Andrew Wakefield found to have Acted Unethically

I am sure that people have heard of Wakefield's Lancet study that sparked the MMR 'debate' which was recently shot down by the GMC in an investigation. (if you don't know what was going on with this check out my article over at examiner.com) But what I wanted to share was some of the lovely comments I got namely that from Age of Autism. My day was made with this - I came to the attention of Age of Autism! yay! Anyway - the comment -

In 2006, the Daily Mail published the comments by Dr. Peter Fletcher, former Chief Scientific Officer in the UK concerning the MMR.
"[Fletcher] said he has seen a 'steady accumulation of evidence' from scientists worldwide that the measles, mumps and rubella jab is causing brain damage in certain children.
"But he added: 'There are very powerful people in positions of great authority in Britain and elsewhere who have staked their reputations and careers on the safety of MMR and they are willing to do almost anything to protect themselves.'
" 'It is the steady accumulation of evidence, from a number of respected universities, teaching hospitals and laboratories around the world, that matters here. There's far too much to ignore. ... authorities are, it seems, more than happy to do so.' "
The GMC decision proves that 'very powerful people' are in control.
Anne Dachel
Age of Autism

To begin with for this comment - heard of a conspiracy theory? Wow, "very powerful people are in control." Yes they are, that is the point, being in control gives you power but I digress. This is a straw man - what research is she talking about? I have evidence that the MMR is not correlated with autism and that vaccination is safe... she offered no research to back this up and in fact it is against the consensus in the scientific community. I asked her to provide the research for me to see, but I seriously doubt that she will provide.

Templeton nonsense

So in a recent (ish) post on Richard Dawkins website led me to find some of the exams and such offered by Templeton. I have to concur with everyone over there that some of the requirements for both undergrad and masters students make the ID trolls comments make much more sense. Mainly because the requirement - for 20% of the grade - is to post at least 10 comments on 'hostile' website. Holy monkey people. 20% of your final to make comments? I no longer wonder at some of the idiotic comments that can be found on the more popular blogs regarding ID/Creationism. Seriously this blew my mind. I wish I had requirements as easy as these.

Win for evolution

So imagine my surprise when I ran into this on the discovery institute. "Peloza v. Capistrano Independent Unified School District: Evolution May Be Taught Even if it Conflicts With Religious Beliefs" Apparently the discotute is just getting to reporting on this case, which was in the nineth court of appeals. This case decided that a teacher can be ordered to teach evolution, even if the theory conflicts with his or her religious beliefs. So what does that mean? It makes it so that even if the teacher is a young earth creationist they still have to teach the science in biology. woo hoo for that case I just find it entertaining that it took sixteen years for them to finally talk about it...

Huzzah?

Well ladies and gents, good news and bad - I am now unemployed (woo.) and yes that was the bad news. ^_^;; I also got myself into the psu fencing club (yay) and found that there is no SCA on campus (boo) but there is a medieval fighting club that I am going to check out and possibly start one (yay) I am going to see about getting a locker today after class, wish me luck! ^^ I am checking out the discotute tonight so watch for that update later.

watch out for the storm

Watch out over the next few days because I will be posting a new article about climate change over on examiner. Part one will be what is climate change/global warming Part two will be what the science says and part three will be what the "sceptics" say. I plan on getting these out friday, saturday and sunday between work and homework. Please let me know what you think of these (ill post linkage) and help me combat the comments I am likely to get because I am finally making a stand on the issue.