Slashdot Mirror
Canadian Blood Services Promotes Pseudoscience
trianglecat writes "The not-for-profit agency Canadian Blood Services has a section of their website based on the Japanese cultural belief of ketsueki-gata, which claims that a person's blood group determines or predicts their personality type. Disappointing for a self-proclaimed 'science-based' organization. The Ottawa Skeptics, based in the nation's capital, appear to be taking some action."
If you lived in Ottawa, like I do, you'd understand that we're nearly the most absurdly "politically correct" place on earth. This is reflected by a common effort to be "inclusive" to other schools of thought. Also, there are more complainers and "letter writers" in Ottawa than any other city on Earth. I'm sure, so none of this seems out of the ordinary to me.
The thin edge of the wedge with this sort of thing is its popularity with the public at large. I'm sure the logic at CBS HQ was (unless the staff are themselves woo peddlers) "Well, yeah, it's pop-nonsense; but if it will draw attention, we'll get more blood donors, and we really need all of those we can get." That can be a compelling argument, and the compromise can seem so harmless at the time.
You also see this sort of thing happen when otherwise respectable medical schools will get endowed institutes in nonsenseology because some big donor has $200 million; but also believes that squirting coffee up his ass cures cancer.
After looking through the site, it's pretty clearly just a marketing ploy to engage with people who believe it to be true.
It even says right up front: 'The What's Your Type? program is a recruitment program with information provided for the participants' enjoyment. You should seek medical supervision for all matters regarding your health.'
I don't care if you believe in pseudo-science, if I need a transfusion and you're a blood match as long as it's clean _Go team blood-donor!_
Type A: Asshole
Type B: Bitch/Bastard
Type AB: Asshole and a Bastard
Type O: Okay
The Ottawa Skeptics, based in the Nation's capital
/Go Boomer!
If they're based in Toronto, why are they called the Ottawa Skeptics?
I like music
OK...well if this does no harm in perpetuating stereotypes about blood typing and behavior, you know something the Nazis liked to spout, then how the hell does creationism in school hurt anyone?
Whats the difference in saying A+ people are more likely to be mass murderers and saying Jesus rode a Dinosaur when he salted Carthage?
This seems like a fairly harmless "just for fun" type thing. This is like ripping on someone for reading a fortune cookie.
The teapot belongs to Russell, see here.
The aircraft scene is a Scientology reference. See the entry on Xenu.
Third one in the second row: this is an airplane flying over a volcano, which either has a tree growing out of it, or more likely a cloud of ash?
Xenu
Middle one, next row: there's a teapot between the Earth and Mars? Is this Sagittarius?
Russel's Teapot
Can someone remind me why ANYONE needs to do something about a private non-profit expressing views that haven't been vetted via the scientific method?
There funding was cancelled this year and is unlikely to ever be renewed.
You're lucky you live in Quebec. I had to endure the torture of "What's your blood type?" from all my friends the whole five years I lived in Korea. I obnoxiously answered "I don't know" (even when I did) just to avoid being typed. Of course, I answer the same to Thais when they ask "What days of the week were you born on?" and to westerners' "What's your sign?" Unfortunately, I can't pretend I don't know my birth date. Western culture doesn't seem to take the matter too seriously, but Korean and Thai cultures do.
These practices all need to die. Do you want to understand me? Get to know me.
Put identity in the browser.
I answer the same to Thais when they ask "What days of the week were you born on?" and to westerners' "What's your sign?" Unfortunately, I can't pretend I don't know my birth date.
If you can even give a toss about this, try figure out what the LEAST compatible sign for each sign is, then ask them theirs and adjust yours to fit. Not like you want someone who really buys into that around you a lot anyway, right?
[_] "I was adopted, you ignorant clod!" (and watch them go "Oh ...")
... or if you really want to scare them off ...
[_] I was born February 29th so I only have a sign every 4th year.
[_] What sign was I born under? Yellow Cab | Maternity Ward | Abortion Clinic ("I was a screw-up even back then")
[_] What's my sign? Well, I was born a [insert bogus info] and I was born again in [insert month] so now I'm really a [insert bogus info], so let me tell you all about Jeebus so you too can have two birthdays!
I see your point, and I would agree with you if the website described any of the blood types in an undesirable manner, but from what I have seen the website makes a few positive affirmations (along the lines of "you are independent"), suggests a diet (not sure how that one works, I will leave it to someone else to comment on), and then state where and when the blood type is thought to have emerged.
No matter which blood type you select, it gives you a few tidbits of bullshit about what your personality and preferred diet might be, then a few tidbits of bullshit about what careers you might do well at. Then it tells you that no matter what your type is, it is important to donate blood, how you can donate, etc.
So I don't think this is an example of Canadian Blood Services promoting or believing this pseudo-science. I don't have a problem with them having a "fun" online activity like this, if it encourages more people to give blood. However, I would prefer if it more explicitly said on the first page that these are beliefs from the Japanese culture, and state that they have no basis in science, but that they can be fun and interesting to read about.
Atheism is a religion to the same extent that not collecting stamps is a hobby.
I find that mostly the people who buy into these things are either Libras or Scorpios. Us Virgos don't fall for all that bunk.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Bacteriophage treatments would be effective, no doubt. But the problem is bacteria have much greater genetic variability than eukaryotic organisms we're used to thinking of. Bacteriophage treatments, to be effective, usually have to be tailored specifically to each patient individually, which is an expensive and time-consuming task. The nice thing about most pharmaceuticals (as opposed to phages) is that once your drug has been invented, generally producing more of the drug is dirt cheap.
You may not remember this, but back in the 90s blood services in Canada were run by the Canadian red cross. They infected tens of thousands of people with HIV and Hepatitis, due to improper handling and care. CBS was created in response to this scandal, so unsurprisingly they have always been enormously risk-averse when it comes to infectious disease. I, for example, am not allowed to donate blood because of time I spent in the UK- they're afraid I may be a mad cow. It seems a bit silly, but I understand the reason. Not everything is bigotry.
Mouse over picture,
Tooltip appears.
Read message it carries
All will be made clear.
Burma Shave.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
When I'm asked what sign I was born under I usually respond that I'm not sure but it probably said something like "Maternity Ward". Depending on the response you can then easily tell whether it is worth continuing a conversation....
I'd love to go on the show Deal or no deal (The one with the women holding the suitcases), and select my suitcases in numerical order (1, 2, 3, etc)-- because my chances are EXACTLY THE SAME as someone who selects the cases according to their own numerological theory.
I'm not so sure about that. The only thing required to make the game fair is to ensure the contestant has no idea which suitcases contain which prizes. There is no reason some person on the show can't be distributing the cases according to their own idea of 'randomness'.
Many, many famous scientists are such skeptics, such as Richard Dawkins, Phil Plait, Carl Sagan...
I'm pretty sure you've got some agenda you haven't quite revealed to us. So, what exactly is your agenda? Believer in ESP? Ghosts? Homeopathy? Hmm?
Your talk of going to pubmed and looking up the terms yourself makes you seem clever to the uninitiated but anyone who has ever used a scientific DB would know that those keywords are going to produce a lot of noise. Indeed, they do--and almost none of it, if any, has to do with ABO-typing and personality, but merely hormones or chemicals in the blood influencing personality traits, something almost no scientist / skeptic would deny. I looked over the keywords you gave. Some of them reference no association found between a personality characteristic and some chemical, some of them are completely tangential, and again, almost none of them have anything to do with the blood typing myth.
You try to present yourself as a scientist very well, but I have to question how much you really do in practice, as any researcher, even on an undergraduate level, would be able to instantly spot how much noise the keywords "blood type personality" would produce. And indeed, it does--all the results that come up do NOT support ABO typing to personality, despite you implying that the results you'd get with those keywords indicate research done on ABO-typing and personality. It's telling how you don't even cite a single study, instead pointing people to impressive-sounding numbers on database hits in a database using broad key words in order to make it seem like research is being done on ABO-typing and personality when there isn't, because the notion has long been discredited even in Japanese scientific circles.
You clearly have some sort of agenda, to so cleverly try to mislead people the way you have What is it?
I forgot to further note that the ABO-typing and personality theory has nothing to do with hormones and possible effect of chemicals on behavior. That is what comes up on the studies provided on your keywords. That is what makes your attempt to fool people so obviously deliberate--you obviously know that those results don't have anything to do with what the "skeptics" (as you lovingly put in scare-quotes) are complaining about, yet you still went ahead and tried to present the results as evidence that ABO typing is mainstream science somewhere.
Someone ought to mark DynaSoar down as a troll for this, because it's really just a disguised troll towards "skeptics" because someone pissed in his cheerios over his religion or pet superstition, that he wants to pretend is science, and is using this incident to further his grudge.
These practices all need to die. Do you want to understand me? Get to know me.
I had a psych lecturer who said: "I don't believe in the power of Astrology to fortell the future, but I do believe in the power of Astrology to influence the way others perceive you." So what he had done is "change" his star-sign every year so that people getting to know him one year would think him a Leo and react accordingly, people getting to know him the next would think him a Sagittarian etc etc.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Sounds like my method for dealing with political activists. I always find out who they are campaigning for and tailor my response to fit, with the goal of choosing the least compatible option. For example, I respond to Republicans with "Anarchist". Other fun responses are Green Party and "Can't vote, I'm a convicted felon".
I'd love to go on the show Deal or no deal (The one with the women holding the suitcases), and select my suitcases in numerical order (1, 2, 3, etc)-- because my chances are EXACTLY THE SAME as someone who selects the cases according to their own numerological theory.
I would choose the suitcases in the order of least attractive to most attractive suitcase-holding model. That way I could look at the pretty ones longer.