denialism | July 17, 2007I thought the denial of the link between smoking and cancer had gone out of style. The link between smoking and cancer is so thoroughly established that I thought no one could continue to defend cigarettes with a straight face.
Well, all Orac has to do is write a piece about the evidence for a health risk from second-hand smoke and soon enough the denialists come crawling out of the woodwork. The reason is pretty simple, smoking bans are unpopular with a certain group of people, and what do you do when science suggests something that people don't want to believe? Well, you whip out the…
denialism | July 16, 2007Two posts on the scienceblogs today that shouldn't be missed.
Orac on second-hand smoke and those who deny it's health effects.
And Kevin Beck on Penis Pills.
It's a great example of the failure to teach critical thinking skills that people can sell tiny doses of ginseng to insecure males and actually make a profit.
choofnagle | July 16, 2007Getting "buy-in" from an industry is crucial when attempting to regulate in favor of consumer protection or environmentalism. If the industry fundamentally does not accept the values embodied in the effort, it finds ways around it. After all, these companies have the brightest lawyers and engineers on their side, and if some public policy is supposed to do X, they'll find a way to make it do Y.
A case in point is the popularity of hybrid cars and the conservation of fuel. Luxury car companies have found a way to pervert them from energy-saving devices to gas guzzlers with the patina of…
denialism | July 16, 2007The troofers seem to think so and based on the interview they have a video of after a screening they may be right.
Here's his reasoning for why we need to investigate 9/11 more.
"I've filmed there before down at the Pentagon-- before 9/11-- there's got to be at least 100 cameras, ringing that building, in the trees, everywhere. They've got that plane coming in with 100 angles. How come with haven't seen the straight-- I'm not talking about stop-action photos, I'm talking about the video. I want to see the video; I want to see 100 videos that exist of this," Moore said.
"Why don't they want us…
denialism | July 16, 2007William Saletan takes the position that progressives have no real bioethical position on stem cells in his most recent column in Slate. I'm a bit disappointed with Saletan over this one, because in his never ending quest to be thoughtful about everything, he's usually much more fair to people - even those he disagrees with. But listen to his characterization of "progressive bioethics".
I have problems with liberals. A lot of them talk about religion as though it's a communicable disease. Some are amazingly obtuse to other people's qualms. They show no more interest in an embryo than in a…
denialism | July 14, 2007MarkCC takes down this idiotic analysis from AEI that appeared in the WSJ Friday.
I saw this curve yesterday on their editorial page and thought, what kind of idiot would fit a curve to an obvious linear regression? Not really having math expertise I dismissed it as probable crap, and moved on.
Thankfully, MarkCC whips out the math and shows exactly how stupid this stupid analysis is. I'm glad for this, because I knew it was stupid to fit a curve to it, but not how exceedingly stupid it was.
One should also note their recent editorials which include, "The Surge is Working" and "Sick…
denialism | July 13, 2007Does Tim Slagle strike anyone else as being a crank?
I feel like we should lend Orac a hand. He's had to deal with the anti-global warming denialism from this guy all on his own. Let's do a take down of this wise man's approach to global warming science.
Let's start with this genius article " Every Breath You Take"
We have the exaggeration of GW alarmism:
Despite the anticlimactic leaks that have been circulated for the past month or so, I'd like to wager a guess: The Earth is going to warm, the oceans are going to rise, and humanity will be destroyed as plague famine and pestilence…
denialism | July 13, 2007We've discussed the incompetence of cranks in their critical reasoning skills, and their inability to think about science in a lucid or productive fashion. But have we tried to help them? Have we moved beyond caddy criticisms and actually bothered to extend a hand to our fellow man? Clearly not. Rather than continuing to mock ID for being the intellectually-dishonest, crank-laden nonsense that it is, why don't we help them become a real science?
Genomicron has some suggested experiments to help ID get on the right track. Maybe, if they are legitimately interested in science, we'll be…
denialism | July 12, 2007Hey Luskin. This is what a genetic fallacy actually looks like.
The Darwinists devoutly desire to avoid the true history of their creed, and usually the media assist in the cover up--unknowingly, I would like to think. The "Inherit the Wind" trope that is monotonously employed by journalists--not to mention Judge Jones of Dover, PA fame--derives from the play and movie of that name. But this cliché, which is the source of what many journalists think about the subject, was fiction and not even aimed at the evolution issue so much as the danger of McCarthyism in the 1950s. The real Scopes…
denialism | July 12, 2007Make no mistake about it, the promoters of alternative medicine are denialists. One of the more stunning examples of their denial of the efficacy of evidence-based medicine appeared in Newstarget with the headline The false gods of scientific medicine revealed: It's a cult, not a science by Mike Adams.
Promoters of conventional medicine claim that all the drug marketing, FDA approvals, surgical procedures, chemotherapy and all other treatments are based on "hard science." The term "science" is invoked with hilarious frequency: Science journals, science-based medicine, proven medical…
denialism | July 11, 2007Sounds dirty doesn't it? But the homobigot fake family values group, the Family Research Council, is dead serious about keeping teh gays out of baseball games.
This past Sunday, at the San Diego Padres baseball game, what was advertised as a "Free Floppy Hat Night" for kids under 14 turned out to be a double play. While the Padres management was enticing families with the giveaway for kids, it was also promoting the evening as a Gay Pride night at the ballpark. Children who received free hats were treated to the Gay Man's Chorus of San Diego singing the national anthem prior to what one…
choofnagle | July 11, 2007Patricia Cohen reports in today's New York Times on a development in economics that will have a huge effect on denialism: the increased willingness to question the orthodoxy of neoclassical economics. Consumer rights, environmental protection, and any number of other issues has suffered for decades under the neoclassists, who hold their beliefs in markets so strongly that it's just like a religion. A bad religion. Anyway:
"There is much too much ideology," said Alan S. Blinder, a professor at Princeton and a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Economics, he added, is "often…
denialism | July 11, 2007Casey Luskin doesn't like that evilutionists equate Intelligent Design Creationism with, well, creationism. I'm sobbing.
But in a perfect example of how cranks like using the tools of logic to make their point, and then fail, he suggests that the assertion that ID = creationism is an example of the genetic fallacy. Well, that's interesting. What's his reasoning?
Darwinian logic often contends that because a given proportion of ID proponents are creationists, ID must therefore be creationism. It's a twist on the genetic fallacy, one I like to call the Darwinist "Genesis Genetic Argument…
choofnagle | July 11, 2007Former Surgeon General Richard Carmona alleged yesterday in testimony before the House Government Reform Committee that the White House censored his speeches and activities. Laura Mackler of the Wall Street Journal reports:
The most recent U.S. surgeon general told Congress the Bush administration routinely blocked him from speaking out on controversial issues, including stem-cell research, emergency contraception and sexual abstinence, and pressured him to support an "ideological, theological" agenda.
Dr. Richard Carmona, surgeon general from 2002 until 2006, said that his speeches were…
denialism | July 11, 2007The laptop is fixed..er...or rather was never really broken. Somehow the kitten managed to kill the cord, and the loose ac power inlet was an incidental finding.
One new power cord later (for the life of me I can't figure out how she did it) I've got my precious back.
Some key denialism links though I've been enjoying
Orac on bad anti-science comedy
Just about everybody talking about the former Surgeon General's muzzling by the Bush administration. Should we be surprised that the administration's new nominee is a homobigot endorsed by the fake family values groups? I must admit, I'm…
denialism | July 10, 2007I need my laptop.
Last week, the power input, which was getting loose, finally decided to become fully disconnected. It might have had something to do with the kitten hanging from the power cord. And sadly, when I consulted the repair people I am told the only solution is to replace the entire motherboard, rather than just reconnect or repair the jack.
In the meantime I have become grumpy and withdrawn. I am unable to blog without my bookmarks and properly configured web-browser. I realize how fully dependent I have become on this machine. My reference database is on it, as well as the…
denialism | July 5, 2007An alert reader noticed that when he performed a Google search on 'Sicko', guess who pops up in the sponsored links? Why, our good friends at AEI, a denialist organization second only to CEI, but since they have a lot of the same people working for both it's really just academic which one you're arguing with. When you need your crappy industry defended from public criticism, you can always rely on AEI or CEI to chomp at the bit and pretend there is "no problem".
What's even more interesting is that Google actually solicited ads (fixed link) to combat Sicko's bad PR for the insurance…
denialism | July 4, 2007I'm vacuuming. Not because it's something I only do on the 4th, but rather because Chris H is coming to town!
So, if you want the shock of seeing more than one Hoofnagle in the same place you should try to find us in Charlottesville. It's not hard, we'll likely be at the Bistro drinking.
denialism | July 3, 2007It's Ruthless Reviews coverage of the Creation Museum's opening.
I'd just like to say that I don't condone dressing up like a mentally disabled person before interviewing Ken Ham. And I don't find it funny, at all, to mock somebody for their religion. Even if they think dinosaurs are vegetarian, they don't deserve mockery from pill-popping investigative reporters going undercover with "Asperger's by proxy". I especially don't find it funny that they created a fake website, the "Special Times", to gain press access to the Creation Museum's opening.
And this youtube video of the interview…