Why scientists have a tough time combating quackery

More is emerging about tennis player Novak Djokovic’s crackpot views.

The tennis star has a track record when it comes to questionable scientific claims.

In his book Serve to Win, Djokovic described how in 2010 he met with a nutritionist who asked him to hold a piece of bread in his left hand while he pressed down on his right arm. Djokovic claims he was much weaker while holding the bread, and cited this as evidence of gluten intolerance.

And during an Instagram live, he claimed that positive thought could “cleanse” polluted water, adding that “scientists have proven that molecules in water react to our emotions.”

According to Dr David Nunan, a senior researcher at the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, “on the balance of probabilities it is highly unlikely that such claims are true – at least not by current conventions of scientific theory and practice.”

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Sidney Poitier (1927-2022)

The acting legend has died at the age of 94.

Among the many films of his that I saw, I loved A Raisin in the Sun (1961), Lilies of the FieldTo Sir With Love (1967). The film I utterly disliked was one that received great acclaim, and that was Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967) where he played the fiancee of a white woman and had to overcome the latent prejudices of her liberal parents. He had to play an almost impossibly accomplished and personally flawless person in the film, in order to gain acceptance.

The main problem he faced was that he entered the film world as an almost illiterate immigrant from the Bahamas (though he was born in Miami when his parents were visiting briefly) during Jim Crow and racial unrest in the US. After struggling tremendously, he was one of the first main black leads and was mindful that he would be taken as a representative of black people. Hence his roles almost always was that of a good guy. It must have irked him that he could not broaden his acting range and play edgy or even outright villainous roles, like his peers Robert Mitchum or Richard Widmark. He had the kind of looks, easy grace, on-screen charm and charisma that made him eminently watchable, like Cary Grant, who also never played the bad guy.
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Tennis star Novak Djokovic in limbo in Australia

Tennis star Novak Djokovic has said that he is opposed to vaccinations. Australia now requires people entering the country to be vaccinated or apply for a special exemption. Djokovic had applied for and got an exemption from the Australian tennis body that issues such exemptions so that he could play in the Australian Open that takes place starting on January 17th. But later it turned out that he had applied for a visa that does not allow for medical exemptions. This caused a furore with people complaining that he was being given special treatment.

Australian prime minister Scott Morrison then stepped in and said only the federal government has the authority to decide who is allowed into the country and under what circumstances and that he was not eligible to enter. The Victorian state government also refused to weigh in in support of Djokovic’s exemption. Meanwhile, Djokovic and his entourage had already departed for Australia on a long flight and upon arrival he was separated from the rest and held isolated under an armed guard at the Melbourne airport while his case was deliberated. In the end, his visa was cancelled and he was asked to leave.
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Who said that there is no honor among thieves?

As part of the legal proceeding involving Virginia Giuffre’s charge that Prince Andrew was one of Jeffrey Epstein’s friends that she was pressured to have sex with as a minor, a federal judge yesterday released the sealed agreement that was reached about a decade ago between Epstein and Giuffre in settlement of her case against him.

The unsealed settlement states that upon receipt of the stipulated sum, Giuffre, referred to under her maiden name, agrees to “remise, release, acquit, satisfy and forever discharge the said second parties and any other person or entity who could have been included as a potential defendant … from all, and all manner of, action and actions of Virginia Roberts, including state or federal, cause and causes of action”.

It looks like Epstein was taking care of his friends to insulate them from legal actions by those they abused. Of course, I doubt that he did this purely out of a sense of friendship. More likely it was to prevent them from buckling under the threat of prosecution and revealing damaging information about him.

It is interesting that Andrew and Alan Dershowitz, neither of whom is specifically named, wanted this agreement to be released since they seem to feel that it will take the heat off them.
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TV Review: Death to 2021

The year 2021 started out with some hope and optimism. The Democrats just barely won control of the US Senate and thus supposedly would be able to get some things done. Donald Trump would be out of office in three weeks. Vaccines were going to be available soon that would enable us to emerge from the pandemic.

But things did not work out that way. Trump has gone full bore bonkers with his claim that the election was stolen and enough of his cult believe him to cause problems. Two Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema seem determined to side with Republicans in opposing efforts to improve the lives of many people. And new covid-19 variants have emerged that, coupled with inexplicably stupid resistance to taking them and other pandemic resistance measures, has seen the number of cases rise sharply at the end of the year.

But the eternal optimist in me hopes that this year will surprise me by turning out better than the current signs indicate.

In general, I am not a fan of year-end retrospectives or lists of various things such as best books, best films, and the like. One exception is a list of well-known people who died during the year, many of whom did not get much press attention at the time of their death and so I missed it. For example, I learned from that article that the celebrated Indian sprinter Milkha Singh had died at the age of 91. I remember him because of a very silly joke that I heard at the time when he came to Sri Lanka to compete in a meet. The joke went that as he was sitting by the side of the track after a race, someone came up to him and asked, “Are you relaxing?” To which he replied, “No, I am Milkha Singh.” That shows the kind of juvenile humor that appeals to me and sticks in my mind.
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Leftist easily wins presidency in Chile

In a recent election, a leftist has won the presidency in Chile.

Leftist candidate Gabriel Boric has won Chile’s presidential election to become the country’s youngest ever leader.

In what was expected to be a tight race, the 35-year-old former student protest leader defeated his far-right rival José Antonio Kast by 10 points.

Mr Boric told supporters he would look after democracy, promising curbs on Chile’s neoliberal free market economy.

He will lead a country that has been rocked in recent years by mass protests against inequality and corruption.

Mr Boric’s victory prompted celebrations on the streets of the capital Santiago, with his supporters waving flags and honking car horns.
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Alex Jones may have disappointed some of his followers

Alex Jones is discovering that his appeals for privacy about what happened at his home on Christmas Eve that resulted in the police being called ind his wife arrested are falling on deaf ears. The Daily Beast has obtained the police report of the incident.

Alex Jones’ wife Erika Wulff Jones allegedly struck the far-right conspiracy theorist “over 20 times” and threatened to hit him in the head with a stone ball, causing him to “fear for his life,” according to police documents reviewed by The Daily Beast.
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Film review: Don’t Look Up (2021)

Netflix has just released a new star-studded dark comedy that sends up the current times in which we live. The film is allegorical, particularly of the Trump era.

The story begins with a graduate student (Jennifer Lawrence) who discovers that a 10 km wide comet is headed straight for the Earth and will collide with it in just over six months, destroying the planet. Along with her advisor (Leonardo DiCaprio) and a top government scientist (Rob Morgan) they try to alert the Trump-like president (Meryl Streep) but she, along with her idiot son (Jonah Hill, no prizes for guessing who he is based on) who is her chief-of-staff, does not take the threat seriously enough and instead worries more about her poll numbers and how to use the news to her political advantage. The news media represented the form of a happy-talk TV show with co-anchors (Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry) also make light of the situation.
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Oh, so now he cares about people’s privacy?

On Christmas Eve, the wife of hate monger and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was arrested by police in their home.

The wife of the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was arrested on Christmas Eve on a domestic violence charge the rightwing provocateur said stemmed from a “medication imbalance”.

Sheriff’s deputies booked Erika Wulff Jones into an Austin jail around 8.45pm on Friday. Jail records showed the 43-year-old faced misdemeanor charges of assault causing bodily injury to a family member and resisting arrest, search or transport. By the afternoon of Christmas Day, she had not received a bond.

Alex Jones, an Austin resident and founder of the rightwing media group Infowars, declined to say if he had been injured or to elaborate on what happened beyond that he believed it was related to a recent change of medication.

“It’s a private family matter that happened on Christmas Eve,” Jones said. “I love my wife and care about her and it appears to be some kind of medication imbalance.”

A ‘private family matter’? This is rich from a man who hounded the families of the Sandy Hook massacre, claiming that the whole thing was a staged hoax, and that they were paid ‘crisis actors’. His followers took up this lie and made the lives of those bereaved parents, already traumatized by the murder of their children, a living hell. Now he wants people to respect his privacy?

It would serve him right if those parents returned the favor by making up all manner of bizarre and disgusting scenarios about what happened at his house and spreading it all over social media.

Desmond Tutu represented the best of religion

The indefatigable South African fighter for human rights died today at the age of 90.

His achievements are well known and the many, many obituaries and articles that will be written in the next few days will review them. What I liked best about him was that he used his eminence to speak out boldly, not caring about taking on sacred cows or tribal allegiances. He criticized the ANC after they took power, for which they retaliated by initially not inviting him to nelson Mandela’s funeral. He was one of the earliest major figures to label Israel as an apartheid state. That carried immense weight since who would know better than he what apartheid looked like? That outspokenness did not endear him to the apologists for Israel and it is suggestive that the Guardian article linked to above or the obituary does not even mention that particular stance of his, highly impactful though it was.

On a personal note, my daughter and son-in-law visited South Africa for a college friend’s wedding at which Tutu was to officiate. At an informal lunch, they met him. He was wearing a Morehouse College t-shirt and they said that he was playful and mischievous, joking around. I have a photograph of just the three of them and you can see the wide grin and the twinkle in his eyes. He was clearly someone who was serious about his work but did not take himself too seriously. He is the kind of person that one would enjoy just hanging out with.

Tutu clearly was a religious person, the kind who believes that his faith requires him to fight for justice for all. That is the best kind of religion.