Author: MarkH

  • Bronze Dog gets it

    Visit the Bronze Blog for a very thorough list of woo justifications, or Doggerel as Bronze Dog puts it, and help him think of more examples. My favorite so far they once thought the Earth was flat.

  • Who’s the bigger liability for ID?

    I thought Michael Egnor was the DI’s biggest liability for stupid arguments. Now I’m thinking based on Aferensis’ posts that it’s probably Dave Scot based on his suggestion that “All the hominid fossils we have wouldn’t fill a single coffin.” But my favorite part of how embarrassing he is for humanity is how people, sometimes…

  • XKCD fun

    I should just feed every xkcd straight into the scienceblogs. Luckily they believe in CC.

  • This reminds me of a joke I once heard…

    Dembski misses the point as always with his recent post describing why the vertebrate eye is again evidence of design. You see, the big bad Darwinists used the structure of the eye, which has its photoreceptors in the back behind all the layers of the retina, as evidence that our eye isn’t designed, because what…

  • Adult Stem Cell Nonsense

    For this Friday afternoon I thought I’d rehash a previous post from denialism.com on adult stem cells and those that hype results inappropriately to disparage embryonic stem (ES) cells. It all started with an exciting JAMA article about using autologous stem cell transplants to help treat type I diabetics who still had some capacity to…

  • Comment policy

    I’m turning on moderation since the 9/11 truthers have shown up and desire to show me how they’re not cranks by hijacking threads and linking their conspiracy sites. Sorry about that. But I don’t think it’s a valuable use of time to argue with cranks. I also won’t accept comments that are just drive-by trollings,…

  • Friday Cartoon fun

    I realize I’ve put this up before, but it’s too relevant to our discussions all week to pass up. Via xkcd.

  • Logical Fallacies

    Almost everybody knows about the fallacies of logic, formal and informal, that are routinely used in arguments with denialists. While these fallacies aren’t perfect examples of logic that show when an argument is always wrong, they are good rules of thumb to tell when you’re listening to bunk, and if you listen to denialists you’ll…

  • Where’s the Hitler Zombie when you need it?

    Well, I won’t watch CNN anymore, after Glenn Beck decided to call climate scientists who actually believe climate science Nazis. You read his profile at Media Matters and it’s clear pretty much anyone he disagrees with is a Nazi.

  • Impossible expectations (and moving goalposts)

    I’m sorry for mixing terminologies. But moving goalposts isn’t adequate to describe the full hilarity of the kinds of arguments denialists make. For instance, the goalposts never have to be moved when they require evidence that places them somewhere in the land before time. What I mean is the use, by denialists, of the absence…