Dr Oz thinks that promoting quack medicine “empowers” people

The New Yorker has an article by Michael Specter on Dr Mehmet Oz, a heart surgeon who is also the host of ‘The Dr. Oz Show’, a hugely popular US television program watched by millions of Americans. Dr Oz is notorious for his refusal to disavow ‘alternative’ medicine as unscientific and unproven; he promotes quackery like ‘miracle’ foods and cures, anti-GMO and anti-vaccine propaganda, Reiki, acupuncture, homeopathy and psychic powers alongside real, effective medical advice. To quote one of his critics, the cardiologist and professor of genomics Eric Topol, Dr Oz’s lack of discrimination between evidence-based medicine and alt-med can mislead people, since “how are consumers to know what is real and what is magic? Because Mehmet offers both as if they were one.”

Echoing the singer Tim Minchin, Specter writes:

Scientists often argue that, if alternative medicine proves effective through experimental research, it should no longer be considered alternative; at that point, it becomes medicine. By freely mixing alternatives with proven therapies, Oz makes it nearly impossible for the viewer of his show to assess the impact of either; the process just diminishes the value of science.

Neurologist Dr Steven Novella (who has been a guest on ‘The Dr. Oz Show’) is another critic of Dr Oz, writing in a blog post that “Promoters of alternative medicine [like Dr Oz] only pay inconsistent lip-service to science, but the core of their philosophy is that science is optional,” and that this is “a very dismissive attitude – the casual dismissal of scientific evidence simply because it contradicts a pet belief.”

The problem of shoddy methodology in medical science, whether in research or in the media, is also touched on by the physician and writer Dr Ben Goldacre in his book Bad Science. As a media personality, the issue of how entertainment values and populism subvert medicine is pertinent to Dr Oz’s case. He seems to think that truth is a democracy, that facts are determined not by the careful examination of reality but by popular vote. These personal beliefs about truth and facts are a core factor in Dr Oz’s promotion of quackery, as this passage from Specter’s article reveals:

”Either data works or it doesn’t,“ I [Specter] said. “Science is supposed to answer, or at least address, those questions. Surely you don’t think that all information is created equal?” 

Oz sighed. “Medicine is a very religious experience,” he said. “I have my religion and you have yours. It becomes difficult for us to agree on what we think works, since so much of it is in the eye of the beholder. Data is rarely clean.” All facts come with a point of view. But his spin on it – that one can simply choose those which make sense, rather than data that happen to be true – was chilling. “You find the arguments that support your data,” he said, “and it’s my fact versus your fact.”

Dr Mehmet Oz is an epistemological relativist; to him, there is no such thing as objective truth, and unsubstantiated medical claims are just as valid as those backed by a mountain of evidence. With such a rotten ideological foundation, should it surprise us that his house of medical knowledge is so unsound? The tragedy is that Dr Oz has an impressionable audience of millions, many of whom may be harmed, not empowered, by the relativism of ‘America’s doctor’.

19.2.13

A quarter of Brits are non-religious

The UK’s 2011 census results are in, and they contain good news for humanists, atheists, agnostics and other non-religious people. You may remember the high-profile campaign ran by the British Humanist Association last year encouraging non-religious citizens to tick the ‘No religion’ box on the census. The campaign may have had an effect after all, as the results below indicate:

• The number of non-religious people has increased from 15 percent in 2001 to 25 percent in 2011.


• The number of Christians has dropped from 72 percent in 2001 to 59 percent in 2011.


• The number of Jedi Knights has more than halved, dropping from approximately 390,000 in 2001 to 176,632 in 2011.

That’s a dramatic decrease in the number of self-identified Christians with a corresponding large jump in the irreligious population. The BHA’s campaign urging so-called Jedi to stop being silly and just put themselves down as ‘no religion’ may have played a part in the massive drop in Jedi numbers. BHA Chief Executive Andrew Copson responded to the census data with the following comments:

This is a really significant cultural shift. In spite of a biased question that positively encourages religious responses, to see such an increase in the non-religious and such a decrease in those reporting themselves as Christian is astounding. Of course these figures still exaggerate the number of Christians overall – the number of believing, practicing Christians is much lower than this and the number of those leading their lives with no reference to religion much higher.

Religious practice, identity, belonging and belief are all in decline in this country, and non-religious identities are on the rise. It is time that public policy caught up with this mass turning away from religious identities and stopped privileging religious bodies with ever increasing numbers of state-funded religious schools and other faith-based initiatives. They are decreasingly relevant to British life and identity and governments should catch up and accept that fact.

The UK is not yet as secular as countries like Japan, Sweden and Denmark, but amazingly it has become less religious, even less Christian, than Australia: 22 percent of Aussies have no religion (compared with 25 percent of Brits) while 61 percent of Aussies are Christian (compared with 59 percent of Brits). Still, both countries are much less religious than the US, which remains an anomaly among rich, developed countries with 73 percent of Americans identifying as Christians (though the number of non-religious Americans is rising).

The steady increase in the non-religious demographic in not only the UK, but Australia and the US also, is an encouraging sign that secular ideas and values are being embraced by more and more people in these countries. Religion will still be around for a while, and may even pull off a modest comeback, but social trends in the developed world are evidently not in its favour. Let’s celebrate that.

12.12.12

How important exactly is science to the economy?

When US senator Marco Rubio failed to acknowledge that the Earth was billions of years old during an interview for GQ magazine, scientifically literate folks pounced. Astronomer and science writer Phil Plait took particular umbrage at Senator Rubio’s dismissive statement that the age of the Earth “has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States.” In a Slate article, Plait retorts (emphasis his):

Perhaps Senator Rubio is unaware that science—and its sisters engineering and technology—are actually the very foundation of our country’s economy? All of our industry, all of our technology, everything that keeps our country functioning at all can be traced back to scientific research and a scientific understanding of the Universe.

Cell phones, computers, cars, machinery, medicine, the Internet, manufacturing, communication, agriculture, transportation, on and on … all of these industries rely on science to work. Without basic research none of these would exist.

And all of science points to the age of the Earth being much, much older than Senator Rubio intimates. Astronomy, biology, relativity, chemistry, physics, anatomy, sociology, linguistics, cosmology, anthropology, evolutionary science, and especially radiometric dating of rocks all indicate the Universe, and our home planet Earth, are far older than any claims of a few thousand years. The overwhelming consensus is that the Earth is billions of years old. And all of these sciences are the basis of the technology that is our country’s life blood.

Writing for the New York Times, economist Paul Krugman also criticised Senator Rubio’s view that geological knowledge is unconnected to economic strength:

Coming back to the age of the earth: Does it matter? No, says Mr. Rubio, pronouncing it “a dispute amongst theologians”—what about the geologists?—that “has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States.” But he couldn’t be more wrong.

We are, after all, living in an era when science plays a crucial economic role. How are we going to search effectively for natural resources if schools trying to teach modern geology must give equal time to claims that the world is only 6000 years old? How are we going to stay competitive in biotechnology if biology classes avoid any material that might offend creationists?

So far, I’m with Plait and Krugman. After all, isn’t it obvious that scientific literacy is essential for a technology-based economy to flourish? Not necessarily so, according to Slate writer Daniel Engber. Responding to Phil Plait’s article, Engber challenges the view that a country’s economy depends on an absolute knowledge of science. He writes:

What about Rubio’s assertion that the age of the Earth “has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States”? That’s the claim that gave Phil Plait “a chill,” since science is “the very foundation of our country's economy.” At Forbes, Alex Knapp declares that “this economy, at its root, is built on a web of scientific knowledge from physics to chemistry to biology. It’s impossible to just cherry pick out parts we don’t like.” If we get it wrong on Earth’s creation, these critics say, the United States will fall apart.

Will it really? It seems to me that Rubio is right. Lots of basic scientific questions have no bearing whatsoever on the nation's short-term economic growth. We can even go much further: Lots of scientific questions don’t matter all that much when it comes to other scientific questions. It’s possible—and quite common—for scientists to plug away at research projects without explicit knowledge of what’s happening in other fields. And when a bedrock principle of science does need to be adjusted—a not-so-unusual occurrence, it turns out—the edifice of scholarship doesn’t crumble into dust. DVD players still operate. Nuclear plants don't shut down.

Philosopher Massimo Pigliucci agrees with Engber. On his blog Rationally Speaking, Pigliucci explains why people like Phil Plait and Paul Krugman (and Pigliucci himself, initially) are wrong to believe that the kind of ignorance of (or disrespect for) science displayed by Senator Rubio is ipso facto damaging to science, or the economy, as a whole:

There is a deeper philosophical reason why Engber is right and people like Phil and myself ought to be more cautious with our outrage at the cutting of scientific budgets or at politicians’ opportunistic uttering of scientific nonsense to gather supporters and votes. Knowledge in general, and scientific knowledge in particular, is not like an edifice with foundations — a common but misleading metaphor. If it were, it would be more likely that, as Phil so strongly stated, everything is connected to everything else, so that ignoring, denying, or replacing one piece of the building will likely create fractures all over the place.

But that’s not how it works. Rather, to use philosopher W.V.O. Quine’s apt metaphor, knowledge is more like a web, with some threads being stronger or more interconnected than others. […] If you see science as a web of statements, observations, experiments, and theories, then it becomes perfectly clear why Engber is right at pointing out that quite a bit of independence exists between different parts of the web, and how even relatively major chunks of said web can be demolished and replaced without the whole thing crumbling. There really is next to no connection between someone’s opinions about the age of the earth and that person’s grasp of the state and causes of a country’s economy.

Pigliucci’s use of the ‘science is a web’ metaphor is persuasive. But before you think that he is letting anti-scientific folks like Senator Rubio, creationists and ‘alternative’ medicine advocates off the hook, Pigliucci clarifies his position on the value of science and evidence-based reasoning (emphasis his):

Still, there is an important point where Phil is absolutely correct and that I think Engber underestimates. What is “chilling” and disturbing about people like Rubio (but not people like Obama) is that they have embraced a general philosophy of rejecting evidence and reason whenever it is ideologically or politically convenient. That is what is highly dangerous.

I can see Pigliucci’s point about how science isn’t a monolithic edifice that will collapse when its foundations are cracked by ignorance and rejection of facts. I accept his argument that science is actually a web, where torn or missing threads in one part may not affect the structural integrity of the whole, or other parts of the web. Still, as Pigliucci concedes, this does not excuse anti-scientific attitudes. A country’s economic prosperity may not be entirely dependent on the scientific literacy of its leaders, but a culture that enables, even encourages, ignorance and rejection of knowledge surely isn’t a healthy one.

1.12.12

Why do religious believers keep making excuses for God’s impotence?

One thing that confounds atheists about god-believers is the way that they rationalise the existence of an all-good, all-powerful deity despite the occurrence of evils like natural disasters, disease and horribly violent deaths like those of the Aurora shooting victims – a rationalisation known as theodicy. A Christian pastor, Rob Brendle, engages in theodicy when he makes excuses for his almighty God who failed to prevent the Aurora massacre. Typical for theodicy, Brendle rigs the (troubling) issue so that it becomes a win-win situation for believers like him: if nothing terrible had happened, it was God’s doing, but if something terrible happened, it wasn’t God’s fault.

And Brendle just makes stuff up as he goes along while contradicting himself. He writes:

But Scripture also teaches that God is totally in control. He is all-powerful and all-knowing and he is willing and able to intervene in human events. So there is a gap between human choice and divine foreknowledge, a gap that transcends understanding and that helps define God in my mind.

The debate over this theological tension has persisted for centuries, and I don’t aim to settle it here. Let me suggest simply that God, in his sovereignty, has chosen to make our decisions meaningful. Consequently, much of what happens on earth neither conforms to nor results from his preference. There are at least four influences on human events: God’s will, to be sure; but also the will of Satan, our adversary; peoples’ choices, for better or for worse; and natural law (gravity, collision, combustion, and the like).

It is difficult to know which force causes the circumstances that devastate us. But it is enough to know that God need not be responsible for them.

So that’s why ACCESS Ministries wants to get into schools

This pie chart was posted on a Southern Nazarene University webpage titled ‘When Americans become Christian - Evangelism statistics: At what age is outreach most effective? How old are people when they get saved?’

More figures from the International Bible Society and the Barna Research Group:

Another survey -- by the International Bible Society -- indicated that 83% of all Christians make their commitment to Jesus between the ages of 4 and 14, that is, when they are children or early youth. The Barna Research Group surveys demonstrate that American children ages 5 to 13 have a 32% probability of accepting Christ, but youth or teens aged 14 to 18 have only a 4% probability of doing so. Adults age 19 and over have just a 6% probability of becoming Christians.

And here’s the disturbing bit:

This data illustrates the importance of influencing children to consider making a decision to follow Christ.

Because the 4-14 period slice of the pie is so large, many have started referring to the "4-14 Window." Many people serving as career cross-cultural missionaries have testified that they first felt God calling them to missionary service during that 4-14 age period.

The data may be America-centric, but it wouldn’t surprise me if evangelical Christians everywhere, including Australia, agree with its implications: to grow the body of Christ, you’ve got to get ‘em while they’re still young and haven’t developed their critical thinking skills.

It’s rank opportunism, pure and simple.




HT: PZ Myers




6.2.12

Dear religious right, cancer is a health issue, not a moral one

Turns out that Vogue magazine isn’t just about semi-glossed pages of beautiful (if often overpriced) clothes on beautiful (if often emaciated) women. There’s also intelligent, provocative writing to be found tucked between all those perfume ads and sparkly bling. The December 2011 issue has a feature on the controversial HPV vaccine (‘Calling the Shots’); writer Ayelet Waldman tells her story about being infected with HPV, and condemns the moralism of American politicians like Michele Bachmann who oppose the HPV vaccine.

Waldman was infected with the human papillomavirus, which can cause various cancers, despite being in a long-term monogamous relationship, putting paid to the conservative lie that HPV is the (deserved) price for promiscuity. Michele Bachmann displayed this odious self-righteousness in her opposition to the HPV vaccine, going so far as to criticising Texas governor and fellow God-botherer Rick Perry for issuing an executive order mandating HPV vaccination for girls in sixth grade. Here’s Waldman on the really spiteful motivation behind Bachmann’s anti-vaccine position (emphasis mine):

Perry’s strategic mistake was in treating a vaccine that protects children against a potentially fatal disease as a health issue. The state of Texas mandates vaccinations for polio, for chicken pox, for nine different illnesses, only a few of which are as potentially deadly as the cervical, anal, and oral cancers caused by HPV, but Bachmann took no issue with those. She attacked HPV because unlike, say, rubella and mumps, it’s sexually communicable. For people like Bachmann, HPV isn’t a disease; it’s a punishment, a penalty for promiscuity, and to require a young girl to get the vaccine is to expect, even to condone, her sin.

Religious zealots like Bachmann are obsessed with sexual propriety. It’s like they’re wearing special glasses that lets them only see the religio-moral spectrum when they look at any issue of public concern. To them, the HPV vaccine issue isn’t about stopping girls from getting cancer; it’s about encouraging girls to fuck a lot. Prominent skeptic and feminist Rebecca Watson took on Bachmann during last year’s Skepticon, wittily exposing Bachmann’s logic fail:

Michele Bachmann is also against fire extinguishers, because they’ll just encourage everybody to set shit on fire.

Waldman received some negative pushback from her Twitter followers when she tweeted about her HPV infection in what many thought to be overly graphic detail. To her critics, Waldman responds:

The concept of [Too Much Information] is composed of a combination of prudishness, squeamishness, and censoriousness. It’s the last part that bothers me the most. You’re a prude? Fine. You’re uncomfortable with your body? That’s your problem. But when you try to shame others out of speaking out or taking action, then you’re engaging in a hip, digital form of the worst kind of demagoguery. Then you’re Michele Bachmann. The opposing principle of TMI is embodied by the phrase “Silence = Death”. Remember back in the height of the AIDS crisis, when HIV was considered a disease of promiscuous gay men and drug addicts, something decent people neither suffered from nor talked about? It took a pink triangle and a slogan to remind us of the dangers of conflating public health and morality. It’s time to do the same for HPV.

Hear, hear.




6.1.12

Not cool, Turkey. Not. Cool.

Oh Turkey, what’s happened to you? From a staunchly secular republic (ok, perhaps too staunch at times) that also has a mostly Muslim citizenry, you’ve gradually degenerated into an Islamist state that seeks to impose religious ideology in place of secular values and science.

So I hear you want to ban any mention of Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution. That you want to protect children’s innocent minds from ideas supposedly comparable to images of naked humans slapping their genitals together. So now you’re playing the ‘think of the children’ card too?

I know you don’t much like those obnoxious, trigger happy Americans. So why do you insist on copying one of their least admirable traits? In the eyes of scientifically literate people everywhere, you Turks and Americans are like bosom buddies in God-infused ignorance. Your bromance is obvious from the flattering way Turkish creationists like Adnan Oktar adopt wholesale the Christian concept of Intelligent Design popular with American fundamentalists.

Children of Ataturk, you were supposed to be a secular exemplar of the Muslim world. You were supposed to persuade us faithless heathens that Islam was compatible with liberty, democracy, progress and science. You were supposed to be a political, social and economic example for other Muslim countries to emulate for the better. Now they’re going to emulate you for the worse.

Turkey, I am disappoint.




CORRECTION: I have just learned that the Turkish creationist Adnan Oktar aka Harun Yahya explicitly rejects Intelligent Design (Win!). This is because he thinks that ID proponents are either contemptible Westerners or treacherous Western sympathisers who haven't got the balls to declare that "Allah created the entire universe and everything in it, living and non-living" (Epic fail!).




3.1.12

Mississippi redefines what it means to be a ‘person’ (and yes, God’s involved)

This is what happens when religidiocy butts into biology. A lump of undifferentiated cells suddenly becomes a person, and abortion and birth control become acts of murder.

From the New York Times:

A constitutional amendment facing voters in Mississippi on Nov. 8, and similar initiatives brewing in half a dozen other states including Florida and Ohio, would declare a fertilized human egg to be a legal person, effectively branding abortion and some forms of birth control as murder. [...]

Many doctors and women’s health advocates say the proposals would cause a dangerous intrusion of criminal law into medical care, jeopardizing women’s rights and even their lives.

The amendment in Mississippi would ban virtually all abortions, including those resulting from rape or incest. It would bar some birth control methods, including IUDs and “morning-after pills,” which prevent fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus. It would also outlaw the destruction of embryos created in laboratories.

The Mississippi amendment is the demon baby you’d expect from the unholy copulation of religiosity and scientific ignorance, as one doctor points out:

Dr. Randall S. Hines , a fertility specialist in Jackson working against Proposition 26 with the group Mississippians for Healthy Families, said that the amendment reflects “biological ignorance.” Most fertilized eggs, he said, do not implant in the uterus or develop further.

“Once you recognize that the majority of fertilized eggs don’t become people, then you recognize how absurd this amendment is,” Dr. Hines said. He fears severe unintended consequences for doctors and women dealing with ectopic or other dangerous pregnancies and for in vitro fertility treatments.

For those folks, Mississippian or otherwise, who think that a zygote is a person, here’s a picture to helpfully illustrate the error of your reasoning.

The Economist also covered this issue, with one reader, Benjamin Iwai of Missouri, writing a letter to the editor that displayed the merit of consistency vis-à-vis the idea of embryos being persons:

Sir, I was delighted to read your article about the effort in Mississippi to pass a state constitutional amendment to recognise embryos as people from the moment of fertilisation. My wife and I have been considering IVF to address our lack of success in conceiving a child. Mississippi’s proposed amendment gives us even more reason to pursue this treatment, and to move to Mississippi.

After the procedure we will insist on taking custody of any extra embryos that result from IVF – it is our right as parents after all. Once safely in our home we plan to keep them in a freezer in our basement and list them as child dependents for tax purposes, thus giving us a tax deduction. To protect the lives of our children in case of a power outage we will buy a backup generator. Anything less would be bad parenting.

HT: Jerry Coyne




8.11.11

Science and politics (and how postmodernism can fuck things up)

Here’s the introduction for a New Scientist special report on the worrying state of science in the US (‘Decline and Fall’, 29 October):

The US was founded on Enlightenment values and is the most powerful scientific nation on Earth. And yet the status of science in public life has never appeared to be so low.

As campaigning for the 2012 presidential election gets into full swing, US politics, especially on the right, appears to have entered a parallel universe where ignorance, denial and unreason trump facts, evidence and rationality.

Almost all the main Republican presidential candidates subscribe to some variety of anti-scientific bunkum. Michele Bachmann thinks science classes should teach creationism; Rick Perry rejects evolutionary theory because “it’s got some gaps in it”; Newt Gingrich considers embryonic stem cell research to be nothing less than murder; Herman Cain claims that people choose to be homosexual.

Meanwhile, Republican candidates who display a modicum of scientific literacy are practically committing political suicide. Shawn Lawrence Otto writes:

Republicans diverge from anti-science politics at their peril. When leading candidate Mitt Romney said: “I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer… humans contribute to that,” conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh responded with “Bye bye, nomination”. Romney back-pedalled, saying, “I don’t know if it’s mostly caused by humans.”

Hitchens recommends books to a young, bright girl

Christopher Hitchens recently attended the Atheist Alliance of America convention in Houston, Texas. Over at Why Evolution Is True, Jerry Coyne has uploaded videos of Hitchens receiving the Richard Dawkins Award for promoting freethought and atheism, and holding forth on Rick Perry and Mormonism.

A highlight of the event was Hitchens taking the time to have a one-on-one chat with 8-year-old Mason Crumpacker. During the Q&A session Mason had asked Hitchens what books he thought she should read in order to become a freethinker like him. Hitchens graciously offered to see Mason afterwards to give her his recommendations.

Coyne has a post on the exchange between Hitchens and Mason written by Mason’s mum Anne, who accompanied her daughter. It was a beautiful moment, when one of the most keen and erudite minds alive today passed on a precious fragment of his mental library to a young, precocious girl who hoped to follow in his footsteps. A dying man planted seeds of knowledge and wisdom in the mind of a potential successor.

Mason wrote a lovely thank you letter to Hitchens:

Dear Mr. Hitchens,

Thank you for your kindness to me and all of the wonderful books you recommended to help me think for myself. Thank you also for taking my question very seriously. When I was talking to you I felt important because you treated me like a grown up. I feel very fortunate to have met you. I think more children should read books. I also think that all adults should be honest to children like you to me. For the rest of my life I will remember and cherish our meeting and will try to continue to ask questions.

Sincerely,
Mason

P.S. I would like to start with “The Myths” by Robert Graves.

Anne Crumpacker captures that fateful meeting between Hitchens and Mason with heartbreaking poignancy:

I’m not a professional writer, just a mom, but if I get to make only one comment it would be this: There isn’t a magic reading list. Never was. Never will be. The reason what transpired that night was memorable was the wondrous Socratic feel of the exchange. Here was a man, a great thinker of our time who has spent his life developing and honing his intellect, challenging the next generation to pick up the mantle. What all these books have in common is they demand us to question, search and engage. They don’t preach, patronize or indoctrinate. They are a joyful expression of the whole of the human experience. The very best examples of a life fully lived.

We are about to lose a giant among us, but we, as atheists know there can be no greater Valhalla then to join the great conversation of the philosophers. We can honor Christopher Hitchens’ life by teaching our children his best virtues: to study broadly, to laugh heartily, to fight ardently, and to question relentlessly. Books are timeless companions and friends. Mason will surely spend her life in the company of illustrious authors gone before. Naturally, she was introduced to many of them that night by a kind man, with flashing eyes, sitting at a table who is about to join their company.

11.10.11

When women betray their own gender

Here’s the gist of Madeleine Bunting’s Guardian article: Western imperialists cynically used the oppression of women by the Taliban as a pretext to carry out the US-led Afghan War.

Bunting isn’t anti-women’s rights; she’s anti-fighting-for-women’s-rights-while-also-shooting-and-bombing-their-oppressors. Now this may seem like a fair enough position to take. Spreading the idea of gender equality shouldn’t require the invasion of another country and subsequent mass killing of its people. Yet Bunting affects a concerned pacifism that disturbingly slips into cultural relativism.

Regarding the initial enthusiasm for the Afghan War, she writes:

Key to this largely supportive public opinion was how, over the course of a few weeks in 2001, a war of revenge was reframed as a war for human rights in Afghanistan, and in particular the rights of women. It was a narrative to justify war that proved remarkably powerful. A cause that had been dismissed and ignored for years in Washington suddenly moved centre-stage. The video of a woman being executed in Kabul stadium that the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan had offered to the BBC and CNN without success was taken up by the Pentagon and used extensively. The Taliban's brutal treatment of women, the closure of girls schools: all were used to justify military invasion and close down debate.

Warren vs Rand

Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren is the antithesis of Ayn Rand, the writer and founder of Objectivism. Two months ago Warren gave a speech that was essentially a rebuttal to Rand’s philosophical ideas concerning the rights of the individual versus the rights of the society in which an individual lives.

Rand notoriously rejected the idea that society, i.e. the state, had a rightful claim to a share of the fruits of an individual’s labour, i.e. taxes. Rand believed that taxation was a form of theft, since it involves the use of force or coercion by the state to take people’s money without requiring their consent. However, since governments require revenue in order to function, Rand conceded that taxes were necessary but insisted that they should be voluntary, and only collected to fund the most basic services that the state could rightfully be expected to provide: the police, the military, and the law courts.

Rand wrote the following in her book The Virtue of Selfishness (1964), in the chapter titled ‘Government Financing in a Free Society’ (emphasis hers):

In a fully free society, taxation—or, to be exact, payment for governmental services—would be voluntary. Since the proper services of a government—the police, the armed forces, the law courts—are demonstrably needed by individual citizens and affect their interests directly, the citizens would (and should) be willing to pay for such services, as they pay for insurance. […]

The principle of voluntary government financing rests on the following premises: that the government is not the owner of the citizens’ income and, therefore, cannot hold a blank check on that income—that the nature of the proper governmental services must be constitutionally defined and delimited, leaving the government no power to enlarge the scope of its services at its own arbitrary discretion. Consequently, the principle of voluntary government financing regards the government as the servant, not the ruler, of the citizens—as an agent who must be paid for his services, not as a benefactor whose services are gratuitous, who dispenses something for nothing.

Randians abandon Sam Harris

Apparently there were quite a number of Ayn Rand devotees who, until recently, were fans of Sam Harris. But when Harris wrote a blog post in support of higher (i.e. fairer) taxes on the rich, the Randians were not impressed.

As a former Objectivist sympathiser, I can understand why Randians would see a kindred spirit in Harris. The guy’s an outspoken atheist, an advocate for science, reason and knowledge, and a proponent of objective morality. But when Harris made the (entirely rational) case for tax increases on America’s super-rich, boy, did he royally piss off the Cult of Virtuous Selfishness.

I stopped believing in many Objectivist ideas for several reasons, both intellectual and emotional. One such reason was my realisation that the Objectivist view of justice – that people got only what they deserved – was simply wrong. Harris explains why (emphasis his):

Many of my critics pretend that they have been entirely self-made. They seem to feel responsible for their intellectual gifts, for their freedom from injury and disease, and for the fact that they were born at a specific moment in history. Many appear to have absolutely no awareness of how lucky one must be to succeed at anything in life, no matter how hard one works. One must be lucky to be able to work. One must be lucky to be intelligent, to not have cerebral palsy, or to not have been bankrupted in middle age by the mortal illness of a spouse.

And that’s what Objectivists refuse to admit – their accomplishments are not entirely a result of their own awesomeness and hard graft. Other external factors contributed to their successes, whether they acknowledge this or not. Conversely, unsuccessful or poor people didn’t get that way simply because they were lazy and stupid. “But for Fortune there go I” is a phrase that is anathema to the Objectivist conception of self-betterment.

It’s a pity that the Randians have excommunicated Sam Harris from their intellectual life. He has so much to offer those who care about ideas. Well, it’s their loss. That the person the Objectivists denounce is actually more rational than them is an all too common irony.




28.8.11

Fukuyama’s new book

I’ve just started reading Francis Fukuyama’s latest book The Origins of Political Order. It’s the first of two volumes, and deals with the development of political institutions across varying cultures and eras from prehistoric times to the 18th century (the second volume will pick up where the first left off and continue the analysis up to the present time). Some have called it Fukuyama’s magnum opus. The books are certainly ambitious in both scope and intended theoretical application.

Fukuyama is often associated with American neoconservatism, but apparently he no longer supports that rather bellicose ideology. A passage from chapter one of TOoPO (‘The Necessity of Politics’) shows his more centrist stance:

There is in fact a curious blindness to the importance of political institutions that has affected many people over the years, people who dream about a world in which we will somehow transcend politics. This particular fantasy is not the special province of either the Left or the Right; both have had their versions of it.

And the political scientist who signed a post-9/11 letter to President Bush urging him to remove Saddam Hussein from power by any means necessary later became a critic of the Iraq War. In TOoPO Fukuyama writes:

The degree to which people in developed countries take political institutions for granted was very much evident in the way the United States planned, or failed to plan, for the aftermath of its 2003 invasion of Iraq. The U.S. administration seemed to think that democracy and a market economy were default conditions to which the country would automatically revert once Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship was removed, and seemed genuinely surprised when the Iraqi state itself collapsed in an orgy of looting and civil conflict.

Fukuyama’s centrist, perhaps even realist, ideas appeal to me. As someone who flirted with far Leftism many years ago (I was a member of an Australian socialist group), my present self actually feels a tad embarrassed over having been seduced by romantic ideas that often took leave of the realities of society, human nature and economics. I think my acquired respect for rationality, evidence and critical thinking played a big part in my move towards the political centre (though upon a thorough accounting perhaps more of my values lie towards the liberal, progressive left). Maybe it’s an inevitable transition, as per Winston Churchill’s curt remark:

If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain.

Since I’m neither twenty nor forty, it’s only fitting that I be a moderate, thus retaining both heart and brain. Which is why I also liked Joseph Heath’s Filthy Lucre: Economics for People Who Hate Capitalism (2009), where a left-leaning philosophy professor debunks common economic myths believed by the Left and the Right. This sort of equal opportunity reality check isn’t so much a case of “the truth lies somewhere in the middle” (an argument prone to the false compromise fallacy), but rather a case of the facts being indifferent to ideology. Just like in science.

It’s going to take me a while to get through volume one of The Origins of Political Order, especially since my distraction by other reading material is basically guaranteed. Hopefully by the time I reach the cliffhanger chapter on the French Revolution, volume two will already be out. I swear, Fukuyama better not do a George R R Martin.




15.7.11

“If the battle is waged on a level playing field, our victory is assured”

Secularism is on the rise, and religious groups aren’t happy about it. A favourite pushback tactic of theirs is to cry discrimination, that their rights are being trampled on by the godless. If they’re referring to their right to be bigots, to be shielded from criticism, to be accorded special privileges like tax-exempt status and unelected political power, and above all to be unquestioningly respected, then yes, such ‘rights’ should be denied to them. Religious groups demand these pseudo-rights because they understand – and fear – the consequences of not having them: they would be forced to compete with more liberal, rational, progressive and humane ideas on equal terms.

A level playing field in the great social debate humanity has with itself is a prospect that frightens the religious. Daylight Atheism’s Adam Lee makes this clear in his post on the worried reaction of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Albert Mohler to the recent same-sex marriage law passed in New York State. Likewise, the UN gay rights protection resolution passed two weeks ago was condemned by Muslims, who would prefer an international climate more conducive to their religiously inspired homophobia. The sacred task of shaming, assaulting and killing gays becomes noticeably more difficult to execute when global opinion is most emphatically not on your side.

Atheists, humanists and freethinkers know that they have a better than good chance of winning in a fair ideological fight. Religious groups and their accommodationist allies are aware of this, so they try to silence their opponents either by force or by the more subtle yet no less deplorable method of tarring them as supposedly strident, aggressive, militant, arrogant, simplistic polemicists. As Lee writes:

In their furious hushing of atheists and demanding that we be more respectful, in their efforts around the world to pass bills punishing speech that insults or denigrates religion, we see that what the major religious groups and their allies want is to silence dissent. Again, they don't want to compete in a marketplace of ideas; they want society to be their parishioners, sitting in enforced silence while they alone stand in the pulpit and preach.

There's a lesson here for freethinkers: to win the debate, we just have to show up. If we can speak freely and make our case, we've already won. If we can successfully claim the same rights and the same privileges as religious people, we've already won. If ordinary people have friends and family who are atheists, and know that they have friends and family who are atheists, we've already won. If the battle is waged on a level playing field, our victory is assured, because we know that in an open and fair debate, our arguments are the better ones and will carry the day. It's only coercion and prejudice that can hold us back, and both those obstacles are weakening and falling one by one.

Yes, our arguments are indeed the better ones, for they are based on reason, evidence and universal compassion. Which is why the religious would rather we didn’t voice them.




30.6.11

Anti-vaccination ads in Times Square

Anti-vaxers are going for the jugular this time. Mercola and the National Vaccine Information Center (or rather MIS-information Center) have launched an anti-vaccination ad campaign on the JumboTron in New York’s Times Square, where it will be seen by millions of locals and visitors. The lies and fearmongering must not go unchallenged.

There’s a petition asking CBS Outdoor, the owners of the JumboTron, to stop running the ads. Please sign it, even if you’re not a New Yorker or an American, and spread the word to all and sundry. Misinformation on health matters affects us all, no matter where we live.

Over at the Skepchick website, Elyse Anders has posted links to stories illustrating the harm caused by a significant drop in vaccination rates. When a certain number of kids in any given population aren’t vaccinated, it compromises the ‘herd immunity’ effect that acts to prevent outbreaks of contagious diseases.

Two trusted medical experts that I know of have written extensively on vaccines and the global anti-vax movement. Dr Ben Goldacre, who is also an investigative journalist, has covered these issues in newspaper articles, interviews, blog posts and his book Bad Science (2009). Dr Steven Novella is a neurologist and educator who has written about the efficacy, safety and necessity of vaccines on his blog NeuroLogica. I highly recommend you read what these two doctors have to say about the vile anti-vax campaign that needlessly puts children at risk of disease and death.

On a lighter note, here’s an awesome poem by the Digital Cuttlefish on the Times Square anti-vax ads.




12.4.11

Critical thinkers, beware Poe’s Law!

Apparently this has been an internet meme since 2005, but I’ve only just discovered Poe’s Law:

Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing.

It makes sense; some of the wacky things that come out of the mouths and keyboards of religious and political fundies almost parody themselves. Satirists poking fun at the kooks need to post disclaimers or include some overt sign that they’re taking the piss if they’re not to be confused for the real deal. Especially by overeager folks who let their outrage overtake their caution in checking out the veracity of some unbelievably dumb/crass/ignorant/bigoted fundie-speak.

Poe’s Law recently snared two exemplars of critical thinking, skepticism and reason. P Z Myers got caught by a satirical article on the Burnt Orange Report website that claims Texas governor Rick Perry encouraged Republicans to take their kids out of public schools and put them into private Christian ones. Crispian Jago in turn fell for a post on spoof ‘Christian’ website Christwire.org, which assures God-loving types that it’s ok for a Christian husband to ‘gently beat his wife’.

To be fair to both men though, their respective bugbears give them plausible reasons to have believed the spoof claims made by the satirists. In Myers’ case, Governor Perry is a conservative Christian who is anti-abortion, anti-gay equality, supports creationism being taught in schools, and rejects the scientific evidence for anthropogenic global warming. The words put in his mouth by Burnt Orange Report writer Libby Shaw aren’t too far-fetched given the Texas governor’s religious, economic and political views.

As for Jago, his blog post was aimed at the ‘head fruitcake at the UK's very own fundamentalist conservative Christian pressure group’, Stephen Green, who allegedly physically and sexually abused his wife in private while preaching Christian morality in public. It was in an addendum to this post where Jago quoted from the spoof website Christwire.org, not realising that it actually satirises Christianity.

To their credit, Myers and Jago acknowledged their gaffes. Given that the genuine treasures of criticism they’ve dug up for their readers’ education far outweigh the occasional fool’s gold, I think they deserve a pardon.

Moral of the story: Sure, go forth and righteously (and metaphorically) smite the enemies of reason. But beware Poe’s Law, and always double check your sources lest you quote made-up stupid instead of real stupid.




30.1.11

Scientific integrity comes to America

It’s official: the US government is going to keep politics out of science.

I’m confused about the appropriate response to the news. Do I whoop with joy over this promising turn of events that will lead to greater scientific progress in the US? Or do I facepalm myself over the politicians’ pathetically belated realisation that science and political ideology should never, ever mix?

Ambivalent reactions aside, it can only be considered a good thing that the Obama administration has publicly declared the independence of science from undue political influence. Yes, I’m aware that a public declaration isn’t a magic spell that will suddenly banish all such influence. But at least American scientists will finally be able to do their thing under the aegis of policies that contain “a clear prohibition on political interference in scientific processes and expanded assurances of transparency.”

This has been a long time coming. For years now scientists and organisations like the Center for Inquiry (CFI) have been calling for such pro-science action. The retardation of science under the Bush administration has arguably eroded America’s commercial, technological and intellectual prominence. It has also very likely contributed to the prevalence of anti-scientific attitudes, while nurturing disdain for evidence-based decision making.

The Obama administration’s green light for independent science comes at a time when the US sorely needs to up its game in scientific literacy. In a 2006 world ranking of science literacy among high school students, the US ranked at No. 22 out of 33 countries, which is well below the OECD average (ditto for maths and reading). With American scientific advancement no longer a signed and sealed deal, the last thing US politicians should be doing is sabotaging their already beleaguered science institutions with anti-scientific meddling (and if it’s the Republicans doing the meddling, you can bet your retirement fund that it will be anti-scientific).

Of course, it would also help if members of the science community refrained from making silly comments regarding ‘political bias’ in the actual practise of science, rather than in its implementation, which can indeed be politicised. Now that the Obama administration has pledged to maintain the integrity and independence of science, freshly energised and emboldened scientists should start strutting their stuff. Even if most of them are Democrats.




20.12.10

Talk about putting the cart before the horse

Consider the following statement:

Most jockeys are short. This is a problem. Horse racing organisations need to address this imbalance by encouraging tall people to become jockeys.

Silly, isn’t it? The reason why jockeys tend to be short has little to do with horse racing politics or managerial bickering. Simply put, short and light physiques lend themselves to riding a horse to victory better than tall and heavy ones. It’s the physics, stupid.

WikiLeaks: the case for and against

Looks like they got him. Julian Assange now sits in a London jail on rape charges, awaiting possible extradition to Sweden. But I won’t be drawn into this sideshow. I’m more concerned about the ethical issues behind the actions of WikiLeaks. Assange may be the cognitive, directive and even motive force behind it, but his current absence from WikiLeaks won’t lessen the impact the organisation has made on the international landscape. The fallout of ‘Cablegate’ will continue to occupy people’s thoughts and fuel fiery arguments attacking and defending WikiLeaks (and thus Assange).