Category: Fake Experts
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Christopher Monckton files a questionable affidavit
Via Ed I see that Christopher Monckton, the fake expert in climate change who has been repeatedly told by Parliament to stop calling himself an Member of the House of Lords,, claims he’s the inventor of a magical disease cure of HIV, MS, flu and the common cold, and recently a birther, has now submitted…
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Ken Ham Meets Everything is Terrible
Every once in a while Everything is Terrible has a fun denialism-overlap as they show some ad for a terrible piece of quackery, or in this case a great cut of Ken Ham speaking nonsense to a group of very unfortunate children. This is child abuse. Not the creationism bit, but the embarrassingly-shoddy job he…
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The Privacy Competition Myth
In his non-book-review of Garret Keizer’s new book, Privacy, “Reason” Magazine correspondent includes this ill-informed quip on privacy: With regard to modern commerce, Mr. Keizer grumps: “We would do well to ask if the capitalist economy and its obsessions with smart marketing and technological innovation cannot become as intrusive as any authoritarian state.” Actually, no.…
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Disinformation about Disinformation: L. Gordon Crovitz's Information Age
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When one spouts disinformation about disinformation, does it make it information? No, it’s L. Gordon Crovitz’s “Information Age,” the weekly poorly informed and poorly reasoned blather about information policy in the Wall Street Journal. Recall that Crovitz recently wrote about the invention of the Internet and online privacy. I wrote about these last two columns,…
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Louis Gordon Crovitz’s Disinformation Age
Imagine a newspaper oped with half a dozen fallacies. Such a thing could appear in any newspaper in the US. But now imagine that the author is a Rhodes Scholar and you’re left with the Wall Street Journal’s L. Gordon Crovitz. For years I’ve followed the bizarre arguments of L. Gordon Crovitz, who has a…
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The Heartland Documents, Doubt is their Product
Everyone is writing about desmogblog’s leak of internal documents from the Heartland Institute. But to me I think leaked documents are nothing compared to their fully public, out-in-the-open history of being openly contemptuous of science, funding cranks with advanced degrees (though not in climate) to disparage the field, and their hosting of denialpalooza. James rightly…
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The Global Warming Cranks – George Will officially in their ranks
One would think given recent findings that antarctic warming is robust for instance, that the canard of antarctic cooling would go away. Or, that based on the round dismissal of the myth of 1970s global cooling warnings we’d stop hearing about that in the media too. But instead I’m watching TV last night and there’s…
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Mathew Nisbet, Beneath Contempt
Well, Nisbet has replied to Mike, Orac and me (not to mention PAL). However his reply leaves something wanting, like, intellectual honesty. Nowhere in any of these reasoned replies is there “name-calling”. What we are arguing is for the preservation of accurate labeling of arguments that fail to meet standards of honesty. There are arguments…
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Open letter to Jenny McCarthy
Dear Jenny, Jenny, Jenny, Jenny. Oh, Jenny. Look, I realize I might have been somewhat less than kind in the past, but I’m hoping you haven’t written me off. I’ve been told you catch a lot more flies with honey than with vinegar, so please take this letter in the spirit it was intended—corrective, constructive,…
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Jenny McCarthy is an idiot—and I don’t mean that in a nice way
I have a certain amount of sympathy for any parent dealing with a sick kid. I also don’t think people should “suffer in silence”. If, for instance, your child is injured in an auto accident caused by a drunk driver, speaking out publicly is a public service. If, however, you are a fuckwit with no…