Even harmless quackery kills

A recent study with almost 2 million subjects evaluated the effectiveness of Complementary Medicine in fighting cancer. CM is that supposedly harmless stuff like yoga and essential oils and homeopathy taken in addition to standard, tested, genuine medicine — stuff that you’d think wouldn’t hurt (although it wouldn’t actually help, either, except maybe in your emotional well-being), except, ooops, it did.

Findings In this cohort study of 1 901 815 patients, use of complementary medicine varied by several factors and was associated with refusal of conventional cancer treatment, and with a 2-fold greater risk of death compared with patients who had no complementary medicine use.

Meaning Patients who received complementary medicine were more likely to refuse other conventional cancer treatment, and had a higher risk of death than no complementary medicine; however, this survival difference could be mediated by adherence to all recommended conventional cancer therapies.

That last paragraph is important: sure, aromatherapy isn’t going to harm you unless you use it as an excuse to avoid conventional treatments. And, unfortunately, from the statistics it seems that a lot of people were doing that, giving the overall group a 2-fold greater risk of dying. I think it’s important to note that this is a statistical assessment — supplementing your chemo with traditional Chinese medicine won’t kill you directly, it just puts you in a group that contains many members who will defy medical advice, and end up dead earlier.

I tried to poke a few holes in their conclusions, which is fairly easy to do in this kind of study, but the authors kept foiling me. One concern I had was that maybe their results were biased by the fact that people whose conventional treatments were failing were more likely to turn to desperate, unlikely treatments — so the results weren’t so much “CM causes people to neglect good treatments” as “failing treatments cause people to try CM”. They had an answer.

As patients receiving CM were more likely to be female, younger, more affluent, well educated, privately insured, and healthier, we hypothesize that our sample was biased in favor of greater survival for patients who used CM (vs no CM).

I guess it makes sense. If you’re intentionally taking a placebo, you probably think it is actually going to help you, and it’s that delusion that’s going to make you more willing to turn down effective, advantageous therapies, especially if they’re going to cause you more discomfort. One thing about CM is that it’s always mostly pleasant and doesn’t challenge the patient in any way. It may be doing harm by increasing complacency about a deadly disease.

The most evil and powerful atheist in the world

You might be wondering who that would be, but the answer is right in your face. It’s ME. Yes! According to YouTube comments, which are clearly an unimpeachable, credible source, I am responsible for destroying the atheist movement. Me! And you regular readers of Pharyngula get a mention, too. It’s all our fault.

(Warning: YouTube comments below.)

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Even tiny brains are complicated

This is impressive: scientists have scanned and imaged every neuron and every connection in a fly brain

. The data has been made freely available, and you can download the whole dataset, if you have 12TB of storage available.

Human brains have about a million times more neurons than a fly brain, and note also that this is morphological, rather than biochemical data, which is going to be even more complex. Adjust your expectations for mind uploading accordingly.

It wasn’t Cthulhu after all

There was this mysterious large black sarcophagus found in Egypt, and for a while, there were wild rumors of evil curses and imprisoned demons and HORRIBLE FATES AWAIT ALL WHO OPEN IT. Sadly, the only things in it were three skeletons and lots of reeking sewage that had seeped in.

Addressing media fears that disturbing the tomb could trigger an implacable Pharaoh’s curse, Mr Waziri declared: “We’ve opened it and, thank God, the world has not fallen into darkness.

“I was the first to put my whole head inside the sarcophagus… and here I stand before you … I am fine.”

Dang. I’d almost been hoping for an apocalypse that would put us out of our misery.

Despite that, the site has now been cleared of people amid fears the sarcophagus could release lethal toxic fumes, Egypt’s state-owned newspaper Al-Ahram says.

So, you’re saying, there’s still hope?

I think this is satire, probably

At least, I wish it were satire. Alexandra Petri describes the role of senators.

A senator, as you know, is someone empowered by the Constitution to go on cable news and state opinions. A senator can do nothing to restrain the executive branch. In the system of checks and balances designed by the Founding Fathers, the Senate is neither.

The Senate is an appendix, a vestigial organ whose function no one can determine, so it just sits there and sometimes rumbles ominously after meals. Aside from its traditional role of acting as a rubber-stamp for judicial appointees, it is a kind of cheery bobblehead designed by the Constitution to stare at what the Executive is doing and offer tacit approval. It is decorative, not functional — like a pocket square, or a succulent in a dentist’s waiting room, or the “Share On Facebook” button at the bottom of an article.

It might be a little too accurate, since it perfectly describes the behavior of all those Republican senators who go on TV to deplore the president and mewl a little bit and then do nothing to stop him. Jeff Flake? John McCain? Susan Collins? All those pseudo-mavericks of the right?

Jewdy-ized and homosexual-ized?

What does one wear to a decapitation party? Rick Wiles says we’re going to have one by this weekend.

“America, you’ve been homosexualized. You’ve been Jewdy-ized. I’m just telling it how it is,” Wiles told viewers. “She was spewing out, last night, calls for revolution. She was telling the left, ‘Take a deep breath, we’re at the moment, it’s coming, we’re almost there, we’re going to remove him from the White House.’ We’re about 72 hours — possibly 72 hours — from a coup.

“Be prepared that you’re going to turn on the television and see helicopters hovering over the roof of the White House with men clad in black rappelling down ropes, entering into the White House. Be prepared for a shoot out in the White House as Secret Service agents shoot commandos coming in to arrest President Trump.”

But Wiles wasn’t finished with his hysterical anti-semitism and homophobia.

“That is how close we are to a revolution. Be prepared for a mob — a leftist mob — to tear down the gates, the fence at the White House and to go into the White House and to drag him out with his family and decapitate them on the lawn of the White House,” he said.

In case you’re wondering who “she” is, the leader of the revolution, the one who is going to chop off the president’s head, it’s Rachel Maddow. I knew I liked her.

However, once again, the Left has shown its inability to get their act together. I didn’t get any notice of this glorious uprising. Was it in the same envelope with my check from George Soros? ’cause that’s also late.

Cats did not evolve 80 million years ago

I mined the rich vein of ignorance and inanity that is Harun Yahya’s Atlas of Creation, and only got as far as one page before I was stunned into silence. He made a claim about cat evolution that even my evil cat found repugnant.

You know the Felidae are a fairly recent clade, appearing in the late Miocene, right?

Script below the field if you’d rather not watch video.

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So, so tired of Christian Atheists

Here we go again, with more weird Christian bias from atheists.

You know, the first sentence is just fine — please do appreciated the culture and history of a place. Personally, I’m not at all fond of church bells, because I grew up near a church that insisted on playing those obnoxious electronic chimes every 15 minutes, and here in Morris some jerk insisted likewise that the local cemetery play ear-splitting hymns on their electronic carillon all day long (fortunately, no longer). It might be a matter of frequency, too, since the Catholic church 3 blocks away rings their bells every Sunday before mass, and that’s not a problem at all.

Dawkins begins to go off the rails with the second sentence. Why is he comparing church bells to “Allahu Akhbar”? 1) A better comparison would be with the adhan, or call to prayer, of an Islamic mosque. It’s not “aggressive-sounding” at all. It would drive me nuts if I had to hear it every day, but it’s analogous in every way to his church bells. 2) “Allahu Akhbar” just means “God is great”, a phrase you’ll hear all the time in Christian churches. It is awfully arrogant, but it’s exactly the same crap that goes on in the grand medieval building behind Dawkins. Just a different language and a different culture.

Which is why the third sentence is so disingenuously stupid. Exactly, Richard, it’s a matter of your cultural upbringing. What else would it be? This is nothing but a phony call-out to anti-Islamic sentiment.

But wait, his supporters say. He’s Just Asking a Question. Maybe he’s simply acknowledging the varieties of human experience and openly admitting that he has a preference shaped by his history? Read charitably, maybe he’s noting the similarities of these different cultures.

Nice try. Nope. He followed up with this:

“Allahu Akhbar” is anything but beautiful when it is heard just before a suicide bomb goes off…fine. Relevance? Do you really think the muezzin is urging all listeners to yank the cord on a suicide vest? It’s a call to prayer. Just like the ringing bells of a cathedral. Shall we make the point that the bells of Winchester cathedral are anything but beautiful when it is heard just before a priest yanks down the pants of a little boy? That “Onward Christian Soldiers” isn’t exactly about peace and love? Is it beautiful when Christian America thinks it would a great idea to nuke Mecca?

Talk show host Pat Campbell for WFLA-AM in Orlando, Florida asked the Colorado Republican Congressman Tom TancredoWikipedia’s W.svg how the country should respond if terrorists struck several U.S. cities with nuclear weapons; he responded, “Well, what if you said something like — if this happens in the United States, and we determine that it is the result of extremist, fundamentalist Muslims, you know, you could take out their holy sites.” “You’re talking about bombing Mecca,” Campbell said. “Yeah,” Tancredo responded. The congressman later said he was “just throwing out some ideas” and that an “ultimate threat” might have to be met with an “ultimate response.” “What is near and dear to them? They’re willing to sacrifice everything in this world for the next one. What is the pressure point that would deter them from their murderous impulses?” the representative asked, his spokesman stressing he was only speaking hypothetically.

Wow. That sounds just like a Sam Harris hypothetical.

It’s really simply bigotry when you condemn followers of one faith for doing exactly what followers of another faith do, and equate going to a mosque to pray with murder.