choofnagle | June 25, 2008This is fun. Someone's created a new NNDB mapper on the Discovery Institute. It's called Theocracy Now!
choofnagle | June 23, 2008The hat tip has to go to that self-love-fest, BoingBoing...nevertheless, this is a masterpiece.
choofnagle | June 23, 2008Jon Hurdle reports in today's Times on nine Philadelphia-based institutions that are planning a "Year of Evolution" program for February 2009, to celebrate Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of The Origin of Species.
Check out the comments of Ken Ham, which I think are totally off message:
Ken Ham, the president of the Creation Museum, said he expected to see more pro-evolution events as the Darwin anniversary approaches. Mr. Ham said that in response his museum was planning its own exhibits on the origins of life.
"The culture war is definitely heating up," he said.
Mr. Ham, who also…
denialism | June 20, 2008Surprisingly, it's not due to the horribly misguided abstinence education nonsense. In fact, I can't even begin to wrap my mind around this one.
As summer vacation begins, 17 girls at Gloucester High School are expecting babies--more than four times the number of pregnancies the 1,200-student school had last year. Some adults dismissed the statistic as a blip. Others blamed hit movies like Juno and Knocked Up for glamorizing young unwed mothers. But principal Joseph Sullivan knows at least part of the reason there's been such a spike in teen pregnancies in this Massachusetts fishing town.…
denialism | June 20, 2008Reading Ed Brayton's discussion of the contrasting behaviors of our two presidential candidates with regards to law and Supreme Court decisions, I couldn't resist comment.
One of the few advantages of medschool is that it keeps me from reading the news while I'm studying for exams, most recently my internal medicine shelf exam yesterday. Thus I'm protected from a state of constant fury from the idiocy of our dear leaders. This being a post-study day I unfortunately ended up reading this statement from John McCain from George Will's article that giving Gitmo prisoners habeus rights was "…
denialism | June 12, 2008The WSJ brings us news of increasing opposition to laws that would protect faith healing. Or as I call it, negligence. As usual it has required the death of innocents before people will come to grips with common sense.
The recent death from untreated diabetes of an 11-year-old Wisconsin girl has invigorated opposition to obscure laws in many states that let parents rely on prayer, rather than medicine, to heal sick children.
Dale and Leilani Neumann of Weston, Wis., are facing charges of second-degree reckless homicide after their child, Madeline Kara Neumann, died on Easter after slipping…
choofnagle | June 4, 2008Yesterday, it was the Times with "Experts Revive Debate Over Cellphones and Cancer". Today, it's the Journal with "Do Fuel-Saving Gadgets Take You for a Ride?", which includes this little gem from a gadget maker:
The EPA and FTC "only test the ones that don't work," says Louis H. Elwell III, chairman and president of Vortex Fluid Optimizer Corp. The Hattiesburg, Miss., company makes the Vortex Fuel Saver, a system that uses magnets to affect the fuel, air and coolant entering an engine. He says the Vortex uses technology that boosts fuel economy by at least 10%.
Yes, Louis, that's right, the…
denialism | May 24, 2008It's a must read over at action skeptics. Dirty limerick skepticism!
Of note, Orac on quackademic medicine, and Greta Christina on the science of sexuality.
denialism | May 19, 2008But why? Why does Brawndo have electrolytes?
Because you need electrolytes to live. Every cell in your body uses electrolytes like sodium (Na), Potassium (K), Calcium (Ca), Magnesium (Mg) and other critical ions for cellular functions, proper osmotic gradients, enzymatic activity and even coordination of complex functions like muscle contraction and nerve conduction. All the cells in your body are full of little ion channels that are importing or exporting (or passively diffusing) these ions for physiological functions, and several organ systems (pituitary, adrenals, kidneys) in your…
denialism | May 12, 2008So on the blog birthday we asked our dear readers what they've learned over the last year, and as a test we gave them this crank who attacks the bisphosphonate anti-osteoporosis drugs in his article "the delusion of bone drugs".
I think the reader with the best grade is LanceR or Martin, but SurgPA would have done better if he had shown his work.
But let's talk about some signs that something you're reading is unscientific crankery. In this case, we don't have a particularly sophisticated crank, and he let's the cat out of the bag in his very profile:
Because of Bill's increasing concerns…
denialism | May 12, 2008I'm sorry I've been buried the last couple weeks, as I've just started my general medicine rotation. Today is my post-call day, which means I get to sleep in and then study all day long. The fire hydrant of information is cranked open full bore again, and the shelf exam for medicine is supposed to the hardest. There is an incredible amount to know, and only a limited amount of time to assimilate it.
Inpatient medicine is especially challenging. It's funny because most people's perception of medicine is from all the TV shows about medicine and you see doctors constantly fixing some…
choofnagle | May 2, 2008Stephanie Simon of the Journal reports today on what Sciencebloggers already know: that the creationists have shifted their tactics from focusing on activism on local school boards to pitching their cause to state legislators:
Their new tactic: Embrace lessons on evolution. In fact, insist students deserve to learn more -- including classes that probe the theory for weakness. They believe -- and their opponents agree -- that this approach will prove more acceptable to the public and harder to challenge in court.
Those promoting the new bills emphasize that academic freedom doesn't mean…
denialism | April 30, 2008Today represents one year since we joined scienceblogs, and I think we've had a great deal of success in defining the problem of denialism, establishing a new vocabulary for dealing with the problem of pseudoscience, and establishing uniform standards for what is legitimate scientific discourse and debate.
Our first post describes the problem of denialism, and our subsequent posts on cranks, and the 5 tactics of denialism - Conspiracy, Selectivity, Fake Experts, Moving Goalposts, and Fallacies of Logic - have stood the test of time. They accurately describe the types of argument that fail…
denialism | April 29, 2008No time for blogging today but make sure to welcome ERV, on of my favorite bloggers, to the network.
Welcome ERV!
denialism | April 28, 2008How else can you describe a site that regularly publishes David Kirby's anti-vaccination denialism, Jennifer McCarthy's insanity, and conspiracy theories from the like of Diedre Imus?
The latest this weekend is the goalpost-moving from David Kirby, which based on the egregious misinterpretation of the Hannah Poling case, represents the new front of anti-vaccination denialists in their war on reason. In the never-ending quest to pin autism on vaccines no matter what the evidence, the anti-vaccine denialists now are trying to make autism a mitochondrial disorder in order to fit their latest…
choofnagle | April 26, 2008You've probably heard that Wesley Snipes received the maximum sentence for not paying his taxes--3 years based on 3 misdemeanor violations. His "advisors," tax fraud denialists with crackpot legal theories received 10 for conspiring to defraud the government of tax revenue:
Snipes' co-defendants in the case,Lake County anti-tax guru Eddie Ray Kahn, 64, and tax preparer Douglas P. Rosile, 59, face up to 10 years in prison. Both were convicted of conspiracy and tax fraud for their work with American Rights Litigators and Guiding Light of God Ministries, two Lake County-based "tax-fraud" mills.
denialism | April 24, 2008Andrea's Buzzing about the latest skeptic's circle.
I'd point out in particular Blake Stacey's discussion of the real expelled, scientists who challenge creationism.
And I'd also recommend the Pap smear to Skepchic. It makes sense in context.
denialism | April 24, 2008Dude. If you thought Vox Day (the guy with the minge haircut) was crazy, check out what his crazy dad has been up too since he fast captured last year:
The trial of millionaire tax protester Robert Beale turned bizarre even before jury selection began Monday as the prosecutor announced the arrest of four of Beale's supporters for conspiring with Beale to disrupt the proceedings and intimidate the judge.
"God ... wants me to take the judge out, that's what he wants me to do," Beale allegedly told his common-law wife, according to a new criminal complaint filed against him and the four…
denialism | April 24, 2008Here's one of the more amusing news stories I've seen. Apparently Al Qaeda is irritated with Ahmadinejad's 9/11 conspiracy theories. It turns out the people who committed the atrocity are quite proud of it, and don't want people to forget it.
Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader issued a new audiotape Tuesday accusing Shiite Iran of spreading a conspiracy theory about who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks to discredit the power of the Sunni terrorist network.
Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's deputy, has stepped up his denunciations of Iran in recent messages in part to depict al-Qaida as the Arabs'…
denialism | April 23, 2008I've been reluctant to write about Expelled from the perspective of their abuse of the memory of the Holocaust. Ever since I learned that they were going to recycle the ludicrous Darwin-caused-Hitler argument I've been sending out emails to asking other experts their take on whether or not it constitutes a serious affront. Now reading Orac's coverage of Art Caplan's review of Expelled I think it's something that needs to be discussed.
Let's start with very clear statements of fact that are at issue here.
1) The Holocaust was a direct result of racism and anti-Semitic hatred that existed…