Denialism

Month: September 2007

  • How Dare They!

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    MarkH
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    Denyse O’Leary points us to an upcoming criticism of the New York Times from the crank journal First Things. Their great sin? Allowing Dawkins, a critic of Behe, to review his latest book. He notes the curious fact that the Times should never have given the book to Dawkins to review anyway, without giving Behe…

  • Bring Back the OTA – Bring Back Evidence Based Government

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    MarkH
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    So I was thinking. It isn’t really enough to merely react constantly to anti-scientific behavior which seems to permeate the media, the interwebs, and policy discussions on Capitol Hill these days. It used to be, for about 20 years (from 1974 to 1995), there was an office on the Hill, named the Office of Technology…

  • Two Court Decisions for Science

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    MarkH
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    There have been two interesting court decisions, I think both decided correctly for science this week. In the first, a federal court has decided states may regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles. In particular, one statement from the judge seemed to come straight from the deck of cards. “There is no question that the GHG…

  • Making Scienceblogs More International

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    MarkH
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    I thought I’d survey the readership for some ideas on how to make Denialism Blog more interesting and accessible to an international readership. One of the goals of the Scienceblogs’ mothership Seed is to expand and get the whole world interested in scientific literacy as well as our little community and I realize that my…

  • Skeptics’ Circle Number 69 – Unscrewing the Inscrutable

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    MarkH
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    At Unscrewing the Inscrutable Brent Rasmussen brings us the 69th skeptics circle with a fun, old west feel. One of the first entries was particularly interesting to me as an example of crank magnetism. The Socratic Gadfly found Lynn Marguilis embracing 9/11 conspiracies, which shouldn’t be surprising given her HIV/AIDS denial – also requiring a…

  • What’s more annoying, creationists or vegans?

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    MarkH
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    An art teacher has been “removed from the classroom” for proselytizing to his students about his vegan lifestyle. Apparently after being born-again into veganism, he wouldn’t stop talking to kids about living “cruelty-free” during class. The kicker? He now wants to charge the school district with child endangerment for encouraging them to drink milk. Dave…

  • RFID and cancer

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    MarkH
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    Who needs privacy concerns if RFID causes cancer. The small implantable microchips that have generated concern from privacy experts and readers of revelations alike have now been associated with sarcoma formation in animals. A series of veterinary and toxicology studies, dating to the mid-1990s, stated that chip implants had “induced” malignant tumors in some lab…

  • Cut and paste denialism

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    MarkH
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    I think most skeptical bloggers would agree that one common tactic one sees from denialists is whole-hog cut-and-paste rebuttals without attribution. For instance, on finds when arguing with evolution denialists that they’ll just cut-and-paste tired creationist arguments into comment threads. We wrote briefly about the latest attempt by global warming denialists to suggest that the…

  • Anyone Going to ACL?

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    Chris
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    The 2007 Austin City Limits Festival starts later this week. There’s a pretty amazing lineup of bands to hear for $80/day, including some of my favorites, Blonde Redhead, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and the Arcade Fire. My schedule of annoying indie bands is posted here.

  • The antidepressant suicide link – busted?

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    MarkH
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    The Washington Post reports on the apparent jump in suicide rates since antidepressants got a black-box warning in 2004 after some reports suggested an increased suicide rate in youths after the initial prescription. The article here (goddamn WaPo still can’t figure out how to link anyone but themselves) shows a disturbing correlation: METHOD: The authors…