Those who argue against vaccination based on the risk of autism may well be on shaky ground, but there are PLENTY of studies linking vaccines to other ill effects, here are a (very) few:
Next time you get a prescription for anything, stop and take the time to read that sheet of paper that comes with it. Even the most commonly used drugs have long lists of possible side effects.
The question isn't "could something bad happen?", but rather "what are the risks of taking this vs. not taking it?". Unfortunately we sometimes underestimate the risks and people die horribly.
Still, from where I'm sitting it looks like modern medicine does far better than causing random effects. Unless you're in an at-risk group, or are taking other medicines known to have a harmful interaction, or your physician is incompetent, you're probably better off taking the medicine despite the long list of possible side effects. People suffer or die from *not* taking medicine sometimes too, you know.
That's a good way to think about it. Peer review, like the market, only works with honorable actors. Scientists are presumed to be honorable, so the way peer review is structured doesn't attempt to look for deliberate forgeries or falsehoods. Peer review is more along the lines of "this conclusion isn't backed up by your data" or "you forgot about this possibility" - that is, it catches mistakes or oversights. And it's pretty good for that.
Importantly, the peer review that happens before publication does not involve repeating the authors' work to verify it. To paraphrase what you already said, all it can do is check to see if the authors did their homework.
I mention peer review "that happens before publication" because that is only part of it. If important results *are* published (such as this, or CNF, or General Relativity) then other researchers do get interested in duplicating the results. In the long run, this is probably a more important factor in guiding science toward reality than the pre-publication peer-review is.
If we never published anything until it was 100% verified, modern science wouldn't exist. We have to go with the best we've got, and correct ourselves when further evidence (or investigation into suspected dishonesty) tells us we took a step off the path.
These spates of disreputable science (this, and the ghost writers for example) is a good bit concerning. There historically hasn't been much deception at all, at least in modern science... I hope this isn't the harbinger of politics-as-science.
Sorry, but it's kind of late to start worrying about that. Big money is doing it's damnednest to obfuscate truth in every area where there's money to be made (or lost).
[...] the wave of anti-MMR vaccine hysteria that swept the UK for years. [...] Really its a case of crap statistics and a gullible media playing it way beyond its worth. [...]
And as with all these stories, the bad science was trumpeted to the heavens but the correction will be a small note on page 31B -- if mentioned at all.
In humans language is something cultural, even syntax is something you learn from others, is not builtin. If is the same on monkeys maybe the ones from a region have a different syntax or semantics than others from far away.
But the capability seems to be at least partly built-in.
The big debate is between the "speech is special" crowd, who think the built-in stuff is only good for language and only present in humans, vs. those who think language is to a big extent based on more general cognitive capabilities.
I'm in the latter group, so I find this utterly unsurprising. The discoveries of the past few decades should have disabused everyone by now of the notion that human cognition is of an utterly different caliber than animal cognition.
Still, there are those who will contest this report vehemently.
The AGW believers want to use governments to force people to lead objectively poorer lives. Many of them have wanted this since before Global Warming was even theorized.
Evidence for that claim?
AGW is going to lose the political struggle because of Climategate. It was already reeling from the fact that it hasn't warmed in the last decade.
The fact that these climate-skeptics were prepared to take these e-mails, pore over them for some choice quotes (which didn't even look incriminating to me out of context), blatantly misinterpret them without making any kind of good-faith effort to understand the context or the science behind it, and trumpet it all out as some kind of 'disproval' of global warming (which wouldn't have been the case even if they were right), just goes to show that they're simply not interested in either learning the science, or engaging in a real debate. And it's in itself pseudo-scientific behavior in action: Decide there's a big conspiracy of fraud behind climate change, and go look for evidence to support your theory, and ignore all other explanations.
The skeptics have been trumpeting a new "proof" that it's all a fraud about once a year lately.
Kind of like the discovery of Atlantis and Noah's Ark...
That's the one lesson that nations can't seem to learn.
Without boots on the ground, you will not get proper intel. As such, there is a higher likelihood of collateral damage. When surprise attacks indiscriminately kill both combatants and civilians, you lose what little support you may have had.
This is the key. As long as we keep blowing up women and children, we're making more enemies than we kill.
The West (including Israel) have a blind spot, thinking "collateral casualties don't count". But to the people on the receiving end, their family is just as dead as if we had deliberately blown up their skyscrapers.
Whatever else our new strategy entails, "no civilian casualties" needs to be the cornerstone, or we're never going to win.
Depends on whether you subscribe to the Reaganite doctrine that a government should not be allowed to do anything that a capitalist middle-man could make a profit on.
Beyond that, I'm having a bit of trouble working up any sympathy for a guy who's complaining that a public service is making it hard for him to charge people for the lies he tells them.
Seriously, there are no real technical reasons why we can't just run 64bit operating systems. Let's just stop selling 32bit ones.
Good idea.
Unfortunately, lots of Windows software won't run on 64-bit Windows XP. Even Windows Update tells you you have to close the 64-bit WIE so it can run the 32-bit version to fetch the update... how lame. Then half the updates won't install, for reasons that aren't made clear.
It should be clear by now that Microsoft, like every other corporation on the planet, isn't going to do a damn thing unless their share prices depend on it. When there's overwhelming consumer demand for 64-bit computing, they'll start fixing their consumer software to support it.
The Americans cannot enforce an immigration policy because doing so is politically incorrect.
Or maybe there's just too many people with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
Look at the revolt that the Republican leaders got from their own people when they floated the idea of a border crackdown to boost their falling popularity a few years ago.
it is quite disappointing to see the world's richest country with what is at times the best health care in the world unable to keep simple infections and parasites from affecting a large portion of its population.
We lack that most basic of technologies: giving a damn.
The combined experience of the Nordic countries for half a century now should stand as proof that, even if everything in life is provided for you, the vast, vast majority of people still go out and work for a living.
See, Socialism warps your mind. Can't even count on them to be decently lazy when the situation calls for it!
Why exactly would a person not trust Bush and then trust the government to run our health care?
You've been hitting on the Republican kool-aid. This isn't about running the health care system; it's about finding a way for everyone to get some of it.
The reason for the furor, just like 15 years ago, is that lots of unnecessary middle men stand to lose their "entitlement" revenue stream. The volume of the furor indicates how much money is at stake.
And alas, also indicates how much of your health care money is going toward making someone rich rather than making you healthy.
So strange... Fifteen years ago I lived in an apartment near the Houston Medical Center, and I remember nurses at the pool saying they were afraid universal health care would cost them their jobs. All the scaremongering cancels a lot of people's capability for critical thinking. A poll this week shows 39% of the people polled want the gummit to stay the hell out of Medicare so they won't screw it up.
From my perspective, both republicans and democrats have a good side: the republicans want to empower the individual citizen and free him from the limitations of government, and the democrats want to help the poor and downtrodden. These are both noble goals.
No, if you look at what the Republicans do when they have power it's obvious that their goal is to ensure that the rich get richer faster than they would if there wasn't a Federal government.
This might mean all those calculations projecting imminent bankruptcy of social security will have to be redone.
Probably need redoing anyway, since people have been decrying TIBoSS for at least 30 years.
Back in the 90's there was a big argument: the Republicans wanted to "save" it by using all its money for something else, whereas the Democrats only wanted to steal about half its money.
Political football. Little in the US economy attracts so much misrepresentation -- except in years when health care reform is up for discussion.
the portion they're talking about is between Beaumont and Texarkana, right on the border
Which makes me wonder if this was a study of US Citizens or merely US Residents?
It might be hard to eliminate the illegal population from those areas, without finishing the job that the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo stopped and annex all of Mexico.
Wrong border. Beaumont-Texarkana lies along the Texas-Louisiana border.
All of Texas has a high Hispanic population, but that area wouldn't be outstanding in that regard. Maybe even lower than most of the state. It's just a backwards "piney woods" region, sort of a cross between the Ozarks and the Bayou Country. Voodoo-practicin' hillbillies, or something.
Not to belittle the people who live there. (I can get away with hillbilly jokes as an in-group member.) It's just a very economically backward part of the state. Oddly, because Dallas banking and Houston oil lie just to the west of its two termini.
Slashdot Mirror
Rain Man is Hollywood fantasy.
Amusingly, reality deniers of all stripes are quite fond of citing movies as evidence for their beliefs.
Those who argue against vaccination based on the risk of autism may well be on shaky ground, but there are PLENTY of studies linking vaccines to other ill effects, here are a (very) few:
Next time you get a prescription for anything, stop and take the time to read that sheet of paper that comes with it. Even the most commonly used drugs have long lists of possible side effects.
The question isn't "could something bad happen?", but rather "what are the risks of taking this vs. not taking it?". Unfortunately we sometimes underestimate the risks and people die horribly.
Still, from where I'm sitting it looks like modern medicine does far better than causing random effects. Unless you're in an at-risk group, or are taking other medicines known to have a harmful interaction, or your physician is incompetent, you're probably better off taking the medicine despite the long list of possible side effects. People suffer or die from *not* taking medicine sometimes too, you know.
It's all about weighing the risks.
That's a good way to think about it. Peer review, like the market, only works with honorable actors. Scientists are presumed to be honorable, so the way peer review is structured doesn't attempt to look for deliberate forgeries or falsehoods. Peer review is more along the lines of "this conclusion isn't backed up by your data" or "you forgot about this possibility" - that is, it catches mistakes or oversights. And it's pretty good for that.
Importantly, the peer review that happens before publication does not involve repeating the authors' work to verify it. To paraphrase what you already said, all it can do is check to see if the authors did their homework.
I mention peer review "that happens before publication" because that is only part of it. If important results *are* published (such as this, or CNF, or General Relativity) then other researchers do get interested in duplicating the results. In the long run, this is probably a more important factor in guiding science toward reality than the pre-publication peer-review is.
If we never published anything until it was 100% verified, modern science wouldn't exist. We have to go with the best we've got, and correct ourselves when further evidence (or investigation into suspected dishonesty) tells us we took a step off the path.
These spates of disreputable science (this, and the ghost writers for example) is a good bit concerning. There historically hasn't been much deception at all, at least in modern science... I hope this isn't the harbinger of politics-as-science.
Sorry, but it's kind of late to start worrying about that. Big money is doing it's damnednest to obfuscate truth in every area where there's money to be made (or lost).
And this is different from global warming how?
Well, for one thing vaccines aren't causing the world's glaciers and ice caps to melt.
[...] the wave of anti-MMR vaccine hysteria that swept the UK for years. [...] Really its a case of crap statistics and a gullible media playing it way beyond its worth. [...]
And as with all these stories, the bad science was trumpeted to the heavens but the correction will be a small note on page 31B -- if mentioned at all.
sure it screwed up North America for a whiel and lowered global temps several degrees, but it isn't the end of the world.
In fact, it will actually help with the global warming problem!
In humans language is something cultural, even syntax is something you learn from others, is not builtin. If is the same on monkeys maybe the ones from a region have a different syntax or semantics than others from far away.
But the capability seems to be at least partly built-in.
The big debate is between the "speech is special" crowd, who think the built-in stuff is only good for language and only present in humans, vs. those who think language is to a big extent based on more general cognitive capabilities.
I'm in the latter group, so I find this utterly unsurprising. The discoveries of the past few decades should have disabused everyone by now of the notion that human cognition is of an utterly different caliber than animal cognition.
Still, there are those who will contest this report vehemently.
The AGW believers want to use governments to force people to lead objectively poorer lives. Many of them have wanted this since before Global Warming was even theorized.
Evidence for that claim?
AGW is going to lose the political struggle because of Climategate. It was already reeling from the fact that it hasn't warmed in the last decade.
Let us know when we get our glaciers back...
The fact that these climate-skeptics were prepared to take these e-mails, pore over them for some choice quotes (which didn't even look incriminating to me out of context), blatantly misinterpret them without making any kind of good-faith effort to understand the context or the science behind it, and trumpet it all out as some kind of 'disproval' of global warming (which wouldn't have been the case even if they were right), just goes to show that they're simply not interested in either learning the science, or engaging in a real debate. And it's in itself pseudo-scientific behavior in action: Decide there's a big conspiracy of fraud behind climate change, and go look for evidence to support your theory, and ignore all other explanations.
The skeptics have been trumpeting a new "proof" that it's all a fraud about once a year lately.
Kind of like the discovery of Atlantis and Noah's Ark...
Air power never wins wars
That's the one lesson that nations can't seem to learn.
Without boots on the ground, you will not get proper intel. As such, there is a higher likelihood of collateral damage. When surprise attacks indiscriminately kill both combatants and civilians, you lose what little support you may have had.
This is the key. As long as we keep blowing up women and children, we're making more enemies than we kill.
The West (including Israel) have a blind spot, thinking "collateral casualties don't count". But to the people on the receiving end, their family is just as dead as if we had deliberately blown up their skyscrapers.
Whatever else our new strategy entails, "no civilian casualties" needs to be the cornerstone, or we're never going to win.
\rant
If I may be allowed to re-order things a bit:
A new report based on data from 100 US and European ISPs claims P2P traffic has dropped to around 20% of all Internet traffic.
The report goes on to say the drop is likely due to continued, widespread ISP P2P shaping
reported by the same company which sells subscriber traffic management equipment to ISPs
The authors of the first study actually realize that speed isn't the only metric that matters.
Still seem to confuse "operating system" and "user interface", though.
Would that be fair?
Depends on whether you subscribe to the Reaganite doctrine that a government should not be allowed to do anything that a capitalist middle-man could make a profit on.
Beyond that, I'm having a bit of trouble working up any sympathy for a guy who's complaining that a public service is making it hard for him to charge people for the lies he tells them.
anyone who's ever tried to wind up power cords
Like this?
Seriously, there are no real technical reasons why we can't just run 64bit operating systems. Let's just stop selling 32bit ones.
Good idea.
Unfortunately, lots of Windows software won't run on 64-bit Windows XP. Even Windows Update tells you you have to close the 64-bit WIE so it can run the 32-bit version to fetch the update... how lame. Then half the updates won't install, for reasons that aren't made clear.
It should be clear by now that Microsoft, like every other corporation on the planet, isn't going to do a damn thing unless their share prices depend on it. When there's overwhelming consumer demand for 64-bit computing, they'll start fixing their consumer software to support it.
The Americans cannot enforce an immigration policy because doing so is politically incorrect.
Or maybe there's just too many people with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
Look at the revolt that the Republican leaders got from their own people when they floated the idea of a border crackdown to boost their falling popularity a few years ago.
it is quite disappointing to see the world's richest country with what is at times the best health care in the world unable to keep simple infections and parasites from affecting a large portion of its population.
We lack that most basic of technologies: giving a damn.
Fuck the immigrants. This is MY country, not theirs.
Rio Grande, Bering Strait, or Atlantic Ocean - how did YOUR ancestors get here?
since the Democrat party
Holy retard shibboleth Batman!
Shouldn't you be at a town hall meaning, screaming about birth certificates or something?
I never understood why Democrats get so bent over that usage. What's the deal?
...and will have rechargeable batteries.
In case you want to watch the commercials over and over again.
The combined experience of the Nordic countries for half a century now should stand as proof that, even if everything in life is provided for you, the vast, vast majority of people still go out and work for a living.
See, Socialism warps your mind. Can't even count on them to be decently lazy when the situation calls for it!
Why exactly would a person not trust Bush and then trust the government to run our health care?
You've been hitting on the Republican kool-aid. This isn't about running the health care system; it's about finding a way for everyone to get some of it.
The reason for the furor, just like 15 years ago, is that lots of unnecessary middle men stand to lose their "entitlement" revenue stream. The volume of the furor indicates how much money is at stake.
And alas, also indicates how much of your health care money is going toward making someone rich rather than making you healthy.
So strange... Fifteen years ago I lived in an apartment near the Houston Medical Center, and I remember nurses at the pool saying they were afraid universal health care would cost them their jobs. All the scaremongering cancels a lot of people's capability for critical thinking. A poll this week shows 39% of the people polled want the gummit to stay the hell out of Medicare so they won't screw it up.
From my perspective, both republicans and democrats have a good side: the republicans want to empower the individual citizen and free him from the limitations of government, and the democrats want to help the poor and downtrodden. These are both noble goals.
No, if you look at what the Republicans do when they have power it's obvious that their goal is to ensure that the rich get richer faster than they would if there wasn't a Federal government.
Who knows WTF the Democrats actually want.
This might mean all those calculations projecting imminent bankruptcy of social security will have to be redone.
Probably need redoing anyway, since people have been decrying TIBoSS for at least 30 years.
Back in the 90's there was a big argument: the Republicans wanted to "save" it by using all its money for something else, whereas the Democrats only wanted to steal about half its money.
Political football. Little in the US economy attracts so much misrepresentation -- except in years when health care reform is up for discussion.
the portion they're talking about is between Beaumont and Texarkana, right on the border
Which makes me wonder if this was a study of US Citizens or merely US Residents?
It might be hard to eliminate the illegal population from those areas, without finishing the job that the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo stopped and annex all of Mexico.
Wrong border. Beaumont-Texarkana lies along the Texas-Louisiana border.
All of Texas has a high Hispanic population, but that area wouldn't be outstanding in that regard. Maybe even lower than most of the state. It's just a backwards "piney woods" region, sort of a cross between the Ozarks and the Bayou Country. Voodoo-practicin' hillbillies, or something.
Not to belittle the people who live there. (I can get away with hillbilly jokes as an in-group member.) It's just a very economically backward part of the state. Oddly, because Dallas banking and Houston oil lie just to the west of its two termini.