Disappointment (20/6/2009)

The big event this weekend was to be a showing of the creationist film "The Voyage That Shook The World". I was looking forward to this because the movie trailer managed to run for over four seconds before an inaccuracy (some would say "lie") was presented.

The cost of entry to the film showing was to sit through a service at a small Pentecostal church, so several intrepid members of the Western Sydney Freethinkers group assembled out of the rain for some singing, some cries of "Hallelujah" and "Praise Jesus", and a couple of personal testimonies from members of the congregation. Then the bad news came - the person who was going to introduce the video had left the DVD at home and it was too far away to go back and get it. As this was supposed to be the premiere of the film it seemed to be a very careless oversight, but we got to see a video of a talk given to a creationists conference in 2003 instead. Space does not permit me to detail the errors, inconsistencies and misrepresentations of evolution offered by the speaker in the video.

A question and answer session followed, where "evolutionists" got to ask hard questions and the representatives of Creation Ministries International (nee Answers in Genesis) got to prevaricate, side step, employ non sequitur and misrepresent science. When the Holocaust was blamed on Darwin and evolution, Godwin's Law was invoked and we all went to lunch.

When I arrived I was told that one of the books on sale mentioned me. In fact, half of the book was written by me. It was an account of a debate that I unwisely entered into in 2005, an experience that taught me that people claiming to be Christians could be very deceitful indeed. As the book was being sold, not given away, I had never been sent a copy, and it was contributing to the coffers of CMI, I asked for a free copy. The man behind the table said that he would buy it for me, which wasn't exactly what I wanted. It was refreshing to reread my contribution and annoying to be reminded of the way that my opponents never once addressed the question. I was also reminded that I was criticised by the debate moderator for having 1,502 words in one of my submissions, exceeding the 1,500 word limit. The corresponding effort by the creationists included 35 links to pages on their web site but attracted no comment from the moderator, despite being the equivalent of reading several books aloud in a spoken debate with the reading time not being included in the three minute lime limit. Did I mention that the debate moderator was a creationist? (I didn't know this until after the debate had concluded. Prior knowledge of this would have affected my enthusiasm to participate).

Another thing I was reminded of was that by the third round I had given up trying to actually debate anyone. When presented with, as an example, the argument that we share a proportion of our genes with tomatoes because God wanted to make it possible for us to eat them, the only possible action for a sentient person is to retreat. I didn't think that anything would have been achieved by pointing out that this made humans the perfect food for humans.

Physician, don't heal yourself (20/6/2009)

One of the myths of alternative medicine is that the cure for cancer has been known for a long time but the cure is suppressed to preserve the "trillion dollar" cut, burn and poison industry. (Of course there are many mutually exclusive causes and cures for cancer offered by quacks, but why should anyone expect consistency and honesty from these people?) The conspiracy requires doctors, nurses, employees of pharmaceutical companies, university researchers, employees of charities which raise funds for research or palliation and a whole host of other people to allow themselves and their loved ones to die of cancer in order to protect the secret and the money. That this is absurd should be obvious to even the most brain-dead follower of quackery, but unfortunately people who can believe in the curative powers of magic water or energy-transforming hand waving are inclined to believe anything.

Australia has a system called the Order of Australia which exists to honour citizens who have made significant contributions to society. The awards are announced on two days in the year, Australia Day (January 26) and the quaintly named Queen's Birthday (generally the first or second Monday in June). The list of recipients is a very closely guarded secret, and the newspapers of the relevant days receive heavy scrutiny by those who think they might have received a mention. An exception to the secrecy was made this year when the Prime Minister visited one of the recipients a few days before the date to present him with his medal. The reason that this was done was that the recipient was not expected to live until the official announcement date.

The person in question was Dr Chris O'Brien, a cancer researcher who had been diagnosed with cancer in 2006. He died on June 4, and his death was front-page news across the country, and politicians, dignitaries and ordinary folk of all persuasions expressed their sympathy and queued for his state funeral. He will be memorialised by the Lifehouse research centre, which is expected to be completed in the next three years.

The idea that Dr O'Brien knew that a cure existed but chose to die instead of breaking ranks with the medical industry is not just insulting to Chris O'Brien and his family. It is insulting to the doctors who worked with him and those who gave him medical advice It is insulting to the countless doctors and researches throughout the world who are working to find answers. It is insulting to the intelligence of people who can think.

There is not one quack in the world with a guaranteed cure for cancer who has contributed a millionth of a percent of what Dr O'Brien gave to humanity. There is not one who would be missed for a nanosecond after they died.

Non-physician, heal yourself (20/6/2009)

Early in the week I fell over while walking down the street, resulting in the destruction of a perfectly good pair of trousers, a skinned left knee, and a badly twisted right ankle. I have been limping around with the ankle strapped ever since. I decided to apply the homeopathic principle of Like Cures Like so I have been treating it with a 30C preparation of concrete, and as the path was damp I have also been using a 20X preparation of rain water. It has been getting a little better each day, so I guess the homeopathy must be working. Someone said "Post hoc ergo propter hoc" to me, but as I have forgotten most of the Latin I learned at school I didn't know what they were talking about. One of the songs at the church service mentioned above included the words "Jesus heals the lame", but my ankle felt the same afterwards so I assume that Jesus was either having a day off or wasn't fixing atheists that day.

Let's attack some children (20/6/2009)

The Australian Vaccination Network is asking for money to let them run some of their lies in a paper called Sydney's Child, a publication directed, as the name suggests, at parents of young children. AVN states that they are going to be partially funded for the advertisement by Generation Rescue, a prominent US anti-vaccination liar outfit. If you think that these people don't tell lies, look at the image below, extracted from an advertisement that Generation Rescue ran earlier this year. See where it says "[Autism]"? The square brackets are there because the word "autism" did not appear in the statement made by the court. (You can see the full advertisement here.) This was not a case of autism, but that didn't stop Generation Rescue lying about it. That is what they do.

I was told this week that parents suing pharmaceutical companies over "vaccine damage" to their children have been advised by their lawyers not to use the word "autism" in any claim. The corollary to this is that the lack of the word "autism" in any court finding is evidence that vaccines cause autism. Similar thinking would have vaccines causing car accidents, amblyopia, hangnails, fin rot on pet goldfish and flooding in Bangladesh, because none of these are mentioned by the courts either. And people keep asking me why I call anti-vaccination liars "liars".

Get your credit cards ready (20/6/2009)

The 2009 Australian Skeptics Convention will be held in Brisbane in November. Full details will be here and on the Australian Skeptics site shortly, but all that fans of The Millenium Project need to know is that I will be speaking at the convention on the topic of the psychology of belief. Get out your diaries and pencil in November 27 to 29.

Still in brevity mode (13/6/2009)

Things are still a bit quiet around here. Some of you might be aware of the happenings at Australian Skeptics Inc over the last few months, where the long-time editor and Executive Officer retired and the replacement person didn't work out for various reasons. I have been acting as Executive Officer for the last few weeks on top of my normal job, and this has made time to work on hobbies like this site a little restricted. A new person has now been appointed to fill the roles, but I still have some work to do before a complete handover can be finalised. I stood down as President at the recent election and as soon as the accounts for the year are finished and responsibility for the web site is transferred I will just be an ordinary committee member with lots of time to spend on personal projects like this site and the Australian Council Against Health Fraud.

Progress is being made (13/6/2009)

I was wandering through the town of Penrith the other day and I thought I might visit the music shop where I bought my last guitar. The shop had closed, but a sign in the window said that they had moved to larger premises a little further down the street. This could only be a good thing as the shop had been too small to fit a grand piano (and even an upright was a tight fit), and while it was possible to look at a cello in the place, playing it meant you kept hitting your elbow on a wall.

Next door to the empty music shop was another empty shop, but this time there was no sign saying that business had grown enough to need more space. This is what the sign in the chiropractor's shop said:

You don't get a notice like that by being nice to the leasing agent. You get it by being in serious default on the rent. A delicious shiver of Schadenfreude ran up my spine as I contemplated the idea that a quack had gone broke. I wonder if the real estate agent had slipped a warning under the door saying "Chiropractor, your rent cheque was bogus. Are you happy?".

What's he reading? (13/6/2009)

This week's bedside reading is by Seth Kalichman, subtitled "Conspiracy theories, pseudoscience and human tragedy". The author has as much sympathy for the denialists as I have, and it is good to see someone come out and start fighting idiocy without bending over backwards (or should that be forwards?) to be polite. Here is what the cover blurb says about the book:

Paralleling the discovery of HIV and the rise of the AIDS pandemic, a flock of naysayers has dedicated itself to replacing genuine knowledge with destructive misinformation—and spreading [this] from the fringe to the mainstream media. Now from the editor of the journal AIDS and Behavior comes a bold expose of the scientific and sociopolitical forces involved in this toxic evasion. Denying AIDS traces the origins of AIDS dissidents during the earliest days of the epidemic and delves into the psychology and politics of the current denial movement in its various incarnations.

Seth Kalichman focuses not on the "difficult" or doubting patient, but on organized, widespread forms of denial (including the idea that HFV itself is a myth and HIV treatments are poison) and the junk science, faulty logic, conspiracy theories, and larger forces of homophobia and racism that fuel them. The malignant results of AIDS denial can be seen in those individuals who refuse to be tested, ignore their diagnoses, or reject the treatments that could save their lives. Instead of ignoring these currents, asserts Kalichman, science has a duty to counter them.

An excellent read, and thoroughly recommended. The book has a useful set of notes in the back, and one which caught my eye took me to Denialism.com, where I found the following definition. I am sure it will resonate with regular readers of The Millenium Project just as it did with me.

Denialism: the employment of rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of argument or legitimate debate, when in actuality there is none. These false arguments are used when one has few or no facts to support one's viewpoint against a scientific consensus or against overwhelming evidence to the contrary. They are effective in distracting from actual useful debate using emotionally appealing, but ultimately empty and illogical assertions.

Examples of common topics in which Denialists employ their tactics include: Creationism/Intelligent Design, Global Warming Denialism, Holocaust Denial, HIV/AIDS Denialism, 9/11 conspiracies, tobacco carcinogenecity denialism (the first organized corporate campaign), anti-vaccination/mercury autism denialism and anti-animal testing/animal rights extremist denialism. Denialism spans the ideological spectrum, and is about tactics rather than politics or partisanship.

And while we're talking about creationism ... (13/6/2009)

WTF? (13/6/2009)

As anyone can see from my hate mail collection, I get some really strange emails. I have to admit, however, that the one below from Frank Hatch has me befuddled. Some things are just too complicated for me to get my small brain around. I have retained the strange text formatting, which just made it weirder, but I have removed Frank's address.

And one last thing (13/6/2009)

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