The Skeptical side claims at least 31,486 dissenters in their ranks, according to the PetitionProject.org. That sounds like a lot. But is it?

Of course, not all 12 million US scientists therefore agree with ‘The Consensus’. But this puts the PetitionProject’s 31,486 signatories in some kind of context.

Our maths here is somewhat coarse. Some better data suggests the ‘consensus’ figure is around 97.5% of publishing climatologists and around 90% of all publishing scientists supporting the human-induced climate theory. See this study for more details (PDF – Doran And Zimmerman 2009)

Actually, here’s how some of it looks:

Skeptical Field

Among the climate skeptic scientists, we wondered which fields of science were most represented. We expected climate and earth sciences. But we got…

In fact, when you adjust the PetitionProject’s odd categorisation – they filed ‘chemical engineers’ as chemists and physical engineers as ‘physicists’ – the total number of engineers who signed the petition, by our reckoning, jumps to 49%

Why so many engineers?

My beautiful book is out. Unfortunately a freak printing error has affected the text on 12 out of the 256 pages. I’m really sorry this has happened.

I’m pretty upset about it. I slaved for a year over every single page. So it’s a particular kind of pain to see mistakes creep in.

So I’ve put together an errata PDF of the affected pages. I’ve chucked in some new images in there as well.

Please email me if you want a copy of it.

UPDATE: Another mistake! Asking people to email me for a copy of the PDF. Doh. I’ve been deluged. Can I suggest this alternative method? Download this Visual Miscellaneum Errata PDF. It’s passworded. The password is the last word in the bottom right hand corner of page 159 of The Visual Miscellaneum. CASE SENSITIVE. Thank you. D

It was hell on earth to research. There’s a jungle of science around H1N1. Very hard to hack through. You can check all my sources here.

You can check all my sources here.

UPDATE 1: Interesting story here on how the H1N1 vaccine is made

UPDATE 2: Jan 2010: There’s now a Greek version of the H1N1 Swine Flu image. (Thanks to George Papadakis) and a Hebrew version (thanks Matty)

A piece exploring the myths around 2012, Mayan Prophecy, geomagnetic reversal, The Long Count, consciousness shifts, Hunab Ku, galactica alignment, the Precession Of The Equinoxes, rogue planet Nibiru, solar storms, pole shifts, timewave zero, the return of Quetzalcoatl and THE END OF THE WORLD December 21st 2012!

Make up your own mind

UPDATE 1 (8 Dec 09): There’s now a Portuguese version of 2012 (thanks Ricardo Vieira) and a French version DEUUUUXMIIIILLEDOUUUUZE (thanks to Olivier!)

My first post is about Deadly Drugs.

There’s been a furore over here in the UK about the dangers of illegal drugs. The Government has sacked its most senior drugs advisor, Dr Professor Nutt, after he claimed cannabis was no more harmful than alcohol. And that horse-riding, and specifically ‘equasy’ (Equine Addiction Syndrome) was riskier than taking ecstasy. (Statistically he’s correct. His study here.).

Anyway, digging at the numbers behind his statements and how drugs are reported in the popular press, I found some stuff I didn’t expect about drug harms.

Check out the article on The Guardian blog for detail and data. You want both right?

A note about the UK. These are the figures for Gardasil, the vaccine used in the US. In the UK, the dominant vaccine is Cervarix. For which I have no figures. Ben Goldacre explores some important points around Cervarix. Worth reading.

(You can explore my data here. I’ve put the data on three separate sheets inside the spreadsheet. Here are the original source documents from the US Centre Of Disease Control).

If you have any figures on Cervarix or any other facts and sources that can add to this diagram, please get in touch. Thanks!

If you’re looking for information on HPV, Cervical Cancer and immunisation, try these links
: The NHS page on the cervical cancer jab
: General info on immunisation, including HPV

Updates

UPDATE 1: I’ve been asked to include the other side of the Gardasil story which is represented by The National Vaccine Information Centre (www.nvic.org) – which is a nonprofit, non-medical organization founded by parents of vaccine-injured children.

In contrast to the Centre For Disease Control, the NVIC are strongly anti Gardasil. As evidence, they cite the case reports from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database. It tracks adverse side-effects of vaccinations across the US. Reporting is voluntary. Studies say it only catches around 10% of side-effects (source: LA Times). Though it’s fair to expect a higher capture rate for deaths.

On that database, the NVIC count 29 Gardasil-associated deaths. I’ve been through the database and pulled out the case reports on those deaths so you can read them for yourself. Download them here.

For extra info, the NY Times has an excellent article about HPV Vaccines here, exploring several perspectives.

UPDATE 2: A few people questioned how I calculated the theoretical odds for dying from Gardasil, as the numbers don’t seem to match. Yup, fair enough. I wasn’t really clear about that. Essentially, the numbers at the top of the image (20,400,000 doses etc) are not used to calculate the odds. Instead, the odds are calculated using the National Safety Council’s method. That is:

population of United States / number of deaths per year

That gives the one year risk rate. Then if you divide that number again by the average US lifespan (77.8 years) you get the lifetime risk. See the risk chart here.

UPDATE 3 I didn’t factor for the fact that women receive up to 3 jabs of Gardasil. So the 20 million doses figures does not necessarily equate to number of people receiving the vaccine. Changing the maths a bit (to assume an average of 2 jabs per person) has altered the numbers slightly on the graph. (Percentage of side effects 0.05% rises to 0.1%. Percentage of serious side effects 0.003% to 0.007%. And so on). Thanks to A for that correction.

Off the back of the recent timeline of global media scare stories, I got curious about what searches actually look like.

For example, the search “violent video games” reveals a very distinct pattern.

Why that distinct pattern? If you add the dates, it clarifies things:

Every April and November the issue flares up. Why?

April 20th is the anniversary of the Columbine Massacre. Though dimishing, the echoes of that event still reverberate through the group mind.

Not sure about the November peak? Maybe because Christmas video games are announced?

Face Off

A cool thing about Insights. You can pile multiple search terms into the interface and force them into a face off. A bit like putting a fly and a spider and an earwig in a bottle. You’ve done that, right?

I like this one for putting the Twitter hype in perspective.

It’s also good for the settling of age old conflicts.

(Though, technically, the results for ‘apple’ might get some noise for people searching for the popular fruit online)

Why those big peaks?

Hahah. Brilliant. Those peaks occur at the height of summer in July. Though there was a considerable dip in 2007. Bad summer then? Maybe we could map these to global temperatures to make a more human (and tasty) barometer of weather fluctuations. Maybe future super-ironic generations will use searches for “ice cream” as climate records?

ANYWAY. Insights a great fun tool for scoping patterns in data or to rate preferencess – or even to help with personal decisions.

Have a play. Let me know any cool stuff you come up with.

There’s quite a big discussion about this on Flickr.