Time for a new post about the wrongs of Gordon Bonnet aka Skeptophilia

I had debated about whether or not to add him to my updated blog roll. He's a good writer, which shows through in his pieces. But, as I've noted here before, on issues that generally involve something metaphysical, while he "presents" as a skeptic, he isn't always totally that way in enthusiasm.

And, sometimes, he's just wrong.

April 9: It's news to me that yuccas allegedly aren't native to the US. Rather? Per Wiki, the reality is that many species of yucca, including the Joshua tree, are indeed native. Given that he's been wrong about matters biological before (even though being a retired high school Advanced Placement-level science teacher) this is not surprising.

April 10: He omits French (wrongly, per Wiki, and weirdly per his own ethnicity) from the top eight languages of the world.

May 8: Calling cynicism no better than gullibility is a laugher. It's also a misframing of cynicism. Good cynicism is not universal, it's subject-specific, and like a generalization vs a stereotype, is based on a reasonably honest assessment of a whole class as a class. Like politicians. And, the fact that Bonnet chose C.S. Lewis as source for his examples in this piece is yet another illustration that his skepticism isn't as rigorous as it could be or as he thinks it is.

May 10: No, Pope Leo I (the Great) did NOT NOT NOT convoke the Council of Chalcedon. Per the Wikipedia link in his own piece, Eastern Roman (not yet Byzantine) Emperor Marcian, NOT Leo, called the council. In general, popes were pretty much ignored by all seven of the "ecumenical" councils. I had commented on his Facebook on No. 2, but not 1 and 3, and debated this one, but eventually did so, using my profile page set up for my blogging, not my personal page.

The real issue is that Bonnet, while LOL-ing on Laura Loomer's "woke Marxist pope" missed the real issues, such as Prevost's role in Catholic clergy sexual abuse covering up and more:

I wish all the best to this century's Pope Leo. Like I said, he looks like a great choice, and a lot of my Catholic friends seem happy with him

You need to ask your presumably church-librul Catholic friends about what's at my link. I don't go openly looking to bash the religious impulse myself, either, but I don't cut blank checks to religious facts on the ground, either.

May 16: At least he redeems himself with honesty, per me having wondered once if he was a closeted believer.

In fact, for a skeptic, I have to admit I'm pretty damn suggestible.

There we are.

BUT?

One more goof and I'll drop him from my updated blogroll.

AND?

June 6: This did it. His post was about Henry VIII (whom Bonnet uses as a stand-in for Trump). He then wants to compare some of Henry's retainers and such to Trump's sycophants, and introduces a list with this:

But Henry was surrounded by nobles (both of the to-the-manner-born and the up-and-coming nouveau-riche types) who were desperately elbowing each other out of the way to capture the king's approval. Even though one after the other, they ended up paying for it.

Here are a few examples:

On that list are Sir Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell.

I know enough about More, and have seen "A Man for all Seasons" more than once. I've read a bio of Cromwell. Bonnet's hot takes are way off base.

On More, there's no indication he connived to replace Wolsey. And, his rectitude in Parliament under Henry VII already showed he wasn't a suck-up.

Cromwell? Pushed the Reformation further and faster than Henry VIII wanted, including pushing the marriage to Anne of Cleves. He did, before that, use the dissolution of the monasteries as a patronage tool to work closer to Henry, tis true.

He does note that Henry was as he was "especially toward the end of his life" while ignoring that Wolsey and More both met their fates long before the end of Henry's life.

Anyway, Gordon, you're gone.

Blogroll cleanup — good riddance, Consortium News

Every 9-18 months, I do a blogroll cleanup, and discuss it briefly.

That's because I don't follow 40-50 other blogs on my blogroll, and so, any deletions — or additions I hadn't previously discussed — deserve comment.

So, here goes again.

The biggie is dropping Consortium News. It's gone downhill since Bob Parry died, plus I have new information that it wasn't always all it was when Bob was alive. On the downhill since he died, adding Caitlin Johnstone was a biggie. Then Ray McGovern goes into his twosiderism over Trump and Mueller to the point that he regularly considers Devin Nunes a reliable figure. Either Ray knows better, in which case he's a general bullshitter, as well as simply wrong on promoting twosiderism, or else he doesn't know and is thus untrustworthy otherwise.

Then, it runs a JFK assassination conspiracy theorist like James DiEugenio. Worse yet, searching CN's archives, I find out that Bob Parry ran him more than once, and on JFK conspiracy theorizing and related stuff. The related stuff includes the "JFK was headed out of Nam" myth, with dumping all the war on LBJ (not that he wasn't problematic, but ... the plans to up the war were in the White House not only before Tonkin Gulf but before Jack's assassination).

Otherwise, on interpreting LBJ, I'll take Robert Caro over DiEugenio's critique of him any time and double on Sundays. Especially since in that critique he makes it clear that he's a Camelot last-dithcer, including calling Sy Hersh's "The Dark Side of Camelot" discredited?

Eugenio also believes the non-skeptical leftist line on things like Hiroshima/Nagasaki, a la Gar Alpherowitz.

He's not a historian, period, whatever his claims. And that Parry ran him repeatedly says that Bob Parry is overrated in some ways himself, I think. Bob also ran one other piece by another author supporting JFK conspiracy theories and, in this header by him to his own piece about Gary Webb, the contras and cocaine, leaves open the possibility of being a JFK Truther himself:

The 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination saw a mainstream media blackout of nearly all evidence of conspiracy in that case. But New York Magazine went even further, mocking the proven Contra-cocaine scandal as a “conspiracy theory,” Robert Parry writes.

The fact that Parry was right about the NY Mag piece that prompted the response (Benjamin Wallace-Wells is an idiot in general) doesn't make him right about JFK. And, I've seen enough Google hits that consider Parry a JFK assassination conspiracy theory fellow traveler, that he surely knew he had this reputation. If it weren't true, he would have issued a clear denial, IMO. That's only exacerbated by the fact that Bob, as EDITOR of CN (and editors decide what runs, and what doesn't, among other things, ran several pieces on or around the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination, three of them clear conspiracy theory pieces and one leaning that way, plus, one two months later from Bob himself, linked above.

And, that's not all that falls under Parry as editor, and "editorial silence gives assent" to him being a JFK conspiracy theorist.

Example? Bob DID explicitly call out 9/11 truthers, and then did a follow-up, which included:

Indeed, the “truther” account has sometimes struck me as a parody meant to bring ridicule on more serious conspiracy investigations such as those into the JFK assassination.

I can't abide conspiracy theories in general and more so, JFK ones in particular because they're usually based on the BS that DiEugenio articulates about the Golden Age of Camelot. In other words, they tell lies about the JFK Administration to try to bolster the alleged need for a conspiracy to assassinate him.

Add in that Ray McGovern of various CN nutteries is also a JFK truther AND a 9/11 truther, and I would never have added it to my blogroll in the first place, with more knowledge. (Sidebar — this also further confirms my recognition of the nuttery level of Brad Friedman of the Brad Blog.)

And, per this, (shock me), Caitlin Johnstone is also a JFK truther.

Do I deny that something like a "deep state" exists? Of course not. Do I deny actual coups by it abroad, like Guatemala? Of course not. Do I deny its attempts to influence US foreign policy? Of course not.

Do I deny that it worked with the FBI in the past on things parallel to FBI operations like COINTELPRO? Nope.

Do I believe any of this adds up to it trying to make Manchurian Candidate presidents, let alone Seven Days in May moves? I sure do deny that.

Some other tie-ins, related to some evidence that third party voters are more likely to be conspiracy theorists? Ray McGovern did a Jill Stein endorsement. Nat Parry, son of Bob Parry and current manager of CN, has a Green Party bumper sticker.

This doesn't mean that I won't still take an occasional glance at CN. It's just that I can't give it that public promotion.

Other changes to the blogroll, now that I've purged CN from my brain with that?

The Society for U.S. Intellectual History, or S-USIH? Stopped reading it after it went to a "real names only" comment policy months ago. Use of real names doesn't stop idiocy; only comment moderation does. Besides, I found it becoming ever more "meh." Dunno what late friend Leo Lincourt would have thought of the thinking behind its change. He turned me on to it; I liked a fair amount of it early on, but it became more "meh" in recent years (I've read it for five years or more) and the commenting policy, plus the lack of insight behind it ... and maybe a bit of pretentiousness behind that, of the idea that they have 50 comments per post and so might have a problem, all added up.

American Third Party Report hasn't updated since last year and its website is 404.

Update, July 2: I also cut Science of Us. Had been thinking about it for some time, but when it ran bullshit about psi phenomena, namely, a claim that meta-analysis confirmed Daryl Bem's claims about the reality of the Ganzfield effect, and ignored that his own initial journal couldn't replicate, out it went. As with Consortium News on conspiracy theories, if you run outright pseudoscience, out you go.

===

On the additions side, I have added the wonderful daily comic Two-Party Opera. Brian Carroll bats at least liberal, if not some place further to the left like me, knows his presidents and has a wry sense of humor.

Fellow Travelers posts just occasionally, but it critiques American foreign policy from the left, and generally left, not just left-liberal.

Tim Shorrock has migrated to a new site, Dispatch Korea, continuing and expanding his work on South Korean foreign policy history, especially vis-a-vis the US.

Robert Fisk I have read off and on for years. With some liberals, and some Trots, both playing holier-than-thou with leftists on Syria, I figured it was good for me, if nothing else, to blogroll him.

And because of what I just said that was the strawbreaker at Consortium News, I've added JFKFiles. It's a "tell" for people familiar with American conspiracy theories in general and JFK ones in particular. Of note? Per his Wiki page, in the early 1980s, blog author Dale K. Myers didn't believe Oswald did it. But, he was confident Oswald shot Tippett. After that, he looked at the Zapruder film, and came to believe Oswald did do it, with the one caveat that Vincent Bugliosi and Gerald Posner had about one Warren Commission error — that it was the first bullet that missed, the second that was the "double hit" and the third was the head shot.

Adventr.CO is a great site to see a guy and his wife hiking, kayaking, etc. around the Colorado Plateau.

Skeptophilia is a nice six-day a week dose of skepticism that's not from someone inside the Skeptics™ world.

#OTD — #Roswell was attacked by an Air Force spy balloon

That's what happened July 8, 1947. Roswell, New Mexico was "attacked" by a top-secret United States Air Force spy balloon loaded with high-tech sensors crashed. Specifically, as Wiki notes, it was loaded with nuclear sensors.

The Air Force wasn't going to tell the media that. It kept mum at first, while various different rumors spread, most actively and deliberately. (For details on the Project Mogul snooping, go here.)

An interesting sidebar is that, even though the public face of the burgeoning U.S. "national security establishment" said in 1947 that the Russkies were a long way from getting "The Bomb," we were otherwise acting like that wasn't such a long ways away, as the sensors were in that balloon for one reason only.

In fact, that's a lot more interesting than "aliens" claims about Roswell in particular or anything related to Project Mogul in general. In fact in fact, I wonder if anybody's written a book just about the start of Mogul, and how much government worries in private did not square with government jauntiness in public.

But, Roswell Army Air Force base public information officer Walter Haupt, for whatever reason, mentioned a "flying disc" after the government got to the site. Then, rancher William "Mac" Brazel (corrected on first name), possibly "primed" by this, claimed to have seen such a disc.

Eventually, "aliens"!

No, not at all.

For more on a properly skeptical stance toward the incident, see this by CSICOP.

That said, I "admire," in a sense, the city of Roswell for continuing to tout the mythical version of the incident, as peddled by the Roswell UFO museum at that link.

I do NOT admire either the city of Roswell, nor Chaves County, when either gives any money to the museum. No more than I would Ken Ham's Noah's Ark museum. In this case, there's no First Amendment issues. It's just the same level of pseudoscience.

And, folks, I've BEEN to the Roswell museum. And heard a curator, or docent, or whatever (maybe it was one of THEM) just say, "You have to believe!" (I think he was possibly responding to a sotto voce comment by yours truly.)

No, I don't "have to" do anything.

As for claims that two dozen people saw aliens? Paul of Tarsus says 500 people at one time saw a resurrected Jesus. I don't believe that one either.

Besides, as with JFK conspiracy theorists, there's at least half a dozen different competing alien theories. I prefer Occam's Razor as an additional guide to the truth.

Per the "admire" in scare quotes? If not for that museum, New Mexico Military Institute and a branch of Eastern New Mexico University, Roswell would have half its population and twice its boredom factor. Oh, there are places to the west that are scenic indeed, around Ruidoso and Sacramento. But, Roswell itself? It's at the farthest stretch of the High Plains without having the scenery of the desert, let alone mountains.

And, yes, it draws the tourists. I lived about 90 miles away in 1997, the 50th anniversary year, and we had spillover hotel bookings because Roswell was sold out.

Interestingly, though it's the birthplace of John Denver, there's about zero promotion of his life there. I know, he was a military brat and didn't live there long. Still, you could do something.

And, someday, the Pecos is going to be a creek not a river, and the last bits of groundwater's going to go away, and the dairy farming and cheesemaking will follow.

Other than it being a retiree area for NMMI alums and other ex-military, I'm not sure why it continues to grow in population today.

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.

Dear NECSS: Re-invite Richard Dawkins!

I like my coffee strong, with
a spoonful or two of Watson

Per the North East Conference on Science and Skepticism disinviting Richard Dawkins from its annual meeting, after an even-for-him offensive tweet of a cartoonish video that was designed to offend both feminists and Muslims, as covered here by Massimo Pigliucci, I had some follow-up thoughts.

Namely —

Re-invite Dawkins, but require him to speak on a particular topic.

Samples would be —
1. Is there an “Islamist gene”?
2. Is there an “offensive British curmudgeon gene, or meme”?
3. Please give a multi-level selection account for the evolution of Gnu Atheists
4. Is there a “brights gene”?

5. Do genes for "Gnu Atheism" and "Social Justice Warriordom" co-evolve?

6. Yes or no: You'd like Rebecca Watson to have your children

7. Yes or no: You think all the Atheism Plus chicks should be your groupies.

For the actual video that Dawkins tweeted, then later tried to soft-sell:

With that as illustration, I seriously note this is nothing new, in the larger scope of things, for Dawkins. His Twitter account is a paean of anti-Muslim, anti-feminist invective.

Anyway, to get back to the sarcastic main point ..

Allegedly, that's Atheism Plus darling Rebecca Watson
at left. (Link of photo implies no consent to all content.)

Or hell, let's just co-invite Dawkins and Watkins.

Sample topics —

1. Discuss how evolutionary psychology created "homo elevatoricus."

2. Discuss the merits or demerits of hotel room service beer vs. hotel room service coffee as pick-ups.

3. Discuss using alcohol as an excuse for avoiding personal responsibility. Discuss whether men or women are worse at this; discuss this as a campus, academic, and professional conference issue.

4. Discuss common psychological, physiological definitions of alcoholism, and abusive drinking.

Or, let's invite the shunted-aside soon-to-be former head of the Center for Inquiry, Ron Lindsay, with CFI merging with the Richard Dawkins Educational Foundation. Because we know the Gnus and Atheism Plus kiddies love him. And, maybe he's butthurt in private about the CFI set-aside.

And, not invite him instead of Dawkins, or Dawkins/Watson. In addition!

Insert three-way jokes here.

Note to all offended persons: Per Harvard, I'm improving my mental health. Thanks for participating.

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.

#Libertarianism, #paleoconservativism, #racism and #skepticism

I've blogged more than once in the past about how I cannot support modern organized skepticism because of the likes of Penn and Teller's libertarianism on things like global warming and climate change and (at one time) secondhand smoke, though P/T later backed off that (at least partially).

I've also blogged about leading libertarian skeptic Michael Shermer and his keeping two known racialists, Frank Miele and Vince Sarich, on the masthead of Skeptic magazine for more than a decade.

Well, I think D.J. Grothe needs to be added to the list.

And, I need to write further about this whole issue.

Yes, it's true that certain genetic differences can be used to biologically divide humans into what some people insist on calling "race."

That said, depending on WHICH genetic markers I use, I can slice and dice "race" into many different ways. If I, say, focus on certain blood proteins, rather than skin color, I can find multiple races of sub-Saharan Africans. And certainly, in things like medicine, blood proteins are more important than skin color.

Or, on malaria drugs and allergenic reactions, I can make "Semites" and "blacks" all one race.

Why intelligent people insist on claiming "race" as a biological reality, AND, insist on only the classical, ultimately RACIST (sic) idea that the only definition of race that counts is skin tones plus a couple of facial features, I have no idea.

And, yes, I'm calling that not "just" racialism, but racism. If you insist that your particular type of biological divisions of people into races is the ONLY valid one when it's clearly not, you're at least giving the appearance of not being "just" a racialist, trying to put pseudoscientific lipstick on a pig, but, vehemently wiping off anybody else's lipstick when they use a different one.

Beyond that, such ideas, beyond ignoring environmental factors, totally ignore the role of luck within environmental factors for achievement.

I have less than no idea why people who claim to be "scientific skeptics" do this. The alleged libertarianism behind this is as harmful to your (not my) "movement" as is the libertarianism of Penn and Teller on global warming. Or more.

And, if you're a libertarian, you're theoretically harming your libertarian evangelism as well as your skeptical evangelism. (Actually, the likes of Shermer and Grothe strike me as a hybrid of libertarian and elitist conservativism [or it's "degenerate" cousin, natural-born conservativism] though they'd never admit that.)

In the particular case in hand, beyond everything else, the facile assumption that I've never read Charles Murray or Nicholas Wade?

That wasn't just wrong. It was an insult.

Why smart people — and movement skeptics — do dumb things; irrational, anti-rational, non-rational

Over at Insight, Skeptic's new blogging spot, Barbara Drescher has a nice piece on the "smart people do dumb things," reminiscing on joining Mensa, with the lead-in of a fairly well-known story of a college prof falling victim to the fake Russian lover scheme. That said, such issues, or related ones, aren't confined to Mensa.

Let's see if motivated reasoning gets tackled over there. One can be so smart and so skeptical to be sure that secondhand smoke isn't carcinogenic and that global warming isn't real. Or, one can be so smart and so skeptical to be sure that "little tweaks" to websites aren't criminally fraudulent. Or one can be sure that such smart people in positions of skeptical authority are right when they are being sure. If you're active in "movement skepticism," I don't think I need to name names.

Beyond that, the forums at the James Randi Educational Foundation website have had people start threads defending irrational ideas. (I guess that, and the effort involved in moderating them, is why Randi is dumping off the forums.)

More seriously, this is the tip of an iceberg. There's differences, I would say, between non-rational, irrational and antirational actions.

And, I'm going to address a bit more how I see those three as separate from each other.

Non-rational actions are of a few different types.

One is, per Daniel Kahneman, where "fast," reflexive thinking is expected. To riff on our ancestry, if you're on a safari vacation, and the grass rustles, you jump just as much as an australopithecine 2 million years ago, since that rustling grass could signify a lion.

Somewhat similar are non-reflexive, but still emotional decisions. You don't analyze why you like chocolate ice cream more than vanilla or strawberry, you just eat.

Third are leaps of faith and similar actions that are forced decisions. (Not all leaps of faith are forced decisions, of course.) Let's say you have a job offer and have 24 hours to decide whether to take it or not. Interviews have been entirely by phone or email; you've never met the bosses and principals at the other end; you've never seen the work site; you've never met your would-be coworkers. At the same time, you're actively looking to get out of your current employment situation. You may, after you leap, find more information that, had you known it earlier, would have led to a decision not to leap. (The issue of emotional dissonance, an emotional parallel to cognitive dissonance, might come into play on some of these issues.)

Then, there's irrational decisions, like the college professor chasing the fake lover. If we would just stop a minute and do our "slow" thinking, we'd escape many of them. They need no more explanation.

Then, there's anti-rational decisions. A good example is Richard Nixon late in his second term, in foreign policy decisions he made after Watergate started catching up to him. He figured if he acted nuts enough vis-a-vis the Russians, they'd think he actually was nuts. Of course, that could be considered rational, as well as anti-rational.

The whole edifice of North Korea's leadership and its action in foreign affairs might be a more reasonable idea of anti-rational action.

Arguably, the Mutual Assured Destruction stance on nuclear staredowns between the US and the USSR in the 1950s is another.

Interesting, that the first three examples I recognized of deliberately anti-rational action are all international affairs, isn't it? Interesting, and scary.

Update, Sept. 26: Drescher needs to pen an addendum about her own boss.

Turbulence in Randi-world? Grothe booted, LA office closed at #JREF

Special update, Sept. 24: Jeff Wagg, a non-immediate predecessor of D.J. Grothe's, albeit under different title (assuming that "general manager" = "president," and with the stipulation that at least Phil Plait was intervening), supports Alison Smith's account about an alleged sexual assault by skeptic Michael Shermer at the 2008 The Amazing Meeting, part of this piece by Michael Oppenheimer on misogyny in the skeptical community.

Per the whole thread on which Wagg comments, he adds that Smith told him at that time that Shermer had raped her, as well as her being very drunk before she went to her room.

And, Wagg says Smith's story hasn't changed.

That said, did Wagg contact police himself? It doesn't look like it. He reportedly talked to Randi, but obviously Randi didn't call police. As for why Smith didn't? Well, many rape victims, especially if away from their normal surroundings, are hesitant to do that.

At the same time, even if Shermer was "trying to get her drunk," nobody put a gun to her head. Nobody forced her to let Shermer in her room, either.

===

I'm not hugely plugged into the world of "scientific skepticism" or "movement skepticism," but the dismissal of D.J. Grothe as president of the James Randi Educational Foundation seems a bit out  of the blue.

Here's the whole release:

In order to achieve cost-savings and greater efficiency, the Los Angeles office of the JREF has closed effective September 1, 2014. All operations have been moved to Falls Church, Virginia. 

 DJ Grothe is no longer with the JREF. James Randi has taken over as acting President. 

 This restructuring is part of an enhanced educational agenda aimed at inspiring an investigative spirit in a new generation of critical thinkers by engaging children and their parents, as well as educators and the general public, in how to think about the many extraordinary claims we hear every day.

Color me, er, skeptical! There's surely more to it than this.

(Update, Sept. 5: Randi provides a pablum update as opaque as the original. This, in layperson's terms, might be called "adding fuel to the fire of rumors." Maybe Randi is now in Bill Nye territory and figures any PR is good PR.)

While I don't follow JREF as much as Center for Inquiry, which I also don't follow a whole lot, I'd heard no major rumors among more plugged-in Facebook friends about significant financial worries.

Beyond that, is Grothe's salary that huge? Probably less money than rent of the L.A. office, along with utilities and expenses. And, the idea that an 86-year-old Randi will be "acting president" in any real sense for any length of time is laughable.

Unless the real president is "Carlos," aka José Alvarez, aka Devyi Peña, aka Uri Geller for all the hell I know. That said, as I've blogged before, I have no doubt that Randi knew who "Carlos" was, and had at least a hint about his identity theft, long before either one came clean.

Out of curiosity, I bopped over to CFI; no beans spilled there about any inside information on this.

Anyway, so, no rumors. And, if it needs change, it surely needs it beyond an 86-year-old being acting president. Maybe Randi, like Paul Kurtz, has founder's syndrome? After all, per Wikipedia, Randi himself was chairman of the board. Maybe Grothe wasn't taking orders well enough or whatever.

Even if other people affiliated with JREF had problems with Grothe, part of that could be larger "alignment" issues. And, beyond the savings in salary and office space, a head of a nonprofit is supposed to help out with fundraising, and Grothe apparently wasn't doing that. If it's as bad as it may be, this can't be a surprise — other than it being a surprise he wasn't escorted out even earlier.

Per a Tweet by Jim Lippard, it is that bad, on funding: JREF Revenue: 2011: $1.56M, 2012: $1.29M, 2013: $887.5K.

Still, the suddenness seems "interesting." Because financial problems, if known, don't suddenly pop up out of nowhere. Ones that bad certainly don't.

Unless .... the board and/or Grothe had been pretending things weren't that bad, and suddenly, voila, their lessor padlocked the doors for nonpayment of back rent in LA.

On the savings? Grothe was getting about $95K a yaer plus benefits. The LA office cost about $85K a year.

That said, Randi himself supposedly pulls down  $250K a year as non-executive chairman. If true? Like with Brian Dunning, behind many a skeptic, there's many a sucker for a guru to follow. Second, Randi's $250K as non-executive chairman of the board (page 7 of the PDF of a recent IRS 990 form) IS a huge amount, and would be at an even larger nonprofit. True, that's from 2012, and in 2013, he made "just" $195K, as reported on the latest 990. The principle still stands, I think.


(This all said, I have a new post on questions JREF's board, contributors and volunteers should be asking, as well as others that the skeptical movement should be asking itself in general.)

And, neither does larger mismanagement. That includes social media mismanagement of posting the same annoucement on Facebook and adding a "no comments" at the end of it. And, now, the beginnings of a flame war between social justice warriors and others have broken out there.

And, it's being abetted by P.Z. Myers, aka Pharyngula, to whom I shall not link. (P.Z. has some information wrong, but, since I'm now also blocked from commenting there with my Yahoo account,I won't try to figure out some other way to straighten him out.)

Meanwhile, the Randi site's forums, which I know led to a lot of interesting discussion, and probably some occasional flaming, are being cut off from the organization? Jim Lippard notes that this is a few days old, and has been done by other skeptical or atheist nonprofits. That said, I think it would be smarter to kill a forum outright rather than hand its ownership over to somebody else. Branding issues, etc.

That said, if you look at the forums homepage and the dog's breath of topics, it should have been either farmed off, killed, or more tightly run, one of the three, years ago. I mean, whoever let it become a generalized political and social commentary site blew it.

Especially given that Gnu Atheist type social justice warriors are "goosing" this whole situation, and probably have been since rumors started a year ago about Grothe's management, the forums should have either been killed outright or handed off to a third party some time ago.

Flip side is that the Gnus are surely at least partially righton the amount of libertarianism under guise of alleged skepticism that runs around JREF. If someone like Sharon Hill, the blank-check defender of Brian Dunning, is that involved, that says something.

As usual, a bit of pox on both houses from where I stand.

And, yes, bad management happens in the skeptics world. Witness both problems Paul Kurtz had at Center for Inquiry and some  that his successor, Ron Lindsay, has had. Some were financial; some were other management issues. 

Related to that, "founder's syndrome" doesn't necessarily just apply to the founders of non nonprofit advocacy-type groups. Witness the "single donor" issue at Center for Inquiry, withdrawing his 25 percent of budget donations when Kurtz was pushed aside. That said, in Randi's case, given that he named the organization after himself, there's an extra twist there.

Beyond that, how many skeptics' groups are needed? One commenter on Randi's forums may be right: Michael Shermer will take over The Amazing Meeting (for now), and perhaps the whole Randi shebang eventually. 

And, Randi  was getting $250K as chairman of the board? Or even $200 after a cut? Really? That is founder's syndrome. At Skeptics Society, both Shermer as president and Pat Linse as CFO make a shade under $80K, per its 990.

But, don't worry, Gnus; if P.Z. and his Freethought Blog co-founder Ed Brayton get the idea for a larger Gnu Atheist "portal" or something, they'll have some of the same issues, in all likelihood.

===

Update, Sept. 12: Although Grothe is not mentioned, the issue of sexism and misogyny in movement skepticism gets a thorough walk around the block by Mark Oppenheimer in Buzz Feed. The biggie? Naming Shermer's hitherto-nameless 2008 accuser. Shermer, in turn, has issued a long denial. That said, as with other forms of abusive behavior (Ray Rice and his wife) an (alleged) abusee remaining amicable with an (alleged) abuser, whether sexual or physical, is not all that out of the blue. It's surely a minority, but how small of one? On the third hand, and I know the social justice warriors don't want to hear about it — if alcohol was involved, nobody put a gun to your head to make you drink, did they?

It is interesting that Shermer didn't comment on this Randi comment from Oppenheimer's piece, though:

“Shermer has been a bad boy on occasion — I do know that,” Randi told me. “I have told him that if I get many more complaints from people I have reason to believe, that I am going to have to limit his attendance at the conference. 

“His reply,” Randi continued, “is he had a bit too much to drink and he doesn’t remember.”

Very interesting, especially since Shermer claims, at least on the 2008 issue, to have been sober.

Let me put it this way. At age 60, Shermer is old enough, and has been around movement skepticism enough, to be part of the old guard in more ways than one. 

The overall truth, on Shermer in particular, and Oppenheimer's piece in general, is probably somewhere in the murky middle.

==

Update, Sept. 18: Skepticblog is being replaced with something new. Jim Lippard has one of the first posts. Questions of "why," that run through my thoughts, are answered well right here, in his tracing the roots of modern movement skepticism back to the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, or CSICOP:

But what were CSICOP’s original goals, and has the organization successfully met them? What are the goals of the other skeptical organizations that have been formed in the U.S. and around the world since (and in a few cases, before) CSICOP, and are they being achieved? Just what is the value and purpose of “organized skepticism” as a movement, as a set of institutions, as a network of people participating in conferences, writing articles and books, recording podcasts and videos, and interacting online? What does it accomplish, what is the broader social context in which it resides, and what is its relation to the institutions, practices, and subject matter of science? Does it do anything that isn’t already done by science, science journalists, science communicators, historians and philosophers of science, social studies of science, science museums, science educators, and just ordinary amateur science-interested people? What can skeptics learn from these other areas? What does it mean to self-identify as a “skeptic”? Where has skepticism gone wrong, and what can we learn from its failures? Are there alternatives to “organized skepticism” that might better achieve all or some of its goals?

Click the link; you'll learn what Jim plans to cover and more. 

And, for more background, click this link, also included in Jim's piece. Daniel Loxton goes into a bit more depth, already in 2007, on some of these issues.

Also, if Barbara Drescher is part of the new effort at Skeptic, is she still going to be doing anything with Randi, or not? Especially since Randi's own column is reportedly not in the latest issue of his foundation's magazine, that plot thickens, too.

Update, Oct. 7: At the same time, an overall good roundup here of why PZ Myers has no business criticizing anybody else's sexual behavior. Liquor him up as much as Shermer may have been at times, and the yucky behavior toward women he sometimes has shown himself would probably be at the level of rumors of criminal behavior on his own part.