Debunking Denialism

Defending science against the forces of irrationality.

Scientific Skepticism and Internet Trolls

Leave a Comment Posted by on June 16, 2013

troll

If you are a scientific skeptic with any kind of enduring online presence, you have surely come across many Internet trolls. These are individuals that are not particularly interested in discussing the issues or presenting evidence for their claims. Instead, their goals are something much more sinister. They want to cause disruption of conversations and websites, get people angry and irritated, provoke emotional responses, inflating their own sense of self-importance and so on.

In this blog post, I will describe some of the most common types of trolls that a scientific skeptic can come across and discuss a couple of suggestions on how to deal with trolls.

Different kinds of anti-skeptical trolls

There are many different kinds of trolls out there, so consider this to be a description of some of the more common anti-skeptical troll archetypes that many skeptical activists online deal with on a regular basis. This list is by no means exhaustive and only covers the kinds of anti-skeptical trolls that are most familiar to me.

The crank troll: someone who has an uncontrollable compulsion to spread their assertions that some aspect of mainstream science (evolution, quantum mechanics, general relativity, modern medicine etc.) are fatally flawed and let others know that they have the solution. This kind of troll typically misunderstands the scientific background to the area and so cannot comprehend skeptical refutations.

The link spammer troll: this kind of troll posts posts or comments containing almost nothing besides a long list links to videos or articles attempting to demonstrate their favorite pseudoscience. A classical example of a link spammer troll is certain 9/11 truthers who think that if they can just post enough links to Youtube videos containing grainy pictures and slow-motion clips, then they will finally be seen as suppressed truth-seekers rather than obsessed and irrational.

The martyr troll: these individuals usually come across as very passive-aggressive as they are often incredibly arrogant and condescending in their treatment of science, skepticism and their critics. However, when someone takes the time and effort to point out the flaws in those assertions, this troll acts like he or she is the victim of a targeted campaign and tries to appear as an innocent victim of cold-hearted skeptics. Read more of this post

Skepticism

Mainstream Climate Science Defeats Global Crank Mike Adams

Leave a Comment Posted by on June 11, 2013

Mike Adams falsehoods about carbon dioxide

Mike Adams, the founder of the anti-science and anti-medicine (actually, anti-reality) website NaturalNews, is perhaps one of the most prolific cranks on the Internet. He subscribes to a wide range of absurd pseudoscientific beliefs and spreads dangerous and harmful myths about vaccines, peddles anti-GMO propaganda, promote homeopathy and distrusts the germ theory of disease and even rejects the strongly evidence-based position that HIV is the cause of AIDS (website links in the reference section). This makes him a sort of global crank and an example of crank magnetism. Adams recently wrote an ignorant compilation on NaturalNews called “Al Gore backlash: Why environmentalists are celebrating rising CO2 levels” (webcite) were he repeated a number of stale climate change denialist talking-points.

In reality, more carbon dioxide will indeed provide a fertilization effect, but we have to remember that climate change does not just involve an increase in carbon dioxide, but also temperature, which means that the fertilization effect is moderated by heat stress. Furthermore, even if carbon dioxide is in excess, other reactants such as nitrogen becomes limited thereby down-regulating photosynthesis. Carbon dioxide has far-reaching climate effects because of interactions and feedback systems. Read more of this post

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Irrefutable Evidence Shows That Anti-Vaccine Activists Still Have No Clue

1 Comment Posted by on June 10, 2013

irrefutable evidence?

Intellihub is an online “alternative” news site that claims to provide “independent news for independent minds” founded by Shepard Ambellas. The background story is already cliché: mainstream media are somehow controlled by evil corporations and Intellihub wants to “inform” people what is really going on by providing them “top notch information”. In reality, the so called news site is a propaganda tool used by conspiracy theorists to spread their pseudoscientific falsehoods about 9/11, synthetic biology, genetically modified foods, alleged depopulation and vaccines.

In a recent anti-vaccine post, Dave Mihalovic spews the same old recycled garbage that defenders of science-based medicine has refuted thousands of times. In stark contrast to the claims made by Mihalovic, vaccines led to a decline in the spread of infectious diseases, vaccines provide only a negligible challenge to the immune system of the developing child, the increase in allergies can be explained by the hygiene hypothesis and correlation between two things does not imply a causal relationship. Read more of this post

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Fraud Psychic Sylvia Browne Promotes Germ Theory Denialism

Leave a Comment Posted by on June 2, 2013

Related: Fraud Psychic Sylvia Browne Proven Wrong Yet Again, Fraud Psychic Sylvia Browne is Back on Facebook.

Browsing through the facebook page of alleged psychic Sylvia Browne is like entering into another universe where reality is distorted so much that it is hard to separate up from down, left from right and reality from fantasy. Desperate and half-baked rationalizations are mixed with the promotion of various forms of pseudoscience, including anti-psychiatry, energy woo and even germ theory denialism. Here is what Sylvia Browne has to say about the origin of diseases and their treatments:

Sylvia Browne and germ theory denialism

So instead of being the result of disease-causing microorganisms or environmental causes, most diseases are caused by your mind? Presumably, this is some version of the pseudoscientific garbage known as “the secret”, which asserts that good things come to those who think positively and bad things happen to those that have a negative state of mind. So if you get cancer, it is not because of genetic risk factors or environment, it is because you were being so damn negative. It is a deadly mix of absurdity, scientific falsehoods, ignorance and emotional exploitation. Read more of this post

Alleged Psychics ,

Skeptical Blogging: What’s the Point?

2 Comments Posted by on June 2, 2013

What's the point?

There are many different kinds of online skeptical activism: blogging, writing comments on blogs, tweeting, taking part in forum discussions, networking with other skeptics on facebook, bickering in Youtube comments and so on.

I tend to prefer blogging over the others because it allows you to create a space where the main content is only produced by you and gives you a lot of control over presentation. I also enjoy debating on forums, with what you say is easily drowned out by the opinions of thousands of others and if you are posting on a hostile forum your content may become edited or deleted. Even if your posts do not get edited or removed, they can become pruned after a while and the content you have written does not stay. Blogs also provide enough space to make detailed arguments (compared with twitter that only allows 140 characters) and is not completely dreadful and life-draining (bickering in Youtube comments).

But what is the point of skeptical blogging? People who are entrenched in pseudoscience will never change their beliefs and so, the argument goes, there is not much point in skeptical blogging since you won’t convince anyone. However, this completely misses the point: skeptical blogging is not about convincing true believers. Far from it. When I write a blog post criticizing Sylvia Browne or Ken Ham, I am not expecting to convince those people or their closest supporters. Instead, I have a number of other goals in mind. Read more of this post

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Fraud Psychic Sylvia Browne is Back on Facebook

3 Comments Posted by on June 1, 2013

In a previous blog post called Fraud Psychic Sylvia Browne Proven Wrong Yet Again, I explored the recent failure of alleged psychic Sylvia Browne where she claimed that Amanda Berry, a kidnap victim recently found alive after being held captive for around a decade, was dead. In the wake of the huge backlash Browne got (both on Twitter and Facebook, as well as from Anderson Cooper at CNN), she inactivated both her Facebook and Twitter account. Here is skeptic Michael Shermer’s reaction:

Shermer's reaction

I could not have agreed more. The fact that she inactivated her Facebook and Twitter accounts as a result of the backlash gave me a lot of comfort. First, the events might have been enough to make her face the reality of her failure (a misbegotten hope, as we shall see below) but also because, for a time, she was unable to spread her vile nonsense on those social media sites.

Unfortunately, Browne reactivated her Facebook account a few days ago. Did she finally acknowledge to herself and the world that she does not have psychic powers? Far from it. Here is what she now writes:

Browne returns

Notice how Sylvia Browne calls her financial exploitation of human greed a dedication “to helping others as a spiritual psychic and guide”. Notice how she claims that she has helped the police solve high-profile criminal investigations, yet fails to provide a single shred of evidence for this extraordinary claim. Notice how she quotes herself and claims that she is more often right than wrong (hardly an achievement for someone who practices common “psychic techniques” such as cold reading) without any evidence whatsoever. Notice how she attempts to sway readers by presenting her own rationalizations and the rationalizations of Berry’s family Read more of this post

Alleged Psychics ,

Elizabeth Mitchell’s Flawed Defense of a Creationist “Science” Quiz

3 Comments Posted by on May 31, 2013

screenshot of the article

Back in April of 2013, some photos of a 4th grade science quiz given at Blue Ridge Christian Academy made rounds on the Internet. It was not any ordinary science quiz by any means. Rather, it was a creationist propaganda tool masquerading as a science quiz. It was handed out to students after the screening of a creationist video that attempted to “teach children the history of the universe from the Bible, with a special emphasis on teaching dinosaurs from a biblical perspective” (source).

The quiz in question contained 18 questions and the images showed it filled in my a young student. Examples of questions included “The earth is billions of years old” (the student answered “false”), “Dinosaurs lived with people” (the student answered “true”), “What did people and animals eat in the beginning?” (student answered “plants”), “What caused there to be fossils” (the student circled “global flood”), “the next time someone says that the earth is billions (or millions) of years old, what can you say?” (to which the student wrote the creationist classic “were you there?”).

Astonishingly, the teacher gave the student full marks.

The information leaked when a concerned friend of one of the parents saw it and posted it on Reddit. Instead of publicly acknowledging the problem, Answers in Genesis decided to dig their heals in and state that the information provided in the video was of high scientific quality. In fact, AiG has written several articles on the issue on their website. In this blog post, we will be taking a look at one of them (“Shenanigans” or “Scientifically Sound Answers with Eternal Significance”?) written by Dr. Elizabeth M. Mitchell and can be found here.

The contamination of K-12 science education by creationist propaganda

Dr. Mitchell starts of her defense of teaching creationism as science by describing what Diane Baker (school director) has to say:

Baker says the school does teach students mainstream science but does so from a biblical perspective.

There is no such thing as mainstream science “but from a biblical perspective”. What is actually happening is that they are letting biblical creationism contaminate the teaching of mainstream science. When a teacher shows creationist video material to children and make them take tests were the rejection of mainstream science and the uncritical regurgitation of vacuous creationist talking-points is awarded, then what is being taught is not mainstream science but creationist propaganda.

The school does not demand that students or parents agree with their worldview. “We are teaching kids how to think. Part of what we do in every class is to teach kids to articulate what they believe,” says Baker. “Our students are well versed,” explains board member Joy Hartsell. “They know evolution. The big bang theory. They are taught what the world believes. We believe the Bible and we teach from that context.”

Indoctrinating children with creationist falsehoods about science is not even remotely similar to teaching kids critical thinking. Feeding their brains with scientific error is not the same as teaching kids to articulate what they believe. Telling them creationist misinterpretations of evolution and the big bang is not the same as teaching them mainstream science. In science class, children should be taught science, not the religious dogma that is creationism Read more of this post

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Mailbag: More Nonsensical Ravings from an Anti-Psychiatry Troll

4 Comments Posted by on May 24, 2013

email icon

I rarely get email via the contact form, but when I do I like responding to them in the mailbag series. This time, a troll by the curious name of You are a moron (I will henceforth refer to this individual as “Moron” for short) sent me an angry email. I previously declined to publish a comment written by Moron on How Skepchick Rebecca Watson Misuses Statistics that containing anti-psychiatry nonsense and I suspect that Moron is one of the resident anti-psychiatry trolls that has been posting comments for many months through many different proxies to evade bans. Moron tends to use emails such as “dsm@dsmisascam.com” and similar.

For those who wonder if Moron has anything intellectually productive to say, I must be upfront and say that you will be greatly disappointed. The general aim of this post is to (1) demonstrate the breathtaking inanity of some trolls and (2) to expose the specific fallacies and errors in the assertions made by this particular troll.

Kamil, I have been following very intermittently your blog.

Apparently not often enough to get my name right. This is a common tactic used by trolls in order to depersonalize the individual.

You are the prime example of why self proclaimed “skeptics” are perceived as jackasses -whose most likely problem in fact might be a lack of an interesting sexual life.

Notice how Moron decides not to engage any arguments I have made against anti-psychiatry but rather make the assertion that self-proclaimed skeptics are jackasses. However, it does not logically follow that an argument is wrong just because it is presented by a person who is perceived as a jackass. This is the genetic fallacy, where an argument is dismissed because of its origin and not its intellectual merits.

It is also interesting that this troll attempts to condescendingly dismiss scientific skepticism by attempting to associate it with “lack of an interesting sexual life”. This is based on the stereotype of skeptics as humorless and boring men who cannot get laid. In addition, it is a pathetic attempt by Moron to introduce an irrelevant personal aspect (sex life) as a way to rationalize why Moron’s nonsensical ravings are not being taken seriously. Finally, Moron does not present any scientific evidence for the notion that a “lack of interesting sex life” (how should “interesting” be operationalized in this context?) is associated with being perceived as a jackass. Read more of this post

Mailbag

Shattering Academic Philosophy

78 Comments Posted by on May 19, 2013

armchair

In their paper “What do Philosophers Believe?” (to be published in the journal Philosophical Studies), David Bourget and David J. Chalmers have surveyed the position of thousands of contemporary philosophers around the world on various questions, from the existence of a deity and a priori knowledge to physicalism and Newcomb’s problem. Their paper can be found here.

This post is going to use the data presented in that paper to argue for fairly controversial positions with regards to academic philosophy: (1) the consensus positions they found in academic philosophy only regard trivial truths, such as the existence of a priori knowledge and the ability of our senses to be accurate, that (2) there is very little progress in academic philosophy and that (3) many academic philosophers promote anti-scientific beliefs in their belief in contra-causal freedom and their rejection of mind/brain physicalism. I will also discuss why it is important to move away from a priori armchair reasoning, how to salvage relevant aspects of academic philosophy and integrate them into interdisciplinary scientific research.

Consensus positions in academic philosophy regard trivial truths

So what philosophical issues did Bourget and Chalmers find a consensus position for? Although the percentage support needed for calling something a consensus position is often quite arbitrary, I will use the same percentage that Bourget and Chalmers use (70%). Looking at the main survey results, these were: a priori knowledge (71.1%) non-skeptical realism regarding external world (81.6%), atheism (72.8%) and scientific realism (75.1%).

So after debating thousands of issues for almost 2500 years, academic philosophers have reached a consensus that mathematical and logical knowledge exists, that our senses are able to acquire correct information from the world around us, that there is no evidence for the existence of supernatural deities and that science can describe the real world.

These are at best trivial truths and no surprise to most scientists. After all, they have used mathematics and logic in their research, gained knowledge about the world using their senses enforced by the methods of science all without actively invoking a supernatural deity to explain their results.

The results also goes to show that there is almost no, or at least very little, progress in the field of academic philosophy. Read more of this post

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Swedish Anti-Vaccine Infection Parties for Measles and Rubella

Leave a Comment Posted by on May 10, 2013

infection party

Near the Swedish capital Stockholm lies a small city called Järna. It is the main center for the anthroposophy movement in the country. The city has several Waldorf schools and even a medical clinic called Vidarkliniken. The clinic was awarded with “Misleader of the Year” by the Swedish Skeptic Association in 2008 for their pseudoscientific treatments, which include homeopathy. Despite this, the clinic continues to receive some political support and financial support from the regional municipality. Vidarkliniken has also been in the news recently when they gave mustard leaves to a patient with a cerebral hemorrhage. In 2012, the largest outbreak of Rubella since 1989 occurred in Järna and all fifty cases (compared with a couple of cases per year) could be connected to the region. The proximate origin of the outbreak is thought to be from India where a group of people traveled to and so non-vaccinated individuals got infected and brought it back, making rubella explode in the community.

The Swedish anti-vaccine movement is particularly strong in Järna and parents prefer to take their children to infection parties instead of vaccinating them. The basic idea behind an infection party is that you bring a bunch of susceptible children to spend time with a child that is currently infected with e.g. measles, rubella or chicken pox and hope that the non-infected children become infected. According to anti-vaccine cranks, this hardens the immune system of the child and they see it as a rite of passage. In addition, anthroposophist believe that it is good for the child’s spirit.

For proponents of science-based medicine, this is dangerous for children because the diseases can cause harmful complications and safe vaccines are available against those diseases. Read more of this post

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