When you bring $145 million a year into the treasury of a province as deeply in hock as Nova Scotia, you swing a big bat. So when a consultant hired by the banished Tory government delivered a cost-benefit analysis of gambling in Nova Scotia to the newly elected NDP government, it stands to reason that the big bat wielders at the Nova Scotia Gaming Corporation*, the agency that administers the provincial government's addiction to gambling revenue, had first dibs on reviewing it. [caption id="attachment_5075" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Marilyn More"][/caption] Whatever the report said about the human toll exacted by provincially sponsored gambling, we...

23 April, 2010

The Brain Repair Centre at the QEII Health Sciences Centre took a magnetic resonance image of Contrarian's brain today, as part of a study on memory loss in people with Alzheimer's disease. The researchers assured me I was there solely as a control! While the machine buzzed, clicked, and roared, the kindly technicians played CBC radio through my headphones. This is what Contrarian's brain looks like while listening to Costas Halavrezos....

12 April, 2010

A diesel-powered Pete's Frootique truck idles unattended on Doyle Street in Halifax Saturday morning, needlessly spilling volatile organic compounds into the crisp spring air. Update: Contrarian reader Colin May points out: Parked on the wrong side of the street, in a no parking zone, too close to a stop sign. Three strikes and you're...

13 March, 2010

Contrarian reader Ken Clare thinks Contrarian's standards slipped with our post of a chart comparing US food subsidies: Edward Tufte, the “Galileo of Graphics” you introduced us to back in June, refers to images like these as “chartjunk." I haven’t taken the time to measure the images you copied (from a committee of physicians who may have had a passing relationship with math sometime in their pasts), but the subsidies pyramid eyeballs closer to a 100-to-1 ratio than the 75-to-25 ratio it is labeled. Update: A Diligent Reader award goes to Contrarian's insomniac friend Alistair Watt, who spent time with a ruler and...

13 March, 2010

This comparison, from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, is, of course, based on U.S. farm subsidies and U.S. dietary guidelines. Any data geeks out there want to take a stab at Canadian pyramids?...

10 March, 2010

This winter, Contrarian hosted an interesting discussion about whether Down syndrome needs a cure. Now reader Denis Falvy offers an intriguing footnote. It seems that people with Down syndrome rarely get tumors. Recent research at Children's Hospital in Boston, reported in the journal Nature, suggests that a gene (gene 231) on the extra chromosome (chromosome 21) carried by people with DS may inhibit cancer by blocking the activity of a protein tumors need to grow. Money quote: The gene suppresses the growth of new blood vessels that cancers need by blocking the activity of the protein calcineurin, suggesting a new target for...

07 March, 2010
Contrarian would not have thought it possible for a defense of quackery to set me chuckling and nodding my head, but my old pal Warren Reed has done it. [Previous installments here and here.] Knowing that the best defense is a good offense, Reed began by catching me in the act of scientific error:
[caption id="attachment_4217" align="alignright" width="230" caption="Amedeo Avogadro"]avogad[/caption] One of the few things I remember from Nat. Sci. 3 is Avogadro's Number — 6.023 x 10**23.  So it isn't roughly 10**23 as you state — it's actually 6 times that.  Six is called The Republican Constant - any Republican can stretch the truth by a factor of six without raising an eyebrow on Fox News.  Journalists often get the same exemption. But we don't read Contrarian just for the science.  More puzzling is the notion that a group of pub-crawling Brits is claiming to know what constitutes "proper medical assistance."  Of the reasons for healing—the passage of time, the placebo effect, natural defenses—"proper medical assistance" is on the list, but is an evanescent concept at best.  It depends on many of the same principles for success as Homeopathy.  Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.
More after the jump.
22 January, 2010

Contrarian reader Andrew Bourke points us to this trenchant sketch on the plausibility of homeopathy from the British comedy duo Mitchell and Webb: ...

20 January, 2010

A British group calling itself 10-23* will stage a mass self-inflicted overdose of homeopathic remedies to protest the Boots pharmacy chain's continued sale of the worthless** nostrums. At 10:23 a.m., January 30, 300 protesters will down a whole bottle of homeopathic pills each. The joke is that homeopathic mixtures have been diluted so many times, they no longer contain any of the original putative active ingredient. From an open letter to the Boots chain: The majority of people do not have the time or inclination to check whether the scientific literature supports the claims of efficacy made by products such as homeopathy....

19 January, 2010

Silas Donham responds to posts on the New York Times Motherlode blog criticizing those who would reject potential chemical treatments intended to improve intellectual function of infants with Down syndrome. This difficult topic provoked a debate here on Contrarian that was remarkably thoughtful and respectful. But when the Times picked up on our discussion, many commenters were incredulous that any parent would hesitate accept such treatments for their children. A few had nasty things to say. Silas responds: First, the disclosure: I am Jenn Power's husband, father to Jacob and Josh, and son to contrarian.ca, the blogger who got all this...

14 January, 2010
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