Denialism Blog

Author: MarkH

  • The Great UN Conspiracy to (gasp) increase green space!

    You heard me. There is a shocking conspiracy, directly from the nefarious leaders of the one world government at the UN and their pawn, Barack Obama to add more public transportation and green space to your neighborhood.

    Across the country, activists with ties to the Tea Party are railing against all sorts of local and state efforts to control sprawl and conserve energy. They brand government action for things like expanding public transportation routes and preserving open space as part of a United Nations-led conspiracy to deny property rights and herd citizens toward cities.

    …

    In Maine, the Tea Party-backed Republican governor canceled a project to ease congestion along the Route 1 corridor after protesters complained it was part of the United Nations plot. Similar opposition helped doom a high-speed train line in Florida. And more than a dozen cities, towns and counties, under new pressure, have cut off financing for a program that offers expertise on how to measure and cut carbon emissions.

    …

    Fox News has also helped spread the message. In June, after President Obama signed an executive order creating a White House Rural Council to “enhance federal engagement with rural communities,” Fox programs linked the order to Agenda 21. A Fox commentator, Eric Bolling, said the council sounded “eerily similar to a U.N. plan called Agenda 21, where a centralized planning agency would be responsible for oversight into all areas of our lives. A one world order.”

    …

    At a Board of Supervisors meeting in Roanoke in late January, Cher McCoy, a Tea Party member from nearby Lexington, Va., generated sustained applause when she warned: “They get you hooked, and then Agenda 21 takes over. Your rights are stripped one by one.”

    Echoing other protesters, Ms. McCoy identified smart meters, devices being installed by utility companies to collect information on energy use, as part of the conspiracy. “The real job of smart meters is to spy on you and control you — when you can and cannot use electrical appliances,” she said.

    It’s true, the blueprints were kept secret until now, but smart monitoring of energy use is designed to turn you into a godless slave of the great beast that is the UN. Using a combination of electromagnetic waves and psychotropic medications released from the devices, it’s victims will be turned into mindless, left-wing voting slaves of the beast.

    I think the tea party has started electing paranoid schizophrenics to their leadership. You couldn’t make this stuff up. This stuff is so great I have to resurrect (drumroll) the Tin Foil Hat!

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    It would actually make a good counter protest to send this woman tin foil hats. Although she may fail to get the point and incorporate it into yet another paranoid delusion of persecution at the hands of those who promote public transportation, parks, and efficient use of energy. You might get emails in return IN ALL CAPS. The horror. The horror.

  • Eisen calls for Elsevier Boycott – but can we all go OA?

    Eisen writes

    Thus, people joining in the new boycott have no excuses not to follow through. There are plenty of viable OA options and it is simply unacceptable for any scientist who decries Elsevier’s actions and believes that the subscription based model is no longer serving science to send a single additional paper to journals that do not provide full OA to every paper they publish. So, come on people! If we do this now, paywalls will crumble, and we all be better off. So, come on! Let’s do it!

    This sounds great. If you remember we were similarly disgusted since Eisen brought the Research Works Act to our attention several weeks ago.

    I still have two issues though with all OA publishing. For one, in my field I tend to publish in AHA journals which are not open access but the predominant journals. There is still a relative shortage of OA journals. There are not enough compared to the thousands of subscription options to take on the literature. I think their success has if anything made them more inaccessible with higher impacts. After all, everyone likes the idea of everyone being able to see and read their paper. Either by the fame of the journal or by the advantage of rapid publication and universal access. I once tried to publish a paper in PLoS One but frankly, I don’t think it was really high enough impact, and while not triaged, we were tanked by a reviewer who basically insisted on about 3 more PhD projects worth of work in order to get it in. Finally, what about us poor peons still working for the man? What if the boss says, “I want this journal”? Because after all, it’s pretty difficult to convince the olds to change their ways.

    In the end to survive you must publish. I’d say the goal should be that we should all give a right of first refusal to your OA option. If that fails, suck it up and send it to the private publishers. And if anyone has some good vascular/heart/circulation OA alternatives to recommend I’m all ears.

  • End the occupation

    No one likes occupiers. They’re like fish and houseguests, they start to stink after a short period of time. And I worry that as time goes on the movement will only have a more and more destructive impact on progressive politics and political discourse. This isn’t to say they can’t be effective, or haven’t been effective at at least one goal, that is bringing the topic of economic inequality back into the spotlight. However, as time goes on their leaderless, agenda-less actions are becoming more random, and less likely to result in a good outcome in the coming political fight. In fact, several of the occupy actions are now likely to harm a progressive agenda, and seriously alienate would-be allies. For example this video from San Francisco CBS:

    Really? Breaking into public buildings and burning the flag? What do actions like this accomplish? That’s like the A-bomb of protest moves, and you’re doing it why? Because you don’t have a job? Because you want rich people taxed more? The reaction seems disproportionate. If you’re going to be burning the flag it better be because the U.S. is tattooing swastikas on puppies and dropping them with C-4 harnesses onto hospitals. Not because your poetry MFA didn’t prepare you for the job market.

    Other snippets from around the country include throwing condoms at Catholic School girls, breaking windows and spray painting anarchy symbols on cars, and generally being jackasses. Now, the condom thing is kind of funny to those that think the Catholics stand on contraception is absurd, every sperm is sacred and all that, but doesn’t that exemplify why it’s an error of tactics? You don’t want to alienate an entire religious organization which actually might side with you in terms of working for economic equality. Who runs more homeless shelters, the Catholics or Occupy? These are potential allies, and the lack of focus of Occupy will result in more harm to it and those that may be in place to enact their goals.

    A survey by Survey USA now shows a majority of bay area residents opposing OWS with 26% saying they did support them before, but now oppose. This movement is becoming toxic. Where did it go wrong? And is there a better way to protest?

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  • Are liberals really more likely to accept science than conservatives?

    Today’s NYT has Thomas Edsall’s What the Left Get’s Right, the follow up piece to last week’s What the Right Get’s Right, and what’s fascinating is how even conservative commentators think liberals get science right more often than conservatives. Or at least they are less likely to view it ideologically:

    A few conservative concessions to liberalism’s strengths were made without qualification; others were begrudging. Nonetheless, in the conservative assessment, common themes emerge:

    Liberals recognize the real problems facing the poor, the hardships resulting from economic globalization and the socially destructive force of increasing inequality.

    Liberals do not dismiss or treat as ideologically motivated scientific findings, especially the sharpening scientific consensus that human beings contribute significantly to climate change.

    Liberals stand with those most in need, and believe in the inclusion of such previously marginalized groups as blacks, Hispanics, women and gays.

    As I sifted through the responses, it became clear that a widely shared view among contemporary conservatives is that liberals are all heart and no head, that their policies are misguided — thrown off track by an excessively emotional compassion that fails to recognize the likelihood of unintended consequences.

    But is this really the case? I disagree, liberals are just as likely to to disbelieve science that challenges their ideology, only the issues where liberals tend to deny aren’t quite as earth-shattering (although anti-vax is a serious public health problem) and not as much in the media spotlight. And recent cognitive studies on why people believe what they believe support the likelihood that all of us, liberal, conservative, or moderate, are poor rational actors in the evaluation of science.

    Here’s why…
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  • Two great obesity articles from the NYT and what they mean for you

    A few weeks ago Tara Parker Pope wrote The Fat Trap for the NYT and once I read it I started sending it to other doctors I know. It is a great summary on the current knowledge of why we get fat, and more importantly for those of us that already are tipping the scales, why is it so damn hard to take that weight back off. (I’ll discuss Young, Obese and Getting Weight Loss Surgery nearer the end)

    Beginning in 2009, he and his team recruited 50 obese men and women. The men weighed an average of 233 pounds; the women weighed about 200 pounds. Although some people dropped out of the study, most of the patients stuck with the extreme low-calorie diet, which consisted of special shakes called Optifast and two cups of low-starch vegetables, totaling just 500 to 550 calories a day for eight weeks. Ten weeks in, the dieters lost an average of 30 pounds.

    At that point, the 34 patients who remained stopped dieting and began working to maintain the new lower weight. Nutritionists counseled them in person and by phone, promoting regular exercise and urging them to eat more vegetables and less fat. But despite the effort, they slowly began to put on weight. After a year, the patients already had regained an average of 11 of the pounds they struggled so hard to lose. They also reported feeling far more hungry and preoccupied with food than before they lost the weight.

    Who among us can’t identify with that story? If you can’t you’ve been thin all your life and can go suck an egg. But for those that have carried extra pounds it’s part of the yo-yo routine of dieting. But why is this? Were we permanently programmed for a preset weight and will feel as though were starving below it? If this is the case, why is obesity increasing now, in the last 20 years? The answer suggested is more subtle, but the fascinating thing is, your body’s set weight might be a real thing. It’s just not programmed from birth.

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  • Homeopathy is an embarrassment to everyone living in this century

    Zite has failed me. For some reason under the “science” heading it referred me to thisold hpathy article on homeopathic treatment of burns. I realize this site has been a source of idiocy for years but I think this is a true gem. It makes me want to cry for humanity. Orac, don’t look, it will make your brain explode. The question is, how should you treat burns? Most normal, sane people, in the treatment of the acute burn would suggest cooling the tissue, thus ending the process of damage from the exposure to heat, as well as adding the secondary benefit of soothing the injury. What do they recommend at hpathy.com?

    Heating it.

    No I’m not joking.

    No they’re not joking.

    In my first year of homoeopathic training a general discussion led the lecturer to describe a treatment for burns. He explained that he had been dining with a friend who had burnt herself and had immediately, to his horror, held the burnt area of her hand in the heat of a candle for a little while. The friend had then explained to him that the normal treatment of using cold water was ineffective, but that the application of heat to a burn meant that it would not blister, and although it did hurt more on the initial application it healed far more quickly and painlessly thereafter. This she demonstrated a little while later when he saw to his amazement that the burned area was not even red and she was experiencing no pain.

    His explanation was that left alone a burn, ‘burnt’, as in the vital force would produce heat. By applying cold water this burning effect was reduced and the vital force had to summon even more heat. If instead we assist the vital force by applying heat the job would be done more quickly.

    This is really nothing more than elementary homoeopathy… like cures like… similar similibus curentur…. And yet some in the group were surprised, and some argued that this would be dangerous with anything other than a very slight burn…

    Sigh. Do we really need to break down why this is a bad idea?
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  • In case you missed it, some denialism mentions of note

    Being inactive for the last couple of years I still read about denialism being mentioned in some interesting places. Two in particular I thought I share.

    Peter Gleick in Forbes write on “The Rise and Fall of Climate Change Denial is interesting largely because it’s in Forbes. And predictably, for publishing in a right-wing magazine, the comments are basically 100% against Gleick, a national academy member, accusing him of everything from incompetence to dishonesty. It’s actually pretty remarkable. But at least the scientific viewpoint is starting to infiltrate the literature of the right wing. Now only if we can get the WSJ to place a scientifically accurate article on global warming on their editorial pages. It would likely snow in hell first.

    The other is an interesting look at Denial from United Academics called Why We Deny including an article evaluating Michael Shermer’s latest work on the pscyhology of denial.

    In it I think a very good point is raised by Shermer (who I’ve been known to disagree with for his own cranky outlook on global warming), we actually shouldn’t expect people to be rational and accept science easily. Too much of the way we think is irrational, and too much of our psychology is based upon making the world conform to the way we view it, rather than conforming our belief to the way the world is. He points out that we tend to come to have beliefs first, often inculcated by family, religion, culture, or tradition, then spend a great deal of effort to rationalize those beliefs and selectively believe evidence that confirms it. After all, when beliefs are tied to such powerful emotive forces to change belief or confront evidence contrary to such belief can be emotionally devastating. The notion that humans are rational and believe things based on evidence or will even act in their own best interest based on logic and evidence is simply not supported by the evidence of how we behave. I find it still amazing that he can have such an insight about the fundamental irrationality of humans and still have a libertarian worldview, which I feel is critically dependent on treating humans as rational actors in an economy, either as individuals or groups. Clearly this is not the case.
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  • Eisen Busts Rep Carolyn Maloney parroting Elsevier Publishing's defense of the Research Works Act

    At It’s not junk Michael Eisen continues to expose the shameless actions of Carolyn Maloney to sell out science for the sake of publishers like Elsevier. As we remarked last week, it seems that very little money is required to buy a representatives favor towards your industry, even if that means acting against the public interest. Now, in her defense of the Research Works Act, which undoes the public distribution of research findings paid for by the public, her response appears to have been written by Elsevier itself.

    Eisen busts her in the act.
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  • How Do you Want to Die?

    Via Zite I found the article How Doctors Die by Ken Murray and was surprised to find it one of the best I’ve read on the issue of end-of-life care. The context is that of how Doctors typically forgo extreme measures in the face of terminal diagnoses, and often reject the type of care we routinely provide to our patients as “not for us”. While the article lacks hard data on the prevalence of these attitudes or behaviors, I have to say this viewpoint is consistent my experience of learning my colleague’s beliefs and how I now personally feel about ICU care . And I’m someone who is interested in trauma and critical care as a career…

    Years ago, Charlie, a highly respected orthopedist and a mentor of mine, found a lump in his stomach. He had a surgeon explore the area, and the diagnosis was pancreatic cancer. This surgeon was one of the best in the country. He had even invented a new procedure for this exact cancer that could triple a patient’s five-year-survival odds–from 5 percent to 15 percent–albeit with a poor quality of life. Charlie was uninterested. He went home the next day, closed his practice, and never set foot in a hospital again. He focused on spending time with family and feeling as good as possible. Several months later, he died at home. He got no chemotherapy, radiation, or surgical treatment. Medicare didn’t spend much on him.

    It’s not a frequent topic of discussion, but doctors die, too. And they don’t die like the rest of us. What’s unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the deaths of others, they tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care they could want. But they go gently.

    Significantly, Murray discusses what “doing everything” can mean. Sadly, most people equate caring for their family member with asking for maximum care when they are sick or dying, but doctors know, and poorly communicate, that maximal care is often painful, expensive, and too often futile.

    Almost all medical professionals have seen what we call “futile care” being performed on people. That’s when doctors bring the cutting edge of technology to bear on a grievously ill person near the end of life. The patient will get cut open, perforated with tubes, hooked up to machines, and assaulted with drugs. All of this occurs in the Intensive Care Unit at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars a day. What it buys is misery we would not inflict on a terrorist. I cannot count the number of times fellow physicians have told me, in words that vary only slightly, “Promise me if you find me like this that you’ll kill me.” They mean it. Some medical personnel wear medallions stamped “NO CODE” to tell physicians not to perform CPR on them. I have even seen it as a tattoo.

    To administer medical care that makes people suffer is anguishing. Physicians are trained to gather information without revealing any of their own feelings, but in private, among fellow doctors, they’ll vent. “How can anyone do that to their family members?” they’ll ask. I suspect it’s one reason physicians have higher rates of alcohol abuse and depression than professionals in most other fields. I know it’s one reason I stopped participating in hospital care for the last 10 years of my practice.

    This situation of futile care is sometimes referenced with some some gallows humor as the chee chee. Why are we unable to communicate to patients that often the treatments that we can provide aren’t something we’d chose for ourselves or for those we love?
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  • The Right Wing Appeal of Duesberg's HIV/AIDS denialism

    Via 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 Southern Poverty Law Center was right to designate AFA a hate group, and here’s qhy

    The AFA seeks to support “traditional moral values,” but in recent years it has seemed to specialize in “combating the homosexual agenda.” In 2009, it hired Bryan Fischer, the former executive director of the Idaho Values Alliance, as its director of analysis for government and policy. Taking a page from the anti-gay fabulist Scott Lively (see Abiding Truth Ministries, above), Fischer claimed in a blog post last May 27 that “[h]omosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and 6 million dead Jews.” (Ironically, the elder Wildmon was widely denounced as an anti-Semite after suggesting that Jews control the media, which the AFA says “shows a genuine hostility towards Christians.”) Fischer has described Hitler as “an active homosexual” who sought out gays “because he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough.” He proposed criminalizing homosexual behavior in another 2010 blog post and has advocated forcing gays into “reparative” therapy. In a 2010 “action alert,” the AFA warned that if homosexuals are allowed to openly serve in the military, “your son or daughter may be forced to share military showers and barracks with active and open homosexuals.”

    I guess it was just a matter of time before he latched onto HIV/AIDS denialism and I think this constitutes and example of crank magnetism. Such is the nature of the rabid ideologue – no matter how obviously absurd a belief is, if it affirms your warped ideology you support it.