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Disco. 'tute: copyright hypocrites

Back when Yoko Ono was suing the makers of Expelled over their use of John Lennon's "Imagine," the Discovery Institute was a hotbed of copyfighters. Disco. DJ Bruce Chapman called Ono a "censor" and pitched it as a battle for free speech. Chapman complains about an Ars.Technica post which rightly notes that "intelligent design is not a scientific theory so much as an attempt to create the appearance of controversy using flashy PR tactics," and that Expelled "greatly exaggerates the persecution of intelligent design advocates": Notice the way the writer feels obliged to abuse free speech—by…

Denmark, a society with God (sort of)

Late last year I reviewed a book by an American sociologist on Danish secularism. The book was titled Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment, and apparently its publication resulted in some controversy in Denmark, in large part due to perceived misrepresentation of the Danish populace by the author. I suspected at the time that part of the issue was that of cultural miscommunication; what "secular" and "religious" are in the United States and Denmark vary a great deal, and the author was attempting to communicate primarily to an American audience…

Genomics is ALL WRONG!

One can acquire all kinds of interesting "scientific" perspectives on the interwebs. For instance, Professor Pallacken Abdul Wahid of Kerala Agricultural University has written a fascinating demolition of genetics and genomics for SciTopics ("Research summaries by experts!" Sponsored by Elsevier!) titled Phenomena of life and death explained based on a computer model of organism in the light of the Quran and the Bible. Take a moment to bask in the wondrous promise of that title before diving into the link. And have no fear, your every hope of delightful wackaloonery will be fulfilled! What…

How much support is the NAS willing to give to religion?

Imagine that a well-funded astrology organization were to establish a prize awarding a good chunk of money to a scientist who best affirmed the validity of astrology, all as part of a campaign to bestow a whiff of credibility to the belief that the position of the stars at the time you were born influenced your fate. Astrologers certainly want to pretend that they are scientific, so it's exactly the kind of thing many of them would love to do; their only problem is that real scientists would laugh them away, and they certainly wouldn't get the support of any of the major scientific…

Dembski's Buddy (part 2): Murphy's Law and Poincare Recurrence

Part two of our crackpot's babblings are actually more interesting in their way, because they touch on a fascinating mathematical issue, which, unfortunately, Mr. Brookfield is compeletely unable to understand: the Poincare recurrence theorem. Brookfield argues that the second law of thermodynamics in not really a law, since it's statistical, and that there must therefore be some real law underlying the statistical behavior normally explained by the second law. Here's his version - be prepared to giggle: "The second law of thermodynamics has a rather different status than that of other…

Unscientific America and those awful atheists

To return to Unscientific America again, I hardly touched on chapter 8, where they express their dismay at those uppity "New Atheists". I am not going to address his personal criticisms of me — there's no point, you obviously know I think he's completely wrong, and the uncharitable will simply claim my disagreement is the result of a personal animus — so instead I'm only going to address a couple of other general points that Mooney and Kirshenbaum get completely wrong. They plainly do not understand the atheist position, and make claims that demonstrate that either they didn't read any of the…

Comparing Sanders and Clinton: Primary and general election prospects

It is far too early to predict the outcome of the Democratic Party primary. Personally, I like both of the candidates and will support whichever one is selected to run in the general election. Both candidates have strong reasons to vote for them, and each candidate has their own “electability” issues. I vote on March 1st, and have not yet decided whom to vote for. Why would I start out an essay, an essay that is meant to be an objective analysis, with that statement? Because the validity of a statement, opinion, or analysis of the current primary process is inevitably evaluated in terms of…

Climate Change and the Integrity of Science

Science has published a letter with 250 signatories protesting the recent and extreme attacks on scientists, climate scientists in particular. I agree with Michael, this letter should not be behind a paywall. I think the fact that it is, is disturbingly revealing of the disadvantage science has in the PR arenas. It is very well done, though to be honest I wish they had not pushed the creationist button and had instead used an entirely different example of well established science to make their point. As scientifically non-controvesial as the age of the earth is, we need to reach even those…

Falsehoods: Has evolution stopped for humans?

In my initial list of Falsehoods, I included these two closely related items: Evolution has stopped for humans; and Serious scientists often entertain the question: "Has evolution stopped for humans?" I'll make the distinction between them clear eventually. For now, let's focus on the first: Has evolution stopped for humans or not? The reason we bring up these falsehoods to begin with is because examining them exposes assumptions or requires the investigation of knowledge that is worth talking about. In this case, the deeper question is this: What is evolution exactly? So, this is a…

Senate Confirmation Hearings - NOAA and Science Advisor

Updated - The archived video is now available on the committee website, so I've been able to go back and fill in the details I missed due to earlier technical problems. Due to technical problems, this liveblog of the Confirmation hearings for Jane Lubchenco and John Holdren begins in progress. Dr. Lubchenco is giving her opening statement. ....... Opening Statements: Dr. Holdren: Honor and privilege to appear as Office of Science and Technology Policy nominee. Office has two areas of responsibility. One is input into policy, education and training, and fostering innovation. Other is…

Friday Grey Matters: Irene Pepperberg Interview!

Well, its been a long time coming, and further delayed by grants, labwork, and Irene's hand injury. But, Irene and I finally got on the phone last weekend and chatted a bit about her work, her birds, and her uncertain future in the field. Irene Pepperberg is someone who I've admired since early undergrad, and she's been a bit of a role model for me. During grad school interviews, I tried to track her down and interview with her at the University of Arizona (who lied and told me she was there, despite her moving to MIT). I would have loved to have worked with her, although now I realize that…

Yet another bad day for the anti-vaccine movement 2011

Here we go again. Having been in the blogging biz for nearly seven years and developed a special interest in the anti-vaccine movement, I think I've been at this long enough to make some observations with at least a little authority. One thing that I've noticed is a very consistent pattern in which, every time a new study or report released that either fails to find evidence that vaccines cause autism or significant harm or that even concludes that vaccines do not cause autism, the anti-vaccine movement is right there, ready to attack it with pseudoscience, misinformation, and exaggerations…

The return of the living Choprawoo

I was originally planning to do a real science post today. Indeed, there are at least two or three interesting studies that have been released in the last month or two that I've been meaning to write up, you know, to lose the snark and make this a real Science Blog. True, having a little fun deconstructing the silliness of homeopaths or antivaccinationists is educational (not to mention entertaining and so fun). However, very so often I feel the need to get serious, and over the last couple of weeks I think I let the snark run a bit more wild than usual, not counterbalanced as much with…

Luskin's ludicrous genetics

I mentioned before that IDEA clubs insist that expertise is optional; well, it's clear that that is definitely true. Casey Luskin, the IDEA club coordinator and president, has written an utterly awful article "rebutting" part of Ken Miller's testimony in the Dover trial. It is embarrassingly bad, a piece of dreck written by a lawyer that demonstrates that he knows nothing at all about genetics, evolution, biology, or basic logic. I'll explain a few of his misconceptions about genetics, errors in the reproductive consequences of individuals with Robertsonian fusions, and how he has completely…

Bill Maher doubles down on his antivaccine misinformation...again

Baratunde Thurston and Zanny Minton Bedoes react to a particularly ignorant bit of antivaccine misinformation by Bill Maher on Real Time With Bill Maher. (February 13, 2015) I really don't want Mondays to be come "let's refute and make fun of the conspiratorial antivaccine nonsense Bill Maher said on his show Friday night." I really don't. However, I figured that I might have to devote Monday to that one more time this week after Maher really let his antivaccine freak flag fly again for the first time in five years on his February 6 show. As a result of the criticism, Maher apologists…

USA TODAY flubs it big time over right-to-try laws

I hadn’t expected to write about this topic again so soon, but then I didn’t expect a major newspaper to have written such a boneheaded editorial about it. In a way, I hate to write this post, because USA TODAY did great things once. There, Liz Szabo wrote the single best science-based report on cancer quack Stanislaw Burzynski. Still, even usually reliable news outlets make mistakes, and in this case the editorial board of USA TODAY made a huge one when it published an editorial entitled FDA vs. right to try: Our view. Seriously, if there’s a case to be made for right-to-try laws, this…

Doctors avoiding their duty to terminally ill patients

She was thin, white skin stretched over bones like worn parchment over old sticks being rhythmically blown in the wind as her chest rose and fell, each time with what seemed like a major effort. Incongruous with the rest of her body, her abdomen was distended, a balloon that looked dangerously close to popping, also rising and falling with each breath. She moaned softly and looked at me. I introduced myself, told her I was a surgeon, and continued, "Your oncologist asked me to see you about your belly pain." "Go ahead," she croaked, hardly acknowledging my presence in the way that patients…

Naturopaths and vaccines

I realize I've been remiss. After all, three or four weeks ago, I pointed out that the week of October 7 to 14, this very week, was going to be Quackery Week. Well, it wasn't actually I who first declared this week quackery week. It was actually our very own U.s. Senate, which, as I pointed out, passed S.Res.221, which declared: A resolution designating the week of October 7 through October 13, 2013, as “Naturopathic Medicine Week” to recognize the value of naturopathic medicine in providing safe, effective, and affordable health care. Given that the vast majority of naturopathy is quackery…

Why a case report being circulated by advocates doesn't show that the ketogenic diet combats cancer

It's October again, which is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. As someone who takes care of breast cancer patients, I have a love-hate relationship with October. On the good side, I like seeing positive messages about what's going on in breast cancer research, advocacy, and clinical treatment. On the other hand, the quacks come out. I also see a lot of bad breast cancer studies. You might think that I'd like that too because it provides blog fodder. I could actually do without that, but in this case I happened to come across a "study" that illustrates why I detest how those promoting unproven…

Torturing more mice in the name of antivaccine pseudoscience

Of all the vaccines out there, it’s hard for me to decide which among them antivaccine activists fear and detest the most. Sure, there’s the MMR vaccine, the original granddaddy bete noire, demonized so successfully by Andrew Wakefield as causing autism based on some of the flimsiest evidence ever, evidence later shown to be fraudulent. That has to be near the top of the list of any of the vaccines demonized by the antivaccine movement, despite is safety and efficacy. After all, it is the mMR vaccine that people like Del Bigtree, Andrew Wakefield, and Polly Tommey are still flogging as the…

REVEALED: Disgraced antivax "scientist" Andrew Wakefield met with Donald Trump in August to promote his "CDC whistleblower" conspiracy movie

As I write this, the 2016 Election is lurching painfully to its conclusion, with about a week to go. In my entire adult life, dating back to when I first reached the age where I started paying attention to politics in the late 1970s, I cannot remember a more bizarre or painful election, nor can I remember an election in which one possible outcome actually terrifies me. I’m referring to the possibility of Donald Trump becoming our next President. I’ve made no secret of my contempt for his xenophobia, his blatant sexism and misogyny, his change from using racist dog whistles to racist bullhorns…

Why wither Goldschmidt?

On November 23rd, 1858, T.H. Huxley wrote one of the most famous letters in the history of science to Charles Darwin. While the letter is perhaps most widely known for Huxley's staunch support of On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection against the opposition both were sure would come out against the book (Huxley opining that "I am sharpening up my claws & beak in readiness."), the letter also contains another important quote. As much as Huxley was taken with Darwin's book, he did have some reservations about one aspect of Darwin's idea that came up over and over again; The only…

The Return of the Compression Idiot

Remember a while back, I wrote about a crackpot who pestered me both about converting to Christianity, and his wonderful, miraculous compression system? He claimed to be able to repeatedly compress any file, making it smaller each time. Well, he's back pestering me again. Repeatedly asking him to leave me alone, shouting at him, etc., hasn't worked. (His current claim is that he doesn't know how to delete me from his gmail contacts list.) So I'm resorting to another round of public humiliation, which I hope will be informative and entertaining as well. To remind you of the relevant…

Yes, Virginia, there is an antivaccine movement (efforts to deny it notwithstanding)

There are times when I want to fall down on my knees and give thanks for certain cranks. I mean, where would my blogging material come from, were it not for antivaccine loons, quacks, cranks, creationists, and animal rights terrorists providing me with an unending stream of blog fodder? Were they all to disappear, I'd be reduced to blogging about puppies or music or something, and, trust me, you wouldn't want that. Of course, my readership would flee me faster than a advocates of gay marriage flee the Republican Party; so I guess it wouldn't matter. I know which side my bread is buttered on;…

Noble Savages: Napoleon Chagnon's Fierce Book

Napoleon Chagnon spent years living among the Yanomamo of Venezuela and wrote, among other things, a classic ethnography still used widely in anthropology classes. It came to pass that Chagnon and his ethnography came under scrutiny, actually a few waves of scrutiny, from practitioners of cultural anthropology in part because his monograph depicted the Yanomamo as “fierce people” and this characterization of them was used, misused really, against them by outside forces including the government to justify their “pacification.” The Yanomamo were indeed being abused by these outside forces, and…

The quack view of preventing cancer versus reality and Angelina Jolie, part 4

Why, oh why, did I look at GreenMedInfo again? You remember GreenMedInfo? It's yet another wretched hive of scum and quackery, but with a twist. Its proprietor, Sayer Ji, thinks he's an expert at interpreting the biomedical literature. Unfortunately, as he demonstrates time and time again with depressing regularity, he is nothing of the sort. In reality, what Ji is an expert at is cherry picking medical studies and torturing them until they confess agreement with whatever quack idea he's currently espousing. In the wake of the news coverage of Angelina Jolie's decision to have her ovaries…

Patient empowerment: Who should call the shots?

"Empowerment." What a grand word! After all, who doesn't want to be "empowered"? Certainly not me. Perhaps that's the reason why it's become the new buzzword in a movement known as "patient-centered" care. Old fart that I am, I'm a bit puzzled by exactly what that term means. After all, I've always thought I have been practicing patient-centered care, ever since my first days in medical school, but apparently these days it means something different, at least if this article from a few days ago in the New York Times is any indication. It's an interview with Dr. Donald Berwick, who advocates…

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Applied kinesiology, but only more woo-ful

I have an MD and a PhD. While many people find that to be impressive, personally I've become so inured of it that I certainly don't take note of it much anymore. Certainly, I rarely point it out. So, you may ask, why am I pointing it out this time, even going so far as to start a post with it? The answer is simple. If there was one thing I always thought about having both an MD and a PhD, it's that it should render one more resistant to pseudoscience and woo. I know, I know, maybe I'm being incredibly arrogant or incredibly naive--possibly both--but it was what I thought for a long time, even…

After all this time, Dr. Bob Sears finally tips his hand on vaccines, part III

Dr. Robert Sears (a.k.a. "Dr. Bob), author of The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child, is definitely antivaccine. His mouth may say, "No, I'm not antivaccine," but his actions say, "Yes, yes, yes!" There, I finally said it. I've been flirting with saying it that bluntly for some time now, but have been tending to avoid it. I really didn't want to conclude this about "Dr. Bob," but, sadly, he's left me no choice. What else can I conclude from his actions over the last three months, when he's clearly solidly allied himself with the worst elements of the anti-vaccine movement…

More legal thuggery against a defender of science-based medicine

ORAC SAYS: Please note my disclaimer. After the events of last week, I'm a bit sensitive when it comes to matters like the one I'm about to discuss. Having the anti-vaccine cranks over at the Age of Autism weblog trying to get me fired over my blogging has a tendency to do that to me. (The details are out there if you haven't heard of it; I will say nothing more of it here.) In any case, if there's anything the events of last week drove home to me, it's that a sina qua non of anti-science cranks like the leaders of the anti-vaccine movement is that, when faced with serious scientific…

Quoth "Dr. Bob" Sears: Poor, poor pitiful me, you stupid people

Poor, poor, pitiful Dr. Bob. For those of you not familiar with him, I'm referring, of course, to Robert "Dr. Bob" Sears, MD, the antivaccine-sympathetic (or, more appropriately, antivaccine-pandering) pediatrician in Capistrano Beach, CA (between Los Angeles and San Diego in Orange County) known for his Vaccine Book, a veritable font of antivaccine misinformation gussied up as a "reasonable" middle ground. Too bad it's not. In any case, in the wake of the Disneyland measles outbreak, Dr. Bob has found himself under a lot of criticism, along with our "good buddy," the other famous…

If you want some cancer woo, and you want it now, who ya gonna call? Mike Adams!

In a way, I have to hand it to Mike Adams. As you may recall, Mike Adams is the man behind what is arguably one of the top two or three woo-filled sites on the Internet, NaturalNews.com (formerly known as NewsTarget.com). I'm hard-pressed to come up with an example of someone who can deliver delusional paranoid conspiracy-mongering against the FDA, CDC, and big pharma, antivaccination lunacy, overblown claims about cancer, and (in my considered medical opinion, of course), dangerous cancer quackery, all in one tidy, ranting package. Sometimes the stuff Adams writes is so over-the-top that I…

Is the infiltration of "integrative medicine" into medicine as relentless as we thought? Maybe not...

If there's one thing about the march of the pseudomedical entity known as "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM), "integrative medicine," "complementary and integrative medicine" (CIM), "complementary and integrative health" (CIH), it's that over the last 25 years or so its progress towards being mainstreamed has appeared utterly relentless. I like to paraphrase Kyle Reese, the warrior from the future sent back in time to save Sarah Connor in The Terminator: "Listen, and understand. That terminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel…

Evidence-based medicine guidelines versus patient wishes

There's a misconception that I frequently hear about evidence-based medicine (EBM), which can equally apply to science-based medicine (SBM). Actually, there are several, but they are related. These misconceptions include the idea that EBM/SBM guidelines are a straightjacket, that they are "cookbook medicine," and that EBM/SBM should be the be-all and end-all of how to practice clinical medicine. New readers might not be familiar with the difference between EBM and SBM, and here is not the place to explain the difference in detail because this post isn't primarily about that difference. The…

Correct, Crank, or Crazy?

So the other day Sam Harris was asked to speak to the TED conference, and he presented what he believes to be a basis for scientifically validating morals and values. This is interesting, as most people who've studied the issue have concluded, for pretty compelling reasons, that this is not the sort of thing that's really possible. Now, I haven't seen Harris's talk, as I don't care for watching YouTube and it's not a form well-suited for evaluating what would be, if true, a fairly radical discovery. The thing is, skepticism gives you a toolkit for addressing such circumstances. When…

Friday Random Recipe: Chicken Paprikash

The year before our first kid was born, my wife and I went on vacation in Budapest. It was a beautiful city, and the food was wonderful - I particularly loved the chicken paprikash that they seemed to server everywhere. When I got home, I started looking for recipes to reproduce it. This is the closest I've been able to come. The most important thing for this recipe is the paprika. Get good hungarian paprika. American paprika is pretty much just powdered red food coloring. Hungarian paprika is a richly flavorful spice which is the heart of this dish. Ingredients 3 tablespoons Sweet…

Order From Chaos Using Graphs: Ramsey Theory

One application of graph theory that's particularly interesting to me is called Ramsey theory. It's particularly interesting as someone who debunks a lot of creationist nonsense, because Ramsey theory is in direct opposition to some of the basic ideas used by bozos to purportedly refute evolution. What Ramsey theory studies is when some kind of ordered structure *must* appear, even in a pathologically chaotic process. Ramsey theory is focused largely on *structures* that exhibit particular properties, and those structures are usually represented as graphs. For example, the most common…

Senator Kennedy Writes the Mad Biologist

So I wrote Senator Kennedy (and Senator Kerry) an email about the upcoming FISA/retroactive immunity legislation. Here's his response: Dear [Mad Biologist]: Thank you for your recent letter on the President's warrantless wiretapping program and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Protecting our national security is a vital concern, but one that must be balanced with protecting our civil liberties. Like most Americans, I was disturbed to learn about President Bush's secret authorization of warrantless wiretaps on American citizens. The Administration claimed the policy was needed to…

Experimentation, IQ, and "Jewgenics"

I've been reading about the AEI seminar about IQ in Ashkenazic (of European ancestry) Jews with some interest (ScienceBlogling Razib raises a really good point that I hadn't thought of too). A few years ago, I was asked to review a paper that dealt with this issue. Let me state that I think IQ as a measure of intelligence doesn't mean all that much, except when it is extremely low or extremely high. Nonetheless, it is a trait that we can measure--we should just be very careful about how much importance we place on IQ. OK, back to the paper I was asked to review. It basically made the same…

Randomness Versus Stochasticity

In a recent post, I mentioned the common confusion between randomness and stochasticity. A couple of commentors brought this issue up, so I'll discuss it further (I really do read your comments...). Needless to say, with mathematicians and philosophers lurking around these ScienceBlogs, I'm giving one biologist's amateur perspective on what these terms mean. Let's start with randomness. I don't mean random in an existential 'does life have any meaning?' sense (Yawn. You bore me. Stop worrying about that and go do something meaningful. Or have an ice cream cone). By random, I mean…

Krugman and Academia

From the archives, here's a post about Paul Krugman's explanation of why academia is so full of those goddamn libruls (originally published April 6, 2005). Yesterday, Paul Krugman wrote an editorial about the high proportion of liberals in academia. His major point was that the anti-intellectualism of the Republican Party has waged an incessant cultural war against academics to gain its 'populist' bona fides. Consequently, they have driven academics into the Democratic Party. This is mostly right: in fact, many faculty, even if they are ideologically liberal, are tempermentally conservative (…

Hitler's library

This is a fascinating article about Hitler's library: he was an avid collector and reader, and part of his collection still exists, and you can even stroll down to the Library of Congress and ask to browse through the stockpile. The bulk of the books are about military strategy and tactics, and a subset are Hitler's personal favorite light reading, cowboy stories. But there are also many religious texts that give insight into the way his mind worked. Experts since then have been of two minds on the matter of Hitler's spiritual beliefs. Ian Kershaw argues that Hitler consciously constructed an…

I get email

Keep that recent xkcd in mind when you read this one. This is from a creationist who is convinced all those biologists have it completely wrong, because Clovis points are beautiful artifacts. Im digging in Ancient mans kitchen Why is it that the deeper I Dig , the more brilliant the artifacts become… Isn't that opposite of the Darwin view? Clovis, First view, Plainview,… these guys were far advanced when it came to the quality of life.. I always was taught the older man was the dumber he was.. That's not accurate in my pea brain view of what I am personally researching… My digging buds…

Stupid Economic Comparisons at the New York Times

This is just a short gripe at the NYT, and a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/10/14/opinion/20081014_OPCHART.html">feature that they included in today's Op-Ed section. It purports to compare how the economy does under democratic versus republican administrations. They claim that they're computing the returns on a 10,000 dollar stock investment under 40 years of republican administrations and 40 years of democratic administrations, in the 80 years since 1929. The whole comparison is pretty idiotic to begin with. Comparing stock prices over different time spans is already…

Tibet & Tibetans, not coterminus

Daniel Larison says: Reliable information is a bit hard to come by, but it seems as if the policy of increased Han Chinese colonisation in Tibet has finally run up against a violent popular backlash. I haven't anything very insightful to say about this, but it is one of the major foreign affairs stories this week and merits some mention here. Made me wonder. Wikipedia says that the Tibetan Autonomous Region is still a little over 90% Tibetan. In contrast, in Xinjiang at least 40% of the population is Han. The main city, Urumqi is 3/4 Han. So comparatively Tibet is actually not much…

Boston's Accidental Stumbling Towards Environmentally Friendy Transportation

Monday, The NY Times had an interesting story about Zurich, Switzerland's intentional policy of making car-based transportation utterly miserable--and thereby convincing people to use other transit options: While American cities are synchronizing green lights to improve traffic flow and offering apps to help drivers find parking, many European cities are doing the opposite: creating environments openly hostile to cars. The methods vary, but the mission is clear -- to make car use expensive and just plain miserable enough to tilt drivers toward more environmentally friendly modes of…

Bin Laden's Death Could Affect Obama's 2012 Chances-But in an Indirect Way

Part of the discussion surrounding the elimination of Osama bin Laden has taken a somewhat ghoulish turn: what does it mean for Obama's re-election chances? While I'm more of a zombies-eat-brains! type of guy, I'm certainly willing to be ghoulish, especially when it gives me the chance to discuss some interesting political science. A couple of years ago, political scientist Douglas Hibbs published a model that describes the percentage of the vote an incumbent party will receive in a presidential election based on only two factors: disposable income and U.S. military causalities. By his…

Genetic thugs in the house!

I've been a bit anal about genetic drift over the past few days. The reason is simple, replace "random genetic drift" with "sampling error", and note how ridiculous some of the things scientists will say to journalists when they come a callin' sound all of a sudden. "Hm...no, I haven't done research in this area, but it seems like sampling error could generate that sort of pattern." "Well, it could be sampling error, they can't prove it isn't." I'm not saying that random genetic drift isn't a good null hypothesis, I'm just saying that it is a deux ex machina that sounds good when you can't…

Mormonism isn't that weird

Ross Douthat has a quick comment on a Noah Feldman piece on Mormonism. Feldman is really, really smart; but his argument is a bit more extended than it needs to be. This interest in the religion is basically sparked by the Romney candidacy. A few quick points: First, the evangelical Protestant (and to a lesser extent other Christians) hostility toward Mormonism is I think pretty comprehensible and requires little analytic decomposition: they think Mormons are liars. Specifically, Mormon theology is so different from the range of ideas in circulation among "orthodox" Christians that most…

Pope Benedict, the good & the bad

Since this blog has basically turned into a forum for my opinions about religion, I thought I'd offer my comments on Pope Benedict's challenge to Islam and secularism. First, I'll point you to John Wilkins' deconstruction of Benedict's misimpressions of evolutionary theory. Ah, the bad. But what about the good? The good is that Benedict is challenging Islam and demanding that it join the civilized and castrated stable of modern organized religions. The universe is characterized by cycles, and organized religions arose first in their prototypical form with the rising priesthoods of city…