Blogging for the Discovery Institute, Michael Egnor repeats the already debunked canard that the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is analogous to the search for Intelligent Design (ID) in nature. This time he is responding to a recent blog entry of mine on SETI. He doesn’t actually respond to any of my points - he is just using my entry as an excuse to repeat the SETI false-analogy.

Egnor writes:

One is struck by SETI supporters’ speculative extravagance. The most cogent critique of SETI, in my view, is that it is akin to an article of faith. There is absolutely no evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial life. SETI is surely a shot in the dark, perhaps literally, but I do believe that it is a worthwhile scientific venture. Methodologically it is certainly science, even good science. The reception of signals with specified complexity or the discovery of artifacts apparently crafted by intelligent non-human agency would be clear evidence for extraterrestrial intelligent agency. Carl Sagan’s example in “Contact” is entirely valid. The reception of a signal repeating prime numbers would be very unlikely to have a non-intelligent natural source, and the most reasonable scientific inference would be that it was generated by extraterrestrial intelligent life.

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There is a cycle to the snake oil market - like the fashion industry. Words and claims come in and out of fashion, used for marketing impact rather than scientific accuracy. Some words, like “natural” and “energy” have staying power, while others last for a time and then may fade, but can come back into fashion like wide ties. Magnetism seems to rear its head every 20 years or so, going back to the animal magnetism of Anton Mesmer. Radioactivity ended with the atomic bomb, but radio or EM waves are back in style. Anti-oxidants are still in their heyday, but perhaps past their peek.

Recently “detox” is all the rage. The basic concept is nothing new - potential customers are scared with the notion that their bodies are being harmed by invading toxins. This triggers our disgust emotion - an evolved defense against eating spoiled, contaminated or dangerous food. There is something deeply satisfying about the idea of getting bad things out of our bodies. It also is an appealing notion that symptoms we may be having are not a problem with our body itself, but is the result of something foreign that can be purged.

The word “detox” tries to capture all that. It’s an effective marketing slogan. It is also (as used in such marketing) utterly meaningless.

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Well, it finally happened. NeuroLogica is a finalist in the Weblog awards for 2008 in the science category. Although this is a hopeless cliche, I am happy just to be nominated and in the finalists. Recognition of one’s efforts doesn’t suck.

Voting is open to the public until January 12th here. If you have enjoyed NeuroLogica over the past couple of years I would certainly appreciate a little blog love. I looks as if polls open 12 midnight EST tonight and everyone can cast one vot per day until the 12th.

Of course, I am up against the perrenial favorites, Pharyngula by PZ Myers and Bad Astronomy by Phil Plait. Both excellent gentleman who put a great deal of time and effort into their outrageously popular blogs.  Congratulations to them and the other finalists.

And to science blogging itself - something worth celebrating. I think science blogging is an unmitigated success of the so-called new media.

I’ll keep you updated on how the voting goes.

Water is the new snakeoil - well, it’s an old snakeoil too. There certainly seems to be something psychologically appealing about the notion of pure water. It is clear, crisp, untainted - it just has to be healthy. And, of course, clean water is essential for health and life, and nothing enhances a lie better than a kernal of truth.

It is not surprising, therefore, that “magic” water has long been a staple of snakeoil salesmen, gurus, and charlatans. Health spas originally centered around special springs of water, or mineral water, and later carbonated water.

I was recently asked about a recent incarnation of the water snakeoil routine, Kangen Water. The claims made on the website for this dubious product are unimaginatively representative.

Water is the single most important resource for the human body. Water is the most essential nutrient involved in every function of the body. Water accounts for approximately 70% of an individual’s complete fat free body mass. In order to function properly, water must be consumed in set quantities in consistent intervals (average of 2.5 liters per day). When not enough water is consumed, people can begin to develop certain illnesses and even accelerate their aging processes.

Many of the “magic water” website begin like this - water is an “important resource for the human body.” Well, duh. This says nothing, of course, about why any particular water is more healthful then, say, the water that comes out of your tap. Continue Reading »

Christine Maggiore was a major figure in the HIV denial community - those who deny that the human immunodeficiency virus is the cause of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Maggiore died at 52 at home on December 26th. At this time there is no official cause of death, but she was treated over the last six months for pneumonia, according to reports.

Maggiore founded Alive & Well, a group dedicated to the notion that HIV does not cause AIDS, in 1993 and since that time has been a fervent advocate of so-called HIV denial. In fact she argued that her own survival as an untreated person with HIV was evidence that HIV does not cause AIDS. It is now recognized, however, that some people have inherent resistance to HIV and researchers are learning more about the genetics of such resistance.

Maggiore’s dedication to HIV denial, however, still had tragic consequences. She decided to breast feed both her children, despite the fact that breast feeding increases the risk of contracting the virus. Her daughter, Eliza, died at the age of 3 apparently from pneumonia that was likely an opportunistic infection due to advanced AIDS. She never had her children tested or treated for HIV.  Her pediatrician, interestingly, was anti-vaccine crank Dr. Jay Gordon. He claims to support the conclusion that HIV causes AIDS, but his website used to contain some squirely comments on HIV that suggested he may have had some denialist sympathies.

Maggiore never acknowledged that her daughter’s death was due to HIV or AIDS. The HIV denial community rallied around her, claiming the death was due to an allergic reaction to amoxicillin. Denial is a powerful thing.

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The following is a response to many comments left on the Skeptic Blog in reply to my previous post on the skeptical battleground of so-called alternative medicine. There are too many comments for me to reply to individually, so I will answer all the main points raised here. Many of the usual points on the pro-CAM side were raised, and even though I have gone over all of them before on NeuroLogica and Science-Based medicine, it is worth reviewing them here.

Doctors are bad

Many of the comments made the basic point that the popularity of CAM is the fault of evil, uncaring, incompetent or dangerous doctors. These comments took one of two forms - using negative claims about doctors and medicine to explain why CAM is popular, and using them to justify CAM. These are similar but distinct claims. The latter claim, that CAM is legitimate because scientific medicine “doesn’t have all the answers” or is uncaring or corrupt, is a non sequitur. The position of CAM critics like myself is that CAM treatments are unscientific, not proven, and often already proven to be unsafe or ineffective. There should be a single science-based standard of care for all medicine - not a double standard where fraud and unscientific claims can flourish. If we are currently not doing an adequate job enforcing the standard of care that is not a justification for abandoning it - it just means we need to figure out how to do a better job.

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I just wanted to wish all of my readers a wonderful holiday season, winter solstice, festivus - whatever excuse you have to celebrate with your loved-ones. I am taking a break over the holiday to spend extra time with my family. I will be back to my usual schedule of posts next week.

The following was cross-posted today on Science-Based Medicine.

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Science-based medicine is more than a website. It is a philosophy of medicine that is actively vying with other philosophies for dominance in the world of medicine. We believe that medicine should be based upon the best science available, according to a single universal standard of rigorous methodology and valid logic and reason. Others desire a double-standard, so that they can be free to practice or market whatever they wish without having to meet strict scientific standards. Still others have a non-scientific ideological world-view and want public policy to accord to, or at least admit, their personal beliefs.

I therefore expect that we will be attacked by proponents of unscientific medicine in all its forms.  Yesterday, however, we were attacked on the Evolution News & Views website of the Discovery Institute by creationist neurosurgeon, Michael Egnor. This may seem incongruous at first, but honestly I suspected that just such an attack was inevitable.

Many science bloggers, David Gorski and me prominent among them, have taken on both the DI and Dr. Egnor specifically over many anti-scientific arguments he has put forward over the last couple of years. We have sparred mostly about evolution in medicine, neuroscience and consciousness, and the materialist underpinnings of modern science. Dr Egnor’s day job, however, is that of a (from what I can tell) respected neurosurgeon, so I always wondered what he thought of his sparring partners’ writings about science-based medicine.

His entry yesterday ends any speculation - he wrote an incoherent, logical fallacy-ridden screed that would make any snake-oil peddler proud. This reinforces a point I have made in other contexts - all anti-scientific philosophies have science as a common enemy, and will tend to band together in an “unholy alliance” against those advocating for scientific rigor or defending science from ideological attack. That is why a website that is ostensibly about the “misreporting of the evolution issue” would post a blog attacking science-based medicine as an “arrogant medical priesthood.”

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Have you ever had the sense that you were not alone, that another person, perhaps menacing, was in the room with you? And yet, when you look around, no one was there? This is a common experience, which researchers call a “sensed presence.” Neuroscientists hypothesize that this common experience likely has a neurological correlate - meaning that activity in some specific part of the brain is responsible for generating the sensation of a presence.

So far, research has validated that hypothesis. And recently the research team of Michael Persinger had the fortune of capturing a sensed presence event on EEG (which measures the electrical activity of the brain).

The subject is a woman who has had numerous episodes of sensed presence after a head injury. Persinger now presents a case report of her EEG, recorded while she experienced the sense of a man in the room with her when none was present. For some reason as yet unknown, 90% of time a sensed presence is of a member of the opposite sex. The EEG shows a burst of electrical activity in her left temporal lobe during the event, and of note she perceived the presence to be on her right side.  (Brain activity corresponds to the contralateral or opposite side of the world.)

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There is a dedicated fringe anti-vaccine movement. They are dedicated to some permutation of the collection of beliefs that vaccines are: 1) not effective; 2) have not reduced or eliminated any infectious disease; 3) are not safe; and 4) are a conspiracy of Big Pharma, the government, and paid-off doctors. Specific claims have wandered over the years, but they have as a central theme that vaccines are bad. When one specific claim collapses, they will move on to the next anti-vaccine claim.

While anti-vaccine cranks have been around as long as vaccines, it is only recently that they have captured the attention of the mainstream media and the skeptical movement and the battle has really been engaged.

Anti-vaccinationists have focused much of their recent efforts on the claim that vaccines cause autism. At first the MMR vaccine was blamed, sparked by a now-discredited study performed by Andrew Wakefield. This led to declining vaccination rates in the UK and a resurgence of measles.

As the MMR claim was in decline (although by no means abandoned), attention shifted to thimerosal - a mercury-based preservative in some vaccines. There are many flaws with the thimerosal hypothesis, and numerous studies have shown no link between thimerosal and autism or any neurological disorder. But the fatal blow to the thimerosal hypothesis was struck when thimerosal was removed from the routine childhood vaccine schedule (thimerosal, incidentally, was never in the MMR vaccine) in the US by 2002. In the subsequent 6 years the rate of autism diagnoses kept increasing at their previous rate, without even a blip. Only the most rabid (or scientifically illiterate)  anti-vaccine fanatics still cling to the thimerosal claim.

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