Some of you have already noticed the big banner in the left sidebar (those of you who have adblock installed probably haven’t) announcing that we’re participating in DonorsChoose this year, the charity that takes your donation and directly hands them over to specific projects teachers have proposed. It’s one way to try and compensate for the deplorable state of public education financing in our country. I’ll be reminding you all a few more times in the future, but just keep it in mind — if you’ve got a few dollars to spare, pass them on to teachers and kids who really need them.

A few articles published in the newspapers today have hit me right in a few sore spots, making me crankier than usual and compelling me to write a few new rules for science journalists. Pay attention.

This first story is titled Male infertility gene discovered. It does an OK job of describing the actual study and even gets into the nuances farther in, but the lead is awful.

Rule #1: Do not describe genes by the disease they cause when broken. This is a gene that contributes to male fertility. There is no infertility gene. If a man has a missing, damaged, or mutant form of this fertility gene, he may have problems conceiving children.

Rule #2: Get some perspective. Deeper in, the story casually mentions that only 4% of men with fertility problems have a mutant allele of this gene. This is a non-story. Hundreds (at least) of genes contribute to fertility. What this is is a routine tale of a clinical observation, part of normal, ordinary science, that may be the grist of the scientific mill, but isn’t worth a superficial news item about one datum. How about writing a story about genetic factors in general that affect fertility? That would at least have some context. As is, this is an inflated press release.

Here’s another news item: New study claims ADHD has ‘direct genetic link’. It’s far less impressive than the headline suggests.

Rule #3: Comprehend the science first. This study does not show a direct link. Instead, it finds that children diagnosed with ADHD are more likely to have a spectrum of diverse genetic abnormalities. Cause and effect are not demonstrated. Specific ADHD-related genes are not identified. It shows a correlation between one measure of physical health and another measure of neurological properties.

Rule #4: Learn this simple principle: genes affect how your body responds to environmental factors. Finding an allele associated with a particular physiological state does not mean you have described a cause. We also need to know how that gene acts, what triggers a particular pattern of expression, and what the gene changes in the cell. There are forms of genes that only have deleterious (or advantageous) effects given certain conditions; that effect must be described as a consequence of both the gene and a certain background or environment.

There. I feel better getting that off my chest. I just get so annoyed at this tendency for the media to focus on simplistic discrete causes that are split into a black & white nature or nurture false dichotomy.

Last month, I mentioned this sad and inspiring story of Mike Celizic, who had been diagnosed with cancer and given very little time to live. I’m sorry to report that Mike Celizic has died. Here is the last email he sent to me; it’s a little embarrassing that he’s saying more about me than himself, but that seems to be the kind of fellow he was.

Dr. Myers:

I’m not given to firing off emails to people who are overwhelmed with same. But I’m dying of lymphoma – I’ve got a few weeks – and I want to tell you how much I’ve learned reading your blog and how much enjoyment it has brought me. I’m a writer for the MSM, and it’s been a delicate balancing act for years to not be blatantly the atheist I am, lest I upset the readers, or, more important, the bosses, who quail at the mention of the topic.

I’ve written an entry on deciding not to undergo more treatment. With my last post, I’ll expose my beliefs and let the cranks and fundies weep and wail and gnash their teeth and rend their garments. I’ll be rejoining the ecosystem – anyway, my ashes will – and won’t care.

If you’ve got a spare 30 seconds, which I can’t imagine you do, here’s my take on my decision. No need to respond. I just wanted to say thanks, not tootle my flootle.

So, thanks. Your writing means a lot to an army of people. Keep it up.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/38771115/ns/today-today_health/

And that’s how an atheist can face death.

Tristero thinks he has refuted my denial of the existence of souls by citing Otis Redding’s soul, but I reject his refutation! He has done it by the sneaky tactic of a strategic redefinition of “soul”, away from ‘magic essence of personal identity independent of the material substrate of the brain’ to ‘smokin” hot passionate musicality’, and I must call shenanigans. Shenanigans, I say!

I could be refuted, however, if Redding’s soul were to possess my body and set me to crooning “These arms of mine” down the hallway right now.

Actually, there are many moments when it would be useful to be possessed by Otis Redding. He never does.

Most Christians are merely misguided and lazy thinkers; I don’t have any particular animus against them, and just wish they’d grow up. However, there’s one kind of Christian that makes me furious and fills me with an angry contempt. I have been known to make the most militant atheist response in my repertoire when I encounter them: I might snarl briefly and leave them to rot in their hateful ignorance.

These are the people for whom I reserve the term “demented fuckwits”. They are the apocalypse-mongers, the cheerleaders for Armageddon, the monsters who take great satisfaction in their patently stupid belief that the world is going to end soon in a Jebus-spooge of Biblical volume. They aren’t just the cretins who fearfully foretell a coming tribulation, but the ones who think it will be a wonderful thing for chaos to erupt and sinners to die horribly so that they, as they believe, will get to sit in a celestial choir singing to drown out the screams of the suffering in Hell, and on their breaks will have the privilege of looking down and chuckling at their well-deserved torment. Anyone who crows about a “laaake of FIIRRRRRRRE” and loves the Jesus of death and damnation is a psychopathic creep in my book, and I want nothing to do with them.

So why do my cruel, cruel readers send me pictures like this? They know I have to watch my blood pressure!

They call it “Family Radio”. It’s some obsessed fundamentalist lunatics taking joy in their predicted annihilation of everyone else. Yes, they predict the world will end on 21 May 2011. I hope they divest themselves of worldly goods and find themselves broke and shivering and homeless on 22 May; I hope the authorities take their poor deprived abused children away from them and give them a decent life, free of the poisonous religion of their parents.

At the very least, I hope an auto body shop is looking forward to charging them for the van repainting job that will have to be done on the 22nd.

I almost wish that Harold Camping’s hell were real, so he could rot in it.

By the way, that van? It was parked in a VA Hospital lot, outside a clinic that specializes in patients with mental illness. That’s all they need, these vile parasites to prey on their wounded minds.

Here’s a little chat with the president of the Montana tea party, Tim Ravndal:

Dennis Scranton: “I think fruits are decorative. Hang up where they can be seen and appreciated. Call Wyoming for display instructions.”

Tim Ravndal: “@Kieth, OOPS I forgot this aint(sic) America no more! @ Dennis, Where can I get that Wyoming printed instruction manual?”

Ravndal has since been ousted. Don’t joke about murdering gays where the liberals might notice!

At least we can dismiss her latest fluff in the first sentence:

Is physical science – as some people say – omnicompetent? Can it (that is) answer all possible questions?

“As some people say” is one of the more perniciously lazy phrases in the English language. And setting up a straw man as the starting premise of an article is not encouraging. The answer to both is no. We don’t know all possible questions, and science is just a tool. A very successful tool, but one with no alternative in sight (and Midgley certainly offers none).

To be fair, Midgley goes on to chatter about some very unfortunate hyperbole from Nicholas Humphrey, who seems to think we’re close to solving all of science’s questions, which is also an extraordinarily silly statement to make. But I can safely say that her questions are still ridiculous.

Not that I’ve become morbid lately — I feel lucky that I got a potential problem taken care of before it became a crisis — but this story by Mike Celizic is inspiring and terrifying at the same time. He’s a journalist who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, knows his life expectancy is now measured in weeks, and has gone public with a cancer journal to describe his last days. It’s brave stuff, and the kind of courageous end we should all aspire to.

Note, of course, that the Christian cowards have infested the comments with come-to-Jesus declarations. Let’s be better than that: a person should be able to face his end in his own way, without mobs of evangelizers trying to push fear and unwarranted promises and irrelevant philosophies on the fellow.

(via UBC Botanical Garden)

My day began well enough. I’d gotten up early, got some writing done, and was headed into the office to do some prep work for classes, which start this week. My phone rang just as I had my key in the office door — which was cutting it close. My office is an AT&T dead zone, and a few more seconds and I would have been in blissful obliviousness for the rest of the day. It was my doctor’s assistant. I will paraphrase her words slightly.

“We just got the results of your tests from last week. Your heart is a shriveled black lump starved of charity, decency, charm, and kindness,” she said, “a gristly godless clot of marginally functional fibers. You need to go back to Abbott for more tests, and the doctors want to crack your chest and marvel at you.”

“So what else is new? My students are used to that and expect me to be lashing them with fear and pain starting Wednesday…and my black heart is an asset to this job,” I said. “Maybe I can pop in for these tests this weekend. Any chest-cracking can wait for the end of the term and Christmas break, when I wouldn’t be using my heart anyway.”

“No,” she said, “now.”

And I waffled and weaseled and tried to argue with her that this could not be, I had a great deal of work to do right now, and I couldn’t possibly just drop out at the start of the term, and besides, I felt fine. And I bickered, and she exasperatedly told me no way, and I bargained, and then she said, “Here. I’m putting the doctor on.” And the doctor spoke with the voice of Doom and the terrifying tone of I-hold-your-life-in-my-hands-you-dope and she quoth (paraphrased somewhat): 

“YOU ARE GOING TO DIE SUDDENLY, ABRUPTLY, WITHOUT WARNING UNLESS WE FIX YOU RIGHT NOW. GO. NOW. DO NOT ARGUE WITH ME.”

“Yes’m,” I said.

And so I now find myself on the road to Minneapolis under the care of the TrophyWife™, who will have to be renamed AmbulanceDriver™ or perhaps MistressOfMercy™, for an appointment with knives and pain. This was not the day I woke up for. This was not my plan for the Fall of 2010, but then, reality does have a way of dicking up our comfortable expectations.

There may be an interruption in the blogging for a wee bit.

If I’m supposed to be traveling your way in the next month or so, there will probably be a change of plans. I’ll be in touch with people next week when I know more about my course of suffering for the next little while.

Meanwhile, relax, chill, don’t panic, and most importantly, don’t waste your time with prayers. Ever.

I’ll be back while convalescing, and will be even more heartfully cranky than ever.