Skepticism
pharyngula | November 9, 2006Brain imaging is a useful tool, but in the wrong hands it can be little more than hi-tech phrenology. Being able to say that you used single photon emission computed tomography to come to your conclusion sure sounds pretty, and it can seem like you know what you're doing, but all too often the use of a fancy buzzword is only a ploy to get you noticed, no matter how trivial or even drecky your work is. Here's a perfect example: a boring paper with almost nothing of interest in it gets published and highlighted in the New York Times, and why? Because the author couples expensive medical gear to…
tsmith | October 27, 2006Yesterday's Ames Tribune, the paper that originally carried Republican lieutenant governor candidate Bob Vander Plaats' comments supporting the teaching of intelligent design in schools contained an article noting Republican governor candidate Jim Nussle's dismissal of Vander Plaats' position:
Republican candidate for governor Jim Nussle and his running mate, Sioux City businessman Bob Vander Plaats, disagree on whether intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution in Iowa's science classrooms.
***
On Wednesday Nussle broke with his running mate.
"While I believe and I have taught…
tsmith | October 26, 2006I mentioned the situation with Lieutenant Governor candidate Bob Vander Plaats and his support of intelligent design last week (posts here and here). A group of us have put together an editorial discussing Vander Plaats' position and why it matters to Iowa voters (letter and signatories can be found here at the Iowa Citizens for Science site). Yesterday, a columnist for the Des Moines register also wrote up the story, and our response to it:
Town and gown are often mutual strangers when it comes to political involvement. But the Iowa governor's race this year is attracting the involvement…
tsmith | October 26, 2006At least, that's the setting for the latest Skeptics' Circle hosted by Left Brain/Right Brain.
tsmith | October 25, 2006I previously blogged an editorial by NBC medical correspondent Robert Bazell, where he told scientists to "quit whining" about intelligent design and instead work on teaching "values." While I agreed with him there on the science (he made it clear he gave no respect to "intelligent design" and other types of creationism), his suggestion that teachers and scientists spend more time worrying (and teaching) about more "practical" things such as biotechnology and medical ethics was just, in my opinion, wrong. Luckily, his new editorial on alternative medicine contains no such red herrings.…
pharyngula | October 18, 2006Deepak Chopra is incredible. After sticking his foot in his mouth once already with an awful article on genes, he then proceeds to kick himself in the teeth, followed by an attempt to turn himself inside out. No, I'm sorry, I simply can't read the Huffington Post as long as this clown graces its pages…and I'm ashamed that he can misrepresent himself as knowledgeable about science and medicine in this country, and that people buy his books. Quacks ought to be tarred and feathered (metaphorically) and run off, I think.
tsmith | October 6, 2006Regular readers out there will already be familiar with the groups of people who deny evolutionary theory, who deny that HIV causes AIDS, even those who deny that germs cause disease, period. Wilhelm Godshalk is even on the record for denying gravity. I don't know what it is about this site, and science blogs in general, that bring people out of the woodwork in this manner, but we have another live one. Witness Charles Hoy's assertion that fear, not smoking, causes lung cancer.
What evidence do you want? Lung cancer is as common in smokers as it is in non-smokers. Where it all gets…
tsmith | October 3, 2006I write on a somewhat regular basis on here about vaccines: new research, new shots, addressing skepticism about how well they work or if they're related to autism, etc. Recently, several vaccine stories have been in the news that I've not gotten to yet, so consider this a vaccine meta-post. More after the jump.
The first story is timely in that it discusses the influenza vaccination (and we're heading into that season). Allow me to share an anecdote first. When I was pregnant with my daughter in 1999, I was in graduate school and the lab I worked in was affiliated with a hospital. So…
tsmith | October 3, 2006Orac has a post up on this new JAMA paper as well. He brings up some better examples than the one I gave:
Does anyone in this day and age still believe that smoking doesn't cause lung cancer? The epidemiological evidence of the association is bulletproof. However, the majority of smokers don't get lung cancer. In fact, there are complex statistical models that allow a pretty accurate calculation of risk in populations based on how long and how much a smoker has been smoking. For example, if you start smoking at age 18 and smoke two packs a day, by age 55, you have about a 5% chance of dying…
tsmith | September 29, 2006Via Dean and Science, Just Science comes this story about a new group trying to get ID into class in the UK:
Parents are being encouraged to challenge their children's science teachers over what they are explaining as the origins of life.
An organisation called Truth in Science has also sent resource packs to all UK secondary school science departments.
It promotes the idea of intelligent design - that there was an intelligence behind the creation of the universe.
On their website, Truth in Science notes that they've already sent " a mailing to all Secondary School and College Heads of…
tsmith | September 20, 2006 The seventh chapter of Wells' book could be summed up in a single sentence: "biology doesn't need no steeekin' evolution!" Wells argues that, because medicine and agriculture were already doing just fine prior to Darwin's publication of Origin, clearly then, these fields (and others) haven't benefited from an application of evolutionary principles in the time from 1859 to present day, and that Dobzhansky's "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" is one big joke.
Wells focuses on medicine and agriculture because these are two fields that we all benefit from, and…
pharyngula | September 19, 2006
The Give Up Blog has a post outlining a general problem: denialists. The author is putting together a list of common tactics used by denialists of all stripes, whether they're trying to pretend global warming isn't happening, Hitler didn't kill all those Jews, or evolution is a hoax, and they represent a snapshot of the hallmarks of crank anti-science. Most of the examples he's using are from climate change, but they also fit quite well with the creation-evolution debates.
Here are the key features:
Conspiracy. Accuse the mainstream scientists of all being in it to defraud the government of…
pharyngula | September 14, 2006A few carnivals have popped up:
Carnival of Education #84
Skeptics' Circle #43
I & the Bird #32
Carnival of the Liberals #21
Also, Mendel's Garden #6 is looking for submissions — it will be hosted at The Voltage Gate tomorrow!
tsmith | September 12, 2006Via Orac comes Skeptico's takedown of Barnes' numerous misuses and abuses of logical fallacies he claims the "HIV orthodoxy" employs. For a lawyer, he sure hasn't had much training in logic, it would seem.
pharyngula | September 11, 2006A reader sent me a link to this unpleasant video of Scientologists in Clearwater, FL. I recognize the work: it's by Mark Bunker of XenuTV, where you'll find a whole collection videos documenting the kind of religious fascism Scientology, the creepiest cult on the planet, sponsors.
Bunker's videos show how these grim fanatics can take over a whole town by terrifying the residents and coopting the police—it's very unsettling.
pharyngula | September 10, 2006Oh, no. I've got to add another book to my growing stack: Frederick Crews' Follies of the Wise: Dissenting Essays(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). If you knew how many books are piling up on that shelf…
Here's a piece of Jerry Coyne's review:
The quality of Crewss prose is particularly evident in his two chapters on evolution versus creationism. In the first, he takes on creationists in their new guise as intelligent-design advocates, chastising them for pushing not only bad science, but contorted faith:
Intelligent design awkwardly embraces two clashing deities one a glutton for praise and a…
tsmith | September 10, 2006In the comments to this post on creationists'/HIV deniers' (mis)use of statistics, several people have been trying to argue that because overlapping membership in the two groups is limited, my comparison of the two is false. I explained:
It's the *tactics* that are the same in both groups: misleading use of statistics as evidenced in this post, cherry-picking the lit, appeals to authority, grand conspiracies imagined, painting scientists as greedy and hopelessly biased, quote-mining, hell, they even each have their own prizes based on an impossible standard of evidence.
Michael replied:
Oh…
tsmith | September 4, 2006Regular readers are very familiar with my refrain that many science deniers use the same tactics: bad arguments, quote-mining, appeals to authority, castigation of originators of respective theories, etc. etc. Another common thread is the complete bastardization of statistical analysis. Mark Chu-Carroll elaborates on Peter Duesberg's misuse of statistics here, while mathematician John Allen Paulos destroys creationist/ID analysis here. I'll highlight some of the best parts below:
For those of you who are familiar with creationist/ID arguments, you know that they take an event (say, the…
pharyngula | August 28, 2006Wow, it's only Monday, but I think it'll be awfully unlikely that we see anyone limbo under the bar of sucky vileness set by Sylvia Browne this week. Watch her lie to a grieving woman. It'll make you want to take a loofah to your eyeballs.
Oh, wait…am I being stupid in my certainty that Browne is a despicable con artist?
pharyngula | August 28, 2006Two can play this game—Chad Orzel, who sometimes likes to blame his insufficient popularity on his off-puttingly deep wisdom and excessive sense of moderation and fair play, notes approvingly that "All the world's stupidest people are either zealots or atheists," and that "certainty only comes from dogma," both rather interesting statements coming from a scientist. My certainty that I shouldn't step out of my second-story window, or that I shouldn't eat a large cake of rat poison, don't come from personal experience, but they aren't dogmatic, either—although I'm awfully darn certain that…