Anti-vaccination groups have reached a new low. The Australian Vaccination Network (AVN) is a group of conspiratorially-minded science deniers so intent on keeping people from getting vaccines that they have now stooped to harassing the parents of a baby who died of whooping cough:
According to this article, 32-day-old Dana McCaffery died last year due to pertussis. She was too young to have received the vaccine, although her parents later came out in support of other children being vaccinated. That was too much for AVN, which started harassing the parents, and sought to prove that pertussis could not have been the cause. It might have beens something else, they claimed, another disease that was now being hidden so that young Dana might be used as a poster child for pro-vaccination forces.
This shows the anti-vaxxers true colors: they are willing to exploit suffering of all kinds, and to wish for more of that suffering in the world, in pursuit of their irrational, anti-scientific, paranoid mission.
"California may drop rock, and geologists feel the pain." As amazing as it sounds, the official state rock of California, serpentinite, is in jeopardy of losing its status, due to a bill by LA Democrat Gloria Romero. Romero rightly points out that California's state rock is chock-full of chrysotile asbestos, and for this reason she finds it inappropriate for this lovely, lime-green rock to be so honored by the Golden State.
The New York Times article on this--which repeats the common mistake of referring to the rock (serpentinite) by its group of mineral (serpentine)--correctly quotes a USGS geologist as saying, "There is no way anyone is going to get bothered by casual exposure to that kind of rock."
People have a hard time getting their minds around this, but we Californians are frequently exposed to asbestos fibers without demonstrably increased rates of cancer. This is especially true in the serpentinite-rich Bay Area (the alleged elevated breast cancer rates in Marin are not connected with this fact). But if we're breathing asbestos in normal air, why aren't Californians who don't smoke dropping dead of lung cancer?
For one thing, chrysotile asbestos is not the most carcinogenic asbestiform mineral--that honor goes to "blue asbestos," crocidolite, and "brown asbestos," amosite.
But unlike these two forms, chrysotile's fibers are slightly curved, meaning that they cannot penetrate quite so deeply into the small passages of the lungs. When lungs are exposed to mineral particles, they react as if these particles were viruses or bacteria; a robust immune system attacks these particles with a toxic brew of chemicals. In a way, our immune system is too good at doing this, because in the process of trying to "kill" the mineral, neighboring cells are damaged in ways that, given enough time, can turn them cancerous. The longer mineral particles remain, the longer the immune reaction occurs; the problem with asbestos fibers is that they lodge so deeply, it is very difficult for them to be dislodged.
I don't want to minimize the health hazards of asbestos, or imply that it does not cause cancer. But it's important not to exaggerate the ill effects of hazardous substances, and to understand what actually does cause harm. It should be noted that one of the more inert substances in nature--silicon dioxide, which in a mineral form is quartz--can also cause a particularly vicious lung disease called silicosis. The bottom line is that you don't want to inhale any mineral particles if you can help it; asbestiform minerals are particularly bad to inhale, and within this mineral group, amosite and crocidolite are the worst. Since most industrial asbestos was chrysotile, this means that the efforts to remove all asbestos from places such as schools has been largely an unnecessary effort, meant to placate fears more than actually protect people. Sure, less exposure is better--although by removing the material, that increases its dispersion and people's exposure.
On a side note, the first half of the South Tower of the World Trade Center had its beams wrapped in asbestos fibers. (This fact alone shows the lie in the EPA's post 9/11 statement that the air quality was non-hazardous.) This fireproofing could be literally sewn around beams in such a way that a sudden jolt--such as an earthquake or a plane
impact--would not knock it off. While the WTC was being built, however, the use of asbestos was discontinued. The North Tower and the upper portions of the South Tower were sprayed instead with a fireproofing foam. There wasn't much science to the amount added; workers recalled that they were instructed to just eye-ball it. No one expected that something would happen to the towers that would knock this insulation off the support beams, exposing them directly to fire. Had they been wrapped in asbestos sheets, this would not have happened. Can we infer therefore that asbestos insulation would have saved the WTC? No, that goes too far--but it might have bought a little more time before the collapses.
Romero's bill has good intentions, but does not take good science into account, but instead plays upon people's fears of a substance they little understand. Moreover, it overturns a tradition, and for that reason if for nothing else, it deserves not to pass.
According to recent research by UCSB economists Philip Babcock and Mindy Marks, the amount of time spent by college students studying has dropped:
1961: 24 hours/week
2009: 14 hours/week
Moreover, the total time spend on school (attending classes + studying) has likewise diminished:
1961: 40 hours/week
2009: 27 hours/week
What's gong on here?
As every college counsellor tells students, they should expect to be responsible for studying 3 hours for every hour in class. At many schools, students are considered full-time with as few as 12 units/week, which translates roughly (not counting labs) as 12 classroom hours per week. At 12 hours/week, the 3x multiple works out to only 36 hours. Added to 12 hours, this means a total time spend on school of only 48 hours/week.
This squares with my experiencing teaching undergraduates. Assign reading, and 90% will not do it. Test on this required reading, and still 90% will not do it. I get the sense, while grading midterms, that the majority of the class has spend less than one hour preparing for the exam. There are good students, students who diligently study, even in freshmen classes. But they are quite the rarity.
It seems to be the diminished number of hours actually spent studying may have a lot to do with declining academic standards, which are hidden only the band-aid of grade inflation. There is something seriously wrong going on here.
It's hard to think of a stranger article than the recent piece by Dr. Robert Lanza which appeared in the Huffington Post.
Titled "What are we? New experiments suggest we're not purely physical," this piece might have offered some actual new experiments; instead, we are presented with tired, hackneyed cliches about quantum theory and how this, supposedly, proves the existence of something other than reality. It is quite simply nonsense.
While arguing, "part of us exists outside of the physical world," Dr. Lanza does not offer any real evidence of this. Instead, we're retold old stories about the spookiness of the quantum world, mixed with assurances the scientific community is "trapped in an outdated paradigm." Kuhn references are the last refuge of anti-science scoundrels.
Quantum mechanics is strange and counter-intutive. But simply because phenomenon occur in ways unexpected to our normal experience is not an argument against the nature of reality. Quantum mechanics simply is. Electromagnetic radiation exists both as a wave and as a particle. There is no why. Extrapolating from quantum mechanics to a New Age, woo-ish interpretation of the world goes far beyond what the evidence actually suggests.
Dr. Lanza writes:
The world was once wondrous.
And indeed it still is. Learning science should not reduce one's wonder about the world; rather, it is through science that we develop an appreciation for just how wondrous reality is.
Dr. Lanza philosophizes:
My colleagues tell me we're just the activity of carbon and some proteins; we live awhile and die. And the universe? It too has no meaning. They have it all worked out in the equations -- no need for woo.
Now we see the crux of the matter. If Dr. Lanza wants to argue that we are something other than carbon molecules, the burden of proof is on him to produce evidence for it. Perhaps there is "something else"--we cannot absolutely rule out such a possibility. But science does strongly suggest that there need not be anything else in order to explain the world and the things that live in it. Therefore to argue that some unnamed "new experiments" are producing reality-shattering paradigm shifts about the nature of reality is, quite bluntly, wrong.
Research ships are very cool. It's a small environment crammed with smart people, visiting beautiful places to do interesting work. Imagine that several times a day someone brings up a mud core--tens of millions of years old, which no one has ever seen before--and plops it down for you to start analyzing. Although prudish American ships are dry, European ships more sensibly understand the importance of the free-flow of alcohol. So where are all these ships?
You can see, for example, that the Polarstern is right now half way between Iceland and Greenland. The Thomas Thompson, from which science writer Wendee Holtcamp is blogging, in Deadliest Catch waters. It is interesting to think of all this cool research going on simultaneously around the world.
Steven Newton spends his days/nights/weekends teaching geology at the College of Marin and defending the teaching of evolution at the National Center for Science Education. The opinions expressed here are his own, and do not reflect official positions either of the College of Marin or the NCSE.
...which bears and determines us has the form of a war rather than that of a language: relations of power, not relations of meaning. " --Michel Foucault
impact--would not knock it off. While the WTC was being built, however, the use of asbestos was discontinued. The North Tower and the upper portions of the South Tower were sprayed instead with a fireproofing foam. There wasn't much science to the amount added; workers recalled that they were instructed to just eye-ball it. No one expected that something would happen to the towers that would knock this insulation off the support beams, exposing them directly to fire. Had they been wrapped in asbestos sheets, this would not have happened. Can we infer therefore that asbestos insulation would have saved the WTC? No, that goes too far--but it might have bought a little more time before the collapses.