Teaching Philosophy of Science in High School

Speaking (again) of vaccines and autism...Jenny McCarthy is the self-appointed spokesperson for the vaccine-autism link, criticized here and many, many places elsewhere for presuming to know more than do scientists, doctors, etc.

I've always quite liked Jenny McCarthy, because she mixes funny and sexy. Sexy too often takes itself Very Seriously, and it's been nice to have something of a Mae West figure again. I recently bought the book McCarthy wrote on pregnancy, which is jaw-droppingly and very disarmingly honest, vividly scatological, and (as it happens) quite funny. You can't quite believe someone would admit such truths to her own doctor, much less the world at large.

What comes across very clearly in this book is that this is a woman who LOVES her son. Who really dotes on him. Perhaps even unusually so, for the world at large and most likely for former Playboy models.

I don't defend what she did, because I do think it has led to a lot of harm with people avoiding vaccines. But I sympathize with it on a gut level. She is a very loving mom who is searching for explanations, hasn't found any, and hasn't been given a reason why to trust the scientific process. She also seems to think her kid has improved.

Most importantly, I think there's a way of avoiding people pulling Jenny McCarthys in the future. What we can do is not simply tell students in schools that smart people trust scientists, and looking up stuff on the web on your own is for bimbos. Anyone who watches the news is provided frequently with counterexamples that show scientists are not always right. Most people have had the experience of being told to trust their doctor, and their doctor turned out to be wrong about something. If you are told just to trust scientists and doctors, but you have not learned anything about the scientific method....why would you then continue to trust scientists and doctors? Presumably you were told to trust them because they know more and are correct. So when they aren't...of course it would get anyone to wondering whether they really do know more. This seems perfectly reasonable to me. If someone has been introduced as having much expertise, and she turns out to have made a significant mistake in the field of expertise, it would certaily get me wondering.

But, of course, we don't simply trust doctors and scientists because they know more. It's part of it, but not all of it. It's because we believe in the use of scientific method. It might be more valuable to teach a little philosophy of science in our high schools. Explain how the scientific method was developed, and, most importantly, how it is to be preferred to wild conjecture even though scientists sometimes get it wrong. Teach what constitutes good evidence, and why it does. Teach why we still think what scientists do is valuable, even if mistakes have been made. My guess is that had Jenny McCarthy and others of her ilk had learned this stuff (she's no idiot, even if she's not a Rhodes Scholar), and learned it well, rather than simply being asked to have a blind faith in the scientific community, much fewer of them would be challenging the scientific community.

Sanity. Hurrah.

From the Times:

A special vaccine court ruled against parents with autistic children Thursday, saying that vaccines are not to blame for their children's neurological disorder.

The judges in the cases said the evidence was overwhelmingly contrary to the parents' claims -- and backed years of science that found no risk.

''It was abundantly clear that petitioners' theories of causation were speculative and unpersuasive,'' the court concluded in one of a trio of cases ruled on Thursday.

My opinions about this are clear. Either one believes that medicine is based upon science, or one does not. Sometimes that science is flawed. Sometimes it is incomplete. But medical investigation is always ongoing, and there has been a huge amount of attention paid to vaccines, thimerosal, and autism. As I say to families that inquire, if there is a link between the three, it is so minute and unclear as to be scientifically undetectable.

I cannot imagine how much more complicated and unpleasant practicing pediatrics would have been had the court decided otherwise. I am grateful for their clear, correct and unambiguous ruling.

People shouldn't have litters

Well, after a couple of days attending to non-blogosphere matters, here I am again. Did you miss me?

Now that the stimulus package appears to be on its way to passage, with the collective hopes of many behind its success, I think it's safe to turn our attention to other matters. Pressing matters. Matters regarding women who give birth to entire sports teams.

Three smiling siblings, he says, were the first Japanese-American triplets conceived in a laboratory, while the robust-looking quadruplets were born after sperm was injected into their mother’s eggs with a needle.

To the couples who turned to Dr. Chiu to have families, the babies were special gifts. To the government and fertility industry, though, such large multiple births have begun to look like breakdowns in the system. The issue has taken on renewed scrutiny since a California woman, Nadya Suleman, who already had six children conceived through in vitro procedures, gave birth to octuplets near here last month.

Ms. Suleman has 14 children now, all of them conceived artificially. While I do not know Ms. Suleman, I wonder if perhaps there is a degree of vanity involved in deciding that one's genetic material is so very, very valuable that it should be propogated well beyond usual numbers. Particularly through artificial means. It is also questionable how ethical it was to implant [edit -- six] embryos in the first place.

The American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the association of fertility doctors, even adopted guidelines in 2008 encouraging the transfer of only one embryo for women under 35, and no more than two, except in extraordinary circumstances. The guidelines allow more for older women, up to a maximum of five.

Ms. Suleman is 33. Correct my math if I'm wrong on this, but six > one, no?

It is easy (so, so easy) to criticize Ms. Suleman's decision. She is single. She is unemployed. Some people are supposing that she has a desire to emulate Angelina Jolie (in both behavior and appearance), though it should be noted that Ms. Jolie is gainfully employed and adopted many of her children. While I think Ms. Suleman is due for her fair share of criticism (and starting up a website so people can donate to the care of her brood is beyond the pale), I would like to ask a question of one Michael M. Kamrava, the doctor Ms. Suleman identifies as the man who implanted the embryos.

What, Dr. Kamrava, is your problem? You have an obligation to practice medicine ethically, and you have failed to do so in a profound and very public way. Apparently you are under investigation by the California Medical Board, and I can only imagine how you plan to defend yourself. Ms. Suleman, it seems needless to say, has some psychological problems that doubtless motivated her decision to seek your services. What, Dr. Kamrava, motivated you to provide them? Or shall I guess?

It also seems odd to heap opprobrium on one woman with 14 kids, when another family with eight has their own show and a website for fans to read devotionals. (It should be noted that the Gosselins used a different method of getting pregnant, and were not aware they were headed for sextuplets. However, this distinction isn't necessarily clear in the court of public opinion.) It's really not all that hard to imagine that an unhappy young woman would see birthing her own jury (plus alternates) as a ticket to fame and adulation. Again, one would have hoped that an ethical physician would have declined to proceed with such a risky and unnecessary procedure, but it appears that one wasn't involved.

Disaster Watch

Hollywood has known for decades that we love watching disasters. Fictional disasters on film are one thing (and we're talking about films intentionally about disasters, such as "Flood", rather than films that are in and of themselves disasters, such as, well, "Flood"), but there are lots of ways to watch real-life disasters.

Some of them are passing wonders, such as the burning of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Beijing...

..and some are too sad and horrific to list, such as the wildfires in Australia. But sometimes the best real-life disaster rubber-necking is the speculative kind, the apoclyptic imagination wondering which event signals the end of the world. Here are just a few:

The Alaska Volcano Observatory

Mount Redoubt is getting ready to blow, potentially covering Anchorage in ash and pyroclastic flows damning inlets. You can even sign up for the Twitter feed, with updates every two hours. Alaskans aren't that worried, but that makes the dramatic tension even more exciting.

Tropical Storms

While the Atlantic hurricane season is still five months away, cyclones are springing up in the Indian Ocean and there's always the off chance of a typhoon in the Pacific.

Nightmare Diseases

You can always troll through the CDC and the WHO and worry about the next outbreak of avian flu, toxic peanut butter, and drug-resistant TB.

GOP

And you can watch the RNC self-destruct. Of course, I'm biased. I'm sure a link to the DNC, Congress, or WhiteHouse.gov could be equally entertaining for disaster mavens. Sausage-making, it's fascinating but it isn't pretty.

Tanks Alot

As always, torn between the greater good and personal interest... Classical economics is pretty clear that I'll choose personal interest, and in practice that's usually the case. So, even though I know it's better for the planet when we drive less, I've been enjoying the lowest gas prices in over two years. I am a cheap scotsman at heart...

When gas prices skyrocketed, our excessive carbon footprint took a step back. Folks flocked to public transportation, rail companies began advertising their fuel efficiency, and traffic got a bit less horrendous.

Then demand dropped too far -- the high price of gas, as well as the generally failing weak economy -- and with the drop in demand, the price at the pump fell back. Good news for drivers, good news for the price of produce and any other goods that get transported (which is, well, everything these days). Gas has dropped so low that Massachusetts is floating a proposal for the highest gasoline tax in the country, $0.52 a gallon.

Well, you'll be delighted (or horrified) to know that cheap gas may once again be a thing of the past. Couple weeks ago, the IHT reported:

From the Indian Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, giant supertankers brimming with oil are resting at anchor or slowly tracing racetrack patterns at sea, heading nowhere. The ships are marking time, serving as floating oil-storage tanks. The companies and countries leasing them for that purpose have made a simple calculation: The price of oil has fallen so far that it is due for a rise.

Some producing countries are trying to force that rise by using the tankers to withhold oil from the market, while traders are trying to profit by buying oil now to store and sell at a higher price later. Oil storage has become so popular that onshore tank capacity is becoming scarce.

What a vision! Giant oil tankers, filled with crude, tracing figure eights in the Indian Ocean. Behemoths of the sea, half a million metric tons, floating giants -- and floating bombs and environmental disasters waiting to happen. Bloody boring for the folks working aboard, except if they explode, run ashore, or get taken by pirates. Be even more impressive if they'd finally build those sail-powered oil tankers -- but even the ordinary tankers have fanboys:



Higher gas prices? Good for us? Terrible news for a weak economy? Great news for new, green jobs?

Stiffing the constituents

And it's back to the stimulus package. One thing that has nagged me about Susan Collins's central role in trimming the package in an effort at "compromise" is that it seems to be hurting the very people she's meant to represent. Maine, as I have mentioned, is cash-strapped, and I would have thought that this would have spurred her to support as much money going out from the federal government in state aid as possible.

Apparently, this is not the case. I've read two different things in the past ten minutes that put the lie to this assumption.

From The Plank:

Here's the difference for a couple key states, in terms of fewer jobs created under the compromise (the numbers reflect an estimated range):

[snip]

Maine: 1,831 - 2,316

From TPM:

The state budget chief says Maine is hoping for as much as $1 billion in federal aid to help close a deficit that is already forcing layoffs and fee increases. So why did Collins work so hard to trim the estimated $250 million in state stabilization aid that would have gone to her own constituents? If she knows, she's not telling.

All I can think of is that Collins wants to appease her fellow Republicans by doing some kind of "trim the fat" kabuki. Because all it would have taken for the bill to pass unchanged was her (and Snowe's) support. Sure, it would be nice if other Republicans supported it, but the Democrats plus Maine would have been sufficient to move the bill along. (Steve Benen has made similar points about Arlen Specter.) Perhaps she thinks that by cutting spending, which makes the bill less effective, she is safeguarding its passage, but her support was all it needed in the first place, and it would have been better for her state the way it was before.

I find it baffling.

Thank you, Vatican

I am so grateful to have something besides the economy to write about, I could just cry.

Apparently, indulgences are back.

In recent months, dioceses around the world have been offering Catholics a spiritual benefit that fell out of favor decades ago — the indulgence, a sort of amnesty from punishment in the afterlife — and reminding them of the church’s clout in mitigating the wages of sin.

[snip]

There are partial indulgences, which reduce purgatorial time by a certain number of days or years, and plenary indulgences, which eliminate all of it. You can get one for yourself, or for someone else, living or dead. You cannot buy one — the church outlawed the sale of indulgences in 1857 — but charitable contributions, combined with other acts, can help you earn one. There is a limit of one plenary indulgence per sinner per day.

Got that? One per day.

As an Episcopalian, I'm really on the outside looking in on this. I don't believe in Purgatory, and I certainly don't believe that the church (a human institution) has any sway over God's grace. But there are aspects of this that, heaven help me, I just find hilarious.

“Why are we bringing it back?” asked Bishop Nicholas A. DiMarzio of Brooklyn, who has embraced the move. “Because there is sin in the world.”

Which is another way of saying the "reduce the sinning" strategy hasn't panned out.

I am also not sure about the way that time spent in Purgatory is calculated. Having read Dante's Purgatorio, which features punishments nearly as unpleasant as the ones in the Inferno but with far cheerier sufferers, I can certainly understand the desire to get out of as much of it as possible. But, short of getting hit by a taxi after leaving the church and donating some alms on the way out, isn't a plenary indulgence a flawed strategy? I suppose, while being crushed or roasted for a few hundred years, the indulgence would allow one to really repent for the sins that got one there, since one could better pinpoint when one committed them. But it would probably make me resentful, since I have a hard time understanding how any sins really justify having one's eyelids sewed shut. (I think that's for pride, but I can't remember.)

Still, they seem to have a sense of humor about the whole thing.

Confessions have been down for years and the church is very worried about it,” said the Rev. Tom Reese, a Jesuit and former editor of the weekly Catholic magazine America. In a secularized culture of pop psychology and self-help, he said, “the church wants the idea of ‘personal sin’ back in the equation. Indulgences are a way of reminding people of the importance of penance.

“The good news is we’re not selling them anymore,” he added.