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The Skeptics' Guide To The Universe - Podcast 175 - 11/20/2008
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The Skeptics' Guide To The Universe
The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, LLC - dedicated to promoting critical thinking, reason, and the public understanding of science through online and other media. The first episode of the SGU podcast went online on May 4th, 2005. It soon became a popular science/skeptical podcast, and remains one of the most popular science podcasts on iTunes.
SGU Podcasting Awards: SGU on XM: You can listen to the SGU on America's Talk XM 166 every Saturday night from 8-9pm Eastern.
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Podcast
175
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November 20, 2008
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Interview with Steven Schafersman
News Items: Kevin Trudeau Smackdown, Placebo Acupuncture, NASA Recycles Urine, Reflexology in UK Schools
Your Questions and E-mail: Flu Vaccine, NESS in Video Game
Science or Fiction
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Segment: News Items
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Segment: Questions and E-mails
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Question #1 Flu Vaccine
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Dr. Novella,
I thoroughly enjoy your blog entries and /love /the SGU podcast. You have saved me from more than one pseudoscience and have sharped my mind. I was wondering if you could take a look at an article that gave me pause.
Yesterday I was listening to the SGU episode where you interviewed Mark Crislip, who advocated /everyone /getting the flu vaccine. Then today I ran into this article: "Avoid Flu Shots, Take Vitamin D Instead"
http://www.lewrockwell.com/miller/miller27.html
Sandwiched between government conspiracy theories and anti-vaccine propaganda he writes:
"In one widely quoted study, 1838 volunteers age 60 and over were randomized to receive a flu shot or placebo (a shot of saline). The flu shot reduced the /relative /risk of contracting (serologically confirmed, clinical) influenza by a seemingly impressive 50%. The incidence of influenza in the unvaccinated people in this study was 3%. In the vaccinated group it was 2% (/JAMA /1994;272:16615). Flu shots reduced the /absolute /risk of contracting influenza by a meager 1% (not 50%, as the "relative risk" portrays it)."
My BS detector was already going off by this time in the article, but this seems to be a reasonable point. If vaccines only reduce the absolute cases of the flu by 1% then why get should we get them? But I wanted more information, so I went to the CDC's website.
According to the CDC:
"Overall, in years when the vaccine and circulating viruses are well-matched, influenza vaccines can be expected to reduce laboratory-confirmed influenza by approximately 70% to 90% in healthy adults <65 years of age."
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/professionals/vaccination/effectivenessqa.htm#iiv
Is the CDC claiming that flu vaccines reduce flu cases 70% to 90% absolutely or relatively? Or am I just getting hung up on a minor point?
Basically I have two questions. (1.) Is this guy completely full of crap? Or only mostly? (2.) Is the effectiveness quoted in the CDC website a reduction in relative risk or absolute risk?(Or maybe I shouldn't even try to understand statistics)
Blake Harber
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Question #2 New England Skeptics
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Not sure if you guys have seen this one, but I couldn't help spotting a certain book in the newly release adventure game A Vampyre Story. It's one of the parodies in a library near the start of the game, but it... jumped out of the screen.
http://www.richardcobbett.com/graphics/assets/ness.png
Of course, it could just be a coincidence. I'd hate to rule anything out, unless it's too ridiculous to be true. Then, yes.
Richard Cobbett
England
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Segment: Interview
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Segment: Science or Fiction [ Click Here to Show the Answers ]
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Item #1  Science
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Scientists report that they have completed sequencing most of the Mammoth genome.
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Item #2 Science
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A young girl survived without a heart for four months, while awaiting a transplant.
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Item #3  Fiction
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Scientists discover a live specimen of a rare New Zealand penguin thought to have gone extinct 500 years ago.
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Segment: Quote of the Week
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Quote of the Week
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“Whatever people in general do not understand, they are always prepared to dislike; the incomprehensible is always the obnoxious.” - Letitia E. Landon
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