http://www.dbskeptic.com Skepticism. Critical thinking. Podcast. Community. Sun, 11 Sep 2011 01:30:05 +0000 en-us hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 Digital Bits Skeptic brings skepticism and critical thinking to a world of new age, religion and credulous pop culture. Andy Kaiser clean Andy Kaiser skeptic@dbskeptic.com skeptic@dbskeptic.com (Andy Kaiser) 2009 Skepticism and critical thinking in a world of new age, religion and credulous pop culture skeptic, skepticism, critical thinking, new age, religion, pop culture, skeptical articles, critical thinking articles, philosophy http://www.dbskeptic.com/images/dbskeptic-logo-144.jpg http://www.dbskeptic.com/category/biology/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/12/06/facilitated-communication-and-rom-houben/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/12/06/facilitated-communication-and-rom-houben/#comments Sun, 06 Dec 2009 17:57:21 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=1683 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/12/06/facilitated-communication-and-rom-houben/feed/ 2 Sandra L Hubscher By Sandra L Hubscher Article ID: 1347 Editor’s note: The author submitted this article with the following private message. It’s important enough that, with the author’s permission, I’m posting it here: “I enjoyed writing this article in that I enjoy... By Sandra L Hubscher Article ID: 1347 Editor’s note: The author submitted this article with the following private message. It’s important enough that, with the author’s permission, I’m posting it here: “I enjoyed writing this article in that I enjoy writing, but other than that, really I hated it. The subject is so irredeemably sad, and filled with anguish for so many, that I wouldn't want to write something like this again anytime soon. It's hard to imagine facing these parents and telling them these things. I know they've probably all heard it before and none of them will likely take the time to read this, but even if they've been slapped a hundred times before by this information, the 101st isn't much lessened.” Update 03/02/2010: Months after the sensational news of Rom Houben’s ‘awakening’ via facilitated communication (FC) from a decades-long, traumatic brain injury-induced silence, there has come a retraction from his physician, Steven Laureys. After rigorous testing involving a number of facilitators and their clients, including Mr. Houben and his facilitator Linda Wouters, Dr. Laureys has declared: “We did not have all the facts before. To me, it's enough to say that this method [FC] doesn't work.” Three facilitators and their clients were involved in the testing, which was carried out by Dr. Laureys and others, including a Belgian skeptics group. In Mr. Houben’s case, he was shown or heard a list of 15 objects without his facilitator being present. When the facilitator was readmitted and Mr. Houben was asked to list the objects, there was not a single success. It is important to note, as Belgian Skeptics pointed out, that this was not a test of Mr. Houben, but rather of the method of communication others have imposed on him. Mr. Houben’s brain scans reveal activity very much like that of an uninjured brain and many, including Dr. Laureys, continue to have hope that they will find a method for him to reach out and ‘speak’ to the world. In November of 2009, a sensational story appeared out of Belgium: Rom Houben, a man who as a result of a catastrophic car accident had been in a persistent vegetative state for more than twenty years, was re-diagnosed as being fully conscious, indeed conscious for the whole twenty-plus years! Furthermore, he was now communicating to the world by typing on a large touch screen, giving words to the years of imprisonment in his own body. The story twinges our imagination wonderfully and terrifyingly - entrapment in plain sight, helplessness, rescue and reunion – hope to all of those in dire circumstances. Immediate to the story’s release, another narrative developed among skeptics – unwitting deceit and good intentions gone awry. While the diagnosis by Steven Laureys, Houben’s neurologist, is best left to fellow neurologists, the technique of facilitated communication, the method used on Houben to bring his ‘words’ out of him by typing, is a well-studied and understood phenomenon,  and is, unfortunately, a fraud. Facilitated communication, first developed in Australia in the 1970’s, has now spread worldwide and purportedly allows those with disorders like cerebral palsy, severe mental retardation, autism and others, to undertake the otherwise impossible task of communication. How does this work? A facilitator holds the hand or arm of the impaired person or client, supposedly giving the strength and steadiness necessary for the client to type with a single finger, one letter at a time. A video of Houben, including his facilitated communication, can be seen here: While it is possible that Houben’s facilitator is willfully perpetrating a heartless con, it is more likely in this case, and in all uses of facilitated communication, that the facilitator’s actions are attributable to the ideomotor effect. Familiar to anyone who’s seen a Ouija board in action, the ideomotor effect is defined as purposeful movement by a person not consciously aware of his movement. Andy Kaiser clean 8:59 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/11/22/a-review-of-on-the-origin-of-species-by-charles-darwin/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/11/22/a-review-of-on-the-origin-of-species-by-charles-darwin/#comments Mon, 23 Nov 2009 02:20:56 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=1662 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/11/22/a-review-of-on-the-origin-of-species-by-charles-darwin/feed/ 13 Nicholas Covington By Nicholas Covington Article ID: 1346 - I have just finished reading what is now one of my favorite books. At the time of this writing, it was published precisely 150 years ago. Ever since, it’s been a brilliant, revolutionary, By Nicholas Covington Article ID: 1346 I have just finished reading what is now one of my favorite books. At the time of this writing, it was published precisely 150 years ago. Ever since, it’s been a brilliant, revolutionary, and even dangerous wo... Andy Kaiser clean 12:27 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/10/03/hidden-dangers-with-ibuprofin-motrin-and-flu-treatment/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/10/03/hidden-dangers-with-ibuprofin-motrin-and-flu-treatment/#comments Sun, 04 Oct 2009 02:46:08 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=1548 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/10/03/hidden-dangers-with-ibuprofin-motrin-and-flu-treatment/feed/ 17 Andy Kaiser By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1339 - Let me tell you about an adventure my family had a few weeks ago. I should also say that I'm not a doctor, and nothing you read here is official medical advice. This is my understanding of what happened in this speci... By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1339 Let me tell you about an adventure my family had a few weeks ago. I should also say that I'm not a doctor, and nothing you read here is official medical advice. This is my understanding of what happened in this specific case. I have to lead with this information because, while the story starts out fun, it ends in the hospital. My family went on vacation. Unfortunately, after just a few days, my daughter, Ally, got the flu. She's four years old, and this was a bad flu, the kind that really wipes you out. My wife and I had to take care of her full-time. We decided to ditch the vacation and come home, but not before stopping off at the local hospital to see if Ally was okay. And she was, the doctor told us. Just a standard flu. Keep her hydrated, wait it out, and she'll be fine soon. For controlling her fever, we also got a prescription for Motrin (that's a brand name ibuprofin used for fever and various aches and pains). On the ride home, I called Ally's pediatrician, and he agreed with the other doctor. But after five days, Ally was still wiped out. She hadn't eaten in that entire time. She couldn't eat anything without having to give it back within the hour. She could barely keep down water. The fever was gone. She just had continual nausea. While she was really weak, every once in a while she would move on her own. She'd burst into tears and say that her back hurt. She'd then flop around to change position, and that seemed to help. My wife and thought this was just because she'd been laying in that position for so long, her muscles were cramping up. I get backaches after sleeping the wrong way overnight - my daughter had been laying in the same position for almost a week. We brought Ally to her pediatrician's office, and were reassured that - again - it was just a regular flu. Then we found blood in Ally's urine. We drove to the emergency room. When we got to the E.R., the doctors, thankfully, were excellent. When we described all that had happened, one of the first things they said was, "We think she's having problems with her kidneys. Has she mentioned having any back pain?" That was one of those times where I felt like a complete failure as a parent. Yes, we said, she has complained of back pain. The doc was right: Ally was in the process of kidney failure. From there, they moved very quickly. I'll keep most of the details to myself because, well, I want them private. But here's one to give you an idea of what the parents and child had to go through: Ally went into surgery to have an IV inserted into her neck. Minutes after she woke up from the anesthesia, they started kidney dialysis. The neck IV was hooked up to a big machine that looked like a giant clothes washer. It took the blood out of her body, cleaned it, and put it back in. That was day nine. Nine days of no food, little water, bad sleep, the physical trauma of a bad flu and, as we found out, kidney failure. Luckily, that was the worst of it. Things turned around very shortly after the dialysis. It was just what her body needed, and having a machine clean her blood gave her kidneys a chance to recover. Things are fine now. The rest of the story is just recovery. After a week in the hospital's intensive care, we got to go home. Ally needed help walking again, but after a few wobbly trips to the hospital's children's activity room, she recovered with a speed I can only envy. We're now home and we're healthy. I told you the whole story so you can understand how we got to the point we did. I tell you this so you can prevent something similar from happening to someone you know. Remember earlier, when I mentioned that Ally was given Motrin for fever control? According to the kidney specialist, the Motrin was probably a contributing factor to Ally's kidney failure. Even if she had just one dose. Motrin, ibuprofin, asprin, and "NSAID" drugs Motrin, ibuprofin, asprin, Andy Kaiser clean 12:40 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/07/05/how-to-be-a-fakir/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/07/05/how-to-be-a-fakir/#comments Mon, 06 Jul 2009 04:32:14 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=1191 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/07/05/how-to-be-a-fakir/feed/ 3 M Parrott By M Parrott Article ID: 1329 - In a previous article, I covered "How to be a psychic", telling how to recreate common psychic supernatural abilities. But there are more important problems in the world. Not a politician's expense claims, but fakirs. By M Parrott Article ID: 1329 In a previous article, I covered "How to be a psychic", telling how to recreate common psychic supernatural abilities. But there are more important problems in the world. Not a politician's expense claims, but fakirs. Fakirs convert people to religions by performing supposed miracles that people assume would otherwise be dangerous or impossible. Before I begin: everything I describe here is dangerous and should not be attempted. If you hurt yourself or someone else with the techniques described here, it's not my fault, it's yours. I will describe how these things are done, and the science behind them, as much as I can. If you are so desperate to try these techniques, I can't stop you. But I did warn you. How to lay on a bed of nails As many of you know, this trick is where someone just lies on a bed, and the bed is made from hundreds or thousands of upturned, pointy, sharp and dangerous-looking nails. The performer takes a snooze, gets up, and is unpunctured. So the trick... actually, there is no trick. All that is needed is a real bed of nails. The nails must all be the same length. You need someone to lower you down so that your weight is evenly distributed over all the nails. You want your body to be pressing against as many nails as possible. Your weight being distributed means there is not enough pressure on any one nail to puncture the skin. When getting up from the bed of nails, make sure no extreme pressure is applied to any nail-covered area. There's a similar (and much safer) way to perform this trick with eggs instead of nails. You can lay out a bed of eggs so that the top of the eggs - the pointy part -  are all facing upwards. Then lay down carefully in the same manner as you would on a bed of nails. If you mess up, at least it's not painful. Just moist. How to perform snake flossing This is a trick where the fakir gets a snake, sucks it in through his nose and pulls it out of his mouth. How's it done? Well, you get a snake, suck it in through your nose and pull it out of your mouth. Any perceived "trick" is just due to human biology: right above your nostrils is the entrance to your nasal cavity. The nasal cavity connects to your throat near the same place your mouth connects to it. So the idea is you snort the snake in through your nose with sharp intakes of breath (I'd suggest tail first), grab it from deep inside your mouth and pull it through. Now obviously if you were stupid enough to not follow my earlier warning and are going to try this (which I thoroughly suggest you do not), don't start with a snake. A thread of 100% cotton (I emphasise cotton) is best. How to walk on broken glass In this trick, a bed of broken glass is laid out. The fakir walks across the bed of glass from one side to the other. At the end of the journey, the fakir shows his feet, and they're uncut by the shards of glass. This relies on a similar principle to the bed of nails - weight distribution. Your pressure is spread out over enough pieces of glass that you won't cut your feet. But there is another element to making sure this trick works. A lot of the glass shards will lay smooth side up - sharp edges will press against the ground, not against your foot - but this isn't always the case. So, when you put your foot down, you must move it slowly back and forth, helping the glass settle into the right distribution so that you can put your entire weight on that foot without getting hurt. Do not transfer pressure to that foot until you are absolutely certain you won't cut yourself. Then repeat the process. The idea is to take it slowly, for two reasons. One, you don't want to cut yourself. Two, the slower it is done the more pain the performer appears to be going through. In reality, any pain is caused by walking on the broken glass too fast. How to walk on hot coals - How to firewalk A bed of burning hot coals. A fakir in bare feet, Andy Kaiser clean 12:49 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/06/28/was-life-on-earth-an-alien-creation-a-critical-look-at-directed-panspermia/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/06/28/was-life-on-earth-an-alien-creation-a-critical-look-at-directed-panspermia/#comments Sun, 28 Jun 2009 17:28:22 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=1158 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/06/28/was-life-on-earth-an-alien-creation-a-critical-look-at-directed-panspermia/feed/ 0 Nicholas Covington By Nicholas Covington Article ID: 1328 - Life may have been the result of intelligent aliens sending bacterium to Earth. This theory is called "directed panspermia". It was proposed thirty-five years ago by Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA, By Nicholas Covington Article ID: 1328 Life may have been the result of intelligent aliens sending bacterium to Earth. This theory is called "directed panspermia". It was proposed thirty-five years ago by Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA, and Leslie Orgel, a highly respected British chemist. I found the original paper they published. Here I examine it and provide some comments[1]. A common objection to the theory that aliens brought life to Earth is the problem of infinite regress: If life on Earth was created by aliens, who created the aliens? And who created those creators? And so on. Crick and Orgel get around this problem by speculating that some planets may have chemical properties that make the origin of life much more probable than it is on Earth. Although it's not mentioned, I think it's possible that there are forms of life more likely to originate from non-living matter (and without the guidance of an intelligent designer). Citing the work of astronomer Carl Sagan, they conclude that life traveling on a meteor would probably be destroyed by radiation long before it would arrive at Earth. But what if an alien civilization designed a special radiation-proof microorganism-carrying ship? Then the "life-from-space" proposal would once again be plausible. In the paper, Crick and Orgel say, "[I]t is quite probable that planets not unlike the Earth existed as much as [6.5 billion years] before the formation of our own solar system." This allows life to originate, evolve and spread before Earth even existed. They go on with arguments supporting their theory: "Infective theories of the origins of terrestrial life could be taken more seriously if they explained aspects of biochemistry or biology that are otherwise difficult to understand. We do not have any strong arguments of this kind, but here are two weak facts that could be relevant. The chemical composition of living organisms must reflect to some extent the composition of the environment in which they evolved. Thus the presence in living organisms of elements that are extremely rare on the Earth might indicate that life is extraterrestrial in origin. Molybdenum is an essential trace element that plays an important role in many enzymatic reactions, while chromium and nickel are relatively unimportant in biochemistry. The abundance of chromium, nickel, and molybdenum on the Earth are 0.20%, 3.16%, and 0.02%, respectively. We cannot conclude anything from this single example, since molybdenum may be irreplaceable in some essential reaction - nitrogen fixation, for example. However, if it could be shown that the elements represented in terrestrial living organisms correlate closely with those that are abundant in some class of star - molybdenum stars, for example - we might look more sympathetically at 'infective' theories." Crick and Orgel's second argument for their theory is the genetic code. As you may know, the genetic code is universal[2]. It is the same in plants, animals, and bacteria. Crick and Orgel believed this means all life on Earth shares a common ancestor with a complete and fully developed genetic code[3]. They reasoned that if an alien civilization sent life to Earth, then it would have developed an organism with that same genetic code. On the other hand, if life originated naturally, the common ancestor of all living things may have simply had a primitive genetic code which coded for only a handful of amino acids (later on, this species would have split into several different lineages which had genetic codes that coded for more types of amino acids using the codons which originally did not code for anything). In this scenario, all life would have genetic similarities, but would also have significant differences. The moral of the story is that directed panspermia would show a universally shared genetic code. A non-panspermia origin could produce a single, universal genetic code, or many codes with significant similarities). Andy Kaiser clean 9:32 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/06/12/the-ideomotor-effect/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/06/12/the-ideomotor-effect/#comments Sat, 13 Jun 2009 02:25:50 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=1126 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/06/12/the-ideomotor-effect/feed/ 7 M Parrott By M Parrott Article ID: 1326 - The ideomotor effect is a psychological accident that spans many new age traditions, séances, and other "woo-woo" practises. I must emphasise that these practises aren't faked intentionally. By M Parrott Article ID: 1326 The ideomotor effect is a psychological accident that spans many new age traditions, séances, and other "woo-woo" practises. I must emphasise that these practises aren't faked intentionally. People delude themselves into believing they are true. Examples of the ideomotor effect cover a wide range of supernatural games, from Victorian-era séances to examining the most harmoniously-vibrating new age crystal. The ideomotor effect and the Ouija board Ah, yes, one of the most popular séance tools! Today, Ouija boards are usually perceived more as a joke and a fun party game. We all know the basic principal and layout of the most common Ouija boards - you've got a flat board with letters of the alphabet printed on it: You've got a "planchette", which is a small pointing device that can be slid around the board. Participants put their hands on the planchette and concentrate on a particular problem, question or spirit communication. The planchette will then start to move towards particular letters or symbols on the Ouija board, giving you a response to your question. If you want to test this out as we go, it would be a great exercise and far superior to me just talking to you: 1) Get 26 small sheets of paper. Write the letters A-Z on the pieces. 2) Get a large table and remove any coverings (like tablecloths). 3) Place all the cards face up in a circle so it looks somewhat like the picture you see here. Candles are optional. 4) Get a strong wine glass (preferably one without wine inside). Turn it upside down and place it in the centre of the cards. And there you have a homemade Ouija board. The next steps work better if you have more than one person, however you can try it alone if you want to tempt the Powers of Darkness all by yourself. Turn one letter over so it's face down. Place two fingers on the wine glass. Concentrate. Focus on believing that the wine glass WILL definitely move towards that one letter turned upside down. Don't move your hand intentionally, but if the glass moves move with it. Keep concentrating. It will move if you concentrate. And it'll speed up towards the letter and when it gets there it will stop at the letter. Now that may not have worked for all of you, but it will have worked for some. I also apologise if the wine glass shot off the table and smashed. If so, that just means you are really easy to manipulate. Now you may be wondering how that worked and why the glass moved. You know for a fact you didn't move the glass. So how did it move? Through a genuine spirit! Nah, just messing with you. The movement happens because of the ideomotor effect. The ideomotor is the mechanism which makes your reflexes kick in when your knee is tapped gently with a doctor's hammer. But in this case what happens is, due to you focusing so much mental power on something, your body makes it physically happen. You may not think you are doing it, but you are, and the more you are convinced it is going to happen, the faster it happens. Which is why a Ouija board "works" better for people who use one more often. What evidence do I have for this? Easy: find a medium who will do the Ouija board blind-folded. Blindfold them, and then without telling them, turn the Ouija board around. As the "Ouijing" commences, the medium will move the planchette to the locations that they think the letters are, as if the board was rotated correctly. This shows the Ouija board is all in the user's mind, and that it isn't some spiritual communion. Ouija boards aren't the only evidence of the ideomotor effect in new age superstitions. Dowsing Dowsing is traditionally thought of as the process of finding underground water or oil using Y-shaped sticks or wire. To a large extent, this is the process. But dowsing has widened its spectrum of effect. A few years ago, I saw a dowser trying to find human remains on a British Archaeology programme called "Time Team". Andy Kaiser clean 11:07 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/05/24/evolution-the-genetic-code-and-message-theory-a-response-to-walter-remine/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/05/24/evolution-the-genetic-code-and-message-theory-a-response-to-walter-remine/#comments Mon, 25 May 2009 02:51:07 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=1062 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/05/24/evolution-the-genetic-code-and-message-theory-a-response-to-walter-remine/feed/ 29 Nicholas Covington By Nicholas Covington Article ID: 1322 - [Editor's note: This article and its comments are here in entirety, but a continuing response by the author can be found at this link.] - This article is a response to a blog post at Uncommon Descent by Walte... By Nicholas Covington Article ID: 1322 [Editor's note: This article and its comments are here in entirety, but a continuing response by the author can be found at this link.] This article is a response to a blog post at Uncommon Descent by Walter Remine[1]. I will begin by quoting part of his essay: "Life is unified by an abundance of complex biochemical features possessed by all, or virtually all life. Such features are known as biologic universals. The list includes: DNA, RNA, a triplet-nucleotide genetic code, and the method of translation of the genetic code into sequences of amino-acids in proteins. Proteins constructed of left-handed alpha-bonded amino-acids, the same set of 20 amino-acids (out of several thousand amino-acids that exist). The lipid bilayer construction of cell membranes. Adenosine triphosphate, biotin, riboflavin, hemes, pyridoxin, vitamins K and B12, and folic acid implement metabolic processes everywhere. For a given complex trait, there are rare, very minor variations away from the standard form. For example, there is now known about two dozen microorganisms that have slight variations on the universal genetic code." I have no problem with this. I do have a problem with Remine's further comments: "Leading evolutionists acknowledge that each of the biologic universals is too complex to have been in the first life - nothing even remotely like known life could have originated by known natural processes aided by chance and the available time. The probability is staggeringly too small, even on the scale of the universe. This should have falsified evolution, but instead evolutionists compensated by making their theory unfalsifiable. That is, without any serious evidence, evolutionists now make three bold, untestable, unfalsifiable, unscientific assertions: 1.    There exists an infinitude (a very large number) of other biochemistries suitable for life. Evolutionists make this unscientific assertion in order to artificially increase the likelihood of life arising by chance. Evolutionists acknowledge the chance origin of any known lifeform is vastly too unlikely, but they claim the chance origin of some lifeform (when allowing for the infinitude of other possible lifeforms) is quite likely. They say there is nothing 'special' about Earthly lifeforms, instead life just happened by chance upon the type of life we see on Earth. 2.    The first lifeforms were vastly simpler than any life known today. The first lifeforms possessed essentially none of the biologic universals. 3.    Many evolutionists further assert that life may have originated more than once on Earth, perhaps many times." The first life by definition would have to have structures to perform things like replication, metabolic processes, etc. Although it is theoretically possible for something to reproduce, and break down energy without having the specific structures that our type of life does, if all life is descended from one primordial organism then the structures performing these functions could not have changed much as we'll discuss further on. As for Remine's allegation that evolutionists make "three unscientific assertions": I would love to see a source for point 1 - "There exists an infinitude of other biochemistries suitable for life", as I have never heard any evolutionist say anything like that. Point 2 - "The first lifeforms were vastly simpler than any life known today" - is false because the first life form would have had several of the biologic universals, as I will explain later. As for point 3 - "Life may have originated more than once on Earth" - it is a possibility that life originated multiple times, but I know of no one who insists that this is the case. Once again, no source is cited. Remine says: "With those assertions in mind, if evolution predicts anything clearly on this matter, it predicts the opposite of what we observe - it predicts that countless lifeforms lacking all, or most, Andy Kaiser clean 17:46 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/05/10/the-swine-flu-crisis/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/05/10/the-swine-flu-crisis/#comments Mon, 11 May 2009 02:07:30 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=1002 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/05/10/the-swine-flu-crisis/feed/ 9 Andy Kaiser By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1320 - The news lately has been buzzing about the swine flu. Excuse me, I mean the "H1N1 virus". Or the "2009 H1N1 influenza virus". Or the "H1N1 swine flu". - You know what? I'm going to forego the medical designation and... By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1320 The news lately has been buzzing about the swine flu. Excuse me, I mean the "H1N1 virus". Or the "2009 H1N1 influenza virus". Or the "H1N1 swine flu". You know what? I'm going to forego the medical designation and... Andy Kaiser clean 15:22 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/05/03/anti-depressants-and-the-placebo-effect/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/05/03/anti-depressants-and-the-placebo-effect/#comments Mon, 04 May 2009 02:09:56 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=988 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/05/03/anti-depressants-and-the-placebo-effect/feed/ 15 M Parrott By M Parrott Article ID: 1319 - It's a growing trend to believe that a pill can cure anything. Any aches, any pains, any sores. It's a big reason why people are still looking for a pill to make you thin. While I think we have become far too reliant o... By M Parrott Article ID: 1319 It's a growing trend to believe that a pill can cure anything. Any aches, any pains, any sores. It's a big reason why people are still looking for a pill to make you thin. While I think we have become far too reliant on pills, I'm not saying to scrap all drugs. They save lives, they save the economy money and they stop your pain. However, there is a specific type of drug that I have a problem with - the anti-psychotic. Or, to be even more specific, the anti-depressant. There are at least seventy-three anti-depressants on the market. For something that is supposed to "cure" depression, that's a lot of drugs. Let me explain where this idea comes from, that a drug will cure a psychological disorder. It relies upon a theory called the "monoamine hypothesis". This theory suggests that depression is caused by low levels of three neuro-chemicals from a group called monoamine neurotransmitters in the central nervous system. In bi-polar patients, the subject's levels of monoamine neuro-chemicals will fluctuate depending on whether they are in a depressed or manic state (low levels for depression, high for mania). What evidence do we have for this effect? Urine. No, honestly, urine. When studying the urine of people with depression we find they have low levels of by-products of dopamine, noradrenaline and serotonin. Autopsies show that those who commit suicide have these same low levels. It therefore seems plausible that depression is caused by low levels of the three neuro-transmitters. However, correlation does not equal causation: there are no ill effects when artificially inducing low-levels of these three neuro-chemicals. The participants do not become depressed. This suggests that low-levels of serotonin, noradrenalin and dopamine do not cause depression. If this is the case, then the whole idea of anti-depressant drugs is a fallacy. What about the drugs themselves? Proponents of the monoamine hypothesis argue that anti-depressants work, therefore proving that the theory is correct. However, this justification by circular reasoning doesn't fly. More on that later. Let me first outline what anti-depressants are. There are four main types; SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitors), MAOIs (monoamine oxidase inhibitors), SNRIs (serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors) and TCAs (tricyclic antidepressants). Medical doctor Arif Khan (1979-1999) tested the effectiveness of three substances; Sertraline hydrochloride (an SSRI), St John's Wort (a plant from which most anti-depressants are made) and sugar pills (a placebo). The effectiveness test came back with a surprising result: sertraline hydrochloride was effective 25% of the time, St John's Wort was at 24% and sugar pills were at 35%. Actual anti-depressant drugs were less effective than a placebo. That's depressing. More research supporting these results is by Professor Irving Kirsch et al. (1998, 2002 and 2008), who showed that anti-depressants do not have enough statistical significance in comparison to placebos. Another point is that TCAs are also used to treat ADHD. You should treat ADHD with depressants, and yet TCAs - anti-depressants - are used to treat depression. I question any group of drugs used as depressants and anti-depressants at the same time. After studying these drugs and the monoamine hypothesis, it appears that the lack of serotonin, noradrenalin and dopamine is a psychological disorder manifesting itself in a physiological symptom. For example, we don't say that Tourette syndrome is caused by sudden inappropriate language, but that Tourette syndrome causes the inappropriate statements. Some argue that if anti-depressant drugs are placebos, at least they seem to do something. This is not a good plan. We should instead pursue other treatments for depression, rather than assuming one little tablet can cure such a complex thing as a psychological disorder. Andy Kaiser clean 6:47 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/04/19/the-drake-equation/ http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/04/19/the-drake-equation/#comments Mon, 20 Apr 2009 04:06:03 +0000 Andy Kaiser http://www.dbskeptic.com/?p=955 http://www.dbskeptic.com/2009/04/19/the-drake-equation/feed/ 15 Andy Kaiser By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1317 - I'm about to prove to you that aliens exist. I'm talking space aliens. Whether they're the traditional Little Green Men, bug-eyed monsters, or something incomprehensible to the human mind, they exist, By Andy Kaiser Article ID: 1317 I'm about to prove to you that aliens exist. I'm talking space aliens. Whether they're the traditional Little Green Men, bug-eyed monsters, or something incomprehensible to the human mind, they exist, they're intelligent, and they're trying to find us. I'm going to prove this to you by using the most powerful tool on Earth: mathematics. Ready? Here we go: The number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy Our planet Earth resides comfortably in the Milky Way galaxy, a pinwheel-shaped collection of at least 200 billion stars. You know how our sun is just ONE star? Give it 200 billion friends. That's 200,000,000,000. At the time of this writing, this is roughly thirty times the number of humans living right now on this planet. Personally, I can't even visualize a number that high. Again, that's why we're using math - even if we can't see it or fathom it, we can represent it and come up with meaningful answers. So, we have 200 billion stars. We know this number fluctuates - new stars form and die. Astronomers think that the birth rate of stars in the Milky Way galaxy is roughly one star per year. The percentage of stars that have planets Next, let's look at all those stars. How many have planets around them? They're hard to see, but we're sniffing them out. NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory tell us we've so far found hundreds of "extrasolar planets".  As of April 2009, the count was at 344. Some astronomers think at least fifty percent of all stars have planets! We'll be more conservative. Let's cut the ratio in half, and estimate twenty-five percent of all stars have a planet. The number of "Goldilocks planets" per star Now look at the planets spinning around all those stars. Of those planets, how many (per star) are capable of sustaining life? Such habitable places are sometimes humorously called "Goldilocks planets", meaning that conditions for life (as we know it) are not too cold, not too hot, but just right. In our own solar system, we have an idea of this number. Earth is such a planet. As we explore further, we may find that other places in our solar system are also "just right". Or say you have a solar system with a Venus-like planet, where the greenhouse effect has escalated beyond control and turned the planet into an acidic-raining wasteland which is hot enough to melt lead. Take that hellish planet and move it away from the sun. Get it out far enough and you'll find a sweet spot, where the planet is warm enough (thanks to the greenhouse effect), but not so hot it kills everything on the surface. There are endless possibilities and plenty of conjecture as to the number of habitable planets per star. For now, let's use the number as dictated by our only example, ourselves: let's assume that of the stars which have planets, one planet is capable of supporting life in some form. The fraction of planets where life evolves This leads us to a conversation about life itself: on planets capable of sustaining life, what are the chances that life exists? Some biologists think that if life can exist somewhere, it will. Their opinion is bolstered by so-called "extremophiles" - Earth-based life that has adapted to some truly nasty conditions. Extremophiles can exist without sunlight, or under massive pressure, or bombarded by amounts of radiation that would make The Incredible Hulk blush. With evidence here on our planet, this is why many suggest that if life can exist somewhere, it will. Others say that getting to that point - the point where life begins - is very difficult. We know it's possible, of course, because I'm writing this and you, my fellow human, are reading it. But let's err on the side of caution. Let's say that on life-capable planets, only one percent of those will harbor living beings. The fraction of life evolving into intelligent life So we've got a lot of stars. They have a lot of planets. Andy Kaiser clean 13:50