Many times we see advertisements for products where the makers claim that their product is better then that of their competitors because they had asked 10 people if they liked it. The Ad then goes something like: ACME is found to be the best of all other products study shows.
In extremely tiny lettering in a 10 second flash it says in at the bottom of the screen: Results from self report among 10 participants.
The same thing is done in soft science too. Recently a blatant self promotional Psychology piece caught my eye thanks to Neuroskeptic
Researchers have wondered how the brain creates emotions since the early days of psychological science. With a surge of studies in affective neuroscience in recent decades, scientists are poised to answer this question. In this target article, we present a meta-analytic summary of the neuroimaging literature on human emotion. We compare the locationist approach (i.e., the hypothesis that discrete emotion categories consistently and specifically correspond to distinct brain regions) with the psychological constructionist approach (i.e., the hypothesis that discrete emotion categories are constructed of more general brain networks not specific to those categories) to better understand the brain basis of emotion. We review both locationist and psychological constructionist hypotheses of brain–emotion correspondence and report meta-analytic findings bearing on these hypotheses. Overall, we found little evidence that discrete emotion categories can be consistently and specifically localized to distinct brain regions. Instead, we found evidence that is consistent with a psychological constructionist approach to the mind: A set of interacting brain regions commonly involved in basic psychological operations of both an emotional and non-emotional nature are active during emotion experience and perception across a range of discrete emotion categories.
You can buy/access it here (don’t it’s a waste of money)
The brain basis of emotion: A meta-analytic review
Hopeless mess of psychological jargon
First horror sentence:
Researchers have wondered how the brain creates emotions since the early days of psychological science.
First of all the brain doesn’t ‘create’ emotions. Emotions are complex preprogrammed reaction patterns buried deep in the older parts of the brain. What the ‘researchers’ are looking for is how this propagates into the higher order processes. And that’s blatantly obvious, you don’t need to look for it since the early days of astrology, oops psychology. It is accumulated in the overall storyline by the storyteller. See:
The self promotional Conclusion, we were right because we researched our own work and it says so:
Instead, we found evidence that is consistent with a psychological constructionist approach to the mind
Read this well.
Then think about the advertising of ACME claiming ACME is the best because ACME asked 10 of it’s employees if they found ACME to be the best.
At the very best (excepting clinical psychology, which isn’t really psychology but actual science) psychology has the same quality as astrology. They have the same kind of jargon, factfree science and totally subjective interpretative results.
Filed under: Ruminations | Leave a Comment
Tags: Astrology, Factfree Science, Psychology, Sjamanism, SnakeOil
Plos published a nice article exemplifying how deep the cognitive dissonance of the medical world regarding FAT is BAD has become.
The article boldly claims to have added to the case of there being a causal link between BMI and IHD, in other words FAT is BAD. Climate alarmism is spreading as a ‘scientific method’.
What are the facts? BMI is a lousy way to measure body mass. It doesn’t differentiate between muscle mass and other mass, nor by type of other mass. As such is it is virtually meaningless. A calculation that gives the same value to a highly trained heavy weight boxer and a couch potato is definitively faulty.
So the basic assumption is already false, so the whole article is useless. However to add insult to injury the final conclusion heavily promotes the idea that FAT is BAD by suggesting (not proving by any scientific standard) that there is a mathematical calculated link between BMI
(i.e. FAT 
)
and IHD and therefore causality is overwhelmingly likely but at the same time admitting that the real causality is NOT BMI but other factors.
It seems there is so much grantmoney floating around to fuel the obesity craze that any paper gets published nowadays in a frantic scramble for the big bucks.
A sad state of affairs indeed.
The offending article (PDF alert):
Proving cognitive dissonance is rampant
Update:
Who’d have thought:
Cholesterol of any kind doesn’t change CVD risk
Basic assumption that Cholesterol causes CVD is again proven wrong, but still they don’t get the message.
Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments
Tags: health, medicine
The Hatebeard phenomenon
Watching current affairs one can’t help but being struck by the correlation between beards, religion/ideology and hate/intolerance. The most rabid examples are the proponents of the Islam, but the same kind of bearded backwardness can also be found in Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, etc.
Those are the determining factors of a HateBeard:
a) Beard, preferably long and unkempt.
b) Mentally and socially living in modes that where current centuries ago
c) Misogyny to an absurd degree
d) Religion
e) Total lack of reason, common sense and civilization
It’s funny in a very sad way how HateBeards just are carbon copies of each other but at the same time fail to see they are. No matter which underlying religion, a HateBeard hates. Hates with a fervor anything not conforming with his antiquated ideology. Hates with a fervor anybody that challenges this ideology and it’s bizarre concepts.
And why are HateBeards suddenly so prominent nowadays? Where they always there but nicely tucked away in some backward sandpit practicing their atrocities hidden from view and has modern science, so despised by them, given them the platform to invade the world with their poisonous filth or has the pressure of the rapidly advancing progress of the civil world unbalanced ever more fragile minds making them more susceptible to the HateSpeech causing an real increase of HateBeards?
Whatever maybe the case, one thing must never be done and that is prohibiting/limiting a HateBeards freedom of speech, a tendency becoming prevalent in western society.
A HateBeard must be given every opportunity to openly show what he stands for: Hate, Intolerance, Suppression of free thought, Submission of women, Lust for Dominance so it is clearly visible. So the more sane part of the world can realize that HateBeards are a menace to all a free world stands for.
Filed under: Ruminations | Leave a Comment
Tags: haatbaard, Hate, HateBeard, Ideology, Misogyny, religion
Autism revisited
Autism has become popular of late. The rate of diagnosed autism rises fast. If this is due to a better awareness or an actual increase is impossible to determine due to a lack of a baseline. It’s unknown what autism rate was so one can’t say if it increases in reality, the awareness causes more diagnosed cases or both.
Wholly based on my own speculation i go for the latter but that’s immaterial.
What is important is that the description of Autism in the DSM, including DSM V, is incomplete. What it does is describing the symptoms of Autism not the whole thing.
As having Asperger myself i can with certainty say that based on my own experiences and those of my peers that Autism is a different state of consciousness which presents the world some symptoms making communication difficult.
This different state of consciousness is obviously hard to describe to someone who doesn’t have it. One can just make an effort similar like explaining a color to a born blind person.
It is a world where thought patterns are more linear, more straightforward. Events have no emotional compound obfuscating, complicating the interpretation.
An event gets analyzed on its face value, without interference. Whereas non Autists see the world through the limbic systems filter, coloring the event, Autists in general don’t.
This frustrates the limbic system to no end. It wants to be heard. I know it’s there, screaming at me, but it’s in a soundproof room. Since this system still has functional control over your hormones it can make life pretty nasty for you. Anxiety/fear is one of the predominant expressions of this frustrated entity. This can in serious cases present itself as tantrums, rage. And that’s what the world at large sees, an anxious person with no or hardly any emotional interaction.
To me my HFA is a good thing. I see it works for me by freeing me from the shackles of the limbic system.
The medical profession however sees this different, not fully comprehending it, and offers ‘treatments’ designed to make you behave as if you are controlled by the limbic system. More like them.
But i don’t want to be like them. I want to be me, i don’t have a ‘disorder’. I am different. Not better, not worse. Different.
Filed under: Ruminations | 2 Comments
A Better Index of Body Adiposity.
An article were the writer proposes a rather fanciful measuring system to calculate body fat as part of body mass. The body adiposity index (BAI = ((hip circumference)/((height)1.5)–18)).
A quick glance at the material is enough to see that yet again someone jumps to conclusions, and that the method is as flawed as BMI. It’s a backward calculation. It’s like determining the temperature of a certain spot 100.000 years ago by taking todays temperature and extrapolating backwards.
Also Better then BMI isn’t much of a standard, because BMI is/was seriously flawed.
Obviously there’s a need for classifying people for medical purposes, how else can you properly diagnose.
However this preoccupation with ‘prevention’ and ‘riskfactors’ is becoming fast more of a goal in itself then it actually does anything for anyone. And as soon as you start to single out 1 form of causes of death as preferential over others you are bound for a goaldriven study, with confirmation bias all over the place.
Sure, people apparently die of CVD, a lot, but those numbers are by no means unpolluted. Ofcourse cause of death is written frequently up as heart failure, because that always happens when you die. It saves a lot of hassle, and the guy’s dead anyway.
Given the overstressed healthcare in most civilized countries, when people die naturally but before their due time why waste time looking for a reason? So much more easy on the paperwork to write up heart failure. Because it’s not a lie. Evidently his heart failed, because it doesn’t beat anymore. Or take ‘palliative death’ or ‘passive euthanasia’. Put that on your death certificate and you’ll be in a whole lot of problems except in some enlightened countries.
And an update already. Yet another ‘let’s jump to conclusions”
High BMI assiociated with cancer
Listen. It’s simple. If you eat chemical waste you’re bound to get some form of cancer. If, as a side effect this makes you have a high BMI making therefore the correlation High BMI and cancer is absurd.
It’s what you eat that causes nasty changes in your body, not the fat. You can’t say: he’s fat so he has higher risk of cancer.
What you should say is: His diet is unhealthy causing disease and leads, probably, as a sideeffect to obesity.
One seriously wonders what’s the cultural education of these researchers. Since centuries diverse cultures have seen obesity as a sign of wealth and status. Thus obesity was/is rampant. If this ‘link’ between obesity and cancer was so evident, you’d expect a serious clustering of those cancers in those cultures. But one doesn’t.
Theory therefore falsified. Obesity and cancer aren’t related.
Another one: Diabetes. Anyone ever heard of Baklava? Last time i looked diabetes isn’t largely overrepresented amongst arab ethnic groups. That culture has obesity as status symbol and eats sugar by the pound.
All other reasons why this whole effort is wasted one can find in a previous post:
The disease Fat does not exist
Filed under: Ruminations | Leave a Comment
The Monkey on the Ape’s Back
Technically this should be called: The Ape on the Monkey’s back but for sake of the imagery the title is more apt. When thinking of an ape we tend to think of a big beast and in case of a monkey a tiny one, whilst ofcourse the ape is the primate. Still it has a better ring to it.
We tend to think of ourselves as free autonomous conscious entities. We are human, and that makes us stand out. To my mind this is an oversimplistic view of reality.
As mammals evolved into primates the brain evolved too. But the principle of evolution being that existing systems are being extended, that caused additional brains to spring from the original basic brain, the brainstem, to take up the extra load.
All vertebrates have a brainstem like structure. It is the minimum needed to keep the body going. Nutrition, oxygenation, temperature, movement etc. are regulated by the brainstem.
With the evolution of the mammals a second outcrop started to develop. The limbic system.
The connection between the limbic system and the brainstem is a mostly one way system in the sense that both brains can interact with the body but not with each other. The two brains are fused together at the bottom of the brainstem into the spinal cord. This gives the limbic system corporal control,in conjunction with the more automated brainstem.
It is a much more advanced brain which handles various higher order processes, such as survival tactics. Survival depends on properly recognizing danger, food, procreation opportunities.
This takes advanced planning, decision making, fast responses to stimuli. This brain interacts with its environment, it must be aware of itself and its relation to its environment to do the job properly.
In other words it is conscious at a certain level.
As mammals further developed into social beings, a new outcrop started to form. The neocortex.
This third brain again has mostly one-way connections with the other two brains. It also fuses into the spinal cord giving it further control over corporal functions. The neocortex houses the most advanced processes,it refines all functions of the limbic system and adds the high order intellectual capacity, such grammatical language, self awareness.
In view of the very limited vertical connections between the neocortex and the underlying limbic system, and taken the fact that the limbic system has priority in determining danger/food/procreation in its environment one can see that the neocortex always by necessity reacts after the fact.
The limbic system perceives danger, it prepares the body for the fight/flight response and the neocortex takes this up afterwards due to a complicated interpretative analyses of facial expression (the limbic system has control over that), body stance, muscle tension, heart rate, respiration,hormone levels and lastly visual and auditory clues.
In most cases where immediate action is deemed necessary by the limbic system it performs the required action, leaving the neocortex to figure out why the body landed a blow in someones face.
This gives rise to the thesis that ‘our’ consciousness is just along for the ride. Although ‘we’ can plan and act accordingly, when it comes to real-time environmental interaction its our other consciousness which calls the shots.
This has far reaching consequences for the premise of ‘free will’. Who has the free will, which consciousness we hold accountable. Or do we just hold the one accountable which can make itself heard even though in reality that consciousness actually hasn’t a clue why his body did what it did and has to concoct an explanation itself.
It also places emotions. Emotions are not ‘our’ emotions but the expression of the state of the other consciousness which for lack of further interaction the neocortex also has to determine via interpretative analysis.
Which leaves ofcourse the facility to plan and re(act) based on cognitive functions. One still can decide to do X or Y. Still this decision making process is being manipulated.
To my mind this whole system is best explained with this analogue:
Imagine that our awareness is the flow across the Collector and Emitter of a Transistor. The Base in this analogue is the limbic system, tiny fluctuations can have a big effect on our storyteller.
This works well also to explain the difference between low and highly emotional people.
A transistor has a specific gain, that is how much the Base current influences the Collector/Emitter flow. With the same Base current you can have a big influence or small influence depending on that gain.
As such we are totally at the mercy of our limbic system, but in some it shows more then others.
Food for thought.
Filed under: Ruminations | 5 Comments
Tags: brain, consciousness, free will, Philosophy
The brain believes, do you?
Untold thinkers have written insights with varying clarity concerning the role and functionality of religion in people.
In my humble opinion all parties get stuck in ever repeating card houses of logic defending their particular conviction thereby completely ignoring the core of the matter. What is religion to more or less objective standards?
The following biological facts, simplified a lot, shed some light on the issue.
There was once a mammal. It needed a lot of little bits of operating systems in order to let all components of its body function properly. Over time they became so numerous that it needed a system to coordinate the other bits . That system became so complex that it was capable to reprogram itself in order to be able to assimilate the ever increasing flow of information. It called itself: conscience.
Objectively impossible to determine if it exists, since conscience itself determines what are the criteria defining conscience.
That conscience, in an attempt to preprogram future acts of the body, starts tell a tale to itself.
A continuous flowchart enabling it by correlating previous events and by means of extrapolation to arrive at a predefined future action.
The conscience calls that tale: reality. Again objectively impossible to determine if it exists, the conscience stipulates what is reality. The one conscience determines the tale in which a supernatural being must exist a reality, the other determines it to be unreal.
In this one can distinguish two different main categories of belief:
First. The true devout believer.
Given the biological fact that belief has a physical origin in a brain structure located somewhere in temple area one can make a good case that belief in its origin/intensity is directly related to a more or less developed structure of the brain.
Accepting this, asking for respect for a religion and it’s rituals is the same as to ask respect because someone can talk, run, eat, defecate.
Discussions involving religions, and their place in society is meaningless, the believer is forced by its brain to believe. Once could compare it with homosexuality . This also finds its origin in the structure of the brain and is therefore futile to try to impose the feeling on a heterosexual, or persuade another to become likewise.
The only difference would be, as the brain structure controlling belief has no preference over one supernatural being for another, that a believer can be made to accept another religion. Whereas a homosexual has not that many options.
Second: The social believer.
The characteristics of this believer are one of educational, peer formed belief. This form of belief is just a concept created by indoctrination and as such is not really ‘felt’ to be true.
This explains why people can become apogees or atheists. An option lacking in the previous category of believers.
Unfortunately there are lots of people with a less developed notion regarding the origin and nature of conscience whom take themselves very seriously. So immensely serious that it is for them unacceptable that their existence has no meaning. And then they will look for something which will give their existence the grandeur they imagine it to have .
Old books such as the bible, koran, torah come in very handy, because just like the writings of Michel the Nostredame they can be interpreted in any which way to suit whatever you want to believe.
The simple solution that we simply are procreating little primates that exist because we exist is too humiliating to them.
We logically have an anthropocentric world view. We assume ourselves to be superior because we believe we are superior. A type of extreme ‘dubito, ergo cogito ergo sum’. Other animals doubt also, take decisions, deceive, tease, play, have feelings of love, hate, joy etc.
Their philosophy of life we do not understand just as little as they understand ours.
But by their standards they sure can feel superior over humans with good reason.
Filed under: Ruminations | 4 Comments
Tags: consciousness, Philosophy, religion
The disease FAT does not exist
Correlation and Causality ran wild
We are overrun with studies, not a day goes by or we learn another result of a study. Alcohol is good for the heart, alcohol causes cancer. Smoking is unhealthy, smoke is good against dementia. The climate warms, the climate cools, the climate does both at the same time.
Why one wonders, are so many studies contradictory?
The underlying reason for this type confusing headlines is that many scientists confuse correlation with causality. They do a study, find a link between the one and the other (correlation) and then they just assume causality.
A point in case:
Conclusion of a study: Meat causes cancer, especially red meat.
Correlation: more meat more cancer.
Causality: Almost all meat, but certainly red meat, is roasted/baked/grilled. The process of roasting/baking/grilling produces aromatic esters which are known long time to be carcinogenic. Red meat is nearly always roasted/baked/grilled therefore one sees more cancer in people who eat red meat.
The conclusion of the study would then have to be: Fried food increased the risk of cancer.
I will try to make the dangers of such correlation/causality clear by means of an example how this process takes place.
The hypothesis that obesity is detrimental to the health.
It doesn’t take much reading to discover this to be completely false but nevertheless time and time again we are brainwashed that we must be slim, be sportive, eat healthy.
So how is it nevertheless possible that we’re brainwashed to believe so, to go so far as to take cholesterol lowering medication, whose dangerous side effects far outweigh the benefits (if any) whereas there only is a correlation between CVD, but no causal relation has ever been proven.
The complete Fat is unhealthy tale started with the discovery of a remote village where the inhabitants suffered less frequently CVD then average for the rest of the population. After much research a correlation was found:
The majority of the inhabitants had a genetic condition causing low cholesterol levels.
This correlation instantly became a causal relation in the eyes of the scientists. The conclusion was quickly made high cholesterol is the cause of CVD .
Having decided that, it became a small step to conclude that being Fat is unhealthy is because fatter people have on average higher cholesterol levels.
The disease FAT was born.
A lot of studies were undertaken especially to prove that it was really a causal relation, and where there’s vested interest anything can be proven Be wary of studies
By now it is widely accepted that BMI is an idiotic way of measuring weight, where a highly trained heavyweight boxer has a higher BMI than your average couch potato. But since all studies to date use BMI as an indicator, I’ll use that here as well.
These kinds of newspaper headlines out of many like it you’ll never see:
Doesn’t matter which kind of fat, it’s all the same
Obese people live longer, and are less prone to fall ill
If one just glances at the abstract briefly one gets the impression that FAT indeed is not good for you. But if one reads it well and adds up the mortality rate it is obvious that in fact allcause mortality amongst people with BMI greater than 25 is an amazing 100,000 less in the same time period than people with a BMI smaller than 25.
Even more amazing still, fatal CVD was 17000 less at a BMI larger than 25 in comparison with BMI smaller than 25.
If you actually buy the study, you’ll see stunning numbers completely contradicting the FAT is Bad thesis.
Take this research: Why don’t they die, dammit?
The first sentence is immediately clear: Obesity is an established cardiovascular risk factor.
Really? Mmm, that’s open for debate
We read on:
Conclusions: Poststroke mortality is inversely related to BMI: overweight and obese stroke patient have a lower poststroke mortality rate than normal-weight and underweight patient.
The researchers assumed as a definite fact that FAT is Bad and increases your risks for fatal CVD only to conclude how skinnier you are how greater the risk of dying.
In science this is called the Obesity Paradox. What is paradoxical? Well, since medical science is 100% convinced that FAT is Bad, but studies do show conclusively the inverse is the case it is a paradox.
Anyone else would realize that the hypothesis is false and adapt it to reflect the findings, but here it is a paradox.
It must be a paradox because there huge amounts spent on weight control. The billions of profits for the pharmaceutical industry, what an invention, you sell a pill to people who have absolutely no health problems which they must take for the rest of their natural lives and which has so many detrimental side effects that you are assured of an ever ongoing flow of income from other illnesses but of which can never be determined if it was effective or not.
Win/win situation.
The medical industry profits also, because if FAT is a malady they also have an enormous source of income remedy that. And if people on average become skinnier, then adjust you simply the`good BMI‘ down (Again).
The paramedical industry would have never existed in its current size without the illness FAT.For this reason the illness FAT has become of vital economic importance.
a) Billions of tax revenues from the pharmaceutical/medical industry.
b) Employment for hundreds of thousands healthcare workers.
c) Billions spent on `healthy’ food.
d) Billions spent on the sport cults, moving is healthy, or is it?
Update Mai 15: Last article suddenly disappeared from the site……
Here we see a clear example how confusing correlation with causality rendered the lives of millions of people miserable and wasted years of research, money and energy.
Various recent releases:
BMI and Mortality: Results From a National Longitudinal Study of Canadian Adults
Obesity paradox at work (pdf alert)
Cholesterol dislodged as important CVD marker
BMI under scrutiny
BMI under scrutiny part 2
The real reason for CVD? (pdf alert)
All CVD markers pretty useless
Statins have no benefits for the majority of users.
Diet has no effect on overall disease risk.
Its the inflammation, not the fat.
Just in, funny and sad
Exercise major cause of heart attacks.
The very latest:
Genetic Study Shows That Low Body Fat May Not Lower Risk for Heart Disease and Diabetes
Also funny
Low Salt diet kills
And finally even the BMJ chimes in
Fat not bad
Filed under: Ruminations | Leave a Comment
Tags: CVD, Obesity, Weight
Me
