Nazis. Nazi, nazi, nazi.

When I put up that last post about shameful moments in American science policy, I felt like Science had forgotten one that I personally consider our most lethal mistake…but it’s so deeply ingrained in American culture that maybe it’s taken for granted. It’s always there, and so it’s easy to overlook. I think the greatest science lie ever has to be our history of racism which led to the enslavement and genocide of other human beings that our society judged inferior.

That crime has never gone away, and we’re currently compounding it. An ICE detention center is performing mass hysterectomies on immigrants.

On Monday, a nurse at a private immigration detention center in Georgia came forward about a range of dangerous medical practices at a U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility. According to her, the center has not only ignored COVID-19 protocols, but is actively performing mass hysterectomies on detained people.

The whistleblower, Dawn Wooten, worked at the Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC) — which is operated by LaSalle Corrections — where she allegedly witnessed the company’s refusal to test detainees for COVID-19 as well as spoke to several people who each had their uterus removed as part of an unwarranted hysterectomy procedure. According to the official complaint lodged with the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security, Wooten said that the facility was performing hysterectomies on people who reported having heavy menstrual cycles or other more serious pain, but that “everybody’s uterus cannot be that bad.”

“I’ve had several inmates tell me that they’ve been to see the doctor and they’ve had hysterectomies and they don’t know why they went or why they’re going,” Wooten said in the report. She also noted how ICDC consistently uses one out-of-facility doctor, who is responsible for the hysterectomies in addition to accidentally removing the wrong ovary in one patient. “He’s the uterus collector.”

It’s possible this nurse is a disgruntled employee, and that she’s misinterpreting an excess of zeal in treating sick patients as a pattern of mass sterilization, but isn’t it odd how ICE, which has never been particularly good at managing the health and safety of the inmates in their concentration camps, is suddenly so solicitous and thorough in treating the reproductive health of the prisoners?

It’s also in line with historical practice.

This isn’t the first time the United States has forced people — especially people of color — into unwanted sterilization, which is a human rights violation and a form of eugenics, according to the World Health Organization. For more than 70 years, California led the country in sterilizations; during that time about 20,000 people were sterilized against their will in state institutions. In the South, Black women were treated as “practice” for incoming medical students and had been sterilized unknowingly during C-sections. Other times, they were coerced in order to retain welfare benefits. Sterilization was so wide-spread in North Carolina that a bill was passed in 2015 to give victims financial compensation.

Of course, when it comes to undocumented immigrants, who are regularly referred to as “unwanted” “aliens” by the current president, it’s not so surprising that these practices went unreported for so long. One immigrant in the complaint put it best: “This place is not equipped for humans.”

ICE and Homeland Security were established under George W. Bush after the post-9/11 freakout. Can we stop trying to resuscitate the reputation of that horrible mass-murderer and criminal, and can we start condemning the Republicans who created the fascist Homeland Security Act, every Democrat who voted for it, and all the presidents since who have allowed ICE to continue existing? Shut it down, and fire our version of Dr Mengele, “the uterus collector”.

“the most shameful moment in the history of U.S. science policy”

In this week’s Science magazine, H. Holden Thorp damns the president of the USA.

When President Donald Trump began talking to the public about coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in February and March, scientists were stunned at his seeming lack of understanding of the threat. We assumed that he either refused to listen to the White House briefings that must have been occurring or that he was being deliberately sheltered from information to create plausible deniability for federal inaction. Now, because famed Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward recorded him, we can hear Trump’s own voice saying that he understood precisely that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was deadly and spread through the air. As he was playing down the virus to the public, Trump was not confused or inadequately briefed: He flat-out lied, repeatedly, about science to the American people. These lies demoralized the scientific community and cost countless lives in the United States.

Over the years, this page has commented on the scientific foibles of U.S. presidents. Inadequate action on climate change and environmental degradation during both Republican and Democratic administrations have been criticized frequently. Editorials have bemoaned endorsements by presidents on teaching intelligent design, creationism, and other antiscience in public schools. These matters are still important. But now, a U.S. president has deliberately lied about science in a way that was imminently dangerous to human health and directly led to widespread deaths of Americans.

Congress needs to throw the asshole out now, and the American people need to elect a better human being to the office in November.

We’re doing a fundraiser at the end of this month!

You know I’ve got this Patreon that I’m using to slowly pay off our legal debt for the Richard Carrier debacle (we won, don’t forget!), but “slowly” is the main term there — it’s going to take about four years to pay it off, four years of abstemious living, and I’m here in the prime of my life when I ought to be wildly partying, dancing naked in the streets, living in a non-stop bacchanal! So we’re going to try to take some steps to accelerate that process.

So we’re putting on a carnival!

On the top left of every single page here you’ll find a big bold badge that says “Carnival of Curiosity”. Click on it and it takes you to our fundraising page that lists some events we have scheduled for 25-27 September — online panels on YouTube, game shows, blog posts, and a memorial to Ed Brayton — all coupled to requests for donations. Join in if you want! We’ve got other ideas in the wings that we might bring out, but this is our start. Check it out! Also look on the sidebar — various bloggers will be announcing their activities, setting up auctions, telling you about their own plans. Links will be added to the fundraising page to lead you to their work.

I’ll be posting notices here periodically. And it may never end: we plan to have similar fundraisers at the end of every month. We won’t stop until FtB is debt-free once again!

You can help with donations to several sites. Pick your favorite!

#slimedidnocrime

YouTube/Google stuck their ugly racist necks out to ban this video, apparently because it pointed out the sleazy hypocrisy of the right wing nutsacks and Big Media.

Youtube have YET AGAIN caved in to a right-wing false flagging campaign. This time they have allowed Steven Crowder fanbois to flag down Thought Slime’s great video. However, on this occasion it is even more egregious than usual, considering the topic of the video is how youtube allows Steven Crowder and other rightist bullies to silence opponents.
This is obviously unjust and so I’ve mirrored the video, and encourage others to do the same.
You can also go give Thought Slime support on the links here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrr7y8rEXb7_RiVniwvzk9w

https://www.twitch.tv/thoughtslime
https://twitter.com/ThoughtSlime

Surprising spider industry

I have an office spider, Diana, who lives in a display case with a wooden climbing frame and a floor made of left over calcareous sand and shells from my aquarist days. Today I found that she’d seized stuff from the ground, like this:

…lifted them up to her web up high, and build a hemispherical nest, which she was snuggled down inside of. Clever girl.

If you want to see the nest, I put a photo on Patreon (reminder: I have a patreon account I use to try to pay off our legal debt) and also on Instagram.

We’ve got to break out of the binary

I’m not enthusiastic about getting a slap in the face in November, but it beats getting a chainsaw to the crotch, for sure.

Now waiting for all of us to realize that we’re being herded into this duality to accept our punishment when maybe there’s a third way that doesn’t involve either slapping or chainsaws. We just have to figure out how to get there.

The sad thing is that faced with what should be an obvious choice, there are lots of people who will welcome the chainsaw.

Mark Siddall becomes famous for something! Not for what he would have intended

The AMNH cracks down on a harasser.

I don’t know the guy, and hadn’t heard anything about his behavior until now — the whisper networks are pretty good at the ‘whisper’ part and focus their messages on the people who need to hear them for their own defense, which is not me. I’m not at all privy to the man’s actions, but for an institution as staid and conservative as the AMNH to fire someone they once featured in a children’s video says something awful was going on. They have typically been thorough in covering up problems (not a good look), but we are starting to hear from the people he harassed.

There are big questions here, though. He’s been a problem for many, many years, and nothing was done — he was allowed to take on women as students. I don’t know whether to be surprised or groan at the familiarity of it all. The larger and more prestigious the institution, the more likely there will be some people in the upper ranks who practice denial. What that means then is that the problem festers, and eventually there has to be a big ugly break after years of peoples’ lives and careers are ruined.

You can learn more about this mess at Balter’s Blog.

Over the last 24 hours, a number of Siddall’s victims and their allies (including people the victims have told) have taken to social media to briefly describe their experiences with him. A key, widely shared demand is that the museum engage in full disclosure of how and why Siddall was allowed to traumatize colleagues for so many years. That means disclosing who knew, when and what they knew, and what they did or did not do about it. Perhaps will take some lawsuits from survivors to pry that information loose, but the museum would be better off doing its own, fully transparent, inquiry now, and let the chips fall where they may. Perhaps even a fully independent inquiry would be necessary to get at the truth.

The AMNH is evidently hoping that getting rid of Siddall after all these years, with a minimal internal announcement to museum staff, is enough to show that they take harassment seriously. Bullshit. My sources say that the museum administration was fully aware–right up to the top ranks–of Siddall’s behavior all this time, but that the HR department was used as a shield to deflect all complaints. They got away with this for years. We still don’t know what the actual findings were in the investigation of Neil deGrasse Tyson, for example; and the only time that the museum has shown any transparency was in the case of disgraced human origins curator and sexual predator Brian Richmond. Why? Because Science magazine already had the whole story.

This is what happens if you’re not swift to respond and transparent about how you handle the accusations — someone is going to sink their teeth into the story and guilt will shift from the bad guy who was abusing people to all of the bad guys who are sheltering the culprit. Perhaps you too are an amoral exploiter who has risen in the ranks of the administration, and I can’t possibly reach you with appeals to morality and goodness; but can I appeal to your selfishness? The bad guys will eventually be exposed, and then you are going to be in the crosshairs…and you’re going to deserve it.

Maybe the botox has leaked into his brain?

I really can’t stand listening to Sam Harris — he is a dreadfully boring speaker whose schtick is to reduce racism to a bland, boring mediocrity that we’re supposed to just accept. I managed to get all the way through this interview on BBC Hardtalk because the interviewer actually pushes back on him. I almost bailed, though, at seeing Harris, who looks chillingly botoxed or processed by some video filter, matching the plastic quality of his arguments.

For instance, he goes off on the Black Lives Matter movement, accusing it of “identity politics” and seeing racism everywhere, even where it’s not. To back up his claim that concerns about racism are overblown, Harris says out of his emotionless white face that Black Americans are roughed up by the police far more often than white people, but on a per incident basis, black people are less likely to be murdered.

No, really, he says that.

That’s right. If cops beat up white people robbing gas stations, and they also beat up black people robbing gas stations and jaywalking, then black people are less likely to get shot in any particular encounter with the police. Gosh. What a triumph of statistical bullshit.

If you want an example of a calm, polite racist holding odious views while denying that he’s a racist, just tune in to Harris. Or don’t. You’ll be less angry if you don’t.

He is truly a worthy successor to Kent Hovind

I made another Bad Science Sunday video, this one about Matt Powell. He claims to have debunked evolution in 50 seconds, and in that short claim he makes one of the dumbest creationist arguments ever…and he presents it in total seriousness in the style of a high school debate team point. The smug ignorance has to be something he got by aping Hovind.

At the end he claims to have refuted evolution using science and logic, neither of which are on display in his argument.

The sleep of the innocent

I sleep fairly well — as I’ve gotten older, I sleep less, but most nights I go to bed, read quietly for an hour or so, and within minutes of turning out the lights, I’m out. Then I’ll typically wake up around 5:30am. I get between 6 and 7 hours of solid sleep most nights, which is about what I need. That’s my pattern, I’m sticking with it.

Clearly, the reason I sleep well is because I’m an atheist — you know, unconflicted by storms of Catholic guilt or Protestant sanctimony. At least, that’s the implication of a study. After all, when it’s called a “study”, you know it’s serious business.

A new study out of Baylor University finds that 73% of atheists and agnostics sleep at least seven hours a night, compared to only 55% of Baptists and 63% of Catholics. Atheists and agnostics also reported fewer difficulties falling asleep at night. The findings held even after controlling for details like age and socioeconomic status.

Gosh, it fits my personal experience as an atheist, so I get that little buzz of confirmation. I don’t have any personal experience sleeping as a Baptist or Catholic, but I still get a little buzz at the idea that the Others are tossing and turning at night. And now, when my religious friends (if I had any!) show up at work tired and red-eyed, I get the smug satisfaction of being able to tell them they ought to become an atheist so they can get a good night’s rest for a change.

If I were an idiot.

I took a look at the study. They’re just mining a bigger data set for correlations, which is not a kind of science I care much for. In other words, there was a survey that asked a large collection of semi-random questions of religious and non-religious people, and then afterwards they fished for anything that might show a difference. It could maybe be useful if they followed through and figured out what caused the difference. But they don’t; this is just a cold wet plop of an observation from a data set.

Another thing that always bugs me is that when a study is reported in the popular press they always strip out important qualifiers that at least the original work includes.

Religious affiliation was associated with sleep duration, but not in the predicted direction. Atheists/Agnostics (73%) were significantly more likely to report meeting consensus sleep duration guidelines than religiously-affiliated individuals (65%), p< .05. For example, Atheists/Agnostics reported better sleep duration than Catholics (63%, p< .01) and Baptists (55%, p<.001). Atheists/Agnostics also reported less difficulty falling asleep at night than Catholics (p=.02) and Baptists (p< .001).

Notice the word I highlighted: these are the results of a self-reported survey. They don’t necessarily mean what you think they mean. It could mean that atheists are very insecure and like to lie positively about their health and confidence. Go ahead, Baptists! You can read it that way! Even if I know in my heart that you are tormented by your god-belief.

That’s the only thing that jumped out at me about this trivial and mundane study. It’s a great example of how the press likes to file the serial numbers off a paper: they report “atheists sleep better” when the actual paper says “atheists report that they sleep better”. In this case, they’re making a change that’s favorable to the godless, but it’s also what they do with studies that go the other way. This paper even begins with a statement of the common presupposition!

The psychology of religion literature indicates that religious engagement is beneficial to physical and mental health.

I don’t trust that interpretation any more than I do the suggestion that atheism is beneficial to your sleep.

Also, it’s a Templeton funded study.