Encore post: Recognizing bogus history, 1

July 3, 2007

While traveling this week, I’ll feature a few blasts from the past — posts that may merit new attention. This post comes from a two-part series in August 2006:

Recognizing bogus history, 1

Robert Park provides a short e-mail newsletter every Friday, covering news in the world of physics. It’s called “What’s New.” Park makes an art of smoking out bogus science and frauds people try to perpetrate in the name of science, or for money. He wrote an opinion column for the Chronicle of Higher Education published January 31, 2003, in which he listed the “7 warning signs of bogus science.”

Please go read Park’s entire essay, it’s good.

And it got me thinking about whether there are similar warning signs for bogus history? Are there clues that a biography of Howard Hughes is false that should pop out at any disinterested observer? Are there clues that the claimed quote from James Madison saying the U.S. government is founded on the Ten Commandments is pure buncombe? Should Oliver Stone have been able to to more readily separate fact from fantasy about the Kennedy assassination (assuming he wasn’t just going for the dramatic elements)? Can we generalize for such hoaxes, to inoculate ourselves and our history texts against error?

Perhaps some of the detection methods Park suggests would work for history. He wrote his opinion piece after the Supreme Court’s decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., in which the Court laid out some rules lower courts should use to smoke out and eliminate false science. As Park described it, “The case involved Bendectin, the only morning-sickness medication ever approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It had been used by millions of women, and more than 30 published studies had found no evidence that it caused birth defects. Yet eight so-called experts were willing to testify, in exchange for a fee from the Daubert family, that Bendectin might indeed cause birth defects.” The Court said lower courts must act as gatekeepers against science buncombe — a difficult task for some judges who, in their training as attorneys, often spent little time studying science.

Some of the Daubert reasoning surfaced in another case recently, the opinion in Pennsylvania district federal court in which Federal District Judge John Jones struck down a school board’s order that intelligent design be introduced to high school biology students, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.

Can we generalize to history, too? I’m going to try, below the fold.

Here are Park’s seven warning signs, boiled down:

Park wrote:

Justice Stephen G. Breyer encouraged trial judges to appoint independent experts to help them. He noted that courts can turn to scientific organizations, like the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, to identify neutral experts who could preview questionable scientific testimony and advise a judge on whether a jury should be exposed to it. Judges are still concerned about meeting their responsibilities under the Daubert decision, and a group of them asked me how to recognize questionable scientific claims. What are the warning signs?

I have identified seven indicators that a scientific claim lies well outside the bounds of rational scientific discourse. Of course, they are only warning signs — even a claim with several of the signs could be legitimate. [I have cut out the explanations. — E.D.]

  1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media.
  2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work.
  3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection.
  4. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal.
  5. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries.
  6. The discoverer has worked in isolation.
  7. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation.

Voodoo history

Here, with thanks to Robert Park, is what I propose for the warning signs for bogus history, for voodoo history:

  1. The author pitches the claim directly to the media or to organizations of non-historians, for pay.
  2. The author says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work.
  3. The sources that verify the new interpretation of history are obscure; if they involve a famous person, the sources are not those usually relied on by historians.
  4. Evidence for the history is anecdotal.
  5. The author says a belief is credible because it has endured for some time, or because many people believe it to be true.
  6. The author has worked in isolation.
  7. The author must propose a new interpretation of history to explain an observation.

Any history account that shows one or more of those warning signs should be viewed skeptically.

In another post, I’ll flesh out the reasoning behind why they are warning signs.

6 Comments | Accuracy, Bad Quotes, Bogus history, History, History Revisionism, Hoaxes, Junk science, Research, Teaching, Textbooks, Voodoo history, Voodoo science, Writing history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Photos of a hoax: The Cardiff Giant

July 2, 2007

David Carlson's pinhole camera photo of a sign promoting the Cardiff Giant

The Cardiff Giant was a great hoax of the 19th century. George Hull, a cigar maker in upstate New York, hired a Chicago sculptor to make a large statute of a man. He then buried the statue on a friend’s farm, and year later hired workmen to dig a well where the statue was buried, and of course the well-diggers “discovered” the statue. Hull’s intent was to hoax Bible literalists who talked about giants in the ground, based on Genesis 6:4.When the statue was discovered, it was claimed to be a petrified giant, evidence of giants living in America. The stone piece was put on traveling display.

The hoax was discovered. That only increased the desire to see the statue, and the price to see it was raised. P. T. Barnum tried to buy the thing, and when his offer was refused, initially he created a hoax of the hoax for his own display.

The Cardiff Giant is on display today at the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown, New York (also home of the Baseball Hall of Fame). Barnum’s fake fake is on display at Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum, Farmington Hills, Michigan.

Cardiff Giant on display at Cooperstown, New York

The photo at top was created with a grant from the Vermont Council on the Arts by David Carlson, whose website is here (his work is for sale — some of the photos would be good conversation starters in history classrooms) It’s a photo made with a pinhole camera, a camera without a lens. The second photo is from Roadside America, showing the Cardiff Giant as displayed today.

1 Comment | Bogus history, History, Hoaxes, Junk science, Museums, Religion, Travel | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Fisking “Junk Science’s” campaign FOR the poison DDT, against Rachel Carson: Point #8, mosquito resistance to DDT

June 29, 2007

This is the second in a series of Fisks of “100 things you should know about DDT,” a grotesquely misleading list of factoids about DDT put up a site called JunkScience.com. While one would assume that such a site would be opposed, this particular site promotes junk science. I’m not taking the points in order.The “100 things” list is attributed to Steven Milloy, a guy who used to argue that tobacco use isn’t harmful, and who has engaged in other hoaxes such as the bizarre and false claim that Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs (CFLs) can pose serious toxic hazards in your home (and therefore, you should continue to waste energy with less efficient bulbs); and to J. Gordon Edwards, a San Jose State University entomologist who, despite being a great entomologist, was a bit of a nut on some political things; Edwards assisted Lyndon Larouche’s group in their campaign against Rachel Carson before his death in 2004. (Did Edwards actually have a role in the development of this list?)

100 things you should know about DDT

Claim #8. Some mosquitoes became “resistant” to DDT. “There is persuasive evidence that antimalarial operations did not produce mosquito resistance to DDT. That crime, and in a very real sense it was a crime, can be laid to the intemperate and inappropriate use of DDT by farmers, especially cotton growers. They used the insecticide at levels that would accelerate, if not actually induce, the selection of a resistant population of mosquitoes.”

[Desowitz, RS. 1992. Malaria Capers, W.W. Norton & Company]

Cover of The Malaria Capers, by Robert S. Desowitz

Cover of The Malaria Capers, by Robert S. Desowitz

This was what Rachel Carson warned about. Indiscriminate use of DDT, such as broadcast application on crops to kill all insect, arthropod or other pests, would lead to mosquitoes and other dangerous insects developing resistance to the chemical. Of course, resistance developed as a result of overspraying of crops has exactly the same result, in the fight against malaria, as overuse in the fight against malaria.  Cover of The Malaria Capers, by Robert S. Desowitz

Worse, such overuse also killed predators of mosquitoes, especially birds. In an integrated pest management program, or in a well-balanced ecosystem, birds and other insect predators would eliminate a large number of mosquitoes, holding the population in check and preventing the spread of malaria. Unfortunately, when the predators are killed off, the mosquitoes have a population explosion, spreading their range, and spreading the diseases they carry.

Assuming Milloy quoted the book accurately, and assuming the book actually exists, this point says nothing in particular in favor of DDT; but it reaffirms the case Rachel Carson made in her 1962 book, Silent Spring. Contrary to suggestions from the campaign against Rachel Carson, she urged that we limit use of DDT to tasks like preventing malaria, around humans, to preserve the effectiveness of DDT and prevent overspraying.

And then, there is this: Milloy doesn’t bother to quote the first part of the paragraph he quotes, on page 214 of Malaria Capers. Here is what the paragraph actually says:

There were a number of reasons for the failure, not least that the anophaline vector mosquitoes were becoming resistant to the action of DDT both physiologically — they developed the enzymes to detoxify the insecticide — and behaviorally — instead of feeding and wall-resting, they changed in character to feed and then quickly bugger off to the great outdoors. [from this point, Milloy quotes correctly]

In other words, the DDT-based campaign against malaria failed because DDT failed; mosquitoes became resistant to it.  DDT’s declining ability to kill mosquitoes is one of the major reasons DDT use plunged after 1963, and continues to decline to no use at all.

To combat the dastardly campaign of calumny against Rachel Carson and science, you should also read: Deltoid, here, here and here, and the rest of his posts on the topic; Bug Girl, here, at least, and here, and the rest of her posts; denialism, here; and Rabett Run, here.

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4 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, Citizenship, DDT, Economics, Environmental protection, Ethics, History, Hoaxes, Junk science, Malaria, Natural history, Public health, Rachel Carson, Science, War on Science | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Cold, Clear and Deadly

June 28, 2007

Title of a book that documents and discusses the omnipresence of DDT and related pesticides in waters all over the world, even in places far from any known application, such as the Arctic and Antarctic.

Author Melvin J. Visser wrote a tribute to Rachel Carson at his blog, also called Cold, Clear and Deadly.

Cover of Cold, Clear and Deadly, by Melvin J. Visser. Michigan State University Press

Cover of Cold, Clear and Deadly, by Melvin J. Visser. Michigan State University Press; at Thrift Books

More:

Leave a Comment » | Bogus history, Business Ethics, DDT, Education, Ethics, History, Hoaxes, Junk science, Natural history, Rachel Carson, Science, Voodoo science | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Didn’t know insanity is contagious: Sen. Tom Coburn

June 27, 2007

Several outbursts of insanity in Washington, D.C., lately make one wonder if there is some contagious disease that prompts these outbursts.

Although, I must admit, this outburst was before the Cheney/Snow claims that the nation’s chief executive and vice chief executive are not executive branch members.

In a flash of irony that shattered irony meters across libraries, laboratories and the research facilities in Oklahoma universities, Oklahoma’s U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn placed a hold on the bill to name a post office in honor of Rachel Carson, accusing Carson of “junk science.” What Coburn failed to say — or, God forbid, failed to notice — is that the criticisms of Carson are truly junk science.

In the Washington Post Coburn offered this inexplicable explanation:

In a statement on his Web site yesterday, Coburn (R) confirmed that he is holding up the bill. In the statement, he blames Carson for using “junk science” to turn public opinion against chemicals, including DDT, that could prevent the spread of insect-borne diseases such as malaria, which is spread by mosquitoes.

Coburn, whose Web site says he is a doctor specializing in family medicine, obstetrics and allergies, said in the statement that 1 million to 2 million people die of malaria every year.

“Carson was the author of the now-debunked ‘The Silent Spring,’ ” Coburn’s statement reads. “This book was the catalyst in the deadly worldwide stigmatization against insecticides, especially DDT.”

This issue is arcane enough that history aficionados reading may not be fully aware of the problems with Coburn’s claims. Let me explain.

First, Carson didn’t complain about insecticides, but instead pointed out that overuse of some insecticides is damaging to the environment, and ultimately frustrates their use as intended. As Carson pointed out, DDT was ceasing to be effective in the fight against malaria due to this overuse. In other words, Carson’s advocacy, if it was as effective as Coburn imagines, saved DDT as an effective tool in the fight against malaria. But Coburn blames her for the opposite. It’s as if he were treating a kid who fell out of a tree, and he blamed the broken arm on a cold virus, because the kid’s nose was running.

Second, DDT is a deadly killer. It’s not like DDT is perfectly harmless. Carson, using studies by insecticide manufacturers and entomologists accumulated over the previous 20 years, pointed out that broadcast use of DDT to protect cotton from boll weevils not only failed to protect the cotton, it also endangered humans. Overuse of any insecticide tends to drive evolution of resistance in the insects targeted, and this is exactly what happened, and what Carson reported. That’s not junk science in any form. It’s accurate, real science, that benefits humans.

Had Carson’s book not appeared when it did, it is quite possible, maybe even likely, that it would have been rendered completely useless against insects.

But even worse, animals don’t evolve resistance as quickly as insects can, and the levels of DDT and its daughter compounds were multiplied in living things as they were higher in a local food chain. DDT is absorbed into living tissues very effectively, so it does not remain floating about, say, in the water of a swamp where it is sprayed for mosquitoes. Instead it is absorbed by other insects, by plants, and then by the animals that consume those insects and plants, and then by the predators at the top of the food chains. Carson was way ahead of her time in understanding this relationship, but the science at the time supported her conclusions exactly, and every study done since then has reinforced Carson’s reporting of the scientific conclusions.

This was important because, as concentrated especially in birds, DDT and its daughters cause eggs to be non-viable, and it even changes the behaviors of birds in raising their young. DDT kills the next generation of birds. It is especially deadly against raptors at the top of the food chain — America’s symbol, the bald eagle, for example, was driven to the brink of extinction by DDT — but it also kills the songbirds which, in a well-balanced ecosystem, keep mosquito populations down and prevent the spread of mosquito-borne diseases like malaria or dengue fever.

So DDT use, as Sen. Coburn appears to defend it, would have left the world malaria and mosquito-ridden, exactly the opposite of his claims.

Third, Carson’s book has been verified in hundreds of studies. To call it “debunked” is either a total purchase of junk science, or a dastardly distortion of the the facts. Carson worried that DDT might be a cause of cancer, a carcinogen. Knowledge of carcinogens was so limited when she wrote that Congress and the medical establishment — two groups Coburn belongs to — endorsed the Delaney Clause to the Food and Drug Act in 1957, ordering that nothing that caused cancer be allowed as an additive in foods or food supplements. This seems almost naive today, when we know that some things, like selenium, are both essential nutrients and carcinogenic, and when we can detect vanishingly small traces of carcinogens in almost everything. Carson called our attention to potential dangers of DDT.

And, it turns out, she was mostly right about DDT and cancer. The good news is that DDT is not a potent carcinogen in humans that we know. Coburn appears to rest his entire case on a misunderstanding of that last sentence. Anti-Carson screeds tend to note that DDT has not been found to be a major cause of breast cancer in women. While true, that study leaves these facts: DDT is a known carcinogen in mammals (and we know of no carcinogen that affects other mammals that is not also a carcinogen for humans, who are mammals); DDT’s effects would be expected to show up in liver cancer, because DDT is a toxin and toxins damage the liver even as the organ does its job in cleaning the toxin out; DDT is a known toxin to human livers, causing liver damage leading to liver disease. Liver disease is a frequent precursor to liver cancer. We need more studies, but it is simply false to say that we know DDT is not a carcinogen. DDT is a carcinogen; the only thing we don’t know is how potent it is in humans.

So here we have Sen. Coburn, an MD in the Senate, a man who has the training of a scientist, a guy who used to practice medicine, helping people avoid things that harm or kill them, falling victim to junk science claims about Rachel Carson and her work, and DDT and what it does, and how it does it.

It ain’t the things we don’t know that get us into trouble, some wag once said: It’s the things we know that ain’t so.

Perhaps you could drop Dr. Coburn a letter, gently inform him of the facts, and ask that he release the hold on honoring Rachel Carson, winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the woman who saved DDT from becoming a useless limb in the war against insect-borne disease? It would be the patriotic thing to do.

5 Comments | DDT, Ethics, Evolution, Hoaxes, Junk science, Natural history, Public health, Rachel Carson, Science, U.S. Senate, Voodoo history, Voodoo science, War on Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Rachel Carson’s honor defended

June 25, 2007

Bug Girl sleuthed around a bit, and found information from official sources that really demonstrates the critics of Rachel Carson are using Gillette Foamy to make us think “mad dog!”

DDT concentration in the food chain - USFWS

Chart from US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) illustrates biomagnification, by which a minuscule dose of DDT to small plankton gets magnified a few million times by the time the top predators in the food chain get it.

So the evidence continues to pile up that Rachel Carson was simply a fine writer, a good scientist, and correct about DDT’s dangers.

Check out the Fish and Wildlife Service’s site, here; notice especially their structure of the site, to dispel the falsehoods.

FWS quotes Carson on DDT use:

In Audubon magazine she wrote, “We do not ask that all chemicals be abandoned. We ask moderation. We ask the use of other methods less harmful to our environment” (4). Countering claims that she was advocating a back-to-nature philosophy, she said, “We must have insect control. I do not favor turning nature over to insects. I favor the sparing, selective and intelligent use of chemicals. It is the indiscriminate, blanket spraying that I oppose” (5).

Evidence mounts that claims against Rachel Carson are sheer calumny. While the political motivations of this smear campaign are not clear, we don’t need to know for certain who is telling lies about a great American hero, or why. As Americans, as concerned citizens, as teachers and parents — as patriots — we only need to know that the claims against Rachel Carson are false.

And now it is our duty to call on Oklahoma’s Sen. Tom Coburn to stop the campaign against Carson. Coburn is the point man in the smear campaign right now: He has put a committee hold on the well-intentioned, justified bill to name a post office in her hometown after Rachel Carson. It is time for Tom Coburn to stand up and do the right thing for a great American. Sen. Coburn needs to lift his committee hold and allow committee action on this minor honor.

Other sources of note:

Bruce Watson, “Sounding the Alarm,” Smithsonian Magazine, September 2002. (Watson, Bruce. Sounding the alarm. Smithsonian, v. 33, Sept. 2002: 115-117.   AS30.S6)

“The Berry and the Poison,” about methyl bromide and its ban, Smithsonian Magazine, December 1997.

3 Comments | Accuracy, Conservation, DDT, Environmental protection, Ethics, History, Hoaxes, Junk science, Natural history, Politics, Public health, Rachel Carson, Research, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science, War on Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Intelligent design – a pig that doesn’t fly

October 9, 2006

We’re talking past each other now over at Right Reason[*], on a thread that started out lamenting Baylor’s initial decision to deny Dr. Francis Beckwith tenure last year, but quickly changed once news got out that Beckwith’s appeal of the decision was successful.

I noted that Beckwith’s getting tenure denies ID advocates of an argument that Beckwith is being persecuted for his ID views (wholly apart from the fact that there is zero indication his views on this issue had anything to do with his tenure discussions). Of course, I was wrong there — ID advocates have since continued to claim persecution where none exists. Never let the facts get in the way of a creationism rant, is the first rule of creationism.

Steve Sack cartoon in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Steve Sack cartoon in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Discussion has since turned to the legality of teaching intelligent design in a public school science class. This is well settled law — it’s not legal, not so long as there remains no undisproven science to back ID or any other form of creationism.

Read the rest of this entry »

10 Comments | Accuracy, Charles Darwin, Creationism, denialism, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Junk science, Law, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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