Author: VD

Here’s your open NCAA thread, basketball fans. Go Gophers!

Yes, in fact, we are going to hit you over the head with it. Because you absolutely deserve it. To his credit, Orac admits that there is something rotten in the current state of “science”, mostly in the area of so-called peer review, but he also worries that the public will draw the correct conclusion from learning of yet another major scientific fraud:

It’s hard to overstate how serious this revelation of scientific fraud is for the field of anesthesiology and medicine. Dr. Reuben was considered a pioneer in his field, and his work is not only widely cited, but serves as the basis for an amount of anesthesia practice that few academic anesthesiologists can lay claim to. The twenty-one papers now retracted represent a body of work that appeared on its surface to be quite impressive….

What most angers me about this case is the massive betrayal of trust. The public expects that its scientists, at the very least, will be honest about their results. Too much depends on it, especially in medical science, where it is people’s health that is at stake. Even worse, much of Dr. Reuben’s work was underwritten by the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture the the very nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs combinations of which he studied. What that means for those of us who defend science- and evidence-based medicine is that every crank alt-med site and blog on the Internet is going to be harping on this incident as The Proof That Conventional Medicine Is Hopelessly Corrupt and their favorite woo is being kept down by The Big Bad Pharma Man. Look for Age of Autism and NaturalNews.com to go crazy about this story as proof that they were right all along and The Big Bad Pharma Man has suppressed The Real Proof that vaccines cause autism. Not only has he put a stain on scientific medicine that will be very hard to erase, if it’s even possible at all, but that bastard Reuben has made my work here harder, as well as that of every advocate of of science- and evidence-based medicine, as Whale.to, NaturalNews.com, and Age of Autism, not to mention every crank blog and website spread the story far and wide as some form of “vindication.”

Actually, Orac is decades out of date with regards to the public’s view of scientists. Scientists no longer occupy any special place in the public’s regard. After more than 30 years of being told to “question authority”, the average non-scientist doesn’t automatically believe a scientific authority any more than he believes any other authority. Scientists aren’t lumped in with completely untrustworthy types such as politicans, used-car salesmen, lawyers, and journalists, but they’re no longer viewed as standing on some sort of objective pedestal and they haven’t been for quite some time. Orac should understand this, after all, is his blog not entitled “Respectful Insolence”?

The reality is that scientists aren’t considered much more trustworthy than the clergy, the military, or the police, and are less trusted than doctors and teachers. This is striking when one considers the fact that unlike the other professions, scientists supposedly have the benefit of relying upon what is supposed to be a completely objective system, which means that their constant tendency to play bait-and-switch, wherein they substitute appeals to scientific authority, peer review, and statistical reviews for actual science, has had a more detrimental effect than the otherwise high credibility ratings would appear to suggest.

Just as the televangelist and pedophile priest scandals drove down the trustworthiness of the clergy from 90 percent in 2001 to 64 percent in 2002, the credibility of scientists will likely fall below their 2002 low of 68 percent as the AGW fraud – to which I note Orac himself subscribes – becomes ever more apparent to all and sundry, as more scientific charlatans such as Scott Reuben and Hwang Woo-suk are unmasked, and as scientists constantly flip-flop over quotidian matters such as whether red wine is good for you and if it’s a high-fat diet or a high-carbohydrate diet that causes weight gain.

Like the increasingly discredited news media, (journalists are near the bottom at 39 percent), scientists often seem to assume that the public has no memory. This is understandable; most people are short-sighted idiots with little recall. But, even a complete idiot will notice when he gains 20 pounds on a low-fat diet, when a blizzard shuts down the roads for the tenth time that winter, or when an infant screams and slumps unconscious right after being injected by a “perfectly safe” vaccine. Scientists have relied far too long on their reputation rather than their method, and the public has finally begun to take note.

Orac and other science fetishists will naturally be tempted to dismiss my words, to take them out of context, and to claim that I am too stupid to understand the miraculous wonders of science. But this will only further undermine their credibility; since I have the benefit of a demonstrably higher IQ than most as well as a seven-year archive containing a high percentage of correct calls on everything from market collapses to housing and gold prices, (yes, there were of course some misses – Hillary! – too), avoiding the subject by calling me names is not going to convince anyone who isn’t already a mindless science groupie. Science isn’t some sort of grand mystery approachable only by the elect, it’s merely a process. It’s not difficult to understand; those who claim that it is are merely advertising their own intellectual limitations. If Orac is genuinely concerned about the public’s willingness to trust scientists, he should spend a lot less time worrying about what he calls woo and a lot more time encouraging scientists to get back to the scientific method that established their reputation in the first place. He should encourage them to stop trying to take credit for things that rightly belong to other fields – as one of his commenters pointed out, it wasn’t scientific self-correction that uncovered Reuben’s fraud, but a bureaucrat at the hospital – and to stop abusing legitimate scientific authority by calling upon it in areas clearly outside their areas of expertise. Some scientific self-congratulation is downright insane; being caught by the auditors doesn’t prove the self-correcting nature of embezzlement.

As for vaccines, if he truly wishes to change even a single parent’s mind, Orac and other vaccine champions simply have to stop attempting to wave the increasingly tattered flag of “but science says” in the face of the growing number of science skeptics and think very seriously about why so many people are rejecting the modern American vaccine schedule despite constant pressure from their doctors, schools, and the science fetishists in the media. More pounding the table isn’t going to work, because the parties pounding the table are already considered completely biased and untrustworthy. As I wrote yesterday, show the science! The real science, where the damn hypothesis is actually tested! No more BS “no statistical correlation has been found”, no more “no peer reviewed study has proven”, no more dancing and ducking and evading the obvious solution of actually putting the scientific method to work. Interpolation and extrapolation aren’t sufficient. Statistical analysis isn’t enough. Peer reviewed metastudies are of zero value. Pump 1,000 kids full of toxinsvaccines according to the complete schedule and leave a control group of 1,000 completely unvaccinated. Then report on how they’re doing every six months. There’s no excuse not to do it, it’s eminently doable.

That, and that alone, will suffice to convince parents that science proves the vaccine schedule is sufficiently safe. And if scientists can’t be bothered to actually do the relevant science and sh
ow their work to the public, they shouldn’t be surprised when the public tells them to stick their fraudulent, faux-scientific propaganda up their collective posteriors.

Note – I tend to doubt that political demonstration, peaceful or otherwise, is likely to prove an effective substitute for the scientific method either.

Dr. Helen brings Amy Alkon’s situation at the Orange County Register to our attention:

If people start reading it online as of Tuesday. The editor has conceded to me that it’s been hard to find online (after readers wrote and told me the link was impossible to find).

Her stuff isn’t bad, actually. Here’s a sample:

“In the dating phase, women do what it takes to attract and hang onto a man: Looking after their looks and maintaining a figure that’s more hourglass than beer keg. While there are some wives whose medical issues prevent them from losing weight, too many interpret “Till death do us part” as “You’re stuck with me forever – more of me than you’d ever imagined.” In worst cases, a woman will eat herself so big that Greenpeace tries to save her – until they realize that’s a scrunchie on her head, not a decorative blowhole…. You sacrifice a lot for her and your kids, without reservation. You ask only one thing from her – not that she meet some bizarro new need, just that she start acting like she said “I do” to being in a partnership with you, not “I dough.””

It’s easy enough to check out a few columns in the archive. Why not go for it, especially considering how few women are willing to publicly admit that there are two sides to sex-related issues.

The Obama administration backs down on the ammunition brass ban:

Responding to two Democratic senators representing outraged private gun owners, the Department of Defense announced last night it has scrapped a new policy that would deplete the supply of ammunition by requiring destruction of fired military cartridge brass.

It’s pretty simple. The American people will put up with a lot. Most are idiots and will fall for just about anything so long as the government can somehow manage to put a positive spin on it. But, no matter how sneakily you try to do it, if you go for their guns, they will kill you politically. If there’s one non-negotiable, it’s guns. And, ultimately, that’s probably the only one that really matters.

I always find it quite funny when an atheist declares that he just couldn’t manage to read The Irrational Atheist, as if this is some sort of meaningful criticism. Do they really not realize that this says absolutely nothing about the book, that it is simply an open admission of their own incapacity? GP emails:

i was unable to read beyond page 6 because it became obvious that you have only one agenda and that is to push and promote your christian views. you are saying that your book is not a religious book but you are lying. you have no interest in any scientific discussion. therefore, i will say with disgust: ” take your christian god (all three of them) and shove it up your ass” maybe islam can offer me more.

Six pages into The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins is still rambling about Albert Einstein. Six pages into The End of Faith, Sam Harris is pontificating about a continuum of faith and laying the foundation for his illogical argument that the moderates of one religion are somehow responsible for the behavior of another religion’s extremists. Six pages into god is Not Great Christopher Hitchens is declaring that he doesn’t need anyone policing his behavior, something his recent companions in Syria would probably dispute. Just as no one could possibly respect the opinion of the Christian who blew off the New Atheist books after six pages due to this nonsense, to say nothing of their obvious agenda to push and promote their atheist views, no one can possibly respect the opinion of the atheist who does likewise with regard to my book, or, for that matter, any other book.

Needless to say, GP is not only godless, he’s also clueless. I never claimed TIA did not have a religious theme or that I have no agenda, I merely stated, correctly, that the book is not a theological work and contains no arguments for God’s existence. Or arguments for intelligent design, Young Earth Creationism, or any of the many things that most atheists would much rather discuss than the many obvious logical and factual flaws in the New Atheists’ arguments. As for my supposed non-interest in scientific discussion, GP would be hard-pressed to explain chapters two and three, Defining Science and The Case Against Science.

Of course, he wouldn’t know about them, having only read to page six. And while I wish GP good fortune in his future religious endeavors, I’d be very surprised if he made it through The Cow.

Two groups of third-world immigrants to Minnesota may point to the problem:

Autism is terrifying the community of Somali immigrants in Minneapolis, and some pediatricians and educators have joined parents in raising the alarm. But public health experts say it is hard to tell whether the apparent surge of cases is an actual outbreak, with a cause that can be addressed, or just a statistical fluke.

I find it interesting that the influx of Hmong in the 1970s didn’t see a big increase in autistic Hmong, but the recent influx of Somalis did. Obviously, the vaccine schedule has been significantly increased in the last thirty years, which makes me tend to suspect that it will eventually be discovered that some sort of system overload is taking place.

It’s a real pity that scientists can’t be bothered to study the problem using the scientific method rather than using statistical measures that are bound to be flawed. Vaccines may not ultimately prove to be the causal factor, but they’re the most logical culprit and the vaccine defenders are being both irresponsible and anti-scientific in their constant refusal to support unbiased scientific inquiry into the matter. There is hysteria on both sides, but the fact that one side is defending a massive industry, not its own children, makes its position significantly less than credible.

Again, I’m not calling for the banning of all vaccines or anything, as irresponsible vaccine defenders often like to dishonestly claim of the opposition. I merely want to see a proper long-term study of two populations performed, wherein one group receives the full vaccine schedule and the other receives no vaccines. It’s an eminently doable, perfectly sensible and properly scientific approach, so why are the vaccine defenders so utterly opposed to the notion?

After all, the alternative isn’t that parents will simply shut up and go along with the program, it’s that they’ll continue to opt out of it and refuse vaccines they otherwise would have allowed their children to receive. Nobody gives a damn what scientists assert or “studies show” anymore since modern scientists are so politicized and corrupt. Either show the science or shut up; the mere possession of a white coat and a science degree no longer convinces anyone.

Now we know why they were so obsessed with uncovering the nonexistent right-wing conspiracy:

For the past two years, several hundred left-leaning bloggers, political reporters, magazine writers, policy wonks and academics have talked stories and compared notes in an off-the-record online meeting space called JournoList…. POLITICO contacted nearly three dozen current JList members for this story. The majority either declined to comment or didn’t respond to interview requests — and then returned to JList to post items on why they wouldn’t be talking to POLITICO about what goes on there.

So, it seems journalism has its own little group of would-be Bilderbergers. What a surprise! One thing I’ve noticed is that you can usually tell what a left-winger is doing in secret by paying attention to what he accuses the right of doing. And this quote tells you all you need to know about the factual reliability of the liberal media:

“Defending the off-the-record rule, Klein said that “candor is essential and can only be guaranteed by keeping these conversations private.””

In other words, if a left-leaning blogger, political reporter, magazine writer, policy wonk or academic is communicating openly in public, candor is inessential and cannot be guaranteed. In short, you should assume they’re probably lying.

UPDATE – Speaking of connections that liberals hide from public view, it turns out that the brother of newly minted anti-Wall Street crusader Jon LeibowitzStewart, Larry Leibowitz, is the head of US Markets & Global Technology at NYSE Euronext. As long as you’re on the side of the angels now, Jonny boy, why not have brother Larry on the show for a public skewering?

This report from John Hawkins may help explain why I’ve always been so amused by those who attempt to dismiss me and other WND writers by claiming we write for a fringe news site that no one actually reads. I don’t know how reliable the Alexa stats are, but I have occasionally been privy to WND’s server stats over the past few years and WND had more daily readers than some major metropolitan newspapers had daily subscribers three or four years ago:

1) Fox News: 260
2) Wall Street Journal: 383
3) The Drudge Report: 748
4) New York Post: 888
5) WorldNetDaily: 2,692
6) Newsmax: 3,264
7) Free Republic: 3,988
8) The Washington Times: 4,717
9) TownHall: 5,986
10) The Rush Limbaugh Show: 7,624

The truth is that one’s media profile doesn’t always reflect the size of one’s actual online audience. Judging by the regular appearances by its contributors on Fox, you would think National Review was massive, but it’s primarily influential in a world of politics that only represents about one percent of the total national audience. It’s also interesting to see that the Mises Institute did so well. Of course, as we saw twenty years ago in the world of talk radio, that which the dominant form of media attempts to marginalize will tend to steal the audience from that media as new technologies provide a means of circumnavigating the gatekeepers.

Speaking of which, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is now defunct, mourned by no one who didn’t receive paychecks from it. Hopefully the demise of the San Francisco Chronicle will soon follow.

“And as the other papers fail into the Web we will hear, again and again, about the Internet, about Craigslist, about The Drudge Report, and a hundred other reasons these papers are dead. What we will never hear is that their editorial policies and news slanting were part and parcel of their demise. We will never hear about the willed insults, slights, and snubbing of fully half of their potential circulation pool. Journalists and editors write a lot about “taking personal responsibility” when it comes to others. You never hear them write that about themselves. There’s no mea culpa among liberal newspaper journalists these days. There’s only “The Internet ate my newspaper.”

Speaking of the Internet, since Blackfive averages twice as many visitors as Vox Popoli I assume this blog would probably rank somewhere in the top 150 right-wing sites. It’s hard to know, though, since so many “big” blogs with lots of links elect to hide their Sitemeter numbers, which I suspect means that their daily readerships aren’t quite as big as their feeds and links would lead you to believe. Another odd thing I noticed is how much longer visitors tend to linger here than they do at other, better-trafficked blogs. For example, the average visit to Pharyngula is 8 seconds. The average visit to Blackfive is 69 seconds. The average visit here is 140 seconds. Having a large audience is great and all, especially if you’re trying to generate ad income, but I much prefer people taking the time to read what I write. And if they happen to have anything interesting to add to the discourse, so much the better.

The Obama administration shows its true colors:

From now on, remanufacturers of military brass will not be able to buy surplus brass from DOD–actually from Government Liquidators, llc.–the corporation that sells surplus materials for the U.S. government. At least, not in any form recognizable as once-fired brass ammunition. Now all brass ammunition will have to be shredded, and sold as scrap. Georgia Arms, who brought this to our attention, is the 5th largest ammunition manufacturer of centerfire pistol and rifle ammunition in the U.S.

Looks like it’s time for the gun defense lobby to start contacting Congress. The politicos are afraid to go directly after guns, so they’re targeting the ammunition. And the ammunition manufacturers should show some courage as well… by refusing to sell to any state or federal agency until the new policy is abandoned.