Is the Take-Home Message Really Bullying?

You may have heard, if you live in New Zealand or Australia, that our schools are bastions of lawlessness. Where gangs of thugs roam like the survivors of a post apocalyptic wasteland, feeding on the weak and growing strong on the marrow of the vanquished. Ok, maybe that’s a little over dramatic, but that’s certainly the impression that news outlets seem to be striving for. Apparently our kids are subjected to a ruling class of bullies and not only are we powerless to stop it, our teachers are not even aware of the problem. At least that’s way news organisations alleged a new study from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement says. I found only a single news story that even referenced the study by name or treated the matter with anything like an even hand.

The study was Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, notice the curious absence of anything remotely connected with bullying or social behavior in that title. That’s no mistake, the bulk of the 512 page report (actually two reports, one for science one for Math, both this length)  is concerned with the treatment of science and maths in our schools and how our students fair on the international stage. The report devotes a total of 7 pages to this topic (bullying) that is apparently of paramount importance. I would have thought that our poor performance in science would have been the real story, but why bother to read the full report when an easy 400 words can be written about a tangential topic.

So how was our Bullying score card filled out, what criteria was used to determine our performance in this area? You may already have realised that this study was not really geared to look at this particular question and the methods of data gathering reflect that fact. The conclusions of this part of the study were generated from two short  questionnaires given to Teachers and students separately, the questions for the teachers were: 

1.  This school is located in a safe neighborhood
2. I feel safe at this school
3. This school’s security policies and practices are sufficient.

 For the students the questions were:

1.  Something of mine was stolen
2. I was hit or hurt by other student(s) (e.g., shoving, hitting, kicking)
3. I was made to do things I didn’t want to do by other students
4. I was made fun of or called names
5. I was left out of activities by other students

Children were categorised according to how many of the questions they answered yes to. 5 No s garnered a place in the High category of the “Index of Students’ Perception of Being Safe in School”, two Yes answers placed them in the Medium column and 3 or more in the Low. The final result being that of the children surveyed 22% felt very safe (by these measures) and 33% did not. With 42% of medium safety. So the data was all subjective experience, which was fine for the study they merely correlated feelings of safety with academic performance. But the news coverage all but forces us to conclude that there are real objective ways in which we have unsafe schools. Students perception aside (it’s important but irrelevant to my point) there were no ways in which the actual safety of our schools was measured. There are multiple way this might have been done for instance finding out:

• How many serious incidents are reported, with a basic characterisation of the incident;
• How many times teachers needed to intervene in situations;
• Are weapons a concern?, what kind?;
• How many disciplinary actions were undertaken;
• How many students expelled…

I’m sure you could think of many more, each able to be objectively counted and compared against other school/countries. The point is that the sensationalism our having unsafe schools trumped accurate reporting of how the data was collected and what conclusions can be legitimately drawn. The Brisbane Times quoted Queensland Primary Principals Association (APPA) spokesman Tony McGruther  as saying ”Australian children have been made far more aware of the issue through strong anti-bullying campaigns in schools and are therefore more likely to identify incidents of bullying and then report on those incidents in a survey”, this is a perfectly reasonable interpretation of the results and there is no reason to prefer one over the other.

I find it far more concerning that we are below average when compared to the rest of the world when it comes to the science education of our young people. Fewer of our students reach international benchmarks, in general have fewer science achievements than our world peers (we beat Scotland!), have less emphasis place on science homework and are given fewer hours instruction in science per year. Compare, New Zealand hours of science instruction per year for 10 year olds: 45, Columbia(the highest in the survey): 139. 139 hours, Columbia values science education more than us, Columbia! . And by many measures we are worse now than we were in 1995. Only 28% of students reported having 0-25 books at home.

The one place were we outstripped almost all else was having computers in the home, 91% reported yes putting us on a par with the United States (90%). Yay for us.

Edit: After re-reading the report I noticed that 39% of the children had >100 books in the home and this correlated with better achievment. I found this to be very heartening indeed.

Resources

http://timss.bc.edu/TIMSS2007/index.html

http://timss.bc.edu/TIMSS2007/sciencereport.html

http://timss.bc.edu/TIMSS2007/mathreport.html

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/national/our-kids-in-worst-class-of-bullies/2008/12/14/1229189416018.html

http://www.iea.nl/

Safety

Inspired by THIS episode of the Are We Alone podcast produced by the SETI Institute I decided to publish a revised version of a piece I wrote last year about the safety of the everyday world.

How safe are we? The world is a dangerous place, we see it on the news everyday. Carjackings, murders, bombings, rape, kidnapping, the media shows us a world we hardly recognise full of menace and unseen risks. Living as I do in a relatively small country of approximately 4 million warm bodies I thought it should be quite straight forward to examine the relative risks in my corner of the treacherous world, using the national stats for mortality from 2003 as a basis I have tried to see if the fears induced by our exposure to the media are justified. Using these statistics as the basis of rough probabilities I found the following interesting results: The average person in New Zealand in 2003 was 60 times more likely to die of heart disease than be a victim of homicide, this went up to 194 times more likely when compared to death by air accident. By this measure the surest way to protect yourself is to put down the chips and pick up the running shoes.

If all that death is getting you down then consider this, people were twice as likely to be burgled than to die at all. They were 28 times more likely to be burgled than sexually assaulted, 82 times more likely to die of Influenza and pneumonia than medical misadventure. Forget going in with appendicitis and coming out with a bionic leg, just get vaccinated you are looking at better odds. There was 44 times more likelihood of death by Diabetes than fire, that piece of chocolate is probably a bigger hazard to your life and limb (gangrene, not pleasant) than a hypothetical arsonist. Fortunately no bombing statistics are available, so I guess technically you are infinitely more likely have anything else happen to you than be blown up.

If you want to talk raw numbers then only 0.7% (28,060) of the population of New Zealand died during that year. If you look at the flipside there was twice that number of births in the same year. I don’t know about you but I feel safer already, but a little afraid of being over run with babies now…

References
http://www.nzhis.govt.nz/moh.nsf/pagesns/71

http://www.police.govt.nz/service/statistics/2003/calendar/stats-national-20031231.pdf

http://www.stats.govt.nz/products-and-services/info-releases/births-and-deaths.htm

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Frequency Specific Microcurrent

This week in my local community paper I had cause to once again raise my brow in surprise at the low bar for inclusion in this publication. I refer to a story written by a journalism student promoting a therapy known as FSM or Frequency Specific Microcurrent (not Flying Spaghetti Monster). I say promoting rather than reporting on as it seemed that the student merely parroted what she had been told of the treatment with nary a skeptical thought. I was unsure when I read this article whether I was looking at a news report or an advertisement for yet another brand of alternative health device. Though I should temper this by pointing out that it seems to be becoming endemic to the field of journalism as a whole rather than be unique to this student of it.

As I could find little in the way of information about this therapy at my usual sources on these sorts of claims (Quackwatch and Skepdic, both excellent resources) I thought I would do some investigation of my own and share the results here. A brief search of PubMed found a decided lack of peer review studies either published by the technology’s alleged inventor Carolyn McMakin, nor on the effectiveness of the therapy itself. So I decided to start with the website of the inventor herself.

The “therapy” consists of applying microamp current to selected areas of the patient’s body, the current is tuned to two different frequencies that historically were supposed to correspond to the resonant frequency of the disease and the tissue of interest. It is unclear whether the current version makes this claim but two frequencies are still employed, apparently providing a unique synergy that is useful for treating only specific ailments. Practically the current is produced by a battery operated device that allows the practitioner to set both the frequency and the current on two independent channels. This current is then transferred to the patient via conductive graphite gloves worn by the practitioner as they lay hands on the patient. The claims for the device itself are modest apparently due to FDA restrictions that apply to the classification of devices it falls under. This classification is that of TENS devices which stands for Transcutaneous Electric Nerve Stimulation, this class of machine can provide relief from certain types of pain simply by virtue of electrical stimulation, no frequencies are explicitly invoked.

However, the frequencies used have much wider claims associated with them, one I found amusing was “There is one frequency combination that so far is 100% effective in a small number of cases to take away kidney stone pain.”, I perhaps naively think that a treatment is either 100% effective or is useful in a small number of cases, combining these two seems to be trying to get the best of both worlds. To clarify I don’t think there are necessarily treatments that are always 100% effective but I do have the opinion that a more useful statement would have been how effective the treatment is for the majority of patients. Other claims include the ability to treat asthma, liver dysfunction and irritable bowel syndrome as well as scar removal.

On the website’s FAQ a simplistic history of the use electromagnetic therapy devices from the early 20th century is given and spoken of in glowing terms stating that “There were thousands of physicians using this technology at this time. They had journals and associations and were treating patients and doing research and sharing the effects of frequencies in articles and books.” This may or may not be true but has no relevance as to the effectiveness of the treatment, I have no doubt there are thousands of practitioners prescribing Homeopathic preparations right now. Dr. Albert Abrams is also referenced as a pioneer of these techniques despite his unusual practices having been exposed as fraud in the 1920s. In 1994 Dr. McMakin started using these frequencies on her chiropractic patients and reports that they “appeared to do exactly what they were alleged to do”.

In 1995 Dr. McMakin developed the therapy using a device and a list of reputedly medically useful frequencies that she apparently inherited from a Canadian osteopath. Two years later Dr. McMakin began teaching FSM according to her website “to see if the effects of FSM were reproducible.” (curious, I thought that’s what studies and controlled trials were for). Despite the order in which the story is related this appears to be before papers were presented to either the American Back Society or Topics in Clinical Chiropractic, both chiropractic based. The teaching of the technique consists of a three day course in “the use of frequency protocols, the differential diagnosis of pain generators and neurologic conditions.”. Were this technique developed by the medical mainstream I hope it would have undergone slightly more rigorous investigation before being tested on patients or taught to other practitioners.

Moving on, there are several papers listed on the website in support of this therapy of mixed quality. The most convincing papers deal with the use of the therapy for Fibromyalgia, in particular this study on “Cytokine changes with microcurrent treatment of fibromyalgia associated with cervical spine trauma“. Now I am not medically trained and readily admit that I am not qualified to accurately interpret the results of this study, however there are several points that I as a layman found concerning. First was the inclusion of only a single control subject who also received treatment. Second there seemed to have been quite a high drop-out rate for the trial (approximately 30%) leaving only 32 subjects to acquire meaningful data from. Thirdly, the use of specific frequencies in the treatment is probably the most controversial part and yet those that were chosen for the study are simply asserted to be the most effective with no reference to how this was done or what data lead to this conclusion. Fourthly, and this is less a criticism of the study itself, is the topic under study. I am given to understand that Fibromyalgia is characterised by periods of flares and remission which may complicate the data. I realise however that this trial may be considered a pilot study and so can not be held to the same standards as a large rigorous placebo/non-treated group controlled trial.

In addition the almost ubiquitous claim in pseudo-scientific medicine and quackery is made that there are no dangers or side effects from the treatment itself. As has been pointed out in other places a modality that affects biological systems is unlikely to be all benefit. If there is an effect then it is almost guaranteed there is a side-effect. The consideration undertaken in the use of valid medical interventions is whether the benefits are worth the accompanying risks.

Due to the nature of the therapy it is unclear exactly what is being tested/providing relief, a shaky theory of dubious plausibility based on the unscientific premise that tissues and diseases have “Frequencies” that if applied externally can enhance or inhibit functioning and so cure medical conditions or transcutaneous electric nerve stimulation that at least one doctor considers to be an uncontroversial treatment for pain. What does seem to be clear is that there seems to be more emphasis on promotion of this therapy than on testing it’s efficacy and introducing to the wider medical community a truly useful technique.

Finally, it seems to me that the evidence is not convincing that there is an effect here that can only be explained by appeals to the recovery of lost knowledge from a golden age of medical treatments that was squashed by a jealous Medical Establishment.

Resources

http://www.frequencyspecific.com

http://www.quackwatch.org/04ConsumerEducation/News/rife.html

http://www.americanartifacts.com/smma/abrams/abrams.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibromyalgia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcutaneous_Electrical_Nerve_Stimulator

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What’s the Harm?

As I have pointed out countless times (ok, 4), we are a story telling species, one good anecdote is worth more to most people than a mountain of rigorous evidence and for good evolutionary reasons. This is just a fact of our psychology, it is not just difficult for us to weigh things rationally it is actually going against our basic nature. In recognition of this fact a website has been created to collect stories from around the world that show the real life harm that pseudo-science and other irrational claims can have on individuals. This website is the answer to the oft posed  rhetorical question “What’s the harm?”.

One of the more extreme cases on the site details the story of Sandra Nette, a Canadian woman whose regular visits to a chiropractor resulted in her becoming permanently paralysed. Sandra had been visiting her chiropractor for years to get “maintenance” adjustments that were to keep her healthy, after one such adjustment she began to feel dizzy and unwell. The Chiropractor suggested massage therapy offered at his office and allowed her to leave, she didn’t make it home. After pulling her car over and calling her husband she was taken to the hospital where it was determined that she had tears in both vertebral arteries in her neck which caused a stroke. One of the tears was 3 inches long. According to Sandra’s husband the first words out of the attending physician after reviewing the test results were “chiropractor, right?”.

Now this story in isolation proves nothing about the efficacy or lack thereof of chiropractic, nor does it prove relative safety or harmfulness. However, this is not the point. The point is that other venues have provided evidence of the implausibility and ineffectiveness of this practice and this story is meant to provide a human face to the issue and help people understand, in a way that is real to them and not abstract like a medical study, the possible harm that can be caused. When there is no benefit to a procedure any risk is too much.

Resources

http://WhatstheHarm.net

http://whatstheharm.net/chiropractic.html

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=152

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Sharks on Discovery

So yesterday I get this email from the contact me part of this site, I’m always glad to get these so I read it eagerly. So it’s from a guy who says he works with the Discovery channel, he liked my interview with Adam Savage the other day, would I like to write a post about the currently showing Sharkweek episodes? At this point I’m on a high that anyone associated with the Discovery channel even read my interview, let alone contacted me about it, so I immediately said yes. A few minutes later when the euphoria had ebbed I decided to do a search on this guy and found that he works for a marketing company and apparently makes a living making flattering comments wherever some one even mentions a Discovery show and tries to get them to promote for him.

Exibit A:

http://thewheat.wordpress.com/2008/07/06/boom-de-ya-da/

http://www.perrbear.com/2008/07/shark-week.html

http://www.myrnasjourney.com/2008/07/thank-you-jam-for-tagging-me-heres-my.html

http://deadliestreports.wordpress.com/2008/06/29/a-few-of-mike-rowes-bloopers-from-dutch-harbor-filming/

http://www.scienceontv.com/2008/07/10/mike-rowe-cleans-septic-tanks/

http://crazedpw.blogspot.com/2008/07/this-woman-votes.html

http://www.blogmagazine.com/blog_magazine/2008/07/dude-wheres-my.html

Now I don’t begrudge this guy doing his job, he didn’t mislead me greatly, though a more upfront introduction would have been appreciated. Something like “I work for a marketing company affiliated with Discovery and since your a fan of Mythbusters thought you might want to help promote their show.” would have been better as now I can’t trust the nice things he said.

So I’ve agreed to do some “Shilling” for “The Man”, but as “The Man” is the Discovery channel and the subject of the “Shill” is Mythbusters, I think I can live with myself. So, er, sharks are cool right…? I do know that at least some species of Shark can sense electrical currents, that’s cool. Anyway here are a couple of pictures from the Mythbusters episode.

Kari and Grant try to figure out where the batteries go in their new sex toy.

Perhaps Kari and Grant weren't the best choice for expedition caterers.

Adam patiently waits for the rest of the Medieval Re-enactment club to arrive.

Thanks for the opportunity Shawn, it was a lot of fun but I don’t think it’s for me.

Adam Savage Interview

I attended the annual Skeptics gathering The Amazing Meeting last month and one of the speakers was none other than Adam Savage from the Mythbusters television show. He happened to mention that he loves interacting with fans and that he is not yet inundated with emails so I decided to increase his inbox by one and get him to answer a few questions for me to share with you all. So here is my first interview with a Major Star and all round nice guy:

[Scepticon] I was at your talk at TAM6 and so have the pleasure of saying you signed my balls, how did it come about that you had hundreds of ping pong balls to give out and what’s the significance?

[AdamSavage] We raised a boat from the bottom of the ocean with about 20000 of them.

[S] I was excited to see you at TAM6, were there any attendees that got your fanboy heart pumping?

[A.S] Well Randi of course. He’s my friggin’ hero.

[S] You revealed something of your inner nature during your talk, have you always been so detail oriented or is this a trait that has developed because of your professional model making?

[A.S] I have not always been so detail oriented. I had to get into the story of what I was building before I understood how to take the time to get everything right.

[S] Is there anything you’ve done in your professional life that you thought after the fact “That was REALLY stupid”?

[A.S] Every day. Seriously.

[S] Have you ever considered doing creationist myths on the show? Like fitting all animals into one boat and the Grand Canyon being formed by a single catastrophic event?

[A.S] Unfortunately, as much as I’d like to tackle some kooky beliefs, like the fact that the earth is 6k years old, it falls under the rubric of “ooogie boogie”, i.e. crop circles and the like. We won’t waste the time to fruitlessly prove a negative.

[S] Do you think there are any topics that you shouldn’t tackle on the show, either for political, moral/ethical reasons?

[A.S] Not for those reasons alone no. There are tons of things we won’t tackle for a variety of reasons. Some are a combination of the above. We also work for a large corporation. There are realities to that model which we must remain sensitive to.

[S] You’ve said that you’d like to be able to cover evolution in some way on the show, are you familiar with Dr Richard Lenski’s work on observing the evolution of novel traits in bacteria?

[A.S] I am.
As for whether we’d do that, see above.

[S] You have said that one of the things you’re most proud of on the show is the elegant science. Is there a field of science that you find particularly fascinating?

[A.S] I’m proud of our methodology. And elegant methodologies can be found in EVERY branch of science. I’m partial to the physical sciences, but not being an expert, my opinion must be taken with a grain of salt.

[S] I saw recently that the Mentos/Diet coke reaction was studied by a group of physics students, how does it feel to see one of your projects more rigorously studied like this?

[A.S] Awesome.

[S] I have heard it said that you and Jamie are not friends and don’t hang out, the same is said of Penn and Teller. Do you think this is the key to a successful long term professional partnership?

It certainly helps. So does a relationship made stronger by contrast and based on a powerful mutual respect.

[S] I saw you on CSI with Jamie, what was up with that?

[A.S] We love them. They love us. They actually borrowed one of our experiments on an earlier show. An exploding truck tire beheading someone. Anyway, I called their writer’s room to express my enthusiasm and they responded by putting us into a show! We had a blast. Everyone was incredibly nice.

[S] You have a full suit of storm trooper armour, that’s really cool, where does someone get one of those?

[A.S] Geeks on the web.

[S] Is there any question that you are just dying to get asked in one of these interviews that no-one ever does?

[A.S] That’s a great question. Honestly no. I get great questions all the time.

I would like to thank Adam for taking a few minutes away from his busy schedule and his family to answer these questions for me, I very much appreciate it.

Adam’s talk covered his creation of a Dodo skeleton and his quest to make the perfect replica Maltese Falcon, it was both inspiring and illuminating and I’m glad to have been given a guided tour of Adam’s psyche. For a fantastic audio interview with Adam live from TAM6 see Skepticality Episode #80 which also includes an interview with the always entertaining Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

This experience has been amazing and it makes me think that I might try to get interviews going with other skeptical and scientific big names. Leave a comment if you have any suggestions of who I should try next.

Quantum

“If you think you understand quantum theory, you don’t understand quantum theory”, words attributed to Richard Feynman and as true now as when they were uttered. The quantum world is replete with examples that make a mockery of our intuitive understanding of the world. From uncertainty principles saying you can’t know exactly where a particle is and how fast it is going to electrons that can pass through solid barriers. Light that is both a particle and a wave, virtual particles and quantum foam, it’s a crazy world down there. Unfortunately this very impenetrability makes quantum theory ripe for misrepresentation and co-option by those who use it as a smokescreen to cover the initial implausibility of their claims.

The mysterious nature of the quantum realm makes it easy to think that almost anything is possible and so any claim that attaches to itself the concept of quantum mechanics becomes more reasonable by association. Telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, paranormal claims of all kinds have been subject to attempts to provide them with a plausible basis by tying them with quantum strangeness. Unfortunately, most of the unusual properties shown by atoms and subatomic particles are incredibly unstable and have a tendency to collapse on themselves and cancel out any spooky behaviour in a process known as decoherence. Mere interaction with other particles can provide an excuse for this process, unless you go to extraordinary lengths in a purpose built laboratory, particles tend to collide.

Another barrier to the likelihood of quantum mechanics as a framework for the supernatural is the De Broglie Wavelength, this is the effective wavelength of any body and is related to the wave/particle duality of matter and has a direct impact of the distance scales over which quantum effects are observed. For very small objects, like electrons the De Broglie Wavelength is large and quantum effects are pronounced, as objects increase in size this wavelength rapidly decreases until for classically sized objects, like brain cells, it essentially vanishes, taking all quantum weirdness with it. That’s a pity, I’d love to be able to walk through walls, oh wait, we have doors for that. 

Resources

http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=312

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Broglie_hypothesis

Skeptics of Carlos

A few days ago I had the honour of having one of my entries be featured in the Skeptics of Carlos blog circle which was hosted this month over at Podblack.com. If you don’t know what a Blog circle is (I didn’t), basically it pulls together posts from multiple sources that have a common theme and pool them on a single site. In this case the uniting theme is Skepticism. I have to give special mention to one of the contributors, Homologous Legs. This guy is 16 years old and at twice his age I wish I was as eloquent and engaging and thorough a writer as he. Check out the blog circle, all entries are highly recommended.

A Skeptic’s Perspective

A less formal post today, unstructured playtime if you like. This week I had not had a chance to write my usual contribution to my work newsletter. Instead I decided to search for a skeptical cartoon to use as a place holder until next week. I found two things, first that there aren’t very many good skeptically themed ‘toons around and second those I could find just seemed to portray skepticism as simple doubting. While this is a good place to start it certainly isn’t all there is to the skeptical outlook. While philosophical skepticism is concerned with whether there is any such thing as objective reality the modern Skeptical movement takes this for granted and seeks to supply a basis for rational inquiry and thought.

A skeptic attempts to examine claims objectively, trying to limit the effect of bias on their conclusion, both that of the person making the claim and their own. This is obviously not easy, we all view the world through a collection of filters that encompass all of our preconceptions, hopes, wants and needs as well as, for most of us, a desire to be part of a larger community. This can seriously affect how we interpret the events around us and hamper our ability to make sound judgments concerning the validity of claims that we make and that are presented to us a factual. As I have previously discussed personal experience as related through anecdote is extremely powerful in affecting the way people perceive the world. An emotion filled story about someone’s plight with an illness and subsequent miraculous recovery is often enough to convince most people of the efficacy of a treatment.

For a skeptic however, certain minimum standards of evidence must be met before we can evaluate the plausibility of a claim. The more unusual or outrageous the claim the higher that minimum standard becomes. This is because prior plausibility must be considered as part of the evaluation process. We all do this in our lives, when we consider how likely a friend is to keep that promise to arrive on time we think back to previous occasions when they were early or late and decide how likely it is that they will make it this time. We consider the prior probability to their claim of punctuality. A friend who is habitually late will score lower that one who has proven time and again that they can read a watch. In the same way a skeptic will consider the evidence that has come before when looking at the claims of Homeopathy, Chiropractic, Therapeutic Touch, psychics, mediums, cryptozoologists, etc.

So, if you meet a skeptic remember that they are not simply trying to ridicule paranormal experience but are attempting to apply reason to the world around them and are hoping that they are providing an example for others to do so as well. At least that’s the way I see it. Happy critical thinking.

Sunscreen

Sunscreens can get a bad rap from promoters of alternative medicine, often returning to the well used warnings about the dreaded Toxins. While being aware of what you apply to your skin is a good idea the scaremongering employed by these groups is almost certainly counter productive in terms of reducing cancer risk in those exposed to the harmful effects of the sun. To assert that the application of sunscreen itself actually causes cancer is to both willfully misinterpret the medical literature and engender ill founded paranoia in those that are susceptible to such tactics.

This is not to say that sunscreens are universally good or are a magic bullet for cancer prevention. There have been studies that found a positive correlation of cancer with screen use, however this is likely due to an over-optimistic attitude towards the capabilities of the screens as well as the fact that almost by definition people who use sunscreens tend to spend more time in the sun. Even so, my own opinion that the nuclear furnace that dominates our sky is over rated, is one that even today should probably not be encouraged.

With regards to use of sunscreens as well as outdoor activities in general it should be realised that a responsible attitude towards sun exposure is prudent, cover up and limit sun exposure when able and reapply sunscreen often. It is generally recognized that the light from our closest star is beneficial to our health in many ways but as with anything else moderation is the key and an overdose can have fatal consequences.

Resources

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=1447210

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=1070981

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=1180647

http://www.worldimage.com/blog/archives/000027_sunscreen_dangers.html some sunscreen bashing, luckily they sell their own.

http://www.lyricscrawler.com/song/3953.html -The “Sunscreen song” just because.