End of the Line

On Tuesday (24th April) Leeds Atheist Society had its AGM and after 104 weeks of being on the committee I’m stepping down.

I’m really proud of what my committee achieved in my year as a president. A year ago the society was in a precarious position, I’m really pleased that we’ve turned it around and that the society is going in the right direction again.  I’ve learned an awful lot from being president and it has been hard work as well, but it has also been rewarding to have had some success to go along with that.

I’m excited to see what direction the society will take in 2012-13 year.  I wish my successor, James Gupta, and his committee all the best and look forward to see what fresh ideas they bring to the society.  I’ll be taking a step back from the society but I do plan to make a few appearances when time allows.

I’d also like to thank everyone who I have worked alongside at the society for the last two years and everyone who’s came to our events.   It has been quite an experience!

Going forward for me I’ll be mostly focusing on my PhD for the foreseeable future.  I’ll still be involved with Leeds Skeptics and I’ve also got a new talk in the planning stages which I’ll hopefully debut sometime before the end of the year.  The talk combines my interest in skepticism towards alternative medicine with my academic life as a chemist.  I hope to answer the question why do a lot of medicines come from molecules found in nature?  I’ll also give an introduction to modern drug design and where we might find new medicines in the future.  Along the way I hope to impart some interesting science!

 

Skeptics News February 18th

A Homeopathic Treatment for Burns

One of the central principles of homeopathy is that like-cures-like, so some homeopaths say that heat can be used to treat burns!  The reason that this treatment has been adopted by some homeopaths is because there is anecodal evidence for heat making burns hurt less (after the initial treatment at least). At first glace this seems counter-intuitive. A first degree burn hurts like hell because damage is superficial  and the nerve-endings are still intact, more serious burns hurt less because the nerve-endings are either damaged or destroyed. Treating a nasty first-degree burn with heat may indeed be less painful but makes the burn far worse and takes much longer to heal, result in scarring, and in sometimes require a skin graft.

Source article here and fuller skeptic response 

Advertising Standards Agency Say Church Can’t Advertise Faith Healing

A Christian organisation in Bath has been odered to remove claims from their website and leaflets that god can cure illness.  Here’s what their literature claimed:

“Need Healing? God can heal today! Do you suffer from Back Pain, Arthritis, MS, Addiction … Ulcers, Depression, Allergies, Fibromyalgia, Asthma, Paralysis, Crippling Disease, Phobias, Sleeping disorders or any other sickness?

The advertising standards authority took action on the grounds that these claims were irresponsible and could encourage false hope.  The christian response has been the typical mixture of confusion and victim complex.

“All over the world as part of their normal Christian life, Christians believe in, pray for and experience God’s healing; our ministry, in common with many churches, has been active in praying for God’s healing (of Christians and non Christians) for many years.”

“but there are certain things that we cannot agree to – including a ban on expressing our beliefs”.

Source articles: here and here 

The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything

A new journal, Life, published a paper entitled  Theory of the Origin, Evolution, and Nature of Life, that claims to provide a theoretical basis to the origin of life.  It’s a pretty meaty paper with 105 pages but it’s also complete nonsense!  There was no mathematical basis provided, no experiments described, and all of the figures were hand drawn by the author!  The same journal also published some creationist BS as well.  The editorial team have since resigned.

Sources: Here and here

The Science Delusion 

Morphic fields and animal telepathy expert Rupert Sheldrake has a new book out entitled ‘The Science Delusion’. The central theme of the book is that conventional scientists constrain themselves by relying too much on materialistic evidence and could discover much more about the universe if we just relaxed that a bit.  In his book he asks questions like ‘Is matter unconscious?’,  ’Are minds confined to the brain?, and ‘Are the laws of  Nature fixed?’.

Read an annoying sympathetic interview with Sheldrake here.

Pope Dawkins Deposed

This week Richard Dawkins appeared on Radio 4′s today program and during the course of the interview was asked what the full title of “The Origin of Species” was.  He didn’t recall it correctly and invoked the name of God in his confusion!  Obviously Richard Dawkins is no longer fit to be the infallible leader of atheists.  He will have to settle for being a mortal human being, capable of making mistakes, and be as open to critisicism as everyone else.  I hope that won’t be too much of an inconvienc for him.

On a serious point, it is incredible how much every mistake Dawkins makes he’s jumped on.

Skeptics News 21st January 2012

How Did The Psychics Do In 2011?

In my skeptics in the pub news slides in January 2011 I showed some psychic’s predictions for 2011, let’s see how they did:

•Debate over Creation Theory vs. Evolution will find both are partially right. Nope

•MySpace sold/merges with Facebook.  Hit! This one happened.

•Lady Gaga becomes a university teacher Nope

•A new solution to the common cold in the form of a special steel pendant Nope

•Billionaire Bill Gates will enter politics Nope

•A major assassination will be hailed as the crime of the century Nope

•Two massive industrial accidents: India has a nuclear disaster, China a huge chemical factory explosion Close! There was the nuclear accident at Fuksihima so only a few thousand miles out. A shame the tsunami couldn’t have been predicted.

•Earthquake in California and the famous Hollywood sign is damaged. Nope

•Fidel Castro’s death will unleash a popular revolt against Cuba’s communist establishment Nope

• Pope Benedict will die in 2011-2012  and The end of the Catholic Church will happen in the period 2011-2012 Nope

Nature Sells Out 

Nature is one of the worlds most prestigious science journals.  Getting your work published in Nature is regarded as a “Home Run” by most scientists, particularly those working in life sciences.  The reputation of Nature brand name carries an awful lot of weight so you would like to think everything published in Nature is of the highest scientific standard -and for the most part it is- however in the December issue of Nature they had a supplement about Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). The supplement was paid for by two companies, Saishunkan Pharmaceutical and Kitasato University Oriental Medicine Research Centre you can read the full sponsor messages here and judge for yourself – but they certainly quack like quacks.

Saishunkan is a herbal medicine manufacturer which aims to help people make the most of their natural powers of healing and self-recovery.

Accepting cash to feature research in one of its supplements is a dark side of Nature but it is not uncommon. For example, a recent issue of Nature had a supplement focusing on Multiple Myeloma which was sponsored by Onyx Pharmaceuticals; more controversially a supplement devoted to discussing allergerys was sponsored by the Nestle Research Centre.  It may be distasteful that companies and organisations can buy space in a supplement of an academic journal but it’s hardly the worst thing you can accuse academic publishers of. In most cases the research being featured is legitimate and interesting; which brings us to why this particular supplement is a problem.

The content of this supplement would never appear as a scientific article in any peer-reviewed journal.  It is for the most part pseudoscience and suggesting that the spiritual approach used by TCM practitioners has insights to health that elude science-based medicine. One article talks about how a diagnosis can be made by looking at the tongue and by diagnosis I mean pseudoscientific nonsense like “Qi stagnation” and “Yang deficiency”.  Most of the articles are an appeal to the reader by using an argument from antiquity i.e. TCM has been around for thousands of years.  A quote from the same article is quite telling.

Pharmaceutical regulations in the West are developed according to the Western way of drug R&D, and they are not fit for evaluating TCM drugs,” says Henry Sun, vice-president of Tasly Group. “Of course, TCM should be proved on the basis of scientific evidence.” However, Sun argues that the science is skewed towards testing single agents targeted to single mechanisms.

This is an example of special pleading.  It may as well say “If you’re going to use your science and your evidence then of course it won’t work!”

The Nature supplements are more of a magazine than a journal however, the Nature brand name does carry a lot of weight and featuring this kind of research gives it legitimacy that it does not deserve. It’s true that some TCM or herbal medicine has yielded potent biological compounds that have been used as leads for pharmaceutical development.  The link between compounds found in nature  (known as natural products) and medicinal chemistry is interesting and I may blog about that and how  medicinal chemistry works in the 21st century at a later date.

You can view the Nature supplement, for free, here and a fuller commentary on this story here.

SOPA

Many websites such as wikipedia took part in a protest against the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act.  The bills language is so broad it could far reaching consequences.

Proponents of the bill say that it is necessary as law enforcement doesn’t have the tools to fight online piracy.  The news on Friday that megaupload had been shutdown and the founders facing criminal charges makes a mockery of their arguments.

Freedom of Expression Under Attack

First, University College London (UCL) Atheist Society got in to trouble with the UCL union after complaints were made about an image on their facebook group. The image was from the comic strip Jesus and Mo. This story was followed by the New Humanist, the Richard Dawkins Foundation, the National Secular Society, and others. The end result was the union withdrew their request to remove the image. Although the president of that society has since resigned.

Earlier this week Queen Mary Atheist Society were due to host a debate on Sharia law with One Law For All spokesperson Ann Marie Waters due to speak.  This event was cancelled over safety concerns, because a man burst into the room filming faces of the attendees  and threatening to”hunt them down” if anyone said anything against Mohammed. You can read Ann Marie’s account of what happened here and The Independents coverage here.

Skeptical blogger Rhys Morgan has been threatened by other students at his school because of his support for the UCL group. You can read Rhys’ blog here.

In response to all of this a Rally to support Freedom of Expression has been organised, it will take place in London on February 11th 2012.

Psychic Animals

An article in the Mail suggests that we aren’t using the psychic potential of animals. Maybe this is  because animals aren’t psychic?

Tesco Profits Drop - Divine Intervention?

Christain voice, a Christian pressure group, are claiming responsibility for Tesco’s profits dropping over the Christmas period. Christian Voice were upset that Tesco had decided to sponsor London Pride and embarked on campaign of leafleting outside the stores and prayer.  Read the full post here.

Looking Forward to 2012

The first half of 2012 will be my last months with Leeds Atheist Society, but there is plenty more to come from us before the AGM.  In March we have the weekend away in London and the AHS convention. In April we will be hosting the Festival of Reason (formerly Reason Week) and, of course, a full program of Tuesday and Friday events.

This will be the second full year of my PhD and probably the year where the structure of the thesis will begin to take shape.  The highlight of this year will be the RSC conference  Challenges in Organic Chemistry and Chemical Biology include in Edinburgh this June, where I will be presenting a poster.

The standout gig of the year for me is the Musical Box (a Genesis tribute act) recreating ‘The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway’.  Unfortunately hardly any footage of the original 1974-5 show exists, which is a great shame is it is said to be one of the most theatrical shows ever produced by a prog rock band.  I first saw The Musical Box a couple of years ago when they were recreating the ‘Trick of the Tale’ tour, it’s as close to seeing ‘Genesis’ as is possible to get. In comedy, Richard Herring and Chris Addison are both coming to Leeds in February-March.

I don’t really make new years resolutions because it seems silly to limit life improvement to only once a year. However, in the last month or so I have found time to read a few books  and this something I’d like to continue with.  I’m especially looking forward to reading more of Christopher Hitchins, I decided I ought to read more of his work after listening to extracts from ‘Arguably’ on radio 4′s book of the week.

 

 

 

 

 

Open Yale Courses

I’ve recently come across Open Yale Courses, an open access educational resource provided by Yale University.  The site hosts hundreds of hours of video from their courses, mainly the introductory modules.  There is a pretty diverse range of courses available ranging from physical and social sciences to arts and literature. Most of the courses come with downloadable handouts and problem sets if you get really into it.

I think this is mainly something the former students will enjoy. I’m currently following the ‘Game Theory’ course which is pretty interesting, particularly in the real world applications that are discussed in the later lectures such as in sport and even some counter-terrorism.

It’s a great project that Yale have produced. No one has an excuse to be bored again!

New Blog!

So this is my new blog, I hope this will get me into the habit of writing regularly.

You can expect to read about; what I’ve been up to with Leeds Atheist Society, my news presentations from Leeds Skeptics, updates from my research at the University of Leeds, cool science, and my thoughts on various issues.

Hope you enjoy reading!