I have an Erdos number of 5!

Katatrepsis2 Comments
Paul Erdos (1913-1996)

People may have heard of the “six degrees of Kevin Bacon“, related to the idea of six degrees of separation, where it was posited that any Hollywood actor could be linked to Kevin Bacon by six or fewer relationships (e.g. by virtue of having shared co-stars, etc).  This theory of networks is fascinating in its own right, due to the uneven connectedness of nodes (people) within a given network.  Not to be outdone, scientists have their own “centre of the universe” and that person is Paul Erdös (1913-1996).  Read More »

Is Correactology just chiropractic in a funny hat?

Katatrepsis8 Comments
Correactology: it’s all about feet, apparently…

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

Katatrepsis3 Comments
RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!! (photo by H. Zell)

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 »

I’ve been nominated for an award (along with everyone else!)

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Scientific American is running its Open Lab science blog competition, where readers submit blog posts that they have come across over the last 12 months.  The best are turned into an E-book (you can find the previous editions here).  Anyway, somebody has apparently nominated my post on “Why are there imperfect mimics?” (thanks, whoever you are!).  I was excited until I saw the field of 269 other entries and realised I didn’t stand a cat in hell’s chance…  There are some amazing people who have been nominated, so you should all go and check out my vanquishers!  Oh, and the deadline is midnight EDT tonight (1st October) so…

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