Continuing the live-blogging from yesterday…
14:00
First up after lunch is David Gorski on science-based medicine and medical research should be ethically performed, with special emphasis on the most recent winner of the Pigasus Award in the category of science. This was followed immediately by Bob Blaskiewicz on the effects of quack oncology on hapless patients. This stuff right here is just plain heartbreaking, and the billing practices aren’t particularly ethical either. When people ask you “What’s the harm?” in alternative medicine, you may want to show them the results of giving cancer patients unproven therapies.
15:00
Panel discussion on science-based medicine vs. quackery and alt-med.
Dr. Harriet Hall is having a proper go at William Rea again. Can’t say I blame her.
Now she is slamming the state medical boards for lacking balls. Can’t say I blame her for that either.
Paraphrasing Steven Novella: There is a lot of money in selling fake medicine, any that can buy power and influence enough to prevent the oversight boards from shutting down professional quacks, at least some of the time. He warns of a coming “Golden Age of Quackery” if we cannot reverse current trends.
Towards the end of panel, they hit on some good grassroots strategies for shutting down quack medical practitioners. My favorite: Find a patient who sustained a cognizable harm and provide them with a competent malpractice attorney.
Chas is back.
16:00
Jerry Coyne is up next. I wasn’t able to liveblog this but it was fun.
16:54
I didn’t get to blog as Susan Haack delivered her gravely needed analysis of credulity on our society and specifically our forensics system. I will try to summarize it after Dan Ariely is done.
Haack thinks that many people are unaware how credulity has permeated our world. In fact, many of her college students flatly give her blank stares whenever she uses the word and I think she’s right to care about this ignorance. Haack is especially worried about scientism which she defines as our non-skeptical consumer of scientific information. We allow ourselves to believe what individual experts say and we give far too much credence to the term “peer-reviewed paper.” I couldn’t have been more on her side but then she went on to thoroughly depress by relaying to us many examples in the criminal system where bunk was excepted because experts in forensics testified that they were certain they were right beyond a shadow of a doubt.
16:58
Dan Ariely is free wheeling on the stage without the use of a powerpoint. His confidence makes me believe that his speaking skills are vastly superior to my own.
Says that world is not full of a few people who cheat a lot but a lot of people who cheat a little. “The standard theory of dishonesty is a cost-benefit analysis.” If we make the the penalties for being dishonesty sever enough then we can stop the crime rate, right? But the death penalty doesn’t seem to stem the tide of crime in places like Texas. Says that his experiments don’t support the idea that people run a cost-benefit analysis because it doesn’t matter if there is a higher likelihood that they are caught or the penalties are greater.
Maybe it’s a part of our need to maintain a favorable opinion of ourselves. If we cheat a lot then maybe that makes us feel terrible about ourselves but minor cheats don’t register with us. In other words, we have learned how to rationalize small cheating habits but we we haven’t learned how to rationalize something worse. There seems to be a difference how people react to watching someone else cheat and get away with doing so depending on if the observed cheater seems to belong to the observer’s clan or what-have-you or if the cheater is the opposition. If the cheat is someone like you then you’ve learned that your peers are okay with it so the observer cheats as well but when the out-group cheats then we tend to be more virtuous and not cheat.
Dan is giving me very much to muse on because it seems to fly in the face of criminal statistics across the world and hey they relate to the area’s governmental efficacy. Says that his experiments across the world show no difference between nations in how people cheat.
He is a very funny man.
17:31
The Amazing Randi is going to deliver tonight’s keynote address and you could hear a pin drop in this place.
This is a very touching presentation as he is talking about his personal medical issues and his illustrious skeptic career. It’s rare to see a man so worthy of praise and admiration yet can’t stop himself from partaking in self deprecating humor. Randi is giving personal attention to Sanal Edamaruku who exposed the weeping statue in India as not a miracle from god and was subsequently forced out of India (he’s in the audience). Randi hints that Sanal’s work is not done in India and that there are great plans afoot. Tells a great story of how a book by Archimedes had been recovered by a very unusual way. The original book had been washed out of the paper and a new one had been written over it. They realized this was palimpset of Archimedes’ but was a copy written at a time that ink contained iron properties. This meant that the book’s pages could be individually scanned by an fMRI and this illuminated the hidden writing and the superimposed writing vanished.
Told a story of his brief experience with MENSA. Randi gave an example showing MENSA’s reckless attitude towards testing applicants. He also told us what he experienced as a MENSA speaker when he dared to call astrology bullshit. When the audience through a fit about this, Randi promptly removed the newly acquired MENSA pin from his lapel, stuck it in to the podium and got the hell out of there.
Randi lists his regrets. Never attending a live performance by Pavarotti, never making his way to South Africa and meeting Nelson Mandela and never standing in front of the Great Pyramids. This is taking a turn for the grave. But he can’t help cracking a few more terrific jokes.
I feel like I was a part of something wonderfully special and as The Amazing Randi left the podium to acknowledge his indebted audience, I had to squeeze back a couple tears to save face (since he had resisted doing so himself).
TAM fucking rules.
