Category: General Discussion

Patricia Cohen reports in today’s New York Times on a development in economics that will have a huge effect on denialism: the increased willingness to question the orthodoxy of neoclassical economics. Consumer rights, environmental protection, and any number of other issues has suffered for decades under the neoclassists, who hold their beliefs in markets so strongly that it’s just like a religion. A bad religion. Anyway:

“There is much too much ideology,” said Alan S. Blinder, a professor at Princeton and a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Economics, he added, is “often a triumph of theory over fact.” Mr. Blinder helped kindle the discussion by publicly warning in speeches and articles this year that as many as 30 million to 40 million Americans could lose their jobs to lower-paid workers abroad. Just by raising doubts about the unmitigated benefits of free trade, he made headlines and had colleagues rubbing their eyes in astonishment.

“What I’ve learned is anyone who says anything even obliquely that sounds hostile to free trade is treated as an apostate,” Mr. Blinder said.

And free trade is not the only sacred subject, Mr. Blinder and other like-minded economists say. Most efforts to intervene in the markets — like setting a minimum wage, instituting industrial policy or regulating prices — are viewed askance by mainstream economists, as are analyses that do not rely on mathematical modeling.

That attitude, the critics argue, has seriously harmed the discipline, suppressing original, creative thinking and distorting policy debates…

Former Surgeon General Richard Carmona alleged yesterday in testimony before the House Government Reform Committee that the White House censored his speeches and activities. Laura Mackler of the Wall Street Journal reports:

The most recent U.S. surgeon general told Congress the Bush administration routinely blocked him from speaking out on controversial issues, including stem-cell research, emergency contraception and sexual abstinence, and pressured him to support an “ideological, theological” agenda.

Dr. Richard Carmona, surgeon general from 2002 until 2006, said that his speeches were edited to remove material about controversial issues and that he was encouraged to attend internal “political pep rallies.” He said he was prevented from releasing a report on global health because he wouldn’t make it a “political document” touting actions by the U.S. The report has yet to be released.

[…]

Dr. Carmona told the committee that, as surgeon general, he hadn’t been permitted to talk about the importance of comprehensive sex education or emergency contraception. He said he wasn’t permitted to discuss the science of embryonic-stem-cell research. Under the Bush administration, there are strict limits on federal funding for such research. “I was blocked at every turn,” he said. “I was told the decision had already been made — stand down, don’t talk about it,” he said.

He also said he was prevented from attending a Special Olympics event to talk about health and disabilities. “I was told I would be helping a politically prominent family, [and] why would I want to help those people?” Dr. Carmona said. The Special Olympics were founded by Eunice Kennedy Shriver, sister of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D., Mass.).

He said his speeches were regularly vetted to ensure they weren’t controversial. Speeches were edited to add references to Mr. Bush — he was told there should be at least three per page. “The vetting was done by political appointees who were specifically there to spin my words to ideologically preconceived notions,” he said.

To Neurophilosophy our newest Scibling.

Go say hi. I command it.

We’ve had another framing fight on scienceblogs today. Here’s the timeline:

Nisbet beats up a strawman of Atheists comparing themselves to women or blacks or gays in terms of civil rights struggle, and then asserts there are no violations of atheist civil rights – they’re just unpopular. The commenters find cause to disagree with him repeatedly. Wait, I know what to do about this – here’s the card.

Those fundamentalists (controlling the country) who call them un-American, evil, sinful and hell-bound? Well, they’re just

And the problems atheists have? Those aren’t real problems like with blacks and women, they’re just

And since there is:

There is:

How’d I do Chris?

Anyway, Rosenhouse fires back, and this is the critical passage:

Atheists don’t face a public image problem because of the books of Dawkins and Hitchens. They face a public image problem because of the bigotry and ignorance of so many religious people. Not all religious people, certainly, as the strawman version of their arguments would have you believe. But a much higher percentage than people like Matthew care to admit. You do not break through such bigotry by polite discussion. You break through it by being loud and vigorous. That’s one of the lessons you learn from the civil rights struggles of the past. Social progress is not made when the downtrodden ask politely for their just due. That women, blacks and gays faced greater oppression than what atheists face today does not alter that fact.

Matthew’s comment that such discrimination as exists against atheists is caused in part by the writings of Dawkins and Hitchens is nothing more than plain, vanilla blaming the victim. (And it’s unsubstantiated to boot). It is an old cliche that gets trotted out every time a minority group starts getting a bit too vocal. The argument conjures up preposterous images of large numbers of non-bigots going over to the dark side when the victims of discrimination start rhetorically attacking the bigots. It is to laugh.

Kevin Beck and PZ back him up. Jake backs up Nisbet, because he apparently hasn’t found it hard being an atheist in NYC. Hmmm. Try Alabama sometime.

I tend to agree with Rosenhouse, and in particular find fault with the article Nisbet cites which essentially blames minorities for being disliked as some kind of natural state. And that may be the case, but there is a substantive difference between dislike and mistreatment, their denial or minimization of the real problem with religious interference in public life as well as the public intolerance and censorship of atheist expression is disturbing. In the comments at Pharyngula and Evolutionblog they list many real examples of these problems.

Finally, I think this is a historically ignorant argument. Anyone remember Ed Brayton’s post on Ellery Schempp?

“I learned that if people were mad at us they would call us ‘Communists.’ If they were really, really mad, they would call us ‘atheists.’ When they called us ‘commie atheists’ they had exhausted their vocabulary – that was the worst they could think of!”

We just emerged from a 40-year cold war in which atheism was identified as synonymous with being a mortal enemy of the country. Really no one in this country was openly atheist. Now fundamentalists are discovering they didn’t manage to stomp out all the non-believers through 40 years of aggressive repression they’re acting like it’s end-times and an assault on the foundation of the country. This is not the atheists’ fault, and Rosenhouse is correct, this is blaming the victim.

Consider the polling that shows that atheists are the most disliked and mistrusted group of people in the country – even worse than sex offenders? Or how about the fact that our government uses an office of Faith-based programming to finance religious outreach for public campaigns? Oddly enough the people that come to atheists’ defense the most often? The anti-defamation league. Isn’t that interesting?

To sum up, I find Nisbet and DJ Grothe and Austin Dacey’s arguments to be morally repugnant and ignorant garbage. This is same thing that is seen repeatedly every time a minority group is mistreated – a group of people emerge to deny there is even a problem and if there is one, it’s the minority’s own fault. If this is “framing”, and I don’t think it is, I’ll have to agree with PZ, you can take your framing and shove it. Maybe that’s the sign of a bad job framing an argument there Nisbet.

The British have foiled another terrorist attack.

This makes me think of two things. Using the military for what should be done with police and investigative work is nuts. And I really hope they weren’t planning to use some common item one might carry on an airplane.

We’ve already had fluids banned despite the physical implausibility of using a liquid explosive to bring down a plane. If these scumbags were planning on making a pen-bomb or a bra-bomb we’re going to end up going naked through security for no damn good reason.

Another interesting article in the Times discusses shining the light on pharmaceutical industry gifts to doctors. What’s interesting about it is that shows another example of how industry self-regulatory principles often have holes (here, a lack of “detail”) that leave the problem to be addressed unaddressed.

In the privacy field, the most notable example of this was the IRSG Principles, which allowed databrokers to sell personal information to anyone they deemed “qualified,” and surprise, surprise, even criminals were “qualified” to buy Social Security Numbers. But back to doctors:

In the midst of a Senate hearing about the money and gifts that drug makers routinely provide to doctors, Senator Claire McCaskill mentioned that she had a brother who runs a restaurant.

“And he said that the most lucrative part of his business was the private room that is used mostly by drug companies” to entertain doctors, said Ms. McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri. “He said that you wouldn’t believe how much expensive wine these guys buy.” The tab often totals thousands of dollars, she said later.

Marjorie Powell, senior assistant general counsel for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, assured Ms. McCaskill that major drug makers no longer offer doctors expensive dinners. The industry’s code of ethics mandates that free meals be modest — pizza, for instance, Ms. Powell said.

“I would, with all due respect, suggest that there has been a change in your brother’s restaurant in recent years,” she said.

Ms. McCaskill pressed, “Are they allowed to buy alcohol?”

Ms. Powell responded, “Our code does not go into that level of detail.”

The senator said, “So they can.”

[…]

After the hearing, Ms. Powell’s trade association released a statement criticizing the state registries, saying they “disarm doctors by inhibiting access to critical scientific information about the benefits and risks of treatment options that help patients win their battle against disease.”

The laws have led to some embarrassing disclosures: that some doctors earn hundreds of thousands of dollars from drug makers, that doctors who are paid by drug makers tend to prescribe more of their drugs, and that some doctors who have been hired to perform clinical trials have serious medical disciplinary records.

So, Apple releases Itunes 7.2, complete with the ability to download DRM-free, high-quality MP3s. However, these MP3s contain all sorts of personal information in the metadata, thus allowing tracking of who possesses the files. The solution? Privatunes, a program provided by a French company that erases the personal information from the metadata.

The best part? How the French justify the protection of privacy. I love it:

5 reasons to erase private information from my legally acquired iTunes Plus library:

1. Am I still a child who needs his pencilcase and schoolbag tagged with my name?

2. I bought the damn tune, but someday I may want to sell it (hey, how is it more stupid that selling old CDs ?).

3. I just have a thing for privacy. Is it dirty?

4. How the heck do I know it’s not gonna be shared on P2P networks by my 6 year old step sister???

5. I thought good customer-seller relationship ment something like… how do they say, “trust’ ?

An article in today’s New York Times shines some light on drug industry gifts to doctors. Pretty interesting stuff:

Vermont officials disclosed Tuesday that drug company payments to psychiatrists in the state more than doubled last year, to an average of $45,692 each from $20,835 in 2005. Antipsychotic medicines are among the largest expenses for the state’s Medicaid program.

Over all last year, drug makers spent $2.25 million on marketing payments, fees and travel expenses to Vermont doctors, hospitals and universities, a 2.3 percent increase over the prior year, the state said.

The number most likely represents a small fraction of drug makers’ total marketing expenditures to doctors since it does not include the costs of free drug samples or the salaries of sales representatives and their staff members. According to their income statements, drug makers generally spend twice as much to market drugs as they do to research them.

[…]

Still, a similar pattern was evident in a Minnesota database that was the subject of a series of articles in The New York Times this year. As in Vermont, psychiatrists earned on aggregate the most in Minnesota, with payments ranging from $51 to $689,000. The Times found that psychiatrists who took the most money from makers of antipsychotic drugs tended to prescribe the drugs to children the most often.

Boingboing puts it eloquently:

I’m deeply saddened by the results of the most recent Supreme Court decision on the free speech rights of students. The so-called “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” case was decided in favor of the school.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The Supreme Court ruled against a former high school student Monday in the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” banner case — a split decision that limits students’ free speech rights.

Joseph Frederick was 18 when he unveiled the 14-foot paper sign on a public sidewalk outside his Juneau, Alaska, high school in 2002.

Principal Deborah Morse confiscated it and suspended Frederick. He sued, taking his case all the way to the nation’s highest court.

The justices ruled 6-3 that Frederick’s free speech rights were not violated by his suspension over what the majority’s written opinion called a “sophomoric” banner. (Watch the banner unfurl and launch a legal battle Video)

“It was reasonable for (the principal) to conclude that the banner promoted illegal drug use– and that failing to act would send a powerful message to the students in her charge,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court’s majority.

You hear that? Free speech is OK until it promotes something the government doesn’t like. For instance, drug use. When the hell did we become so obsessed over illegal drug use, even pot (for Jesus), as advocated in this sign that students can’t legally speak about it? Off school grounds no less? This is a bizarre case. Even though student free speech tends to be limited relative to political speech outside the school, the fact that he had the banner across the street from the school, to me at least, should have protected him from any disciplinary action.

I think Stevens summarizes just how I feel though in his dissent:

Roberts was supported by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Stephen Breyer, and Samuel Alito. Breyer noted separately he would give Morse qualified immunity from the lawsuit, but did not sign onto the majority’s broader free speech limits on students.

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said, “This case began with a silly nonsensical banner, (and) ends with the court inventing out of whole cloth a special First Amendment rule permitting the censorship of any student speech that mentions drugs, so long as someone could perceive that speech to contain a latent pro-drug message.”

He was backed by Justices David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

This leads me to another point, and a topic I think we’ll discuss in the future here at denialism blog. And that is the anti-drug science that comes out of funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse or NIDA. While not truly junk science per se, it tends to always be misinterpreted and twisted to present a uniformly anti-drug message. I consider this the political abuse of science by the government, and hope to write about it when it comes up in the future.