Denialism Blog

Category: Cranks

  • Crank Trifecta Complete

    It’s funny, but the crank use of the recent reevaluation of global AIDS statistics by the UN reminds me of a sign you see driving towards Charlottesville from DC. It’s faded wooden thingy that says, “Get the US out of the UN”. About 5 miles up the road is a derelict-looking building with what looks like Santa Claus dressed as a confederate soldier carrying the battle flag, so you get a feel for the general sentiment of the area. For those outside the US, it might be helpful to understand this problem to know that a big part of the hatred is based on the belief of some fundamentalists that the UN represents the beast of revelations. The establishment of world government brings rapture, yada yada. They have a whole series of creepy books about it that, to the US’s everlasting shame, are bestsellers.

    So far, Denyse O’Leary and Tim blair used the UN correction to suggest all science is BS, or at least anything believed by that there dirty UN should be suspect. The trifecta has now been sealed by Steve Milloy, denialist extraordinaire.

    It should come as no surprise that, according to the UN, 257 years of western development and progress has placed the Earth in imminent danger of utter disaster and that the only way to save the planet is to drink the UN Kool-Aid and knuckle under to global government-directed energy rationing and economic planning.

    Oh, and did I mention that the UN says we only have seven years to end the growth of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and 40 years to stop them entirely if we are to avoid killing as many as one-fourth of the planet’s species?

    I’d be scared too, if I didn’t know that this is the very same UN that just admitted to inflating the African AIDS epidemic — thereby maximizing the public panic feeding its fundraising efforts — and the very same UN that presided over the corrupt oil-for-food program which gave Saddam Hussein as much as $20 billion in kickbacks while delivering food unfit for human consumption to hungry Iraqis.

    Note the conspiratorial tone? The UN didn’t make an epidemiologic error, it was all part of its dastardly plan to create panic and raise money! Because actions of some corrupt members in oil for food means every wing of the UN, even UNicef, is out to rob us!

    This is actually a pretty clever tactic for the global warming denialists. The UN is definitely a target of a lot of right-wing hate, and if you can create the false association that climate science = the United Nations, well that right there will gain you the toothless rapture-ready vote. DeSmogBlog has it right I think, it’s more than just the usual crank glee at a perceived failure of science. It’s also a clever political smear trying to unite UN hatred with climate science.
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  • Crank Convergence

    Keeping quiet for the last few days has given me the advantage of seeing patterns in my firefox tabs. I see news stories in my feed that I’m interested in, open them in tabs and figure maybe I can blog about them later.

    Well, the result of doing this for the last week has led to a couple of nice crank convergences.

    The first is this crank attack on scientific consensus from John West at ID the future. It follows a pretty standard crank script. First a misstatement of what scientific consensus means

    Should the consensus view of science always prevail? Darwinists often claim science isn’t democratic and that students should therefore learn only the evidence which supports Darwin’s theory because that theory is held by the majority of scientists

    Only the evidence that supports Darwin’s theory? Here is the problem. The IDers are trying to oppose the scientific consensus on evolution, which would be acceptable, if they actually had evidence. But they don’t. They just have promiscuous teleology.

    The rest of the podcast consists of the same old nonsense. Consensus has been wrong before, therefore we should allow dissenting views be presented when the public believes something different yada yada. Which would be fine and scientists agree if those views were based on science.

    West then lists three criteria used for silencing debate:

    1. Majority of scientists support the theory.
    2. Critics aren’t scientists.
    3. Critics are religious.

    Of course, this is a total straw man attack, and no scientists who are fighting to prevent the teaching of cdesign proponentsists’ nonsense in schools uses these criteria. Except the first of course, which is true, except that it is overly simplistic. The majority of scientists support the theory of evolution because that is what the data supports, it isn’t just some silly belief like a magic man done it. The second two criticisms are frankly absurd. And we don’t object to the religion of the opponents because of their religion, but rather that they are trying to insert religious ideas into the debate without any scientific data to back them up. If they had data, or a cohesive theory that presented a valid explanation for the existing data, we might be able to talk. Instead, cdesign proponentsists have nothing but religious ideology, dishonestly presented as science, with the goal of subverting legitimate scientific education. We here at denialism blog, who believe that debate should be squelched when it is the non-productive squealing of cranks who don’t like science, have a real set of criteria for ignoring the misinformation campaigns of pseudoscience. None of those criteria are of course those that he lists, because it would be to difficult to argue with.

    Noting all the recent attacks on the mere idea of consensus by the anti-AGW crowd, I am of course thrilled that the cdesign proponentsists are now also taking this tactic. Although, this is the underlying theme of all Galileo gambits and other crank views of persecution by some bizarre notion of dogmatic science.

    The second convergence of crank thinking is also between cdesign proponentsists and AGW denialists, except in this case it’s Denyse O’Leary and Tim Blair converging in their crankery.

    Both are crowing about the recent correction by UN health officials of worldwide AIDS statistics, which were mistaken due to a sampling bias.

    This is wonderfully consistent with what we know about how cranks operate. Any perceived slight to science is good news because they think it means that their particular brand of nonsense gains in legitimacy when mainstream science is proven wrong. This is of course absurd, this is science correcting itself, which is what legitimate science does. Only cranks react with glee to the denigration of science, a quality Blair has in spades. It’s a sure sign of a crank, along with attacks on consensus, attack on peer review and a persecution complex which we noted long ago in our HOWTO. It’s gratifying to see the consensus theory on cranks fit the data so nicely.

  • 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.

  • Global warming crankery from co-founder of the weather channel

    Just watching CNN, and saw them mindlessly parrot the latest rant from a crank. In this instance it’s the founder of the weather channel John Coleman, now a San Diego meteorologist, who peels off a doozy.

    It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motivesmanipulated long term scientific data to create an allusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental whacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the “research” to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus.

    Environmental extremists, notable politicians among them, then teamed up with movie, media and other liberal, environmentalist journalists to create this wild “scientific” scenario of the civilization threatening environmental consequences from Global Warming unless we adhere to their radical agenda. Now their ridiculous manipulated science has been accepted as fact and become a cornerstone issue for CNN, CBS, NBC, the Democratic Political Party, the Governor of California, school teachers and, in many cases, well informed but very gullible environmentally conscientious citizens. Only one reporter at ABC has been allowed to counter the Global Warming frenzy with one 15 minute documentary segment.
    …
    I am incensed by the incredible media glamour, the politically correct silliness and rude dismissal of counter arguments by the high priest of Global Warming.

    Ahhh, that is some fine crankery. I speak as a connoisseur. We have a conspiracy theory that involves, well, everybody. I’m really impressed. Not only do we have every climate scientist lying, and their “friends in government” steering research grants their way (he doesn’t know how grants are awarded clearly), but he manages to pull in every single media organization short of Fox news and Governor Schwarzenegger! I think I even detect a little bit of the Galileo gambit mixed with Gore-derangement syndrome in that last bit.

    Why are we listening to this nonsense? CNN might as well broadcast an editorial from a man convinced the FBI put a chip in his brain (or an intelligent design advocate – same arguments). I think we’ve got to break out the tinfoil hats for this guy.
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  • Doctors are conspiring to convince you you're sick!

    How do doctors decide what is healthy and unhealthy? Do they arbitrarily decide on risk factors to line their pockets – creating false epidemics as Sandy Szwarc at Junkfood Science suggests? Or, is there actually a science, called epidemiology, that is the basis for health recommendations?

    As I’ve said repeatedly, one of the sure signs you’re about to hear total BS is if someone suggests there is some conspiracy by scientists or doctors to hide the truth. In an article challenging the use of serum troponin levels to determine whether myocardial infarction (MI) has occurred (a more sensitive method) Sandy suggests this is yet another example of doctors lowering metrics of illness and risk to generate the impression of false epidemics.

    There must be a health crisis to bring the greatest funding for research, treatments and education… even if an epidemic has to be created. One of the most common tactics is to change the definition. When diagnostic criteria is broadened, suddenly, with the stroke of a pen, new cases can appear to explode in number.

    With heart disease deaths dropping dramatically for the past half century, the world’s top four organizations representing heart disease interests have all gotten together to change the definition … of a heart attack.

    The World Heart Federation, American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association and the European Society of Cardiology have been championing the new criteria over recent years, and will officially release it next month in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and in the AHA journal, Circulation. The new definition will use elevations of troponin levels, rather than the traditional cardiac biomarkers, such as the MB-CK enzyme.

    This is a truly bizarre argument. Because measuring troponin will allow us to detect more MIs that have occurred, it must of course be part of a plot to make Americans think they’re less healthy. Never mind that more sensitive tests for MI are what is known as a good thing, and that current tests clearly are missing minor heart damage thus underestimating the number of true MIs. Any revision of current standards must be part of a plot! The fact that those scientists got together is a sure sign. We should never let them do that.

    While troponins may go up for other reasons, the idea that the test will misdiagnose as heart attacks other disorders is pretty silly. This isn’t a test that is going to be used to diagnose MI in the absence of chest pain or abnormal ECG findings – which enhances the specificity of the test – and doctors are aware of confounding diagnoses – it’s their job to find them. Further, the idea that the new criteria were designed to somehow justify funding for heart disease (an area of medicine that will never lack for funding) is downright hilarious.

    But this isn’t the only example of “false epidemics” being created by those greedy doctors trying to convince people that they’re ill. Sandy mentions other excellent examples.

    First, because this is Sandy, is of course obesity:

    “Overweight:”Definition changed from BMI ≥ 27 to BMI ≥ 25 by the U.S. National Heart Lung and Blood Institute in 1998, instantly increasing by 43% the numbers of Americans, an additional 30.5 million, deemed ‘overweight.’

    So, did doctors just pull that figure out of nowhere to line their pockets? Or does data exist that justify the decision? This study in NEJM(1) is a prospective study of over a million people evaluating all-cause mortality (as well as a number of independent risk factors) showing the relationship between BMI and mortality. Here is the relevant figure – the dark line is most relevant – showing the relative risk of death versus BMI.

    Continued below the fold:
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  • How not to be taken seriously

    I think I’m going to have to add a new behavior to the crank HOWTO based on the latest campaign by troofers to get attention by disruption.

    First it was Bill Maher:

    Who I think handled it right.

    Now Bill Clin-ton.Bill also does a pretty good job with the kooks. But it has me thinking that part of the crank HOWTO is going to have to be go to talks and shows that have nothing to do with your topic and start screaming. If you get tased, congratulations, you’ve been persecuted. Act like it was a victory too, and complain about being manhandled after you’ve disrupted a live television show.

    Do we need better proof of their irrelevance? Their idea of getting their message out is yelling at TV hosts? Now that is some crankery.

  • How to triage nonsense

    Both Orac and MarkCC have been having a blast tearing to shreds virtually every aspect of the latest nonsensical piece by Dennis Byrne based on this idiotic study at JPANDS.

    One thing struck me in the two analyses, was MarkCC’s emphasis on the idea of triage in assessing the scientific literature. This is fundamentally a good concept, but I think he was too kind to JPANDS in saying that they merely lacked credibility as a journal thus raising red flags. If we’re going to look at this from the perspective of triage, an article from JPANDS is like encountering a dead body on a gurney accidentally misplaced from the morgue in your ER . This is beyond dead-on-arrival. This is dead a few days ago, frozen, with a toe-tag.

    This of course doesn’t stop the egregious liars from the fake family values groups from saying this is new proof of the relationship they’ve failed to prove for the last decade. They would love to have proof of the conspiracy of evil doctors trying to poison women with abortions so we can line our pockets with sweet sweet breast cancer dollars. Recent articles in real journals have shown in cohorts of over a hundred thousand women there is no link between abortion and breast cancer.

    Now, liars who have no interest in truth or science will of course latch on to anything that conforms to their ideology, even if it is a pathetic piece of correlative nonsense from artificially selected data, based on false assumptions and an obviously false model of risk. That’s because they’re worthless liars. However, those of us who care about truth, no matter feelings on abortion, must say that the evidence unequivocally shows that there is no link between abortion at any age and breast cancer.

    Anyone who says the opposite is a liar or a fool. It’s that simple.

  • Denialists should not be debated

    Orac has brought up the interesting point that debating the homeopaths at U. Conn might not be a good idea.

    On a related note, in a post derriding attacks on consensus I was asked by commenters if isn’t it incumbent on science to constantly respond to debate; to never let scientific questions be fully settled. And I understand where they’re coming from. These ideas represent the enlightened ideals of scientific inquiry, free speech, and fundamental fairness.

    However, they’re also hopelessly misplaced in regard to the problem at hand. That is, denialists, cranks, quacks, etc., are not interested in legitimate debate or acting as honest brokers trying to bring clarity to a given issue through discussion. Orac dances around this issue a little bit, talking about the challenges of debates with pseudoscientists because they are hard to pin down, but the fundamental problem, simply put, is the absence of honesty and standards. Academia and science are critically dependent on debate, this is true, but the prerequisite for having the debate is having people who are honestly interested in pursuing the truth and operate using the same rules of evidence and proof. It’s not about censoring dissent, which the cranks insist is the issue in their eternal pursuit of persecution. It’s about having standards for evidence and discussion. This is why these debates, when confined to a courtroom, often fare so disastrously for the denialists. In the presence of standards that exist before evidence can be introduced, they are left with nothing.

    In what is probably the best book on denialist tactics Deborah Lipstadt’s “Denying the Holocaust”, are the best arguments for not engaging in debate with denialists. Now, I realize we’re not talking about scum-of-the-earth holocaust deniers here, but the fact is, the tactics and the methods are ultimately the same no matter how noble or evil the motive. Just because the motives or ideologies of the other cranks or denialists are different, doesn’t mean that they don’t have the exact same flaws in their arguments, use of evidence, or fundamental honesty. Lipstadt explains the risks then of entering into debates with deniers:
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  • Attacking consensus – a sure sign of a crank

    Sandy Szwarc continues to wage her war against the “obesity myth”, and has fallen into the classic crank trap of the attack on scientific consensus. It’s right up there with attacking peer-review as a sure sign you’re about to listen to someone’s anti-science propaganda.

    She cites this article at the financial times by John Kay which lauds the Crichton view of science.

    Michael Schrage’s comment on politics and science (September 26) struck a raw nerve: and provoked an extended response from the president of the UK’s Royal Society. Lord Rees advocates that we should base policy on something called “the scientific consensus”, while acknowledging that such consensus may be provisional.

    But this proposal blurs the distinction between politics and science that Lord Rees wants to emphasise. Novelist Michael Crichton may have exaggerated when he wrote that “if it’s consensus, it’s not science, if it’s science, it’s not consensus”, but only a bit. Consensus is a political concept, not a scientific one.

    Readers of this blog will remember that line comes from Crichton’s infamous anti-global warming crank speech “Aliens Cause Global Warming”, which is one of the more pathetic crank attacks on science of all time. It’s just one long Galileo gambit that suggests whenever scientists agree, you’re being hoodwinked. This is, of course, total nonsense. Scientists strive for consensus on difficult topics. Review papers essentially are statements of consensus by people familiar with the field. Consensus conferences are routinely held to pour over data and determine things like the best treatments for a disease, or policy recommendations. The attack on scientific consensus is illegitimate, and is more or less, a subtle Galileo gambit. The article also has this great line:

    Often the argument will continue for ever, and should, because the objective of science is not agreement on a course of action, but the pursuit of truth…

    Boy I bet the cranks would love for this to be true. Sorry to burst their bubble but HIV causes AIDS, humans evolved, the CO2 causes global warming, the holocaust happened, and we landed on the moon. This idea that scientific concepts should be debated endlessly is absurd. If the data do not fit the theory, that’s when you have a debate. If new methods and new findings show a theory is limited, that’s when you have a debate. You don’t have a debate because some people don’t like what they hear.

    And remember what I said about not trusting people who attack peer review?

    Peer review is a valuable part of the apparatus of scholarship, but carries a danger of establishing self-referential clubs that promote each other’s work.

    And if that wasn’t enough:

    Statements about the world derive their value from the facts and arguments that support them, not from the status and qualifications of the people who assert them. Evidence versus authority was the issue on which Galileo challenged the church. The modern world exists because Galileo won.

    And there we have a Galileo reference! Of course, on these topics it’s the denialists who use status and qualifications rather than data and evidence.

    Kay Ends with this stunning piece of naivete:

    The notion of a monolithic “science”, meaning what scientists say, is pernicious and the notion of “scientific consensus” actively so. The route to knowledge is transparency in disagreement and openness in debate. The route to truth is the pluralist expression of conflicting views in which, often not as quickly as we might like, good ideas drive out bad. There is no room in this process for any notion of “scientific consensus”.

    Again we have the annoying appeal to some perfect ideal of debate club. The problem is that some people are liars. They are not honest brokers in the debate. They aren’t interested in providing evidence and data for their point of view. Instead, they lie, cherry-pick evidence, and smear the opposition. This idea that consensus isn’t real and instead we need to debate denialists, and cranks as if they have something to contribute is absurd. What we need is to arm people with the knowledge to detect nonsense when they hear it, and accept that the expertise of bodies of scientists is preferable to the ramblings of hacks paid by groups like AEI or CEI. One recognizes, also, a conspiratorial tone in these attacks on consensus. As if scientists, when they have conferences on such topics, aren’t actually evaluating data but trying to figure out how to attack political enemies. This is absurd. When scientists gather to debate a consensus they do just what Kay advocates, they fight it out and argue over what the data says. When cranks respond by covering their ears and yelling “Al Gore is fat!”, that’s not an alternative presentation of data, it’s just useless bullshit, and is rightly impugned and ignored.

    Now, this is not to say that increasing obesity or its links to morbidity is even one of those difficult questions that we need to have consensus conferences on. We’re way past that. It is known, it is real. It causes illnesses like diabetes and hypertension, increases morbidity and mortality, and we should pursue methods to prevent obesity from developing because, as we’ve discussed, once obesity has developed it is difficult to reverse. No one seriously doubts the link between obesity and these consequences, and Sandy’s latest foray into the classic crank realm of attacking consensus is just another great example of why she’s not a real skeptic at all. Like her fellow CEI fake skeptic Steven Milloy, her site exists to muddy the waters on the science rather than clarify it. They would love for us to believe that it’s our duty as scientists to perpetually debate them as if they honestly had something to say. I think we’ve made the point with this blog that this is not a wise course of action or a good use of time.
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    P.S., I’m heartbroken Reasic has disappeared and his beautiful take down of Michael Crichton’s speech is gone with him. If you’re still out there Reasic, forward me that post and I’ll preserve it here.

  • Uri Geller makes a comeback!

    Watching 30 Rock and the Office tonight I kept on seeing this commercial for a new show called “Phenomenon”. The story goes:

    The search for the impossible begins…there are those who claim special powers, but only one can be called the greatest. Now, the mind of Uri Geller, and the mastery of Chris Angel will test them all before the world, and everything you see will be live.

    I was cracking up because when they show Geller he’s got this sign that bends behind him. I can’t believe it, he still tries to milk this idea that he can bend metal like he’s some kind of spoon-bending genius.

    I’d think he’d give up that angle after James Randi busted his ass on the Carson show – see the video below.

    Even Geller’s blog has an idiotic banner with a bent-spoon prominently displayed. What an idiot.

    This new show is the American version of “the Successor”, and based on what I’ve seen, he’s continuing his idiotic shtick of presenting himself as a psychic, rather than an just an illusionist (and a crummy one at that). For a preview of the hoaxing you’re likely to see on NBC, friendly skeptic has posted videos from the Israeli show, in which you can see him stick a magnet on his thumb to make it appear that he can manipulate a compass with his mind.

    Geller has a history of using bogus copyright claims to try to suppress videos proving he’s a hack and a fake, so make sure to check these out before they disappear.

    This actually might be a lot of fun, because I bet other magicians, like Penn and Teller, like Johnny Carson before them, will have a blast showing how these guys are using simple illusions to provide proof of their claims of mystical abilities. From what I understand magicians get a little pissed when you try to claim supernatural powers for what is, in the end, just slight-of-hand. It might be fun to watch, and live blog with a magician to see who can spot the tricks. Anyone up for that? Anyone know a good magician? Preferably one who blogs? And who hates hacks?