Denialism Blog

Denialism Blog

  • Hire Google for your denialist campaign!

    An alert reader noticed that when he performed a Google search on ‘Sicko’, guess who pops up in the sponsored links? Why, our good friends at AEI, a denialist organization second only to CEI, but since they have a lot of the same people working for both it’s really just academic which one you’re arguing with. When you need your crappy industry defended from public criticism, you can always rely on AEI or CEI to chomp at the bit and pretend there is “no problem”.

    What’s even more interesting is that Google actually solicited ads (fixed link) to combat Sicko’s bad PR for the insurance industry. How’s that for “do no evil”?

    AEI’s criticism is pretty weak:

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  • Happy 4th

    I’m vacuuming. Not because it’s something I only do on the 4th, but rather because Chris H is coming to town!

    So, if you want the shock of seeing more than one Hoofnagle in the same place you should try to find us in Charlottesville. It’s not hard, we’ll likely be at the Bistro drinking.

  • Everybody go say hi

    To Neurophilosophy our newest Scibling.

    Go say hi. I command it.

  • I know I shouldn't find this funny

    It’s Ruthless Reviews coverage of the Creation Museum’s opening.

    I’d just like to say that I don’t condone dressing up like a mentally disabled person before interviewing Ken Ham. And I don’t find it funny, at all, to mock somebody for their religion. Even if they think dinosaurs are vegetarian, they don’t deserve mockery from pill-popping investigative reporters going undercover with “Asperger’s by proxy”. I especially don’t find it funny that they created a fake website, the “Special Times”, to gain press access to the Creation Museum’s opening.

    And this youtube video of the interview? Not an ounce of humor there.
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  • Animal rights terrorists have their next target

    The LA Times reports.

    The FBI and the Los Angeles Fire Department are investigating an anonymous claim that animal rights extremists placed an unexploded incendiary device found under the car of a prominent UCLA eye doctor last weekend. The incident was similar to one last year in which another UCLA researcher was the intended target.

    A gasoline-filled device was discovered Sunday by the car outside the Westside home of Dr. Arthur Rosenbaum, who is chief of pediatric ophthalmology at UCLA’s Jules Stein Eye Institute. The device did not ignite despite evidence of an attempt to light it, authorities said Thursday.

    An e-mail on Wednesday signed by the Animal Liberation Brigade said the group put the device there to stop experiments on animals in Rosenbaum’s laboratory. The message claimed a gallon of fuel was set alight under the vehicle, but authorities said there was no fire.

    Attacking scientists again, but it appears – as with the unexploded incendiary device used against a previous UCLA target – their incompetence has spared them from doing great harm.

    And Vlasak, the former spokesman for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, and now loosely-affiliated animal rights terrorist spokesman even gets a mention.

    A Woodland Hills-based group called the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, or NAALPO, alerted reporters to the anonymous claim signed by the Animal Liberation Brigade concerning Rosenbaum’s car. NAALPO said it had nothing to do with the incendiary device and does not know who was responsible.

    However, NAALPO spokesman Jerry Vlasak, a trauma surgeon, said he agreed ideologically with such violent tactics against anyone leading painful experiments, particularly on primates. When peaceful protests don’t work, “we certainly advocate taking it to the next level,” he said.

    Now last time we discussed this, some of you were more reluctant to call it terrorism despite the secondary risks of arson and massive property damage. I disagree but still, I get the point. It’s terminology that is over-used and incorrect a lot of the time. But here we have ALF trying to bomb this ophthalmologist with Vlasak saying they “advocate taking it to the next level” – do we agree we’ve crossed the threshold yet?

  • My question for Luskin IV

    I officially retract my question to Luskin as it has been answered. When I last asked my question of Luskin in regards to their assertion that the denial of tenure to Guillermo Gonzalez was a matter of “academic freedom”, I really wanted an answer to it. My question was:

    Mr. Luskin, is it the considered opinion of the DI, UD etc., that it is never acceptable to discriminate against a professor in a tenure decision based on their ideas?

    Now, Tara shows me the answer to my question in her post Why deny only one part of science? IDists branch out into AIDS denial.

    I think my question is answered, and it is “no”.

    Now, it’s been frequently mentioned on here that prominent IDers Phillip Johnson and Jon Wells have previously stated their “skepticism” of HIV as the cause of AIDS. To their credit, most IDers I know disagree with Johnson and Wells on this point. However, Scot and Cordova buy right into it. Scot:

    That said it’s not wholly unlikely that HIV is a symptom rather than a cause of AIDS. From my POV 23 years of considering it the cause of AIDS has not moved us any closer to a vaccine. There are two possibilities in that. The first is that the virus is just too insidious but second is that it isn’t insidious it’s just not the cause so no amount of effort against the virus will prevent the disease. However it does seem incredibly unlikely that AIDS isn’t a transmissable disease caused by infectious element of some sort so if not HIV then what is it? The evidence is circumstantial and compelling but the lack of progress in curing AIDS is also compelling evidence that we’re on the wrong track.

    Incredibly likely? Because we have no vaccine? That means that more than 99% of all infectious diseases, then, aren’t infectious.

    Cordova, meanwhile:

    Even if the dissent is wrong, it would be hard to argue those involved are crackpots. [Cites Kary Mullis, Bernard Forscher and David Rasnick]. Given how I’ve seen Darwinian evolution promoted and how it has created harmful medical and social practices, it’s hard not to be skeptical of all sorts of accepted scientific “truths”.

    At least they’re consistent. With Dembski defending a holocaust denier, their AGW denialism from DaveScot, their general evolution denialism, and now HIV/AIDS denialism from at least 4 prominent IDers, I think it’s safe to write of the Discovery Institute and the intelligent design creationist movement as just another clearing house for anti-science and denialism. They clearly wouldn’t have a problem with a virology department hiring an HIV/AIDS denier, or a history department hiring a holocaust denier because they simply aren’t competent to judge what is good science and what isn’t.

    Now, people may ask, why is this? Why is there so much overlap between cranks? Why do they not care if a crank has an inconsistent view as long as they’re attacking science? For instance, there is no consistency between the various IDers and their beliefs of what intelligent design covers – Behe is a raging “Darwinist” compared to Dembski for instance. Why are they like this?

    Well I think our original post on the Unified Theory of the Crank still has the explanation. The fundamental issue is that of competence. Cranks can not make competent scientific arguments. And because people who are incompetent are not capable of recognizing competence in others (discussed in the post), cranks are not competent to judge the scientific arguments of others. Further, they enjoy anything that attacks perceived scientific “orthodoxy” because they figure if one aspect of the orthodoxy can be attacked, why not the orthdoxy they hate so much? They see science as a uniform enemy to be attacked, and any aspect of science that can be brought into question is an advance of their cause because they are fundamentally anti-science. They want their overvalued ideas to be believed by others, and science is in the way. Therefore science itself is the enemy and any attack on any branch of science is to their advantage.

    Thanks Tara!

  • And the winner is…

    Many thanks to those who sent in entries. If people get a stunning idea in the future I’ll always accept more banners and put them in the shuffle if they send them to me. But today’s winner is this stunner from Patrick of Dog Opus. Be sure to check out his graphic-design blog.

    And here it is! It will be at the top of the page all week.

  • Michael Moore's Sicko (or why Orac should relent and go see this movie)

    I went to see Michael Moore’s Sicko last night and it is truly worthy of being seen by every American. I say that knowing how many feel about Michael Moore and his tendency towards spectacle. I hope that people can set aside whatever prejudice they have towards Moore and see this movie.

    This is a movie that contains more truth than any he has made so far. I went in with a skeptical mind, knowing the issues that face the practice of medicine in the United States in this new millennium, how easy they can be discussed inaccurately or flippantly and how medicine was once practiced in this country. Medicine is something deeply personal to me as I am a the son of two doctors – my mother a private-practice family physician who has been practicing for more than 30 years, and my father a research MD at the NIH. This movie struck many chords, as someone who has insurance, who studies medicine, who cares about fixing our current medical care system, who has known doctors, and who has received medical care. There is something for everyone in this movie, doctors, nurses, patient, and policy-makers alike, and I sincerely wish that everyone gives it a chance and an open mind. I doubt anyone will see it and be disappointed or unaffected.

    Now, the rest will be below the fold, I’ll try to keep spoilers to a minimum, but I’ll need to discuss some scenes in order to describe the importance of this movie.
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  • PZ and Rosenhouse are correct

    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.
    i-e80414ff40124a19710b000fc9c565bc-2c.jpg

    Those fundamentalists (controlling the country) who call them un-American, evil, sinful and hell-bound? Well, they’re just
    i-3a98e902c2d2451ed6523a0e819bb2f7-2h.jpg

    And the problems atheists have? Those aren’t real problems like with blacks and women, they’re just
    i-73e8da0bce0cebef8eca34b7b2dc4657-2s.jpg

    And since there is:
    i-29638c5b5008ea7c771bc8f5cc10141e-3h.jpg
    There is:
    i-e80414ff40124a19710b000fc9c565bc-2c.jpg

    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.

  • Police work works

    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.