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Thread: The 10 worst "science" stories of 2006

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    The very model of a modern Moderator Xiahou's Avatar
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    Default The 10 worst "science" stories of 2006

    Here they are, from STATS, at George Mason University. Discuss.
    Sex crazed teens, overhyped abductions, booze bunk - our awards for the worst science stories of 2006!
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    The 2006 Dubious Data Awards
    STATS, January 2, 2007
    Sex crazed teens, overhyped abductions, booze bunk - our awards for the worst science stories of 2006!

    Toxins for Tots?
    Just in Time for Christmas! The Dec. 13 issue of Time magazine warned parents to throw out all their soft vinyl toys, teethers, pacifiers, nipples, sipping cups, and baby bottles to avoid poisoning their children with phthalates, a family of chemicals that makes plastics flexible. This grinchlike recommendation came despite the fact that phthalates in toys have been cleared for children’s use by both the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the European Union’s Institute for Health and Consumer Protection.

    Hurricane Blowhards
    In the wake of Katrina and 14 other hurricanes in 2005, the media carried dire predictions of another big year for big blows – “distressingly like last year’s” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution); “another tempestuous one” (San Francisco Chronicle). The AP cited a forecast of nine hurricanes, including five “category three’s” (winds over 110mph) and 17 tropical storms. Even worse, global warming was going to produce more Katrina-scale disasters -- “an upward trend in hurricane intensity” (CBS Evening News) “all along our Atlantic and Gulf Coast lines;” (CBS Morning News). So what happened? In 2006 there were only five hurricanes, including two category threes, and nine tropical storms. And the media doom mongering? Gone with the wind.

    Girls Not As Wild As Hoped, Part I
    Leapin’ libidos, Batman! The media ran wild with a survey on spring break debauchery “all but confirming what goes on in those ‘Girls Gone Wild’ videos”, according to the AP dispatch. The survey, commissioned by the American Medical Association (AMA), found that large majorities of college women and recent graduates said that spring break involves increases in drinking and sex, and “sizable numbers” reported having sex with more than one partner and blacking out or getting sick from drinking. Whoops! Despite their claims to the contrary, and their attempts to stonewall critics, it turned out that the AMA actually conducted a non-random non-scientific Internet poll of volunteers, only 27 percent of whom had actually been on spring break themselves.

    Girls Not As Wild As Hoped, Part II
    In February the Wall Street Journal reported that the consumption of alcohol among teenage girls increased by over 30% from 1999 to 2004. But alcoholic drinks were measured by volume, and included mixers as well as actual alcohol. Thus, a 6 ounce glass of alcohol was treated the same as an ounce of alcohol mixed with 5 ounces of orange juice. In fact, US government studies show that "binge drinking" by college age females has remained steady since 1980, and daily drinking has been dropping since 2002.

    More Crocked Booze News
    Both Forbes and the New York Times bit on a study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA), which claimed that almost half of the alcohol industry’s revenue (almost 50 billion dollars per year) comes from underage drinkers, who consume over 20 billion drinks a year. For that to be true, the 36 million kids in the 12 to 20 age group must be consuming nearly as much booze as the entire adult population. If this seems unlikely on its face, do the math: If we accept CASA’s claim that nearly half the teenagers in America are drinkers, each of them must each be consuming over 1,000 drinks per year, or almost three drinks a day, for CASA’s numbers to add up.

    Fishy New Car Smell
    The Los Angeles Times reported that drivers who suck in that “new car smell” are actually inhaling dangerous chemicals that escape from polyvinylchlorides (pvc's) in their car's interiors, in a process called “outgassing.” The Times relied on the complaint of an environmental group that didn't actually measure how much of the chemicals had outgassed in any of the new cars it tested; it just measured the amount of plastic used in the cars and assumed the rest. Moreover, the group claimed the chemicals were dangerous because they were harmful in massive quantities to fish in the North Atlantic. But risk assessments by the Environmental Protection Agency have found no danger to humans.

    Miami Vice vs. Arabian Fights
    It’s no secret that a lot of people around the world think of the United States as an unusually violent society. And it’s true that our homicide rates are far higher than in much of Europe, Canada, and Australia. But sometimes the comparisons get out of hand. For example, in November filmmaker George Gittoes made headlines in his native Australia with the claim that Miami is more dangerous than Baghdad. Gittoes, who is making a documentary comparing life in a Miami suburb with life in Iraq, was quoted by the Australian Daily Telegraph, “It is much worse in Miami than in Baghdad…people with guns, drug dealers leering at you… I knew I was in a war zone.” The story was covered in the Miami Herald and other US media after Rep Tim Tancredo (R-CO) called Miami a “third world country” and “murder capital of the world.”

    For the record, homicides in Miami’s Dade County totaled 171 last year, although it projects to well over 200 this year. Casualty figures in Iraq are a matter of great controversy. But according to Iraqi Body Count, the most conservative estimate for Baghdad was 810 violent deaths in September 2006 alone, the latest available figures. Thus, although Baghdad’s population is over twice as large as Miami’s, the chances of meeting a violent death are dozens of times as great there.

    An Overly Convenient Poll
    “The nation's top climate scientists are giving ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ Al Gore's documentary on global warming, five stars for accuracy,” the Associated Press announced in June. In fact every scientist contacted by the AP endorsed Gore’s claims. Sounds impressive, until you reach the small print. The AP contacted “more than 100” climate researchers, of whom only 19 had seen the movie or read the book. And could it be that these 19 made themselves familiar with Gore’s work because they were predisposed to agree with it? The AP quotes one who recalls telling his host at a special screening, “Al, I’m absolutely blown away.” Whatever top climate scientists actually think about global warming, this survey is so much hot air.

    The Kids Are Alright
    Using a concealed-camera segment to show how easy it was for an adult man to get a little boy close enough to his car to abduct him, In March the NBC Today Show claimed that the number of “missing children” in America has risen 44 percent since 1982. But according to the Justice Department, which is widely recognized as the best source for such data, there has been no increase at all. In fact, there are signs of a decline between 1988 and 1999, the last years for which numbers are currently available.

    This is Your Brain on Porn…
    Does porn cause brain damage? ABC News says so… sort of. In an April report on anti-porn campaigns, one activist claims, “we'll demonstrate in the not-too-distant future the actual physical harm that pornography causes”. But the main “expert” quoted to support the view that “you’re damaging your brain” by consuming porn is… (drum roll) an automobile executive. An expert on internet behavior then estimates that “up to ten percent” of male pornography viewers stop having sex with their wives – but where he got ten percent is anybody’s guess. (No word on how many men don’t need pornography to stop having sex with their wives)
    "Don't believe everything you read online."
    -Abraham Lincoln

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    Member Member Yun Dog's Avatar
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    Default Re: The 10 worst "science" stories of 2006

    Quote Originally Posted by Xiahou
    This is Your Brain on Porn…
    Does porn cause brain damage? ABC News says so… sort of. In an April report on anti-porn campaigns, one activist claims, “we'll demonstrate in the not-too-distant future the actual physical harm that pornography causes”. But the main “expert” quoted to support the view that “you’re damaging your brain” by consuming porn is… (drum roll) an automobile executive. An expert on internet behavior then estimates that “up to ten percent” of male pornography viewers stop having sex with their wives – but where he got ten percent is anybody’s guess. (No word on how many men don’t need pornography to stop having sex with their wives)
    HA HA HA

    nice post

    its funny how the retractions/corrections are always small one paragraphs somewhere at the end of the classifieds

    I would guess the other 90% - but Im no automobile executive

    Quote Originally Posted by pevergreen View Post
    its pevergeren.

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    Evil Sadist Member discovery1's Avatar
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    Default Re: The 10 worst "science" stories of 2006


    Girls Not As Wild As Hoped, Part II
    In February the Wall Street Journal reported that the consumption of alcohol among teenage girls increased by over 30% from 1999 to 2004. But alcoholic drinks were measured by volume, and included mixers as well as actual alcohol. Thus, a 6 ounce glass of alcohol was treated the same as an ounce of alcohol mixed with 5 ounces of orange juice. In fact, US government studies show that "binge drinking" by college age females has remained steady since 1980, and daily drinking has been dropping since 2002.



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    Come to daddy Member Geoffrey S's Avatar
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    Default Re: The 10 worst "science" stories of 2006

    It's just barely before 2006, but that whole faked stemcell business in South Korea springs to mind,
    "The facts of history cannot be purely objective, since they become facts of history only in virtue of the significance attached to them by the historian." E.H. Carr

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    The very model of a modern Moderator Xiahou's Avatar
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    Default Re: The 10 worst "science" stories of 2006

    I seem to remember this being discussed in the backroom:
    Toxins for Tots?
    Just in Time for Christmas! The Dec. 13 issue of Time magazine warned parents to throw out all their soft vinyl toys, teethers, pacifiers, nipples, sipping cups, and baby bottles to avoid poisoning their children with phthalates, a family of chemicals that makes plastics flexible. This grinchlike recommendation came despite the fact that phthalates in toys have been cleared for children’s use by both the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the European Union’s Institute for Health and Consumer Protection.
    Naturally, here it wasn't about children's toys, but sex toys.
    "Don't believe everything you read online."
    -Abraham Lincoln

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    Jillian & Allison's Daddy Senior Member Don Corleone's Avatar
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    Default Re: The 10 worst "science" stories of 2006

    Interesting article, Xiahou. John Stossel himself couldn't have said it any better.

    My personal favorite, being in New England this winter, is global warming. By the most extreme accounts, global warming is supposed to cause an average increase in temperature of about 4 degrees Farrenheit. Yet every night, on every news broadcast, we hear about how the unseasonably warm winter we've had thus far 'just must' be caused by global warming. (For the record, our daily temperatures are approximately 15 degrees above average). To these folks, I have two questions:

    1) If global warming is pretty much caused my mankind, did we quadruple our CO2 emissions in the past year without anybody noticing?

    2) Did Denver and Nebraska reduce their Carbon emissions, hence all the snow?

    In reality, the culprit is a well-known phenomenon, a weather pattern that was recorded by Spanish explorers 200 years before the invention of the combustion engine, known popularly as 'El Nino'.

    But if we could only force the USA to adhere to Kyoto protocols... then we'd get some snow!!!
    Last edited by Don Corleone; 01-05-2007 at 23:11.
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    L'Etranger Senior Member Banquo's Ghost's Avatar
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    Default Re: The 10 worst "science" stories of 2006

    Actually Don, almost no-one disputes the evidence that the earth is getting warmer.

    The argument nowadays is whether this is a natural cycle or man-made, which determines what, if anything we should do about it.
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    Jillian & Allison's Daddy Senior Member Don Corleone's Avatar
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    Default Re: The 10 worst "science" stories of 2006

    I totally agree, BQ. I do not doubt that we are in a warming trend. Winters are much, much milder than when I was young. My point was all the people seeing this year's unusually warm termperatures and playing chicken little. Even if you listen to the most ardent Luddites, that man is a pox upon the planet, they'd tell you we've raised the temperature by only a quarter of the aberration we're currently experiencing. If it's all caused by us... where is all of this unaccounted harmful activity occuring?

    Yes, the planet is warming. But we're still not as warm as the Earth was in the early Middle Ages.
    "A man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man."
    Don Vito Corleone: The Godfather, Part 1.

    "Then wait for them and swear to God in heaven that if they spew that bull to you or your family again you will cave there heads in with a sledgehammer"
    Strike for the South

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    Texan Member BigTex's Avatar
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    Default Re: The 10 worst "science" stories of 2006

    Quote Originally Posted by Banquo's Ghost
    Actually Don, almost no-one disputes the evidence that the earth is getting warmer.

    The argument nowadays is whether this is a natural cycle or man-made, which determines what, if anything we should do about it.
    Suppose the earth is getting warming. But Texas has had the coldest decade since records were kept. It's getting warmer, but so has the sun. Man made not so much as man slightly assisted it get a little warmer. When the sun die's down a bit so will the temps.

    But where on the right track. The combustion engine is soon to be CO2 free. The first of the GM electolosys based hydrogen burning car's were showed off in the New York auto show not to long ago. Plastic's are steadily being made more from soy beans and other beans rather then oil. Even the US Navy is in the process of changing it's acedaline torches to the same electrolosys based device. All in all it's getting better.
    Last edited by BigTex; 01-06-2007 at 01:01.
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    Member Member Phatose's Avatar
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    Default Re: The 10 worst "science" stories of 2006

    Eh, Hydrogen is a red herring. Sure, the engines themselves don't produce CO2, but getting the hydrogen in the first place requires energy. Can't burn hydrogen to get that energy, since we don't even have it yet, so we're back to classical sources. More centralized, perhaps, and certainly easier to control then millions of gas powered vehicles, which is an advantage, but unless the centralization allows for enough reduction in waste output to offset the inefficiencies of transferring energy from one form to another twice, we end up putting out more pollution then we did before we switched.

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    Texan Member BigTex's Avatar
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    Default Re: The 10 worst "science" stories of 2006

    Quote Originally Posted by Phatose
    Eh, Hydrogen is a red herring. Sure, the engines themselves don't produce CO2, but getting the hydrogen in the first place requires energy. Can't burn hydrogen to get that energy, since we don't even have it yet, so we're back to classical sources. More centralized, perhaps, and certainly easier to control then millions of gas powered vehicles, which is an advantage, but unless the centralization allows for enough reduction in waste output to offset the inefficiencies of transferring energy from one form to another twice, we end up putting out more pollution then we did before we switched.
    Like I said, electrolosys based hydrogen combustion. The man that created the machine made it efficient enough to be started off the car's battery. More importantly that's why GM became interested. Though the man originally created it for the US navy so they wouldnt need to use acedaline torchers which produce large amounts of dangerous chemicals.
    Wine is a bit different, as I am sure even kids will like it.
    BigTex
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    Default Re: The 10 worst "science" stories of 2006

    Texas may have had the coldest decade but the majority of the Alps ski resorts did not open until very recently.

    Sure, the engines themselves don't produce CO2, but getting the hydrogen in the first place requires energy
    Renewable energy to power electrolysis, then store the hydrogen.

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    Simulation Monkey Member The_Mark's Avatar
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    Default Re: The 10 worst "science" stories of 2006

    What about the thermal chip, that converts thermal energy directly into elevctrical energy, by Eneco? or something? That sounded somewhat interesting, regarding energy savings et all, in case the thing acvrtually works.

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