Homeopathy: a new study proves efficacy (according to Dana Ullman)

I am indebted to my good friend and log-term admirer Dana Ullman for alerting me to this new (2019) paper. It reports a study aimed to test whether homeopathic medication administration to COPD patients during the influenza-exposure period may help to reduce the frequency of common URTIs. This prospective, observational, multicenter study was carried out […]

Read the rest here: Homeopathy: a new study proves efficacy (according to Dana Ullman)

American Loon #2138: Allen Quist

Michele Bachmann is crazy, but compared to her mentor, Allen Quist, she can at least occasionally come across as deceptively reasonable (they’re close: Allen Quist’s wife Julie was for instance Bachmann’s district director while Bachmann was in Congress). Quist is a soybean farmer, former...

Read the full lunacy: #2138: Allen Quist Encyclopedia of American Loons

Live Blood Analysis revisited … but it turns out to still be bogus

About a year ago, I published a blog-post about LIVE BLOOD ANALYSIS (LBA). My conclusion at the time was that LBA is an ineffective, potentially dangerous diagnostic method for exploiting gullible consumers. My advice is to avoid practitioners who employ this technique. But perhaps it was too harsh? Recently, this post started to attract a […]

Read the rest here: Live Blood Analysis revisited … but it turns out to still be bogus

Oscillococcinum: “If it’s made from a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s got to go”

Oscillococcinum is by now well-known to readers of this blog, I am sure (see for instance here, here and here). It seems an important topic, not least because the infamous duck-placebo is the world’s best-selling homeopathic remedy. Just how popular it is was recently shown in a survey by the formidable ‘Office for Science and […]

Read the rest here: Oscillococcinum: “If it’s made from a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s got to go”

The AHRQ review of spinal manipulation for chronic back pain: more bad news for chiropractors

Chronic back pain is often a difficult condition to treat. Which option is best suited? A review by the US ‘Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’ (AHRQ) focused on non-invasive nonpharmacological treatments for chronic pain. The following therapies were considered: exercise, mind-body practices, psychological therapies, multidisciplinary rehabilitation, mindfulness practices, manual therapies, physical modalities, acupuncture. Here, […]

Read the rest here: The AHRQ review of spinal manipulation for chronic back pain: more bad news for chiropractors

2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #4

Story of the Week... Editorial of the Week... Toon of the Week... Quote of the Week... SkS in the News... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Reviews... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week...

Story of the Week...

Teenage activist takes School Strikes 4 Climate Action to Davos

Protest by 16-year-old Greta Thunberg snowballs to last day of World Economic Forum

 

Swedish youth climate activist Greta Thunberg at the World Economic Forum in Davos, eastern Switzerland. Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images 

The 16-year-old activist behind the fast-growing School Strikes 4 Climate Action has taken her campaign to the streets of Davos, to confront world leaders and business chiefs about the global emissions crisis.

Greta Thunberg, whose solo protest outside Sweden’s parliament has snowballed across the globe, will join a strike by Swiss schoolchildren in the ski resort on Friday – the final day of the World Economic Forum.

Thunberg travelled by train for 32 hours to reach Davos, and spent Wednesday night camped with climate scientists on the mountain slopes – where temperatures plunged to -18C.

Having already addressed the UN Climate Change COP 24 conference, Thunberg is rapidly becoming the voice for a generation who are demanding urgent action to slow the rise in global temperatures.

As she travelled down Davos’s funicular railway from the Arctic Base Camp – while more than 30,000 students were striking in Belgium - Thunberg said the rapid growth of her movement was “incredible”.

“There have been climate strikes, involving students and also adults, on every continent except Antarctica. It has involved tens of thousands of children.”

Teenage activist takes School Strikes 4 Climate Action to Davos by Graeme Wearden & Damian Carrington, Environment, Guardian, Jan 24, 2019

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Editorial of the Week...

This Could Be The Biggest Scandal Of The Climate Change Era

The world is headed for up to 5 degrees Celsius (9 F) of global warming above pre-industrial levels by 2100, which would lead to devastating consequences for billions of people. Credit: Anton Petrus via Getty Images

Governments and businesses habitually set out emergency response plans to protect their economies, jobs, cities and other crucial assets from potential disaster. Yet when it comes to climate change ― the biggest, most urgent threat the world faces ― there is no emergency plan.

On the issue of our lifetime, countries can agree very little. The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2019 published last Tuesday found that increasing divisions between the world’s major powers is the most urgent global risk we face because it stymies vital collective action on climate change.

Instead of action, we see delays, rejections and avoidance, as December’s United Nations climate summit in Katowice, Poland, so acutely reminded us. The event, which brought together world leaders, scientists, campaigners and the private sector, settled most of the rules needed to ensure countries follow the climate pledges they have made to date. What it failed to do is push countries to step up their targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions ― currently the only viable way to prevent climate breakdown. The Middle East, the U.S. and Russia refused to even welcome landmark scientific predictions on climate change, signaling their intention to continue blocking progress.

This Could Be The Biggest Scandal Of The Climate Change Era, Opinion by Sandrine Dixson-Declève & Anders Wijkman, Huffington Post, Jan 23, 2019

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Toon of the Week...

 

Hat tip to Stop Climate Denial Facebook page.

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Quotes of the Week...

But the tone has shifted. The feeling is more dire. I don’t know what kids are supposed to do with the sobering fact that their planet is changing for the worse.

According to Laura Kastner, a clinical psychologist and professor in the psychology department and the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington, the way to teach kids about environmental issues is not by overwhelming them with data or presenting them with projected outcomes they can see no way of changing. It’s by being realistic with kids and also teaching them agency and action.

It’s what Kastner describes as the “both-and.” The idea of first acknowledging that, yes, climate change is happening, and there are things we can do to help. “We really are going to have to deal with this, and there is so much to do, so let’s get to work,” she said. “We want to be responsible and smart and informed about what’s happening, and we want to be hopeful and agentic.”

Heather Price, an atmospheric chemist, climate scientist and chemistry instructor at North Seattle College, who has presented climate science to members of Congress, says that whenever she gives a talk about rising temperatures, ocean acidification and mass extinctions, she always spends at least a quarter of her time discussing the areas where scientists see hope and how people are already altering the trajectory. For example, the capacity of renewable energy in the United Kingdom has surpassed that of fossil fuels for the first time, and in the United States, electric car sales were up 81 percent in 2018 over sales in 2017. Price knows the science is depressing. “But,” she says, “it’s not on the science side where the good things are happening. It’s on the mitigation, on the solutions.”

Ways to help kids cope with — and help combat — climate change by Ronit Feinglass Plank, Lifestyles, Washington Post, Jan 22, 2019 

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SkS in the News...

[To be added.] 

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Coming Soon on SkS...

[To be added.] 

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Climate Feedback Reviews...

How credible were 2018’s most popular climate articles?

Summary

To investigate whether last year’s most “viral” climate change stories misled the people who read them, we asked scientists to evaluate a list of top articles (as we did last year). In November, we searched Buzzsumo for the climate articles[1] with the most shares and interactions—as many as 1.2 million in the top spot—selecting the top 10 that focused on verifiable statements about climate science. (One more story entered the list in December.) Two stories did not receive any reviews, but all the evaluations and comments we collected can be found below.

Compared to last year’s top 10, there is a notable lack of low credibility stories. Two stories garnered mixed reviews from scientists. In one case, this was an article detailing false claims about sea level rise made by politicians, in which some reviewers felt the article simply wasn’t clear enough in its corrections. But there were no articles from partisan outlets presenting inaccurate rejections of climate system at the top in 2018. Instead, the list was dominated by major news outlets—with the exception of the top story, which was published by the local FOX station in St. Louis.

This leads to an interesting question we unfortunately cannot answer at this stage: is this improvement in the credibility of the most-shared articles the result of recent changes to social media algorithms or just chance?

Almost half of the stories in this list cover major IPCC and US National Climate Assessment reports released last year. It also seems clear that people are interested in learning about (or commenting on) the environmental impacts of diet. The #4 story of 2017 was about the greenhouse gas emissions associated with beef production, and two of 2018’s top stories are on the same topic.

Several of the remaining stories featured dramatic headlines on events related to climate trends—things like winter warm spells at the North Pole or the 400th consecutive month warmer than the 20th century average. The most popular story (titled “NASA releases time-lapse of the disappearing Arctic polar ice cap”) was actually an article on the 2017 global surface temperature ranking that included a NASA animation of Arctic sea ice changes over the years.

 

 

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SkS Week in Review...  

• 2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #4 by John Hartz
• New research, January 14-20, 2019 by Ari Jokimäki
• SkS Analogy 17 - Lotteries, evaporation, and superstorms by Evan & jg
• State of the climate: How the world warmed in 2018 by Zeke Hausfather, (Carbon Brief)
• 2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #3  by John Hartz

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Poster of the Week...

 

from Skeptical Science
via IFTTT

American Loon #2137: Janet Quinn

Janet Quinn is an “Associate Professor, Adjunct,” (a bit unclear what that means) at the University of Colorado School of Nursing, and a true crackpot. Though she does have a PhD in Nursing Research and Theory Development from NYU, her thesis was on therapeutic touch (TT) (Quinn is a...

Read the full lunacy: #2137: Janet Quinn Encyclopedia of American Loons

Acupuncture is effective for chronic back pain!!! If you disagree, tell the CMS

Really? Acupuncture for chronic back Pain? If you doubt it, the following announcement might amaze you: In response to the U.S. opioid crisis, HHS is focused on preventing opioid use disorder and providing more evidence-based non-pharmacologic treatment options for chronic pain. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services […]

Read the rest here: Acupuncture is effective for chronic back pain!!! If you disagree, tell the CMS

Integrative medicine for coronary artery disease works – provided your trial is fatally flawed

The objective of this ‘real world’ study was to evaluate the effectiveness of integrative medicine (IM) on patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) and investigate the prognostic factors of CAD in a real-world setting. A total of 1,087 hospitalized patients with CAD from 4 hospitals in Beijing, China were consecutively selected between August 2011 and […]

Read the rest here: Integrative medicine for coronary artery disease works – provided your trial is fatally flawed

American Loon #2136: Greg Quinlan

Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX) is an organization devoted to promoting conversion therapy (also for children) and the (more or less mythical) ex-gay movement, the central ideological commitment being that homosexuality is not a product of biological determination –...

Read the full lunacy: #2136: Greg Quinlan Encyclopedia of American Loons

Does acupuncture reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease? Yes, that would be nice, but I fear the answer is no!

Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have a higher risk of coronary heart disease (CHD). Despite good evidence for effectiveness, acupuncture is often advocated for RA, and it has not been reported to prevent CHD in patients with RA. The authors of this analysis aimed to assess the risk of developing CHD in acupuncture-users and non-users of […]

Read the rest here: Does acupuncture reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease? Yes, that would be nice, but I fear the answer is no!

Healing Cancer: A Homoeopathic Approach

The claim that homeopathy can cure cancer is so absurd that many people seem to think no homeopaths in their right mind would make it. Sadly, this turns out to be not true. A rather dramatic example is this extraordinary book. Here is what the advertisement says: The global medical fraternity has been exploring various alternative […]

Read the rest here: Healing Cancer: A Homoeopathic Approach

American Loon #2135: Hal Puthoff

Harold Puthoff is an engineer and parapsychologist and one of the true legends of pseudoscience. In the 1970s and 1980s Puthoff directed a CIA/DIA-funded program at SRI International tasked with investigating paranormal abilities, collaborating with Russell Targ in a study of the purported...

Read the full lunacy: #2135: Hal Puthoff Encyclopedia of American Loons

‘Users of homeopathic medicines can no longer remain silent’

Belgian homeopaths, together with the ‘European Committee for Homeopathy’, have published a statement which I find too remarkable to withhold it from you: START OF QUOTE Users of homeopathic medicines can no longer remain silent about the untruths circulating in the media. These lies raise doubts which naïve and gullible people take on board all too easily […]

Read the rest here: ‘Users of homeopathic medicines can no longer remain silent’

Are cervical manipulations for neck pain truly ‘much safer than the use of NSAIDs’?

In 1995, Dabbs and Lauretti reviewed the risks of cervical manipulation and compared them to those of non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). They concluded that the best evidence indicates that cervical manipulation for neck pain is much safer than the use of NSAIDs, by as much as a factor of several hundred times. This article must […]

Read the rest here: Are cervical manipulations for neck pain truly ‘much safer than the use of NSAIDs’?