"Skeptical Raptor" Michael Simpson disses the lab-leak theory

Not totally shocked by this, but he still got a two-tweet callout. I'll expand on this.

First, I noted that he ignored the in-depth Pro Publica piece. That's the Pro Publica piece whose core, and most of its periphery, withstood attacks both scientific and more often politically tribalist.

Related, I noted he hadn't at all discussed someone like former Bill Clinton National Security Agency staffer Jaime Metzl, who was on the possibility early on, and who has regularly updated his writing on this. (I've visited that link about every three months.)

Metzl lays out a VERY detailed possibility of how a lab leak could have happened. (I have never posted the full thing before.)

• In 2012, six miners working in a bat-infested copper mine in southern China (Yunnan province) were infected with a bat coronavirus. All of them developed symptoms exactly like COVID-19 symptoms. Three of them died. 

• Viral samples taken from the Yunnan miner were taken to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the only level 4 biosecurity lab in China that was also studying bat coronaviruses. 

• The WIV carried out gain of function research, almost certainly on these and a range of related and other samples (which is different than genetically engineering the viruses). Chimeric viruses were likely developed in this process. There has never been a full and public accounting for what viruses are in the WIV sample set and database, and key elements of the database have been taken off line or deleted. 

• Given the close relationship of the Chinese Peoples’ Liberation Army (PLA) in the development and construction of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, it is fair to assume a connection between the PLA and the WIV. 

• In late 2019 the SARS-CoV-2 virus appeared in Wuhan. The closest known relative of this virus is the RaTG13 virus sampled from the Yunnan mine where the miners had been infected. (NOTE: RaTG13 is almost certainly not the backbone virus for SARS-CoV-2. Also, the BANAL-52 virus, a closer match to SARS-CoV-2, was later isolated from samples taken in Laos. Viral samples from Laos and Cambodia were regularly sent to the WIV.) 

• The genetic similarity between the RaTG13 virus and SARS-CoV-2 suggest that SARS-CoV-2 or a closely related backbone virus could have been sampled from the Mojiang mine or elsewhere in the same region and brought to the WIV (which is why the disappeared WIV databases and lab records are so critical). 

• It is also plausible that SARS-CoV-2 could have been among the viruses held in or derived from a different virus in the WIV repository. 

• In the earliest known stage of the outbreak, the virus was already very well-adapted to human cells. 

• In the critical first weeks after the outbreak, Wuhan authorities worked aggressively to silence the whistleblowers and destroy evidence that could prove incriminating. 

• When Beijing authorities got involved a bit later, they likely faced a choice of implicating the Wuhan authorities, and, in effect, taking blame for what was quickly emerging as a major global problem, or turning into the curve and going all in for the coverup. I believe they likely chose the second option. 

• The Chinese government then massively lobbied the WHO to prevent the WHO from declaring COVID-19 as an international emergency and prevented WHO investigators from entering China for nearly a month. 

• In late January 2020, PLA Major General Chen Wei was put in charge of containment efforts in Wuhan. This role included supervision of the WIV, which had previously been considered a civilian institution. General Chen is China’s top biological weapons expert. Allegations that the PLA was conducting covert dual civilian-military research on bat coronaviruses at WIV have not been proven. 

• The Chinese authorities have gone to great lengths to destroy evidence and silence anyone in China who might be in a position to provide evidence on the origins of COVID-19. 

• Although nothing can be fully conclusive in light of Chinese obfuscation, the continued absence of any meaningful evidence of a zoonotic chain of transmission and mutation in the wild and the accretion of other evidence is pointing increasingly, in my view, toward an accidental lab leak as the most likely origin of COVID-19. Given the extent to which China would benefit from discovering evidence of a transmission in the wild, we can assume Chinese authorities are doing all they can to find this kind of evidence without success. This failure would explain why Chinese officials have recently begun, with little credible evidence, asserting that the outbreak started outside of China. 

• In light of all of this, only a full and unrestricted international forensic investigation into the origins of the pandemic, with complete access to all samples, lab records, scientists, health officials, etc. will suffice. 

• Ensuring the most thorough and highest quality investigation exploring all possible hypothesis is and should be in all of our interest, including that of the Chinese government and people. 

• Preventing such an investigation should be seen significnatly [sic] as an admission of guilt by the Chinese government.

But, Simpson's piece doesn't even begin to dialogue with something like this.

I did give him a kudo for not being a sneering tribalist like Orac. (I do think he is a tribalist. If he accepts my callout to do a follow-up, we'll see how tribalist he is, and we'll see if he goes more down Orac's road on sneering, too.)

For someone who claims to be "skeptical," he isn't, and we'll also see, if he does a follow-up, if he gets any more skeptical. And, per Metzl's last point, if he doesn't do such a follow-up, his silence will be seen here as like Beijing's prevention.

That said, Simpson's personal-professional story is interesting. IIRC, he moved to the West Coast for a position that fell through and he's now blogging for tip jar money and doing other things on the side.

==

Ten days later, no response on Twitter, no update to the original post, and no new follow-up post.

Another pseudoskeptical fail by Michael Shermer

Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational by Michael Shermer
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This is an expanded version of the Goodreads review for inside baseball Skeptics™,pseudoskepticism reasons. Semi-regular readers here should know that I'm not a huge fan of Shermer, and this book only makes it worse. 

Let's dig in on the expansion.

This is a horrible book, not on the conspiracy theories, which I don't need Shermer to tell me, but on him totally getting wrong the one actual conspiracy he discusses, which is why this is 1-starred on a grok.

Rather than there being JUST and ONLY an Austrian conspiracy against Serbia in 1914, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand instead traces directly through one "Apis," head of both Serbian military intelligence and the secret society named The Black Hand, and also directly or semi-directly through confederates of Apis in the nationalist organization Narodna Odbrana, to Serbian Prime Minister Pasic. All of this and more is documented by Christopher Clark in the excellent book "The Sleepwalkers," which Shermer ACTUALLY REFERENCES and then ignores for Tim Butcher's "The Trigger," which is
A. A piece of crap and
B. Only about 10-20 percent about lead assassin Gavrilo Princip and 80-90 percent directly or indirectly about Tim Butcher.

Shermer's right that this is arguably the world's deadliest conspiracy. He's dead wrong about where the conspiracy started.

==

The rest of the book, without this egregious ax-grinding, would probably be 3 stars, no more, so, even without this, it's not worth a read. It's a basic definition of conspiracy vs conspiracy theories, basic overview on why many people believe in conspiracy theories, and how to try to talk to them.

But, surely Shermer could have found something else to discuss as a true conspiracy. Rather, it appears that, following in Butcher's footsteps despite having read Clark's documenting the likely ties to the Serbian government, and despite mentioning the Black Hand, even in an overall superficial treatment (and even talking about an assassination conspiracy, though trying to limit it to just the Black Hand, if that), he thought he could use some intellectual judo to show an Austrian conspiracy.

In reality, despite Conrad having been pushing for pre-emptive war with Serbia for years, even after the assassination, the Dual Monarchy was divided on going to war. And, trying to treat its Byzantine turns in just a few pages will be a good way to get superficial treatment even if not wrong — which, of course, Shermer is. And, I can say that as having read "The Sleepwalkers" TWICE. 

==

It's also bad for those other, inside baseball reasons.

First, citing libertarian pseudoskeptic and convicted felon Brian Dunning will get you nowhere in my book.

Second and related, attacking the tobacco merchants and climate change deniers when, at a minimum, I don't think you have ever publicly called out Penn and Teller for promoting both of them, and I'm not sure they've ever backtracked on climate change, is an issue. You yourself, in fact, albeit to a lesser degree than Dunning, have mixed libertarianism and skepticism at times, including on climate change (and Kurzweil's "singularity"). You've also mixed both with bad political hot takes, like on Occupy Wall Street.

In addition, you and Dunning blocked me at Skepticblog, in part because I called out both you and Dunning on the libertarian pseudoskepticism, and you and the Not-So-Always-Amazing Randi also had at least a couple of toes in the world of #MeToo problems, including, allegedly, personally having committed sexual assault, and also, at Skeptic mag, you've been at a minimum, a racialist fellow traveler, tackled again here in passing when talking about Pop Ev Psych and sexism. And, to tie this all into one nice neat bow, the actual Serbian conspiracies, of which its prime minister almost certainly had some foreknowledge, and its army intelligence even more? Driven by ethnic-based Serbian nationalism, which isn't too many stones' throws away from racialism, as Serbia's post-1989 history shows. (Not that Croatia's been a lot better.)

Beyond that is Shermer's ignorance of actual philosophy. Or him being "no true Scotsman" at times on skepticism in his personal life.

View all my reviews

Skeptophilia — a closeted semi-believer?

Type your summary here Type rest of the post here

I have Skeptophilia, a blog by Gordon Bonnet, on my blogroll, and he's been here for several years. It's generally good stuff, but at times, more than once, I've wondered how skeptical he is on some things.

For example, I think he wants to believe that there's "life out there" and so sets the bar lower on Drake Equation issues. On something else, he linked uncritically to a guy in Houston, a pastor or similar but not a Ph.D. archaeologist from an accredited university, who claims to have found a curse tablet at Mount Ebal that had the name of Yahweh on it dated to circa 1200 BCE. (More here on how much of a circular reasoning fail it is, in a generally good r/AcademicBiblical piece except the one fundagelical there.) In another post, he claims that a coin in the name of otherwise generally unattested Roman emperor Sponson is legit, when it's nowhere near settled among numismatists. I blogged together about both, then separately about his claim about extinct gomphotheres and distribution of some trees in North America.

And, on my other site, I recently noted (He's "Tales of Whoa" on Twitter) that his willingness to believe humans are hardwired to know the difference between happy and sad music was based on a survey of dubious scientific value, if any. Given that he's an avid amateur musician, he should have noted my caveats about Western vs non-Western, as well as pre-Baroque, or even more, pre-Renaissance vs modern major-minor Western music. As a retired AP science teacher, he should have noted the small sample size and other issues.  (I've since updated that blog post of mine based on a new one of his where he seems to at least indirectly undercut himself.)

And, now, there's his post two weeks ago about ChatGPT threatening to replace pastors' sermons. First, as someone who's a PK with a graduate divinity degree, this ignores that many a pastor has been preaching out of either sermon books or online equivalents for decades if not centuries. Second, pastors and priests and rabbis, at least in denominations where they work full time, do much more than lead religious services.

Anyway, there's this from that post:

To make my own stance clear right from the get-go, I'm what the philosophers call a de facto atheist -- I'm not a hundred percent sure there's no higher power (mostly because I'm not a hundred percent sure of anything), but the complete lack of hard evidence tilts me in the direction of disbelief. As far as spiritual concerns, like the existence of a soul (or at least "something more" than our physical being), I'm an agnostic. There is a great deal of weird shit out there that might be explainable by virtue of some sort of non-materialistic model -- but it might just as well have to do with a combination of our own flawed cognitive processes and incomplete understanding of science. (If you have five minutes, watch this video by physicist Sabine Hossenfelder about why quantum wackiness doesn't support the existence of souls. I'm not as convinced as she is, but wherever you're starting, belief-wise, it'll get you thinking.)

Really?

He's interesting enough in many ways that I have no plans de-blogroll him, but I wouldn't add him over at my philosophy and critical thinking blog. (Actually, though on my original, larger blogroll, he is NOT on my updated one. He has also, as of spring 2026, abandoned Blogger, and doing about half of what he was doing there at his Substack, which I am not following.)

As for Sabine? I DID de-blogroll her, after she went on a rant about climate scientists being too alarmist.

==

Update, July 28: His piece on David Grusch and his UFO testimony says he's a closeted semi-believer here, too. The obvious answer is the simple one: They didn't see it. In cases like radar screens and pursuit aircraft, they saw UFOs that are that — unidentified. (The bogeys were probably later "de-identified" with more scrutiny.) As for the rest of his claims? Simple answer is that he's lying, for one or more of related psychological reasons that usually drive such things.

This, Gordo?

I have to say that even I and other folks who are accustomed to giving the side-eye to the hype are paying attention.

Speak for yourself.  

And, per this piece of mine, written two years before him, Bonnet knows the physics involved. He also knows the human psychology involved. Maybe "believer-lite" is more accurate than "semi-believer." 

Doug Henwood slouches further toward Gomorrah

I noticed Henwood's name among commenters on Seymour Hersh's original "welcome" piece on Substack last week.

Henwood, with whom I've tangled before, which led to him blocking my original Twitter account,  maybe is himself a COVID minimalist or worse if he also follows Vinay Prasad's Substack. He's also a paid subscriber to Modern Monetary Theory tout Stephanie Kelton's Substack, and Doug used to laugh at MMT touts like Michael Hudson and Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism. Again, PAID, not free, subscriber; this is far worse than somebody sensible on Twitter following some nutbar for free.

I said then that I might have to do a small sidebar piece about Doug, and here I am.

Previous tanglings?

First, six years ago? The Electoral College for electing U.S. presidents, while tangentially connected to slavery, was NOT "all about slavery." 

Second, not too much later? Jim Crow was NOT a class-based issue. As I noted, Jim Crow was in place across the South before the steel industry took off in Birmingham, Alabama and other things. I soon thereafter noted Henwood and running buddy Adolph Reed (punked by Barack Obama about 25 years ago) largely ignored the likes of Franz Fanon.

Third? And what led Henwood to block me, since Reed isn't on Twitter? Reed's anti-Black Lives Matter stance on death by cop. (For the unknowing, Reed is Black himself; he also, like Henwood, Chomsky and others, is one of those hard-core leftist duopolists.) Anyway, as part of his argument, Reed cited the high death by cop rate in the large White (in his mind) New Mexico. As I noted, in an extensive takedown, New Mexico being largely White would be huge news to the massive amount of Hispanic and American Indian residents of a state that, already 6 years ago, had been majority-minority for 20 years, and nearly that for decades before. I then noted that the American Indian death by cop rate was even higher nationally than the Black one.

Anyway, back to what I noted above, about the hypocrisy, it would seem, of him paying to follow Kelton, too. Several years ago, he did a big take down of MMT at Jacobin. I blogged about it, calling my piece "MMT is Maoism, or New Ageism."

Orac: Still a tribalist on COVID — Coronavirus week 117

Orac, David Gorski. He's not a pseudoskeptic in the way that Michael Shermer is, confusing libertarianism with skepticism.

He IS a pseudoskeptic in confusing tribalism with skepticism, though. And he just can't get over it on COVID.

After waiting for months, even a year, for him to talk seriously about the lab-leak hypothesis at Wuhan Institute of Virology, I simply stopped waiting.

And, then, yesterday, lo and behold, he writes about it!

Only to go into tribalist bullshit.

To put it bluntly, his heater, "Is the lab leak conspiracy theory dead?" is a lie. There's no other word for it, because Orac operates willfully on the scientifically unproven idea that all discussion of the lab leak is conspiracy theorizing.

And, yes, he needs to be called a liar.

As I told him on Twitter, he entirely ignores Jamie Metzl's discussion of the issue. He notes he caught the attention of Beijing (land of 2 million deaths) enough that he's been attacked by name. Scott Gottlieb also thinks it's plausible. Contra the well-written book she did with Matt Ridley, he insinuates (though won't say directly) that Alina Chen is a crank. Instead, he cherry-picks a couple of new studies that he says vindicate him and people like him. He also doesn't even mention Ridley as coauthor.

I'll give him credit for linking to a Chen blog piece on Medium, even though he probably expects tribalist leaders to buy his thinking. She tore to shreds a previous, pre-print essay in Science in February by the same authors of a July piece who pretty much claim they've nailed it. Here's details Orac probably doesn't want you to read:

• She notes they backed off of things like "incontrovertible" in the July peer-reviewed print, and elsewhere notes this does not "establish" origin.
  
• They added a "Study Limitations" section.
• She says, contra Orac, that the piece still isn't free of ascertainment bias, and rejects the lead author's claims that they're free of it.
• And questions their explainer behind the "two strains" theory.

Read the whole thing, or at least give it a decent grok.

Besides tribalism being in his personal cultural DNA, I think Orac is a tribalist on this issue because, per the 2 million deaths link, he still takes the Chinese government, Chinese CDC, etc., at way too close to face value. That, in turn, shows how much he's a pseudoskeptic.

As I noted on "still a tribalist" and also tweeted to him? John Horgan had his number six years ago. Aong with the Novella brothers and others. COVID just gave Gorski new room to let his tribalism run rampant.

Brian Dunning was not only a fraudster, he was an ineffective one

That's one of several findings from this long piece about online advertising.

It's snark-heavy, with a headline of "The new dot-com bubble is here: It's called online advertising."

The bubble, as it turns out, isn't just online advertising. It's a variety of online marketing, including affiliate marketing. The photo at right is a teez of what's coming.

A key early point of Jesse Frederick and Maurits Martijn is that here, in the most dismal of the social sciences (advertising as part of economics), as in other sciences, correlation is not causation.

From there, we dive into some actual research, which the hand-wavers didn't.

Finding one? Paid company brand name keyword links? Bupkis.

We then move beyond that to:

The benchmarks that advertising companies use – intended to measure the number of clicks, sales and downloads that occur after an ad is viewed – are fundamentally misleading. None of these benchmarks distinguish between the selection effect (clicks, purchases and downloads that are happening anyway) and the advertising effect (clicks, purchases and downloads that would not have happened without ads).

Interesting.

Now, that's all true of old-fashioned ads as well.

From there, the authors talk further about "selection effects" (i.e., selection bias) vs "advertising effects." And they apply this to the Hucksterman Empire.

In seven of the 15 Facebook experiments, advertising effects without selection effects were so small as to be statistically indistinguishable from zero.

Well, that's pretty serious.

From here, the authors note that this also shows advertising can't manipulate people as much as digital advertisers claim.

The information above is as true on affiliate marketing as on search, the authors show.

And, given that much of the research on both search and affiliate that the authors cite is about eBay, the specific company that unrepentant pseudoskeptic fraudster Brian Dunning pled guilty to defrauding? Schadenfreude is sometimes a semi-Nietzschean recurring bitch.

And who will tell Sharon Hill?

Sy Hersh, Seth Rich, Wikileaks and rejecting #RWNJ, #LWNJ and #EWNJ worlds

Sy Hersh

First, if you don't know your hashtags, this American Political Life has both right-wing nut jobs AND left-wing nut jobs. (That third "wing" gets revealed below.) An old leading light among LWNJs, Greg Palast, is quickly having his spot usurped by Caitlin Johnstone, who is now essentially lobbing conspiracy theory claims at Sy Hersh for his reveal last week about Seth Rich possibly selling DNC email leaks — or thefts (more in a minute on that) to Wikileaks.

OK, I'm making a mini-Tweetstorm into a blog post over the burning stupidity on this issue.

First, no, the DNC Leaks, even if they make relations with Russia worse, aren't leading to nuclear war, Caitlin. Smoke a fattie or whatever you need to do to get that out of your mind.

Update, Aug. 11, 2019: Remembering I'd done a blog post about this, as I just finished Hersh's new memoir, I didn't realize I had gone that far down the Seth Rich rabbit hole myself. I am firmly convinced now these emails were hacked by the Internet Research Agency, which has indirect (for plausible deniability, if nothing else, like Chinese Red Army "indirect" hackers) connections to the Russian government.

Second, on the surreptitiously taped conversation (which it surely was done surreptitiously) with Ed Butowsky, per transcripts of the whole schmeer, there's a key portion at the top, neglected by mouth-breathers left and right.

Sy specifically says he thinks Rich was NOT murdered, but rather that this was indeed nothing other than a crime gone bad. Elsewhere, he says that he is ONLY repeating what he has heard as rumor, the stuff on Seth Rich. ONLY as rumor.

Wingnuts won't admit it, but if Rich had been deliberately offed, his body would NOT be lying in a public street, wallet with ID in it still in his pants. Occam's Razor, folks.

But, wingnuts won't take a shave with it, hence in a follow-up email exchange, Hersh tells Butowsky, politely, to take a hike. As any good investigative journalist would do. A person of interest (Butowsky is surely not a source of any depth for Hersh on this) just burned him with that clandestine taping followed by public reveal. So, Hersh is burning him back. And, the RWNJ and LWNJ folks of conspiratizing can take a hike in my book along with Butowsky. And, Hersh's "real world" doesn't include those folks and neither does mine.

Third, Hersh is otherwise NOT making any big new reveal, other than Rich being fingered more specifically as the leaker.

At Consortium News last week, a group of retired intelligence vets stated very specifically, with corroborative evidence, that the DNC emails were NOT hacked online by out-of-country actors. Rather, they were directly downloaded from one computer to another, or to a thumb drive, at speeds too high for Internet-based downloading.

And now, The Nation has a long piece, overviewing the work behind that Consortium News piece and two others before it. It is, itself, a very important read. It very much undercuts the Guccifer 2.0 — or other "Putin Did It" official Russky meddling — lines of thought.

To go more in depth on the basic update, it turns out that VIPS, said retired intelligence group, was NOT unanimous in this stance and neither Consortium News nor The Nation reported this at the time. The Nation DID clean up Patrick Lawrence's mess, though he has spread it more at Consortium News, which I finally de-blogrolled.

The truth is that the VIPS majority went looking for their own "Curveball" and of course found him. From this, I learned that one of the top VIPS touters of the idea is a 9/11 falser and a JFK conspiracy theorist and CN's founder was a JFK conspiracy theorist. I apologize for going as far down this road as I did.

(I'm now digressing to the third hashtag, which is "Establishmentarian wing nut jobs." When a "movement skeptic" like Ed Brayton talks about the "Alex Jones conspiracy phone" in response to me posting the link — as best I can tell, without him reading — the hashtag is earned. That said, this another reason I moved beyond giving much credence on a variety of issues to "movement skepticism. [Ed posts to "public" on Effbook, so no confidences revealed.] It's also, as the recent death of Leo Lincourt kind of reminds me, time to do some cleanup on my friends list again. )

I want to briefly look at calendar issues. DNC and Crowdstrike announced a likely "Russian hack" in mid-June. Hersh, in the transcript above, says the last email from the Podesta string was late May.

So, lax as internal DNC security and Crowdstrike were (another reason to not let the servers be inspected by FBI), they discover "something" in early June. And, given they can't blame Bernie, like December 2015 (was Rich snooping then too), Russia is the easy "get."

But, they apparently don't know that it's a full-blown insider, assuming Rich was behind the July 5 pilfering mentioned at Consortium News. (Possibility No. 2: Crowdstrike knew full well itself from the early days it was an inside job and went into CYA mode.) Who died just a few days later, without being able to steal more, or leak more, if he planned to.

So, the only real questions left are "why"?

Assuming Rich did it, why? (We don't know it was him, but per that Consortium News piece, it seems the DNC had some "Snowden" inside — if not Rich, it was somebody else, or option 3 is that Rich was a middleman. Rich worked for the DNC since 2014; again, not saying he did it, but this is further evidence he was in position to do it.) Was it just for the money? Was it for some anti-Clinton reasons? If it was for the money, was he shot not in a robbery gone bad but a drug deal gone bad? I mean, the 4:20 a.m. time for the shooting is an eyebrow-raiser.

Yes, that's a bit of stretching, but still a much closer shave with Occam's Razor than the nut jobs do.

Rich's parents will never, ever talk. If they even know any more than we do, which they may not.

And, if my thoughts are right, I'm sure DC Metropolitan Police never did a toxicology report on Rich's body. Too late now.

That said, process server Shawn Lucas, who died a couple of months later, OD'ed on a mix of fentanyl, kratom and a muscle relaxant.

(Update: Anyway, Disobedient Media (ranking medium or more on bias of making news into opinion, on the right-wing side) building a story off wingnut America First Media Group insinuating that both Rich and Shawn Lewis were targets of Crowdstrike-funded hitmen sounds pretty conspiratorial.

Further undercutting conspiratorial ideas is that Lucas was not the only process server involved with giving the DNC July papers. Why wasn't Brandon Yoshimura, also with One Source Process, also killed? So sorry, Nash, but ... you probably should unpin that Tweet. You're risking coming off like ShirtLost DumbShit Zach Haller.)

By the same account, to another Twittter who called out both that story AND this blog post? I specifically said that I don't see this as guaranteed. At the same time, because drug dealers would have no nefarious intent beyond sending a signal to people copping out of payouts, it's not a conspiracy theory. And I need nobody who has self-appointed as the Twitter god of conspiracy theory debunking to claim that I'm peddling a conspiracy theory.)

Anyway, of course, there's no guarantee this is true. It's possible that this was an attempted robbery, which became a fatal shooting and aborted robbery in panic. But, it makes MUCH more sense than Johnstone's claims that somewhere behind this, Trump is trying to drag us into nuclear war, OR than various factionalized Trump Trainers' claims that this is some anti-MAGA fake news or whatever.

Oh, and our old frenemy Actual Flatticus was likely wrong that Rich was not the source.

==

Finally, per Johnstone's fear of nuclear war? It's legit, but has nothing to do with what Sy Hersh said about Seth Rich.

And, given her willingness to work with the alt-right, and by name, Mike Cernovich? Let's note that this memo by former NSC staffer Rich Higgins now blowing up the Net is filled with not just Steve Bannon versions of nationalism, but directly attacks social justice ideas AND plays with anti-Semitic tropes. And, it's linked to Cernovich. And, she's probably having an orgasm over it because it mentions "deep state."

John Horgan, NECSS, #skepticism, #tribalism, #scientism, ox-goring

Many people involved with "movement skepticism" are probably familiar with the recent contretemps over John Horgan's speech to the New East Conference on Science and Skepticism.

Here's a summary of the speech, by Horgan. Here are two of the most heated responses, from Orac and from Steve Novella, both medical doctors of some standing.

Then, here's Horgan's response. And a second.

I don't necessarily agree with everything he said, nor every bit of the style. I do agree with a fair amount, though. (I have also read, and favorably reviewed, a couple of Horgan's books. I've also read, and largely agreed with, broadly similar takes on "movement skepticism" by the likes of Massimo Pigliucci.)

I had a more specific question, though. How much of the reaction from a few — well, specifically, Novella and Orac, as far as longer reactions — does anybody think comes from "ox goring" over Horgan's comments about medical care in the US?

The nut of my issue is this.

A semi-rhetorical question, as I called it in a comment on Orac's site ... how much of the heat of criticism is due to ox-goring re Orac and Novella over what Horgan said about modern medicine, including overtesting driven in part by the fee-for-service model?

Theoretically, the two of them are above such money-grubbing. I think. Maybe they make extra money off consultancy fees or something, though. (That, mutual backup consultancy agreements with other doctors, is an ugly part of modern American medicine indeed.)

And, even beyond the money, it's their profession, not movement skepticism in general, that they could be upset about as an ox being gored.

To be fair, in his link, Orac himself says he and Novella have both written about cancer overscreening.

To which I note: To what effect? There's plenty of doctors who still do it, and plenty of skeptics who still don't write about it.

Plus, overscreening for cancer is but one of several types of overtesting.

And, when it's in one's own skeptical house, as with Dr. David Gorski and mammograms, he may raise one skeptical eyebrow ... but still give one thumbs up.

So, contra people who think this trio, and others, from the medical world are actually mad because Horgan allegedly got a lot wrong, I don't think so. (Skeptics™ folks can tell me if any of the trio has called for single-payer national health care with limits on fee-for-service payments.)

Otherwise, especially on people criticizing Horgan's attack for movement skeptics not looking at things like war and economics?

Related to this, Horgan has touted the Cochrane Collaboration as promoting medical research "free from commercial sponsorship and other conflicts of interest," per its website. (Horgan just posted that link recently, but the site and movement's been around some time, and he obviously has a few years' familiarity with it.)

Guess what? No link to it on "Science Based Medicine," the skeptics'-driven blog which has Orac, Novella and Gorski among its main contributors.

And, back to, if not money, then reputation. I got a bit snarky about the "Science Based Medicine" website when it was created ... wondering if we'd have skeptics' medical products for sale or something. No, that's not happened, but per Orac above, it has not commented more about overtesting in general. Nor has it commented about the issues behind that — loose p-values and other statistical standards that it's high time were made more rigorous. Where's the Orac/Novella call for that?

First, I agree with him and have already said so. Steve Pinker's book on the subject was pretty much crap. Of course, Pinker's a Pop Ev Psycher, and the book came in part from that pseudoscience direction.

Probably, a bit of the ox-goring is involved there, too. Pinker himself's not a leader in movement skepticism, but he's simpatico with its work. And, a LOT of movement skeptics still believe in the unfalsifiable, sexist pseudoscience of Pop Ev Psych in general.

Second, it was impolite at best, possibly martyr-feeding at worst, for Jeremy Ian Swiss to not allow Horgan a Q&A time, since he'd deliberately made his speech short enough to allow for this.

Third, sorry Orac, but Horgan's spot-on about tribalism, and you're only exemplifying it. I am sure you care nothing about little old me, but nonetheless ... per the old cliche, I'd put the shovel down and stop digging.

Fourth, I don't think Horgan is "clueless about skepticism," Orac. (See tribalism, holes, and shovels.)

Fifth, I'm surprised that he didn't directly name "scientism" as a problem with movement skeptics. It is, and Horgan's written about the subject, in relation to the humanities, before. (In a Tweet, he noted he's called out Jerry Coyne for it — a link I didn't click because "Coyne.")

That said, John could have mentioned science hype as part of scientism. I'm not anti-GMO, but I am anti-hype when GMOs don't deliver. And, no, scientism-type movement skeptics, they don't always deliver.)

All of this is why, like Pigliucci, who used to be more involved with the "movement," but has drastically distanced himself in the past few years, I take a Marxian (Groucho) type eyeball to it.

I noted above that I don't agree with everything Horgan says.

Above all, I think studies about the possible harms of psychtropic medications — antidepressants, etc. — are somewhat overblown. Not totally, but somewhat. I do agree that we probably need more caution with their use than is practiced today.

(I don't know if Orac, Novella or other MDs at NECSS or in movement skepticism have written about this at all or not.)

It also should be remembered that the first antidepressants were discovered in the 1950s, as was Thorazine for schizophrenia, long before Big Pharma was quite as big as today. And, even if a placebo effect was part of it, they were a godsend to many.

Related to that, I don't think Horgan, or others with his mindset, think about the emotions involved in seeking relief from mental health afflictions. And, if I'm correct in questioning the claim that, on average, they're positively harmful, some relief is better than none until our options become better.

In turn, I encourage general practitioners/internists to become more enlightened on this subject, since they're often, not psychiatrists, the ones providing the pharmaceuticals. Likewise, I encourage them to become more enlightened about addiction, including anti-craving medications. (I sure as hell hope Horgan doesn't have a problem with them.

Next, it's funny, if not sad, to see Novella and Orac both accuse Horgan of creating strawmen. I see them, in their replies, doing exactly that.

Finally, Orac showed a degree of "true colors," I guess. Lumping Horgan in the same piece as Mike Adams qualifies as an ad hominem in my book. And, there was no need for it. None.

You say Zuckerberg, I say Hucksterman, part two (updated)

I blogged on Wednesday about the magical PR pixie dust that has led some people to think Mark Zuckerberg's new for-profit LLC is really a charity and will do all sorts of magic stuff.

Marky Mark, Priscilla Chan and daughter Max.
Who could resist such cuteness? I could.

Well, other than pixie dust inhalers calling me a cynic, and naive PR readers thinking Zuck's done so much good, others have claimed that a California benefits corporation, which is the type of LLC this is in California, will keep him in line.

And, an alleged skeptic should know better. After being given a lawyer's explainer of what such a corporation is, as he attempted to refute a Pro Publica piece from my original blog post, and referenced again below. I Googled to find the actual law instead.

It's true that 30 states have some sort of benefits corporation, per Wiki. It's also true that every one of them was created this decade, when the man and the hour of neoliberalism met nationally in Barack Obama. That alone should be ground for pause. Nobody has any real empirical evidence on how these babies operate.

Specific to Zuckerberg and where Facebook is?

Per California's enabling statute, I don't see it that way; I don't see California's law having any real teeth to making Zuckerberg do anything that he doesn't want to do, period and end of story.

The only way to "enforce" whether such a body is living up to its charter, etc., is through a "benefits proceeding."

However, such proceeding is all "inside baseball":

(a) No person may bring an action or assert a claim against a benefit corporation or its directors or officers under this chapter except in a benefit enforcement proceeding.
(b) A benefit enforcement proceeding may be commenced or maintained only as follows:
(1) Directly by the benefit corporation.
(2) Derivatively by any of the following:
(A) A shareholder.
(B) A director.
(C) A person or group of persons that owns beneficially or of record 5 percent or more of the equity interests in an entity of which the benefit corporation is a subsidiary.
(D) Other persons as have been specified in the articles or bylaws of the benefit corporation.
(c) A benefit corporation shall not be liable for monetary damages under this part for any failure of the benefit corporation to create a general or specific public benefit.

So, that would mean the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative corporately, or any shareholders or directors named Priscilla Chan, Mark Zuckerberg or cronies thereof, of such persons unlikely to hold more than 5 percent of the Initiative's stock, are the only people who can do anything about its performance. Let's remember that, although Cal law, and in most states, technically allows an incorporated, publicly traded company to also reincorporate as a benefits corporation, there's been no rush to do so. Why would they, at least when any shareholder can raise eyeballs, at least "derivatively," which is never really explained.

As for whether such incorporation is better than a traditional 501(c)3 nonprofit? I think not.

True that they don't have tremendous amounts of oversight, either. However, theoretically, the IRS can come down on nonprofits more than these LLCs. The fact that IRS enforcement is bupkis in reality doesn't refute the theoretical angle. And, I'll take even minimal IRS enforcement over this.

And, places like Charity Navigator do annual reviews of charity performance, but, I assume, not of for profit LLCs, even if they're allegedly for a vague "public benefit."

As for the idea this boosts stakeholder value rather than shareholder value? Well, theoretically, but only if your LLC's board isn't a fount of nepotism. Which is why publicly traded corporations aren't rushing to do this.

Speaking, what is a “public benefit”? In California’s enabling law, it says it is:

(D)efined as a material positive impact on society and the environment, taken as a whole, as assessed against a 3rd-party standard, as defined, that satisfies certain requirements. 

But, that “third party standard” is undercut by lack of third-party enforcement.

Wikipedia’s article itself notes this, too:

Benefit corporations need not be certified or audited by the third-party standard. Instead, they use third-party standards solely as a rubric a company uses to measure its own performance.

A “rubric.” Is that like a “goldbrick”?

And, yep, California's statute specifically says an outside audit is not required.

So, what we have is a for-profit company that says, "This is what we think is a 'public benefit.'"

Let's see how this spells out in detail. 

It can then say: "Our cronies agree that we're doing a pretty good job of meeting that benefit."

It can then say: "Now move along, nothing else to see here."

But, I didn’t yet answer what that “specific public benefit” is. Hold on, we’re there:

(e) “Specific public benefit” includes all of the following:
(1) Providing low-income or underserved individuals or communities with beneficial products or services.
(2) Promoting economic opportunity for individuals or communities beyond the creation of jobs in the ordinary course of business.
(3) Preserving the environment.
(4) Improving human health.
(5) Promoting the arts, sciences, or advancement of knowledge.
(6) Increasing the flow of capital to entities with a public benefit purpose.
(7) The accomplishment of any other particular benefit for society or the environment.

OK, more analysis time.

No. 1? Zuckerberg's fake free Internet in India could fall under that.
No. 2? Former San Francisco Mayor, now Cal Lite Guv Gavin Newsom's pothole Donkey Kong ideas would fit.

No. 3? Sounds straightforward, but wait until Facebook promotes "Virtual reality National Parks" or something.

No. 4? Straightfoward.

No. 5? Facebook in K-12 classrooms certainly falls here. The tech-neolib wet dream combined with tax deductions for doing so, as Pro Publica explained. (Yes, yes, he gets tax deductions. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise. If they try to claim otherwise, tell them to read the piece precisely, then go argue with Pro Publica. If they try to claim you're saying tax deductions "now" or similar, tell them the same thing.)

No. 6? "Money laundering" is what this is called. For example, Sergey Brin starts something. Let's call it the Elgoog Foundation. The two foundations start swapping money like bacterial DNA-transfer sex. (Or like David Brock playing shell games with Hillary Clinton money.) And, trust me, this one WILL happen in the future.

7. WTF? That's not just a Mack truck sized loophole. I can take Patton's Second Armored Division through that.

Remember, on that point 7, there is no third-party auditing, and a third party definition is just a "rubric."

Back to that tax issue:

Zuckerberg shows that even among #skeptics, there's a sucker born every minute

Or maybe I should put "skeptic" in scare quotes. And, I definitely should advise you that I have a follow-up post, refuting pseudoskeptics who didn't want to accept what's in this initial one.

Marky Mark, Priscilla Chan and daughter Max.
Who could resist such cuteness? I could.

Early this week, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that with the birth of his daughter, he was creating a new charitable foundation in his wife's name and that he would give away 99 percent of his Facebook stock.

Gawker, a day later, provided the reality of what this meant.

First, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative isn't a charitable organization, it's an LLC. That means that it can spend those Facebook stocks, when cashed out, on whatever it damn well pleases.

I noted that, as well as the fact that Zuckerberg's announced desire to promote "connecting people and building strong communities" sure made it sound like he'd be giving all this Facebook stock to ...

Promote the use of Facebook.

Because, hey, Facebook connects us all, right? Into communities, right?

What's not patently self-serving in the announcement?

Well, much of it that isn't that is New Age drivel.

Advancing human potential is about pushing the boundaries on how great a human life can be. 

Can you learn and experience 100 times more than we do today?

Because that, too, is among what Marky Mark wants to fund.

If you can read that second sentence without barfing, you're probably not much of a real skeptic.

When I posted this on Facebook, alleged "skeptics" claim that I'm just a heartless cynic.

Since I don't normally post to "public," I can't name their names by my Facebook ethics.

Which, of course, is far more ethics related to Facebook than its inventor has ever shown.

Meanwhile, per BuzzFeed, which pointed out that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is not a charity, Marky Mark already has for-profit activities lined up:

A Facebook release this afternoon stated as much. “The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative will pursue its mission by funding non-profit organizations, making private investments and participating in policy debates, in each case with the goal of generating positive impact in areas of great need,” it said. “Any profits from investments in companies will be used to fund additional work to advance the mission.”

"Policy debates" could be translates as "lobbying," in my book.

But I'm just a cynic.

Other buzz phrases could be similarly translated. "Areas of great need" could be neoliberal tech-powered education, where Marky Mark's already been a flop, per the Gawker link.

Which, from there, goes on to note about said education initiatives:

“Micro-schools”? Putting Facebook software in public schools? Software, software, more software. If you have a headache, take a software. Jimmy can’t read? Give him software. The conceit that code can solve all social ills and free the species from the chains of aging, illness, and flatulence is the height of Silicon Valley bullshit, and Zuckerberg’s massive giveaway will clearly be predicated on that conceit.

Yep. Like Chris Whittle and others, Zuckerberg wants to get our schoolkids hooked on the tech-neoliberal version of Marlboros ASAP. 

Or, his attempt to ram Facebook down Indians' throats while offering a bait-and-switch with a lure of a crappy free Internet plan to try to get people to buy a slightly less crappy paid plan.

But I'm just a cynic. And the MSM, like "skeptics," are suckers. Right, NYT? Right again, NYT? Even while co-suckering others to play along?

And not mentioned by Zuckerberg is that this "giveaway" surely will allow him a sweet tax write-off.

Indeed, Pro Publica has now weighed in on exactly that issue

Mark Zuckerberg did not donate $45 billion to charity. You may have heard that, but that was wrong. 

Here’s what happened instead: Zuckerberg created an investment vehicle. 

In doing so, Zuckerberg and Chan did not set up a charitable foundation, which has nonprofit status. He created a limited liability company, one that has already reaped enormous benefits as public relations coup for himself. His PR return-on-investment dwarfs that of his Facebook stock. Zuckerberg was depicted in breathless, glowing terms for having, in essence, moved money from one pocket to the other.

Sounds about right. 

But, wait, it gets "better."

What’s more, a charitable foundation is subject to rules and oversight. It has to allocate a certain percentage of its assets every year. The new Zuckerberg LLC won’t be subject to those rules and won’t have any transparency requirements.

And, only one person makes the decision on how to invest this. 

But wait, Pro Publica goes further on this:

Any time a superwealthy plutocrat makes a charitable donation, the public ought to be reminded that this is how our tax system works. The superwealthy buy great public relations and adulation for donations that minimize their taxes.

Yep. 

And, Zuckerberg gets tax benefits from this:

So what are the tax implications? They are quite generous to Zuckerberg. I asked Victor Fleischer, a law professor and tax specialist at the University of San Diego School of Law, as well as a contributor to DealBook. He explained that if the LLC sold stock, Zuckerberg would pay a hefty capital gains tax, particularly if Facebook stock kept climbing. 

If the LLC donated to a charity, he would get a deduction just like anyone else. That’s a nice little bonus. But the LLC probably won’t do that because it can do better. The savvier move, Professor Fleischer explained, would be to have the LLC donate the appreciated shares to charity, which would generate a deduction at fair market value of the stock without triggering any tax.

Meanwhile, some pseudoskeptics are claiming that a California benefits corporation, which is the type of LLC this is in California, will keep him in line.

Per California's enabling statute, I don't see it that way.

That's in part because, per that same lawyer, and contra one neolib pseudoskeptic, Zuckerberg's money can be used for lobbying purposes, too.

The only way to "enforce" whether such a body is living up to its charter, etc., is through a "benefits proceeding."

However, such proceeding is all "inside baseball":

(a) No person may bring an action or assert a claim against a benefit corporation or its directors or officers under this chapter except in a benefit enforcement proceeding.
(b) A benefit enforcement proceeding may be commenced or maintained only as follows:
(1) Directly by the benefit corporation.
(2) Derivatively by any of the following:
(A) A shareholder.
(B) A director.
(C) A person or group of persons that owns beneficially or of record 5 percent or more of the equity interests in an entity of which the benefit corporation is a subsidiary.
(D) Other persons as have been specified in the articles or bylaws of the benefit corporation.
(c) A benefit corporation shall not be liable for monetary damages under this part for any failure of the benefit corporation to create a general or specific public benefit.

So, that would mean the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative corporately, or any shareholders or directors named Priscilla Chan, Mark Zuckerberg or cronies thereof, of such persons unlikely to hold more than 5 percent of the Initiative's stock, are the only people who can do anything about its performance.

As for whether such incorporation is better than a traditional 501(c)3 nonprofit? I think not.

True that they don't have tremendous amounts of oversight, either. However, theoretically, the IRS can come down on nonprofits more than these LLCs. The fact that IRS enforcement is bupkis in reality doesn't refute the theoretical angle. And, I'll take even minimal IRS enforcement over this.

And, places like Charity Navigator do annual reviews of charity performance, but, I assume, not of for profit LLCs, even if they're allegedly for a vague "public benefit."

As for the idea this boosts stakeholder value rather than shareholder value? Well, theoretically, but only if your LLC's board isn't a fount of nepotism.

Speaking, what is a “public benefit”? In California’s enabling law, it says it is:

(D)efined as a material positive impact on society and the environment, taken as a whole, as assessed against a 3rd-party standard, as defined, that satisfies certain requirements. 

But, that “third party standard” is undercut by lack of third-party enforcement.

But, I'm just a cynic.

Hey, alleged skeptics? (One of him is somewhere between right-neolib and libertarian, so understandable.) Sometimes cynicism is the proper social and emotional stance to adopt as a result of skeptical perusal of an issue.

Of course, I love being a deliberate contrarian at times. And a capital-C philosophical Cynic.

But, Zuckerberg doesn't even make a public announcement about going to the bathroom unless there's some self-interest involved.

Part of the problem is that many Americans, including said neoliberal pseudoskeptic, don't understand what philanthropy actually is. Per this piece, remember:

If you are giving money to somebody with the expectation that they will carry out your instructions, further your agenda, owe you compliance and assistance, or complete a project you've assigned them — you're not a philanthropist. If your giving is designed to give you power or control over an aspect of public life in our country — you're not a philanthropist.

Period and end of story.

===

Update, April 12, 2016: Facebook's new Siri-on-Oxy-slow bot-apps are surely a public benefit, right?