HuckleB
HuckleB's JournalFight The Stigma! Do Not Allow Anyone To Blame Those With Mental Illness.
Period.
Thank you. Not for today. Not for last Friday. Not at all.
The Myth Of Mental Illness And Violence
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150723-the-myth-of-mental-illness-and-violence
Thank you.
I truly appreciate it.
Americans aren’t as anti-science as you might think
http://www.dailydot.com/geek/vaccines-genetic-modification-american-attitudes-pew-survey/Maybe a bit of hope.
Is Addiction a Disease? Yes and No. Two Perspectives.
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/is-addiction-a-disease-yes-and-no/"Addiction is a puzzling phenomenon. Why do addicts persist in self-destructive behavior even after it has lost them their jobs, their family, their health, and their self-respect? Do they have any control over their behavior? If so, why don’t they control it? If not, why not? Two recent books shed light on these questions: The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction Is Not a Disease, by Marc Lewis, and The Thirteenth Step: Addiction in the Age of Brain Science, by Markus Heilig.
Lewis is a neuroscientist and former addict; Heilig is a physician and addiction researcher. Lewis is convinced that addiction is not a disease, but a habit created by the neural circuitry of desire in the course of its normal functioning. Heilig is convinced that addiction is a chronic disease like diabetes that can’t be cured but that must be managed by lifelong treatment.
While they disagree about whether addiction is a disease, they actually agree about almost everything else. They agree that we should reject the stigma of addiction as a kind of moral failing. They reject the hypotheses that addiction is a matter of choice or self-medication. They think current diagnostic labels are inadequate. They both try to integrate two levels of information: the case histories of addicts and the scientific knowledge from research. They are both skeptical of AA and of conventional rehab programs. They both support evidence-based treatments. They both think addicts are not all alike and that individual addicts will respond better to individualized approaches.
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So is addiction a disease or not? It might be interesting to see these two authors duke it out in a debate, but I think it would be far more interesting to see them share their ideas in a productive discussion. I think they are both right. It’s like the blind men and the elephant; each has part of the truth and much could be gained by combining their different insights. The bottom line: what matters is not what you call it; what matters is whether you can help patients.
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A good piece, worth reading, and the books are now on my "to read" list, as well. I can see both perspectives, and I think both have part of the picture. The brain is slowly letting us figure out how it works, but we have a long way to go.
Paleo Peaches? First Fossil Peaches Discovered In China
http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/18503/20151202/paleo-peaches-first-fossil-discovered-china.htm"While peaches are widely popular, modern humans can't take credit for the delectable fruits. After unearthing eight fossilized peach pits older than two and half millions years, researchers from Pennsylvania State University reveal the juicy tree fruits may have been a snack eaten by many early humans.
"The peach is an important part of human history, and it's important to understand how it became what it is today," Peter Wilf, a professor of paleobotany at Penn State and co-author of the recent study, explained in a news release. "If we know the origins of our resources we can make better use of them."
The preserved peach pits, or endocarps, were recently discovered in a rock outcrop from the late Pliocene in southwest China. What's more is that researchers concluded the ancient pits are nearly identical to modern variations. It follows then that peaches evolved through natural selection -- or the help of animals, primates and early Hominids dispersing the seeds -- well before humans domesticated them. Today, there are numerous new varieties of differently shaped, sized and colored peaches circulating the globe.
"Is the peach we see today something that resulted from artificial breeding under agriculture since prehistory, or did it evolve under natural selection? The answer is really both," Wilf said in the university's release.
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Was there a ‘dinosaur disco’ 170 million years ago in a Scottish lagoon?
Scientists stumbled upon humongous 170-million-year-old dinosaur tracks on the Isle of Skye. These dinosaurs are estimated to be the largest animals ever to roam the Earth.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/1201/Was-there-a-dinosaur-disco-170-million-years-ago-in-a-Scottish-lagoon
"Some 170 million years ago humongous dinosaurs walked through a lagoon, but their splashy stroll stayed in the past until recently.
Scientists spotted the footprints of these dinosaurs preserved in layers of rock on the Isle of Skye, according to a new paper.
In the Middle Jurassic period, generations of sauropods, huge, long-necked, pot-bellied dinosaurs, walked through a shallow salt water lagoon that is now the rocky northeastern tip of the Scottish island.
Today, "There are so many tracks crossing each other that it looks like a dinosaur disco preserved in stone," study author Steve Brusatte said in a news release.
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Cool stuff!
Study: Some Deepak Chopra Tweets Are Indistinguishable From Bullshit
http://factually.gizmodo.com/study-some-deepak-chopra-tweets-are-indistinguishable-1745338066"Deepak Chopra is known around the world for spouting pseudo-scientific garbage wrapped up in spiritual feel-goodery. A new paper in the journal Judgment and Decision Making even uses Chopra’s tweets to show how some people have trouble distinguishing profound statements from bullshit.
The paper, titled “On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit,” doesn’t pull any punches. But it carefully notes that, “None of this is intended to imply that every statement in Chopra’s tweet history is bullshit.” (Emphasis mine.)
Researchers took the Chopra tweet below, published in June of 2014, and presented it to study participants along with randomly generated statements that employed “profound” buzzwords. The statements made sense grammatically, but made absolutely no sense logically.
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As Dr. Emily Willingham explains in a post over at Forbes, the researchers found that there were a variety of reasons that some people found Chopra’s bullshit to be profound. They looked at the participants’ analytical thinking skills and willingness to accept implausible ideas. Those who found Chopra to be profound tended to be less skeptical of the paranormal and scored lower on cognitive and reasoning ability tests.
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Also, see why meaningless marketing terms work on some people.
Great Piece On The Male And Female Brains Study, Equality, Individuals, And Medical Ethics
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/male-and-female-brains/#more-8631"...
What are we to make of the results of this study? To summarize my own approach, I think it is counter productive and not scientifically accurate to deny that there are real differences between identifiable categories of people.
At the same time it is important to recognize when those difference are only statistical with large overlap. What this means is that in such cases it is not scientifically justifiable to treat individuals as members of a group. Membership in a group does not predict what traits the individual will have. It is therefore best to treat people as individuals.
From an ethical point of view this also works. The basic principle of respect for everyone’s individual dignity demands that people be generally treated as individuals. It just so happens that science supports that position also.
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Genetic heritage, for example, is used to predict the probability of certain diseases or even the response to certain treatments. We don’t ignore race or sex in medicine, because these categories have a statistical reality that informs our very important practical decisions. But we recognize that these categories don’t always predict individual traits. Patients – and all people – still need to be treated like individuals."
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Dr. Novella hits it out of the park, yet again.
This fish utilizes fewer resources, so it's less expensive, with a smaller ecological footprint.
The demonization of this fish is not logical. Why are environmental groups screwing up their message with the constant, baseless attacks on GMOs? It is going to backfire, big time.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/11/19/456634593/fda-says-genetically-modified-salmon-is-safe-to-eat
A genetically modified salmon is just a fish
http://montrealgazette.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-a-genetically-modified-salmon-is-just-a-fish
Are Religious Children More Selfish? New Study Says, Yes, Perhaps.
A six-continent study of the foundations of generosity.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/11/religious_children_are_more_selfish_in_a_sticker_study.html
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A new study from the University of Chicago claims to show that religion does not necessarily provide the foundation for more moral beings. For the study, published on Thursday in the journal Current Biology, researchers surveyed more than 1,000 kids across six countries. They found that those raised in religious households were actually more selfish than their nonreligious counterparts. These findings “contradict the common-sense and popular assumption that children from religious households are more altruistic and kind toward others,” the authors write. “More generally, they call into question whether religion is vital for moral development.”
The study took the form of a thought experiment. First, children aged 5 to 12 in the United States, Canada, South Africa, Turkey, Jordan, or China were each given 30 stickers and told to choose their 10 favorite ones. Those 10 were theirs to keep, they were told. Then, the children were given the option to give some of their stickers away to other children who had not been given any stickers. Regardless of the children’s country of origin, age, and other factors, researchers found that children raised in nonreligious households gave away more stickers to their stickerless peers. Religious children exhibited “significantly less sharing,” according to the paper. Those little misers.
The vast majority of religiously raised children in this study came from Christian or Muslim households; a smaller number grew up in households that were Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, or another faith. The researchers found no difference in generosity between the children raised Christian and those raised Muslim. (There weren’t enough children of other faiths for a statistical comparison.)
Sharing stickers is a small thing, of course, but the researchers concluded that nonreligious households were better at fostering a sense of generosity and altruism in their kids. But why? It might be that nonreligious households encouraged children to use reason and logic to form moral conclusions, rather than laws and codes. “If you cannot rely on stories, tales and supernatural beings to teach and guide moral behavior, what’s left is rational reasoning,” says lead researcher Jean Decety, a professor in the department of psychology at the University of Chicago currently on sabbatical in South Africa.
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It's the difficult to assess "soft science," so I'm not taking it very seriously, but I certainly don't need to be told to bring my kid to church, either.
A More Thorough Look At Meningococcal Vaccines, Including The New B Vaccine
http://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-details/meningococcal-vaccine"Although there are only five different types of meningococcus that commonly cause disease (types A, B, C, Y and W-135), it has been very difficult to make a vaccine that includes type B, and meningococcus type B accounts for two-thirds of meningococcal infections in infants and one-third of meningococcal infections in adolescents and adults. (Of note, two vaccines to prevent meningococcus type B were submitted for licensure to the Food and Drug Administration in 2014. Both are likely to be licensed for use in adolescents in 2015.)"
The Long Road to an Effective Vaccine for Meningococcus Group B (MenB)
http://www.annalsjournal.com/article/S2049-0801(13)70037-2/abstract?cc=y=
ACIP Supports Meningitis B Vaccine for Teens, Young Adults
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/853191
Meningitis B Vaccine: Is It For You?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterlipson/2014/06/26/meningitis-b-vaccine-is-it-for-you/
Why is the NHS vaccination for meningitis B not provided to everyone?
http://www.theguardian.com/science/occams-corner/2015/sep/01/why-is-the-nhs-vaccination-for-meningitis-b-not-provided-to-everyone
THE MENINGOCOCCAL B VACCINE DEBATE
http://www.comomeningitis.org/blog/2015/09/the-meningococcal-b-vaccine-debate/
Recently, a DU OP offered a quick interview newspaper article that only offer opinions, sans offering any actual explanations for those opinions. That OP also offered a link to an anti-vaccine page, which tends to make such an OP's real purpose highly questionable, IMO. I acknowledge that these pieces only tell the start of the story, but they tell much more of the story than the other OP. I think these pieces are a better place to start for people who want to understand the vaccine better.
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