in humans. The virus is of great interest as it is the etiological agent of cervical cancer. Sexual transmission of HPV is generally accepted, however, non-sexual transmission of the virus is often debated. Here, we review the evidence from basic research and clinical studies that show HPV can survive well outside of its host to potentially be transmitted by non-sexual means. In doing so, we hope to discover problems in current prevention practices and show a need for better disinfectants to combat the spread of HPV. A risk for non-sexual transmission of human papillomavirus?

some research indicates abstinence isn't a slam-dunk for prevention.

When you come back around and rant about how "Big Pharma" is suppressing a cancer cure or vaccine, all
I'm going to hear is "Blah blah blah" because we have a cancer vaccine and the same whackos will not let their kids have it.

How are you going to know someone is clean unless you do a blood test, a lot of people carry the viruses without having hat any outbreaks. HPV is commonly considered a sexually transmitted disease but;

However, the high prevalence of the infection among the virginal women indicated that transmission of HPV by nonsexual modes was common. Genital HPV infection is ubiquitous and in women is not exclusively a venereal disease. Is genital human papillomavirus infection always sexually transmitted?

Human papillomaviruses (HPVs) are estimated to be the most common sexually transmitted virus in humans. The virus is of great interest as it is the etiological agent of cervical cancer. Sexual transmission of HPV is generally accepted, however, non-sexual transmission of the virus is often debated. Here, we review the evidence from basic research and clinical studies that show HPV can survive well outside of its host to potentially be transmitted by non-sexual means. In doing so, we hope to discover problems in current prevention practices and show a need for better disinfectants to combat the spread of HPV. A risk for non-sexual transmission of human papillomavirus?

some research indicates abstinence isn't a slam-dunk for prevention.

When you come back around and rant about how "Big Pharma" is suppressing a cancer cure or vaccine, all
I'm going to hear is "Blah blah blah" because we have a cancer vaccine and the same whackos will not let their kids have it.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... Moderate Alcohol Consumption Is Not Associated with Reduced All-cause Mortality. "During 206,966 person-years of follow up, 7902 individuals died. No level of regular alcohol consumption was associated with reduced all-cause mortality. The hazard ratio and 95% confidence interval in fully adjusted analyses was 1.02 (0.94-1.11) for 7 drinks/week, 1.14 (1.02-1.28) for 7 to 14 drinks/week, 1.13 (0.96-1.35) for 14 to 21 drinks/week, and 1.45 (1.16-1.81) for 21 drinks/week. CONCLUSIONS:

Moderate alcohol consumption is not associated with reduced all-cause mortality in older adults. The previously observed association may have been due to residual confounding."

graphing that out, the significance of that 7-14 point is pretty sketchy, given that the 14-21 is not significant bu a greater margin.
if you want to be honest, the results state that you should drink 7 or less, or 14-21, but not 7-14 drinks per week. if you're going to start smoothing the curve, if you make it linear it's more accurate to say the difference is insignificant below 10 units or so; or even more accurate to suggest that the curve looks like it depends on the cube of the alcohol consumption, not linear. which is not unreasonable, given the complexity of the situation.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
RESULTS:

Male sex, being physically active, and good health status were independently associated with light to moderate drinking (P .001). An apparent protective effect of light to moderate drinking on mortality was evident in the unadjusted analysis and after adjusting for age, sex, risk factors, and cardiovascular events (adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) = 0.77, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.68-0.88, P .001), but after also adjusting for PASE and VAS, the relationship was no longer significant (aHR = 0.92, 95% CI = 0.80-1.05, P = .19). Follow-up physical activity was associated with baseline alcohol consumption; baseline physical activity did not predict alcohol consumption during follow-up.
CONCLUSION:

After accounting for health status and physical activity, light to moderate alcohol drinking had no direct protective effect on mortality.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
Moderate Alcohol Consumption Is Not Associated with Reduced All-cause Mortality.
"During 206,966 person-years of follow up, 7902 individuals died. No level of regular alcohol consumption was associated with reduced all-cause mortality. The hazard ratio and 95% confidence interval in fully adjusted analyses was 1.02 (0.94-1.11) for 7 drinks/week, 1.14 (1.02-1.28) for 7 to 14 drinks/week, 1.13 (0.96-1.35) for 14 to 21 drinks/week, and 1.45 (1.16-1.81) for 21 drinks/week.
CONCLUSIONS:

Moderate alcohol consumption is not associated with reduced all-cause mortality in older adults. The previously observed association may have been due to residual confounding."

I'd start by asking the media to stop making a 24x7 spectacle of shooting sprees and glorifying the people who commit them.

There's a phenomenon called the Werther effect in which suicidal individuals who see news reports about suicides go on to commit copycat suicide. In some cases the reporting of one suicide has resulted in multiple "contagious" suicides soon after. That is to say, people who are already in a fragile place mentally can be pushed over the edge, so to speak, by what they see in the news. When Austria's news media agreed to abruptly stop reporting subway jumper suicides, incidents of subway jumpers dropped 75% in less than a year and have remained at much lower levels than when they were routinely reported in the news.

With the exception of celebrities, the American media tends not to report suicides. There isn't, and shouldn't be, any law that requires this; I absolutely don't support any attempt to legislate against the media. Not reporting suicides is simply a common ethical position that American journalists have almost universally adopted. I would like very much for them to experiment with taking the same position when it comes to shooting sprees. Unless someone noteworthy is somehow involved, just don't report it. Try that for a year and I bet we see fewer of these shooting spree incidents.

I know, it's a pipe dream, Fear Sells Too Well.

Well, statistics of 1 is not really statistics, anything can happen.

But let me give you a more numeric anecdotal story. An old farmer died of prostate cancer few years ago, and he told me that almost every farmer in the region that he had known had died of prostate cancer too. We are talking about 20-30 people.

http://www.cancer.org/cancer/c...

So normalized data shows 15% chance, but for older farmers based on that farmer's testimony, it's about 80% if you ignore heart disease deaths.

So yes, I believe we'll kill ourselves with the chemicals we produce and spray on ourselves. Anecdotal evidence shows that too. But studies? Which company would fund long term studies into cancer rates of their products? And which government would do that? They don't even acknowledge that Agent Orange fucked up Vietnam.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
http://www.snopes.com/photos/m...

That's not true at all.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4098594/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6066852/

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa021721#t=articleTop

If you're going to command the ridiculously high salaries that surgeons do, and charge the patient the ungodly sums that you do, you should do your job right or be prepared to make amends for not doing so. If that's not tolerable, go find another job where you're less likely to hurt people with your carelessness. Sheesh, the entitlement...

That's not true at all.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4098594/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6066852/

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa021721#t=articleTop

If you're going to command the ridiculously high salaries that surgeons do, and charge the patient the ungodly sums that you do, you should do your job right or be prepared to make amends for not doing so. If that's not tolerable, go find another job where you're less likely to hurt people with your carelessness. Sheesh, the entitlement...

The high pH the river water is more prone to carrying particulate lead (lead from the poor plumbing infrastructure) than the lower pH water that had been used before switching sources. That being the case, the water source switch had an indirect impact on lead concentrations in water ultimately provided to Flint's citizenry; it wasn't that the Flint River was just inundated with lead to begin with. Here's a paper to better illustrate how that indirection isn't as bullshitty as you seem to think.

The balance of proper scientific evidence suggests that giving up red meat would in fact make your life shorter, less healthy, and less happy. Vegetarians are more prone to depression and a range of diseases. See, for example, http://www.fathead-movie.com/i...

Except for the part where
"For depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, and somatoform disorders and syndromes we found that on average the adoption of the vegetarian diet follows the onset of mental disorders." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

Took two seconds to google these. I'm not alone on this.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
http://www.wsj.com/articles/ha...
http://www.economist.com/news/...
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/21s...

Interesting you should pick that as an example. Red light doesn't hurt your night vision as much as multispectrum light, and blue light suppresses melatonin much more than lower energy wavelengths.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Additionally, if you are a photodiode, you could generate energy from the blue, but the red could be below your bandgap.

So their effects are quite similar at heating a black body, but have different effects based on the material absorbing them- and very different effects on the human organism, which uses them as input for certain important biological decisions.

Again- if you are willing to grant that radio waves can cause some effect, it's no leap at all to suppose that the effect would be frequency dependent.

Much bullshit here.

There is so much semite in modern jews, even in those long of european descent, it's easily identified with cheap DNA sequencing, as any customer of FTDNA, Ancestry or 23andme can see and test for themselves. As for the Cohen and Levi bloodlines they are alive and well and easily verified by Y-DNA identification of haplogroups such as J-P58* or J-M410* (source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm... ). Same goes for a lot of mitochondrial DNA haplogroups of course. And the results are applicable directly to Palestinians as well, since Palestinian Arabs and Jews are genetically indistinguishable and form a single population.

But then I suspect you already know you're full of shit and are just trolling.

It is all in your mind, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm... Change your mind and save your money.

The human body is way more precise in long-term energy intake regulation than any bean-counting diet can ever be. Just have a look at groups of people who diet mostly on energy-dense food, like those on ketogenic diets or ethnic groups eating mostly fatty fish and whale meat etc. - those sure don't have an obesity epidemic because of that.

It's cute how reality disagrees with your unsubstantiated bullshit. Especially when these people are not actually eating ketogenic diets and you're bitching about a carbohydrate replacement.

Except I'm pretty sure you've got 'casual relationship' wrong.

Let's take the example of burns. There is a casual relationship with 'having been on fire' and 'having burns.' However, there is not relationship being 'having burns' and 'having been on fire.' The fact you have burns doesn't mean you were on fire: they might have been caused by something else, such as hot liquids, hot metal, or corrosive chemicals. However, if you have been on fire, you probably will have burns.

This is what's going on with polygraphs: There's a (not entirely reliable) causal relationship between 'lying' and 'certain physiological responses.' As you noted, these physiological responses are not caused by lying. For example, a relatively recent study with subjects who consented to having their PTSD intentionally triggered to cause flashbacks found that the effects registered as lies--which actually is one of the reasons many areas don't even bother trying if somebody is known to already have a heart condition.

If you want people to cite peer-reviewed papers on this subject for you, then know your terminology. It's not like this is something that can be found easily via PubMed; you're asking for stuff that'll be best looked for using PsycINFO which requires a paid membership to access. It doesn't help at all that a lot of the papers are behind paywalls themselves. However, there is [Risk assessment by means of polygraphy.] so the question is, how good is your Dutch? (There's a few others that would fit, but many are indexed without abstracts and require a journal subscription, such as the review Physiological measures and the detection of deception. . Let me know if you can get at it, I want a copy. Or at least the abstract...)

Except I'm pretty sure you've got 'casual relationship' wrong.

Let's take the example of burns. There is a casual relationship with 'having been on fire' and 'having burns.' However, there is not relationship being 'having burns' and 'having been on fire.' The fact you have burns doesn't mean you were on fire: they might have been caused by something else, such as hot liquids, hot metal, or corrosive chemicals. However, if you have been on fire, you probably will have burns.

This is what's going on with polygraphs: There's a (not entirely reliable) causal relationship between 'lying' and 'certain physiological responses.' As you noted, these physiological responses are not caused by lying. For example, a relatively recent study with subjects who consented to having their PTSD intentionally triggered to cause flashbacks found that the effects registered as lies--which actually is one of the reasons many areas don't even bother trying if somebody is known to already have a heart condition.

If you want people to cite peer-reviewed papers on this subject for you, then know your terminology. It's not like this is something that can be found easily via PubMed; you're asking for stuff that'll be best looked for using PsycINFO which requires a paid membership to access. It doesn't help at all that a lot of the papers are behind paywalls themselves. However, there is [Risk assessment by means of polygraphy.] so the question is, how good is your Dutch? (There's a few others that would fit, but many are indexed without abstracts and require a journal subscription, such as the review Physiological measures and the detection of deception. . Let me know if you can get at it, I want a copy. Or at least the abstract...)

Seems easy enough to set up an experiment to address this.

However, I do want to add that seeing significant anti-aging effects but no extension of life expectancy would seem to imply that aging is programmed. There is growing evidence that aging is not programmed, though. Instead, aging seems to be the result of wear and tear on a very complicated system, so that reducing wear and tear should extend the life of the system.

There's a difference between anecdotal evidence and properly correlated research data.

Agreed. The problem is the "properly" qualifier, which most published studies have trouble meeting, and the percentage of valid conclusions goes down even further when you try to measure nebulous social science issues.

Research that confirms an expected answer is not useless.

While what you say is literally true, the problem is that "research that appears to confirm an expected answer" is frequently "useless." Anyone who has been following recent attempts to reproduce studies in various fields know that Ioannidis's claims that most published research findings are false has been shown to be an accurate assessment again and again.

And everything gets even worse in a situation like this. Even if researchers have the best of intentions, there are fundamental cognitive biases they are working against in setting up the experiment. There is potential to unintentionally (or intentionally) bias the data collection, the measures chosen, the categories and analysis system created, the ultimate statistical measurements used to determine significance, etc., etc. at every stage. When such an "obvious" hypothesis is the starting place, this is GOING to happen in the vast majority of cases.

So, I'd go so far as to say that 90% of research that APPEARS TO confirm an expected answer is useless... because it probably didn't actually measure things accurately or have enough statistical power to support the conclusions beyond what was already expected in most cases anyway.

And here's the thing -- even IF some researchers manage to overcome all of these biases and did a study like this and found NO correlation -- would they even publish it? Would a journal accept it? "Yeah, we looked for a correlation and didn't find any strong evidence." Note that's different from finding strong evidence AGAINST a correlation, which would likely take a different experimental design. Instead, they would have just found a negative result for their hypothesis... which seems uninteresting, and may be nearly unpublishable unless they found an interesting way to spin it.

So, publication bias means it's even MORE likely that studies like this are completely useless.

There's only ONE REASON why a study like this is generally useful -- it sets up a scientific "standard" in an official publication which COULD make another future study that proves the opposite publishable. Because now if another study comes along and can't find this correlation, they can argue it IS interesting, since it contradicts previous "science."

This study itself is likely useless, if it's like most studies of the sort. Its only usefulness is if it actually leads someone to disprove it or to qualify it with further nuance that partially disproves it. I wouldn't take it as evidence of anything without a thorough review of the procedure (in likely much more detail than would appear in any publication).

The real question here is who is being more immature, the researcher or the publisher.

The researcher has decided to act like a childish asshole.

The publisher has said "unfortunately, due to your stupid manifesto we can no longer carry this paper because it violates our policy".

This guy is perfectly allowed to go all crazy and issue his manifesto of "you can't use my stuff". That doesn't mean that other entities are required to keep hosting his stuff.

The publisher is following a policy, and the people who wrote the paper agree.

This breaches the journalâ(TM)s editorial policy on software availability [2] which has been in effect since the time of publication. The other authors of the article, Arndt von Haeseler and Korbinian Strimmer, have no control over the licensing of the software and support the retraction of this article.

So, really, the only one acting immature is the childish idiot who has decided he's taking his ball and going home, and making up random rules about who can use his software.

But he can own that decision and the consequences.

This isn't two wrongs making a right, this is an idiot living with the real world consequences of being an idiot.

Texas did this for many years, but got called out for it when it became clear that there were some transactions with the US Navy, using the dried blood samples for research. They were sued and had to eventually destroy 5 million samples

An article in Pediatrics from 2011, hosted at the US National Institute of Health, says that many states are still doing similar shady things with newborn blood samples, and that some don't even need to inform parents about how the samples are used after the initial testing is done.

I understand something like 60% of the US population is obese, and an almost equal number is diabetic.

No. The are overweight or obese. Overweight is not the same thing as obese. The number for obese is around 1/3 which is still alarmingly high.

By 2025, 75% of the US population will be obese.

Beware of naive extrapolation. It will lead you down all sorts of false paths. You are presuming that historic trends will continue indefinitely without change and that is actually quite unlikely.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

The article complains that "Despite their best attempts, they were unable to collect enough species (Diazona angulata) to obtain sufficient amounts of the precious chemical.". However this article omits a significant detail: a biologically active analog of diazonamide A was synthesized in 2003 AND he is listed as one of the authors. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu....

Male-to-female transsexuals have female neuron numbers in a limbic nucleus.
Kruijver FP1, Zhou JN, Pool CW, Hofman MA, Gooren LJ, Swaab DF.
Author information
Abstract

Transsexuals experience themselves as being of the opposite sex, despite having the biological characteristics of one sex. A crucial question resulting from a previous brain study in male-to-female transsexuals was whether the reported difference according to gender identity in the central part of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BSTc) was based on a neuronal difference in the BSTc itself or just a reflection of a difference in vasoactive intestinal polypeptide innervation from the amygdala, which was used as a marker. Therefore, we determined in 42 subjects the number of somatostatin-expressing neurons in the BSTc in relation to sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and past or present hormonal status. Regardless of sexual orientation, men had almost twice as many somatostatin neurons as women (P The number of neurons in the BSTc of male-to-female transsexuals was similar to that of the females (P = 0.83). In contrast, the neuron number of a female-to-male transsexual was found to be in the male range. Hormone treatment or sex hormone level variations in adulthood did not seem to have influenced BSTc neuron numbers. The present findings of somatostatin neuronal sex differences in the BSTc and its sex reversal in the transsexual brain clearly support the paradigm that in transsexuals sexual differentiation of the brain and genitals may go into opposite directions and point to a neurobiological basis of gender identity disorder.

This is old news, with the research that led to this turn-of-the-century study being based on previous studies from the 1990s.

You can read a WSJ article that covers more ground in a simpler manner here. A more extensive treatment of sexual differentiation in the interconnections of the brains of transsexuals more closely resembling their target gender rather than their birth sex can be found here.

That transsexuals have brains that are more a match for their perceived gender than their biological sex is pretty much accepted as fact by most of the medical community. The only ones who still see this as controversial mostly have hidden agendas (religion, etc).

For decades, we've been teaching children that it's not a person's appearance that matters, it's their minds. Well, we now have proof that, in the case of transsexuals, this is especially true. Physical cause, not psychological delusion.

Think of it this way - if we were able to transplant your brain into a body of the opposite sex, you would still be the same person, and perceive that you now have the wrong body.

This is true, but this is a highly contrived scenario. Why would a repair mechanism be rate-limited at such low doses?

It is an OBSERVED scenario. Evolution is a funny thing and tends to be "lazy". It tends to also concern itself only with conditions that are encountered in nature at the time it evolves. I can guess that the mechanism requires some stimulus to work at all because it costs energy. I can guess that it has a limited capacity due to practicality and the unlikely usefulness at higher exposure.

This is not the simplest model.

Yes, if we agree to toss reality and observation out the window, we can just put a dot at the origin and call it good. It is the simplest model that matches observation. See this for example.

Consider, there are a number of people who refused to leave their homes in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. LNTY says they should be dead by now. They are not.

I'm not suggesting we go back to radium water for good health, but it does appear that the risk is greatly exaggerated at low dose.

Many organizations only use LNT out of an abundance of caution.

Salt is a good example as many western nations are now having widespread iodine deficiencies because they've cut out their main source of iodine, which was iodised (table) salt.

[citation needed]

Here's a Lancet published study that found that Iodine deficiency in the United Kingdom was around 70% in 2011. Of course, that's just one study, the WHO put the rate in North America at around 10% in 2004, and this study put the rate of iodine deficiency in Australia between 50% (for pregnant women) to 75% for the volunteers. It's not clear to me whether the samples in the studies are unrepresentative, if the WHO is underestimating the levels of deficiency, or if there has been a rapid rise in the level of deficiency. Regardless, it looks like North Americans are likely getting enough iodine, the WHO result seems to be somewhat confirmed by Stats Canada who estimate that only about 30% of Canadians are not getting enough iodine. The level is higher than the WHO estimate but much lower than the UK and Australian measurements. This could be a cultural difference if North Americans are much more liberal with their salt than comparable overseas populations.

However, mutation and natural selection have only been seen to result in bacteria with defective proteins that have lost their normal functions.

Citation needed. Antibiotic resistance plasmids do not cause the normal proteins of the bacterium to become non-functional. They add capabilities to organisms that did not have those capabilities before.

Also, producing more of a protein does not equal "defective proteins." Genetic upregulation of protein expression is still a mutation.

You honestly have no idea what you're talking about, and it's very evident to the rest of us.