Denialism Blog

Denialism Blog

  • Mike Adams Demands the Media Stop Lying About Vitamins (then lies about vitamins)

    I can’t resist, Adams thinks he has a real winner with this study’s null results on vitamin C & E. As we’ve shown, Newstarget’s claims of the medical benefits shown in this study reflect, a poor understanding of p values, and a willingness to ignore data showing increased risks from beta-carotene. However, convinced of an AMA conspiracy against natural substances by the disease-mongering and drug loving media, he continues to misrepresent the findings of the study.

    Today, NewsTarget announces a grassroots action campaign to demand retractions, corrections or clarifications from major media outlets — Fox News, ABC News, CNN, Reuters, WebMD and more — all of which printed incorrect, incomplete or misleading statements concerning the results of an antioxidant study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

    The study clearly showed that women who took vitamins E and C experienced a statistically significant and rather remarkable reduction in risk of heart attacks (22 percent reduction), strokes (31 percent reduction) and other cardiovascular events.

    I’ll remind you, the p values on those three events were 0.11, 0.04 (actually significant) and 0.55 (9% decrease in overall CVD events is what he’s alluding too) respectively. Also remember they showed a 48% increased risk of cardiovascular mortality [p=0.02] with beta-carotene, a finding that Adams and Newstarget have happily ignored or misrepresented in each article. While crying foul the media hasn’t even read the study, he makes it clear he hasn’t read (or understood) the study.

    So, hooray for Mike Adams! Fight the good fight! Demand the media stop reporting the authors findings and instead report your misrepresentations!
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  • Do We Care More for Animals than People?

    Reading about the anger stoked by Karl Rove’s plan to go dove hunting reminded me of a recent oped by Vicki Haddock in the Chronicle, where she explores why animals sometimes receive more sympathy than people. A few anecdotes from the story are telling, and so totally California:

    …football star Michael Vick pleaded not guilty to criminal charges after authorities raiding his home found 66 angry dogs, a dog-fighting pit and bloodstained carpets. An indictment claims that losing dogs were drowned, hanged and shot, or soaked and electrocuted.

    Also last week, an 8-week-old rescued kitten named Adam underwent skin grafting at a Sonoma County animal hospital after having been caged and deliberately set on fire. Two 15-year-old girls stand charged with felony animal cruelty.

    In both cases, as in other notorious incidents of animal cruelty, public outrage has been fierce — so much so that it almost seems to outpace our empathy for human affliction.

    […]

    Meanwhile, thousands of dollars are cascading in from around the globe to help pay for Adam’s grueling recovery. The staff at the Animal Hospital in Cotati has been overwhelmed with well-wishers.

    […]

    It’s worth asking why animal victims sometimes evoke our emotions more than human ones. (Recall the case of the mountain lion that attacked jogger Barbara Schoener jogging in El Dorado County. After authorities killed the cougar, donations to find a home for the cougar’s orphaned cub were running more than double what people pledged to a trust fund for Schoener’s children, until the national press trumpeted the irony.)[This has been debunked, thanks TTT!]

    Similarly, some Santa Rosa residents are wondering why a wounded kitten triggered a greater outpouring than the killing of a 16-year-old boy in the same Apple Valley neighborhood last year. A reward was issued on behalf of the feline victim, not the human one. And the cost of kitten Adam’s care could nourish a village of Sudanese children.

    She goes on to discuss the various forces at play–pampering pets, the replacement of children with pets, animals’ helplessness, anthropomorphism, the link between cruelty to animals in childhood and adult sociopathy. But I think this is the best explanation:

    One is practically theological. We tend to regard animals as pure, blameless, sinless — and thus lacking responsibility, however unfortunate their fates. Mahatma Gandhi, a vegetarian who famously contended that a nation’s morality could be judged by the way its animals are treated, observed “the more helpless a creature, the more entitled to protection by man from the cruelty of man.”

    Researchers have found that when humans suffer abuse or tragedy, the rest of us subconsciously look for ways to distinguish our situations from theirs as a way of tamping down our own anxieties.

    Thus we rationalize that a crime victim shouldn’t have ventured into a certain neighborhood at a certain time, or consorted with people of ill-repute, or been careless about locking their doors, or dabbled in drugs — whatever might have jacked up their risk of jeopardy.

    We simply don’t play the same “blame game” with animals.

  • Two conservative opinions on Global Warming from WaPo

    Oddly enough, I agree with (most) of one of them.

    The attack on Newsweek’s article “The Truth About Deniers continues with a piece from Robert Samuelson in the WaPo. Samuelson, true to form, sees a hard problem and resorts to saying, “It’s hard, we can’t do anything about it!” His boring fatalism on any difficult problem seems to always end with assertions that if something requires regulation, or proactive government, it’s impossible. He’s also critical of Newsweek’s correct assertion that the attacks on the science aren’t for legitimate “dissent” but rather represent an organized disinformation campaign.

    But the overriding reality seems almost un-American: We simply don’t have a solution for this problem. As we debate it, journalists should resist the temptation to portray global warming as a morality tale — as Newsweek did — in which anyone who questions its gravity or proposed solutions may be ridiculed as a fool, a crank or an industry stooge. Dissent is, or should be, the lifeblood of a free society.

    The problem is that the people who are questioning global warming are fools, cranks, and industry stooges (or those duped by them). And Samuelson, without denying the science, is being a typical scold, crying about people who point out the anti-science, and economic motives of those who question the science for no other reason than they don’t like what they hear. We don’t call them denialists because we disagree with them or merely because they dissent. We call them denialist and cranks because they act like denialists and cranks! How many examples of cherry picking, or fake experts, or conspiracy theories, or references to being Galileo do you need to hear before it becomes clear the “dissenters” don’t have a leg to stand on? Take last weeks glorious exclamations from the denialists over the correction of the US record for instance. It did not change the global average for 1998, it did not change the trends, it had no real effect on the science. This is not the behavior of honest actors who merely are interested in finding the truth about the state of global climate. This is the behavior of people who don’t like a scientific result, in will latch onto anything, no matter how insignificant, to bolster their denialist position.

    Dissent and denialism should not be confused Mr Samuelson. Global warming is not a “moral” crusade, as much as the denialists would like to compare themselves to heretics like Galileo being oppressed by the evil left-wing Al Gore global warming conspiracy. The only moral issue is the dishonesty of those who lie and misrepresent science for a political aim.

    The second article, from Michael Gerson of all people, is a much better example of how global warming should be addressed – with technology. Giving credit where credit is due, the Bushie has a much more reasonable approach to the problem in “Hope on Climate Change? Here’s Why”
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  • Skeptics' Circle Number 67

    The Giant Robot Edition of the Skeptics’ circle is up at the Bronze Blog.

    He has chosen a theme “cooler than ninjas, pirates, and pirate ninjas: Giant robots.” And he’s collected a great pool of fighters to defend against all kinds of woo.

    Good job Bronze Dog! Check it out.

  • Who's Afraid of Gay Incestuous Monkey Sex?

    Sociologists are. Or so says Inside Higher Ed.

    Sociologists — especially those who study sexuality — have for years done research that was considered controversial or troublesome by politicians or deans. Many scholars are proud of following their research ideas where they lead — whatever others may think. But at a session Monday at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, sociologists considered the possibility that some of their colleagues may feel enough heat right now that they are avoiding certain topics or are being forced to compromise on either the language or substance of their research.

    …

    One paper at the session featured what may be the most eye-catching title of the meeting: “Erections, Mounting and AIDS: Incestuous Gay Monkey Sex (or seven words you can’t write in your NIH grant).” While the title drew laughter from the crowd here, the paper left many worried. Joanna Kempner, a research associate at the Princeton University Center for Health and Wellbeing, shared preliminary results of her study of the impact of having one’s sexuality-related research attacked by politicians. (In fact, the words from her paper title all come from words whose use was attacked by conservative groups.)

    Kempner studied 162 researchers who in 2003 either had their research questioned by lawmakers who tried (and almost succeeded in the House of Representatives) to have their projects blocked for support from the NIH or whose work appeared on what became known as “the hit list” of projects for which the Traditional Values Coalition tried to generate opposition. The research projects — all of which had been approved through the peer review process at the NIH — involved such topics as prostitution, gay sex, unsafe sexual acts, and drug use. Kempner interviewed some of the researchers and sent an e-mail survey to all of them.

    More below the fold…
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  • Dawkins: The Enemies of Reason

    It’s up on Google video – and embedded here. Enjoy!

    H/T Factition and Bad Science.

  • Foxipedia

    Remember how I said you shouldn’t source Wikipedia? Well here’s another reason. Fox News likes to edit it.

    Ha!

  • Is the FDA responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths?

    No. But the WSJ would like you to believe so.

    One libertarian talking point I hear a lot (Cato of course loves this story), and is repeatedly pushed by the WSJ, is that the market and consumers should decide the safety and efficacy of drugs – not dirty gov’mint bureaucrats who want nothing but death and suffering for cancer patients. The latest is this commentary from Ronald Trowbridge and Steven Walker which has some fun with math to suggest the delay in approval of cancer drugs has led not to dozens, or hundreds, or thousands, but hundreds of thousands of premature deaths.

    Is there any basis in fact for these accusations? Is the FDA somehow worse than Hitler? Hmmm.
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  • How Alties read science (p values matter)

    I couldn’t make it a week without talking again about Newstarget, home of Altie-med uber-crank Mike Adams. This time, they caught my eye with a surprising read of this large study of the antioxidant vitamins C and E. Jack Challem, writing for Newstarget, tells us the good, but hidden, news from this study.

    When Cook and her colleagues analyzed data from people who consistently took their supplements, they found these specific benefits:

    Vitamin E led to a 22 percent reduction in the risk of heart attack.

    Vitamin E led to a 27 percent less risk of stroke.

    Vitamin E led to a 9 percent lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease.

    Vitamin E led to a 23 percent lower combined risk of heart attack, stroke, and cardiovascular-related death.

    Vitamin E and vitamin C together lowered the risk of stroke by 31 percent.

    Now this is surprising given the latest meta-analysis which actually showed little benefit from supplementation (and possibly some harm). But after all, a big trial like this will often be better than retrospective analysis of several small studies. However, I was shocked, shocked, to find the authors at Newstarget may have exaggerated the findings.
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  • Bring on that Army of Inspectors!

    Our friends from the WSJ recently endowed us with this bit of wisdom:

    Unsafe products are a fact of life. The U.S. has created its own share of food- and product-safety scares over the years, from E. coli-tainted spinach to faulty Bridgestone Firestone tires. Even the best inspection regime, whether government or private, will miss serious problems from time to time. But at the end of the day, the private market stands a better chance of protecting consumers than an army of government inspectors ever will.

    O RLY? Here’s the type of product produced by the private market in China, where the government inspectors are complicit in the chase for cash at the individual’s expense: