From Cectic of course.
Why we don’t argue with denialists – the cartoon!
Comments
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Boy, I can’t argue with a poorly drawn, banal cartoon. I guess you’ve proved the sensitivity of the planetary climate system energy balance to a 300ppm increase in atmospheric CO2. Well, at least as well as any global climate model.
All this proves is your reliance on name calling rather than empirical evidence.
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Lance, I’ve asked you nicely, read the about section about what we consider denialism to be. Do you have a problem with our central thesis? Do you really believe it to just be name-calling?
Second, this is a thread hijack, and poor etiquette. I’m not going to have global warming arguments in every goddamn thread. Stick the Viking thread at least.
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The old “You make fun of us in one thread, so we’ll ignore all the other threads that involve discussion of empirical evidence” trick.
Classic.
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Hmmm, so sarcasm is out of bounds as a response to a sarcastic cartoon?
Here is your definition of “denialism”…
“Denialism is the employment of rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of argument or legitimate debate, when in actuality there is none. These false arguments are used when one has few or no facts to support one’s viewpoint against a scientific consensus or against overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”
This is your attempt to define a pejorative, “denialist”, in a way that exempts you from culpability. I suppose I could make up my own definition of the “N” word and bandy it about as if it were just a term that represented some arbitrary set of attributes.
The word “denialist” has long been prefixed by the word holocaust and you, and the other people that wield it, know that quite well.
The use of this word demonstrates your intent to stifle discussion and smear anyone with whom you happen to disagree on any particular topic.
If those with whom you argue have made mistakes in logic, misstated facts or otherwise presented flawed arguments then you should respond to those items. Slurring them with a caustic label only demonstrates your interest in ad hominem attack rather than reasonable discourse.
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If those with whom you argue have made mistakes in logic, misstated facts or otherwise presented flawed arguments then you should respond to those items.
I agree, Lance. So now what should we do when some people ignore the responses that point out the mistakes in logic and the misstated facts? What should we do when people intentionally misstate, cherry-pick and quote out-of-context? What kind of reasonable discourse can be had with people who won’t listen to reason?
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An ad hominem attack is not necessarily a logical fallacy. Saying that youre’ wrong, AND you’re an idiot is not an ad hominem attack. Saying you’re wrong BECAUSE you’re an idiot would be an ad hominem attack.
Denialism is a set of tactics common to those who dispute the Holocaust, evolution, AIDS/HIV, 9/11 “truth”, and climate change. There is no use arguing with people who do not understand the rules of the game. They never understand that they’ve lost, and will deny even basic truths in their inane struggle for their “Truth”.
You don’t have to like it. We don’t care.
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It’s generous to assume they don’t understand the rules, but it’s misguided. They know the rules; that’s how they know how to cheat. You try cheating and watch how quickly they catch you.
Their basic game is we all know the rules; you, the well-meaning honest fool, will play by the rules; I, the scammer, will cheat, cheat, cheat, and cheat. And, when need be, I will trick, con, swindle, defraud, bamboozle, bilk, and dupe.
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Again Lance, try actually reading our thesis rather than the first sentence. There are specific tactics that are common to all these efforts that we have documented. You can not dispute these tactics are illegitimate. To the extent that any ideology or psuedoscientific position uses the argument we will call it denialism. The other commenters here get it.
I notice you also repeat the “guilt-by-association” argument. Just because holocaust deniers were the ones that perfected the techniques, doesn’t mean that other ideologies should get a pass when they mimic their tactics. We’ve discussed this issue, and aside from a few honest dissenters – like Colugo for instance – people accept that whatever the motivation, these tactics represent a common strategy across each denialist group. Smart people are then able to dissect the difference between the motivations of each group, and realize we’re not trying to capitalize on the fact that holocaust deniers are just the most well known type.
Because you can’t actually refute the fact that these tactics are illegitimate, and common to all types of pseudoscience, you just pull out the one-sentence short definition you feel like you can tease apart and still say we use name-calling. Nice try, no one here believes it.
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They know the rules. However, the problem is that each side argues from a different perspective of reality. On one side we have the “real” reality based on evidence, observance, testing, deduction, logic, ect. On the otherside we have the reality of one’s own making. Their reality is what they wish to be true, and therefore, to them, is true. So, they will deny any evidence or argument that doesn’t conform with their preconceived beliefs.
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MarkH:
I appreciate the “honest dissenter” description. I strive to be straightforward in my arguments – and I try to stay on the thread topic (though I have been known to digress).
May I suggest the term “dismissivism,” at least for some categories of claims? It has the advantage being unencumbered by the etymological baggage of “denialism.” On the minus side, like “denialism” it implies a negative assertion rather than a positive one (e.g. elaborate conspiracy theories and other fanciful constructs).
As is the case with many terms used in policy debates, I detect some “denialism creep” – the application of the term beyond its older boundaries. For example, in one thread an assertion on the Wall Street Journal editorial page that markets are the main factor responsible for rising living standards (a view which, correct or not, is held not only by conservative arch-capitalists) was labeled “denialism.” (Not by one of the brothers Hoofnagle, but by a commenter.) Terms like “skeptic,” “truth” (now a conspiracy giveaway) “junk science,” and most infamously, “fascism,” have been stretched far beyond coherent meaning by polemicists. Whatever the utility of the generic “denialism” concept, it does injury to both it and the older, more specific “denier” label for the meaning of “denialism” to be further expanded and diluted.
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But then dismissivism (doesn’t have as nice a ring either) would be misused. There is very little one can do about the fact that people will want to use words as insults without thinking about their definition. Hell, I’ve been called a fascist, a lefty, a radical, a nazi, a right-wing stooge, a pharma-shill etc., just in the last 6 months on this blog!
Further, I’m not really responsible for the generation of this word and it’s use in these other debates. I would say it was Monbiot linking tobacco/cancer campaigns to oil/anti-AGW compaigns, the HIV/AIDS truth articles, and some other influential types using the word to describe this behavior that did it.
What me and my brother did was define what they were talking about, which is really just a modern day variant of the demarcation problem between science and pseudoscience. How do pseudoscientists attack science? Well, they use these tactics. Funny thing, the holocaust deniers (they were not called denialists until post 2000 and I’ve found the word used as early as 1928) use the same tactics. In fact, between them and the tobacco companies from the 1960s on, you see the refinement and testing of all the techniques me and by brother describe in pseudoscientific and industry denialism. Holocaust denial was just the long-used methods of pseudoscience applied to history. They were first to be widely described as “deniers”, but as we’ve emphasized repeatedly, it isn’t an indictment of their motives (which is how people abuse the use of the word – usually against me), but rather an indictment of tactics which ultimately makes this word useful and descriptive.
I think as long as we keep making that clear people will understand the distinction between the different types and it won’t be diluted. At least, not as much as any other word used to describe pseudoscience gets abused (hell, the IDers call the “darwinists” pseudoscientists), you can’t protect a word from morons.
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“Again Lance, try actually reading our thesis rather than the first sentence.”
MarkH,
I read the entire “thesis” I just clipped the paragraph that you used to define the term “denialism”. Was I supposed to cut and paste the whole thing? Are you claiming that I have somehow taken this out of context or missed the essential point? The rest of the “thesis” just discusses “denialist tactics”.
Again you want to keep using the term because it suites your rhetorical purposes.
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No but what you are doing is refusing to face that denialism is about tactics. The short definition is largely irrelevant. It simply can’t be descriptive enough in that amount of space.
Do you disagree that to the extent that these tactics are used they represent pseudoscience rather than science? Is our definition of a fake vs real expert apt? That’s what we’re going on – and is important to this discussion.
The term is useful because it’s descriptive of these rhetorical practices which you cannot deny are illegitimate and represent pseudoscience.
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This is your attempt to define a pejorative, “denialist”, in a way that exempts you from culpability. I suppose I could make up my own definition of the “N” word and bandy it about as if it were just a term that represented some arbitrary set of attributes.
This is a 100% false analogy. The n-word has a commonly accepted meaning among English speakers, and so we don’t get to redefine it. However, “denialism” most certainly is not defined by English speakers as “Holocaust denial”.
My evidence: (a) the term appears nowhere in the OED, or in other online dictionaries; (b) a Google search for ‘denialist’ doesn’t turn up any references to Holocaust denialism within the first 5 pages of results (indicating this is not the most common use of the term); (c) the term “holocaust denier” gets 345,000 hits, while “holocaust denialist” gets 559.
In short: this approach to defining a term is completely appropriate, in that it does not involve the redefinition of a commonly-used word. The fact that it’s vaguely similar to ‘denier’ as in ‘holocaust denier’ certainly does not invalidate this definition.
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Davis,
When you call someone a denialist you are attempting to smear them. Playing semantic games between the words “denier” and “denialist” is splitting hairs and completely beside the point.
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I’ve been called…a pharma-shill etc…
Did you count mine in that one? Because I try to be circumspect about it. 🙂
That’s a nice cartoon, but it’s not an issue of “doesn’t understand the rules”. The whole point of corporate communication is to understand the rules, and then to undermine them wherever possible so they serve a specific client goal — not necessarily yours and your hangup on truth.
You can always walk away from the people that don’t play the game to your understanding of the rules. But just because you walk away doesn’t mean they go poof; they’re still there doing their thing.
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While the cartoon is essentially correct, the portrayal of the gray haired elegant white guy and the young unintelligent, uneducated black guy who of course (as all blacks do) calls people biatch, and doesn’t play chess (don’t be ridiculous, he plays poke-the-totem-pole) is stereotypical and implicitly racist.
I really like this blog, shame. -
When you call someone a denialist you are attempting to smear them.
That depends. Calling someone ‘denialist’ in conjunction with highlighting invalid arguing tactics is completely legitimate. It’s a smear only if it’s an illegitimate application of the label.
This is not “playing semantic games”. Rather, you seem to have baggage associated with any word remotely like ‘deny’ because of Holocaust denial. But “denier” is an old term (dating back to at least 1400 according to the OED), and similarly for “denial”. If you don’t like the English language, go get yourself a new one.
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While the cartoon is essentially correct, the portrayal of the gray haired elegant white guy and the young unintelligent, uneducated black guy who of course (as all blacks do) calls people biatch, and doesn’t play chess (don’t be ridiculous, he plays poke-the-totem-pole) is stereotypical and implicitly racist.
I really like this blog, shame.All in the perception of the message. My first impulse was that the dark haired, heavily tanned guy, was relaxed, laid back and just having fun in both frames. You get tanned by being outdoors and enjoying the world.
The white haired guy seems deep in thought in the first frame (look at his pose) and slightly foiled/frustrated in the second frame. Pale and nerdish with a cloistered view of rules.
Meh. That’s what being anal about the rules gets you. A lifetime of furrowed brows and frustration.
PS: Biyatch could be just poser talk.
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We at Cectic are equal opportunity skeptics–we ridicule kooks of all kinds and colors.
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@Eyal
You have to consider Cectic in context. This single data point is not representative of a general attitude towards one race or another. Don’t read too much into that.
@Lance
Illegitimate debate deserves to be identified and ridiculed. I stand by our central thesis, which is that denialist are not worthy of being engaged as honest brokers in debate. In multiple links we have explained this, and it is widely understood among people who don’t have some form of crankery to defend. It simply is not a worthwhile activity to argue with liars.
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MarkH,
You can rightly call someone that promotes ID misinformed or even ignorant. If they misrepresent components of evolutionary theory you can call them on it. If they continue to ignore evidence that detracts from their theory you can point it out to them and demand an answer.
Calling them a “liar” and then walking away serves no purpose other than to brand you a name caller. I’m not saying you need to keep engaged in pointless discussion but there are better ways to end the discourse than resorting to name calling.
I understand the frustration of talking to a dogmatic “brick wall”. However, insisting that anyone that holds contrary opinions to your own, even in the face of what you consider incontrovertible evidence, is delusional, ill-intentioned or dishonest and then calling them names does nothing to help the situation. It only demonstrates your short temper or intolerance.
The friendly “agree to disagree” is often the best exit strategy from these fruitless encounters. As far as “labels” go ID proponent or creationist are terms not objectionable to those that hold those beliefs and are damning enough to anyone informed on the subject of evolutionary biology.
Einstein never agreed with the basic tenets of quantum mechanics, a theory that had passed every empirical test thrown at it, but nobody had the nerve to call him a “quantum mechanics denier”.
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Lance,
It’s not about disagreeing with their position! It’s about disagreeing with their tactics.Yes, if you’re trying to convince someone of the error of their ways, you won’t win an argument with name-calling, but that assumes that I’m interested in winning such arguments, or even believe such is possible.
When you have a party engaged in a false debate, there is no point in engaging them at all – it’s the opposite of what you want to do. They’re not playing by any valid set of rules. Worse, when that party is waging a campaign based on the tactics of denialism, at some point you have to attack the tactics themselves. It’s not about calling individuals names, it’s about equipping people with the tools to recognize BS, and reject it. It’s about making certain that people who seek to undermine science using these tactics don’t get recognized as “the other side” in a scientific debate, when in reality there is no parity.
Basically, our goal is to create a handy bullshit detector that makes it so you don’t need a PhD in every damn field in the world to avoid having your chain yanked by liars. When you recognize the tactics, and those that use them, they can be dismissed as legitimate sources of information. If people widely understand what constitutes legit scientific debate, and the demarcation between pseudoscience and real science, then we don’t have journalists calling a Nobel prize winner for one view, and then calling some crank like Dembski for the other.
There is great utility in a world of excess information for learning techniques for dismissing bullshit rapidly. It’s also of great utility for undermining organized pseudoscientific efforts which seek to attack science, put religion in schools under the guise of science, sell fraudulent products, prevent meaningful reform, attack minority groups etc. When people don’t have science on their side, they have to use bullshit. If you make people aware of the bullshit, they are disarmed, dismissed, and lose their influence.
Most importantly, the denialist isn’t always necessarily interested in one side being convinced. Often they’re interested in just extending the debate itself! Teach the controversy ring a bell? As long as some semblance of a debate is occurring they can point and say, “see! Scientists debate evolution!”. It’s about magnifying doubt and extending debate on settled topics ad nauseum. If you can short-circuit their ability to create the illusion of debate by pointing out the false tactics they use, you defang them.
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Nobel prize winners and cranks are overlapping categories, especially – but not always – when the topic is outside of the Nobelist crank’s field. Prime examples: James Watson and Kary Mullis.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/weekinreview/28johnson.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
What do we call climate scientists – not industry flacks or politicos – who accept global warming but sincerely do not believe that it is mainly anthropogenic? They are a small (but significant) and declining minority, to be sure. It is not accurate to describe them as key players in an active debate at the heart of a discipline; rather, they appear to be an atrophying rearguard. (I do not agree with them.) But surely not all of them are industry shills or use The Tactics. Are they heretics? Skeptics? Cranks? Are they beyond the pale – and legitimate debate – at this point, like IDists? Or are they more analogous to the fringe of biologists who accept evolution but do not accept natural selection (Lima-de-Faria and a handful of others), instead invoking self-organization to explain functional complexity?
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MarkH,
So who gets to pronounce these miscreants “denialists” and hence hang a big red letter (D perhaps) on their frock? It appears you are suggesting that once affixed they are to be excluded from discussion. The media should refrain from interviewing them, or even acknowledge their existence. Perhaps they can be banished to “Denialist Island”? Devil’s Island is available I believe.
Surely you see the problem here. (Apologies for calling you Shirley.)
Just whom are you attempting to protect from these “denialists”, average unsophisticated Joes, the media, policy makers, science itself? I’m quite sure science will not be injured by the airing of contrarian theories, indeed most of the great scientific breakthroughs, such as evolution itself, were once wildly out of step with the “scientific consensus”.
Certainly these folks are allowed access to the media and the other facilities of our open society? I fail to see where this pejorative is useful at all.
I had no problem identifying the problems in creationism and ID without the benefit of your parental warning sticker of “denialist” being affixed. I suggest you are trying to project your own regimented view of the world onto others without having to actually compete in an open forum.
I hadn’t uttered four paragraphs about climate change in this blog when you proclaimed me a “crank” and a “troll” and promised to disemvowel any further posts from me. Not exactly the hallmark of one interested in the open discussion of scientific issues.
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Nobel prize winners and cranks are overlapping categories, especially – but not always – when the topic is outside of the Nobelist crank’s field. Prime examples: James Watson and Kary Mullis.
Don’t forget Linus Pauling. 😉
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Ah. I see.
Lance, remember that (as any blogger on their blog) Mark wears two hats:
– the person who has to moderate the discussion *here*. He gets to wave a big stick, disemvowel, etc. That’s life.
– the person who is writing about the topic (denialism). We all have equal authority on that once we step away from this forum.
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Re Orac
” Nobel prize winners and cranks are overlapping categories, especially – but not always – when the topic is outside of the Nobelist crank’s field. Prime examples: James Watson and Kary Mullis.
Don’t forget Linus Pauling. ;-).”
Don’t forget Brian Josephson, Nobel prize winner in physics who believes in cold fusion, PK and ESP and who fell for Uri Geller.
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