Although we try at the BAS website to blog about Bay Area issues, sometimes national issues are so important they swamp our local focus. Dr. Robert Park

The issue of cell phone radiation and cancer is one of them. Of course, as members of society, Bay Area residents are tuned into this controversy as well, so perhaps it is not inappropriate to comment on it.

Do cell phones cause brain cancer? There is no epidemiological evidence to suggest the link, only anecdote (and two anecdotes, despite the common practice in the press, do not constitute “data”). Is there a reason to suspect that cell phone radiation — close to the brain, and in the case of many heavy cell phone users, as much as several hours/day — might be dangerous?

Well, no. Not according to basic physics. F…

by Norman Sperling, May 15, 2011

Some substances that are usually regarded as having no effect actually do have effects.

* Water, as in homeopathic treatments.
* Placebos, as in medical tests and treatments.

I have seen homeopathic treatments strongly criticized as being useless and having no effect, because they’re “only” water. Yet water itself has many effects.

* Peeing usually makes you feel better.
* Drinking a lot of water is recommended for several medical and nutritional situations. It is suspected to dilute or flush precipitates that would otherwise form painful kidney stones, for example.
* And drinking a lot is often recommended in treating colds and other illnesses.
So plain old water, whether labeled homeopathic or not, CAN have effects.

“Placebo” is La…

Did you know you can balance an egg on the Equinox?! Wow!! And this year, with the gravitational pull of the “super Moon”, or something, the powers should be even stronger, or something, and eggs should be balanceable even more easily!

Well, the Bay Area Skeptics in the Pub for March 19 — OK, the day BEFORE the actual card-carrying equinox — found egg balancing possible, but something of a chore. This picture shows three eggs balanced at the same time, which I think was a record. The dozen eggs we had to work with seemed almost symmetrical, with none of the “bottom heavy” morphology most eggs have. Balancing them was much more difficult than other eggs at previous BAS spring rituals.

At the next SitP, we’ll try again to balance eggs, and I’ll…

Anyone interested in the scandalous story of Andrew Wakefield, whose paper in the British journal Nature and further activities have spurred the antivaccination movement, would be interested in Adam Rutherford’s report on BBC Radio 4. The second part of the series airs tonight, March 24. Here’s the link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00zm328

Friends, you will enjoy an excellent column by John Carroll on March 2, 2011. Link is here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/02/28/DDTE1I0BVH.DTL

We need lots more journalistic efforts like this to help the public understand that no, science does not know all the answers (it isn’t a list of completed explanations), rather, it’s a process that ends up (often) with our asking a lot more questions than we began with. Furthermore, it’s really exciting that there are so many things yet to learn.
And scientists aren’t upset having to say, “I don’t know yet.”
Check it out.

The demonstrators wore white t-shirts with ???10²³ Homeopathy: There???s Nothing In It??? emblazoned in blue. One demonstrator, Athena, had blue hair to match. We assembled at the corner of Franklin & California Streets in San Francisco with a banner & leaflets to protest the marketing of homeopathic ???remedies??? by Whole Foods, CVS, Walgreens, and others. Similar and simultaneous demonstrations were taking place in 22 other cities on all seven continents around the planet.

We passed out the small information leaflets, took pictures of each other, and chatted in uncharacteristically warm weather. Among the demonstrators were folk from The Exploratorium, the California Academy of Science, Atheist Nexus, Reason 4 Reason, East Bay Skeptics Society, two board members from the Bay Are…

Relayed from Jay Diamond, slightly enriched by Norman Sperling, January 27, 2011

Homeopathy is a popular but widely misunderstood form of alternative “medicine” based on pseudo-scientific principles. Homeopathic “remedies” are allegedly made by diluting questionable remedies with extraordinaryamounts of water – often until there is only a slight chance of one molecule of active ingredient in the final treatment.

Extraordinary claims are causing consumers to forego traditional medical treatment, with estimates of Americans spending >$3B per year on this pseudoscience.

Stand up for rational thinking and scientific evidence. For more on the 10:23 campaign or homeopathy see http://1023.org.uk .

Why 10:23? Think Avogadro’s Number. After the event, go to Tr…

Harold Camping’s January 2010 Solano Avenue, Berkeley, Billboard

My colleague snapped this picture on the way to work this morning. You will find it in Berkeley, on Solano Avenue, near the Oaks Theater.

I suppose if there were a place that needed saving, it would be Berkeley, but it also seems a place rather unlikely to take Camping’s pronouncements seriously.

The worry in all such EOTWAWKI (end of the world as we know it) predictions is that some poor souls DO take such predictions seriously, in the face of failure after failure. But people have been known to sell their homes, give away their belongings, even commit suicide — and even take the lives of their loved ones. Only to wake up the morning after believing that “there was a miscalculation”.

from Mother Jones

In the Bay Area, we’ve had a lot of fussing about the PG&E Smartmeters that have been installed over the last few years. Much of the opposition comes from a familiar fear about radiation effect. In an article posted today, the magazine Mother Jones attempts to assuage concerns on this as well as some other accounts. A nice graph appears here: http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/01/will-smart-meters-give-you-ca… Skeptics know that the amount and type

of radiation emitted by these as well as other familiar devices are not such as to be able to cause cancers and other maladies. Here’s a good article from Skeptical Inquirer by an engineer that gives some of the science behind why the concerns about cell phones or power lines is unnecessary. http://ww…

Today a colleague of mine at work brought in a curious black elastic wrist band with two embedded holographic disks in it. A “Power Balance” wrist band, which he found on a path in a park. Such a device, according to testimonials, improves one’s athletic performance (balance, stamina, strength, energy, etc) by “optimizing the body’s natural energy flow” because it “resonates with and responds to the natural energy field of the body”.

PowerBalance bracelet

Another colleague told me that according to his son, many athletes at Berkeley High School are quite fond of these bracelets, and are willing to shell out the $29.95 to emulate sports heroes such as the handsome ones depicted on the PowerBalance website. http://www.powerbalance.com/powerbala…