cranks
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 1, 2012About a month ago I asked if denialism is truly more frequent on the right or is it that the issues of the day are ones that are more likely to be targets of right wing denialism? After all, one can think of slightly more left wing sources of denialism like GMO paranoia, 9/11 conspiracies, altie-meds, and toxin fear-mongering. The mental heuristics that cause people to believe, and then entrench themselves, in nonsense seem generalizable to humanity rather than just those attracted to conservative politics. Why should those who identify as liberal be any different? Wouldn't they just…
denialism | February 27, 2012There is a joke expression about surgeons, "sometimes wrong, never in doubt." Depending on how you feel about surgeons I've heard it begin "sometimes right" and "even when wrong." Applied to Rick Santorum, I think it has to be "usually wrong" if not "always wrong" given the serious of ridiculous distortions, lies, and made up statistics in the last week.
Starting with his claim that 62% of people that go to college religious graduate without their faith. It seems plausible. College expands peoples experiences and exposes them to new ideas, and such experiences are not going to always mesh…
denialism | January 9, 2012Via Ed
If you ever wondered what motivated this particular HIV/AIDS denialist this video makes it obvious. Duesberg comes out and blames homosexual promiscuity for AIDS rather than a virus. I think examples like this make it clearer that the ideology responsible for this denialism is plain just plain homophobia after all. This is, of course, appealing to right wing ideologues so where does Duesberg end up? On right wing radio with the American Family Association's Brian Fischer proposing the absurd "AIDS was invented for gays to steal grant-money" conspiracy theory. I think the…
denialism | November 16, 2009So who here has actually read the health care bill?. I've been devoting a bit of time each week to peruse more and more of it, and while there are endless obstacles to a complete understanding of it (including legalese and the annoying tendency of legislation to contain edits to other bills without including the text of the other bills being edited) it is telling that opponents of the bill are having some difficulty coming up with real criticisms of it. For example, the now infamous death panel fiasco was a willful misunderstanding of a completely wholesome concept, the idea that physicians…
choofnagle | September 16, 2009Thomas Frank's weekly column in the Journal is one of the few tolerable pieces in the paper's opinion section. This week, Frank writes, sensibly, in my opinion, that the left needs to recapture "freedom."
There are few things in politics more annoying than the right's utter conviction that it owns the patent on the word "freedom" that when its leaders stand up for the rights of banks to be unregulated or capital gains to be untaxed, that it is actually and obviously standing up for human liberty, the noblest cause of them all.
He concludes:
Even such pits of statism as Britain and Canada…
denialism | June 11, 2009Orac has already pointed out the disgusting hate behind the Holocaust museum shooter and his holocaust denial. Others around the internet, in particular Pat at Screw Loose Change have pointed out he was an example of crank magnetism. Not surprisingly, he was also a 9/11 truther (which as Pat says, "scratch a 9/11 truther and you get a holocaust denier"), loved Mel Gibson, and promoted conspiracies about how Obama isn't a US citizen.
I am particularly interested in his anti-Federal Reserve craziness, which these days, especially among the Ron Paul crowd, I've noticed seems to be a stand-in…
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 | June 1, 2009PZ brings to my attention this article in Newsweek which sums up Oprah's views on health, and one sadly must come to the conclusion that Oprah is a crank. Based on our definition of crankery, one of the critical aspects is the incompetence of an individual in judging sources of information. How else can you describe her dismissal of legitimate medical opinion for the pseudoscience of celebrities like Suzanne Somers or Jenny McCarthy?
That was apparently good enough for Oprah. "Many people write Suzanne off as a quackadoo," she said. "But she just might be a pioneer." Oprah acknowledged that…
denialism | June 1, 2009The onion, as always, nails it:
Oh, No! It's Making Well-Reasoned Arguments Backed With Facts! Run!
I...I think it's finally over. Our reactionary emotional response seems to have stopped it dead in its tracks. If I'm right, all we have to do now is smugly reiterate our half-formed thesis and--oh, no! For the love of God, no! It's thoughtfully mulling things over!
Run! Run! It's making reasonable, fact-based arguments!
Quickly! Hide behind self-righteousness! The ad hominem rejoinders--ready the ad hominem rejoinders! Watch out! Dodge the issue at hand! Question its character and keep moving…
denialism | May 18, 2009It's good news though! A description of the tactics and appropriate response to denialism was published in the European Journal of Public Health by authors Pascal Diethelm and Martin McKee. It's entitled "Denialism: what is it and how should scientists respond?" and I think it does an excellent job explaining the harms of deniailsm, critical elements of denialism, as well as providing interesting historical examples of corporate denialism on the part of tobacco companies.
HIV does not cause AIDS. The world was created in 4004 BCE. Smoking does not cause cancer. And if climate change is…
denialism | April 30, 2009It's been two years now since we said hello to scienceblogs, and had our introductory posts on Conspiracy, Unified theory of the Crank, and the denialist deck of cards.
Lately reading a recent profile of a crank, Marc Morano in the NYT, which was sent to me by the crank himself. I can't help but be amazed how our initial description has held up.
For one, throughout the article, it's wonderful how wihtout realizing it, Morano exposes the the fact he's living in a bizarre fantasy world. Starting with the questionable reality of his confrontation with Al Gore:
For example, Mr. Morano said…
denialism | February 16, 2009One would think given recent findings that antarctic warming is robust for instance, that the canard of antarctic cooling would go away. Or, that based on the round dismissal of the myth of 1970s global cooling warnings we'd stop hearing about that in the media too. But instead I'm watching TV last night and there's all these unbelievable crank ads sponsored by the anti-regulation ideologues the Americans for Prosperity featuring fake expert John Coleman. His senseless rant against the stimulus and the evils of regulation is accompanied by text on the bottom of the screen declaring "global…
denialism | February 10, 2009I have to admit I'm somewhat surprised (even if Orac isn't). We all knew that Andrew Wakefield's research was bogus and the link between vaccines and autism was engineered by ideologues who fear vaccines irrationally. But fabrication of data? Sloppy research is one thing, but the need for cranks to be correct, no matter what reality reflects, has resulted in yet another example of egregious dishonesty.
This is in line, however, with what we know about cranks. Mark Crislip recently wrote an interesting piece on mathematics crankery which bears upon just this phenomenon. Mathematics is a…
choofnagle | January 11, 2009Sciblings, I request your assistance in an important venture.
I recently learned that Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead was a top read among UC Berkeley undergrads in 1987 and 1997. This dismaying fact drove me to start assembling a reader, The Ayn Rand Deprogrammer. I've spent the last several weeks reviewing possible texts for this important new work. Here is the first candidate for inclusion, and going forward, I would appreciate any suggestions that you have for the Deprogrammer.
Mary Gaitskill: Two Girls, Fat and Thin
I spent much of my vacation reading Mary Gaitskill's Two Girls, Fat and…
denialism | November 25, 2008Ever since we began writing here about denialism we've emphasized a few critical points about dealing with anti-science. For one, denialists aren't interested in legitimate debate - they are not honest brokers and the tactics they use exist to artificially extend discussion of settled scientific issues. Second, one of the most time-honored traditions of cranks is claiming persecution in response to rejection of their nonsense. Take for a recent example Coby's exposure of the "environmentalists want to jail global warming denialists" myth. You don't need to do anything to make a crank cry…
choofnagle | September 10, 2008All, I'm sorry for abusing you with posts concerning the Berkeley Tree Sitters. For those of us at UC, this has been an enduring pain. And it's been embarrassing. Why? In part, because this is the type of rhetoric common to the debate:
And of course...
I promise, this is the last posting on the tree sitters. Thanks be to Zombietime.
sb admin | August 10, 2008To wear the mantle of Galileo, it is not enough to be persecuted: you must also be right.
--Robert Park
I used to spend a lot of time on the websites of Joe Mercola and Gary Null, the most influential medical cranks of the internets (to call them "quacks" would imply that they are real doctors, but bad ones---I will no longer dignify them with the title of "quack"). I've kept away from them for a while in the interest of preserving my sanity. Unfortunately, Orac reminded me this week of the level searingly stupid and dangerous idiocy presented by these woo-meisters.
In light of this, it…
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…
sb admin | July 3, 2008Orac was kind enough to pollute my inbox with the latest idiocy from the journal that has never met a crank it didn't like. As Orac says, "Medical Hypotheses [is] the journal where the editors encourage the authors to make shit up."
Before I tell you about the latest "hypothesis", let me give you an idea of what kind of thinking goes into this publication. The latest issue has an editorial that argues that it is the "maverick" scientist who makes the real scientific breakthroughs, and that teamwork is only for the "modestly talented".
Not that there's anything inherently wrong with being…