denialism | March 20, 2008Now that PZ, Brian, and ERV have all weighed in on whether Chris Mooney's piece on crank enablers is right or not, let me lay out my operational strategy as an anti-denialist writer.
It is true that repetition of denialist arguments is a strategic error, and that the repeition itself can reinforce their arguments. One has to consider this when dealing with nonsense and debunking it not to fall in the trap of just fisking it, which can defeat the purpose of your writing - to decrease the amount of BS in the world.
However, a knowledge of the history of denialism is of utility in this…
denialism | March 13, 2008Check it out, the genesis of the Skeptics' Circle.
In particular I admire PalMD's willingness to read JPANDS for the sake of the cause. Yes, it's as bad as you thought.
denialism | March 11, 2008I love a crank that you only have to quote to utterly humiliate. From the guy who brought the logic of the Third Reich to bear on the immigration issue we have this thoughtful analysis of the real threat to science:
As I have demonstrated in "The Irrational Atheist," religion is not a threat to any aspect of science: It does not threaten the knowledge base, it does not threaten the method and it does not threaten the profession. It never has.
But this is not to say there is not a genuine threat to all three aspects of science today. Unsurprisingly, it comes from the same force that is the…
denialism | March 10, 2008Also pissing me off this week is the continuing nonsense from Cato's anti-universal health care club which is suggesting that increasing health care coverage will lead to an increased number of deaths because of increasing medical errors.
Sack notes that "at least twice as many Americans are estimated to die each year from medical errors as from lack of access to care." He quotes economists Helen Levy and David Meltzer's conclusion that there is "no evidence" that expanding coverage would be the best way to improve health and save lives.
...
If there is no evidence that expanding coverage…
denialism | March 8, 2008Has anyone noticed how my sciblings are really ornery at the moment?
We've got PZ bringing out the angry stick over Wilkins' criticism of Dawkins. Physioprof is getting ready to pop Greg Laden in the nose over this thread (and I tend to agree it needs a rewrite).
And then Shelley broke my heart by posting
this video mocking anesthesiologists that I posted a couple months ago. And here I thought my sciblings paid attention to me *sob*.
Mommy and Daddy fighting and my sciblings ignoring me are making me feel insecure and frightened and as a result I'm going to lash out at Jake for this…
denialism | March 7, 2008
There is no way I could let the Heartland Institute's Global Warming conference go by without comment, especially since it's so beautifully conformed to my expectations of what a gathering of cranks would be like. I think DeSmogBlog's coverage has been the best.
But back to my expectations, we have experts of dubious quality speaking to a group of people that clearly have no ability to judge sources (from the WSJ ):
Given that line-up, and the Heartland Institute's stated mission--"to discover and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems"--two of the presentations…
denialism | March 6, 2008My least favorite thing? Being constantly ill. Of the eight weeks or so I've been back, I've been sick for about four of them. I managed to get by the first three or four weeks cold-free through neurotic hand-washing before the current cold circulating the hospital got a whack at me.
It was a pretty obnoxious cold and I still was just getting over it when I got hit by this second cold, a gift, I believe, from a friend working on a pediatrics rotation. This one actually floored me with a fever of over 101 and now I'm finally coming down below a hundred. And you know what the real…
denialism | March 1, 2008I've lived in Charlottesville Virginia now for about 8 years and one of the great things I love about it is the Corner community. I have a bar I like, there is a good music at the Satellite Ballroom where I plan on seeing They Might Be Giants this month. We've got lots of local businesses and restaurants where you feel like you're experiencing something unique and your money goes to local people you know and like.
Then you hear crappy news like 4 local businesses are going to get shut down to put in a national chain store like a CVS and it's like a punch in the gut. In this case, the…
denialism | February 28, 2008At Conspiracy Factory.
In particular I like Skepchik's take on a pretty horrifically sexist Oprah poll which seems to present the only options for women in a stressful situation are to cry now or cry later or act like a big strong man. Hmm.
PalMD has really been fighting the good fight lately with this piece on antivax, but really it's worth your time to explore his other stuff on Morgellon's and other crankery.
Good stuff as always, check it out.
denialism | February 28, 2008This time it appears to be a physical assault and an attempt to enter a home of a researcher that works with mice.
The researcher described the attack in which people wearing masks attempted to break into her house during her daughter's birthday party. Although her identity is being protected, I admire her moxy, she's not going to back down.
"I'm a scientist, I do research that's really valuable," she said. "One in seven women get breast cancer."
She also said she refused to move from her Westside Santa Cruz home, where police say six masked intruders banged on her door and tried to…
choofnagle | February 27, 2008I've been AWOL from Denialism Blog because one of my UC-Berkeley projects has become all-consuming.
I'm interested in sparking a market for identity theft protection. A real one. One where consumers can actually make choices among banks based on their actual ability to address security attacks. Last year, I published Identity Theft: Making the Unknown Knowns Known, (PDF) an article making a legal and policy argument in favor of mandated public disclosure of identity theft statistics by banks.
In this vein, today, I'm releasing "Measuring Identity Theft at Top Banks (Version 1.0)," my…
denialism | February 26, 2008I've almost come to the end of the core 8 weeks of my surgery rotation (4 more weeks follow in electives) and am currently working on the trauma service for another couple days before taking exams.
I don't have a great deal to say, the hours stay long, the medicine remains interesting etc. I'm enjoying the decrease in laundry that wearing scrubs entails. I enjoy how much doctors tend to take joy in their work. Medicine is a great field that way, as it gives you a feeling of accomplishment as you see what you do day to day really can make a big difference in people's lives. The debt may…
denialism | February 25, 2008I must say I've loved much of the writing at the new blog Science-Based Medicine. These guys are fighting the good fight and presenting very sophisticated aspects of evaluating the medical literature in a very accessible way. In particular I'd like to point out David Gorski's critique of NCCAM and the directly-relevant articles from Kimball Atwood on the importance of prior probability in evaluating medical research. I mention these as a pair because lately I've really become highly attuned to this issue due to the research of John Ioannidis which is critical for understanding which…
denialism | February 18, 2008One of the few advantages of having no time is that when I do get around to sorting through my RSS feeds of various denialists is that I end up seeing patterns I didn't observe as much when I tracked these jokers day-to-day. So, inspired by BPSDB I decided I'm going to share some generalizations.
For one, I feel rewarded by my previous study of denialists and cranks. Given that I have no time to deal with the incredible mass of BS that they generate daily, looking through their output I don't feel particularly inspired to challenge anything in particular they have to say. After all, it's…
denialism | February 17, 2008I'm late to the party sorry, but this week's circle is up at Bug Girl's Blog. Check it out. She's one of my favorite bloggers and she's done a great job with her Valentine's day edition.
In particular I will point out Greta Christina's review of "Mistakes Were Made (but not by me)", and the new (to me) blog BPSDB (like BPR3 but with this snazzy new icon).
My brother Chris would also like Andrea Buzzing about Scientology's claims about psychiatry.
choofnagle | February 14, 2008The Ponemon Institute and TRUSTe have just released their annual Most Trusted Companies for Privacy report. As part of this report, the groups asked consumers about the factors--positive and negative--that shaped their perceptions of companies' privacy practices. (Full disclosure: I am a fellow of the Ponemon Institute.)
Bar Charts 3 and 4 in the Ponemon/TRUSTe survey are instructive. In Chart 3, we see that the strongest indicators for trust among consumers is reputation, respect for consumers, and product quality. This explains why certain information-intensive companies, such as Amazon…
choofnagle | February 12, 2008I've spent the last few months working with an excellent journalist on the Anonymity Experiment, which will appear in this month's Popular Science magazine. In it, Catherine Price attempts to live a normal life without revealing personal data:
...when this magazine suggested I try my own privacy experiment, I eagerly agreed. We decided that I would spend a week trying to be as anonymous as possible while still living a normal life. I would attempt what many believe is now impossible: to hide in plain sight.
[...]
Tall and friendly, Hoofnagle has an enthusiastic way of talking about privacy…
denialism | February 11, 2008I'm very upset to see that following up on previous threats, animal rights terrorists have set fire to a scientist's house.
I've been saying for a while that the real threat towards biological science isn't the evolution denialists and other silly cranks' rather laughable attempts at trying to convince people the earth is 6000 years old.The real threat is what we've seen in England and other countries of extremist violence against scientists for using animals in research. These actions are often justified based upon the absurd premise that research can be performed without the use of animals…
choofnagle | February 10, 2008Today, I joined about 100 hooligans in the anti-scientology protest in San Francisco, as part of Project Chanology, a large-scale effort to call attention to abuses committed by the cult of Scientology. Many protestors had serious signs that called attention to the various ways in which Scientology censors speech and defrauds people. But after watching this crazy video of Tom Cruise, the Viking and I decided that the real victim of all this craziness is Katie Holmes. Poor Katie.