McCarthy and the autism demon 27 Feb 2010 Jenny McCarthy has long campaigned against vaccination because her son “acquired” autism after being immunised, and lost the ability to speak. She has since claimed that she has managed to give him (non-medically recognised) therapy that has improved his abilities. She has convinced many credulous people of this. Except, it turns out, her son may not have had autism after all, but a neurological disease called Landau-Kleffner Syndrome, which, you guessed, sufferers improve as they age – it appears to be a developmental problem of neurological maturation. As this site says: “Most children outgrow the seizures, and electrical brain activity on the EEG usually returns to normal by age 15.” In other words, the entire basis for her campaign was false. She doesn’t appear to be apologetic for the thousands if not tens of thousands of children who have suffered and died as a result of her campaign, though… [H/T Bora Zivkovic] Politics Pop culture Science
Epistemology 50 words for snow, or conceptual confusion 11 Sep 20171 Mar 2019 Series Conceptual confusion The economics of cultural categories What are phenomena? What counts as sociocultural? Species Constructing phenomena Explanations and phenomena In a well-known and generally debunked story, Inuit people have around 50 words for snow. Or so the argument by anthropologist Franz Boas goes. In fact, people who engage… Read More
Education Science Communication and the Business Model 22 Mar 2009 There are a lot of folk who think they have a handle on how to communicate science to the general public, and a lot of folk, mostly scientists, who think nobody else does. But I was reading Carl Zimmer’s twittering today, about Rebecca Skoot getting a column gig for a… Read More
Australian stuff On tribalism 25 Sep 201424 Nov 2022 Humans evolved in tribes, our species’ equivalent of the general primate troop structure. This meant that members of the tribe benefited from shared resources, the protection of the group and the inherited knowledge of the tribe. It also meant that we will natively and naively defend our group against others,… Read More
Until I noticed the h/t to Bora, I wondered why you were reading “Hollywood Life.” I also noticed that our friends from Autism Speaks have flooded the comments there. JB Handley must have bots out there .