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What's New | 3 Mar 2006 22:12

What's New Friday March 3, 2006

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 3 Mar 06   Washington, DC

1. GLUCOSAMINE AND CHONDROITIN: INEFFECTIVE FOR ARTHRITIS PAIN? 
We got a lot of mail last week about our comment on these popular
dietary supplements.  Based on an NIH-funded trial, reported in
the New England Journal of Medicine, WN characterized G-C as
"ineffective" for osteoarthritis knee pain.  The study reported
that: "Overall, glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate were not
significantly better than a placebo in reducing knee pain by 20
percent."  The double-blind trial was placebo controlled, and
celecoxib (Celebrex) was used as a positive control.  The problem
is that the 1583 patients in the trial were divided into subsets
based on severity of pain.  Although it was ineffective overall,
indignant WN readers pointed out that for the moderate-to-severe
subset G-C "provided statistically significant pain relief
compared to a placebo."  Statisticians groaned: by dividing the
cohort into subgroups, the outcome for a specific subset can
usually be altered by fiddling with the boundaries.  The bottom
line in the NEJM study, incidentally, is the ubiquitous report
ending, "continued research is needed to establish efficacy." 

2. WE FEEL YOUR PAIN: WHAT'S NEW DOES A STUDY OF THE BOTTOM LINE.
Much of the e-mail about G-C was anecdotal.  Not just from people
who used it themselves, but also those who had treated dogs, cats
and horses with it(vets love G-C, and point out that pets don't
respond to placebos).  "The plural of anecdote," someone said,
"is data."  Although anecdotes are not blind; we decided to see
what the data might tell us about What's New.  First we divided
the messages into subgroups.  The groups ranged from,"He's just
guessing," to "Park is a liar and must be getting paid under the
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What's New | 10 Mar 2006 22:39

What's New Friday March 10, 2006

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park    Friday, 10 Mar 06   Washington, DC 

1. BUBBLE FUSION: NEWS OF SCIENCE THAT WON'T CHANGE YOUR LIFE. 
The story sounded vaguely familiar.  A claim was made in the
month of March that deuterium fusion had been produced in a
desktop experiment.  However, experienced nuclear physicists,
using the same experimental setup except for better detection
equipment, found no evidence of fusion.  By early summer, the
bubble burst.  "Cold fusion" in 1989?  No, "bubble fusion" in
2002, http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN02/wn030102.html .  But
like cold fusion, the corpse of bubble fusion keeps twitching. 
In 2003, Rusi Taleyarkhan, who made the claim, moved from Oak
Ridge to Purdue University.  There he claimed to confirm fusion.
Others found nothing.  Last week, citing "extremely serious"
concerns, Purdue announced a full review of Taleyarkhan's work.   

2. SCHOOL SPIRIT: 8 OUT OF 10 ACADEMICS SAY THEY ARE SPIRITUAL. 
Maybe.  Today's Chronicle of Higher Education reports on a UCLA
survey of 46,670 faculty members at 421 institutions.  Sixty-four
percent called themselves religious, but there was only a 38%
response rate to the survey.  I would have summarized the results
differently: 38% of faculty members are willing to respond to a
survey about their spiritual beliefs.  Anything else is a guess.

3. FAITH-BASED GOVERNMENT: FEDERAL MONEY FOR RELIGIOUS CHARITIES?
President Bush this week signed an executive order establishing a
religion-based office in Homeland Security.  It will pray the
levees hold in another hurricane.  The Bush administration gave
more than $2.1B to church operated social programs last year.
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What's New | 17 Mar 2006 22:47

What's New Friday March 17, 2006

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 17 Mar 06   Washington, DC

1. THE BIGGER PRIZE: IS "THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE" INFECTIOUS? 
Sir John Templeton had stipulated in 1972 that his prize for
"Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual
Realities," now at $1.4 million, was to always be bigger than the
Nobel.  British cosmologist John Barrow has been awarded the
Templeton Prize for 2006.  Barrow is best known for "The
Anthropic Cosmological Principle," written with Frank Tipler in
1986.  The "anthropic principle" states that the laws of nature
were fine-tuned by the Great Designer to allow the existence of
beings so intelligent that they could discover the anthropic
principle.  This is so incredibly deep that something happens to
scientists who dwell on it too long.  In Tipler's case, it led
him in 1996 to write, "The Physics of Immortality," in which he
derives, "the existence of God and the resurrection of the dead"
http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN94/wn100794.html .  In Barrow's
case it led to the 2006 Templeton Prize. 

2. BELOW THE GROUND STATE: BEFORE SPRING THERE IS MARCH MADNESS. 
On March 23, 1989 in Salt Lake City, the University of Utah held
a press conference to announce the discovery of cold fusion, but
the story had already been leaked to the world's most influential
financial dailies, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial
Times.  Both papers continued to print unfailingly optimistic
reports for weeks.  Among those lured into the swamp was Randell
Mills, a 1986 graduate of Harvard Medical School.  Two years
later Mills held a press conference of his own to announce that
it wasn't fusion.  It was better!  Hydrogen atoms can shrink into
"hydrinos," releasing energy.  With the 17th anniversary of cold
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What's New | 24 Mar 2006 22:55

What's New Friday March 24, 2006

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 24 Mar 06   Washington, DC

1. MIRACLE MEDICINE: WASH POST HYPES PRAYER STUDY ON PAGE ONE. 
Today, in a major front-page story, staff writer Rob Stein tells
us that "the largest, best-designed study of intercessory prayer"
is being published in two weeks.  What does it say?  The secret
is guarded as tightly as the Academy Awards.  However, as I write
this, the world population clock reads 6,505,424,096.  Most of
them pray.  A bunch of them pray 5 times a day.  They pray mostly
for their health, or that of loved ones, making prayer by far the
most widely practiced medical therapy.  It's a wonder anyone is
still sick.  No one doubts that personal "petitionary" prayer
benefits believers.  Optimism is good medicine.  To the believer,
prayer is a stronger placebo than sugar pills.  Stein, however,
has his facts wrong.  The controversy (if there ever was one
among scientists) was settled in 1872 by Sir Francis Galton when
he published "Statistical Inquiries into the Efficacy of Prayer." 
Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, recognized that remote prayer
by strangers would be blind to the placebo effect.  Since the
Order for Morning Prayer of the Church of England includes
prayers for the health and long life of the monarch and the
archbishop, he compared their longevity to that of the general
population and found no difference.  So who is doing this new
study?  Herbert Benson, founder and president of the Mind-Body
Institute, who touted the health benefits of prayer in his 1975
bestseller "The Relaxation Effect."  It would be a miracle if he
now discovers there's nothing to it.  It's in our hands now, we
have two weeks to pray that the study turns out to be objective.

2. MOUSE MEDICINE: CONTROVERSIAL CURE FOR DIABETES IS VERIFIED.
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What's New | 1 Apr 2006 00:02

What's New Friday March 31, 2006

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 31 Mar 06   Washington, DC

1. MIRACLE MEDICINE: PRAYERS OF SCIENTISTS HAVE BEEN ANSWERED. 
The long-awaited study of intercessory prayer for coronary bypass
patients was released yesterday (see last week's WN).  A small
increase in complications, attributed to "performance anxiety,"
was found in a subset of patients who were told that strangers
were praying for them.  Otherwise, there was nothing.  Scientists
are relieved of course; science is tough enough without having to
worry that somebody on their knees in East Cupcake, Iowa can
override natural law.  The study of 1800 patients took almost ten
years and cost $2.4M, mostly from the Templeton Foundation.  Of
course, there are calls for further study.  Where do we start?
What are the units of prayer?  Do prayers of Pat Robertson count
more than those of death-row inmates?  What is the optimum
posture of the supplicant?  Where can we learn these things?

2. COLD-FUSION DAY: DOES FLEISCHMANN STILL BREW TEA ON HOT PLATE?
On 23 March 2006, D2Fusion, Inc., a subsidiary of Solar Energy,
Ltd., issued a press release to announce that cold-fusion pioneer
Martin Fleischmann had agreed to serve as "senior scientific
advisor" to produce a cold-fusion heater.  Seventeen years ago,
on 23 March 1989, the University of Utah held a press conference
to announce the discovery of "cold fusion" by Martin Fleischmann
and Stanley Pons.  Fleischmann modestly told the press that cold
fusion was so far capable only of 'heating water for a cup of
tea."  D2Fusion believes "he still holds the secret." 

3. CURING OIL ADDICTION: CHECK INTO THE WHITE HOUSE DETOX CENTER.
Two months ago in his State of the Union address, President Bush
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