the_archfiend | Entries tagged with skepticism/science

This is going to be hard for me to write.

Ed Brayton's Dispatches from the Culture Wars has long been a favorite skeptical blog of mine, since it featured a wonderful combination of incisive analysis, strong opinion and outright snark. It's bounced around from when I first ran into it on Scienceblogs, but Ed has always kept the same degree of quality and intelligence in all of its incarnations up until now.

Unfortunately, serious health problems dropped his output to the point where he couldn't post nearly as often as he liked.

And then I read something that just ruined my night.

Ed has decided to apply for hospice care, since his medical condition has deteriorated to the point that palliative care instead of yet more trips to the hospital and yet more stays in rehab facilities would just make more sense.

I understand his decision and respect it.

That doesn't make it any easier to accept.

As somebody who has a blog that has nowhere near the following that he does, it's like a giant sinkhole appeared and ate the place where I live. He was one of those bloggers who kept swinging for the fences even when a number of completely spurious lawsuits from some of his targets started coming in to try to shut him up. They didn't, but you know how idiots are when you point out their stupidity. They just keep plugging away even though all that proves is that they're still idiots.

Unfortunately, being shut down by your own medical problems is something entirely different.

Ed is, in my mind, irreplaceable, just as any great blogger is. I'm sure he'll keep up at it until he no longer can, but the end is the end, regardless of that. And that's what's so difficult to stomach about it.

Because if you don't think that Andrew Wakefield is still largely responsible for this happening, I'd like to know why he continues to bang the broken drum of his own fraudulent theories like any disgraced snake-oil salesman would. Granted, he's probably foolish enough to think that his constant promotion of anti-vaccination woo isn't responsible for the rise in cases of measles worldwide, but as this article from the Guardian helpfully points out, he's openly getting anti-vax politicians elected in Texas, which has one of the worse rates of measles cases in the US. And this paragraph is especially telling:

But Wakefield’s most substantial contribution to Texas appears to be the network of autism-related charities and businesses he has been affiliated with, and in some instances drew six-figure salaries from, from the early 2000s onwards.

So much for the Hippocratic Oath. There's a very powerful profit motive in promoting quackery, and it appears Wakefield would take the almighty dollar in a heartbeat over the health and safety of children - actually, of anyone - threatened by a resurgence of preventable diseases caused by science-free opposition to vaccination. And I can't even feign surprise at that.

It's not just that Gwyneth Paltrow's GOOP empire has expanded to the point of being an extremely viable boutique (read: overpriced and vacuously trendy) business based on all sorts of ridiculous air-filled woo, but that the promotion of said woo in the face of all sorts of counterevidence (such as from gynecologist Jen Gunter) seems to not have slowed her death march into the land of big money quackery down one bit:

At Harvard, G.P. called these moments “cultural firestorms.” “I can monetize those eyeballs,” she told the students. Goop had learned to do a special kind of dark art: to corral the vitriol of the internet and the ever-present shall we call it cultural ambivalence about G.P. herself and turn them into cash. It’s never clickbait, she told the class. “It’s a cultural firestorm when it’s about a woman’s vagina.” The room was silent. She then cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, “VAGINA! VAGINA! VAGINA!” as if she were yodeling.

(Yeah, I know - those last three sentences almost seem like a scene written by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in one of their more cynical moments, but no, she apparently really did do that.)

As of June, there were 2.4 million unique visitors to the site per month, according to the numbers Goop provided me. The podcast, which is mostly hosted by Loehnen and features interviews with wellness practitioners, receives 100,000 to 650,000 listens per week. Goop wanted to publish articles about autoimmune diseases and infrared saunas and thyroids, and now it can, on its own terms — sort of.

After a few too many cultural firestorms, and with investors to think about, G.P. made some changes. Goop has hired a lawyer to vet all claims on the site. It hired an editor away from Condé Nast to run the magazine. It hired a man with a Ph.D. in nutritional science, and a director of science and research who is a former Stanford professor. And in September, Goop, sigh, is hiring a full-time fact-checker. G.P. chose to see it as “necessary growing pain.”

Oh, but I can actually think of a better cure for those growing pains: actually involving more than just one former Stanford professor, but a number of actual doctors and scientists - if not to debunk some of this nonsense, then to provide something at least resembling a counterpoint to the mindless cheerleading for all of this crap.

I just don't think it'll happen. Too much work, and too hard on Gwyneth's sizeable bank account. Which, of course, is the real beneficiary here.

Hawking's passing wasn't exactly unexpected, considering his nearly lifelong illness; what was unexpected was the fact that he survived ALS for over 50 years while becoming one of the most important scientists of that same half-century. His death is a gigantic loss to the science world, of course, but a couple of essays published by Gregory Benford in 2005 and 2012 (and reproduced on File 770 here and here) show a more personal side of Hawking. From the former:

A week after my evening at Cambridge, I got from Stephen’s secretary a transcript of all his remarks. I have used it here to reproduce his style of conversation. Printed out on his wheelchair computer, his sole link with us, the lines seem to come from a great distance. Across an abyss.

Portraying the flinty faces of science—daunting complexity twinned with numbing wonder—demands both craft and art. Some of us paint with fiction. Stephen paints with his impressionistic views of vast, cool mathematical landscapes. To knit together our fraying times, to span the cultural abyss, demands all these approaches—and more, if we can but invent them.

Stephen has faced daunting physical constrictions with a renewed attack on the large issues, on great sweeps of space and time. Daily he struggles without much fuss against the narrowing that is perhaps the worst element of infirmity. I recalled him rapt with Marilyn [Monroe], still deeply engaged with life, holding firmly against tides of entropy.

People not interested in the upcoming Super Bowl can skip this, unless they're actually interested in reading my immortal prose (what? I repeat, what?) concerning the upcoming Super Bowl.

Two things are rather obvious at this point:

1) Outside of his little football world, Tom Brady is a woo-promoting jackass;

2) That's still no reason to go after his daughter in public, though, like one radio host did.

That being said, I'm under the impression that if anyone's going to upset The Belicheck Machine That Ate The AFC it might be Philly. The Eagles are every bit as capable of making life tough for opponents as the Pats are, and the fact that they mercilessly pounded the Vikings 38-7 in a game where the Vikes were favored by Vegas is proof of that. Even so, the Pats have more experience. And they have a quarterback who's incredibly skilled and pulling off last-minute wins even if he is a quack medicine-promoting idiot off the field.

So Pats by 2.

However...

I have shit luck picking Super Bowl winners since I started doing it again in 2006. Last year was a rare exception (Pittsburgh beating Arizona in 2008 was the other one, and I didn't even cover my own spread that time), but considering my lack of luck picking winners in - which years were they, now? - 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 you can at least rest assured that just because I was right about the Pats in 2016 I might not be this year considering my Monopoly money-worthless 2-9 record.

So, Pats haters? Don't give up hope.

Yet.

If you really needed any more explanation from a source outside President Unintelligible Central about why his budget would be especially hard on scientific and medical research, look no further than the following post from the American Association for the Advancement of Science:

The double-digit percentage cuts President Donald Trump is proposing in his fiscal 2018 budget plan for science and technology programs would “devastate America’s science and technology enterprise” and weaken the nation’s economic growth, Rush Holt, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said Tuesday.

Pointing to the budget blueprint the White House delivered to Congress Tuesday, Holt said, the plan, if enacted, would make steep cuts to science and technology programs and “negatively affect our nation’s economy and public well-being.” He cited several agencies and programs facing particularly “severe” cuts.

For instance, the proposal calls for sharp reductions in science and technology programs, including 11% from the National Science Foundation, which champions basic scientific research across all fields except medical topics; 22% from the National Institutes of Health, the world’s largest biomedical research agency; and 44% from the Environmental Protection Agency’s science and technology programs.

“Slashing funding of critically important federal agencies threatens our nation’s ability to advance cures for disease, develop new energy technologies, improve public health, train the next generation of scientists and engineers and grow the American economy,” said Holt.

The Energy Department’s scientific research efforts also face deep cuts. Its Office of Science, the government’s central energy research agency, largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences and the home of a renowned network of national research laboratories, would be cut by 17% and its Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy would face a 69% reduction. The budget proposal also calls for the department’s Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy program to be eliminated altogether by fiscal 2019.

The Agriculture Department’s research programs were not immune to proposed reductions. Funding for the Agriculture Research Service, for instance, would shrink by 38%; the National Institute for Food Agriculture would face an 8% decrease; and the Forest Service research programs would be cut by 10%. The Interior Department’s U.S. Geological Survey, which maps the Earth’s systems to help officials monitor natural hazards such as earthquakes, volcanoes and landslides, is slated to be cut by 15%.

At the Commerce Department, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a scientific agency, which uses satellite data to forecast and track severe weather and conducts research on oceans, fisheries and climate, would see funding fall by 9%, while the National Institute of Standards and Technology that leverages measurement science to advance innovation would see a 23% decrease.

Holt stressed that the budget proposal in now in the hands of Congress where it is up to lawmakers to accept, reject or shape, a reality that was on full display when the Republican-controlled Congress restored many of the cuts Trump outlined in his fiscal 2017 budget plan.

During an afternoon press conference, Holt noted that the administration’s budget proposal deviates from how the scientific enterprise has long been viewed. “It has been regarded as an investment that leads to economic growth and human welfare,” said Holt, noting that the fiscal 2018 plan “is completely contrary to the idea of investment.”

Holt applauded Congress for “prioritizing federal research and development” when lawmakers finalized spending on May 4 for the remainder of fiscal year 2017, which ends after Sept. 30.

He called on Congress to continue to make research and development investments a priority and “to once again act in the nation’s best interest and support funding for R&D in a bipartisan fashion – including both defense and non-defense programs – in FY 2018 and beyond.”

Granted, the article talks about mining previous published research as opposed to the still all-too-human work of actually undertaking it, but still - anyone starting to feel just a bit inadequate because of this?

Big Bang: the most important scientific discovery of all time and why you need to know about it by Simon Singh.

Both of the following reasons were found via Ed Brayton's Dispatches from the Culture Wars, and both one of them are quite disturbing, to say the least:

A study concerning the level of knowledge among science teachers in Oklahoma on the very subjects they're supposed to be teaching proved that their supposed expertise is downright abysmal, and - unsurprisingly - the abysmal nature of that lack of knowledge extends straight down to the students they're supposed to be teaching. I could also go on about the AP/GfK poll that reveals some equally scary facts about the lack of acceptance of science in the American population at large, but enough people have already done that - but perhaps not loudly enough, though.

The most horrible thing revealed here is that Oklahoma - a state where I normally joke that "all the cool people I know from that state have escaped" (not quite true, but close enough) has had know-nothing idiots like Sally Kern and Josh Brecheen (feel free to look them up - I patently refuse to link to their own web sites for obvious reasons) trying to pass laws weakening science education in that state even further for decades. All in the name of getting the Yahoos to re-elect you over and over again, of course, and also to apparently produce a new generation of the Future Fry Chefs of America out of that vast mass of intellectually incurious high school graduates that they're effectively created.

The sad thing is that Neil deGrasse Tyson said it boldly a while ago, and not enough people listened. Not nearly enough. Which is why I'm reposting it again. For your kids' sakes, if no one else's.

My guess is that - like practically everything else she "predicted" - she didn't see it coming.

You'd do better to read the entire L.A. Times obit, but one of the true giants of biochemisty is gone. Luckily, his life's work isn't.

I fail to see how these two shouldn't have got the 2013 Nobel Prize in physics, but I'm sure someone will argue that point. I won't.

Nearly 50 years ago, Francois Englert of Belgium and Peter Higgs of the United Kingdom had the foresight to predict that the particle existed.

Now, the octogenarian pair share the Nobel Prize in physics in recognition of a theoretical brilliance that was vindicated by the particle's discovery last year.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the prize to them.

Higgs and Englert's theories behind the elusive Higgs boson explained what gives matter its mass.

The universe is filled with Higgs bosons. As atoms and parts of atoms zoom around, they interact with and attract Higgs bosons, which cluster around them in varying numbers.

Certain particles will attract larger clusters of Higgs bosons, and the more of them a particle attracts, the greater its mass will be.

The explanation helped complete scientists' understanding of the nature of all matter.

"The awarded theory is a central part of the Standard Model of particle physics that describes how the world is constructed," the Royal Swedish Academy said in a post on Twitter.

As is tradition, the academy phoned the scientists during the announcement to inform them of their win. They were unable to reach Higgs, for whom the particle is named.

The conversation with Englert was short and sweet. "I feel very well, of course," he said, when he heard the news. "Now, I'm very happy."

Deservedly so, I might add.

(Also on Lurker)

Well, it's been roughly a year since I last did this, so here it is again. The more things change...

From the original post:

It took me a while to get around to this, and for obvious reasons; so many of these bills have been proposed since January 2011 that even writing up a brief list of them (with massive help from the NCSE's archives, of course) took a fairly long time to compile and edit. The following is a list of bills that either contains language attacking the teaching the Theory of Evolution (or that advocate "alternative theories" such as Intelligent Design) that have been proposed in state legislatures from January 2011 to the present; they also include information on who proposed the legislation, whether anthropocentric global warming (AGW) or other scientific topics were also targeted and whether the bill has passed, was voted down or merely died in committee as a result of being tabled.

KENTUCKY House Bill 169: proposed by Tim Moore (R-26th district) on January 4, 2011; died in committee as of March 9th, 2011.

MISSOURI House Bill 195: proposed by Andrew Koenig (R-88th district) and 13 others on January 13th, 2011; died in the House Elementary and Secondary Education commitee as of May 13th, 2011.

OKLAHOMA SENATE BILL 554: prefiled by Josh Brecheen (R-6th district) on January 19th, 2011; died in committee on February 28th, 2011.

OKLAHOMA House Bill 1551: prefiled by Sally Kern (R-84th district) in January 2011; initially rejected in committee on February 22nd, 2011; reintroduced by Gus Blackwell (R-61st district) on February 20th, 2012; passed the House 56-12 on March 15th, 2012; died after being rejected by the Senate Education Committee. Bill also attacked academic discussion of AGW, abiogenesis and human cloning.

NEW MEXICO House Bill 302: introduced by Thomas A. Anderson (R-29th district) on February 1st, 2011; died in committee on March 8th, 2011. Bill also attacked discussion of AGW, abiogenesis and human cloning.

TENNESSEE House Bill 368: introduced by Bill Dunn (R-16th district) on February 9th, 2011; passed the state House of Representatives by a 72-23 vote on March 16th, 2012; allowed to become law by Governor Bill Haslam without signature on April 10th, 2012. Bill also attacks discussion of AGW, abiogenesis and human cloning.

TENNESSEE Senate Bill 893: introduced by Bo Watson (R-11th district) on February 16th, 2011; passed the state Senate by a 24-8 vote on March 19th, 2012; allowed to become law by Governor Bill Haslam without signature on April 10th, 2012. Bill also attacks discussion of AGW, abiogenesis and human cloning.

FLORIDA Senate Bill 1854: introduced by Stephen R. Wise (R-5th district) on March 5th, 2011; died in committee on May 7th, 2011.

TEXAS House Bill 2454: introduced by Bill Zedler (R-96th district) and James White (R-12th district) on March 8th, 2011; died in the House Committee on Higher Education on May 30th, 2011.

NEW HAMPSHIRE House Bill 1148: prefiled by Jerry Bergevin (R-17th district) on December 21st, 2011; defeated 280-7 by House vote on March 16th, 2012. Also attempted to compel inclusion of the "political and ideological viewpoints (of "theorists") and their position on the concept of atheism".

NEW HAMPSHIRE House Bill 1457: prefiled by Gary Hopper (R-7th district) and John Burt (R-7th district) on December 21st, 2011; killed by voice vote in week previous to vote for HB 1148 above.

INDIANA Senate Bill 89: prefiled by Dennis Kruse (R-14th district) in December 2011; passed by the Senate by a 28-22 vote on January 30th, 2012; shelved by the House of Representatives in early February 2012.

MISSOURI HOUSE BILL 1227: introduced and sponsored by Rick Brattin (R-124th district) and five others on January 10th, 2012; died in committee on May 18th, 2012.

MISSOURI HOUSE BILL 1276: sponsored by Andrew Koenig (R-88th district) and 13 others on January 11th, 2012; died in committee on May 18th, 2012.

OKLAHOMA SENATE BILL 1742: prefiled in January 2012 by Josh Brecheen (R-6th district) in January 2012; Bill also attacked AGW, abiogenesis and human cloning. Died in committee on March 1st, 2012.

ALABAMA HOUSE BILL 133: introduced on February 7th, 2012 by Blaine Galliher (R-30th district); died in committee on May 16th, 2012. Would have authorized "local boards of education to include released time religious instruction as an elective course for high school students.", including courses in "creation science".

OKLAHOMA HOUSE BILL 2341: a previously passed bill that was amended by Steve Russell (R-45th district) to include language identical to Oklahoma HB 1551 above; bill died when it was not brought to the floor for a vote in amended form on April 26th, 2012.

MONTANA HOUSE BILL 183: originally proposed by Clayton Fiscus (R-46th district) on November 5th, 2012. Originally had "intelligent design" language included which was later changed to an "encourage critical thinking regarding controversial scientific theories" gambit.

TEXAS HOUSE BILL 285: prefiled on December 14th. 2012 by Bill Zedler (R-96th district). Specifically mentions "intelligent design" in text. Legislation died in committee on May 6th, 2013 on expiration of committee passage deadline. Bill tabled in committee on February 5th, 2013.

COLORADO HOUSE BILL 13-1089: introduced on January on January 16th, 2013 by Stephen Humphrey (R-House 48th) and Scott Renfroe (R-Senate 13th) and 10 others. Rejected in committee on February 4th, 2013. Bill also attacked AGW.

MISSOURI HOUSE BILL 79: introduced on January 16th, 2013 by Andrew Koenig (R-99th district) and 10 others. Died in committee on May 17th, 2013.

OKLAHOMA SENATE BILL 758 and HOUSE BILL 1674: prefiled by Josh Brecheen (R-6th Senate) and Gus Blackwell (R-61st House) on or around January 18th, 2013. Senate bill died in committee on February 25th, 2013; House bill died in March 14th, 2013 when a reading deadline in the Oklahoma House of Representatives was not met.

INDIANA HOUSE BILL 1283: introduced on January 23rd, 2013 by Jeff Thompson (R-28th district). Attempted to take a stealth "teach the controversy" approach and was introduced by the House sponsor of Senate Bill 89 above. Bill died on February 25th due to a missed reading deadline.

MISSOURI HOUSE BILL 291: introduced on January 24th, 2013 by Rick Brattin (R-58th district) and two others. Died in committee on May 17th, 2013 (see above).

ARIZONA SENATE BILL 1213: introduced primarily by Judy Burges (R-22nd district) and Chester Crandall (R-6th district) with 4 others as cosponsors on or around January 26th, 2013. Bill died on February 22nd, 2013 when it failed to be passed by its committee.

NOTE: although there have been separate bills proposed in state legislatures attacking the scientific basis for Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), those bills (such as Kansas House Bill 2306) will have to be left for a separate post at a later date.

(Also on Lurker)

This is rich.

Ten to twenty years ago, proponents of this type of crap would be the exactly the same sort of people who'd bitch and whine if a similar strategy came from a left-leaning legal foundation, similarities in tactics be damned.

Ed Brayton:

In case you thought Kansas hadn’t had enough idiocy over science curricula in public schools, a group of fundamentalist Christians has filed a federal lawsuit to prevent the implementation of science standards on the grounds that they will teach things that are “inconsistent with the theistic religious beliefs” of the plaintiffs. The Pacific Justice Institute, which is representing the plaintiffs, said in a press release:

In addition to citing numerous areas of law that the standards violate, the complaint cites that the standards cause the state “to promote religious beliefs that are inconsistent with the theistic religious beliefs of plaintiffs, thereby depriving them of the right to be free from government that favors one religious view over another.”…
Brad Dacus, President of Pacific Justice Institute noted, “it’s an egregious violation of the rights of Americans to subject students—as young as five—to an authoritative figure such as a teacher who essentially tells them that their faith is wrong.” He continued, “it’s one thing to explore alternatives at an appropriate age, but to teach theory that is devoid of any alternative which aligns with the belief of people of faith is just wrong.”

Brayton again, pointing out the silliness in all its glory:

Exactly! So they should immediately stop teaching that the earth is round because that would subject children of Flat Earth Society members to a “teacher who essentially tells them that their faith is wrong.” And heliocentricity has got to go too, since that will expose the children of geocentrists to a “teacher who essentially tells them that their faith is wrong.” There isn’t a single thing taught in any school that does not conflict with someone’s religious beliefs. That has precisely nothing to do with what ought to be taught in public schools.

Of course it doesn't.

Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is this - ignorance can be educated out of people; willful stupidity is a terminal condition.

(Also on Lurker)

From Whatever:

Popular Science Kills Online Comments

(The PS editorial in question can be found here)

I'm sure that it'll take most people reading either of those a scant 2.27 seconds on average to figure out why they're doing it, but considering that one of my first bits of advice to anyone reading an online article practically anywhere these days* is "whatever you do, don't read the freaking** comments!" I'm hardly surprised they decided to go this route.

*(There are exceptions, usually in terms of sites that make you register or identify yourself somehow. Quelle surprise.)
**(Not a word beginning with "F" that I would normally use, but I'm trying to be nice and polite today.)

Everybody knows that the field of science fiction (and its attendant fandom) attracts a diverse, sometimes oddball group of people. Quite a few of them are either too intelligent or too outside cultural and social ideas of "normalcy" to ever truly fit in in many other social milieus; for the most part, that fact is an incredibly weak reason to issue a caveat about how "getting into that Sci-Fi stuff will rot your brain". I can think of more than a few other pastimes that are far worse for you than picking up a book and reading or attending SF conventions, especially since you're not going to end up in an ambulance or doing jail time as a result.

On the other hand...

There have always been fringe figures in SF who've driven off the road with a large bottle of Crazy as their primary drug of choice in the past; one only has to look at, say, historical figures such as L. Roy Hoover and his First Church of Appliantology (as well as lesser known hoaxers such as Richard Shaver in the pages of Amazing Stories) and more contemporary examples like James P. Hogan's thoroughgoing crank magnetism (up to and including Holocaust denial, depending on who you ask) to realize that SFnal culture has produced some towering problematic figures in the past. Which brings us to now, of course.

Recently, a series of massively unappealing (at least to me, IMHO) public rants ended up causing both the SFWA and the rest of SF in general a serious collective headache. on the one hand, the SFWA was pretty much forced to expel an individual known by the sobriquet of the RSHD (among others) for online conduct that would've been merely repellent (but predictable) if he had used his own web site to divulge those views and not a SFWA-owned Twitter feed. He didn't, hence the expulsion.

On the other hand, non-SFWA authors like Orson Scott Card and Sarah A. Hoyt ended up stepping in it hard and deep as well. Card recently issued a weak walking back of his formerly intense opposition to gay marriage in order to make sure that the upcoming theatrical release of Ender's Game wouldn't fall prey to either a boycott or adverse publicity; unfortunately for Card, his strangeness doesn't merely gravitate towards that subject alone, as David Weigel of Slate found out when he dug up a Card-authored essay from the Rhinoceros Times that pretty much states that Barack Obama Is Out To Get You, Whitey, and he's putting together a political police force of inner-city gang members to do it. This is minus any real proof of that assertion, of course.

As for Hoyt, her particular recent moment in the sun (?) occurred when she posted a strange item on her web site entitled "I am Spartacus" (parodied to death at Wonkette and given a further "that's not even wrong" treatment by Brad DeLong) that lends itself to parody because self-parody seems to be a rather spent option given the pompousness and multiple crank magnet points of Hoyt's original. It's as if every Tea Party manifesto writer in existence had a drunken party featuring a noxious blend of Jolt, Everclear and Skittles and decided to publish the results.

Fine work in terms of proving that "that Sci-Fi junk'll rot yer brain, kid", even if it isn't the actual writings of the genre causing the mess. It's just the non-fictional ramblings of some purveyors of the genre who should know better but don't.

The point is, this: it is now AD 2013, at last count. Still no flying cars, but never mind that unfortunate fact. You might think that a wider range of participants in the SF/fantasy/horror blender in terms of gender, race and sexual proclivity would cause others to be more capable of polite - or even sane - public discourse in this day and age. Apparently, you'd be wrong. Not for every author out there, mind you, but the amount of pros (some, like Card, quite prominent in the field) who are sipping the Conspiracy Theory/Fugghead Kool-Aid and authoring things that speak more to their bizarre state of mind than any real facts is genuinely distressing. And this isn't anything like the innumerable feuds of past generations of fandom, incidents like the charge of the asshole brigade in the online forum for Asimov's or even the ridiculous petulance pros like Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg displayed in the face of criticism of a column they wrote for the SFWA Bulletin; these are actual professional writers acting like bomb-throwing loons. And yeah, I fully realize that writers can be loons as much as anyone else;. that doesn't keep such a fact from being disheartening.

People like this are entitled to their opinions. I'm also entitled to take issue with those opinions when I think they're composed of fertilizer-grade bullshit. Such is the case here, and I have to wonder why it's becoming such a nagging issue in SFnal circles these days.

You'd think that the previous removal of arch-cretin Don McLeroy from the Texas State Board of Education in a primary election might count for something in this day and age, but apparently it didn't. From the Texas Freedom Network:

It looks like the Lone Star State’s reputation as a hotbed of anti-science fanaticism is about to be reinforced. At least six creationists/”intelligent design” proponents succeeded in getting invited to review high school biology textbooks that publishers have submitted for adoption in Texas this year. The State Board of Education (SBOE) will decide in November which textbooks to approve. Those textbooks could be in the state’s public school science classrooms for nearly a decade.

Among the six creationist reviewers are some of the nation’s leading opponents of teaching students that evolution is established, mainstream science and is overwhelmingly supported by well over a century of research. Creationists on the SBOE nominated those six plus five others also invited by the Texas Education Agency to serve on the biology review teams. We have been unable to determine what those other five reviewers think about evolution.

Although 28 individuals got invites to review the proposed new biology textbooks this year, only about a dozen have shown up in Austin this week for the critical final phase of that review. That relatively small overall number of reviewers could give creationists even stronger influence over textbook content. In fact, publishers are making changes to their textbooks based on objections they hear from the review panelists. And that’s happening essentially behind closed doors because the public isn’t able to monitor discussions among the review panelists themselves or between panelists and publishers. The public won’t know about publishers’ changes (or the names of all the review panelists who are in Austin this week) until probably September. Alarm bells are ringing.

The TFN link has a full list of the intellectual lightweights in question, but it's entirely unsurprisingly that most of them are either shills for Intelligent Design (one of them - namely, Raymond Bohlin - is a research fellow of the Discovery Institute) or are avowed, open creationists. Only one (Richard White) seems less than enthusiastic about jumping up and down about his ID/creationist affiliations despite advocating the same "teach the controversy" nonsense that his comrades in arms are far more open about.

As it is, this is going to be a long, hard march to November. Then the real silliness begins.

(Also on Lurker)

It used to be that you had to make stuff like this up, mostly for the sake of parody or research for a play (a point to be brought up later). Not anymore, though:

Supporters and critics of Kentucky’s new science education standards clashed over evolution and climate change Tuesday amid a high-stakes debate on overhauling academic content in public schools.

The article (quoted from the original at cincinnati.com, by the way) continues:

"Students in the commonwealth both need and deserve 21st-century science education grounded in inquiry, rich in content and internationally benchmarked,” said Blaine Ferrell, a representative from the Kentucky Academy of Sciences, a science advocacy group that endorses the standards.

Dave Robinson, a biology professor at Bellarmine University, said neighboring states have been more successful in recruiting biotechnology companies, and Kentucky could get left behind in industrial development if students fail to learn the latest scientific concepts.

Now, those are perfectly reasonable points made by perfectly reasonable people working in academic fields (or advocating for them) that have considerable relevance to the subject of science education.

Now comes the bad part.

But the majority of comments during the two-hour hearing came from critics who questioned the validity of evolution and climate change and railed against the standards as a threat to religious liberty, at times drawing comparisons to Soviet-style communism.

One parent, Valerie O’Rear, said the standards promote an “atheistic world view” and a political agenda that pushes government control.

Matt Singleton, a Baptist minister in Louisville who runs an Internet talk-radio program, called teachings on evolution a lie that has led to drug abuse, suicide and other social afflictions.

“Outsiders are telling public school families that we must follow the rich man’s elitist religion of evolution, that we no longer have what the Kentucky Constitution says is the right to worship almighty God,” Singleton said. “Instead, this fascist method teaches that our children are the property of the state.”

At one point, opponent Dena Stewart-Gore of Louisville also suggested that the standards will marginalize students with religious beliefs, leading to ridicule and physiological harm in the classroom, and create difficulties for students with learning disabilities.“The way socialism works is it takes anybody that doesn’t fit the mold and discards them,” she said, adding that “we are even talking genocide and murder here, folks.”

Yep, all of the usual bizarre fundamentalist/YEC/Tea Party tics are there for the taking, if you actually want them: misused snarl words like "fascism" and "socialism", unverified anecdotal assertions about how evolution leads to "drug abuse, suicide and other social afflictions" (and I'm sure that Mr. Singleton actually has case studies in his possession that can actually prove those anecdotes, right?) and a whole slew of accompanying gibberish that makes me wonder if any of the aforementioned speakers have cracked open a book on science past the age of 18, much less read any of it.

Speaking of gibberish:

What?

That's the way socialism works? Funny, but what that mushwit just described is pretty much how something like bullying works. Of course, Ms. Stewart-Gore is one of those people who probably thinks it's perfectly okay if non-Christian students are bullied for their religious beliefs, but that thought probably never popped into her head when she used the term "religious".

Likewise, the assertion that teaching real science will "create difficulties for students with learning disabilities" seems to be based on the singularly odd belief that students with learning disabilities (a dangerous, one-size-fits-all term of convenience if there ever was one) are one uniform blob of stereotypical mentally challenged gimps who can't learn anything, whether it has to do with biology or tying their own shoes. It's as if the kids who are wheelchair-bound are being thrown in the same room with those suffering from dyslexia, hyperactivity or ADD and are all classified as uneducable as a result.

Yes, people actually believe this shit. And no, I couldn't think of a word more poetic than "shit", since that's the most straightforward way of classifying this nonsense.

As mentioned before, this stuff could be the subject of a play. It has been in the past. Reading the original version of Inherit the Wind is entirely relevant. Inherit, incidentally, came out back in 1955, at the tail-end of the McCarthy era.

Feeling intellectually threatened, yet?

(Also at Lurker)

Okay, I admit it. I've been busy. But that's no reason not to finally get around to posting the results of the latest James Randi Educational Foundation Pigasus Awards, right?

My congratulations to Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, the Pumpkin Hollow Retreat Center, SyFy, Alex Jones and Dr. Mehmet Oz for choosing to step in it hard and deep. Your hard work at fostering differing forms of woo and complete bullshit are a cautionary lesson in gullibility and a source of unintentional humor for the rest of us.

(Also on Lurker)

Earlier in the week, there was some degree of confusion as to whether CERN had actually discovered the Higgs Boson (or the "God particle", if you so choose); apparently, they did:

We observe in our data clear signs of a new particle, at the level of 5 sigma, in the mass region around 126 GeV. The outstanding performance of the LHC and ATLAS and the huge efforts of many people have brought us to this exciting stage,” said ATLAS experiment spokesperson Fabiola Gianotti, “but a little more time is needed to prepare these results for publication.”

"The results are preliminary but the 5 sigma signal at around 125 GeV we’re seeing is dramatic. This is indeed a new particle. We know it must be a boson and it’s the heaviest boson ever found,” said CMS experiment spokesperson Joe Incandela. “The implications are very significant and it is precisely for this reason that we must be extremely diligent in all of our studies and cross-checks."

“It’s hard not to get excited by these results,” said CERN Research Director Sergio Bertolucci. “ We stated last year that in 2012 we would either find a new Higgs-like particle or exclude the existence of the Standard Model Higgs. With all the necessary caution, it looks to me that we are at a branching point: the observation of this new particle indicates the path for the future towards a more detailed understanding of what we’re seeing in the data.”

(Also on Lurker)

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About Ed Brayton
"Congratulations", Andrew
Stay trendy and dumb, and the money will roll right in
In Memoriam: Stephen Hawking, 1942-2018
"Big Game", big pick, big deal
Signal Boost: "White House’s 2018 Budget Plan Would 'Devastate' R&D, Says AAAS CEO Holt"
Your computer wants your job - sort of
Now reading
Two legitimate reasons to be angry about science education
Schadenfreude: Sylvia Browne
Frederick Sanger, 1918-2013
And the prize goes to...
State legislative attacks on evolution in science education since 2011: a rough guide (UPDATED)
Identity politics, Christian fundamentalist style
Ya think?
Far-out space (wing)nuts
Education in a backward, Third World country named Texas
Smokin' the creationist bluegrass
Better late than never: the Pigasus Awards
News of actual significance, for once

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Wait 'till the fire turns green

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Entries tagged with skepticism/science

About Ed Brayton

"Congratulations", Andrew

Stay trendy and dumb, and the money will roll right in

In Memoriam: Stephen Hawking, 1942-2018

"Big Game", big pick, big deal

Signal Boost: "White House’s 2018 Budget Plan Would 'Devastate' R&D, Says AAAS CEO Holt"

Your computer wants your job - sort of

Now reading

Two legitimate reasons to be angry about science education

Schadenfreude: Sylvia Browne

Frederick Sanger, 1918-2013

And the prize goes to...

State legislative attacks on evolution in science education since 2011: a rough guide (UPDATED)

Identity politics, Christian fundamentalist style

Ya think?

Far-out space (wing)nuts

Education in a backward, Third World country named Texas

Smokin' the creationist bluegrass

Better late than never: the Pigasus Awards

News of actual significance, for once