Posts Tagged media

Simon Singh, leaving job to deal with chiropractic legal case Grant Jacobs Mar 13

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Science writer and journalist Simon Singh, who faces a libel suit from the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) for writing that a number of chiropractic claims of treatment of disorders unrelated to the spinal cord such as asthma were “bogus” has written in his column that it will be the last. He is resigning his job in order to give the libel suit the BCA has served on him full attention.

Simon Singh (Source: wikipedia)

Simon Singh (Source: wikipedia)

I recently pointed out an extensive review of the evidence for and against chiropractic treatment that showed that the claims that Singh objected as unsupported, are unsupported.

Another survey of the research literature for chiropractic treatments, that of Ernst (available free from the British Medical Journal), has an extensive collection of follow-on letters. The author, replying to the early letters, points out that neither his article nor the libel case are about safety; in moving onto safety in his reply, he concludes: “Applying the precautionary principle, one should therefore not recommend chiropractic but warn patients not to use this form of therapy.”

Surely any sincere business would respond by simply pointing to evidence backing their original claims. Not so the BCA. The BCA was offered an opportunity to write a rebuttal in the Guardian (the newspaper that published Singh’s original article), but declined, seemingly preferring to legally bludgeon the writer, rather than reaffirm readers of the accuracy of their claims and the validity of the particular chiropractic practices referred to. (Or withdraw them.)

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High speed international connection? Yes, please Grant Jacobs Mar 11

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Announced just a few hours ago, for me via KAREN on twitter, is an initiative to build a high-speed direct internet connection linking New Zealand, Australian and the U.S.A.

pacific-fibre-mapAlthough the Pacific Fibre website is short on technical details, it does a great job of conveying the essence of the idea simply. Some details are available on their news blog, e.g.

The current proposed cable configuration would be 13,000 km long, and have two fibre pairs with 64 wavelengths (lambdas) each at 40 Gigabits/sec per lambda. The maximum lit capacity initially would be 5.12 Terabits/sec, but would be upgradeable to over 12 Terabits/sec as the emerging 100 Gbit/sec per lambda technology becomes reality. The newer cable and repeater technology that Pacific Fibre proposes to use will be substantially more easily upgradeable than that of existing cables.

pacific-fibre-model-2010They say they aim to have this ready for 2013 and that it is expected to cost around $NZ900M. Whatever the details, I am sure this will have internet users in NZ talking for some time and hatching new business plans. (For example, it would be interesting to learn if this would affect the idea that NZ can act to exploit that it is ~12 hours out of cycle of most of the bigger Western nations to deliver overnight service efficiently.)

pacific-fibre_model-2011It has been noted that those academic researchers whose data transport problems are solved by KAREN, a new network may not be needed. (From what I understand KAREN still has plenty of capacity: anecdotally I’ve heard figures of 5-10% of capacity being used. Viewing their excellent near-live “weather map” is worthwhile, try it.)

For those who need fast networking outside of this high-speed academic network, which is most of us, I’m sure this initiative will be widely viewed very positively. It is great to see people taking the lead on these things and pushing for it to get done.

pacific-fibre-model-2012For my personal situation, I need to learn more about it first: my position is more complex as in principle I can gain access to the large databases I use through other means, but being able to deliver large volumes of data may open up new opportunities for me.

Interested readers can follow the Pacific Fibre twitter discussion. Here are a few replies that might be worth others’ reading (comments in square brackets are mine):

  • @kuahyeow Current estimate is under $900m [I presume this is in response to an estimate for the costs.]
  • RT @ronanq: Best of luck. Great fibre connections is one of the reasons Google, Amazon, Paypal, Microsoft, Facebook and IBM are in Ireland
  • @sam_DPS we will sell to ISPs and major corporates. We are aiming for prices which will let them fulfll the uncapped high speed mandate
  • @samfarrow just international – we are focussing on just that one part of the problem. Others are working on the rest.
  • RT @Pete_Robson:As a former “Senior Product Manager” of the current SouthernCross Cable, I can safely say that there’s $ in that Awesome job

Peter Griffin, writing at idealog, has more detailed coverage.

An horrific case of natural health treatment of cancer Grant Jacobs Mar 08

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Some of my local readers will have seen last night Lorelei Mason of TVNZ (Television New Zealand) present an horrific case of an iridiologist treating a skin cancer on the scalp which went on to invade the patient’s skull, eventually requiring major surgery.

(Source: wikipedia.)

(Source: wikipedia.)

You can read a text account of this news presentation, with comments from readers, or view the TV presentation on-line. (If you are viewing the video, you will need to wait for the advertisement to complete. Those squeamish about viewing exposed brains, may wish to avoid the appropriate parts of the video.)

Dr. Swee Tan, interviewed in the presentation, says that natural health practitioners ought to be registered. Some commenters offer that registration will not solve the problem.

My own thoughts, as a non-medical person-on-the-street, are that in one sense registration might legitimise the more moderate use of “remedies” like iridology, which grates given that many, if not most, of these remedies are nonsense under any use, but on the other hand registration offers some control over the worst extremes of misuse by obligating practitioners to adhere to guidelines.

Despite my unease at giving practices that lack evidential support credibility, my initial thoughts are that Swee Tan’s suggestion makes some sense: clients approaching someone offering medical remedies—of any kind—should have some assurance that the practitioner is being held to at least some basic responsibilities and at least some basic level of education in medicine. Ideally I would like to see unsound ‘natural remedy’ practices gone, but realistically this is unlikely to happen any time soon. Registration might be a good compromise in the meantime. Personally, I would like to see these guidelines also include some level of control over use of remedies that are not backed by evidence.

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Chiropractic libel suit snagged by its own ruling body? Grant Jacobs Mar 06

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The UK’s ruling body for chiropractors, the General Chiropractic Council (GCC), has declared the same claims that the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) have charged science writer Simon Singh as falsely claiming as “bogus” are contrary to evidence. Or, some would say, actually bogus.

u-johannesburg-spineAccording to the GCC’s “What is the GCC” page, “it is a criminal offence for anyone to describe themselves as any sort of chiropractor [in the UK] without being registered with the GCC” and that one of their aims is to “set the standards of chiropractic education, conduct and practice” (my emphasis).

I’m no lawyer, but on the face of it the BCA have two obvious choices: pull out of the libel case against Simon Singh as a consequence of the GCC’s findings, or part ranks with the GCC and sue their own ruling body in order to be consistent with continuing with their suit against Simon Singh.

Although (highly) unlikely, particularly as they are almost certainly legally obligated to work within the constraints of the GCC, the latter option would be an entertaining dog fight.

The news of the GCC’s findings originate from an article from the Guardian by Martin Robbins that scibling Alison Campbell emailed me and earlier reported earlier tonight. In his article, Robbins claims that an up-shot of the law suit against Simon Singh is that:

A staggering one in four chiropractors in Britain are now under investigation for allegedly making misleading claims in advertisements, according to figures from the General Chiropractic Council.

The details for the interested are in Robbins’ article, but the essence is that the BCA is swamped with claims and it’s costing them.

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Enabling deaf people to text emergency calls to 111 Grant Jacobs Mar 02

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On occasion I write about disability-related issues. I’d like to briefly step aside from science and share my reaction to a recent announcement that deaf people in New Zealand will soon be able to text emergency calls, reported in an article from The Dominion Post by Claire McEntee.

My initial reaction was surprise that it hasn’t been possible until now. I’d always assumed that you could text to the emergency number (111 in New Zealand). It had never occurred to me that you couldn’t.

I’ve learnt that there are emergency text numbers for deaf people in a number of countries but in these arrangements, the number differs from the national emergency number, whereas the new service in NZ is to use the national emergency number.

For example, individual police services in the UK are advertise texting services, but using local numbers for each region. More recently British emergency services have been testing a national texting service using their national emergency number, 999.

Regardless of the issues of priority (who came first) and the fiddly details of how each service works, this news is good to see. See, not hear.

Claire McEntee, at the Dominion Post, tells us this new service is to be a registered-user only affair: deaf users will have to subscribe via Deaf Aotearoa New Zealand (DANZ, formerly the Deaf Association; for overseas readers: Aotearoa is the Maori name for New Zealand and translates as “land of the long white cloud”).

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Book review: The Open Laboratory: The Best Science Writing on Blogs 2009 Grant Jacobs Feb 28

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The Open Laboratory offers 50 of the best writing that science blogs gave over 2009.

You know the WWW is the source when the editor is listed by their pseudonym! Scicurious edits, with Blake Stacey as production editor and Bora Zivkovic the series editor.

It’s available for the princely sum of $US 15.50 from Lulu in either book form, or as a download. The PDF version includes links to sources. (Those new to Lulu may want my tips in the footnotes.)

The volume opens with with a poem (Beyond Energy, by Kristopher Hite), a refreshing start that caught me slightly off guard. It’s bookended with another poem: My Personal Genome Project by The Digital Cuttlefish.

Next in line, editor Scicurious’ Preface introduces science blogs, to quote, we scientists and science writers:

do our geeky best to fight ignorance and hype, and to show people just how useful, and cool, science can be

(I’d add that one more thing that people can get from science blogs is to they are ask scientists things and can engage in conversation. More than just seeing science and scientists for what they really are: they can interact with them. It’s something I don’t see enough of.)

She rightfully hopes that this volume can extend the reach of the science blogs further into “living rooms and offices around the world” and looking at it, I hope it does.

There’s 50 articles. That’s precisely 31¢ per article, if anyone cares.

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Advertising campaigns: homeopathy or a sceptical series? Grant Jacobs Feb 26

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The atheist bus campaign has me thinking… what if there were a similar campaign against homeopathic remedies? Or an on-going series of advertisements questioning dubious practices of all kinds? Fridays are good for day-dreaming, right?

uk-bus-2NZ Bus seems to have had an attack of tremulous timidity in the face of “some” complaints and have withdrawn their initial approval, the advertising campaign is getting plenty of attention as a consequence of their withdrawing approval. (Articles I’ve read don’t have them saying how many complaints were received from, nor from who.)

It strikes me this is strategy where the advertisers more-or-less can’t completely lose. If the advertising company pulls out, the withdrawal only attracts more attention!

Imagine a series of sceptical advertisements, perhaps run along the lines of the Tui beer advertisements? (For those from overseas, this local beer company is famous for it’s marketing campaign featuring a two part advertisement with a short statement on the left-hand side and “Yeah, right” on the right-hand side. They’re typically to the point and unsubtle. Think: “Homeopathic remedies work. Yeah right.”)

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Best research blogs: get ready for voting; well done Aimee and David Grant Jacobs Feb 26

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Research blogging have put up their list of candidates for the Research Blogging Awards, 2010.

research-blogging-awardsIn them are a few familiar names.

misc.ience, one of our own, makes the short-list for the Best Blog — Chemistry, Physics, or Astronomy category. Well done, Aimee!

The Atavism, syndicated here, also makes the Best Lay-Level blog selection (the link points to the stand-alone blog). Well done, David.

They can now add the Research Blogging Finalist icon to there blogs.

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Post-embargo publication delays: be gone Grant Jacobs Feb 25

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Scientific research articles cited in the media should be available at the time embargoes are lifted, not later.

missing-in-actionRecently there was an article I very much wanted to write about in a timely fashion, having seen the news in local media and on Ed Yong’s blog. To my complete frustration, the research paper was unavailable despite the story being widely reported in the media. And not just frustration, either: it seemed wrong.

Others explained it was because PNAS (the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA) has a practice of not releasing the paper for a period after the media embargo.

It seems a number of journals take some time to release the DOIs (Document Object Identifiers) associated with a publication or even the article itself following an embargo on reporting the publication.

As Yong writes in his call to Kill the post-embargo publication window:

This practice punishes scientists who are unable to see, comment on, or discuss work that is outed in the mainstream media, it punishes journalists who are trying to link to original sources, and it punishes readers who are inquisitive and skeptical enough to try to verify the information they read. None of these is acceptable.

I agree.

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Professor, denied tenure, shoots colleagues Grant Jacobs Feb 13

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Gaining tenure is a critical juncture of university careers in the USA. Without it, you remain on “soft” money. With it, you have—in principle at least—a job for life. (There are positions that straddle the two extremes in some institutions.)

(Source: wikipedia)

(Source: wikipedia)

Recent news is that a neurobiology professor, named as Dr. Amy Bishop, at the University of Alabama in Huntsville apparently shot colleagues late on Friday afternoon after being informed that she was being denied tenure, as reported in the New York Times:

WAFF, the NBC affiliate in Huntsville, quoted university officials as saying the professor began shooting after learning at the faculty meeting that she was being denied tenure.

Three staff members are dead and three wounded. No students are involved.

A newer article, indicates that the meeting was for an appeal to an earlier denial of tenure and identifies those killed and wounded.

Source: New York Times. HT: @BoraZ.

An article is available at the local (NZ) news site, but at the time of writing lacks the additional detail of the NYT pieces. Additional international coverage is widely available, e.g. Guardian, CNN, New York Post, and so forth.

Update: The university website is reporting a full closure of the campus, with access to the site redirecting to this message.

17-Feb-2010: I am generally cautious about recommending Wikipedia as a source, but at the time of writing it appears to be one source that pulls most (but not all) of the different threads emerging in this case, largely without of over-playing the issues. It would increasingly appear that there is a substantial back-story as one might expect.