Can they be housebroken? - A MAn with a PhD

"Karianne's Pet" by Carl Buell. The large animal in the painting is the hyaenodontid Megistotherium osteothlastes, a contender for the title of biggest carnivorous mammal ever.

As explained in an earlier post (which you may be interested in reading as a bit of background to this one), the earlier part of the Caenozoic (the current era of the earth's history) was home to a number of mammalian lineages of very mysterious relationships. Very few of the familiar orders around us today had yet put in an appearance, and instead the world was home to such oddities as pantodonts, tillodonts and dinocerates. Among the prominent carnivorous mammals of the time were a group known as the creodonts. Creodonts ranged in size from that of a small cat to lion- or bear-size species, and often converged in appearance with those animals. But what were creodonts?

Current authors regard the Creodonta as including two families, the vaguely cat-like Oxyaenidae and the largely dog- or hyaena-like Hyaenodontidae. Oxyaenids were found in North America and Europe during the late Palaeocene and Eocene, while hyaenodontids were found in Africa, Eurasia and North America from the Late Palaeocene to near the end of the Miocene, though they disappeared from North America not long after the end of the Eocene (Gheerbrant et al., 2006). Many authors have suggested a relationship with modern carnivorans (cats, dogs, weasels, bears, etc.), and they have been included with the latter in a superorder Ferae. Popular as this arrangement has been, however, there's just one small problem - there's not a shred of evidence to support it. [More]

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comment []12:24:33 PM    

How science corrects misrepresentation - A Man with a PhD

It's only taken two weeks to go from the blog posts shredding McLean et al to a paper submitted to the Journal of Geophysical Research. The authors are G. Foster, J. D. Annan, P. D. Jones, M. E. Mann, B. Mullan, J. Renwick, J. Salinger, G. A. Schmidt, and K. E. Trenberth and the abstract says:

McLean et al. [2009] (henceforth MFC09) claim that the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), as represented by the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), accounts for as much as 72% of the global tropospheric temperature anomaly (GTTA) and an even higher 81% of this anomaly in the tropics. They conclude that the SOI is a "dominant and consistent influence on mean global temperatures," "and perhaps recent trends in global temperatures". However, their analysis is incorrect in a number of ways, and greatly overstates the influence of ENSO on the climate system. This comment first briefly reviews what is understood about the influence of ENSO on global temperatures, then goes on to show that the analysis of MFC09 severely overestimates the correlation between temperature anomalies and the SOI by inflating the power in the 2-6 year time window while filtering out variability on longer and shorter time scales. It is only because of this faulty analysis that they are able to claim such extremely high correlations. The suggestion in their conclusions that ENSO may be a major contributor to recent trends in global temperature is not supported by their analysis or any physical theory presented in that paper, especially as the analysis method itself eliminates the influence of trends on the purported correlations.

Via Joe Romm and Gareth Renowden.

[More]

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comment []12:23:42 PM    

Astroturf is not democracy - A Man with a PhD

Fixing our health care system is critical for the United States, not only because it might be the humane thing to do but also in order to maintain a competitive economy. 15% of our GDP pays for healthcare and this is projected to raise to about 20% by 2017. Our health insurance premiums have more than doubled in 10 years. We pay more than any other developed country while insuring a smaller portion of the population. Over 50% of all personal bankruptcies are due to medical expenses, something that is not even possible in most developed countries.

Health care costs to businesses are increasing much faster than profits, resulting in the mathematical certainty that either total health insurance costs to businesses will become greater than total profits or even more people will be without health care. Businesses in most other countries do not have the burden of paying healthcare out of their profits, making it easier for them to be profitable.

Finally, health insurance costs raise each year but at an unknown rate. It is quite difficult for most businesses, especially small ones, to forecast just what their health care costs will be each year. This adds another problematic layer for the financial health of small companies.

These should all be part of any debate on health care reform in this country. But we are not seeing that. What we are seeing are the same sorts of bullying, astroturf tactics that have been used before by vested interests to stop debate and to stop the democratic process.

They do not have any interest in our real health concerns. They are concerned solely about maintaining their profits.

There has been well-documented instances of astroturfing over the years. One of the most recent instances of fraud dealt with a lobbying group that forged letters using legitimate organization's letterheads; trying to make it seem as though groups like the NAACP were against legislation that was harmful to the group that paid for the campaign.

Astroturf may be fraud. But it is used constantly by lobbying groups, and others with vested interests.

Rachel Maddow has been doing a great job reporting on the history of this fraudulent approach and who is behind its current usage against health care reform.

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comment []12:22:45 PM    

Spreading lies should have consequences - A Man With A PhD

The AVN is reaping what they sowed: [Via Bad Astronomy]

Iâo[dot accent]m not shedding too many tears over the tsunami of bad press the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN) is receiving right now.

Iâo[dot accent]ve written about them before, oh yes. They are the ones headed by Meryl Dorey, the woman who says vaccinations are dangerous, who says no one dies of pertussis, who says that itâo[dot accent]s better not to vaccinate, who insinuates (at the 11:50 mark of that video) that doctors only vaccinate children because itâo[dot accent]s profitable for them. She says that, even though on that live TV program she sat a few feet away from Toni and David McCaffery, parents who had just lost their four week old daughter to pertussis because she was too young to be vaccinated yet and the herd immunity in Sydney was too low to suppress the pertussis bacterium. This year alone, three babies in Australia, including young Dana McCaffery, have died from pertussis.

Not enough parents are vaccinating their children. And groups like the AVN spread misinformation about vaccines, spread it like a foul odor on the wind.

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By spreading misinformation about vaccinations the AVN is scaring parents. The herd immunity is low in part because parents are scared to vaccinate their children. The low herd immunity is killing babies. It really is just that simple.

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comment []11:54:38 AM