There ARE websites with reliable medical info on the internet. WebMD and the Mayo Clinic's site come to mind.

See my comment above. They don't just "claim" that the vaccine works. They have to prove it, in scientifically rigorous studies, or the FDA doesn't approve the drug for marketing (or, if you are in Europe, the EMEA doesn't approve it for marketing).

Oh, I'm sorry... from your original comment I thought you would be unswayed by scientific evidence.

I'll post the same link that I posted further up the thread:
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=186

This has a run down of the numbers of infections and deaths, before and after vaccines.

For a vaccine to be approved to go on the market, rigorous scientific tests demonstrated efficacy (i.e., that they work) and safety (i.e. that there are not unacceptable side effects) are required. I suspect you could even request to see the data submitted to the FDA via the Freedom of Information act. Certainly, you can search in PubMed and find the published, peer-reviewed papers describing the studies that showed efficacy. There really is no doubt that vaccines work.

Because the diseases are coming back in populations with excellent nutrition, modern sanitation, and clean water... but an unfortunately tendency to believe that the government and large pharmaceutical companies are out to get them.

We had a measles outbreak in my (really rather wealthy) neighborhood a couple of years ago, caused by a family who chose not to vaccinate their kids, and then traveled to Switzerland (not exactly a third world country) and came back with the measles, which they then spread around amongst similarly deluded people who did not vaccinate and a few innocent bystanders with children too young to have gotten the vaccine yet. My daughter was too young to have been vaccinated at that point. It was frankly a bit scary.

You aren't as educated about vaccines as you think.

Go read this to learn a little bit about the diseases that the childhood vaccine prevent:
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=186

That site will give you the cold hard numbers about how many children used to die from these illnesses and the actual, documented side effects (and their frequencies) of vaccines.

Then go to this site to get a more human view of what happens to OTHER PEOPLE'S BABIES when you choose not to vaccinate:
http://www.danamccaffery.com/

No one should have to bury their 4 week old baby because someone else believes conspiracy theories.

Now, if you don't want to get your daughter the HPV vaccine, that is no skin off of my nose. But do not lump that vaccine in with the vaccines that prevent diptheria, pertussis, measles, and the like. The ethics of decided to refuse the HPV vaccine and deciding to refuse the DPT vaccine aren't evenly remotely similar.

Yeah the bit about not being able to cite your own work is just wrong. In fact, journals compete partially on impact scores, which are based on how many citations their papers get. The would have no motive to go after people citing papers they published, even if they had some legal basis to do so- which I don't think they do.

Copyright on academic papers is to provide some financial reward for those who edit and publish the paper, not the person who created the paper. There are other models emerging to pay for this work (e.g., PLoS), but it is real work and it won't get done for free. Just abolishing copyright is unlikely to be a productive approach.

I doubt absolute height is really important for whether a man is considered attractive or not. I suspect it is relative height- as in, he's a little taller than most of the women living in the same time period.

The difference in height between medieval times and now is largely due to better nutrition now. Pretty much everyone was shorter then.

I agree, and have been trying to get my company to use some reporting methods vs. doing everything in meetings. There are too many meetings that could have been replaced by a halfway decent status report.

The problem is, a lot of people can't be bothered to read emails.

I am in charge of IT at a small company. If I want to get a message out, I have to (1) send an email, (2) show up at a couple of big meetings and tell people in person, and (3) post an announcement on our intranet. For really important things, I even post a sign in the break room.

Despite all of this, I find that I have to tell some people the same information in a personal one-on-one conversation within a few days.

Some people won't read. Some people won't listen.

Actually, they published the work in Science.

I think you can read the abstract there without a subscription. If you can't, you can go to PubMed and search for 18403709 (that's the PMID).

You can't really call publishing in Science not publishing in a real scientific journal.

That's not what I'm talking about.I'm not talking about letting the identity of your advertisers influence your content. I'm talking about being paid directly to produce content- which is what a lot of bloggers are doing. In the old school media, that is called advertising. On blogs, it is not even disclosed.

I think, but I am not sure (and don't care enough to go look it up), that if a magazine takes money to include content, it is required by law to label that content advertising. This is why many articles in scientific journals are labeled "advertising"- the authors pay page fees.

Are you sure that old media isn't legally required to disclose when they have been paid to put up certain content? I am not. In fact, I think they probably are- why else would news magazines label those "infomercial" sections they sometimes print as advertising?

If you take money or free product to produce a blog post, you should disclose that fact. I hang out on some mommyblogs from time to time, and there was a big uproar on one blog over the fact that another blogger took money from 23andMe to post about her experiences with their community aimed at pregnant women and new moms. In her post, the second blogger included some statements of questionable scientific validity that, if made directly by 23andMe in their advertising, probably would have brought the FDA and the FTC down on them. But it is fine to spread this disinformation in a blogpost- reader beware, etc. The problem was, the second blogger did NOT disclose her relationship with 23andMe in the post itself, although apparently most of her regular readers were aware of the relationship.

So- should that be legal? What if someone read her scientifically questionable opinions and acted on them, resulting in injury or even death (the opinions dealt with preeclampsia, which can be quite serious)? Sure, they shouldn't have taken medical advice from a blog. But do the blog writer and her sponsors have some sort of legal requirement not to spread false/unproven info? Are you ready for pharma companies to use blogs as a way to make an end run around direct to consumer marketing restrictions?

I'm not saying that the FTC's proposed rule is perfect, or even right. But I do think there is more to it than you imply. Ethical breaches in the marketing of computers is maybe not a big deal worth of laws. Ethical breaches in the marketing of drugs and diagnostics are a different story.

I actually think there is some utility in making the brightest kids learn how to coexist with the kids who aren't so bright. Out in the real world (you know, the place the education system is preparing kids to live and work), you don't get to avoid interacting with people who aren't as bright as you are. Where are you going to learn how to do it if not in school?

I did my share of grunt work in school, and I remember hating it. I also remember rushing through it once, getting a crap grade and learning the important lesson that even grunt work needs to be done properly. That lesson has served me well in my working life. I've met people who have never learned it. They are often "stuck" in their career- they can't suck it up and do the grunt work that is needed to advance to the next level. That is fine if they are happy with the situation, but they often aren't. Personally, I'm glad I learned my lesson in the 6th grade, when the penalty was not coming first in math class, and not in the workplace, when the penalty is a hefty difference in pay and workplace satisfaction.

Now, our public schools might not be doing the best job of juggling all the competing requirements put on them. We ask them to educate kids with a wide range of capabilities. We can and should try to fix that. But I don't buy your statement, put forth without argument, that stratifying kids is the way to do it.