Bad Science Awards

KDan writes "The Bad Science Awards are out. These should put a smile on any science geek's face. Prize gems include: shrinking water molecules, anesthetic condoms, and a plan to send homeopathic AIDS remedies to Botswana."

Comments

ooh ooh! I've got one! no! two!

[i_should_be_working]

bush's bunker busters

missle defense shield

Re:how about "creationism" crap?

[Sique]

A God surely can. :) But try to tell a creationist, that his God has evolved a little since the Creation :)

Durex Performa

[Anonymous Coward]

I've tried these, and they work . . . somewhat. The lubricant contains a local anesthetic that dulls sensations . . . for obvious uses.

I found that I didn't like them, and the dullness continued longer than desired. Secondary considerations included not being able to maintain an erection as easily (hehe, little guy couldn't feel anything, so he said "Why bother?").

Other guys could probably use them with better success. It was worth a try, but I'd not recommend them whole-heartedly.

Re:how about "creationism" crap?

[Anonymous Coward]

what about all the people insisting on teaching creationism in school as an alternative theory to evolution in biology classes?

These are British awards. I've never heard of anybody here in the UK insisting on anything of the sort.

Shrinking Water Molecules?

[Radical Rad]

But the winner was a hair-straightening treatment by Bioionic, called Ionic Hair Retexturizing: "Water molecules are broken down to a fraction of their previous size ... diminutive enough to penetrate through the cuticle, and eventually into the core of each hair". Shrinking molecules caused some concern among the physicists at the ceremony, since IHR was available just 200 yards away, and the only other groups who have managed to create superdense quark-gluon plasma used a relativistic heavy ion collider. The prospect of such equipment being used by hairdressers was deemed worthy of further investigation.

I half expected to find them using Randell Mill's BlackLight Process to create "Oxygen Dihydrino".

Re:Horses for courses

[magefile]

Not antiseptic ... anaesthetic. The stuff that numbs you?

Re:Global warming?

[Thuktun]

the Kyoto Accords which requires China to INCREASE its emmissions

Can you provide a citation to support this?

The protocol itself makes no mention of this. Developing countries are excluded from the emissions reductions targets that apply to the "Annex I" countries, but they're not required to increase their emissions--that's patently absurd. Note that China has apparently stated their intent to join Annex I soon and has been reducing their emissions anyway.

http://www.nrdc.org/globalwarming/achinagg.asp

This October 2001 analysis updates and replaces an earlier NRDC report showing that China's greenhouse gas emissions fell dramatically in the late 1990s, even as the country's economy grew rapidly. The earlier report was based on U.S. government analyses, which were later questioned in a Washington Post article that prompted NRDC to redo its analysis. Even after using new, more conservative statistics, NRDC has found that the original conclusion still holds true -- China's emissions reductions are real. By comparison, U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide over the same time period actually rose about 5 percent. This demonstrates that it's possible to achieve economic growth without a corresponding jump in global warming pollution, even in developing countries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_protocol

China emits 2,893 million metric tons of CO2 per year (2.3 tons per capita). This compares to 5,410 million from the USA (20.1 tons per capita), and 3,171 million from the EU (8.5 tons per capita). China has since ratified the Kyoto Protocol, and is expected to become an Annex I country within the next decade. The US Natural Resources Defense Council, stated in June 2001 that: "By switching from coal to cleaner energy sources, initiating energy efficiency programs, and restructuring its economy, China has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions 17 percent since 1997".

China is third in emissions behind the USA and European Union, they're still a developing nation, and their still managing to lower their emissions while the USA continues to increase theirs.

Re:missing items

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to remeber that a RonBot thinks that everything LRH wrote, even the fiction, is part of their scripture.

Re:Durex Performax

[Rhone]

Did you read the article? They didn't really say it wouldn't work; in fact, they said quite the opposite:

The magic ingredient was benzocaine, a local anaesthetic, which made the judges' tongues go numb. We didn't even think about trying it on our genitals.

Re:A physicist's view on homeopathy

[Anonymous Coward]

"For you or for me, that could be true, but what about babies with colic? I have yet to see anything else that would work. I know many mothers who would swear by it."

You misunderstand the placebo effect. The placebo effect is in the mind of whoever is going to be reporting the symptoms. If the mother expects the medicine to work, she then perceives the crying as being less whether it is or not.

That's why the placebo effect also seems to work on gambling, sports, and a dozen other things. Lucky socks change how people perceive reality. They count their negatives less. Not worrying about the negatives often frees them to do better.

Since a baby is rarely going to actually die of colic, just being sure it will get better is usually enough.

Babies also calm down if held by a calm person. They may still be feeling symptoms, but they're no longer worried about them. Their breathing matches up with the person holding them and they stop caring so much about symptoms. A baby has to be extremely sick to not show improvement when held properly. It's only natural for a parent to be anxious about the baby's health, but it's not good for the kid. So if a placebo helps the parent be calm for the child, so much the better.

The surest cure for colic is to hand the baby to its grandmother. Giving the baby a teasppoon of water, whether charged with homeopathic energy or not, is also an old folk rememdy... it's not unlikely that the swallowing of just a tiny amount of fluid helps stimulate the peristaltic action.

Re:A physicist's view on homeopathy

[jcdill]

Frankly, homeopathy works. Before you criticize, I am as baffled by it as you are. There is no reason it should work, but it does. And yes, there are studies.

Were these peer reviewed studies? Can you cite these studies? All I have found are sites like this one: Homeopathy Fails in the UK Again

Okay, I need to come out and say this..

[sarareku]

My uncle has AIDS. He's known for two years. The doctors wanted to put him on HIV medications as soon as they knew.

He said no. He urged me, my family, to research every possible medicine [both mainstream and alternative] for AIDS

And we came up with a mix of different therapies.

MGN3
Immunofin
Colostrum
CCA30
Chlorophyll

We added a potent multivitamin, a specialized diet, as well exercise, meditation, and accupuncture.

He also quit smoking, stopped drinking, took up religion, and went back to school [he already had two degrees, one in accounting and one in computer science, now he's studying economics and law[

The doctors that he has seen are pretty much amazed. They count his viral load, check for other opportunistic infections and diseases, and do all sorts of tests, everything comes out great.

He feels wonderful, has very few symptoms, and happens to feel his health is greater than before he found out.

One of his friends, also with AIDS, is dead. He was on drug cocktail for one year and a half, he died in a hospital with a drip of AZT going.

However, I doubt this is what they are sending to Africa. The diet is one of the most important parts of the treatment. The supplements are expensive [bottles of CCA and Immunofin, etc, can run around $50 each] and some of the supplments you really have to search around for [example, MGN3 was banned by the government, no longer in production]

Of course, I know lots of you "Science geeks" will laugh and say it's a lie, but you'll start seeing nutrition and natural remedies coming back a lot in this drug society..

Re:Okay, I need to come out and say this..

[Jerf]

And we came up with a mix of different therapies.

So which one was it?

To what degree was each responsible?

Might one of them have still been a negative, and be better off without it?

Might the entire improvement be entirely attributable to one factor? Perhaps not one even listed?

Might the improvement even been due to none of these things at all, but would have come regardless?

Let me answer those questions for you: "You don't know, you don't know, you don't know, you don't know, you don't know", and yes, "you don't know".

I don't laugh, I don't deny the results, I'm glad he's doing so well. But you are in absolutely no position to be making any claims about the cause of his improvement. Even if his actions are responsible, which you don't know, you changed so many variables at once that even the statement "If you do these 24 things, your AIDS might improve. After all, this one person I know's did." is still nearly bereft of information. I mean, just being "a fighter" has been shown to be helpful almost across the board!

(Remember, one of the ways of measuring information is "the extent to which a fact is a surprise"; no surprise, no information. "Eating a pound of popcorn a day cures AIDS" is a surprise. "If you do a lot of stuff, and also improve your lifestyle in several ways at the same time, you'll be healthier" isn't much of a surprise for anyone who has been paying attention to health science, or, well, much of anyone else either.)

This in no way belittles your Uncle's accomplishments. Moreover, he may even be right and maybe he's sitting on the perfect treatment; it has happened before. But you aren't in any position to know. The plural of anecdote is not "data"... and you haven't even reached the "plural" part.

That is what science is about. Not denying that certain things have benefit, but testing and verifying and quantifying so we know, and in knowing become stronger and more capable. The reason herbal remedies are so often despised is that so many of them, when actually put to the test, fail miserably, not that they are herbal. Proof? Why, when the tests succeed, they are swiftly coopted... one can hardly list all the medicines that started out as herbal remedies. Obviously science hasn't got an intrinsic problem with such things, and anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something.

Science is far from perfect, but it beats the hell out of "I know this guy who sort of flailed around and tried a lot of things and one or more of them may or may not have had a significant impact on his disease", which is where you stand now. Again, it's great that he's doing well, but wouldn't you like to find out what actually contributed, and whether there might be something that works even better, so that others can actually benefit without potentially wasting time and money on things that are neutral or even harmful?

Re:missing items

[tylernt]

The only L. Ron Hubbard book I've ever read was 'Battlefield Earth', and it was quite good (I know the movie sucked though). It's straight SF that has nothing to do with Scientology. I don't know anything about that other Scientology crap he wrote, but at least *one* book of his is worth reading.

Re:how about "creationism" crap?

[foreverdisillusioned]

It's the best explanation we have. Creationism isn't really an explanation at all--it merely dodges the question how did we come to be? God did it. Um, ok, but how? Doesn't matter, because he's God.

Practically all the "facts" I learned in school turned out to be mistaken, or just out and out lies. I spent considerable time memorizing charts of horses evolving from tiny 5 toed animals to large hoofed animals only to find out later that someone just made all that stuff up, the specimens presented where not in chronoligical order and not even from the same continent. If you have to intentionally mislead people then maybe you're supporting a psuedoscience too.

This is a failing of your education; not a failing of the science itself. I was told a number of outright lies too, especially in history, but just because our educational system is so shitty (textbooks in particular) doesn't mean you can write off the entire thing as a pseudoscience.

What possible natural selection process would select a fish with an eye 1/1000 of inch higher than the other? I can see having it all the way would be a great benifit but unless there was a sudden mutation it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.

You're sort of correct. The evolution-causing mutations are usually bigger than 1/1000 of an inch. A common misconception is that they have to be incredibly miniscule, but that simply isn't the case. Look around you; people eyes are not all set at the same exact spot on their face. The differences are slight, but they are certainly bigger than 1/1000 of an inch.

To a fish trying to evade a predator or capture its prey, it certainly could matter if its eyes are 1/16 of an inch higher. No, it wouldn't be a huge difference, nor would it make a difference in every higheyed fish's life, but in a large population over an extended period of time, statistics will work its magic. Fish with eyes 1/16 will be slightly more likely to thrive (assuming that this trait does indeed help them spot food or avoid predators.) Eventually, the majority of the fish population will have high eyes simply because of competition for resources and statistics. Then one day a fish is born with even higher eyes, and the same exact process happens over again.

So you see, the mutations are small enough to happen by mere chance, yet they are significant enough to have an enormous cumulative impact, provided one allows them millions upon millions of years to happen.