A recent example of an ad hominem argument.
After being provided Neil deGrasse Tyson's "Perimeter of Ignorance" paper (see footnote) which puts Newton, Einstein, et al's religious sentiments into perspective, instead of critiquing the paper a believer went off questioning NDT's "smartness": "Did he ever win a Nobel Prize? Please elaborate why [we] would think that he is smarter or wiser than Albert Einstein or Sir Isaac Newton." And even after being told that "an idea stands and falls on its merit, not from whom it came from," this believer forges on, none the wiser, and hauls out NDT's curriculum vitae and resume from wikipedia, placing emphasis on NDT's being "a frequent Guest on the Game Show called Jeopardy," finally concluding "I am sorry but his greatest 'Achievements' are certainly nothing compared to the 'Achievements' of Albert Einstein, and Sir Isaac Newton. Are you kidding Sir???"
As to whether this person even bothered to read NDT's essay is unclear. He certainly does not even broach the ideas contained therein.
What is an ad hominem? It consists of "attacking the person instead of attacking his argument" [link]. "This tactic is logically fallacious because insults and even true negative facts about the opponent's personal character have nothing to do with the logical merits of the opponent's arguments or assertions" [link].
An ad hominem argument has the following basic form:
1. Person A makes claim X.
2. Person B makes an attack on person A.
3. Therefore A's claim is false.
[link]
Person A corresponds to NDT and person B to the believer.
One crucial question is whether B would've said what he did if NDT's essay had been, say, entitled "The Perimeter of Enlightenment" and had hailed Newton et al. as being warranted in invoking an intelligent designer for those mysteries which at the time eluded scientific explanation. Well apparently not, since when confronted with this very question, B simply refused to answer.
When you think about it, science would never advance and would become dogmatic and a cult worshiping the pronouncements of a few if the ad hominem rule were to prevail. Young scientists and thinkers would never get off the ground since they have yet to make their mark in history by adding to the pool of knowledge or even overthrowing wrong ideas by their esteemed predecessors. So when their ideas are at odds with the status quo they would be compared with the giants who've come before them and since their CV and resume are practically blank they would be pooh-poohed and never given an audience. Their ideas would be trampled upon and deemed heretical simply because they have no Nobels or awards to show off, no celebrity status, no biographies, no books written about them, none of the "blings" to show they're smarter and oh so important.
And rather obviously, scientists win Nobel prizes after their ideas have proved to be groundbreaking and shown to be true, and not because they scored 300 on their IQ test or because their CV is a hundred pages thick or that they didn't frequent game shows. Had we applied the above believer's criteria for judging ideas we would've said of Einstein when he came up with his relativity theory (thus supplanting Newtonian mechanics) at the beginning of the 20th century: "Einstein was a patent office clerk! Are you kidding me?! Has he won a Nobel Prize? Please elaborate why we should think he's smarter or wiser than Sir Isaac Newton?"
-----
Far more entertaining than the paper is Tyson's Beyond Belief 2006 talk with the same title: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4
Saturday, January 01, 2011
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Sins to be wary of
Back in 1996, in the chapter The Fine Art of Baloney Detection, Carl Sagan used this example to illustrate the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy: "Jaime Cardinal Sin, Archbishop of Manila [said]: 'I know of ... a 26-year-old who looks 60 because she takes [contraceptive] pills.'" [emphasis mine, not Sagan's] (Sagan, Carl. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. New York: Ballantine Books, 1996. p. 215)
Sin's use of "because" implies he was blaming the pill and citing it as the cause. That's fallacious. There's a host of possible causes in that woman's life that can account for the effect observed, and yet the cardinal picked this particular one (perhaps out of prejudice).
I'd also point out that Cardinal Sin committed the sin of selection bias. He cites one example that (erroneously) supports the implied claim that contraceptive pills are bad for women. However, just like psychics who never advertize those predictions that bombed, Sin fails to tell us about how many 26-year old women have taken the pill but don't' look 60 or 50 or 40 or 30. Also for the sake of completeness Sin would also need to tell us how many 26 yr olds who don't take the pill and look 60 or 50 or 40 or 30, and how many who don't take the pill and don't look any older than they really are.
Why would we need all those values? To fill in the 2x2 contingency table required for the computation of the correlational coefficient between the two variables (taking the pill and looking older than one really is). In order to find out if there is a correlation (positive or negative) or not, we need the values for all four cells of the table.
These two--post hockery and selection/confirmation bias--I might add are such common pitfalls in health claims (the Cardinal's assertion included). They're all over the Web. Quacks and manufacturers/dealers/multilevel marketers of health products use them to their advantage, and sadly most consumers see nothing wrong with them and in fact fall for and even naively employ such flawed reasoning.
All too often we read and hear testimonials proclaiming that John and Jane de la Cruz took Vitamin Z or LiverAIDS or 4Geek antioxidant or hairball tea or whatnot, and then felt better or lost weight or their cancer went away or their gray matter went away or whatever. That I took A and thereafter noticed B doesn't necessarily mean A caused B. To argue otherwise is textbook post hockery. And yet even doctors fall prey to this error. For instance there's one who enthusiastically presribed a CAM procedure to my mom because he's seen/heard positive anecdotes regarding that specific "alternative" treatment.
But as shown by the Cardinal's sin positive testimonials and stories aren't evidence at all, because:
1. they provide datum for only one of the cells in the contingency table. Where are the other three?
2. they don't tell us how much of the "I feel better" is due to the placebo effect
3. they don't tell us of the other treatments, lifestyle changes, and other possible causative factors that the person is simultaneously undertaking, confounding factors that screw up any pat and easy causal conclusion.
4. they don't give us a precise baseline--they don't provide the "before" picture--with which to compare the "after" nor a verification that the illness/condtion purported to exist is true and accurate.
If I declare that prayers work giving as proof the fact that the sun indeed rose after I wore ten rosaries each around my neck, arms and legs and prayed to god Xenu for the sun to rise, I would be guilty of the post. hoc fallacy as well as the sin of selection bias. If you want to show how freaking stupid and moronic I really am you simply have to ask for the data for the other three cells. After computing for the coefficient, not only will we discover a lack of causal link, we'd prove there isn't even a correlation at all.
We know the caveat "correlation does not necessarily imply causation." We also need to keep in mind that an apparent (but yet untested) correlation may not even be true--it might be illusory.
Sin's use of "because" implies he was blaming the pill and citing it as the cause. That's fallacious. There's a host of possible causes in that woman's life that can account for the effect observed, and yet the cardinal picked this particular one (perhaps out of prejudice).
I'd also point out that Cardinal Sin committed the sin of selection bias. He cites one example that (erroneously) supports the implied claim that contraceptive pills are bad for women. However, just like psychics who never advertize those predictions that bombed, Sin fails to tell us about how many 26-year old women have taken the pill but don't' look 60 or 50 or 40 or 30. Also for the sake of completeness Sin would also need to tell us how many 26 yr olds who don't take the pill and look 60 or 50 or 40 or 30, and how many who don't take the pill and don't look any older than they really are.
Why would we need all those values? To fill in the 2x2 contingency table required for the computation of the correlational coefficient between the two variables (taking the pill and looking older than one really is). In order to find out if there is a correlation (positive or negative) or not, we need the values for all four cells of the table.
These two--post hockery and selection/confirmation bias--I might add are such common pitfalls in health claims (the Cardinal's assertion included). They're all over the Web. Quacks and manufacturers/dealers/multilevel marketers of health products use them to their advantage, and sadly most consumers see nothing wrong with them and in fact fall for and even naively employ such flawed reasoning.
All too often we read and hear testimonials proclaiming that John and Jane de la Cruz took Vitamin Z or LiverAIDS or 4Geek antioxidant or hairball tea or whatnot, and then felt better or lost weight or their cancer went away or their gray matter went away or whatever. That I took A and thereafter noticed B doesn't necessarily mean A caused B. To argue otherwise is textbook post hockery. And yet even doctors fall prey to this error. For instance there's one who enthusiastically presribed a CAM procedure to my mom because he's seen/heard positive anecdotes regarding that specific "alternative" treatment.
But as shown by the Cardinal's sin positive testimonials and stories aren't evidence at all, because:
1. they provide datum for only one of the cells in the contingency table. Where are the other three?
2. they don't tell us how much of the "I feel better" is due to the placebo effect
3. they don't tell us of the other treatments, lifestyle changes, and other possible causative factors that the person is simultaneously undertaking, confounding factors that screw up any pat and easy causal conclusion.
4. they don't give us a precise baseline--they don't provide the "before" picture--with which to compare the "after" nor a verification that the illness/condtion purported to exist is true and accurate.
If I declare that prayers work giving as proof the fact that the sun indeed rose after I wore ten rosaries each around my neck, arms and legs and prayed to god Xenu for the sun to rise, I would be guilty of the post. hoc fallacy as well as the sin of selection bias. If you want to show how freaking stupid and moronic I really am you simply have to ask for the data for the other three cells. After computing for the coefficient, not only will we discover a lack of causal link, we'd prove there isn't even a correlation at all.
We know the caveat "correlation does not necessarily imply causation." We also need to keep in mind that an apparent (but yet untested) correlation may not even be true--it might be illusory.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
If I drink and drive I'll meet an accident. I had a mishap therefore I'd been DUI.
According to a news article which just got posted on Richard Dawkins' website, a study shows that "people with higher IQs are less likely to believe in God." Apparently the creme de la creme among scientists are not only geniuses but have chucked the belief in talking snakes and cops in the sky: "A survey of Royal Society fellows found that only 3.3 per cent believed in God - at a time when 68.5 per cent of the general UK population described themselves as believers."
Well, let's assume that's true--that highly intelligent blokes are more likely to be nonbelievers. As is known to all here I don't subscribe to any postulated supernatural entity whether you call them gods, goddesses, deities, angels, higher powers and principalities, your heavenly juju or holy mojo or Elvis for that matter. On the other hand, I have no idea what my IQ is. Since I'm a true-blue, dyed-in-the-wool, in-your-face atheist, does it follow then that I am more likely to have above average IQ? Can I conclude that I'm most likely an Einstein? Let's find out.
First, for the sake of clarity let's give the news article's claim some concreteness. So let's say that it's been determined that those with IQ >100 have an 80% chance of being atheistic. Now let's try and encode that in the nomenclature of probability theory since we are dealing with likelihoods.
Let:
AA = above average intelligence
NB = non-belief
P() = probability of
The above proposition then can be expressed as:
If a person has AA then P(NB) = 80% [let's call this P1]
We now move on to the question we're trying to answer. Does it follow that if I'm a nonbeliever there is an 80% of oh so humble moi having above average intelligence? In other words, is the following statement true:
If a person is an atheist then P(AA) = 80% [P2]
Well, you probably guessed it's not.
P1 can be written succinctly as P(NB|AA), which is read as the "probability of nonbelief given the person has above average intelligence." The vertical bar means "given."
P2 on other hand can be written as P(AA|NB), the probability of having AA given NB.
P1 and P2 are known as conditional probabilities and the values for these two are not necessarily the same. More often than not they're different. If we want to find the value for P(AA|NB) we'd need to have the figures for P(AA) and P(AA and NB), the latter being the probability that a person has above average intelligence and is an atheist--the intersection between the set of people with AA and the set of atheists. Mathematically, P(AA|NB) = P(AA & NB) / P(NB).
So the answer to our inquiry is: No, we cannot conclude at all that I can now be a member of Mensa or any clique and club of snobbish, condescending eggheads and geniuses.?
I couldn't think of a good title for this piece and so have that clumsy one up there. It alludes to the conversion error whereby given "if A then B" is true we presume it follows that "if B therefore A."
Well, let's assume that's true--that highly intelligent blokes are more likely to be nonbelievers. As is known to all here I don't subscribe to any postulated supernatural entity whether you call them gods, goddesses, deities, angels, higher powers and principalities, your heavenly juju or holy mojo or Elvis for that matter. On the other hand, I have no idea what my IQ is. Since I'm a true-blue, dyed-in-the-wool, in-your-face atheist, does it follow then that I am more likely to have above average IQ? Can I conclude that I'm most likely an Einstein? Let's find out.
First, for the sake of clarity let's give the news article's claim some concreteness. So let's say that it's been determined that those with IQ >100 have an 80% chance of being atheistic. Now let's try and encode that in the nomenclature of probability theory since we are dealing with likelihoods.
Let:
AA = above average intelligence
NB = non-belief
P() = probability of
The above proposition then can be expressed as:
If a person has AA then P(NB) = 80% [let's call this P1]
We now move on to the question we're trying to answer. Does it follow that if I'm a nonbeliever there is an 80% of oh so humble moi having above average intelligence? In other words, is the following statement true:
If a person is an atheist then P(AA) = 80% [P2]
Well, you probably guessed it's not.
P1 can be written succinctly as P(NB|AA), which is read as the "probability of nonbelief given the person has above average intelligence." The vertical bar means "given."
P2 on other hand can be written as P(AA|NB), the probability of having AA given NB.
P1 and P2 are known as conditional probabilities and the values for these two are not necessarily the same. More often than not they're different. If we want to find the value for P(AA|NB) we'd need to have the figures for P(AA) and P(AA and NB), the latter being the probability that a person has above average intelligence and is an atheist--the intersection between the set of people with AA and the set of atheists. Mathematically, P(AA|NB) = P(AA & NB) / P(NB).
So the answer to our inquiry is: No, we cannot conclude at all that I can now be a member of Mensa or any clique and club of snobbish, condescending eggheads and geniuses.?
I couldn't think of a good title for this piece and so have that clumsy one up there. It alludes to the conversion error whereby given "if A then B" is true we presume it follows that "if B therefore A."
Monday, October 11, 2010
Echoing Prof. Coyne
Jerry Coyne has just come out with a science-and-religion-are-incompatible article.He doesn't provide anything novel but what he says has to be repeated over and over as there are quarters out there that want us to buy into yet another fantasy--that science and religion can be partners in bed.
Last night I commented on a friend's blog entry on this very subject of science and religion. Got carried away and ended up writing more than I intended. Am reposting it here:
I am of the opinion that science and religion are premised upon conflicting and irreconcilable epistemologies. Science is rooted in churning out hypotheses that can be tested and falsified. Hypotheses and explanations which cannot be empirically determined to be true/false are not scientific.
Theistic ideas are of the latter kind. Take the hypothesis that there is a being and this entity is in fact three persons. From the git go you have problems. First there needs to be a definition of this entity. Then we'd need to find out wthether this hypothesized entity is real. We'd then need to define what these "persons" are. If we manage to provide characterization of these persons, then we'd then move on to determining the existence of these multiple persons. This is a bit similar to finding out whether the hypothesis "Intelligent lifeforms with six stomachs, five eyes, four legs, three heads, and two penises exist in the universe" is in fact true.
It should be noted that probabilities, though not sine qua non, are of practical importance here. The idea that the planet Earth has no core and is in fact hollow has a very low probability of being true. So is the claim that there is biological life on the Sun. There are very scientific reasons for saying these are highly improbable. In a similar vein, the hypothesis that intelligent anthropomorphic entities exist within the Earth's atmosphere, as the ancients believed, is so highly improbable that they can be rejected as false. Needless to say, science and technology have relegated this worldview under the rubric of mythology.
Revelation, faith, tradition--these do not make anything true. Revelation is merely a claim. We would still need evidence that the "revealed truth" was in fact revealed by some nonhuman intelligence and that it is true. Faith--belief without evidence--is simply that. Rather patently, no amount of believing will make something true if it isn't. That would be wishful thinking. And however old an idea may be will not make it any truer than it really is. Hence, an argument from tradition has no merit in the determination of the truth of a claim or idea.
The lack of progress in finding which religion and which religious/supernatural hypotheses is/are true over the last several thousand years merely shows how religion does not possess valid epistemological methods. In fact the number of religions and religious hypotheses have increased over time. Contrast that with hypotheses about the empirical world. We have advanced so much in our understanding of the universe that we are now discovering exosolar planets trillions of kilometers from our planet and have been able to weigh the universe and discovered that our universe is mostly likely a flat one--that galaxies will continue to accelerate away from each other until they exceed the speed of light.
Religion underscores the importance of believing. Science emphasizes evidence to provide a solid foundation for believing. Religion, unlike science, ahbors truth, in the sense that while it may be a fount of ideas, it does not provide any proven means for determining the truth/facticity of those ideas. In short, science has the methods to mercilessly rid itself of bad ideas. Religion on the other hand has been forced to become a storehouse of untested and untestable ideas, as it continuous to seek refuge in God the Gaps hypotheses.
[S]cience is no more compatible with religion than with other superstitions, such as leprechauns. Yet we don't talk about reconciling science with leprechauns. We worry about religion simply because it's the most venerable superstition — and the most politically and financially powerful.Indeed. Let's not treat religion with kids gloves. As with astrology it's had millennia to prove itself. And all we've found out is either that religious ideas are flat out wrong or that they're mere speculations which even their proponents can't prove to be true.
Last night I commented on a friend's blog entry on this very subject of science and religion. Got carried away and ended up writing more than I intended. Am reposting it here:
I am of the opinion that science and religion are premised upon conflicting and irreconcilable epistemologies. Science is rooted in churning out hypotheses that can be tested and falsified. Hypotheses and explanations which cannot be empirically determined to be true/false are not scientific.
Theistic ideas are of the latter kind. Take the hypothesis that there is a being and this entity is in fact three persons. From the git go you have problems. First there needs to be a definition of this entity. Then we'd need to find out wthether this hypothesized entity is real. We'd then need to define what these "persons" are. If we manage to provide characterization of these persons, then we'd then move on to determining the existence of these multiple persons. This is a bit similar to finding out whether the hypothesis "Intelligent lifeforms with six stomachs, five eyes, four legs, three heads, and two penises exist in the universe" is in fact true.
It should be noted that probabilities, though not sine qua non, are of practical importance here. The idea that the planet Earth has no core and is in fact hollow has a very low probability of being true. So is the claim that there is biological life on the Sun. There are very scientific reasons for saying these are highly improbable. In a similar vein, the hypothesis that intelligent anthropomorphic entities exist within the Earth's atmosphere, as the ancients believed, is so highly improbable that they can be rejected as false. Needless to say, science and technology have relegated this worldview under the rubric of mythology.
Revelation, faith, tradition--these do not make anything true. Revelation is merely a claim. We would still need evidence that the "revealed truth" was in fact revealed by some nonhuman intelligence and that it is true. Faith--belief without evidence--is simply that. Rather patently, no amount of believing will make something true if it isn't. That would be wishful thinking. And however old an idea may be will not make it any truer than it really is. Hence, an argument from tradition has no merit in the determination of the truth of a claim or idea.
The lack of progress in finding which religion and which religious/supernatural hypotheses is/are true over the last several thousand years merely shows how religion does not possess valid epistemological methods. In fact the number of religions and religious hypotheses have increased over time. Contrast that with hypotheses about the empirical world. We have advanced so much in our understanding of the universe that we are now discovering exosolar planets trillions of kilometers from our planet and have been able to weigh the universe and discovered that our universe is mostly likely a flat one--that galaxies will continue to accelerate away from each other until they exceed the speed of light.
Religion underscores the importance of believing. Science emphasizes evidence to provide a solid foundation for believing. Religion, unlike science, ahbors truth, in the sense that while it may be a fount of ideas, it does not provide any proven means for determining the truth/facticity of those ideas. In short, science has the methods to mercilessly rid itself of bad ideas. Religion on the other hand has been forced to become a storehouse of untested and untestable ideas, as it continuous to seek refuge in God the Gaps hypotheses.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Will this offend you?
I downloaded a copy of the bible. I then deleted it from my hard disk. Will fatheists be offended? Will I be accused of irreverence and desecration and insensitivity? What if I kept downloading and deleting? What's the difference between annihilating a digital copy and a printed one? What if I had burned it into a CD and took a pair of shears and cut it up? What if I had cut that CD into the shape of a cross and then tossed it into a bonfire or flushed it down the toilet?
The psychology of offense and which forms offend and which don't should be an interesting field of study.
The psychology of offense and which forms offend and which don't should be an interesting field of study.
Bearded juveniles
I really don't get all the brouhaha over the planned (but eventually aborted) burning of Korans. Much ado about ink and paper. And over a handful of mass produced copies out of millions at that. If the ancient scrolls/manuscripts/codices or the last copies on earth were the ones under threat, I'd be among those rallying to save them. But of course this is simply not the case. Just goes to show you how Mo's fanboys are slaves to their psychology. How puerile can you get? Grow up you babies.
If religionuts everywhere bought all the remaining copies by Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, Dennett, and Darwin and burned them and even their effigies, I predict the only complaint from atheists would be that these pissants have unnecessarily contributed to climate change. Sure, go rip out the pages of The God Delusion and damn and curse atheists and burn title upon title, but please go roast your shawarma with them.
If religionuts everywhere bought all the remaining copies by Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, Dennett, and Darwin and burned them and even their effigies, I predict the only complaint from atheists would be that these pissants have unnecessarily contributed to climate change. Sure, go rip out the pages of The God Delusion and damn and curse atheists and burn title upon title, but please go roast your shawarma with them.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Teaching children to fish and to ...
If I had kids I'd indoctrinate them to ask the following: How do we it's true, that is, what are our reasons for believing? How good are these reasons?
If we simply give children the answers to questions they grow up thinking they've already got unassailable knowledge and end up thinking that knowledge is that which comes out of the mouths of their personally preferred authorities. Encourage children to keep questioning and to ask the right questions and they become astute independent critical thinkers who have the ability to know and to assess an idea as to its position on the "reality spectrum" ranging from reason-based knowing to unsubstantiated belief.
If we simply give children the answers to questions they grow up thinking they've already got unassailable knowledge and end up thinking that knowledge is that which comes out of the mouths of their personally preferred authorities. Encourage children to keep questioning and to ask the right questions and they become astute independent critical thinkers who have the ability to know and to assess an idea as to its position on the "reality spectrum" ranging from reason-based knowing to unsubstantiated belief.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
What?! You got no religion?
Census taker came by this noon and I had to spend some ten minutes providing her the number of people in our household, birthdate, educational attainment, ethnicity, and religion. When she got to that latter item, I said I had no religion. With a quizzical look, she inquired, "What do you mean no religion?" Without hesitation I told her, "I'm an atheist." And she turned to her clipboard and started writing on the form. My eyesight is so bad I wasn't able to catch what she scribbled.
I gather that this particular individual (late 20s early 30s) has not come across a person who's answered "no religion" to her question. It's strange really that she wasn't prepared for such a reply. I'd like to think that the census office give their people enough training to expect the various possible answers before sending them off to collect data.
Today's experience shows me that there are some (as to the percentage I would say it's not insignificant) who still need consciousness raising. There are those who are still in that stage of innocence, assuming that everyone has a religion, in the same way that everyone has a birthdate and biological parents (even those who were conceived via IVF). Just as I had a rude awakening years ago that not every human on this planet celebrates Christmas and therefore not everyone would welcome or even understand being greeted "Merry Christmas", there are those who need to wake up to the reality that there are not a few who've never had a religion or been part of organized religion, or who were part of some tradition but have moved on and unfettered themselves from such belief systems.
Well, if anything, at least I may have nudged (I should hope jolted) this person out of her naivete.
I gather that this particular individual (late 20s early 30s) has not come across a person who's answered "no religion" to her question. It's strange really that she wasn't prepared for such a reply. I'd like to think that the census office give their people enough training to expect the various possible answers before sending them off to collect data.
Today's experience shows me that there are some (as to the percentage I would say it's not insignificant) who still need consciousness raising. There are those who are still in that stage of innocence, assuming that everyone has a religion, in the same way that everyone has a birthdate and biological parents (even those who were conceived via IVF). Just as I had a rude awakening years ago that not every human on this planet celebrates Christmas and therefore not everyone would welcome or even understand being greeted "Merry Christmas", there are those who need to wake up to the reality that there are not a few who've never had a religion or been part of organized religion, or who were part of some tradition but have moved on and unfettered themselves from such belief systems.
Well, if anything, at least I may have nudged (I should hope jolted) this person out of her naivete.
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
I'm offended that you're offended
Richard Dawkins was recently in Australia and stole the limelight in a Q&A episode on religion [Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6].
I have to hand it to Senator Stephen Fielding. He has guts coming out and admitting he's a young earth creationist. Perhaps Australian politicians are not unlike those in my country--they'll do anything to draw attention (and thus engendering name recall for future elections) even it means becoming the laughing stock of the audience (or the country). People like Fielding are truly deluded in the psychiatric sense. In the face of overwhelming evidence they still hold on to cockamamie beliefs. In fact for the utterly deluded no amount or quality of evidence will persuade them otherwise. They are absolutely closed to the idea that they are or may be wrong. As long as they have a minimum number of members (and who knows how many that is) who subscribe to the same delusion, as long as such a community of like-minded inmates exists, they will carry on.
Interestingly Dawkins is the only nonbeliever in the panel of six. I don't know if the audience was able to digest the fact--one that Dawkins eventually pointed out--that those in the panel had differing religious beliefs which were incompatible with one another to a lesser or greater degree. For instance none of the five of course would have anything to do with Fielding's inane "10,000-year old universe, God waved his wand and rabbits and humans magically came into being" worldview. I felt that Minster of Agriculture Tony Bourke and political opposition deputy leader Julie Bishop wanted to distance themselves as clearly as possible from the crackpot senator when they explicitly and repeatedly said that religion and specifically Intelligent Design should not be taught in science classes. And then there was Judaism represented by Rabbi Jacqueline Ninio, a religion which does not and, as far as its tradition goes, will never accept Jesus as God incarnate. Ninio's Judaism, by the way, seems to lean more toward Jewish mysticism--she talked about a God concept that continually evolves. Hardly fundamentalist. So even within this group of five you had a plurality of supernatural beliefs which couldn't all be simultaneously right (unless we're willing to throw out the principle of noncontradiction). Some ideas will be wrong and some may be right, or all of them might be false. That's inescapable.
What I found so completely lame is that during the latter half of the program Bishop and then Bourke charged Dawkins with being disrespectful and ridiculing religion. Once Dawkins delved into specifics and pointed out biblical facts, these two whipped out the "you are being disrespectful" and "you offend me"card. Well, believers offend and disrespect me for being offended by rational critique. How dare they mock Dawkins' and nonbelievers' intelligence!
Dawkins is proved right. If this had been a discussion on political or economic systems, or science or engineering, this issue of respect of one's views wouldn't come up. Criticism and debate would be taken for granted as the norm. Somehow believers have this insane belief that belief in invisible superheroes and superfoes, in airy fairy, namby pamby notions should be respected. And "insane" is not inappropriate a description. For what could be sane about granting respect to and withholding criticism from such extraordinary ideas that have no evidential support whatsoever? What is a mockery is the believers' supposed treasuring of truth but all the while closing off the avenues toward reaching it.
I have to hand it to Senator Stephen Fielding. He has guts coming out and admitting he's a young earth creationist. Perhaps Australian politicians are not unlike those in my country--they'll do anything to draw attention (and thus engendering name recall for future elections) even it means becoming the laughing stock of the audience (or the country). People like Fielding are truly deluded in the psychiatric sense. In the face of overwhelming evidence they still hold on to cockamamie beliefs. In fact for the utterly deluded no amount or quality of evidence will persuade them otherwise. They are absolutely closed to the idea that they are or may be wrong. As long as they have a minimum number of members (and who knows how many that is) who subscribe to the same delusion, as long as such a community of like-minded inmates exists, they will carry on.
Interestingly Dawkins is the only nonbeliever in the panel of six. I don't know if the audience was able to digest the fact--one that Dawkins eventually pointed out--that those in the panel had differing religious beliefs which were incompatible with one another to a lesser or greater degree. For instance none of the five of course would have anything to do with Fielding's inane "10,000-year old universe, God waved his wand and rabbits and humans magically came into being" worldview. I felt that Minster of Agriculture Tony Bourke and political opposition deputy leader Julie Bishop wanted to distance themselves as clearly as possible from the crackpot senator when they explicitly and repeatedly said that religion and specifically Intelligent Design should not be taught in science classes. And then there was Judaism represented by Rabbi Jacqueline Ninio, a religion which does not and, as far as its tradition goes, will never accept Jesus as God incarnate. Ninio's Judaism, by the way, seems to lean more toward Jewish mysticism--she talked about a God concept that continually evolves. Hardly fundamentalist. So even within this group of five you had a plurality of supernatural beliefs which couldn't all be simultaneously right (unless we're willing to throw out the principle of noncontradiction). Some ideas will be wrong and some may be right, or all of them might be false. That's inescapable.
What I found so completely lame is that during the latter half of the program Bishop and then Bourke charged Dawkins with being disrespectful and ridiculing religion. Once Dawkins delved into specifics and pointed out biblical facts, these two whipped out the "you are being disrespectful" and "you offend me"card. Well, believers offend and disrespect me for being offended by rational critique. How dare they mock Dawkins' and nonbelievers' intelligence!
Dawkins is proved right. If this had been a discussion on political or economic systems, or science or engineering, this issue of respect of one's views wouldn't come up. Criticism and debate would be taken for granted as the norm. Somehow believers have this insane belief that belief in invisible superheroes and superfoes, in airy fairy, namby pamby notions should be respected. And "insane" is not inappropriate a description. For what could be sane about granting respect to and withholding criticism from such extraordinary ideas that have no evidential support whatsoever? What is a mockery is the believers' supposed treasuring of truth but all the while closing off the avenues toward reaching it.
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Another condition for which acupuncture is useless
A systematic review of ten RCTs for labor pain showed that needling was no better than no intervention, analgesics, or sham acupuncture. Edzard Ernst, one of the co-authors said:
Labour is a good subject to study the analgesic effects of acupuncture. Our analyses show that the effects of acupuncture perceived by women are largely due to placebo. Acupuncture has many qualities that maximise placebo effects: it involves touch and is invasive and, psychologically, is attached to the mysticism of the East. Our findings are in keeping with much of the recent research on acupuncture which demonstrates that the more one controls for such confounders, the smaller the effect of acupuncture gets.How many more RCTs and reviews will it take before quacks throw in the towel? Unfortunately, they never will however compelling and overwhelming the evidence against their claims are. As James Randi would say, they're unsinkable rubber ducks.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Stent or surgery?
Two-month old news but I just heard about it. The Carotid Revascularization Endarterectomy vs. Stenting Trial (CREST) was a 9-year, multicenter, mega trial with over 2,500 patients randomized to either stenting or endarterectomy. Adjudicators of the outcomes were blinded. Results shows that placing a stent to dilate a blocked carotid artery and surgical removal of the blockage--the traditional treatment--both have nearly the same efficacy and overall safety.
You'd think that's the final word on the matter. However, in March this year the results of the International Carotid Stenting Study (ICSS) came out. ICSS is a multicenter mega trial with over 1,700 participants randomized to either stenting or endarterectomy. As in CREST adjudicators of outcomes were blinded. Unlike CREST the objective of the European study did not include comparison of efficacy, only safety. Researchers found that surgery is safer overall. Incidence of stroke, death, procedural myocardial infarction, and risk of any stroke and all-cause death were all lower in the endarterectomy group. The three heart attacks that occurred during stenting were all fatal, while all four that occurred during endarterectomy were nonfatal. On the other hand,
Possible reasons for the difference in findings: the ICSS employed only symptomatic patients (ie., those who've had minor strokes or transient ischemic atttacks) while CREST included both symptomatic and asymptomatic patients; unlike ICSS, CREST limited itself to physicians who had a "high degree of proficiency and safety."
The overall safety and efficacy of the two procedures was largely the same with equal benefits for both men and for women, and for patients who had previously had a stroke and for those who had not. However, when the investigators looked at the numbers of heart attacks and strokes, they found differences. The investigators found that there were more heart attacks in the surgical group, 2.3 percent compared to 1.1 percent in the stenting group; and more strokes in the stenting group, 4.1 percent versus 2.3 percent for the surgical group in the weeks following the procedure.
The study also found that the age of the patient made a difference. At approximately age 69 and younger, stenting results were slightly better, with a larger benefit for stenting, the younger the age of the patient. Conversely, for patients older than 70, surgical results were slightly superior to stenting, with larger benefits for surgery, the older the age of the patient.
You'd think that's the final word on the matter. However, in March this year the results of the International Carotid Stenting Study (ICSS) came out. ICSS is a multicenter mega trial with over 1,700 participants randomized to either stenting or endarterectomy. As in CREST adjudicators of outcomes were blinded. Unlike CREST the objective of the European study did not include comparison of efficacy, only safety. Researchers found that surgery is safer overall. Incidence of stroke, death, procedural myocardial infarction, and risk of any stroke and all-cause death were all lower in the endarterectomy group. The three heart attacks that occurred during stenting were all fatal, while all four that occurred during endarterectomy were nonfatal. On the other hand,
There was one event of cranial nerve palsy in the stenting group compared with 45 in the endarterectomy group. There were also fewer haematomas of any severity in the stenting group than in the endarterectomy group.
Possible reasons for the difference in findings: the ICSS employed only symptomatic patients (ie., those who've had minor strokes or transient ischemic atttacks) while CREST included both symptomatic and asymptomatic patients; unlike ICSS, CREST limited itself to physicians who had a "high degree of proficiency and safety."
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
95% of chiropractic sites make unsubstantiated claims
On the heels of Simon Singh's victory, we have the following assessment of chiropractors' claims on the Internet by Ernst and Gilbey.
RESULTS: We found evidence that 190 (95%) chiropractor websites made unsubstantiated claims regarding at least one of the conditions. When colic and infant colic data were collapsed into one heading, there was evidence that 76 (38%) chiropractor websites made unsubstantiated claims about all the conditions not supported by sound evidence. Fifty-six (28%) websites and 4 of the 9 (44%) associations made claims about lower back pain, whereas 179 (90%) websites and all 9 associations made unsubstantiated claims about headache/migraine. Unsubstantiated claims were made about asthma, ear infection/earache/otitis media, neck pain, CONCLUSIONS: The majority of chiropractors and their associations in the English-speaking world seem to make therapeutic claims that are not supported by sound evidence, whilst only 28% of chiropractor websites promote lower back pain, which is supported by some evidence. We suggest the ubiquity of the unsubstantiated claims constitutes an ethical and public health issue.Ethical and public health issue. What good can we expect from quackery?
Monday, April 19, 2010
Ruse gives Church a two thumbs down
Philosopher Michael Ruse isn't exactly a fan of the Four Horsemen even as he is very much against creationism and its current evolutionary descendant Intelligent Design. Apparently, however, the continuing revelations of sexual abuses and cover-ups in the Catholic Church has pushed Ruse into Dawkins' camp, at least in the matter of wishing for the the Fall of the Catholic Church.
Richard Dawkins, wrote a highly emotive piece for the Washington Post, in which he derided the present pope and expressed glee and satisfaction that such a person was now leading the Catholic Church. In Dawkins's judgment, not only was this no less than the Church deserved, but such leadership could only hasten the Church's demise. I thought at the time that Dawkins was over the top and wrong. I now think that he was right and that it was I who was wrong. Let me say at once that, unlike Dawkins, I don't necessarily want to see this as the end of religion or even of the Catholic Church in some form. I stress that although I cannot share the beliefs of Christians, I respect them and applaud the good that is done in the name of their founder. But I do now think that as presently constituted, the Catholic Church is corrupt and should be eradicated.Great to hear that even a critic of "New Atheism" (I have problems with that term) sees how depraved the Church is.
Friday, April 16, 2010
The spinal manipulators have backed down
The British Chiropractic Association (BCA) has dropped its libel case against Simon Singh. They thought they could intimidate and silence Simon and criticism of chiropractic by suing. Well they took on the wrong guy. Taking the matter to court backfired. Not only has the BCA managed to train the spotlight on them, they've unwittingly initiated moves to reform English libel laws.
Congratulations, Simon!
Congratulations, Simon!
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
It's World Dilution Delusion Awareness Week 2010
Replace "Dilution Delusion" with "Homeopathy."
Yes, folks, homeopaths are actually celebrating awareness of their 200-year delusion this week. And as others have already done, I'm all for enlightening the yet unaware about what homeopathy really is. Instead of introducing it let me direct you to these fabulous resources:
Segment from Richard Dawkins' 2007 TV series Enemies of Reason
Talk by James Randi
Homeopathy: The Ultimate Fake, by Dr. Stephen Barrett of Quackwatch
Prof. Robert Carroll's comprehensive article
Edzard Ernst, former homeopath who practiced for many years and is the first Professor of Complementary Medicine in the UK, along with science writer Simon Singh have this to say about homeopathy's effectiveness:
On January 30 2010 hundreds of brave souls in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the US went out on the streets and overdosed on a variety of homeopathic pills. Unfortunately for quackery, none of them died, and no one came down with even a tummy ache. Well, that's the point of the whole 10:23 campaign--to show the world that homeopathic preparations--particularly the allegedly most potent ones--contains no active ingredients.
In February 2010 the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee released Evidence Check 2: Homeopathy, a report in which it unequivocally stated that there is no evidence for homeopathy and recommended that the government cease supporting its use.
In October 2009 I wrote about homeopathy in the Philippines. Just an excerpt from that blog entry:
While homeopaths are living in dreamland, the homeopathic industry is an investor's dream.
If that got your goat as it did mine then the following should give you a much needed shot of endorphins. Here are comedians Mitchell & Webb parodying homeopathy and other quackery.
So be aware of homeopathy. And make sure to tell others to be wary of it. It's bizarre. It's bunk. It's bogus. It's balderdash.
Yes, folks, homeopaths are actually celebrating awareness of their 200-year delusion this week. And as others have already done, I'm all for enlightening the yet unaware about what homeopathy really is. Instead of introducing it let me direct you to these fabulous resources:
Segment from Richard Dawkins' 2007 TV series Enemies of Reason
Talk by James Randi
Homeopathy: The Ultimate Fake, by Dr. Stephen Barrett of Quackwatch
Prof. Robert Carroll's comprehensive article
Edzard Ernst, former homeopath who practiced for many years and is the first Professor of Complementary Medicine in the UK, along with science writer Simon Singh have this to say about homeopathy's effectiveness:
We suggest that you ignore the occasional media hype and instead rely on our conclusion, because it is based on examining all the reliable evidence - and the evidence suggests that homeopathy acts as nothing more than a placebo. For this reason, we strongly advise you to avoid homeopathic remedies if you are looking for a medicine that is more than just make-believe. [Simon Singh & Edzard Ernst, Trick or Treatment: Alternative Medicine on Trial, Bantam, 2008, p.140-141]I just went to the Cochrane Library and found a handful of systematic reviews of homeopathy: attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder or hyperkinetic disorder, chronic asthma, dementia, induction of labour, adverse effects of cancer treatments. The authors conclude that the evidence is either absent, insufficient or unconvincing.
On January 30 2010 hundreds of brave souls in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the US went out on the streets and overdosed on a variety of homeopathic pills. Unfortunately for quackery, none of them died, and no one came down with even a tummy ache. Well, that's the point of the whole 10:23 campaign--to show the world that homeopathic preparations--particularly the allegedly most potent ones--contains no active ingredients.
In February 2010 the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee released Evidence Check 2: Homeopathy, a report in which it unequivocally stated that there is no evidence for homeopathy and recommended that the government cease supporting its use.
In October 2009 I wrote about homeopathy in the Philippines. Just an excerpt from that blog entry:
In the Nux vomica oral drops some of the substances are watered down to D1000. How dilute is a D1000? If you had one drop of active ingredient and were to dilute it in one go you'd have to mix that single drop with 101000 (remember, that's "1" followed by a thousand zeros) drops of water or alcohol. How much is 101000 drops? That's equivalent to 6.5 × 10992 cubic meters [see Note 1]. And just how large is that? Well, it's more than the size of our universe. In fact a lot bigger. If a bucket were the size of the universe you'd need 7.7 trillion buckets to end up with 6.5 × 10992 m3 [see Note 2]. After mixing (if you can even imagine achieving that) you can scoop a volume as large as the Earth or the Sun or the Milky Way and the chances of finding a single molecule of the active ingredient would still be exceedingly infinitesimal.Matt Parker writing in TimesOnline has another illustration of how utterly diluted homeopathic remedies are:
To put homeopathy in a medicinal context, if you wanted to consume a normal 500mg paracetamol dose you would need ten million billion homeopathic pills. Where each pill is the same mass as the Milky Way galaxy. There is actually not enough matter in the entire known Universe to make the homeopathic equivalent of a single paracetamol pill.The funny thing about these dilutions is that if you remove the labels of two vials containing different high potency homeopathic preparations there is no way homeopaths can distinguish one from the other.
While homeopaths are living in dreamland, the homeopathic industry is an investor's dream.
Somewhere near Lyon, France, sometime this year, officials from the French pharmaceutical firm Boiron will slaughter a solitary duck and extract its heart and liver--not to appease the gods but to fight the flu. The organs will be used to make an over-the-counter flu medicine, called Oscillococcinum, that will be sold around the world. In a monetary sense, this single French duck may be the most valuable animal on the planet, as an extract of its heart and liver form the sole "active ingredient" in a flu remedy that is expected to generate sales of $20 million or more. [US News]Imagine that. Companies can package pure water and lactose (in pill form), stick a variety of labels on the bottles, market water and sugar pills as having therapeutic efficacy for a host of conditions, make a killing, and get away with it legally!
If that got your goat as it did mine then the following should give you a much needed shot of endorphins. Here are comedians Mitchell & Webb parodying homeopathy and other quackery.
So be aware of homeopathy. And make sure to tell others to be wary of it. It's bizarre. It's bunk. It's bogus. It's balderdash.
Crime and punishment
Well, it's about time someone from the inside spoke up and call for The Rat's resignation.
It's not just a matter of command responsibility; Ratzinger ordered the cover up of sexual abuses! This sleazeball has no business leading an organization which touts itself as a moral authority. I'm with Dawkins and Hitchens. Book this depraved geezer and try him.
It's not just a matter of command responsibility; Ratzinger ordered the cover up of sexual abuses! This sleazeball has no business leading an organization which touts itself as a moral authority. I'm with Dawkins and Hitchens. Book this depraved geezer and try him.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Something's very wrong when they can't tell the difference
Take a cup of consecrated host and another cup of unconsecrated ones. Pour their contents into a jar, put the lid on and mix well. Now ask the Pope, cardinals, and bishops to sort the wafers. Quite patently, they won't be able to. Both chanted over and untransubstantiated crackers look, feel, taste, weigh, and test exactly the same.
Take ten new empty vials from the same production batch and in a class 1 cleanroom fill nine of them with triple distilled water. Using the same batch of distilled water, using new and ultra clean beakers/flasks and pipettes/droppers, and in the same clean 1 room, proceed to make a 30X homeopathic remedy. Doesn't matter what type so long as you end up with a 30X dilution (that is, the amount of active ingredient is 1 part in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). In a double-blind test have homeopaths determine which vial is the homeopathic dilution. They can use whatever instrument, equipment, machine, and laboratory they want. Have this test performed many times. You can bet that as more trials are done, homeopaths' performance will converge toward 1X--they will get it right 10% of the time, which is the probability of being right by chance alone.
Being a fan of James Randi I naturally tend to look at weird and pseudoscientific claims from the perspective of testing them in a controlled fashion. Prof. Chris MacDonald on the other hand looks at homeopathy from the point of view of business and consumer protection. Although he doesn't believe it to be so, for the sake of argument he assumes that homeopathy actually works. He then asks,
Take ten new empty vials from the same production batch and in a class 1 cleanroom fill nine of them with triple distilled water. Using the same batch of distilled water, using new and ultra clean beakers/flasks and pipettes/droppers, and in the same clean 1 room, proceed to make a 30X homeopathic remedy. Doesn't matter what type so long as you end up with a 30X dilution (that is, the amount of active ingredient is 1 part in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). In a double-blind test have homeopaths determine which vial is the homeopathic dilution. They can use whatever instrument, equipment, machine, and laboratory they want. Have this test performed many times. You can bet that as more trials are done, homeopaths' performance will converge toward 1X--they will get it right 10% of the time, which is the probability of being right by chance alone.
Being a fan of James Randi I naturally tend to look at weird and pseudoscientific claims from the perspective of testing them in a controlled fashion. Prof. Chris MacDonald on the other hand looks at homeopathy from the point of view of business and consumer protection. Although he doesn't believe it to be so, for the sake of argument he assumes that homeopathy actually works. He then asks,
How do we detect phoney homeopathic preparations? In order to protect consumers, we need to be able to detect fake remedies — fake versions (sold by counterfeiters) that are really just inert look-alike copies of genuine remedies. In an age of international trade and Internet-based pharmacies, phoney pills are a big problem. So, is there any way to test a homeopathic preparation to verify that it is genuine? If I buy homeopathic tablets, is there any test that can be done to see if they’re real or counterfeit? If authorities suspect a criminal organization of selling fake homeopathic tablets, how can they tell the difference between the criminal organization’s tablets and those manufactured by an honest homeopathic pharmacy?I'd very much like to hear the dilutionists' answer to this as well.
Repeat after me: Sham = placebo
Yesterday I mentioned Linde et al.'s 2009 Cochrane review and how the authors noted that having needles anywhere on the skin is as effective as sticking them in the "official" acupuncture points. Here's a recent news item on their eureka discovery:
Lead author Klaus Linde explains these results:
Let's be clear that the placebo group is there for comparison. If and when the experimental group does not perform any better than the control group then the conclusion ought to be: the modality under test isn't effective. If acupuncturists tell us that the needles should break the skin and that certain points need to be manipulated instead of others in the the treatment of condition X, and if the sham procedure does not meet these criteria, and if there is no statistically significant difference in the results between the two procedures then the conclusion is simple: acupuncture doesn't work.
Sure, we can do a comparative test of placebos and find out which are comparable to placebo X and which elicit placebo effects better than others. But let's keep in mind that they're placebos.
The picture that's coming out of acupuncture studies is that needling anywhere and even jabbing without penetrating the skin (unbeknownst to the particpants of course) all elicit similar or the same effects. One wonders then whether touching, pinching, fondling, scratching, spanking, "hickey-ing," licking, tapping, ... would likewise trigger the same. The only problem is blinding the participants as to which procedure they're receiving. I would guess, however, that being kissed, licked, and fondled by persons the participant finds "interesting" would have much greater, uhh, clinical benefit than being poked with needles.
The researchers conducted two sets of tests on patients with chronic migraine pain. In one test, acupuncture needles were applied in strict adherence with established practice. But in the other test, the needles were inserted either in the wrong positions or else the needles did not penetrate the skin at all.And as the authors concluded: "Collectively, the studies suggest that migraine patients benefit from acupuncture, although the correct placement of needles seems to be less relevant than is usually thought by acupuncturists."
Lead author Klaus Linde explains these results:
Much of the clinical benefit of acupuncture might be due to non- specific needling effects and powerful placebo effects, meaning selection of specific needle points may be less important than many practitioners have traditionally argued.Well that's a clarification/qualification I'm more comfortable with. Noting that the observed reduction in headaches are due to "non-specific needling effects" and "powerful placebo effects" calms me down.
Let's be clear that the placebo group is there for comparison. If and when the experimental group does not perform any better than the control group then the conclusion ought to be: the modality under test isn't effective. If acupuncturists tell us that the needles should break the skin and that certain points need to be manipulated instead of others in the the treatment of condition X, and if the sham procedure does not meet these criteria, and if there is no statistically significant difference in the results between the two procedures then the conclusion is simple: acupuncture doesn't work.
Sure, we can do a comparative test of placebos and find out which are comparable to placebo X and which elicit placebo effects better than others. But let's keep in mind that they're placebos.
The picture that's coming out of acupuncture studies is that needling anywhere and even jabbing without penetrating the skin (unbeknownst to the particpants of course) all elicit similar or the same effects. One wonders then whether touching, pinching, fondling, scratching, spanking, "hickey-ing," licking, tapping, ... would likewise trigger the same. The only problem is blinding the participants as to which procedure they're receiving. I would guess, however, that being kissed, licked, and fondled by persons the participant finds "interesting" would have much greater, uhh, clinical benefit than being poked with needles.
A journalist for science
Michael Specter of the New Yorker talks about how science is essential, how the antiscience sentiment is misplaced.
Best line: We run away from Big Pharma and leap into the arms of Big Placebo.
Best line: We run away from Big Pharma and leap into the arms of Big Placebo.
Chinese studies now to be taken with a ton of salt
It's worse than I thought. The problem of publication bias in China is nothing compared to this.
Ghostwriting, plagiarizing or faking results is so rampant in Chinese academia that some experts worry it could hinder China's efforts to become a leader in science.
...
"Academic fraud, misconduct and ethical violations are very common in China," said professor Rao Yi, dean of the life sciences school at Peking University in the capital. "It is a big problem."
...
Fang Shimin, an independent investigator of fraud, said he and his volunteers expose about a hundred cases every year, publicizing them on a Web site titled "New Threads." "The most common ones are plagiarism and exaggerating academic achievement," Fang said.
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