Category: Skepticism
Human beings are not the same thing as monkey cells: no, don’t start taking fenofibrate
Audacy (a site for radio stations’ online presence) reports, “Cholesterol drug cuts COVID infection rate by 70%: study”.
Actually, no, that is not what’s reported.
70% reduction in infection would be incredible, so naturally I read the article. I even read the actual journal paper they refer to.
Bonus points for this being an actual, peer-reviewed, published paper in a real journal, Frontiers in Pharmacology Translational Pharmacology. It just does not say anything about infection in humans. It says that the virus failed to infect monkey cells in culture media by up to 70%.
This is a really interesting paper, and I look forward to future work. This could potentially be a useful treatment.
That does not justify the utterly false headline. Audacy reporter Stephanie Raymond apparently either did not read the paper or did not know what Vero cells are and did not bother to look it up. Certainly she did not interview any of the scientists involved. One wonders if she worked off a press release.
Note: in the subject line I said not to start taking fenofibrate. I of course mean, “Unless it’s prescribed by your doctor, for a valid reason.” I am not a medical doctor and I’m not giving medical advice. I’m just saying that you shouldn’t start any prescription med unless it is prescribed by a licensed practitioner.
Kaiser doctor: Cause, Effect, What’s the Difference?
A press release on the Kaiser Permanente web site showcases Doctor Robert Sallis, who conducted a study in which the data on 50,000 KP members diagnosed with COVID-19, finding that people who were less active were 20% more likely to be hospitalized and 30% more likely to die after diagnosis.
Yes, it’s just as nonsensical as you are quite likely thinking.
We know that various comorbidities, such as diabetes, asthma, old age, and kidney disease can result in worse outcomes when someone gets COVID-19. And we also know that these same conditions are associated with lower levels of physical activity.
So Dr. Sallis has found that … sicker people are less active.
But he interprets it as meaning that exercise can save you from dying if you get the disease. That might be true, but the press release comes nowhere near proving it.
Of course, it’s possible the actual paper in the British Journal of Sports Medicine has a more powerful analysis. So I found it.
Umm ….
The activity levels were self-reported. Red flag.
The authors mention confounders. That’s it. They make no effort to account for them, they just vaguely discount them: “There is also the potential issue of residual confounding due to unmeasured confounders or measurement error. However, many studies have demonstrated numerous strong benefits from PA, especially among those who suffer from a variety of chronic diseases.” Yes, but that doesn’t mean that exercise automatically has benefits in every case. It would in principle be possible to do a better analysis, in which you compared people in matched subgroups (groups matched by age and pre-existing conditions, where the only difference between members is level of physical activity). They didn’t bother to do that.
Let me be clear: if I had access to the data I could do that analysis. It isn’t mysterious. They just didn’t.
So … this paper is, let’s say, very far from convincing.
Conspiracy theorizing: killing people again
Wisconsin pharmacist who destroyed more than 500 vaccine doses believes Earth is flat, FBI says.
Pharmacist Steven Brandenberg deliberately ruined over 500 doses of COVID-19 vaccine, by leaving it out of the freezer so that it spoiled.
Why? Because he thought it would be harmful, cause infertility, and that it included some kind of microchip.
Why? Because he believes in conspiracy theories. Notably, he believes that the Earth is flat, and that the sky is fake, a physical dome put in place to prevent people from seeing God. Note that this last theory is not compatible with literally any religion I’ve ever heard of. He isn’t religious–he has fallen down the rabbit hole and is unable to properly reality-check. He’s measuring the value of a proposition, not by how well it comports with reality, but by how cool it would be if it was true.
And … if any of the incorrectly vaccinated or unvaccinated people he deprived of their shots die, he has killed them in the name of nonexistent harms and nonexistent microchips.
For more on conspiracy theorizing:
All science denial is a form of conspiracy theory by Steven Novella.
This is what evil looks like
A protest forced the temporary closure of a COVID-19 vaccination site in Los Angeles. They’re literally willing to kill people for the fiction that COVID-19 doesn’t exist.
They’re willing to kill for a lie. I literally can’t think of worse evil. Bigger evil, sure, but not worse.
To quote a post from one of the protestors, “… please refrain from wearing Trump/MAGA attire as we want our statement to resonate with the sheeple. No flags but informational signs only.” Naturally, they had to lie about who they were.
Internet Archive Promotes Woo
I have used and liked the Internet Archive since it was just the Wayback Machine. I have donated money on multiple occasions.
And now they’re promoting The Secret. Yes, the infamous peak-nonsense idea that if you just want something really badly, you get it. The literal apotheosis of blame-the-victim, The Secret implies strongly that if you die of cancer it is your own fault, because if you wanted it to go away badly enough, it would have. Your own bad attitude is responsible for anything bad that happens to you.
And the Archive invited one of its best-known promoters, Michael Beckwith, to speak at their event.
I am discouraged. I believe that I will be donating to something else this year.
No, I don’t think the Thais have cured the Wuhan virus
Did you see that Thai doctors have cured the Novel Coronavirus?
https://www.ibtimes.co.in/cocktail-flu- … and-812699
Don’t hold your breath. They claim to have used anti-HIV drugs. Those are almost all antiretrovirals. Coronavirii are not retroviruses. It seems very unlikely meds that work by inhibiting the enzyme reverse transcriptase would affect members of the Coronaviridae, since the RNA of a coronavirus is not reverse-transcribed into DNA.
Oseltamivir (trade name Tamiflu), their third drug, is specific to influenza and again would not be expected to work against a totally different type of virus. I actually found a Chinese study that tested it against the SARS virus (close relative of 2019-nCoV) and found no activity.
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/10/4/pdfs/03-0458.pdf
The whole media brouhaha is based on … one patient.
I can’t rule it out. I can and do doubt it a lot.
The Washington Post embarrasses itself
I just dashed off an angry letter to the Post about their recent article, UFOs exist and everyone needs to adjust to that fact. I reproduce my text below.
The above article is apparently a fairly subtle joke that has taken in the Post’s editorial team. Surely you wouldn’t post something so afactual and nonsensical without a disclaimer in a serious “Perspective” demi-editorial? Surely you should at least have had an article by a person competent in some sort of science? I find it hard to believe you were taken in.
On the off-chance you took that … set of words … seriously (I’m eliding my more strident description), may I suggest you consult Professor Massimo Pigliucci (CUNY), or Professor Steven Novella (Yale Med), or someone from the CSI (Center for Skeptical Inquiry)? Massimo in particular as a philosopher and scientist could point out both the factual incorrectness of some of the assertions, and the logical fallacy blatantly present in the phrase, “… but even those skeptics could not completely rule out the possibility that extraterrestrial activity was involved.”
I await your retraction.
Carl Fink
The article is a hot mess of nonsense. I’m embarrassed for every newspaper editor, just because their colleagues published this waste of photons.
(Image courtesy Wikipedia user D J Shin)
Non-GMO means “evil”
Today I sent the following to two manufacturers of almond milk.
I like one of your products. Because of a misleading, unnecessary label on the package I’m reluctant to buy it.
To be specific, I like your almond milk (specifically the unsweetened and unflavored variety). It’s nutritious, low in calories, supplies lots of calcium which I happen to need from time to time, and tastes just fine.
But you had to stick that “Non GMO” logo on the package.
It isn’t exactly false, it’s just morally wrong. No almonds currently on the market are genetically modified, and no water is GMO. Those are the ingredients of unsweetened almond milk. The label is misleading because it falsely implies that your competitors do use GMO almonds.
It’s also morally wrong because NOT using GMO almonds, if they did exist, would be unethical. GMO crops use less land and less fertilizer and less pesticide to produce the same amount of food. This is not only profitable for the farmer, it means that we can feed everyone using less land, which allows more land to be wild, or used for solar or wind production. By being non-GMO you would be harming everyone.
It may be worth pointing out that there are NO KNOWN UNDESIRABLE EFFECTS from the consumption of GMO foods. In many hundreds of scientific papers, no real evidence of any harms has ever been detected. You’re also falsely implying that GMOs are bad. They simply are not.
So your label boils down to two misleading implied claims, to justify doing something that causes harm to everyone.
I strongly urge you to remove that undesirable label from your products. Until you do … well, as I said I’m reluctant to buy products that advertise that they are unethical.
Sincerely,
Carl Fink
Pardon the ALL CAPS for emphasis, I was using web contact forms that have no boldface.
So anyone know of a non-non-GMO brand of almond milk. It also has to be non-organic. (“Organic” means “farmed inefficiently for no good reason.”) Thanks.
(Image created by De Cora, licensed under Creative Commons 2.0.)
Parents torture child, nearly kill him. No mention of charges.
Warning: I am very, very angry.
In Oregon (in 2017), a child was diagnosed with tetanus. It was the first case in that state in over 3 decades.
The parent withheld the DTAP vaccine (which prevents Diphtheria, Tetanus, and Pertussis) despite medical recommendations. Their son got a cut while playing, they treated it themselves (with home suturing!) and didn’t seek medical attention until he developed the classic symptom of tetanus — involuntary muscle contractions. It reached the point where he could not breathe without both drugs and mechanical assistance. With devoted care from many practitioners over a period of two months, the team in Oregon managed to save him from his parents.
As part of treatment he got one dose of DTAP. Five are suggested for full protection. Even after he got a deadly disease that came very close to killing him and meant months of hospitalization and rehab, the parents said that they would refuse to give him the other four doses.
In a just world, they would be sentenced to daily injections of strychnine for two months. Enough to put their own muscles in spasm to the point that they needed mechanical help to breathe. In our world, there seems to be no mention of even a Child Protective Services investigation. I’m sort of glad I have no way to know the names of these hideous monsters, because I would feel some obligation to drive to Oregon and scream at them.
No, that is not hyperbole. They badwording tortured a helpless child. Monsters.
10% of your brain: can we please put this one to bed?
I’ve been hearing for decades about how we only use 10% of our brains. It’s silly as soon as you think about it: why would we evolve such huge brains for our body size then not use them?
I believed it as a kid, mind you, before being trained in biology
Now Monty (a decades-old newspaper comic, formerly called Robotman), demolishes that whole urban legend in four panels.
Meddick is right. Can we (as a culture) please stop making idiot movies based on this myth?
Reasonably Literate 