Debunking Denialism

Defending science against the forces of irrationality.

Mailbag: More Nonsensical Ravings from an Anti-Psychiatry Troll

Leave a Comment Posted by on May 24, 2013

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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

48 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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Fraud Psychic Sylvia Browne Proven Wrong Yet Again

2 Comments Posted by on May 9, 2013

Sylvia Browne claims to be a psychic, but she has been convicted of fraud in the past and has failed all scientific tests of her ability. In addition, she is very often wrong about her predictions. For background on Sylvia Browne, please read the the article Psychic Defective: Sylvia Browne’s History of Failure at the website for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

Recently, a shocking story has been revealed in Ohio. As reported by Reuters, Ariel Castro, a school bus driver, had kidnapped three women and held them a prisoners for around a decade. He subjected them to physical abuse and rape. One of these women is Amanda Berry who went missing in 2003 (she was around 17 years old).

What is the connection between Sylvia Browne and this brutal kidnapping? She apparently used her “psychic powers”, got a “vision” and told the parents of Amanda Berry that she was dead (ABC news story). How does Browne attempt to get out of this morally abhorrent mess? She writes a Facebook status update (original link):

Pathetic rationalization

Does she treat this as a “miss”, acknowledging that she is not a psychic and that she has abused her media standing? Far from it. Instead, she makes a credulous, pathetic and morally vile post-hoc rationalization. Apparently, her vision was of Amanda being held under water, but she interpreted it as death when she should have interpreted it as Amanda being held down. It was, in her view, a “hit” all along, she just had “interpreted it to have a different meaning”. Her second excuse is that she hoped she was wrong.

Can you believe that almost 150 000 people has liked this on Facebook? Some of the comments to the post (right now close to 3000) is also mind-bogglingly irrational (I have blacked out the names and the profile pictures):

irrational supporters

Sylvia Browne is “a divine loving being of light”!? People still believe in her completely!? If psychics did not do any mistakes, there would be no crime!? It is irrelevant whether or not she is right, as long as she tries to do the right thing!?

There are hundreds of comments like this. It just goes on and on and on.

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The Robustness of Scientific Skepticism

1 Comment Posted by on May 9, 2013

skepticism and testable claims

Recently, scientific skepticism has come under attack. PZ Myers has announced that he does not want to be a part of the skeptical community any longer. His decision stems from a long-standing disagreement with Jamy Ian Swiss about the proper mission of skepticism. While I do not think that his characterization of scientific skepticism is accurate and that his action is a result of anger rather than reason, I will entertain his arguments, point-by-point.

Testable claims and sacred cows

[...] it is clear that “scientific skepticism” is simply a crippled, buggered version of science with special exemptions to set certain subjects outside the bounds of its purview. [...] But what else can you call this logic? Skepticism has no sacred cows! Except that skepticism only addresses “testable claims”. By the way, the existence of gods is not a testable claim. That’s a pretty explicit loophole by definition.

Skepticism has no sacred cows in the sense that no particular set of beliefs that make testable claims is shielded from skeptical scrutiny. Theistic and religious beliefs often do make testable claims, such as the efficacy of prayer, the origin of biological diversity, the nature of the human brain and so on. These are absolutely acceptable targets for scientific skepticism.

What about non-testable claims? Positions that do not make any testable claims cannot be handled exactly the same as those that do make testable claims. However, there are different skeptical approaches to non-testable claims and it is here that skepticism becomes very robust. Read more of this post

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Scientific Skepticism and One-liners

Leave a Comment Posted by on May 9, 2013

skeptical one-liners

The great power many of pseudoscientific myths is that they are often short, simple, memorable, emotionally influential and cognitively attractive. These are beneficial traits in the modern media world, where people can have short attention spans and frequently browse a lot of information. Scientific rebuttals, on the other hand, are usually hard, complex, cold, long-winded and can include a lot of technical information such as crowded graphs, large tables and statistics. It takes a lot of reading effort to get through the material and a lot of cognitive effort to really understand the science. In addition, the problem of different backfire effects looms over any attempt at correcting pseudoscience.

Right from the start, scientific skepticism (and science at large) face uphill terrain. How can the scientific skeptic throttle his or her way out of the situation? Read more of this post

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How Skepchick Rebecca Watson Misuses Statistics

38 Comments Posted by on April 30, 2013

leading women age too

It is very important to correct the misuse of statistics regardless of the identity of the perpetrator. Sometimes, it may be even more important to correct well-known individuals because their erroneous statistical argument will have a much more substantial influence than if it had been committed by an average blogger.

One such case is that of Rebecca Watson (who has arguably done more than anyone to highlight important issues related to feminism in the skeptical community) and her analysis of the ages of specific female movie stars and the age of men playing their male love interests in a selection of their movies. The background leading up to her blog post entitled Leading Women Age, Too is that an article posted on Vulture showed data suggesting that male movie stars increase in age, whereas the age of the women playing their female love interests stays roughly within the same age range regardless of the age of the male actor (this is, as we shall see below, erroneous). Someone suggested doing a similar thing for female movie stars that has been doing movies for a long time. Since Watson is apparently “a party animal” she “got totally crazy and spent like an hour on IMDB just to satisfy your curiosity”.

The basic idea was to compare the age of the female movie star (Watson picked Meg Ryan, Julia Robers and Meryl Streep) in different movies with the age of who she believed to the female characters’ love interest and to see if there is a difference before and after the actress turns 40. Here is the logic of her statistical analysis:

If you’re interested, Meg’s mean age in this chart is 35.6 and her costar’s mean age is 39.9 (a difference of 4.3 years). Prior to the age of 40, her mean age is 31.8 and her love interest’s mean age is 37.8 (a difference of 6 years).

See the problem? Watson apparently thinks she can just average the age of the female movie star in all movies, then compare it with the average age of the male love interest in all movies. However, this is only possible for unpaired data and it is highly statistically inappropriate to attempt this for paired data Read more of this post

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Cold Facts about Gardasil? More like Intellectual Rigor Mortis

1 Comment Posted by on April 23, 2013

Kalla Fakta - Vaccination Choice

Kalla Fakta (roughly translates to “Cold Facts”) is an investigative program on Swedish television that has been on air since 1991. Among its many crowning achievements we can count exposing how the Swedish government let a CIA-led operation on Swedish soil deport two suspected terrorists and subject them to torture in an Egyptian prison (one of them was released and each got financial compensation equivalent to almost half a million USD) as well as shining a light on the Nazi connections of Walther Sommerlath (father of the Queen of Sweden) that was previously denied. Together with Uppdrag Granskning (roughly translates to “Mission: Scrutiny”), it is one of those investigative shows that typically sends chills down the spine of people anytime you get a phone call or visit from them; you instantly know you are in deep trouble.

However, even good investigative programs sometimes fall pray to pseudoscience. On April 21st, Kalla Fakta aired an episode called “The Vaccination Choice”, which was supposedly investigating the information teenage girls get about the HPV vaccine Gardasil. In reality, it was a compilation of classic anti-vaccine tropes and, astonishingly, one of their tactics was reminiscent of the HIV/AIDS denialists pseudodocumentary House of Numbers.

Let us investigate the investigators. Read more of this post

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Why Stephen Bond’s Case Against Skepticism Is Profoundly Unconvincing

1 Comment Posted by on April 21, 2013

no longer skeptic

In the article Why I am no longer a skeptic, writer and former Stephen Bond tries to explain why he no longer finds the identity of scientific skepticism credible. He states that he does not believe in things like Christian theism or that 9/11 was an inside job and still accepts the general principles of scientific methodology and the power of reason. Could this be an interesting challenge to scientific skepticism? Unfortunately, no.

As we shall see, Mr. Bond makes makes many dubious hasty generalizations about people, such as skeptics, as a group (which is ironic as he himself objects to this practice later on) and even entire scientific fields. He also appears to subscribe to a long list of irrational and pseudoscientific beliefs including anti-psychiatry, anti-evolution, cancer quackery and alternative medicine. Far from being a convincing case against scientific skepticism, it resembles the debating tactic of denialists, together with many of the same rehashed assertions.

The benefits and perils of the skeptical identity

Mr. Bond starts off by describing his stance of the so called “skeptical identity”. Before, he seems to have made a cautions truce with it, but he can no longer uphold it. His argument is basically that he feels that it is no longer required. As we shall see, he cannot be more wrong. Here is how he starts out:

What has changed is that I have come to reject skepticism as an identity. Shared identities like skepticism are problematic at the best of times, for numerous reasons, but I can accept them as a means of giving power and a voice to the disenfranchised. And indeed, this is how skeptics like to portray themselves: an embattled minority standing up for science, the lone redoubt of reason in an irrational world, the vanguard against the old order of ignorance and superstition. As a skeptic, I was happy to accept this narrative and believe I was shoring up the barricades.

It is true that group identities can often be problematic. It can enforce stereotypes and promote an us-versus-them thinking. However, as Mr. Bond points out, it is a useful way of making opponents of pseudoscience feel empowered and increase the potential influence they have over society. So Mr. Bond use to think that skepticism was a spearhead against irrational superstition. What has changed?

However, it’s a narrative that corresponds poorly with reality. In the modern world, science, technology and reason are central and vital, and this is widely recognised, including at the highest level. [...] Science has a high media profile and a powerful lobby group: in the midst of a global recession and sweeping government cuts, science funding has generally held up or even increased. Hi-tech corporations have massive wealth and influence, and their products are omnipresent and seen as ever more desirable. In fact, the world today would be unthinkable without the products of science and technology, which have infiltrated into almost every economic, political and social process. We live in a world created by and ever-more dependent on science, technology and reason, in which scientists and engineers are a valued and indispensable elite.

That’s right: the nerds won, decades ago, and they’re now as thoroughly established as any other part of the establishment.

Mr. Bond seems to think that the struggle has already been won, thereby abolishing the need for the skeptical identity and perhaps even the skeptical movement as a whole. Nothing could be further from the truth. The central flaw in Mr. Bond’s argument is the elementary confusion between technology and science: there is a profound difference between technical products and their manufacturing and the intellectually honest search for accurate descriptions of reality. This is why it is possible for societies to be sufficiently technologically advanced to create nuclear and biological weapons of mass destruction, but still be trapped in ancient superstition or worshiping their deceased leaders.

Look no further than to the popularity of creationism and alternative medicine. During the past 30 years, over 40% of the U. S. population are creationists. Every year, almost 34 billion dollars are spent on alternative medicine.

Mr. Bond also underestimates the impact of selective skepticism. This is how people can know enough about technology to produce and use smartphones, yet be so clueless as to believe that vaccines cause autism or that acupuncture cures hemorrhoids (as Mr. Bond put it). Even if science sometimes wins, it is far from always.

Technology may have won the hearts and mind of the population, but science has often come up short. There is still a desperate need for organized opposition to pseudoscience. Read more of this post

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The Failure of Mysterian Complaints about Neuroesthetics

1 Comment Posted by on March 30, 2013

mysterian

Mysterian explanation for human cognitive facilities have been around for millennia. Before the more modern discoveries of the structure and function of the human brain, mysterian explanations were very common. However, with the advent of newer technology and more accurate research programs, supernaturalist assertions about the mind has largely been discredited by the evidence. Increasingly, cognitive processes and behavior has been given a neurological basis. This can be considered a great triumph of modern science. However, there are people who dislike this approach. Two common archetypes are the religious zealot (who believes that the mind is a supernatural soul) and the secular mysterian (who while not going so far as to deny the material basis of mental events, assert that this or that cognitive feature can never be explained by science).

One such mysterian is the freelance science writer and consultant editor for Nature Philip Ball. A few days ago, he wrote a deeply flawed attack on the science of neuroesthetics entitled Neuroaesthetics is killing your soul that can be found here.

His basic assertions are the following: (1) neuroesthetics may cause an encroachment of objective standards for art or reactions to art and (2) neuroesthetics lacks operationalizations of key concepts, (3) various tangential complaints about appreciation of art not being just about beauty, (4) neuroesthetical explanations cannot differentiate the appreciation of art from being high on drugs or having sex and (5) science will never be able to fully explain human understanding and experience of art.

Let us look the credibility of these arguments, one by one. As will be clear at the end of this examination, Ball’s assertions and fears are not only unfounded but rather far-fetched. Read more of this post

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