Denialism

Category: General Discussion

  • Two links for you

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    MarkH
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    So nothing special for today, I’m too busy with meatworld, but you might enjoy these two links: Teen sex has been wronged by a puritanical society – it appears teens who have sex earlier are less likely to become delinquents (however I suspect it ignores that they are also more likely to get knocked up).…

  • Ask A Scienceblogger – Which parts of the human body could you design better?

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    MarkH
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    The question this month is “Which parts of the human body could you design better?” This is a great question, because a lot of aspects of the human body represent what worked well enough for survival, not necessarily what works best. Therefore the engineering ends up being rather ramshackle, and convoluted, and sometimes, downright terrible.…

  • Bloggers for Peer Reviewed Research

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    MarkH
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    BPR3, or Bloggers for Peer-Reviewed Research Reporting has announced the release of their new icons. For those of you who don’t know what this is all about, it’s pretty simple. When we’re not making up lolcats, and being all super-serious, we want to have a simple way to communicate to the audience that we’re discussing…

  • The Placebo effect, how significant is it?

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    MarkH
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    Are placebo’s really effective? So asks Darshak Sanghavi in Slate, citing this study from 2001 that shows the placebo effect, compared to passive observation, to be relatively minor for improvements in pain or objective measures of health. This is an interesting topic, but unfortunately, a really bad article. Given how many alties love to stress…

  • Denialists should not be debated

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    MarkH
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    Orac has brought up the interesting point that debating the homeopaths at U. Conn might not be a good idea. On a related note, in a post derriding attacks on consensus I was asked by commenters if isn’t it incumbent on science to constantly respond to debate; to never let scientific questions be fully settled.…

  • No Imagination Without Religion? Lee Seigel is an idiot.

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    MarkH
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    Noted sockpuppet and sniveler Lee Siegel warns us that the new militant atheists may be closing the book on imagination. And for some reason the LA Times saw fit to publish this tripe. In the last few years, so many books have rolled off the presses challenging God, belief and religion itself (by Sam Harris,…

  • Can You Really Strangle Yourself Getting out of Handcuffs?

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    MarkH
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    I thought for sure the idiotic slugs that pass for security in our airports had mishandled this woman resulting in her death when they said she strangled herself while trying to escape from handcuffs. However, Slate reports indeed you can manage to screw up this maneuver and contort yourself into such a position. They also…

  • Welcome A Few Things Ill-Considered!

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    MarkH
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    It looks like it will be two announcements of new sciblings today. We have A Few Things Ill Considered joining us at Scienceblogs. It’s a climate science/debunking blog I’ve been familiar with for a while, and author of the excellent Howto talk to a climate skeptic. Welcome!

  • New Scibling – Sciencewoman

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    MarkH
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    Welcome Sciencewoman to the block, as she starts up her new blog here. I’m continually impressed with our Sb overlords and their ability to acquire a diverse set of talented individuals. It seems they’re doing a better job the The Scientist as some of my sciblings have pointed out.

  • Genomicron on Genome Size

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    MarkH
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    For anyone curious about complexity, genome size, and non-coding or “junk” DNA, there are a number of good posts on the topic at Genomicron. See in particular Junk DNA: let me say it one more time fand Function, non-function, some function: a brief history of junk DNA for a discussion of what junk DNA is,…