For those artistic evilutionists out there, Burning Man, the yearly festival celebrating freedom, expression, and self-reliance, is sponsoring art based on this year’s theme of Evolution. The details for getting a grant to support your artwork are here.
So, come up with some ideas for interactive, creative expressions of what evolution means, where humans have come from or where are we going, and submit them for entry into the festival!
I 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 wonderful area to study crankery because as Crislip points out, mathematics is a field in which it is possible to distinguish between the possible and the impossible.
In mathematics there are things that are impossible. Absolutely impossible. No ifs, ands, or buts. Impossible. Can’t be done no how no way. In the world of mathematics, things are not only impossible, they are proven truly impossible within the boundaries of the mathematical discipline.
An example of mathematical impossibility is the quadrature of the circle, also called squaring the circle.
It is impossible, using only a straight edge ruler and a compass, to construct a square with the same area as a given circle. It was proved to be impossible in 1882 by Lindeman. Not improbable or unlikely or very, very, very difficult. With in mathematical reality, it is impossible.
But in his review of Mathematical Cranks
Here is Crislip’s description of the mathematical crank:
1) They are convinced that their opinion is superior to the accumulated opinion of 2000 years of mathematics and mathematicians. That hundreds of mathematicians have worked for hundreds of years on these problems and found no errors in the proof that it is impossible to square a circle is of no consequence. Despite the accumulated mathematical knowledge of uncounted mathematicians, they are convinced that their solution is the right solution. Everyone else for all of history has been wrong. There is a tinge of megalomania in all the correspondence, and some appear to me to be clinically insane.
2) To accommodate their solutions, they are willing to alter reality to fit their proofs. There are solutions to squaring the circle, but they require a value of pi that is different that 3.14159265… Pi, for those that have forgotten, is the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle and is a constant of the universe. For some circle squarers, Pi has a different value and all the mathematics that has confirmed the current value of pi is wrong. Others deny that pi exists or that the definition is meaningless, since they can construct a squared circle with pencil and paper, and send in the (flawed) construction.
3) When errors of math or logic are pointed out, they respond not with understanding, but a redoubling of efforts to prove that their erroneous solution to the problem is actually correct. They are incapable of recognizing flaws in logic, or mathematics, or flaws that are in opposition to mathematical consistency. A crank cannot recognize their error because they cannot recognize that their reality differs from mathematical reality.
4) Cranks are impervious to arguments based on mathematical reality. They do not recognize or understand that their solutions are in error because the solution contradicts known mathematical reality. They do not base their solutions on known mathematics, but on their own flawed understanding of mathematics.
5) Cranks evidently send their ‘solutions’ to multiple mathematical departments and rarely receive a reply. This silence from academia is interpreted not that their solution is worthless, but that there is a conspiracy of Professors of Mathematics to keep their solution secret, to the detriment of human kind. Big Math, out to suppress the truth THEY don’t not want you to know.
It is obvious to me that no matter what the field, the problem is crankery – the defective thought processes that allow people to believe in nonsense, no matter what obstacles reality throws in their path. Every description of every crank in every field ultimately boils down to these same factors. Cranks believe in something contrary to observable reality. They will do anything to prove it. When reality gets in their way, they ignore, subvert, lie, cheat, or obfuscate to create confusion. And when it’s proven beyond all doubt they’re wrong? That’s when the conspiracies come out. The comments on the Huffington Post coverage of the most recent Wakefield dishonesty are an excellent example of this. Wakefield is a victim of Big Pharma, being persecuted by Brian Deer, it’s all a conspiracy against children by doctors and pharmaceutical companies etc.
The more time passes the more I’m convinced that our original thesis on cranks and denialism in general has been confirmed again and again. No matter what the foolish belief the problem the reality-based community is fighting is a defective pattern of thought, an incompetence in evaluating the quality of evidence that afflicts millions of individuals and ultimately is why so many people believe in such stupid things. Wakefield, ultimately, is just another in a long line of cranks. And while biology is never as concrete as mathematics, it is clear that accepting reality was never a part of the the anti-vaccine movement’s ideology. And what do cranks do when reality opposes your world view? They do what Wakefield did. Reject reality, and substitute their own.
Even after all this time I was surprised they would find outright fabrication in Wakefield’s work, but I shouldn’t have been.
What do this cartoon and the latest edition of PLoS One have in common? Well, reading Bora’s blog this week I saw an article entitled, Risks for Central Nervous System Diseases among Mobile Phone Subscribers: A Danish Retrospective Cohort Study and my ears perked up. We have been mocking the idea that cell phones cause everything from brain cancer to colony collapse disorder and it’s always fun to see what cell phones are being blamed for based on weak associations and correlations.
In this article the authors identified more than four hundred thousand cell phone subscribers and linked their cell phone use to their medical records in the Danish Hospital Discharge Registry which has collected records of hospitalizations since 1977. They then tried to identify an association between cell phone use and various CNS disorders over the last few decades. These disorders include epilepsy, ALS, vertigo, migraines, MS, Parkinsons and dementia, a broad spectrum of diseases with a variety of pathologies and causes. Basically, they’re fishing. Well, what did they find?
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The process of choosing a medical specialty, and applying for residency programs is nearly complete as I have returned from my tour of the West Coast and am nearly done with interview season. This is when medical students travel the country at great (and unreimbursed) expense to find their future training program. When all is said and done, all your research into programs and time spent interviewing boils down to a simple question. Do you want to work with these people for the next 3-7 years of your life?
It’s also nice to see the cities where you may live and get a feel for the type of lifestyle you may enjoy. You also get to take pictures from helipads! Like this one from UNC:
And then there is the famous medical art like the Gross Clinic at Penn which also graces a common surgery text:
Or Ether Day (in the Ether Dome at MGH):
More pictures and some fun interview questions below the fold…
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Not infrequently, science butts heads with culture as the data scientists collect about issues of the day may conflict with cultural perceptions and deeply-held beliefs. Attitudes and perceptions about homosexuality are, not surprisingly, a source of denialism as certain overvalued ideas about sexuality are being challenged with our deeper understanding of human sexual desire. For one, homosexuality is not a choice, despite all attempts to reprogram or suppress homosexual desires, the desires do not go away. One might even hypothesize the attempts to repress or disparage such a fundamental aspect of someone’s identity might cause harm long term and result in negative health outcomes. Sure enough, this article published in the journal Pediatrics last week suggests this is in fact the case, and I believe we must begin to view the rejection of homosexuality by parents as not just as small-minded, but actively harmful, constituting child abuse that has long term implications on their childrens’ health.
The authors identified 224 gay and lesbian youths between 21 and 25 years of age and using surveys to evaluate for high risk behaviors, mental health and levels of rejection by family, they found some startling patterns…
Welcome to the new year, and now that I’m back from a little family vacation I’d like to applaud PAL for the excellent job he did summarizing our thesis, and the job he’s done in general in the last year. I’m busy doing my last 3rd year clerkship in neurology (even though I’m graduating in 2009 – it’s complicated) and it’s wonderful to have him at our side fighting the good fight.
Objects of interest in the last couple of weeks include (former?) framing ally Chris Mooney breaking with Matt Nisbett on the necessary language for addressing denialism. In his article defending the Obama administration’s appointment of real scientists like John Holdren or Jane Lubchenco, Mooney writes:
Use of the Term “Denier. Holdren’s aforementioned op-ed, published in the Boston Globe and the International Herald Tribune, is strongly worded about the problem of global warming “skepticism” or “denial”–and rightly so. It prompted a large volume of response, and Holdren has, in turn, answered his critics. It’s important to note that the op-ed wasn’t written when he was a representative of the president, and I would imagine that his language might not be as strong in the future. But in any event, I want to defend his, and anyone’s, right to use the term “denier” in a global warming context, something The Rocky Mountain News (among others) objects to. I am continually baffled by attempts to rule a perfectly good word out of bounds under the strange pretense that any use of it implies some type of connection with the phenomenon of Holocaust denial, which is the central complaint that global warming “skeptics” tend to make.
“Denier” is defined in the dictionary as meaning “one who denies.” You will note that there are no Holocaust references. The verb “deny” means (among other things) “to refuse to recognize or acknowledge; disown; disavow; repudiate.” It does not specifically refer to the Holocaust either. Perhaps that’s because the word is massively older: As Dictionary.com notes of the etymology (relying on the online etymology dictionary):
c.1300, from O.Fr. denier, from L. denegare, from de- “away” + negare “refuse, say ‘no,’ ” from Old L. nec “not,” from Italic base *nek-“not,” from PIE base *ne- “no, not” (see un-).
Why should we not properly use this time honored word? In particular, the idea that calling someone a “global warming denier” is an implicit comparison with Holocaust denial is absurd. When one uses words like “denier,” “denial,” and “deny,” there is no necessary reference to one particular species of the broader phenomenon, and thus no more invocation of Holocaust denial than of those who denied Christ or those who are in denial about their crumbling marriages. Global warming deniers do not have the power to redefine words that long preceded them, and that will long outlive them.
I tend to agree, although I of course have a bias towards referring to their tactics in general as denialism – or the systematic use of distracting tactics to prolong debate over settled science and historical facts.
I’d also like to point out some fun items from my denialist RSS feeds over the last couple of weeks. For one HuffPo deserves credit for debunking some odious historical revisionism by Fox News on the Great Depression and this nonsense that FDR prolonged it. We should give credit where credit is due.
And I couldn’t resist noting some hysterical nonsense from crazy Joe Mercola. At the same time he decries a war on the public by modern medicine he in the next breath suggests that you forgo food and obtain all your sustenance by staring at the sun. I can’t make this stuff up.
HIV/AIDS denialist Christine Maggiore has died from AIDS and I won’t hedge and say it was merely likely it was from AIDS. A 52 year old HIV positive individual with bilateral pneumonia treated multiple times in 6 months has AIDS until proven otherwise. This woman and her daughter were killed by her foolish ideology and I have no sympathy for her similarly deluded husband. I dislike discussing the medical diagnoses of individuals (even public ones) on a blog, but in the case of HIV/AIDS denialism this is an important public health issue, and it’s important the denialists don’t get away with further revising history and science by suggesting this was anything other than what it obviously is – another death from HIV/AIDS denialism. As Ben Goldacre mentions in his coverage, HIV/AIDS denialism may be responsible for as many as 340,000 deaths so far. This is denialism that kills.
Finally for Michael Egnor (who no doubt would find our attacks on HIV/AIDS denialism to be “arrogant”) I’d suggest reading this Lancet article on adaptive evolution and antibiotic resistance. The real arrogant ones aren’t the ones fighting for legitimate scientific discourse but those that reject the most established fields in science simply because they “see design.” The issue includes several articles on the impact of evolution on medicine and is a wonderful read.
With school, travel and interviews things will be slow at first this year, but hopefully they’ll ramp up before long.
I couldn’t be more thrilled to see that Rebecca Skloot has joined scienceblogs. I remember reading her article on HeLa cells and thinking it was the best science writing I’d ever read.
So, sorry for the late announcement and welcome to Rebecca!
Please 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 theory to explain your beliefs, well, you should re-think your beliefs.
And speaking of conspiracies, I forgot to blog the hysterical interchange between Rolling Stone contributor Matt Taibbi – author of The Great Derangement
As you’ve noticed, I struggled for quite some time with the question of how to answer your responses. Mainly this was because I was unsure of whether to treat this exercise like a comedy (because it’s certainly hard to take seriously any “debate” with a person who believes that Rudy Giuliani would conspire to blow up the densest slice of taxpaying real estate in the world, the New York City financial district, in order to save his city the cost of an asbestos cleanup) or whether to aim higher and treat it like a serious political argument. I tried it both ways and neither way seemed to fit. Treating this like an absurdist comedy, I realized, I’m making it hard for readers to see how monstrous and offensive your arguments are — but then again, when I take you seriously, spending paragraph after crazed paragraph grandstanding against you and your book, suddenly I’m the one who looks ridiculous.
Then it hit me, and probably far too late: the correct play here is to ignore you and your arguments entirely. There are many things about your work that are outrageous and offensive, but the very worst thing about you and other 9/11 conspiracists — and, I guess, lately anyway, me — is that you’re/we’re a distraction from the real problem.
It gets better. Taibbi really nails the fundamental problem with all of the false-flag arguments the truthers always lay out against reality:
This same public — the same public that stood meekly by when its manufacturing economy was exported overseas, that cheered when our government pledged to “get tough” with China by demanding that it allow us to weaken our currency vis a vis the Yuan, that twiddled its thumbs when Wall Street played Keno with the nation’s homeowner savings, that has consistently voted overwhelmingly to deprive itself of its right to litigate against powerful companies — this is the public you think George Bush and Dick Cheney needed to blow up downtown Manhattan for, in order to get them on board with a war against Iraq, the Patriot Act, and whatever else.
…
All of this 9/11 Truther stuff, it’s a silly distraction. A country whose economy is about to go down the shitter, to the brink of depression, thanks to three-plus decades of routinely-ignored Wall Street deregulation just can’t afford to be wasting its time arguing about thermite reactions and “morphing technology.” Captivated by the comic possibilities of Truther literature, I realized this too late. As you’ll see below, I even spent a lot of time pulling what’s left of my hair out over your answers to questions that even I admit now go beyond inane. I admit in advance to looking silly for doing so, and hereby make a promise to God that I won’t do it again, at least not as long as we have other things to worry about. All the same, some of the stuff you came up with, Professor sheesh! And I thought I was loony!
Freaking awesome. I’m sorry I didn’t write about it when it came out. His final diagnosis of Griffin’s writing was beautiful:
In the end it all comes down to what you believe. If you believe that events in life tend to have simple explanations, then you’re not going to be very impressed by Griffin’s arguments. If on the other hand you think that the people running this country spend their days plotting to create phantom civilian jet-liner flights, disappearing whole fuselages full of passengers, and then shooting missiles into the Pentagon in broad daylight in order to cover up embezzlement schemes if you think, in other words, that our government is run by the same people who cook up second-rate French spy movies or your mind instantly produces the word “crossbow” when asked to produce A MURDER WEAPON by a Mad Libs script well, then, you’re probably going to enjoy Griffin’s books.
Ha!
Aside from taking 4th year medical school classes it’s also the time of year that medical students who plan to graduate in 2009 (like me) are applying to residency programs across the country. This is an interesting process and one that many people outside of medicine are unfamiliar with, and quite surprised by. For one, did you know that we don’t have final say on where we train in residency but that the decision is made by a computer?
It’s true. The process is called “the Match” and it’s a time of great excitement and anxiety for 4th year medical students. For one, there are far more applicants than there are residency positions around the country – largely due to application from foreign applicants. Also, depending on which field you’re applying, there may be many more applicants for each given position than there are positions. So let’s look at some of the match data from the National Residency Match Program that they publish each year (Charting Outcomes in the Match 2008 – PDF) to give you an idea of what a 4th year medical student is facing. Table 1 of the report is enough to give many students palpitations.
Divided by US vs other applicants, this is what your chances are as a 4th year senior for getting into the various medical specialties.
So, now that you’ve chosen your medical specialty what kinds of things can you do to make your chances of matching better? And what’s it like applying for these programs even though you can’t outright pick them, and conversely, they can’t directly pick you? How does this crazy system work? More below the fold…
It seems Obama didn’t get Nisbet’s memo. Just watching on CNN, future president Obama says:
The time for delay is over, the time for denial is over. We all believe what the scientists have been telling us for years now, that this is a matter of urgency and national security and it has to be dealt with in a serious way. That is what I intend my administration to do. I think what is exciting about this conversation is that it is not only a problem but an opportunity.
I can not be happier that we have a president who is willing to stand up and call global warming denialism what it is.