badscience

posts about #badscience more →
Everything that Cures or Prevents Cancer (According to the Media)
CERN Is The Front Line In Science Fiction's War Against Science
Clever New Breast Gadgets Can't Support Their Claims
Teen with Home Chemistry Lab Arrested for Meth, Bombs
Computer-Generated Paper Accepted for Prestigious Technical Conference
Bad Science Can Lead To Good Stories
Hard Scifi Flick "Splice" Actually Based on Internet-Rumor Science
Ultra-Bright X-Ray Machine in Danger
What if Sony Really Did Have Corporate DNA?
Climate Change Traced to High Divorce Rate

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Klebert L. Hall
09/01/09

In reply to Everything that Cures or Prevents Cancer (According to the Media)
Life causes death. We really ought to get over it.
-Kle.
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Roklimber
08/31/09

In reply to Everything that Cures or Prevents Cancer (According to the Media)
I recently watched a very interesting TED talk about the possibility that cancer may actually not be a disease but an extreme form of healing that certain kinds of cells in the body have not yet mastered.

Eva Vertes looks to the future of medicine
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27dec1983
08/31/09

@Roklimber: that's like cutting of your arm to lose weight
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Roklimber
09/01/09

@27dec1983: It sounds like that, yes, but if you watch the talk you'll see that it actually is not a crazy idea.

There are cells in the body (eg, muscle cells) that are so active that they require extreme forms of healing. However, precisely because they're so active, evolution has fine-tuned the process for those cells so that they (the cells) know how and when to turn off the cancer mechanism that drives their healing.

There's evidence that other kinds of cell also know how to heal themselves by triggering a cancerous mechanism, but they haven't yet "learned" how to stop it.

The idea, then, is to look at cancer from a different perspective and find ways not to avoid it but to teach cells when and how to stop it.
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gorehound
08/31/09

In reply to Everything that Cures or Prevents Cancer (According to the Media)
I wish they could cure it.My friend Mark has lung cancer.He was the bass player in my first punk band back in the 1970's ijn Boston called The Transplants.
He is getting chemo therapy and radiation therapy.
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Dr Emilio Lizardo
08/31/09

In reply to Everything that Cures or Prevents Cancer (According to the Media)
Fun site, but not well indexed. They have three citations each for Anastrazole and Arimidex but they are different citations. Anastrazole is the generic name for Arimidex and it is still on patent so they are not only legally but truly exactly the same.

As Roger Ebert once said "That's the problem with watching a documentary when you actually know the subject."
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MosesMonster
08/31/09

@Dr Emilio Lizardo: Every site that has been citing this have all omitted the last four panels probably to entice readers to actually click the sourced links and drive traffic to SMBC. Tis funnier in whole context.
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Grey_Area
08/31/09

@MosesMonster: That really is damn funny.
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phoenix
08/31/09

In reply to Everything that Cures or Prevents Cancer (According to the Media)
I love SMBC for this very reason. :D
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botanicidal
08/31/09

In reply to Everything that Cures or Prevents Cancer (According to the Media)
So true... It seems that old joke about 50% of people not understanding statistics is true. I keep reading mainstream newspapers and cringe everytime there is an article on Gardasil, or H1N1, or cancer, or whatever the healthscare du jour seems to be. The commentary allotted for online publications and newspapers these days show but a hint at the stupidity of people in interpreting said terrible science journalism. Its a very half-assed two way street. Both journalists and readers are incompetent to the nth degree in interpreting anything of a scientific nature.
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Grey_Area
08/31/09

@botanicidal: So you're saying statistics cause cancer, right?
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Pope John Peeps II
08/31/09

@botanicidal: Isn't Gardasil the HPV vaccine? What's wrong with that?
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RandomFrequentFlierDent
08/31/09

@Pope John Peeps II: There's recently been some questioning as to whether Gardasil is safe/effective/beneficial.
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tetracycloide
09/01/09

@RandomFrequentFlierDent: and then there's the problem of only perscribing it to women when men are the primary carriers.
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crashedpc - Haifisch
08/31/09

In reply to Everything that Cures or Prevents Cancer (According to the Media)
Heehee, SMBC.

"SCIENTIST RAPES REPORTER"
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Grey_Area
08/31/09

In reply to Everything that Cures or Prevents Cancer (According to the Media)
Very odd that on that site there is no "J" section. Are they covering up the fact that Journalism Causes Cancer?!
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Ruthless, If you let me
08/31/09

@Grey_Area: Damn. I was hoping for Jelly Beans Cure Cancer.
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Edited by Ruthless, If you let me at 08/31/09 3:31 PM

analog orange
07/15/09

In reply to CERN Is The Front Line In Science Fiction's War Against Science
There's nothing wrong with science. But scientists have themselves demonized the whole subject by regularly ignoring their own history. We have as a whole always assumed that our generation is getting everything right. No generation has ever gotten everything right. You may think you understand how the universe works. You don't. You have an idea. An educated and well thought out one. But in 100 years, your idea will have been picked apart and a new idea will form. One closer to the truth. But only closer. Philosophers used to get this, why can't the scientific community as a whole? It's elementary.
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Bill-Lee
07/14/09

In reply to CERN Is The Front Line In Science Fiction's War Against Science
I once wrote to the suits at the SciFi Channel and asked if they were Luddites. Needless to say, I got no response. Too many of their "original" movies and many of their "original" series are built on the premise of "science and technology are inherently evil". This includes Battlestar Galactica, which, as solid as it was, was still rooted in the Luddite concept of "beware science and technology run amok". Science and technology are tools and morally neutral. It's the person using them that has moral choice.
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iCurmudgeon
07/14/09

@Bill-Lee: Perhaps it's a reaction to the relentlessly upbeat plots of Star Trek the Franchise?
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Edited by iCurmudgeon at 07/14/09 5:07 PM iCurmudgeon was starred iCurmudgeon was unstarred

Vermilion001
07/14/09

@Bill-Lee: I actually had this exact problem explaining my interest in consumer robots to a co-worker. He kept going back to "but don't you think it's most likely that the robots would deem us unnecessary and choose to kill us? Like in Terminator"

"No, I don't think so, that's a cultural bias perpetuated by pop culture. I believe that robots will love mankind and save the children, like Astro Boy"

"I accept that someone can believe that, but it's most likely..."

"No it's not, you don't have any evidence of any such likelihood either way, you're speaking out of a fear of new technology that's pretty pervasive in American culture"

"I'm not AFRAID of robots, I'm saying that it's most likely that robots would turn on us and I'm worried"

That mentality is baffling.
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honeybee111
07/15/09

@iCurmudgeon:

I always thought the reactionary attitude toward Star Trek in the early 2000s (We want dark Sci Fi. No alien make up! Gritty!) was a very conservative backlash against pro-science, pro-humanism, optimistic Star Trek. It's not an accident that Trek has been revived during the Obama years. (Yes, I know the film was in production before the election, but still). Lots of mainstream Sci Fi demonizes science - from Frankenstein to BSG. And lots of it is dark. Trek was always a bit unique in its positivity - based on the idea that humans could make the right choices about what to do with technology and what not to do.
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crashedpc - Haifisch
07/14/09

In reply to CERN Is The Front Line In Science Fiction's War Against Science
I think portraying Tara Reid as a nuclear scientist irreparably destroyed the reputations of movie scientists everywhere.
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Pope John Peeps II
07/14/09

@crashedpc /sarcasm: Uh. Christmas Jones?
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crashedpc - Haifisch
07/14/09

@Pope John Peeps II: Did I make a factual booboo?
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HockeyMountain
07/14/09

@crashedpc /sarcasm: I think you mean Denise Richards in James Bond
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His_Steveness
07/14/09

@crashedpc /sarcasm: Tara Reid did play a scientist of some sort in Uwe Boll's critically acclaimed masterpiece Alone in the Dark.

But I don't think anybody gave a shit about that movie.
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Edited by His_Steveness at 07/14/09 2:19 PM His_Steveness was starred His_Steveness was unstarred

Pope John Peeps II
07/14/09

@HockeyMountain: Yep. She was the ORIGINAL nuclear scientist slutty crackpot.
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crashedpc - Haifisch
07/14/09

@His_Steveness: So... uh... what kind of scientist DID she play in this mythological Alone in the Dark movie? *has blocked memory, apologies for the mistake*
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crashedpc - Haifisch
07/14/09

@Pope John Peeps II: Ugh, this furlough has rotted away even my most basic Googling skills. Can't believe I screwed that one up. Must have been an unconscious link between "unrealistic hot nuclear scientist" and "unholy shitstorm movie by Uwe Boll".
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His_Steveness
07/14/09

@crashedpc /sarcasm: I think it was a paleontologist who specialized in aliens. You know, a perfectly reasonable career choice.

(All I know about that movie comes from the Agony Booth recap)
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Edited by His_Steveness at 07/14/09 5:27 PM His_Steveness was starred His_Steveness was unstarred

AngriestGeek
07/14/09

In reply to CERN Is The Front Line In Science Fiction's War Against Science
And isn't religion demonized in Angels & Demons and our hero is a Harvard professor? And then there's this Dr. Henry Jones Jr, who goes by the nickname "Indiana"... Seriously, the more I think about this complaint the emptier it becomes.
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icelight
07/14/09

@AngriestGeek: The hero of Angels and Demons is an Art History Professor. That's about as far away from scientist as you can get, and still be in academia. And when, exactly, did Indiana Jones do anything remotely scientific. I assure you that shoving demon-worshiping priests into giants pits of fire is hardly approved archeological technique. He had no grid reference for where the priest landed!
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TemporalSword
07/14/09

In reply to CERN Is The Front Line In Science Fiction's War Against Science
Stories need villains, something (or someone) scary, to be feared, and it's no longer the Russians, etc. Humans fear what they don't understand, and with the current state of education right now, that's science.
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Edited by TemporalSword at 07/14/09 12:37 PM TemporalSword was starred TemporalSword was unstarred

crashedpc - Haifisch
07/14/09

@TemporalSword: What's that phrase about sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic? OOGA BOOGA
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AngriestGeek
07/14/09

In reply to CERN Is The Front Line In Science Fiction's War Against Science
But for every scientist who "breaks the rules" isn't there an equally heroic scientist around to put the genie back in the bottle? It's not Joe The Plumber who figures out how to stop the stop the radioactive giant fireflies whose light threatens to destroy our national sleep patterns and keep the kids out all night chasing them. It's Professor Brilliant from the nearby university. Basically, for every Dr. Doom, there is a Reed Richards.
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icelight
07/14/09

@AngriestGeek: Usually it's not a scientist who solves those problems. It's the super-spy, or the military, or the plucky 12 year old, or in fact the Joe Nobody who also happens to have a gorgeous woman fall in love with him.
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tk.
07/14/09

In reply to CERN Is The Front Line In Science Fiction's War Against Science
A quick glance at Wikipedia's list of fictional scientists and engineers seems to contradict this theory. There are a lot of fictional scientists that are positive role models, like Buckaroo Banzai, or The Doctor.

Sure, "generic mad scientist" or "generic nerd scientist" are popular archetypes, but it looks like there are many more identifiable scientists that are actually characters rather than just caricatures.
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crashedpc - Haifisch
07/14/09

@tk.: True, but I get the impression that the good scientists are usually in movies that appeal to us geeks and nerds.
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