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The mean orange juice residual

Saturday, January 7th, 2012

Statistics humor is good humor.

Seeing that I have some sort of weird fetish about doing double blinded experiments, I did a test on 4 brands of orange juice from the store across the road.

At first I was planning to do this experiment like I usually do them, but during the start of testing something weird happened.

In the first test one of the juices got a score of 6 (1-10) but in the subsequent tests got 2.5 and 3. The reason for this is “The orange juice deviation”, a law of nature that states that “If you drink two different types of orange juice in a short time span, the second one will taste fucking weird”.

I tried rinsing with water between each test, but that did not help, so I had to do the testing another way to avoid interference between the different samples.

So to avoid the taste testing being influenced by the previous one, I drank 24 cups of orange juice over the course of 3 days with a minimum of 30 minute delay between tests. Thanks to my GF Stacy for helping with the blinding (she suspected it was all a ploy to make her get me juice).

TEST 2 DATA SET
1	lerum		6
2	sunniva		6.5
3	first price	7
4	sunniva		8
5	first price	6.5
6	first price	6.5
7	first price	7.5
8	eldorado	5.5
9	sunniva		7.5
10	first price	7.5
11	lerum		7
12	first price	7
13	lerum		6.5
14	sunniva		7
15	lerum		8
16	eldorado	6.5
17	lerum		8
18	sunniva		8
19	eldorado	6
20	lerum		6
21	lerum		7
22	eldorado	7
23	sunniva		8
24	sunniva		7.5

 

Test 1 – drinking 4 glasses of randomized juice.

Sunniva First Price Lerum Eldorado
 1 6.5 5 6 7
 2 7 5.5 2.5 6
 3 7 5 3 6
AVG 6.83 5.17 3.83 6.67
STDEV 0.22 0.22 1.44 0.44

 

Test 2 – drinking 1 glass of random juice.

Sunniva First Price Lerum Eldorado
AVG  7.5  7  6.75  6.25
STDEV  0.43  0.33 0.58  0.5
Trimmed mean:
AVG  7.6  7  6.62  6.25
STDEV  0.32  0.25  0.38  0.25
Price per liter (NOK)   19.9  6.45  18.6  13.26

So what’s the conclusion?

I’ve always been buying the Eldorado juice, however I clearly think Sunniva is the best (highest score in both tests). however the 1 Liter pack of Sunniva is almost twice the cost of the 2 Liter pack of First Price which is a very cheap brand. Despite that First Price did came in second and who doesn’t love a juice with a small standard deviation?

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Posted in Food & Drink, General, Science | No Comments »

The Amazing Meeting 9 (2011)

Sunday, October 9th, 2011

I was at TAM 9 (The Amazing Meeting) almost three months ago, but have been too lazy to blog about it until now.

TAM is a yearly conference about science and skepticism, and has lots of panels and talks by scientists and the “big stars” from the skeptical community (those tend to overlap).

Day -1 (The trip)
Traveling from Norway to the west coast of the US is a major pain in the ass. I got on the airplane early as shit, having only about 2-3 hours of sleep, and only carrying my plastic grocery bag containing 2 tshirts, 1 boxer and 1 pair of socks, as well as my camera and charger (I decided to travel light). The aircraft rolls out from the gate, but something strange is happening. After a couple of minutes the captain announces that the computer system is refusing to start one of the engines, and they have to reboot the aircraft.. So everything is switched off, but rebooting the computer system of the airplane takes a long time as it has to do lots of tests and configurations at startup. After about 30 minutes the computer decides to start both engines and from there the flight to Amsterdam went quickly (about 2 hours), then I had to wait at the airport in Amsterdam for 4 hours. Not that I did mind, it’s a really nice airport, and I could listen to my favorite podcast for the whole time.

Traveling light

The flight from Amsterdam to New York went much better(quicker) than expected, never been on such a huge plane before and I’m sooo glad I paid the 10% extra to get economy extra seating (only 1 seat next to you, and more room for arms and legs). Can’t really remember much of the flight, except the vegetarian meal was excellent and the desert awesome (go KLM!). Spent the entire flight using the in-flight entertainment system, Think I watched ‘Battle Los Angeles’, ‘Ant Bully’ and some tv shows (Curb your enthusiasm, Seinfeld, and a few others).

However when I landed at JFK, the so far pleasant trip took a turn for the worse. I had done the whole ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorization) thing, so I expected to just walk trough the immigration area. So I stood in line for 1 hour, just to find out I had to do the paper version as well (which is just asking for exactly the same information again).. Back to the end of the line and wait for another hour. I make it through immigration, but for some reason the guy just stared at my passport without blinking for at least 45 seconds, and was starting to freak me out a little.

Now I’m trying to find my flight, but of course it’s not listed on the board. I go to the Delta place and after them trying to send me to another terminal, they finally locate the flight (apparently there was some mix up of the flight number between KLM and Delta) and I have to run trough the airport and literally get on the plane in the last minute. On the plane I get flabbergasted by some people from the Norwegian skeptical society that I somewhat know from online.

Flight to Las Vegas is like 5 hours and I was half asleep the entire trip. I land around midnight and take a taxi to South Point hotel and casino, where the conference is taking place. I make my way up to the room, set my alarm clock and go to sleep faster than you could say ‘snapple’.

This bed was a sight for sore eyes that had been traveling for 28 hours

Day 0 – July 13th.
My first day in the new world, I’m up at 6 am (2 hours before my alarm goes off), tired confused and looking out into the desert trough my hotel window.

It's the wild west, and I didn't bring a gun or a hat :(

I go downstairs and quickly gets something to eat from the hotel gift shop before I head into town:

Traditional american breakfast

Traditional american breakfast

I take a taxi into town to get some supplies (I came bringing only 1 carry on). So with a long shopping list I headed to the place where the american dream turns true: Walmart.

However right across the road from Walmart I found “The Gun store”, so I got to play with some weapons (AK47 and MP5) that it would be hard to get to try in Norway without joining the army.

Skinhead with beard and foreign accent rents AK-47

Skinhead with beard and foreign accent rents AK-47

Certified Nazi Zombie killer

Certified Nazi Zombie killer

After shooting zombies, I bought lots of stuff at Walmart (luggage case, netbook, boxers, socks, tshirts, shirts and a couple of shorts, toothbrush, shower gel, deodorant, sunblock + food and snacks).

Can haz loot!

I have no idea what happened from noon to midnight, by looking at the photos from that time it appears I just went back to the hotel and did nothing (damn you sleep deprivation + jet lag).

Day 1 (June 14th) – First day of TAM
Fuck me, it’s 05:00 and I’m awake! I tried going back to sleep, but instead I ended up going out and taking pictures of the area around the hotel while waiting for the convention to start.

Las Vegas sunset

Las Vegas sunset

las vegas desert

Desert! I am in you!

Flowers are purdy

Red and shiny car being all red and shiny

South Point hotel and casino

More desert, now with hills in background

A random building

yaaay,a crosswalk! this is awesome

South Point hotel and casio from the front side

Registration opened at 7:30, I got my badge and wandered around waiting for the first workshop. The workshop was about examining UFO photos, and faking UFO photos without using photoshop. After that I attended a workshop called “Investigating monster mysteries” which was about cryptozoology (Bigfoot, Loch Ness monster, etc..)

After that I had lunch and I think I went up for a nap. I woke up in time for ‘The Rebecca Watson Game Show and Variety Hour’, which was really funny. After that I went straight to bed.

Day 2 (June 15th)  – Second day
Yesterday was kind of a slow TAM day, no panels, just the workshops.

This day however started with what I think was the highlight of TAM, a live recording of the podcast The Skeptics Guide to the Universe. This was followed by the official opening remarks by James Randi himself.

The SGU crew

Following that was an awesome panel with James Randi, Richard Wiseman, Phil Plait, Joe Nickell and Michael Shermer

Panel about skepticism on TV

After that I wandered around a bit, got some lunch,visited the vendor booths and got myself a couple of pet Trilobites :)

at 14:00 I was back in the main hall for a series of great panels/lectures.

A skeptical look at aliens by Biologist PZ Myers.

A panel with Astronomer Pamela Gay from Astronomy cast

This was followed by an extremely awesome panel about our future in space, with Neil Degrasse Tyson, Pamela Gay, Bill Nye (the science guy), and Lawrence Krauss with Phil Plait as a moderator.

Our future in space

This was immediately followed by Neil Degrasse Tyson’s keynote speech which was in lack of a better word, EPIC!.

Neil Degrasse Tyson Tam 9

I went to the Skeptics guide to the universe dinner at 18:00, and actually ate some real food. After that I was going to take a quick nap before the ‘Penn Jillette’s Rock & Roll, Doughnut and Bacon Party’, but dozed off and missed it :(

Day 3 (June 16th)  – Third day
This day there weren’t that many panels that I had to go to, so from I woke up at 7 (seriously, is jetlag supposed to last this long?) I headed into downtown and walked the strip and took lots of photos:

A hotel/casino with a rollercoaster, never got around to trying it :(

A casino/hotel that's a fucking castle! :o

Walking up the strip

Caesars palace! If this was Fallout 3 New Vegas I would go in there and kill everyone

Looks vaguely familiar

Yay, I got to see the Eifel tower without going to Paris

A place for the statistically illiterate

I rode the monorail! But saw no cat

I made it back to South Point and TAM just in time for the second half of the Skeptics Guide Live podcast event.

Steve, Evan, Jay, Rebecca and Bob

This was followed by the second Keynote speaker, Richard Dawkins. Again, the word Epic! comes to mind.

Day 4 (June 14th) – Final day
Day 4 had a few panels I wanted to see, but I had to make a flight to Los Angeles at noon, so left the hotel pretty early.

I’ll write about my LA trip in a while and put a link to it >>> HERE <<< :)

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Posted in General, Science, Skepticism, Traveling | No Comments »

Increasing earthquakes?

Saturday, May 14th, 2011

Are earthquakes increasing in strength or frequency?

Just found myself in a debate where the opposition claims earthquakes is on the rise (judgement day, wrath of god, etc..), being a skeptic I of course needed evidence, and where better to get it than to analyse it for myself from raw data?

How many earthquakes are there?
I went to the United States Geological Survey for the raw data, they have a pretty big list of “selected earthquakes of general historic interest” (6.0+) earthquakes recorded (ordered by magnitude, strongest quake first)
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/world/historical_mag_big.php

I then made a little computer program to parse the text, and output it in csv format:
java program: Test.java
data text file: quakes.txt (program input)
csv result file: quakes.csv (program output)

The output from the data was opened in a spreadsheet for further analysis. There are 722 quakes in the input data file. I used the data from the period 1900 to 2010 in the statistics below (660 of the 722 total data entries).

The data in table form

6+ 7+ 8+
1900 9 5 1
1905 14 12 5
1910 14 9 1
1915 9 6 0
1920 10 8 3
1925 15 10 0
1930 20 13 4
1935 12 7 2
1940 16 15 4
1945 21 18 5
1950 21 11 3
1955 20 18 3
1960 12 10 3
1965 34 18 3
1970 21 13 2
1975 18 12 0
1980 15 4 0
1985 17 6 1
1990 17 11 1
1995 31 21 1
2000 110 50 5
2005 194 67 8

The first column is the date of the quakes, the next 3 are number of earthquakes with a magnitude of at least 6, 7 and 8 respectively.
Data is grouped into 5 years.. so the first row with year 1900, is data from 1900 to 1904, followed by 1905 to 1909, etc..

Graph
Earhquake frequency last 110 years

Click for larger version

Conclusion
This graph makes it look like earthquakes are running rampant, and you might have seen a very similar graph on the Internet (YouTube and other places), used by conspiracy cranks as an argument that earthquakes are increasing. But fortunately this graph is very misleading.

The data used to make it is complete rubbish, to quote the page they are collected from: “selected earthquakes of general historic interest”.. These quakes have been hand picked as the most interesting ones, and the data has a HUGE bias towards newer earthquakes, so you can’t make any meaningful statistics out of it (except if you are making statistics of which years the guy who compiled the data finds “interesting”).

Maybe we should try and remake the graphs using some good solid data..

== Real Data ==

A scientist at the USGS was kind enough to send me a datafile with all the 7.0+ earthquakes from 1900 to 2010 (all the registered quakes, not filtered in any way).

Making some graphs from those data yields results consistent with what the experts on earthquakes are saying.. They are totally random and unpredictable, and there has been no increase of earthquakes since we started recording them:

Frequency of earthquakes from 1900 to 2010. Click for bigger version:
Earthquake frequency, 1900 to 2010

Distribution of earthquakes by month:
Earthquakes by month

Distribution of earthquakes by day of month, (day 31 omitted for obvious reasons):
Earthquakes by day of month

Distribution of earthquakes by hour of day:
Earthquakes by hour of day

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Exponential ferret

Monday, March 21st, 2011

Last night a ferret just stood idly on the floor for about half a minute just staring blankly at us. It looked a bit like she was really concentrating, so the first hypothesis to explain this strange behavior was that she was trying to create a copy of herself through agamogenesis (asexual reproduction). This naturally led to the notion of a ferret able to replicate itself once every minute, and seeing that playing with exponential growth is always fun, this scenario deserves some illustrations:

0 minutes

one ferret.

1 minute

WOW!, did you see that? That ferret just duplicated!

3 minutes

Sweet, 8 ferrets. This is awesome.

5 minutes

Ehm, I love ferrets but 32 is a bit much.. how do you stop this thing?

18 minutes

Help! 268’000 ferrets just filled and breached the entire volume of our ~200 cubic meter apartment!

23 minutes

Neighborhood overrun, time to evacuate.

35 minutes

The blue dot is me, speeding away from the 50 square kilometer sea of ferrets half a meter deep.

48 minutes

Despite speeding like crazy I was just overtaken by a huge wave of ferrets, twice the area of Rhode Island and 30 meters tall.. By now there are 281 trillion ferrets in Norway.

1 hour

The 1 billion billion ferrets now cover all of Scandinavia with a height of the Eiffel tower

1 hour 15 minutes

Ferrets now rule the earth. covering the entire surface of the planet, filling up all the oceans, in a huge ferret sea 5 times the height of mount everest.
the 37 sextillion ferrets weight about 1/3 of the moon.

1 hour 23 minutes

The ferrets now have the same mass as the earth.

1 hour 55 minutes*

The ferrets now weigh 13’000 times more than our sun, the speed at which they can expand is limited, so the pressure and heat is extreme, this makes the huge ball of ferrets shine more powerful that any star, while a black hole has formed at the center.

2 hours 23 minutes

Ferrets now weigh the same as our entire galaxy, have formed a supermassive black hole and things are starting to get nasty.

3 hours

At 30 times the mass of the observable universe, outputting extreme amounts of energy through a geometrically challenged universe, the laws of physics are probably breaking down and fusing together again for the first time since the big bang.. It’s safe to say the ferrets have ruined reality as we know it.

 

Note: What happens after about 1 hour 30 minutes gets pretty speculative, it’s hard trying to apply the laws of physics to something that is physically impossible :)

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Supermoon terrorizes small Norwegian village!

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

It’s hard being a skeptic sometimes..
Today I saw a particularly silly story in the local Newspaper: “Supermånen Sprer frykt” or “Supermoon spreads fear”.

To sum it up, in 10 days the moon will be closer to the earth than it has been in 19 years.
The newspaper then goes on to list a bunch of conspiracy theory bullshit about several times when the moon has been at its closest to the earth, earthquakes/tsunamies/etc. occurred.

The moons orbit is not a perfect circle, so the distance from the moon to the earth varies between roughly 350’000 km and 400’000 km.

The moon’s effect on the tides is around 60-70% and the sun makes up 40-30%, so of course when the moon gets closer the tides get more extreme, and unless I made an error in the calculations below, the difference in gravitational force between the earth and the moon from when the moon is farthest away and closest should be 13.764%

= 13% difference

Update: It seems the formula I used above is the “shared” gravitational force between the earth and the moon, Phil plait comes up with a maximum 50% increase in the moons gravitational effect on the earth, which is a more useful number. Also he’s an astronomer, so I’d take his word over mine.. On anything but Star Trek trivia :)

When the moon is at it’s closest and at the same time line up with the sun, we get what’s called the Perigean spring time. In other words, a big ass tide :)

 

Earthquakes and statistics!

They also cited a professor in astronomy (they actually referred to him as professor in astrology, but later changed the article and deleted the comments pointing this out).

The paper suggests that earthquakes can be caused by the moon being to close to the earth (sounds like a 50′s sci-fi movie), but what I find quite surprising is the rather strange quote from the professor:
“I would be very surprised, if there was a really strong earthquake at this particular date”. and that while living in California, he witnessed an powerful earthquake on the day before a “supermoon”.

The USGS defines a strong earthquake as anything with a magnitude of 6.0 or above (Christchurch was 6.3). On average there 150 earthquake like this yearly.

So the chance for a strong earthquake to happen on march 19th, is 41%.

If we however include the day before and after, the chance increases to 79%.

If we where to include 2 days before and after, we’re up to 92%.

So it’s pretty certain that a big earthquake will take place on or around march 19th, and it’s pretty certain crazy doomsday nuts will say there is a connection between that statistically predicted earthquake and the evil moon. The chance of the quake hitting a densely populated area however is much smaller, so maybe the nuts won’t notice it

update 11.03.2011: As statistics predicted a large earthquake did occur. It did hit a densely populated area, and caused a huge tsunami that hit the northwestern coast of Japan causing massive damages and deaths :(

The newspaper actually takes this flawed thinking to a whole new level, posting a picture from a earthquake/tsunami in Indonesia, making the point that it “happened only 2 weeks before a supermoon” (oooouh spooky!!).

This is just moronic.. the chance of a strong earthquake being 2 weeks before or after a certain date is 99.999977369 %

Note: all my calculations are based upon dates of earthquakes being relatively evenly distributed through the year, as confirmed by USGS

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evidence against homeopathy

Wednesday, February 9th, 2011

Seeing as I made a list of what lesser scholarly inclined would call “evidence for homeopathy“, I find it only fitting to also provide a a few studies that show no effect of homeopathy. These are only a few, you can find tons more on pubmed, or wikipedia.

Note, that many of these are meta studies which means it’s a study of several other studies (usually some poor ones). This means there will often be some weak results saying there is an effect other than placebo. This is caused by poor studies (methodological flaws, insufficient randomization, ineffective blinding, confirmation and publication biases, etc..) that are “averaged” into the results of the meta study.

A systematic review of systematic reviews of homeopathy (link)
“In conclusion, the hypothesis that any given homeopathic remedy leads to clinical effects that are relevantly different from placebo or superior to other control interventions for any medical condition, is not supported by evidence from systematic reviews”

Homeopathy for childhood and adolescence ailments (link)
“The evidence from rigorous clinical trials of any type of therapeutic or preventive intervention testing homeopathy for childhood and adolescence ailments is not convincing enough for recommendations in any condition”

Are the clinical effects of homoeopathy placebo effects (link)
“This finding is compatible with the notion that the clinical effects of homoeopathy are placebo effects”

Clinical trials of homoeopathy (link)
“At the moment the evidence of clinical trials is positive but not sufficient to draw definitive conclusions because most trials are of low methodological quality and because of the unknown role of publication bias”

Are the clinical effects of homeopathy placebo effects? A meta-analysis of placebo-controlled trials (link)
“the results of our meta-analysis are not compatible with the hypothesis that the clinical effects of homeopathy are completely due to placebo. However, we found insufficient evidence from these studies that homeopathy is clearly efficacious for any single clinical condition”

Evidence of clinical efficacy of homeopathy (link)
“There is some evidence that homeopathic treatments are more effective than placebo; however, the strength of this evidence is low because of the low methodological quality of the trials. Studies of high methodological quality were more likely to be negative than the lower quality studies”

Impact of study quality on outcome in placebo-controlled trials of homeopathy (link)
“We conclude that in the study set investigated, there was clear evidence that studies with better methodological quality tended to yield less positive results.”

The methodological quality of randomized controlled trials of homeopathy, herbal medicines and acupuncture (link)
“While the methodological quality of the trials was highly variable, the majority had important shortcomings in reporting and/or methodology.”

Is homeopathy a clinically valuable approach? (link)
“Contrary to many claims by homeopaths, there is no conclusive evidence that highly dilute homeopathic remedies are different from placebos. The benefits that many patients experience after homeopathic treatment are therefore most probably due to nonspecific treatment effects. Contrary to widespread belief, homeopathy is not entirely devoid of risk. Thus, the proven benefits of highly dilute homeopathic remedies, beyond the beneficial effects of placebos, do not outweigh the potential for harm that this approach can cause”

Efficacy of homeopathic arnica (link)
“The claim that homeopathic arnica is efficacious beyond a placebo effect is not supported by rigorous clinical trials”

A systematic review of the quality of homeopathic pathogenetic trials published from 1945 to 1995 (link)
“The central question of whether homeopathic medicines in high dilutions can provoke effects in healthy volunteers has not yet been definitively answered, because of methodological weaknesses of the reports”

Efficacy of homeopathic therapy in cancer treatment (link)
“Our analysis of published literature on homeopathy found insufficient evidence to support clinical efficacy of homeopathic therapy in cancer care”

Homeopathy for chronic asthma (link)
“here is not enough evidence to reliably assess the possible role of homeopathy in asthma”

Homeopathy for dementia (link)
“In view of the absence of evidence it is not possible to comment on the use of homeopathy in treating dementia”

Homoeopathy for induction of labour (link)
“There is insufficient evidence to recommend the use of homoeopathy as a method of induction”

Double-blind randomized placebo-controlled study of homoeopathic prophylaxis of migraine (link)
“Overall, there was no significant benefit over placebo of homoeopathic treatment”

Randomized controlled trials of individualized homeopathy (link)
“The results of the available randomized trials suggest that individualized homeopathy has an effect over placebo. The evidence, however, is not convincing because of methodological shortcomings and inconsistencies.”

The effects of homeopathic belladonna 30CH in healthy volunteers (link)
“There is no indication that belladonna 30CH produces symptoms different from placebo or from no intervention”

Comparison of homeopathy, placebo and antibiotic treatment of clinical mastitis in dairy cows (link)
“Evidence of efficacy of homeopathic treatment beyond placebo was not found in this study”

Homeopathic Arnica 30x is ineffective for muscle soreness after long-distance running (link)
“Homeopathic Arnica 30x is ineffective for muscle soreness following long-distance running”
I just had to include this. not often the conclusion and title are identical :)

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Posted in General, Science, Skepticism | 2 Comments »

The evidence for homeopathy

Wednesday, February 9th, 2011

Recently in a “discussion” with a homeopath, I’ve been asking for documentation that homeopathy actually works. In the references I got, even the studies that claim even a small effect of homeopathic medicine, also point out methodological weaknesses and flaws of the studies. If this is the best studies homeopaths can point to, it’s nothing short of pathetic.

The title of the studies are in bold, to find the study just google the title and you’ll find it on pubmed. You should also read the whole article if available (especially the findings, conclusion and discussion parts are fun).

Homeopathy for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder or hyperkinetic disorder
MAIN RESULTS: The forms of homeopathy evaluated to date do not suggest significant treatment effects for the global symptoms, core symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity or impulsivity, or related outcomes such as anxiety in Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.

Evidence of clinical efficacy of homeopathy. A meta-analysis of clinical trials. HMRAG. Homeopathic Medicines Research Advisory Group
CONCLUSIONS: There is some evidence that homeopathic treatments are more effective than placebo; however, the strength of this evidence is low because of the low methodological quality of the trials. Studies of high methodological quality were more likely to be negative than the lower quality studies.

A critical overview of homeopathy
some randomized, placebo-controlled trials and laboratory research report unexpected effects of homeopathic medicines.However, the evidence on the effectiveness of homeopathy for specific clinical conditions is scant, is of uneven quality, and is generally poorer quality than research done in allopathic medicine

Clinical trials of homeopathy. British Medical Journal
CONCLUSIONS: At the moment the evidence of clinical trials is positive but not sufficient to draw definitive conclusions because most trials are of low methodological quality and because of the unknown role of publication bias

Are the clinical effects of homeopathy placebo effects? A meta-analysis of placebo-controlled trials
INTERPRETATION: The results of our meta-analysis are not compatible with the hypothesis that the clinical effects of homeopathy are completely due to placebo. However, we found insufficient evidence from these studies that homeopathy is clearly efficacious for any single clinical condition.

The conclusions on the effectiveness of homeopathy highly depend on the set of analyzed trials
CONCLUSIONS: Our results do neither prove that homeopathic medicines are superior to placebo nor do they prove the opposite. This, of course, was never our intention.

Are the clinical effects of homoeopathy placebo effects? Comparative study of placebo-controlled trials of homoeopathy and allopathy
INTERPRETATION: there was weak evidence for a specific effect of homoeopathic remedies, but strong evidence for specific effects of conventional interventions. This finding is compatible with the notion that the clinical effects of homoeopathy are placebo effects.

A randomised, controlled, triple-blind trial of the efficacy of homeopathic treatment for chronic fatigue syndrome
CONCLUSIONS: There is weak but equivocal evidence that the effects of homeopathic medicine are superior to placebo. Results also suggest that there may be nonspecific benefits from the homeopathic consultation. Further studies are needed to determine whether these differences hold in larger sample

How healthy are chronically ill patients after eight years of homeopathic treatment?
Our findings demonstrate that patients who seek homeopathic treatment are likely to improve considerably, although this effect must not be attributed to homeopathic treatment alone.
“The aim of this study, however, was not to test the effectiveness of homeopathic drug treatment”

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10:23 Trondheim (Sleeping pill overdose)

Saturday, February 5th, 2011

Today was the international 10:23 campaign. Thousands of people with a bias towards reality took huge overdoses of Homeopathic “Medicine”.

I took around 70 (3500% overdose) homeopathetic sleeping pills today, if I had taken real sleeping medicine I would probably be dead or dying about now.

Homeopathy of course is pure and utter bullshit, the 70 pills did not make me sleepy or affect me in any way, which is exactly what is expected for a “medicine” which has no active ingredients and consequently fail to show any effect besides placebo when scientifically tested.

Letting 60 pills melt under your tongue at once kinda sucks btw…

Homeopathy overdose
OM NOM NOM NOM!

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Posted in Food & Drink, General, Science, Skepticism | 1 Comment »

Kent Hovind is back?

Friday, January 28th, 2011

I recently read on twitter that Kent Hovind was released from jail!
The tweet came from Michael Shermer, however this fortunately proved to be false. Kent is still locked away and not scheduled for release until 2015

For those who don’t know, Dr. Kent Hovind (Not really a doctor, but he likes to think that piece of paper from a diploma mill makes him one) is a creationist who thinks that the world is 6000 years old.

  • He thinks evolution (and even mathematics) is a religion.
  • The grand canyon was formed in a couple of weeks.
  • Thinks humans at dinosaurs lived at the same time (The Flintstones hypothesis).
  • Sentenced for 10 years for tax fraud (Denying evolution just makes you an idiot, but denying taxation will kinda ruin your day).

If you’re interested in his fantastically erroneous claims filled with logical fallacies and outright lies, you could check out drdino.com

I personally avoid such sites, because no matter how many times you point out their errors, these fundamentalists will continue using the same old shot to pieces arguments like nothing happened.

For example the latest post on Dr Dino is an excellent display in being wrong:

“Nobody has ever seen ANY plant or animal (including apes and humans) produce ANYTHING other than their own kind”

This is a false continuum fallacy, which is like saying one brick is not a pyramid, and adding just one brick does not make it a pyramid.

Adding one brick millions of times will in fact make a pyramid, just as many very small genetic modifications over a huge amount of time will make a human.

This argument also has a straw man fallacy. No scientist says there is a sharp line between being a pre-human ape, and being a modern human. Just like there is no sharp line between being a pile of bricks and being a pyramid. Small progress over time is one of the cornerstones of evolution, and is almost always (deliberately) misunderstood by creationists. The notion that an animal will over ONE generation make something so different that it’s an entirely new species is just silly and has nothing to do with evolution (it does however happen in X-men).

“Every farmer on planet earth throughout all of recorded history has counted on evolution NOT happening! When the farmers plant corn, they expect (and get) CORN—EVERY TIME!”

This is the same argument as above just using plants instead of humans (very clever), containing the same logical fallacies. Instead of simply repeating my reply from above, I’ll reply with images:

Banana 7000 years ago:
Wild Banana

Modern Banana:

Of course nobody in their right mind believes you can plant the first image (oldskool banana) and get a modern one. However evolving it over the course of thousands of year is no problem. In fact almost all plants, vegetables and fruits used in agriculture today has been specifically evolved over thousands of years (by artificial selection instead of natural) to make stuff we humans find appealing.

For more fantastic creationist banana based arguments, check out this awesome video

“There are billions of bones in the ground but no “record.” Some people put their interpretation on those bones but NONE have dates on them when they are found and none can talk”

Is “lying” a logical fallacy? guess not.. There have been discovered hundreds of millions of fossils all over the world, and they make up a record (small and simple life forms are the oldest, and diversity and complexity increase over time). Fossils can be dated with a very high accuracy (1% error on radiometric dating from 60 million years ago), Kent of course does not believe in this kind of dating since it conflicts with his religious views. The bones talk by showing how creatures have gradually changed over time.

“The idea is that evolution happened so fast that no evidence was preserved”

Punctuated equilibrium is not a required feature of evolution, it’s just an unproven hypothesis that states that evolution happens very quickly (quickly compared to geological timeframes, it’s still taking tens of thousands of years). Considering how few animals turn into fossils out of all animals that ever lived, rapid changes over a 50’000 year period of evolution could easily be lost

There is not a scientific consensus regarding the punctuated equilibrium hypothesis, like there is for the theory and scientific fact of evolution. Evolution as a whole does not in any way depend on this hypothesis (which just tries to explain minor details that can be explained by other mechanisms).

“If you have ever broken even ONE of God’s laws (….such as lying,….) I suggest you get a good lawyer”

“I know one who has NEVER lost a case. He is my advocate for judgment day”

It must be nice being able to lie your ass off, when you got Jesus as a lawyer..

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Homeopathic sleeping pills

Monday, January 17th, 2011

A couple of hours back, I took 10 pills of the homeopathic sleeping “medicine” called Viasedal, markeded in Norway by Norges NaturmedisinSentral AS (Norwegian Nature medicine sentral inc).

Viasedal

these 10 oddly tasting little things constitutes a 500% dose of sleeping pills, yet I’m unsurprisingly very much awake, and will of course stay that way until midnight or so.

What is homeopathy?

To sum it up, homeopathy is the belief that what makes you sick, also makes you well. But only if you take it in ridiculously tiny doses.
Example: You’re having trouble sleeping, and since caffeine makes you NOT sleep, quite logically a tiny amount of caffeine will make you sleep.

The way you make homeopathic “medicine” is to mix 1 part caffeine with 99 parts water. Then you take out 1 part of this new mixture and put that in 99 parts of water, then that part into another 99 parts of water, and so on, and so on..

This is when homeopathy gets really fun, the more dilute (less of the active ingredient) you have, the stronger the “medicine” is.. Yes that totally makes sense. The strongest homeopathic medicine is actually so dilute that it crosses the a limit in chemistry known as Avogadro’s number, which means that not even a single molecule of the original substance is present in the concoction you are making. So you eventually end up with very expensive water.

The homeopaths say this makes perfect sense because water has magical properties unknown to science, and that “remembers” the stuff it was in contact with. The inventor (Samuel Hahnemann) called this a spirit-like healing force. Hopefully the water won’t remember all the fish poop and pollution it came into contact with while in the ocean.

Samuel "numbnuts" Hahnemann

Of course this is all bullshit, it’s completely asinine, defies even the smallest  amount of common sense, contradicts hundreds of years of research into chemistry and physics, and have been tested by science countless times, showing that taking homeopathic medicine does in no way differ from drinking water (pun intended).

Viasedal

The vial of Viasedal i got contained 50 pills, each weighing aproximately 0.35 grams.

pill weight

And the contents of this so called medicine is:

Viasedal Content

  • Calcarea phosphorica (or as normal people call it: Calcium phosphate, the stuff you get from milk).
  • Ignatia Amara (the plant Strychnos ignatia) Believed by homeopaths to help with Hysteria.
  • Arnica montana (wow, I’ve actually seen this plant outside lots of time without knowing it was magical)
  • Nux vomica (better know as the Strychnine tree, highly poisonous, at least if taken in non-homeopathic doses).
  • Jalapa (plant to help with colic and diarrhea) not sure what they’re supposed to do for sleep though.
  • Kalium carbonicum (or what scientists might call Potassium carbonate, or old school baking powder)

Now all of these are present in extremely small amounts, lets’ start with the calcium one. which says “D5″. in homeopathy this means 10% 5 times.

So in a 0.35 gram pill there should be 3.5 microgram of calcium. which is 0.003% of the daily recommended calcium intake.

The other ingredients are listed at 4C, this means 1% 4 times (in other words, 1% of 1% of 1% of 1% of X)

In other words, each pill should have 3.5 nanograms* (1 nanogram is one billionth of a gram) of the ingredients listed above.

To put that in perspective, if you ate 857* of these pills, the ingredients would in mass equal a single grain of sand.

The pill also consists of 0.000000005%* active ingredients (the ingredients above).

UPDATE:
*I finally got the amount of active ingredients in each pill from the supplier/producer:
Even though each pill weigh 0.35 gram, less than 0.035 grams is actually the diluted calcium “medicine”, the rest is just mostly inert pill material. So all numbers above are 10 times as high as they should, which means you would need 8570 of these pills to make up a grain of sand in active ingredients. each pill has 0.35 nanograms of the ingredient.

Why??

Why am I wasting my time eating “medicine” that obviously does not work?
Just trying to do my part, showing people that it does not work!

The belief in homeopathy actually kills people by preventing them from getting real medicine. Luckily homeopathy is not very wide spread in Norway, but some pharmacies like “Apotek Løven” at Byhaven in Trondheim promotes this crap

Apotek Løven

I’ll be eating the rest of my 40 pills on February 5th, as part of the 10:23 campaign, a UK based initiative (where Homeopathy is widely used). So along with thousands of other skeptical, scientifically minded people all over the world, I’ll be eating a bunch of placebo pills.

“Homeopathy, there’s nothing in it”

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