Denialism

Month: July 2008

  • More on the effects of tobacco poisoning

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    MarkH
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    My recent post on tobacco poisoning focused on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the cause of about one-third of smoking related deaths. Let’s move on to cardiovascular disease (CVD), which accounts for another third. When we talk about CVD, what are we taking about? The pathophysiology is very interesting…go and read. Heart disease, which includes heart…

  • Another reader question, and open thread

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    MarkH
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    This is one of those topics I’ve always sort of avoided, and I’m still avoiding it for now. But that doesn’t mean you have to remain silent. Here’s the reader comment/question: This is off-topic, but I wanted some doctorly input to a discussion that I am having over at another blog. This lady is hyperventillating…

  • Link love—Sceptics’ Circle #92 at The Lay Scientist

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    MarkH
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    It’s up over at Martin’s place. His blog came out of nowhere (don’t they all) a few months back, and he’s hit the ground running. Just, please, when you get to my section, try not to use your imagination too well. Trust me.

  • How real science works

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    MarkH
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    Every once in a while I like to do a piece on how real science works. The New England Journal of Medicine was kind enough to serve up a nice example for us this week. Real science is hard. It’s time-consuming, expensive, and leads down many blind alleys. That’s one of the reasons pseudoscience is…

  • Rationality served up hot and fresh

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    MarkH
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    One of my favorite pet websites is RationalWiki, which is slowly transforming into it’s 3.0 iteration. It originated as a parody/rebuttal site to the execrable Conservapedia (and no, Conservapedia is not a parody, just an example of Poe’s Law at work). Eventually, it expanded to developing articles that examined irrationality in general, such as fundamentalism,…

  • The truth is out there…WAY out there

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    MarkH
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    Oh. My. F-ing. God. All the news that’s fit to print??? I know some of my readers don’t think much of the New York Times (yes, PP, I’m talking to you), but despite some of my reservations, it’s still the Paper of Record. That’s why I was, er, um, was nauseated was flabbergasted threw up…

  • I get questions…

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    MarkH
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    I frequently get questions by email or by comment. If it’s simple, I might fire off an answer. If it’s about a personal medical problem, I either don’t answer, or send a standard disclaimer to seek medical care. If it’s a really interesting question, I blog. Today, I blog. The question regarded the ubiquitous commercials…

  • What should smokers be scared of?

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    MarkH
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    This comes up every day. Everyone’s afraid of the big “C”, and they should be. Smoking increases a person’s risk of dying of lung cancer by about 12-20 times (whatever that means, but it’s significant). And while cancer may be scary, other diseases are just as bad. Lung cancers attributable to smoking cause about 125K…

  • A blog recommendation

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    MarkH
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    Everyone this morning should check out a new favorite website of mine the International Journal of Inactivism. Frank Bi has created a wonderful little catalog of global warming conspiracy theories that nicely illustrate the fundamental defects of reasoning used by the denialists. In particular, I enjoyed his genealogy of climate conspiracy theories. When we first…

  • Scene III, wherein we move on to more important things

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    MarkH
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    What could be more important than a good old-fashioned flame war? I’ll get to that in a moment, so please stick with me. The recent imbroglio between some of our doctor bloggers and non-physician scientists got me thinking (so it couldn’t be all bad). As a quick summary, PhysioProf of the DrugMonkey blog used an…