A hangout about science communication

I’m getting together with some nerds, Jackson Wheat, Phrenomythic, and ScientistMel, to talk about the challenges of communicating science on YouTube, a medium which seems to favor posturing twits, Nazis, and Nazi twits more than it does people with actual content. It’ll be a public conversation at 5pm Central time today, right here:

If you have your own questions and comments, leave them here, or tune in and leave them in the chat. Another thing: there are successful science youtubers out there. I have a long list, but if there are others you want to call attention to, let me know!

We brought up a few channels that are worth checking out:

3Blue1Brown
AronRa
Ben G Thomas
Brief Brain Facts
Draw Curiosity
Frankus Lee
Kurzgesagt
Mathologer
Neurotransmissions
PBS Eons
Paulogia
SciShow
SciStrike
Scott Manley
Shawn
Stated Clearly
Step Back History
Tony Reed
Trey the Explainer
Up and Atom
WeCreateEdu

And of course, our own:

Jackson Wheat
Phrenomythic
PZ Myers
Scientist Mel

Is ‘litigiosity’ a word? It ought to be.

Good news for lawyers everywhere! We have managed to completely pay off our lawyer, Marc Randazza! The Carrier lawsuit is over, ending in victory for the side of goodness, he says, as he gazes out over the shambles of his finances. We paid him off, but all of us defendants together are in the hole for <gulp> $20,000, so we’re not closing our fundraiser yet, and I’m still holding out my hat for personal donations. Good lawyers, it turns out, aren’t cheap, and litigious assholes willing to sell their soul to misogynistic, racist haters can mobilize more cash than we can.

And our society does breed for litigious assholes. Case in point: Devin Nunes is suing Twitter, “Devin Nunes’ Mom”, and “Devin Nunes’ Cow” for $250 million dollars. It’s absurd. It’s doomed (although his lawyers will profit). All it accomplishes is to further promote people who are laughing at him. I would never have seen this, for instance, if it weren’t one of many insults featured in his filing:

You may be thinking that the defendants might need some help protecting themselves from this frivolous and excessive nuisance, but really, Twitter’s lawyers are laughing themselves sick right now. If you are inspired to help an underdog, donate to me instead.

Man, I’m thinking that if there were a poll to name the dumbest person on the internet, and the choices were Jim Hoft, Jacob Wohl, Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump, or Devin Nunes, I wouldn’t know who to vote for.

Gaslit by the alt-right

Here we go again. People are arguing that “subscribe to Pewdiepie” and flashing the OK sign are not Nazi signifiers. They’re half right. Pewdiepie is not a Nazi; he’s a Nazi stooge. Likewise, all those photos of idiots giving the OK sign to ‘trigger the libs’ aren’t literal Nazis, they’re just idiot Nazi enablers. Here’s a useful explainer from some asshole on one of the chans:

By the way, if you try to argue that you “simply enjoy Pewdiepie’s content”, which is stupid, repetitive, unoriginal, and obnoxious, I already have grounds to call you a liar.

They think it’s all a game, but they also know what they’re doing. Amanda Marcotte gets it.

Racism is no longer “ironic” when the racists are murdering people. It’s not just “trolling” when you shoot dozens of people in the head.

The fact that Brenton Tarrant is likely a mass murderer doesn’t mean he’s not a troll, however. He is both. He livestreamed his killing spree and posted an online manifesto that is stuffed full of alt-right memes and inside jokes, making it quite clear that one of his main goals in murdering all those people was, in internet parlance, “the lulz.” Messing with the libs is what trolls like Tarrant live for, and it turns out that nothing messes with people’s heads quite like mass murder.

The fascist strategy works this way: You “shroud your sincere ideas in cartoon characters and memes and then, when called out, you mock your accuser for being a clueless normie who isn’t in on the joke,” as vlogger Natalie Wynn explained in her indispensable video “Decrypting the Alt-Right,” released after the Charlottesville riot in 2017.

Another familiar term for this is gaslighting. They are playing with your head: they endorse atrocities right in front of you, and then deny that that’s what they’re doing. And then they commit atrocities and try the same game of plausible deniability, except it’s no longer plausible. It’s no longer funny in any sense if you’re trying to publicly show sympathy for a movement that murders innocents.

This is why, even though the era of the OK sign as a troll may be over, the larger dynamic behind it is still in effect. Public figures will make gestures of sympathy with white nationalism and then deny that’s what they’re doing. Journalists, unable to read their thoughts and prove they’re lying, are stuck over and over again having to write, “Well, there’s no way to know for certain.”

Perhaps after this debacle folks in mainstream media will be a little less quick to mock leftists for believing that people on the right are using symbols and other coded gestures to signal their sympathy for a toxic and hateful cause.

Also note that HBomberGuy pointed this out over a two years ago. Figure it out, people. It’s past due.

You’re in a group photo where everyone is making the OK gesture? Don’t try to laugh it off. All I’m going to say is “Fuck you.”

“Why I am a creationist”

The things I do to try and comprehend the mental workings of creationists…I wasted 16 minutes on a video of Andrew Snelling explaining why he is a creationist. To make a too-long story short and cut right to the main point, he doesn’t. Not at all. I sat there waiting for him to get to the point and explain how he got to that point, but he doesn’t. Or maybe he does right at the beginning — he was brought up in a very religious family, was thoroughly indoctrinated into Christianity, and then discovered how neat-o rocks are on a family vacation, so he tried to force-fit geology into his young-earth, biblical “literalist” point of view. When he commits to studying geology, starting a geology club in high school, he seems to approach it from a stamp-collecting point of view, completely dismissing the idea of mechanisms behind geology.

When he discovers Whitcomb & Morris’s The Genesis Flood, he thinks all the questions have been resolved and is done. I remember stumbling across that book in high school, reading the first chapter, and shoving it back on the library shelf with contempt. It’s a garbage book. The very first sentence is In harmony with our conviction that the Bible is the infallible Word of God, verbally inspired in the original autographs, we begin our investigation of the geographical extent of the Flood with seven Biblical arguments in favor of its universality. Basically, they’re claiming that they’re going to demonstrate the validity of their premises by reciting a statement of their premises. Even a teenager should be able to see the problem with that approach, and they only fail if they’re blinded by their own priors.

Snelling isn’t capable of thinking that way. He’s just soaking in dogma.

We aren’t giving the internet enough credit, or we’re giving people too much credit?

I found this on the internet (!), and had to share.

Yes, it’s obvious. The United States is an anomalous mess, and when you compare it to other countries, it’s hard to believe people still think we are and have been the greatest country on Earth. The catch is, though, that people aren’t rational. The operative phrase is “our country”, where anyone criticizing any aspect of what is ours are attacking us and insulting our personal shambles, and instead of thinking that we could improve by taking those criticisms to heart, we embrace our flaws as evidence of our greatness.

And it’s killing us.

It’s hard to believe, but a large percentage of the US population would rather sicken and die than challenge the system that fastens insurance company parasites on us from the day we’re born. That would rather fatten CEOs and corporations than see a fair work load for the middle class. That would rather maintain systems of inequity than help our brothers and sisters prosper.

So, yes, the internet should make us aware of better alternatives. It’s too bad that so many of us would rather watch Fox News and be told how great we are.

True Facts about the bolas spider

This is funny, but I have never seen a bolas spider. Have you?

They’re on the checklist of Minnesota spiders, though, so they exist this far north. I’m going to have to make finding one an objective of my summer research plans. They’re nocturnal, though — I might turn into that weird guy poking around in the neighborhood bushes and trees late at night. I swear, officer, I’m not a peeping tom, I’m just looking for arachnids.

Hmm, the cemetery might be a safe place for nocturnal spider watching.

I wish Michael Behe would get as tired of his nonsense as I am

Michael Behe has this new book out, Darwin Devolves. I haven’t been able to muster enough enthusiasm to even want to try and dissect it — that man has been shitting on science for at least 20 years now, and having picked through his fecal piles before, I know what to expect, and am tired of it. He is tediously predictable.

Fortunately, Gregory Lang and Amber Rice have the willingness to do the dirty work and dive right in and sift through the shit in this excellent review, Evolution unscathed: Darwin Devolves argues on weak reasoning that unguided evolution is a destructive force, incapable of innovation. They discover that Behe cherry-picks his evidence, ignoring, or worse, being completely ignorant of, vast orchards of information that directly refute his premise, which Lang and Rice cite and summarize. It’s an informative review. Go read it, I won’t rehash it. You’ll learn a lot from it.

I will mention the conclusion, which discusses the peculiar tension at the heart of the evolution/creation argument. I did highlight one sentence.

Without a hint of irony, Darwin Devolves cautions us that “[t]he academic ideas of nutty professors don’t always stay confined to ivory towers. They sometimes seep out into the wider world with devastating results (p257).”

Scientists—by nature or by training—are skeptics. Even the most time-honored theories are reevaluated as new data come to light. There is active debate, for example, on the relative importance of changes to regulatory versus coding sequence in evolution (Hoekstra and Coyne 2007; Stern and Orgogozo 2008), the role of neutral processes in evolution (Kern and Hahn 2018; Jensen et al. 2019), and the extent to which evolutionary paths are contingent on chance events (Blount et al. 2018). Vigorous debate is part and parcel of the scientific process, lest our field stagnate. Behe, however, belabors the lack of consensus on relatively minor matters to proclaim that evolutionary biology as a whole is on shaky ground.

By reviewing Behe’s latest book, we run the risk of drawing attention—or worse, giving credibility—to his ideas. Books like Darwin Devolves, however, must be openly challenged and refuted, even if it risks giving publicity to misbegotten views. Science benefits from public support. Largely funded by federal grants, scientists have a moral responsibility (if not a financial obligation) to ensure that the core concepts of our respective fields are communicated effectively and accurately to the public and to our trainees. This is particularly important in evolutionary biology, where—over 150 years after On the Origin of Species—less than 20% of Americans accept that humans evolved by natural and unguided processes (Gallup 2014). It is hard to think of any other discipline where mainstream acceptance of its core paradigm is more at odds with the scientific consensus.

Why evolution by natural selection is difficult for so many to accept is beyond the scope of this review; however, it is not for a lack of evidence: the data (only some of which we present here) are more than sufficient to convince any open-minded skeptic that unguided evolution is capable of generating complex systems. A combination of social and historical factors creates a welcoming environment for an academic voice that questions the scientific consensus. Darwin Devolves was designed to fit this niche.

Creationists like to pretend that there is still a legitimate debate here, and their absurd confidence does seem to be effective in swaying, as they mention, about 80% of the population. In response to their ignorance, responsible scientists are expected to invest a great deal of effort in reacting to stupidity. It is ten thousand times harder to master the science behind evolutionary biology than it is to read a few bible verses and some clueless apologetics and decide that the science is all wrong. Behe, and people like him, are ridiculous crackpots, and we’re saddled with the obligation to refute them.

And yet we do. Or Lang and Rice do. I’m sitting this one out, which makes me immensely grateful that more scientists are joining in the battle.

I’d almost forgotten what a terrible atheist I am

Suddenly I’m seeing this image popping up all over. But it’s over ten years old! And worst of all, it’s not real — it’s made by an atheist, which explains why the list of characteristics sounds so awesome. It’s also not a particularly useful perspective on how non-atheists think.

Hate atheists? So do we! Your typical atheist smokes marijuanana associates with jews masturbates regularly partakes in deviant sexual proclivities worships at the alter of the internet. To find out more come to atheist awareness week!!! april 2008

While I was trying to track this down, though, I ran across this old post on Scienceblogs by Matt Nisbet, which reminded me of how much I was hated by some of my colleagues on that site. No, really, you might have seen evidence of the friction in some of the published posts, but there were a couple of people who really pulled out the knives in the back channel. This is relatively mild stuff.

Consider this recent article at the National Catholic Register. Titled “The Face of the New Atheism,” it profiles PZ Myers and his rants against the Eucharist and the Catholic community. Notice the key words emphasized. The dominant image of atheism portrayed in the article is one of “hate,” “contempt,” “dogmatism,” “a junior high level understanding of religion,” “irate,” “incredulous,” “bigoted”…the list goes on.

Is this how we really want Catholics to view us? Do we really want a group of moderately religious Americans–who polls show otherwise prize science and reason, and who stand for many of the same values that we hold dear–to think of us through the prism of PZ Myers?

Right. The National Catholic Register. This is a guy holding up as a source an extremely conservative newspaper that idolizes Bill Donohue, echoing the arguments of Donohue and Mark Mathis, producer of the movie Expelled, which worships Catholicism, and considers atheists as tools of the anti-christ. I guess he thought it was as valid a source of information about atheists as anything else. It’s a bad memory. Sometimes things got rather toxic at the old site.

But what redeems it all is that Nisbet then goes on to cite as a counter-example, his paragon of what a good atheist should be. It’s DJ Grothe, the guy who later was found to have covered up sexual harassment at the Amazing Meetings, who abruptly left the JREF under a cloud, who was strangely characterized as a psychopath by people who had to spend much time with him, and who had a fondness for crude rape jokes.

I actually first met DJ Grothe about a year before at Dragon*Con in 2010. I had admired his work on Point of Inquiry and when he became president of the JREF I thought it would be a great thing. When I got a chance to meet him that year I was excited. We encountered one another at a Skepchick party (one that had to be moved to the lobby because of noise complaints as soon as it started). He was drunk, but it was a social occasion and I’d had a couple cocktails as well. No big deal. I was fairly surprised though, when DJ turned to me and said that the reason everyone loved the Skepchicks was because they “want pussy”. That seemed to be a rather dismissive and insultingly sexist way to dismiss the work of your professional colleagues (not to mention the people whose booze you were at that moment drinking.

I’m embarrassed to say that at the time I was still a bit fame-struck and too shocked to really process it. I didn’t do what I should have done, and told him how rude, insulting, and unprofessional it was to say something like that, even while drunk. Even in a casual social setting. But then it got more bizarre and incredible. I’m a tall guy, chubby (fat, honestly) and bearded. If I were gay I would definitely be a bear. This was discussed and DJ then made an hilarious horrendous “joke” about how I should pay him a visit down in Los Angeles so that he could drug me and let some of his friends have some fun with me. You know, in other words so that I could be gang raped.

Nisbet’s post hasn’t aged well, and I’m now proud to have been such a bad atheist, if that’s what atheism is supposed to be more like.

By the way, Rebecca Watson talked about Grothe back in 2014. If you want a glimpse into what a shitshow the skeptic/atheist movements have been, just read the comments.