Today, newspapers including the NYT and WaPo are commemorating the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's death both on their front pages and opinion pages I was thinking if it's finally time to confront one of the most persistent, and widespread conspiracy theories out there - that of a larger conspiracy behind the Kennedy assassination. However, I'm not interested in addressing specific allegations of the conspiracy theorists, as Fred Kaplan does or Vincent Bugliosi in his thorough debunking of JFK conspiracies and Oliver Stone's absurd JFK.(If you can find it it's great: Reclaiming History: The…

How can environmental groups and media outlets maintain that they are advocates of science, and not ideology, when they engage in the anti-science Luddism of GMO fearmongering? The potential of this anti-science behavior to poison their credibility on global climate change is real, as there is an obvious comparison between their flawed risk assessment on GM foods being compared to their legitimate risk assessments on issues of global climate change and pollution. One of the major arguments of environmental groups on global warming is that there is overwhelming scientific consensus on…

I'm pleased the Supreme Court has decided to reject the idea of patenting genes, as such case law would be restrictive to scientific discovery and also just feels fundamentally icky. From a legal perspective, as far as I understand patent law (not a lawyer here), it also seemed to fail on the more basic level of novelty and obviousness. The methods used to discover such genes were not what was invented. And one could conceive of "gene trolls" that would seek out gene aberrations and sit on them, just like other patent trolls, waiting for a payout and hindering scientific and medical…

Why do food writers think they are competent to evaluate the scientific literature? I know of at least two who, based on their tweets, clearly are not. One is Mark Bittman, who we have previously chastised, and now also Michael Pollan who has been a bit more coy about promoting anti-science related to GMO. Now they've both been broadcasting the flimsy results of this paper - A long-term toxicology study on pigs fed a combined genetically modified (GM) soy and GM maize diet - published in the "Journal of Organic Systems". Why do I feel like I'm reading headlines from Climate Depot or…

Dear British friends, I am deeply ashamed, and mortified, on behalf of my entire country for the embarrassing phenomenon that is Alex Jones. I see you have learned now for yourselves, this disturbed, bizarre person, is quite possibly the worst guest you could have ever invited to be on a television show. I have enclosed the relevant clip below. I feel the need to apologize, as Jones appears to represent the worst stereotypes of Americans; that we are loud, bullying, and rude, that we prefer to shout to win debates, that we have no manners compared to our cousins across the pond. Please…

Chris Mooney has been exploring the basic underpinnings of denialism lately, with this latest article a good summary of the basic problems: In a recent study of climate blog readers, Lewandowksy and his colleagues found that the strongest predictor of being a climate change denier is having a libertarian, free market world view. Or as Lewandowsky put it in our interview, "the overwhelming factor that determined whether or not people rejected climate science is their worldview or their ideology." This naturally lends support to the "motivated reasoning" theory—a conservative view about the…

In the wake of the dramatic events surrounding the discovery of three women including Amanda Berry, being held captive for a decade by a monster, it's important not to forget another sociopath played a role in this drama. That sociopath is the psychic who told Amanda Berry's mother that her daughter was dead: Her mother, Louwana Miller, never gave up hope that the girl known as Mandy was still alive, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The case attracted national attention when Miller went on Montel Williams’s nationally syndicated television show in 2004 and consulted a psychic. “She’s…

And the best article on the implications of this, surprisingly, comes from Huffington post authors Young and Kirkham: The database released on Wednesday by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services lays out for the first time and in voluminous detail how much the vast majority of American hospitals charge for the 100 most common inpatient procedures billed to Medicare. The database -- which covers claims filed within fiscal year 2011 -- spans 163,065 individual charges recorded at 3,337 hospitals located in 306 metropolitan areas. ... Within the nation’s largest metropolitan area…

I've recently written about the relationship between conspiracy theories and hate speech. Too often, conspiracy theories are used to justify irrational hate for one group or another, and to direct anger over lack of control of one's life onto a group the conspiracist ideologically opposes. Historical examples include the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or blood libel and more modern examples include everything from the racist birther allegations that our president isn't American, the homosexual agenda, and the rabid anti-government conspiracy theories advanced by lunatics like Alex Jones,…

And Alex Jones and Mike Adams are their Fred Phelps. It's a wonder that Anonymous doesn't retaliate against these ghouls as well as against Westboro who are planning to picket the Boston Marathon funerals. Why are the the same thing? Because they're all ghouls, and they all use any tragic event to bolster their warped, abhorrent world view no matter what the facts are, and no matter how offensive to the victims. Within minutes, with no one knowing any facts, Jones claims this is a false flag attack. The only appropriate response to an event like this, within the first minutes and hours,…

I was extremely disturbed to see in the NYT's letters a veterinarian's defense of the practice of overuse of antibiotics in animals that suggested transmission of resistant organisms does not occur. Nonsense! It is abundantly clear that antibiotic use in animals results in resistant strains that then colonize humans. They are being recognized as the newest reservoir for strains of MRSA. Unlike the GMO nonsense, this is a clear public health issue with a plausible (and demonstrated) mechanism of transmitted risk to humans. The author of the letter, Charles Hofacre, says two, wildly…

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 Bonnie Lowenthal, a Democratic assemblywoman from Long Beach. It would make Internet companies, upon request, share with Californians personal information they have collected—including buying habits, physical location and sexual orientation—and what they have passed on to third parties such as marketing…

And it may even be more when one considers that there is likely non-overlap between many of these conspiracies. It really is unfortunate that their isn't more social pushback against those that express conspiratorial views. Given both the historical and modern tendency of some conspiracy theories being used direct hate towards one group or another (scratch a 9/11 truther and guess what's underneath), and that they're basically an admission of one's own defective reasoning, why is it socially acceptable to espouse conspiracy theories? They add nothing to discussion, and instead hijack…

Crazy ranting about impending socialism/fascism aside, there are legitimate critiques to be made of Obamacare. One policy in particular that raises my ire is penalizing hospitals over performance metrics and penalizing readmissions in particular. The way it works is, patients are admitted to the hospital, treated, and eventually discharged, but a indicator of failure of adequate care is if that patient then bounces back, and is readmitted shortly after their hospitalization: Under the new federal regulations, hospitals face hefty penalties for readmitting patients they have already treated…

I still think that list is pretty incomplete, the RationalWiki has more, but it's interesting to see a potential internal ideological conflict as Adams sides with big business and the fossil fuel industry to suggest CO2 is the best gas ever. While he doesn't appear to directly deny CO2 is a greenhouse gas, he's managed to merge his anti-government conspiratorial tendencies with his overriding naturalistic fantasy to decide the government (and Al Gore) are conspiring to destroy our power infrastructure with carbon taxes, and deny the world the benefit of 1000ppm CO2 in the atmosphere. His…

It's a sad day for the reality-based community, within the critiques of Jane Goodall's new book 'Seeds of Hope' we find that in addition to plagiarism and sloppiness with facts, she's fallen for anti-GMO crank Jeffrey Smith's nonsense. When asked by The Guardian whom she most despised, Goodall responded, “The agricultural company Monsanto, because I know too much about GM organisms and crops.” She might know too much, but what if what she knows is completely wrong? Many of the claims in Seeds of Hope can also be found in Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered…

For those disturbed by the evils of the hospital chargemaster as exposed by Brill's piece in time, Uwe E. Reinhardt's proposed solution is a must read. While the hospitals are never going to charge the uninsured the same rate as they charge medicare (and probably be less forgiving the more they think they can get out of you), that's no reason we can't force them to with state law. Apparently that's what Reinhardt had them do in Jersey: In the fall of 2007, Gov. Jon Corzine of New Jersey appointed me as chairman of his New Jersey Commission on Rationalizing Health Care Resources. On a ride…

Two links today for denialism blog readers, both are pretty thought provoking. The first, from Amy Tuteur, on the newly-released statistics on homebirth in Oregon. It seems that her crusade to have the midwives share their mortality data is justified, as when they were forced to release this data in Oregon, planned homebirth was about 7-10 times more likely to result in neonatal mortality than planned hospital birth. I'm sure Tuteur won't mind me stealing her figure and showing it here (original source of data is Judith Rooks testimony): Oregon homebirth neonatal mortality statistics, from…

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 environment. But I cannot help but point out that the article could be used to provide more footnotes to the Denialists' Deck of Cards: ... The lead companies also paid scientists who produced flawed studies casting doubt on the link between lead exposure and child health problems. When University of…

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” providers.  Berkeley has joined in by migrating student and faculty to bMail, operated by Google.  In doing so, it has raised some anxiety about privacy and autonomy in communications.  In this post, I outline some advantages of our outsourcing to Google, some disadvantages, and how we might…