To appreciate the kind of person she was, you need to appreciate what Irish society was like just a few decades ago. Most things of importance in Ireland were controlled by the Catholic Church. Because of their power and influence, nothing happened in the country without the imprimatur of the bishops. They had ways of making their views known. What displeased them quickly came to an end. Priests were seen as minor nobility: to be revered, not to be crossed, no matter what their personal qualities and vices. The Church had their backs. So long as you followed the system, you could get on with your life.

And what of those who didn’t fit? The Church had solutions for them, too. They ran Industrial Schools to deal with poor and unruly children. They ran slave laundries to deal with unmarried mothers. Within these walls, they beat troublemakers into submission. For others, they had more effective means of gaining the upper hand, practically guaranteeing that they would never speak up for the shame of it.

Much of this took place behind closed gates and closed doors. Most people never heard of it. If you heard something, you were far better off staying quiet. Life would be easier for you. From the highest statesmen to the keenest of media investigators, the monster that lay at the heart of the Catholic Church in Ireland lay hidden for decades; all the while growing, gathering tentacles, feeding off its most vulnerable, corrupting those who came in contact with it.

This was the country in which Mary Raftery began her career in investigative journalism. Things weren’t right. A heroin epidemic was raging in Dublin. Mary began to inquire into its causes. Her inquiries lead to broken people, their dreams destroyed long before they ever took drugs. Ireland had a horrible secret, and it was behind a lock that would require several years of dogged determination to open. Mary helped to unpick that lock.

The 1990′s were not great years for the Catholic Church in Ireland. Bishops and priests were discovered to have had children in secret. Damaging books were being written. Pederasts in clerical garb were being exposed. It was possible to look upon these incidents as aberrations and the protagonists as bad apples. Easily excused and dismissed. It would take something much bigger to rock the sensibilities of official Ireland.

In 1999, Mary Raftery’s RTE documentary series, “States of Fear”, did just that. It exposed a widespread system of institutional abuse, through which thousands of children were processed, for over half a century. The system functioned through deprivation, starvation, overwork and violence: both physical and sexual. What this documentary had in abundance was evidence. After her programme, it wasn’t so easy to make excuses.

Mary went on to produce more documentaries that set out the scale of the problem. “Cardinal Secrets” (2002) showed how senior bishops “managed” the crisis, often compounding the horror and injury for victims. More recently, “Behind the Walls” (2011) shone a light into the Government run psychiatric hospitals. At one time, Ireland lead the world in terms of the number of people detained in mental institutions.

For those still in denial, the subsequent years have been torrid indeed. The scale of the problem has been revealed to be enormous and manifest. A succession of official reports have backed up, with compound interest, the original allegations. The rot within the Catholic Church has been laid bare. We now live in an Ireland that looks at the past and our past masters, and says “never again”.

We knew Mary Raftery from her regular media appearances and for her great faculty to put words to the intense anger we all felt when the latest stories came to light. She was not someone to be trifled with in a debate, as apologists found quickly to their cost. She came across as brave and ruthless in the face of grave injustice. Mary epitomised a new type of morality, based on compassion, truth and justice. She was a role model for a new, more secular generation. Mary Raftery was a sceptic, a rationalist and a humanist. Her name and her work deserves widespread recognition.

Mary Raftery died last week at the age of 54, after a battle with ovarian cancer.

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. It’s simple really. The days are short. The weather is dreadful. People are generally in bad form. Everyone is sick with runny noses and headaches. We all need time to recover from the craziness in the run-up to Christmas.

It’s better, I think, to sit back and rest. To waste our hours in idle pursuits with friends, family and loved ones. To eat and drink with abandon. To get some exercise, if the weather permits it. To recall the year – its highs and lows.

Resolutions can wait.

I prefer to start my year in mid March. The buds are yawning and stretching. The celandines are popping their yellow heads from between the leaves of grass. It’s a time for lambing and calving. Daytime and nighttime are nicely balanced. The shadows are easing. Photographers are emerging from hibernation.

So, let’s set our sights on the Ides of March, Patrick’s Day and the Vernal Equinox for resolutions. For the time being, we should wrap up and gratefully accept all offers of mulled wine and hot whiskey that come our way.

* Image “Raindrop 2307” via s.alt / Flickr (CC Licensed)

Today, we went one step further to proving him right. At a press conference earlier today, astronomers announced the discovery of two planets the same size as the Earth. These are the smallest planets ever discovered outside our solar system and the first definitive proof that worlds on a similar scale as our own exist.

The planets, Kepler 20-e and Kepler 20-f, are very close to their parent star, and therefore too hot to bear any real similarity to our home world. The news comes hot on the heels of the discovery of a planet in the “habitable zone” around a star, where it is possible for water to exist in liquid form. We are now hot on the trail of a planet that meets all the basic criteria for supporting life.

The discovery comes via Kepler: a space telescope that is surveying thousands of stars in a small area of the sky, roughly in the region of the Summer Triangle. It records the light emitted from each of the stars over time, playing close attention to any slight dips in brightness. These dips may indicate a planet moving in front of the star and momentarily blocking its light. Kepler’s systematic approach has revolutionised the science of planet hunting. To date, with just over a year’s data processed, it has found over 1,200 candidate planets.

It is surely only a short time now before a small Earthlike planet is discovered that is just the right distance from it’s parent star to support life. Who knows what may be discovered in the future about these small, watery worlds? We live in hope.

Minister of State for Enterprise Seán Sherlock is to publish an order early in the new year that is expected to allow music publishers, film producers and other parties to go to court to prevent internet service providers from allowing their customers access to pirate websites. (Irish Times)

It’s being done because of a court case involving record company EMI, where they took out an injunction against the cable company UPC, ordering it to block access to websites that allowed illegal downloading. They failed in their injunction, and now the Irish Government is helping them push it through with supportive legislation.

Let’s think about that for a second. Along with the usual suspects, there are other companies that in their own way, “allow illegal downloading”. They go by the name of Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. In other words, the companies that add the most value to the Internet may well be in the firing line. This legislation does not target users or accounts, it goes after whole websites. If the record companies get their way, they have carte blanche to gut the Internet to protect their failed business model.

And here’s another problem. Now, let me make this clear: I’m not into file sharing in any way. I don’t know the first thing about setting up torrents and peer-to-peer networks. It’s not that I have any sense of superiority about it, just because I’m simply not that big into music and movies. Blogs and reading seem to be more my kind of thing. In principle, I’m quite happy to pay the producers for the content that they produce. If they have gone to all that effort to create something of value, I think they should be rewarded for it. But paying companies whose sole purpose in life is to limit distribution through copyright laws? Not so much.

EMI are a dinosaur. They made money when CD’s and DVD’s were in vogue. They are suffering now, because a far more open and efficient system – the Internet – has displaced them. Gutenberg II has arrived and the likes of EMI are trying to burn the pamphlets. Unless they adapt, the EMI’s current business will be dead in ten years. The law might not be dead, though.  So, it’s quite feasible that we might have a draconian off-switch on the Internet, whose current use does not match the original intended purpose. How good is that?

Which gets me to my third problem with this. Ireland is a country whose growth prospects depend greatly on its attractiveness towards large and emerging technology companies – companies that have thrived because of Internet freedoms. We have the highest percentage of tech workers in Europe. A huge proportion of our GDP (and consequently, tax revenue) is tied up with the fortunes of the technology and Internet industry. These companies want to do business with governments that understand the dynamics of the Internet. By bowing to the dubious demands of the likes of EMI, our government will be demonstrating, in a very unambiguous way, that they don’t understand it at all. Instead of towing EMI’s line, we should be listening to what the technology companies are saying about this. They seem to be very angered about the US’s SOPA law. Why would it be different here? Do we really have such bad lawyers in this country, that they are not prepared to stand up to the record industry on such a crucial matter?

Dear Sean Sherlock TD, the proposed legislation is bad legislation. You are going to punish legitimate users of the Internet and you playing with the growth prospects of our country, all in an attempt to appease a pack of dinosaurs whose day has come.

Honestly, I cannot imagine how I would react if I were in such a position. When treatment options are limited, people are motivated to help as much as they can. There is clearly a strong desire to keep her alive, to not lose hope, and for this they must be commended. 

On Hannah’s website, the desired course of action is the clinic of Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski in Houston, Texas. Burzynski advertises treatments involving “antineoplastons”. These are molecules, so the claim goes, that attack cancerous cells, leaving healthy cells alone. Unfortunately, there is no proper scientific evidence that these treatments work, and Burzynski has not shared the data with the wider medical community in order for the treatments to be validated. Furthermore, his treatments have not been approved by US regulators. Burzynski is getting around this by presenting the treatments as experimental. This would possibly be ok, except for the surprisingly and stupendously high cost of such an experimental approach. The bottom line is that his clinic exists on the fringes of the medical world. Instead of working with scientists and oncologists to prove for once and for all whether his course of treatment is scientifically valid, he has rejected it all in favour of direct approaches to patients and the use of slick marketing and testimonials. Burzynski presents himself as the lone genius who has challenged the might of the medical establishment. This would be fine if he had properly controlled, peer reviewed evidence, but so far, he has not been able to provide this. The burden of proof clearly rests on his shoulders.

Over the past few weeks, challenges to Burzynski’s methods have been met by a barrage of legal threats from an individual who appears to be associated in some way with the clinic, including a personalised attack on a 17 year old blogger that beggars belief. This is not the right way to meet such challenges. The right way would be to provide the facts, and to let these facts speak for themselves.   

Hannah’s friends have clearly decided that Dr. Burzynski holds the keys to her recovery. Data is emerging throughout the Internet each day that this is not the case. I understand that Hannah’s team will feel that they have invested themselves on a course of action – that perhaps it is too late to change course – but for Hannah’s sake, they need to take this new information into account. It will make for very uncomfortable reading and there will be a natural tendency to rationalise it away as the product of some very mean and nasty individuals. The people who are presenting this information are not bad people. Many of them work closely with cancer sufferers, and many of them will have lost family and close friends to cancer. If Team Hannah were to reach out to some of these critics, I expect they would be listened to sympathetically and provided with second and third opinions. The question “what would you do?” can always be asked.

I know that the medical establishment can sometimes appear cold and arrogant. I know that there are limits to what is known and that doctors can sometimes give patients a message that they never want to hear. It is heartbreaking to have someone say “We can’t do any more”. The natural inclination is to say that they are not trying hard enough. Sometimes, perhaps they aren’t. But, no matter how inadequate doctors may seem, there is a world of a difference – a universe of a difference – between medical science and outright quackery. 

Cancer is shit. Real shit. It’s the plague of our times. Some day, hopefully, our children or grand children might look back on the world today and ask how we managed through it at all. The hard, thankless work of medical researchers will continue to push the frontiers forward. They have already accomplished wonders, but much more needs to be done. Given time, there will be enormous advances. Unfortunately for some, time is running out.

I wish Hannah the very best. I hope she can get through this nightmare of a year and emerge with this awful thing in remission. If her doctors can still help her, I hope they are doing everything within their powers to give her the best possible chances. I don’t know from her blog if the cancer has metastasised, whether chemotherapy has been tried or even if it is effective against such a cancer. If options within the medical literature are still available, then I expect they have already been seriously considered by all concerned. If options no longer seem to exist then yes, it’s heartbreaking. Being there, at such a time, possibly trumps doing something. I wish her the very best.

References

a) The False Hope of the Burzynski Clinic (Andy Lewis)

b) Stanislaw Burzynski: Bad medicine, a bad movie, and bad P.R. (David Gorski)

c) Antineoplastons (Skeptical Health)

d) Burzynski The Movie: Hitting you over the head with pseudoscience (Orac)

Toastmasters clubs around Cork each got an hour long slot, and each member got a few minutes to speak on any topic they wished to discuss. Because I am president of two Toastmasters clubs, that meant I needed to come up quickly with two speeches.

In the evening session on Friday night, I spoke about how I had entered into a DNA study that will help determine the origins of Irish people. All my great-grandparents come from the same part of Ireland, so I would be an ideal candidate for such a study.

In the morning session the following day, I spoke about how you can improve your presentation skills by applying some very simple techniques. I hate traditional Powerpoint “bullet point” templates. By adding some images and animation you can bring any presentation to life, making it interesting for the audience.

In the evening I hosted a Cork Skeptics meeting in Blackrock Castle. We had two talks. Síle Lane, from Sense About Science spoke first, and talked about what her organisation was doing to address misinformation in the media. The efforts here have been admirable. Sense About Science have recently kicked off a campaign called “Ask For Evidence” which seeks to encourage ordinary people to request peer reviewed evidence from companies when presented with extraordinary claims.

The second speaker was Brian Hughes from NUI Galway. He is a lecturer in psychology and a prominent sceptical blogger. He spoke about how normal people are particularly bad at statistical reasoning, and how we tend to consistently overestimate our abilities and ignore data that contradicts our world-views. He discussed some interesting studies that indicate that depressed people can often be more realistic in their estimation of themselves, and suggests that fantasy and misconception might be an evolutionarily necessary condition for humans. Quite fascinating stuff.

So, a busy and thoroughly enjoyable weekend. A lot of time spent on my feet, talking and thinking about things that interest me.

The key problem is nerves. Why is it that we can speak easily and confidently, using natural body movements, facial expressions and vocal variety in front of friends and family, but when we are put in front of a large group of strangers, all that ease and confidence disappears? Nerves, adrenalin – whatever you want to call it – kicks in and makes us very uncomfortable. It’s a protective response, designed to make you feel you should run for the hills. The other side of the coin, however, is that it make you feel alive and in the moment. If you can use nerves to your advantage, they can actually enhance your speaking delivery.

Nerves are not an intellectual problem. You can’t “switch them off’, or find the answer to nerves in a book, or by think them into non-existence. The “imagine the audience as all naked” thing never worked for me. Breathing techniques, relaxation, etc. all help, but I have found that the best way to overcome nerves is to speak in public as often as you can. You will never lose nerves – and neither should you want to – but with time it just gets more manageable.

I have a bit of a bug-bear about Powerpoint presentations, in that much of the time they are used as a crutch for the presenter, and not as an aid to understanding for the audience. Let me make this plain: I hate bullet points. I hate complex diagrams. I hate word laden slides. I hate slides with no apparent purpose. Powerpoint presentations should, if at all possible, be full of vivid imagery, with minimal use of text. The audience came to hear you and the focus should therefore be kept on you, and what you have to say.

The structure should also be simple. The best speeches use a simple narrative style: the speaker tells a story. They might start in the past, move into the present and talk about the future. Alternatively, they might stay in the past, and what was learned from the story. Or they might have a purpose, backed up by a few small stories to demonstrate why you think the way you do. Either way they make use of narrative: moving, where possible, through time in order to reach a conclusion. Make use of storytelling. It’s the gift we were given by our distant ancestors to retain knowledge and audiences appear to be particularly well disposed to it.

As for making mistakes – I’m all for it. When you have an interesting story to tell, you shouldn’t worry too much about slip-ups. The audience will ignore them. The audience is extremely forgiving if you are saying something of value to them. Your missteps, forgotten lines, technical hitches, momentary amnesia, ems, ums and ahs, will be quickly forgotten.

The bottom line: do it. Do it again. Then, do it again. It’s all about practice.

In a wide ranging interview, he made two claims that had me scratching my head.

He is concerned about immunisation, particularly in children. He believes that a lot more work needs to be done to understand the linkage between the whooping cough vaccine and allergic syndromes such as asthma and eczema.

He believes that antibiotics are a principal cause of CFS. The thinking goes like this: our cells contain mitochondria, which are bacterial organisms. Mitochondria generate energy that feed the cells. Antibiotics kill bacteria, and therefore, while killing “bad” bacteria, they will kill mitochondria too. Therefore the cells do not get the energy they need. Therefore people feel fatigued. Therefore, CFS.

I am not an expert in medicine, and I have not done any research into these issues, but to my mind these are pretty serious statements. If they are completely factual, backed up by proper scientific research, then these are hugely important medical breakthroughs. The CFS claim is truly revolutionary, as I have not heard anything like this from mainstream scientific commentators: in fact, I have frequently heard the opposite.

If the claims are not backed up by proper evidence, then what he is saying is enormously irresponsible. Both areas: childhood immunisation and CFS, are fraught with stratospheric levels of emotion and an almost zealous disregard for the truth. The science behind the claims of the most vocal of the advocates is either non-existent or flatly contradictory. Children throughout the developed world have fallen ill and died as a result of the questioning of immunisation. Fear mongering about the use of antibiotics, on the basis that you might get CFS, could have equally serious consequences. Making public factual claims about things that are merely hypotheses, serve as a huge distraction and may divert badly needed resources and time from more promising areas of research.

On the claim that CFS is called by the death of mitochondria, then how come we all don’t have CFS after a course of antibiotics? How come chronic users of antibiotics don’t all have CFS? How come you can safely administer antibiotics to small children and the elderly? What is the research? What alternative views exist and what research has been conducted into alternative claims? None of this was explored in the interview, but it would be interesting to know more.

I encourage you to listen to the radio programme and to draw your own conclusions. The relevant part of the interview begins at the 26:16 minute mark.

We live at a point in history where government policies, exacerbated by economic collapse, have created a dangerously wide gulf between the rich and the poor. Unprecedented indebtedness, unemployment and a widespread perception that government only works to protect the powerful, has brought people onto the streets. The most visible manifestation of this is the Occupy movement, where protesters have taken to camping in financial districts around the world to highlight the problems that rampant market deregulation has caused to ordinary people.

I can see three ways this is going to go.

Perhaps, the whole thing will fizzle out. Economic circumstances might improve; the powerful may close ranks and crush the movement using all the resources of law; people might just get disillusioned and give up. Five years from now, it may well be as if it never happened. In this scenario, the extraordinarily wealthy see no change to their earning potential while vast numbers of the impoverished continue to eke out whatever . Investment bankers and the corporate elite may continue to obtain remarkable salaries and privileges, while the less fortunate find their prospects and benefits eroded.

A second scenario is revolution. This happens where the instruments of state security are not strong enough to withstand public anger. History has shown that, where governments refuse to listen to their people, then eventually the whole political system can break down through riots and widespread violence. This is essentially what occurred in North Africa and the wider Middle East over the last year. The problem here is what comes next. Where there is a political vacuum, all sorts of ideological groups may rush in to take control. Not a pretty picture if you are looking for rational solutions and stability.

Then there is the third scenario: governments listen to the protesters, identify the root causes of the problems, and do something to address it. The core concern of the Occupy protests would be resolved by changes in policy: more equitable taxation, a widening of the safety nets, better and more comprehensive regulation, bolstering the representation of voters and lessening the influence of lobby groups. Such a scenario does not mean the end of business, it does not mean the end of innovation and entrepreneurship, it certainly does not mean socialism, but it does allow for people to air their grievances and to feel that they are being listened to. In the long run, it makes for a healthier society. What is needed are governments with enough teeth to implement badly needed reforms in the face of very well funded vested interests.

Ironically, this last option may actually not be such a good thing for our little island. One of the drivers behind the inequality in the US has been the headlong rush by global companies to outsource labour to cheaper parts of the world with more favourable corporate taxation policies. Should the critical point be reached where these protests translate into changes in government policy, this trend may well go into reverse. Large numbers of unemployed people in the US may force companies to source their labour back from within their home country, and there could be aggressive moves to repatriate taxes earned from abroad. Given our dependence on foreign investment in Ireland, this might be a very bitter pill to swallow.

Our politicians need to take close heed of what is happening, particularly with regard to events unfolding in the US. The Occupy movement, or at least what it represents, may well change the nature of global business and foreign affairs in the coming years. A swing to the left may pose challenges to Ireland, so it is something we need to start preparing for now.

Photo: “Occupy Wall Street: Day 14“, Long Island Rose, CC Licensed.