Denialism

Some random thoughts

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by

MarkH
in

Some links, general business, and not-so random thoughts.

Tangled Bank #109 is up at Greg’s place.

The Blog that Ate Manhattan is hosting the latest Grand Rounds, Seinfeld additon.

ScienceBlogs has a new project called Next Generation Energy. It will cover energy problems, alternative, etc. It will feature writers from ScienceBlogs and other outside experts. Interestingly, it’s being sponsored by Shell, which has led to a bit of discussion. Check it out.

The 94th Carnival of the Godless came out a few weeks ago, and I hadn’t realized we were featured, so here’s a link.

PZ Myers had an interesting post yesterday that sparked controversy both IRL and withing the blogging community. It is about some shit-disturbing student who stole a Eucharist waffer from a Catholic service.

I’m of two minds about this. If you wish to protest odd religious practices, fine. But to violate a sanctuary where no one is being harmed is not only in poor taste, it scares people, as it has a tinge of oppression (even though one bored student is hardly oppressive). Writing about religious foolishness is one thing, invading a church is another. Obviously, this would be a different issue if a minority religious institution in a secular nation were invaded—most Americans are going to side with the church on this one, so they are hardly in danger. Sure, it’s just a fucking cracker to me, but not to them. To them it is the physical representation of their god. I’m not sure how violating this serves the purpose of rationalism.

Next, an interesting (for me) occurance. I hate medical mis-information, and never hesitate to go after it. A recent post of mine criticized a post in the NYT. The information in the post was execrable. The writer is not. Tara is a friend of medical reporting, which in no way renders her immune from making mistakes, or suffering criticism (as I often have), but when writing a blog on critical thought, where do you draw the line? Folks like Gary Null and Joe Mercola are systematically spreading bad medical information, and taking people’s money. Tara’s column is generally quite good, and is not an outlet for separating people from truth and money. I’m sure that I don’t always know where to draw the line. I think I hit the correct tone in my earlier post about a news reporter. In my critique of the NYT piece, I think I was spot on about the content, but not the writer.

If you have the stomach for it, I’m going to try to teach you a little evidence-based medicine later, and the name Bayes may come up. Stay tuned.

Comments

  1. Kagehi

    Umm. Sorry, but really, the level of idiocy and paranoia with the fracking cracker goes well beyond anything that would likely have happened if someone had wandered in an nicked a robe. Its just plain insane, no matter “what” they think it represents, is, or stands for. This is very nearly nuclear weapons grade witch trial, “I noticed Webster talking to my cow yesterday and now it sick, we need to burn him as a warlock!”, class insanity. Its the sort of BS that leads people to destroy lives, stone people, or outright kill them, over stuff that, I am sorry, but ***sane*** people wouldn’t.

    And it does this bunch no credit at all that their own church wouldn’t have gone as far as killing him, since there where dozens of even crazier nuts threatening to do that. The guards hired to protect the fracking communion should have been hired to protect the poor fool being threatened over this.

    I am with PZ. I wouldn’t care if they went one step farther and thought the ghost of the host was going to come back to haunt them and they had a serious internal conflict about if exorcising Jesus from the church would be conflict somehow with their faith, it still wouldn’t rise to a sufficient level to send someone death threats, try to ruin their education/expel them from the school, or threaten crazy legal actions against them over a fracking cracker.

    Reply
  2. Joe

    Nobody expects the Bayes inquisition …;

    Reply
  3. Martin

    Well, my website has been suspended by my hosts thanks to a conspiracy theorist infestation, so I’ll hang around on SB for a bit. Maybe they’ll even give me an account, lol.

    Anyway, the way I see it, it’s a bit like this.

    You walk into a dodgy area of town. You draw out £200 (I believe that’s about USD$93,000 now for you Americans), wedge it into your back pocket so it’s poking out, and walk up an alleyway in front of some rough looking guys.

    You’re probably going to get mugged, and this tells you two things. Firstly, the people in this place are really bloody nuts and need to be cracked down on or deprogrammed or educated or something. Secondly, you’re an idiot.

    So in reply to Kagehi, yes, it’s insane. However, the kid is also a little bit nuts.

    Reply
  4. Vagueofgodalming

    Martin – sorry to hear that. I hope you are back in action soon.

    Reply
  5. Martin

    Yeah, it’ll be back on in about 3 hours. I really need a dedicated server…

    Reply
  6. qetzal

    Violating a sanctuary? Invading a church?

    That’s pretty hyperbolic language to describe attempting to walk out of a mass with an uneaten host. A mass that is open to the public mind you.

    Any of you been to mass before? I have, multiple times, despite being a complete atheist. They don’t stop you at the door and tell you only believers are permitted, so in what sense was the church invaded? There’s no sign saying communion is for members only, so where’s the violation?

    I don’t think the kid was fully aware of the significance that Catholics place on the consecrated eucharist. At least, he claimed he only wanted to show it to his friend. His refusal to give it back and subsequent attempt to “hold it for ransom” apparently came up only because they tried to take it from him by force. From your description, you’d think he chewed up the host and spit it on the floor!

    If you want to say his was guilty of poor judgment, I wouldn’t object. But unless his actions and foreknowledge were very different than they’ve been protrayed, accusing him of invading a church and violating a sanctuary is quite over the top.

    Reply
  7. Egaeus

    Bayes? That gives me flashbacks of people who couldn’t understand why you always should switch doors in the Monty Hall problem….

    Reply
  8. Bayesian Bouffant, FCD

    I’m of two minds about this. If you wish to protest odd religious practices, fine. But to violate a sanctuary where no one is being harmed is not only in poor taste, it scares people, as it has a tinge of oppression (even though one bored student is hardly oppressive). Writing about religious foolishness is one thing, invading a church is another. Obviously, this would be a different issue if a minority religious institution in a secular nation were invaded—most Americans are going to side with the church on this one, so they are hardly in danger. Sure, it’s just a fucking cracker to me, but not to them. To them it is the physical representation of their god. I’m not sure how violating this serves the purpose of rationalism.

    I believe the sense of PZ’s post was not to defend the bored student’s actions, but to comment on the disproportionate and hyperbolic response, with examples provided. Maybe you missed that part.

    Reply
  9. minimalist

    I wish I’d saved the link, but someone at around post 250-300 of the Pharyngula thread found a link on a Catholic ‘humor’ blog that is the most likely source of this story.

    In short, it was a parody article picked up by a credulous local news station. The whole story seemed pretty unbelievable to me in the first place. And it’s not like there isn’t precedent (an incident with an Onion article being taken seriously a couple years ago, for instance).

    There are two valuable lessons to be learned from this:

    1.) News outlets should frigging check their facts,

    2.) Always double-check something coming from a Fox outlet, especially in Florida (the floppy, useless dong of the United States).

    Reply
  10. KillerChihuahua

    minimalist: I’m not certain what you read, but this particular incident actually happened. This is current news.

    Reply
  11. Mary Parsons

    Next, an interesting (for me) occurance. I hate medical mis-information, and never hesitate to go after it. A recent post of mine criticized a post in the NYT. The information in the post was execrable. The writer is not. Tara is a friend of medical reporting, which in no way renders her immune from making mistakes, or suffering criticism (as I often have), but when writing a blog on critical thought, where do you draw the line?

    iirc you went after Sandy Scwarz of Junk Food Science very strongly, albeit you distinguished between what you characterised as her ‘good Sandy’ and ‘bad Sandy’ posts. This, together with Mark H’s acitivities in complaining and contacting various hosts, nonetheless lead to her being mostly excised from Skeptics’ Circle, as far as I can tell.

    Tara Parker-Pope has been promoting some very dubious sources. No, she is probably no worse than most other health journalists. But – what is the distinction between her and Sandy that explains what looks like very different treatment?

    Reply
  12. PalMD

    At the time of the Sandy thing (and I really didn’t have much to do with the skeptic circle thing except for my writing) I went back and went through her posts. Some were quite good, and I gave her her props. Many were dreadful, and I took her to task.

    Readers suggested I go back through Tara’s writing…much of it is quite good, some is not (I believe I’ve critiqued two of them so far). Just as my readers take me to task for my occasional idiocy, I will certainly continue to criticize writers who get it wrong. From my re-reading, Tara’s writing isn’t systemically illogical. The bad posts have been a little credulous but not full of ideology and logical fallacies.

    Sandy’s writing, which I haven’t looked at in a while, appears to be more ideology-driven and more prone to post hoc justification of bad conclusions.

    That’s my read anyway.

    Reply
  13. minimalist

    Okay, I could be wrong, and there’s no damn way I’m digging through that entire Pharyngukla thread to find it, but someone did link to a humor blog that was nearly word-for-word the same thing. I don’t remember if the names matched.

    It all seems so absurd to me, and PZM has fallen for obvious satire before, so I was disinclined to believe it (especially as the given link was Fox).

    A quick Google search turned up an actual video news report of the student question, so I guess it’s true after all. Whoops.

    All I wanted was to hold onto a tiny little shred of faith in humanity and YOU RUINED IT NOW. Happy?

    Reply
  14. Mary Parsons

    Tara Parker-Pope has cited some papers from very dubious journals that are sometimes little more than a pay-to-publish outlet for supplements companies. The NYT is very influential is affecting what people think of such matters.

    Dr Ben Goldacre recently highlighted that the NYT was the subject of the Phillips et al study: Importance of the lay press in the transmission of medical knowledge to the scientific community. Goldacre wrote:

    Phillips et al showed, in a seminal paper from the New England Journal of Medicine in 1991, that if a study was covered by The New York Times, it was significantly more likely to be cited by other academic papers. Was coverage in the NYT just a surrogate marker for the importance of the research? History provided the researchers with a control: for 3 months, large parts of the NYT went on strike, and while the journalists did produce an “edition of record”, this was never published. They wrote stories about academic research, using the same criteria of importance as ever: the research they wrote about, in articles which never saw the light of day, saw no increase in citations.

    People read newspapers. Despite everything we think we know, their contents seep in, we believe them to be true, and we act upon them.

    Which is why the NYT and similar papers of record have a particular reputation/responsibility to maintain for the accuracy of their contents. And, citing a paper in the NYT (albeit in the blog rather than the main paper) may be giving rather more prominence to some very dubious papers from a very dubious journal. The influence of that is way beyond anything that Sandy Swarcz might have achieved yet she was vilified in some quarters.

    I would similarly argue that TPP has been particularly credulous in relying upon the expertise of people such as Jonny Bowden.

    Reply
  15. KillerChihuahua

    minimalist: Reality is like that sometimes, but it IS a better place to live. Sorry to burst your bubble. You have my sympathies.

    Reply
  16. Kagehi

    Qetzal pretty much covers the reason that claims of invading churches, etc. is plain stupid. Would, BTW, hate to be a real Catholic trying to get communion there while visiting any time soon. They would probably be strip searched by the armed guards and prayed at until they confused under torture that they came to blasphemy the host.

    Other issues this has brought up:

    1. Bill Donahue proved conclusively the age old rules that, “Fanatics are indistinguishable the world over”, and, “Most religious people lack a sense of humor about their own faith, or anything related to it.”, given that they actually took PZ’s comments seriously, never mind that no one has witnessed him desecrating Korans, or other similar things he has suggested in similar sarcasm in the past.

    2. Now PZ is getting death threats from “good” Catholics, for which one commenter on his site has given us the label “fatwa envy” to. I.e., they don’t *want* Islam’s holy book or religion, but they seem damn pleased with the idea of being able to shoot people, or setting car bombs for them, if they don’t like their disrespect of their faith, as well as issuing orders for others to kill such people instead, while being **really** pissed off that the US government (or maybe their own god) won’t let them.

    And, I am a tad confused, really. What would be the point of having some kid go through a bunch of ceremonies and other things to make “penance” for his actions, never mind do anything other than telling these lunatics to kiss off, other than either 1) he felt/feels his life, education and/or future sufficiently threatened to give in, or 2) he was Catholic as well, and that was one reason no one bothered asking him why he was there when he palmed the stupid thing? So, either he is scared to death and playing along to keep from getting lynched, or he knew what he was doing, but presumed that it wouldn’t hurt anything, since it wasn’t *intended* as desecration. Either way, this is almost as idiotic as some lunatic 200 years ago proclaiming that the old lady with a mole looked at their cow wrong, it got sick, and the local witch hunter, i.e. Donahue, proclaiming that they need to burn her at the stake, along with anyone that raised a hand and said, “That is a stupid idea”, or, “Isn’t that a tad extreme?”. Its weapons grade idiocy, no matter who, how much, or *why* they are offended by it.

    Reply
  17. MarkH

    iirc you went after Sandy Scwarz of Junk Food Science very strongly, albeit you distinguished between what you characterised as her ‘good Sandy’ and ‘bad Sandy’ posts.

    Part of the reason is that Sandy is promoting a consistent theory that obesity has no health consequences, laughable to anyone in the healthcare profession. She has an agenda which is anti-science, and motive matters. If TPP goofs, we criticize, and she’s very responsive (there are emails behind the scenes on this one). She wants to represent science correctly. Sandy is on an obesity-is-harmless kick, and that is equivalent to tobacco denialism.

    Reply

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