Denialism Blog

Author: MarkH

  • What's the matter with this curve?

    MarkCC takes down this idiotic analysis from AEI that appeared in the WSJ Friday.

    I saw this curve yesterday

    on their editorial page and thought, what kind of idiot would fit a curve to an obvious linear regression? Not really having math expertise I dismissed it as probable crap, and moved on.

    Thankfully, MarkCC whips out the math and shows exactly how stupid this stupid analysis is. I’m glad for this, because I knew it was stupid to fit a curve to it, but not how exceedingly stupid it was.

    One should also note their recent editorials which include, “The Surge is Working” and “Sick Propaganda“.

    Does anyone need any additional explanation for why I consider the WSJ editorial page to be a denialist organization? It’s a virtual clearinghouse of denialism on par with Uncommon Descent. Their denialist garbage ranges from bad economic arguments using laughable math, to global warming denialism, to typical libertarian crankery (FDA kills people, the EPA = fascism), to what might soon qualify as a new branch of denialism – the “everything is fine/we’re winning the war denialism”.

    ** PZ mocks it too.

    ***An update *** It is not my intent that everyone I link as spreading BS to be deserving of the denialist title. It takes a lot more effort to get that designation, namely the use of a significant number of the tactics in an attempt to attack legitimate science or fact. I don’t agree with the Offit editorial and believe that it’s based on a straw man attack on Moore’s movie. By linking it without context Orac and others clearly have felt that I was labeling Offit or Omar Fadhil denialists by default. I do think it’s an example of the WSJ editorial page acting as an aggregator of BS. I’ll spend some more time in the future talking about the WSJ and examples of how they do this and construct a more thorough takedown of their use of the tactics.

  • Wow Orac, you found a real winner

    Does Tim Slagle strike anyone else as being a crank?

    I feel like we should lend Orac a hand. He’s had to deal with the anti-global warming denialism from this guy all on his own. Let’s do a take down of this wise man’s approach to global warming science.
    (more…)

  • Genomicron wants to help ID out

    We’ve discussed the incompetence of cranks in their critical reasoning skills, and their inability to think about science in a lucid or productive fashion. But have we tried to help them? Have we moved beyond caddy criticisms and actually bothered to extend a hand to our fellow man? Clearly not. Rather than continuing to mock ID for being the intellectually-dishonest, crank-laden nonsense that it is, why don’t we help them become a real science?

    Genomicron has some suggested experiments to help ID get on the right track. Maybe, if they are legitimately interested in science, we’ll be able to direct them towards some productive research, since they can’t seem to figure out how to get beyond their current promiscuous teleology and crank arguments without help.

    Here are some of the suggested experiments:
    (more…)

  • Now this is the genetic fallacy

    Hey Luskin. This is what a genetic fallacy actually looks like.

    The Darwinists devoutly desire to avoid the true history of their creed, and usually the media assist in the cover up–unknowingly, I would like to think. The “Inherit the Wind” trope that is monotonously employed by journalists–not to mention Judge Jones of Dover, PA fame–derives from the play and movie of that name. But this cliché, which is the source of what many journalists think about the subject, was fiction and not even aimed at the evolution issue so much as the danger of McCarthyism in the 1950s. The real Scopes trial in 1925 was rather different. And so was the biology textbook that was at the heart of the Scopes trial.

    Hunter’s A Civic Biology was racist. It advocated therapeutic eugenics–and it was widely used in schools around America, not just in Tennessee. John West’s forthcoming book, Darwin Day in America: How Our Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science, includes an extensive examination of the subject as it relates to the popularity of eugenics in general.

    …

    Congratulations therefore go to Garin Hovanissian, who brings up the topic of the Hunter biology textbook in The Weekly Standard. We are coming up on the 100th anniversary of Darwin’s birth in 2009, so you can be sure that Inherit the Wind will be shown in thousands of high school and college classrooms, where it will be lovingly presented as an approximation of the truth. It might be useful before then to dig up all the speeches of William Hunter, the racist and eugenicist, and of his champion, the great H. L. Mencken. The fullness of the truth will be found there. How hard will the Darwinists fight to keep the students from learning about that?

    Just thought he might like to know what one looked like. “Darwinism was once used in a racist textbook and racist people liked it – therefore there is something wrong with the science and you should believe ID”. He’s got some poisoning the well there too, going after H. L. Mencken and Hunter for being bigots. It has nothing to do with the validity of the science of course. And Mencken wasn’t just a racist and eugenicist, he was also sexist, anti-semitic, anti-woman, anti-child, anti-foreigner etc. Mencken pretty much hated on everybody. It’s not exactly a secret you know. It’s also totally irrelevant to the validity of the science.

  • Alternative medicine quacks deny efficacy of conventional medicine

    Make no mistake about it, the promoters of alternative medicine are denialists. One of the more stunning examples of their denial of the efficacy of evidence-based medicine appeared in Newstarget with the headline The false gods of scientific medicine revealed: It’s a cult, not a science by Mike Adams.

    Promoters of conventional medicine claim that all the drug marketing, FDA approvals, surgical procedures, chemotherapy and all other treatments are based on “hard science.” The term “science” is invoked with hilarious frequency: Science journals, science-based medicine, proven medical science and so on. As you might have guessed, however, there’s surprisingly little genuine science to be found in the common practice of conventional medicine. Rather, what passes for “science” today is a collection of health myths, half-truths, intellectual dishonesty, self delusion, fraudulent reporting and wishful thinking.
    …
    This is how doctors have come to believe the incredible: That food has nothing to do with health, that antioxidants will kill you, that herbs interfere with drugs, and that only drugs can treat or cure disease. It’s a cult-like belief system handed down by the high priests of conventional medicine, and if this intricate web of false beliefs was actually subjected to genuine scientific scrutiny, it would crumble into a thousand pieces of junk science and marketing propaganda.

    It’s the usual denialist garbage. Conspiracy theories about drug companies, doctors, scientific conspiracies and the FDA. The straw man that doctors think that food has nothing to do with health is an egregious denial of all research done into nutrition. And his statement that herbs can’t interfere with drugs? Well, try taking St. John’s Wort and birth control sometime and see what happens. But my jaw dropped with this claim:

    Chemotherapy has been scientifically proven to be worthless at curing cancer, enhancing quality of life or protecting the health of the patient. In fact, chemotherapy kills patients, and even the ones who survive it are left with permanent damage to their brain (“chemo brain”), kidneys, liver and other organs. Chemotherapy is a medical hoax with absolutely no scientific validity. The size of a tumor is not a measure of the degree of cancer that exists on a patient’s body, and shrinking a tumor is not a meaningful measure of a cancer treatment’s success.

    Oh really? I wonder if I can find an example of chemotherapy extending life. Let’s see…

    (more…)

  • FRC wants gays out of baseball, mom's apple pie

    Sounds dirty doesn’t it? But the homobigot fake family values group, the Family Research Council, is dead serious about keeping teh gays out of baseball games.

    This past Sunday, at the San Diego Padres baseball game, what was advertised as a “Free Floppy Hat Night” for kids under 14 turned out to be a double play. While the Padres management was enticing families with the giveaway for kids, it was also promoting the evening as a Gay Pride night at the ballpark. Children who received free hats were treated to the Gay Man’s Chorus of San Diego singing the national anthem prior to what one homosexual group billed as “Out at the Park with the San Diego Padres.”

    The San Diego Padres organization should be ashamed that they would promote such an event on a night they specifically designed for the family. On this curveball of an evening, the Padres struck out.

    Click the link below to contact the San Diego Padres and tell them that baseball is a family game that shouldn’t be used as an exhibition of homosexual lifestyles. The national pastime is just that: an opportunity for fans of the sport to enjoy a game and take respite from the daily grind. It’s not place for politics – or political correctness.

    We’ve provided a short sample text you can sign or modify as you like to the Padres. Let’s tell major league baseball to leave politics aside at the turnstile.

    That’s right, please, tell the Padres what you think.

    After all, if children see gay people or hear them sing, it’s like a siren-song of gayosity that will convert them to the homosexual lifestyle, or something. That’s my current hypothesis. My other one is that the FRC is such a shameless coven of bigots that they feel they can intimidate business owners out of allowing gays to show their faces (and sing) at public events. They believe it is socially acceptable in this century to force gays back in the closet out of some ridiculous appeal to protecting kids. Oh won’t somebody please think of the Children!

    i-144c24146c7fb7dde1e86d344a3cd67a-Thinkofthechildren.gif

    Via Box Turtle Bulletin

  • Crankery is caused by a fundamental defect in reasoning

    Casey Luskin doesn’t like that evilutionists equate Intelligent Design Creationism with, well, creationism. I’m sobbing.

    But in a perfect example of how cranks like using the tools of logic to make their point, and then fail, he suggests that the assertion that ID = creationism is an example of the genetic fallacy. Well, that’s interesting. What’s his reasoning?

    Darwinian logic often contends that because a given proportion of ID proponents are creationists, ID must therefore be creationism. It’s a twist on the genetic fallacy, one I like to call the Darwinist “Genesis Genetic Argument.” As noted, it implies that each and every argument made by a creationist must be equivalent to arguing for full-blooded creationism. This fallacious argument is easy to defeat on logical grounds by pointing out that some ID proponents are not creationists, and in fact have been persuaded to support ID in the absence of religion. Thus something other than creationism or religion must be fundamental to the set of views underlying ID (big hint: it’s the scientific data indicating real design in nature)!

    First of all a big belly laugh from the “scientific data” point. But anyway, is this actually a case of the genetic fallacy? And even if it were fallacious, is it really an example of an argument of irrelevance?

    Luskin links the wiki as well in his post, but it’s clear he didn’t read it (correctly).

    (more…)

  • We will now resume our regular blogging schedule

    The laptop is fixed..er…or rather was never really broken. Somehow the kitten managed to kill the cord, and the loose ac power inlet was an incidental finding.

    One new power cord later (for the life of me I can’t figure out how she did it) I’ve got my precious back.

    Some key denialism links though I’ve been enjoying

    Orac on bad anti-science comedy

    Just about everybody talking about the former Surgeon General’s muzzling by the Bush administration. Should we be surprised that the administration’s new nominee is a homobigot endorsed by the fake family values groups? I must admit, I’m getting sick of these guys putting up with this crap for years, then only doing something about it after they’re out of the job. Are they deluded into thinking they can change the anti-science politics of this administration?

    Finally, I’d like to thank the people who gave me good computer advice and offered help, especially Batz, Terry, and Ray. My machine is getting a bit old and when it does die, it sounds like I’ll likely make the switch to a mac that dual-boots or runs parallels. Seems like the best of both worlds.

  • I am in withdrawal

    I need my laptop.

    Last week, the power input, which was getting loose, finally decided to become fully disconnected. It might have had something to do with the kitten hanging from the power cord. And sadly, when I consulted the repair people I am told the only solution is to replace the entire motherboard, rather than just reconnect or repair the jack.

    In the meantime I have become grumpy and withdrawn. I am unable to blog without my bookmarks and properly configured web-browser. I realize how fully dependent I have become on this machine. My reference database is on it, as well as the paper I’ve been working on, all my other work software, photoshop, and various other programs that allow me to be functional from day to day are now out of reach as I await the verdict from the repair shop.

    On the plus side, I got about twice as much bench work done today as I usually do, although I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to interpret what I wrote in my notebook in the future (I usually print out protocols).

    The question is, if the repair makes it more sensible to purchase a new machine, what should I get? And I can’t get a Mac, just to short-circuit that conversation right there. Too much of the software I need to do data processing is Windows-dependent, and my lab isn’t going to dump thousands of dollars to buy Mac versions. I currently have a Thinkpad, which has been a consistently rock-solid piece of hardware that, while heavy, has always been reliable and fast. I am reluctant to buy a new Thinkpad since they are now made by Lenovo, and don’t know if the quality is convenient.

    I will not buy a Dell, because they are loud, ugly, and everyone in our lab who has had one has had catastrophic drive collapses at some time or another. I can take a motherboard death, but losing a drive can be a real pain in the ass. What do people think?

    In the meantime I will blog and comment less (and less effectively) as I am rarely near a friendly computer that knows all my passwords and has my RSS feeds handy.

  • Hire Google for your denialist campaign!

    An alert reader noticed that when he performed a Google search on ‘Sicko’, guess who pops up in the sponsored links? Why, our good friends at AEI, a denialist organization second only to CEI, but since they have a lot of the same people working for both it’s really just academic which one you’re arguing with. When you need your crappy industry defended from public criticism, you can always rely on AEI or CEI to chomp at the bit and pretend there is “no problem”.

    What’s even more interesting is that Google actually solicited ads (fixed link) to combat Sicko’s bad PR for the insurance industry. How’s that for “do no evil”?

    AEI’s criticism is pretty weak:

    (more…)