...Weird shit happens. I should note that this doesn't happen often - actually I rarely enough even remember dreams. But in the wee hours of this morning, I was dreaming - in and out of sleep, about Orac, Dr. Steven Novella and medical woomeister, Bill Maher - thanks I suspect, to Dr. Benway's comments here and here. (this is all in regards to Maher receiving the Richard Dawkins Award at the Atheist Alliance International Convention)
The last time I had a blogger dream - indeed, the only other one I remember, was a steel cage non-death match between Greg Laden and Comrade PhysioProf, over who was going to get to be my post grad mentor. The funny thing is, I am really not that arrogant and not only are neither of them in the field I am going into - they aren't even in the same field themselves. I honestly think it was a combination of finding the thought of them in a steel cage match terribly amusing and suspecting that both of them would be excellent mentors that did it to me. In any case, it was a fucking brilliant dream and well worth remembering. And no, I am not going to say who won. Suffice to say, if they were in my field and locale, I would be totally thrilled to have either as a mentor...
So in my dream, not only was Orac a computer, so was Steven. And this takes place in deep space, aboard a science vessel - where there is to be a competition between Orac, Dr. Novella and Maher, for the Richard Dawkins Award. I am unsure whether it was something Orac or Dr. Novella did, or if it was the science vessel itself rejecting him, but moments after boarding the ship, the cabin he was in was decompressed and Bill Maher was ejected into space (to be picked up by the shuttle that dropped him off - no one was irrevocably harmed during this dream), thus removing him from the competition before it really got rolling.
So the competition was soon down to the two worthy competitors - Dr. Novella and Orac. At first they fought computer against computer, until it was realized that both are just too good natured to actually battle each other for the win. There was some tampering of circuitry by their respective well meaning fans, but both were balking at these potentially damaging attacks. Then someone came along with the idea of motherfucking battle bot avatars. The battle was fierce and grueling, but the outcome was inevitable for several reasons. So at the end - in that holographic rendition of a Roman Colosseum, Orac eventually vanquished his frienemy, Dr. Steven Novella.
First and foremost, Orac simply has vastly more experience as a computer. On top of that, Orac is just a touch more "vicious" than Dr. Novella - vicious of course being a relative term, as both computers are really very decent sorts. And finally, it was my dream and while I really do like Novella, I actually read Orac's blog with far greater frequency.
I have to say though, amusing as the dream was (especially seeing Maher pop out that airlock - seriously, that was totally fucking rocking), I really rather would have slept more soundly and not woken up before five am for the second morning in a row...
And while I won't admit who won the battle between CPP and Greg, I will leave you with the visual that haunts me to this day (keeping in mind I only have a picture I made up, of what CPP actually looks like - just trust me, it is haunting). The steel cage non-death match, involved loin cloths, bear grease and bowie knives...
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!11!!!!11!!!
Showing posts with label woo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label woo. Show all posts
Friday, October 2, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
Skepticism and How the Internets Changed My Thinking
I think that I can pretty legitimately consider myself a skeptic now. I'm not really sure where or when it became a solid facet of who I am, but the other day in my Health and Wellness class I had a bit of an epiphany. I realized that where and when it happened are irrelevant - I really am a skeptic now. It happened like this...
I was sitting in class, taking my notes and generally doing what students are supposed to do, when I was stopped dead. My instructor for this class stated that nicotine - not smoking, not tobacco - nicotine will dramatically increase one's risk of heart disease. This wasn't stated with the caveat that scientists suspect this is the case, or that there is some evidence this may be the case. It was stated as an absolute and that absolute wasn't coming from my instructor, it came from the source material for the class. And the epiphany wasn't "now I can't simply trust that what I am being told in this class is the best understanding that we have, based on available evidence." It wasn't even "now I know that I can't trust that what I am being told in this class is the best understanding we have, based on available evidence, as apposed to assuming that what I am told in this class may be suspect." Because that was already how I have been approaching my education. Rather it was the realization that instead of my first thought being the former, it was the validation of my baseline skepticism and with that I realized that no matter how prone to credulity I am - to the point that I have often described myself as pathologically credulous, I am a skeptic now.
This is not to say that I am immune to the knee-jerk reaction that I have often had in the past, when I hear something that sounds good or comes from someone I trust and especially when it's something that I want to believe. I still have those momentary "this makes so much sense" kind of feelings pretty regularly. But instead of letting it go at that and getting on with my life, I don't just take it for gospel. If it is something that I care enough about to actually repeat, I do my best to make sure that it's accurate before I repeat it. At worse, I will repeat it with the caveat that I haven't verified this information yet - after all, I am not always able to verify something that may be relevant to people I care about. And of course it is always possible to verify something and still be wrong - I have done it and had the unpleasant task of then going back and admitting that I was wrong. I hate having to admit to mistakes, but instead of just pretending the mistake didn't happen, I just try very hard to make sure that I don't make mistakes. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that I'm not still occasionally prone to being a raging asshole, but I sincerely doubt that my experience on the internets is going to cure that any time soon.
Here's how it's come together for me...
More...
I've spent most of my life finding interesting and creative ways to deal with depression, bipolar and severe ADHD. Among them has been this tendency to construct fairly elaborate perceptions of reality, in my head. I haven't really gone into detail about this before and I think that now is probably a good time to really explain how this works - in part because I think that it is probably not all that uncommon in people who are prone to certain types of magical thinking. I know that it's not uncommon among people who are trying to manage affective mood disorders and/or severe ADHD without medication - hell, even with the meds it's hard to avoid.
When one's brain is constantly running at high speed - no stopping, no slowing - constant inundation of ideas, words, pictures and music, an unrelenting deluge - one starts to relish anything and everything that will slow it down. One of the best ways of doing this is to keep your mind distracted - make sure that it is so busy with something that it can't help but slow things down. One of the ways to keep the mind busy is reading - I read a lot as a child and I am a heavy reader as an adult. And when I read as a child - and even now on the rare moments I have to read fiction - I get completely immersed in what I'm reading. I can see the characters, hear them talking and just sort of float through the landscape that the story takes place in - a passive observer. Like watching tee vee would be if the action took place all around you in 3D...But that was not enough. I, like a lot of people like me, needed more. So I created my own perception of reality.
I was a Christian, when I was a child and my Faith became an integral part of my reality. I was quite able to make my reality quite pleasant. I made my god a god who loved and wanted to have everyone bask in his glory. There were rules and those rules meant that certain things needed to happen for people to be able to do that - so I became very adept at proselytizing. The consequences to the people around me were too grim if they didn't come to believe. I also was able to compartmentalize my perception of the people I interacted with as a separate entity from people I didn't. People I knew were People, while all those other folks were people, a group that included the sort of people who would unfortunately go to hell - people who committed crimes and did bad things - hypocritical things. Those folks only existed out there - none of the People in my life were like that. And within my reality, everything was either just, or when there were wrongs, those wrongs would be righted and justice would prevail. Justice had to prevail - every time, even if it might take awhile. And of course, I would be anything and everything I wanted to be someday. It didn't matter that I wanted to be many different people, where many different hats - I didn't just think - I knew that I would be all those things and more. This made things complicated, but complicated was good. My mind was plenty busy trying to sort out inherent and irreconcilable contradictions and things slowed down a bit - sometimes more than others. Inevitably, when things were moving too fast again, I would end up thinking about how a loving god could massacre so many people, or I would work on how I was going to be an artist, a bounty hunter, a pastor/theologian and work for the army - not to mention a dozen or so other things - all at once. Impossible my ass - I knew I would figure it all out with time. My god wouldn't make me this way, with these desires and abilities, if he didn't want me to use them - right?
After I was smacked in the face with massive hypocrisy and contradictions that I simply couldn't ignore and definitely couldn't process fast enough - that reality crumbled and I started forming a new reality. I became convinced that my god wanted me to have the sex - I wanted some and god provided a partner. I was also convinced that god wanted me to smoke cannabis - I want to get high? There's a friend with some weed. And I knew for sure that god wanted me to use hallucinogens - I mean he really, really wanted me to trip, trip balls and trip often. God totally made that clear the first time I took acid. Thus, with my gods blessing - his encouragement even, I embarked upon a remarkable journey of substance abuse, sex, music - anything and everything that would contribute to total sensory overload. Didn't matter that I was basically homeless, didn't eat everyday - I was alive and I was free to wander the world, playing music, getting fucked up and having copious amounts of the sex. Meanwhile, I needed to use even more of my brain to meet the challenge of a stream of brand new contradictions needing to be reconciled. And it worked. During most of my moments of sensory overload, I didn't even need to reconcile stuff and when I was pretty straight - there was plenty to keep my mind busy. Besides, if I wasn't engaged in sensory overload, I was usually seeking it, which also took a lot of brain power and energy.
And I got into woo. Way beyond the religious woo that I was inundated and really rather extraspecially nutty with. I became convinced that plants were probably a far superior form of the medications derived from them - it helped that that was pretty much the only medicine I had access to. Wildcrafting plants that can help with problems that I have was much easier than spending hours on end in the ER, which was the only other way I could get anything and even then, would be limited to the meds they could give me through the ER. I could have left it there, but didn't. Because the same folks who were so keen on telling me about various plants, were also keen on things like magical water with memory, energy healing, Ayurvedic medicines (my favorite containing a strip of silver foil I later learned was actually silver and lead), acupuncture, acupressure - pretty much if it was magical and mystical and wonderful - I was there baby! I wanted to believe the things that these folks had to say - especially when they could reasonably connect their woo to my cultural faith, Christianity. I can't begin to express how exciting it was when I discovered a group of hedonists like myself, who, like I did, believe that their god wants them to get high and screw. I wanted to believe, because it was just more cognitive dissonance with which to douse the flames of my brain.
Then something happened on the way to the lunatic fringe. I discovered these interesting websites called blogs. Instead of just reading things that validated the woo I was inundated with - leavened with the occasional article or book that contradicted it all, I was able to interact with people who had an interest in the things that I did - but who didn't buy into all the crap. And while I had some magnificently crazy ideas, I wasn't one of those folks who developed an inherent distrust of science based medicine or "big pharma." I have always had a fascination with science and also had a pretty fundamental understanding of what science is. I didn't buy into the woo assuming that scientists were totally mistaken - rather I just felt that they were probably a little too focused on the material world. I accepted most of what I knew science has to tell us about the material world. It's just that I was ignorant of what science really had to say about certain things and assumed that science was simply incapable of ascertaining what was happening in the immaterial world that I largely inhabited. But now I had the opportunity to engage with actual scientists, to learn what science has to say about many of the things that I believed. I was able to learn a great deal by simply asking the right questions and there were a lot of great people who were willing to answer my questions.
Now anyone who knows me will assure you that I am not the most humble of people. There are probably one or two people out there who would go as far as to say that I'm actually a little bit on the arrogant side. I would be lying if I said that I haven't been this way for a very long time. But I am one for mostly being careful about my arrogance. I am only arrogant about things that I am very certain of - like I said, I really hate apologizing or otherwise admitting I was wrong, so I try very hard to be right. When I first discovered the blogs, I was pretty damned arrogant about things like creating music, repairing houses and my understanding of the human mind. I also was pretty arrogant about my understanding of Faith and a few religions. This meant that I was very keen on mostly paying attention to what people who knew a lot more than I did, had to say about a lot of topics in which I was sorely misguided. And I read the things they suggested I read, because evidence is an important key to ensuring that what one is being told is true. Or as true as we can best ascertain it to be.
I am pretty damned arrogant about a lot more these days. I am arrogant about a lot more, because I am confident that when I make an assertion, it is based on the best evidence I have available to me. My level of confidence in any assertion I make, correlates directly with my confidence in the evidence that supports it. Whatever my initial reaction to things that others assert to me is irrelevant. It's what I do with that information after that's important and what I do with that information is why I am a skeptic now.
Given my penchant for psychology and my rather vast experience with a wide variety of magical thinking, I am going to write about magical thinking fairly regularly. I tend to think that there is some value in understanding why people engage in certain behaviors, especially when those behaviors often contribute to dangerous decision making. I can't say how regular it will be, but I am hoping to write substantively on this topic at least once a month.
I was sitting in class, taking my notes and generally doing what students are supposed to do, when I was stopped dead. My instructor for this class stated that nicotine - not smoking, not tobacco - nicotine will dramatically increase one's risk of heart disease. This wasn't stated with the caveat that scientists suspect this is the case, or that there is some evidence this may be the case. It was stated as an absolute and that absolute wasn't coming from my instructor, it came from the source material for the class. And the epiphany wasn't "now I can't simply trust that what I am being told in this class is the best understanding that we have, based on available evidence." It wasn't even "now I know that I can't trust that what I am being told in this class is the best understanding we have, based on available evidence, as apposed to assuming that what I am told in this class may be suspect." Because that was already how I have been approaching my education. Rather it was the realization that instead of my first thought being the former, it was the validation of my baseline skepticism and with that I realized that no matter how prone to credulity I am - to the point that I have often described myself as pathologically credulous, I am a skeptic now.
This is not to say that I am immune to the knee-jerk reaction that I have often had in the past, when I hear something that sounds good or comes from someone I trust and especially when it's something that I want to believe. I still have those momentary "this makes so much sense" kind of feelings pretty regularly. But instead of letting it go at that and getting on with my life, I don't just take it for gospel. If it is something that I care enough about to actually repeat, I do my best to make sure that it's accurate before I repeat it. At worse, I will repeat it with the caveat that I haven't verified this information yet - after all, I am not always able to verify something that may be relevant to people I care about. And of course it is always possible to verify something and still be wrong - I have done it and had the unpleasant task of then going back and admitting that I was wrong. I hate having to admit to mistakes, but instead of just pretending the mistake didn't happen, I just try very hard to make sure that I don't make mistakes. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that I'm not still occasionally prone to being a raging asshole, but I sincerely doubt that my experience on the internets is going to cure that any time soon.
Here's how it's come together for me...
More...
I've spent most of my life finding interesting and creative ways to deal with depression, bipolar and severe ADHD. Among them has been this tendency to construct fairly elaborate perceptions of reality, in my head. I haven't really gone into detail about this before and I think that now is probably a good time to really explain how this works - in part because I think that it is probably not all that uncommon in people who are prone to certain types of magical thinking. I know that it's not uncommon among people who are trying to manage affective mood disorders and/or severe ADHD without medication - hell, even with the meds it's hard to avoid.
When one's brain is constantly running at high speed - no stopping, no slowing - constant inundation of ideas, words, pictures and music, an unrelenting deluge - one starts to relish anything and everything that will slow it down. One of the best ways of doing this is to keep your mind distracted - make sure that it is so busy with something that it can't help but slow things down. One of the ways to keep the mind busy is reading - I read a lot as a child and I am a heavy reader as an adult. And when I read as a child - and even now on the rare moments I have to read fiction - I get completely immersed in what I'm reading. I can see the characters, hear them talking and just sort of float through the landscape that the story takes place in - a passive observer. Like watching tee vee would be if the action took place all around you in 3D...But that was not enough. I, like a lot of people like me, needed more. So I created my own perception of reality.
I was a Christian, when I was a child and my Faith became an integral part of my reality. I was quite able to make my reality quite pleasant. I made my god a god who loved and wanted to have everyone bask in his glory. There were rules and those rules meant that certain things needed to happen for people to be able to do that - so I became very adept at proselytizing. The consequences to the people around me were too grim if they didn't come to believe. I also was able to compartmentalize my perception of the people I interacted with as a separate entity from people I didn't. People I knew were People, while all those other folks were people, a group that included the sort of people who would unfortunately go to hell - people who committed crimes and did bad things - hypocritical things. Those folks only existed out there - none of the People in my life were like that. And within my reality, everything was either just, or when there were wrongs, those wrongs would be righted and justice would prevail. Justice had to prevail - every time, even if it might take awhile. And of course, I would be anything and everything I wanted to be someday. It didn't matter that I wanted to be many different people, where many different hats - I didn't just think - I knew that I would be all those things and more. This made things complicated, but complicated was good. My mind was plenty busy trying to sort out inherent and irreconcilable contradictions and things slowed down a bit - sometimes more than others. Inevitably, when things were moving too fast again, I would end up thinking about how a loving god could massacre so many people, or I would work on how I was going to be an artist, a bounty hunter, a pastor/theologian and work for the army - not to mention a dozen or so other things - all at once. Impossible my ass - I knew I would figure it all out with time. My god wouldn't make me this way, with these desires and abilities, if he didn't want me to use them - right?
After I was smacked in the face with massive hypocrisy and contradictions that I simply couldn't ignore and definitely couldn't process fast enough - that reality crumbled and I started forming a new reality. I became convinced that my god wanted me to have the sex - I wanted some and god provided a partner. I was also convinced that god wanted me to smoke cannabis - I want to get high? There's a friend with some weed. And I knew for sure that god wanted me to use hallucinogens - I mean he really, really wanted me to trip, trip balls and trip often. God totally made that clear the first time I took acid. Thus, with my gods blessing - his encouragement even, I embarked upon a remarkable journey of substance abuse, sex, music - anything and everything that would contribute to total sensory overload. Didn't matter that I was basically homeless, didn't eat everyday - I was alive and I was free to wander the world, playing music, getting fucked up and having copious amounts of the sex. Meanwhile, I needed to use even more of my brain to meet the challenge of a stream of brand new contradictions needing to be reconciled. And it worked. During most of my moments of sensory overload, I didn't even need to reconcile stuff and when I was pretty straight - there was plenty to keep my mind busy. Besides, if I wasn't engaged in sensory overload, I was usually seeking it, which also took a lot of brain power and energy.
And I got into woo. Way beyond the religious woo that I was inundated and really rather extraspecially nutty with. I became convinced that plants were probably a far superior form of the medications derived from them - it helped that that was pretty much the only medicine I had access to. Wildcrafting plants that can help with problems that I have was much easier than spending hours on end in the ER, which was the only other way I could get anything and even then, would be limited to the meds they could give me through the ER. I could have left it there, but didn't. Because the same folks who were so keen on telling me about various plants, were also keen on things like magical water with memory, energy healing, Ayurvedic medicines (my favorite containing a strip of silver foil I later learned was actually silver and lead), acupuncture, acupressure - pretty much if it was magical and mystical and wonderful - I was there baby! I wanted to believe the things that these folks had to say - especially when they could reasonably connect their woo to my cultural faith, Christianity. I can't begin to express how exciting it was when I discovered a group of hedonists like myself, who, like I did, believe that their god wants them to get high and screw. I wanted to believe, because it was just more cognitive dissonance with which to douse the flames of my brain.
Then something happened on the way to the lunatic fringe. I discovered these interesting websites called blogs. Instead of just reading things that validated the woo I was inundated with - leavened with the occasional article or book that contradicted it all, I was able to interact with people who had an interest in the things that I did - but who didn't buy into all the crap. And while I had some magnificently crazy ideas, I wasn't one of those folks who developed an inherent distrust of science based medicine or "big pharma." I have always had a fascination with science and also had a pretty fundamental understanding of what science is. I didn't buy into the woo assuming that scientists were totally mistaken - rather I just felt that they were probably a little too focused on the material world. I accepted most of what I knew science has to tell us about the material world. It's just that I was ignorant of what science really had to say about certain things and assumed that science was simply incapable of ascertaining what was happening in the immaterial world that I largely inhabited. But now I had the opportunity to engage with actual scientists, to learn what science has to say about many of the things that I believed. I was able to learn a great deal by simply asking the right questions and there were a lot of great people who were willing to answer my questions.
Now anyone who knows me will assure you that I am not the most humble of people. There are probably one or two people out there who would go as far as to say that I'm actually a little bit on the arrogant side. I would be lying if I said that I haven't been this way for a very long time. But I am one for mostly being careful about my arrogance. I am only arrogant about things that I am very certain of - like I said, I really hate apologizing or otherwise admitting I was wrong, so I try very hard to be right. When I first discovered the blogs, I was pretty damned arrogant about things like creating music, repairing houses and my understanding of the human mind. I also was pretty arrogant about my understanding of Faith and a few religions. This meant that I was very keen on mostly paying attention to what people who knew a lot more than I did, had to say about a lot of topics in which I was sorely misguided. And I read the things they suggested I read, because evidence is an important key to ensuring that what one is being told is true. Or as true as we can best ascertain it to be.
I am pretty damned arrogant about a lot more these days. I am arrogant about a lot more, because I am confident that when I make an assertion, it is based on the best evidence I have available to me. My level of confidence in any assertion I make, correlates directly with my confidence in the evidence that supports it. Whatever my initial reaction to things that others assert to me is irrelevant. It's what I do with that information after that's important and what I do with that information is why I am a skeptic now.
Given my penchant for psychology and my rather vast experience with a wide variety of magical thinking, I am going to write about magical thinking fairly regularly. I tend to think that there is some value in understanding why people engage in certain behaviors, especially when those behaviors often contribute to dangerous decision making. I can't say how regular it will be, but I am hoping to write substantively on this topic at least once a month.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
If you gotta Godwin: A rule for Anti-vax loons and other Denialists
Orac is getting rather bored with the damned Hitler references already. Now I can't say that my new rule - more a suggestion really, will get you much further than calling anyone Hitler will. But lets try to get creative about it, 'k? In the spirit of turning over new leaves, of entering exciting new realms of hyperbole, I thought I would help you folks out. Lets stop being so generic. Hitler is so very early millennium - socialism is the new fascism.
Keep in mind though, many of these will easily apply to those of us loons who are rather more keen on evidence than hysteria. And they needn't be restricted to vaccine denialists either. These work just as well for cancer denialists, HIV/AIDS denialists, even psychiatry denialists. I am pretty sure the more creative among you - and there is a lot of creativity amongst the denialists - can even work it for 9/11 denialism and other non-medical woo.
1) Chairman Orac and his merry band of Maoist poison peddlers!!1!11!! (or Chairman Tara and her...)
2) Pal Pot, the anti-smoking mass murderer and pharma shill!!!11! (sorry, but I don't think that one really works for anyone else)
3) McCarthy Hoofnagle thought crime investigator!!!11!!
4) Mike the murdering Bolshevic!!1!11!!!
5) PZ Stalin - Christian baby eating Cthulu worshiper!!1!!!1!
6) Ed Satan and his dispatches from hell!!1!11!!
7) Osama Greg Laden - Islamosocialist terrorist!!1!!111
8) DrugCaligula evile cloner of human/lab animal hybrids!!1!!11!!
9) Bad Ass Cylon destroying the human race!!!1!!1!11!! (stolen from the Science Pundit)
10) Jason Chavez, totalitarian commie gun thief!!!11!!1!!!
11) Imelda Podblack, laughing in her million dollar wardrobe, while poor babies are injected with toxic sludge!!!11!!!!1! (Mike Haubrich, FCD)
12) Dave and Greta Mussolini, with their propaganda rag, the Communist Daily!!1!!11!!! (Lousy Damned Canuck)
13) Jamestiltskin on his Island of the Damned, dragging down teh human race one royal firstborn at a time!!1!11!!!1 (Stolen from that Damned Canuck)
14) Stephanie Genghis Zkhan, barbarian warlord, murderer of peasants and pusher of wordiness!!1!!!!1!! (Osama)
15) Mike Jong-Il, repressive socialist sociopath, who probably hangs people who aren't "rational"!!!11!1!!!!!
16) Greta M Hari, flaunting evidence, sexuality and erototoxins - she's into that toxic sludge marinading too!!!1!!111!!!
17) Lucretia Sci Borgia, the treacherous temptress of science, injecting the poison directly into your BRAIN!!!11!1!!
18) Ben Goldtorquemada, turning the tables on the inquisition!!!11!111!! (David D.G.)
Come on, lets make this list longer, so we can provide an exhaustive reference for those times when irrational arguments are wearing thin and only a Godwin will do!!! Help a loon out - or if you are a loon - get creative!!!
And if someone calls you Hitler, you can send them this way!!!11!!!1!!
Keep in mind though, many of these will easily apply to those of us loons who are rather more keen on evidence than hysteria. And they needn't be restricted to vaccine denialists either. These work just as well for cancer denialists, HIV/AIDS denialists, even psychiatry denialists. I am pretty sure the more creative among you - and there is a lot of creativity amongst the denialists - can even work it for 9/11 denialism and other non-medical woo.
1) Chairman Orac and his merry band of Maoist poison peddlers!!1!11!! (or Chairman Tara and her...)
2) Pal Pot, the anti-smoking mass murderer and pharma shill!!!11! (sorry, but I don't think that one really works for anyone else)
3) McCarthy Hoofnagle thought crime investigator!!!11!!
4) Mike the murdering Bolshevic!!1!11!!!
5) PZ Stalin - Christian baby eating Cthulu worshiper!!1!!!1!
6) Ed Satan and his dispatches from hell!!1!11!!
7) Osama Greg Laden - Islamosocialist terrorist!!1!!111
8) DrugCaligula evile cloner of human/lab animal hybrids!!1!!11!!
9) Bad Ass Cylon destroying the human race!!!1!!1!11!! (stolen from the Science Pundit)
10) Jason Chavez, totalitarian commie gun thief!!!11!!1!!!
11) Imelda Podblack, laughing in her million dollar wardrobe, while poor babies are injected with toxic sludge!!!11!!!!1! (Mike Haubrich, FCD)
12) Dave and Greta Mussolini, with their propaganda rag, the Communist Daily!!1!!11!!! (Lousy Damned Canuck)
13) Jamestiltskin on his Island of the Damned, dragging down teh human race one royal firstborn at a time!!1!11!!!1 (Stolen from that Damned Canuck)
14) Stephanie Genghis Zkhan, barbarian warlord, murderer of peasants and pusher of wordiness!!1!!!!1!! (Osama)
15) Mike Jong-Il, repressive socialist sociopath, who probably hangs people who aren't "rational"!!!11!1!!!!!
16) Greta M Hari, flaunting evidence, sexuality and erototoxins - she's into that toxic sludge marinading too!!!1!!111!!!
17) Lucretia Sci Borgia, the treacherous temptress of science, injecting the poison directly into your BRAIN!!!11!1!!
18) Ben Goldtorquemada, turning the tables on the inquisition!!!11!111!! (David D.G.)
Come on, lets make this list longer, so we can provide an exhaustive reference for those times when irrational arguments are wearing thin and only a Godwin will do!!! Help a loon out - or if you are a loon - get creative!!!
And if someone calls you Hitler, you can send them this way!!!11!!!1!!
Monday, May 4, 2009
CAM, Anti-Vax loons and the Morons at Merck
I am more than a little pissed after reading this post, which I found through Greg Laden. I am pissed because I have become increasingly involved with fighting non-evidence based medicine, mostly with people around me. I don't really write about it much, though I have begun thinking that I should. I haven't really felt the need to, because there are a lot of great medical bloggers out there who do such a fantastic job of it - several of whom are linked in my sidebar. In particular, Orac, PalMD, Mark Hoofnagle and the great people at Science Based Medicine do one hell of a job tearing down the veneer of crap and exposing it for what it is.
Here's the issue I have. I'm a reasonably intelligent person, a bit above average even. Yet I am also what I like to call, pathologically credulous. I have fallen into remarkable amounts of magical thinking over the years and not because I'm dumb. In fact part of it is because I tend not to assume that something is true, just because everyone else says it is. And my relationship with non-evidence based "medicine" was largely grounded in the idea that evidence based medicine is largely profit based and therefore largely corrupt. What wasn't so apparent to me at the time, was that a lot of the bullshit that I was falling into was just as profit based and much of it was even more corrupt - though much of the corruption was a very different sort. I also fell into a lot of the bullshit because many of the claims were made by people who also made claims that were easily verifiable - they fostered my trust and I believed what they had to say about things that weren't so easily verifiable.
And that is the key to sucking people into so called alternative medicine. Efficacy by association. Throwing plant medicines that actually have some degree of efficacy (largely because many pharmaceuticals are derived from plant sources) into the mix, even though this can actually be quite dangerous in some cases (a whole post of its own sometime). Throwing legitimate medical treatments in, but using them for things they simply aren't called for - such as chelation therapy. It makes it easier to sell people on flat out bullshit. Things like osteopathy, homeopathy and energy medicine - things that are not only not supported by evidence, but which are flat out absurd on their face. Things that are based on nothing more than magical thinking.
It's bad enough that some of these "medicines" can be dangerous in and of themselves - either because the actual treatment is harmful, or more often, because the treatment is used in place of evidence based medicine. But it doesn't stop there. There is a very dark side to this, with insane and deadly notions like HIV/AIDS denialism, denial of the germ theory of disease, the anti-vaccine movement and anti-chemotherapy proponents. People actually die because of this complete and utter bullshit.
Another reason it is easy for some people to fall into magical thinking in regards to medicine, is because of the perception that evidence based medicine is mostly based on therapies developed by corrupt pharmaceutical companies. Most people don't start out believing that, but I think that most people do recognize that pharmaceutical companies and for that matter, medical science in general, is not immune to corruption. And I think that most people recognize that sometimes that corruption includes maliciously covering evidence that companies wish to avoid becoming public. This makes it rather easy for some people to buy the CAM line that critics of CAM and even fringe CAM ideas, are simply shills for Big Pharma - an evil bogyman that's out to addict people to their medicines and cast them aside when they've been poisoned by them. From there it isn't much of a trek to believing that all evidence based medicine is evile and that doctors are merely merchants of death, the death manufactured by Big Pharma.
This is why I am so very angry at Merck and the doctors that contributed to their advertising rag, disguised as a legitimate science journal*. The doctor involved should should face sanctions. And Merck should be fined heavily by the FDA. Things that would happen, if we lived in a reasonable world, in a reasonable country with reasonable oversight. There is something very wrong with a system where this can happen and the people involved don't even understand that they did something wrong. This is absolutely and categorically disgusting and unconscionable.
But the idea that this somehow validates the proponents of woo, the peddlers of magical thinking in the guise of medicine, is a logical fallacy and a rather obvious one - if not also one that is easy to accept. Just because another pharmaceutical company and some doctors were really damned stupid and highly unethical, does not mean that all of science based medicine is. And there are several doctors and scientists out there who would like to make sure you know that this is not the mainstream of science based medicine. Some of them have even written about this....
Respectful Insolence
Adventures in Ethics and Science
Dr. Isis
Stranger Fruit
Greg Laden
*I would also note that I am more disappointed in Elsevier for publishing this bullshit, than I am with Merck and the people involved from their end. That they would choose to put out this kind of garbage reflects poorly on them and while it may be a while yet before I am publishing papers, this will certainly reflect on my decisions about where to publish.
Here's the issue I have. I'm a reasonably intelligent person, a bit above average even. Yet I am also what I like to call, pathologically credulous. I have fallen into remarkable amounts of magical thinking over the years and not because I'm dumb. In fact part of it is because I tend not to assume that something is true, just because everyone else says it is. And my relationship with non-evidence based "medicine" was largely grounded in the idea that evidence based medicine is largely profit based and therefore largely corrupt. What wasn't so apparent to me at the time, was that a lot of the bullshit that I was falling into was just as profit based and much of it was even more corrupt - though much of the corruption was a very different sort. I also fell into a lot of the bullshit because many of the claims were made by people who also made claims that were easily verifiable - they fostered my trust and I believed what they had to say about things that weren't so easily verifiable.
And that is the key to sucking people into so called alternative medicine. Efficacy by association. Throwing plant medicines that actually have some degree of efficacy (largely because many pharmaceuticals are derived from plant sources) into the mix, even though this can actually be quite dangerous in some cases (a whole post of its own sometime). Throwing legitimate medical treatments in, but using them for things they simply aren't called for - such as chelation therapy. It makes it easier to sell people on flat out bullshit. Things like osteopathy, homeopathy and energy medicine - things that are not only not supported by evidence, but which are flat out absurd on their face. Things that are based on nothing more than magical thinking.
It's bad enough that some of these "medicines" can be dangerous in and of themselves - either because the actual treatment is harmful, or more often, because the treatment is used in place of evidence based medicine. But it doesn't stop there. There is a very dark side to this, with insane and deadly notions like HIV/AIDS denialism, denial of the germ theory of disease, the anti-vaccine movement and anti-chemotherapy proponents. People actually die because of this complete and utter bullshit.
Another reason it is easy for some people to fall into magical thinking in regards to medicine, is because of the perception that evidence based medicine is mostly based on therapies developed by corrupt pharmaceutical companies. Most people don't start out believing that, but I think that most people do recognize that pharmaceutical companies and for that matter, medical science in general, is not immune to corruption. And I think that most people recognize that sometimes that corruption includes maliciously covering evidence that companies wish to avoid becoming public. This makes it rather easy for some people to buy the CAM line that critics of CAM and even fringe CAM ideas, are simply shills for Big Pharma - an evil bogyman that's out to addict people to their medicines and cast them aside when they've been poisoned by them. From there it isn't much of a trek to believing that all evidence based medicine is evile and that doctors are merely merchants of death, the death manufactured by Big Pharma.
This is why I am so very angry at Merck and the doctors that contributed to their advertising rag, disguised as a legitimate science journal*. The doctor involved should should face sanctions. And Merck should be fined heavily by the FDA. Things that would happen, if we lived in a reasonable world, in a reasonable country with reasonable oversight. There is something very wrong with a system where this can happen and the people involved don't even understand that they did something wrong. This is absolutely and categorically disgusting and unconscionable.
But the idea that this somehow validates the proponents of woo, the peddlers of magical thinking in the guise of medicine, is a logical fallacy and a rather obvious one - if not also one that is easy to accept. Just because another pharmaceutical company and some doctors were really damned stupid and highly unethical, does not mean that all of science based medicine is. And there are several doctors and scientists out there who would like to make sure you know that this is not the mainstream of science based medicine. Some of them have even written about this....
Respectful Insolence
Adventures in Ethics and Science
Dr. Isis
Stranger Fruit
Greg Laden
*I would also note that I am more disappointed in Elsevier for publishing this bullshit, than I am with Merck and the people involved from their end. That they would choose to put out this kind of garbage reflects poorly on them and while it may be a while yet before I am publishing papers, this will certainly reflect on my decisions about where to publish.
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