A century of concern trolls

This is a letter to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle from 1916. Look, this person is just trying to be helpful to the cause!

“Have to voters of Montana stopped to seriously consider whether there will be gain to them in sending a young woman to congress? Admittedly there will be novelty in such a proceeding; admittedly the state will be talked about for such action on its part, but will the talk be beneficial to Montana or otherwise? Montana has earned something of a name for herself as one of the most progressive of states looking for practical results rater than the sentimental or freakish; and voters should seriously consider whether by casting their votes for Miss Rankin, regardless of how attractive a personality she may have, they would not be giving the state undesirable publicity.

“Have the suffragists of Montana considered whether the sending of a young woman to congress would promote the cause of suffrage? Is it not true that such action on the part of the voters of this state, by unduly advertising the desire for office on the part of women, would seriously retard the suffrage movement in other states?

“Is there any justification for the claim that the women of Montana owe suffrage to Miss Rankin? Is it not true that other women, Mrs. H. L. Sherlock for example, were working for woman suffrage before Miss Rankin was out of her cradle? Did not suffrage come to Montana rather through the example of other states around her, and through the action and votes of men of the state? Miss Rankin undoubtedly had a part, but no more than many other men and women.

“Has Miss Rankin had the life experience that is necessary to make her a useful servant of Montana in the halls of congress? Does she understand the land questions arising in this state, the questions relating to the various irrigation projects, and other matters of practical importance to the state’s development? If Miss Rankin was a young man instead of a young woman – of the same age and experience – would anyone think of sending her to congress? If we are going to send a woman to congress from Montana, would it not be well to send one who has had a woman’s part in life, who has won her place in the state in a woman’s way?”

I liked this bit best: “Is it not true that such action on the part of the voters of this state, by unduly advertising the desire for office on the part of women, would seriously retard the suffrage movement in other states?” Don’t look to eager, ladies, it might hurt the cause if you’re too bold.

The implication that she’s not a real woman who won by following a “woman’s way”, and at the same time questioning whether a woman could actually know anything about the practical, manly issues in Montana is just icing on the cake.

The candidate, by the way, was Jeannette Rankin, who won the election handily and went on to become the first woman elected to the US Congress. She was a dedicated pacifist who voted against our entry in World War II…and she was also a Republican. I don’t think she’d fit in any more.

The incredible self-destructing psychologist

Holy crap. A Dutch social scientist’s career has just crashed flamingly. He apparently had a tremendous reputation.

“Somebody used the word ‘wunderkind’,” says Miles Hewstone, a social psychologist at the University of Oxford, UK. “He was one of the bright thrusting young stars of Dutch social psychology — highly published, highly cited, prize-winning, worked with lots of people, and very well thought of in the field.”

But maybe someone should have been made a bit suspicious by this behavior:

Many of Stapel’s students graduated without having ever run an experiment, the report says. Stapel told them that their time was better spent analyzing data and writing. The commission writes that Stapel was “lord of the data” in his collaborations. It says colleagues or students who asked to see raw data were given excuses or even threatened and insulted.

Graduate students who were not doing experiments, a PI who was, graduate students doing all the analysis and writing, a PI who wasn’t? This was an obvious inversion of the natural order. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria! Such peculiar behavior should have alerted someone early on — data are primary.

And now, the denouement:

Diederik Stapel was suspended from his position at Tilburg University in the Netherlands in September after three junior researchers reported that they suspected scientific misconduct in his work. Soon after being confronted with the accusations, Stapel reportedly told university officials that some of his papers contained falsified data. The university launched an investigation, as did the University of Groningen and the University of Amsterdam, where Stapel had worked previously. The Tilburg commission today released an interim report (in Dutch), which includes preliminary results from all three investigations. The investigators found “several dozens of publications” in which fictitious data has been used. Fourteen of the 21 Ph.D. theses Stapel supervised are also tainted, the committee concluded.

Stapel has made a comment. I don’t think he understands what he has done at all.

Stapel initially cooperated with the investi­gation by identifying fraudulent publications, but stopped because he said he was not physically or emotionally able to continue, says Levelt. In a statement, translated from Dutch, that is appended to the report, Stapel says: “I have made mistakes, but I was and am honestly concerned with the field of social psychology. I therefore regret the pain that I have caused others.” Nature was unable to contact Stapel for comment.

No, he was not honestly concerned with the field of social psychology. If he actually cared about what the evidence told him about the world, he wouldn’t have made it up. He was honestly concerned with the selfish goal of making a name for himself, nothing else.

He’ll never be trusted in any field of science ever again. He’s going to have to look for a new career…maybe theology, where making up data is a way of life.

(Also on FtB)

Theologians don’t get to slither out from under the rules of nature

Keith Ward sounds just like Ken Ham. It’s remarkable. You see, Ken Ham has this schtick in which he basically denies all of history: you weren’t there (the only valid evidence is eyewitness evidence captured through your biological senses), and because history isn’t repeatable, its study isn’t a real science, isn’t empirically verifiable, and is subject to whims and fads and therefore lacks any substantial objective core. Ken Ham says this kind of nonsense because he believes in a great elaborate line of historical bullshit, and wants to pretend that his illusions are on an equal footing with the evidence-based history.

Keith Ward is doing the same thing.

A huge number of factual claims are not scientifically testable. Many historical and autobiographical claims, for instance, are not repeatable, not publicly observable now or in future, and are not subsumable under any general law. We know that rational answers to many historical questions depend on general philosophical views, moral views, personal experience and judgment. There are no history laboratories. Much history, like much religion, is evidence-based, but the evidence is not scientifically tractable.

I keep trying to get this message across: the creationists (Ward is definitely not a fundamentalist/literalist sort, however) aren’t just out to corrupt biology, they stomp all over every scholarly discipline with great contempt. I agree that not every thing in the universe is scientifically verifiable or repeatable, but this cavalier attitude towards history is reprehensible. Yes, there are history laboratories: there are historians who do archaeology, chemistry, biology, astronomy and all kinds of hard sciences to confirm and test historical claims. The provenance and authenticity of documents is a major historical interest.

A discrete historical event may not be repeatable, but it is amenable to confirmation and validation. The source information can be independently verified. Multiple approaches can be taken to test a claim. Did Caesar invade Gaul? It only happened once, you don’t get to repeat the invasion, and no one alive was there, after all. But we can look at the archaeology of France, we can see the linguistic evidence, we’ve got documents from the time, and every time someone digs up a Roman cache from the first century BCE we are getting more information on the event.

I do consider it scientifically tractable. Evidence-based, empirical study and logical analysis are right there at the heart of the discipline of history.

But you know why Ward is doing this, right? It’s so he can claim Jesus, as a historical figure, is totally exempt from scientific examination.

Claims that the cosmos is created do not “trespass onto” scientific territory. They are factual claims in which scientific investigators are not, as such, interested. Scientific facts are, of course, relevant to many religious claims. But not all facts are scientific facts – the claim that I was in Oxford last night, unseen by anyone, will occur in no scientific paper, but it is a hard fact. So it is with the miracles of Jesus, with the creation of the cosmos and with its end.

So, if I claimed that Keith Ward was hatched from a rotten turtle’s egg incubated in a dung heap, that would not be trespassing onto scientific territory? Because it happened in the past and no one directly witnessed it, my claim gets to stand unchallenged and unquestioned? I should think if I made a remarkable claim in defiance of a standard scientific observation — that humans are birthed in a standard mammalian way, and that Keith Ward is a mammal — I think I should certainly deserve an argument on scientific grounds against my assertion.

On his trivial claim that he was in Oxford, unobserved, I’d say it could be turned into question amenable to rational inquiry and verification. Is there evidence that is compatible with him being in Oxford at that time? Did he leave any traces, credit card receipts, was he spotted on a traffic camera, were there witnesses he didn’t see? Even if there actually is a complete absence of evidence and nothing we can directly test, we can at least whether the claim is compatible with what we know.

A better comparison with the miracles of Jesus would be for Keith Ward to claim he’d been on Mars last night. Can we evaluate that scientifically? Sure can. If he’s going to argue that, he’d better have a collection of Mars rocks, a spacesuit, and a rocketship in his back yard.

Again, I’m not claiming that everything has to be demonstrable as a scientific fact. A poem is not subject to a scientific determination of its truth. But the existence of a poem does not flout the nature of the universe, and doesn’t call into question the validity of physics, while Ward is blithely swapping in mundane experience as proof of extravagantly unlikely, ridiculous claims like the “miracles of Jesus”. Not only is it a very weak argument, it’s dishonest. It’s like saying you can’t disprove I had a drink of water this morning, therefore you you can’t disprove that my glass of water had cosmic consciousness and taught me how to fly.

Also, as long as you’re insisting on saying very silly things, could you at least have the courtesy to avoid using your ignorance to spit all over the entirely respectable and rational discipline of history?

(Also on Sb)

The incredible self-destructing psychologist

Holy crap. A Dutch social scientist’s career has just crashed flamingly. He apparently had a tremendous reputation.

“Somebody used the word ‘wunderkind’,” says Miles Hewstone, a social psychologist at the University of Oxford, UK. “He was one of the bright thrusting young stars of Dutch social psychology — highly published, highly cited, prize-winning, worked with lots of people, and very well thought of in the field.”

But maybe someone should have been made a bit suspicious by this behavior:

Many of Stapel’s students graduated without having ever run an experiment, the report says. Stapel told them that their time was better spent analyzing data and writing. The commission writes that Stapel was “lord of the data” in his collaborations. It says colleagues or students who asked to see raw data were given excuses or even threatened and insulted.

Graduate students who were not doing experiments, a PI who was, graduate students doing all the analysis and writing, a PI who wasn’t? This was an obvious inversion of the natural order. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria! Such peculiar behavior should have alerted someone early on — data are primary.

And now, the denouement:

Diederik Stapel was suspended from his position at Tilburg University in the Netherlands in September after three junior researchers reported that they suspected scientific misconduct in his work. Soon after being confronted with the accusations, Stapel reportedly told university officials that some of his papers contained falsified data. The university launched an investigation, as did the University of Groningen and the University of Amsterdam, where Stapel had worked previously. The Tilburg commission today released an interim report (in Dutch), which includes preliminary results from all three investigations. The investigators found “several dozens of publications” in which fictitious data has been used. Fourteen of the 21 Ph.D. theses Stapel supervised are also tainted, the committee concluded.

Stapel has made a comment. I don’t think he understands what he has done at all.

Stapel initially cooperated with the investi­gation by identifying fraudulent publications, but stopped because he said he was not physically or emotionally able to continue, says Levelt. In a statement, translated from Dutch, that is appended to the report, Stapel says: “I have made mistakes, but I was and am honestly concerned with the field of social psychology. I therefore regret the pain that I have caused others.” Nature was unable to contact Stapel for comment.

No, he was not honestly concerned with the field of social psychology. If he actually cared about what the evidence told him about the world, he wouldn’t have made it up. He was honestly concerned with the selfish goal of making a name for himself, nothing else.

He’ll never be trusted in any field of science ever again. He’s going to have to look for a new career…maybe theology, where making up data is a way of life.

(Also on FtB)

Halloween is over, so it’s time for…

…Christmas! I’ve already seen Christmas trees up, so I guess I have to gird my loins and gather up my hosts and prepare for another seasonal campaign in the War On Christmas. Here’s an early salvo, The Ultimate Christmas Quiz. Christians and scholars, click on the link and find out what a confusing botch of a holiday it is.

Of course, this campaign will ultimately end with me gathering up the family and celebrating something or other anyway.

Jeezus. 24? Really?

I didn’t know they made them that young. I scarcely remember that time — that was that abnormal moment in life when joints don’t creak and your back doesn’t ache and you have absolutely no idea what your future is going to be like, right? I’d wish her a happy birthday, but the young don’t need the acknowledgment.

Hey…am I the oldest codger on freethoughtblogs? Now there’s a depressing thought.

Theologians don’t get to slither out from under the rules of nature

Keith Ward sounds just like Ken Ham. It’s remarkable. You see, Ken Ham has this schtick in which he basically denies all of history: you weren’t there (the only valid evidence is eyewitness evidence captured through your biological senses), and because history isn’t repeatable, its study isn’t a real science, isn’t empirically verifiable, and is subject to whims and fads and therefore lacks any substantial objective core. Ken Ham says this kind of nonsense because he believes in a great elaborate line of historical bullshit, and wants to pretend that his illusions are on an equal footing with the evidence-based history.

Keith Ward is doing the same thing.

A huge number of factual claims are not scientifically testable. Many historical and autobiographical claims, for instance, are not repeatable, not publicly observable now or in future, and are not subsumable under any general law. We know that rational answers to many historical questions depend on general philosophical views, moral views, personal experience and judgment. There are no history laboratories. Much history, like much religion, is evidence-based, but the evidence is not scientifically tractable.

I keep trying to get this message across: the creationists (Ward is definitely not a fundamentalist/literalist sort, however) aren’t just out to corrupt biology, they stomp all over every scholarly discipline with great contempt. I agree that not every thing in the universe is scientifically verifiable or repeatable, but this cavalier attitude towards history is reprehensible. Yes, there are history laboratories: there are historians who do archaeology, chemistry, biology, astronomy and all kinds of hard sciences to confirm and test historical claims. The provenance and authenticity of documents is a major historical interest.

A discrete historical event may not be repeatable, but it is amenable to confirmation and validation. The source information can be independently verified. Multiple approaches can be taken to test a claim. Did Caesar invade Gaul? It only happened once, you don’t get to repeat the invasion, and no one alive was there, after all. But we can look at the archaeology of France, we can see the linguistic evidence, we’ve got documents from the time, and every time someone digs up a Roman cache from the first century BCE we are getting more information on the event.

I do consider it scientifically tractable. Evidence-based, empirical study and logical analysis are right there at the heart of the discipline of history.

But you know why Ward is doing this, right? It’s so he can claim Jesus, as a historical figure, is totally exempt from scientific examination.

Claims that the cosmos is created do not “trespass onto” scientific territory. They are factual claims in which scientific investigators are not, as such, interested. Scientific facts are, of course, relevant to many religious claims. But not all facts are scientific facts – the claim that I was in Oxford last night, unseen by anyone, will occur in no scientific paper, but it is a hard fact. So it is with the miracles of Jesus, with the creation of the cosmos and with its end.

So, if I claimed that Keith Ward was hatched from a rotten turtle’s egg incubated in a dung heap, that would not be trespassing onto scientific territory? Because it happened in the past and no one directly witnessed it, my claim gets to stand unchallenged and unquestioned? I should think if I made a remarkable claim in defiance of a standard scientific observation — that humans are birthed in a standard mammalian way, and that Keith Ward is a mammal — I think I should certainly deserve an argument on scientific grounds against my assertion.

On his trivial claim that he was in Oxford, unobserved, I’d say it could be turned into question amenable to rational inquiry and verification. Is there evidence that is compatible with him being in Oxford at that time? Did he leave any traces, credit card receipts, was he spotted on a traffic camera, were there witnesses he didn’t see? Even if there actually is a complete absence of evidence and nothing we can directly test, we can at least whether the claim is compatible with what we know.

A better comparison with the miracles of Jesus would be for Keith Ward to claim he’d been on Mars last night. Can we evaluate that scientifically? Sure can. If he’s going to argue that, he’d better have a collection of Mars rocks, a spacesuit, and a rocketship in his back yard.

Again, I’m not claiming that everything has to be demonstrable as a scientific fact. A poem is not subject to a scientific determination of its truth. But the existence of a poem does not flout the nature of the universe, and doesn’t call into question the validity of physics, while Ward is blithely swapping in mundane experience as proof of extravagantly unlikely, ridiculous claims like the “miracles of Jesus”. Not only is it a very weak argument, it’s dishonest. It’s like saying you can’t disprove I had a drink of water this morning, therefore you you can’t disprove that my glass of water had cosmic consciousness and taught me how to fly.

Also, as long as you’re insisting on saying very silly things, could you at least have the courtesy to avoid using your ignorance to spit all over the entirely respectable and rational discipline of history?

(Also on FtB)

Why I am an atheist – Scott Taylor

The story of my current atheism and rationalism begins when I was a child; I was raised with no mention of religion and I still do not know my mother’s religious or irreligious views, I was thus left unexposed to any religion which was stated as fact for my early life. Even when I began primary school I did not know a thing about Christianity or any of the other major religions of the world today. In fact the first religion I had any understanding of was the polytheistic religion of the ancient Egyptians. This knowledge was the first time I had encountered religion; it is also worthwhile noting that I cannot quite remember what exactly I thought of it outside of the various gods looked “cool”. I learned a great deal about ancient Middle Eastern history and in particular Egypt from a wonderful set of children’s history books which my school library possessed. I read and reread continuously; absolutely enthralled by both the literary and visual content of these books. However I digress.

I was first exposed to a religion treated as though it were fact as opposed to simply a cultural belief of past times by ancient peoples (like the ancient and long defunct religions were detailed in the books in persistently read) when I was either 8 and a half or 9 years old through what was in my primary school called R.E (Which stood I believe for religious education); a program which when I and my brothers went to school ran and essentially taught you the main events detailed in the bible (Both Old and New Testament). I cannot remember what my initial thoughts were and it is unlikely that I had any of significance due to my complete ignorance of all religion with some exceptions. I cannot remember exactly what was taught during the first lesson of this class however during the second lesson the old woman who taught R.E told the story of Noah’s Flood, according to this absurd story only eight people existed in the world at 2400 BC or thereabouts. I did not quite understand how this was possible because the existence of the Egyptians and Sumeria and other neighboring states definitely had more than eight people because otherwise how were there empires existing at that time and even being formed shortly after this date. This realization lead me to interrupt and state that it’s not possible for there to only be eight people left in the world because Egypt and Sumeria had lots of people. I was politely told that in order to speak I must raise my hand and wait my turn, I thus did so and was promptly ignored which prompted me to interrupt and ask the same question/statement. This generally defiance lead my regular teacher to ask me to either stop being rude or leave. I refused and said I wanted to know the answer to my question. This ultimately lead me to end up outside in the bag area for the duration of the lesson and for the weekly lessons as I refused to not interrupt and ask “rude” questions. This first experience of religion left what was undoubtedly a bad impression and lead me to formulate the opinion that R.E was a dumb class with no point; the motivation for this view mainly being spite from her refusal to let me point out that there wasn’t eight people in the world at any point around 2400 BC.

This general disagreement with R.E lead me to end up being excluded for the several years which this program ran due to the fact that I persistently complained about the various absurdities which became more obvious as I grew older and my knowledge of history increased. By this point I was around 11-12 years old and was an agnostic (Although I didn’t know the word to describe myself at the time) having thought about the idea of a god I couldn’t think of any good reasons for one even though I couldn’t think of any really against either since I had never read anything on the subject and my opinions on the matter at this point in my life were based on nothing more than my own thoughts. My skepticism of not only the bible which had been present since I had first learnt of it continued and grew greater as I entered my teens. By the time I was around 13 I had decided that there was no need for a god and that it is beyond unreasonably improbable for a theistic god such as that of Christianity to exist given the bible’s superb rate of managing to detail supposedly huge events that never occurred as well as the numerous paradoxes and problems that result from this god supposedly being benevolent, omnipotent and omniscient. Furthermore I decided in my early teenage years that any god is neither needed for the world to exist nor is it likely as nothing in this world that we have observed is impossible without a deity.

This view and my atheism holds stronger than ever now several years after I first came to the idea that I am an atheist. Reason and logic compel me to disavow the theistic god’s of our world’s major religions on the basis of the paradoxes and problems raised by their qualities such as in the case of Yahweh; a benevolent being who created a system in which souls are supposedly created WITH the knowledge of this being that they will commit acts which will get then sent unto a place of eternal torture? Which benevolent being creates a system of such barbarity that is akin to Hitler breeding Jews simply so that the SS could kill them? Additionally the extraordinary track record of failure on material matters that are testable by science that is possessed by all major religions that make claims in regards to the material world (and only world); the supposedly flawless and ever-truthful fairy tale known as the Qur’an says a great flood occurred yet this did not happen nor did the great exodus of the Jews from Egypt as detailed in the Old Testament.

Even a deistic god falls in the face of reason for the absence of any reason or necessity for such a being and the burden of proof alone are more than enough to fell such an idea and quite frankly there is nothing more beautiful and spectacular than the wonder of nature and a world so beautiful and grand; nothing greater than not living in fear of cosmic tyrants or eternal torment but simply living for ourselves and those we love today in the magic of reality.

Scott Taylor
Australia

No one expects the Atheist Inquisition!

The Catholics shall fear us. They already feel the tightening of the thumbscrews, they hear the creak of the Iron Maiden closing, and they smell the reek of the spilled beer on the Comfy Chair. And oh, how the Catholics are squealing at their oppression. I have in my hands a list of three, no, four crimes against Holy Mother Church, all horrors that no civilized society should inflict on any of its members, no, not even the ones who rape little children and call it holy.

Oh, wait. Now that I look at them, the torments aren’t really that bad.


Oh, the humanity. Look at those sad, suffering faces, those underprivileged, unemployed saintly servants of the Lord. I weep to see their patent deprivation and demeaned status. Set them free!

  • Catholics are forced to use contraception! Uh, actually, Health and Human Services is requiring that private health insurance plans cover contraception for those who use it. So what they’re really complaining about is that they have to pay for coverage that includes something they won’t use. Just like I have to pay for an insurance plan that covers diseases of the uterus, or worse, cancer. Cancer is expensive, and I don’t have it; I expect to be deaded by heart disease, so why should my money be used for those deadbeats with a horrible disease I haven’t got?

  • Catholics are excluded from government jobs! They cite two things: the first one is in incomprehensibly mangled English, but I think it’s something about how doctors assisting refugees have to be willing to give abortions if needed. Homeless women never have life-threatening gynecological conditions, so it’s perfectly reasonable for devout Catholic doctors to let them die if they do. The second problem is that USAID isn’t going to support HIV/AIDS programs that don’t recognized the effectiveness of condoms in preventing the disease. It’s all the same nuisance requirement: they’re hiring people to do some specific work, and they’re unfairly refusing to hire people who say they’ll only do half the job.

  • The government wants to control who the Church can hire! Meddlesome bastards. They actually expect the divine and sacred faith to respect their employees civil rights. Waaaaah!

  • The Department of Justice has officially called Catholics bigots! It’s true. They’ve come right out and said that the church’s efforts to impose their views on all people, including non-Catholics, that gay people are wicked and evil sinners who will burn in hell and do not deserve equal treatment under the law, is somehow bigoted. Civil servants who are Catholic in states that allow gay marriage are facing legal action because they refuse to do their job. Catholic adoption agencies are being squeezed out of business for the innocent act of hating same-sex couples and telling everyone that they are bad, bad parents. Hating people and discriminating against them for their natures isn’t bigotry, is it?

You know, that’s just pathetic.

Clearly, the Atheist Inquisition needs to step up their game, and do a little research to learn how to do their job. Maybe we should study how Catholics have historically managed any group that disagrees with them? Surely, they wouldn’t complain if we were scrupulously fair and only did to officials of the Catholic Church what the Catholic Church has done to heretics in the past, would they?

We’d be doing them a favor. Right now, they look rather foolish sitting there in opulent robes, dandling terrified children on their knees and demanding that we allow vast populations to suffer from poverty and sexually transmitted diseases, all while squealing and crying because someone won’t give them money for not distributing condoms, or insisting that doctors ought to be willing to do simple surgeries that save women’s (sinners!) lives. They’d at least look like they had good reason to whine if they were on fire, rather than being told they don’t get to interfere in people’s lives.