Category: ignorance

IvanView Contains Malware

Seth Roberts16 Comments

A few days ago I needed to convert image files from one format to another. Searching for the software, I found IvanView, an apparently reputable company whose program once got 4 stars from CNET. I download and installed the converter. Right after that I started having trouble with my Firefox browser. After I did a Google Search, and tried to go to one of the results, I’d be directed elsewhere. Trying to use Avis.com in America put me on Avis’s Australian website — and many relocations were much worse. Internet Explorer still worked okay.

I searched “Firefox virus.” I found a post about a problem that was the same as mine, with the reassuring words that it will just mess with your web surfing. The outlined solution steps, however, were either very complicated or didn’t solve the problem.

Later I started to have trouble with Internet Explorer. I used Norton Antivirus to scan my hard drive. It found nothing of importance. But it did tell me I had some sort of incoming malware. Then it told me to restart my computer. I did so — and was unable to log on! No one had reported this problem in what I’d read.

At this point I did a full system recovery (from a few weeks earlier). It took a few hours but then everything was fine. It’s unfortunate, though, that Mozilla and Norton, not to mention Microsoft, haven’t managed to protect against a virus that has been around for almost a year, as far as I could tell. You should be able to fix this by downloading a free antivirus program.

How Bad is Animal Fat?

Seth Roberts15 Comments

After learning that animal fat improved my sleep, I happily ate much more of it. I wasn’t worried that it made something else worse (e.g., heart disease). I believe that all parts of our bodies have been shaped by evolution to work well on the same diet, just as all electric appliances are designed to work well on the same house current.

A to-be-published meta-analysis in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition supports my view that animal fat is nowhere as bad as we’ve been told a thousand times. It says:

During 5—23 y of follow-up of 347,747 subjects, . . . intake of [more] saturated fat was not associated with an increased risk of CHD [coronary heart disease], stroke, or CVD [cardiovascular disease]. The pooled relative risk estimates that compared extreme quantiles of saturated fat intake were 1.07 (95% CI: 0.96, 1.19; P = 0.22) for CHD, 0.81 (95% CI: 0.62, 1.05; P = 0.11) for stroke, and 1.00 (95% CI: 0.89, 1.11; P = 0.95) for CVD.

Emphasis added. One aspect of the results suggested that studies that found an positive association (more fat, more disease) were more likely to be published than those that didn’t find an association or found a negative association. Which means these numbers may underestimate the good effects.

Thanks to Steve Hansen and Michael Pope.

False Alarm

Seth Roberts1 Comment

Today I flew from Tokyo to San Francisco. Just before boarding there was a level of security I hadn’t encountered before: Every passenger’s carry-on luggage was searched and every passenger was wand-scanned. Then my name was called. “Please come to the check-in desk.” I went to the check-in desk. “Are you Mr. Roberts?” Yes. The woman who had asked me that started typing. “Why did you call my name?” I asked. No answer. I asked again. No answer. Eventually I figured out I’d been summoned to the check-in desk to be offered a better seat, for which I hadn’t asked and for which I was very grateful. The airline was ANA.

Even More Room For Improvement at the NY Times

Seth Roberts2 Comments

In a widely-emailed article about depression, Judith Warner, a former columnist at the New York Times, writes:

This is the big picture of mental health care in America: not perfectly healthy people popping pills for no reason, but people with real illnesses lacking access to care; facing barriers like ignorance, stigma and high prices; or finding care that is ineffective.

When Atul Gawande fails to mention prevention in a discussion of how to improve American health care . . . well, he’s a surgeon. Of course he has gatekeeper syndrome. What’s Judith Warner’s excuse? Judging from this article, the notion that depression might be prevented has not occurred to her.

The Door-in-the-Face Effect

Seth Roberts2 Comments

One of my Tsinghua students, a freshman, has been getting up early Saturday mornings to go to nearby Beijing University to attend a 4-hour intro psych class for graduate students. “What does the teacher talk about?” I asked. He showed me his notes. “The Door-in-the-Face Effect” was the heading of a little graph he’d drawn. “What’s that?” I asked. “If you get someone to help you in a little way, they’re more likely to help you in a big way later,” he said. I knew that result. It’s called the foot-in-the-door effect. “Your teacher made a mistake,” I said.

I was wrong. There is a door-in-the-face effect very similar to the foot-in-the-door effect. The door-in-the-face effect is after you make a big request that is turned down, you are more likely to get agreement to a small request.

The Unwisdom of John Mackey

Seth Roberts12 Comments

John Mackey is the founder of Whole Foods, a business I greatly respect. But he’s not always right.

“You only love animal fat because you’re used to it,” he said. “You’re addicted.”

(From a profile of Mackey in The New Yorker.) I discovered that animal fat improved my sleep when I overcame my (learned) repulsion and ate a lot more than usual.I think it’s obvious that fat tastes good for unlearned reasons. For reasons not based on experience. (Babies like fat. Animals similar to us, who have never eaten fast food, like fat.) Mackey’s comment is an example of a larger disregard of this. Professional nutritionists, including nutrition professors, have ignored the general point that our food preferences must somehow be good for us. I’m not saying all fat must be good for us — just the fat we ate when our liking of fat evolved. The idea that evolution would shape us to like and eat a food component that’s bad for us makes no sense.

MSG and Nightmares

Seth Roberts11 Comments

At a dinner for foreign teachers at Tsinghua, I met a Canadian woman who teaches English literature. Soon after she moved to China, she started having nightmares every night. For dreams, they were unusually linear and realistic. They were nightmares in the sense that they felt “sinister”. This hadn’t happened to her before. It was especially puzzling because she was having a good time.

On a forum for foreigners in Beijing, she asked what might be causing the problem. MSG, she was told. All Chinese restaurants use MSG. She started cooking her own food. The problem went away. Whenever she ate a restaurant meal, the problem returned. The time between meal and sleep made a difference. The dreams would be more vivid if she slept soon after the meal.

Here is a discussion of the MSG/nightmare link with many stories about it. I believe we like the taste of MSG because glutamate is created when proteins are digested by bacteria. We like glutamate because we need to eat bacteria to be healthy. Bacteria are too big and varied to detect directly; it’s much easier to evolve a glutamate detector. The problem is that now you can have glutamate in your food without bacteria. Apparently cooked tomatoes and garlic are other sources.

With PubMed I found two relevant articles. One reported an experiment where hyperactive boys got better when additives, including MSG, were removed from their food. The other is a review article about the effects of MSG that mentions sleep.

I’m sure from the personal stories that MSG causes nightmares — and therefore probably also causes other problems. (That glutamate is a neurotransmitter makes the MSG-nightmare link even more likely.) Here are researchers from the Scripps Clinic in San Diego saying MSG is safe:

Since the first description of the ‘Monosodium glutamate symptom complex’, originally described in 1968 as the ‘Chinese restaurant syndrome’, a number of anecdotal reports and small clinical studies of variable quality have attributed a variety of symptoms to the dietary ingestion of MSG. . . . Despite concerns raised by early reports, decades of research [this review was published in 2009] have failed to demonstrate a clear and consistent relationship between MSG ingestion and the development of these conditions..

What the woman I met did in a week or so (establish that MSG has bad effects), medical researchers — at least, judging by this review — have failed to do in 41 years (“decades of research”). Just as dermatologists have been unable to figure out that acne is caused by diet.

More about the dangers of MSG.

How the National Multiple Sclerosis Society Harms MS Patients

Seth Roberts15 Comments

I blogged earlier about how Paulo Zamboni, an Italian surgeon, discovered that almost all MS patients have impaired blood flow from the brain. Surgery to improve the blood flow usually reduced MS symptoms. A very important discovery.

At the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, in Denver, they are unconvinced. They want more studies. Yes, Zamboni’s single study shouldn’t be the final word but here is the astonishing part: They say patients shouldn’t get tested to see if they have impaired blood flow. Impaired blood flow is very rare. When an MS patient gets tested, this tests Zamboni’s theory. His theory predicts they are likely to have impaired blood flow. At the National MS Society, they are against gathering data that would help decide if Zamboni is right. And against individuals finding out if something is wrong with their blood flow. This isn’t conservative, it’s stupid. And harmful — if anyone listens to them.

I wrote them to ask about their astonishing recommendation. Here’s the answer (from Kris Graham):

Our greatest concern at this point is the risk involved with the possible treatment, and we would like to see more clinical testing done before making a recommendation to the general public.

I wrote again to say it was the recommendation against testing (not treatment) that I was asking about. I got this reply:

We are not recommending that people get tested because there is not yet a treatment that has undergone comprehensive clinical testing. In other words, we do not encourage people to go through testing that can not — yet — lead to treatment. If clinical trials show that treatments, such as Dr. Zamboni‘s, are clinically safe and effective, we will of course change our recommendations. Until we know from controlled trials that there is a treatment to offer, spending the money to get tested doesn’t seem very reasonable.

What nonsense. Dr. Zamboni did a clinical trial. Spending money to get tested is money spent in a way that helps every MS patient — not to mention yourself. It’s gatekeeper syndrome — they can’t fathom why a MS patient would want to gather useful health-care info without waiting for “controlled trials,” whatever those are. I wrote back to ask what “controlled trials” meant. No reply. Thank god for self-experimentation, PatientsLikeMe, and CureTogether.

Breakthrough in Treating MS

Seth Roberts10 Comments

When Paulo Zamboni’s wife came down with MS (multiple sclerosis), he was in an unusual position: He was a professor of medicine. Not only did he have technical expertise, he was going to care far more than than most MS researchers about finding a cure. (Likewise, when I suffered from early awakening, I had both technical expertise and cared more about finding a solution than any sleep researcher.)

Using ultrasound to examine the vessels leading in and out of the brain, Dr. Zamboni made a startling find: In more than 90 per cent of people with multiple sclerosis, including his spouse, the veins draining blood from the brain were malformed or blocked. In people without MS, they were not. [emphasis added] . . . More striking still was that, when Dr. Zamboni performed a simple operation to unclog veins and get blood flowing normally again, many of the symptoms of MS disappeared. . . . His wife, who had the surgery three years ago, has not had an attack since. . .
The initial studies done in Italy were small but the outcomes were dramatic. In a group of 65 patients with relapsing-remitting MS (the most common form) who underwent surgery, the number of active lesions in the brain fell sharply, to 12 per cent from 50 per cent; in the two years after surgery, 73 per cent of patients had no symptoms.

Clearly Dr. Zamboni has discovered something very important. Perhaps no true health breakthrough would be complete without appalling responses from powerful people within the biomedical establishment. The American MS society issued a comment on these findings that the rest of us can marvel at. According to them, people with MS should not get tested for malformed or blocked veins!

Q: I have MS. Should I be tested for signs of CCSVI?
 A: No, unless you are involved in a research study exploring this phenomenon, since at this time there is no proven therapy to resolve any abnormalities that might be observed, and it is still not clear whether relieving venous obstructions would be beneficial.

Persons with MS cannot be trusted with the dangerous knowledge of whether or not their veins are malformed or blocked! The Chairman of the Board of the National MS society is Thomas R. Kuhn. The President is Joyce M. Nelson. I would love to know how they justify this position. I wrote to the National MS society asking how Kuhn justifies this. The Canadian MS society is far less negative, perhaps due to public pressure.

Over at This Is MS, the National MS position is derided. Someone has made the shrewd observation that if there is something to Zamboni’s idea, persons with MS should get a red head after exercise more often than persons without MS and is collecting data to see if this is true. There seems to be something to it.

Not only is this a wonderful discovery but it is wonderful how the National MS Society can simply be ignored. There are now much better sources of information.

Thanks to Anne Weiss, Charles Richardson, and James Andwartha.

Chatting With a Gmail Hacker

Seth Roberts10 Comments

Someone broke into my gmail account. (I have regained control.) The hacker sent an email to about twenty people asking for money. To be sent to London. Here is a gchat conversation that ensued (me = the hacker, Richard = one of my students):

18:30Â Richard: do u need sth professor?
18:32Â me: nop
  not good at the moment
 Richard: what do u mean? ur feeling not well?
 16 minutes
18:49Â me: HEY
18:50Â Richard: hey
18:51Â me: heop you get my mail?
 Richard: uh.. no
  when did u send it?
18:52Â me: I’m stuck in London with family right now
 Richard: wow!! u didn’t tell us u’re going to the uk!
18:53Â me: I’m sorry for this odd request because it might get to you too urgent but it’s because of the situation of things right now
 Richard: wait.. are you Kaiping or Seth?
 me: Seth
  i came down here on vacation
18:54Â Richard: oh..
  this is really odd
  i saw kaiping’s post saying that he’s with his family too..
18:55Â so u emailed to me? but i didn’t get it..
18:56Â u mentioned request.. what is the request in ur email?
18:57Â me: i was robbed, worse of it is that bags, cash and cards and my cell phone was stolen at GUN POINT, it’s such a crazy experience for me
 Richard: what!
where are you now? are you safe? 

18:58Â me: i need help flying back home, the authorities are not being 100% supportive but the good thing is i still have my passport but don’t have enough money to get my flight ticket back home and l need to clear the hotel bills here
 Richard: can u resend me the email?
18:59Â me: please i need you to loan me some money, will refund you as soon as I’m back home, i promise.Get back to me ASAP let me know what to do next
 Richard: can u log on gtalk so i can voice chat with u?
  not enough info for me
19:00Â i did get ur email so i don know how i can hel u
  ~help
19:02Â me: can i ask you a qus?
 Richard: yes
 me: tell me who is your best friend?
19:03Â Richard: …..my girlfriend i guess
 me: are you kidding me ?
 Richard: if ur serious about my helping u then…
19:04Â me: are want to who you her
  tell me who is your best friend?
 Richard: why does this matter if.. what?
  best friend okay, a guy in tsinghua
19:05Â but u don’t know him i guess
 me: the title of book I showed you lat time ?
 Richard: the shangri-la diet or mindless eating?
  ….professor, please
19:06Â me: stop kidding me
19:07Â Richard: professor i thought u r a little strangely
sorry.. i mean talking a little strangely 

  i should be confused
19:09Â why does these matter if ur trying to fly back?
19:11Â the thing is i didn’t get ur email so i do not know how to help
19:13Â me: You can wire it to my name from a western union outlet around. Here are the details you need to get it to me;
 Richard: can u use voice chat?
19:15Â it should be easy to install the voice char plugin for gmail, i mean we are not well connected, so it’s kinda slow
  i couldn’t help thinking this as an experiment…
19:16Â i think the easiest way would be u resending the email so i can get enough info
19:17Â besides, i may not have enough money so i would need time to trasfer money into my active account if we act fast enough we can get u home more quickly
19:18Â do u have a phone number of any kind?
19:19Â me: You can wire it to my name from a western union outlet around. Here are the details you need to get it to me;
Name – Seth Roberts
Location – 27 Leicester Square, London. England.
19:20Â Richard: and how much? all i have is rmb does it matter?
19:21Â me: how much can you loan me ?
 Richard: i donno. all i have in my account is about 4k yuan
19:24Â me: I still have my passport so i can use it as identification. You’ll be given a 10 digit confirmation number as soon as the transfer goes through, email it to me as soon as you have wired the cash to me.Regards
19:31Â me: you there
 Richard: yes professor do u have a phone number?
 me: nop
19:32Â Richard: but u have access to internet! where r u now?
 me: yes
19:35Â Richard: i gotta go good luck man