On this day in 1618, Johannes Kepler formulated his Third Law of Planetary Motion. This third law states that “the square of the orbital period of a planet is directly proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit.”
Important stuff, this.
Here’s a video that has been floating around for the interwebs for a couple weeks. It’s freaky-cool.
It will be interesting to see what response, if any, the anti-vaccination crowd will have for this report that the National Health Service (UK) Information Centre has found that the rates of autism in adults directly correlates to the rates of autism in children.
The anti-vax movement, spearheaded by Jenny McCarthy, has been pushing the idea that vaccinations cause serious illnesses as side-effects to preventing others. In particular, the MMR vaccine (Measles, Mumps, and Rubella) is blamed by anti-vaxers to cause Autism.
The MMR vaccine has been available only since the early 1990s. Thus, it would be expected that, if this vaccine were causing autism, that rates of autism in children would be higher than rates of adults, since children with the MMR vaccine have not had time to become a part of the adult population.
The NHS study, however, shows that this is not the case:
“The NHS Information Centre found one in every hundred adults living in England has autism, which is identical to the rate in children.”
Case closed. If the MMR vaccine was causing autism, then rates of autism rates in children should be higher than adults. They are not, so the MMR vaccine is not causing autism.
This study goes beyond the simple rates, though. Autism in girls as compared to women were completely equal and the same is true of boys compared to men. The rates are constant, whether the person has received the MMR vaccine or not.
Why is this an issue? What’s the harm in not getting your child vaccinated? To find out, check out www.whatstheharm.net/vaccinedenial.html.
(as usual, Dr. Steve Novella has a much more thorough analysis of this study on his blog, neurologica.)
Ryan Gregory of the Genomicron blog has put together a quick, but excellent, list of predictions made by the theory of evolution that have later been confirmed. The list can be found at:
http://genomicron.blogspot.com/2009/09/does-evolutionary-biology-make.html
Even though I’m sure this is old and that most evolutionists in America have probably seen it already, it is new to me and I think its great!
Those of you who don’t know her, the above is our pal Jenny McCarthy. McCarthy began her career as a Playboy Playmate, and moved on to an acting career which landed her in amazing acting roles like a spot in the “Lingerie Bowl.” So naturally, this makes her an authority on the toxicity of vaccines.
McCarthy, whose son is autistic, believes that “her son was developing normally until he received his measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine (at 15 months of age) and claimed that they were the cause. McCarthy has stated at many talk shows and rallies that chelation therapy [pronounced kee-lay-shun] helped her son recover from autism; the underlying rationale for chelation, which is that mercury in vaccines causes autism, has been roundly rejected by scientific studies, with the National Institute of Mental Health concluding that autistic children are unlikely to receive any benefit to balance the risks of cognitive and emotional problems posed by the chelating agents used in the treatment.” (Wikipedia page on Jenny McCarthy, May 14th, 2009).
McCarthy has since become a major spokesperson for the anti-vaccination movement in America. The key point to be taken out of the above context from the Wikipedia page on McCarthy is that “the underlying rationale for chelatioin…has been roundly rejected by scientific studies.” The National Institute of Mental Health, who would know a thing or two about a mental illness like autism, reject chelation as a valid treatment for autism. Of course, facts do not stop McCarthy. Nor do they stop Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who simply states that the above is simply a large pharma-industrial complex and government conspiracy. As was pointed out on a recent episode of “The Skeptics Guide to the Universe”, it’s interesting to see a Kennedy proposing a conspiracy theory. Those of you who don’t know why, just go here. (You may want to go there anyways; conspiracies are always good for a laugh.)
I would go on about this, but the absurdity of it brings me to simply say that, once again, Dr. Novella has written extensively on the topic and is a much better source for the nitty gritty details. To read more, I suggest using this link to do a search of the good doctor’s Neurologica blog for “McCarthy.” There is a wealth of information there too vast to summarize in my one short post.
This is kind of old news, but it is new news to me. I don’t know why, but I found this particularly interesting.
“Researchers have discovered two living species—so recently that they have yet to be named—of this Alavesia fly, a genus that had previously only been seen preserved in Cretaceous-era amber in Spain and Burma.
The flies, captured in dry streambeds along Namibia’s highest mountain, the Brandberg Massif, have wings only about 0.08 inch (two millimeter) long. The discovery came out of a 2002 bug inventory on the plateau-like mountain (which predates the separation of the southernmost four continents) that also yielded a new suborder of carnivorous insects known as Mantophasmatodea. The new species of this ancient “dance fly” genus were only recognized by researchers Bradley Sinclair, an entomologist at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and Ashley Kirk-Spriggs, who leads the Entomology department at the South Africa National Museum, in 2007.”
Pretty damn cool.
Happy 200th birthday to Dr. Charles Darwin. Later this year (in November) we will also be saying happy 150th anniversary to the release of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Indeed today, Darwin Day, is a special day.
Today is also the celebration of the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States and a person largely responsible for the ending of slavery in the U.S. in the 1860’s. Kudos on this day go to you, too, Abe.
“Evidence for Creation” is an easy target for a debunking article. Nevertheless, it is important to go through with reviewing this type of information because it can, and does, get repeated and used in other places. For instance, a comment was left by a high school teacher on the introduction to this series of blogs stating “I have students that use that site as a veritable atom bomb to ‘volutionary idiocy’, and it is enthralling to read a logical and scientific examination of their ‘fact’.” I had an email exchange with this commenter and discussed how often this sort of thing happens in our schools.
It is often the opinion of scientists that the creationists and intelligent design proponents should not be debated because by giving them the platform we are treating them as equals, when there is no real science in their ideas. While I agree with this sentiment, the internet makes me reconsider. I still don’t think that a “debate” is something that should be granted, but propaganda such as “Evidence for Creation” can be put up on the internet for all to see. Anyone without knowledge of the scientific process and unaware of the wealth of knowledge supporting the theory of evolution may come across articles like “Evidence for Creation” and unquestioningly accept its arguments as fact.
It is for this reason that I have taken the time to write my responses to the arguments proposed in “Evidence for Creation”. My hope is that, from time to time, someone my come across my blog before seeing the article and, perhaps, gain a new perspective on creationism, evolution, and science in general.
