Denialism Blog

Category: Conspiracies

  • Angels and Demons – Feeding our love of conspiracies

    Tomorrow Angels and Demons comes to theaters across the country. One in a long series of movies that profits from the idea that underneath our regular, ordinary world, there are powerful forces controlling the scenes. I understand the appeal of these movies, it’s an entertaining concept. A fictional conspiracy engages your intellect, creates a mystery, makes you think about the world and who is in control. But we have to remember when we see these films that these are works of fiction for entertainment. The Illuminati are not real, this sadly ludicrous belief still persists for some people but fortunately for most of us has become a joke. The Priory of Sion was conclusively demonstrated to be a hoax decades ago. These groups are, of course, not real because such conspiratorial groups and actions could never be kept secret or hidden in the real world.

    The reality of conspiracy theories is very different. These don’t represent any kind of healthy thought process at all. They require one to reach a conclusion, then ignore any information that contradicts it. They attempt to explain, but only create more questions. I like to say they are non-parsimonious. And worse, rather than make people think, they tend only to enforce bigotry and ideology. It is the intellectual equivalent of self-lobotomy.

    Films often seem to reinforce non-skeptical thought. We like to be entertained, or scared, or shocked. Hence, every time someone is introduced as an atheist or “skeptic” in a film they’re inevitably exposed to ghosts, or aliens, or whatever unlikely boogeyman serves the script. The skeptic never turns out to be right, as they are in real life. What would be the fun in that? Every movie would turn into an episode of Scooby Doo. It was just old man Withers with a flashlight after all, and a multi-million dollar CGI budget.

    So the question is, do films like these make the situation worse? Do they encourage conspiratorial thought or are they recognized by film goers appropriately as entertainment?

    I suspect that to some degree our fascination with, and desire to be entertained by conspiracies is encouraged by these films, but for most of us, seeing 1408 or the X-files is just entertainment and that’s OK. I read Angels and Demons and I gotta tell you, it’s a pretty silly, unbelievable book. But that never precludes it from being a good movie.

    If instead you want to spend this weekend watching an entertaining movie that deals with conspiracies in a realistic way, those exist too. I can highly recommend Burn After Reading which is the antidote to government conspiracy theories. In a hysterical way it mocks how little we are in control of anything. Or if you like the murder-mystery types, try Blood Simple. Really, anything by Joel and Ethan Coen will be highly entertaining while keeping your skeptic’s circuits sharp. Any other skeptical suggestions for entertainment? Leave them in the comments.

  • The Teabaggers Are Nuts

    Via Brayton I caught this disturbing video of the new right-wing fringe movement:

    Now, if you guys have been following along for the last few years of denialism blog, you know you should immediately be suspicious of people alleging conspiracy theories. This one is a doozy. The administration as a culmination of a 5 decade communist plot to take over the country? This movement is disturbing, and as radical and unhinged as the 9/11 truthers. I would emphasize as always, no political ideology is safe from this paranoid fringe, and this is a great example of how ideology is the universal threat to rational thinking.

    I also can’t help but think this teabagging movement represents a more mainstream identity of growing right-wing hate in this country. With new reports of growth of white supremacist recruiting, recruitment of members of the military and the Father Coughlin-esque ranting of Glenn Beck and Limbaugh I’m worried we’re seeing the rise of new hate movement. Seeing their signs – blaming Obama for economic woes he’s had all of three months to address, Obama’s Plan:White Slavery, The American Taxpayers are the Jews for Obama’s ovens, Obama is the Anti-Christ, drumming up paranoia about guns, and internment camps, secession from the union for the love of Benji, Obama is a Muslim, let’s waterboard Obama – my interpretation of these events isn’t that they are legitimately angry at government spending or taxation. I just don’t buy it. After all, why get angry now? We’ve spent hundreds of billions under Bush, and wasted huge amounts in foreign wars and disastrous national policies. The tax increase? 3% on those making more than 250k? I somehow don’t see that as taxing our children’s future away, or these folks as representative of the wealthy Americans that are targeted by the tax. The people leading this movement may be recruiting a large number of people who share this unbalanced delusion about taxes and “big government” but it’s clear there is also an ugly, nationalist, and frankly racist theme behind this new movement.

    The leaders of right-wing talk are playing a dangerous game, tapping into a dark, paranoid underbelly of American politics. I’ve been following Orcinus pretty closely in the last few months and am increasingly disturbed by what I see. While we might want to dismiss the paranoid rantings of pundits like Beck, we should remember that such conspiratorial beliefs aren’t meant to convince the masses. They exist to radicalize ideologues, and ideologues are dangerous, whether left-wing or right-wing. Conservatives may be furious that the the FBI and DHS are tracking right wing extremism, but I see this as a rare example of them actually seeing a threat coming, and being ready to do something about it. For those of us old enough to remember Oklahoma City, I don’t think we should be dismissive about the terrorist potential of the militant right, especially with Beck and Limbaugh stoking the fires of paranoia.

  • Skeptics' Circle 102 at Happy Jihad's House of Pancakes

    Please check out this week’s skeptics’ circle at Happy Jihad’s House of Pancakes.

    Of note, I liked Dr Austs’ post on the human toll of HIV/AIDS denialism, it is stirring. I also found the Skeptic’s field guide particularly interesting. I would have two suggestions. One would be to prioritize by frequency of use or rhetorical appeal rather than alphabetical, and second would be to include a section on conspiracy (like the ones the Lay Scientist and Dubito Ergo Sum describe in this issue ), which I believe is the hallmark of all denialist arguments. If you need a non-parsimonious conspiracy theory to explain your beliefs, well, you should re-think your beliefs.

    And speaking of conspiracies, I forgot to blog the hysterical interchange between Rolling Stone contributor Matt Taibbi – author of The Great Derangement, and David Ray Griffin, 9/11 truther crank. The whole thing is instructive in the lesson of not arguing with cranks, but it doesn’t get interesting until part II when Taibbi starts to figure this out for himself.

    As you’ve noticed, I struggled for quite some time with the question of how to answer your responses. Mainly this was because I was unsure of whether to treat this exercise like a comedy (because it’s certainly hard to take seriously any “debate” with a person who believes that Rudy Giuliani would conspire to blow up the densest slice of taxpaying real estate in the world, the New York City financial district, in order to save his city the cost of an asbestos cleanup) or whether to aim higher and treat it like a serious political argument. I tried it both ways and neither way seemed to fit. Treating this like an absurdist comedy, I realized, I’m making it hard for readers to see how monstrous and offensive your arguments are — but then again, when I take you seriously, spending paragraph after crazed paragraph grandstanding against you and your book, suddenly I’m the one who looks ridiculous.

    Then it hit me, and probably far too late: the correct play here is to ignore you and your arguments entirely. There are many things about your work that are outrageous and offensive, but the very worst thing about you and other 9/11 conspiracists — and, I guess, lately anyway, me — is that you’re/we’re a distraction from the real problem.

    It gets better. Taibbi really nails the fundamental problem with all of the false-flag arguments the truthers always lay out against reality:

    This same public — the same public that stood meekly by when its manufacturing economy was exported overseas, that cheered when our government pledged to “get tough” with China by demanding that it allow us to weaken our currency vis a vis the Yuan, that twiddled its thumbs when Wall Street played Keno with the nation’s homeowner savings, that has consistently voted overwhelmingly to deprive itself of its right to litigate against powerful companies — this is the public you think George Bush and Dick Cheney needed to blow up downtown Manhattan for, in order to get them on board with a war against Iraq, the Patriot Act, and whatever else.
    …
    All of this 9/11 Truther stuff, it’s a silly distraction. A country whose economy is about to go down the shitter, to the brink of depression, thanks to three-plus decades of routinely-ignored Wall Street deregulation just can’t afford to be wasting its time arguing about thermite reactions and “morphing technology.” Captivated by the comic possibilities of Truther literature, I realized this too late. As you’ll see below, I even spent a lot of time pulling what’s left of my hair out over your answers to questions that even I admit now go beyond inane. I admit in advance to looking silly for doing so, and hereby make a promise to God that I won’t do it again, at least not as long as we have other things to worry about. All the same, some of the stuff you came up with, Professor sheesh! And I thought I was loony!

    Freaking awesome. I’m sorry I didn’t write about it when it came out. His final diagnosis of Griffin’s writing was beautiful:

    In the end it all comes down to what you believe. If you believe that events in life tend to have simple explanations, then you’re not going to be very impressed by Griffin’s arguments. If on the other hand you think that the people running this country spend their days plotting to create phantom civilian jet-liner flights, disappearing whole fuselages full of passengers, and then shooting missiles into the Pentagon in broad daylight in order to cover up embezzlement schemes if you think, in other words, that our government is run by the same people who cook up second-rate French spy movies or your mind instantly produces the word “crossbow” when asked to produce A MURDER WEAPON by a Mad Libs script well, then, you’re probably going to enjoy Griffin’s books.

    Ha!

  • Creationism—GOPs arugmentum ad populum

    (HT to Nisbet…really)

    With the “choice” of Governor Palin as the vice presidential candidate, the GOP must now face up to questions about the teaching of creation myths is public school science classes. The new talking point? “It’s a local issue.” Science is local?

    Lucky for the GOP, Governor Pawlenty wasn’t chosen for veep, given his responses to Tom Brokaw on Meet the Press. Pawlenty apparently missed the whole Dover thing, wherein ID was shown to be Creationism, and Creationism was found to be “teaching religion” and not appropriate for public school science classes.

    Pawlenty brought up the “competing theories” argument, and also managed to contradict himself by saying that evolution and Creationism are “competing theories” and that “intelligent design is dismissed [in the scientific community]”.

    My wife is a teacher. She’s taught elementary school at both public and parochial schools. She’s a very talented teacher, and has taught science to hundreds of kids. You know what? She doesn’t know enough about creation myths to teach them in a science class. She does, however, know enough biology. In the parochial school, creation myths were always dealt with in religion classes. Even some religious schools seem to understand the difference between myth and science.

    If we can turn away from Palin and her kid’s wombs for a while, we can take the governor to task for her statements about mixing religion and politics and make her clarify her stance. A candidate’s uterus may be off limits, but not her politics.

  • A blog recommendation

    Everyone this morning should check out a new favorite website of mine the International Journal of Inactivism. Frank Bi has created a wonderful little catalog of global warming conspiracy theories that nicely illustrate the fundamental defects of reasoning used by the denialists. In particular, I enjoyed his genealogy of climate conspiracy theories.

    When we first started here, our first post after the introduction was on the non-parsimonious conspiracy as one of the primary indicators of pseudoscientific argument. Frank Bi has done a wonderful job showing just how dependent the global warming denialist arguments are on these absurd premises. Here’s to hoping he keeps it up.

  • Ah, the credulity!

    Yesterday, it was the Times with “Experts Revive Debate Over Cellphones and Cancer”. Today, it’s the Journal with “Do Fuel-Saving Gadgets Take You for a Ride?”, which includes this little gem from a gadget maker:

    The EPA and FTC “only test the ones that don’t work,” says Louis H. Elwell III, chairman and president of Vortex Fluid Optimizer Corp. The Hattiesburg, Miss., company makes the Vortex Fuel Saver, a system that uses magnets to affect the fuel, air and coolant entering an engine. He says the Vortex uses technology that boosts fuel economy by at least 10%.

    Yes, Louis, that’s right, the government only tests the ones that don’t work, because the government wants you to waste fuel, and because it is against magnetism. You see, everyone in science, the EPA, and the FTC is actually in cahoots with Exxon-Mobil to sell more gas. Here at UC-Berkeley, we got $500M from BP, and you know what, all I do now is figure out ways to get people to waste gas. Brilliant!

    How does this stuff get into important newspapers?

  • Attack of the child zombies!

    I was glancing at the Huffington Post today when I ran into yet another piece of what I wish was absurdist health reporting. Unfortunately, it’s meant to be taken seriously.

    What’s even worse is that there is a real problem hidden in the hyperbole, but the author’s over-the-top rant does more to obscure than expose the issue.

    In this country, we’ve never known how to deal with psychiatric disease. From the mass institutionalization present for much of our history, to the massive de-institutionalization of the mid-1960’s, from forced lobotomies and sterilizations, to the development of helpful medications and their use, and perhaps overuse, we have lived with a chaotic mental health care system. This system is somehow divorced from the rest of the health care system, despite the fact that the brains is an organ like any other. Mental health care is expensive and spotty, and compared to health care involving every other organ, is nearly completely uncovered by insurance.
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  • A mysterious encounter

    The room was dark—preturnaturally dark (damn you, Stephen Donaldson!). I was led by the robed and hooded figures to an altar. On the altar was a…something, and it was covered with a cloth. The cloth was a remarkable black, the kind of black that escapes focus. It created an even darker hole in the already dark chamber.

    Two of the figures picked up what appeared to be some type of rope, and slowly pulled. The cloth rose from the altar, revealing a box, but what a box! It was of no material I have ever seen. It was clear, but also thick. With the cloth removed, I could see lights inside—lots of lights. They blinked rapidly on and off in a sequence that I could tell was some sort of pattern, but one far to complex for my mind to comprehend.

    And then it spoke.

    “What brings you before me, supplicant?”

    It’s voice was not box-like at all. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

    “I…I come seeking knowledge. And advice.”

    “That is a good start. Many come seeking knowledge. Some find it. Some do not.”

    That final phrase carried a coldness. My mind flashed to an image of Rodin’s “Gates of Hell”.

    “I would like to ask a question,” I muttered hesitantly.

    “ASK!” it boomed.

    “I feel surrounded by ignorance. I can’t seem to find a way out of the dark. I try to tell people to stop chasing miracles, and to look to the marvels of the human mind and that which it discovers through science, and I try to do it with compassion. But I don’t feel like I’m getting anywhere. Like no one is really listening.”

    There was a silence.

    The silence continued.

    The silence became ironic.

    And then, it was broken. “Young physician, you have done well. You have helped, in a very, very small way, to bring light to the darkness. But more must be done. Lemme get another beer.”

    Huh?

    I shook my head and looked around. I was sitting in a pub, not a creepy Masonic chamber. Damn my wandering mind! I looked down at my pulled pork sandwich and looked across the table at the other physician.

    “Damn, Orac, I just had the weirdest daydream…”

    “Meh, happens all the time. Maybe you just need more beer.”

    “Sure, sounds good. I’ll have one. But will that detract from our planning more attacks on the cranks, the credulous, and the quacks?”

    “My young(ish) apprentice, nothing can stop us now! The universe will bow to our powerz!11!!”

    “Um, you’re starting to creep me out…”

    “Oh, sorry. The nachos always do that to me. But damn, they’re good! I might have to swing through town again someday for another batch.”

    “Well, when you do, Orac, the next beer is on me.”

  • Slate parses some crankery

    Slate has a series of three articles on what editor Daniel Engber refers to as “the paranoid style”. Starting with A crank’s progress, sliding into a review of Doubt is their product, and finishing with a spot-on review of Expelled he runs the guantlet of modern denialism. He also happens to hit upon the major commonalities between all pseudoscientists, which of course I find gratifying. For instance, read his description of Berlinski and how he nails the truisms in detecting the false skeptic:

    Forgive me if I don’t pause here to defend the conventional wisdom on evolution and cosmology. (Click here or here for a more expert appraisal.) That would be beside the point. Berlinski’s radical and often wrong-headed skepticism represents an ascendant style in the popular debate over American science: Like the recent crop of global-warming skeptics, AIDS denialists, and biotech activists, Berlinski uses doubt as a weapon against the academy–he’s more concerned with what we don’t know than what we do. He uses uncertainty to challenge the scientific consensus; he points to the evidence that isn’t there and seeks out the things that can’t be proved. In its extreme and ideological form, this contrarian approach to science can turn into a form of paranoia–a state of permanent suspicion and outrage. But Berlinski is hardly a victim of the style. He’s merely its most methodical practitioner.

    Don’t mistake denialism for debate, it is merely the amplification of doubt using tactics no self-respecting scientist should use.

    His review of Expelled is also worthy of note, in particular I enjoy how expands the type of analysis used by Stein et. al to other denialists like anti-vax denialists and the HIV/AIDS denialism such as that published by Harpers. He correctly points out that Harpers is a crap magazine, and that it rejoices in anti-intellectual attacks on science.

    Expelled extends this contrarian approach with one more question: If God might be right, then why are scientists trying so hard to deny His existence? The suppression of faith starts to look like a concerted effort, and so doubt gives way to paranoid science. A skeptic cites bad evidence and sloppy data; the paranoid finds the books have been cooked. A skeptic frets over thoughtless conformism; the paranoid grows frantic about conspiracy.

    The proponents of intelligent design are far from the only critics of mainstream science whose skepticism has taken on the trappings of conspiracy theory. In a 2005 article for Salon and Rolling Stone, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reported on a top-secret meeting in rural Georgia where high-level government officials and pharmaceutical executives worked to cover up the link between children’s vaccines and autism. (No such link has been found.) The public utilities are still accused, as they have been for more than 50 years, of conspiring against America’s youth by fluoridating the water supply. And skeptics of the obesity epidemic point out that the media collude with pharmaceutical companies to feed a booming weight-loss industry. Paranoid science reveals nonmedical conspiracies, too–impenetrable ballistics data form the basis for a theory of the assassination of JFK, and the calculations of structural engineering cast doubt on the official story of 9/11.

    More below the fold

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  • I could have told him that

    Richard Black investigates the common crank claim that science is just an old boys network designed to throw sweet, sweet grant money at their friends. Guess what? The evidence of this conspiracy is lacking.

    I anticipated having to spend days, weeks, months even, sifting the wheat from the chaff, going backwards and forwards between journal editors, heads of department, conference organisers, funding bodies and the original plaintiffs.

    I envisaged major headaches materialising as I tried to sort out the chains of events, attempting to decipher whether claims had any validity, or were just part of the normal rough and tumble of a scientist’s life – especially in the context of scientific publishing, where the top journals only publish about 10% of the papers submitted to them.

    The reality was rather different.
    …
    The sum total of evidence obtained through this open invitation, then, is one first-hand claim of bias in scientific journals, not backed up by documentary evidence; and three second-hand claims, two well-known and one that the scientist in question does not consider evidence of anti-sceptic feeling.

    No-one said they had been refused a place on the IPCC, the central global body in climate change, or denied a job or turned down for promotion or sacked or refused access to a conference platform, or indeed anything else.
    …
    Whether this exercise has conclusively disproved a bias is not for me to say – I am sure others will find plenty to say, doubtless in the courteous and gracious language that typifies climate discourse nowadays.

    But I will say this; if someone persistently claims to be a great football player, and yet fails to find the net when you put him in front of an open goal, you cannot do other than doubt his claim.

    Andres Millan, who wrote to me on the subject from Mexico, offered another explanation for why scientific journals, research grants, conference agendas and the IPCC itself are dominated by research that backs or assumes the reality of modern-day greenhouse warming.

    “Most global warming sceptics have no productive alternatives; they say it is a hoax, or that it will cause severe social problems, or that we should allocate resources elsewhere,” he wrote.

    “Scientifically, they have not put forward a compelling, rich, and variegated theory.

    “And until that happens, to expect the government, or any source of scientific funding, to give as much money, attention, or room within academic journals to the alternatives, seems completely misguided.”

    It’s good that he researched this and all, but frankly, it was a waste of time. It doesn’t matter what the crankery is, they’re always convinced the reason people don’t listen to their nonsense is that it’s some kind of conspiracy against them. And surprise surprise, when you actually try to make them provide evidence of said conspiracy, they can offer none. From the HIV/AIDS denialists to the cdesign proponentsists, you always see the same argument again and again. Science is a church, protecting dogma! It’s biased against us! You’re just conspiring to enrich your buddies with grant money! Blah blah blah.

    You don’t need to waste any time investigating such nonsense, it’s a prima facie absurd claim.