Denialism Blog

Category: Politics

  • More Examples of Right Wing Stupidity/Racism

    Lot’s of blogging hay was made over the conservatives = stupid and racist article two weeks ago, but it seems like since that was published they’re going out of their way to provide supporting evidence. Between reincarnating a 40 year old dead argument about whether or not women should be able to have birth control, and pretty unbelievably racist stunts at CPAC, even the wingers at little green footballs are shaking their heads and asking, what the hell is going on. For instance, some white republicans thought it would be a good idea to put on a rap show and throw around the N-word. No, I’m not kidding. Conservatives still think a bad rap parody is somehow edgy.

    Even if they’re saying “knickers”, which is BS, it’s still a wink and a nudge saying, “you know what we really think of black people.”

    And who missed Andrew Breitbart acting so crazy he made the Occupy protesters look good:

    Now that’s what Occupy needs, just invite Breitbart to your protests and people will think you’re positively angelic next to that wackjob.

    Then we’ve got the bizarre response to the Fox News article on Whitney Houston’s death. The thread is totally overrun with racist comments, for the highlights see Little green footballs list of gems.

    Now, comments on blogs are usually nothing you can judge a blog by, I’ve had some doozies here. But the sheer number and the unbelievable bigotry of the the Fox News commentariat is mind-boggling. I will not reproduce them here, but think of the ugliest racist thing you can say about Whitney Houston, then make it 100% worse and repeat it 50 times, generalize it to all black people and then include Obama. That’s the comment thread.

    What is going on here? I feel like I’ve done a reverse Rip Van Winkle and woken up in Mississippi in the 1950s.

  • The Great Labor Department Conspiracy to fake new jobs

    One of the characteristics of defective thinking, particularly of cranks (see theHOWTO) that we’ve discussed on scienceblogs is their poor ability to process information that is contradictory. Last week there were some interesting reports on a study which suggested those who believe in conspiracy theories can hold two seemingly contradictory pieces of information in their heads and not see the conflict. For instance:

    “The more people were likely to endorse the idea Princess Diana was murdered, the more they were likely to believe that Princess Diana is alive,” explained Douglas. People who thought it was unlikely she was murdered were also unlikely to think she did not die.

    This study is great because it’s direct confirmation that people who buy into conspiracy theories have fundamentally defective thought processes that allow them to believe things that are logically inconsistent. Just like we’ve been saying for years.

    Now, examine instance the Fox News reaction to the improving jobs numbers from the last month.

    The right has struggled with the news. Mitt Romney went into denial; his supporters desperately tried to convince people not to give President Obama credit; GOP leaders on Capitol Hill found themselves at a loss for words; and Fox News spent much of Friday going to comical lengths to pretend the jobs report wasn’t newsworthy at all.

    And then, there are the conspiracy theorists.

    Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) came first, arguing on Friday there’s “something suspicious about the job numbers.” He did not elaborate.

    On Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” this morning, the cast went down this road with more enthusiasm. Here’s what Eric Bolling told viewers:

    “So are they playing around with the numbers? Look, it’s the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it’s supposed to be non-partisan, but that’s the Department of Labor. Hilda Solis heads the Department of Labor, Hilda Solis works directly to Obama. I’m, you know.”

    Steve Doocy raised the question of whether the Obama administration is “cooking the books,” while Gretchen Carlson emphasized the fact that this is “an election year.”

    The reality of the numbers isn’t what they want to hear, it conflicts with their overriding ideology that Obama is doing a terrible job to matter what, so it must be false. How could it be false? It’s a conspiracy! The department of labor statistics is cooking the books for Obama (but they didn’t cook it any other time in his presidency when it made him look bad or for any other president). Next month, if the numbers sour, they will again attain legitimacy, as long as the evidence is supportive of the overriding principal of Obama being the devil, it’s true, if it conflicts, it’s a conspiracy.

    This is the classic cognitive dissonance of the crank. They’re fixated on an idea, and when the data supports their belief it’s true, when it’s not, it’s false. There’s a conspiracy to manipulate the data because there can never be data that proves the crank is wrong about their overvalued idea.

  • A global warming conspiracy theorist has won 4 states, should we be worried?

    The states in Green have gone for Rick Santorum, who besides having a a Google problem also believes in one of the wackiest conspiracy theories there is – the climate change hoax. That is, the belief that there is a shady group of Illuminati that have power over thousands of climate scientists from all over the world, and in their greed for sweet sweet grant money scientists uniformly falsify all their data to serve this power-hungry cabal. Is that an exaggeration? Nope, that’s what people who believe in the “hoax” ascribe to (see skeptical science’s thorough debunking of Evans here). This is a more severe form of the denial by Newt or Romney, who claim “insufficient evidence”, the more basic goalpost moving of half-hearted global warming denialism.

    But now we have a full-blown global warming hoax-promoting conspiracy theorist picking up momentum to become a candidate for president. Should we be worried?

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  • The Great UN Conspiracy to (gasp) increase green space!

    You heard me. There is a shocking conspiracy, directly from the nefarious leaders of the one world government at the UN and their pawn, Barack Obama to add more public transportation and green space to your neighborhood.

    Across the country, activists with ties to the Tea Party are railing against all sorts of local and state efforts to control sprawl and conserve energy. They brand government action for things like expanding public transportation routes and preserving open space as part of a United Nations-led conspiracy to deny property rights and herd citizens toward cities.

    …

    In Maine, the Tea Party-backed Republican governor canceled a project to ease congestion along the Route 1 corridor after protesters complained it was part of the United Nations plot. Similar opposition helped doom a high-speed train line in Florida. And more than a dozen cities, towns and counties, under new pressure, have cut off financing for a program that offers expertise on how to measure and cut carbon emissions.

    …

    Fox News has also helped spread the message. In June, after President Obama signed an executive order creating a White House Rural Council to “enhance federal engagement with rural communities,” Fox programs linked the order to Agenda 21. A Fox commentator, Eric Bolling, said the council sounded “eerily similar to a U.N. plan called Agenda 21, where a centralized planning agency would be responsible for oversight into all areas of our lives. A one world order.”

    …

    At a Board of Supervisors meeting in Roanoke in late January, Cher McCoy, a Tea Party member from nearby Lexington, Va., generated sustained applause when she warned: “They get you hooked, and then Agenda 21 takes over. Your rights are stripped one by one.”

    Echoing other protesters, Ms. McCoy identified smart meters, devices being installed by utility companies to collect information on energy use, as part of the conspiracy. “The real job of smart meters is to spy on you and control you — when you can and cannot use electrical appliances,” she said.

    It’s true, the blueprints were kept secret until now, but smart monitoring of energy use is designed to turn you into a godless slave of the great beast that is the UN. Using a combination of electromagnetic waves and psychotropic medications released from the devices, it’s victims will be turned into mindless, left-wing voting slaves of the beast.

    I think the tea party has started electing paranoid schizophrenics to their leadership. You couldn’t make this stuff up. This stuff is so great I have to resurrect (drumroll) the Tin Foil Hat!

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    It would actually make a good counter protest to send this woman tin foil hats. Although she may fail to get the point and incorporate it into yet another paranoid delusion of persecution at the hands of those who promote public transportation, parks, and efficient use of energy. You might get emails in return IN ALL CAPS. The horror. The horror.

  • Eisen calls for Elsevier Boycott – but can we all go OA?

    Eisen writes

    Thus, people joining in the new boycott have no excuses not to follow through. There are plenty of viable OA options and it is simply unacceptable for any scientist who decries Elsevier’s actions and believes that the subscription based model is no longer serving science to send a single additional paper to journals that do not provide full OA to every paper they publish. So, come on people! If we do this now, paywalls will crumble, and we all be better off. So, come on! Let’s do it!

    This sounds great. If you remember we were similarly disgusted since Eisen brought the Research Works Act to our attention several weeks ago.

    I still have two issues though with all OA publishing. For one, in my field I tend to publish in AHA journals which are not open access but the predominant journals. There is still a relative shortage of OA journals. There are not enough compared to the thousands of subscription options to take on the literature. I think their success has if anything made them more inaccessible with higher impacts. After all, everyone likes the idea of everyone being able to see and read their paper. Either by the fame of the journal or by the advantage of rapid publication and universal access. I once tried to publish a paper in PLoS One but frankly, I don’t think it was really high enough impact, and while not triaged, we were tanked by a reviewer who basically insisted on about 3 more PhD projects worth of work in order to get it in. Finally, what about us poor peons still working for the man? What if the boss says, “I want this journal”? Because after all, it’s pretty difficult to convince the olds to change their ways.

    In the end to survive you must publish. I’d say the goal should be that we should all give a right of first refusal to your OA option. If that fails, suck it up and send it to the private publishers. And if anyone has some good vascular/heart/circulation OA alternatives to recommend I’m all ears.

  • End the occupation

    No one likes occupiers. They’re like fish and houseguests, they start to stink after a short period of time. And I worry that as time goes on the movement will only have a more and more destructive impact on progressive politics and political discourse. This isn’t to say they can’t be effective, or haven’t been effective at at least one goal, that is bringing the topic of economic inequality back into the spotlight. However, as time goes on their leaderless, agenda-less actions are becoming more random, and less likely to result in a good outcome in the coming political fight. In fact, several of the occupy actions are now likely to harm a progressive agenda, and seriously alienate would-be allies. For example this video from San Francisco CBS:

    Really? Breaking into public buildings and burning the flag? What do actions like this accomplish? That’s like the A-bomb of protest moves, and you’re doing it why? Because you don’t have a job? Because you want rich people taxed more? The reaction seems disproportionate. If you’re going to be burning the flag it better be because the U.S. is tattooing swastikas on puppies and dropping them with C-4 harnesses onto hospitals. Not because your poetry MFA didn’t prepare you for the job market.

    Other snippets from around the country include throwing condoms at Catholic School girls, breaking windows and spray painting anarchy symbols on cars, and generally being jackasses. Now, the condom thing is kind of funny to those that think the Catholics stand on contraception is absurd, every sperm is sacred and all that, but doesn’t that exemplify why it’s an error of tactics? You don’t want to alienate an entire religious organization which actually might side with you in terms of working for economic equality. Who runs more homeless shelters, the Catholics or Occupy? These are potential allies, and the lack of focus of Occupy will result in more harm to it and those that may be in place to enact their goals.

    A survey by Survey USA now shows a majority of bay area residents opposing OWS with 26% saying they did support them before, but now oppose. This movement is becoming toxic. Where did it go wrong? And is there a better way to protest?

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  • Eisen Busts Rep Carolyn Maloney parroting Elsevier Publishing's defense of the Research Works Act

    At It’s not junk Michael Eisen continues to expose the shameless actions of Carolyn Maloney to sell out science for the sake of publishers like Elsevier. As we remarked last week, it seems that very little money is required to buy a representatives favor towards your industry, even if that means acting against the public interest. Now, in her defense of the Research Works Act, which undoes the public distribution of research findings paid for by the public, her response appears to have been written by Elsevier itself.

    Eisen busts her in the act.
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  • Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Darrell Issa (R-CA) sell out science

    I’m never shocked by what Issa can do in a never-ending downward spiral of serving business interests, but it’s sad that NY rep Carolyn Maloney has joined him backing a bill to sell out science. Once again the publishers are trying to destroy public access, and make everyone pay to read science you’ve already paid for with your taxes.

    The Research Works Act reads:

    No Federal agency may adopt, implement, maintain, continue, or otherwise engage in any policy, program, or other activity that–

    (1) causes, permits, or authorizes network dissemination of any private-sector research work without the prior consent of the publisher of such work; or

    (2) requires that any actual or prospective author, or the employer of such an actual or prospective author, assent to network dissemination of a private-sector research work.

    This really should be a settled issue but the publishers won’t let it go. They are allowed to limit access for a time to make profit for publishing research, but in the end, we’re talking about taxpayer funded research here. In the end, taxpayers should be able to read the results without paying again. It’s good for science too, especially internationally, because not every library can afford subscriptions to every journal in the universe. Open access will allow research to be more rapidly disseminated around the world.

    And what did it take to make Carolyn Maloney back the publishers over the public and advance this bill? About $9000 in donations from publishers (Issa only needed about $2000). It’s pathetic how cheap it is to get a member of congress to vote for an industry over the public.

    Here’s her email page if you want to send her a nasty-gram. Tell her to change position on H.R.3699 the “Research Works Act”.

    h/t it’s not junk

  • Don't Even Give them Your Zip Code Anymore

    Consumers who have asked me whether they should give their zip code at the register have been getting bad advice! I was under the misimpression that zip-level data was only being collected for demographic research purposes (to determine where stores should be located, and advertising directed, on a mass scale) and thus said that no harm came from revealing the zip. No longer. Here’s a summary of data practices at William Sonoma, according to a recent California case (Pineda v. Williams-Sonoma Stores Inc., Cal. Ct. App., 4th Dist., No. D054355). Giving the zip code allows the store to “enhance” the information they already have about your (your name from the credit card) and determine your home address:

    Jessica Pineda visited a store in California owned by Williams-Sonoma Stores, Inc. (the Store) and selected an item to purchase. She then went to the cashier to pay for the item with her credit card. The cashier asked for her zip code, but did not tell her the consequences if she declined to provide the information. Believing that she was required to provide her zip code to complete the transaction, Pineda provided the information. The cashier recorded it into the electronic cash register and then completed the transaction. At the end of the transaction, the Store had Pineda’s credit card number, name and zip code recorded in its databases.

    After acquiring this information, the Store used customized computer software to perform reverse searches from databases that contain millions of names, e-mail addresses, residential telephone numbers and residential addresses, and are indexed in a manner that resembles a reverse telephone book. The Store’s software then matched Pineda’s now-known name, zip code or other personal information with her previously unknown address, thereby giving the Store access to her name and address.

    So, when they ask for your zip code, say no, or to have fun, give them the zip code of the White House: 20500.

  • Americans on Tailored Advertising: DO NOT WANT

    I’m delighted to announce the results of our first national telephonic survey of US internet-using adults on consumer privacy! The Times has coverage and the full report (Americans Reject Tailored Advertising and Three Activities that Enable It is available here. Here’s a summary:

    This nationally representative telephone (wireline and cell phone) survey explores Americans’ opinions about behavioral targeting by marketers, a controversial issue currently before government policymakers. Behavioral targeting involves two types of activities: following users’ actions and then tailoring advertisements for the users based on those actions. While privacy advocates have lambasted behavioral targeting for tracking and labeling people in ways they do not know or understand, marketers have defended the practice by insisting it gives Americans what they want: advertisements and other forms of content that are as relevant to their lives as possible.

    Contrary to what many marketers claim, most adult Americans (66%) do not want marketers to tailor advertisements to their interests. Moreover, when Americans are informed of three common ways that marketers gather data about people in order to tailor ads, even higher percentages– between 73% and 86%–say they would not want such advertising. Even among young adults, whom advertisers often portray as caring little about information privacy, more than half (55%) of 18-24 year-olds do not want tailored advertising. And contrary to consistent assertions of marketers, young adults have as strong an aversion to being followed across websites and offline (for example, in stores) as do older adults.

    This survey finds that Americans want openness with marketers. If marketers want to continue to use various forms of behavioral targeting in their interactions with Americans, they must work with policymakers to open up the process so that individuals can learn exactly how their information is being collected and used, and then exercise control over their data. We offer specific proposals in this direction. An overarching one is for marketers to implement a regime of information respect toward the public rather than to treat them as objects from which they can take information in order to optimally persuade them.