Denialism Blog

Author: MarkH

  • Worst Colleges in America

    Jason Rosenhouse links this excellent feature from Radar entitled America’s Worst Colleges.

    My favorite? The review of Liberty university.

    Notable Course: Christian Womanhood IV. Because keeping your mouth shut is too rich a subject for just three levels of study.

    Raw Data: Ranked in the lowest “fourth tier” by U.S. News & World Report and awarded ho-hum grades for academics, social life, and campus attractiveness by its students, Liberty proudly accepts 94 percent of applicants. Low SAT scores do not appear to be an obstacle. On the plus side, the debate team won the national championship last year.

    School Pride: “The mountains and all are beautiful. It’s right near the Wal-Mart, too,” writes a student on Campus Dirt. “The College Republicans are the best!!!!” gushes another enthusiastic reviewer. A third warns prospectives to “Be ready for an AWESOME spiritual experience at the finest Christian university in America! Be prepared to follow the high standards and rules they have set forth, it will be worth it!”

    Fun Fact: Kudos to Falwell for naming the fervently anti-gay university’s football team the Flames.

    Ha! Reading some of the other reviews, one wonders how these places exist – and manage to get 20k a year out of people. Then one realizes that a significant number of people who are running our country today were “educated” at Liberty.

    Damn. Now the article doesn’t seem nearly as funny. More sickly disturbing than funny.

    Also, one wonders, no mention of George Mason? It’s a commuter-school extraordinaire – home of the Mercatus Center and source of anti-science policy cranks for your Republican of choice. Whenever you need some problem to be labeled “no problem”, just call George Mason.

  • An Inconvenient Truth – how true?

    Geek Counterpoint has done an excellent job going through Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

    The overall impression? Mostly right, some overblown links that are rather tenuous, but ultimately thorough coverage of the science behind climate change. Good job Lorne.

  • Quiet Week

    I’ve been trying to get some work done this week, hence the slow week.

    In the meantime, please consider a visit to to the Unicorn Museum, soon to open up near another museum for other imaginary beliefs.

  • Welcome Zooillogix

    Go say high to Zooillogix, another two-brother team science blogging away here under the auspices of Seed. I will enjoy their blog, as long as they stay away from too many pictures of creatures with more than 4 legs (tentacles don’t count). The African Booze tree should be your first stop there.

    And that makes me think of another plug. Everybody should be reading Seed magazine. I got my first copy as a super-special scienceblogger last month and I love it. It’s a great magazine, with beautiful graphical design, and some of the best-written general interest science articles I’ve read.

  • If you want to prevent abortions write your senator and congressmen now

    Multiple news outlets have been reporting on the sudden increase in cost for birth control prescriptions at health centers on college campuses.

    The cause?

    Health experts say the price bump for college students was inadvertent — a byproduct of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, a federal law that went into effect in January. The law alters how drug makers calculate Medicaid-related rebates paid to states, but it ultimately made it expensive for companies to offer schools such deep discounts on birth control. As a result, brand name prescription prices for campus clinics rose from about the $3 to $10 range per month to the $30 to $50 range. Organon, the maker of Cyclessa and Desogen birth control pills and the NuvaRing, says the company is not happy about having to increase prices for colleges. But Nick Hart, Organon’s executive director of contraception, says they were forced to make “a business decision” after the law went into effect.

    This combined with steep and unexplained price increases from Ortho-McNeil for contraception supplied to Title X family planning clinics, and we’re likely to find a great number of sexually active women choosing not to use oral contraceptive – by far one of the easiest, most-effective techniques.

    About 2/3 of college students are sexually active and about a little under half of college-aged women use oral contraception. We know that contraception has been effective in reducing teen pregnancy rates and that financial barriers to contraception are a cause of unintended pregnancies. Why colleges would be dumped from the approved list of which agencies can receive discounted medications is perplexing. Aren’t the democrats interested in safe, legal and rare? Isn’t this a no-brainer?

    Adequate funding for family planning is critical to prevent unwanted pregnancies among the populations that are most susceptible. A Democratic congress should prioritize this issue so that unintended pregnancies are not an unintended side-effect of budget cuts.

  • Enemies of Reason Part II

    It’s up at Google Video (and embedded here). Check it.

  • If you're going to pull the Galileo Gambit – try to remember who Galileo was

    From the “my god these people are dumb files” is this clip from last night’s History Channel documentary 9/11 conspiracies.

    Ha! Good stuff. Don’t worry, they’re replaying it Saturday night in case you missed it, but it apparently has the troofers up in arms.

    In more 9/11 troof news, Popular mechanics has an update to their original 9/11 debunking piece. Between the two, it’s a good summary of 9/11 debunking and well-researched as always.

  • HIV/AIDS denialism covered in PLoS!

    Our very own Tara Smith and Steven Novella have teamed up to write an excellent paper covering the state of HIV/AIDS denialism in the Public Library of Science.

    I love the article, and Tara and Steve do a great job covering all the critical aspects of denialism inherent in the HIV/AIDS denialist movement. Starting with prominent deniers who are largely responsible for the movement, they go on to cover the basic conspiracy theories that really are inseparable from any denialist argument, the classic goalpost moving technique, fake experts, anti-consensus nonsense (also known as the Galileo gambit – a critical component of being a crank) and the basic logical fallacies underlying the denialist opinion. The only thing that seems to be missing is cherry-picking, but hey, 4 out of 5 ain’t bad.

    It really is a remarkable and concise summary of HIV/AIDS denial, its history, and the classic tactics of a denialist movement exposed. It’s at PLoS so it’s free, so check it out. Great job Tara and Steve!

  • Pink is for girls and Blue is for boys?

    It’s so embarrassing when scientists use poorly-constructed studies to blithely reinforce societal stereotypes. Today, LPH at Second Innocence brings us the latest example.

    A new study by scientists from Newcastle University gives substance to the old adage ‘Pink for a girl, blue for a boy’.

    Evolution may have driven women’s preference for pink, according to the study published today.

    ‘The explanation might date back to humans’ hunter-gatherer days, when women were the primary gatherers and would have benefited from an ability to home in on ripe, red fruits. Culture may exploit and compound this natural female preference’, says Professor Anya Hurlbert, Professor of Visual Neuroscience at Newcastle University.

    The study, which is published in the latest issue of Current Biology, provides new scientific evidence in support of the long-held notion that men and women differ when it comes to their favourite colours.

    ‘Although we expected to find gender differences, we were surprised at how robust they were, given the simplicity of our test,’ says Professor Hurlbert.

    LPH points out, this is really dumb for two glaring reasons. First, the pink=girl, blue=boy thing is a relatively new invention:

    “…the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger color is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is pertier for the girl.” [Ladies Home Journal, June, 1918]

    Second, it’s just stupid to think you can take 171 brits who have been exposed to this stereotype their entire lives and expect a result to be reflective of some genetic effect. The explanations they come up with are cringe-worthy.

    ‘The explanation might date back to humans’ hunter-gatherer days, when women were the primary gatherers and would have benefited from an ability to home in on ripe, red fruits. Culture may exploit and compound this natural female preference’, says Professor Anya Hurlbert, Professor of Visual Neuroscience at Newcastle University.
    …

    However, Professor Hurlbert says she could only speculate about the universal preference for blue: ‘Here again, I would favour evolutionary arguments. Going back to our ‘savannah’ days, we would have a natural preference for a clear blue sky, because it signalled good weather. Clear blue also signals a good water source’, she says.

    LPH’s response is about right.

    Oh, those savvy homo habilis home makers. You probably use those same red-finding skills in the supermarket today! Well, that settles it. We can, in fact, use preferences formed by a very small, very homogeneous group to explain our genetic gender differences and there will always be someone with the right letters behind their name who is willing to back up even the stupidest stereotype.

    How does this kind of nonsense get published?

  • Vox Dei Bait

    The debate is churning along at Monkey Trials, and I have to say it’s pretty interesting. Hatfield is doing a great job in this titanic struggle between data and “raw intellect”.

    Check it out.