conspiracies
denialism | June 8, 2009Our recent discussions of HIV/AIDS denial and in particular Seth Kalichman's book "Denying AIDS" has got me thinking more about the psychology of those who are susceptible to pseudoscientific belief. It's an interesting topic, and Kalichman studies it briefly in his book mentioning the "suspicious minds":
At its very core, denialism is deeply embedded in a sense of mistrust. Most obviously, we see suspicion in denialist conspiracy theories. Most conspiracy theories grow out of suspicions about corruptions in government, industry, science, and medicine, all working together in some grand…
denialism | May 14, 2009Tomorrow Angels and Demons comes to theaters across the country. One in a long series of movies that profits from the idea that underneath our regular, ordinary world, there are powerful forces controlling the scenes. I understand the appeal of these movies, it's an entertaining concept. A fictional conspiracy engages your intellect, creates a mystery, makes you think about the world and who is in control. But we have to remember when we see these films that these are works of fiction for entertainment. The Illuminati are not real, this sadly ludicrous belief still persists for some…
denialism | April 20, 2009Via Brayton I caught this disturbing video of the new right-wing fringe movement:
Now, if you guys have been following along for the last few years of denialism blog, you know you should immediately be suspicious of people alleging conspiracy theories. This one is a doozy. The administration as a culmination of a 5 decade communist plot to take over the country? This movement is disturbing, and as radical and unhinged as the 9/11 truthers. I would emphasize as always, no political ideology is safe from this paranoid fringe, and this is a great example of how ideology is the universal…
denialism | December 18, 2008Please check out this week's skeptics' circle at Happy Jihad's House of Pancakes.
Of note, I liked Dr Austs' post on the human toll of HIV/AIDS denialism, it is stirring. I also found the Skeptic's field guide particularly interesting. I would have two suggestions. One would be to prioritize by frequency of use or rhetorical appeal rather than alphabetical, and second would be to include a section on conspiracy (like the ones the Lay Scientist and Dubito Ergo Sum describe in this issue ), which I believe is the hallmark of all denialist arguments. If you need a non-parsimonious conspiracy…
sb admin | September 2, 2008(HT to Nisbet...really)
With the "choice" of Governor Palin as the vice presidential candidate, the GOP must now face up to questions about the teaching of creation myths is public school science classes. The new talking point? "It's a local issue." Science is local?
Lucky for the GOP, Governor Pawlenty wasn't chosen for veep, given his responses to Tom Brokaw on Meet the Press. Pawlenty apparently missed the whole Dover thing, wherein ID was shown to be Creationism, and Creationism was found to be "teaching religion" and not appropriate for public school science classes.
Pawlenty brought…
denialism | July 28, 2008Everyone this morning should check out a new favorite website of mine the International Journal of Inactivism. Frank Bi has created a wonderful little catalog of global warming conspiracy theories that nicely illustrate the fundamental defects of reasoning used by the denialists. In particular, I enjoyed his genealogy of climate conspiracy theories.
When we first started here, our first post after the introduction was on the non-parsimonious conspiracy as one of the primary indicators of pseudoscientific argument. Frank Bi has done a wonderful job showing just how dependent the global…
choofnagle | June 4, 2008Yesterday, it was the Times with "Experts Revive Debate Over Cellphones and Cancer". Today, it's the Journal with "Do Fuel-Saving Gadgets Take You for a Ride?", which includes this little gem from a gadget maker:
The EPA and FTC "only test the ones that don't work," says Louis H. Elwell III, chairman and president of Vortex Fluid Optimizer Corp. The Hattiesburg, Miss., company makes the Vortex Fuel Saver, a system that uses magnets to affect the fuel, air and coolant entering an engine. He says the Vortex uses technology that boosts fuel economy by at least 10%.
Yes, Louis, that's right, the…
sb admin | June 1, 2008I was glancing at the Huffington Post today when I ran into yet another piece of what I wish was absurdist health reporting. Unfortunately, it's meant to be taken seriously.
What's even worse is that there is a real problem hidden in the hyperbole, but the author's over-the-top rant does more to obscure than expose the issue.
In this country, we've never known how to deal with psychiatric disease. From the mass institutionalization present for much of our history, to the massive de-institutionalization of the mid-1960's, from forced lobotomies and sterilizations, to the development of…
sb admin | April 30, 2008The room was dark---preturnaturally dark (damn you, Stephen Donaldson!). I was led by the robed and hooded figures to an altar. On the altar was a...something, and it was covered with a cloth. The cloth was a remarkable black, the kind of black that escapes focus. It created an even darker hole in the already dark chamber.
Two of the figures picked up what appeared to be some type of rope, and slowly pulled. The cloth rose from the altar, revealing a box, but what a box! It was of no material I have ever seen. It was clear, but also thick. With the cloth removed, I could see lights…
denialism | April 17, 2008Slate has a series of three articles on what editor Daniel Engber refers to as "the paranoid style". Starting with A crank's progress, sliding into a review of Doubt is their product, and finishing with a spot-on review of Expelled he runs the guantlet of modern denialism. He also happens to hit upon the major commonalities between all pseudoscientists, which of course I find gratifying. For instance, read his description of Berlinski and how he nails the truisms in detecting the false skeptic:
Forgive me if I don't pause here to defend the conventional wisdom on evolution and cosmology. (…
denialism | November 14, 2007 Richard Black investigates the common crank claim that science is just an old boys network designed to throw sweet, sweet grant money at their friends. Guess what? The evidence of this conspiracy is lacking.
I anticipated having to spend days, weeks, months even, sifting the wheat from the chaff, going backwards and forwards between journal editors, heads of department, conference organisers, funding bodies and the original plaintiffs.
I envisaged major headaches materialising as I tried to sort out the chains of events, attempting to decipher whether claims had any validity, or were…
denialism | October 30, 2007It's already got the fundamentalists up in arms. Apparently, one of them managed to read something outside the accepted cannon of Christ-like books and now they're all bothered about the December 7th release (see trailer) of the first installment of Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy - the Golden Compass (IMDB).
According to CNSNews.com, leading atheist writers and intellectuals are engaged in a "scientific" quest to ultimately destroy organized religion, particularly Christianity. Oxford professor Richard Dawkins, author Sam Harris and journalist Christopher Hitchens are some of…
denialism | August 31, 2007Leave it to AEI writing for the WSJ editorial page to allege a grand conspiracy of the government against pharmaceutical companies. Their proof? The government wants to compare the efficacy of new drugs to older ones to make sure they're actually better.
The reauthorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (Schip), created in 1997 to cover children from lower-income families who make too much to qualify for Medicaid, is up for renewal this fall. Tucked into page 414, section 904 of the House bill is a provision to spend more than $300 million to establish a new federal "…
denialism | August 6, 2007Alert readers have brought to my attention two articles of interest to the study of denialism. First a big fat article in Newsweek entitled The Truth About Denial is a good overview of the anti-scientific crusade of conservative crank tanks to dispute global warming. It has a nice timeline of the development of the denialist movement in response to the unwanted science, examples of the cranks in congress that have latched onto and internalized the arguments that confirm what they want to hear, and their classic tactics of cherry-picking and confusing climate with weather.
The second, and I'…
denialism | July 18, 2007New Scientist has an interesting article by Patrick Leman on the psychology of believing in conspiracy theories.
Belief in conspiracy theories certainly seems to be on the rise, and what little research has been done investigating this question confirms this is so for perhaps the most famous example of all - the claim that a conspiracy lay behind the assassination of JFK in 1963. A survey in 1968 found that about two-thirds of Americans believed the conspiracy theory, while by 1990 that proportion had risen to nine-tenths.
One factor fuelling the general growth of conspiracy beliefs is…
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 | May 17, 2007WaPo shows us how a good conspiracy theory can never die. It's depressing. We're probably going to be hearing from 9/11 troofers for the rest of our lives.
The new evidence that Kennedy was killed by someone on a grassy-knoll or the Cubans or whatever is that the metallurgical analysis that was used to prove that the bullets could only have come from the batch that Oswald used was flawed.
So is it time to re-open the Kennedy assassination?
No. It's not.
All this new analysis proves is that the analysis to tie the bullets to Oswald's batch was flawed. It doesn't mean that the bullet…
denialism | May 4, 2007I realize I've put this up before, but it's too relevant to our discussions all week to pass up.
Via xkcd.
denialism | May 1, 2007How will we ever know the truth about 4-29. I say, it was a conspiracy to undermine 9-11 truth to show that fuel from a tanker truck could actually melt steel and cause a freeway to collapse. Initial photos from the site raise lots of questions.
And if you visit the 9/11 truth site 9/11 blogger, they've already gathered evidence this was all a hoax and has nothing to do with the physics of combustion. Clearly, no real authority doubts that steel can't be melted by fire, and 4-29 should do nothing to change your mind about this clear fact.
Now, luckily, 4-29 truth has been created to…
denialism | April 30, 2007Three can keep a secret if two are dead.
-Benjamin Franklin
What are denialist conspiracy theories and why should people be instantly distrustful of them? And what do they have to do with denialism?
Almost every denialist argument will eventually devolve into a conspiracy. This is because denialist theories that oppose well-established science eventually need to assert deception on the part of their opponents to explain things like why every reputable scientist, journal, and opponent seems to be able to operate from the same page. In the crank mind, it isn't because their opponents are…