We're back!/Vaccines, Autism, and Dr. Oz

It appears the spam has significantly been cut down, and I feel it is now safe to continue our regularly scheduled blogging. Plus, it is summer, and I now am generally free from responsibility.

Be advised that I am planning on making a trip to Amoeba Records sometime in the near future, and thus will have much more material to review.

Anyways, there's a situation that's been bugging be for some time now, and it recently came to my immediate attention a month ago.
I was listening to the radio, abnormally not NPR, and Dr. Oz was a guest on the DJ's morning show, offering listeners a chance to call in about their medical questions. A mother soon called in, and asked Dr. Oz whether she should vaccinate her children because of the "link" (emphasis added)  between vaccines and autism. Dr. Oz responded that yes, it would be beneficial, and she shouldn't worry because the chances are very slim.

Now, while Dr. Oz was right about getting your children vaccinated, two details worried me. One, Dr. Oz is a heart surgeon, not an expert in vaccines, just a heart surgeon that has become a television personality. Two, there is no link at all between vaccines and autism. None whatsoever. This has been confirmed dozens of times by experts on vaccines, and is well known to the medical community. These present issues to the well-being and acceptance of scientific research in the medical community.

The first issue, that of the acceptance of claims coming from non-experts, is an easily solvable one, yet one whose solution continues to elude the general populace. We are so used to either denying everything scientists say, or believing it because it appears on the news, and therefore must be true to society. We fail to take into account that, for one, science is true whether you believe it or not, and two, scientists aren't specialists in everything. You can generally, if not always, hold an astrophysicist's conclusion about the movement of an specific asteroid to be true, just like you can trust that a neuroscientist's conclusion about the location of lobes in the brain to be true. However, you would not go to a foot doctor to get your ears checked. Why would you trust a heart surgeon to put out reliable information about vaccines, even if he's on TV? There is no logical answer to this question. Simply, instead of blindly taking in whatever Dr. Oz. or any other TV doctor says on TV, do some research. Find out what fields are highly specialized, if the one they are talking about is included among that set, and what the doctor in question is specialized in. If it isn't the field they are talking about, then you are probably better off with an expert from that field. Of course, this does not mean that everything doctors say about fields outside their specialty is wrong; rather, the general rule is to research the doctor's background, and use discretion when taking, or not taking, action pertaining to their answers.

The second issue is that of the link between autism and vaccines, and, while probably the most damaging case of scientific misconduct in recent history, can be shortly discredited. As the BBC reported three years ago, the General Medical Council, the organization in charge of medical conduct and accreditation in the United Kingdom, found that Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the researcher centered around the misconduct and the originator of the paper that linked vaccines with autism, had violated several ethical guidelines, forged evidence, and had a severe conflict of interest within his studies, prompting the GMC to redact Dr. Wakefield's paper. [1] To clarify, there is no link between vaccines and autism, and any link put forward in fraudulent and scientifically inaccurate.

In short, Dr. Oz is not an expert on everything, as proven by his misinformation about vaccination, and people should do what I have constantly pushed for in this blog: do research, and think critically.

Spam Spam Spam Spam

There's a ton of it linking here, so I've took a sabbatical on posting for a bit.

But hey, I have a research paper in progress, so I'll have that up for the readers that are actually here when I finish.

For now, keep on thinking.

Ending the no-post blues

I've been short on original content for a while, mainly trying to combat spammers. For now, I will share with you a blog that I follow
Friendly Atheist
Hemant Mehta is a high school math teacher in the Chicago area. He writes excellent articles focusing on discrimination against atheists, and other political topics relevant to secularists. Check him out when you get the chance.

Some Sense About Gun Control

Looky here, another controversial post.

Gun control is the one area where I decidedly separate myself from the rest of the liberal population, primarily because I have a certain fondness for them, and secondarily because of the logical fallacies and incorrect information given out by those who support gun control. In reality, the main problem I have with gun control is their definition of an assault rifle, and the effect of the assault rifles thereof. 

Encyclopedia Britannica, while being infamous for their rate of serious errors, has improved substantially over the past few decades, and defines the assault rifle for what it actually is, by stating the following:

assault rifle,  military firearm that is chambered for ammunition of reduced size or propellant charge and that has the capacity to switch between semiautomatic and fully automatic fire. Because they are light and portable yet still able to deliver a high volume of fire with reasonable accuracy at modern combat ranges of 300–500 m (1,000–1,600 feet), assault rifles have replaced the high-powered bolt-action and semiautomatic rifles of the World War II era as the standard infantry weapon of modern armies. Their ease of handling makes them ideal for mobile assault troops crowded into personnel carriers or helicopters, as well as for guerrilla fighters engaged in jungle or urban warfare. Widely used assault rifles are the United States’ M16, the Soviet Kalashnikov (the AK-47 and modernized versions), the Belgian FAL and FNC, and the German G3.[1]

Compare this against the media definition and identification of the assault rifle:

Obviously this is quite incorrect, and meant to be humorous. Instead, here's what the Assault Weapons Ban of 1993 defined as an assault rifle:

So, according to the AWB, an "assault rifle" could be a .22LR bolt action Savage with a pistol grip and a flash suppressor. This certainly does not fit the definition of an assault rifle. In fact, under the National Firearms Act, citizens cannot own fully automatic rifles (classified as "machine guns" under the act) without a Class III Federal Firearms License, which is typically only given to museums, movie armorers, and specialized firing ranges. So, in essences, banning assault rifles is no big deal since they were banned to begin with. Today's definition of an assault rifle is basically anything that looks scary, be it a bolt action .303 British Lee-Enfield No. 5 "Jungle Carbine" with its cone-shaped flash suppressor put there to prevent you from searing whatever happens to be near the muzzle, or a nice little semi-automatic AR-15 in .223 Remington, useful for plunking larger varmints and the odd deer. Basically, the assault rifle mentality is wrong, both in definition and deadliness, as proved by both the examples above and this nice little pie chart I put together based on the FBI Crime Statistics for 2011 (the most recent year I could retrieve):

While firearms do make up most of the homicides, an issue which I will address next paragraph, rifles make up a very small portion of the firearm deaths, and caused less deaths than plain old hands and feet. Even if we were to evenly distribute the unknown total among the firearm category,  rifles still  would be the smallest category within firearms.

Here's where I start agreeing with my fellow liberals: not everyone should have firearms, and background checks should be mandatory  along with a clean bill of mental health. However, just because of this doesn't mean we need to ban firearms because they look scary. Even if we did, we all know how well criminals follow the law. 

They follow it like, well, criminals.    

1. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/39165/assault-rifle

National Day of Prayer: Yet Another Brick in the Wall

Yup, it's that time of year again. National Day of Prayer is just around the corner. This year it falls on May 2, which is either today or yesterday, depending on when I feel like finishing this. This also means it's time to break out my favorite Supreme Court case, Lemon v Kurtzman, the golden ruler of unconstitutionality. This case's influence is summed up nicely here.

National Day of Prayer was established in the year 1952, during the unconstitutional and shameful McCarthy era, where the far right in America quickly showed their lack of consideration for the First Amendment, by instituting this  government sanction of religion, along with adding the facinorous words "Under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance. This was not for the greater good of the citizens of the United States; instead, this was merely xenophobic rhetoric.

The law bringing National Day of Prayer into existence states the following:

The President shall issue each year a proclamation designating
the first Thursday in May as a National Day of Prayer on which the
people of the United States may turn to God in prayer and
meditation at churches, in groups, and as individuals.

That would be great, having one day a year for people to go the church. It would be really great, since people weren't given the right to go to any church they would like any day they would like by the First Amendment.

Oh, wait a minute. They are.

How funny.

So that means that the law has no secular legislative purpose, and that, since it advances religion, it fails two prongs of the Lemon test?

Seems like common sense.

Gee, law seeming like common sense? What trickery is at work here?

So you mean the Constitution outlaws religion interfering with government, no matter what religion?

The people that just answered "no" to these questions are why our country is losing to China and Europe. Perhaps this monstrosity proves Voltaire's point: "Common sense is not so common."

Happy Law Day everyone.

Isn't this wonderful?

I might do this more often.

One lazy evening Something horrible happened someoneone with less talent than the Bieber kid came on TV! Someone worse than Bieber exists!? Yes! He appeared on a stupid TV show last night I saw! Uh oh, that's bad. We're gonna have a bad time A few months later hey! I've finally done it I made music like Bieber! I just went in the kitchen and turned on my wonderful food processor ~ End of experiment ~ written with HTML ~ Comix Markup ~ from cmx.io/edit ~ backed by gist.github.com ~ by Esquire

Educate Yourself!

I'm a big proponent of science education, and Pew Research has given the people of the Internetz the opportunity to compare their knowledge of science with that of the average American. This 13 question quiz covers a wide variety of scientific fields, and allows you to understand which ones you need to improve in. You can take it at: http://www.pewresearch.org/quiz/science-knowledge/

I personally scored a perfect 13 out of 13, placing me in the 93rd percentile. After you take the quiz, spread the word! Encourage others to take it as well, and improve your scientific knowledge. 

Science rules!