Last Saturday, Dr Krissy Wilson joined me, to discuss Power Balance bracelets, UFO sightings over Sydney and fish raining from the sky in the isolated aboriginal community of Lajamanu, NT.

You can listen to the audio here.

On Wednesday March 3rd, 2010, the Shorty Awards were announced in New York City. I was unable to attend, even though I would have been delighted (I heart NYC) so instead I settled in front of my computer at work to watch the live stream from 11 am. The categories were announced in alphabetical order, so it wasn’t long before we reached the health category.

The Shortys are affectionately known as the ‘Twitter Oscars’ which is accurate in the sense that none of the nominees know if they have won before the ceremony. Further, The Shortys are not won purely on votes alone. A panel of judges makes the final decision following an initial round of nominations to select six finalists, then a secondary voting round.

As I watched the awards being handed down, it became apparent that those who had won the voting round were not automatically winning the final round. Some finalists had come from 3rd or 4th to take out the trophy. I was decidedly nervous. So it was with great relief that I heard my name announced as the winner of the health category.

Some very perceptive readers (I’m looking at you AndyD!) observed that I remained very quiet during the entire Shortys process. I did not blog it, I only occasionally asked for votes and I rarely tweeted about it except to say ‘thanks’ when I had won a round. There was a reason I made the decision to do this and some of you might have worked out why.

It was because specific alt. medders behaved so badly throughout this process that all I had to do was sit back and watch them self destruct. It was much better for me to say nothing, quietly screen capture their abuse and ad hominem attacks and wait for it all to crumble around them. Which it eventually did, not in the least on Wednesday, as you are about to see.

As Steve Novella advised me when the ‘she’s a fatty post’ appeared on Mercola’s site (see below), it was apparent that they had forgotten their roots in unicorns, sunbeams and fairy dust and reverted to their apparent true colours of personal insults and crazy antics. And Mercola and Adams did it in spectacular style. All I had to do was sit back and wait whilst other people documented the carnage.

Let’s recap a little shall we?

It all started when Mike Adams from Natural News was coming first and Dr Mercola second. At this stage I was somewhere down near 16th place, when I alerted my twitter followers to the competition. My mate and all round awesome smart guy Jason Brown decided he would have none of that and instigated a campaign to get me to the top position. Amongst other things he alerted PZ Myers of the hugely successful Pharyngula blog, who is known for his ability “to Pharyngulate”. PZ kindly blogged about the competition and this was when things began to get interesting.

Firstly, my position was elevated to the top five and increasing when Mike Adams got wind that a big pharma drug pusher was threatening his top spot. In fact, at this time I wasn’t even winning, but this didn’t matter to Mike, so he wrote a long post on his website asking his followers to vote for him (which is completely within the guidelines for The Shortys BTW).

Well it seems they did, but we started to notice some abnormalities with their votes. Many people including Tim Farley, Jason Brown and @Weezmgk did a quick audit and found that many of the votes for Adams were coming from newly created accounts, which were clearly set up explicitly to vote for Mike in health (and also for me in quackery). Weezmgk also did an audit on 160 votes when Adams had a total of 530 and found 104 were invalid. That’s 65%. That’s a lot.

Tweeting votes from new accounts was explicitly against the rules, which stated that only twitter accounts which were established and active prior to the competition start date on January 1, 2010 were eligible to place votes.

Next thing we knew, Mike Adams was completely disqualified.

And this was when it started to get interesting. Mike threw an epic tantrum, he threw his toys out of the pram, he hand flapped, he foot stamped, he wrote a frothing rant about how the competition was rigged, he threatened to sue the judging panel, and he wrote to the organisers;

“If you allow this to continue, the integrity of the entire Shorty Awards will be destroyed. I had hoped this would be a fair, honest competition that highlights the usefulness of short-form content, but thanks to the rogue voters who are supporting Dr. Rachael Dunlop, the Shorty Awards are quickly becoming a platform for defamation and false accusations where those who can spread the most aggressive insults are allowed to win.”

He then wrote a a truly epic post entitled “What sceptics really believe”. I won’t post the original blog here because it’s much more fun to read the various take-downs. Orac over at “Respectful Insolence” described it as A pyromaniac in a field of straw man or black hole of burning stupid incinerating every straw man in the universe? Mike Adams attacks skeptics. Phil Plait described it as “Alt. Med. guy whacked with the Shorty end of the stick”. Steve Novella over at Neurologica also covered it.

The following day Adams wrote another post referring to “hate speech from jackals who attack natural medicine” (all up, he wrote about four ranting posts about skeptics, filled with conspiracy theories and references to Big Pharma). My personal favourite was the claim that skeptics believe that the water in your toilet is the same as water from a mineral spring.

Adams got so asinine on his Facebook page that some of his followers suggested that his computer had been hacked. Not so I’m afraid. He really is that nasty. Many people covered Adam’s public tantrums, but I especially enjoyed the analysis by the Merseyside skeptics on their Skeptics with a K podcast. I recommend you have a listen.

But now it was Mercola’s turn to throw his toys out of the pram. He posted an acerbic rant on his Facebook page, pleading with his followers to vote for him by insulting me;

The ad hominem attacks became decidedly more charming, until some of his followers began to question his motives and behaviour;

The ‘little known’ bit might have been accurate before the Streisand effect multiplied my Twitter followers by a huge amount and traffic to my website doubled overnight – all thanks to Mercola putting my url on his website with the comment;

‘If you want a real laugh to see how ridiculous some of her positions are you can go to her site’. www.skepticsbooks.com

Thank you Joe Mercola.

Someone might want to direct Mercola to the definition of The Streisand Effect.

Interestingly, all the while Mercola was ranting and railing about me and pleading with his fans to vote and ask three friends to vote, he was simultaneously dismissing the Shortys as ‘just a stupid popularity contest’. One he cares about deeply it seems. He also made remarks about how him winning would have implications for the credibility of alternative medicine and natural health providers everywhere. Well I guess that never happened.

As the voting round continued, things began to get difficult for us. Remember mercola.com is one of the largest natural health websites in the world, he had at the time 64,000 fans on Facebook, he even claimed to have emailed 2.5 million people pleading with them to vote for him. At one stage, his votes went from 600 less than me to overtake me by more than 2000. I thought we might have lost it then, but as soon as they appeared, the Shortys removed them.

It doesn’t matter how many fans you have if they can’t read the rules, their votes won’t count.

Of course as you can predict as his votes started to disappear his fans accused me of having some kind of influence over the Shortys and called me a cheat, a fraud and a liar, amongst other things. I began to get votes in such categories, meanwhile my fans were much more creative, nominating Mercola for ‘mythical half fish, half drink’ – a category which he took out comfortably I am happy to say!

As the deadline for the voting round drew closer, I asked Tim Minchin to ask his 50,000+ followers to vote for me, which he very kindly did. (Interestingly, in contrast to when PZ Myers tweeted it, this kind gesture did not translate into many more votes. Clearly, PZ has his fans much better trained).

So it all ended on Wednesday and so far there has not been a squeak from the Adam’s or Mercola camps. What began as a fight for our principles, science and evidence, ended as an incredibly interesting insight into the minds of believers who when challenged in lieu of any evidence to support their claims, simply run behind the shelter shed and call me fat.

To my surprise and delight, there has been a huge amount of mainstream media coverage of the awards, probably because news agregator AFP picked up the story. In Australia, my name even appeared in the headline of many articles, whilst others described “Aussie biologist honoured for ‘tweeting’.”

My sister learned of the award from Brisbane commercial radio who ran it as a news item. The free afternoon newspaper, MX which is distributed to over 700,000 commuters in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane ran the story on page two in Sydney (see left) and page four in Melbourne.

A Big Pharma thank you to all my supporters and all who voted for me throughout the process. I guess this little known non-physician is not so ‘little known’ anymore.

To reiterate my acceptance speech;

This award recognises the value of sharing evidence based health information on twitter. For science, reason and critical thinking, thank you.

Good manners doesn’t hurt either.

—-

Media coverage I have collected so far.

Nine msn; Aussie Biologist Honoured for Tweeting

The Australian; Australian Scientist Rachael Dunlop wins Twitter Award

Adelaide Now; Australian Scientist Rachael Dunlop wins Twitter Award

Sydney Morning Herald; Aussie biologist honoured for tweeting

BigPond News; Aussie honoured at Twitter awards

PerthNow; Australian Scientist Rachael Dunlop wins Twitter Award

The Mercury Tasmania; Aussie scientist wins Twitter award

News dot com dot au; Aussie scientist wins Twitter award

Audio Boo from Richard Saunders; Congratulations Dr Rachie (includes audio of announcement)

CNN dot com reports on the Shortys

It represents the day in 1788 when the English turned up on the banks of Sydney Cove in their tall ships and declared the country ‘ours’.

This was in spite of Aboriginal Australians having occupied the land for more than 40,000 years prior to “white” man setting foot here.

This subsequent settlement has been a vexing issue for Australia, especially since the Aboriginal population has suffered greatly ever since and as such, reflection on their plight forms a large part of the significance of the day. But Australia Day is also about catching up with friends, having a traditional bbq, playing some cricket and downing a few coldies.

Yet, there are some formalities that come with Australia Day in the form of awards which celebrate outstanding contributions and achievements of Australians. Regular readers to this blog might recall my Dad was honored with an Order of the Medal of Australia last year.

For many years, the top of the prestigous Honours list was dominated by sportsmen, entertainers and celebrities whom, although certainly do a great job, are often sufficiently honoured by other means.

So this year, I was thrilled to see a large science contingent honoured in the 2010 awards.

Australia’s first female Nobel Prize winner, Professor Elizabeth Blackburn is a scientist who was jointly awarded the 100th Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine last year for work on understanding the role of telomeres in protecting chromosomes was given the highest honour. Professor Blackburn is among four Australians named a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC).

Also recognised in the medical field is Dr Wendy Hoy, a Professor of medicine at the Centre for Chronic Disease at the University of Queensland.

She’s been honoured for her medical research in indigenous communities. Wendy told ABC radio, “I hope it gives other people the energy and confidence to press on in what’s really a difficult and unnecessarily contentious field.”

Professor Fred Watson is the astronomer in charge of the Anglo-Australian Observatory in Coonabarabran in New South Wales, and was honoured for sharing his passions about astronomy through raising public awareness about space and the universe.

I know someone else like that.

Fred told ABC radio; “As soon as you start talking to people about things like that, about the possibility, even of microbial life on Mars their interest is piqued, it’s very, very easy for an astronomer to engage with the public and engage with people generally”.

Watch an interview with Fred Watson here.

Dr Chris Kennedy, a clinician from Queensland, received an award for his medical work and education. As a doctor working with children, he understands the importance of vaccines as an essential tool in the prevention of communicable disease, particularly in third world countries.

He told ABC news that the cost of vaccines can be prohibitive for developing nations, and encouraged Australia to contribute to the costs where they are desperately needed.

Also from Queensland, Dr Will Cairns was recognised for his services to palliative medicine.

One group of entertainers who were honored for tireless services to entertainment was The Wiggles. But you can hardly not like the Wiggles, unless you are a parent who has a child obsessed (and if you are a parent then you most likely have/will have).

Happy Australia Day all!

ARGHHHH! Run for the hills, it's a Helminth!

We had talks about scabies in the Aboriginal population, the mites that spread the disease, and I interviewed Dr Alex Loukas, parasitologist from the Queensland Institute for Medical Research. Dr Loukas has an interest in a member of the Helminth family the hookworm, and is currently working on developing a vaccine against the infection.

Hookworms are no longer a big problem for humans in Australia, but remain a health risk in the developing world. The manifestation of a serious hookworm infection is anaemia from a loss of blood, corresponding with low levels of iron.

Like the malaria parasite I wrote about in my previous post, hookworms consume the haemoglobin component of blood and they do this by latching onto the walls of the intestine and leeching blood into their gut. They then excrete the left overs out through their anus.

Which brings me to the pornography part of Alex’s talk yesterday. He has a video taken during a routine colonoscopy (which failed to work during the presentation and I can’t say that I am really sorry) showing a dog hookworm attached to the inside of a human patient’s intestine. According to Alex, it precisely demonstrates this process.

He refers to it as “pornography for parasitologists”. And people say scientists are weird.

But seriously, the main focus of Alex’s work is to develop a vaccine for hookworm. This might sound a bit strange to you at first, since many of us would know that there is already one available for dogs. Alex told me however that this vaccine, whilst a viable technology to adapt for human use, is far too expensive to use in the developing world. This is because it is an “attenuated vaccine”, meaning the hookworm larvae are irradiated to a senescent or no longer active state, then when the immune system is exposed to them, antibodies are created and immunity developed. This is a very expensive process however, requiring the culturing of hundreds of thousands of hookworm larvae for vaccine manufacture. Cost is a critical factor for the availability and distribution of medical care in the developing world.

Parasitology - it's fun.

To overcome these issues, Alex’s approach is to create an antibody against a protein in the feed cycle of the hookworm. This enzyme is critical for the final stages of the digestion of the haemaoglobin component of the blood. If the enzyme doesn’t work, the hookworm cannot extract nutrients and it effectively starves to death.

The method of delivery of the antibody to the gut of the worm is particularly fascinating. The host, being the human, is exposed to the hookworm gut protein, thereby making antibodies against it, which will enter their blood stream. The hookworm then feeds on the blood, ingests the antibodies which enter its gut and stop the digestive enzymes from working. Alex refers to this as the “Poison Chalice” of vaccines. Elegant and ingenious.

To hear the full interview with Alex Loukas, tune into the Skeptic Zone , episode 56, on November 13, 2009. Find us on iTunes.

See an alternative image of a hookworm eating its prey here.

In true Mythbusters style, Jamie narrates the best course of action to take if you have flu, over the top of a slow motion clip of Adam sneezing goo everywhere!

Watch the clip here.