Denialism

Author: MarkH

  • Authoritah! wars

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    MarkH
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    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

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    MarkH
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    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

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    MarkH
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    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

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    MarkH
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    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,…

  • Cult of Scientology update

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    MarkH
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    There are a few news items worth mentioning. The daughter of a Norwegian politician killed herself after taking a “personality test” at a Scientology cult office near her dormitory. Given the cult’s history, I can see why folks would like to draw a causal connection here, but there aren’t many details in the news reports.…

  • Syphilis!

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    MarkH
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    Southeast Michigan’s Genesee county is experiencing an outbreak of syphilis. The largest city in the county is Flint, made (in)famous in Michael Moore’s film Roger and Me. Syphilis is a nasty sexually transmitted disease with an interesting history. It may have originated in the New World. It was the subject of the infamous “Tuskegee Experiment”.…

  • Mike Adams – Hysterical Luddite of the Natural Food Movement

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    MarkH
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    Sometimes I just can’t get too angry about some particularly insane rant from a denialist. In this case, HIV/AIDS denialist, scientific medicine denialist and all-around crank Mike Adams rants about the prospect of food sterilization by irradiation: Let’s be blunt about this: The corporations running this country (which also run the U.S. government) want the…

  • Expelled makes me sick, or it would if I were allowed to see it

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    MarkH
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    If you haven’t been keeping up, let me give you a quick heads up about this whole Expelled brouhaha. A bunch of lying Creationist cultists decided to make a film whining about how oppressed Creationist “scientists” are. Ben Stein got involved somehow. They hoodwinked a bunch of real scientists into talking to them. They excluded…

  • National poetry month

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    MarkH
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    It’s all the buzz around here, so it’s my turn to share some interesting verse with you. Death and dying is a common topic of discussion with my patients and colleagues. Some of these are well-known to all, some of them aren’t, but I enjoy all of them.

  • Read intelligently because the next crank you read may be your last

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    MarkH
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    A reader of ours ran into a questionable book ad, and being a good citizen, sent it on to me. I glanced at it, and it seemed to be the usual silly book purporting to cure all that ails, but on deeper inspection, it was much uglier. The book says that it “renders insulin and…