This is my second post on the climate change project (see my earlier piece on the background to the story). In this post I’ll talk briefly about some of the negative response that was raised to the project, primarily by the researcher who developed the course, Tim Patterson. It is worth noting that the course is being taught again in January 2013. I’ll follow this up with posts on (i) experiences with the media, and (ii) advice for skeptical campaigns in general.
Category: Skepticism
Climate change denial: my part in its downfall
In March 2012 I was involved with a project that sought to make public some poor science that was being taught at a Canadian university. I have been busy with other things since then (like getting a job…) but now I find myself with a few minutes to reflect on the experience. I have a tendency to write long posts which I’m sure nobody ever reads, so I’m going to write three short posts on this topic. In this post I’ll talk briefly about some of the negative response that was raised to the project, primarily by the researcher who developed the course, Tim Patterson. It is worth noting that the course is being taught again in January 2013. I’ll follow this up with posts on (i) a response to some criticisms, (ii) experiences with the media, and (iii) advice for skeptical campaigns in general.
Why does breast cancer research receive more research funding than prostate cancer?
“Men’s Rights Activism” (MRA) is a dirty phrase in many circles. The MRA movement is a fairly diverse beast ranging from claims of inequality in child custody cases to accusations of full-blown, societal-scale misandry typified by higher death rates in men and lower levels of social investment. One claim in particular that the MRAs make is that breast cancer (a cancer that predominantly, though not entirely, affects women) receives substantially more money in terms of research funding than prostate cancer, despite similar numbers of people dying from each. First I’ll review some of the specific claims made, I’ll look at the data on funding, then we can delve into a few stats on the impacts of these two cancer types (bear with me!). I’ve also included some more detail on whether younger men are more at risk from prostate cancer as an appendix for those who are interested.Read More »
Is Correactology just chiropractic in a funny hat?
I’ve blogged about Correactology before, and that post has been pretty popular (for one of my posts, anyway…) so I thought I would revisit the topic. Supply and demand and all that jazz… Also, I was moved by a comment on the earlier post (reproduced in full below the fold), where a woman described a terrible experience with a Correactologist because she (a) had not been familiar with the nonsense treatment before, and (b) had nowhere to go to complain (the particular practitioner she was treated by is actually a Director of the “Canadian Association of Correactology Practitioners”). Helping people like this is one of the reasons that I set up this blog:Read More »
A skeptical take on allergy testing
This is the second of three segments that I presented on The Reality Check, Canada’s weekly skeptical podcast. On episode #205, I talked about allergy testing. Advances in medicine have completely eradicated diseases such as smallpox, and we are well on our way to doing the same for polio. Yet more diseases are firmly under control through most of the developed world through the use of vaccines. However, as we remove some causes of ill health, we notice that others have grown in prominence over the past few decades. Allergies are a good example of one of these increasingly diagnosed conditions, but the general public tends to have a fairly poor understanding of what allergies are, how they come about and how they can be diagnosed.Read More »
Is water fluoridation safe and/or effective?
I was lucky enough to be invited on as a guest presenter on The Reality Check, one of Canada’s largest skeptical podcasts. I recorded a couple of shows before I left Ottawa and it was immensely fun and interesting. I had made fairly extensive notes for the segments, and it seemed a shame not to post them here.Read More »
Is religion good for the environment?
The Committee for the Advancement of Scientific Skepticism (CASS) was asked recently to take part in a discussion of the relationship between religion and the environment. A number of questions were put to the group, and I have reproduced those questions below with some of my (brief) answers. Feel free to chip-in in the comments – I’d be interested to hear what others think!Read More »
New Ben Goldacre book on clinical trials and academic misconduct
I’ve been working on getting the blog up and running again, and I have a few posts in the pipeline. However, this topic is one close to my heart and I wanted to post on it as soon as possible. I have blogged about the limitations of clinical trials and the need for clinical trial registration before. Ben Goldacre has published a new book (“Bad Pharma: How Drugs Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients“) on precisely this problem, and gave a recent TED talk that frames the issue brilliantly. As he says “tell everyone that this is a problem, and that it hasn’t been fixed”:
Image credit: Tom Varco
I get email
So, I have been following PZ Myers’ blog at Pharyngula for some time and it always makes me smile when he comments on some of his email correspondance. Well, I had a bit of a mention in a news story last weekend which looked at the control of feral cat populations (see the Ottawa Citizen article). As a result, I received the following email:
Licensing and legitimacy in alternative medicine
I saw this sign literally yards from my home in Ottawa. So close to the border between Ontario and Quebec, there is a lot of competition for services, competition which is enhanced by the fact that there are two different tax rates in the provinces. In this case, the Ontario naturopath is arguing that the customer (and let’s face it, users of naturopathy are really more customers than patients) would be better off using a provider from a province within which naturopathy is licensed and regulated (i.e. Ontario) rather than a province where the practice is unregulated (i.e. Quebec). Of course, this really boils down to a debate over whether or not the Emperor’s new clothes were made by a tailor who was part of the Tailors’ Guild…
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Katatrepsis 