I’ve so late in tallying up the Molly nominations lately, that I thought for a change I’d get the March Molly award done on time, and a little early even.
This one was easy: it was a landslide for Josh, Official SpokesGay. Every blog should have an official SpokesGay.
Now, start nominatin’ for the April Molly by leaving a comment here.
Some yogi in India claims that he hasn’t eaten, drunk, or used a bathroom in 70 years.
Yeah, right.
Now the Indian military is studying him because, obviously, soldiers who don’t need to be provisioned would be rather useful…which assumes that this nonsense is even worth studying.
Two cameras have been set up in his room, while a mobile camera films him when he goes outside, guaranteeing round-the-clock observation.
His body will be scanned and his brain and heart activity measured with electrodes.
“The observation from this study may throw light on human survival without food and water,” said Dr G. Ilavazahagan, who is directing the research.
That short description already tells me they’re going at this all wrong. He goes outside? Where? How secure is this test?
And they’re plugging him into electrodes and recording EMGs and EEGs? Why? That’s not interesting at all. The interesting claim is the idea that he doesn’t eat or drink. Those don’t test that in the slightest, but do lend a pseudo-sciencey air to the proceedings.
They claim he has been observed closely for a week, and hasn’t ingested or excreted anything at all. I don’t believe it. I suspect that there have been some very sloppy procedures going on, or that the guy has an accomplice or assistant, or both.
What they really need is a James Randi. If I were in charge, I’d give the yogi a very nice single room with books and a meditation mat and whatever non-edible, non-drinkable luxury items he wanted…and I’d put him in there for four weeks, monitored by video cameras, and lock the door. Just to be nice, I’d also put a couple of bottles of water in the room, in case he breaks. But if he is really able to live without sustenance, that’s the ability we have to test first, and test well.
If he came out after a month, perfectly healthy, the water in the room untouched, the video cameras showing no untoward intervention, then we can talk about fancy-pants physiological testing.
Tim Minchin has a new and utterly delightful little song about the Pope. Warning: it’s catchy. You might end up singing it around the house.
Oh, and also…it’s a teeny bit naughty. Maybe not safe for work, unless you work in a Catholic office — then you should turn it up loud.
Also, if you’re one of those people who fret over “tone”: insert your name where ever Tim says “Pope”.
At last, some research in communicating evolution that I can agree with, because it corresponds to my prior experience and biases! Which is exactly the wrong reason to agree with it, of course, but it’s a start, and with some significant reservations, is an interesting foundation to argue over.
Here’s the abstract. It’s a paper describing general strategies for winning over participants in public debates about science, which basically says, in terms more familiar to us, that waffling accommodationists are losers.
Public debates driven by incomplete scientific data where nobody can claim absolute certainty, due to current state of scientific knowledge, are studied. The cases of evolution theory, global warming and H1N1 pandemic influenza are investigated. The first two are of controversial impact while the third is more neutral and resolved. To adopt a cautious balanced attitude based on clear but inconclusive data appears to be a lose-out strategy. In contrast overstating arguments with wrong claims which cannot be scientifically refuted appear to be necessary but not sufficient to eventually win a public debate. The underlying key mechanism of these puzzling and unfortunate conclusions are identified using the Galam sequential probabilistic model of opinion dynamics. It reveals that the existence of inflexible agents and their respective proportions are the instrumental parameters to determine the faith of incomplete scientific data public debates. Acting on one’s own inflexible proportion modifies the topology of the flow diagram, which in turn can make irrelevant initial supports. On the contrary focusing on open-minded agents may be useless given some topologies. When the evidence is not as strong as claimed, the inflexibles rather than the data are found to drive the opinion of the population. The results shed a new but disturbing light on designing adequate strategies to win a public debate.
So when you’ve got an argument going, and one side has the evidence but the other side has an inflexible certainty that the evidence is wrong, the inflexibles tend to distort the normal process of weighing the evidence and drawing reasonable conclusions — they suck in more uncommitted participants (called ‘floaters’) to their way of thinking, generating more inflexibles, strengthing the position of the anti-science side, leading to greater attraction to being wrong. The counter-strategy, suggested later in the paper, is to ‘get more inflexibles’ — winning over floaters so they drift over to your side has little long-term impact, it’s far better to build a larger army of forceful advocates for your position.
Now for the reservations, though. This isn’t real social science: dig into the paper deeper and you discover it is entirely theoretical, based on a mathematical model of human behavior. Hmmm. It’s all well and good to say that a population of autonomous agents with properties X, Y, and Z will behave in a particular way in a simulation, but, well, people tend to be very messy beings. I don’t have a background in this field to be able to say whether the model has good empirical support or not, so I’m not going to be able to say that the Pharyngula model for arguing over evolution, that is, by unreserved and loud advocacy that steamrollers the opposition as much as possible, has been proven to be correct.
But that’s what this paper says I should do anyway! If I want to persuade, it’s best to avoid those fuzzy little tentative words, go gung ho for the answer you want. Which in a lot of ways is undesirable, actually.
The results shed a new but disturbing light on Designing adequate strategies to eventually win public debates. To produce inflexibles in one’s own side is thus critical to win a public argument whatever the rigor cost and the associated epistemological paradoxes. At odds, to focus on convincing open-minded agents is useless. In summary, when the scientific evidence is not as strong as claimed, the inflexibles rather than the data are found to drive the collective opinion of the population. Consequences on Designing adequate strategies to win a public debate are discussed.
OK. We need more positive inflexibles. Got it. (Oh, and by the way, the paper has an annoying trait of capitalizing “Design” wherever it occurs. Don’t know why, it may just be grep run amuck.)
However, I have another reservation. What’s this “when the scientific evidence is not as strong as claimed” business? The author has his own peculiar blindspot, where he thinks biologists have been overstating the evidence for evolution. That isn’t true at all.
However the major outcome of our modeling is to confirm the rightness in overstating the validity of Darwin theory to oppose Intelligent Design in terms of success in the public debate. Afterwards our results suggest that in case opponents to Intelligent Design had been more circumspect about the “status” of Darwin theory, they would have lost the public debate. It is a somehow disturbing hypothesis with an embarrassing result for an honest scientist.
Except, no, we have not been insufficienctly circumspect at all. The evidence for evolution really is overwhelmingly in its favor. It isn’t proven in a mathematical sense, there is no illusion that we have accounted for every single possible mechanism, and there is still active exploration of all the details, but there is no doubt anywhere sensible that evolution, that populations change over time driven by natural processes, and that all life on earth shares a common ancestry, is a fact, amply confirmed and tested.
There’s nothing to be embarrassed about open advocacy of a well-demonstrated scientific position at all, and no one is hiding the interesting controversies within the boundaries of that truth. What this really is about is good debating strategies. You do not open a discussion by saying, “Well, we aren’t certain about the relative contributions of chance and selection, and maybe chemical properties dictate some of the outcomes of biological processes, but we’re pretty certain evolution happens.” That puts all the emphasis on doubt. No, you start by saying positively that “Evolution happens, period.” Then you can discuss, if necessary, the ragged edges of the science. The important point, though, is the reality of that core idea, and you have to realize that in many arguments with creationists, it’s not the ragged edges they’re talking about — it’s precisely that scientifically indisputable central fact.
No compromise of the science is required, only a recognition of the actual point being discussed. Where scientists are often handicapped is that they don’t recognized the depth of the denial on the other side, and that their opponents really are happily butting their heads against the rock hard foundation of the science. We tend to assume the creationists can’t really be that stupid, and figure they must have some legitimate complaint about some aspect of evolution with which we can sympathize. They don’t. They really are that nuts.
(via Ben Goldacre)
The word is out: on my way to the Gods & Politics conference in Copenhagen, I’m taking a little detour to visit Oslo, as this forum article mentions.
It’s true! It’s true! Tidenes happening før Skepsikonferansen 2010! En ravende, sinna, og nysgjerrig teddybjørn av en ateist og skeptiker kommer til vårt fagre land i noen dager før Ateistkonferansen i København 18-20. juni.
Han skal være her 16. juni, og skal holde en talk på Litteraturhuset 15.30 -17; om noe om Science Communication. Skal dele link til info når den kommer opp.
Dessuten overleveres han til mine klamme hender når han er ferdig med å skravle med UiO-pampene, og da skal vi finne på noe trivelig. Forvent moro. Hold av kvelden. Dere som liker ham da.
Vi takker CEES for at de inviterte ham, og nyopprettede Studentenes Skeptikerlag Oslo for å dele ham med folket etter foredraget.
I have no idea what she said…but wait, did she call me a “teddybjørn”? Somebody will have to translate the rest for me, or since only Norwegians are going to care, maybe you don’t have to translate at all. Just let me know if there are secret plans in there to have me publicly crucified when I arrive.
Barring any Christian berserkers assaulting me when I arrive (not likely, given Norway’s godlesÃ¥s socialist reputation), it should be fun. The Trophy Wife™ is joining me on this trip, no doubt drawn by the call of the Motherland — her maiden name is good ol’ Norse, Gjerness, and while I’m mongrel American with my maternal Swedish/Norwegian roots muddled with a father who was just about everything else European, she’s one of those purebred Scandinavians. She may also be coming along to keep an eye on me, because she knows from experience that I’ve got a thing for Scandinavian goddesses.
We will be getting out for some social time while we’re there, too. I fear, though, a visit to a nation where beer may be replaced with akevitt. I don’t know if I’ll have the stamina.
This story about the desperation of the French priesthood to recruit new victims has some interesting statistics.
There are around 24,000 priests in France today, down from 42,000 in 1975. The number of Catholics entering the diocese has declined as well, from 116 ordainments in 1999 to 89 in 2009.
…
While 64 percent of the French population, or 41.6 million of the country’s 65 million inhabitants, identifies itself as Catholic, only a little more than 2 million attend church each week, said Jacques Carton, a representative from the Bishops Conference in France.
How desperate are they? Most of the story is about how they’re putting up posters and advertising on Facebook to convince young men to give up sex and commit their lives to sitting in churches and prancing through rituals. Yeah, that’ll work. Why not go all the way and put personals on Craigslist? That would at least sucker a lot of people into contacting them, because they’d all assume it must be something really perverse.
I suggested in jest that maybe we should put England’s sensible Lord Justice Laws on our Supreme Court, but maybe they still need rationalists over there. The Guardian has been using a stellar pro-science panel (Goldacre and Singh, to name two members) to quiz representatives of various political parties on their science stance. They just interviewed the United Kingdom Independence Party, whose representative was…Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. You have got to be kidding; that man is a raving loon. So the UKIP rejects the science of global warming, but advocates for homeopathy.
My favorite part, though, was their position on stem cell research.
Wherever stem cells can be obtained by means other than the killing of very small children, it is ethical only to obtain the stem cells by means that do not involve the loss of little lives. On this basis, there is no reason why Britain should not play a leading part in stem cell research.
That’s completely batty. Why, how can science proceed if we are not free to charge into schoolyards, butchering little tykes so we can harvest a few grams of cells from their guts? The summary of their science policy is damning.
Ukip is the only significant party to support homeopathy, and the only party apart from the BNP still in denial over climate change. The appointment of Viscount Monckton as a science spokesman adds to the air of a party of old British eccentrics.
Woeful.
The one sad bit of this lunatic party is that Pat Condell supports them. Say it ain’t so, Pat — how can anyone defend a party run by refugees from the looney bin?
I think Lord Justice Laws would be an excellent choice, even if he is British. He recently handed down a decision in the case of a therapist who refused to treat same-sex couples that was simply beautiful.
Lord Justice Laws said legislation for the protection of views held purely on religious grounds cannot be justified.
He said it was irrational and “also divisive, capricious and arbitrary”.
Also: cool name for a judge.
I really hate Poe’s Law. I can’t tell if Restore Stephen Baldwin, a web site dedicated to raising money for the evangelical Christian actor, is sincere or not. It’s just too crazy — it’s comparing Baldwin to Job, and shilling for donations so Baldwin can continue to preach about Jesus, despite the fact that he’s a hack actor whose sole affliction is that no one wants to hire him.
What makes me most suspicious is that the guy pushing it doesn’t seem to have read Job, or he wouldn’t be making the comparison. Job lost everything he owned, had all of his children exterminated, and was afflicted with ghastly disfiguring diseases. Baldwin was more of a joke than a charismatic evangelist; Job was righteous, but not a preacher on a skateboard hanging with the cool kids.
But then…that’s no obstacle to believability. Most Christians ignore 99% of the Bible, anyway.
A vitamin D overdose is nothing to laugh about — it’s painful and debilitating, can cause kidney damage, and can kill. This is a case where consuming excessive amounts of a vitamin supplement can do more than help you make expensive urine, and can lead to crippling illness and death. Gary Null is a thorough quack who has been raking in the dough with — you guessed it — nearly worthless vitamin supplements. Now this would simply be a tragic story of one of his poor deluded suckers clients had come to harm from his magic crap food, but it’s almost funny that Null nearly killed himself by eating his own supplements.
It’s not his fault, of course: he’s suing the contractor who made his Ultimate Power Meal, claiming it was all their fault for putting too much vitamin D in one batch. The stuff has been yanked from their catalog, but have no fear, there are still plenty of other overpriced, overhyped, random collections of herbs and other gunk still on the shelves. Go ahead, buy one of his magnetic bras, Prostate Pro, or cellulose pills. They probably won’t kill you.
Null is also now claiming that it was nothing too serious, that vitamin D “dissipates quickly in the body”, and that he has returned to complete health. I guess that means we are free to laugh at him, then!
Unless he’s lying. But a quack wouldn’t lie to us, would he?
