denialism | April 6, 2012Maybe my email worked? I got a one sentence reply from Max last night saying he agreed, and today Tucker Max says hellz no to PETA and instead wants to give to a local shelter:
I do not agree AT ALL with the mission of PETA.
...
If we're talking about what an awful organization PETA is, that's really just the beginning. They're so ridiculous, they compared the holocaust to killing chickens. Not only that, but they have a history of shitting on celebrities they've worked with in the past. And perhaps worst of all, they are the ones that think violence against women is OK. Their stated…
choofnagle | April 6, 2012In 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. Could this happen to other products? Does it relate to a broader shift in power from PR firms and industry to the consumer mob?
John Bussey has a good article in today's Wall Street Journal featuring some of the wound-licking of the lean finely textured beef industry. Note the tactics:
1) Make it about…
denialism | April 6, 2012You may have heard about Planned Parenthood turning down Tucker Max's 500k charitable donation on the grounds his misogynistic past marred the gift.
Now PETA is asking for the donation.
Let's beg him not to do this. Instead of giving money to the dog-killing animal rightsists, how about a donation to pro-test and put a thumb in the eye of the anti-research pet killers? Send him a message, donate the money to a pro-science group.
Here's my email to Tucker:
Hey, I hear you're looking to give a charitable donation and now PETA is saying they'd be happy to receive it. As a pet owner, doctor…
denialism | April 5, 2012A great article from the awl asks writers and book critics which books they liked when they were younger, but now make them cringe.
The results are interesting, the two authors those surveyed reported most cringe-worthy were Kerouac and, you probably guessed it, Ayn Rand. Ha!
choofnagle | March 29, 2012The 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 attract thousands to a rally, many more should actually vote for him. Paul himself discusses the problem in the article:
"I don't have a full answer for that," says Mr. Paul, who says he believes ballot irregularities have chipped into his numbers in some places. He adds, "I think there's some problem…
choofnagle | March 28, 2012Writing 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, "A Feb. 27 event at Michigan State University drew 4,000 people. But at polling places the next day, Mr. Paul finished third -- with 3,128 votes -- in Ingham County, where the campus is. Mr. Romney got more than three times as many votes." Paul's supporters attribute this to a failure in…
denialism | March 27, 2012The NYTimes reporting suggests a 5-4 split against ACA is likely:
Justice Kennedy, along with Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. all asked questions suggesting that they had a problem with the constitutionality of the mandate requiring most Americans to buy insurance. Justice Clarence Thomas, as usual, did not ask any questions, but he is widely expected to vote to overturn the mandate.
As does CNN's Toobin's analysis:
This is interesting. Part of the issue is how much of the law would fall if they turn against it? Would we still be able…
denialism | March 26, 2012He had to realize Nisbett's framing was worthless and write a whole book on defective Republican reasoning to realize it but it sounds like Chris Mooney has come around to the right way to confront denialism:
The only solution, then, is to make organized climate denial simply beyond the pale. It has to be the case that taking such a stand is tantamount to asserting that smoking is completely safe, no big deal, go ahead and have two packs a day.
Sounds a little bit like what I wrote in 2007 when I pointed out denialists should not even be debated:
The goal instead must be to enforce standards…
denialism | March 26, 2012With the Supreme Court hearing arguments for the next three days on the Affordable Care Act, many commentators, including Dahlia Lithwick appear to have so much contempt for the Roberts court that they believe the issue will likely be settled on politics rather than law.
The first proposition is that the health care law is constitutional. The second is that the court could strike it down anyway.
...
The law is a completely valid exercise of Congress' Commerce Clause power, and all the conservative longing for the good old days of the pre-New Deal courts won't put us back in those days as if…
denialism | March 23, 2012We've already extensively discussed why it costs twice as much for the US to provide healthcare for it's citizens all the while failing to cover health care for all. Most recently, we discussed the hidden tax of the uninsured and the perverse incentive structure of US healthcare which encourage costlier care, more utilization, and more procedures.
To summarize, the US spends more on healthcare compared to other industrialized nations because
We deliver it inefficiently
Without universality problems present when critical and in the ER
Fee-for-service incentives in the form of excessive…
denialism | March 22, 2012Our initial optimism over Huffpo science being a haven for reason in a den of disease-promotion and quackery appears now to be misplaced. It appears the animal rights cranks have made inroads with Bruce Friedrich, a member of PETA and advocate of animal liberation, who has jumped from Huffpo "green" to Huffpo "science". The science gatekeepers at Huffpo have clearly failed.
Writing about "Speciesism: The Movie", he exposes the anti-science ideology of the animal rights movement, and Huffpo science doesn't seem to have noticed:
Every now and then, a movie comes along that is capable of…
denialism | March 22, 2012With the impending, and unprecedented, 3 days of arguments over the Affordable Care Act occurring early next week, it's interesting to see that the test case being used to challenge the law has now become a test case demonstrating the necessity of the law.
Mary Brown, the woman who asserts no one has the authority to make her buy health care is now bankrupt, at least in part due to medical bills. From theLA Times article:
Mary Brown, a 56-year-old Florida woman who owned a small auto repair shop but had no health insurance, became the lead plaintiff challenging President Obama's healthcare…
denialism | March 21, 2012The news was just publicly announced that the University of Maryland is now the 2nd hospital to perform full face transplant in the US. Just a handful of these procedures have been performed around the world, and they are enormously complex ethically, surgically and medically.
To begin with, long before the surgery even became a possibility, there have been years of work put into setting up such a novel transplant program. Besides obtaining approval for what is still an experimental procedure from an IRB, it is necessary to very carefully screen a population of potential recipients. A face…
denialism | March 21, 2012In the continual spread of assaults on women's reproductive freedom in the wake of the 2010 tea party movement, another state, Idaho, is legislating women receive unnecessary and invasive medical procedures prior to obtaining abortion.
This is part of an unprecedented effort at the state level to restrict reproductive rights, and in 2011 a record number of these measures have passed.
And it won't stop here, as we've seen in Georgia, they are trying to pass a law to force women to carry all 20 week gestations to term, even if the fetus is dead. And if you think that's creepy, Georgia isn't…
denialism | March 15, 2012At Alternet there is a great article by Kristin Rawls on homeschooling and educational neglect. I think it makes an excellent argument that homeschooling needs either tighter regulation and oversight, or needs to be outright outlawed:
In recent weeks, homeschooling has received nationwide attention because of Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum's homeschooling family. Though Santorum paints a rosy picture of homeschooling in the United States, and calls attention to the "responsibility" all parents have to take their children's education into their own hands, he fails to…
denialism | March 13, 2012In a debate on the floor of the Georgia State house over a bill to force women to bring all pregnancies after 20 weeks to term, even in cases of dead or non-viable fetus, this Georgia representative reaches a new low. State Rep Terry England seems to be suggesting pigs and cows do it, why can't humans?
Rep. Terry England compares women to cows, pigs and chickens. from Bryan Long on Vimeo.
Aside from this genius on-the-farm reasoning of Mr England, the failures of reasoning and misrepresentations of scientific knowledge engaged in to pursue this legislation are many.
The legislation is…
denialism | March 9, 2012The safety of soda has been in the news a lot lately. The news even seems bad for diet coke, which hits close to home for me given my diet coke addiction. The worst seems to be this correlative study proposing a link between diet sodas and stroke risk:
The study, which followed more than 2,500 New Yorkers for nine or more years, found that people who drank diet soda every day had a 61 percent higher risk of vascular events, including stroke and heart attack, than those who completely eschewed the diet drinks, according to researchers who presented their results today at the American Stroke…
denialism | March 8, 2012I think it's a nice, succinct description of the problem of climate change from one of the leaders of the field.
On a related note the nation of Kiribati is relocating to Fiji as their island nation is disappearing.
denialism | March 7, 2012Ed Yong demands higher accountability in science journalism and has made me think of how in the last two days I've run across two examples of shoddy reporting. These two articles I think encompass a large part of the problem, the first from the NYT, represents the common failure of science reporters to be critical of correlative results. While lacking egregious factual errors, in accepting the authors' conclusions without vetting the results of the actual paper, the journalist has created a misleading article. The second, from Forbes, represents the worst kind of corporate news hackery,…
denialism | March 4, 2012We've discussed it before, why are costs so much higher in US healthcare compared to other countries? The Washington Post has a pointless article which seems to answer with the tautology costs are high because healthcare in America costs more. How much more? Well, we spend nearly twice as much per capita as the next nearest country while failing to provide universal coverage:
In the WaPo article they make a big deal of the costs of individual procedures like MRI being over a thousand in the US compared to $280 in France, but this is a simplistic analysis, and I think it misses the point…