denialism | June 15, 2007La Corte de los Milagros translates the Crank HOWTO!
I'm flattered. Thanks Martin.
denialism | June 15, 2007I just knew it. The second I read this abstract I just knew that the Uncommon Descent cranks would dust off their old "Junk DNA" harangue and suggest that if it wasn't for them, no one would believe that all that non-coding DNA had a purpose. Sal Cordova obliged, and it's the usual embarrassing misread of our literature.
Heaven forbid that scientists should be so brash as to not infer purpose into everything without studying it first. I've been waiting to use "promiscuous teleology" in a post, I guess this is my chance. But that's not even necessary in this case, this is such an egregious…
choofnagle | June 14, 2007Watch your newsstand for the July issue of Harper's Magazine. Today's Wall Street Journal reports today that Harper's Ken Silverstein has written an article describing his experience posing as a businessman with interests in improving the image of Turkmenistan. He approaches lobbying firms, and hints that he represents a front company that can direct oil revenues to officials in Turkmenistan.
The results are very revealing. They show how lobbying and public relations strategies work--attack opponents as "biased," hold bogus conferences to lure journalists hosted by others (the so called "…
denialism | June 14, 2007George Monbiot posts his last reply to Alexander Cockburn.
Wisely, Monbiot has chosen not to continue arguing with a crank. At a certain point it's always a lost cause. And considering Cockburn's evidence one would be crazy to continue.
It turns out, the sole-source of his rambling diatribe against all global warming science - the papers from Martin "Guy I met on a boat" Hertzburg - turned out not to be papers at all. They were never published, never peer reviewed. The only peer-reviewed literature Cockburn managed to find to agree with him was published in Lyndon Larouche's fake…
denialism | June 13, 2007I'm surprised it took as long as a day for denialists like Patrick Michaels to gloat over the finding that the loss of the ice caps on Kilimanjaro - an example used by Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth - has turned out to be from causes other than global warming (a more in depth paper).
But one thing they usually won't mention when they quote these articles - how Kilimanjaro was the exception that proved the rule.
In an article in the July-August edition of American Scientist, Mote and Kaser also cited decreased snowfall in the area as a driver of melt because bright, white snow reflects…
denialism | June 13, 2007Now it's the "Rachel Carson killed millions" nonsense over at Uncommon Descent and it's based upon this WSJ editorial from Dr. Zaramba, the health minister for Uganda.
What's really embarrassing is how they link the entire article and it's clear they didn't even read it.
BarryA writes:
When I got home I did some research and was horrified to learn that the malaria epidemic in Africa is perhaps the most preventable health care tragedy in the history of the world. We could eradicate African malaria if only we would allow them to use DDT to combat the mosquitos that spread the disease. I also…
denialism | June 12, 2007
As promised, I'm going through the three papers from last week about the re-programming of adult cells into an embryonic-like phenotype. Since it is three papers I'll go through first what's common to all three, and then what each group did special.
First of all, let's summarize the method one more time.
Background
All of these papers are based on the "rational identification" of 4 critical transcription factors by Yamanaka in 2006. What they did was take 20 proteins that drive the expression of other genes that were known to be in embryonic stem cells, and added them to adult cells to…
denialism | June 11, 2007Anyone else want to venture a guess as to what that ending was about?
To those who haven't seen it - I'd avoid going below the fold - it will be a spoiler.
This is a total spoiler so seriously stop reading if you don't want to talk about the end of the series.
Watching the show on a DVR I was thinking for a minute, "holy crap TiVo just froze at the worst possible moment." Then I realized it was purposeful - just a fade to black after a kind of suspicious camera-glance at some customer who came into the bar who made you think Tony was about to be whacked.
I definitely got how A.J. was…
denialism | June 11, 2007Last week we discussed the nomination of Dr. James Holsinger to be Surgeon General of the United States, and our concerns considering his anti-gay views.
Now Jim Burroway has done a thorough dissection of Holsinger's attempt to use science to advocate for homophobic policies in his church and it's about as skewed and cherry-picked as something Paul Cameron would advocate.
This is of significant concern as the Surgeon General is supposed to be a science educator, someone who informs the public about medicine and health-related issues. The fact that this nominee has abused science previously…
denialism | June 9, 2007It's a good read, also check out MarkCC's review
It's another example of cranks not recognizing talent - or rather the absence of it. And Sean Carroll hits pretty hard in his review making the point that there are so many basic errors in the book that Behe isn't doing ID any favors. He ends with this:
The continuing futile attacks by evolution's opponents reminds me of another legendary confrontation, that between Arthur and the Black Knight in the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The Black Knight, like evolution's challengers, continues to fight even as each of his limbs is hacked…
denialism | June 8, 2007Ever since I heard the link I was hoping for something more solid than the weak associations I was hearing about on NPR and other news sources. It seemed very preliminary, and a bit worrisome that, especially in the foreign press, that they were claiming things like the New Orleans/Katrina disaster was the first example of a global warming disaster. The evidence simply wasn't conclusive and in general in science, results need to age. It's like cheese or wine, you wait for the results that get better with time, and you have to be patient.
I'm reading now in New Scientist that the…
choofnagle | June 8, 2007
And finally, we come to the final card. Perhaps industry's strongest card--"we'll lose money"--is not really denialism, but it is what motivates so much of the bad rhetoric in public policy debates.
And of course, the truth is more nuanced. Proposals for reform create new opportunities, and many businesses have thrived under the very proposals they said would wreak havoc.
"Wall Street...has greeted practically every important market regulation introduced in this century with howls of dismay and predictions of disaster. In 1934, the head of the New York Stock Exchange told Congress that if…
denialism | June 8, 2007Ben Goldacre at Bad Science is leading the way on opposing this new absurdity of "electric smog", and one of it's leading proponents in Britain, Julia Stephenson.
It's really too easy. Remember the crank HOWTO? Well, she's just about a perfect example.
It all started when she got wifi in her apartment...
Within a couple of weeks she felt tired and fatigued, so she removed it, and then she felt better!
Two years ago I got Wi-Fi. It was convenient, as I could work anywhere in my flat. But within a few weeks began to suffer from a lack of energy and insomnia, and had difficulty…
denialism | June 7, 2007I see that Tim Blair has decided to quote mine me. As part of my analysis of Cockburn's crankery I made the following statement.
Below the fold I'll summarize Cockburn's arguments and how they use the denialist tactics, George Monbiot's responses (including his amazing crank-fu!) and discuss why in the future we may start seeing global warming denialism from the left as well as the right.
...
It's important to remember both the left and the right have anti-scientific tendencies, the left's just tend to be less religious, less world-threatening and more woo-based. My brother recently told me…
denialism | June 7, 2007After yesterdays pathetic article from the WaPo suggesting that scores were "up" (whatever that means under the moronic patchwork that evolved under the law) it was nice to see the NYT get it right. Their article exposes the joke of state standardized testing in response to the law, and further demonstrates how meaningless standardized testing is as a way to reform schools.
The law requires that all students be brought to proficiency by 2014, but lets each state set its own proficiency standards and choose its own tests to measure achievement.
In essence, the report issued today creates a…
choofnagle | June 7, 2007
Suricou Raven guessed it--after calling your opponent "Unamerican," you call them "Communist." Here, use loaded phrases, such as "the proposal smacks of the paternalistic 'command and control' of Communism."
denialism | June 7, 2007At Polite Company.
My favorite is Reasic's late but thorough dissection of Michael Crichton in his "Aliens Cause Global Warming" speech.
denialism | June 6, 2007I hope this time I'm finally right about this. I've been hopeful that some strategy of developing stem cells would allow us to bypass the absurd ethical restrictions from those who think one type of destruction of an embryo is worse than another. Particularly promising were spermatogonial stem cells, but they could only be made from men (and the procedure might have been unpopular), and placental/amniotic stem cells, which were limited by the ability to passage them without differentiation, and supply (not everybody freezes back their placentas).
The ideal stem cell would have the following…
denialism | June 6, 2007The Human Rights Campaign is concerned, and I would tend to agree, that Bush's recent nominee for Surgeon General has the earmarks of an homophobe.
In a document titled "Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality," Holsinger opined, in his capacity as a physician, that biology and anatomy precluded considering gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equality in his denomination. The opinion very clearly states that this is his scientific view, stating that theological views are separate.
Additionally, Holsinger and his wife were founders of Hope Springs Community Church which, according to the…
denialism | June 6, 2007Another credulous article on the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law appears today in the Washington Post. As someone who knows many teachers who have had experience with similar stupid laws in Virginia, and the history of the Bush administration pushing for these kinds of laws based on the "Texas Education Miracle", I'm far more skeptical about any real gains in learning as a result of standardized testing.
But first, you have to understand what Bush, and his education secretary Rod Paige, really did as governor of Texas for education (take a guess), and how standardized testing is a cynical…