choofnagle

Never thought I would write this: Maastricht University is organizing a conference on the intersection of denialism and human rights. Here is a link to the conference description and the call for papers can be downloaded here.

I'm reading Jeffrey Kacirk's delightful Forgotten English, which includes this anecdote concerning boanthropy, a condition where a person believes himself to be a cow or ox: In 1792, Edward Jenner successfully developed a vaccine for smallpox by injecting a boy with closely related cowpox germs. He…

As part of related research into consumer protection, I recently scanned in a copy of Samuel Hopkins Adams' seminal articles on the patent medicine industry. These articles, which appeared in Collier's magazine starting in 1905, helped build the record for the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act, and for…

The Wall Street Journal reported on a battle developing between privacy advocates and internet companies concerning AB 1291, a transparency measure that is in part based upon some of my privacy research: The industry backlash is against the "Right to Know Act," a bill introduced in February by…

Helen Epstein has an interesting review of Lead Wars: The Politics of Science and the Fate of America’s Children by Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, in the current New York Review of Books. The review is worth reading to better understand the public policy problem of lead in products and the…

Denialism blog readers, especially those at academic institutions that have/are considering outsourcing email, may be interested in my essay on UC Berkeley's migration to Gmail.  This is cross-posted from the Berkeley Blog. Many campuses have decided to outsource email and other services to “cloud…

Gawker reports that on the first day of Katie Couric's new show, Sheryl Crow discusses her theory that cell phone use caused her to have a brain tumor. Update: The Chronicle reports that the show is just a celebrity infomercial, with softball questions, and no critical discussion: You would be…

With the announcement of the Kindle Fire HD, some users were upset to learn that Amazon was going to stuff "special offers" on the device. But the company quickly retreated, and now is offering the option to turn of the ads for a mere $15. This is a good development for consumers. We should…

Facebook watchers are reporting that the service is about to launch a new feature for merchants that will allow merchants to target ads to users based upon users' email and phone numbers. That's a little confusing. Let me explain with a hypo-- As I understand it, it might work like this: ABC Corp…

Earnest reporting or catty criticism? Fareed Zakaria, according to the Times, is on the short list of Lynda Resnick's dinner parties, along with "Queen Noor of Jordan, George Soros, the financier, and Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California." Is the Times' Christine Haughney critiquing…

Have you heard of App.net? If not, check it out. The basic premise is to create a social media platform that is aligned with users' interest. And so, gasp, it costs money! The CEO, Dalton Caldwell, has a neat video explaining the inception of the project and the philosophy of the venture.…

In his non-book-review of Garret Keizer's new book, Privacy, "Reason" Magazine correspondent includes this ill-informed quip on privacy: With regard to modern commerce, Mr. Keizer grumps: "We would do well to ask if the capitalist economy and its obsessions with smart marketing and technological…

BNA reports on the formation of the Internet Association, a new trade group that will represent Google, Facebook, eBay, and Amazon. The group introduces itself as, "the unified voice of the Internet economy, representing the interests of America's leading Internet companies and their global…

When one spouts disinformation about disinformation, does it make it information? No, it's L. Gordon Crovitz's "Information Age," the weekly poorly informed and poorly reasoned blather about information policy in the Wall Street Journal. Recall that Crovitz recently wrote about the invention of…

Imagine a newspaper oped with half a dozen fallacies. Such a thing could appear in any newspaper in the US. But now imagine that the author is a Rhodes Scholar and you’re left with the Wall Street Journal’s L. Gordon Crovitz. For years I’ve followed the bizarre arguments of L. Gordon Crovitz, who…

As an educator, I realize that much of education is...well...a scam. And some scams are much bigger than others. We've all read about the graduates with six-figure debt loads from obscure colleges. But the for-profit college world operates on another level. Gawker has had excellent commentary on…

Thomas Kinkade, painter of pablum and our nation's most collected living artist, died on Good Friday. Hmmmm.

In a matter of weeks, activists have been able to assassinate a popular product through a confluence of events: an official labeled it derogatorily as "pink slime," social media buzz (or anti-buzz), and media attention against the background of Americans' greater concern about processed foods.…

The point raised by yesterday's Times article on Ron Paul was that while Paul attracts big crowds, these crowds do not translate into voter turnout. Perhaps the problem is that Paul has appeal within his fervent base, but that base is unable to influence people outside the circle. If Paul can…

Writing in today's Times, Richard A. Oppel asks, "Whatever happened to Ron Paul?" Ron Paul has fans, in the traditional sense of the word--fanatics. They foam over this small and strange man, whose career in Congress has largely been ineffectual. Thousands go to his rallies, but as Oppel observes…

How's this for a tinfoil hat conspiracy, brought to you by the American Life League-- Planned Parenthood's strategy in this great world is to: Phase one: Get kids addicted to sex. Phase two: profit! Through selling birth control, STD testing, and abortion.

In case you missed it, here's a pointer to a recent Times story concerning baked reviews on Amazon and the like. In it, David Streitfeld describes how one company gave rebates to customers in exchange for five star reviews. They even seem to have a claque to address detractors-- Even a few…

Evgeny Morozov argued in Slate last week that search engines could do more to warn readers about kooks online. Among other things, he cites to a recent article in Vaccine that details the tactics of anti-vaccine denialists. Morozov points to Google's special treatment of certain searches, such as…

Via Everything is Terrible.

Denialism fans, you might enjoy the archive of informercials at my favorite website, Everything is Terrible. It's so much fun to watch all those lame infomercials from the 80s and 90s and realize how little has changed in the marketing world. Okay, back to Chair Dancing.

Writing in the Saturday (how to make it look like you're rich edition) of the Wall Street Journal, Marisa Acocella Marchetto mentions an expensive, branded drug--Nexium--eight times. She even mentions its slogan ("the purple pill")! As Mark has written elsewhere, it's moronic to take Nexium…

Those of you who read Mark Zuckerberg's oped in today's Washington Post might appreciate my take on how Facebook talks about privacy in tomorrow's San Francisco Chronicle: The Privacy Machiavellis.

A response is requested from a non-scientist.

Media reports teem with stories of young people posting salacious photos online, writing about alcohol-fueled misdeeds on social networking sites, and publicizing other ill-considered escapades that may haunt them in the future. These anecdotes are interpreted as representing a generation-wide…

Naftali Bendavid reports today in the Journal on a problem facing conservatives: how should they assure their supporters, many of whom are suspicious of government activity, to participate in the US Census? After all, the Census sounds suspiciously like something Tiberius would like. But Moses…