No, antivaxxerism is not INHERENTLY racist

The key to the phrase above is in the capitalized word. Paula Larsson, as a graduate philosophy student at Oxford, should be ashamed for writing a piece claiming that it is inherently so, as she should know the extra burden of proof involved in claiming that any social idea, group or movement is INHERENTLY "X." 

The Conversation should be ashamed for running this.

People like Juan Cole should be ashamed for spreading this.

None of them, of course, WILL be.

The "inherently" claim is ultimately a structural claim. And, with that, I see the camel's nose of Critical Race Theory — and its misuse, overuse, stretched use and abuse. As an actual leftist, at least for America, and as one who's read one of the seminal texts of CRT, actually does know something about it, and sees both things to like and dislike about it, I can say this with a high degree of confidence.

To wit, I've actually read Eddie Glaude's Democracy in Black, who is on the edges of the movement, and Derrick Bell, a founder of the theory, whose Silent Covenants was a good introduction. 

I've also read many other books about how the concept of race was developed. And, blogged about the good, bad and ugly of CRT here.

And, Larsson's just not proven her claim AT ALL.

In fact, she's not proven that leading White antivaxxers like RFK Jr. and their organizations are NON-inherently (casually?) racist.

To take a counterexample? Some anti-abortion people target minorities in general and Blacks in particular, claiming abortion is genocide. Does that make them racist? Of course not. AND? It's built on the fact that Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist, among other things. Ditto for antivaxxer pitches to minorities; they're built on facts like the Tuskegee Airmen.

Does that mean they're not distorting facts? Of course they are, and so is Paula Larsson. I've heard many things hurled at RFK Jr., but inherently racist (if the movement is, then he is, as a leader, by default definition) is NOT one of them. As a public figure,  with the "actual malice" standard, there's no way the likes of him could win a lawsuit against Larsson, but, I feel that, ethically if not legally, she's skating on thin ice.

Basically, what we have here, as I see it, is an "own the wingnuts" form of tribalism. It's the same type of tribalism that ignores St. Anthony of Fauci's Platonic Noble Lies and refuses to even talk about the possibility of a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or that, at one time, we did indeed fund gain-of-function research there, or that St. Anthony can even be wrong at any time. (I may feel the urge to blog about this gain-of-function stuff, as it's yet another of St. Anthony's lies, this time done by trying to redefine the most commonly accepted definition of the phrase.)

In other words? #BlueAnon tribalism. Cole's a definite #BlueAnon tribalist. Larsson's Canadian, so we call her the Canadian fellow-traveler or equivalent of BlueAnon.

And, in most these cases, and definitely this one? It's a self-own, at least for us who strive not to be tribalists and who actually engage in critical thinking. Other than that, all it does is increase tribalism and give fuel to wingnuts attacking CRT. Or to wingnuts attacking #BlueAnon over ideas like this.

Conspiracy theories continue to abound about #TwinPeaks shooting

Most these conspiracy theories started among hardcore libertarians, bikers, or gun nuts. Unfortunately, as I'm discovering, more and more progressives are buying the idea that the Waco Police Department "set up" the bikers who met at the Twin Peaks Restaurant on May 17.

First, bikers were firing at other bikers first. That's not just Waco PD claims; one biker firing at another was caught on video; read the story as well as seeing the video footage in this account. Second, per a Cossack who wants to stay anonymous, for obvious reasons, the whole event was a set-up by the Bandidos.

Second, if it really were a set-up, why didn't Waco PD have 40 cops there instead of 14? Why didn't it kill 30 people instead of the 9 it allegedly did kill?

Survey says: Because it wasn't a set-up.

Update, June 18: Survey does say that the Cossacks came loaded for bear.)

Survey says that conspiracy thinkers will say: Because this was all part of the conspiracy.

Yes, the Waco PD did do a pretty broad dragnet on its arrests. And yes, local judges, at the prompting of a hang-em-high DA who has Texas' fifth-worst record, by county, for pretrial detention time, set bonds high. But, a little more than half the arrested are now free on bond, most with reductions from the original $1 million to $100K, $50K or even $25K. Judges are trying to speed this up even more. And, that's as those who are in jail engage in deliberate monkey-wrenching as jailhouse lawyers.

Third, this is part of broader issues, though.

As I've told others, although I vote Green because it's the only left-liberal option here in Texas, this is part of why I'm not an official member of the Green Party. Too much anti-vaxxerism (though a lot of that runs around in libertarian circles, too, like Orange County, California), and too much anti-GMO-ism, among other things.

The GP 2012 platform says that farms and ranches should convert to organic, (as part of broader ag issues that, if all implemented, at once, would probably cut our food production 20 percent) which would mean it's officially anti-GMO, presumably in part for conspiracy thinking reasons.

On medicine, it officially supports "alternative" medicine as well as .. well, as well as medicine! Alternative medicine, when I'm in an extra-snarky mood, I call pseudo-medicine. It's either tested and confirmed of value, tested and disconfirmed, or not tested. Categories two and three are not medicine.

Specifically, these items of GP-endorsed pseudomedicine:

Chronic conditions are often best cured by alternative medicine. We support the teaching, funding and practice of holistic health approaches and as appropriate, the use of complementary and alternative therapies such as herbal medicines, homeopathy, naturopathy, traditional Chinese medicine and other healing approaches.

(Previous Green platforms also mentioned Ayurvedic techniques by name.)

I cut third parties more slack, because the American system is stacked against them. But, that doesn't mean I have to join them while voting for their candidates.

And, this isn't something new. I blogged about Greens and agriculture three years ago. Besides, Grist, a national respected strong, in-depth environmental magazine, shot down most GMO myths a year ago. That said, I've had people say Grist is "on the take." Which just proves there's no arguing with conspiracy theorists.

Or, I blogged earlier this week about the dumb idea that banksters are mysteriously dying in massive numbers. (I guess the idea is that their higher-ups are killing them off before they spill all the beans on yet-uncovered financial shenanigans.)

That said, at least any progressive types who are conspiracy thinking are being open about this.

Even if "not even wrong," per Wolfgang Pauli.

Have I believed any conspiracy theories? Once, on a lesser one, yes.

At one time, I believed that Sarah Palin was not Trig Palin's mom.

That said, first note that "at one time" in italics. When I had a better plausible explanation, as suggested in part by someone else (the not Trig's mom was originally suggested entirely by other people), I ran with that. I actually found two better plausible explanations, and they're not mutually exclusive.

I also noted on this blog that I had abandoned that original idea; in fact, on my own, even before officially abandoning it, I was finding it less likely. And, I actually read something from a fairly big conservative blogger (blind hogs and acorns, if you will), that was part of my final abandonment of that issue.

Which I also publicly noted on this blog.

That said, Sarah Palin acted a lot more weird and suspicious than the Waco PD. And, if you don't believe that, then we're past the point of reasoning together. And, while my next statement may be in part self-rationalizing behavior, given what I said about Sarah Palin vs the Waco PD, and the amount of detail publicly reported about the shooting fallout vs. the Trig Palin birth fallout, this is a conspiracy theory that's more easily corrected.

Will it be?

Quasi-looping-reference intended, call me skeptical. Being skeptical about the McLennan County DA, with a known, provable hang-em-high reputation, is one thing. I am myself, to some degree, though less than others.

The murder by cop? No.

And, that's not the first time for me. I was very skeptical about the worst claims against Darren Brown in Ferguson, while giving more credence to those about the Ferguson PD in general, or even the whole city apparatus.

Know what? Then-Attorney General Eric Holder ultimately agreed.

And,  yes, sometime in the near future, I'll probably do a rewrite of this to focus further on left-liberal conspiracy thinking. It happens. And not just with the items I mentioned above. Certain elements of the far left, as well as the libertarian-type far right, worry about things like contrails, too.

And, it's not just the far-left or far-right. It's the far-nonrational in general.

Folks, in my day job as a newspaper editor, I've seen plenty of conspiracy theories about police in particular and local governments in general.

Do I give a kneejerk rejection? No. I investigate.

That said, only a couple have come even close to having actual fire behind the alleged smoke. Most were neither empirically nor psychologically plausible.

But, because Homo sapiens wasn't built to be a slow-thinking, cogitating animal, we don't do it well.

I don't claim to do it perfectly, myself.

I DO claim to be committed to continuing to improve at it.

I wish others would make that same claim. No matter their political stance, no matter their religious beliefs, no matter other things.

Related to that, sometimes I get in a mood, or a mindframe, where I blog more about sports. Or about science. Or about something else.

I feel the need to blog more about skeptical issues likely popping up in the future.

Scratch Greg Laden from the critical thinkers list

I used to browse him on ScienceBlogs from time to time, but, over the NASA fake exobiology story, and now, over (under the influence of his attack dog Stephanie Zvan, I believe) Julian Assange, he's lost me ... and lost "it."

First, the NASA story and his response.

Slate has an excellent article about how NASA has sponsored not-so-good science AND blown the media coverage issues. And, at least one professor says NASA had motive for this fluffery. But, because of the reason for that motive, it could well backfire:

Some scientists are left wondering why NASA made such a big deal over a paper with so many flaws. "I suspect that NASA may be so desperate for a positive story that they didn't look for any serious advice from DNA or even microbiology people," says John Roth of UC-Davis. The experience reminded some of another press conference NASA held in 1996. Scientists unveiled a meteorite from Mars in which they said there were microscopic fossils. A number of critics condemned the report (also published in Science) for making claims it couldn't back up. And today many scientists think that all of the alleged signs of life in the rocks could have just as easily been made on a lifeless planet.

I didn't think so much about that as budgetary motives, but it makes sense. No big news from Mars probes for a while. Obama announces budget cuts and mission changes. The next planned shuttle flight keeps getting shoved back.

Yep, that's motive.

First, contra the breathlessness, at Gizmodo AND elsewhere — don't tell me that just because Gizmodo isn't a science site, that NASA had nothing to do with "framing." The evidence for that is becoming more and more clear, despite someone like Greg Laden at Scienceblogs, an unrepentant fluffer here and here. That said, Greg's definitely lost credibility in my eyes over this issue.

But, per the first of his linked blog posts:

I've asked for specific critiques of the NASA press release and have received one, which makes a good suggestion but hardly demonstrates that NASA lied or cheated or flim flamed.

You, on the other hand, are quickly making it onto my list.

I never said, myself, that NASA "lied or cheated." I didn't use the phrase "flim flamed" [sic] for its fluffery, either. But, if that's what you think fluff PR for apparently shoddy science should be called, OK!

And, ooohhhh, I'm on your "list"!

The New York Times and Phil Plait both also, among others, seem to have gotten a bit breathless.

The Guardian has an excellent roundup of NASA's dissing of all the skeptics and naysayers. Again, fluffers ... more skepticism!

Update, Dec. 9:More yet on the NASA fluffery angle:

Here's proof of the fluffery - the hed on NASA's annoucement:
"Get Your Biology Textbook...and an Eraser!"

Fact is, as P.Z. Myers, Wikipedia and many other sites noted, arsenic replacing phosphorus in organic compounds, albeit much simpler ones than DNA, isn't even new. As for it actually doing so in DNA, well, the trumpeted NASA experiment doesn't necessarily prove that.

And, NASA's PR machine is still going, in this wire story that connects the iffy experiment to discovery of more habitable planets and more stares:

Meanwhile, more motive for NASA to trumpet itself? Perhaps worries about the successful orbital flight of SpaceX's Dragon. though NASA was kind enough to offer congratulations.

Remember, getting back to the budgetary motive angle, Obama has talked about leaning more on private services to head to the space station.

====

Next, he (and Stephanie) on Assange's arrest.

Here's the bottom line there — Laden's credulity on the U.S. government wanting to corral Assange meets up with incredible legal naivete and sloppy thinking:

Perhaps being arrested is not the same as being charged, but really, at this point this is just a semantic game. Yawn.

Whoa .... just whoa ....

If that's his thinking level, and communications concerns level, no wonder he "bit" so readily on the NASA story, and refuses to admit he was wrong.

More in this new Assange post on how Greg is a "word-snake" who likes to slither away from his own statements, especially when he gets busted.

Beyond that, his sense of humor is puerile.

Oh, and he is now threatening to go after my ISP:

Failure to adhere to these rules may lead to your permanent banning from this blog, and if you don't adhere to that, you will be banned from the entire internet.

Dude. Thin-skinned, are we?

And, his friend Stephanie, I am guessing from her response, will claim any and all information about false rape reporting is suspect; I think she's seeing this as a litmus test for gender feminism, or, at least, her particular version of it. And, I'll be glad to fail that one.

Updated, Dec. 11: Ugh. Being a SciBlogs reader doesn't guarantee critical thinking. Two of Laden's posts related to ArsenicGate are in readers' top-five list.

Critical thinking goes missing again at CFI

I am starting to think with Mr. Leo Lincourt, and surely others, that it's perhaps time to be more skeptical about alleged skepticism.

Besides the obvious offenders like Michael Shermer, there are others.

The latest? John Shook at Center for Inquiry.

His latest blog post? "How Does Science Defeat Religion." It's targeted NOT at fundamentalists, but the religiously liberal, those who might well be quite comfortable with Steve Gould's "non-overlapping magisteria" on certain items.

My short, on-site reply:

NOT a good post. First, science is not designed to "defeat" anything, John.

If you had rewritten the whole "defeat" idea about philosophy and how the liberally religious try to deal with the problem of evil, you'd be cooking with gas. Instead, you don't even have a campfire.

Longer thoughts here.

If this is what the "Vice President and Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Inquiry Transnational" thinks is the nature of science, oy. Really.

I agree with where I think Shook is coming from philosophically — rejecting the idea held by both Gould and liberally religious on dual magisteria. But, that's a philosophical issue as much as a scientific one, at least. Certainly, once you get past naturalistic issues, with the liberally religious accepting evolution, etc.,. it is. Science works with methodological naturalism. Therefore, if a liberally religious person claims that an incorporeal deity intruded into the natural world it's ultimately a philosophical issue.

If you go beyond methodological naturalism to philosophical naturalism, well, obviously, by definition, you're now in philosophy.

Second, as Mr. Lincourt has noted in response to me, he misdefines science:

Aside from the fact that he never defines religion, rather just assumes the reader agrees with whatever nebulous definition he's using, I found this 'graph to be particularly troublesome:

"After science was invented, all things were no longer equal. Science supplements ordinary knowledge with vastly improved knowledge, and common consent gets overruled by scientific knowledge. There is a parallel superiority of ethical judgment over the "common consent" of humanity on moral matters -- after past experiments with slavery caused horrible consequences for all to see, no society could justify slavery anymore."

Umm... science was invented? I rather thought science was a constellation of philosophies, methodologies, practices and social norms that evolved out of our capacity to reason, not some monolithic creation that was conjured whole cloth out of the void one fine day by some old, bearded, toga-wearing dude and has remained relatively static ever since then.

So, moving on, science supplants ordinary knowledge? Really? I can think of half a dozen types of knowledge where science neither supplants or even has anything to say. Literature and music, just to pick two.

Leo doesn't use the word "scientism," but it seems that's exactly what Shook is practicing.

Third, Leo passed on Massimo Pigliucci's latest blog post, called "Why Plumbing is not Science."

The title of this entry is a reference to Jerry Coyne’s occasional remark that there is no substantial difference between plumbing and science because plumbers test hypotheses based on empirical evidence.

Except, of course, that plumbing is not science, and here is why. ... I don’t actually believe that anyone takes seriously the proposition that all reason-based knowledge is “scientific.” If that were the case, then pretty much everything we do every day should count as science — from picking a movie based on a review by a critic we usually like (induction!) to deciding to cross the street when the pedestrian light is green (hypothesis testing!). If the concept of science is that expansive, than it is also pretty close to meaningless.

Bingo, and it reflects at least in part another Shook mistake and why he needs to listen to some philosophers, as David Buller knows most scientists do. (Jerry Coyne and P.Z. Myers, who probably applaud thoughts like Shook's, definitely need to.)

Beyond that, this and various other things eventually got me into writing a post about general organizational problems/issues, as I see them, at CFI.

Celebrity deaths, nostalgia, fallacious reasoning

The old folk saying about “it happens in threes” often gets applied to celebrity deaths. Well, today it’s true. After Ed McMahon’s death earlier this week, then Farah Fawcett’s expected passing
and Michael Jackson’s surprise death is the third.

All three mean something.

First, with Farrah, I’m the right age that she was pin-up material when I was in junior high school. And “Charlie’s Angels” was definitely watchable.

And, Farrah Fawcett Majors, if you will, please. That’s who the actress on “Charlie’s Angels” was.

Yes, Lee was jealous. Perhaps that did contribute to the divorce. Perhaps he had a wandering eye, too.

But, perhaps she was already into drugs by then. Coke or speed to stay thin, then Valium or similar to get some sleep.

And, from some of her late-life TV appearances, apparently never 100 percent, long-term, successful, in kicking various drug habits.

She did show poise, dignity, and more, though, in her battle with cancer, and yes, given its ravages and the type of cancer, I can understand her wanting it to end.

Beyond that poise and dignity, perhaps she can, in her death, get more Americans to open their minds more about assisted suicide legislation.

===

Michael Jackson? Thriller broke out when I was in college; that part of Jackson, before he plunged into the drained shallow end of the pool of weirdness, means nostalgia.

So, nostalgia related to Jackson is more about trying to do the moonwalk — and succeeding nicely — at college dances, and therefore, reflecting in larger part on college life at a small (less than 500 students) Christian college.

In turn, as Salon music critic Bill Wyman (NO, not THAT Bill Wyman) notes, Jackson had quite the screwed-up family life as part of being unprepared for celebrity and therefore having quite the screwed-up adulthood. Perhaps he, and Latoya, were sexually abused That said, as civil-case-settlement pedophile, his own childhood, if that is part of what happened, is neither excuse nor reason.

I know that from family history, both as an offered justification, and the fact that shit like that often ISN’T poured further downhill.

Beyond nostalgia, I look at Michael as having been “a kinder, gentler predator,” and shed not a tear for him.

I have no desire, therefore, to try Facebook’s “What Michael Jackson song are you” quiz. Or anything similar.

===

So, too, does Ed. Nostalgia for the “simpler time” of America, the time of my parents more than myself.

Ed? Far more than “set-up man” for Johnny, he was a comedic star in his own right before pairing with Carson. And, Johnny knew it, too, even if he didn’t already admit it.

As part of being that set-up man, though, he bore Johnny’s jokes at and about him, including those that involved psychological displacement. (Ed was never a serious drinker, but Carson was, for many, many a year; the Budweiser jokes were example No. 1 of that displacement.)

Then, later, Ed made his own, post-Johnny second-act career, only to sadly show us at the end that being rich, famous, or both, is no guarantee against financial catastrophe.

===

At the same time, per my own self and people like Bob Carroll at Skeptic’s Dictionary, the “this happens in threes” is nothing more than an illustration of the bulls-eye fallacy.

Being an atheist doesn’t guarantee critical thinking — or factual accuracy

As in this atheist blog post that claims religion has killed 2.3 billion people in various wars.
In a nutshell, the author badly, sadly, and perhaps deliberately conflates correlation with causation in many cases. At a few other points, as claiming that European invaders of the New World practiced “smallpox genocide,” he simply gets facts wrong. That leads off my response to him, edited and expanded for the purpose of this blog post:

The Spanish, etc., who brought smallpox with them? Yes, per Jared Diamond, that gave them an advantage, but Hernando Cortez didn’t cough in Montezuma’s face or something. Certainly, the Spanish didn’t bring smallpox-bearing slaves from Africa (per your linked webpage) for the purposes of genocide to American Indians, either. For the first century or so after “Contact,” Europeans didn’t even know they had this advantage, let alone why. 

Genocide implies deliberation, and with the exception of Sir Jeffrey Amherst just after the end of the French and Indian War, I’ve yet to see a documented case of it on smallpox. 

Beyond that, your linked webpage, in more than one spot, uses phrases like “some believe,” with no empirical documentation. You can always find someone who believes something at sometime; they may often be a stereotypical P.T. Barnum sucker, tho8ugh.Next, the British, especially, didn’t claim to be conquering in the name of God. Amherst certainly didn’t make that claim. Therefore, any deliberate casualties of his bioweaponry can’t be considered “religiously caused.” (That said, I grew up in New Mexico. I am more than familiar with conquistadors and priests, and Indians with long cultural memories.) 

In short, that whole graf of yours is emotionally biased, emotionally laden, and of almost no factual support. 

And, even earlier, you confuse correlation with causation. Did Jinggis Khan kill his 40 million because of his animist religious beliefs? I hugely doubt it. Did medieval Japan invade Korea for religious reasons? Again, I hugely doubt it. 

Despite the Japanese emperor being “divine,” can Japan’s WWII invasion of China be called religiously driven? You would have a boatload of historians rejecting that. Ditto for Hitler, born Catholic but probably best described as an agnostic as an adult, and having religious reasons for his half of World War II. 

The Iran-Iraq War? Not religious. A secular Muslim, Hussein, launched the invasion. Later, after losing the Gulf War, Hussein wrote the Quranic statement of belief on the Iraqi flaq as a PR gesture. It didn’t make him any more religious than before, nor did it make his gassing of the Kurds religious. 

In short, I can easily knock about a third of these numbers out of the ring. 

Don’t give atheist intellectualism a bad name.

The blogger in question, in response to me posting this on his blog, claims “genocide” doesn’t imply causation. Au contraire, since genocide is usually defined as “mass MURDER” and not “mass manslaughter.” He also ignores his own introduction, where he talks about “deaths from theism,” overlooking that that implies causation that simply isn’t there. (And he ignored my comment about factual inaccuracies.)
I couldn’t resist one final post back:

Let me go you one better. The oldest tentative evidence for religion goes back 50,000 years. 

But Homo sapiens evolved 500,000 years ago. There’s a LOT of “atheist” murders you forgot to count.

This post is actually a good example of classical “village idiot atheism.”