Bad Astronomy, Penn and Teller, etc.
 

The Bad Astronomy blog is written by Phil Plait and published by Discover Magazine. Through the blog, Phil Plait discusses science, and he also takes on bad science.

Here Penn and Teller discuss vaccination. Well, Teller doesn't say much.




In this article, Plait discusses how photons from an exploding cruise missile can set a plane on fire. The article includes cool pictures of things exploding.

Lots of interesting stuff. I've subscribed to the e-mail feed for a few years.

Plait has a new show - Bad Universe. Sort of a science-specific Mythbusters. The first episode had lots of explosions, but I was hoping for a bit more. I'll give it a few more chances, as his blog is excellent.

Drama is so cute. My best count shows about 35-38 pins still standing on the right hand side. I had no idea that 65% of all children died prior to the 1950s. Those are some very sobering numbers indeed.

Or perhaps Teller's just not a very good bowler.

He should probably have only taken out about 30 to 40%, but that depends on the age range we're considering.

"Which it fucking doesn't"

He must have missed the interview with Dr. Julie Gerberding, former director of the CDC, admitting that yes, it does. Funny skit though. :rolleyes:

"Go ahead! Look it up! I know you won't bother..."
Izzard

Is that Dr. Julie Gerberding, the president of Merck's Vaccine division?

Yes, the same.

I can't find it. Need more clues, please.

"children that have a rare, mitochondrial disorder"

Mitochondrial dysfunction, impaired oxidative-reduction activity,
degeneration, and death in human neuronal and fetal cells induced by
low-level exposure to thimerosal and other metal compounds

Interesting. Do they still use that?

At all? Yes. You could easily look up in which products.

Jinx, I'm sorry, I don't know how to deal with this reference,
other than to say that the actual research in the article sited above
has no direct connection to autism.
The authors mention their own study in the Introduction (literature review),
and while discussing some other articles about toxicity studies in cell lines,
and again later in their Acknowledgment (of funding) and the References.
There is no reference cited to connect cell line data with patients diagnosed with ADs

As an example I quote:
Their actual research is done only with 3 cell lines (kinds of cells in tissue culture),
and their cell lines are NOT from patients with any of the diseases that they discuss.
No patients with any of these diseases was involved in this study.

This was a simple toxicity study of how much (Thimerosal)
it takes to cause toxicity (mitochondial-dysfunction) or cytology (visual) changes.
You can do the same kind of study with many other chemicals, and get similar results.
All the authors say is that their data "is consistent with" ....

The authors, themselves, to not attempt to equate their results
with any kind of direct cause-and-effect with autism,
or with patients with the rare mitochondrial diseases
mentioned in their literature review.

While I do have my own beliefs about the usefulness of tissue culture studies in medical research
and about the causality of vaccination and autism, I won't get into any of that here.
It has been discussed endlessly on TV and probably here in The Cellar.

I apologize for being so blunt.

When they are actually tested, a huge percentage of children with autism are found to have mitochondrial dysfunction (see below for relevant references.) Of course, the only people who will test them for this are the people who believe in the vaccination connection. Everyone else says, "No, we won't run a test for mitochondrial dysfunction, because we know your child has autism, not mitochondrial dysfunction." And when autistic individuals are confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt to have mitochondrial dysfunction (e.g. Hannah Poling,) suddenly it becomes evidence that they never had autism to begin with.




Pastural E, et al. Novel plasma phospholipid biomarkers of autism: Mitochondrial dysfunction as a putative causative mechanism. Prostaglandins Leukot Essent Fatty Acids. 2009 Oct;81(4):253-64.

Clark-Taylor T, Clark-Taylor BE. Is autism a disorder of fatty acid metabolism? Possible dysfunction of mitochondrial beta-oxidation by long chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase. Med Hypotheses 62(6): 970-5.

Filipek PA, Juranek J, et al. Mitochondrial dysfunction in autistic patients with 15q inverted duplication. Ann Neurol 53(6): 801-4, 2003.

Fillano JJ, Goldenthal MJ, et al. Mitochondrial dysfunction in patients with hypotonia, epilepsy, autism, and developmental delay: HEADD syndrome. J Child Neurol 17(6): 435-9., 2002.

Gargus JJ, Imtiaz F. Mitochondrial energy-deficient endophenotype in autism. Am J Biochem Biotechnol 4(2): 198-207, 2008.

Holtzman D. Autistic spectrum disorders and mitochondrial encephalopathies. Acta Paediatr.2008 Jul;97(7):859-60.

Lerman-Sagie T, et al. Should autistic children be evaluated for mitochondrial disorders. J Child Neurol 19(5): 379-81, 2004.

Lombard, J. Autism: a mitochondrial disorder? Med Hypotheses 50(6): 497-500, 1998

Oliveira G, Diogo L, et al. Mitochondrial dysfunction in autism spectrum disorders: a population-based study. Dev Med Child Neurol 47(3): 185-9, 2005.

Palmieri L, et al. Altered calcium homeostasis in autism-spectrum disorders: evidence from biochemical and genetic studies of the mitochondrial aspartate/glutamate carrier AGC1. Mol Psychiatry. 2010 Jan;15(1):38-52.

Palmieri L, Persico AM. Mitochondrial dysfunction in autism spectrum disorders: Cause or effect? Biochim Biophys Acta. 2010 May.

Poling JS, et al. Developmental regression and mitochondrial dysfunction in a child with autism. J Child Neurol 21(2): 170-2, 2006.

Pons R, Andreu AL, et al. Mitochondrial DNA abnormalities and autistic spectrum disorders. J Pediatr 144(1): 81-5, 2004.

Ramoz N, Reichert JG, et al. Linkage and association of the mitochondrial aspartate/glutamate carrier SLC25A12 gene with autism. Am J Psychiatry 161(4): 662-9, 2004.

Rossignol DA, Bradstreet JJ. Evidence of mitochondrial dysfunction in autism and implications for treatment. A J Biochem Biotechnol 4(2): 208-217, 2008.

Segurado R, Conroy J, et al. Confirmation of association between autism and the mitochondrial aspartate/glutamate carrier SLC25A12 gene on chromosome 2q31. Am J Psychiatry 162(11): 2182-4, 2005.

Silverman JM, Buxbaum JD, et al. Autism-related routines and rituals associated with a mitochondrial aspartate/glutamate carrier SLC25A12 polymorphism. Am J Med Genet B Neuropsychiatr Genet, 2007.

Shoffner J, et al. Fever Plus Mitochondrial Disease Could Be Risk Factors for Autistic Regression. J Child Neurol. 2009 Sep 22.

Smith M, Spence MA, Flodman P. Nuclear and mitochondrial genome defects in autisms. Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 1151:102–132, 2009.

Weissman JR, et al. Mitochondrial disease in autism spectrum disorder patients: a cohort analysis.PLoS ONE.2008;3(11):e3815.

No, according to the National Institute for Health, the childhood infectious disease death rate was already at .25% by 1910 (yes, that decimal is in the right place.) By 1920 that number had dropped to .15%, and it was down to .02% by 1950. That's 1 in 5000, back in 1950.

They also acknowledge that the current rate has not dropped at all since 1986, despite the fact that approximately two-thirds of the current vaccination schedule was added after 1986.

I didn't intend this to be a discussion of childhood death and disease, but it's actually quite interesting.

According to The Decline of Childhood Mortality, by Kenneth Hill, Department of Population Dynamics, School of Hygiene and Public Health, Johns Hopkins University:

Note that these numbers are for death by first birthday. The report goes on to discuss childhood mortality for various periods and geographical regions. The older records are not as reliable as modern data, and what data does exist probably ignores the poor.

Yet the US stands at 180 out of 224, in infant mortatity.

That's a list on which you don't want to be number one.

Edit: From your link:

I did not know that.

Yes, but 180 ain't so hot either.

What does any of this have to do with bad astronomy?

Thimerosal was voluntarily removed from childhood vaccines ten years ago. The only childhood vaccine still containing it seems to be a Sanofi Pasteur dip-tet, for which there are several other options.

The removal of Thimerosal from childhood vaccines had no impact on climbing autism rates in the US and EU.

Here is the table of which vaccines contain Thimerosal.

Incorrect. See pages 125-139 of the book you purchased, since you seem to have forgotten. The data from the handful of studies you are alluding to were examined in wholly illogical (at worst, fraudulent) ways--for example, one study looked at the numbers by year of diagnosis, rather than year of birth, despite the obvious fact that it was children born after a certain year who did or not not have the thimerosal, and when you re-graph the very same data they were looking at, the reduction in gain after Thimerosal was removed becomes clear. Not a true reduction in cases, of course, because as it has been explained repeatedly, Thimerosal was only one small piece of the probem, but a reduction in the upward slope of the graph.

I'll assume that by "interesting" you mean "still nowhere near my completely bullshit number of 30-40%." For fuck's sake, the death rate for soldiers in the Civil War was only 25%.

At any rate, it's true, infant mortality has been vastly improved by things like pre-natal care, neonatal intensive care, and even things like surgery in utero. That has nothing to do with the rates of infectious disease, or the vaccinations intended to prevent them.

IIRC - Many countries have different definitions of "live birth" which skews the numbers.

Not that, cf. I meant it's interesting to see how people react when someone doesn't agree with them.

I didn't realize a thread about Bad Astronomy would get anyone so excited.

From today's post regarding testing of a cruise missile in 1986:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/ba..._testblast.jpg

Yeah, that's what Penn was doing when he screamed obscenities and flung props around the room. He was merely disagreeing.

You gonna cop to the utter ridiculousness of your made-up statistics, or just keep letting it slide?

Sorry, cf. I thought I addressed it in post 16.

But the other point was that I don't think they were trying to be precise in the number of bowling pins that were knocked down.

If you are back participating in the threads, Clod, we have unfinished business. I need you to watch the final Desiree Jennings video, which I posted here. It occurred only a few days after you declared your retirement from the threads.

After you watch it, tell me once again that you believe she was injured by a vaccine and had dystonia.

http://cellar.org/2010/autismcases2.png

This is a graph of new autism cases in the US. Note that the graph was prepared by Thoughtful House on the basis of CDC data. I have removed the years that mark the horizontal axis. Please point to the year Thimerosal was taken out of childhood vaccines.

Point is, "a reduction in the upward slope of the graph" is not a very interesting correlation.

Oh I know, I wasn't suggesting they were, I just included the study to point out that it shouldn't be assumed that this rare mitochondrial disorder that makes some children susceptible shouldn't be assumed to occur naturally. It may, it may not, or any combo thereof.
I realize that study doesn't prove anything, but it's a jumping off point. Some things that are ingredients in some other things we inject into humans can cause harm we don't at first realize. Ie. pregnant women receiving flu shots might injure their fetus in a way that only shows up later when they are vaccinated (or stressed in some other way).

Look! A missile! Blowing up an airplane!

I can't figure out what this thread was supposed to be about. The best theory I can come up with: masterful shit-stirring wrapped in an indecipherable layer of obfuscation.

If that were the case I would have put it in a different forum.

It's about Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy blog, which is now on the Discover magazine site.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/

I suppose it could also be about scientific skepticism and related topics.

Is Phil Plait Penn and Teller?

There was an article about the Penn and Teller video on the blog yesterday. Also, Penn and Teller sometimes address issues of interest to scientific skeptics.

It's entirely possible it was not dystonia. I already noted that back when you did your "this is huge! this means we are in agreement! *kisses*" post, which I'm too busy to go back and find. You are very singly focused on individual cases and individual components like thimerosal. I am concerned with larger trends that the medical community is refusing to acknowledge. If you want to go one-for-one on individual cases, a vaccine injury board in the UK just this past weekend ruled that the MMR shot did in fact cause the plaintiff's "encephalopathic seizures," but made absolutely sure to note that they still did not equate the seizures with the diagnosis of autism he's had from the beginning, despite the fact that 30% of children with autism have visible, grand mal seizures, nevermind the additional number who have absence and partial seizures.

Okay, I'm with you so far. Now... astronomy, vaccines, and missles exploding airplanes. I'm not seeing the connection...? . . . Oh, by the way, do you read Michael Shermer, "The Skeptic" in Scientific American?

It's all science.

No, I don't/haven't. Is it interesting?

Well this is how the problem moves. When Thimerosal is suggested as a problem, it's a disaster; when it's devalued, there are problems with the studies; when it's shown to be irrelevant, it's an "individual component".

Why must the argument move so? What does that say about the argument?

*kisses* (11/1/09)

Two months later, Desiree was "outed" in the final video.

She is an individual case. Yup. That's what she was when you first posted her first video as a scary case of vaccine injury... and I watched it, and I thought to myself, "BULLSHIT, THIS RINGS FALSE TO ME".

And that's why I followed it so closely; and for the next few months we went over her and over her, until your last word on Desiree was (11/21/09):

You can see why I pursued it so hard. You can see why I had to bring it back, after all this time. You said I lack corroborating life experiences. I say that corroborating life experiences are not what is needed to fuel the bullshit detector.

Not by me. Not ever by me. I have repeatedly told you that thimerosal is not my main concern, since as you say, it was removed from most childhood vaccines. It's repeatedly been my contention that the inability to properly metabolize and process heavy metals is a symptom of autism, thus mercury toxicity merely exacerbates the damage, it does not cause the syndrome.

Honestly, I can't. But it's fine--you detected her bullshit sooner and faster than I did. Congratulations. It's not about some stupid cheerleader to me, or the credibility of one's bullshit detector. It's about my fucking daughter, who I openly contend developed her autistic symptoms as a direct result of her MMR vaccine. So perhaps you can see why I pursue it so hard.

Yes. It's all kinds of science-y and stuff. When I read it, I'm usually all like, "whoah."

In your thread it is, but in this one, it's about all of them.

Oh? I thought it was about Desiree Jennings again...


Whatever, fuck it. I don't know why I thought I was ready for this; I'm not. In my defense, if I'd realized you were still waiting with 6-month-old "unfinished business," I surely would have known better. I only jumped in to refute the idiocy of the Penn & Teller demonstration, which HungLikeJesus took as such de facto truth he couldn't even understand why someone would take offense at it. I stand by everything I've said about it.

When you insist that vaccines don't have any connection to autism, you call me a liar. It's as plain as that. It's my problem that I can't just be cool with that, and I guess I'll have to work harder at it.

Somehow I missed this reply, sorry.

I'm sorry anyway. To say I am calling you a liar is exactly what this thing has not been about. I enjoy this thing because we are both intelligent people with an honest disagreement. You have worked on the problem in detail, so you are not a pushover. I push and you push back. I like that here. But if you don't like it then I won't like it, so that is that.

Hey at least once I have made a good point and it has helped your situation. I thought there was good value there.

I pushed you cause I loved you guys
I didn't realize
That you weren't having fun
-- Ben Folds, "My Philosophy"

Observatory with Big LASER
 

From yesterday's Bad Astronomy:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/ba...ser_galcen.jpg

There's a much larger version of the image linked at the BA site. I've set it as my wallpaper at work.

That is a neat pic !

Are you buying that story, HLJ? :headshake
They're really picking off spaceships trying to steal our women, you know.

Its the signal to our overlords so they can come save us.

yeah, but can it set planes on fire?

I think it's used for hunting interstellar space sharks.

Interstellar candygram!

The second episode of his show was not good. It got the math on acceleration for space travel completely wrong. On his blog he said he was simplifying it for the audience, but to paraphrase Einstein, things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.

In an early segment he sort of simulated a meteor strike, and pointed out that the bacteria in it were killed. That was then defanged by saying that maybe a different species could have survived, and completely ignored when he later discussed the possibility that Earth life could have come from a Martian meteor.

Not a well constructed show.

Were the equations written on the backs of topless women?

He didn't go into those equations at all, but the one equation he did mention was not written on naked women. That, combined with the fact that it was the Drake equation was disappointing.

Maybe we shouldn't be looking for science on an entertainment show, we'll surely be disappointed. The people that produce these shows couldn't care less if we learn anything, as long as we're entertained enough to keep the ratings up. Apparently Mr Wizard and Bill Nye are passé. :(