science

Natural News attacks TED for tightening standards

Jennifer Raff14 Comments

This article by Natural News was brought to my attention a few weeks ago. The author (and founder of NN), Mike Adams claims:

“…the group that organizes so-called “TED talks” has been thoroughly hijacked by corporate junk science and now openly rejects any talks about GMOs, food as medicine, or even the subject of how food can help prevent behavioral disorders in children. All these areas of discussion are now red-flagged from being presented on any TED stage. This is openly admitted by TEDx itself in a little-known letter publicly published on December 7, 2012.”

Let’s go through a few of Mr. Adams’ allegations and compare with what the letter actually says. Continue reading →

The Discovery Institute challenged me. Here’s my response.

Jennifer Raff43 Comments

Casey Luskin, a blogger for the Discovery Institute, recently took issue with my proposal that when reading a scientific paper, one should check the institutional affiliation and credentials of its authors. I believe the part that he particularly objected to was my statement that one might not wish to use the Discovery Institute as a “scientific authority on evolutionary theory.”

Luskin wrote:

“In other words, study a paper carefully, but if the authors work with Discovery Institute, disregard everything they are saying from the outset. That’s the ground rule that comes before any other tips. It’s a great way to keep yourself carefully in the dark about things you know nothing about. And she calls us “agenda-driven”?

Imagine how journal editors would behave if they followed Raff’s advice. Or better yet, imagine what would happen if Raff herself were a journal editor. Someone affiliated with Discovery Institute (or any group friendly to ID) submits a paper, and you immediately toss it in the trash without even taking it seriously. More than a few such editors probably share her philosophy. That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the peer-review system, even though of course there are already plenty of reasons to lack such confidence.”

It’s a very telling reaction on his part. Continue reading →

Adventures with the Texas State Board of Education

Jennifer Raff26 Comments

I’ve written before about the ongoing battle to maintain decent science standards in Texas schools, and why this is not just a regional issue, but important for science education in the United States as a whole.

Today I went before the Texas State Board of Education to testify in support of the science textbooks currently under review. They’re all quite good on the subject of evolution, but there’s a chance that the board may require the textbook companies to modify them based on the testimony of their so-called experts (whose anti-evolution opinions can be read here). The outcome is very much in doubt right now.

I came expecting this to be a largely symbolic (though important) gesture, but I was completely wrong. The pro-creationism/Intelligent Design crowd was present in force, and even though they were vastly outnumbered by the science advocates, they were given extra time and friendly questions by some SBOE members, which amplified their voices.
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How to read a vaccine safety study: an example.

Jennifer Raff30 Comments

I want to expand upon my guide on how to read a scientific paper by working through an example. You may not have the time or ability to read a paper in as much depth as I outline below. But my goal with this series of posts is to help people feel less intimidated by research papers by giving them a framework for reading them. I want to make these tools available, should you wish to use them.

I decided to choose as my first example a paper that would also be useful for people grappling with the question of vaccine safety, so that they can become familiar with how these studies are conducted and better understand some of the terminology.

Think hard. Go deeper into the paper.
Think hard. Go deeper into the paper.

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Cutting off our nose to spite our face: Scientific funding in the age of sequestration

Jennifer Raff12 Comments

My friend Alexander Nakhnikian has been thinking and writing a lot about American politics and science. He kindly agreed to share his thoughts here on the impact of the sequester on American research. –Jennifer

Science is important. Really, really important. Most Americans agree about this. Unfortunately, we don’t always act as though scientific progress is a high priority. That’s partly because of the American love/hate relationship with science as a way of viewing the world, which is most evident in the fights over creationism, climate change, and vaccination. But there’s another factor in play that often gets overlooked because it seems so mundane: Money. We need it. Lots of it. And these days, we don’t have it.

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How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists

Jennifer Raff496 Comments

Update (1/3/18) I’ve been overwhelmed with requests for the shorter guide, and the email address below no longer works. So I’ve uploaded a copy of the guide for anyone to download and share here: How to read and understand a scientific article. Please feel free to use it however you wish (although I’d appreciate being credited as the author). I apologize to everyone who emailed me and didn’t get a response! If you would like to let me know who you are and what you’re using it for in the comments below, I’d love to hear!

Update (8/30/14): I’ve written a shorter version of this guide for teachers to hand out to their classes. If you’d like a PDF, shoot me an email: jenniferraff (at) utexas (dot) edu.

Last week’s post (The truth about vaccinations: Your physician knows more than the University of Google) sparked a very lively discussion, with comments from several people trying to persuade me (and the other readers) that their paper disproved everything that I’d been saying. While I encourage you to go read the comments and contribute your own, here I want to focus on the much larger issue that this debate raised: what constitutes scientific authority?

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The truth about vaccinations: Your physician knows more than the University of Google

Aside Jennifer Raff2,204 Comments

“A cousin of my mom’s survived Polio and lived the rest of his life with its effects. He was not expected to live past his teens but made it to his 40s. I am grateful that modern science can protect us from Polio and other diseases and I choose to take advantage of modern science to give my kid better odds of not dying from a preventable disease. I had heard a lot of noise from people claiming vaccines caused Autism, but never saw any clear evidence. It just seemed to me like people really wanted to point to something as the cause and they latched onto vaccines.”–Jennifer

I have been getting into a lot of discussions about whether vaccines are safe in the last few days. I’m not sure if it’s because of a post going viral about a (terrible) Italian court ruling last year (In contrast, American courts side with doctors and scientists on vaccine safety) or Jenny McCarthy’s recent hiring as co-host on “The View”, or simply (as a friend suggested to me today) the fact that a new school year is starting soon and parents are having to provide vaccination records to schools.

“(I got my children vaccinated) because the science supports it and I don’t want my kids to die. And civic reasons. It’s so straightforward.”–Britta

Whatever the reason, this week I’ve been in many conversations with individuals staunchly against vaccinations, parents who are very upset at the idea of unvaccinated children putting their own kids at risk, and parents who are confused and worried and want to know how to make the best decision possible for their children’s safety. I’m writing this for the third group of parents.
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Creationism in Texas: good news!

Jennifer Raff4 Comments

If you read my post on Kathy Miller’s recent talk at the Answers in Science event, you’ll recall that the Texas Board of Education is currently reviewing science textbooks for statewide adoption. This is a very important process, as historically creationists have attempted to insert their stupid arguments against evolution into school educational standards and textbooks. Since Texas is the largest buyer of textbooks in the United States, it has a huge influence on what publishers will produce.
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Creationism and Answers in Science: One weekend in Texas (with fossil porn!)

Jennifer Raff11 Comments

ammonite
This past week, Houston hosted several major players in both the anti- and pro- evolution camps. The Texas Home School coalition had their annual convention on Aug 1-3, and unfortunately chose to invite Ken Ham as a keynote speaker. Ham has a long history of anti-science, anti-evolution advocacy, including recently criticizing Bill Gates’ “Big History” curriculum for teaching evolution.

In response to Ham’s presence at the convention, several groups, including Houston Atheists, Humanists of Houston and Houston Oasis, organized an “Answers in Science” educational event at the Houston Museum of Natural History.
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GMO study is pseudoscience

Jennifer Raff20 Comments

I abhor the exploitative practices of Monsanto and companies like it. But truth is more important than politics, and I am always going to speak out when I see false information being touted as “science” to further an agenda.

I wanted to make this clear because I seem be writing a lot about the misrepresentation of GMOs as being harmful to your health. This article (“GMO feed turns pig stomachs to mush”) is by Natural News, which is emphatically NOT a scientific publication. It’s a site with a definite bias, and implies that people who disagree (I guess that means me?) are “paid online trolls, on-the-take ‘scientists.'”*

Natural News is a complete goofball pseudoscience website, but could the study they cite (Carman et al. 2013: “A long-term toxicology study on pigs fed a combined genetically modified (GM) soy and GM maize diet.”) be the first legitimate evidence that GMOs are harmful to health?
Continue reading →