Denialism Blog

Author: MarkH

  • Defense Day

    Well today is my thesis defense day. For those who are unfamiliar with the process, this is how it works at least at my university.

    When you start out in a lab you do the experiments your boss tells you to do, with the goal of picking up a project. This usually involves taking up where another graduate student or post-doc left off, or reading the literature in your field and figuring out an important question to answer. Depending on how many years its been since your boss handled a pipette, he/she will suggest experiments that range from next to impossible to impossible. You spend a year screwing around, messing up experiments and hopefully generating some preliminary data to justify the research that will go into your thesis. Simultaneously you are taking graduate classes and applying to be a degree candidate. The requirements for this vary by university and department. It may require writing a review paper summarizing a related (or unrelated) field of science and defending it to a committee, or may be an actual exam in which you prove you’ve actually learned something in class.

    Eventually, in the lab you sit down with a post doc who helps you design experiments that will actually work, and all of a sudden data arrives. If your boss asks you about the experiments he/she recommended either say you’re still working on it, that you’re waiting for an antibody, or pretend you don’t understand English. Then, quickly distract them with the interesting data you’ve been generating and they should soon forget about what you haven’t been doing. At this time you should be developing your possible/impossible filter, and judging your mentor’s advice accordingly.

    The next step is to compile all the data you’ve been generating into a defense of your proposal. Most labs these days have you write something that resembles a grant, because it gives you critical experience in how to get people to give you money. The importance of this skill can not be underestimated for your future success as an academic scientist. You will be justifying the financing of your science for the rest of your career, and knowing how to get funding is probably more important than knowing any specific experimental technique. You present your grant, which consists of your primary aims, methods, preliminary results, etc, again to a committee. They grill you. If your lucky your committee will be composed of a mixture of docs who will defend you from the worst iniquities of the other members and docs who won’t be afraid to tell you your project actually sucks. Either way, you’re in for a treat.

    Once you’re done with that congratulations! You are between 2 and 10 years away from graduation.

    Continued….
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  • David Kirby – the ultimate goalpost mover

    I don’t need to cover this latest nonsense from David Kirby about vaccines and autism as Orac has already done so nicely.

    However, I would like to point out a few examples of why anti-vax is a prime example of denialist argument.

    For one, Kirby is such a promiscuous goal-post mover, I’m floored. This is the guy that said he’d remove himself from the debate if thimerosal were vindicated. Well, that’s proving more and more impossible, as are his expectations:

    Finally, to all those who are going to post comments about the autism rates in California not coming down, following the removal of thimerosal from most vaccines: You are right. The most likely explanation is that thimerosal was not responsible for the autism epidemic. But that does not mean that it never harmed a single child.
    …
    But if thimerosal is vindicated, or shown to be a very minor player, then what about other vaccine ingredients? And what about the rather crowded vaccine schedule we now impose upon families of young children? And what about reports of unvaccinated children in Illinois, California and Oregon who appear to have significantly lower rates of autism? Shouldn’t we throw some research dollars into studying them?

    You can answer that, no, we shouldn’t, because the vaccine-autism debate is over.

    But I am willing to wager that it has only just begun.

    Oh for the love of … you’ve got to be kidding me? You spend the last decade suggesting the entire epidemic is caused by this stuff, but now that the hypothesis has been thoroughly smashed, you’re going to find a dozen other things to blame about vaccines, all similarly based on no science? This guy kills me. He is right though, the debate will never be over. There are fundamental aspects of vaccination that will always make people crazy and paranoid, and lack of any evidence of harm will never stop these people from making false accusations against one of the most effective medical interventions ever developed. The key is learning that this is the usual evidence-free anti-vax nonsense, and making sure it’s ignored for the crankery that it is. We’ll probably never overcome the natural inclination of parents to want to avoid injections in their kids for an abstract benefit (or a benefit that may not be directly for their child). But we should be able to learn what kind of specious arguments will be made against vaccination, and dismiss them out of hand.

    Second I’d like to point out what I think is the most idiotic question I’ve seen asked in a while:

    Among the “factors” to be studied are family history, events during pregnancy, maternal medications, parental occupation, ambient pollution around the house, and “a child’s vaccination history,” the paper reported.

    Oddly, the study will not look at the mercury-based preservative thimerosal. According to the FDA and the Institute of Medicine, the last batches of thimerosal containing vaccines for infants and immune-globulin given to pregnant women expired in late 2003 (except for the flu shot, which is still given to infants and pregnant women).

    The new study will only study children born from September 2003 to August, 2005.
    But the question remains, and I think it’s legitimate: If an association between vaccines and autism has been completely “ruled out,” then why are we spending taxpayer dollars to study autistic children’s vaccination history?

    Maybe because vaccination history is part of a patient history? Maybe because you cranks will cry foul if they don’t? Maybe because they want to continue to accumulate evidence showing that the anti-vax movement is wrong? What a moron. I get what he’s implying. It’s a conspiracy! Secretly we worried about his idiotic hypothesis that has been repeatedly disproven, that’s why scientists will continue to study vaccines. Otherwise why would we bother to study a variable like a patient’s medical history in a study of autism? Sigh.

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  • I'm Jealous of Minnesota

    You guys are so damn lucky. I want Al Franken to run in my state. That race is going to be a total blast. Not to say a showdown in Virginia between Mark Warner and one of the incompetent former Republican governors that bankrupted the state in the last decade won’t be entertaining, but a Franken run raises it to a new level.

    I was shocked by this one statement in the article however:

    “To think of him as a United States senator almost boggles anyone’s imagination,” said Ron Carey, the chairman of the state’s Republican Party. “So much of what he has said is vile and offensive — you can’t even quote it. I look at his words and that’s not how Minnesotans talk, not even in private conversation. His vile bomb throwing is so non-Minnesotan; he must have left his Minnesota roots in Hollywood and New York.”

    Really? That’s the best they can do in a state that previously elected Jesse Ventura governor? Suggest the bogeyman of “Hollywood”?

    And maybe I’m not familiar enough with the entire tome of Franken’s public statements, but has he really said so many things that are so foul they can’t even be quoted? Seriously I’m asking. Quote these horrific statements in my comments. My impression of Franken is that he’s actually quite judicious in his choice of words. He might be forceful, or call people “fat idiots”, but since that line is quoted in the article, what is it we’re missing that can’t be quoted? I smell slander.

  • Attacking the FDA – Pseudoscience masking itself as patient advocacy

    Speaking of libertarians, reading the JCI this week I came across this wonderful review of Richard Epstein’s new book, “Overdose: How excessive government regulation stifles pharmaceutical innovation”.

    We’ve discussed Epstein, and his ilk before. The libertarians that routinely attack the FDA as some kind of bogeyman, killing kids, eating babies, blah blah blah, when the market could be making all these drug decisions for us. David Ross, writing for JCI, sees through the nonsense.

    Although Epstein terms Overdose a study, it’s really a legal polemic that could be subtitled “What’s good for pharma is good for America,” his title for a 2006 newspaper opinion piece (1). Overdose raises questions but fails to persuade, largely because Epstein consistently fails to mention evidence that might inconvenience his argument.

    First, he ignores the reality that patients and health care providers cannot acquire on their own the information they need to make rational choices about drugs. Without complete information, drug market failures, in the form of poor patient outcomes, are inevitable. Epstein dismisses this problem, proposing, for instance, surfing the Internet as a replacement for FDA-required information on drug efficacy and safety.

    Second, Epstein seems unconcerned about the effects of market failure. He notes the Elixir Sulfanilamide disaster of 1937, which cost over a hundred lives, without explaining how his proposals would prevent such catastrophes. He posits the effects of safety issues on companies’ reputations as a deterrent to the knowing marketing of unsafe drugs, ignoring repeated examples of manufacturers doing just that. He concedes that the average patient does not have the ability to tell whether a drug is contaminated yet assumes that judging clinical trial results is a simple matter.

    Finally, Epstein repeatedly distorts clinical trial science. The most peculiar section of Overdose is Epstein’s attack on randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Epstein seizes on the heterogeneity of responses to any therapeutic intervention as evidence that reliance on RCTs is flawed. He contends that drugs that are equivalent to (or even inferior to) placebo should still be approved, arguing that patient responses in the experimental arm that are greater than the placebo mean imply efficacy for the drug in those patients — committing the blunder of rejecting the null hypothesis for a post-hoc subgroup. Epstein appears unaware, or indifferent, to the role of variations in natural history, drug response, and assessment, and the role of type 1 error. Under his scheme, patent medicine nostrums would be legal again.

    …

    Epstein’s hidden agenda appears to be opposing more FDA-mandated information on drug efficacy and safety that might level the playing field between drug manufacturers and consumers.

    I don’t have much hope that we’ll be able to keep these arguments out of the debate over the FDA forever. People have such a poor understanding of history (and everyone from that period is dead or soon will be – the drugs didn’t help), that they may actually be convinced of this nonsense. But I can think of few suggestions more profoundly stupid and intellectually dishonest than to suggest that we can create this ideal market system in which omniscient consumers navigate through the vagaries of pharmacologic science and RCTs to find the best drug for their condition, or that the market will magically provide information to consumers when the evidence is that companies have already shown they are disinclined to do so.

    The argument over whether or not we should have validation of safety and efficacy of drugs by non-partial government scientists is over. The only way one can argue for a return to a pre-FDA market regime is to argue dishonestly.

  • Reason – the most inappropriate magazine title ever

    The stupidest essay ever entitled “The Death of Main Street: Are big chains to blame, or is excessive regulation? ” courtesy of Reason magazine. This stuff rivals creationist drivel for sheer stupidity.

    Briefly, Balko argues small businesses fail because regulations price them out of business, not because of Wal-Mart. The evidence? Old Town Alexandria! Ha!

    Old Town Alexandria is an historic, charming stretch of city just outside of Washington D.C. that features lots of shops, restaurants, parks, cobblestone streets, and a waterfront teeming with American history. George Washington was a regular in Old Town, as was a young Robert E. Lee.

    The Alexandria Times article explained how Old Town Alexandria’s onerous permit process and regulatory system have put a strain on small businesses, especially the small, independent outfits that give Old Town all of its charm. I’m fairly anti-regulation, but even I don’t have too much of a problem with city ordinances that attempt to preserve unique neighborhoods with a distinct vibe or identity, particularly when the aim is to keep the quaint, historical atmosphere of a place like Old Town. These sorts of regulations are about as localized as you can get, in this case covering just a couple dozen or so city blocks.

    For example, if you want to do something as simple as change the lettering on, or repaint the sign outside of your business in Old Town, you need to both apply for and pay $50 to obtain a “ladder permit,” and apply for and pay $55 for a “building permit.”

    It can take more than two weeks to get the proper paperwork, even if all you want to do is replace the “e” on your “Ye Olde Sandwich Shoppe” sign. More significant changes, obviously, require more bureaucratic hassle.

    …

    The question is, should you really need to have to keep lawyer on retainer in order to open a business in Old Town? Is that really the kind of business atmosphere the city’s elected officials want to create? And if Old Town is going to make that a requirement–intentionally or not–what effect is that going to have on the small boutiques, art galleries, and antique stores that make up the very atmosphere the regulations are trying to promote?

    The answer, I think, lies in what’s happened to Old Town over the last decade or so. It’s been Gap-i-fied. The independent spots are closing down, and they’re being replaced by familiar national chains. Old Town now has a Gap, a Chipotle, a Nine West, a Ross, a CVS, a Restoration Hardware, a Banana Republic, and loads of other stores you can find in just about every other part of the country. Parts of it are like a strip mall now, albeit one outfitted in Virginia red brick and quaint colonial architecture.

    …

    People who decry the Wal-Mart-ification and Gap-ificaiton of America need to realize that regulation often does more harm to local businesses than predatory pricing, loss-leader business models, or some other imagined corporate evil.

    I’ve lived in or near Old Town for most of the last 10 years. It’s not at all common to see an independently-owned antique shop or art gallery get boarded over, only to be replaced in ensuing months by a franchise. It’s not difficult to see why. Franchise operators can tap the resources of the parent company, particularly when it comes to accessing legal help with experience navigating through and working with local zoning laws and business regulations.

    I challenge this idiot to find a single business in Old Town that had to move out because of “excess regulation”, and not the fact that property values have skyrocketed there to the point it’s impossible for anyone but the ultra-rich to survive. This guy supposedly has lived there for 10 years and he can’t figure out this simple relationship? Instead he blames signage regulations and historical regulations? And then generalizes observations of Old Town, one of the most uptight, wealthy, and downright rare neighborhoods in the country to small businesses across the country?

    This is off topic for me, but I simply can’t believe these nitwits get to call their magazine “Reason”, when clearly they’re so out of touch they can’t even analyze what’s going on in their own neighborhoods. Either that or the property values have so little effect on their net worth they don’t feel the pinch.

  • HIV/AIDS denialism is deadly – The sick bastards have another victim

    If anyone has been deluded into thinking HIV/AIDS denialism isn’t dangerous or deadly, all one has to do is look at the fruits of their labor on the AIDS myth exposed message boards. Their latest monstrosity is to convince an HIV positive mother to refuse medical care and testing for her and her child. Momma2girls82 writes on their message board about becoming a denialist and asking for help from the denialist community:

    So I’ve always been one to go ‘against the grain’. I firmly believe that one should question everything they are told ‘just is’ and determine their own beliefs based on their own research. And so here I am, questioning, learning everything I can because my life (or quality thereof) and that of my husband and children truly depends on it.

    It seems so…. EASY to just believe HIV doesn’t really exist. I’ve just essentially been told that I have a fatal disease and that I will certainly die, quite possibly along with my beloved infant. Having that hanging over my head may likely cloud my judgment. I want desperately to really believe that this really is all a myth, but I’m afraid it’s just that I’m really seeking a feasible source for denial. Am I alone there – that this is all just too easy?

    What I’ve come to understand is that the basic belief of a dissident is that HIV is in fact NOT the cause of an immune system debilitation that is killing people all around the world, but that HIV is just a form of antibodies found (naturally or otherwise) in some people but is not actually detrimental. The true cause of all the illness and immune deficiency is more likely caused by the toxins people are constantly bombarding their bodies with. So if everyone in the entire world ate healthful diets consisting of whole, raw foods, we would find that no one died of AIDS. Am I getting this right?

    For those of you who are “positive” – do you ever question yourself and ask yourself “what if I’m wrong?” What if HIV really does exist, really does cause AIDS, and without medication, you might die? Are there some of you out there that truly believe, without any doubt, that you are right? Does just reading other people’s stories about ‘feeling better than ever before’ even with a t4 count of like, 25, convince you that this is all really true? What did it take to really convince you?

    …

    As for where I’m at right now… we are avoiding speaking to anyone except those from dissident groups until we can really get a good grasp on this incredible amount of information. I intend to learn quickly how to eat a truly healthful diet – my husband was raised on whole/raw foods so he’ll be a good resource – and I will make the necessary changes to ensure my family is getting the right foods. I have told my friend that was going to be tested tomorrow not to go, though I’m afraid she will anyway. I’ve ordered Stephen Allen’s video, I intend to speak with Christine [-ed Maggiore] as soon as possible, and order a copy of her book as well. I’m nursing my baby and have no plans to stop as of yet.

    True to form, the denialists reassure her that her gross negligence is the correct course of action. They feed her the standard lies that they always do about the tests, safety of HAART, etc. Their replies are the same mixture of total nonsense and biological mumbo jumbo you always see from these cranks.

    The truth is testing during pregnancy is perfectly accurate, antiretrovirals extend life and decrease the probability of maternal transmission to children, and since she got a confirmatory result this is no fluke.

    The worst part is this woman is HIV positive and is breastfeeding her child which will increase the risk of the child acquiring HIV (studies have shown about 11% transmission, as high as 15% if breastfeeding is extended to the second year, and this is worsened by her refusal to take anti-retrovirals). It is not recommended for HIV + women to breastfeed children when viable alternatives exist, and the denialists are encouraging her to do so anyway – this is telling her to risk her child’s life for no good reason.

    More below:
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  • World AIDS day 2007 – Denialism is still a problem

    Today is World AIDS day, and it’s important to take a minute to discuss HIV and AIDS since this blog addresses HIV/AIDS denialism.

    While the the UN made a mistake overestimating world HIV/AIDS statistics (it is good news and not for the reasons cranks like) Estimates of new HIV transmission in the US are rising. This is bad news. At the same time you have HIV/AIDS denialists still persisting in spreading their nonsense, cranks like Michael Fumento spreading the misinformation that heterosexual transmission of HIV is a “myth”, and that the figures for Africa are a conspiracy by UNAIDS and WHO to get more money (he thinks 32 million is still too high and it’s more likely to be around 8 million).

    Let’s go over some of the current data on HIV transmission, who is most at risk, why HIV/AIDS is still a problem in the US and worldwide, and why people like Fumento should keep their crank nonsense to themselves. As an added incentive, I’ll include a little email Fumento sent me a couple weeks ago at the bottom of the post. Before looking, guess which adjectives I receive, you might be pleasantly surprised.
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  • Disingenuous? Stupid? Both?

    Let’s talk about Uncommon Descent for a moment. One of the recurring complaints we’ve been hearing from the evolution denialists there is this refrain that whenever a evolutionary explanation for a result gets reevaluated, it’s a sign that we “Darwinists” are somehow being dishonest and fitting any data to the theory of evolution. Evolution, therefore, isn’t falsifiable. For example, two posts, one from BarryA, the other from O’Leary (commenting on this ARN nonsense, wrongly suggesting that results that falsify evolutionary theory have been discovered – like the recent hypothesis the appendix has a function – and that we just ignore the problem.

    BarryA:

    In Edge, Behe talks about Ernst Mayr’s 1960’s prediction that on Darwinian grounds the search for homologous genes would be quite futile. Now Darwinists use homologous genes as evidence for the theory; after all the existence of such genes was predicted by the theory (after the fact).

    What can you say about a theory that can just as easily predict “X” and the opposite of “X”?

    I commend to our readers sections 19 and 20 of Popper’s Logic of Scientific Discovery, in which he discusses “conventionalist stratagems” to rescue a theory from falsification. Popper writes, “Whenever the ‘classical’ system of the day is threatened by the results of new experiments which might be interpreted as falsifications . . . the system will appear unshaken to the conventionalist.” Popper goes on to explain the stratagems the conventionalist will use to deal with the inconsistencies that have arisen between the predictions of the theory and the results of experiments:

    And O’Leary:

    Despite its name – which means “hanger on” – the human appendix works for a living, according to recent research (helping kill germs). [ed – note she didn’t even read it!]

    As British physicist David Tyler notes, despite the claim of evolutionary biologists from Darwin to the present day that the appendix is junk left over from evolution, the appendix actually has a function – and the current crop of evolutionary biologists try hard to avoid acknowledging that they were wrong about that.

    I think this warrants further discussion for two reasons. One is that it exposes, again, how the UD cranks just don’t get science. As someone who favors Popper’s view, I’m particularly pissed that the purveyors of the unfalsifiable would use him to promote their crankery. Second, there is often a problem in scientific communication that some people propose sloppy evolutionary speculations for findings that feeds these cranks ammo. First, let’s go over why the statements by our UD cranks are incorrect:
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  • Ack! ChopraWoo!

    Usually Deepak Chopra’s nonsensical writings at the Huffington post about mind-body healing are so vague and bland I don’t bother addressing them. The mind controls the body, the mind is powerful, blah blah blah, who cares right? Well, today Chopra pulled back the curtain and we see the crank within. It’s a reminder that behind the facade of all the touchy-feely nonsense of the alties is a campaign against science and legitimate medical practice. We start with the standard quack appeal to the individual, which sounds nice, but in practice basically means they have no consistent method to apply their nonsense.

    The great promise of mind-body medicine will never be fulfilled as long as the treatments are unpredictable. This has been a major stumbling block in the West, ever since the original excitement over acupuncture in the Seventies and Ayurveda in the Eighties. Patients who have been helped sing the praises of alternative medicine while official clinical trials don’t satisfy the skeptics. In the East it is more easily accepted that each patient is unique, and therefore one cannot expect that the same therapy will lead to the same results in everybody.

    You know, I simply don’t believe the alties when they tell us that they treat each patient differently. Whenever I see their writings they are always recommending specific treatments for specific diseases. Where is all this tailored treatment they talk about? And further, what is their method for determining which individuals need which treatment? Reading auras? They should just admit they’re full of it right here.

    But then Chopra shows the real objective of altie medicine quacks – the undermining of evidence-based medicine and with standard denialist tactics no less.

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  • Holocaust Denier David Irving at Oxford – A report

    I actually had thought the debate with holocaust denier David Irving and racist Nick Griffin at the Oxford Union had been canceled, but via Deborah Lipstadt’s blog it turns out they made the mistake of giving the man an outlet for his nonsense. An account is offered by attendee Jonny Wright that I think supports our contention that denialists should not be debated.

    Wright takes the side that free speech is always the best way to go, but the mistake here is thinking that free speech means inviting a holocaust denier to use your loudspeaker to spout nonsense. It never should have even been considered. All this does is give Irving a patina of legitimacy, and an opportunity to once again deny the truth, which he clearly does throughout the debate. The deniers will use this as an example of their fake historian being taken seriously, and legitimize the idea that there is an actual debate to be had over whether or not the holocaust happened. The other supporters of the invitation had similarly inane things to say, such as this nonsense

    But participant Ms Atkins said controversial views should not be silenced but exposed.

    “When you say that the majority view is always right I think that is a deeply dangerous and disturbing thing to say.

    “I am not for a moment saying that I agree with David Irving or Nick Griffin but I am saying that once you start having truth by democracy you risk silencing some of the most important prophets we have ever had.”

    This is making the false assumption that truth by democracy is what makes people like Irving and Griffin wrong. The issue isn’t what the majority approves of but having standards for honest debate. You simply can’t have that with people who lie and misrepresent science or history to serve a ideological agenda.

    The tougher issue, however, is what to do when the denier got invited. The anti-fascist demonstration clearly got out of hand trying to prevent entry of anyone into the debate. Wright categorizes this as anti-free speech and hypocritical (just as hypocritical as “free speech” advocate Irving’s lawsuit against Deborah Lipstadt to silence her), and I agree with that much. But the goal of putting pressure on the Oxford Union not to have the debate in the first place was certainly correct, and protesting outside of the debate and calling the attendees useful idiots of Irving would have been just fine as well. It’s not suppression of free speech to refuse denialists access to your platform though, and that is just what should have been done. After all, the issue is not the content of what Irving discussed that night, but rather the legitimacy that a venerated debate society confers on the denier by virtue of their invitation.