Aww, I have a fan!

I am blessed with the talent to infuriate people like this.

Try out the new ™PZ Myers Target! Guaranteed to sharpen your shooting skills and hone your hunting instincts… almost as good as blasting the REAL thing!

Based upon the Trayvon Martin hoodie design, this target naturally inspires a sense of righteous indignation in any patriotic, God-fearing citizen worried about the encroaching subversive elements in our society.

While we can’t reproduce the EXACT dimensions of our portly infidel guru, given his walrus-like girth and facial features, this target, nonetheless, will provide hours of fun shooting for every family member!

Suitable for either slow and deliberate surgical sniper fire, or combat-style, full-auto machine gun and riot shotgun blasts, this durable target will acclimate the conscientious patriot/Christian to the pleasures of obliterating a national disgrace and social cancer without the legal entanglements that usually follow.

We’re currently working on a 3-D version that more fully simulates the structural characteristics of a grossly overweight anti-theist boar, so you can actually see pieces of the fat bastard fly off as you hit it with all manner of artillery.

Great fun for the whole family!

Don’t feel left out. He’s a hysterical anti-Semite, homophobe, and 9/11 Truther who despises atheists, so he probably hates you, too.

Academic freedom isn’t always honored in the breach

This is a rather chilling story of academic freedom getting trampled. A whole pile of documentation is available at that link, I’ll try to simplify it down a lot.

UC Davis was sponsoring a public seminar on prostate cancer; specifically, they were actively promoting the prostate specific antigen (PSA) test. One professor, Michael Wilkes, objected — the PSA test is now discouraged as worse than useless. Wilkes is a specialist in prostate cancer; he knew this. Heck, I knew this, and my local MD knows this. He explained to the department that was sponsoring the seminar that it was wrong, and he also published an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle that does a very good job of explaining why tests with lots of false positives and false negatives are no good.

UC Davis just announced a seminar for the public on “men’s health.” That title notwithstanding, the program appears to be entirely about prostate cancer and in particular about the prostate specific antigen screening test. Prostate cancer can be devastating, and the PSA is intended to find cancer early – in time to do something about it.

If only it were that simple. Research has shown that there are steps people can take to improve the quality and length of their lives, even before they’re having any symptoms. (That’s what “screening” for disease is.)

Unfortunately, though, the devil’s in the details, and many possible screening programs turn out not to do any good – and in fact some tests like PSA cause harm. That’s why virtually all expert public health panels do not recommend the PSA test.

A blood test that isn’t accurate can fail to find disease that’s present, leading to false reassurance. It can also report disease when it’s not really there, leading to unnecessary use of other tests (like biopsy) that are not so benign. Perhaps most concerning, the PSA test frequently identifies something that qualifies as cancer under a microscope but acts nothing like cancer in real life. That is to say, the large majority of PSA-discovered “cancers” would never cause any problem whatsoever if they went undetected.

But because doctors can’t tell whether one of these “cancers” is benign (as it usually is), or might occasionally be one of the bad actors, finding something through screening invariably leads to treating it.

Most of the men so treated would have been just fine if they never knew about the cancer. But when they’re treated (whether with surgery, radiation or chemotherapy), the majority suffer really life- affecting effects, such as impotence and/or incontinence. That’s why both of the two very large trials of PSA screening published in 2009 found no (or at most a tiny) benefit, but a great deal of harm.

Wilkes was doing exactly what a responsible scientist ought to do, correcting public misinformation about his field of expertise.

Unfortunately, a dean, an associate dean, and the Health System counsel at UC Davis were very upset that a professor was criticizing a public health program that they were putting on. Never mind that they were dispensing unsound health information; he was dissing their turf. Among other things, they responded by threatening Wilkes academic appointment and and taking away his lab space.

The good news in the end, though, is that the UC Davis Committee on Academic Freedom and Responsibility has come through; reviewing the case, they’ve determined that Wilkins’ academic freedom was violated and slapped down the various administrators who’d punished him for being a responsible public scholar.

I’m wondering, though, how often these kinds of cases come up and the scholarly responsibilities are squelched. For a lot of people, these are tough decisions: their livelihood can be threatened and their ability to do the work they love compromised. I’m incredibly fortunate in my case to have tenure at a university that so far has demonstrated a commendable commitment to academic freedom — I can publicly declare that my university’s Center for Spirituality and Healing is a colossal boondoggle and complete betrayal of reason and responsibility, and my job is still safe.

But then, I know of other cases. I have a colleague at another university who learned that they were offering seminars that were far worse than what UC Davis was doing — we’re talking New Age bullshit by a con artist who is promising to teach magic powers — and so wrote a polite letter to the individuals in charge of the program. The response was a complete blow-off, an endorsement of the charlatan, and a gentle suggestion that my colleague’s nose ought to stay out of this affair, or risk being an unemployed appendage. I am itching to scream bloody outrage at this nonsense, but I can’t…it’s not my job that would be on the line.

So tell me…who else is experiencing quackery and bullshit peddled through their place of employment, and can’t speak out because your administration is staffed by pandering ignoramuses? Dish, please. Anonymity will be respected.

Keep Sanal Edamaruku out of jail

The Catholic church is up to their old tricks again, this time in India. They’re trying to get a skeptic imprisoned for exposing a phony “miracle”.

Sanal Edamaruku, President of the Indian Rationalist Association, has for decades been a tireless campaigner for science and against superstition. He is widely known for his exposure of the tricks used by self-professed ‘God-Men’ and gurus and has often been on Indian television explaining the everyday science behind supposed miracles.

After one such exposure – he pointed out that the “blood” oozing from a statue of Christ at the Catholic Church of Our Lady of Velan kanni in Vile Parle, Mumbai was in fact water from a leaky pipe – the Catholic Church of Mumbai made a formal complaint about him to the Mumbai police. He stands accused of “deliberately hurting religious feelings and attempting malicious acts intended to outrage the religious sentiments of any class or community”, an offence under Section 295(a) of the Indian Penal Code. No arrest warrant has been issued but the case is "cognisable" meaning the police can arrest without warrant at any time. He is being harassed daily by the Mumbai authorities who, under pressure from Catholic groups, are insisting that he turn himself in. His petition for “anticipatory bail” was turned down on 3 June 2012 on the bizarre grounds that he would be safer in custody. If he is arrested he will therefore most likely be detained in jail until court proceedings are concluded, which could take several years. Fearing arrest, he dares not stay long at home or work.

Go sign the petition.

Atheism should be science and social justice, not science vs. social justice

I have received a couple of complaints about Sikivu Hutchinson, complaints that were also cc’ed to a number of big names in the atheist movement, which is weird. Why complain to me? Apparently my correspondent wants me to write a rebuttal to some remarks she made in the May issue of International Humanist News. Here are the offensive comments:

Engaging in science fetishism without a social justice lens merely reproduces the white supremacist logic of the New Atheist Movement.

If much of the New Atheist fervor springs from the endless culture war over evolution and church/state separation, contemporary black humanist ideology emerges from a social justice lens.

[Read more…]

Blogathon Week 2012

It’s starting this weekend: the craziest bloggers in the atheist/skeptic blogosphere are going to be doing marathon scribbling from 9 June to 16 June, all to raise money for the Secular Student Alliance. Look over there on the right: there’s a widget installed to make it easy for you to click and contribute money to a good cause…and they’re already over the halfway mark before even starting, thanks to a donation from the Stiefel Foundation. Look at the schedule — you’ll see which blog to tune into and when to see non-stop conversation. You can help by donating, or also by simply participating — show up in the comments section at 3am to inspire them to keep going.

Why I won’t be going to TAM this year

Regretfully, I won’t be going to The Amazing Meeting next month. It’s a small thing; it’s a great meeting, I do think DJ Grothe has made a good effort to improve it over the years, but recent events have simply cooled my enthusiasm. It was a terribly clumsy mistake to accuse Rebecca Watson of undermining the meeting (a mistake he has apologized for) — she has not only cheerfully promoted TAM every year, but has been an activist doing fundraising to send more people to the meeting. Then we got the accusation that “one blog network” (this one) fosters the idea that going to skeptic/atheist meeting means you would be “assaulted, harassed, or worse“, which is simply not true. Every year I have promoted TAM enthusiastically, and as an activist, I’ve been encouraging people to attend these kinds of meetings everywhere…and I’ve been specifically encouraging women to increase their participation.

So I find myself a little less than gung-ho about flying off to Vegas next month. Sorry. Maybe next year.

I know DJ is wondering why fewer women are registering this year, and I’m sure he wants to keep the meeting lively and enticing for the coming years, so I’ll explain a little more why I can be lackadaisical, and it might help DJ understand where the problem really lies. It’s not in the people who offer constructive criticism — they’re the sensors who help the meeting be more adaptable — it’s simpler than that.

TAM isn’t the only game in town any more. There’s Skepticon, NECSS, SkeptiCal, and lots of local meetings. Atheist meetings have adapted and become a lot less dry and far more inclusive; I’d go so far as to say that the TAM style has been stolen and freely used, with atheist meetings becoming more diverse and including science and skepticism in their purview. Heck, science fiction conventions like Dragon*Con and Convergence are doing it. The success of the movement means we’re entering Darwin’s domain, and competition is growing fiercer.

It is a huge mistake to see attendance at one con experiencing a few rough spots, and to then turn to your most fervent, reliable participants and pin the blame on them. You’re in a situation where the little things can cost you your edge; adapt or die.

So, in this world of many great conventions, I simply have no difficulty at all in crossing one off my list this year. It’s not a condemnation, just a little “meh” from one potential attendee (I know, those can add up), and maybe next year the current wobble will be corrected and I’ll be back cheerleading.

Also, let me emphasize that I have no illusions that I’m ‘punishing’ TAM — in this happy world of an expanding movement, there is also no shortage of participants, and I certainly don’t consider myself indispensable. It’s also the month before the meeting, so most of you will have already made the commitment or not, so I’m not trying to dissuade anyone, either. I do hope DJ listens more attentively to this year’s attendees, though.

Vox Day is one sick puppy

I don’t do debates anymore. One reason is that they give the other side far too much credibility; another is that the format rewards rhetoric, not honesty. But the other big reason is sheer disgust at the spectacle these loons can put on.

Imagine this metaphorical situation: you’re at a debate, and your opponent stands up and in the first round, starts punching himself in the face. Punching hard, until the blood spurts in great red rivers out of his nose. You’re aghast, but when your turn comes up, you try to make your points; in rebuttal, he pulls out a knife and starts gouging out one of his eyeballs. You just want to stop the whole debacle, call an ambulance, and have the poor warped goon hauled away. But then afterwards, he crows victory.

That’s a bit of hyperbole, but not by much. Theodore Beale, aka Vox Day, has leapt upon my post in which I used the status of women as evidence that religion does harm to humanity, and eagerly tries to rebut me in a spectacular act of self-mutilation. I won’t link directly to poor sick Theodore Beale — he needs psychiatric help — but fortunately Dave Futrelle quotes him extensively, so you can get the gist without feeding Beale’s pathology directly.

But there’s enough bile to make you wonder. I was arguing that many features of religion clearly don’t benefit women, so I asked:

How does throwing acid in their faces when they demand independence from men benefit women?

So Teddy rebuts that in the most appalling way.

[F]emale independence is strongly correlated with a whole host of social ills. Using the utilitarian metric favored by most atheists, a few acid-burned faces is a small price to pay for lasting marriages, stable families, legitimate children, low levels of debt, strong currencies, affordable housing, homogenous populations, low levels of crime, and demographic stability. If PZ has turned against utilitarianism or the concept of the collective welfare trumping the interests of the individual, I should be fascinated to hear it.

Say what? So his answer to how this benefits women is to say it’s bad for society for women to be independent, and that honor killings, stonings, and mutilation of women is a small price?

I think he just made my case for me.

But how about this: Beale has not made the case that destroying women’s lives is a necessary price to pay for social stability. I reject his bargain; I say we can have a more stable, healthier, stronger society if human beings live in mutually loving and respectful relationships. I do not have to hover over my wife with a threatening jar of acid in order for both of us to live together happily; in fact, a life where I had to compel a partnership with terror would be a horror and a nightmare.

One more. I also asked this:

How does letting women die rather than giving them an abortion benefit women?

Here’s his answer.

Because far more women are aborted than die as a result of their pregnancies going awry. The very idea that letting a few women die is worse than killing literally millions of unborn women shows that PZ not only isn’t thinking like a scientist, he’s quite clearly not thinking rationally at all. If PZ is going to be intellectually consistent here, then he should be quite willing to support the abortion of all black fetuses, since blacks disproportionately commit murder and 17x more people could be saved by aborting black fetuses than permitting the use of abortion to save the life of a mother. 466 American women die in pregnancy every year whereas 8,012 people died at the hands of black murderers in 2010.

A fetus is not a woman. I’m used to hearing those wacky anti-choicers call the fetus a “baby”, with all those emotional connotations, but this is the first time I’ve heard them called “women”.

The racist tirade is just sickening. So now Beale wants us to lump all black people together as “murderers” to justify forced sterilization, as a logical consequence of my values? I’ve heard of that tactic somewhere else before.

Again with the logical fallacies. Here’s a hint: the death of women in back-alley abortions can be directly addressed by legalizing abortion and providing responsible medical treatment; the socioeconomic conditions that create an environment of crime are not addressed by racially-defined forced abortion. If we want to end murders by any population (yes, please), the answer is not the extermination of that population, but the correction of social and economic inequity and providing opportunity for advancement.

And with that, I’m sufficiently repulsed not to want to continue. Beale/Day has apparently been whiningly demanding to debate me for the last few years; now you know why I won’t even consider it. Getting his words as second-hand text is nauseating enough, I’d rather not have to deal with the poisonous little scumbag directly.