Denialism

Month: August 2007

  • A big day for cranks

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    MarkH
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    Today is a big day for cranks in two separate areas, but the interesting thing is the similarity of the responses. First we have Casey Luskin of the “top think tank” the Discovery Institute (wow, they must be right up there with Cato and CEI!) blathering about paleontologists don’t know anything because of the self-correcting…

  • Mike Adams Crank Magnetism – now it’s the Secret!

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    MarkH
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    As if I needed more evidence for the phenomenon of crank magnetism, Mike Adams has a post on the Nutrition behind the Secret. Apparently, the secret to the Secret is Mike Adams nutritional advice. Few people really know one of the most important secrets to making “The Secret” work: Establishing the right nutrition and dietary…

  • Congressional Bigotry

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    MarkH
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    What is it about “family” organizations and bigotry? That’s some definition of family they’ve got there. The latest comes courtesy of the American Family News Network, and features the lovely hate of Congressman Bill Sali. “We have not only a Hindu prayer being offered in the Senate, we have a Muslim member of the House…

  • Utah Miners and Cranky CEOs

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    MarkH
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    Some readers have been emailing me about the Utah mine disaster saying the mine owners are using some seriously fishy arguments. I am in no way shape or form a geologist, but after reading the coverage of the Utah mine collapse I can’t help thinking the CEO saying it was an earthquake – not a…

  • Skeptics’ Circle Number 67 – Call for submissions

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    MarkH
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    Deadline is next tuesday, and it’s at the Bronze Blog. Send your entries.

  • I say, Hard Cheese!

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    MarkH
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    Responding to a commentor on a thread about animal rights, I again encountered this funny view of nature that some people have. Two sentences in particular just struck me as being out of touch with reality. The alternative may be to try to live in harmony with nature. … Trying to dominate nature has only…

  • Do microwaves “nuke” the nutrients in food?

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    MarkH
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    No. However, there is never a shortage of crankery from Mike Adams who asserts Microwave ovens destroy the nutritional value of your food. There may be too much idiocy here to address but let’s get started. The rise of widespread nutritional deficiencies in the western world correlates almost perfectly with the introduction of the microwave…

  • Egnor lashes out at Dunford and hits himself in the face

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    MarkH
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    Ah Egnor. The chief purveyor of foot-in-mouth disease at Evolution News and Views takes on Dunford’s recent post on the intellectual dishonesty of the intelligent design creationist movement and shows exactly why Dunford has a point. Intelligent design is a cheesy attempt to smear a patina of scientific legitimacy on creationist ideas. Dunford quite reasonably…

  • Denialism in the news

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    MarkH
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    Alert readers have brought to my attention two articles of interest to the study of denialism. First a big fat article in Newsweek entitled The Truth About Denial is a good overview of the anti-scientific crusade of conservative crank tanks to dispute global warming. It has a nice timeline of the development of the denialist…

  • A fundamentalist dilemma – gay and lesbian mice

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    MarkH
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    How will the homophobes greet this latest article in Nature describing a pheromone “switch” in mice that when inactivated – even in adult mice – appears to change their sexual orientation? Briefly let’s go over what the researchers found.