Given the fuss occasioned by her PhD thesis, I was interested to look at the document produced for Judy Wilyman's MSc (available here on-line), largely to see what attention had been given to the science content and perspectives. Having examined or adjudicated a number of Masters theses in the sciences, I've a reasonably good idea […]
Continue readingI had another head-desk moment today, on reading a bit more of Judy Wilyman's PhD thesis (a bit at a time is quite enough). The document has quite a bit to say about smallpox. I've already noted the ill-considered statement that the vaccine has never been subject to clinical trials – a statement unaccompanied by […]
Continue readingThis is the human face of smallpox: Photo Credit: Content Providers(s): CDC/James Hicks This media comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Public Health Image Library (PHIL), with identification number #3265. Smallpox is now extinct in the wild: the last known case was in 1977. And this is what Judy Wilyman has to say about the vaccine that […]
Continue readingOne of today's big stories, in the blogosphere and elsewhere, is of the University of Wollongong's decision to award a PhD to a thesis that promotes a strongly anti-vaccination take on the policies and science relating to immunisation. Fellow NZ scibloggers Helen Petousis Harris and Grant Jacobs have already commented on it, and over on Respectful Insolence […]
Continue readingWill Grant & Rod Lambert, from the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, listed these 10 common mistakes in an article published in The Conversation. And as they say, if we're honest we've probably made at least one of them at some point. This article would probably be a really useful resource […]
Continue readingThere is some seriously odd stuff on teh intertoobs. A coupe of days ago, one of our ‘regulars’ on Making Sense of Fluoride posted a link to a page entitled “Water Confusion“. It was confusing all right. Apparently we are confused about “what kind of drinking water is the most health promoting”. I would have […]
Continue readingA nice piece in Nature, by Tony Ballantyne (& hat-tip to PZ Myers, who somehow finds these things first), speculates on how things could be for those who selectively reject the bits of science they don’t like: in this instance, vaccination, but creationism could easily be substituted in this storyline. T.Ballantyne (2012) If only… Nature […]
Continue readingPerhaps the greatest fear for any parent is that their child will die before they do. Such events must be incredibly hard to bear, particularly if the death is unexplained and unexpected, & my heart goes out to any parents in such a situation. Sometimes, particularly where the death is unexplained, all sorts of alternative […]
Continue readingAt Respectful Insolence, Orac has a recent post discussing ‘anti-science’, and I thought of this when I finally got around to writing this piece (which Grant has kindly ‘left to me’, as it were!). Here’s how Orac defines the term ‘anti-science’: It’s an imperfect term for people who reject well-established science. To get a flavor […]
Continue readingA new post by Orac discusses various tactics of the anti-vaccine movement, with reference to a new paper published in the journal Vaccine. (Link is to a pdf – apologies if this isn’t accessible to all as it’s well worth the time spent reading.) In the paper (entitled Anti-vaccine activists, Web 2.0, and the postmodern paradigm – […]
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