Denialism Blog

Denialism Blog

  • What do Ayn Rand and Kevin Trudeau have in Common?

    The NYT had a piece on the life and times of Ayn Rand yesterday, and I just couldn’t get over these two paragraphs.

    For years, Rand’s message was attacked by intellectuals whom her circle labeled “do-gooders,” who argued that individuals should also work in the service of others. Her book was dismissed as an homage to greed. Gore Vidal described its philosophy as “nearly perfect in its immorality.”

    But the book attracted a coterie of fans, some of them top corporate executives, who dared not speak of its impact except in private. When they read the book, often as college students, they now say, it gave form and substance to their inchoate thoughts, showing there is no conflict between private ambition and public benefit.

    You see, I was also reading this MSNBC story about Kevin Trudeau (crank and quack extraordinaire) and his recent legal troubles with the FTC. You see, Trudeau sells books by telling people what they want to hear, whether it’s true or not. In this case, that you could follow his diet, and also eat all the food you want.

    In both cases, the authors manage to sell people lots of books by telling people what they want to believe, rather than anything resembling the truth. In Trudeau’s case, that his quack cures will let you live forever and lose weight. In Ayn Rand’s case, that unenlightened self-interest is the highest form of moral behavior (side note – also that rape is consensual sex). It’s like “the Secret” for CEOs, total nonsense, but sure to sell.

  • Global Warming as a Threat to Global Health – Review in Nature

    Blogging on Peer-Reviewed Research

    Nature has a review this week on the Impact of regional climate change on human health(1) that is an interesting read.

    Contrary to the previous article we discussed which suggested what I think is a non-existent link between climate change and chronic disease, this article discusses the very real likelihood of increased acute mortality from respiratory and cardiovascular disease with extreme weather.

    Exposure to both extreme hot and cold weather is associated with increased morbidity and mortality, compared to an intermediate ‘comfortable’ temperature range15. Heat mortality follows a J-shaped function with a steeper slope at higher temperatures16. The comfortable or safest temperature range is closely related to mean temperature, with an upper bound from as low as 16.5 °C for the Netherlands and 19 °C for London17, to as high as 29 °C in Taiwan18. Hot days occurring earlier in the summer season have a larger effect than those occurring later17. It should be noted that although the majority of temperature-mortality studies have taken place in developed countries and in regions with temperate climates, the same pattern of temperature-mortality relationship found in European and North American cities occurs in São Paulo, Brazil, a developing city with subtropical conditions19.

    The temperature/mortality curves look like this:
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  • Dobson Latches onto Ex-Gay study – Exaggerates Results

    Why can’t people just be bigots and not demand science reinforce their bigotry? James Dobson is promoting the Exodus Ex-Gay study (reviewed by Jim Burroway here). You remember the study? The one where they ignore all the people that dropped out? The one where success also included chastity, or merely staying with the program despite not changing sexuality? The one where “conversion” left participants still sexually conflicted? Yeah, that one, is being promoted as proof that Dobson is right.

    Focus on the Family, the Colorado Springs-based Christian media ministry, on Monday endorsed a recent study finding that it is possible, through religious mediation, to change one’s sexual orientation.

    “This study bolsters our position of advocating for people’s right to self-determination,” said Melissa Fryrear, director of Focus’ Gender Issues Department, in a statement.

    Focus on the Family is a worldwide media ministry broadcasting in 26 languages.

    The results were more promising than expected, with 67 percent of study participants reporting “a change toward heterosexual orientation or … successfully continuing to work towards that goal,” Fryrear said.

    Study findings were first released last week in a book, “Ex–Gays? A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation.”

    Only a tiny minority of participants actually experienced a meaningful change and they were still conflicted. This is a gross inflation of success. The study, read accurately, suggests exactly 0% of gays can be converted to heterosexuals, was flawed in execution, and manipulated to pose the brightest possible picture for the cranks.

    This is why family values associations are so disgusting. That in the name of values they unabashedly lie and mislead to suit their bigotry.

  • You Know You're in Trouble When Alan Keyes is Your Hero

    I’m sad I missed the “Values Voters Presidential Debate”, but I’m not alone. All the first-tier presidential candidates skipped it as well. The big winner was apparently Mike Huckabee according to the World Nut Daily, he apparently was the most hateful of them all. But the nuts are clearly upset at being snubbed by the candidates that actually have a chance of being nominated:

    Debate panelist Rabbi Aryeh Spero of the Jewish Action Alliance asked, “How can we expect these no-show candidates to take on Osama bin Laden and other world leaders when they’re afraid to show up and answer questions from Phyllis Schlafly?”

    I don’t know. Given the choice I’d avoid Phyllis Schlafly and her “values”. She’s a harridan. My favorite quote from her is “It’s very healthy for a young girl to be deterred from promiscuity by fear of contracting a painful, incurable disease, or cervical cancer, or sterility, or the likelihood of giving birth to a dead, blind, or brain-damaged baby even ten years later when she may be happily married.”

    I also love how avoiding hateful bigots means that you kowtow to terrorism. Charming group, really.

    Anyway, onto Alan Keyes. He made a big score in the hate fest according to the American Family News Network for his vociferous attacks on the homosexual agenda.

    Three-time Republican presidential candidate Alan Keyes is taking aim at fellow GOP candidates who are reluctant to support a federal marriage amendment. During last night’s Values Voters Presidential Debate in Fort Lauderdale, Ambassador Keyes at times sounded like a fiery gospel preacher. When asked what he would do to counter the homosexual agenda if president, Keyes voiced support for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex “marriage,” and said he would defend the “natural family.”

    “We have to restore the understanding of what marriage is,” he said. “I heard tonight a shocking statement that somehow the state can withdraw its respect for and support for the natural family as ordained by God.

    Apparently the family ordained by god is actually the modern family, not the types of families you usually read about in the good book with polygamy, selling daughters etc. The types of families that are described in the Bible, these days lead to criminal charges, just ask the FLDS.

  • The Right to Trial…By Elves

    The Journal’s James Hookway informs us that a trial court judge in Manila, Judge Floro, has an interesting set of consultants: three elves, only visible to the judge himself! Belief in this trio has caused the country’s supreme court to intervene and fire the judge.

    …Mr. Floro, 54 years old, has become a media celebrity. He is now wielding his new clout to campaign for the return of his job — and exact vengeance on the Supreme Court.

    Helping him, he says, are his three invisible companions. “Angel” is the neutral force, he says. “Armand” is a benign influence. “Luis,” whom Mr. Floro describes as the “king of kings,” is an avenger.

    Mr. Floro has become a regular on Philippine television. Often he is asked to make predictions with the help of his invisible friends. “They say your show will be taken off the air if you don’t feature me more often,” was Mr. Floro’s reply to one interviewer.

    The full article is worth a read for a giggle; here’s just a snippet:

    Mr. Floro says he never consulted the invisible elves over judicial decisions and the fact that he puts faith in them should make no difference to his career. “It shouldn’t matter what I believe in, whether it’s Jesus, Muhammad, or Luis, Armand and Angel,” he says in an interview.

    Ha!

  • Verizon: It's OUR Network

    Mark is totally outperforming me on this blog for many reasons, but my newest excuse is that I went to Austin for the weekend to see the Austin City Limits Festival. W00t!!1!

    So, I’m going to be covering some divine articles that appeared over the weekend. First up: Verizon, it’s OUR network, baby! The Journal reports:

    Verizon Wireless appealed the Federal Communications Commission’s rules for a coming radio spectrum auction, charging the agency with exceeding its authority in requiring carriers to open their networks to any devices and cellphone applications.

    		 i-fdadf3f4eafaf88a43c4ba0f2ec49117-4d.jpg
    Yes, you read that right: Verizon wants to change the rules so that they control what devices and programs you can use when using wireless. What ever happened to consumer freedom? Oh, maybe it’s that consumers want control! i-9d936ebcbb671ac98c18d0fb1b4e58c6-4s.jpeg

    The good news is that the decision of the FCC, yes, a federal government agency, to give you more choice and freedom, is reviewed on an “arbitrary and capricious” standard. This means that Verizon carries the burden to show that the agency acted irrationally in requiring the spectrum to be free from such carrier restrictions.

  • Science blog survey

    Shelly asks us to take part in her survey on science blogging. She wants to know who is reading science blogs, what do they want, what they don’t want, and how science blogs can influence awareness of science.

    Help her out, and take the survey.

  • I knew it was just a matter of time

    I knew eventually some crank would find John Ioaniddis’ work and manage to misrepresent it against science, well, the first to bat are the HIV/AIDS cranks. Fresh off this bizarre declaration from Harvey Bialey that he’d won the war against HIV science and is now going home, they’re back on the horse and using Ioannidis to hint all science is bunk (via selective bolding, wink wink, nudge nudge).

    I’ve written previously about the importance of understanding Ioannidis’ work, it emphasizes the critical role of replication in biological science, not that biological science doesn’t work.

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  • OTA Thread II

    Let’s keep this ball rolling. On Friday we started talking about the importance of the OTA

    It used to be, for about 20 years (from 1974 to 1995), there was an office on the Hill, named the Office of Technology Assessment, which worked for the legislative branch and provided non-partisan scientific reports relevant to policy discussions. It was a critical office, one that through thorough and complete analysis of the scientific literature gave politicians common facts from which to decide policy debates. In 1994, with the new Republican congress, the office was eliminated for the sake of budget cuts, but the cost in terms of damage to the quality of scientific debate on policy has been incalculable. Chris Mooney described it as Congress engaging in “a stunning act of self-lobotomy” in his book the Republican War on Science (RWOS at Amazon).

    The fact of the matter is that our government is currently operating without any real scientific analysis of policy. Any member can introduce whatever set of facts they want, by employing some crank think tank to cherry-pick the scientific literature to suit any ideological agenda. This is truly should be a non-partisan issue. Everybody should want the government to be operating from one set of facts, ideally facts investigated by an independent body within the congress that is fiercely non-partisan, to set the bounds of legitimate debate. Everybody should want policy and policy debates to be based upon sound scientific ground. Everybody should want evidence-based government.

    We’ve gotten some nice linkage so far:

    Links so far:
    PZ at Pharyngula
    John Wilkins at Evolving Thoughts
    Major Geek’s LiveJournal
    Ordinary Girl at Tales of an Ordinary Girl
    John Pieret at Thoughts in a Haystack
    Dave Bruggeman at Prometheus writing a month ago
    Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub
    Alex at the Yorkshire Ranter
    Measured Against Reality
    One Good Move
    La Pobre Habladora at Second Innocence
    Dan at Migrations
    Mike Dunford at Questionable Authority – with links to presidential campaigns!
    Jeremy Elton Jacquot at TreeHugger
    Epicanis at the Big Room
    Blue Sky Mining
    Brian Thomas at Carbon-Based
    Bora at Blog Around the Clock
    suddenly south at the Cucking Stool
    Geoff Davis at PhDs.org Engineering and Science Blog
    Amanda at Enviroblog
    Kate at Anterior Commissure
    Soberish
    Chris Mooney at the Intersection
    Paul Hutchinson at Paul Hutchinson’s Blog
    Kent at Uncommon Ground
    DOF at Decrepit Old Fool

    As before we ask if you have a blog link this post, spread the word, and contact your senator or congressman about having this office re-established.

    We believe that we can make this a political issue in the coming election. If candidates for office support science and reason period, they should support the idea that government and policy should be studied scientifically in a non-partisan and independent fashion. I also believe this can go a long way to undoing the influence of money in politics. While it’s probably impossible to truly expect congress to do away with lobbying or stop listening to crank think tanks, having independent and non-partisan scientific information presented routinely to congress can go a long way to balance out the ideologically-motivated nonsense that currently passes for science on Capitol hill.

  • Crank Science Alert

    Box Turtle Bulletin has been tracking the latest ex-gay study that purports to show a 30-50% efficacy in making homosexuals into heterosexuals through the Exodus ex-gay ministry.

    Initial problems with the study which went to a Christian publisher rather than peer review – the authors Stanton L. Jones and Mark Yarhouse (of Regent University have an interesting history in this field:

    Jones and Yarhouse have collaborated at least three times before. They wrote “The Use, Misuse and Abuse of Science in the Ecclesiastical Homosexuality Debates,” which appeared in the 2000 anthology Homosexuality, Science, and the “Plain Sense” of Scripture (edited by David L Balch and published by Eerdmans). That chapter was based largely on an earlier article they wrote for the Christian Scholar’s Review in 1997 titled “Science and the Ecclesiastical Homosexuality Debates.” They also contributed a chapter titled “The Homosexual Client” in the 1997 anthology Christian Counseling Ethics (edited by R.K. Sanders and published by InterVarsity).

    Already some red flags indicating this study might have some biases. What about some of the results?
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