Faith healing and me

In yesterday’s post and earlier I have expressed my fury with parents who let their children suffer and die because they withheld medical care, believing that their faith will heal the child. P. Z. Myers documents some other abuses inflicted by parents on children. Such acts are nothing short of criminal because they sacrifice the health and even the life of a child on the altar of parental superstition. There is no evidence that faith healers can do what they claim to do and plenty of evidence that they are at best misguided and self-delusional or outright frauds preying on the gullible.
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Why do they hate us?

In an article titled It’s the Occupation, Stupid, Robert Pape of the University of Chicago, who has been studying terrorism in many countries for a long time, says that the argument that we hear that terrorists hate us for who we are and what we represent, as formulated bt then president George W. Bush that “They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other” is simply not true.

New research provides strong evidence that suicide terrorism such as that of 9/11 is particularly sensitive to foreign military occupation, and not Islamic fundamentalism or any ideology independent of this crucial circumstance. Although this pattern began to emerge in the 1980s and 1990s, a wealth of new data presents a powerful picture.

More than 95 percent of all suicide attacks are in response to foreign occupation, according to extensive research that we conducted at the University of Chicago’s Project on Security and Terrorism, where we examined every one of the over 2,200 suicide attacks across the world from 1980 to the present day.
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Intelligent decisions require putting all the facts before us and considering new approaches. The first step is recognizing that occupations in the Muslim world don’t make Americans any safer — in fact, they are at the heart of the problem.

How religions mainstream insanity

Some time ago, I wrote a post titled Suffer little children about children who are allowed to suffer and even die because of the religious beliefs of their parents. I mentioned the tragic case of a woman Ria Ramkissoon with a child named Javon who in 2006 joined a Christian religious group whose leader, who called herself Queen Antoinette, demanded total obedience from her followers.

Sometime in 2007, Antoinette was angered when Javon did not say ‘Amen’ after his meals (he was just 16 months old at that time). Antoinette said that Javon was a demon and demanded that food be with held from him until he said ‘Amen’, and the mother complied with the order. The child died of starvation. Queen Antoinette said that God would bring Javon back to life but only if they had enough faith, and she ordered everyone to pray. But of course, god did nothing of the sort and as the body began decomposing, Antoinette ordered his body placed inside a suitcase where it was eventually discovered in 2008 in a storage shed. [Read more…]

The internet as a new media model

An interesting example of the power and utility of the internet was a recent case in England. Simon Singh, in an article in the London Guardian, criticized the British Chiropractic Association “for claiming that its members could treat children for colic, ear infections, asthma, prolonged crying, and sleeping and feeding conditions by manipulating their spines… Singh said that claims were made without sufficient evidence, described the treatments as “bogus”, and criticised the BCA for “happily promoting” them.”

The BCA sued Singh personally under Britain’s absurdly strict libel laws and he faced the possibility of financial ruin. But what happened was that a volunteer army of bloggers swung into action investigating every single claim of the chiropractors and showing that Singh’s charge was true. As Ben Goldacre writes:

Fifteen months after the case began, the BCA finally released the academic evidence it was using to support specific claims. Within 24 hours this was taken apart meticulously by bloggers, referencing primary research papers, and looking in every corner.

Professor David Colquhoun of UCL pointed out, on infant colic, that the BCA cited weak evidence in its favour, while ignoring strong evidence contradicting its claims. He posted the evidence and explained it. LayScience flagged up the BCA selectively quoting a Cochrane review. Every stone was turned by Quackometer, APGaylard, Gimpyblog, EvidenceMatters, Dr Petra Boynton, MinistryofTruth, Holfordwatch, legal blogger Jack of Kent, and many more. At every turn they have taken the opportunity to explain a different principle of evidence based medicine – the sin of cherry-picking results, the ways a clinical trial can be unfair by design – to an engaged lay audience, with clarity as well as swagger.
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But more interestingly than that, a ragged band of bloggers from all walks of life has, to my mind, done a better job of subjecting an entire industry’s claims to meaningful, public, scientific scrutiny than the media, the industry itself, and even its own regulator. (my italics)

As a result, the chiropractors dropped their claim against Singh and may now have to pay his legal costs as well. The claims of the chiropractors have been exposed to the whole world.

Legendary journalist I. F. Stone was probably the prototypical blogger before the internet even existed, doing the kind of detailed analysis that good reporting requires and which requires a passion for the work. It cannot be just a job. Victor Navasky says that Stone,

although he never attended presidential press conferences, cultivated no highly placed inside sources and declined to attend off-the-record briefings, time and again he scooped the most powerful press corps in the world.

His method: To scour and devour public documents, bury himself in The Congressional Record, study obscure Congressional committee hearings, debates and reports, all the time prospecting for news nuggets (which would appear as boxed paragraphs in his paper), contradictions in the official line, examples of bureaucratic and political mendacity, documentation of incursions on civil rights and liberties. He lived in the public domain.

There is still an essential role for journalists to go out and gather first-hand information, questioning people, and obtaining documents. But they are inadequate when it comes to analysis either because they filter the raw information through the establishment lens or they simply do not have the time or knowledge or expertise to do a thorough examination and analysis. It is mostly bloggers who are now doing that kind of thing, picking up Stone’s baton and working in the public domain to glean information that the big media journalists cannot or will not do. Of course, there is a huge amount of rubbish on the internet. But as time goes by, bloggers and their readers will become much better at what they do, the former becoming more careful and authoritative, the latter at being able to distinguish good sources of information from the bad.

I. F. Stone’s own credo is a inspiration to all independent journalists and bloggers: “To write the truth as I see it; to defend the weak against the strong; to fight for justice; and to seek, as best I can, to bring healing perspectives to bear on the terrible hates and fears of mankind, in the hope of someday bringing about one world, in which men will enjoy the differences of the human garden instead of killing each other over them.”