Doctor Dunce on call at Car Talk

I really like the radio show Car Talk. I've been listening since it was a segment on Morning Edition (yes, I'm that old), and since the newspaper column went online I've read that, too. Oddly, I don't actually like or care about cars. So why do I like it? Because the hosts, Tom and Ray Magliozzi, are smart and funny and worth listening to.

In this column, a doctor writes to them, saying he had read their previous column mentioning that ethylene glycol is poisonous to animals, and wonders if that makes the GoLytely he gives patients before a colonoscopy (polyethylene glycol) toxic.

WHAT?!

Forgive me, but I sure hope "Dan" is not really a doctor.

First of all, how can a physician not know that ethylene glycol is toxic? Did he skip toxicology in med school?

Second, how can anyone who's ever taken a chem class in high school not know that "poly-" means a polymer? Or that polymers don't have the same properties as their monomers? Does he think that proteins all have the same properties as amino acids? That cellulose is identical to glucose? This guy is a DOCTOR?

He needs to give up his practice and go into something less dangerous to others, such as hermiting.

If you read the Car Talk column, note that the Magliozzi brothers get it completely right. Not shocking. Ray was a science teacher once (as I was) and Tom, as mentioned there, was once a chemical engineer. And they didn't sleep through their classes like Dan, aka "Doctor Dunce".

Vaccination: one journalist gets it right

I and a lot of other critical thinkers have deplored the magical thinking that leads people to fear vaccination more than disease. This has become the leading cause of scientific physicians lately, as evidenced by Science-Based Medicine. The press has an unfortunate habit of treating the antivaxers, the promoters of fear, as authority figures, and taking the ludicrous conspiracy theories of the fringers as equally valid with actual facts and logic.

I would therefore like to give Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times credit for his column of October 12, 2009, in which he makes sense and tells the truth. It's refreshing and encouraging to see a journalist who actually does his job well. Thanks, Neil.