French spermcount down —

Andrew M. Seaman writes: "Researchers found that between 1989 and 2005, the number of sperm in one milliliter of the average 35-year-old Frenchman's semen fell from about 74 million to about 50 million - a decrease of roughly 32 percent". [Chicago Tribune] — Rob •

Be careful out there, bedbug warriors —

Yes, bedbugs are gross. But before you go all Conan on any creepy creatures living in your mattress, please be aware that pesticides are both helpful and potentially dangerous. With bedbug infestations on the rise in many American cities, the Centers for Disease Control is trying to make people aware of the dangers of using too much pesticide, using the wrong types of pesticide, or not carefully following directions. Know what you're using on your home and know what any company you hire to spray is using, too. (Via Jen Gunter) — Maggie •

Dave Ng writes, "Tomorrow, the Government of Canada will go through the second reading of Bill C-398. This is essentially important discussion over the fate of a law that would allow a measured approached for the production of life saving generic medicines within Canada. These generics are life saving in the sense that with this law in place, meds that are needed but currently far too costly in developing world economies (due to patent protection) can reach those who dignity, and frankly their lives, are at stake. I've written about this before, but have updated this piece to reflect the current policy situation. I strongly feel all Canadians should read about this Bill. My post starts:

Dear Canadians:

On Wednesday, a very important piece of policy will be discussed in parliament. It's called Bill C-398 and it deserves our attention. It seems that it has been challenging for some to see its merits, and so, I'd like to take moment to clarify what it's all about. It turns out that it's not just important -- the narrative is compelling as well: it has a rich history of political intrigue; it is a story where viruses factor in prominently; it has a plot that involves armies of angry grandmothers; and above it all, learning about Bill C-398 can literally save lives.

If you agree with the sentiment of the piece, he strongly urges you to sign this quick petition, which in turn is sent to the folks in Parliament who need to hear your voice.

A moment of your time: about Bill C-398 and how Canadians can contribute to global health (Thanks, Dave!)

Oncologist and cancer-woo-debunker Orac has more on the legal details that allow this man to keep practicing medicine in Texas: "the dubious doctor known as Stanislaw Burzynski, who charges desperate patients with advanced (and usually incurable) cancer tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars to participate in his 'clinical trials' of antineoplastons, compounds that he claims to have isolated from urine and that he now represents as a promising new treatment that can do much better than existing therapies with much less toxicity, even though there’s no evidence that it can."

The Texas Medical Board has abandoned its prosecution of Burzynski, as noted in a previous Boing Boing post here with guest commentary by fellow anti-cancer-woo writer Robert Blaskiewicz.

The legal underpinnings of the case will be interesting to some, and too tedious for others, but here's the tl;dr from Orac's post: the outcome does not make the case that Burzynski's "science" is valid. The board simply found that, "as a matter of law, the TMB couldn’t bring action against Burzynski on the basis of actions performed by doctors under his supervision."

Read the rest

NYC's Dr Jack Berdy offers a botox treatment called "pokertox," which freezes parts of the face implicated in poker "tells" -- nonvolitional expression-changes that signal your opinion of your cards to your adversaries.

Some players look at their cards and ‘‘might raise their eyebrows or raise one eyebrow’’ if they do or don’t like what they see.

“Some squint, or furrow their brows,’’ Berdy said.

“We can inject Botox appropriately’’ so the other player doesn’t get the message that they’re angry, disappointed or happy.

“What someone sees across the table is no movement,’’ he said.

Remember the TSA's plan to turn mall-cops into mind-readers by teaching them to read semi-mythical "microexpressions" and so detect terrorists? Even if it worked, anyone wanting to foil it could presumably plump for some terror-tox injections and pass through the TSA look-into-my-eyes-and-swear-you're-not-a-jihadi checks smoothly and without batting an eyelash.

Botox poker face [NYPost/Rita Delfiner] (via Neatorama)

My latest Guardian column is "Why all pharmaceutical research should be made open access," and it makes the wider case for open access, beyond the obvious truth that publicly funded work should be available to the public:

One of the strongest arguments for public access in scholarly and scientific publication is the "public debt" argument: if the public pays you to do research, the research should belong to the public. That's a good argument, but it's not the whole story. For one thing, it's vulnerable to the "public-private partnership" counterargument, which goes, "Ah, yes, but why not ensure that the public gets a maximum dividend on its spending by charging lots of money for access to publicly funded research and returning the profit to the research sector?" I think this argument is rubbish, as do most economists who have studied the question.

The public good of freely accessible, unencumbered research generates more economic value for the public than the quick-hit sugar-rush you get from charging the public on the way in and again on the way out. This has held true in many sectors, though the canonical example is the massive public return from the US Geological Survey's freely usable maps, which have generated a fortune that makes the ransoms collected by the Ordnance Survey on its maps of the UK look like a pittance.

That's why Goldacre's work is important to this discussion. The reason pharma companies should be required to publish their results isn't that they've received a public subsidy for the research. Rather, it is because they are asking for a governmental certification saying that their products are fit for consumption, and they are asking for regulatory space to allow doctors to write prescriptions for those products. We need them to disclose their research – even if doing so undermines their profits – because without that research, we can't know if their products are fit for use.

Why all pharmaceutical research should be made open access

Bobbie Johnson writes,

New crowdfunded science and tech publisher MATTER launches today Earlier this year Boing Boing wrote about a Kickstarter project to produce serious, in-depth, long-form online journalism. Today, after months of work, we're launching with the publication of our first story, "Do No Harm" - an 8,000 report that uncovers a network of people suffering from a fringe condition known as Body Integrity Identity Disorder. People who suffer from BIID are at war with their own bodies - specifically one or more of their limbs, which they feel utterly disconnected from in a way that most of us would struggle to understand.

But the feelings that BIID triggers are so powerful that sufferers are often driven to relieve their pain in the most drastic way - by self-amputation or, in some cases, paying a sympathetic surgeon to cut off the affected limb. Our reporter, science writer Anil Ananthaswamy, unearthed a network of sufferers in America who travel to Asia for off-the-books operations -- and even travelled with one patient as he went to get the most extreme therapy imaginable.

MATTER's stories are available to buy and read through our website or as part of Amazon's Kindle Singles program, for $0.99 -- and anyone purchasing on our site gets a DRM-free ebook as part of the deal (or sign up to receive one story each month and we give you loads of extra goodies like audiobook downloads!)

TK (Thanks, Bobbie!)

(Image: Brian Lee)

Rabies isn't funny. But, somehow, Heather Swain makes her story about her brush with rabies absolutely hilarious.

Now Swain didn't have rabies, but she did have a lot of the symptoms that go along with it. In this Story Collider piece, she talks about her experience being "that patient with a mystery disease" and what it's like when nobody actually figures out what's making you sick.

The BBC's Keith Moore tells the tragic story of Joe Pasquini, an RAF navigator who was ordered to fly a jet through the mushroom cloud rising from the 1958 Grapple Y nuclear test, the largest nuclear explosion ever created by the British (he also flew through the Grapple Z test). He has since survived seven bouts with cancer; his children have also had various cancers. They blame his exposure to nuclear radiation, but have been denied any benefits by the British government, which, unlike the US military, does not acknowledge that veterans of nuclear tests are at any elevated risk of cancer. Here's Pasquini's description of his flight through the heart of a mushroom cloud:

"It detonated at 8,000 feet. We had our eyes closed, but even with our eyes closed we could see the light through our eye lids. It took 49 seconds for the light to stop.

"As soon as that happened, we immediately turned back. Fortunately being in the navigating position, I had a little window and I watched the whole thing develop and spread and then start climbing.

"I think I saw the face of God for the first time. It was just incredible, it blew our minds away. These were things that had never been seen before, certainly not by English people."

When the mushroom cloud had passed over them, Pasquini looked up at the window above him and had another surprise - radioactive rain.

"It's the only time I've experienced rain at 46,000 feet," he says.

Nuclear test veteran who flew through a mushroom cloud (via Kadrey)

Man sues church after crucifix crushes leg —

A man, crushed by the 600-lb marble crucifix he was cleaning, is suing the Hudson Valley church which gave him permission to do so: "Jimenez was standing on the crucifix's base, using rags and soapy water to clean Christ's face. While holding onto the cross beam for balance, the whole crucifix snapped off at its base, sending Jimenez crashing to the ground." [AP] — Rob •

Some pseudoscience is pretty obvious. I think most of us are comfortable saying that the world will probably not end this December, in accordance with any ancient prophecy. But distinguishing fact from fiction isn't always simple. In fact, "fact from fiction" might be too simple a way to even frame the question. In reality, we're sometimes tasked with spotting misapplication of real science. Sometimes, we have to tell the difference between a complicated thing that nobody understands yet very well but which is likely to be true and a complicated thing that nobody understands yet very well but which is not likely to be true.

Basically, it's messy.

Emily Willingham at Forbes has some helpful hints for how to make these distinctions. She offers ten questions that can serve as guidelines for approaching new topics you're skeptical of — questions that, taken all together, can help you see the patterns of pseudoscience and make informed decisions for yourself and your family.

3. What kind of language does it use? Does it use emotion words or a lot of exclamation points or language that sounds highly technical (amino acids! enzymes! nucleic acids!) or jargon-y but that is really meaningless in the therapeutic or scientific sense? If you’re not sure, take a term and google it, or ask a scientist if you can find one. Sometimes, an amino acid is just an amino acid. Be on the lookout for sciencey-ness. As Albert Einstein once pointed out, if you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it well. If peddlers feel that they have to toss in a bunch of jargony science terms to make you think they’re the real thing, they probably don’t know what they’re talking about, either.

9. Were real scientific processes involved? Evidence-based interventions generally go through many steps of a scientific process before they come into common use. Going through these steps includes performing basic research using tests in cells and in animals, clinical research with patients/volunteers in several heavily regulated phases, peer-review at each step of the way, and a trail of published research papers. Is there evidence that the product or intervention on offer has been tested scientifically, with results published in scientific journals? Or is it just sciencey-ness espoused by people without benefit of expert review of any kind?

Read the rest at Willingham's Forbes blog, The Science Consumer

Image: Day 35 of 365 - A Private Stash, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from jesssseeee's photostream