Denialism Blog

Denialism Blog

  • Will the ID cranks ever tire of the appeal to consequences?

    Short answer, no.

    The latest is Dembski laughing with glee at the latest bigoted ramblings of James Watson who apparently has gone and said Africans are stupid and that’s why Africa suffers. This is not the first, or last time that Watson will say something dumb, offensive, and backwards. Like some people who have received enough accolade that they are safe from any repercussions for their actions, he seems to just revel in being an ass. Like, as Zuska points out, his recent diagnosis of Rosalind Franklin as autistic, as if she was the asshole in that conflict.

    As if Watson’s shenanigans aren’t embarrassing enough for humanity, Dembski has to then weigh in with the usual numbskull analysis and say, “See! If people believe in Darwinism we’ll have racist eugenics again“. No I’m not kidding. He asks:

    Anybody willing to offer predictions about when Darwinists will be getting back big time into the eugenics business?

    Let’s make this abundantly clear, eugenics was nothing but the use of science to justify pre-existing racist ideas scientists had about other races. These ideas were not scientifically valid. Dembski, and others with their historically indefensible “From Darwin to Hitler” nonsense, seem to be suggesting there is some scientific validity to this idea of inferior races. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that this is inadvertent, but it makes it no less tiresome.

    The idea of inferior races, is, of course, nonsense, and the attempts to pin the ills of racism and the holocaust has even raised the ire of the Anti-Defamation League . Anyone who has read Stephen Jay Gould’s Mismeasure of Man realizes that in the case of eugenics the researchers were biased, the theories flawed, and the science manipulated to favor the outcome of a specific ideology. They started with their conclusions, and made the science fit their racist beliefs.

    The IDers should be careful. The real similarity isn’t between modern evolutionary biologists and eugenicists, but between ID and the eugenics movement.
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  • TRUST Seminar: Need Credit? No Identity? No Problem!

    I’m doing the TRUST Seminar at Berkeley this week. Here’s the info and abstract.

    Date: Thursday, October 18, 2007
    Time: 1:00 PM (lunch will be served)
    Location: 540 A/B Cory Hall

    ABSTRACT: In synthetic identity theft cases, an impostor creates a new identity using some information from a victim that is enhanced with fabricated personal information. For instance, the impostor may use a real Social Security number, but a falsified name and address. Since this synthetic identity is based on some real information, and sometimes supplemented with artfully created credit histories, it can be used to apply for new credit accounts. In a currently-ongoing case, two men alleged to have used this tactic applied for and obtained 250 credit cards and amassed $760,000 in charges. Experts following fraud trends claim that synthetic identity theft is a growing problem, and is responsible for massive losses among financial services institutions. How can fabricated person obtain credit? This presentation will explore the synthetic identity theft problem, its roots in credit authentication, and possible approaches to reducing its incidence and severity.

  • The Road to Sildenafil – A history of artifical erections

    The inability to achieve erection has been a source of consternation for men for, well, a really long time. But the recent history of treatments for impotence, wait, I mean Erectile Dysfunction, oh no, now they’re calling it Male Sexual Dysfunction, represents a medical revolution. In the last 100 or so years, we’ve gone from nonspecific and largely ineffective treatments, to progressively more successful treatment, finally resulting in a highly specific and effective pharmaceutical solution to the problem. The goal of this post is to share a history of this unique field of medical endeavor, the medical and biological insights we’ve gained, and the rather interesting characters involved along the way.

    Erectile dysfunction is reported in about one out of five of all men and increases with age. It is therefore a serious problem for millions of American men (and their spouses a fair amount of the time), and hundreds of millions worldwide.

    Our story starts with one of the earliest “medical” treatments for male impotence. Starting in the late 1800s, sheep testis extract was injected as a source of testosterone (although they didn’t know it at the time). This was the standard of care until testosterone was purified in the 1940s. However, testosterone as a treatment for impotence was pretty poor. The inability to obtain an erection has little to do with levels of androgens, and in studies at the time testosterone fared no better than placebo.

    Thus, this was the treatment that failed for Geddings Osbon in 1960, leading to the next great leap forward in treatment of male erectile dysfunction. Osbon, a successful owner of a tire-retreading business, did what doctors dread their patient will do. He went home and looked around his shop and home and tried to come up with a solution to his medical problem. Usually, this results in disaster, and many doctors have hilarious stories of the attempts of such patients to cure less mechanical disorders with household materials. However, in this case, Osbon invented a device which he called the “YED” or “youth equivalence device” that is still today one of the most effective solutions to erectile disfunction. It’s also known as the penis-pump.

    I’m afraid the rest must continue below the fold. I think it’s safe for work, but you never know…the description of probably the most infamous urology lecture of all time might be a bit much.

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  • Say Goodby to a Hack

    Chris DeMuth, the head of AEI, is announced he’s stepping down from the position in the WSJ Op-Ed page (article free here – at AEI). His farewell is a call to crankery:

    Every one of the right-of-center think tanks was founded in a spirit of opposition to the established order of things. Opposition is the natural proclivity of the intellectual (it’s what leads some smart people to become intellectuals rather than computer programmers), and is of course prerequisite to criticism and devotion to reform. And for conservatives, opposition lasted a very long time–in domestic policy, from the New Deal through 1980.

    These circumstances meant that the think tanks in their formative years attracted many contrarian characters who were strongly disaffected by some aspect of politics or policy. One of AEI’s founders was Raymond Moley, the FDR brain-truster who coined the term “New Deal” and then became disillusioned with the project (a liberal mugged by reality long before the 1960s, he was a proto-neoconservative). Milton Friedman was an active AEIer when he was still considered a crackpot in polite academic circles. Robert Bork and Jeane Kirkpatrick worked at AEI long before they became public personalities.

    You ask me, Milton Friedman still was a crackpot when he died this year – none of his ideas, no matter how widely adopted actually worked. Robert Bork is so embarrassing as an intellectual and a human being that when he wasn’t serving as a hit-man for Nixon during the Saturday Night Massacre, he wrote execrable legal opinions on reverting the constitution to a some antebellum ideal. He also cites Charles Murray, of Bell Curve fame, the most recent leader in the effort to abuse science to justify racism.

    This isn’t surprising talk from someone who championed the conversion of AEI from a conservative, but scholarly organization to a promoter of catastrophic idiocy. Basically, if you want to know who thought up the Iraq war – it’s these idiots. DeMuth takes credit for the surge in the essay:

    Sometimes the moment comes with astonishing speed. Last December, a group of military specialists closeted themselves at AEI to see if they could devise a new strategy for the war in Iraq, one that might have a reasonable prospect of victory following three years of catastrophic mistakes. Their plan was adopted within weeks by the White House, Pentagon, and new commanders in the field, with all credit due to our soldiers in action for their great success to date.

    But what he fails to remind us is that the strategy of the invasion and subsequent attempt to turn Iraq into a libertarian paradise was largely the intellectually aborted brainchild of AEI “thinkers”.

    Timothy Noah has the full scoop of the legacy of AEI in the DeMuth years in Slate. It’s a must-read for people to understand why I consider the global-warming denying, torture-promoting, stem-cell restricting, ultra-right, racist, and downright stupid nonsense coming from AEI to be the height of organized denialism.

  • 9/11 cranks sure are paranoid – of each other

    One of the latest discussions going on at the 9/11 conspiracy sites is the big question of who are the 9/11 disinformation agents being paid by the government to spread lies and confusion about the events of 9/11. George Washington gives the simple 5 d’s of disinformation to help you figure out who the splitters are:

    * Distracting, disrupting, or derailing 9/11 truth efforts;

    * Dividing the truth movement; or

    * Discrediting leading 9/11 activists

    What inflated egos they have to tihnk the government is actually afraid of them or cares enough about their crankery to pay money to influence their silly debates. I can’t help be amused at watching all the infighting between those who are embarrassed by holographic plane theories, to controlled demolition nonsense, to no-plane at the Pentagon etc. The whole discussion reminds me of this clip from Monty Python’s “The Life of Brian”:

    Splitters!

  • Uri Geller makes a comeback!

    Watching 30 Rock and the Office tonight I kept on seeing this commercial for a new show called “Phenomenon”. The story goes:

    The search for the impossible begins…there are those who claim special powers, but only one can be called the greatest. Now, the mind of Uri Geller, and the mastery of Chris Angel will test them all before the world, and everything you see will be live.

    I was cracking up because when they show Geller he’s got this sign that bends behind him. I can’t believe it, he still tries to milk this idea that he can bend metal like he’s some kind of spoon-bending genius.

    I’d think he’d give up that angle after James Randi busted his ass on the Carson show – see the video below.

    Even Geller’s blog has an idiotic banner with a bent-spoon prominently displayed. What an idiot.

    This new show is the American version of “the Successor”, and based on what I’ve seen, he’s continuing his idiotic shtick of presenting himself as a psychic, rather than an just an illusionist (and a crummy one at that). For a preview of the hoaxing you’re likely to see on NBC, friendly skeptic has posted videos from the Israeli show, in which you can see him stick a magnet on his thumb to make it appear that he can manipulate a compass with his mind.

    Geller has a history of using bogus copyright claims to try to suppress videos proving he’s a hack and a fake, so make sure to check these out before they disappear.

    This actually might be a lot of fun, because I bet other magicians, like Penn and Teller, like Johnny Carson before them, will have a blast showing how these guys are using simple illusions to provide proof of their claims of mystical abilities. From what I understand magicians get a little pissed when you try to claim supernatural powers for what is, in the end, just slight-of-hand. It might be fun to watch, and live blog with a magician to see who can spot the tricks. Anyone up for that? Anyone know a good magician? Preferably one who blogs? And who hates hacks?

  • Obesity – Primary vs. Secondary prevention

    I will never forget the very first patient history I ever took. Part of medical school training is they send you onto the wards to gather patient histories and physicals so you learn to gather information effectively as a clinician. My first patient history was on a woman about 35 years old on the orthopedics ward, who was a triple-amputee. She had her legs removed below the thigh, and one arm amputated below the elbow. The cause was imminently preventable. She had type II diabetes that was poorly controlled. She was obese, weighing about 180 lbs despite the removal of large parts of her body. A common problem with diabetics is that they are susceptible to infection in their bones. Diabetics have have poor pain perception from diabetic neuropathy and poor blood supply, the result is that cuts on their extremities go unnoticed, heal poorly, and ultimately result in infection that frequently goes into the bone. The result, osteomyelitis, is persistent infection of the bones from these infections, and, if antibiotics are ineffective, the only treatment is to surgery to remove the infected tissue and often amputation. Such was the case with my patient. She was poor, from Appalachia, had inadequate control of her diabetes, and as a result lost multiple limbs from infection (she was hospitalized for yet another infected bone).

    The major reason for the increase in Type II diabetes rates is obesity and lack of exercise. Disturbingly, younger and younger people are presenting with diseases often only seen with age, like type II diabetes and gout. This is unquestionably due to increasing rates of obesity in the US population. Thus, it is with dismay, that I read Sandy Szwarc’s blog Junkfood science, that seems to exist for the sole purpose of denying the health risks of obesity and of being overweight. Sandy, who is on CEI’s staff, routinely writes about obesity as a health-scare, that is not harmful as doctors and health scientists suggest.

    To illustrate the problems with her analysis, let’s go through one of her more recent posts on the Obesity Paradox – the apparent decrease in mortality in studies of the obese.
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  • Skeptics' Circle Number 71

    The Infophile has this week’s circle up at Infophilia. He has presented the posts in the context of logical puzzles, practically daring us to use our brains rather than just spoon-feeding us the skepticism.

    See if you can figure them all out!

  • The Short Memory of HIV/AIDS denialism

    Greta Christina has sent me this link to her wonderful essay discussing the short memory required for HIV/AIDS denialism.

    It is really a fantastic essay, personal and well-researched, and it covers a very important point. A lot of the anti-science attitudes we see are from people have no memory of what things were like before some medical intervention like vaccines, antibiotics, or in this case HAART. It’s easy to think there’s no problem with avoiding vaccination, or denying germ theory once the problem of these diseases are so well-controlled that there doesn’t seem to be a tangible benefit from the interventions anymore. Similar with HAART, HIV/AIDS denialists who for whatever reason have bought into the crankery, probably didn’t experience or can’t remember what a dramatic effect HAART had on survival rates of AIDS, or the sheer terror of the disease in the early days when no one knew the cause, or how it was transmitted. HAART and public health have been highly successful, and as a result AIDS awareness now occupies the back-burner. This will likely make HIV/AIDS denialism ripe for a resurgence as people ignorant of the history of the disease will have no personal experience to counter the lies of the cranks.

    Unless, of course, people go read Greta’s essay, and spread it around the web.

  • Two articles on building immunity in kids

    The first from the NYT discusses the fallacy that childhood illness somehow builds up the immune system making them healthier adults. Rather, it emphasizes correctly, that exposure to lots of harmless antigens seems to be the key to making kids less susceptible to asthma and allergies, not exposure to harmful ones. In other words, let your kids go outside and eat dirt, but don’t take them to chicken-pox parties (vaccinate them instead).

    In a similar vein, Slate has an articleon eating more crap. While the point is made more carelessly, the idea is the same, that exposure to common harmless antigens may be protective for later exposures in preventing auto-immunity and decreasing severity of illness.

    It reminds me, of All Creatures Great and Small, when Herriot is discussing the children of the local “knacker man” Mallock. The man spent all his time cutting up, and processing diseased carcasses of farm animals, and Herriot remarked that his kids, despite being surrounded with all the stinky filth imaginable, he were the healthiest children in the district.