Snakes and other venemous creatures got their poison by consuming these plants. And stinging insects got their little doses of poison by feeding off dead snakes.
Isn't that a great narrative? It explains everything, in a nice logical progression. OK, it presupposes what we would call a "supernatural" force as the ultimate origin of poison, but other than that, it's an entirely "scientific" account. In accordance with Occam's Razor, it proposes a single unified process underlying diverse phenomena.
It is, in other words, a perfect scientific theory. It's completely wrong, on every point, but we only know that because we now understand atoms, molecules, chemistry and biochemistry, which the Greeks had no way of knowing. At the time, the Hades theory was surely the best possible theory about where poison came from.
The moral of this story is, beware nice theories based on incomplete data.
Reference: Greek Fire, Poison Arrows and Scorpion Bombs, which I'm currently reading, all about chemical and biological weapons.
54 comments:
Like the evolutionary psychology?
"At the time, the Hades theory was surely the best possible theory about where poison came from."
It was certainly a religion and politically correct theory for the time.
But not the best possible unless it had been observed by those Greeks that poisonous plants were more potent when growing closer to a cave or that poisonous snakes were vegans
or that planting vegetables near a cave or even putting a pot of a vegetables into a cave for the nights make it dangerous to eat. You name it.
Ethics and creativity being very separate observable phenotypes in the so called humans
–optimist view and a negative correlation has been published recently-
My guess is that it is highly improbable that nobody –under that religious explanation of the origin of poison- never had try to make vegetables turning poisonous in order to terminate with a grekbanque banquet unpleasant relationships.
It has been a long sadness of mine that Aristotle who was such a keen observer of human nature
(what he wrote about unequal friendship can be observe nowadays for example in research teams and many other working or social relationships)
had been so pompous and arrogant when thinking about nature in medicine or astronomy .
Although in fairness to them, many animals do acquire poison by eating plants and/or other animals. So some truth in it. Maybe a C- rather than an F
Chris
Like the psychoanalytic theory of autism and schizophrenia would be a better aim for sarcasms in my view.
At least until enough great minds had been working and publishing on evolutionary psychology.
It is not the case yet: the last World Pschia Assoc meeting in 09 2011 had a symposia on EVOLUTIONAY FOUNDATION FOR PSYCHATRIC NOSOLOGY
during which D STEIN -an excellent speaker as far as the English language is concern -from South Africa admitted a slight contradiction to their beliefs in Darwin's evolution theory explaining the formation of psychiatric symptoms:
According to D STEIN lecture 20 09 2011 Buenos Aires Sheraton WPA great meeting,a problem for darwinian psych was that anti social personality disorder with psychopaths often ending in prisons with same sex inmates at the most favorable age for reproduction.
I told at the end of the session his American (USA) buddy and chairman of the session R NESSE that many a politician - being at the countries government scale or at the University or business power seats show very often distinctive antisocial traits when the voters favor it like in France a Italy and even in real democracies like in GB, Northen Europe , USA etc…
R Nesse was graceful enough to answer me that it can be said even of premiers.
With Silvio Berlusconi at Italy premier Giorgio Napoletano playing the role of the GB and other countries Queen plus prince Williams (the Italian president gives the people gidance outpublic conducts like respect for the military) who being born Italian would not have agree?
And, dear Chris who being Fench as I presume you to be would not being the KARACHI AFFAIR and DSK having been closed to become a sex addicted women assulting no condom user socialist party candidate to the 2012 presidential election?
Ed Young
If his was known at the time it was then a scientific theory
and not a religious belief or a fraud like the psychoanalytic cure of autism maingte moher guilty and wraping the poor children in icy sheets in front of sadistic psychologist and psychiatrists (packing) theory.
Isn't data always incomplete ?
All data is incomplete and all theories are wrong. Scientists just go with the currently least wrong theory. Our "atoms, molecules, chemistry and biochemistry" is less wrong than the Greek theory, but still wrong. In the future, there will be a better theory than our current one.
Pluc
And who wrote that the Universe could be too complicated for human intelligence even to realize that understanding is above its capacity?
Anyway, as a middle age psychiatrist clinician of limited philosophical ambition I prefer Bishop Berkeley:
" We have first raise a dust and then complain we cannot see"
And religion, sects and/or greed for fame and money can raise long-lasting dust of phenomenal thickness
when using a simplistic theory for very complex objects of study like human psychology and psychiatry.
From the Freudians heartless money makers theory of autism and
schizophrenia to the Am psychiatric Ass DSM or the 5HT theory for depression etc.
How do you know they aren't still gateways to the underworld? The world was different back then. One time the world was roaming with dinosaurs but that don't mean fossils are enough to "get it".To project moderns to ancients, shouldn't be the way to reconstruct the past and interpret. Like you say - History was recorded differently back then - poetic antiquitish whatever. I don't think we understand our species enough to assume the human form and nothing other than the human form has the capacity to make sense of things. As a species we may've championed the scientific paradigm to illuminate things, but I think our understanding of the universe was more accurate when we were closer to the gods or the Big Bang, when it all began. That isn't to say yesterdays findings are better than tomorrows. Progressing cathedrals don't change much, but when you walk outside.. it's a different story. You are closer to the sunshine, unprotected from the rain, feel the wind. People can't be exposed to that for too long or they die. But, the cathedral could have transparent walls, mimic what's outside, so it's like an illusion but not the real thing. For that to happen, perhaps the cathedral needs to be torn down, rebuilt with different materials.. theories might be the only conscious sustaining science before consciousness epiphanizes, adapts to a procedural anomaly and takes over knowledge and the world as we know it.
Brian: Well, sure, chemistry is going to continue to advance. But I don't think our theory of why say foxgloves are poisonous is going to be radically overturned. We know what the toxic molecule is. We know how it works (inhibition of Na+/K+-ATPase) and we know how that eventually leads to the symptoms of the poison. We even know (I assume) why it is that a molecule of that shape binds to that enzyme (because we know the enzyme's structure & can see where it fits).
There's no mysterious ultimate origin of the toxicity (as there was in the Greek theory - Hades).
There is little here to call it a 'scientific' theory, although it does have the redeeming feature that it includes testable hypotheses. To call it an entirely "scientific" account, indeed a perfect scientific theory, is rather goofy of you.
Gweemus
A scientific theory is not a scientific demonstration.
It is just a proposal based on some observations or some calculations.
Neuroskeptic was ironically using an ancient Greeks pseudo-scientific explanation of where poisons come from,
to demonstrate that simplicity and logical sequence is not at all equal to science.
I am glad he chose an ancient Greeks myth that nobody seem to care about nowadays which help to show a healthy common sense.
And not a Maya one with all the buzz in the internet about the end of the world in 2012 due to Maya supposed prediction...
Since when do snakes eat plants?
Since when do snakes eat plants?
The ancient Greeks might not have known much about chemistry, but they must have known snakes had never been observed to eat plants.* I don't see how you can say that a theory with such an obvious hole in it is "surely the best possible theory about where poison came from."
*Google tells me that there is exactly one species of snake (Erpeton tentaculum) known to eat plants, and it eats aquatic vegetation along with meat. Still, my point holds.
I don't think they all had a hole in their head like you purport. I'm not a Hellenistic historian but the snake like most ancient cultures at the time may've had mythical type significance. For example in Asia, they still believe a giant serpent protects houses, Aborigines - rainbow serpents, Hebrew bible - serpent offered Eve an apple. Explain that, serpents don't eat apples right? Language was constructed differently back then, tongues closer to the gods apparently, how do you know it's not us who aren't able to decode ancient semantics appropriately because we no longer possess the intuition to interpret truth using that method, mode or device?
NeuroSkeptic
I think a better topic title would have been "Beware Good Stories". A good theory is nothing of which to beware for a good theory has predictive value.
One could make a similar diagram showing the reasoning, or at least the sequence of propositions, that rationalize the present "war on drugs", especially cannabis and psychedelics.
A comparison would favor the ancient Greeks. Their theory didn't lead to massive misallocation of resources and it doesn't appear to be grounded in nasty, invidious motives ("someone, somewhere might be having a good time").
DS: Ah, there's the rub though, it can be hard to tell the difference between a seductive story and a real theory.
No doubt the Greeks would have said, "sure, this makes predictions - and if anyone bothered to do the experiment (raise a baby snake from an egg with no access to poisonous plants or whatever) we're sure it would work. But it would be too hard to do that experiment."
omg
I hope you are doing a PhD in sciences or have it already because sciences need open minded intelligent and courageous persons like you!
How right could you be- to my mind- and at so many levels in asking respect for spirituality in genral and for the ancient Greeks culture.
For persons hearing voices without terrible pain that need a symptomatic but efficient treatment from Big Pharma-and they are numerous, ancient Greek culture can offer reconfort and moral support enough not to take antipsychotics-
Ancient Greeks culture can provide much needed moral support and strenght for persons hearing voices like did for homosexuals in cultures that oppressed them (Oscar Wilde in victorian England or the great pianist S Richter in communist Russia).
I think of it as a very nice psychiatrist's tool for some clients.
But do not repeat it to the French medical gestapo since they think me already unfit and not prepare enough to treat clients since I refused to think about reimpregnate my brains with French psychiatry and provocked them by asking to open in Paris a short term psychotherapy and homeopathy oriented psychiatric practice to treat persons no in need of Big Pharma.
Those ancient Greeks myths did teach me that you should make the effort to learn what you can of your ennemies culture and way of thinking and protected me from the orthodox Freudian sect:
A little richer those ancient Greeks myths, I find, than the frustration from missing penises in women and fear of loosing it in a women vagina for men(for Freund anuses didn't counted and male homosexuals were mentaly sick and fellation were not considered )plus the impact of your forgotten primitive scene of having seen your parents making love as a baby w he ler adti of hainforgotten that you e vicim of incest...
NB:I cannot read ancient Greek and was born in a very catholic country but the last partner in life of my father was a scholar and teacher of ancient Greek in a good secondary school in Rome. We disliked each other and she was not tutoring me at all but she knew how to use her knowledge of the ancient greeks culture to look good at a diner table.
Dear Roger,
As an activist you have the right to write anything you like in my view.
but only as long as you do not use a pseudo like caducei (KI DU Said in comments of the October 2011 post on packing by neuroscientist )making people think you are a physician.
Because how medically dangerous and unscientific of you to have written in
Roger Bigod 2 December 2011 21:40:
"One could make a similar diagram showing the reasoning, or at least the sequence of propositions, that rationalize the present "war on drugs", especially cannabis and psychedelics."
We need to study hard and fair in order to tell clients who should think twice before smoking pot.
Cannabis is
- in the fairest of opinion given the state of the so-called scientific literature -
not good for everyone.
It might have beneficial effect on some people and pathologies when worsening some form of schizophrenia and may be provoking it on some client with genotypes and phenotypes.
Then two reasons at least to study it carefully.
Idem for psychodelic drugs;and binge driking
-sorry for Pr Nutt- it is not because alcohol comsumption is for now far more dangerous for society that one can take the risk of young people damaging their brain with psychotic episodes as a result
of pot smoking.
Pr Nutt seems to me a bit of a demagogue as much as I admire him
but he might have a reason of his own to hate alcohol more than pot (may be he has a daughter who gave birth to a disabelded fetal alcoholism syndrome grand child for him with; the father being a man she would not have considered a worthy unsafe sex partner without beer googles or alcohol stupor or whatever ).
Beware dear Rthat greedy academic psychopharmacologists and psychiatrists on Big Pharma pay roll are currently telling that one psychotic episode ask for antispychotics treatment for life.
I even heard in Nice 2009 disgusting academics telling psychiatrist that after only one psychotic episode we have to prescribe Zyprexa depot
Depot being a long lasting form of administrating a treatment: an injection produce the depot of the drug in the client's body-in a muscle- and in a chemical mixture that releases the drug for weeks into the client system.
Think a little,please dear Roger,about the consequences of pot smoking for vulnerable persons who will suffer from a psychotic episode after it when UK and France have laws that permit mandatory drug treatment even for outpatients and academics on the pay roll of Big pharma.
Dear Roger,
Dear Roger,
After reading properly what I wrote outside of the tiny window,
I hasten to add that my old fingers produce many typos errors - One of them being:
the delation of "vulnerable to cannabis " before "genotypes and phenotypes" in my second main reason for welcoming studies in cannabis effects on the human body.
"(...)cannabis might have beneficial effect on some people and pathologies when worsening some form of schizophrenia and may be provoking it on some client with "vulnerable to cannabis" genotypes and phenotypes.(...) is what I intended to write to you.
Not your case lucky person -judging by your comment you do not seem delusional to me -
just an activist having not thought enough about the benefit to study any illicit drug effects on the brain and body-
You not only seem lucky not to be vulnerable to very unpleasant psychiatric symptoms induced by cannabis use; you seem able to refuse to consider that other people are not as lucky as you are.
Even if cannabis were just making a minority of vulnerable persons exibit schizophrenia earlier, it will still deprive them and their family of some good years of life without symptoms.
Then, the CBT or good psychodynamic psychiatrist will have a harder time othem recover hope and self-esteem because the longer you have lived symptoms free the easier it is to recover self-esteem after a psychiatric hospitalization in my experience.
No to repeat my worry about young people being maintained for life with antipsychotic drugs by mandatory treatment decision very easy to implement with depot injections.
I think even a man as bright as Alastair Campbell would not have been able to overcome the fear of going nutts again under pressure of being Tony Blair spin doctor if he had been experiencing psychosis at a high school pupil and not as an oxbridge student.
NB: I do not know AC and never treated him and only ask him questions and talk to him at boozy signatures sessions of his books.
I use as a tool in my pratctice his memoirs "The Blair Years"-
one book I make reading list prescription for clients and family able to read it
because AC had the courage to tell that he suffered a psychotic episode in his oxford days and was afraid of relapsing under the pressure of the job tony Blair offered him.
Ivana: I've said before, don't go around insulting other commentators. I will delete any future insulting posts.
Ivana, I'm a drop out. The academia looks dead no offence - I was the one falling asleep at the back. I prefer to garble freely like a bird with an Aristotelian detachment and optimize my mental acuity in worthwhile pursuits like openly engaging with public officials - envision a different world, or working on my own thing in understanding the mind, and to hopefully make my cathedral a service to humanity someday. You on the otherhand smell like presidential material.
RB, the drug cartel is not a science. There is no theory to rationalize. Will they take responsibility to which policies do they adopt.. will they make more compromises, risk more lives to build an election war chest to erecting mansions, offshore accounts blebleble power doesn't have to be theorized or understood sometimes, probably flourishes humanely without. i.e. The 3rd Reich - academic collaboration. There might be other forces in the world to other paradigms yet to be discovered that don't conform to existing rational constructs. That's why power should just be dwelt with, like Frodo and that ring. Once you get into the particulars about that fiery eye and should the heat density be tested before Frodo embarks on that journey - the world would've ended.
omg
I am not interested in politics but I am currently fighting for my right to treat and help aspies in France as well as I would do it in Italy or England ie with the benefit of the worls medical and aspies and families communauties current knowledge.
I have no Nobel laureat personal friends but some friend of mine have and I have been proviledge with two diner and one lunch with three different specimen of that lot (one in chemistry I was ashamed to ask the name after having been invited at an Oxford high table with him by a physicicst friend and two in medicine and I found the three very creative and modest of sort people.
Being anglo-saxon probably or at anyrate with a better grasp of English and typewriting skill than, I hope you will go back to study science or become a politician: people like you are more susceptible to have great ideas and more generopus enough to propose things for the general good than many an arrogant oxbridge mind.
For myself, I am the opposite of presidential material.
My father Enzo Fulli was a clever barrister with a sarcastic eloquent abilities and able to plaiding in the highest courts in Italy. He never made any money compared to other barristers because he was also for decades a very dedicated communist (and then socialist) mayor of Serrone, little city in the mountains south of Roma.Plus he loved art and would defend or advice artists for free.
He dreamed of my becoming an important political woman but I have always wanted to be a doctor.
and I am not able to make any money because I am neither a psychianalyst and neither a believer anymore in biological psychiatry and I refused to keep my mouth shut.
Now I am suing some members of the medical gestapo and a former health minister alone and for criminal offense, mind you. I decide to go for them like you go to the throat of any mafia on money slandering: i accused them of using the physician mandatory contribution to the medical councils to pay 300 000 euros a year a civil lawyer who doesn't make them apply the laws plus putting in the deep pocket of one young GP 6000 euros a month to let a senile 80 years old former psychiatrist decide -without pay- if I was fit to open a private practice in Paris in 2008.
(before you wonder why French autistic society do not help me you can read what the French autistic society are like in the 3/12/2011 comment of Nicole X in the oct post of NS on the packing).
Fair neuroskeptic:
omg called me names when after I commented the ffod for thought you provide us with my real name- and my family name is very rare even in Italy- and accused me of being against video games just because they sell when I am not at all against video games and convinced that they are probably not severely addictive ( betting money on line is a different story but pathologicaly not different from going in person in a casino to my mind).
And it was OK with you
I am not insulting him and being ironic in my compliments. Sincerely.
I can prove what I just wrote:
omg said...16 November 2011 16:57 wrote:
" Ivana, noob, overall weirdo, I eat bananas when I play Donkey Kong, mushrooms with Mario.. you know the game that goes dudududii nerdududu nohohoho life.
You, Crowley and Susan Greenfield + noobs should salute to the sun pilate your way through the war against terrorism, fight poverty, democracy, protest.
(...)Just because they've commercialized what sells, don't mean it can't be consumed in moderation."
omg,
No offense intended and no offense taken in my part on that score.
neuroskeptic
More seriously, can you tell me what commentator I had insulted please?
I hope it is not an insult to tell a commentator refuting any worth of the addiction researchers that he has not think enough about the consequences for very young person smoking pot when they might have a phenotype that makes them vulnerable to become psychiatric ward clients after doing it according to the medical litterature and many anecdoctical evidences.
But anyway, I think Nicole X continuous comments on your october post about packing made me check too often your blog and i will stop producing comments for a while. i do not think she will put any more interesting materal after her 3/12/2011 one.
You bright neuroscientist do not need a bitter clinician to spoil the fun of your friends.
What I find even more interesting than the incredibly wrong theories of yesteryear are the "almost-right" theories of the past that explain certain phenomena while getting the underlying mechanisms completely wrong.
My current favorite while I'm studying 19th-century tourist narratives:
The miasmatic theory of disease posited that disease came from "bad air." Nonetheless, if you believed in that theory, you might still be more likely to avoid getting malaria in (say) Italy. 19th-c tourists believed that the air at night, in summer, and near water was especially malarial -- sure, they missed the important fact of mosquitoes as carriers, but they still had a certain predictive ability.
Kwame Anthony Appiah writes that superstitions have predictive ability, just like scientific theories -- they just aren't as rigorously explored. Cheers!
Ivana, I studied science but work in elsewhere. Unlike you my family background is uninspiring and uneventful. I'm a common layman with common dreams, never dined with nobel laureates, given the choice I'd opt for Jude Law though. Your history sounds fascinating, it's inspiring, you have passion, and that can take you far without having to resort to corruption. I had the privy of interacting with since a child, a relative, who would someday become the president. He was passionate and resilient with his beliefs. He was different. People around him knew from decades earlier he would be president.
Ivana: I was referring to this-
"As an activist you have the right to write anything you like in my view. but only as long as you do not use a pseudo like caducei (KI DU Said in comments of the October 2011 post on packing by neuroscientist )making people think you are a physician. Because how medically dangerous and unscientific of you to have written"
It's not a scientific theory, since there are no falsifiable hypotheses presented.
It does make predictions. It predicts that if you could raise snakes, or bees, in a closed environment with no access to poisonous creatures, they wouldn't be poisonous.
That's a false prediction, but it is a prediction.
Neuroskeptic,
If I cannot strongly oppose the use of a pseudo suggesting that the writer is a physician when its writing suggest a lack of technical knowledge (in comments of your oct post on packing).
You should leave baroness Greenfield alone when it pleases her to declare whatever she fancies
from the media golden mouth of the queen of British neurosciences
without having the shadow of a proof.
omg,
Believe me academic credentials or other professional achievements will help you have the say your creativity and intelligence deserve (and being bored into underachievement at school is a frequent occurrence for the most clever and creative pupils, it was the case for my two sons).
A great neuroscientist attacked recently videogames using her scientific credential without scientific backing up for her claim.
I hated her accusing the internet of causing the rise in autism incidence.
Because she may have been depriving –without proofs- some non speaking autistic children from a good learning tool and some aspies of a way of socialization plus adding anxiety to the parents.
I am a nobody in science and was very very glad that another academic from Oxford, Dr Bishop, could protest:
ahttp://deevybee.blogspot.com/2011/08/open-letter-to-baroness-susan.html
"You may not realise just how much illogical garbage and ill-formed speculation parents of children with these conditions are exposed to. Over the years, they've been told that their children's problems are caused by their cold style of interaction, inoculations, dental amalgams, faulty diets, allergies, drinking in pregnancy - the list is endless. Now we can add to this list internet use."
Greenfield's public response to this is reputed to have been:
"We are colleagues, after all, and I have a lot of respect for Dr Bishop's work. However, it's not really for Dorothy to comment on how I run my career."
Aren't you glad omg that Dr Bishop has very strong scientific credential since the answer is as interested as the open letter?
Neuroskeptic,
Before any anonymouses accuse me of being a packing advocate please tolerate that I repeat what wrote 1 December 2011 13:07 as a comment to your post on packing in oct 2011.
in answer to Nicole X former alias caducei (Ki DU SAID) 30 November 2011 12:54 telling us
"first Pr Delion is not a stupid"
bedore adding on the 3 December 2011 11:20
"There is a lot of mysticism in him (...) he clearly assimilates the packing to a funeral ceremony. Very strange for a doctor.(...):
after having started by:
"Dear Ivana
Beleive what you want of me, I do not mind. I will not tell if your guesses are false or true. You are trolling. I am realising that carring a discussion with you can only pollute Neuroskeptic's blog and I will not answer anymore to you if you do not change your behaviour."
I am a believer in free speech and convinced that it allows discussion but my problem with Nicole X is that I wrote the opposite of her conviction that he is somewhat a sadistic person.
And this popint is right on the present point about "Beware of good theories"
I wrote on the 3 12 11 in answer to the rather paternalistic-and to the best of my knowledge and my estranged husband Pr François Lemaire is anb expert on ethics in clinical trials-was an adviser of Dr Bernard Kouchner when the Former French doctor was health ministrer for the laws on the patients rights of 2002 and my estranged husband had a room in the cabinet of the health ministrer Mrs Bachelot "chargé de mission" when Pr Delion was given suppoort for his trial of packing.
NB: my trusted interlocutor who -after personal discussion with Pr Delion- advised me that the only hope for us -against packing- was very good referees on the submission for publication of the clinical trial on packing by Pr Delion is conducting was not Pr François Lemaire.
My informer of Pr Delion looking everyinch the cool academic quietly convinced that he was right in doing packing was the vice-président of one of the many French autistic association, an, engineer and businessman and the grand-fatehr of an aspie.
What I wrote is o 3 12 11 is
" I believe PR Delion to be what she wants"Pr Delion cannot be very bright writing what he writes and I take him for a Freud religion bigot of no remarkable intellect power for not thinking him delusional and in charge of disabled vulnerable children.
Because I am not alone to wait for his results and discussion!
I am not a genius and homeopathy seems to me a very useful tool sometimes for a physician but I knew when to stop writing the best and soundest protocol to study clinical efficacy of homeopathy in orthopedic surgery against the world scientific community – in Pr Claude Chastang dept in hospital St Louis in 1998 not my kitchen mind you!
with a very supportive boss that thought I should be allowed to do research although he would have preferred me to do research in psychiatry."
Neuroskeptic
Yourself on 4 December 2011 07:59 Plus three comments of mine deleted between this post and the 10 11 post on packing.
Were you less depressed than yesterday when you wrote
http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=2733981550095578188&postID=6812600122888613092 ?
For the 4 December 2011 13:53 you are really being fairplay not to let me expose that alias caducei in French phonetic was able to write that a living chils will not produce any heat just because he is wrapped in cold sheets in packing.
You do not realize that for activists to refute physicians as a whole and attacking Pr Delion in a very simplistic way is a recipe for more suffering for the cliets and family.
Greenfield may've lost her sense of decorum when dealing with the public, hope lots of her colleagues complain so the public get sobriety - the public don't retain what researchers write unless it's about space aliens, practitioners they might.
Ivana, I care about poverty, social justice, Wall St protests etc. I don't care about Greenfield, the Ivory Tower, PhDs, titles and recognition. I'm going to buy more houses on the beach, do lots of charity work and be a cool house wife (not married yet) - that's just who I am. I emulate from those who think outside the box (like yourself & Neo), champion rights, take the path less travelled. I just can't imagine myself slaving away for years in nerd castle studying rat whiskers or snails move when I could use that time baking muffins, I love baking yummies I could do that all day. I'm academically uncultured and I don't think that's going to change any time soon. I admire how your kids are PhDs but I'd prefer my future kids be artists, writers, musicians, create beauty in the world, enjoy life.
P.s. Can't you just be nicer to Neo? I mean he has a point, you could be less confrontational towards some folks. Am sure Neo just wants to retain civility so everyone feels welcome to contribute without being clawed in the face.
omg,
NS do not deserve to be treated like a poor innocent child!
NS was the author of a nice post explaining that it is normal to be insulted on the internet and you should not complain in 2010.
He can change his mind.
Fair enough but encouraging Nicole X alias caducei writing that I am trolling and not accepting that I call her a fraud and a coward is not.
According to Nicole X on her 3 12 11 coment on the oct post on packing, I should be more respectful of her (him) when she wrote ludicrous claims like:
The child (...) has to give a lot of energy to heat about 2kg of water from 15°C to 35°C, that is almost as much energy as to lift 17kg to an height of 1000m. How can he produce heat while he cannot move? (...)the end of the pack is not far from being sensory deprivation.
omg,
In case you do not know and neither NS a child produce heat even when pressed in a cold sheet unless he is dead.
She (he) also claim that packing is useless because when it has been generally acknoledge that deep pressure is beneficial in many autistic children Temple Grandin wrote to a friend of her that the pressure has to be applied by the child himself.
Temple Grandin is a high functionning autist -not an aspie- best selling author who think in pictures when many aspies do not and for a living Temple Grandin design slaughter house cliaming that appliying pressure to the cows make them easier to kill and calmer!
I never commented when that caducei wrote in the first post NS about packing.
But I realize that Pr Delion might get results because of the pressure being a bias since Autism Research is conducting a study on weight blanckets.
And I spoke with parents of children at some NAS events and persons I respect like Gaynor Kelly occupational therapist I went to be taéught by at St Andrew Northampton. etc..
Temple Grandin is just wrong and texan (those texans had one of them saying that if English was enough for Jesus it was enough for American -not Spanish )
omg,
I meant to write :
Temple Grandin is just wrong and Texan (those Texans had one of them saying that if English was good enough for Jesus it was good enough for America -not Spanish).
Also: beware that you do not end up bitter at middle age when any stupid can have the better of you in uour profession or vocation because you spend so many years as a house wife.
It is just what I did cooking lasagna for my kids when they were very young and homeschooling them when school was boring them into being unhappy, bullied and arrogant etc...
NB: someone is using your pseudo to insult me sometimes but I find that normal.
Dear Ryan
The good clinical observation is ta way of finding efficient way of prevention of disease or curative treatments.
An Italian physician Francisco Torti (1658-1741)is said to have found and call mal'aria "foul air,"a disease found in marshy district.
from mala "bad" (malo,malus) + aria "air."
Neuroskeptic wrote:
"That's a false prediction, but it is a prediction."
Yes it is a "prediction" but it is not "predictive". Theories always possess the latter. Stories may possess the former.
We humans seem to have brains well suited to story-telling and attending to story-telling. Maybe this is what makes us so susceptible to snake-oil wrapped in a good story?
DS
TYou wrote:
"Yes it is a "prediction" but it is not "predictive". Theories always possess the latter."
If I were to grow a lot of pots of basil and put half of them to spend the night in a cave where the plants are colonized by a microscopic poisonous mushroom or other plant parasites.
I can possibly kill some sheep by making them eat the basil from the pots having been impregnated by hades miasmas when the control group will leave the sheep happy and sane.
Of course, you shout bias but if you cannot see the killing microscopic mushrooms and your culture is to fear caves...
DS and NS
And if other research teams were not able to replicate my findings.
With no technical difficulties to reproduce a very cheap clinical experiment and no sophisticated stats (X2)- I am not a sophisticated neuroscinetist but a clinician with always very simple ideas for research:
A qualitative result criteria (not the number of sheep dead bodies found in each "treatment" group during a reasonable period of time after being fed my basil feast but the number of sheep alive in each "treatment " group since one could think that a wolf might have chosen as an easy prey an ill animal or whatever.)
Do you not think that if not enough studies showed the superiority of the Hades theory corresponding to the cultural and (pseudo)scientific beliefs of the time
Neuroseptikes and other would have argue like Neuroskeptic did on a post against homeopathy:
We should find what is wrong since it is not possible that raising basil with nights spend in a cave is not producing poisonous food for sheep!
Which research teams do you think will have had the professional magicians and detectives to deal with in the caves and fields?
I bet not I.
I will pass for a great scientist and citizen
(of course I will be born with the right sex to be a scientist and the right nationality from birth to be a citizen in Magna Grecia).
My adversaries will be attacked savagely by the cleverest Ben Goldacres
and all the “current knowledge science” ayatollah of Magna Grecia.
And if one scinetist had dare to wash my basil poisoned by Hades he would have a hard time publishing his work and even aristoteles would have had to go to China under sarcasms like Pr Gilbert Montagnie , Nobel laureate for finding AIDES due to a virus did.
NB: GM and team are -following Jacques Benveniste- not studying sugar pills but the magnetic traces effect of water molecule arranged by homeopathic dilutions.
Dear omg,
I am sure you are such a strong minded person that you might leave your children spend time on the internet no matter baroness greenfield say.
But you have a very high IQ I bet and a lot of courage and creativity.
You are from a minority and as a generous civil activist you should show empathy for the parents afraid to vaccinate their children or let them play videogames or explore the internet because of fraud by British academics .
Also, You are right and you have better aim at a successful cinema actor for ideal diner or lunch companion to give you pleasure. you do not need to improve your mind and scientific knowledge.
It will leave you more free time and spirits for political activism.
Science is too hard work for your very British mindset and family projects -in my opinion.
Plus, after raising properly your own children you will have to be happy that a Dr Bishop says something you feel soothing for the poor autistic children mothers when that Dr Bishop dared to write in her open letter that Autism is obvious in toddlers.
When Aspergers are often diagnosed at an adult age after having being heavily loaded with Big Pharma drugs plus alcohol or other self-medication during their teens.
Actually it is why it is with Pr Holland or team -the Oxford child psychiatrists- that I would love to lunch or share tea.
The academic British psychologists are to my taste too much good at politics with the DSM bosses and too involved in stats.
That Dr Bishop was really unsicntific answering an academic and exposing their mail correspondance.
Just imagine Pr baron-cohen was that academic outing out by dr Bishop in
http://deevybee.blogspot.com/2011/08/defence-of-susan-greenfield.html
So long mgm, I must for real now stop perturbing NS and friends as I have to attend more productive work for little I.
Ivana, like you said before, a mother's will is stronger than anything in this world, she knows what's best for her kid irrespective of expert advise. I talk to mothers on a daily basis, a lot of them professionals like doctors who gave up their careers to become full time mothers. I learn more from them than any article, politician, academic, I swear mothers know everything. Maybe they have more mental energies to reflect on life and hone in on things that matter most, like family, eating etc. So instead of getting caught in obscure theories, you share pearls of wisdom, experiences, love. Don't get me wrong, I think mothers who can handle a career like yourself are extraordinary. I could handle a job to make ends meet but not a full-blown career. I was raised conservative not liberal. When I have kids, I will be the one rounding up the mothers to protest against Greenfield, le pack child molesters and so on. If I had a title like Dr Bishop it wouldn't be a very convincing altruistic protest.
An after thought omg
after reading todays beautiful and generous answers of Nicole X on the NS oct 2011 post on packing autistic children.
May I suggest to you- kindly and respectfully- that you do some pro bono work to help a poor single mother strugling to keep at home an autistic child with low IQ or not who self-harm and cannot be left alone on the week-end?
Even once a month or every other month but on a regular basis and for a fixed period like 6 months or a year.
Since you are so motivated to do good on the social front.
A poor mother who fight to keep at home a difficult self-harm child will be happy to have you even half a week-end day or on an evening to help her go and see some friends or a movie or have a hair cut or whatever pleases her.
Nicole X told me what trolling means and it was not a second meaning I ignored and i was blessed with an explanation I will treasured and show around:
"I did not say that the child cannot produce heat because he does not move. I said ; How can he produce heat while he cannot move? (...)It was a question to which the litterature on packing does not answer. It's a misunderstanding.
I should have asked : How can they produce enough heat to heat the pack while they cannot move?"
I answer in case you do not not and neither NS:
"The answer is easy because they are alive they produce heat and the packers say that they put above the cold humid sheets warmed blankets."
She's a nut so no. How do inject sense into someone who thinks wrapping dead mummies and Freudian sexual fetishes justifies molesting kids? Me doing something about it would draw awareness to it like those obscure sects. I have MORE kids to take care of - gifted, savant, autistics than this PR fraudster has as test subjects. So no. Nicole sounds like a hysterical groupie who's obviously been mindwashed, ignore the bich.
omg,
I have to deal with people who are afraid to vaccinate their children until they feel guilty because they have done it be;
Mothers( and some fathers) who agonize about what to feed their children (gluten free even if the lab tests are negative just in case - cakes and sweets only for birthdays or daily, alimentary supplements,miracle cure preserves of exotic fruits on sale on the internet ...you name it)
You are determined to do the best for your future children but no worrying and rightly so:
Blessed a good looking father Jude law type and a mother bright and independent minded, your children will most probably get the best of what is available on the internet and elsewhere.
No matter for you what scientists say in the media and what naughty people greedy for fame or money will try to sell you. No matter what associations of parents will say to you.
You are an exception and being socially good enclined you should take other people worries into account.
NB: When you have time read in neuroskeptic
“Thursday, 6 October 2011 post Le Pack It
Nicole X alias caducei in French phonetics comments.
She(he)is doing propaganda with very simplistic and dangerous critics of packing and defamatory personal attack on Pr Delion that do not serve the cause of the autistic persons and their family.
Not even the one of the president of Vaincre l'Autisme" formerly "Lea pour Samy" she visibly campaigned for to my mind.
Nicole X comment in NS 3 December 2011 11:20 is defamatory. Full stop.
”(...) There is a lot of mysticism in him : When, in his last paper, in cairn info, he says that packs will become an institution to accompany the dead in their passage from one life to another, he clearly assimilates the packing to a funeral ceremony. Very strange for a doctor. Is it a cult of mummies in which Pr Delion is the great priest and which help him to deal with his own anguishes? I do not know."
I went to a 25th celebration of a very efficient alcohol addiction clinic treatment I advise people to get help to and I was seating(italian way nothing special) on the seats were tjhe clinets were besides one of mines and we were listening to a very boring and silly psychoanalyst talk from a psychologist of that clinic. My client looked at me and said he was sorry that this psychologist was so boring speaking in public and assured me that he had never been spoken that nonsenses when in therapy...Luckily afterward we had a nice theater play by the patients.
So beware that this Delion is not writing silly when helping children.
We need Pr Delion data and Nicole X refusing any possible bias with an argument of authority is not acceptabl
So let's that he seemed a different person from the one who saved his family life and job by making him free from alcohol. I answer that what count is the ggo(that man had been veru lowbecause the therapist had helped him with a clinet who
omg,
I have to deal with people who are afraid to vaccinate their children until they feel guilty because they have done it be;
Mothers( and some fathers) who agonize about what to feed their children (gluten free even if the lab tests are negative just in case - cakes and sweets only for birthdays or daily, alimentary supplements,miracle cure preserves of exotic fruits on sale on the internet ...you name it)
You are determined to do the best for your future children but no worrying and rightly so:
Blessed a good looking father Jude law type and a mother bright and independent minded, your children will most probably get the best of what is available on the internet and elsewhere.
No matter for you what scientists say in the media and what naughty people greedy for fame or money will try to sell you. No matter what associations of parents will say to you.
You are an exception and being socially good enclined you should take other people worries into account.
NB: When you have time read in neuroskeptic
“Thursday, 6 October 2011 post Le Pack It
Nicole X alias caducei in French phonetics comments.
She(he)is doing propaganda with very simplistic and dangerous critics of packing and defamatory personal attack on Pr Delion that do not serve the cause of the autistic persons and their family.
Not even the one of the president of Vaincre l'Autisme" formerly "Lea pour Samy" she visibly campaigned for to my mind.
Nicole X comment in NS 3 December 2011 11:20 is defamatory. Full stop.
”(...) There is a lot of mysticism in him : When, in his last paper, in cairn info, he says that packs will become an institution to accompany the dead in their passage from one life to another, he clearly assimilates the packing to a funeral ceremony. Very strange for a doctor. Is it a cult of mummies in which Pr Delion is the great priest and which help him to deal with his own anguishes? I do not know."
I went to a 25th celebration of a very efficient alcohol addiction clinic treatment I advise people to get help to and I was seating(italian way nothing special) on the seats were tjhe clinets were besides one of mines and we were listening to a very boring and silly psychoanalyst talk from a psychologist of that clinic. My client looked at me and said he was sorry that this psychologist was so boring speaking in public and assured me that he had never been spoken that nonsenses when in therapy...Luckily afterward we had a nice theater play by the patients.
So beware that this Delion is not writing silly when helping children because he applies soothing deep pressure.
We need Pr Delion data and Nicole X refusing any possible bias with an argument of authority is not acceptable.
neuroskeptic
You are not shy in deleting my comments, so please delete the penultimate 7 December 2011 11:34.
since I had left a little "brouillon" at the end.
omg,
Thank you for the friendly note in a 7 12 11 comment of the 6 10 11 Ns poston packing:
I knew NS had done one 2010 post on packing and I had reads it happily and I was attending the Catania 10 2010 meeting of Autism Europe who put a moral ban of France for packing children.
But thanks all the same and all the best for you and future children.
But please, try to understand that women -and men when they do not abandon the wife with the autistic child(ren)to fend for themselves and their autistic children- deserve some indulgence if they are showing less spirit and good sens than you do.
Nb: part of a sentence escaped me in my last answer to you:
"I have to deal with people who are afraid to vaccinate their children until they feel guilty because they have done it- be it from a fraudulent British academic publication or- more often in France-from propaganda from homeopaths or even simplistic anti Big Pharma activists who oppose vaccination because it makes Big Pharma richer."
Beware of cheap imitation of science dear omg
and beware of simplistic activists like Nicole X alias caducei
who gave me an ilarious lecture on physics on her last 7 12 11 comment on the 6 10 11 NS post on packing because I looked respectful enough!
NB: Let me tell you also:kids are ungratful, i spend days with them at the two paris science museums plus the Boston one and good history of science museums , flemming laboratory and the likes.
They quit science when they could have become top class researchers.
So beware that if they have got your brain and critical sense they might end up scientists!
More seriously, i home schooled them for several years and my engineer one son (turned PhD candidate in economy)refuses to fix my computer unless he become the only administrator of it pretending that I am too old and incompetent to try to improve the way it works and it is too much work to undone my pathetic attempts and my other son pretend I have to go Apple for him to help!
So long for good now since my English is deteriorating -and it had much shortcomming before- becvause my mind is in italy since i saw on television a woman minister cry sincerely because she had to cut pension.
To get rid of a Silvio Berlusconi governement for one with technical and honest looking people and a woman minister who care about the consequences for ordinary folks of her decisions is something.
Thank you for your kind words Dr Ivana. You should definitely consider going for office. Best of luck with things :)
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