Denialism Blog

Denialism Blog

  • Good News, Max snubs PETA, will give to a local shelter

    Maybe my email worked? I got a one sentence reply from Max last night saying he agreed, and today Tucker Max says hellz no to PETA and instead wants to give to a local shelter:

    I do not agree AT ALL with the mission of PETA.

    …

    If we’re talking about what an awful organization PETA is, that’s really just the beginning. They’re so ridiculous, they compared the holocaust to killing chickens. Not only that, but they have a history of shitting on celebrities they’ve worked with in the past. And perhaps worst of all, they are the ones that think violence against women is OK. Their stated ultimate goal is complete animal liberation. They’re serious about that. F*** [sorry to be a prude, ed.] that-I not only disagree, I vehemently oppose that goal.

    …

    To that effect, I am proposing another solution, one that helps dogs but doesn’t force me to give money to an organization that works at odds with most of my personal beliefs:

    In the past, I have supported a cause in Austin called Austin Pets Alive that is trying to open a no kill shelter (another thing I disagree with PETA on, they operate kill shelters). Their new building has numerous naming opportunities. I would love to make a sizable donation to them, and PETA should agree to match whatever I put in. If that happens, I will open it up to any of my fans to contribute as well.

    If PETA doesn’t like Austin Pets Alive for some reason, that’s OK, they are welcome to suggest any other dog-related charity in the Austin (or surrounding Texas) area, and I am down for contributing a lot of money to help them do positive things for dogs. Together, I am sure we can raise several hundred thousand dollars for needy and worthy dogs in the central Texas area.

    Good for him. Whatever flaws he has, he’s no animal liberationist.

    Finally, a note about the HSUS and PETA. They are not for animal welfare. They are for animal liberation. That means they don’t believe in animal agriculture, they don’t believe in animal research, and they don’t believe in pet ownership.

    HSUS runs deceptive and sleazy ads showing suffering puppies and kittens to make you think your money is going to rescue and adoption, yet only 1% of their budget goes to shelters. They are not a rescue organization!

    Their animal experts include ALF morons like JP Goodwin, a high-school dropout who has dedicated his life to animal liberation. People think that since “Humane Society” is in its name, it is affiliated with local humane societies or that it shares the same mission. It does not. If you want to donate money to spaying and neutering of animals, animal rescue, or adoption, give to your local humane society or SPCA, not HSUS. HSUS is a animal liberation advocacy organization, not a shelter! Likewise PETAs shelters euthanize 95% of the animals they receive, they are not interested in promoting pet adoption. They are interested in animal liberation. If you’re for animal liberation fine, but don’t represent yourself as a humane society or animal welfare organization. They’re not the same thing.

  • The Bigger Pink Slime Problem for Business

    In a matter of weeks, activists have been able to assassinate a popular product through a confluence of events: an official labeled it derogatorily as “pink slime,” social media buzz (or anti-buzz), and media attention against the background of Americans’ greater concern about processed foods. Could this happen to other products? Does it relate to a broader shift in power from PR firms and industry to the consumer mob?

    John Bussey has a good article in today’s Wall Street Journal featuring some of the wound-licking of the lean finely textured beef industry. Note the tactics:

    1) Make it about consumer choice:

    This week beef producers belatedly said they’re considering labeling the beef that contains LFTB. The idea is simple. Tell consumers what they’re buying. Give them an option. Let them make the choice.

    Of course, how much choice do I have as a student at some public school that has decided to save five cents on my burger by packing it with LFTB?

    2) Change the language:

    Notice the use of LFTB acronym…Notice the reporter used it, and it is the same acronym used by the industry.

    3) Make an entirely unverifiable and vague claim, one that reporters seem to always quote faithfully:

    “We have recently seen an increased interest in purchasing ground beef containing LFTB as customers and consumers gain access to more accurate information,” adds Gary Mickelson, a spokesman for Tyson Foods…”

    I am so totally sure that if consumers just knew that their food had to be treated with ammonia because of underlying problems with the safety of its rendering, they would clamor for it.

    4) Rely upon toady regulators–here the USDA. Note the unidentified spokesperson. Does the fact that the USDA expert won’t identify him/herself a signal?

    “It’s beef,” says a USDA official. “There are various parts of the animal that come together in ground beef. This is just one part.”

    5) Say it’s really no different from the rest of the sorry state of processed foods, because that is a very cogent argument:

    As for the ick factor, well, wake up and smell the Spam. “There are plenty of examples in the food system where you could come up with a derogatory term for the process,” says Edward Mills of Penn State’s animal science department. “Luncheon meat, sausage, hot dogs. All of these are batter products. They’re made in a slurry. It isn’t pretty.”

    6) And don’t forget to malign the critics:

    “a troubling mix of industry intransigence, uninformed consumers and a megaphone-toting media–social and otherwise. The only innocent bystander was the cow.”

    Of course, consumers are always uninformed. No one can be fully informed…

    In order to win the larger battle with big business and their PR tactics, the consumer movement (and ordinary consumer themselves) has to recognize these tactics. In large part, this article has illustrated the pattern of argumentation that is so effective at manipulating the media and regulators. We need to get wise to this.

  • No Tucker Max, not PETA!

    You may have heard about Planned Parenthood turning down Tucker Max’s 500k charitable donation on the grounds his misogynistic past marred the gift.

    Now PETA is asking for the donation.

    Let’s beg him not to do this. Instead of giving money to the dog-killing animal rightsists, how about a donation to pro-test and put a thumb in the eye of the anti-research pet killers? Send him a message, donate the money to a pro-science group.

    Here’s my email to Tucker:

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  • Readers remember Ayn Rand and cringe

    A great article from the awl asks writers and book critics which books they liked when they were younger, but now make them cringe.

    The results are interesting, the two authors those surveyed reported most cringe-worthy were Kerouac and, you probably guessed it, Ayn Rand. Ha!

  • Ron Paul & Clicktivism

    The point raised by yesterday’s Times article on Ron Paul was that while Paul attracts big crowds, these crowds do not translate into voter turnout.

    Perhaps the problem is that Paul has appeal within his fervent base, but that base is unable to influence people outside the circle. If Paul can attract thousands to a rally, many more should actually vote for him. Paul himself discusses the problem in the article:

    “I don’t have a full answer for that,” says Mr. Paul, who says he believes ballot irregularities have chipped into his numbers in some places. He adds, “I think there’s some problem with always making sure this energy is translated into getting to the polls.”

    Perhaps the answer is clicktivism. Paul’s fervent base is all over the internets, commenting on this blog for instance, but clicks and comments do not create voter turnout. Nor are they part of anything resembling a dialogue. Libertarian movements are something akin to PR firms, all transmit and no receive. Able to create the appearance of broad appeal, but with a actual following that is quite shallow.

    And that honestmistake video is not very compelling. So news organizations, particularly television, omits Paul from a bunch of infographics. If that is your beef, you are not ready for the national stage, where many unfair things happen. You cannot blame the media for not taking Paul more seriously. He’s not even a serious member of Congress–introducing dozens of bills on crackpot topics that are all languishing in subcommittee land. He appears to have accomplished next to nothing in his many years there.

  • There is no There There — Ron Paul's Loud, Thin Base

    Writing in today’s Times, Richard A. Oppel asks, “Whatever happened to Ron Paul?”

    Ron Paul has fans, in the traditional sense of the word–fanatics. They foam over this small and strange man, whose career in Congress has largely been ineffectual. Thousands go to his rallies, but as Oppel observes, “A Feb. 27 event at Michigan State University drew 4,000 people. But at polling places the next day, Mr. Paul finished third — with 3,128 votes — in Ingham County, where the campus is. Mr. Romney got more than three times as many votes.” Paul’s supporters attribute this to a failure in conveying the urgency to vote.

    Paul is emblematic of the larger libertarian movement, if it can even be called that. Paul’s supporters are loud and able to manipulate the levers of public spectacle and the media. They seem omnipresent in Washington, DC, on policy panels and the like, but support for their ideas is not widely shared. In general elections, libertarian candidates routinely capture less than 1 percent of the vote. Perhaps that is a reflection of the power of our two political parties. But Ralph Nader, representing the complete opposite of the libertarian canon, captured over 2% in 2000.

    The Ron Paul people remind me of the Lyndon LaRouche supporters who used to plague the Berkeley campus. They typically were good looking young people who would accost others with a message that might be popular on the campus: “Impeach Dick Cheney.” That might be a conversation starter. But once one looks at the spectrum of where that conversation goes–in both LaRouche’s case and in the case of the libertarians–one might be turned off. All sorts of crazy is on parade, from years-long campaigns against global warming, bluster about the stimulus, and hysterical attacks on Obama’s healthcare plan.

    One cannot just cause a spectacle and win an election. It takes people, investment, and time. Once one takes the time, invests in people, and actually organizes, one sees that the world is a complex place and perhaps is less likely to vote for the likes of Ron Paul.

  • Bad news for the Affordable Care Act

    The NYTimes reporting suggests a 5-4 split against ACA is likely:

    Justice Kennedy, along with Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. all asked questions suggesting that they had a problem with the constitutionality of the mandate requiring most Americans to buy insurance. Justice Clarence Thomas, as usual, did not ask any questions, but he is widely expected to vote to overturn the mandate.

    As does CNN’s Toobin’s analysis:

    This is interesting. Part of the issue is how much of the law would fall if they turn against it? Would we still be able to prevent insurers from dumping patients and refusing to cover chronic conditions if the mandate falls? Will both provisions be struck down? All provisions?

    I think a strategic error was made in not describing the penalty as a tax. Because no one doubts congress’ power to tax, and after all, it made sense to tax the uninsured considering as a group they cost the taxpayers $43 billion a year in unpaid medical bills.

    The other interesting outcome may be political. Without Obamacare to rile up the base, what issue will Republicans have left come next fall? This was their touchstone, and if the Supreme Court pulls the rug out from under them, they’re going to have to come up with a new form of librul fascism to rail against for November.

    In the end this may be an opportunity or a catastrophe for medical care depending on how we are led into the future. The failure of this law may result in a tax-supported single payer system. It may result in expansion of health exchanges to cover the uninsured. It may result in a new national flat tax, like Japan’s, that results in income-based subsidization of healthcare costs. All of these things are clearly constitutional based on the congressional ability to tax.

    The worst outcome would be if we saw another 15 year delay in addressing the crisis of rising health care expenditures and coverage for the uninsured. Or, if it became delegated to the states to create individual universal systems as, sadly, most red states have no financial capacity to afford it. Already the southern and para-Mississippi states have higher obesity rates, poorer objective measures of health, worse infant mortality, and higher bankruptcy rates etc., this will likely worsen these disparities. California, New York, Massachusetts (will they lose their mandate?), Maryland and other states which are the major federal revenue generators could probably manage it if they could convince their population to support universal healthcare legislation with additional taxes, but a patchwork approach will create unnecessary complexity. What if a Pennsylvanian gets a surgery in Maryland? What if someone wants to chose an out-of-state hospital, which they very frequently do? What about emergency care for out-of-staters? Will this just further increase disparities between the states until the we see an ever worsening downward slope in quality of life as you approach the Mississippi river? Will states like Texas that can probably afford reform refuse to enact any out of cold-hearted laissez-faire libertarianism?

    It’s sad, but oh well. America gets the government it elects.

  • Mooney now agrees with us – Denialists deserve ridicule, not debate

    He had to realize Nisbett’s framing was worthless and write a whole book on defective Republican reasoning to realize it but it sounds like Chris Mooney has come around to the right way to confront denialism:

    The only solution, then, is to make organized climate denial simply beyond the pale. It has to be the case that taking such a stand is tantamount to asserting that smoking is completely safe, no big deal, go ahead and have two packs a day.

    Sounds a little bit like what I wrote in 2007 when I pointed out denialists should not even be debated:

    The goal instead must be to enforce standards of scientific debate, to delimit sharply what kind of evidence and argument is worthy of being listened to, to educate people about the form of pseudoscientific arguments, and when these arguments are proffered, to refuse to engage on the grounds they aren’t even worthy of consideration.

    Don’t mistake denialism for debate…

    The whole goal of denialists is to create the appearance of a legitimate debate when there is in fact no legitimate scientific debate to be had. What is the point of arguing with someone who denies the moon landing? Or evolution? Or that HIV causes AIDS? Or the holocaust? They get real angry when you mention that one as they feel it creates a moral equivalence between the types of denial. But the operative word is “denial” which is totally unrelated to whatever specific topic one denies. It’s just another helpful distracting strategy, to try to prevent critics from using the legitimate word to describe their pathology – denial – by suggesting it’s a wrongful comparison to one specific type of denial.

    The solution to these problems is not in confrontations or debates or even necessarily careful fisking of their arguments every time they appear in the blogosphere. For one, it’s somewhat futile. They’re cranks. They will just go on and on, immune to any new data, scientific findings, or any evidence the real world can present. Worse, evidence suggests that repetition of false claims reinforces them even if you are debunking the claim. So debating them to supposedly educate those around you is not a legitimate reason because it’s probably making things worse, not to mention legitimizing the denialist. It’s a constant struggle I have to try to write about things in such a way as to reinforce positive true claims rather than repeat false claims with correction. It’s natural, but it doesn’t work.

    Chris is right, the only way to address denialism is to call it what it is and ridicule it. People have to understand the difference between denialism and debate, and when they encounter denialism expose and attack the tactics. Denialism is an established strategy, likely ancient, honed to a science by tobacco companies, and now used by those attacking everything from global warming to evolution. Some of the same fake experts for the tobacco companies are now working for the global warming denialists. The way to win is to remember the way tobacco science was eventually beaten, and that was with exposure of their deceptive techniques, and public ridicule for denial of the obvious reality.

  • Three reasons the Supreme Court should uphold ACA

    With the Supreme Court hearing arguments for the next three days on the Affordable Care Act, many commentators, including Dahlia Lithwick appear to have so much contempt for the Roberts court that they believe the issue will likely be settled on politics rather than law.

    The first proposition is that the health care law is constitutional. The second is that the court could strike it down anyway.
    …
    The law is a completely valid exercise of Congress’ Commerce Clause power, and all the conservative longing for the good old days of the pre-New Deal courts won’t put us back in those days as if by magic. Nor does it amount to much of an argument.

    Despite the fact that reading the entrails of those opinions suggest that they’d contribute to an easy fifth, sixth, and seventh vote to uphold the individual mandate as a legitimate exercise of Congressional power, the real question isn’t whether those Justices will be bound by 70 years of precedent or their own prior writings on federal power. The only question is whether they will ignore it all to deprive the Obama of one of his signature accomplishments.

    Professor Randy Barnett, the intellectual power behind the entire health care challenge, wrote recently that Justice Scalia could break from his previous opinions–freeing him to strike down the Affordable Care Act–“without breaking a sweat.” I suspect that’s right.

    If that’s true, we should stop fussing about old precedents. These old milestones of jurisprudence aren’t what will give Scalia pause. What matters is whether the five conservative justices are so intent in striking down Obama’shealthcare law that they would risk a chilly and divisive 5-4 dip back into the waters of Bush v. Gore and Citizens United.

    It disturbs me when legal commentators as experienced and knowledgeable as Lithwick have essentially given up on the notion that the court is non-partisan or above the political fray. Instead, they seem to think it’s just another political body, making decisions based on partisan point-scoring over legitimate constitutional analysis. With the tea party rallying to keep us uninsured under the false notion that the bill will increase costs (it will actually reduce the deficit according to the CBO) and impinge their freedoms. These are the false arguments that people like Nick Gillespie (or libertarian Fonzie) are using, quite successfully, to convince the American people to oppose their own interest. Gillespie argues in his three point essay that (1) it’s unconstitutionally intrusive legislation (2) it’s price tag is ballooning, and (3) it won’t make us healthier. The first claim is debatable since it’s ultimately up to the courts. However good arguments suggest congress does have the power to pass such regulation.

    For one previous case like Wickard and Raich suggest extensive powers for congress to regulate commerce. Second, if one of every seven dollars is spent on healthcare, it represents a significant portion of the economy. Third, and most importantly, the uninsured inflict an economic penalty on taxpayers and the insured, so rather than claiming they have a right not to buy, I would argue we have a right to address the cost the uninsured inflict on society. The penalty for not carrying insurance I believe makes complete sense in this regard.

    The second claim is blatantly false and his description of the costs as “ballooning” is unsupportable based on the CBO reports. This talking point is an outright lie being spread far and wide by right wingers. The CBO director had to issue a comment to correct this widespread deception.

    The third claim is a bit of a red herring. The health benefits of people being insured may eventually result in a healthier population but probably not by much and it’s besides the point. We’re not arguing the law will make us healthier. We’re arguing that the reform law will reduce healthcare expenditures, and protect people economically from the often devastating costs of illness.

    But rather than just knocking down their arguments I think it’s important to remind people of the positive reasons we should support this bill. So I have my own list of 3 reasons this bill should be upheld and we should all support it.
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  • What is the cause of excess costs in US healthcare? Take three – signs of reform

    We’ve already extensively discussed why it costs twice as much for the US to provide healthcare for it’s citizens all the while failing to cover health care for all. Most recently, we discussed the hidden tax of the uninsured and the perverse incentive structure of US healthcare which encourage costlier care, more utilization, and more procedures.

    i-880005398336c472547ab02e425e6cd0-commonwealthfigureII8.jpg

    To summarize, the US spends more on healthcare compared to other industrialized nations because

    1. We deliver it inefficiently
    2. Without universality problems present when critical and in the ER
    3. Fee-for-service incentives in the form of excessive reimbursement for procedures and hospitals ramp up costs by encouraging doctors to overuse expensive tests and perform more procedures
    4. Direct-to-consumer advertising (we are one of two countries that allow advertisement of prescription drugs) and medicare part D encourage overuse of pharmaceuticals while tying providers hands when it comes to bargaining for lower drug prices
    5. Defensive medicine
    6. Poor management of end-of-life decisions and excessive and futile overuse of resources at the end of life
    7. Absence of a universal electronic medical record (or record format) to prevent redundancy and waste.

    Now, what about the new Affordable Care Act? Are there going to be measures to address these sources of excess cost while creating universal coverage? The WaPo has an article outlining reforms addressing many of these specific problems.

    First off, fee-for-service is going to be discouraged with increased use of “bundling” of costs:
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