1. Are there right and wrong answers to moral questions?

Morality must relate, at some level, to the well-being of conscious creatures. If there are more and less effective ways for us to seek happiness and to avoid misery in this world — and there clearly are — then there are right and wrong answers to questions of morality.

2. Are you saying that science can answer such questions?

Yes, in principle. Human well-being is not a random phenomenon. It depends on many factors — ranging from genetics and neurobiology to sociology and economics. But, clearly, there are scientific truths to be known about how we can flourish in this world. Wherever we can have an impact on the well-being of others, questions of morality apply.

3. But can’t moral claims be in conflict? Aren’t there many situations in which one person’s happiness means another’s suffering?

There are some circumstances like this, and we call these contests “zero-sum.” Generally speaking, however, the most important moral occasions are not like this. If we could eliminate war, nuclear proliferation, malaria, chronic hunger, child abuse, etc. — these changes would be good, on balance, for everyone. There are surely neurobiological, psychological, and sociological reasons why this is so — which is to say that science could potentially tell us exactly why a phenomenon like child abuse diminishes human well-being.

But we don’t have to wait for science to do this. We already have very good reasons to believe that mistreating children is bad for everyone. I think it is important for us to admit that this is not a claim about our personal preferences, or merely something our culture has conditioned us to believe. It is a claim about the architecture of our minds and the social architecture of our world. Moral truths of this kind must find their place in any scientific understanding of human experience.

4. What if some people simply have different notions about what is truly important in life? How could science tell us that the actions of the Taliban are in fact immoral, when the Taliban think they are behaving morally?

As I discuss in my book, there may be different ways for people to thrive, but there are clearly many more ways for them not to thrive. The Taliban are a perfect example of a group of people who are struggling to build a society that is obviously less good than many of the other societies on offer. Afghan women have a 12% literacy rate and a life expectancy of 44 years. Afghanistan has nearly the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the world. It also has one of the highest birthrates. Consequently, it is one of the best places on earth to watch women and infants die. And Afghanistan’s GDP is currently lower than the world’s average was in the year 1820. It is safe to say that the optimal response to this dire situation — that is to say, the most moral response — is not to throw battery acid in the faces of little girls for the crime of learning to read. This may seem like common sense to us — and it is — but I am saying that it is also, at bottom, a claim about biology, psychology, sociology, and economics. It is not, therefore, unscientific to say that the Taliban are wrong about morality. In fact, we must say this, the moment we admit that we know anything at all about human well-being.

5. But what if the Taliban simply have different goals in life?

Well, the short answer is — they don’t. They are clearly seeking happiness in this life, and, more importantly, they imagine that they are securing it in a life to come. They believe that they will enjoy an eternity of happiness after death by following the strictest interpretation of Islamic law here on earth. This is also a claim about which science should have an opinion — as it is almost certainly untrue. There is no question, however, that the Taliban are seeking well-being, in some sense — they just have some very strange beliefs about how to attain it.

In my book, I try to spell out why moral disagreements do not put the concept of moral truth in jeopardy. In the moral sphere, as in all others, some people don’t know what they are missing. In fact, I suspect that most of us don’t know what we are missing: It must be possible to change human experience in ways that would uncover levels of human flourishing that most of us cannot imagine. In every area of genuine discovery, there are horizons past which we cannot see.

6. What do you mean when you talk about a “moral landscape”?

This is the phrase I use to describe the space of all possible experience — where the peaks correspond to the heights of well-being and valleys represent the worst possible suffering. We are all someplace on this landscape, faced with the prospect of moving up or down. Given that our experience is fully constrained by the laws of the universe, there must be scientific answers to the question of how best to move upwards, toward greater happiness.

This is not to say that there is only one right way for human beings to live. There might be many peaks on this landscape — but there are clearly many ways not to be on a peak.

7. How could science guide us on the moral landscape?

In so far as we can understand human well-being, we will understand the conditions that best secure it. Some are obvious, of course. Positive social emotions like compassion and empathy are generally good for us, and we want to encourage them. But do we know how to most reliably raise children to care about the suffering of other people? I’m not sure we do. Are there genes that make certain people more compassionate than others? What social systems and institutions could maximize our sense of connectedness to the rest of humanity? These questions have answers, and only a science of morality could deliver them.

8. Why is it taboo for a scientist to attempt to answer moral questions?

I think there are two primary reasons why scientists hesitate to do this. The first, and most defensible, is borne of their appreciation for how difficult it is to understand complex systems. Our investigation of the human mind is in its infancy, even after nearly two centuries of studying the brain. So scientists fear that answers to specific questions about human well-being may be very difficult to come by, and confidence on many points is surely premature. This is true. But, as I argue in my book, mistaking no answers in practice for no answers in principle is a huge mistake.

The second reason is that many scientists have been misled by a combination of bad philosophy and political correctness. This leads them to feel that the only intellectually defensible position to take when in the presence of moral disagreement is to consider all opinions equally valid or equally nonsensical. On one level, this is an understandable and even noble over-correction for our history of racism, ethnocentrism, and imperialism. But it is an over-correction nonetheless. As I try to show in my book, it is not a sign of intolerance for us to notice that some cultures and sub-cultures do a terrible job of producing human lives worth living.

9. What is the difference between there being no answers in practice and no answers in principle, and why is this distinction important in understanding the relationship between human knowledge and human values?

There are an infinite number of questions that we will never answer, but which clearly have answers. How many fish are there in the world’s oceans at this moment? We will never know. And yet, we know that this question, along with an infinite number of questions like it, have correct answers. We simply can’t get access to the data in any practical way.

There are many questions about human subjectivity — and about the experience of conscious creatures generally — that have this same structure. Which causes more human suffering, stealing or lying? Questions like this are not at all meaningless, in that they must have answers, but it could be hopeless to try to answer them with any precision. Still, once we admit that any discussion of human values must relate to a larger reality in which actual answers exist, we can then reject many answers as obviously wrong. If, in response to the question about the world’s fish, someone were to say, “There are exactly a thousand fish in the sea.” We know that this person is not worth listening to. And many people who have strong opinions on moral questions have no more credibility than this. Anyone who thinks that gay marriage is the greatest problem of the 21st century, or that women should be forced to live in burqas, is not worth listening to on the subject of morality.

10. What do you think the role of religion is in determining human morality?

I think it is generally an unhelpful one. Religious ideas about good and evil tend to focus on how to achieve well-being in the next life, and this makes them terrible guides to securing it in this one. Of course, there are a few gems to be found in every religious tradition, but insofar as these precepts are wise and useful they are not, in principle, religious. You do not need to believe that the Bible was dictated by the Creator of the Universe, or that Jesus Christ was his son, to see the wisdom and utility of following the Golden Rule.

The problem with religious morality is that it often causes people to care about the wrong things, leading them to make choices that needlessly perpetuate human suffering. Consider the Catholic Church: This is an institution that excommunicates women who want to become priests, but it does not excommunicate male priests who rape children. The Church is more concerned about stopping contraception than stopping genocide. It is more worried about gay marriage than about nuclear proliferation. When we realize that morality relates to questions of human and animal well-being, we can see that the Catholic Church is as confused about morality as it is about cosmology. It is not offering an alternative moral framework; it is offering a false one.

11. So people don’t need religion to live an ethical life?

No. And a glance at the lives of most atheists, and at the most atheistic societies on earth — Denmark, Sweden, etc. — proves that this is so. Even the faithful can’t really get their deepest moral principles from religion — because books like the Bible and the Qur’an are full of barbaric injunctions that all decent and sane people must now reinterpret or ignore. How is it that most Jews, Christians, and Muslims are opposed to slavery? You don’t get this moral insight from scripture, because the God of Abraham expects us to keep slaves. Consequently, even religious fundamentalists draw many of their moral positions from a wider conversation about human values that is not, in principle, religious. We are the guarantors of the wisdom we find in scripture, such as it is. And we are the ones who must ignore God when he tells us to kill people for working on the Sabbath.

12. How will admitting that there are right and wrong answers to issues of human and animal flourishing transform the way we think and talk about morality?

What I’ve tried to do in my book is give a framework in which we can think about human values in universal terms. Currently, the most important questions in human life — questions about what constitutes a good life, which wars we should fight or not fight, which diseases should be cured first, etc. — are thought to lie outside the purview of science, in principle. Therefore, we have divorced the most important questions in human life from the context in which our most rigorous and intellectually honest thinking gets done.

Moral truth entirely depends on actual and potential changes in the well-being of conscious creatures. As such, there are things to be discovered about it through careful observation and honest reasoning. It seems to me that the only way we are going to build a global civilization based on shared values — allowing us to converge on the same political, economic, and environmental goals — is to admit that questions about right and wrong and good and evil have answers, in the same way the questions about human health do.

Related posts

• Morals, Ethics and Pope Benedict Evil (13)
• Being Good Without God Is Natural (4)
• Why I Am Not A Christian (0)
• Science Can Answer Moral Questions (3)
• Let’s Stop Coddling The Ignorant (3)

• Keep Your Fingers Crossed: How Superstition Improves Performance
• More Than Half the World’s Population Gets Insufficient Vitamin D, Says Biochemist
• Low Vitamin D Levels Associated With Cognitive Decline
• Team Develops Non-Toxic Oil Recovery Agent
• Smoking Mind Over Smoking Matter: Surprising New Study Shows Cigarette Cravings Result from Habit, Not Addiction
• Light and Moderate Physical Activity Reduces the Risk of Early Death
• New Antibacterial Material for Bandages, Food Packaging, Shoes
• A Blood Test for Depression?
• 3-D Gesture-Based Interaction System Unveiled

Keep Your Fingers Crossed: How Superstition Improves Performance: New research shows that having some kind of lucky token can actually improve your performance — by increasing your self-confidence. …Volunteers who had their lucky charm did better at a memory game on the computer, and other tests showed that this difference was because they felt more confident. They also set higher goals for themselves. Just wishing someone good luck — with “I press the thumbs for you,” the German version of crossing your fingers — improved volunteers’ success at a task that required manual dexterity.

~Of course, this is still a form of delusion. Everyone tested in the study was superstitious and had a lucky charm. I’d like to see a study or two that involved people who don’t rely on superstition as well. I think if a person understands the delusion of superstition, they will therefore not need the “lucky” feather in their cap. They will have appropriate self-confidence based on their actual abilities. Still, it’s an interesting study.

More Than Half the World’s Population Gets Insufficient Vitamin D, Says Biochemist: Half the people in North America and Western Europe get insufficient amounts of vitamin D. “Elsewhere, it is worse, given that two-thirds of the people are vitamin D-insufficient or deficient. It is clear that merely eating vitamin D-rich foods is not adequate to solve the problem for most adults.” Currently, the recommended daily intake of vitamin D is 200 international units (IU) for people up to 50 years old; 400 IU for people 51 to 70 years old; and 600 IU for people over 70 years old.
“There is a wide consensus among scientists that the relative daily intake of vitamin D should be increased to 2,000 to 4,000 IU for most adults,” Norman says. “A 2000 IU daily intake can be achieved by a combination of sunshine, food, supplements, and possibly even limited tanning exposure.” While there is now abundant data on vitamin D and its benefits, Norman believes there is room for more study.
Because vitamin D is found in very few foods naturally (e.g. fish, eggs and cod liver oil) other foods such as milk, orange juice, some yogurts and some breakfast foods are fortified with it. The fortification levels aim at about 400 IU per day.

Low Vitamin D Levels Associated With Cognitive Decline: An estimated 40 percent to 100 percent of older adults in the United States and Europe are deficient in vitamin D, according to background information in the article. This deficiency has been linked to fractures, various chronic diseases and death. Vitamin D may help prevent the degeneration of brain tissue by having a role in formation of nervous tissue, maintaining levels of calcium in the body, or clearing of beta-amyloid, the substance that forms the brain plaques and tangles associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
Editorial: “Vitamin D has been known for many years to play a critical role in skeletal health. More recently, observational studies have reported inverse associations between levels of serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D, the metabolite that best reflects overall vitamin D status, and the risk of a wide range of disease, including cancer, vascular disease, infectious conditions, autoimmune diseases, osteoporosis, type 2 diabetes mellitus and obesity. …It is now time to test the various hypotheses generated by observational studies of vitamin D in adequately designed and conducted randomized controlled trials.”

Team Develops Non-Toxic Oil Recovery Agent: A team of chemists has developed a non-toxic, recyclable agent that can solidify oil on salt water so that it can be scooped up like the fat that forms on the top of a pot of chilled chicken soup. The agent could potentially be used to recover oil lost in the British Petroleum (BP) spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The gelling agent developed by his team is environmentally benign. It uses a sugar-based molecule that can be obtained from renewable sources and is biodegradable. In addition, only a relatively small amount of the agent — five percent of the volume of the oil being recovered — is required for the process, which handles a range of oil from crude to vegetable oil, to work.

Smoking Mind Over Smoking Matter: Surprising New Study Shows Cigarette Cravings Result from Habit, Not Addiction: The new study found that the intensity of cravings for cigarettes had more to do with the psychosocial element of smoking than with the physiological effects of nicotine as an addictive chemical. …Dr. Dar’s studies conclude that nicotine is not addictive as physiological addictions are usually defined. While nicotine does have a physiological role in increasing cognitive abilities such as attention and memory, it’s not an addictive substance like heroin, which creates true systemic and biologically-based withdrawal symptoms in the body of the user, he says. Dr. Dar believes that people who smoke do so for short-term benefits like oral gratification, sensory pleasure and social camaraderie. Once the habit is established, people continue to smoke in response to cues and in situations that become associated with smoking. Dr. Dar believes that understanding smoking as a habit, not an addiction, will facilitate treatment. Smoking cessation techniques should emphasize the psychological and behavioral aspects of the habit and not the biological aspects, he suggests.

Light and Moderate Physical Activity Reduces the Risk of Early Death: A new study has found that even light or moderate intensity physical activity, such as walking or cycling, can substantially reduce the risk of early death. the largest health benefits from light or moderate activity (such as walking and cycling) were in people who do hardly any physical activity at all. Although more activity is better — the benefits of even a small amount of physical activity are very large in the least physically active.
The good news from this study is that you don’t have to be an exercise freak to benefit from physical activity. Just achieving the recommended levels of physical activity (equivalent to 30 minutes daily of moderate intensity activity on 5 days a week) reduces the risk of death by 19%, while 7 hours per week of moderate activity (compared with no activity) reduces the risk of death by 24%. “This research confirms that is not just exercising hard that is good for you but even moderate everyday activities, like walking and cycling, can have major health benefits. Just walking to the shops or walking the children to school can lengthen your life — as well as bringing other benefits for well-being and the environment.”

New Antibacterial Material for Bandages, Food Packaging, Shoes: A new form of paper with the built-in ability to fight disease-causing bacteria could have applications that range from anti-bacterial bandages to food packaging that keeps food fresher longer to shoes that ward off foot odor. …They made sheets of paper from graphene oxide, and then tried to grow bacteria and human cells on top. Bacteria were unable to grow on the paper, and it had little adverse effect on human cells.

A Blood Test for Depression? Researchers evaluated blood gene expression profiles in healthy individuals and patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder, or MDD. They identified a set of seven genes in whole blood that was able to distinguish un-medicated MDD patients from healthy controls. “This is a first, but major step in providing a molecular diagnostic tool for depression.” Although psychiatry already has specific criteria for diagnosing mental health disorders, this type of diagnosis would be unbiased and particularly valuable for those with whom it is more difficult to have a conversation. It may also eventually assist in reducing the stigma associated with mental health problems.

3-D Gesture-Based Interaction System Unveiled: Scientists have developed the next generation non-contact gesture and finger recognition system. The novel system detects hand and finger positions in real-time and translates these into appropriate interaction commands. Furthermore, the system does not require special gloves or markers and is capable of supporting multiple users. This system detects multiple fingers and hands at the same time and allows the user to interact with objects on a display. The users move their hands and fingers in the air and the system automatically recognizes and interprets the gestures accordingly.
Cinemagoers will remember the science-fiction thriller Minority Report from 2002 which starred Tom Cruise. In this film Tom Cruise is in a 3-D software arena and is able to interact with numerous programs at unimaginable speed, however the system used special gloves and only three fingers from each hand.
The FIT prototype provides the next generation of gesture-based interaction far in advance of the Minority Report system. The FIT prototype tracks the user’s hand in front of a 3-D camera. The 3-D camera uses the time of flight principle, in this approach each pixel is tracked and the length of time it takes light to be filmed travelling to and from the tracked object is determined. This allows for the calculation of the distance between the camera and the tracked object.
“A special image analysis algorithm was developed which filters out the positions of the hands and fingers. This is achieved in real-time through the use of intelligent filtering of the incoming data. The raw data can be viewed as a kind of 3-D mountain landscape, with the peak regions representing the hands or fingers.” In addition plausibility criteria are used, these are based around: the size of a hand, finger length and the potential coordinates.
A user study was conducted and found that the system both easy to use and fun. However, work remains to be done on removing elements which confuses the system, for example reflections caused by wristwatches and palms which are positioned orthogonal to the camera.
“With Microsoft announcing Project Natal, it is likely that similar techniques will very soon become standard across the gaming industry. This technology also opens up the potential for new solutions in the range of other application domains, such as the exploration of complex simulation data and for new forms of learning.”

Related posts

• More Research and Studies To Interest You (3)
• Some Recent Scientific Studies (0)
• Random Thoughts About Human Impact On Evolution (2)
• More Groovy Science 3 (5)
• More Groovy Science – 1 (6)

This is great news! My first question is why it took Britain so long to make such a move. My second concern is that he will just come back over here where he is worshiped by idiots like McCarthy and her ilk. And my third concern is people will still worship him and continue to avoid getting their children properly vaccinated, causing suffering and even death for innocent kids everywhere.

LONDON — The doctor whose research linking autism and the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella influenced millions of parents to refuse the shot for their children was banned Monday from practicing medicine in his native Britain.

Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 study was discredited — but vaccination rates have never fully recovered and he continues to enjoy a vocal following, helped in the U.S. by endorsements from celebrities like Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy.

“That is Andrew Wakefield’s legacy,” said Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “The hospitalizations and deaths of children from measles who could have easily avoided the disease.”

Wakefield’s discredited theories had a tremendous impact in the U.S., Offit said, adding: “He gave heft to the notion that vaccines in general cause autism.”

In Britain, Wakefield’s research led to a huge decline in the number of children receiving the MMR vaccine: from 95 percent in 1995 — enough to prevent measles outbreaks — to 50 percent in parts of London in the early 2000s. Rates have begun to recover, though not enough to prevent outbreaks. In 2006, a 13-year-old boy became the first person to die from measles in Britain in 14 years.

“The false suggestion of a link between autism and the MMR vaccine has done untold damage to the UK vaccination program,” said Terence Stephenson, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. “Overwhelming scientific evidence shows that it is safe.”

On Monday, Britain’s General Medical Council, which licenses and oversees doctors, found Wakefield guilty of serious professional misconduct and stripped him of the right to practice medicine in the U.K. Wakefield said he plans to appeal the ruling, which takes effect within 28 days.

The council was acting on a finding in January that Wakefield and two other doctors showed a “callous disregard” for the children in their study, published in 1998 in the medical journal Lancet. The medical body said Wakefield took blood samples from children at his son’s birthday party, paying them 5 pounds (about $7.20) each and later joked about the incident.

The study has since been widely rejected. From 1998-2004, studies in journals including the Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine, Pediatrics and BMJ published papers showing no link between autism and the measles vaccine.

Wakefield moved to the U.S. in 2004 and set up an autism research center in Austin, Texas, where he gained a wide following despite being unlicensed as a doctor there and facing skepticism from the medical community. He quit earlier this year.

Offit said he doubted Britain’s decision to strip the 53-year-old Wakefield of his medical license would convince many parents that vaccines are safe.

“He’s become almost like a Christ-like figure and it doesn’t matter that science has proven him wrong,” Offit said. “He is a hero for parents who think no one else is listening to them.”

In Monday’s ruling, the medical council said Wakefield abused his position as a doctor and “brought the medical profession into disrepute.”

At the time of his study, Wakefield was working as a gastroenterologist at London’s Royal Free Hospital and did not have approval for the research. The study suggested autistic children had a bowel disease and raised the possibility of a link between autism and vaccines. He had also been paid to advise lawyers representing parents who believed their children had been hurt by the MMR vaccine.

Ten of the study’s authors later renounced its conclusions and it was retracted by the Lancet in February.

At least a dozen British medical associations, including the Royal College of Physicians, the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust have issued statements verifying the safety of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine.

This verdict is not about (the measles) vaccine,” said Adam Finn, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Bristol Medical School. “We all now know that the vaccine is remarkably safe and enormously effective… We badly need to put this right for the sake of our own children and children worldwide.”

Related posts

• Your Tax Dollars Teaching Medical Students Pseudoscience (6)
• People Trust Peers, Not Science (4)
• Interesting, Enlightening Evolution (0)
• Drink When You’re Thirsty, Not 8 Glasses A Day (4)
• Dark Chocolate and Other Tidbits of Goodness (0)

I guess you are not that interested in it because I only got one comment on my first post, Meditation for Godless Heathens. But it was a great comment, by easydoesit. It mentioned an episode of Scientific American Frontiers with Alan Alda, which was called Worried Sick. You can click the link to watch the whole episode. Robert Sapolsky was in it talking about baboons and stress, plus a bunch more research. It really enforced my desire for learning to meditate, because I suffer from PTSD and chronic anxiety, and I know it’s not good for me.

PBS also has a page for that episode called Meditation 101. Here it goes over the 4 steps to meditate simply. I tried this for a couple of days and had varying success. My problem is my hamster wheel mind. So I thought I’d try some guidance. Here again I ran into the “airy-fairy” garbage I try to avoid as a skeptic.

What I’m after is medically and scientifically sound basic meditation. Yesterday I found an interesting guy, Jon Kabat-Zinn, a Professor of Medicine Emeritus and founding director of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He teaches mindfulness meditation as a technique to help people cope with stress, anxiety, pain and illness.

So far, he’s the closest I’ve come to someone I can listen to. I found a mindfulness meditation that I listened to today and it was really neat. It gave me some guidance and focus but not too much. He seems very zen.

Here is a video where he leads a session on Mindfulness at Google. It’s 1 hour and 12 minutes long. He gets into the session in earnest at the 21 minute mark or thereabouts.

Related posts

• Meditation For Godless Heathens (1)
• More Groovy Science – 1 (6)
• Answering Paul’s Questions (0)

One thing I never gave up was meditation. That’s because I was never able to do it in the first place. Long ago I tried it and hated it. I was a dismal failure at it.

But, as a science-minded skeptical atheist, I love to learn about new research. For that I use keep an eye on Science Daily and Scientific American. Recently Science Daily reported that Brief Meditative Exercise Helps Cognition (see below for some of the report)

This intrigued me, because it said brief, not expert meditation. As a middle-aged woman, I find myself increasingly struggling to think clearly when it comes to reading or processing information. It’s alarming and disturbing. So when I saw this study I thought, what the hell, that’s something I can experiment with myself. Why not just try it and see if I can then think better?

So, based on the information in the report, I looked up Samatha Meditation and also found BuddhaNet.

So I tried it, just focusing on my breathing. I said I’d do it for 1 minute, just to see if I could. I read that doing a short burst of it often is better than trying to force yourself into a long session. So here’s the amazing bit, I comfortably meditated, focusing on my breathing and letting thoughts go, for 10 minutes! I think I can do this! After I opened my eyes I felt refreshed and happy. I think I like it!

~Later: I tried another two times today. Once I meditated easily for 20 minutes which refreshed me as much as a 3 hour nap. A bit ago I wanted to wash dishes but my shoulder was burning (a recurring problem I’ve had for awhile now). Normally nothing makes it better, not painkillers, stretching, nothing. I thought, hey, what if I meditate for 10 minutes? I’ve heard that can help with chronic pain. I’ll be damned 10 minutes later I was stretching and feeling pain-free. It came back but only after an hour and not nearly as bad. I think de-stressing and relaxing is very healthy for such things.

~

Here’s the thing. The information I found was all stuffed full of “musts” about some god or other and mystical energy, and a bunch of other nonsense. Getting through all of that to get to the instruction on the actual meditation technique is a challenge.

It would be nice to find online instruction on mindfulness meditation from a secular point of view. Does anyone have any resources?

An excerpt of the report:

…new research now suggests that the mind may be easier to cognitively train than we previously believed. Psychologists studying the effects of a meditation technique known as “mindfulness ” found that meditation-trained participants showed a significant improvement in their critical cognitive skills (and performed significantly higher in cognitive tests than a control group) after only four days of training for only 20 minutes each day.

“Simply stated, the profound improvements that we found after just 4 days of meditation training- are really surprising,” Zeidan noted. “It goes to show that the mind is, in fact, easily changeable and highly influenced, especially by meditation.” The study appears in the April 2 issue of Consciousness and Cognition.

… The meditation training involved in the study was an abbreviated “mindfulness” training regime modeled on basic “Shamatha skills” from a Buddhist meditation tradition, conducted by a trained facilitator. As described in the paper, “participants were instructed to relax, with their eyes closed, and to simply focus on the flow of their breath occurring at the tip of their nose. If a random thought arose, they were told to passively notice and acknowledge the thought and to simply let ‘it’ go, by bringing the attention back to the sensations of the breath.” Subsequent training built on this basic model, teaching physical awareness, focus, and mindfulness with regard to distraction.

Zeidan likens the brief training the participants received to a kind of mental calisthenics that prepared their minds for cognitive activity.

“The simple process of focusing on the breath in a relaxed manner, in a way that teaches you to regulate your emotions by raising one’s awareness of mental processes as they’re happening is like working out a bicep, but you are doing it to your brain. Mindfulness meditation teaches you to release sensory events that would easily distract, whether it is your own thoughts or an external noise, in an emotion-regulating fashion. This can lead to better, more efficient performance on the intended task.”

Related posts

• More Groovy Science – 1 (6)
• Atheism is the Default (46)
• Swearing Brings Pain Relief (6)
• Sometimes It Sucks To Be A Skeptic (0)
• More Differences In The Brains Of Believers And Non-Believers (6)

Dark Chocolate Helps Ease Emotional Stress: A new study found that eating about an ounce and a half of dark chocolate a day for two weeks reduced levels of stress hormones in people who felt highly stressed. The chocolate also partially corrected other stress-related biochemical imbalances. “The study provides strong evidence that a daily consumption of 40 grams [1.4 ounces] during a period of 2 weeks is sufficient to modify the metabolism of healthy human volunteers,” the scientists say.

That led me to a study from last December. It’s rather small and involves self-reporting, but it could be a promising line for further research, and could be something you experiment with yourself to see if it works for you:

Dark Chocolate Lessens Cravings: Dark chocolate is far more filling than milk chocolate, lessening our craving for sweet, salty and fatty foods. In other words, eating dark chocolate may be an efficient way to keep your weight down over the holidays (and throughout the year!) The dark chocolate gives a feeling of satiety.

To compare the effects of dark and milk chocolate on both appetite and subsequent calorie intake, 16 young and healthy men of normal weight who all liked both dark and milk chocolate took part in a so-called crossover experiment. This meant that they reported for two separate sessions, the first time testing the dark chocolate, and the second time the milk chocolate.

They had all fasted for 12 hours beforehand and were offered 100g of chocolate, which they consumed in the course of 15 minutes. The calorific content was virtually the same for the milk and dark chocolate.

During the following 5 hours, participants were asked to register their appetite every half hour, i.e. their hunger, satiety, craving for special foods and how they liked the chocolate.

Results

Two and a half hours after eating the chocolate, participants were offered pizza ad lib. They were instructed to eat until they felt comfortably satiated. After the meal, the individuals’ calorie intake was registered.

The results were significant. The calorie intake at the subsequent meal where they could eat as much pizza as they liked was 15 per cent lower when they had eaten dark chocolate beforehand.

The participants also stated that the plain chocolate made them feel less like eating sweet, salty or fatty foods.

So apart from providing us with the healthier fatty acids and many antioxidants, dark chocolate can now also help us steer clear of all the sweet, salty and fattening Christmas foods.

That led me to an even older study (2006) about smokers’ arteries and dark chocolate. I’m sure it benefits nonsmokers as well. This study is also small, but promising.

A Few Squares Of Dark Chocolate A Day May Stave Off Artery Hardening In Smokers: Dark chocolate may stave off artery hardening in smokers, and a few squares every day could potentially cut the risk of serious heart disease.

Researchers compared the effects of dark (74% cocoa solids) and white chocolate on the smoothness of arterial blood flow in 20 male smokers.

In smokers the activity of both endothelial cells, which line the artery walls, and platelets, which are involved in the formation of blood clots, are continuously disrupted, making the arteries susceptible to the narrowing and hardening characteristic of coronary artery disease.

Before eating 40 g of chocolate (about 2 oz), smokers were first asked to abstain from other foods rich in antioxidants, such as onions, apples, cabbage, and cocoa products for 24 hours.

After two hours, ultrasound scans revealed that dark chocolate significantly improved the smoothness of arterial flow, an effect which lasted for eight hours. Blood sample analysis also showed that dark chocolate almost halved platelet activity. Antioxidant levels rose sharply after two hours.

White chocolate had no effect on endothelial cells, platelets, or antioxidant levels.

Dark chocolate has more antioxidants per gram than other foods laden with the substances, such as red wine, green tea, and berry fruits, say the authors, who suggest that the beneficial effects of dark chocolate lie in its antioxidant content.

“…Only a small daily treat of dark chocolate may substantially increase the amount of antioxidant intake and beneficially affect vascular health,” conclude the authors.

Of course, these studies are not conclusive. They are all small. But hey, it’s dark chocolate. It tastes great and is full of chocolatey goodness. With all the other stuff you eat, if it could help you in these three ways, some of which you can experiment with yourself to see if it’s actually working for you, why not give it a try?

I had some bars in my fridge that I had been saving for a special occasion but decided, since I get stressed out easily, I’d try to do an experiment. I will eat 40 grams a day (if I can get my hands on that much) and keep a log of food cravings, food intake and stress levels. So far I’ve had it for two days but have been quite lax about the log bit. I guess we can’t all be diligent.

I thought while I have you here, I’d share some other links that might interest you.

We have all been inundated with swine flu madness over the past several months. But what is hype and what is science-based reality? Is the vaccine safe? Do I have to worry about this?

I’ve gotten a lot of information just from listening to The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe, which is honestly the best skeptical podcast I’ve found. I’m usually a couple of episodes behind, but hey, look at what they have for the November 15 epsiode: Special Report: H1N1 Pandemic Update! I’d recommend listening to back issues as well. They are quite an education in skepticism. You’ll learn a great deal!

Dr. Steven Novella, the main Rogue of the SGU, also has a blog called Science-Based Medicine. (I know, what a concept, medicine based on science!) This site has different contributors who cover all kinds of issues with solid facts, no hype, no pseudoscience BS. Want to know the facts about H1N1? Go here. Want to know if chiropractic is mainly pseudoscience mumbo-jumbo? You know where to go.

On that note, you can also go to Quackwatch. I haven’t investigated it much, but the SGU recommends it and for this kind of thing, I’d consider that a good endorsement.

Now, just to remind you of some other podcasty goodness, and so that we don’t ignore our minds with all this science talk, there is Reasonable Doubts, the podcast for people who refuse to “just take things on faith.” These guys know their religion. They mainly focus on christianity and its flaws, but they’ve also tackled issues like Determinism, islam, Profiles of the Godless (a survey study done by one of their own), and much, much more.

I love these guys and get so much out of each podcast. I only found them through a friend several months ago, so I am still not caught up with the old episodes. I highly recommend listening to their full library.

Like the SGU, you can subscribe to Reasonable Doubts through iTunes.

Ok, that’s it. Have fun. If you have suggestions for great podcasts, websites or resources for science-based medicine, studies, facts over hype, skepticism, and of course atheism, please feel free to share in the comments.

Related posts

• Podcasts and Internet Radio Stations You May Enjoy (0)
• Sometimes It Sucks To Be A Skeptic (0)
• More Groovy Science – 1 (6)
• Celebrating Skepticism With More Podcasts (0)
• Boobquake: Dress Immodestly For Science April 26 (5)

Apparently a growing number of medical schools are teaching acupuncture, herbology and other CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine) to their students, often with the help of Uncle Sam. That’s right, your tax dollars are being spent to teach your future doctors all about pseudoscience.

The government has spent more than $22 million to help medical and nursing schools start teaching about alternative medicine — lesson plans that some critics say are biased toward unproven remedies.

Additional tax money has been spent to recruit and train young doctors to do research in this field, launching some into careers as alternative medicine providers.

Doctors need to know about popular remedies so they can discuss them nonjudgmentally and give competent advice, the government says, and many universities and medical groups agree.

“Patients are using these things” whether doctors think they should or should not, and safety is a big concern, said Dr. Victor Sierpina, an acupuncturist at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston who heads a group of academics who favor such training.

But to critics, it’s like teaching Harry Potter medicine. Students are being asked to close their eyes to science principles that guide the rest of their training in order to keep an open mind about pseudoscience, they say.

“I’m concerned about the teaching of illogical thinking to medical students” and lending credence to biologically implausible theories like distance healing and energy fields, said Dr. Stephen Barrett, a retired physician who runs Quackwatch, a Web site on medical scams.

Personally, if I were using some herbal remedy or other treatment that had no scientific evidence behind it, I would want my doctor to let me know it’s not tested and not proven effective. I want science-based medicine. I want my doctor to be informed about pseudoscience but he shouldn’t be using my tax dollars to study it in school as if it were real medicine. That’s a waste of money and incredibly misleading to students who might then add acupuncture or other nonsense into their future practice.

I just listened to James Randi on The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe talking about the same thing, only in a more insidious way. If you listen to the episode, James Randi’s interview starts at 34:21 on episode 222 from October 21, 2009. Mr. Randi had colon cancer and has found during his treatment that the NIH tacitly promotes acupuncture. This is partly paid by taxpayers. The NIH has 520 acupuncture studies listed on its website. James has a man looking at those studies. He has looked at about 220 or so and EIGHT (8) of them are positive.

So if you went there, you might think all 550 studies listed were positive, but almost all are negative. The 8 that are positive were not double blind studies, so they are invalid.

I tried to find the same list that Randi talked about but didn’t have much luck. What I did find was the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) which is part of the National Institute of Health (NIH).  This site is very pro-CAM. Unfortunately while it legitimizes CAM and mainstreams it, I am not sure how the actual research has been done. The spotlights of the studies are vague and lack detail of actual study methods and results.

Are they trying to justify their $22 million dollar investment? Have many of the people in charge of NCCAM been given their jobs because they already believe in CAM? I’m pretty sure a lot of them are CAM proponents and were before they started the research project with the government. Needless to say, I don’t have all the answers. If you have any hard evidence about NCCAM or the studies in question, please comment or email me.

Also, if CAM is mainstreamed, doesn’t it just then become Medicine? No, not if there’s still no science behind it. But if you take an herb and find out that there is something in it that has medicinal value, research and study it for efficacy and safety and all that good stuff, then you can standardize it and make it safe and consistent to take. Plain old herbal supplements from the health food store don’t offer any of that.

Give me science based medicine any day over pseudoscience, thank you very much.

Related posts

• Podcasts and Internet Radio Stations You May Enjoy (0)
• People Trust Peers, Not Science (4)
• Justice Late Is Better Than None At All (10)
• Dark Chocolate and Other Tidbits of Goodness (0)
• Young Earth Invasion (6)