WaPo shows us how a good conspiracy theory can never die. It’s depressing. We’re probably going to be hearing from 9/11 troofers for the rest of our lives.
The new evidence that Kennedy was killed by someone on a grassy-knoll or the Cubans or whatever is that the metallurgical analysis that was used to prove that the bullets could only have come from the batch that Oswald used was flawed.
So is it time to re-open the Kennedy assassination?
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A must read from Slate on Oprah, the Secret, and the American excess of wishful thinking – starting with a lovely story about a woman who stopped taking her cancer meds because of the secret.
I find the Secret to be pretty typical idiotic woo, that taken to its logical conclusions becomes dangerous, nasty and ugly woo. Beyond the stupid quantum mechanics fallacy, and the outrageous woo claims which have no credibility whatsoever, If you think about it, they’re really just blaming the victims and offering false hope.
Or at least “Darwinism” whatever the hell that means these days. I guess they couldn’t keep quiet all day. UD’s new argument is an easily dismissed straw man. It goes like this.
Scientists discover fruit flies put in a sensory-deprivation chamber,instead of flying around randomly, or in a rigid pattern, fly in a pattern with both random and non-random properties. (PLoS one article)
Uncommon Descent which should have its RSS feeds revoked, says it’s proof of design! Darwinism requires there is no free will! This is apparently based on a stunning misunderstanding of Dawkin’s ideas by dacook.
Of course standard Darwinian orthodoxy denies the reality of free will. Though many Darwinists shy away from the implications of their beliefs as they apply to ascribing responsibility for human behavior, their position demands that all behavior is determined by the genetic heritage of selfish genes.
Then we hang our heads and sigh.
You know the most obnoxious thing about 9/11 conspiracy theorists? They make idiots like Jonah Goldberg look right about something.
Goldberg, who as far as I can tell has never made an accurate prediction, finally has figured out a great way to make Democrats look bad rather than just embarrass himself and the Republicans. He writes for the LA Times “Just How Crazy are the Dems?”, and sadly, he’s got a point. The Democrats, their candidates, and sites like Daily Kos have failed miserably to quash support for conspiratorial thinking about 9/11. And it makes them look, really, really bad.
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This is good. I’ll get some writing (non-blog) done. However I’d like to pose the rare political question based on the coverage of last night’s debate. Everyone from CNN to the National Review is all atwitter over Giuliani’s brash response to the question about whether the first Gulf War might have had something to do with 9/11. His response? Angrily denouncing the idea that anyone could find blame for anything America has done as a potential reason for the attack (I bet the answer would have been different if they suggested it was Clinton’s fault).
Have we really failed to move past this? Are there still people who believe that we were just walking along, minding our own business when terrorists decided to attack us for our freedom?
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Here’s an interesting article in BBC which suggests that more hysterical messages on climate change might fall on deaf ears.
Professor Mike Hulme, of the UK’s Tyndall Centre, has been conducting research on people’s attitudes to media portrayals of a catastrophic future.
He says strong messages designed to prompt people to change behaviour only seem to generate apathy.
His initial findings will be shown to a meeting run by the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
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The study compared the responses of a group of people shown sensational media coverage with those given the more sober information from scientific reports.
The initial findings suggest that those shown doom-laden messages tended to believe the problem could come to a head further into the future. This group also felt there was little they could do to affect the planet’s future.
“Not only is this not a good way of presenting climate change science, but even in trying to effect change, it’s self-defeating,” Professor Hulme said.
Now as someone who can’t stand it when I read hysterical articles on the environment like those from the indepedent which decry everything from cell-phones killing bees (the evidence is pretty poor) to “electronic smog” from wireless internet connections causing people to get sick.
For an example of this contrast between good scientific reading that informs rather than terrorizes, compare the Independent’s version, to the New York Times’ far superior article. The Independent’s writing on the environment, in my opinion, undermines legitimate environmentalism by making environmental concerns look, well, stupid and insane.
I’ll be curious to see this actual research come out so we can check out the methodology, but based upon the range of messages I’ve seen on the science of environmentalism, I welcome a call for less idiotic and hysterical coverage. At the very least I think it makes people disbelieve legitimate information about threats to the environment. For a lengthier article from Hulme see this one from the BBC, or some of his other writings. I think he’s got a point about the message, and if the research really shows that the messages have to be framed differently, then it’s something we should consider when we write about the science of climate change.
A fun thing about reading things on the ID sites and then actually checking primary sources is how bizarre Uncommon Descent is as an information filter. I guess this would be an example of the dreaded “framing” of science which I don’t want to fight with my sciblings over. Take for example their discussion of Guillermo Gonzalez’s qualifications in light of his failure to get tenure.
UC says:
“he has had his research featured in Science, Nature, and on the cover of Scientific American.”
Then you see what they’re talking about and you see they’re talking about this negative review of “Privileged Planet” in Nature, a mention of his idea of a galactic habitable zone in an article about someone else’s research in Science (or were they referring to the articles in science about how the DI duped the Smithsonian into showing a documentary about his book?), and a Scientific American article that wasn’t mentioned on the cover as far as I can tell. Gonzalez’s article was in group of articles in SciAm entitled Mysteries of the Milky Way. It looks like, according to DaveScot (so I don’t know if I should believe this), SciAm is embarrassed to have published an IDer and has removed mention of the article being on the cover from their archives. Ha! It must suck to be an IDer. They may call their abuse at the hands of scientific publications (and science in general) McCarthyism, but I think it’s more accurately described as spotting BS and not letting it contaminate your journal.
C’mon internet hive-mind. Give me some more examples of the filtering process where “criticized negatively” or “mentioned” turns into “featured”. Or how articles which are just contained in a special issue become “on the cover”.
(Thanks sparc)
All the evolution denialists are up in arms because one of their own, Guillermo Gonzalez, was denied tenure. It’s persecution they cry! Let’s write a letter to ISU they cry! And now Denyse O’Leary says, “It’s a conspiracy!”
How tiresome. Could a kind reader make me an animated gif of a man climbing up on a cross for me? This persecution complex of the IDers needs a graphic.
There are a number of good reasons why Gonzalez might have been denied tenure (and so far I haven’t seen Gonzalez himself cry persecution – just his fans at UC)
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“It’s just murder…It’s really just that simple.”
-Anthony Fauci on the HIV/AIDS denialist Peter Duesberg
I think that one of the clearest examples of denialism, and of the harm that anti-scientific attitudes can have, is in HIV/AIDS denialism. But who in this day and age can continue to promote such a thoroughly absurd idea that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS, and worse yet, actively discourage those infected with the virus from pursuing treatments that have been proven to extend life?
I’ll tell you who. The denialists.
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Happy Mother’s Day this weekend! In honor of the day I’d think we should talk about divorce myths. I was scanning the Family Research Council blog and they repeated the commonly-believed myth that half of all marriages end in divorce. But what is the evidence this is true?
*Updated with cohabitation information*
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