Tiny Humanists and Dinosaurs!
Sep 27th
It’s autumn again, and that means that Humanist Sunday School is back in full swing! It was our turn to teach class last Sunday, which I only remembered about on Friday, so I threw together my lesson plan pretty quickly. I asked myself, “What to all Tiny Humanists love?” And of course, the answer is, “Dinosaurs!”
Really, I decided on the dinosaur theme because I’m pretty sure my local library has sent me to collections again (I’m a bad citizen, I know), and I was looking for the most educational books my son has. What I found were his Dinosaur Dictionary (full of really great illustrations), and a book called Dinosaur Dream, which my best friend sent him for his birthday this year (thanks, Amanda). If you haven’t read Dinosaur Dream with your kids, I highly recommend it. It’s a story about a little boy who dreams that he meets a baby Apatosaurus and must take him home to the Jurassic Period by walking back through time. So they go on an adventure through the eras until they find the dinosaur’s family. It’s a fun story, and actually has some information about dinosaurs and the eras that came before our own. So I read this story to the kids, and they thought it was pretty good. We discussed their favorite parts of the story, and then went to have a snack.
Part two of the class was the science demonstration part, which I admit was a little light on the science. I got some plastic fossil toys and showed them to the kids. I asked them what different fossils looked like (a Trilobyte for example) and then asked a few questions about the fossil, like “Where do you think it lived?” or “What kind of modern animals might it be related to?” The kids had a lot of good ideas and asked some great questions. They recognized the T Rex tooth as the tooth of a carnivore, and they were shocked to learn that modern humans have been around for 250,000 years. But then, they seemed a little surprised that their parents had been around for more than 20 years. Their understanding of really big numbers isn’t quite fully developed yet.
In all, it was a fun class. We learned a bit about dinosaurs and prehistoric life, and the kids had a good time, as always. I think this is going to be a great year for the Tiny Humanists.
Ignite NM and the Lunar Effect
Aug 16th
Ignite NM went really well last night. We had a pretty good turn out, and my talk was pretty well received. It’s called “Honing your BS detector,” and it’s about how to evaluate science articles. I promise I’ll post the video as soon as I get my hands on it.
In honor of my talk, I thought I’d write about some recent bullshit that I happened to come across while browsing r/skeptic. You see, there was a full moon recently, and that apparently led to 45 babies being born in 48 hours at a hospital in Sacramento. According to this article, “doctors” say that the full moon caused the “baby boom.” Go ahead and read the article, it’s short.
Now, I want to point out a big, glaring red flag that those who saw my talk will recognize right away: there isn’t one doctor, medical expert, or official quoted in this article. It simply states that some anonymous group of “doctors” claim that the baby boom was caused by the “Lunar Effect,” and that another anonymous group of “medical experts” (presumably different medical experts than the aforementioned “doctors”) say that the effect is due to the moon’s gravitational pull. Although apparently there are plenty of “doctors” and “medical experts” making these claims, the author of the article couldn’t be bothered to actually interview any of them.
So what is this Lunar Effect thing anyway? There’s a persistent belief out there that the moon has all kinds of effects on pretty much everything, from menstrual cycles to crime rates. The claim being made about how the moon affects childbirth goes like this. The moon’s gravitational pull causes the tides, and the human body is 80% water. Since the moon can pull on the water in the ocean, it must pull on the water in the human body, right? And this somehow leads to more women giving birth during the full moon!
Another article contained this quote from an unnamed “hospital official” (presumably, the official is spokesman Gary Zavoral, but that isn’t clear:
The human body is 80 percent water, after all. And, given that both menstruation and ovulation roughly follow a lunar cycle – occurring on a monthly basis – it doesn’t seem too far off to think that the moon could have a say in childbirth as well
This is a pretty ridiculous claim, and I really don’t know how anyone who believes that the moon dictates menstruation can actually complete medical school. Yes, the moon follows a roughly 28 day cycle, and women menstruate roughly every 28 days on average. This is what scientists refer to as a coincidence. The moon doesn’t actually have anything to do with menstruation or ovulation. If it did, then we’d all be menstruating at the same time, right in sync with the lunar phases.
In a rather surprising twist, The Huffington Post actually has a pretty skeptical take on this whole Lunar Effect nonsense, noting that studies have found that childbirth rates aren’t affected by the phases of the moon. They even included a link to this interesting article with more detail on the Lunar Effect myth.
And this is where it gets personal
Aug 11th
I tend to keep this blog somewhat academic and impersonal, but I’d like to take a moment and tell my readers (all 4 of you!) about some of the exciting things that have been happening lately, and part of why I haven’t been writing much lately.
First things first, I am no longer a stay at home mom. That’s right, I got a job! It’s a low paying part time job as a Pharmacy Tech at a National Pharmacy Chain. I’m going to start up school again in the fall, and hopefully within a few years, I’ll be applying to PharmD programs so I can become a real paid Pharma Shill! And yes, I will make you all call me Dr. Pharma Shill.
I’ve also been involved in getting putting together the next Ignite New Mexico, which all of my local readers should really try to attend. I’ll be giving a talk this time around called “Honing your BS Detector.” The event is this Monday, and it’s 21+ this time, so I’ll actually be able to say “Bullshit.”
On the home front, things are good. Tiny Human is adjusting very well to daycare. The Tiny Humanists have taken a break for the summer, but we’ll be back in action with Atheist Sunday School next month, so expect more updates on that. I have a few blog topics I’ve been kicking around, and I plan to get to those in the next couple weeks before school starts. So there will be updates soon.
Tiny Humanists: Walpurgis Edition
May 3rd
Last Sunday was my turn to teach Humanist Sunday School. I kind of threw this all together at the last minute, because I was so involved in other events last weekend that I kind of forgot it was my turn to teach! So, as soon as I remembered, I went down to my local library to get some ideas.
I decided to read a book about the moon, and we talked about the moon and the shuttle program, which is soon to be ending (only a couple launches left!). The kids really liked talking about space, so that was fun. I think they knew more than I did! Then we had a traditional Walpurgis snack: donuts and sparkling lemonade.
I found the book Change It!: Solids, Liquids, Gases, and You at the library. It’s from the same series as the book I used to teach the kids motion and forces. This is a really great series. It has fun illustrations, simple explanations, and experiment ideas. I had already decided on an experiment, and I was glad to see instructions for it in the book. I decided to show the kids how you can use the reaction of vinegar and baking soda to inflate a balloon. To do this experiment, you’ll need:
- A bottle (I gave each child their own)
- A balloon
- A funnel
- Baking soda
- Vinegar
I used cheap $1 bottles from Walmart, filled them about 1/4 way with vinegar, and filled each balloon with 1 tsp of baking soda (you probably won’t even need this much to get a complete reaction with the vinegar). Fit the balloon over the neck of the bottle, dump in the baking soda, and watch the balloon inflate! The kids loved it, and it was a good way to explain about different forms of matter: we mixed a solid and a liquid together to create a gas. I even had the opportunity to explain how chemical reactions work (sort of) when one of the kids asked if he could add more baking soda and do it again. The answer to that question is, of course, No. Once the vinegar has all reacted with the baking soda, it’s become water and sodium acetate, so there’s no more to react with.
If you have older kids, you can show them the chemical equation, so they can see what the reactants and products are, and show what’s happening:
H3COOH (aq) + NaHCO3 (s) → NaH3COO (aq) + H2CO3 (aq) (neutralization)
H2CO3 (aq) → H2O (l) + CO2 (g) (decomposition)
Of course, that’s pretty advanced. I just told the kids that we were creating carbon dioxide, which inflated the balloons. They had a lot of fun with it, and played with the balloons once they were inflated.
Remember that time I gave that talk on vaccines?
Apr 29th
Well, the video is now up on YouTube! Despite being super nervous, I think I did a pretty decent job of squeezing a lot of information into a 5 minute talk. Check it out!
The post Scott Adams should have written
Mar 28th
So, let’s talk about Scott Adams. Actually, let’s not talk too much about him, but just mention the kerfuffle surrounding his recent blog post about Men’s Rights activism. You can read his follow up, as well as the original post, over at his blog. I’m not going to talk about how offensive it was or wasn’t, as that’s been thoroughly covered by just about everyone already, but I will say that it was uninformative, it contributed nothing to any conversation about feminism or men’s rights, and Adams is simply being intellectually lazy in an attempt to start some shit (which apparently worked). Of course, according to Adams, the point of his blog isn’t to be informative or contribute anything to any conversation about anything. Further, this is a topic about which people sometimes get emotional, and emotional people can’t be reasoned with, therefore any criticism of Adams or his opinions is invalid. So, what follows is the post Scott Adams would have written if he were slightly less intellectually lazy and maybe even a little bit self-aware.
What Adams failed to mention in his little screed about MRAs was the fact that Men’s Rights activists frequently agree with feminists. Yes, I just said that. Many “men’s rights issues” are issues on which feminists agree. Now, Men’s Rights activists (or MRAs) are kind of odd. It’s pretty obvious that most of the “Men’s Rights issues” are simply attempts at maintaining privilege, which is why they hate anti-discrimination laws so much. They’re basically giant misogynists who are fighting against some sort of straw-feminist who is trying to take away their rights. What they fail to realize is what many feminists say over and over: The systems in place that are bad for women are bad for men too. Everyone loses, so the system needs to change. The response from MRAs is to childishly ignore what the feminists are saying, and pretend that feminists are just a bunch of man-haters who never agree with them about anything, ever.
My first example of this phenomenon comes from Skepchick Rebecca Watson. See, Rebecca Watson makes awesome YouTube videos, including this one on female genital mutilation, which I think most of us agree is a pretty horrific practice that should be ended. In the video, she calls male circumcision “pointless at best, and at worst, quite harmful.” But the point of the video was to examine a claim that male circumcision kills as many people as female genital mutilation (Spoiler Alert: No, it doesn’t). In the comments under her video, a surprising number of men came out to write insulting and misogynistic comments, which I’m not going to repeat here (my mom reads this!), but which you can read in the linked blog post and video. These comments are presumably intended to inform Ms. Watson that male circumcision is bad and that mutilating the genitals of any child is wrong. This is a point that isn’t disputed in the video. In fact, she states her opinion that male circumcision is a Bad Thing in very clear language. But the MRAs in the audience don’t seem capable of actually acknowledging the fact that they are on the same side!
My next example comes to us courtesy of the feminism subReddit, although it’s a pretty common trope that I see repeated a lot (kind of like creationists asking why there are still monkeys). A few weeks ago, some kind fellow decided to inform the feminists of Reddit that women don’t deserve equality until they are required to register for the draft. As I said this is a common trope, and it has several reasonable answers, which you can see if you read the thread. As one commenter pointed out, the Equal Rights Amendment would have required women to register for the draft, and feminists fought hard to get that amendment passed. But the OP and other MRAs who showed up ignored the fact that some of the feminists are in agreement with them (at least as far as draft equality), and chose to speculate that women who were drafted would just get knocked up to get out of it anyway (and you know, putting women in a situation where they have to choose between having a baby they may not want and going to war would be totally fair). One even made the disingenuous move of citing notorious anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly as the example of a woman who opposed the ERA.
Of course, there are plenty of “Men’s Rights issues” that are completely ridiculous. But really, if the issues of circumcision, equality in the draft, and (as Adams notes) the gender inequality of the justice system are so important to MRAs, it would certainly behoove these men to realize that feminists could be their allies. They care about gender equality and creating a society that is better for women and men. Unfortunately, the MRAs are just unable to look past their own misogyny and acknowledge that feminists are not their enemies.
Tiny Humanists
Mar 8th
I am part of a Humanist Family Co-op. We meet twice a month and take turns teaching what I refer to as “Humanist Sunday School” (I’m not sure if anyone else actually calls it that). The idea of these classes are to teach our kids values, morals, cultural and religious literacy, and science. It’s also a good way to meet other parents who share our skeptical worldview. I know there are other groups like ours out there (and maybe some readers who are interested in starting such a group), so in the interest of sharing ideas and resources, I’m going to start blogging about my lesson plans.
This is my lesson plan from last Sunday, and in the next few days, I’ll post previous lesson plans. These are all aimed at 2-6 year olds, although some of the activities and books would be fine for early elementary kids as well.
My Tiny Humanist’s favorite game right now is to throw balls down the hallway. Inspired by his enthusiasm, I thought it would be fun to teach the kids about motion and forces. I went to the library and checked out Move It! Motion, Forces, and You. This was a really great book. This was at just the right level for our Tiny Humanists*. Each page briefly explains a different concept (force, gravity, friction, etc) and asks the kids to identify the forces in different illustrations. There are even a few activities in the book that would be fun to try.
After we read the book, we had a snack time (kettle corn and apple juice, in case you were wondering). Then, the real fun started. I brought several of my TH’s balls (of various sizes and masses) from home. We had the kids roll the balls against the wall, or against each other. We also set up a ramp to roll the balls down. And we asked the kids to make some predictions:
- If you roll a heavy ball and a lighter ball against the wall with equal force, which ball will hit first?
- If we roll the heavy ball into the lighter ball, what will happen? Will they bounce off each other? Will only one of them bounce? Which one?
- If we roll the balls from the top of the ramp, which will reach the bottom first?
One of the other parents also showed the kids a really neat trick. He held a light ball so it rested on top of a heavier ball and dropped them both at the same time. When the heavy ball hits the ground, the lighter ball bounces off the heavy ball and goes flying across the room. It was very exciting, and the kids all learned a bit about Physics from observing the things around them.
*If you have older kids in your group, I recommend checking out Forces Make Things Move. I also recommend checking out The Science Book of Motion and Forces Around Us for activities and experiments relating to force and motion. These books are aimed at early elementary level kids (ages 5-8), so the activities and experiments are a bit more involved than just rolling balls around the room, but they’re still very simple.
Dr. Bob gets it wrong (again)
Feb 14th
This is kind of year-old news, but I just noticed it today. Almost a year ago, I happened upon this press release from the University of Texas Austin. I commented on it, in response to another commenter, with the reasonable position that gluten free casein free (GFCF) diets shouldn’t be used as a treatment for autism generally, but only in cases where specific allergies or intolerances are present. Of course some people commented to tell me how wrong I am, since a GFCF diet worked for their kids. But, that’s not the point of this post.
The point is, Dr. Bob Sears (author of The Vaccine Book, which I have read and reviewed) posted his own comment, which you can read at the link above (he also made a similar comment here). It looks like he was just spamming in an attempt to discredit the review (and maybe promote his new book, The Autism Book, which I have not read, but this review tells me much of what I need to know about it). In his comments, Dr. Bob once again shows that he should never have passed medical school. He outlines some issues he has with the study.
1. This isn’t an actual research study. It’s a review of 15 studies done by other researchers. So, there was no new testing done to determine the effectiveness of the GFCF diet is this study.
No, Dr. Bob, it isn’t a research study. It’s a systematic review, hence the title, Gluten-free and casein-free diets in the treatment of autism spectrum disorders: A systematic review. Since Dr. Bob doesn’t seem to know what a systematic review is, why it is useful, or how to evaluate it, I thought I might help him out. You see, sometimes there are a lot of studies on a particular topic, but most of them are seriously limited (by methodological flaws, small sample sizes, etc), and they all seem to come to different conclusions. This is when a systematic review can help clear things up. Researchers dig through all the papers published on a topic, use a set of criteria for inclusion, and then try to analyze all the data together to come up with a conclusion.
Now, you know I’m never one to trust a press release to give me all the information, so you can go read the full paper yourself here (pdf). It’s actually very well done. The researchers provided all the details of their inclusion criteria, and present a comprehensive overview of the research, along with their conclusions. Dr. Bob decided to spin those conclusions to show that GFCF diets do work in his second point:
Basically, their research showed that when they studied the 15 studies, their own interpretation was that when you group all the results, there isn’t enough evidence to show the diet works in enough children to warrant everyone trying the diet. BUT, they didn’t find that the diet does NOT work.
The actual conclusions of the review state that “the published studies we located do not support the use of GFCF diets in the treatment of ASD.” They go on to explain that there isn’t a lot of research, and the studies they did find have severe limitations. They also offer some alternative explanations for positive findings in studies on GFCF diets. So yeah, they didn’t find that GFCF diets never work, but they also didn’t find conclusive evidence that would indicate that the diet should be recommended for everyone.
Dr. Bob’s third point is basically that there’s no harm in trying (even if it doesn’t work):
3. The supposed harm that the abstract refers to (reduced bone thickness) can easily be prevented with calcium and vitamin D supplementation.
Well, OK. But the researchers mentioned other drawbacks of a GFCF diet, including diversion of resources. Special diets can be expensive and difficult to stick to, especially if they involve taking supplements to make up for missing nutrients.
In his fourth point, Dr. Bob decides to spin the findings again to show that the researchers actually recommend GFCF diets, which they do not:
4. Interestingly, the abstract actually DOES recommend the diet in two groups of children: 1 – those who have shown behavioral or developmental improvements from the diet, and 2 – those who are tested and found to either be allergic OR intolerant. This is a direct conflict with the message that the news stories are giving. THE AUTHORS OF THIS STUDY ACTUALLY RECOMMEND THE DIET!
In this last point, he actually sort of says the same thing that I said in my comment: if a child with ASD has a food allergy or intolerance, then a GFCF diet is appropriate, and testing should be done to determine if the child has an allergy. The authors of the review also mention this, and point out that only two of the studies in their review even bothered to test the subjects for allergies. They also recommend that in cases where the diet seems to help, allergy testing should be done. But they do not recommend GFCF diets for all children with ASD, as many of them do not benefit, probably because they don’t have actual allergies or intolerances.
This last point is really important, because there were many other commenters who defend GFCF diets based on the assumption that gluten and casein actually cause ASD. This is known as the opioid excess theory, which would more accurately be called a hypothesis. The theory proposes that opioids from dietary sources (like gluten and casein) escape from the intestines and cross the blood brain barrier to cause ASD behaviors. The authors of the review offer an alternative hypothesis: some kids with ASD respond well to GFCF diets because they have allergies or intolerances that cause pain and discomfort. The pain and discomfort exacerbate other symptoms of ASD, notably behavioral problems. This makes a lot of sense, when you consider the fact that many people with ASD can’t communicate well, and so rather than expressing their pain in words, they act out because of the pain. This explanation is a great deal more parsimonious than the opioid excess theory.
Of course, Dr. Bob ignores the entire systematic review, and gives a long list of citations that he uses to justify his recommendations for a GFCF diet. I have not yet waded through all of them, but I would recommend that Dr. Bob perhaps consider conducting a systematic review of his own, since he clearly doesn’t trust other scientists to do it for him.
Vaccine resources
Feb 8th
On Wednesday, February 9 (that’s tomorrow, eek!) I’ll be giving a presentation on vaccines at IgniteNM. It’s only a 5 minute talk (20 slides, 15 seconds per slide), so it’s not that information dense. I did a lot of research for the talk, so here are some sources with more information about vaccines:
General information from the CDC
National Network for Immunization Information
Brian Dunning on vaccine ingredients (video)
Parenting Within Reason: Vaccine FAQ (podcast)
Nine Questions, Nine Answers, Mark Crislip, Science Based Medicine
The Media’s MMR Hoax, Ben Goldacre
Secrets of the MMR Scare, Brian Deer, from the British Journal of Medicine, 2011
Part 1: How the case against the MMR was fixed
Part 2: How the vaccine crisis was meant to make money
Part 3: The Lancet’s two days to bury bad news
Early Thimerosal exposure and neuropsychological outcomes at 7 to 10 years, Thompson et al, New England Journal of Medicine, 2007
A population based study of measles, mumps and rubella immunization and autism, Madsen et al, New England Journal of Medicine, 2002
Historical comparisons of morbidity and mortality for vaccine-preventable diseases in the United States, Roush et al, Journal of the American Medical Association, 2007
Vaccine, Arthur Allen, 2007 (book), available from the Bernalillo County Library System (as soon as I return it)
Awesome organizations that are saving the world with vaccines:
Women Thinking Free Foundation
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
These are all very informative resources, so if you didn’t get enough information from my talk, please check some of them out. I’ll be posting video of the talk as soon as it’s available.
Should circumcision be banned?
Nov 13th
A proposed ballot initiative in San Francisco seeks to ban circumcision in children under 18 years of age. According to Lloyd Schofield, the author of the initiative:
“Tattooing a child is banned as a felony and circumcision is more harmful than a tattoo,” said Schofield, who believes religious traditions should change.
“People can practice whatever religion they want, but your religious practice ends with someone else’s body,” said Schofield. “It’s a man’s body and…his body doesn’t belong to his culture, his government, his religion or even his parents. It’s his decision.”
Schofield still needs over 7,000 signatures to get this initiative on the ballot, so it’s not clear yet whether this issue will even come to a vote. Still, I think he raises some relevant points.
In theory, I agree with Schofield. I chose not to circumcise my Tiny Human because it’s an irreversible elective surgery. If he decides later in life that he wants to be circumcised, I’ll support that decision, but it must be his decision, not mine.
However, in practice I find his ballot initiative problematic for a number of reasons. First, it proposes making circumcision of anyone under 18 illegal. I think that’s going too far. My suggestion would be to ban circumcision in children under age 12 (or maybe even 10 or 11). I think by this age, a boy is competent to make the decision, provided he has access to good, unbiased information.
As I said, I chose not to circumcise my son, not because I am completely anti-circumcision, but because I want him to decide for himself if it’s right for him. There is evidence that circumcision can prevent the transmission of STDs (as well as urinary tract infections and penile cancer). As a parent, I am sure that my son will have questions about sex when he’s around 10 or so, and that education about his sexual health will begin around that age. Part of that education will include talking to him about the possible risks and benefits of circumcision. If he does decide that circumcision is a good idea, I want him to be able to make that choice before he decides to become sexually active.
Then, there’s this bit of information:
[A]ccording to the New York Times, a CDC researcher reported a sharp drop in the number of American parents choosing circumcision in hospitals – from 56 percent in 2006 to less than 33 percent last year.
That is a huge drop. Now, it’s too soon to know whether that’s a trend or a statistical fluke, but if it’s a trend, it’s very significant. It shows that attitudes toward circumcision are changing. Parents are no longer viewing it as the default, and are making the active decision not to circumcise. And, if circumcision is already becoming less common, then it isn’t really necessary to pass legislation to discourage circumcision.
I don’t think that banning circumcision is the answer. I think the best thing we can do is encourage hospitals to adopt policies that don’t treat circumcision as the default. Circumcisions should not be routinely performed on infants, and (both) parents should have to specifically request circumcision.
We should also encourage parents to stop treating circumcision as the norm. The AAP does not recommend routine neonatal circumcision, and we should pay attention to that recommendation. The most common reasons I hear for circumcision is that uncircumcised penises are “weird” or “ugly,” or that boys should be circumcised because their fathers were circumcised. These basically boil down to “This is just what we have done for generations, and we should continue to do that because that’s what we’ve always done.” It’s an argument from tradition, and it is far from a good reason to perform elective surgery on infants who are given no say in the matter.
So let’s continue this trend. Let’s critically examine our reasons for circumcising our boys. Is it really to their benefit? Or are we just doing it because of tradition or aesthetics? It’s time we stop treating it as the default, and start letting our sons make up their own minds about what happens to their genitals.
