Hereditary health problems are fake, who knew?

           Health problems are a widely discussed and debated topic in the science and health community. Over the course of the last few decades, a variety of diseases have been rising steadily around the world. Scientists want to find the cause for diseases that are becoming more common, such as coronary disease, as well as prevention and possible cures. Despite trying their best to find the answers, scientists and health professionals, as well as individuals seeking answers for their own personal benefit, are plagued with the fake news circulating the internet and journals. These fake news articles, journals, and websites claim to know causes and cures for many diseases which are not scientifically proven.

An infamous source of science-based health news comes from Natural News. According to their article “It’s not that heart disease and obesity runs in your family, it’s that nobody in your family runs”, the author claims that a variety of health problems are not inherited by family ties but instead are a direct result of conscious choices for individual well being. The article proceeds to talk about how being overweight leads to heart problems, and if Americans want to eliminating their ‘non-inherited “condition”’, they need to exercise and make smart food choices. The article reluctantly does admit that there are people who inherit nutrient deficiencies, but that the magnitude of the problem does not correlate with the heart disease cases arising in the public.

            However, heart diseases and similar diseases are not purely dietary based. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, heart disease and high blood pressure can be caused by a variety of factors. Age, sex, race, health, and genetic factors all contribute to the probability of developing heart disease. It is important to note that smoking and an unhealthy diet can increase the risk for disease, but not to the degree Natural News is claiming that it does. The risk factors for coronary disease seems to correlate with many other diseases because age does have a significant impact on disease development. Acknowledging that it is not the ‘American obesity culture’ that solely leads to an abundance of coronary diseases is important for the community to understand and accept.

https://www.naturalnews.com/2018-11-03-its-not-that-heart-disease-and-obesity-runs-in-your-family.html

https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/family_history.htm

-Rachel Klett

Why We Might Be Approaching Discussions with Anti-Vaxxers Wrong

  Since the mid-90's with the MMR hypothesis, there has been a debate around the idea that vaccines cause autism. ("Do Vaccines Cause Autism?"). This has lead to a lot of debate around the world. Which is correct -- are we really putting our kids at risk by getting them vaccinated? Independent of evidence to the contrary, people want to desperately cling to the things they believe -- whichever side of this issue they are on. That idea is called confirmation bias.

Despite how much we've been hearing about and from anti-vaxxers, they still remain a minority in the population. ("The Tyranny of the Anti-Vaxxers"). What if we, as the majority, have been approaching conversations around this issue all wrong? Due to confirmation bias, anti-vaxxers aren't likely to change their beliefs any time soon. These are the issues that "The Tyranny of the Anti-Vaxxers" approaches, through the lens of the Italian Parliament. The Italian Parliament recently removed the requirement that parents need to vaccinate their school-aged children in order to attend school. ("The Tyranny of the Anti-Vaxxers").

Where do these beliefs about vaccines and autism, and the actions they inspire, as in the case of Italy's Parliament, come from? A study was published in The Lancet that looked specifically at the MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) vaccine. It followed some observations that some children that were given the vaccine later were also diagnosed with autism. It turns out that this study was widely flawed: it contained a very small sample size, was funded by sources that motivated the scientists, via large sums of money to give dishonest results, and has been widely replicated since to show universally that the findings were false. ("Do Vaccines Cause Autism?")

Vaccines also can't make you sick. Some claim that they have become sick because of a vaccine. While you may have been sick before, and only began showing symptoms after a vaccine has been given, the vaccine itself cannot make you sick. This comes down to how vaccines are designed. The viruses or bacteria used are genetically modified to impair their ability to make you sick -- unlike if
you were to encounter the same virus outside of the administration of a vaccine. Wild versions of the same virus aren't genetically modified in the same sorts of ways.

All of this to say, whether in the placebo effect, or in the vaccine debate, beliefs are powerful forces. They often effect the ways we perceive the world around us, as is the case here.

Do Vaccines Cause Autism? (n.d.). Retrieved from           https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/do-vaccines-cause-autism

The Tyranny of the Anti-Vaxxers. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.acsh.org/news/2018/09/11/tyranny-anti-vaxxers-13296

Posted by "Chandler Kupris" (3)

Humans and neanderthal's: one in the same

     This article states that of many human ancestral frauds, that Neanderthal's are one of them. The article goes on to say that the difference in the shape of the Neanderthals and Homo sapiens (humans) is due to arthritis and a condition called rickets.
     However the Smithsonian National Museum of National History says that the difference in body types between the two species was due to living in different environments, like them being shorter and stockier because they lived in a colder environment.
     The reason that Neanderthal's are recognized as skilled hunters, 'surgeons', and believers in after-life is because their brains were just as large and ours and often larger when compared to body-to-brain ratio.
     Another reason this article is completely false is because there has been DNA found from Neanderthals, linking them as a completely different species than Homo Sapiens.

Posted by Danielle Bermingham (1)

"Wrasses demonstrating Providential Design"

Our natural world has a wide variety of systems, with great degrees of complexity and seeming nonsensical or irrational. Yet, these expectations are human constructs. Authors like Harry Sanders writing for the creationist website ‘Answers in Genesis’ falls into this fallacy of reason. His great inspection of every syllable and phrase of biological studies paired with his passing paragraph asserting the ability of Christian holy texts to explain away these seemingly unsolvable problems without even the basic level of academic pretension of biblical citations or a sympathetic theologian’s quote; this inequality of investigation shows the obvious bias of the website--although hopefully readers understood upon reading the name of the organization.

Another facet of Sanders’ anti-scientific reasoning is their base-level discomfort with empirical confusion. Causation is a hard fact to establish since our universe isn’t a neat, straightforward laboratory without exogenous factors impeding our observations. It’s a rough environment, the ocean especially given our body’s deficiency at life-like ability underwater for long periods of time. Yet Sanders dismisses the messiness, instead deferring to their faith; religion is valid, but there’s a reason its called faith, its based on a belief beyond the physical world. For this part of the adventure of our universe, biological laws reign supreme, and one of those is the theory of evolution.

Let’s dismiss the empirical aspect of Sanders’ article first-off. The impact of cleaner wrasses on individual reefs is not straightforwardly good or bad; its a mix of impacts with their own benefits and deficiencies of their own (Waldie et al). Our view of the natural world, without the social world of humanity and the intelligence of our species, there is nothing constant war between every organism over every resource. Yet take for example the complementaries of cleaner wrasses and parrot fish, with each preferring their own respective mucus (Grutter & Bshary). Imagine instead nature as a marketplace, with differing resources being valued in different ways by different individuals; with each fight fought, battle won, and reef environment rid of cleaner wrasses individual benefits are minimal, it’s just wasted opportunity cost on low-nutrient organisms.

Posted by "Chorryi Chin"

The Missing Link between Birds and Reptiles

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The Missing Link between Birds and Reptiles

Archaeopteryx lithographic specimen displayed at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin.  

In a short article on the subject of Anthropological Evolution, the Northwest Creation Network denounced the evolutionary connection between birds and dinosaurs (reptiles). The original article, titled Archaeoraptor Liaoningensis: Fake Dinosaur-bird ancestor, references an evolution fraud that was committed by the National Geographic journal in November of 1999. The magazine forged a fossil with bones from different animals and claimed it to be evidence for the ‘missing link’ between birds and the group of dinosaurs known as theropods. They informally named this creature as “Archaeoraptor liaoningensis”, and claimed it had the ability to fly. This was later proven to be false, as the Northwest Creation Network asserted. However, there have been other fossils of feathered dinosaurs found that demonstrate the evolutionary link between birds and reptiles.

There have been fossils of the theropod dinosaur suborder found that help us understand the junction link between dinosaurs and birds. In Liaoning, China, Turner et al. (2007) found fossils of the dinosaur, Velociraptor mongoliensis. The velociraptor had “quill knobs on the posterior forearm,” which are also found at the base of the secondary feathers of many living birds. This finding signified the presence of feathers in V. mongoliensis.

Additionally, a study of three specimens from the Archaeopteryx genus of dinosaurs found that these animals might have been the transitional bird-like dinosaurs. Voeten et al. (2018) studied the wing bones of these organisms and found that they exhibit the architecture and geometry required for flight. However, the type of flight employed by these ancient reptiles was interpreted to be different than that of the modern bird flight. The Archaeopteryx is often considered the missing link between birds and reptiles. In fact, the name literally means “old wing”, derived from the ancient Greek words: archaīos meaning ‘ancient’, and ptéryx meaning wing.

Although the Northwest Creation Network presented a story that supported their anti-evolution claims, they were unable to refute other scientifically backed data that proved the evolutionary connect between birds and dinosaurs.

-       Posted by Priya Bikkani (1)

The “Land Before Time” Was Only 6,000 Years Ago

The article The so-called ‘Age of Dinosaurs’ flirts with the idea that dinosaurs could not have lived more than 6,000 years ago. It gives us the “facts” on the interpretation of the supposed “Dinosaur Age,” meeting a common ground between religion and science. The author tells us that dinosaurs and other creatures all died at the same time, somewhere about 4,500 years ago. He ignores the descent of mammals, suggesting that mammals and dinosaurs both coexisted although we know this not to be true. In an interview for the magazine Creation, Dr. Carl Werner exclaimed that over 432 species of mammals have been discovered side-by-side with dinosaurs, slandering the name ‘The Age of the Dinosaurs,’ telling us mammals were just as important as dinosaurs in this period; in fact, even hypothesizing that mammals helped drive dinosaurs to extinction.

The author answers our confusion, by “confirming” that the mass extinction that indeed lead to the extinction of most dinosaurs was the great Flood described in the biblical story in Genesis 6:8 of Noah’s ark. In the story, before a 40 day flood two kinds (male or female) of each animal were chosen to board Noah’s ark to avoid death by the flood. The author suggests that some extreme conditions of the earth after the flood may have killed off many of the reptiles (dinosaurs), eventually until they all died off. He tells us that the last of the dinosaurs have only completely died off recently. Although providing no real evidence, the author claims that, “There is no ‘huge mystery’ about the existence of dinosaurs… God made them, along with the rest of His creation, around 6,000 years ago.” Dinosaurs lived alongside other animals then gradually died out after the flood, as other species have. Even though sediments and and ice core carbon dating, give factual evidence of creation much further back then 6,000 years ago, the article completely ignores our technological advancements we have made that prove the Earth’s existence millions and millions of years ago.

Posted by Josha Cruz

Climate Change: Fake News & Real Consequences

There is an overwhelming amount of scientific evidence that points to humans as the cause of global warming. Nevertheless, a video entitled “Why Climate Change Is Fake News” has gone viral on Facebook in the past few months, garnering over 9.5 million views, nearly 5 thousand comments, and one hundred seventy thousand shares. The video depicts Marc Morano, a “climate denial expert” despite having no scientific expertise in the area, who centers around three common climate myths to cast doubt on the legitimacy of climate change and spread misinformation. Morano is best known for having directed think-tanks that were funded by large fossil fuel companies, including ExxonMobil and Chevron, and designed to influence public opinion by creating uncertainty about the reality of and dangers associated with human-made climate change.

Morano begins the video by utilizing one of the most popular climate change myths known as consensus denial, denying that there is not actually a 97% expert consensus on human-caused global warming among scientists and claiming that it is “the most outrageous falsehood of them all” and the percent was “pulled out of thin air”. The climate denyer bases this opinion on a single study that evaluates the expert scientific consensus, in which out of the 3,146 Earth scientists that were surveyed only 80 of them were currently publishing climate science research, judging that the sample size was too small to be effective. Although this is a valid critic, Morano pointedly ignores the other consensus studies that employ a variety of approaches, some of which including very large sample sizes. Specifically, the authors of seven different consensus studies collaborated to publish a paper in 2016 that concluded that the expert scientific consensus on human-causing climate change was between 90 and 100%. Thus, when considering all available research on expert consensus, Morano’s argument falls short.

In the next portion of the video, Morano states that the hottest year claims, in which the annual global temperatures have increased since the industrial age and each preceding yearly temperature breaks the record of the one prior since 2014, are “merely political statements”. In other words, the temperature statistics are in the “margin of error between hottest year statements” and therefore not increasing. According to a consultation with climate scientists, this statement is wrong. Rather that point to single year increases, like Morano does, experts said that long-term trends clearly show the temperature has been rising for decades on Earth. The years from 2014 to 2017 have indeed been the hottest years on record, and 2018 is also predicted to be the fourth-hottest year yet.

Morano concludes his video by saying that the “most outrageous myth of them all [despite having already claimed this in his first point] is that carbon dioxide is somehow the control knob of the climate.” In a study published by NASA scientists that is actually entitled “Atmospheric CO2: Principal Control Knob Governing Earth’s Temperature”, it states that ample evidence shows that carbon dioxide is the most important greenhouse gas. Despite how ludicrous the claims in this video are and blatantly pulled on widespread myths, it was obviously effective with engaging viewers and has had a degree of impact on individual’s prevailing beliefs or confirmed their bias. The epidemic of fake news and disinformation will continue to be employed as political tactics and wreak havoc until it is combatted and regulated by the creators of the tech companies and social media apps.

Posted by Jamie Courtney (Group A)