OT: Science Frauds and Hoaxes of the Modern World

Your open mind appears to have dribbled out and there is none left.

in on stuff that you don't actually understand.

pedia!

How? I'm using wikipedia as the examples of the kind stuff that you should have looked up to cross-check the total rubbish that you have posted. I alw ays read through wikipedia articles before I cite them, to make sure that t hey've got it right.

I've had a subscription to New Scientist for some thirty years now, and int ermittent access to the original literature for rather longer. I'm not goin g to bother trying to find and cite the information that originally formed my opinions, and I know that wikipedia is reliable enough to demonstrate th at you are terminally ill-informed (for which it wouldn't need to be anythi ng like as reliable as it is).

More that his experimental design was total rubbish. He was deceiving himself as well as everybody else.

Serious homeopathy does no harm.

Human beings are social animals. If you don't have people to associate with - even if its only by phone and e-mail (there's a Finnish study that illustrates this) bits of your brain seem to shrivel.

In part because they point out that you are losing weight and ought to eat more, and better.

Very easily. Friends are the people who tell you that you ought to take that small skin cancer on your arm off to the doctor before it gets to be a fatal melanoma.

That's because you can't do joined up logic.

You couldn't explain your way out of a paper bag. Your enthusiasm for posting non-facts and your capacity for not finding out real facts makes you a basket case as far as explaining anything goes.

Homeopathy can't work. If you dilute your medicine enough that there's very little chance of a single molecule of the medicine being present in the medicine you take, it's game over.

The health benefits of having friends are a lot more real and obvious.

Intelligent people are expected to reconcile the two differing ideas. You don't seem to bother with that step.

Not exactly. Thinking that atoms and sub-atomic particles don't behave in quite the same way as large aggregates of atoms isn't irrational, and does give you useful insights into certain physical phenomena.

Dismissing it completely would make you useless as a spectroscopist ....

lim-flam is beloved of the government because they can "protect us" and mak e us passive in the face of a major threat. Centralized government is despe rate to find a way to be useful, because it makes them look good, and mayb e in some there is a twinge of guilt about their theft of money from the e conomy.

So insulate your roof with loose asbestos.

You'll get mesothelioma, and so will your kids, but not fast enough to get you out of the gene pool early enough to do any good.

of flim-flam

ng to zero in on the "cancer scare industry" in which carcinogens abound.

Care to name one of the 20,000 non-carcinogens which the cancer-scare indus try has called a carcinogen?

he "Ames Carcinogen test." He now says that all the dangerous carcinogens is just a bunch of bunk. (bruce ames yourtube) He is THE main man on carcin ogens, and at age 80, says his life work (or that part of it - he did wor k on mitochondrial aging and aging in general which is very current.) -wa s mistaken.

Wrong. "He was concerned that overzealous attention to the relatively minor health effects of trace quantities of carcinogens may divert scarce financ ial resources away from major health risks, and cause public confusion abou t the relative importance of different hazards."

He isn't saying that there aren't any carcinogens around - rather that ther e are lots, many of them natural, and that getting too fussed about trace q uantities of the less potent carcinogens can be a waste of time and a distr action from more serious health risks.

As usual, you have misunderstood the message.

Good points - but I would say as you alluded to the church was dominant and nobody read the bible (because it wasn't considered important) . And the church screwed up royally.

Phil Hobbs made a pertinent point. At the beginning it was best science that the earth was the center of the universe. But then center of power, let's not admit we were wrong, ego and it all blows back eventually. Actually I was just thinking it is not unlike todays situation if you try to report errors/mistakes within a large established company. Often, they respond as if the person trying to inform about the problem were the problem itself. How little we change...

An error in logic, but an understandable one. Churches have often behaved very badly or more often one member, congregation, branch or denomination behaves badly and everyone gets branded.

The Dead Sea scrolls were really good for establishing the accuracy of the old testament writings. IIRC they had a complete manuscript of the book of Isiah that was about 1000 years older than the manuscripts already known. Comparisons showed there was very change over the time.

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e of flim-flam

ying to zero in on the "cancer scare industry" in which carcinogens abound.

ustry has called a carcinogen?

the "Ames Carcinogen test." He now says that all the dangerous carcinogen s is just a bunch of bunk. (bruce ames yourtube) He is THE main man on carc inogens, and at age 80, says his life work (or that part of it - he did w ork on mitochondrial aging and aging in general which is very current.) - was mistaken.

or health effects of trace quantities of carcinogens may divert scarce fina ncial resources away from major health risks, and cause public confusion ab out the relative importance of different hazards."

ere are lots, many of them natural, and that getting too fussed about trace quantities of the less potent carcinogens can be a waste of time and a dis traction from more serious health risks.

Thanks Bill, that's well said. I know nothing about carcinogen detection, But it reminds me of nuclear radiation. To the general public, if scientist's can measure it, it must be dangerous.

George H.

And there is very real hard science showing how biological chemistry is affected by stress / emotions / loneliness etc.

It depends a bit on the semantics of what you mean by "can't work". It works every bit as well as any other placebo effect based sugar pill.

ISTR some research that showed that placebo effect based pills with very mild harmless side effects were even more effective at treating annoying hypochondriacs with chronic conditions than mere sugar pills. The placebo effect can be a significant factor.

The "theory" behind homeopathy doesn't hold water (excuse the pun).

I reckon all homeopaths should have to spend at least a year in a malaria country protected only by their quack "medicine" before being allowed to practice. That would thin them out pretty effectively.

Lets see how many actually believe the homeopathic crap that they peddle so expensively to the worried well.

Indeed. Although it is also likely that being lonely is bad for you too.

As the unfortunate punk rock guru Malcolm McClaren knows to his cost.

He is unusually high profile most of the other fatalities have been low profile laggers, boilermen and furnace workers in industrial plant.

beta-naphthylamine would be a lot more effective and is extremely potent against males - causing a lethal bladder cancer in most men. It was amongst the first serious industrial carcinogens to be identified in the dyestuffs industry and is now largely banned worldwide.

Smokers are also exposed to it in tobacco smoke and bladder cancer will shorten their life expectancy if their heart or lungs don't fail first.

e health benefits of networks of friends!

very little chance of a single molecule of the medicine being present in th e medicine you take, it's game over.

At least there's something in the sugar pill that the patient can detect. H omeopathy doesn't tout itself as marshaling the patient's own powers of res istance, so while it may be a way of doing that, it isn't functioning as a homeopathic remedy when it works as a placebo.

Obviously, it's easier to believe that something with some effect (no matte r how irrelevant that effect is) is helping your problem

Malaria doesn't reliably kill adults. About 35% of malaria deaths are in pe ople over the age of 15, so an unprotected year in a malaria country wouldn 't kill nearly enough homeopaths. Cholera would be better. Oral re-hydratio n therapy works fine, but only if the sugar and the salt are present in rou ghly the right proportions (30ml sugar, 2.5 ml salt per litre of water). Ho meopaths would be tempted to dilute it with more water ....

The greedy hypocrites are lot less dangerous than the lunatics who actually believe the theory.

That's a reformulation of the same proposition. If having friends is good f or you, not having friends is bad for you.

f flim-flam is beloved of the government because they can "protect us" and make us passive in the face of a major threat. Centralized government is de sperate to find a way to be useful, because it makes them look good, and m aybe in some there is a twinge of guilt about their theft of money from th e economy.

get you out of the gene pool early enough to do any good.

hop-233221/

Tobacco smoke contains a wide variety of carcinogens. My father was heavy s moker until his heart started acting up when he was in his early sixties.

He die of kidney cancer when he was 82, rather than lung cancer - I never g ot around to telling him that kidney cancer is twice as common amongst heav y smokers (more than 20 cigarettes a day) than it is in the general populat ion. The risk is supposed to go back to normal if you've not smoked for ten years, and he'd not smoked for nearly twenty years when the kidney cancer showed up, so perhaps my restraint was justified.

Cancer theory says that it takes about six individual mutations to turn a n ormal stem cell into a cancer stem cell, and one would imagine that any per iod of inhaling mutagens would give them a head start.

No, homoeopathy is complete and utter bollocks. It is the same drivel as crystal healing, astrology and similar nonsense. There are some "alternative medicine" treatments that /may/ have some minor physical effect in some cases, in theory (though not necessarily a good effect) - acupuncture is one such "treatment". But homoeopathy is well within the category of provably zero effect (while acupuncture is has zero provable effect).

Note that this does not mean that there is no measurable health effect from going to a homeopathist (or other imaginary "alternative treatement") - there are two types of effects that are very real. One is that some people believe in such nonsense and as a result they fail to get required proper medical treatment. This is, of course, a serious health risk.

The other effect is similar to the "network of friends" effect. Physical health and psychological feelings are not independent - being ill makes you feel bad, but feeling bad can also make you ill. So if some "treatment" makes you feel better, it can help your bodies own defence and repair mechanisms do their job, and it can help you help yourself (such as by encouraging you to eat properly and move around rather than lying ill in bed). But it is not the homoeopathy or the bottles of water that help - it is the person taking time to listen to your problems, reducing your stress and relaxing you that helps. And if you /think/ that a "treatment" is helping you, then this effect is re-enforced (much due to reduction in stress and worry) - that is the placebo effect. The placebo effect is so strong that it even works (though less effectively) when you know the "treatment" is a placebo!

No, this is not difficult to understand at all. See above.

Keep an open mind - but not so open that your brains dribble out.

There seems to be a popular concept that all ideas and theories are equally valid, and should be discussed and considered together. But despite the popularity, the concept is totally wrong.

So by all means keep an open mind on things that are not well understood, or when there could be complicating factors that make it difficult to be scientifically categoric about effects. But for clear, simple, well-understood concepts with solid scientific evidence and indisputable everyday experience, there is no need to be open-minded. Just as you are not open-minded about how gravity works when you drop a pencil, you should not be open-minded about how dissolving substances in water works.

Yes, quantum mechanics is counter-intuitive (at least until you have studied it significantly - many of its results drop out as inevitable logical consequences of simple intuitive ideas). But that does not mean that other counter-intuitive ideas may be correct!

snip snip

The determining factor for me about "Hoaxes" is the following:

1. they involve a large amount of money in the perps pockets
2. they involve disinformation to a large group of people
3. official bodies are usually involved.
4. "true believer" advocates push the beliefs in public as proven fact

The reason I go easy on Homeopathy is it's small change compared to the hidden hoaxes. Homeopathy is a "Brave New World" hoax. It is a hoax that the pols point to and say: "See, there is a hoax." An official hoax. Now, if the structure of institutional science itself is largely a hoax, then a minor hoax like homeopathy provides a welcome distraction, doesn't it?

In sum, it is a "red herring."

the "Ames Carcinogen test." He now says that all the dangerous carcinogen s is just a bunch of bunk. (bruce ames yourtube) He is THE main man on carc inogens, and at age 80, says his life work (or that part of it - he did w ork on mitochondrial aging and aging in general which is very current.) - was mistaken.

or health effects of trace quantities of carcinogens may divert scarce fina ncial resources away from major health risks, and cause public confusion ab out the relative importance of different hazards."

ere are lots, many of them natural, and that getting too fussed about trace quantities of the less potent carcinogens can be a waste of time and a dis traction from more serious health risks.

I'm sorry I have hurt your feelings, but it is you who have misunderstood t he message. I have known Bruce Ames personally as well as reading his publishe d papers. You should read them if you want to understand him.

To correct your misunderstanding of my message:

1. There has been a huge emphasis on the 20,000 carcinogens, as I explained to you.
2. Bruce Ames states categorically that carcinogens cause 1% of cancers, po or nutrition causes 99%.

I am guessing that you think big government is a kind of wise mentor maybe, but there is no way to misinterpret Ames's position, as you have done.

Now, I may have been at fault for not saying "invisible carcinogens." The c arcinogens that the EPA (here) is concerned to protect us from are not the obvious poisons like working with asbestos for 30 years, but the every day exposure to a myriad of minor carcinogens which number in the thousands. You should read his scientific papers in PNAS, etc. And again, if you disag ree with what I am saying, then show me in the scientific papers where I misint erpret him. Ames is very categorical about this - it's radical.

And several more points: Many, if not most, government scientists at EPA disagree with Bruce Ames. You may also. But Prof. Bruce Ames is not lightly dismissed, nor his work distorted. He is making a radical statement. Second, Bruce Ames is the foremost authority on carcinogens out there.

Finally, my definition of a "scientific hoax" is it fills roughly these asp ects:

1. A group makes big money from it.
2. an official body supports it.
3. a widespread belief is promulgated about it.
4. A group of "true believers" defends it to the bitter end.

The carcinogen industry has a huge bureaucracy and has those who believe anything Daddy Sam tells them. Unfortunately, the main proponent, Bruce Ame s, has jumped ship. How embarrassing! :)

Lots of people make money from selling homoeopathic "medicine" and "treatments".

There is a surprisingly large number of people who believe there is at least some effect of homoeopathy. And while many of the practitioners know it is bunk (and are therefore conmen), I'm sure there are plenty who really think it works (and have therefore been conned themselves by suppliers of homoeopathy "medicines", books, and other products).

There is an even larger number of people who - like you - think it should be treated with an open mind instead of being ridiculed.

Authorities usually allow people to practice homoeopathy, rather than treating the conmen as the criminals they are.

As do believers in homoeopathy.

So by your definition of a hoax (which I don't agree with as a good definition), homoeopathy is clearly a hoax.

There are certainly greater evils in the world than homoeopathy, but it is certainly a hoax nonetheless. A shoplifter is not a bank robber, but he is still a criminal.

Supposedly the emu possesses a complete dinosaur genome, it just needs to be activated, can't wait for that one. I also want a flock of those chickens from hell too, they have to lay some large sized eggs.

Then either:

1. Bruce Ames is totally wrong.

or

1. You have misunderstood him.

I'm guessing Ames is probably wrong to some extent - most people taking extreme positions are. But I am very confident that /you/ are misunderstanding him.

Here's a hint for you - if poor nutrition causes 99% of cancer, why do people who eat properly sometimes get cancer? Why do people who eat badly sometimes /not/ get cancer? Why is there virtually no real-world statistical correlation supporting a causal link?

There are /many/ causes of cancer, and /many/ contributing factors. Carcinogens of various sorts are often a factor (though I don't disagree that the roles of many carcinogens are overstated). Environmental factors such as radiation, particularly sunlight, are a big factor. Poor nutrition is certainly a factor in some cases, as is an obsession about the latest fads of healthy eating (eating too many anti-oxidants reduces your body's ability to fight early stages of cancer). Genetics is a huge contributor. Viruses have been clearly identified in some cancers, and could potentially be a major cause of most cancers - we know far too little about viruses.

In some cases, carcinogens are clear. If you are a moderate to heavy smoker in the western world, the chances are over 50% that you will die of a smoking-related disease - and about half those deaths will involve cancer.

Here's a clue - when most scientists or experts disagree with a small number of "radical thinkers", it usually means the radical thinkers are wrong. /Occasionally/ they are correct - and it is good to have radical thinkers to come up with radically new ideas. But for most of the time, they are wrong.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof - not just extraordinary media attention.

The best way to identify hoaxes and conspiracies is to follow the money. Ask yourself who makes most money - the people getting grants to study these carcinogens, the bureaucrats making a living from lists of carcinogens, or the companies making and selling products that use carcinogens? This third group outweigh the first ones by many orders of magnitude.