Shaw's Eco-Logic

This HND piece gives you the basics on Lyme Disease, and cuts through the misinformation on Chronic Lyme aka Post Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome (PTLDS). As it happens, Lyme can be difficult to diagnose, and no, not every case presents with the "bullseye" rash. Moreover, the established lab tests are not exceedingly reliable, either.

Yet, there are academic physicians who should know better claiming that Chronic Lyme is just a misdiagnosed mystery disease, because real Lyme does not go chronic and can be easily cured with a round of antibiotics. Of course, this is a lame tautological argument amounting to nothing more than "The patients we cure had Lyme, the others didn't." Ever hear of the "No true Scotsman fallacy"?

Unfortunately, there is no approved treatment for PTLDS, but most cases seem to clear up given sufficient time.

Read the complete article.

This HND piece goes back to a subject we've covered a few times before: The proliferation of junk science. In this case, we examine a blatant political screed masquerading as science, that checks off so many boxes: 

  1.    Politically correct...check

  2.    Anti-Trump...check

  3.    Based on a post hoc fallacy...check

  4.    Involves a minority group...check

  5.    Suggests that this minority is suffering at the hands of the bad Orange man...check

  6.    Cherry picks data...check

  7.    This cherry picking ignores a much larger trend that destroys the authors' premise...check

  8.    Key references cited do NOT state what the authors claim

  9.    Main hypothesis cannot be proven since there is no control group, nor could there ever be one.

10.    Even if their hypothesis were proven, it is a pointless finding.

Embarrassingly bad study, yet originating from prestige institutions, and published in a well-regarded journal.  Read the complete article.

This HND piece examines the anesthetic ketamine, delving into its history, current uses, and prospective applications as a therapy for depression, anxiety, PTSD, and in cocaine addiction treatment. Ketamine was first introduced as a replacement for PCP, used in the 1950s and early 1960s as a general anesthetic. But PCP had nasty hallucinogenic side effects, as was taken off the legal market.

While ketamine in proper doses can have mild hallucinogenic side effects of its own, it is mostly well tolerated and is quite safe. We describe the non-anesthetic uses as ketamine infusion grows in popularity.

Read the complete article.

This HND piece debunks the pernicious nonsense pushed by the prohibitionists that vaping is a "gateway" to smoking. And you thought that the government wanted people to quit smoking. Completely ignoring science (OMG, are they vaping deniers?), they continue to attack e-cigs. Heck, the "enlightened" city of San Francisco has flat-out banned the sale of e-cigs because they know better. So...a city that can't keep human feces and discarded syringes off the streets has a better way. Riiight.

This story brings you the real story, citing numerous studies, and gives the facts behind the findings. As you might expect, the prohibitionists wildly distort the statistics, with all their slicing, dicing, and conflating.

Read the complete article.