Fisking “Junk Science” and “100 things you should know about DDT”: A new project

June 27, 2007

Looking at the odd campaign against the reputation of Rachel Carson, conducted largely by a group of corporate-paid, political scalawags, one will eventually come across a site named JunkScience.com, which has as a motto, “All the junk that’s fit to debunk.”

One might be forgiven if one assumes that the site debunks junk science claims. But that does not appear to be it’s aim at all. On this page, for example, “100 things you should know about DDT,” the site perpetrates or perpetuates dozens of junk science claims against Rachel Carson, against public health, against government and against reason. The site promotes junk science, rather than debunking it!

For example, I had just read a chunk of history reminding me that our first Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, William Ruckelshaus, had been ordered by a federal court to review the pesticide certification for DDT, and had acted against DDT only after two different review panels recommended it be phased out, and states had already started bans of their own. At the time, in 1972, Ruckelshaus faced a heap of criticism for moving so slowly on the issue.

EPA history caption: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring led to banning DDT and other pesticides. [EPA iimage]

EPA history caption: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring led to banning DDT and other pesticides. [EPA iimage]

How is this action described at JunkScience.com?

You wouldn’t quite recognize the events — and I doubt you could verify other oddities the JunkScience.com site claims:

17. Extensive hearings on DDT before an EPA administrative law judge occurred during 1971-1972. The EPA hearing examiner, Judge Edmund Sweeney, concluded that “DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man… DDT is not a mutagenic or teratogenic hazard to man… The use of DDT under the regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds or other wildlife.”

[Sweeney, EM. 1972. EPA Hearing Examiner’s recommendations and findings concerning DDT hearings, April 25, 1972 (40 CFR 164.32, 113 pages). Summarized in Barrons (May 1, 1972) and Oregonian (April 26, 1972)]

18. Overruling the EPA hearing examiner, EPA administrator Ruckelshaus banned DDT in 1972. Ruckelshaus never attended a single hour of the seven months of EPA hearings on DDT. Ruckelshaus’ aides reported he did not even read the transcript of the EPA hearings on DDT.

[Santa Ana Register, April 25, 1972]

19. After reversing the EPA hearing examiner’s decision, Ruckelshaus refused to release materials upon which his ban was based. Ruckelshaus rebuffed USDA efforts to obtain those materials through the Freedom of Information Act, claiming that they were just “internal memos.” Scientists were therefore prevented from refuting the false allegations in the Ruckelshaus’ “Opinion and Order on DDT.”

I propose to Fisk much of the list of 100 claims against Carson (which is really a list over 100 items now), in a serial, spasmodic fashion. I’ll post my findings here, making them generally available to internet searches for information on Rachel Carson and DDT. Below the fold, I’ll start, with these three specious claims listed above.

Read the rest of this entry »

17 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, Cost of Green, DDT, History, Hoaxes, Natural history, Politics, Rachel Carson, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science, War on Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Insanity spreads through Article II agencies

June 26, 2007

From the Chicago Tribune:

White House press secretary Tony Snow said the president and vice president are not executive “agencies” and are therefore not covered under the executive order, but he stopped short of placing Cheney exclusively in the legislative branch. Snow He said the vice president has served “in an executive capacity delegated to him by the president” and noted that, constitutionally “there are no specified executive activities for the vice president,” and that his role “is a wonderful academic question.”

Chicago Tribune, “Emanuel seeks to cut funding for Cheney’s office, home,” June 26, 2007

Constitution of the United States, Article II, Section 1:

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows . . .

2 Comments | Bogus history, Ethics, Government, History Revisionism, Politics, Presidents, U.S. Constitution, Voodoo history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Setting the record straight on Rachel Carson, malaria and DDT

June 19, 2007

The contemptible campaign of hoax and calumny against the work and memory of Rachel Carson continues. You should read more at the sites I cite near the end of this post.

The key false claim of the Carson critics is that, but for the ban on DDT, millions of lives would have been saved over the past 30 years. Chief problem with the claim is that national bans on DDT all preserve DDT use for essential mosquito eradication, especially if there are no other tools to fight the disease. But other problems with the claim include the fact that DDT had stopped being highly effective by the late 1960s; eradication was a pipe dream, and mosquitoes developed resistance to DDT.

That doesn’t stop the critics. So, Dear Reader, when you read criticisms of Rachel Carson and hear the pseudo-science whine that Carson alone has condemned millions to death by malaria, I want you to keep in mind this question: If DDT were such an effective tool against malaria, why didn’t the World Health Organization fight to keep it? Why didn’t the manufacturers fight to keep it? Why would more than 150 nations, tens of thousands of scientists, tens of thousands of health workers, and conservative “I-told-you-so” skeptics who hate environmentalists, all simultaneously fall asleep?

The answer is, Dear Reader, they didn’t all fall asleep. DDT stopped being effective, and malaria fighters realized there were other problems — the parasites that the mosquitoes spread also became resistant to anti-malaria drugs, a bigger problem than DDT resistance. People and organizations who fight malaria did ask that use of DDT be preserved for spraying to fight malaria; but they didn’t defend it against bans on other use because those bans help the malaria fighters.

Cover of Saving Lives, Buying Time: Economics of Malaria Drugs in an Age of Resistance (2004), from the National Academies Press

Cover of Saving Lives, Buying Time: Economics of Malaria Drugs in an Age of Resistance (2004), from the National Academies Press

Below the fold, I offer two quotes from Saving Lives, Buying Time: Economics of Malaria Drugs in an Age of Resistance (2004) Board on Global Health (BGH) (available from the National Academy of Sciences). You can see that DDT is not the golden-egg-laying goose, and that consequently Rachel Carson is not the mindless ogre she is made out to be in recent invectives.

Check out these sites:

Read the rest of this entry »

6 Comments | Accuracy, Africa, Bogus history, DDT, Green Politics, Hoaxes, Public health, Rachel Carson, Research, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Creation Museum: Sad, beleaguered

June 6, 2007

For those of us who worry at every eruption of intentional ignorance, such as Ken Ham’s Creation Museum, the comments of BBC’s correspondent Justin Webb produce a little salve:

There is nothing remotely convincing about the Creation Museum and frankly if it poses the threat to American science that some American critics claim it does, that seems to me to be as much a commentary on the failings of the scientific establishment as it is on the creationists.

And a bit later:

At the Creation Museum, goggle-eyed children watch depictions of the Great Flood in which children and their mums and dads are consumed, because God is cross.

In a nation of kindly moderate people I am not sure this is the future.

I put my faith – in America.

Mencken’s hoax about bathtubs in the White House was innocent enough, but impossible to kill (yet). Ham’s hoax about science, at $27 million (U.S. reports) or $30 million, doesn’t have the grace of its perpetrator confessing the hoax and urging correction (yet).

Faith in America is reassuring, until one remembers P. T. Barnum’s faith that Americans include a “sucker born every minute,” and Tom Sawyer’s assessment of small town politics: ‘Ain’t we got every fool in town on our side? And ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?’

3 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, Creationism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Museums, Natural history, Science, Science and faith, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Bogus science palace puts blot on Memorial Day remembrances

May 27, 2007

There’s not much to add, beyond the three-quarters of a hundred entries in the one time Ken Ham’s Creation Museum blog carnival, hosted at Pharyngula by P. Z. Myers.

Those we honor on Memorial Day fought, and died, to preserve Ken Ham’s right to believe any fool thing he wants to believe.  That’s part of the ironic beauty of our Constitution and those who fight to defend it.

Having a right to believe any fool thing, and promoting fool ideas with $27 million given by people who expected one to tell the truth, are probably separate, different things.

Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, Bill of Rights, Bogus history, Creationism, Education, Evolution, Free speech, Freedom - Political, History Revisionism, Hoaxes, Natural history, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Historical fiction: Churchill and Fleming, and antibiotics

May 26, 2007

Is this old dead duck still circulating?

The story is that a poor farm kid in England Scotland saves a rich kid from drowning, and the rich family offers to pay for college for the poor kid. The poor kid goes to college, and later makes a great discovery, and that discovery later saves the life of a member of the rich family, who goes on to save the world.

Churchill in Tunisia, 1943, visiting New Zealand’s 2nd Division, with Bernard Freyberg, known as Tiny

Churchill in Tunisia, 1943, visiting New Zealand’s 2nd Division, with Bernard Freyberg, known as Tiny

In various forms I’ve seen this story, that a member of the Churchill family, or Winston Churchill himself, was saved by a member of the Fleming family, or Sir Alexander Fleming himself (the discoverer of penicillin). Then, years later Churchill has a deadly infection, but his life is saved by Fleming’s discovery.

It’s a great story, actually, but it is fabrication from start to finish, laced with famous names, our natural ignorance of some parts of history, and our desire for such coincidences to be true. It’s such a great story that the wrong, hoax version still circulates even after it is so easy to learn that the story is wrong.

The Churchill Centre, in England, has a denial that should be embarrassing to Americans and Christians — they point out it was distributed in the 1950s by churches here.

The story apparently originated in Worship Programs for Juniors, by Alice A. Bays and Elizabeth Jones Oakberg, published ca. 1950 by an American religious house, in a chapter entitled “The Power of Kindness.”

Here are several ways to tell the story is false: Read the rest of this entry »

10 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, History, Hoaxes, Science, Winston Churchill, World War II | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Quote of the Moment: Physicist Bob Park, on the Creationism Museum

May 25, 2007

The museum is a monument to the failure of education.

o Bob Park, “What’s New,” May 25, 2007

[See full quote below the fold]

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a Comment » | Bogus history, Creationism, Natural history, Science, Science and faith, Voodoo history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Creationist math, creationist accuracy

May 24, 2007

From today’s Christian Science Monitor, a story about Ken Ham’s Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky:

The $27 million museum set on 50 acres opens on Memorial Day, and [Answers in Genesis] AiG hopes for 250,000 visitors a year. Mr. Ham, a former science teacher in Australia, is direct about the museum’s purpose: to restore the Bible to its “rightful authority” in society.

And, later in the article:

No one has a handle on the scope of creationism’s influence, says [Ronald] Numbers, author of “The Creationists.” “Intelligent design” (which disputes aspects of evolution but accepts that the universe is billions of years old) has been more in the news recently. But AiG, simply one group in the creationism fold, is clearly doing well. The museum has 8,500 charter members, [Mark] Looy says [AIG’s p.r. guy], and is all paid for – by donations averaging $100.

Now, I admit to having had difficulty with calculus in college. But even using a calculator to make sure my in-the-head numbers were right, 8,500 members multiplied by an average contribution of $100 equals $850,000. That’s considerably less than the $27 million advertised at the top of the article.

There’s a gap of more than $26 million in those figures. Where did the extra $26 million come from?

Is that where the money missing from Iraq went? Is Judge Crater in one of the displays? Is their claim of a 6,000-year-old Earth also off by a factor of at least 27?

Just askin’.

Leave a Comment » | Bogus history, Creationism, Natural history, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Brownback parody, or Brownback lunacy?

May 20, 2007

Okay, I think this site is a parody, a hoax, on U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback‘s presidential campaign.

But it’s difficult to tell, especially when stuff like this voodoo history is on Brownback’s official campaign site. Alvin Reed thinks Brownback understands “the creator” better than other candidates because he was Secretary of Agriculture in Kansas, and that made Brownback ‘closer to the soil?’

Brownback is one of the three Republicans who confessed to supporting creationism, so he has no chance of my vote in any case. All the same, I’d prefer lunatics stay out of the presidential campaign.

I have written the Brownback campaign asking them for an explanation of the heliocentrism stuff. If they are not savvy enough to have a disavowal of the Blogs4Brownback out, and the sites are not part of the campaign, he’s going to get toasted quickly.

But if the site is affiliated with him, he deserves to get toasted more quickly — already there are serious posters there defending Brownback. Someone needs to tell them Jesus died to take away their sins, not their brains ©.

More commentary from experts:

3 Comments | Bogus history, Campaigns, Creationism, Hoaxes, Intelligent Design, Politics, Voodoo history, Weblogs | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

War on science: Spinning DDT, slandering the dead

May 17, 2007

What rational person would have thought irrationality could be in such surplus?

My post on the silly opposition to naming a post office after Rachel Carson produced a minor response. Reader Electratig took me to task at his blog.

Criticism is based on interesting claims that millions have died unnecessarily because the entire planet was driven to ban DDT, which is really not toxic to humans, and which really is the panacea that would rid the world of malaria. I’m surprised that DDT isn’t implicated as a cure for the designated hitter rule, too. The criticisms don’t hold so much water as the critics claim, I find. Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | Bogus history, Environmental protection, Ethics, History, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Fighting history hoaxes

May 11, 2007

Daily Kos I don’t get to daily. But here’s a post I did see that all history teachers ought to read, if only to raise their consciousness about the frauds that plague us every day: Help Fight Fake History that Powers the American Right.

Fight fake historyChris Rodda needs help supporting her research against all the old dogs of history revisionism, and the post from Troutfishing goes through most of the dishonor roll: D. James Kennedy, David Barton, Catherine Millard, and Chuck Norris

Rodda’s blog series can be found at Talk2Action.

My interest in getting history done right was kindled when high school teachers mentioned early versions of David Barton’s work — stuff that showed up on tests, though anyone who had read our texts and had a passing knowledge of real history would have known was in error. As a staffer in the U.S. Senate I had to got to read letters from people who bought the Barton tales lock, stock, and monkey barrel, and who consequently felt that everyone else on Earth was lying to them.

I wish Rodda luck.

4 Comments | Accuracy, Bad Quotes, Bogus history, Capturing history, Citizenship, Current History, Curricula, Education, History, History Revisionism, Hoaxes | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Fearful IDists can’t meet ethics challenge in Dallas

April 10, 2007

Advocates of intelligent design at the Discovery Institute have been rattled by the strong showing of scientists at Southern Methodist University who called their bluff, and questioned SMU for hosting an ID conference this week. SMU’s officials pointed out they were just renting out facilities, and not hosting the conference at all.

The ID conference, with special religious group activities preceding it, is scheduled for April 13 and 14 at SMU. It is a rerun of a similar revival held in Knoxville, Tennessee, last month. The conference features no new scientific research, no serious science sessions with scientists looking at new research, or new findings from old data.

In return, ID advocates “challenged” scientists to show up at a creationist-stacked function Friday evening. To the best of my knowledge, all working scientists declined the invitation, on the understanding that in science, there is no debate.

This morning’s Dallas Morning News features the expected desperation move by Discovery Institute officials Bruce Chapman and John West. They accuse the scientists of being “would-be censors.”

This is highly ironic coming from the group that spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to convince the Texas State Board of Education to censor and bowdlerize* Texas biology books in 2003.  (*  Thanks, Jim Dixon)

But go read the stuff for yourself. Some of us have real work to do today, and there is not time for the appropriate, godly Fisking this piece deserves right now. (Readers? Friends?)

My dander is up, however, and I offer a counter challenge:

Discovery Institute, what is it you’re afraid of? Let’s meet, and discuss the ethical challenges you’ve experienced in this discussion. Specifically, let’s discuss:

One, your misrepresentation of the science of Darwin, and your repeated attempts to mislead school officials — remember the claim in Ohio that federal law requires discussion of intelligent design? Was that a hoax that fell flat, or an honest misunderstanding? In any case, we still await your disowning of the falsehood, years later.

Two, your support of unethical screeds against science and scientists. I’ll mention one here: You need to disown the dishonest and unethical work of Jonathan Wells. Look at his book, Icons of Evolution, which is promoted at your website. I call your attention to his chapter of misinformation against the work of Bernard Kettlewell on peppered moths. Check out the citations in his chapter. If one believes his footnotes, there are many scientists who support his views on Kettlewell’s pioneering and still valid work. You need to acknowledge that the footnotes are ethically challenged; you need to acknowledge in print that each of the scientists involved, and others, have disowned Wells’ work and said that his claims misrepresent their work and the status of science. In polite, scientific terms, these people have called Wells a prevaricator. You still promote his screed as valid.

Three, your support of name-calling must stop. Especially, you need to pull your support from books, conferences, and editorial pieces that say evolution was a cause of the Holocaust. The attempts to connect Darwin to Hitler are scurrilous, inaccurate, unethical and unholy.

Chapman, West, the Methodist Church does not endorse your views on evolution, and if they understood your tactics I suspect they would disown your tactics as well. You are guests on a campus that does serious science work and also hosts people of faith. You need to bring your organizations ethical standards up to a higher level.

You want a debate? The science journals are open — the federal courts have repeatedly found that claims of bias against you are completely unfounded (untrue, that is . . . well, you understand what I’m trying to say politely, right?). The journals await your research reports.

All of science has been awaiting your research reports for years, for decades. (Here’s one famous case: “Three Years and Counting,” at Pharyngula (a science-related blog run by an evolutionary biologist).

You want to debate? Stop hurling epithets, and bring evidence.

As an attorney, parent, teacher, and reader of Texas biology textbooks, I’d be pleased to debate your need to change your ways. The debate needs to focus on your methods and ethics. Are you up to it?

Earlier posts of interest:

16 Comments | Accuracy, Bad Quotes, Blog Against Theocracy, Bogus history, Business Ethics, Charles Darwin, Darwin, Ethics, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Christian Seniors push bogus history

March 15, 2007

California Congressman Pete Stark answered a query about his religious beliefs, saying he does not believe in God. This is not unusual, really. Through history the U.S. has had people of many religious beliefs, and disbeliefs, serve in Congress.

A group calling itself the Christian Seniors Association, a division of Traditional Values Coalition, hit the panic button unjustly, issuing a press release noting a “Sad First in the History of Congress.”

“It is sad but not surprising that the current Congress has produced this historic first – one of its members has denied God,” said CSA Executive Director James Lafferty. “The liberals in Congress want to throttle any school child who bows his or her head in prayer, but they want to establish a right for liberals to bash Christians and berate God around the clock.

Would it be too much to ask such a group to actually study history? This is not a first, and probably not all that historic, either. Their claim is bogus history.

In 1846 an Illinois state representative ran for Congress, against a famous Methodist preacher, Read the rest of this entry »

4 Comments | Abraham Lincoln, Bogus history, First Amendment, Religious Freedom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Strong hints that “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” is fiction

March 14, 2007

The DVD release of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s latest cinema episode is probably driving the traffic to the post I did a while ago noting that the movies are not based on any Texas incidents (see “Based on a true story, except . . .). The original movie, in 1974, was billed as “based on a true story.” “The film which you are about to see is an account of the tragedy which befell a group of five youths, in particular Sally Hardesty and her invalid brother, Franklin,” the Narrator says opening the film.

The latest enfilmations apparently carry the same claim (I say apparently because I have never seen any of them through, and only a few snippets on television of any of them — I go by what I hear and see from others).

We have the testimony of the author of the original screenplay that it is fiction, loosely based on a famous case in Wisconsin which was also, very loosely, the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and the later, more horrifying Silence of the Lambs. Other internet sites say it’s fiction, such as Snopes.com (a favorite and very good hoax and error debunking site).

Still, the kids ask.

Why not turn this into a geography and/or history exercise? Read the rest of this entry »

34 Comments | 100 Milestone Documents of U.S. History, Accuracy, Bogus history, Geography - Physical, History, Lesson plans, Movies, Texas | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Good! Bad History Carnival is back

March 5, 2007

April may be the cruelest month overall, but March has been deadly on some of my favorite weblog carnivals.

Fortunately, the Bad History Carnival is back, over at Old is the New Way.

Leave a Comment » | Bogus history, History, History blogs, Voodoo history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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