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Doc Hawkins posted:You joke but of course many people claim to be allergic to wifi. And blind studies showed it to be bunk.
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Mar 9, 2016 02:44
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CommieGIR posted:And blind studies showed it to be bunk. I always enjoyed reading public comments describing how they were allergic to the electromagnetic radiation created by computers. (The comments were submitted by email.)
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Mar 9, 2016 04:11
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Kalman posted:I always enjoyed reading public comments describing how they were allergic to the electromagnetic radiation created by computers. They did a couple tests where they hid cell-phones and wifi devices in random places and asked the person if they felt better or more comfortable. Almost every time they were unable to tell that they were standing next to a device until told so.
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Mar 9, 2016 04:28
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Kalman posted:I always enjoyed reading public comments describing how they were allergic to the electromagnetic radiation created by computers. I can understand this more back in the day, being someone who despite having poo poo hearing having whatever frequency old CRTs operate at always (And still, even as I close in on 30) come through clear as a bell. If you were the only one in your house that could hear it, I can see where you might get a headache from it and not be able to explain more than "it's caused by the computer!" Not getting that your old CRT tv's do the same thing because A) tv's have audio way more, and B) you sit way closer to a monitor than you do your TV. But in the day and age of LEDs, there's no excuse for this.
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Mar 9, 2016 05:08
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I've been getting sent this link to a supposed vaccine for Crohn's a lot by family members who know I have a disease, and it's popping up on the 'support group'y website I go to sometimes. It sets off my scam warning bells very strongly, but I can't quite articulate why, other than the 'donate' button and the vaguely desperate tone of the website in general.
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Mar 9, 2016 05:11
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Sinestro posted:I've been getting sent this link to a supposed vaccine for Crohn's a lot by family members who know I have a disease, and it's popping up on the 'support group'y website I go to sometimes. It sets off my scam warning bells very strongly, but I can't quite articulate why, other than the 'donate' button and the vaguely desperate tone of the website in general. As far as I can tell, it's legit (the guy at the bottom actually has research papers listed on a legitimate university website). It does feel desperate, but it's probably more "help fund PBS" than "help fund this
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Mar 9, 2016 05:18
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I'm having trouble telling. John Hermon-Taylor is listed as a visiting professor at King's College. edit: after some more poking, it's legit. Hermon-Taylor appears to be pushing it individually after several companies he was working with appeared to stop expressing interest. This may be because preliminary human model data came back no good in their initial formulation-but there's no clear way to tell from my sources. edit 2: aha, here it is, from the website's timeline: quote:The last came with the results of clinical trials of a vaccine against AIDS sponsored by the National Institutes of Health in the USA. These created uncertainty about the use of the otherwise safe and effective viral vector hAd5 -a harmless derivative of the ordinary human cold virus. Many people had pre-existing natural immunity to it. The story is most recently summarised in Science 2014; 344:49-51. We and many others working on new modern vaccines had selected hAd5 as the best-in-class priming vector and it worked safely and well in mice and even more so in cattle. However, alternatives had to be found and adapted to the vaccine vector role in humans. This took time over the period 2007-2012 but is now in place. Thanks again to the great people at the Jenner Vaccine Institute, Oxford University. edit 3: the site is actually very transparent, and their sourcing is good. I can't speak to the viability of the specific vaccine without knowing the area, and ofc Hermon-Taylor (and the small company backing him) has a massive personal stake in all this, but it's legit. The problem is whether or not the actual mechanism works, and that would take an area specialist to determine. The alternative is that Hermon-Taylor's theory was discredited, and he's clinging on, hoping for another shot. edit 4: I'll pull the science article the site lists and see if it provides any clarification. edit 5: Ugh, I hate Science- as freaking pop sci as it gets. No issue number makes Vox sad. edit 6: loving- save my institution login, you piece of poo poo edit 7: Why do people like science this website is a garbage fire WHERE ARE THE DOIs Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Mar 9, 2016 |
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Mar 9, 2016 05:47
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Yeah, I'm not seeing a lot of current research activity involving MAP and Crohn's. There was a big flurry of research about 10-15 years ago, then it died down and the only recent mentions are on woo blogs. One of the things that concerns me is the plea for funding. If it was a proper clinical trial, it ought to be externally funded by a grant, but maybe private funding of this stuff is still the norm in Britain. I don't know. It seems to be right on the edge of legitimacy. It's not obvious to me either way.
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Mar 9, 2016 05:52
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Hahaha, wow. so the vector they were planning to use for the vaccine, rAd5, actually appeared to increase infection- which is a problem, because it was being used in Phase II HIV trials! They've got a new vector proposed, but they're looking for private funding to run it. The exact current status of the project isn't clear because different parts of the website are describing different statuses. I can't tell if the reason for a lack of federal funding is because MAP as causal mechanism is an unpopular explanation, or because Crohn's is underfunded generally(I'm not under the impression that it is-pharma sees a lot of money to be made in treatment). Sinestro, a better place to start looking, rather than support groups (which are targeted by predatory industry, cranks, legit researchers and others) is clinicaltrials.gov. You can search for Crohn's trials there (a quick glance says there are 310 currently recruiting) and see if they're things you would be interested in. Participation in well-vetted research is one of the best ways to contribute-tossing money at people rarely is unless your last name rhymes with Waits. AHA! Sinestro, let me do you one better. The current frontrunner candidate treatment for Crohn's (if it's actually caused by MAP), is RHB-104, which used to be called Myoconda. It's basically an antibiotic combo that treats MAP. The rights holder is RedHill Biopharma Limited, a small Israeli incubator firm for gastro illness treatments. The rights have changed hands several times to get to them, which isn't a great sign, but anyways: they're recruiting for a large-scale efficacy trial right now, all across the US. The trial title in clinicaltrials.gov is: Efficacy and Safety of Anti-MAP Therapy in Adult Crohn's Disease (MAPUS) Their website for recruitment is http://www.mapmycrohns.com/ Good luck with your poo poo problems. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 07:13 on Mar 9, 2016 |
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Mar 9, 2016 06:20
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I'm not actually looking for something like that, my therapist thinks that because I have trouble relating to the horrible weirdos at my lovely college, clearly the solution is to spend time around people twenty years older than me who pray to the Lord Jesus every night for him to deliver them from making GBS threads a bunch. I don't get it, I just wanted a reason to shot on their hopes.
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Mar 9, 2016 23:22
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Sinestro posted:I'm not actually looking for something like that, my therapist thinks that because I have trouble relating to the horrible weirdos at my lovely college, clearly the solution is to spend time around people twenty years older than me who pray to the Lord Jesus every night for him to deliver them from making GBS threads a bunch. I don't get it, I just wanted a reason to shot on their hopes. oh, ok. ...I feel a bit silly spending 3 hours researching Crohn's now.
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Mar 10, 2016 03:05
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Discendo Vox posted:oh, ok. FWIW I always find it pretty interesting to read the random things you research for threads. 
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Mar 10, 2016 14:54
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The Aspartame causes cancer!!111 people are at it again! This time it's Splenda in hyperdoses which causes cancer in mice, thus making it unsafe for people in regular doses. Bonus hilarious news coverage: New Study: Splenda causes cancer; a safer sweetener comes from anal glands of beavers
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Mar 11, 2016 19:55
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Absurd Alhazred posted:The Aspartame causes cancer!!111 people are at it again! This time it's Splenda in hyperdoses which causes cancer in mice, thus making it unsafe for people in regular doses. So, if I follow the study design correctly, most of their tested dosages would be roughly on par with living entirely off of Splenda packets?
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Mar 11, 2016 20:13
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Oddly enough they don't mention their study finding a decrease in cancer risk in female rats at high doses. It's almost as though the study was poorly designed so that the data could be cherry picked... But would the Ramazzini foundation do such a thing?
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Mar 11, 2016 20:17
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We should ask them for their dataset and run a human model replication using the same methods.
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Mar 11, 2016 20:18
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Bonus hilarious news coverage: New Study: Splenda causes cancer; a safer sweetener comes from anal glands of beavers To be fair, lots of things come from the anal glands of beavers.
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Mar 12, 2016 05:40
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Castoreum is actually what they were referring to in the news article. Man, CSPI used to be a really good organization...what the hell happened?!
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Mar 12, 2016 06:09
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Absurd Alhazred posted:The Aspartame causes cancer!!111 people are at it again! This time it's Splenda in hyperdoses which causes cancer in mice, thus making it unsafe for people in regular doses. It doesn't cause cancer but it makes whatever it's put in taste like cat piss, which is a far greater crime imo.
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Mar 15, 2016 19:47
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Pretty sure that beaver anal gland is where artificial vanilla comes from Just think of how that discovery was made
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Mar 16, 2016 00:21
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QuarkJets posted:Pretty sure that beaver anal gland is where artificial vanilla comes from That's mostly false, according to Snopes. Castoreum (the stuff from beaver glands) has a vanilla-like smell and is used in perfumes and cosmetics, but not food. Artificial vanilla flavor was made from wood pulp waste for a while, and is now synthesized directly from petroleum.
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Mar 16, 2016 00:29
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Crossposting from a couple other relevant threads:IAMNOTADOCTOR posted:Here's my issue with the current crop of leftist candidates, they are usually all for consumer protection, but the moment a consumer needs to be protected form the horrible fraudulent billion dollar Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Mar 16, 2016 |
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Mar 16, 2016 03:23
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Bernie's kind of lovely on GMOs in general as well though, and I don't really get where this is coming from. Like, we must do something about global warming because it's a scientific consensus and we should trust science: but noo when science says that GMOs are fine, that's somehow not good enough and we must come up with some bullshit to justify acting contrary to the scientific consensus.
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Mar 16, 2016 10:59
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mobby_6kl posted:Bernie's kind of lovely on GMOs in general as well though, and I don't really get where this is coming from. A) It's a "White Progressive" thing, as in it's a cultural trait that's as logic driven as (eg) "Conservatives love guns". Especially the richer you get. B) If Vermont is anything like Oregon, there's a very large organic industry to pander to said White Progressives and they lobbied him to push it.* C) Bernie might actually believe in it himself, because of A) and B). *No progressives are immune to this sort of thing. Take Elizabeth Warren for example. She's adamantly against the medical device tax (specifically) in the ACA. Guess what Massachusetts makes a lot of?
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Mar 16, 2016 16:51
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Science is good when it supports my bougie dreams of Thoreau-Jeffersonian homesteading and bad when it does not.
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Mar 16, 2016 17:00
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Discendo Vox posted:Crossposting from a couple other relevant threads: DV, since you actually understand research methods and quality and those kinds of things, curious if you had any thoughts on the state of research into dry-needling as a therapeutic technique? (Brother is a physical therapist and swears by it, and it came up in that conversation.)
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Mar 16, 2016 18:32
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Kalman posted:DV, since you actually understand research methods and quality and those kinds of things, curious if you had any thoughts on the state of research into dry-needling as a therapeutic technique? (Brother is a physical therapist and swears by it, and it came up in that conversation.)
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Mar 17, 2016 02:01
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I looked into this about 4 years ago. Acupuncture has positive results in a couple specific contexts in well-designed studies (pain-relief related), but I strongly suspect these are due to accumulated familywise error, a problem that's big in the alternative medicine literature. It's pretty close to the xkcd M&Ms comic- a thousand different tests on a thousand different methods for a thousand different conditions using a thousand different names, and the error values give you a false positive-which is promptly overreported without replication. In most contexts, it doesn't survive blinded trials, meaning it's some form of placebo effect at work. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 05:47 on Mar 17, 2016 |
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Mar 17, 2016 04:25
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I thought it was pretty well established that acupunture reliefs pain by overloading pain receptors, confusing them into not reporting pain anymore?
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Mar 17, 2016 08:27
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Buller posted:I thought it was pretty well established that acupunture reliefs pain by overloading pain receptors, confusing them into not reporting pain anymore? That's something I'd heard, depletion of neurotransmitters, but I'm not sure if they've ever done anything to actually test it or just threw it up as a plausibility smokescreen.
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Mar 17, 2016 08:32
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The idea is stupid on the face of it. "hmm let's stick needles into people's body this will relieve pain"
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Mar 17, 2016 08:52
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-Troika- posted:The idea is stupid on the face of it. "hmm let's stick needles into people's body this will relieve pain" It's a dubious claim to say the least but at least it proposes a mechanism that could work within the bounds of what we know about cell biology. Which is only worth anything if it's tested in a well designed and performed study. I think it's unlikely given that in intense pain situations you don't go numb quickly.
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Mar 17, 2016 09:22
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Discendo Vox posted:I looked into this about 4 years ago. Acupuncture has positive results in a couple specific contexts in well-designed studies (pain-relief related), but I strongly suspect these are due to accumulated familywise error, a problem that's big in the alternative medicine literature. It's pretty close to the xkcd M&Ms comic- a thousand different tests on a thousand different methods for a thousand different conditions using a thousand different names, and the error values give you a false positive-which is promptly overreported without replication. Here are the Cochrane reviews. It doesn't work.
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Mar 17, 2016 09:43
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Discendo Vox posted:Here are the Cochrane reviews. It doesn't work. Literally all of the ones I looked at that deal with pain management seem to suggest that it does?
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Mar 17, 2016 16:38
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Buller posted:I thought it was pretty well established that acupunture reliefs pain by overloading pain receptors, confusing them into not reporting pain anymore? Are you saying that inserting a tiny needle causes so much pain that the recipient stops registering pain? I once had acupuncture done to the back of my hand, during some health fair or something at a previous job. I was curious as to what it was like. I hardly felt it, but I'm pretty sure if someone had jabbed my hand with a pin while it was happening, it still would have hurt.
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Mar 17, 2016 16:53
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Kalman posted:Literally all of the ones I looked at that deal with pain management seem to suggest that it does? Literally all of the ones I've looked at that deal with pain management seem to suggest that it's not any better than a placebo
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Mar 17, 2016 17:24
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Kalman posted:Literally all of the ones I looked at that deal with pain management seem to suggest that it does? Pooping phone post, forgive the layout: It's confusing, but if you read the papers they often say that there are no or too few good trials to base results on. The result is that they base their meta-analysis on garbage. If you want to I'll look at the individual trials they base this on with you, but basically garbage in means garbage out. Confusingly, they go on to say that based on what data they have there is a modest effect. What makes it even more difficult is the reporting bias: there is strong evidence that most negative acupuncture trials never get reported. (An issue evidence based medicine is solving using trial registry)The result is that what studies they can analyse are mostly those that found an effect. For most doctors and scientists the strongest evidence against acupuncture is that the effects are never reproduced by solid trials performed by sceptic's. There is an interesting negative correlation between the quality of a trial and the effect of acupuncture. The better the trial the worse the results. To summarise, people are allready being treated and paying for something for which even in the most generous analysis the data is bad, based on results that are mediocre from trials performed by those that have the most to gain financially from a positive result that can not be replicated by sceptic's. If this was done by BigPharma we'd rightfully burn them at the stake.
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Mar 17, 2016 17:25
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IAMNOTADOCTOR is a hundred percent right. There have been a couple NIH-funded legit double blind sham trials that produced strong effects, but it's suspected to be a product of folks basically claiming acupuncture works for anything and running separate trials on all of them until something hit the alpha error and gave a false positive. IAMNOTADOCTOR and thread in general, do you have any EBM sources to recommend? I'm writing up an article on it for my degree, and as far as I can tell most people in my field are citing to really old or irrelevant sources.
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Mar 17, 2016 19:25
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Discendo Vox posted:IAMNOTADOCTOR is a hundred percent right. There have been a couple NIH-funded legit double blind sham trials that produced strong effects, but it's suspected to be a product of folks basically claiming acupuncture works for anything and running separate trials on all of them until something hit the alpha error and gave a false positive. I'd not sure what your looking for, but David gorski over at science based medicine is nice.
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Mar 17, 2016 19:35
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IAMNOTADOCTOR posted:I'd not sure what your looking for, but David gorski over at science based medicine is nice. I'm looking for academic sources, ideally theory pieces or texts used in med schools. I got one excellent text, How to Read a Paper: The Basics of Evidence-Based Medicine, earlier and I'm hoping for similar.
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Mar 17, 2016 23:00
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