Pharmacists put themselves at risk by selling homeopathic remedies

I have written about the ethics of pharmacists selling homeopathic preparations pretending they are effective medicines often – not just on this blog, but also in medical journals (see for instance here and here) and in our recent book. So, maybe I should give it a rest? No! I believe that the issue is far […]

Read the rest here: Pharmacists put themselves at risk by selling homeopathic remedies

American Loon #2047: Francis Myles

Now, what the heck is this? Ostensibly, one Francis Myles explains how you achieve “genetic salvation” (if you’re interested, you can go to the video here. “Delusional incoherence” doesn’t even begin to describe the otherworldly gibberish contained therein). The interview in that link was...

Read the full lunacy: #2047: Francis Myles Encyclopedia of American Loons

THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF CHIROPRACTIC’s pathetic attempt at re-inventing chiropractic

The Royal College of Chiropractors (RCC), a Company Limited by guarantee, was given a royal charter in 2013. It has following objectives: to promote the art, science and practice of chiropractic; to improve and maintain standards in the practice of chiropractic for the benefit of the public; to promote awareness and understanding of chiropractic amongst medical […]

Read the rest here: THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF CHIROPRACTIC’s pathetic attempt at re-inventing chiropractic

Kinesiology tape: a triumph of marketing over evidence

I am sure we have all seen these colourful tapes that nowadays decorate the bodies of many of our sporting heroes. The tape is supposed to be good for athletic performance – but not just that, it is also promoted for all sorts of health conditions, for instance, low back pain. But is it worth […]

Read the rest here: Kinesiology tape: a triumph of marketing over evidence

American Loon #2046: Steven Myers

Deranged, home-made theories defended with motivated reasoning by “independent scholars” are a dime a dozen, and the Giza pyramid is a common target. Edward J. Kunkel, for instance, argued – in his book The Pharaoh’s Pump – that the great pyramid in the desert at Giza was a water...

Read the full lunacy: #2046: Steven Myers Encyclopedia of American Loons

Some recommend acupuncture for infant colic, yet the evidence tells us that it ‘should not be recommended’

Needle acupuncture in small children is controversial, not least because the evidence that it works is negative or weak, and because small children are unable to consent to the treatment. Yet it is recommended by some acupuncturists for infant colic. This, of course, begs the questions: Does the best evidence tell us that acupuncture is […]

Read the rest here: Some recommend acupuncture for infant colic, yet the evidence tells us that it ‘should not be recommended’

Yet another confirmation: the effects of acupuncture are due to placebo

Most people probably think of acupuncture as being used mainly as a therapy for pain control. But acupuncture is currently being promoted (and has traditionally been used) for all sorts of conditions. One of them is stroke. It is said to speed up recovery and even improve survival rates after such an event. There are […]

Read the rest here: Yet another confirmation: the effects of acupuncture are due to placebo

My treatment works … Because … my treatment works! A crash-course in logic for alternative practitioners

In the comment section of a recent post, we saw a classic example of the type of reasoning that many alternative practitioners seem to like. In order to offer a service to other practitioners, I will elaborate on it here. The reasoning roughly follows these simple 10 steps: My treatment works. My treatment requires a […]

Read the rest here: My treatment works … Because … my treatment works! A crash-course in logic for alternative practitioners

Homeopathic remedies are inherently harmless! True or false?

“Homeopathic remedies are inherently harmless” this is what many seem to think – homeopathy friends and foes alike. After all, they contain nothing – so, how can it cause harm? The notion is, of course, not entirely true. Homeopathic remedies can be directly harmful, if: they are not highly dilute (low potency) – imagine Arsenic […]

Read the rest here: Homeopathic remedies are inherently harmless! True or false?

PLEASE JOIN ME IN A FUN EXPERIMENT: Let’s design a study that might deceive (almost) everyone

Can I tempt you to run a little (hopefully instructive) thought-experiment with you? It is quite simple: I will tell you about the design of a clinical trial, and you will tell me what the likely outcome of this study would be. Are you game? Here we go: _____________________________________________________________________________ Imagine we conduct a trial of […]

Read the rest here: PLEASE JOIN ME IN A FUN EXPERIMENT: Let’s design a study that might deceive (almost) everyone

2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #29

Story of the Week... Analysis of the Week... SkS Highlights... El Niño/La Niña Update... Toon of the Week... Quote of the Week... Graphic of the Week... SkS in the News... Photo of the Week... SkS Spotlights... Video of the Week... Reports of Note... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review...

Story of the Week...

A Global Heat Wave Has Set the Arctic Circle on Fire

Fire burns in Karbole, Sweden. Photo: Mats Andersson/AFP/Getty Images

From Japan to Sweden, and Oman to Texas, a global heat wave is setting records, igniting wildfires, and killing dozens all across the world this week.

The south-central region is home to the highest temperatures in the U.S. this week, with nearly 35 million people living under excessive heat warnings issued by the National Weather Service. Temperatures are expected to be in the triple digits across Texas this weekend, marking the most severe heat wave in the state since 2011.

The Texas heat has already led to record-breaking days for the Texas power grid twice this week. Things aren’t any better elsewhere in the region, with heat indexes in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana reaching up to 110 degrees.

A Global Heat Wave Has Set the Arctic Circle on Fire by Adam K Raymond, Daily Intelligencer, New York Magazine, July 20, 2018

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Analysis of the Week...

The 5 most important questions about carbon taxes, answered

 

Carbon taxes are in the news these days. In recent months, not one but two conservative national carbon tax proposals have emerged, disrupting the usual partisan dynamic on climate policy.

First there was the proposal from the Climate Leadership Council, a group of (mostly older, retired) Republicans and centrists, which was released last year but recently gained the backing of a new big-money conservative PAC. And next week, Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL), co-chair of the House Climate Solutions Caucus, plans to release a carbon-tax proposal of his own.

Neither proposal has a snowflake’s chance in hell of passage any time soon. And on Thursday, the House passed a resolution trying to squash even the possibility of a carbon tax. But the existence of these proposals does indicate a heightened level of awareness of and interest in carbon taxes. So now seems like a good opportunity to review some of the basics.

The 5 most important questions about carbon taxes, answered by David Roberts, Energy & Environment, Vox, July 20, 2018

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Toon of the Week...

 

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Quote of the Week...

“The red alert is on,” Laurent Fabius, who was president of the 2015 international climate change negotiations in Paris, told an audience last week at the EuroScience Open Forum, Europe’s largest interdisciplinary science meeting. As of 2015, global temperatures had risen about 1 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels. “It’s a race against time,” Fabius said, and the political challenge is to avoid acting too late.

What Climate Change Looks Like In 2018 by Christie Aschwanden, Climate, FiveThirtyEight, July 19, 2018

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SkS in the News...

Carolyn Kormann interviewed John Cook for her New Yorker magazine article, In Andrew Wheeler, Trump Gets a Cannier E.P.A. Chief. Cook's observations are contained in this paragraph:

Wheeler has long been a climate denialist, fighting any policies that would establish mandatory carbon limits. In 2003, in a long speech on the Senate floor opposing a climate bill put forward by Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman, Inhofe famously said that “man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” Wheeler defended his boss’s position for years, criticizing the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and casting doubt on the science. (In 2006, he said in an interview with E&E News, “The fact is that the climate changes regularly.”) On Friday, however, in an interview with the Washington Post, Wheeler changed his position—or, at least, chose his words carefully. He said that he believes climate change is real and that “people have an impact on the climate.” (During his Senate confirmation hearings for deputy administrator, last November, he expressed more uncertainty. “I believe man has an impact on the climate,” he said. “But what is not completely understood is what the impact is.”) John Cook, a climate-change communications researcher at George Mason University, categorizes this kind of statement as “doubt-mongering misinformation,” Republicans’ latest argument, he told me, to support climate inaction. (Previously, Wheeler and others used the “explicit misinformation” argument, Cook said. “It seems to be on its way out.”) Wheeler now claims, as he told the Post, that he has “always deferred to career scientists,” and will continue to do so. In his first e-mail to E.P.A. employees as acting administrator, last week, he wrote, “I look forward to working alongside all of you to continue our collective goal of protecting public health and the environment.” 

In his New York Times article, He Sues to Discredit Climate Scientists. Now He’s Being Sued by His Allies., John Schwartz wrote:

The efforts by Mr. Schnare and Mr. Horner to obtain climate scientists’ emails followed a trail blazed in 2009 in an episode known as Climategate, when hackers exposed a trove of private messages between scientists. Global warming denialists took the blunt discussions out of context to allege that researchers had tampered with data, but subsequent investigations found no evidence of fraud.

The first link in the above is to the Basic version of the SkS rebuttal article, Clearing up misconceptions regarding 'hide the decline' 

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Reports of Note...

Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage Approaches for Carbon Dioxide Removal and Reliable Sequestration: Proceedings of a Workshop in Brief

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Coming Soon on SkS...

• Scientists detect a human fingerprint in the warming of the atmosphere (John Abraham)
• Wind Energy: What About Those Subsidies? And, the Key Advantage over Natural Gas (greenman)
• Facebook video spreads climate denial misinformation to 5 million users (Dana)
• CSLDF is fighting attacks on science. Here’s how you can help (Lauren Kurtz)
• Permafrost and wetland emissions could cut 1.5C carbon budget ‘by five years’ (Robert McSweeney)
• 2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #30 (John Hartz)
• 2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #30 (John Hartz)

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Poster of the Week...

 

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SkS Week in Review... 

• 2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #29 by John Hartz
• 97% of House Republicans foolishly reject carbon taxes by Dana Nuccitelli (Climate Consensus - the 97%, Environment, Guardian)
• Ocean Temperature - Part 2 by Irek Zawadzki
• How Wind Turbines Bolster Rural America by greenman360 (Climate Denial Crock of the Week with Peter Sinclair)
• SkS Analogy 13 - Water glasses and Greenhouse gases by evan & jg
• Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy by Dana Nuccitelli (Climate Consensus - the 97%, Environment, Guardian)
• 2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #28 by John Hartz

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American Loon #2045: Ned Myers

Not really sure who Ned Myers is, but he is definitely a creationist, and at one point got the opportunity to lay out his delusions about science in a column in the (now defunct?) Daily News Journal. In the column, Myers was concerned that in 2011 “American public school students place 23rd in...

Read the full lunacy: #2045: Ned Myers Encyclopedia of American Loons

Andrew Wakefield, Donald Trump, SCAM, and the anti-vaccination cult

The fact that many SCAM-practitioners are latent or even overt anti-vaxxers has often been addressed on this blog. The fact that the anti-vaccination guru, Andrew Wakefield, has his fingers deep in the SCAM-pie is less well appreciated. In case you forgot who Wakefield is, let me remind you. As a gastroenterologist at the London Royal […]

Read the rest here: Andrew Wakefield, Donald Trump, SCAM, and the anti-vaccination cult

More evidence that the use of SCAM shortens the life of cancer patients

We Have previously seen that SCAM use can shorten the lives of cancer patients. A new article now confirms this notion. The investigators wanted to find out what patient characteristics are associated with use of SCAM for cancer and what is the association of SCAM with treatment adherence and survival. They thus  compared the overall […]

Read the rest here: More evidence that the use of SCAM shortens the life of cancer patients

“Non-reproducible single occurrences are of no significance to science”. The example of the homeopathic diarrhoea trials

“Non-reproducible single occurrences are of no significance to science”, this quote by Karl Popper often seems to get forgotten in medicine, particularly in alternative medicine. It indicates that findings have to be reproducible to be meaningful – if not, we cannot be sure that the outcome in question was caused by the treatment we applied. […]

Read the rest here: “Non-reproducible single occurrences are of no significance to science”. The example of the homeopathic diarrhoea trials