Slashdot Mirror

Articles like this try and give you the idea that if you do this or that, you're going to prevent your death. This one actually says a better diet will prevent 1 in 5 deaths globally. I'm pretty sure all 5 out of 5 are going to die at some point. It's just a matter of time.

In this particular case it seems even worse than that.
The article is making a direct quote from the research paper. It is not selectively leaving out any details related to the claims.

So this isn't even the case of the news reporter being imprecise and hyperbolic as they tend to do.
It isn't even the case that the slashdot summary has nothing to do with the words in the article it links to, as happens far too frequent.

Here's the giant and ugly link to the published paper.
Do a find for "discussion"

Even the claims further down that are just as 100% wrong as the one you pointed out, they have foot notes, and those aren't qualifiers but instead links to source material that are just as bad.

#11 and #12 are all I looked at, but make the exact same type of claims, that logically imply death would stop happening to people if their listed risk factors were accounted for.

I'm certain at this point that "the lancet" is not any sort of real science journal.
This site is clearly a self-regurgitating link farm factory, and it's sad it is being given any attention at all that doesn't involve the mockery and shaming it looks to deserve.

This is not the scientific consensus. The scientific consensus is that ionizing radiation is harmful at any level and this has been demonstrated even for very low doses. For example, in this study which demonstrated the risk of leukemia and brain tumors from CT scans in childhood (published in the Lancet, no less): https://www.thelancet.com/jour...

Of course, as others have pointed out. the chemical risks from uranium are much higher than the radiological risks which are very low, but this does not change the fact that risk of ionizing is non-zero even for very low doses. Maybe Ann Coulter is not exactly the best source of information.

"Why Most Published Research Findings Are False"
John P. A. Ioannidis

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

Further reading:

"There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false. The probability that a research claim is true may depend on study power and bias, the number of other studies on the same question, and, importantly, the ratio of true to no relationships among the relationships probed in each scientific field. In this framework, a research finding is less likely to be true when the studies conducted in a field are smaller; when effect sizes are smaller; when there is a greater number and lesser preselection of tested relationships; where there is greater flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and analytical modes; when there is greater financial and other interest and prejudice; and when more teams are involved in a scientific field in chase of statistical significance. Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias".
- Dr John Ioannidis (“Why Most Published Research Findings Are False”) August 30, 2005 http://journals.plos.org/plosm...

"It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine".
- Dr. Marcia Angell, New York Review of Books January 15, 2009. http://www.nybooks.com/article...

"The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue.
Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness".
- Richard Horton, Editor, “The Lancet” April 11th 2015 http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/...

"Scientists these days, especially but not only in such blatantly corrupt fields as pharmaceutical research, face a lose-lose choice between basing their own investigations on invalid studies, on the one hand, or having to distrust any experimental results they don’t replicate themselves, on the other. Meanwhile the consumers of the products of scientific research—yes, that would be all of us—have to contend with the fact that we have no way of knowing whether any given claim about the result of research is the product of valid science or not".
- John Michael Greer
http://thearchdruidreport.blog...

Andrew Wakefield et al concocted a scheme based on "litigation based testing":

Clear evidence of falsification of data should now close the door on this damaging vaccine scare ... Who perpetrated this fraud? There is no doubt that it was Wakefield. Is it possible that he was wrong, but not dishonest: that he was so incompetent that he was unable to fairly describe the project, or to report even one of the 12 children's cases accurately? No. A great deal of thought and effort must have gone into drafting the paper to achieve the results he wanted: the discrepancies all led in one direction; misreporting was gross. Moreover, although the scale of the GMC's 217 day hearing precluded additional charges focused directly on the fraud, the panel found him guilty of dishonesty concerning the study's admissions criteria, its funding by the Legal Aid Board, and his statements about it afterwards.

and

In a BMJ follow-up article on 11 January 2011,[24] Deer said that based upon documents he obtained under Freedom of information legislation, Wakefield—in partnership with the father of one of the boys in the study—had planned to launch a venture on the back of an MMR vaccination scare that would profit from new medical tests and "litigation driven testing"

Yep - the "father" of the "vaccines cause autism" HOAX seems to have agreed to split the profits with the families of the children in his "study".

How much were those projected profits?

Well, now that you asked:

the $43 million predicted yearly profits would come from marketing kits for "diagnosing patients with autism" and that "the initial market for the diagnostic will be litigation-driven testing of patients with AE [autistic enterocolitis, an unproven condition concocted by Wakefield] from both the UK and the US"

Finally:

In October 2012, research published in PNAS, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, identified Wakefield's 1998 paper as the most cited retracted scientific paper, with 758 citations, and gave the "reason for retraction" as "fraud".

The Lancet article that Wakefield used to start this scam has been retracted.

The general gist from here and elsewhere seems to be: concerns against nitrites and nitrates remain unabated, but not as definitive as the smoking link. "More research required" is the usual hedge at the end of almost every paper in medical research. Pinning down any delayed effect in a multi-factorial system with confidence is a slow process in research and is certainly prone to error. But it cannot be helped.

https://www.theguardian.com/so...

"Prof Tim Key, Cancer Research UK’s epidemiologist at the University of Oxford, said: Cancer Research UK supports IARC’s decision that there’s strong enough evidence to classify processed meat as a cause of cancer, and red meat as a probable cause of cancer."

The 2015 Lancet study is not easy to ignore.

https://www.thelancet.com/jour...
(fulltext paywalled)

The classic response from Industry:

The North American Meat Institute said defining red meat as a cancer hazard defied common sense.

“It was clear, sitting in the IARC meeting, that many of the panellists were aiming for a specific result despite old, weak, inconsistent, self-reported intake data,” said Betsy Booren, the institute’s vice-president of scientific affairs. “They tortured the data to ensure a specific outcome.

Sure, dietary science is rarely perfect since we can't put people in cages, control for everything and monitor them for years. Medical (or climate science for that matter) advise is often going to be from imperfect conclusions from best available evidence for now - people should understand that.

The British Medical Journal, the Lancet.

https://www.thelancet.com/jour...

He is not that wrong. BMI is big factor:
5.24 million individuals were included; 166955 developed cancers of interest. BMI was associated with 17 of 22 cancers, but effects varied substantially by site. Each 5 kg/m 2 increase in BMI was roughly linearly associated with cancers [...] Assuming causality, 41% of uterine and 10% or more of gallbladder, kidney, liver, and colon cancers could be attributable to excess weight.

A excess of sugar is the first cause of increase of BMI. If you don't smoke (the main cause) and you are fit, you risk is a lot lower.

Agreed but the problem is how do you fairly evaluate a colleagues research at a global level when you do not work in that area?

You ask someone who does work in that area. I think that would be obvious. Merely having a paper published in a "prestigious" journal will not answer the question of whether they do good work in general or whether the specific work in question is actually valuable. Even the best journals with the highest reputations sometimes publish some shit science unintentionally. What determines the credibility of research is the quality of the work that builds from it.

If you really want to evaluate the work of a researcher you need to evaluate number of citations, and the quality of those citations. Influential and important works tend to have a lot of citations and the works based on them tend to be influential as well. Simply publishing a lot or being published in a particular journal doesn't really mean anything.

Given the need to do this high quality, peer-reviewed journals make sense since, if your colleague can get his/her work published in one then clearly the rest of their field also think their research is high quality.

Not sure how you could draw that conclusion. All it tells you is that a few "peers" felt the paper was potentially worthwhile. Maybe not even that much depending on how seriously they took their job. It doesn't mean they've done a deep dive to corroborate the research. Peer review does not mean the rest of the field respects their work.

There's recent research showing a cure for type 2 diabetes, as well. The conclusion:

"Our findings show that, at 12 months, almost half of participants achieved remission to a non-diabetic state and off antidiabetic drugs. Remission of type 2 diabetes is a practical target for primary care."

Since I have type II diabetes, I clicked that with interest to read what miracle might be there. To sum it up...intensive weight loss via exercise.

Well no shit.

"Our findings show that, at 12 months, almost half of participants achieved remission to a non-diabetic state and off antidiabetic drugs. Remission of type 2 diabetes is a practical target for primary care."

What do you consider to be a cure?
Type 2 diabetes can apparently be solved in a considerable number of cases by exercise, changing your diet, and of course the result of losing body fat. Not long ago there was a study conducted in the UK: http://www.thelancet.com/journ... But then again the UK has socialized medicine. For them it's more expensive and less profitable to treat a disease over a prolonged time than finding a solution that is of a more permanent nature. At least in the Type 2 case most patients can continue to stay in remission on their own and don't need expensive support from the pharmaceutical industry.

This full text link works:
http://www.thelancet.com/journ...

I don't need the karma whoring, but why not. Here I think, is the actual article in the Lancet by Lanphear et al.

abstract: http://www.thelancet.com/journ...

full text: http://www.thelancet.com/journ...

I don't need the karma whoring, but why not. Here I think, is the actual article in the Lancet by Lanphear et al.

abstract: http://www.thelancet.com/journ...

full text: http://www.thelancet.com/journ...

Update: here is a paper discussing the black death/Y pestis link. It is behind a paywall, so I only have the abstract:

Recent correspondence on the cause of Black Death1–3 includes incorrect citation of unpublished results obtained by one of us (MBP).2 The origin of this correspondence was a report4 of a conference presentation by James Wood suggesting, on the basis of epidemiological data, that Yersinia pestis was not the cause of the Black Death. Two recent books come to similar conclusions with different datasets.5,6 Didier Raoult and Michel Drancourt point out1,3 that their observations7,8 of Y pestis DNA in teeth from putative Black Death victims provide hard evidence to refute any epidemiological hypotheses suggesting different causes for the Black Death.

I am going to need a credible source for that and not any of that ecowatch bs.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
http://www.thelancet.com/journ...

Why are anti-nuclear people disappointed to learn that nuclear power hasn't killed more people? Given the realities of climate change it is immoral to oppose nuclear power.

Quit that binary thinking. Just quit it, Just because someone points out that there are problems related to nuclear reactors, especially when they fail, does not mean that they are opposed to nuclear power.

What I'm for is that not only adequate but reassuring safeguards are in place, both for production and post-production. Not from an economic standpoint with more insurance and lawyers, but from a worst case standpoint with actual physical safeguards, already existing evacuation and containment and remediation plans. Hopefully things won't go wrong, but with the numerous examples where reactors have gone wrong, more focus on what else to do when things do go wrong seems needed. Admit that there are problems, and don't let that stop us.

Because this is /., the obligatory car analogy is that hust because cars are very safe relative to horseback riding doesn't mean that we should rest on our laurels and say that seat belts and air bags and crumple zones is a waste of money, and that more research into car and road safety isn't useful.

A few notes to keep in mind with the interpretation of the results:

1. The macronutrient consumption data are based on food frequency questionaires, a somewhat unreliable means to measuring food consumption. How accurate do you think you'd be if asked about how much of each type of food you ate over the past few months? For more disucssion of problems with food frequency questionaires and other general issues with studies on nutrition see: http://fivethirtyeight.com/fea...

2. The study is an observational study that can only assess correlation, not causation. People who reported eating more carbohydrates had higher mortality. Was eating more carbohydrates the cause of the higher mortality, or were there other differences between people who ate more carbohydrates and those who ate less? A common problem with these studies is that people who follow dietary guidelines are more likely to follow other guidelines for healthy living, so one could just be picking up a signal from decreased mortality of those who pay attention to their health in general. Socioeconomic factors are another potential confounding factor in the results. In many of the third world countries studied, a diet higher in animal protein would likely be more expensive than a diet higher in carbohydrates. These confounding variables make inferring causation difficult. Randomized controlled trials would provide a gold standard for assessing whether there is a causal relationship between carbohydrate intake and mortality, though these are notoriously difficult to perform (how do you get a large cohort of people to change their diets for long periods of time?).

3. Even if the differences in diet are causally related to the changes in mortality and CV events, the exact mechanism is unclear. For example, in a commentary published in the Lancet along side the research paper (I would recommend reading the commentary if you are interested in the subject), the authors note:

Micronutrient malnutrition is an important problem in many of the countries included in PURE. Animal products are rich sources of zinc, bioavailable iron, vitamin K2, and vitamin B12, which might be suboptimal in populations consuming high carbohydrate diets. Therefore, one potential explanation for the PURE results is that nutrient-dense meats corrected one or more nutrient deficiencies

http://www.thelancet.com/journ...

If the results are partly due to consumption of animal products alleviating micronutrient malnutrition, it is unclear whether the results would be as applicable in populations where micronutrient malnutrition is not an issue.

Overall, the study is a very important piece of evidence in determining the best amount of carbohydrates, proteins and fats to include in one's diet. However, it is not a definitive study, so one needs to consider the entire body of evidence including observational studies (such as this one) done in a number of different populations, randomized clinical trials, and laboratory experiments that get at the mechanisms involved.

For anyone interested, here is the actual paper (paywalled).

Links from the CBS article were worthless and it took a little searching to find that, so I figured I'd post it for anyone looking.

in this case it's being done for a very positive reason, which is that it's known to reduce the transmission of AIDS

Nope, the preponderance of evidence say the transmission of AIDS is either unaffected or enhanced by circumcision.

Almost any claims that circumcision protects from AIDS quote the infamous Camp Orange/Orange Farms study. That study consists of an egregious list of scientific misconduct. For example, the circumcised group had received sexual education while the control group did not -- so it's not surprising that men who had a downtime and were taught safe(r) practices will have less AIDS. The researchers' bias was so strong they immediately destroyed the control group "so they can benefit too" before even the data was tabulated.

Let's take a look at other studies:small increase of risk; no effect; large increase. Or for gay men: UK, US, Scotland.

On the other hand, there's a significant increase of MtF transmission.

But, if a study is funded by the Gates Foundation, it will be stopped early "because of futility" of protection, while in fact the preliminary data show a strong increase of risk.

Or, papers outright lie about the conclusion: "Declining Rates in Male Circumcision amidst Increasing Evidence of its Public Health Benefit -- in all categories other than one the "benefit" is negative, and the only category where circumcision slightly wins (heterosexuals with syphilis) had a sample of 6.

(though I'm circumcised, as are most American men, and I don't consider myself "mutilated"

I'm sorry for you. Alas, people who suffer from some malady tend to have a strong bias that "it's the right thing to do". For example, the strongest driver for female circumcision are older women who were circumcised themselves. Same for the deaf.

even if it does (theoretically) reduce a little sexual pleasure

"theoretically", "a little"?!? While you're unable to make this test yourself, you can ask an intact friend: wear regular underwear (ie, not commando, not boxers), retract the foreskin, try walking. For extra bonus, do it where there are people around so you can't adjust (this randomly happened to me a couple times). The chafing is so strong it's a pain. If penises get so calloused such chafing is not noticeable, there's hardly any feeling left.

In this large population-based cohort, living close to heavy traffic was associated with a higher incidence of dementia, but not with Parkinson's disease or multiple sclerosis.

The road noise early in the morning is really bad for sleep, which we know has a huge effect on brain function. How do we know that's not the main cause? Car pollution likes to stick around and pollute the entire city, so even if you live far away, you'd still be hit with some pollution.

The other article they mentioned tested children's working memory and how classroom pollution affects it. None of the children had dementia, which is what this study measured.

this study was funded by Singapore's Ministry of Health partly to see if that was true... unfortunately it turns out not to be (for a 'large' majority of people, at least).

The stupid new item didn't even link to the journal article - the summary and findings are available at http://www.thelancet.com/journ...

Lie on.

And keep lying.

And what is your "evidence to the contrary"?

Here's some peer-reviewed evidence on my side while I wait for whatever standard non-sequitur you have to offer, showing "evidence" against a Straw Man theological position of your choosing.

Here's the abstract for one of the many MS/ aHSCT trials going on in the world today...

Findings

Between diagnosis and aHSCT, 24 patients had 167 clinical relapses over 140 patient-years with 188 Gd-enhancing lesions on 48 pre-aHSCT MRI scans. Median follow-up was 67 years (range 39–127). The primary outcome, multiple sclerosis activity-free survival at 3 years after transplantation was 696% (95% CI 466–842). With up to 13 years of follow-up after aHSCT, no relapses occurred and no Gd enhancing lesions or new T2 lesions were seen on 314 MRI sequential scans. The rate of brain atrophy decreased to that expected for healthy controls. One of 24 patients died of transplantation-related complications. 35% of patients had a sustained improvement in their Expanded Disability Status Scale score.

I wouldn't call it a cure for MS, but certainly very promising... Since aHSCT therapies apparently involve destroying your immune system with chemo and doing an immune system reboot with stem cells, it's probably a last resort thing right now...

Oh, empirical evidence absolutely exists for the existence of a God and a soul.

Here's a peer-reviewed, quantified, eye-witness (empirical) study, for one.

And "metaphysics" is a core branch of philosophy acknowledged and used the entirely of the last 2500 years, by religious and secular sources. There is no question that metaphysics exists, even if one's metaphysics is "only material things exist".

Peer-reviewed evidence.

There you go. Now you can stop saying there is no evidence. In all likelihood, you knew already there was -evidence-, and were perfectly clear about this in your own mind while you were lying. It's hard to miss the fact that between people contemporaries of Jesus dying rather than recant their experiences (yes, persecution is historical fact), improbabilities of prophecy fulfillment, even if we discard 90% up front as possibly "self fulfilling" or on the basis of other objections, and modern testimony of experiences, there is unquestionably -evidence-.

Yes, I know you'll probably do the standard thing here and conflate "evidence" with "proof" or redefine "evidence" to mean "evidence that satisfies me personally, which I will never allow it to".

Evidence doesn't mean either. Evidence means evidence, and you were just provided with it. Try to avoid the compulsion to simply continue lying about it.

and who paid for this study exactly?

That is an interesting question.

According to Forbes Bindu Kalesan says the the Boston University study was "self funded".

Leslie Corrice's Hiroshima Syndrome is the best all-round source. Corrice's site is an amazing work, he has collected into one place facts as they became known, and news coverage of the events. He is particularly attuned to distortions, exaggerations and certain scenarios that have been delivered to the press chosen for their dramatic description despite a laughably low probably. And unlike just about everyone else, he strives to segregate his news reporting from his own commentary.

Some no-hype and anti-hype information sources compiled by The Actinide Age,

What actually happened, written clearly by a radiation professional and teacher, Les Corrice ... Putting Health Risks from Radiation Exposure into Context: Lessons from Past Accidents Professor Geraldine Thomas, Imperial College London, April 2011 ... Also quoted in New Scientist ... The D-shuttle project comparing negligible radiation doses internationally in 2014, and its published open access paper ... Real-time radiation monitoring network for Japan. See if you can find a reading higher than this ... Internal radiocesium contamination of adults and children in Fukushima 7 to 20 months after the Fukushima NPP accident (all below detection limit in 2012) ... in Proceedings of the Japan Academy ... Radiation dose rates now and in the future for residents neighboring restricted areas (after 2012, will not cause detectable health impacts) ... in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ... Will Boisvert confirms that wild claims of Japanese thyroid cancers in 2015 are based on bad science. Dr Jonathan Kellogg summarises the academic criticism ... Tim Worstall confirms that wild claims of a single Tepco worker developing radiation cancer is mere anti-nuclear opportunism ... Articles on the mental health impacts of long term evacuation in Medical News Today and Tech Times, and the cited 2015 Lancet study ... Ocean contamination in 2012(Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) and in 2015(Scientific Reports) --- already comparable to natural radioactivity ...

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.

Here you go. Peer-reviewed.

Now go ahead and equivocate "science" or "evidence" to the degree necessary to comply with your pre-existing bias.

Well put.

Number of people killed by homeopathy: zero.

Number of people killed by the medical system. Well, that's awkward, the medical system itself if the third leading cause of death in the United States today.

Examining the actual evidence on all sides is appropriate at this juncture.

The medical system third-leading cause of death in the United States.
Starfield B (July 2000). "Is US health really the best in the world?". JAMA 284 (4): 483–5. doi:10.1001/jama.284.4.483. PMID 10904513.

Ioannidis JPA (2005) Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. PLoS Med 2(8): e124. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
http://journals.plos.org/plosm...

What is medicine's 5 sigma? - Richard Hortonemail - DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S014... http://www.thelancet.com/journ...

Pharmecutical companies write their own "clinical reports", then bribe doctors to put their names on them.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/soci...

Such "ghostwriting" is not uncommon at all.
Lacasse JR, Leo J (2010) Ghostwriting at Elite Academic Medical Centers in the United States. PLoS Med 7(2): e1000230. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000230
http://www.plosmedicine.org/ar...

Untrue, Davy my adorable child.

Getting a paper through peer review is overrated... it really isn't that hard. Both sides manage it all the time.

How you people can think this is even that hard when there was that Korean fellow recently outed as having falsified the data for something like 180 peer reviewed papers that he got through peer review. Pretty much his entire career was a giant fraud.
.
And it wasn't caught until someone tried to reserve engineer his findings and couldn't.

I even quoted not long ago an essay by the chief editor of the Lancet saying that fraud and sloppyiness was running rampant in the peer review system. And according to him, its being hushed up by the government of England in his case as well as academia.

But he's just the chief editor of the Lancet... what does he know, dear child?

Want to give it a read, little one?

here you go:
http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/...

Read it... you rarely show any ability to read anything... I'll be shocked if you able to absorb even one page of contrary evidence so thick is your cognitive dissonance

How many of your peer reviewed papers are even capable of being empirically audited? But of course anyone that criticizes a paper that can't be audited must be a thought criminal. Right? Of course.

The point here was that that there was a claim of 4 independent datasets. I struck that down. There aren't. There are four datasets... but independent? Nope. All of it links back to the NOAA.

As to my motivations, so you're shifting to Ad hominem now?

And you call yourself a scientist?

Hahahahahahaha

I'm going to give you this because it is fitting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

As to people not reading stuff... here is the fellow's full comment:

http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/...

If there is anything left of the good scientist and thinker your education system was supposed to make you into... try to be better than you are. You are a very disappointing figure right now.

The MMR vaccine fiasco is of course the classic example of this;

How so? It seems, instead, to present a counter-argument. I would refer you to the comments of Richard Horton, of the Lancet. To wit:

"But there are fair questions to be asked about the style of government and expert response to claims about the safety of MMR. Three reactions have been discernable. First, there has been an appeal to evidence. The Department of Health's www.mmrthefacts.nhs.uk website contains a superb collection of materials designed to help parents make the “decision in your own time and on your own terms”. The difficulty is that in a post-BSE era, where government advice is no longer immediately taken on trust, the weight of accumulated evidence carries less force if it comes from government than it once did.

Second, public-health officials have disparaged as “poor science” evidence that appears to contradict their official message. This approach has a cost. The reason that today's retraction is partial and not total is that the discovery of a possible link between bowel disease and autism is a serious scientific idea, as recognised by the MRC,8 and one that deserves further investigation. Although dismissing the entire 1998 Lancet paper as poor science gives a clear and correct message to the public about the status of any claim regarding the safety of MMR, in scientific and clinical terms it is both wrong and damaging. The autism-bowel disease link was considered part of a series of physiological observations judged by the MRC to be “interesting and in principle worth investigating”. Subsequent research has yielded conflicting findings.13, 14 This work should be supported.

Third, there has been an effort to starve critics of legitimacy by refusing to engage them face-to-face."

there are still people acting on the assumption that the lies were true, and that's getting people killed.

There were no "lies", only misunderstandings, misinterpretations, and misrepresentations OUTSIDE of the scientific community, and a failure to disclose associations and funding on the part of ONE of the many researchers, which turned out to be irrelevant to any of the research conducted or findings reported.

Further, I think you would be as hard-pressed to show a direct causal link between any specific refusal of the MMR vaccine and any specific death as researchers have been to show a causal link between any specific vaccine and autistic enterocolitis.

Read the article and weep. Of course, there's no need to weep for Monsanto, who are slaughtering their way to the bank.

Not a hell of a lot to back up those claims. As the article says, there's "limited evidence." Case-control studies never prove anything; they're merely hypothesis-generating. You can never be sure that you've controlled for every factor. They use case-control studies to "prove" that marijuana causes schizophrenia. I'd like to see the written record of the Working Group that classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2A), and how they came to that conclusion.

The Lancet Oncology

Available online 20 March 2015

Kathryn Z Guytona,
Dana Loomisa,
Yann Grossea,
Fatiha El Ghissassia,
Lamia Benbrahim-Tallaaa,
Neela Guhaa,
Chiara Scocciantia,
Heidi Mattocka,
Kurt Straifa,
on behalf of the International Agency for Research on Cancer Monograph Working Group, IARC, Lyon, France

Show more

doi:10.1016/S1470-2045(15)70134-8

Glyphosate is a broad-spectrum herbicide, currently with the highest production volumes of all herbicides. It is used in more than 750 different products for agriculture, forestry, urban, and home applications. Its use has increased sharply with the development of genetically modified glyphosate-resistant crop varieties. Glyphosate has been detected in air during spraying, in water, and in food. There was limited evidence in humans for the carcinogenicity of glyphosate. Case-control studies of occupational exposure in the USA,14 Canada,6 and Sweden7 reported increased risks for non-Hodgkin lymphoma that persisted after adjustment for other pesticides. The AHS cohort did not show a significantly increased risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. In male CD-1 mice, glyphosate induced a positive trend in the incidence of a rare tumour, renal tubule carcinoma. A second study reported a positive trend for haemangiosarcoma in male mice.15 Glyphosate increased pancreatic islet-cell adenoma in male rats in two studies. A glyphosate formulation promoted skin tumours in an initiation-promotion study in mice.

Glyphosate has been detected in the blood and urine of agricultural workers, indicating absorption. Soil microbes degrade glyphosate to aminomethylphosphoric acid (AMPA). Blood AMPA detection after poisonings suggests intestinal microbial metabolism in humans. Glyphosate and glyphosate formulations induced DNA and chromosomal damage in mammals, and in human and animal cells in vitro. One study reported increases in blood markers of chromosomal damage (micronuclei) in residents of several communities after spraying of glyphosate formulations.16 Bacterial mutagenesis tests were negative. Glyphosate, glyphosate formulations, and AMPA induced oxidative stress in rodents and in vitro. The Working Group classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2A).

6
HH McDuffie, P Pahwa, JR McLaughlin, et al.
Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and specific pesticide exposures in men: cross-Canada study of pesticides and health
Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev, 10 (2001), pp. 1155–1163

7
M Eriksson, L Hardell, M Carlberg, M Akerman
Pesticide exposure as risk factor for non-Hodgkin lymphoma including histopathological subgroup analysis
Int J C

Read the article and weep. Of course, there's no need to weep for Monsanto, who are slaughtering their way to the bank.

Link to the actual fucking article:
http://www.thelancet.com/journ...

And to NBC, grow some balls and stop rolling over for blowjobs from advertisers. Monsanto is one of the largest agribusinesses in the world. its products are in everyones home, like it or not, in some form or another. For you to blatantly ignore a link to the article and dilute the fucking statement to a "probably" is nothing short of treasonous. Do your god damn job and stop worrying about the trolls.

Yeah, the bionic hand is great and all, but what in the actual fuck does it have to do with Star Wars? Besides the one throwaway sentence at the start of the article, nothing. Fluffy bullshit is bullshit. Here's a better link (to a PDF) from The Lancet:

http://press.thelancet.com/bio...

No more page views for clickbaiting whores from Telegraph, please.

I very much approve of reading the actual papers. However...

Scientific papers are usually dry and hard to read.

I agree -- however, I find most people with some background in at least one science can at least glean something from reading the abstract, and hopefully some bits and pieces of the statistical analysis (something I admittedly wish I had better background in. If I could afford the time and money to go back to University, I'd love to take stats and philosophy of science).

If papers come to conflicting conclusions, it's hard to figure out which is right. If you're in the field, you read the papers (or at least glance at the abstracts), and have a good sense of which studies have been confirmed and which disproved.

I think part of the problem for many peoples that the state of knowledge in science isn't a binary proposition. In much of science, the answer to 'Is X true?" boils down to five possibilities: 'yes', 'yes with caveats', 'no', 'no with caveats', and 'uncertain' ("more research in this area is required"). So if you're seeing only a few studies, and they seem to be contradictory, the conclusion you need to take is simply "this area requires more research".

And that is my problem with how most people approach science. They see one study, and say 'Science says X!", when in reality, it's really just one study that says X. Unless you have a massive body of scientific work behind a concept (such as evolution, or gravitation), one can't really make any claims as to what "science" says. Consequently, you also shouldn't be disappointed if future research on a new or lightly researched area of science later produces a paper with a contradictory view -- you can't feel that this means that "Science was wrong!". Science is seldom, if ever, "wrong" -- but how much importance people put into preliminary/early/initial results can certainly make them mistakenly feel that way.

I'm somewhat reminded of how people with multiple sclerosis reacted to Dr. Paolo Zamboni's "liberation therapy". Here was a medical doctor who produced a paper where he looked at the neck veins of a group of people with MS, found they had some narrowing of the veins and iron deposits in the brain, and came up with an angioplasty procedure to open these veins up, believing that MS was caused by "chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency" (basically, insufficient blood drainage from the brain). He tried it on his own wife, she subjectively said she felt a bit better, and suddenly MS sufferers around the world were flying to third-world countries to have this done to them (for a fee, of course), and in some countries (like Canada) were begging their national governments to bring the procedure on-shore and to make it part of the social healthcare system.

Unfortunately, Dr. Zamboni's research was deeply flawed. Firstly, his study wasn't "blinded". It also didn't have a comparison group -- he didn't even look for vein narrowing in non-MS populations. Thirdly, he didn't disclose that he had financial ties to a company that made equipment to treat the condition he had "discovered". These are all problematic, but IMO the worst was really the lack of a comparison group for control purposes. As two further studies have shown, the type of vein narrowing Dr. Zamboni detected are equally prevalent in both people with MS and people without MS.

Now MS is a terrible disease. People who suffer from MS live in a sort of quiet bravery, in constant struggle against their condition, and with a lot of hope for a cure. I hope one is found. Unfortunately, all too many of them jumped on this one, and got ill-advised procedures done, which in some cases has led to a worsening of their symptoms, and even death. Damage has been done, all because one p

I very much approve of reading the actual papers. However...

Scientific papers are usually dry and hard to read.

I agree -- however, I find most people with some background in at least one science can at least glean something from reading the abstract, and hopefully some bits and pieces of the statistical analysis (something I admittedly wish I had better background in. If I could afford the time and money to go back to University, I'd love to take stats and philosophy of science).

If papers come to conflicting conclusions, it's hard to figure out which is right. If you're in the field, you read the papers (or at least glance at the abstracts), and have a good sense of which studies have been confirmed and which disproved.

I think part of the problem for many peoples that the state of knowledge in science isn't a binary proposition. In much of science, the answer to 'Is X true?" boils down to five possibilities: 'yes', 'yes with caveats', 'no', 'no with caveats', and 'uncertain' ("more research in this area is required"). So if you're seeing only a few studies, and they seem to be contradictory, the conclusion you need to take is simply "this area requires more research".

And that is my problem with how most people approach science. They see one study, and say 'Science says X!", when in reality, it's really just one study that says X. Unless you have a massive body of scientific work behind a concept (such as evolution, or gravitation), one can't really make any claims as to what "science" says. Consequently, you also shouldn't be disappointed if future research on a new or lightly researched area of science later produces a paper with a contradictory view -- you can't feel that this means that "Science was wrong!". Science is seldom, if ever, "wrong" -- but how much importance people put into preliminary/early/initial results can certainly make them mistakenly feel that way.

I'm somewhat reminded of how people with multiple sclerosis reacted to Dr. Paolo Zamboni's "liberation therapy". Here was a medical doctor who produced a paper where he looked at the neck veins of a group of people with MS, found they had some narrowing of the veins and iron deposits in the brain, and came up with an angioplasty procedure to open these veins up, believing that MS was caused by "chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency" (basically, insufficient blood drainage from the brain). He tried it on his own wife, she subjectively said she felt a bit better, and suddenly MS sufferers around the world were flying to third-world countries to have this done to them (for a fee, of course), and in some countries (like Canada) were begging their national governments to bring the procedure on-shore and to make it part of the social healthcare system.

Unfortunately, Dr. Zamboni's research was deeply flawed. Firstly, his study wasn't "blinded". It also didn't have a comparison group -- he didn't even look for vein narrowing in non-MS populations. Thirdly, he didn't disclose that he had financial ties to a company that made equipment to treat the condition he had "discovered". These are all problematic, but IMO the worst was really the lack of a comparison group for control purposes. As two further studies have shown, the type of vein narrowing Dr. Zamboni detected are equally prevalent in both people with MS and people without MS.

Now MS is a terrible disease. People who suffer from MS live in a sort of quiet bravery, in constant struggle against their condition, and with a lot of hope for a cure. I hope one is found. Unfortunately, all too many of them jumped on this one, and got ill-advised procedures done, which in some cases has led to a worsening of their symptoms, and even death. Damage has been done, all because one p

Nor do the 65% of the population that are not obese (according to your numbers, which I am not sure where you get them from since the Lancet reports much different numbers: http://www.thelancet.com/journ....

Once again, no item you can eat contains healthy or unhealthy calories. The calorie is a measurement of energy. If one eats dramatically more or dramatically less energy then one's body metabolizes, they are adding an unhealthy element to their lives.

We do not say sarcastically "But you still get all the healthy water!" because its possible to drink enough water to get water poisoning. We do not claim that water is unhealthy for us because a surfeit or lack is unhealthy for us. It is the surfeit or lack that is unhealthy, not the water. Similarly, a calorie itself is not healthy or unhealthy.

If religious people had any proof, it would no longer be religion.

Sure it would. Why would the definition of "religion" change? I mean, the real one, not the Dawkins made-up one.

But, "proof" (clever of you to goalpost-shift this up front to a criteria virtually nothing, including science, can meet, by the way) would be tantamount to worldwide forced conversion. You'd either have to accept it, or go to an asylum for denying basic proven facts. Might you see a reason a God would not want that, particularly in this era of global communication?

That said, to use reasonable epistemological criteria, here's peer-reviewed evidence. As with most domains, -evidence-, not -proof-, is the intellectually-honest expectation.

The first symptom is developing a fever and it's apparent when you first start developing the fever you're still not contagious to any significant degree.

Wrong. Ebola viruses can be detected in the blood of some people who are asymptomatic. Although it is highly unlikely for Ebola to spread from an asymptomatic individual, it is *not* impossible.

How do you think the people that Thomas Eric Duncan was living with in Dallas avoided getting Ebola even though he was sent home from the ER after his first visit?

In all likelihood? The same way that 46% of close contacts of Ebola victims showed antibodies for Ebola despite never showing symptoms.

If it was all that contagious some of them would have been infected too.

I never said it was highly contagious. I said that the probability of spreading it was nonzero. And I stand by that comment.

The first symptom is developing a fever and it's apparent when you first start developing the fever you're still not contagious to any significant degree.

Wrong. Ebola viruses can be detected in the blood of some people who are asymptomatic. Although it is highly unlikely for Ebola to spread from an asymptomatic individual, it is *not* impossible.

How do you think the people that Thomas Eric Duncan was living with in Dallas avoided getting Ebola even though he was sent home from the ER after his first visit?

In all likelihood? The same way that 46% of close contacts of Ebola victims showed antibodies for Ebola despite never showing symptoms.

If it was all that contagious some of them would have been infected too.

I never said it was highly contagious. I said that the probability of spreading it was nonzero. And I stand by that comment.

Say...repeating multiple times the peer-reviewed study (and it's contained test cases) here:

http://www.thelancet.com/journ....
http://profezie3m.altervista.o...

--and persistently finding a lack of reported empirical verification of the predictive accuracy of the mainline hypothesis of the "designer", rather than consistently finding empirical (i.e. "eyewitness sense data derived") verification of its predictions. The latter being the actual case we see per reality.

There's one. Additional and/or better ones in no way excluded by providing this one.

Some of us have a problem when you post to Slashdot about it. If you could provide actual evidence, which you can't, or even say how it's falsifiable, I think it would go over better.

Of course, I don't care in the least what you or the entirety of Slashdot have "a problem with", as is appropriate, because it simply could not in any way factually matter.

That said, though, again, this is an issue of interpretation. Insofar as a given IC structure does not currently have, within the scope of science, a definitive explanation, it is -evidence-. No amount of equivocation around "of course we will determine the particular route to the transition" or "we've thoroughly politically smeared IC and ID, so don't bother bringing it up" or handwaving reasoning-by-analogy to other biological structures will alter this. If you want to make up you own notion of what "evidence" is, that's fine, but if we go by what evidence actually is, apparently improbable biological transitions are -each-, -individually-, evidence. They are evidence until they -all- are refuted.

I have been accused of setting unreasonable criteria for this, in that it is claimed that the current state of science does not allow for these to be exhaustively analyzed. Well... too bad. Difficulty of analysis does not enable redefinition of words.

And, likewise, that is the route to falsifiability. Explain all the transitions. Specifically.

Even then, you have a major issue in that at some point we have to address the unstated causal factors contained in the placeholder-word for the not actually present causal explanation that is the term "random".

You'd need to show the "random" mutations are "unknown quantum effect random" rather than "designer-directed random"--neither of these, likely, is falsifiable.

However, we can address that when the baseline criteria for falsification is reached. All the proposed IC structures explained. Yes, all of them. Specifically. At a resolution of the specific mutations and specific biochemistry transitions resulting therefrom. At that point, if you can meet the previous criteria, and show that the former is more plausible, in that as the effect of the Big Bang, that is, on the first and only "try" (insofar as we have evidence, feel free to forward a conjectural model and we'll do some epistemological comparisons), we end up with intelligent life rather than a mass of "spacetime goo", thus removing the strong flavor of teleology from empirical existence, I'll be personally satisfied.

In the interim, I'll assume forebearance enough (though, as noted, I don't care if it's not given, and given typical responses, it probably hypocritically won't be) to support my position on this question -indirectly- as, say, is considered perfectly acceptable for most pro-atheism writers today (Dawkins, Harris) etc., to combine broader inferential and worldview arguments into their exegesis along with the narrow, specific biological questions around evolution.

So, in that regard, here is peer-reviewed evidence of firsthand quantified eyewitness (e.g. empirical, the unusual circumstances being something I'm quite willing to argue) of the predictive accuracy of mainstream conceptualizations of a particular notion of that designer.

http://www.thelancet.com/journ....
http://profezie3m.altervista.o...

When and if you respond with an alternate possible interpretation of this evidence (as is the standard response), will it then cease to be evidence for my model, rather than at best (from your perspective) evidence for -both-?

No.

Livebirth after uterus transplantation [PDF] (with pictures of the uterus! :-) ).

haha, no.

" an estimated range of deaths from between 151,700 and 575,400 people who perished worldwide from 2009 H1N1 virus infection during the first year the virus circulated"

" 80% of 2009 H1N1 deaths were in people younger than 65 years of age which differs from typical seasonal influenza epidemics during which 80-90% of deaths are estimated to occur in people 65 years of age and older"

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/spotlig...
http://www.thelancet.com/journ...

You'll have to address the intellectual dishonesty of your own insistence on "evidence proving" first. They aren't remotely equivalent, in theology or science, and you are asking for it specifically because you're confident your self-contradictory request can be successfully goalpost-shifted to "still not proof I'm willing to accept" to whatever arbitrary degree you wish. But here's something peer-reviewed for you.

No intellectual dishonesty here, friend. That's the beauty of having an open mind: when new evidence is presented, I can use that information to expand my understanding of the universe around me. I am completely open to new ideas and understandings of the universe. However, I take empiricism very seriously. As such, for evidence to be valid, it must be identifiable, classifiable, and most of all, when identical methodologies are applied, repeatable.

From my perspective, those goalposts have never, and will never move.

I will go on to say that "religious" perspectives have often been used to popularize various life patterns or paths. *Sometimes*, they've even been useful, and could (in certain cases, i.e., buddhism) even be reasonably argued to be, a "good thing."(TM) That said, the creation myths of the belief systems generally referred to as "religions" do not jibe with the evidence collected, quite painstakingly, in our objective reality and do nothing to increase our understanding of the universe around us.

Science is a methodology and has exactly zero to do with metaphysical questions of existence and meaning. If you get your meaning from one bunch of stories, who am I to say they are meaningless? They mean something to you. That doesn't mean they have any relevance to me.

I have no issue with alternate belief systems per se, but for me to subscribe to one or more of those, the belief system must be self-consistent and not contradict the evidence we have explaining why the world is the way it is.

You'll have to address the intellectual dishonesty of your own insistence on "evidence proving" first. They aren't remotely equivalent, in theology or science, and you are asking for it specifically because you're confident your self-contradictory request can be successfully goalpost-shifted to "still not proof I'm willing to accept" to whatever arbitrary degree you wish.

But here's something peer-reviewed for you.