While Mark Mathis was leading a bumbling raid on rationalists at Baylor University, Biblical literalists took another scalp in Iowa, of a college instructor this time. Maybe it’s time to beef up tenure, and make it easier to get.
(Maybe I need to add a new category along with “voodoo science” and “voodoo history”: “Voodoo literature.”)
2 Comments | 
Creationism, History, Literature, Rampant stupidity, War on Science | Tagged: Academic freedom, Baylor University, Bible, creationistm, Iowa, literal Bible, Southwestern Community College, western civilization | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
9/11 conspiracy nuts are vexing, partly because they don’t pay attention to rebuttals, for example Osama bin Laden’s claiming credit for the attack, partly because their internet output gives succor to Islamic terrorists who argue the U.S. has no justification for any anti-terrorist activity, and partly because it just hurts to see so much time and trouble wasted on silly ideas.
Darrell’s Corollary of Godwin’s Law is that if posters in an internet discussion know to avoid the mention of Hitler to avoid their opponents’ invoking Godwin’s law, they’ll compare the actions to Stalin instead.
Now we’ll have to figure out the corollary for Castro. You know it’s gotta be pretty silly for Castro to go back on his previous statements. Maybe we should cut the man some slack — he’s very ill, after all.
What’s the excuse of the other 9/11 conspiracy fanatics?
4 Comments | 9/11, Rampant stupidity, War on Terrorism | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
The “Godly” mathematics curricula at a San Antonio church school, and the ridicule it’s gotten, give a glimpse behind the curtain of what could happen were the Texas State Board of Education to succumb to sectarian calls to gut evolution out of biology texts.
Mathematician John Allen Paulos — known best to educators for his book Innumeracy — does a column for ABC News’ website. His latest column details some of the history of mathematics and religious lunacy, and problems with creationism; he concludes:
. . . the curricula cited above and others like them are a bit absurd, even funny. In private schools they’re none of our business. This is not so if aspects of these “creation math” curricula slip into the public schools, a prospect no doubt devoutly wished for by some.
One hopes the board will stick with letting the textbooks describe the world the Creator actually created, as opposed to a world created in the fantasies of creationists.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Pharyngula, whose note on this blog‘s original posting of the curricula from Castle Hills First Baptist School is probably what got the attention of Dr. Paulos in the first place; a tip of the scrub brush with lots of soapy fervor.
Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, Creationism, Curricula, Intelligent Design, Rampant stupidity, Reason, Religion | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Not my view. Vox Day. I can’t resist kicking his arguments when he’s down.
Agree or not? Put it in comments.
5 Comments | Education, Education quality, Education reform, Rampant stupidity, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
We are plagued by industries set up to deny reality. It’s impossible to discuss public policy without smashing into organizations set up specifically to question history and hard science, and plant seeds of doubt in the minds of the public about the way things really are. When my job was to fight them, with essentially no budget, as late as 1985 there was a well-funded lobby in Washington that cranked out weekly “news” and opinion columns for smaller and less discriminating news outlets like weekly papers and local television stations, extolling the virtues of tobacco and claiming that no scientist had any real evidence that smoking is unhealthy.
A lot of those disinformation artists have moved on — not to the Soviet Union, since it collapsed and took most its propaganda machine with it — to denial of reality on global warming, evolutionary biology, pesticides and chemicals, and a host of other issues.
Sharon Begley’s story in the August 13, 2007, Newsweek pulls back the veil on the well-funded industry that tries to plant doubt about the reality of global warming: “The Truth about Denial.” If this is news to you, that people get paid well to hoax the public, you really need to read the story:
If you think those who have long challenged the mainstream scientific findings about global warming recognize that the game is over, think again. Yes, 19 million people watched the “Live Earth” concerts last month, titans of corporate America are calling for laws mandating greenhouse cuts, “green” magazines fill newsstands, and the film based on Al Gore’s best-selling book, “An Inconvenient Truth,” won an Oscar. But outside Hollywood, Manhattan and other habitats of the chattering classes, the denial machine is running at full throttle—and continuing to shape both government policy and public opinion.
Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming; measurements indicating otherwise are flawed, they said. Then they claimed that any warming is natural, not caused by human activities. Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless. “They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry,” says former senator Tim Wirth, who spearheaded environmental issues as an under secretary of State in the Clinton administration. “Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That’s had a huge impact on both the public and Congress.”
Do these deniers affect public policy? Gullibles, political opponents, handmaidens of error, and even well-meaning suckers fall for spin on science, over and over again: On global warming (see this one, too), on DDT and malaria, teaching science in public schools, alternative medicine and preventive vaccines, and other issues including (who could make this up?) riding a bicycle.
No, I don’t have a solution.
6 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, DDT, Hoaxes, Rampant stupidity, Reason, Science, Voodoo science, War on Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
The Straight Dope has a motto: “Fighting ignorance since 1973. (It’s taking longer than we thought.)”
Alas, the motto could work as well for people who understand science, who understand chemistry and biology, and who urge sanity in discussions about DDT, malaria prevention and control, and Rachel Carson.
DDT sprayed on a crowded beach -- photo from an unidentified 1950s publication. Caption in the photo: "This machine is spreading a kind of fog of DDT spray to see if it will kill the mosquitoes and other insects on the beach. Outdoors, the spray soon spreads and does not harm people."
The meme that “Rachel Carson caused millions of deaths” and prompted the disappearance of DDT is factually in error, but popular, and still spreading. It doesn’t help that there are well-funded groups that work hard to spread the disinformation.
As Ben Franklin noted, in a fair fight, truth wins. The difficulty is that the fight for truth about DDT and Rachel Carson has never been fair, and the anti-sense forces have a 25-year head start on wise people like Bug Girl, Deltoid, Rep. Jason Altmire of Pennsylvania, and even dunderheads like me.
How widespread is the damage? Well, how many editorial pieces were there slamming Rachel Carson, falsely, on the event of the 100th anniversary of her birth? Has Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., lifted his holds on naming a post office for her?
The damage continues to spread.
For example, these blogs have fallen victim to the malaria/DDT/Rachel Carson hoax:
a. London Fog, ostensibly about government in London, Ontario, goes off half-cocked on DDT
b. Irrational Optimism, about a Georgian transplanted to Utah, picks up the misunderstandings of DDT
d. Even Forbes Magazine’s blogs put out the faulty version of the story
e. Red State includes an artless and caustic piece here (repeated during what appears to be a brain power failure at PowerLine)
g. “Rachel Carson’s Genocide,” hysteria at a Ron Paul site misnamed Rational Review
h. Even Nobel Prize winning economists and distinguished federal judges get sucked into the vortex of specious information if they are not scrupulously careful — as Becker and Posner did here, and again here. (See final installment,too.)
And even while fighting ignorance and generally rebutting the wild claims about Rachel Carson, even Cecil Adams at Straight Dope gets suckered in by some of the myths. (In “moderate amounts,” DDT concentrates up to 10 million times in the wild, poisoning birds of prey and predator fishes, especially; DDT is deadly to mosquito-eating birds and bats, and pest-eating lizards; EPA’s hearings on DDT were overwhelmingly in favor of banning the substance — a court suit cited EPA for not moving fast enough to ban such a dangerous substance, and evidence in such trials is not made up; the cause of egg-shell thinning in birds is pretty solidly established to be DDT and its breakdown substances, only the exact process is not well understood; the international treaty against POPs has a specific out-clause for DDT to be used to prevent malaria; and so on).
So, there’s a lot of work to be done, and little time. Stay tuned.
Update: The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin, had a wonderful feature on the 1970 hearings in that state to ban DDT,[alternate URL here] and the subsequent success with the spectacular return of the bald eagle to local waterways. In comments, early in the process, the junk science about DDT and malaria appear. It’s everywhere.
P.S. — Here’s a reading for a lecture at Purdue University that neatly summarizes Carson’s life and work, accurately. (In fact, the entire lecture series, by Jules Janick, should prove interesting to people interested in horticulture.)
4 Comments | DDT, Environmental protection, History, Rachel Carson, Rampant stupidity, Reason, Research, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science, War on Science | Tagged: DDT, eagles, endangered species, Malaria, Rachel Carson, Science, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Some links you should check out, in the continuing fight for reason against the bizarre campaign against the reputation of Rachel Carson, against the World Health Organization, and against fighting malaria, and for unwise use of DDT:
2. Insight from Bug Girl: “Scientists, media, and political activism;” also check out her post on new research on mosquito bed nets.
3. Deltoid posted several good pieces since last I linked; go here, and here. Be ready: Tinfoil hat brigade comes out in the comments to the first piece.
Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, Bogus history, DDT, History, Hoaxes, Junk science, Natural history, Public health, Rachel Carson, Rampant stupidity, Voodoo history, Voodoo science, War on Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
(Who said that, first?)
Vox Day writes a column at the abominable WorldNet Daily. Also he blogs. Frequently he demonstrates the flight of reason from those pages, such as his column on July 7, in which he wrote:
What is interesting is observable evidence shows that even professional evolutionary biologists are increasingly frightened to expose themselves to the ridicule that the softness of their science renders them liable. Consider this recent post at the science blog Pharyngula by Dr. P.Z. Myers, a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris, entitled Don’t Debate Creationists.
Why does that demonstrate Day’s flight from reason? Here, let me explain.
First, Day establishes as his premise that real biologists, scientists who practice in the real world and actually understand Darwin and evolution, are “afraid to expose themselves to the ridicule that the softness of their science renders them liable.” In short, he’s saying they don’t talk to the public.
His evidence? He cites a blog post by P. Z. Myers, an evolutionary development biologist at the University of Minnesota, Morris, a co-founder of and frequent contributor to the evolution-promoting weblog Panda’s Thumb, and the creator and author of the science weblog Pharyngula.
So, what Day is saying is that Myers doesn’t bother to expose himself to public scrutiny despite Myers’ being a distinguished researcher and teacher who daily exposes himself to tens of thousands of readers on two of the most heavily trafficked blogs in the world — generally, many times each day — in addition to his work exposing himself to other scientists via his research publications, and through his teaching several classes.
Right. And preachers never speak, Pope Benedict is not Catholic, and polar bears don’t defecate on the ice or in the water. Nor is the sky blue.
Of such evidence are most rants at WorldNet Daily made.
16 Comments | Accuracy, Rampant stupidity, Reason, Research, Science, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Americans seeking justice and healing for crimes committed during the civil rights movement, from about 1953 through at least the 1970s, championed a proposed law that would establish a unit in the Justice Department to clear up some of these old cases before the perpetrators all die — sort of a civil rights cold case division.
H.R. 923 is called “The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act” in honor of the slain young boy whose murderers were convicted by a racist-tinged jury, and then bragged about the murder in a national magazine.
The bill passed the House of Representatives June 21, 422 to 2.
It was scheduled for a quick vote in the U.S. Senate, a unanimous consent motion, to speed the bill to President Bush, so the investigations can begin quickly.
Then that old curmudgeon hurdle to progress and to the 21st century, Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn stepped in. He put a “hold” on the bill, which is a notice that a senator has gross objections to a matter. As a matter of courtesy in that great deliberative body, holds are honored.
The bill is dead, unless Coburn removes his hold.
Coburn may be a nice guy otherwise, but his recent holds, stopping action honoring Presidential Medal of Honor winner Rachel Carson, and now, delaying justice already too long denied, go beyond the pale of polite society. These are thuggish actions.
I hope he’ll reconsider. But if past history is any sign — his refusal to allow the Senate to vote to stop cockfighting was one mackerel by moonlight — he won’t.
Say a prayer for America today. When justice and honor cannot be had in the U.S. Senate, because one man is a crank — when his saner colleagues cannot prevail upon him — our nation is in trouble. Don’t fly your flag upside down today — but be sure it flies in protest of Sen. Tom Coburn’s inactions.
1 Comment | Civil Rights, History, Justice, Law, Rampant stupidity | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
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Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
Come on in, the water's fine. Come often: Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 