Science « Biofortified

Do OTC Head Louse Treatments Work? Part 2: Questionable treatments

by Joe Ballenger on 1 January 2012

Editor’s note: Thanks to Joe for Biofortified’s first post of 2012! Here’s to a great year of science blogging!

I like to think of myself as a skeptical blogger. I like to engage in critical thinking about scientific issues because this is an important aspect of my job as a graduate assistant. When I move into the workforce, I’ll still need some basic skills to parse evidence because this is my job as a scientist. Mythbusting is a great opportunity to do this, and I enjoy discussing things which may help people who read my posts whenever I can. Being an entomologist gives me some rather interesting opportunities to do this, which is leading me to discuss head lice of all things.

In my last post, Do OTC Head Louse Treatments Work? Part 1: Mechanisms, I explained how the most commonly used FDA-approved treatments worked. In addition to those science-based products, there are many products that have no evidence of efficacy behind their claims, and that rely on fear to make a sale. What I’ve seen deeply concerns me not only as a scientist trying to make the world a better place, but as a parent trying to raise my daughter the best that I can. In this post, I’ve taken a few commonly sold products and listed some ways in which I think they play fast and loose with their claims.

Do OTC Head Louse Treatments Work? Part 1: Mechanisms

by Joe Ballenger on 23 December 2011

I think it’s safe to say that most folks have had experiences with lice. Every entomologist I’ve ever met (including myself… buy me a few beers and I’ll tell you) has at least one entertaining pubic louse story. Head lice are a childhood rite of passage, with most kids being infested at one point or another. They’re generally harmless with the occasional secondary infection, but infested kids are prone to teasing and other forms of exclusion by classmates. Distraction due to constant itching can also be a problem. Since schools don’t want children being infested for obvious reasons, kids are sent home because of infestation, resulting in parents missing work. Even though lice are mainly nuisance pests, they’re still a pretty big economic pest and account for billions of dollars per year in lost productivity.

When lice strike

Head lice are something almost everyone has to deal with, and head lice treatments are something someone buys every once and awhile. These are big business in and of themselves. Because they’re big business, many firms have started popping up offering louse treatments with varying degrees of effectiveness.

A while back, I went through my own head louse ordeal with my daughter. Treatment was complicated by a family member who didn’t realize they were infested. We originally thought the lice were resistant to treatment, so I had to get a second treatment. Since then, I’ve become curious about what is for sale in stores for Over The Counter (OTC) head louse treatments and generally take a look at whatever treatments I can when I get the chance. Over the years, I’ve become surprised at how many dubious treatments are offered for sale (although perhaps I shouldn’t be) and how many of these use questionable advertising techniques mostly built upon fear rather than science. Many treatments offered for sale over the counter are either unproven, or have been proven not to work.

First, let’s discuss some headlouse biology. Then, let’s discuss how the treatments currently FDA approved work. In Do OTC Head Louse Treatments Work? Part 2: Questionable treatments, I’ll discuss the dubious treatments.

Lit search failures and hazards

by Anastasia on 16 December 2011

On Twitter yesterday, @seekblunttruth shared a link with @franknfoode that I thought deserved greater scrutiny. The link is to an ISIS post* titled Bt Crops Failures & Hazards.

Others may spend some time criticizing ISIS itself, and that criticism may be worthy, but here I’d like to focus on the post. I’ll let you check out the post content yourself, but I want to focus on the works cited list.

There are 29 citations. We find 11 sources that are by ISIS authors. It’s ok to refer to your previous work, we do it on Biofortified all the time, but having almost 40% of the citations be self-citations feels like an attempt to pad the citations list. Many of the rest of the sources are either by biased organizations or have been previously debunked either in the literature or in the blogosphere.

Compelling stories from the frontier of biology in “The Genome Generation”

by David Tribe on 12 December 2011

Re-posted from GMO Pundit blog

A new book was launched by Ed Byrne last night in suave surroundings at the Monash University Museum of Art. The book launch was enlivened with witty remarks from publisher Louise Adler and warmth and obvious admiration from high achiever husband Alan Finkel, amid great excitement and genuine enthusiasm in the audience for the appearance of a really up to the minute science story. This is a story that has changed considerably, even as Elizabeth has been writing this book these last four years.

Will cover crops feed the world?

by Karl Haro von Mogel on 29 November 2011

A week before Thanksgiving, Tom Philpott wrote a blog post for Mother Jones about organic agricultural research, saying Yet Again, Organic Ag Proves Just as Productive as Chemical Ag. He was discussing a pamphlet (PDF) from Iowa State University’s Long-Term Agroecological Research (LTAR) Experiment, which compared yields and profitability of a “conventional” corn-soy cropping scheme with three different organic cropping schemes that rotated in oats, alfalfa, and/or wheat and red clover. What is otherwise promising research into crop rotations and management, however, was proof in Tom Philpott’s mind that Norman Borlaug, in particular, didn’t know what he was talking about when he opined on the limits of organic agriculture.

I responded that contrary to such lofty conclusions, a combination of missing details, shortened quotes, and silver-bullet single-solution thinking was at play. The ensuing discussion was heard around the food blogosphere with Michael Pollan tweeting for people not to miss reading our exchange, and Mark Bittman advertising it as well. I would like to continue and expand the discussion here, and bring up some things that have been glossed over and forgotten in this discussion.

How much Nitrogen?

The main thrust of our disagreement was over the issue of the source of nitrogen for growing crops that are going to feed the world. Tom quoted Norman Borlaug as saying that organic would not be able to feed the world, and tried to address it with the ISU brochure. But as I pointed out, Tom cut off the quote, avoiding a key phrase that indicates he is talking about nitrogen production. Here is the full quote:

That’s ridiculous. This shouldn’t even be a debate. Even if you could use all the organic material that you have–the animal manures, the human waste, the plant residues–and get them back on the soil, you couldn’t feed more than 4 billion people. In addition, if all agriculture were organic, you would have to increase cropland area dramatically, spreading out into marginal areas and cutting down millions of acres of forests. At the present time, approximately 80 million tons of nitrogen nutrients are utilized each year. If you tried to produce this nitrogen organically, you would require an additional 5 or 6 billion head of cattle to supply the manure. How much wild land would you have to sacrifice just to produce the forage for these cows? There’s a lot of nonsense going on here.

This key phrase underscores the perennial problem of switching from fertilizers to an organic-only approach. The first question is where you are going to get the nitrogen that plants need to grow?