Breaking: Australian antivax group slammed for “misleading and inaccurate information” | Bad Astronomy

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stop_the_avn_logoWe can celebrate another victory for skeptics and reality!

The antivax group Australian Vaccination Network has been found to give "misleading and inaccurate information" to its followers, according to an Australian government investigation. The investigation also concluded that despite their many denials, the AVN is in fact an antivaccination group and must make that clear when disseminating information.

Ouch.

The entire report can be downloaded here from the Antivaxxers.com website.

Here’s the background: Meryl Dorey is the head of the AVN. She travels across Australia talking about the dangers of vaccination, and by "talking about" I really mean spewing misinformation. She says things that are not correct, cherry picks data, misrepresents scientific studies, and basically distorts reality in order to push her propaganda about vaccines.

Given that vaccinations do work, are almost entirely safe, and have almost eliminated such diseases as pertussis, measles, polio, and smallpox, some reality-based people have taken exception to Ms. Dorey’s tactics.

That included Ken McLeod, who filed a complaint about Dorey and the AVN with the New South Wales Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC). There were two thrusts to the complaint: one was that the AVN is a health care service provider, because they dispense health care advice, and second that the way they dispense that advice is misleading and harmful.

The HCCC agreed on both points. First, they concluded that:

According to its own constitution and through its activities the AVN is a health education service.

I found it bizarre that Dorey would try to deny that (it was a classic "who me?" denial on her part). She’s trying to eat her cake and have it, too; dispense health care advice but then deny any responsibility for what happens when she does.

The second part is where the AVN and Dorey get handed their heads. The HCCC report goes on for page after page listing out the breaches by Dorey and the AVN, showing where they have distorted and misrepresented vaccination information, all in a biased, negative way (keep in mind that Dorey has vehemently claimed the AVN is not antivax).

For example, the report points out things like:

  • The AVN’s claims that vaccines are untested is simply false;
  • The AVN’s claims about toxic substances in vaccinations are exaggerated and in some cases simply wrong;
  • The AVN’s claims that vaccines are contaminated with viruses is cherry- picked in order to support an antivax stance;
  • The AVNs claims that vaccines do not necessarily protect against disease misrepresents the facts;

and much more.

In the end, sadly, the HCCC won’t punish the AVN for its falsehoods, but it has recommended they put up a prominent disclaimer on their home page stating that they are antivax, that the information provided by the AVN is not medical advice, and that a decision to vaccinate or not should be made after consulting an actual health care provider.

But have no doubt: this is a big win for skepticism and reality! Dorey and the AVN were repeatedly slammed in this document, which is a litany of their transgressions. While I have no doubt Dorey will continue to claim she is the victim of a pogrom by people trying to suppress information and all that — and the rabidly antivax Age of Autism site has already called this whole thing fascism: yes, fascism, which doesn’t mean what they think it means — the truth is, Ms. Dorey and the AVN are guilty of spreading false, slanted information in order to spread their vicious antivax nonsense.

Ken Mcleod, who filed the suit in the first place, has issued a public statement about the report that’s well worth reading, too.

And remember, while Dorey and the AVN place themselves up on pedestals, there’s a pertussis outbreak in Marin County, California , another in Bakersfield, California, and similar reports from around the planet.

The bottom line is that mouthpieces for antivax propaganda distort reality, spread falsehoods, and consistently use fear as a tactic to spread their nonsense. This comes at a great cost: more disease, more disregard for reality, and literally more cost as money has to be spent caring for sick patients.

I’m glad that more people are taking this health threat seriously, and very glad for this victory against the antivaxxers. Keep ‘em coming!

My thanks to Rachel Dunlop, David McCaffery, Al Janulaw, Linda Mitts, and the Stop the Australian Vaccination Network website for info pertaining to this post.

Related posts:

- Australian skeptics jeer Meryl Dorey
- Major step against antivaxxers in Australia
- The AVN is reaping what they sowed
- Australian skeptics strike back against antivaxxers


From the Vault: Hamilton’s Fall | The Loom

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[An old post I'm fond of]

Just before the winter solstice brings autumn to an end, here’s a chance to blog about the great evolutionary biologist–and student of fall foliage–William Hamilton. Hamilton, who died in 2000, has never reached the household-name status of other evolutionary biologists such as E.O. Wilson or Richard Dawkins or Stephen Jay Gould. But he deserves a place of privilege, for all his profoundly influential ideas. He found an explanation for altruistic behavior in many insect species by expanding biology’s notion of fitness to include the genes an individual shares with its relatives. He offered one of the best-supported theories for the origin of sex–as a way for a species to keep ahead of its parasites in their evolutionary arms race. And he proposed that sexual displays–such as peacock tails and rooster combs–are signals that males send to females to reveal their ability to fight off parasites and otherwise live well.

It wasn’t just the ideas he came up with that made Hamilton extraordinary–it was the way he came up with them. They just seemed to pop into his head, obvious and simple, and he proceeded to write them down in clipped, humble prose, tossing in a few equations to give a sense of their underlying beauty. And then he was off to the next idea, or a trip to the Amazon. Hamilton wasn’t much interested in promoting his ideas to the world at large, to become a talking head or a writer of best-selling science books (in part because he was extremely shy and humble). That’s probably one reason why Hamilton is sliding into obscurity even as his ideas live on.

In the current issue of Biology Letters, there’s an example of Hamilton’s enduring legacy. One of the last papers Hamilton wrote before he died (after an ill-fated trip to Central Africa to investigate a controversial theory about the origin of HIV), appeared in 2001 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. He and co-author Samuel Brown asked why it is that leaves change color in the fall. There are many possible explanations. Perhaps leaves just look that way as they inevitably die, for example. Hamilton, however, believed there was an adaptation involved. He and Brown proposed that a brilliant leaf was, like a peacock’s tail, a signal. A peacock’s tail takes a huge investment of energy, energy that could otherwise be diverted to fighting off parasites or surviving other stresses. A strong male can afford to use up this energy, which makes the tail an honest ad for its parasite-fighting genes. In the case of leaves, trees are not sending signals to other trees–they are sending signals to tree-eating insects.

Trees, after all, are as besieged by insects as birds or other animals are by internal parasites. They fight their enemies a sophisticated arsenal of chemical agents, sticky traps, and other weapons of mass arthropod destruction. Hamilton and Brown proposed that trees that have a strong constitution warn off insects by changing colors in the fall. In a sense, they say, “I can shut down my photosynthesis early in the fall, pump a lot of red or yellow pigments into my leaves, and still have enough energy left to annihilate your babies when they hatch in the spring.. So just move along.”

Warning colors are a well-established fact in biology. Poisonous butterflies and snakes deter predators with them, and other species try to horn in on the protection by mimicking their appearance. But the notion that trees were warning off insects was quite new–just the sort of brilliant notion Hamilton might have while taking a stroll one autumn day. (Note: In forumlating his hypothesis, Hamilton depended heavily on a theory called the Handicap Principle formulated by Amotz Zahavi in the 1970s.)

For evidence that autumn leaves are signals, Hamilton pointed to some interesting patterns. Aphids, for example, lay their eggs on trees in the fall; when the eggs hatch, the larva devour leaves voraciously. Hamilton and Brown found that aphids are less common on trees that have bright red or yellow leaves. And species with bright leaves tend to be burdened with more species of aphids specialized for feeding on them than trees with drab leaves.

Hamilton left this jewel of an idea behind after his death for other scientists to investigate. It’s a challenge to test, because there are so many links in the theoretical chain. “Vigor,” for example, is a tricky thing to measure in trees; you could, for example, shower a tree with aphids, close it up in a gigantic net, and see how well it defends itself against them. That’s a huge amount of work, however, that yields you one data point. And you’d still have to find a way to eliminate other factors, such as weather, the age of the tree, and so on.

But recently scientists have found a reliable clue to vigor in the shape of a tree’s leaves. Vigorous trees produce very symmetrical leaves, while weaker trees produces misshapen ones. Symmetry signifies much the same thing in swallow tails and gazelle horns and human faces. When a complex organ like a leaf or a feather forms, any environmental stress can throw off its development from perfect symmetry. In stronger indviduals, the develoment of the organ is better shielded from these insults.

In September 2001 a team of Norwegian biologists took advantage of the symmetry of vigorous leaves and went gathering leaves of birch trees. They collected them from 100 birch trees all told. Half of the trees were shimmering yellow, and the other half were still green. As Hamilton would have predicted, they found that the yellow leaves were consistently more symmetrical than the green ones. The researchers had gathered half their yellow and green leaves from a healthy stand of trees, and the other half from the middle of an outbreak of birch-feeding moth larvae. On average, the trees in the healthy stand had more symmetrical leaves than the moth-infested ones, once again just as Hamilton would have predicted. Finally, the biologists looked at how trees with different colors fared the following spring. They found that trees with strong colors suffered less damage from insects compared to trees with weak colors.

These results are powerful support for Hamilton, although they don’t tell the whole story. How much do aphids depend on the sight of leaves when they choose a tree, for example, as opposed to their smell? Still, it’s a disconcerting idea that’s gaining strength: a beautiful fall landscape is a giant shout of “Back off.” When you see a tree at its most autumnally glorious, be sure to remember Hamilton.

Update 9/27/04: Here is the sequel: some scientists think that fall colors mean something else.


On “Accommodationism” and Templeton | The Intersection

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I'm on a couple of podcasts recently talking about the clash within atheism between "New Atheists" and people like me. First, I was on the "Reasonable Doubts" podcast discussing this topic for a good half hour or so. You can listen here. Many things came up, including the Templeton Foundation and the problem of online incivility. A few brief comments:
* On the Templeton Foundation, I've already had my say, and in a post that has been very interestingly ignored, reporter Dan Jones does a far better job than me at explaining why it is doesn't make sense to discount views just because they may have received Templeton support. On an intellectual level, I think Dan really deserves an answer from those who dismiss Templeton funding and those who receive it in a blanket way. (Note: My post defending Templeton has not been prominently answered either, at least that I have seen.)
* I also am tired of the label "accommodationist." It seems to imply that there is something weak about my view, as if I'm all ready to just cave to some common enemy. On the contrary, I think that I'm being tolerant and pragmatic.
There's an added point here, which is that ...


Prairie Voles: The Social Drinkers of the Rodent World | Discoblog

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fieldvoleMice might turn up their noses at alcohol, but not the prairie vole. This usually upstanding rodent, famous for mating for life and sharing pup-raising duties, apparently likes a stiff drink.

“They not only drink alcohol, they prefer it over water,” Allison Anacker, a neuroscience graduate student at Oregon Health & Science University told The Oregonian.

Anacker, working under behavioral neuroscience professor Andrey Ryabinin, was looking for a model organism to study some humans’ troubled relationship with alcohol. Mice and rats fail in this role–it’s unusual to find ones that want even a sip of the stuff.

In a study published in Addiction Biology last month, Ryabinin’s team records the drunken misadventures of prairie voles. After chugging their preferred 6 percent alcohol drink (about the equivalent of beer), some thirsty voles shoved off parental responsibilities and even walked out on their mates. Though some drank responsibility, others drank to excess, stumbling away from the bar/spiked water bottle.

The study suggests that like humans, the voles also make drinking buddies, seemingly encouraging each other to have another. When caged together, the voles appear to match one another drink for drink, a practice that apparently has nothing to do with who’s buying the next round.

Related content:
Discoblog: “Drunk” Parrots Fall From the Trees in Australia
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Anticipated versus actual alcohol consumption during 21st birthday celebrations.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Beer Consumption Increases Human Attractiveness to Malaria Mosquitoes.
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Pocket science – sperm races and poison-stealing voles
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Of voles and men: exploring the genetics of commitment

Image: flickr / Gilles Gonthier / field vole


Asteroid Photo Session: Rosetta Spacecraft Snaps Pics of Battered Lutetia | 80beats

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LutetiaOn Saturday, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe took the world’s closest pictures of the 80- by 50-mile-wide asteroid known as 21 Lutetia. Though the Lutetia visit is just a stop on the way to Rosetta’s real destination–a 2014 visit to the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko–Saturday’s pictures document the closest visit to this big asteroid, the largest we’ve ever visited with a spacecraft.

We’ve known about Lutetia for quite a while: since 1852, according to Sky and Telescope. In November of that year, Hermann Goldschmidt spotted the space rock from his Paris balcony. The asteroid is now around 280 million miles from the Sun. From only 2,000 miles away, Rosetta got a much closer look at Lutetia, whipping around it at about 10 miles per second (30,000 miles per hour) as its OSIRIS camera snapped pictures recording details down to a few dozen meters.

“The fly-by has been a spectacular success with Rosetta performing fautlessly,” ESA said in a statement. “Just 24 hours ago, Lutetia was a distant stranger. Now, thanks to Rosetta, it has become a close friend.” [AFP]

Lutetia-craterLutetia is an old chunk of rock, possibly dating back to the solar system’s birth. The big guy is also rather dense; as reported by Sky and Telescope, it has a mean density of about 5½ g/cm3—”nearly twice that of ordinary rock.” Some experts suspect it is an M-type asteroid, meaning it’s made out of metal.

Rosetta will now go back into hibernation mode as it prepares for its rendezvous with comet 67P four years from now. If all goes well, it will snag 67P with a pair of “harpoons” and coast along on a comet ride.

[I]t’ll enter orbit around the comet’s core, and drop a landing vehicle to try and find out more about its composition, firing a pair of harpoons into its surface during its descent to keep it attached and stop it from bouncing off. It’ll then accompany the comet as it approaches the Sun, before ending its mission in 2015. [Wired]

For a recording of Saturday’s live stream and other details, check out Phil Plait’s post in Bad Astronomy.

Related content:
80beats: Rosetta Photographs a Crescent Earth on Its Way to a Comet Rendezvous
Bad Astronomy: Live stream of Rosetta’s July 10 asteroid flyby
Bad Astronomy: Rosetta takes some home pictures
Bad Astronomy: Rosetta swings past home one final time

Image: ESA / Final sequence of images before closest approach


One Cap Off, One Cap On: BP Tries Another Plan to Catch Leaking Oil | 80beats

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Gulf Oil SpillWill this solution finally be the solution? Today in the Gulf of Mexico, BP is attempting to secure another containment cap onto its oil leak, which the company says could trap and collect all the oil gushing from the leak—if it works.

On Saturday BP removed the leaky cap that had been catching a little bit of the oil, meaning that the oil is now flowing unchecked into the Gulf as engineers race to install the new one. This is the latest try in a string of attempts to cap the leak, and BP’s Kent Wells says that engineers are lowering the new, tighter-fitting cap into place this morning.

The new cap, which should eventually not allow any gas or oil to escape, will be used to divert more oil to collection ships that will be brought in over the next two to three weeks, Mr. Wells said. “We’ll continue to ramp up the capacity so that sometime along the line, whatever the flow is, we’ll capture it all,” he said [The New York Times].

BP says it hopes to have the new cap installed by the end of the day. Still, it could be mid-week by the time they know how successful they were.

Once the cap is firmly in place, the company will begin “shutting in” the well by closing perforated pipe at the top. The company will be looking to see if the pressure rises under the cap. If it does, that means there are no other leaks, and the cap is stopping oil from leaking into the Gulf. But lower pressure readings may indicate leaking elsewhere in the well. In that case, Suttles said, the company will work to collect the leak with surface vessels and by dropping yet another cap on top of the stack [AP].

While BP continues to play musical containment caps, its backup project—drilling relief wells to ultimately stem the flow—continues. Company spokespeople say the new wells could intercept the old well by the end of July, though even after that it would take a few weeks into August to pump in enough mud and cement to stop the leak—if it works.

“At this point, there have been so many ups and downs, disappointments, that everybody down here is like, ‘We’ll believe it when we see it,’” said Keith Kennedy, a charter boat captain in Venice, La [MSNBC].

Recent posts on the BP oil spill:
80beats: BP Oil Update: Tar Balls in Texas & Lake Pontchartrain
80beats: Gulf Coast Turtle News: No More Fiery Death; Relocating 70,000 Eggs
80beats: Next from X Prize: An Award for Cleaning up BP’s Oil Spill?
80beats: BP to Kevin Costner: We’ll Take 32 of Your Oil Clean-up Machines

Image: BP


Jurassic Mascot [Science Ink] | The Loom

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cooperoceras texanum tattoo440Susan, a graduate student, writes,

I got my tattoo in 2008 after raising enough money by carrying around a jar marked “tattoo fund” as I bar hopped for my 21st birthday. The tattoo is of a Permian cephalopod from the Guadalupe Mountains of Texas, Cooperoceras texanum.

I have loved paleontology for as long as I can remember. When I was looking at colleges, I came across a program called “Earth, Life, and Time” at the University of Maryland. It was a 2 year program as a part of an honors living and learning program called College Park Scholars. ELT was run by two amazing paleontologists, Dr. Tom Holtz and Dr. John Merck. The program was what convinced me to go to UMD and without these two great professors, I might not even be alive today. They are not only wonderful human beings, but also some of the greatest teachers at the university. Of all the classes with a natural history or evolutionary focus offered at the university, the classes they taught were truly of the highest caliber. To honor them, I got the mascot of the Earth, Life, and Time program, Cooperoceras texanum, tattooed on my leg. Unfortunately, the program is no longer offered at the university, due to shifting research goals in the the Geology Department, but Dr. Merck and Dr. Holtz now run a new program called “Science and Global Change”. ELT remains in the hearts and minds of the decade worth of students who came through it’s classroom.

Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.


KSC Wants To Buy A Welsh Robot To Greet U.S. Visitors

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NASA KSC Solicitation: LIFE-LIKE ROBOT

"NASA/KSC has a requirement for a 5'9" Life-Like Robot, brand-name Engineered Arts Limited, RoboThespian, or equal. The solicitation (14 pages) is attached and includes: terms and conditions of order, salient characteristics for life-like robot, and questions/answers to inquiries about the Request for Information (RFI) that was previously posted."

Keith's note: I will be the last person to say that NASA does not need to enhance the way that it interacts with the public. The cooler that interaction is, the more you are going to reach people in a memorable way. I have no doubt that RoboThespian is cool. But at a time when NASA is off developing a real (and much, much cooler) robot that will work in space (Robonaut) why not try and use something that resembles actual NASA robots to do education and public outreach? RoboThespian is manufactured overseas in the UK (Wales). Quite frankly, at a cost of between $54,000 to $119,000 wouldn't you think that KSC could find an American company that offers something that will fit the bill? Indeed, Disney World is an hour west of KSC in Orlando and they have lots of animatronic robots - indeed, its their specialty.

Maybe we could get RoboThespian and Robobaut to compete for the job ... like they do on Futurama ...

More Good News From Kepler

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The Kepler Asteroseismic Investigation: Scientific goals and the first results

"So far data have been available from the first 7 month of the mission containing a total of 2937 targets observed at a 1-min. cadence for periods between 10 days and 7 months. The goals of the asteroseismic part of the Kepler project is to perform detailed studies of stellar interiors. The first results of the asteroseismic analysis are orders of magnitude better than seen before, and this bodes well for how the future analysis of Kepler data for many types of stars will impact our general understanding of stellar structure and evolution."

UDPATE: Obama DID NOT "Charge" Bolden To Do Muslim Country Outreach

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White House denies NASA remark on Muslim outreach, AP

"The White House is contradicting the NASA administrator's claim that President Barack Obama assigned him to reach out to Muslims on science matters. ... White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday that such activities are not among Bolden's assigned tasks. He said administration officials have spoken with NASA about the matter."

White House: No Muslim outreach for NASA, Washington Post

"Despite his sterling credentials as a former astronaut and military man, Bolden has been a bit of a headache for the White House: Some say he was nominated reluctantly for the post only after Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) (Bolden's former space shuttle crewmate) insisted that Obama appoint him. Since then, he cried at his first meeting with agency workers and has upset lawmakers and NASA veterans with the administration's new plans for space exploration."

Muslim Outreach Not the Job of NASA, White House Says, Fox News

"But [White House Press Secretaty] Gibbs on Monday appeared to deny that Bolden was asked to focus on Muslim outreach at all. Asked whether Bolden misspoke, Gibbs said: "I think so." He said he wasn't aware of Obama speaking to Bolden about his comments."

Press Briefing by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, 7/12/2010 - NASA Excerpts

"Q I wanted to ask you, there are some comments that the NASA Administrator, Charles Bolden, made a couple weeks back that drew some interest, specifically from conservatives who are wondering why we he said that one of the charges that the President gave him when he got the job was that he had to focus on outreach to the Muslim world. Why is the NASA Administrator doing that?

MR. GIBBS: That's an excellent question, and I don't think -- that was not his task, and that's not the task of NASA."

Keith's update: It looks like Charlie Bolden did NOT get the direction to do outreach to Muslim countries from President Obama after all.

Charlie Bolden: Stealth Middle East Diplomat? (video) earlier post

"When I became the NASA Administrator - before I became the NASA Administrator - he charged me with three things: One was that he wanted me to re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, that he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with predominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering."

White House, NASA, Defend Comments About NASA Outreach to Muslim World Criticized by Conservatives, ABC, ABC

"In response to criticism, White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said in a statement that "The President has always said that he wants NASA to engage with the world's best scientists and engineers as we work together to push the boundaries of exploration. Meeting that mandate requires NASA to partner with countries around the world like Russia and Japan, as well as collaboration with Israel and with many Muslim-majority countries. The space race began as a global competition, but, today, it is a global collaboration."

Keith's note: I cannot seem to find any statement on this topic at the White House website - or online at NASA.gov. Nor have I seen a confirmation from the White House that specifically confirms what Bolden said on Al Jazeera i.e. that "[President Obama] wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with predominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering."

Bolden was quite clear that there was specific direction from the President with regard to Muslim countries as one of the three things that President Obama charged him to do as NASA Administrator - with outreach to Muslim countries being "perhaps foremost" of the three.

Space Florida Is Not Happy With Sen. Nelson

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Is Utah emerging as rival to KSC?, Orlando Sentinel

"Frank DiBello, the president of Space Florida, the state's aerospace development body, is not pleased. "We don't want to sacrifice Florida seed corn for an increased R&D role to be politically expedient and save jobs for Utah and other states," DiBello told a Brevard County jobs-development meeting Saturday. "The Senate bill kills outright the promise of a real R&D opportunity for KSC. It's not good for Florida. I don't know who Bill Nelson is listening to, but it's not his constituents," DiBello said."

Former CAIB Members Support White House Space Policy

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Letter from Former Columbia Accident Investigation Board Members Regarding Crew Safety

"As former board members of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB), we agree with your view that assuring crew safety is an essential element in the discussion of future U.S. crew transportation systems. As members of the CAIB, we have also noted with interest recent space policy discussions where our report has been cited. In particular, we have been somewhat surprised to learn that some people, both within and outside of the Congress, have interpreted the new White House strategy for space which gives a greater role to the commercial sector in providing crew transportation services to the International Space Station, as being not in line with the findings and recommendations of the CAIB report. Our view is that NASA's new direction can be a) just as safe, if not more safe, than government-controlled alternatives b) will achieve higher safety than that of the Space Shuttle, and c) is directly in line with the recommendations of the CAIB."

CSF and Human Spaceflight Misperceptions

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Commercial Spaceflight Federation Responds to Recent Misperceptions Related to U.S. Human Spaceflight

"As a strong supporter of a robust NASA human spaceflight program, the Commercial Spaceflight Federation is releasing the following statement to address topics related to human spaceflight, including commercial human spaceflight. Please see items below on the topics of capability, safety, and cost savings."

CSF’s Commercial Crew “Myths and Facts” Document Released

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Commercial Spaceflight Federation Responds to Recent Misperceptions Related to U.S. Human Spaceflight

Washington, D.C., July 12, 2010 – As a strong supporter of a robust NASA human spaceflight program, the Commercial Spaceflight Federation is releasing the following statement to address topics related to human spaceflight, including commercial human spaceflight.  Please see items below on the topics of capability, safety, and cost savings.  To download the document, please click here [pdf].