Denialism Blog

Month: July 2008

  • PZ vs. the cracker

    I was trying to avoid weighing in on this one, but blogorrhea always wins.

    I won’t bother rehashing the details of the imbroglio—if you don’t know, well, you’ve been sleeping. Go on…google “pharyngula cracker”…I can wait.

    OK, now that you’ve caught up, here’s my two cents.

    I’m conflicted about this. It’s not usually a good thing to offend people’s deeply held beliefs unless those beliefs are deeply offensive. A free society requires a great deal of tolerance. This of course cuts both ways–if Catholics can expect reasonable peace, so can those who criticize their beliefs.

    As I started writing this, my daughter took the pen out of my tablet pc and broke the clip off of it. I reacted angrily, and she gave me one of those “I’m gonna punish you by crying” looks. I grabbed her, held her tight, and said, “It’s just a thing, honey. Things aren’t important; people are.”

    And that helped put things in perspective—sort of. How would I feel if someone grabbed a Torah out of the Ark and tossed it on the floor? I’d be angry at the gesture, and possibly frightened, given the history of my people.

    The fact that people are willing to die in the name of an object, rather than a person, saddens me. Objects, no matter how deeply revered, are objects. Fundamentalists often claim a unique insight into the value of human life, based on it’s relationship to the divine. At the same time, they are uniquely able to imbue inanimate objects with that same divine presence. Atheists are often criticized for having no basis for valueing life, but, hey, how many atheists will threaten your life over a scroll or a cracker? Deification of the inanimate, raising the value of the inanimate above that of a human being is unique to religion, and a unique danger.

    My daughter is smart enough to know that a thing is a thing, a person a person, and one is more valuable than the other. Perhaps the fundies need a lesson from a four year-old.

  • Just one more thing…

    Look, my beef with Steve Wilson isn’t about style, isn’t about quality, isn’t about personality…it’s about truths, and it’s about health. Getting a detail wrong in an investigation of, say, cement is a peccadillo. Helping spread lies about the most important public health measure since clean water is a real problem.

    It probably couldn’t hurt to drop a line to the station. I’m not sure if the email address is any good, so here’s the snail mail.

    Bob Sliva, Vice President / General Manager
    WXYZ-TV
    20777 West Ten Mile Road
    Southfield, MI 48037

    talkback@wxyz.com

  • Some of the best blogs you might not be reading

    This is my little version of blogrolling, something I vowed to never do, but I’ve been reading so many good blogs lately that I’d like to share some links. Some of these are on our blogroll, some aren’t.

    EpiWonk: An epidemiology blog.

    Archeoporn: one of the best names on the web.

    Submitted to a Candid World: progressive politics, but not a rant.

    Evangelical Realism: this ain’t your grandma’s Old Time Religion

    The field negro: stuff you didn’t know you needed to know, but you need to know it

    The Bad Idea Blog, apparently written by Jabba the Hut.

    Historiann: written by a, well, historian, and yet mysteriously not boring.

    Happy Jihad’s House of Pancakes: another great blog with a great name

  • Some random thoughts

    Some links, general business, and not-so random thoughts.

    Tangled Bank #109 is up at Greg’s place.

    The Blog that Ate Manhattan is hosting the latest Grand Rounds, Seinfeld additon.

    ScienceBlogs has a new project called Next Generation Energy. It will cover energy problems, alternative, etc. It will feature writers from ScienceBlogs and other outside experts. Interestingly, it’s being sponsored by Shell, which has led to a bit of discussion. Check it out.

    The 94th Carnival of the Godless came out a few weeks ago, and I hadn’t realized we were featured, so here’s a link.

    PZ Myers had an interesting post yesterday that sparked controversy both IRL and withing the blogging community. It is about some shit-disturbing student who stole a Eucharist waffer from a Catholic service.

    I’m of two minds about this. If you wish to protest odd religious practices, fine. But to violate a sanctuary where no one is being harmed is not only in poor taste, it scares people, as it has a tinge of oppression (even though one bored student is hardly oppressive). Writing about religious foolishness is one thing, invading a church is another. Obviously, this would be a different issue if a minority religious institution in a secular nation were invaded—most Americans are going to side with the church on this one, so they are hardly in danger. Sure, it’s just a fucking cracker to me, but not to them. To them it is the physical representation of their god. I’m not sure how violating this serves the purpose of rationalism.

    Next, an interesting (for me) occurance. I hate medical mis-information, and never hesitate to go after it. A recent post of mine criticized a post in the NYT. The information in the post was execrable. The writer is not. Tara is a friend of medical reporting, which in no way renders her immune from making mistakes, or suffering criticism (as I often have), but when writing a blog on critical thought, where do you draw the line? Folks like Gary Null and Joe Mercola are systematically spreading bad medical information, and taking people’s money. Tara’s column is generally quite good, and is not an outlet for separating people from truth and money. I’m sure that I don’t always know where to draw the line. I think I hit the correct tone in my earlier post about a news reporter. In my critique of the NYT piece, I think I was spot on about the content, but not the writer.

    If you have the stomach for it, I’m going to try to teach you a little evidence-based medicine later, and the name Bayes may come up. Stay tuned.

  • Feministe on Gardasil

    Complementing Pal’s essay on Gardasil yesterday is our buddy la Pobre Habladora guest blogging on Feministe.

    Which, I think, brings us to a new angle on anti-vax denialism because as Pal mentions, the motivations behind harping on Gardasil are different than the usual nonsense. Gardasil, to everyone’s dismay, has become intertwined with sexual politics in this country. As the only vaccine that has been identified as preventing a sexually-transmitted disease (the HepB vaccine managed to avoid this, not to mention an association with IV-drug use) there has been a clear impetus among the anti-sex crowd to malign this treatment for girls.

    Two things which I think are disgusting and idiotic about this practice. One, I’m willing to bet if it were for boys and not girls, we wouldn’t have this problem. Second, it suggests there is a subset of parents that feels that if their children somehow violate the rules of sex that disease and death should be the wages of their sin.

    Is there nothing not disgusting about these attitudes? While the CNN article doesn’t get into this nonsense, let’s not forget the main obstacle to the acceptance of this highly-effective vaccine is not safety issues (it’s a very safe vaccine and the incidents cited in the article are likely coincidence) but rather the amoral bigotries of idiots who are desperate to control women’s sexuality – even to the detriment of women’s health.

  • Antivax lies from a local reporter

    It’s worse than I thought.

    A local investigative reporter has just broadcast a report on mercury, vaccines, and autism that was devoid of any investigation. It was a piece of lazy journalism, relying on the propaganda of the antivax cults, rather than real medical information. It was a pure propaganda piece. Before this aired, I did email Wilson and offer to hook him up with actual experts. I received no reply.

    Let me share some details…
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  • Should parents worry about HPV vaccine?

    That’s the question posed by CNN yesterday. It’s a good question. Any time a new vaccine or treatment is available, safety is a concern. Pre-marketing testing is likely to miss very rare reactions, so the government monitors new drugs when they hit the market. Gardasil has so far been quite safe, which does not rule out very rare problems that my crop up as more people are vaccinated.

    Added to the general level of suspicion regarding Gardisil is Merck’s very aggressive marketing campaign aimed at the public and at state legislators.

    All that aside, Gardasil is probably a good idea. Much of the hullabaloo surrounding its use has been ridiculous—attacks from religious fanatics and anti-vaccination cultists. In evaluating this promising new vaccine, we must set aside the noise from the wackos, and view things more objectively.
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  • NISSSBETTTTTT!!!!

    Arghhh!!! Framing. What is it?

    Is it a way of communicating issues effectively to diverse populations? Or is it another word for compromising your values until they become meaningless?

    In his latest piece, SciBling Matt Nisbet shows it to be the latter. While many of us are shaking our heads as we are forced to choose a candidate who panders to religion, Nisbet praises Obama’s strategy of co-opting the Religious Right’s message by supporting faith-based charities.

    If your only goal is to elect Obama, perhaps this is a good strategy. If your goal is to continue to improve our (secular) nation, this is hardly a step forward. To continue this unnatural mingling of government and religion is a mistake. It does not improve delivery of charitable services (Bush’s plan has been a complete failure). It also makes services less accessible in a diverse community. If you do not wish to support your local Lutheran church, for instance, but they are the ones with the alcohol rehab program, well, that’s one more barrier to recovery.

    Make no mistake—funding faith-based initiatives is religious extremism. Frame it however you will, it is another erosion of our personal liberties. This is not a place for compromise.

  • Swallowing nutrition myths hook, line, and sinker

    I’m starting to worry about health coverage in the NY Times. Lawrence Altman is a great health reporter, and I like one of Michael Pollan’s pieces in particular, but the Times also has a bunch of those blog-thinggies, and one of the writers has disappointed me before.

    Oops, she did it again…

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  • Medicare cuts—a bad thing

    Look, I know no one is weeping for doctors and their complaints about payment cuts, but you should at least be concerned, and here’s why.

    Some doctors are rich…very rich. Most are not. Medical education is largely financed with debt, and primary care doesn’t pay all that much. Small practices work on narrow margins, and often run “paycheck to paycheck”. For internists, a large percentage of payments come from Medicare, the national health insurance program that covers seniors. Doctors participate with Medicare voluntarily—there is no law requiring us to see Medicare patients or to bill Medicare for them.
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