General Discussion
choofnagle | July 11, 2007Patricia Cohen reports in today's New York Times on a development in economics that will have a huge effect on denialism: the increased willingness to question the orthodoxy of neoclassical economics. Consumer rights, environmental protection, and any number of other issues has suffered for decades under the neoclassists, who hold their beliefs in markets so strongly that it's just like a religion. A bad religion. Anyway:
"There is much too much ideology," said Alan S. Blinder, a professor at Princeton and a former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Economics, he added, is "often…
choofnagle | July 11, 2007Former Surgeon General Richard Carmona alleged yesterday in testimony before the House Government Reform Committee that the White House censored his speeches and activities. Laura Mackler of the Wall Street Journal reports:
The most recent U.S. surgeon general told Congress the Bush administration routinely blocked him from speaking out on controversial issues, including stem-cell research, emergency contraception and sexual abstinence, and pressured him to support an "ideological, theological" agenda.
Dr. Richard Carmona, surgeon general from 2002 until 2006, said that his speeches were…
denialism | June 29, 2007We'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.
Those fundamentalists (controlling the country) who call them un-American, evil, sinful and hell-bound? Well, they're just
And the problems atheists have? Those aren't real problems like with…
denialism | June 29, 2007The 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.
choofnagle | June 28, 2007Another interesting article in the Times discusses shining the light on pharmaceutical industry gifts to doctors. What's interesting about it is that shows another example of how industry self-regulatory principles often have holes (here, a lack of "detail") that leave the problem to be addressed unaddressed.
In the privacy field, the most notable example of this was the IRSG Principles, which allowed databrokers to sell personal information to anyone they deemed "qualified," and surprise, surprise, even criminals were "qualified" to buy Social Security Numbers. But back to doctors:
In…
choofnagle | June 27, 2007So, Apple releases Itunes 7.2, complete with the ability to download DRM-free, high-quality MP3s. However, these MP3s contain all sorts of personal information in the metadata, thus allowing tracking of who possesses the files. The solution? Privatunes, a program provided by a French company that erases the personal information from the metadata.
The best part? How the French justify the protection of privacy. I love it:
5 reasons to erase private information from my legally acquired iTunes Plus library:
1. Am I still a child who needs his pencilcase and schoolbag tagged with my name?…
choofnagle | June 27, 2007An article in today's New York Times shines some light on drug industry gifts to doctors. Pretty interesting stuff:
Vermont officials disclosed Tuesday that drug company payments to psychiatrists in the state more than doubled last year, to an average of $45,692 each from $20,835 in 2005. Antipsychotic medicines are among the largest expenses for the state's Medicaid program.
Over all last year, drug makers spent $2.25 million on marketing payments, fees and travel expenses to Vermont doctors, hospitals and universities, a 2.3 percent increase over the prior year, the state said.
The number…
denialism | June 26, 2007I'm deeply saddened by the results of the most recent Supreme Court decision on the free speech rights of students. The so-called "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case was decided in favor of the school.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Supreme Court ruled against a former high school student Monday in the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" banner case -- a split decision that limits students' free speech rights.
Joseph Frederick was 18 when he unveiled the 14-foot paper sign on a public sidewalk outside his Juneau, Alaska, high school in 2002.
Principal Deborah Morse confiscated it and suspended Frederick. He sued, taking his…
choofnagle | June 15, 2007I just received my July issue of Harper's Magazine, complete with an article about lobbying and public relations in Washington. Unfortunately, the article is behind a paywall, but it's too good for me not to share some highlights.
It seems to me that this article screams for a legislative intervention and for an ethical rule at newspapers: the strengthening of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (You can search registrations under FARA here), and a requirement for oped writers to disclose their financial conflicts of interests. After all, what makes this all possible is newspapers…
choofnagle | June 15, 2007The courts, prodded on by libertarians, civil libertarians, and corporate-funded think tanks, have afforded more and more protection for "commercial speech," expression in the business interest of the speaker. Commercial speech has a lower level of protection than religious and political expression, but still, in order for the government to regulate it, it has to have a good reason to do so, and the regulation has to be effective.
Expanding protections for commercial speech makes it more difficult to regulate advertising for consumer protection purposes. It makes it harder to enforce…
choofnagle | June 14, 2007Watch your newsstand for the July issue of Harper's Magazine. Today's Wall Street Journal reports today that Harper's Ken Silverstein has written an article describing his experience posing as a businessman with interests in improving the image of Turkmenistan. He approaches lobbying firms, and hints that he represents a front company that can direct oil revenues to officials in Turkmenistan.
The results are very revealing. They show how lobbying and public relations strategies work--attack opponents as "biased," hold bogus conferences to lure journalists hosted by others (the so called "…
denialism | June 5, 2007The last day or so of posts on HuffPo is a perfect example of why I'll never take that site seriously, and why in the end, lefties are just as susceptible to anti-science nonsense as the right. We start with Donna Karen promoting her new health-care initiative, the Well-Being Forum with much credit to hucksters Tony Robbins (he'll hypnotize you with his teeth) and Deepak Chopra, king of woo. You know where it's going with the first post "Healing Is Individual, Not One-Size-Fits-All" and early statements such as this:
But Tony knew that the bottom line is that healing is individual, it's not…
denialism | June 4, 2007Renegade Evolution encourages us to spend some time today blogging for sex education (she has a great feminist blog by the way).
I thought to further this aim I'd talk about this recent Nation article about the scam that is the abstinence education industry. Basically, it's just pork for the already-wealthy right-wing friends of the administration who use their money to attack abortion and fund denialist groups like the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America.
Following the money swirling around Ruddy offers an eye-opening glimpse into the squalor at the heart of the…
choofnagle | June 1, 2007As Paris Hilton gets ready for her short stay in jail, she increasingly is photographed carrying Jesus books. And today, she appears on my favorite blog wearing a "Faith" hoodie, and carrying Count Your Blessings, Spiritual Warrior, and some others.
Her behavior recalls Machiavelli's advice:
...a prince ought to take care that he never lets anything slip from his lips that is not replete with the...five qualities, that he may appear to him who sees and hears him altogether merciful, faithful, humane, upright, and religious. There is nothing more necessary to appear to have than this last…
denialism | May 30, 2007We've been on for one month now. It was a pretty good start. We got about 110k pageviews, about 54k visitors, 100 entries and 1050 comments on those entries. We've gone through what makes a denialist argument, what makes a crank, 3 major categories of denialists (there are many more) and almost a whole deck of denialist cards - only the high cards are left.
If you like the job we're doing, let us know. If there is something you want more of, we'd be happy to hear about it. As always, if you're just joining us and you want to read what we're all about, our "about" page summarizes the…
choofnagle | May 22, 2007Some followup from the earlier post:
If Gonzalez thinks ID is science, and not religion, he may have an even harder time arguing that there is discrimination here. Professors, rightly so, have freedom of religion and can believe whatever they want in their personal lives. However, if he thinks ID is science, I don't think it is discrimination to count that fact against a candidate, just as it wouldn't be discrimination to give a student a lower grade for having a wrong answer on a test. Writing a book about DI applied to astronomy would be exactly the type of extramural statement that…
choofnagle | May 22, 2007First, a disclaimer: I don't know much of anything about this controversy surrounding Guillermo Gonzalez, but I do know a fair amount about academic freedom. I wrote an article several years ago on legal protection for professors' speech. Legally, professors have the same rights as ordinary public employees, and so only a small spectrum of academic speech is protected by the First Amendment. As a result, many institutions have been successful when they decided to fire a professor based on their expression.
Of course, most of these disputes never make it to the courts. Internal rules at…
denialism | May 22, 2007People with good reasoning skills don't fall for stupid things like spun arguments and advertising.
I always suspected that if we taught a basic reasoning class in public schools in which kids were taught about logic and critical thinking it might lead to a decrease in the efficacy of advertisement.
Reasoning abilities are influenced by intelligence and socioeconomic status, but they are also skills that can be learned and honed with practice, says a "decision scientist" at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Many people are affected by the way that information is framed, marketed or…