Furious Backlash From Simon Singh Libel Case Puts Chiropractors On Ropes
“As the British Chiropractic Association’s battle with Simon Singh continues to work its way through the legal system, chiropractors are counting the financial costs of a major backlash resulting from a libel action that has left the Lord Chief Justice “baffled”. What was originally a dispute between the BCA and one science writer over free speech has become a brutally effective campaign to reform an entire industry.
A staggering one in four chiropractors in Britain are now under investigation for allegedly making misleading claims in advertisements, according to figures from the General Chiropractic Council.
The council, which is responsible for regulating the profession and has 2,400 chiropractors on its books, informs me that it has had to recruit six new members of staff to deal with a fifteenfold increase in complaints against its members – from 40 a year to 600. While it declined to comment directly on the costs inflicted by the reaction to the BCA’s actions, it is clear that a six-figure sum will be involved for the extra staffing costs alone, to which will have to be added the considerable costs of any misconduct hearings.”
Read more at The Guardian
Nepalese Celebrate ‘Cursing Festival’
“KATHMANDU (AFP) – Each year, Nepalese youth in two villages in the south of the Himalayan country save up their choicest insults for a 10-day “cursing festival” that reaches its climax Sunday.
The youngsters in the neighbouring villages of Parsawa and Laxmipur hurl insults at each other, their neighbours, villagers and passers-by — and then laugh.
They gather in parks and other areas around straw heaped in the shape of a phallus to launch into the insults.
Insults like, “Monkey face, I hope your sons are as ugly as frogs,” and “I hope your buffaloes die of diarrhea,” ring out along with more obscene curses.
Village elders say the annual festival, which is just for youngsters, has been going on for as long as they can remember.”
Read more at Yahoo News
Can Animals Forsee Natural Disasters?
“Earthquakes, like the one that struck today in Chile–which, at the time of this writing, is believed to have claimed 147 lives–are all the more devastating for their unpredictable nature. While geologists have resources available to indicate a probability of when a quake will strike, such as measuring seismic pressures or observing changes in magnetic fields, it is still impossible to provide any short-term notice to threatened communities–a notice that would undoubtedly save countless lives. Although geologists may be incapable of putting communities on alert, however, recent disasters are strengthening theories that some animals may be able to ‘sense’ impending earthquakes.
Seismologists in Guangxi Province, China, believe that snakes may be the most sensitive to subtle vibrations which precede a quake–predicting the disaster about 120 hours prior to the major event. The snakes are monitored 24 hours a day to observe any erratic behavior. According to the researchers, before an earthquake the snakes have been seen acting unusually, repeatedly throwing themselves against the walls of their enclosures.”
Read more at Treehugger
World’s Most Powerful Atom Smasher Restarts
“‘The LHC is on its way again. First beam of 2010 circulated in each direction by 04.10 CET (0310 GMT),’ said CERN in a tweet on its website on Sunday.
The 3.9 billion euro (5.6 billion dollars) Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was shut down in December to ready it for collisions at unfathomed energy levels. It was run for a few weeks after being successfully revived from a 14 month breakdown.
The particle collider — inside a 27-kilometre (16.8-mile) tunnel straddling the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva — is aimed at understanding the origins of the universe by recreating the conditions that followed the Big Bang.
In the weeks before the technical shutdown in December, the collider achieved over a million particle collisions and accelerated proton beams to energy levels never reached before, according to CERN.
Collisions reached a world record energy level of 2.36 teraelectronvolts (TeV), already allowing scientists to gather data.
But CERN now wants to reach 7.0 TeV to try to recreate conditions close to the Big Bang, and run it at those levels for 18 to 24 months.”
Read more at Physorg.com
Buxton
Sat having a late breakfast at a brilliantly unaccommodating hotel near Buxton. Last night we arrived back after the show for our normal hotel drink and to enjoy a bit of left-over birthday cake, to be told that for health and safety reasons, we could not consume birthday cake downstairs as a group. Neither, for the same reasons, could we order sandwiches. The very stern lady at reception did, however, concede that she ‘understood the high’ that we were experiencing as ‘theatre types’. Fantastic.
Buxton last night was immense fun, and it’s always a beautiful place to explore. I visited Scriveners Bookshop, one of my touring highlights any year we pass this way, and then had weak twee tea in a little cafe, until I had to be at the Opera House. I was happy with the show, and at one point I found myself up in the balcony during the second half. A lovely group came with a coat for Coops made out of Roast Beef Monster Munch packets, which continue to be provided by audience members competing for the prize of who-brings-the-most for Coops and Iain. As ever, entries can be left at stage door, along with your contact details, before the show. Unsure if the coat consisted of the largest number of packets, but it was certainly the most impressive configuration.
One of the delights of a touring show such as this is the ability to introduce little shifts and changes. Last night we discussed a small change to something in the first half which will be immense fun to try out. Went to sleep and awoke considering possibilities.
Right – a tasty breakfast to mitigate the amusing unhelpfulness of last night. Must now do a phone interview to promote a couple of theatres for later in the run: Ipswich and Hull, I believe. Splendid.
Ta-ta,
D.
Brains Show Physiological Response To Inequality
“The human brain is a big believer in equality — and a team of scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, has become the first to gather the images to prove it.
Specifically, the team found that the reward centers in the human brain respond more strongly when a poor person receives a financial reward than when a rich person does. The surprising thing? This activity pattern holds true even if the brain being looked at is in the rich person’s head, rather than the poor person’s.
These conclusions, and the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies that led to them, are described in the February 25 issue of the journal Nature.”
Read more at Science Daily
Real-Life Flat Earthers Still Continue To Believe
“Daniel Shenton should be the most irrational man in the world. As the new president of the Flat Earth Society, you’d imagine he would also think that evolution is a scam and global warming a myth. He should argue that smoking does not cause cancer and HIV does not lead to Aids.
Yes, that Flat Earth Society, a group that has become a living metaphor for backward thinking and a refusal to face scientific facts. Yes, it is still going, and no, this isn’t an early April fool.
In fact, Shenton turns out to have resolutely mainstream views on most issues. The 33-year-old American, originally from Virginia but now living and working in London, is happy with the work of Charles Darwin. He thinks the evidence for man-made global warming is strong, and he dismisses suggestions that his own government was involved with the 9/11 terrorist attacks.”
Read more at The Guardian
When Doubt About Doubt Leads To Confidence
“Can confidence ever be a bad thing? What if it happens to be confidence in your own self-doubt? In a pair of mind-bending experiments Aaron Wichman and colleagues show that doubt layered on doubt doesn’t lead to more doubt but rather to increased confidence, as the initial self-doubt is undermined. The researchers say their findings have clinical implications – for instance, by turning a belief that one is definitely going to fail into a belief that one might fail, a therapist could help inspire a client to overcome the paralysis of hopelessness.
First off, Wichman’s team measured the chronic uncertainty of 37 participants (by testing their agreement with statements like ‘When bad things happen I do not know why’). Half these participants also completed a sentence unscrambling task designed to surreptitiously sow doubt. They had to organise jumbled words into sentences and many of the words, like ‘uncertainty’, pertained to doubt. The other participants performed an almost identical task but without any doubt-related words.”
Read more at BPS Research Digest
