Denialism

Month: April 2008

  • I don’t like this at all

    —

    by

    MarkH
    in

    Yesterday my daughter (the one in my picture, but older now) started sneezing—a lot. Allergy season in this part of the country is brutal. We keep a box of kleenex on every flat surface in the house. But this morning she started coughing, and had a low-grade fever, so we knew she was sick, not…

  • Congress Isn’t Priceless!

    —

    by

    Chris
    in

    The financial services industry pumps a huge amount of money into politics. So much so that the industry has special status and gets pretty much what it wants. Things are a bit different now, because the downturn in the economy and mortgage screwup has given Washington some leverage to examine some of the industry’s worse…

  • Whoopie!

    —

    by

    MarkH
    in , ,

    Last night I was reading a book to my daughter at bedtime. It was all about a kid who had chickenpox. I looked at my wife and said, “this is a bit outdated.” “So what, it’s cute,” she accurately replied. Wow. I hadn’t thought about it much lately, but chickenpox in the U.S. is disappearing…

  • Christian Apologists don’t have enough faith

    —

    by

    MarkH
    in

    I don’t normally blog on religion, but there has been an jump in foolish writing coming from the wacky end of the religious spectrum. On the top of the list are folks like Vox Day and Geisler and Turek (I Don’t Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST). For some Christians, faith isn’t enough, apparently—they…

  • Flu roundup

    —

    by

    MarkH
    in

    This was a really crappy season. The system for developing flu viruses is the best we’ve got, but it’s imperfect. This year, we had significant mismatch between the vaccine and the circulating strains. According to the CDC, this season peaked in mid-February, and was “moderately severe”—and the worst season in four years. Improving our system…

  • The latest example of crank magnetism – Ahmadinejad becomes a Troofer!

    —

    by

    MarkH
    in ,

    Yes, that’s right, the Holocaust denier who brought us the international meeting of Holocaust deniers has slipped naturally into trooferism. Earlier Wednesday, Ahmadinejad called the 9/11 attacks a “suspect event” in a speech at a public rally in the holy city of Qom. “Four or five years ago a suspect event took place in New…

  • Authoritah! wars

    —

    by

    MarkH
    in

    There has been a terribly pedantic interesting debate going on around here about the nature of authority in science. I won’t bore you with the origins of this debate. OK, maybe I will a little, but I’ll try to make this foray into meta-blogging interesting. First, blogging is not scientific writing as such. It isn’t…

  • Measles—it’s no joke

    —

    by

    MarkH
    in

    A new patient came to see me a few months back. She is in her 60’s or 70’s and not in the best health. She is very nice. And simple—very simple. I spoke to her brother before the appointment. He told me that she was a normal, happy kid until the age of seven. Then…

  • Slate parses some crankery

    —

    by

    MarkH
    in , ,

    Slate has a series of three articles on what editor Daniel Engber refers to as “the paranoid style”. Starting with A crank’s progress, sliding into a review of Doubt is their product, and finishing with a spot-on review of Expelled he runs the guantlet of modern denialism. He also happens to hit upon the major…

  • The inconsistency of cranks

    —

    by

    MarkH
    in ,

    One of the most salient features of cranks is their inconsistency. A major difference between someone who is trying to reason scientifically and someone who has a fixed belief they are trying to defend against rational inquiry is the scientific thinker is looking for synthesis. They want things to fit together nicely, to make sense,…