Denialism Blog

Author: MarkH

  • How Alties read science (p values matter)

    I couldn’t make it a week without talking again about Newstarget, home of Altie-med uber-crank Mike Adams. This time, they caught my eye with a surprising read of this large study of the antioxidant vitamins C and E. Jack Challem, writing for Newstarget, tells us the good, but hidden, news from this study.

    When Cook and her colleagues analyzed data from people who consistently took their supplements, they found these specific benefits:

    Vitamin E led to a 22 percent reduction in the risk of heart attack.

    Vitamin E led to a 27 percent less risk of stroke.

    Vitamin E led to a 9 percent lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease.

    Vitamin E led to a 23 percent lower combined risk of heart attack, stroke, and cardiovascular-related death.

    Vitamin E and vitamin C together lowered the risk of stroke by 31 percent.

    Now this is surprising given the latest meta-analysis which actually showed little benefit from supplementation (and possibly some harm). But after all, a big trial like this will often be better than retrospective analysis of several small studies. However, I was shocked, shocked, to find the authors at Newstarget may have exaggerated the findings.
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  • Prophetic words about the Iraq War

    Via Pandagon we see that at least one administration official knew ahead of time the types of troubles we would encounter trying to occupy Iraq.

  • Turdblossom quits

    Karl Rove quits.

    I wonder what this means? This administration has so little transparency one always feels like interpreting their actions is like trying to read tea leaves. Does this mean they realize Karl Rove’s advice isn’t pulling Bush out of his terrible approval ratings? Is Rove trying to avoid going down with a sinking ship? Is it to avoid trouble with congressional subpoenas over the AG firings?

  • Sworn Virgins and Albanian Feminism

    The Washington Post had a fascinating article over the weekend entitled The Sacrifices of Albania’s ‘Sworn Virgins’. It turns out that in the rural and mountainous regions of Albania, there developed a custom several hundred years ago by which women could assume all the rights of men, but in return had to sear to never marry, never have children, and dress and act like men for the rest of their lives.

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  • Scott Hatfield to debate Uber-Crank

    Responding to an idiotic challenge from Vox Day Scott Hatfield has chosen to debate Vox at some point after August 15th.

    I don’t know what to think. On the one hand, debating a crank like Vox day is unlikely to do anyone any good. It’s not like a guy who doesn’t think that science is valid (all science I know, he’s crazy) is likely to be receptive to anything but their pre-formed worldview. On the other hand, it may help people see just how much of a lunatic crank Vox Day is. Although I don’t know that we need evidence beyond the fact he writes for World Nut Daily.

    In the end, I think it’s worth it for the sheer humor value of such an exchange. We have an early hint from Vox that this is going to be a side splitter. He writes:

    “Since biology is entirely outside my areas of both interest and expertise, I think this should be an interesting experiment as to whether decades of science is enough to trump raw intellect.”

    Ha!

    Scott is sharpening up his arguments in preparation. Drop by and give him some moral support.

  • Is it economics they want taught or religion?

    The Wall Street Journal comments on some select results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) testing which this year included some questions on economics.

    Pop quiz. Which has been most important in reducing poverty over time: a) taxes, b) economic growth, c) international trade, or d) government regulation?

    Now this is an interesting question, does it have a simple answer? Here’s what the WSJ says.
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  • This is a think tank?

    The critical word being “think”. Cato’s Daniel Mitchell writes The More You Tax, the Less You Get . His stunning proof? Cigarette taxes. Wow.

    An article in USA Today notes that big tax hikes on tobacco have dramatically reduced consumption of cigarettes. This is hardly surprising. Indeed, politicians openly state that they want higher tobacco taxes to discourage smoking, and their economic analysis is correct (even if their nanny-state impulses are not).

    It is frustrating, though, that the same politicians quickly forget economic analysis when the debate shifts to taxes on work, saving, investment, and entrepreneurship. But just as tobacco consumption fell when taxes rose, it is inevitable that there will be less productive activity if statists in Congress follow through on plans to hike tax rates on capital gains and corporate income:

    Yes, because working/investment and cigarettes are so alike. People pay for this kind of output?

  • I love Blogs 4 Brownback

    Today’s post is one of the best ever. Woodwinds are the instruments of Satan.

  • No! Bad media!

    Do I have to roll up a newspaper?

    Big Tom warned me in today’s cranks post of the ABC news’ headline Global Warming Tipping Point in ’09?” in regards to this paper from the Hadley Centre on new more sophisticated modeling techniques. Could they be more boneheaded?

    Fortunately, nowhere in the article do they mention “tipping” points for ’09, it’s just that yellow headline. The point of the story is that this modeling that uses current weather patterns and data to model climate for the near future shows a likely lull in the current upward trend before further increases in temperature after 2009. This does not mean a “tipping point” has been reached, nor should such a thing be suggested.

    Bad ABC news. Bad!

  • A big day for cranks

    Today is a big day for cranks in two separate areas, but the interesting thing is the similarity of the responses.

    First we have Casey Luskin of the “top think tank” the Discovery Institute (wow, they must be right up there with Cato and CEI!) blathering about paleontologists don’t know anything because of the self-correcting nature of science.

    After this latest find, one researcher realized its implications and was quick to quash any doubts this may spark regarding human evolution, stating: “All the changes to human evolutionary thought should not be considered a weakness in the theory of evolution, Kimbel said. Rather, those are the predictable results of getting more evidence, asking smarter questions and forming better theories, he said.”

    I’m all for “asking smarter questions and forming better theories,” and it logically follows that I therefore must also favor abandoning theories that aren’t working. The aforementioned Harvard biological anthropologist, Daniel Lieberman, apparently did not get the memo about refraining from making statements that might lead to doubts about evolution: he stated in the New York Times that these latest fossil finds regarding habilis:

    “show ‘just how interesting and complex the human genus was and how poorly we understand the transition from being something much more apelike to something more humanlike.’” (emphasis added)

    Indeed, as explained here, the first true members of Homo were “significantly and dramatically different” from our alleged ape-like ancestors, the australopithecines. So far, the data isn’t doing a very good job of explaining precisely from what, if anything, did our genus Homo evolve.

    Well soooorrrry for actually looking for answers rather than stopping at, “a magic man done it.” Or rather, “I see design, therefore a magic man done it!” It’s really tiresome when denialist cranks like Luskin attack science and scientists because we’re self-correcting and willing to revise theories based on new evidence. That’s science people. I would hardly say looking for “smarter questions” involves dropping evolutionary theory, which is unaffected by this result as PZ has noted, to search for a magic man.

    Anyway, that leads me to the second group of cranks dancing around a new result today. In this case it is global warming denialists like Steven Milloy, Tim Blair, Joseph D’Aleo at Icecap, NewsBusters (It’s a scandal!), etc. jumping up and down because of an error found in a dataset of US temperature that revises the records to show that 1934 was actually hotter than 1998. The chart and more below the fold.
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