I was recently asked about this article, Bedrock of vaccination theory crumbles as science reveals antibodies not necessary to fight viruses, which is a year old, but is making the rounds recently on social media. I was asked if there is any validity to the article. It’s from NaturalNews (not to be confused with NatureNews), which means, in my experience, it is almost certainly complete nonsense.

For the average consumer my advice is to completely ignore NaturalNews and Mike Adams. He is, among other things, an anti-vaccine crank. This article is written by staff writer Ethan Huff.  Let’s take a close look  and see if it lives up to the site’s reputation.

He writes:

While the medical, pharmaceutical, and vaccine industries are busy pushing new vaccines for practically every condition under the sun, a new study published in the journal Immunity completely deconstructs the entire vaccination theory. It turns out that the body’s natural immune systems, comprised of both innate and adaptive components, work together to ward off disease without the need for antibody-producing vaccines.

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I love raging scientific controversies. I am not talking about vaccines and autism, global warming, evolution, or homeopathy – these are not actual scientific controversies. They are political controversies intruding onto science.

I prefer nerdy scientific debates that have insignificant political implications. I like to see two groups of scientists arguing about the evidence over some narrow scientific question.  That way you get pure science without all the distortion and nonsense of politics and ideology. That is when you see how science really works.

Take for example the Younger Dryas. The last glacial maximum ended about 20,000 years ago. That glacial period was followed by interstadial (warm) periods and stadial (cold) periods. The term Dryas refers to the indicator genus (Dryas octopetali) which is a tundra flower that was much more widely distributed during cold periods. Its pollen in core samples is therefore a good indicator of an stadial period.

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Only two patients have ever been demonstrably cured of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Timothy Brown has not had any detectable virus in his blood since receiving a bone-marrow transplant for leukemia. More recently a child infected with HIV at birth was apparently cured after receiving an early high-dose regimen of anti-retrovirals. These cases are considered “functional cures” – they have no detectable virus even off anti-retroviral medication.

The press has a habit of throwing around the word “cure” prematurely or inappropriately. We hear all the time about a potential “cure” for cancer, for example. Invariably the new treatment in question, if it pans out at all, becomes a useful treatment for cancer – one more tool in our toolbox – but not an outright cure.

I was therefore skeptical of the following headline, “HIV cure months away, Danish scientists say, citing novel new DNA treatment.” Perhaps there are Danish scientists claiming this, but that is a bold claim. I also worry about any clinical claim that a treatment is close. What does that mean, exactly? Either there is compelling clinical evidence of efficacy or there isn’t. You can’t predict the results of future research, so if the evidence isn’t here yet then we simply don’t know. At best such statements are expressing an optimistic hope.

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Social media has been getting a bad rap recently. Blogs, podcasts, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and other social media outlets have certainly had a dramatic impact on how people communicate. They are powerful tools and many people have put them to good use.

There are some unintended consequences as well, and as a society we are still learning to adapt to this new factor in our lives. There are issues of privacy, the rules of social behavior, and the ethics of spreading dubious information online.

We discussed two related issues recently on the SGU. The first was about the recent paper, “Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation,” by Lewandowsky. Essentially Lewandowsky wrote a paper about conspiracy theories around the denial of global warming. Part of the backlash against that paper by self-described global warming skeptics included further conspiracy theories about the paper. Lewandowsky could not resist the irony, hence his subsequent paper.

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It’s always amusing to see two pseudosciences combined into one greater pseudoscience – it’s like chocolate and peanut butter. It’s not uncommon because those who would embrace one pseudoscience are likely to follow the same flawed logic and process to accept others. My colleague David Gorski has termed this effect “crank magnetism.”

Take, for example, Gian Paolo Vanoli. He has been making international headlines recently because of his claim that vaccines cause homosexuality, which he insists is a disease. The story appears to have been first picked up in English by the Huffington Post – all other reports of this story I have found cite this article as their source.

Because of the date of this article (4/1) I wanted to make sure I had another source, but the only other sources are in Italian. The story does seem to check out – here is one article: Gian Paolo Vanoli: Cricket on the urine that has been around the world. 

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While I am at home preparing for the “perfect storm” – an Autumn hurricane that is barreling down on the northeast –  I found the following letter in my e-mail:

I am appalled at what I am reading. How is integrative medicine quackery? Have you ever visited a Naturopathic Doctor, or an integrative Doctor or practitioner? I bet you know not one thing concerning not only their practice or about what they do to treat diseases. They understand that sometimes pharmaceutical drugs and surgery are necessary, but understand that sometimes they can cause more harm than good.

For some people, not having their nutrients at optimal levels can cause a series of symptoms to exhibit their “deficiency”. For some people toxins do cause problems and therefore need to detoxify. For instance, a cancer patient went to see a naturopathic doctor and found that she was being exposed to large amounts of copper which not only lead to her cancer but also to its persistence. Some people do have food sensitivities that can cause to lymph related cancers.

You may say that nothing that they do is scientific but how can you prove that?

Naturopathic Doctors have always treated people with “Adrenal Fatigue”. You may say that this is not a disease, and that the Adrenals can deal with bountiful amounts of stress. But if Adrenal Fatigue is not a scientifically sound nor is it a disease, then please tell me why has The Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine found that patients with CFS, have an altered Cortisol and DHEA diurnal rhythm? And why has McGill University, a prestigious academic institution, found the same results, as people who suffer from fatigue have altered or varied Cortisol and DHEA diurnal rhythm.

These studies are new studies, but Naturopathic Doctors have been treating them for thirty years or more?

If a Medical Doctor says in their Hippocratic oath that they are to first do no harm, why do they sometimes prescribe medications which at the end causes more harm.

A statin drug was recently taken of the market because although it was approved, they found that it now causes bladder cancer.

Hippocrates said, “Let thy food be thy medicine, and thy medicine be thy food”

If an apple a day keeps the Doctor away, then why don’t we suggest nutrition.

Naturopathic Doctors are unscientific. If the statement be then they would not use blood test and other means to measure biochemical substances and use what they can to treat it.

There is a lot of Journals and Papers published on Orthomolecular Medicine, and CAM. Are these journals not scientific.

The Tripedia Vaccine for Pertussis has been taken off the market. It was noted to the FDA that multiple adverse effects included autism, and SIDS.

If certain drugs can cause carcinogenicities, liver failure, and other nasty side affects why should we take them when there are safer alternatives which can perform the task?

Before you open your traps on making statements that CAM and IM as being  pseudoscientific, go see someone who has treated the ROOT cause of ailments and pathologies.

If you want scientific research I can give them to you!

Sincerely,

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We lost two towering figures in the world of rationalism over the weekend. On Saturday October 20, Leon Jaroff died at the age of 85. Then on Sunday October 21 we learned that Paul Kurtz had died at the age of 86. Both men hit their peak prior to the explosion of blogs, podcasts, social media, and as a result, the skeptical community. They therefore might not be that well known to many of the younger skeptics in the community. Their legacy, however, is worth knowing.

Paul Kurtz was a philosopher who dedicated the better part of his life and career to promoting science, reason, and humanist values. He was one of the founders of the modern skeptical movement – someone who was there at the beginning. Kurtz had something that the others did not – the ability to organize a movement. Other giants, like James Randi, Ray Hyman, and Martin Gardner, got together and knew that the world needed a dose of reason. Kurtz had the  skills, however, to make it happen.

He founded two “sister” organizations, the Council for Secular Humanism and the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP, now CSI – the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry). Regarding Secular Humanism, he took the existing humanist philosophy and essentially purged it of supernatural fluff to craft it into Secular Humanism. This he presented as a philosophical alternative to supernatural-based religions. He made a powerful philosophical argument that one could lead a moral life without any appeal to a supernatural belief system.

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My recent discussion of neurosurgeon, Eben Alexander’s near death experience sparked a discussion about whether such topics are fruitful targets of skeptical analysis. For example, commenter smillsishere wrote:

This blog post in itself (as with many analyses) raises questions about the extent to which skepticism can be of use in society. I completely understand the well constructed and logical opposition to the anti-vaccine movement. I understand in generic terms the critique and possible dismissal of poor research and unsubstantiated claims that can have a negative impact on our progression as a species (one topic comes to mind immediately, the use of ‘interpretors’ to help parents communicate with their autistic children, an abuse of common decency and trust). However, sometimes I wonder if skepticism often targets topics or elements of human culture that are neither harmful or unhealthy?

This criticism of scientific skepticism, that we spend too much time and effort on claims that don’t matter, or beliefs that are harmless, has been around as long as there has been skeptical activism. It is an almost ubiquitous question when being interviewed about skepticism by the media. Who cares if people believe in life after death, or if this neurosurgeon visited heaven while he was in a coma?

The major unstated premise of this criticism is that a claim or belief must have direct demonstrable harm in order to be harmful. A further unstated premise is that the belief itself is the only subject of concern.

In fact, for “harmless” beliefs I don’t care, necessarily, about the beliefs themselves. This is mostly why I do not find it fruitful to address matters of pure faith, and in a way I don’t care what people believe about unanswerable questions with no immediate consequences.

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Bill Nye (the Science Guy) has a YouTube video that is part of the Big Think series, in which he makes the argument that teaching children creationism rather than evolutionary theory does them a great disservice. He makes a very good point with some supporting arguments. The Creation Museum has decided to put out a response video that is, as you might guess, fantastically lame and both logically and factually challenged. As I am fond of pointing out, the denial of evolution by creationists is so profoundly at odds with reality, they have no choice but to play it loose with facts and logic. It does occasionally make for an entertaining spectacle, and is a target-rich environment for “teaching moments.”

The video begins with Dr. David Menton, who has a PhD in Biology and works at Brown University, addressing Nye’s opening statement. Nye, unfortunately, did begin his video with a poor choice of words – he said that denial of evolution is unique to the United States, which is not true. It is clear from what he says next the point he was trying to make. There is an interesting dichotomy in the US in that we are a technologically advanced country with great intellectual capital in science and technology, and yet evolution denial is very prominent in the US. The US may be unique for the extent of this contrast, and I think that’s what Nye was going for. (Only Turkey has a greater percentage of the population that denies evolution.)

Menton uses Nye’s statement as an opportunity to make what is essentially an argument from popularity, detailing how many people around the world deny evolution (including, apparently, mooslums, whoever they are – perhaps some cow-worshipping sect? I know, too easy.). Popular support or denial of evolution is completely irrelevant to whether or not evolution is scientifically valid. If anything, the popularity of evolution denial supports Nye’s position that teaching children pseudoscience is a real problem.

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I am just getting back home from TAM2012, the largest annual skeptical meeting  hosted by the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). Many of you were likely there as well. During the trip I also stopped off for a tour of Pixar (which was awesome) and to give a health seminar at Google. If you will indulge me, I like to use such events to take the pulse of the skeptical movement to see what I can learn.

First, I am happy to report that the skeptical movement remains vibrant and energetic. These events are always invigorating – it’s a pleasure to meet with those who listen to the SGU or read my blogs and to be told directly that all the hard work is worth it. So thank you to everyone who approached me during TAM to offer their kind words, it really does have an effect.

Attendance at TAM was down about 25% from last year. TAM9 had over 1600 attendees, the highest attendance of any TAM and I think any skeptical meeting. This year the attendance was over 1200, which is still huge for a skeptical conference but down from last year. Of course among those involved with TAM there is much discussion about the cause of the shrinkage. There is certainly more competition – more such conferences, including NECSS, which the NESS is involved in running. DragonCon also has a growing skeptical track, and CSI is getting back into the conference game with the second CSICON in October. Further, last year there were several big headliners (Tyson, Dawkins, Nye) who tend to be a big draw, and while this year’s speakers list was stellar last year simply had some bigger names. There are also issues that have nothing to do with skepticism, like the economy. Perhaps last year’s conference was simply exceptional, and this year we are experiencing a little regression to the mean. And there have been some controversies surrounding TAM this year, which I will discuss below.

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