Evolution Proven False?

This seems as good a time as any to examine the tendency of nut-jobs (religious and otherwise) to grab onto minor controversies within the ranks of their opposition and distort them out of all proportion.

The inspiration for today’s posting comes from Jerry Coyne, who pointed me in the direction of this article in The New York Times, with a further reinforcement from a favorite Youtuber of mine, Coffee With Claire.

The NYT story highlights a case of recently discovered academic fraud within the field of social psychology and the faked data of a Dutch researcher. Claire’s latest YouTube offering reminded me of how it will be misused by anti-science zealots as proof that all of “science” is just one big scam, by invoking the logical fallacy of composition (what is true of the part is necessarily true of the whole). Claire does an excellent take-down of this knuckle dragging God slobberer. His YouTube handle is noimplant4me and his video exemplifying the well worn logical fallacy of composition is here.

Claire rightly notes that noimplant4me fails to mention that in every instance of scientific fraud, it is other scientists who are responsible for policing and catching the miscreants. In the case of noimplant4me, this misuse of logic is aimed at supporting the house of cards that is young earth creationism, but I’ve also seen similar scientific shenanigans leveraged in support of global warning denial.

My noting this tendency will likely have little effect on those who continue to misuse it. That said, I think it is worth mentioning that in this latest example of fraud within the field of social psychology, not much of consequence was really affected. The studies under scrutiny were of the touchy-feely variety and the results, much like religious texts, were manipulated by a man of ignoble character into a framework that fit social convention.

I don’t want to pile on the social psychologists too hard. Sure, most of what they study looks to be about as useful as the beard on my Aunt Bess, but at the end of the day, it’s experts in this field who are responsible for having to make a comprehensible analysis of crazy cultural shit like #atheismplus, so I’ll cut them some slack.

Evolution has not been proven false.

Enjoy.

Accuracy in Media

Independent analysis from FlockThink.

Enjoy

Lady and the Scamp

I have been asked to reflect on my experiences dealing with a young lady named Julia Rose, who first caught my attention on Facebook a couple years ago. She has a Facebook tribute page dedicated to preserving and distributing the works, and highlighting the memories, of Peter McWilliams.

The Lady

Here is Julia speaking about Peter in a public YouTube video taken at one of the many rallies, conventions or speaking (and singing!) venues she attends.

The Scamp

The many uplifting stories of Peter, as well as his accompanying trials and tribulations, are too broad to relate here. I know I would feel blessed to have my own wikipedia page, let alone a youthful cheerleader like Julia, so long after my ashes are scattered. FWIW, I have chosen to honor my personal memories of Peter by ending all my correspondences with Enjoy. But I digress. Let us move on to my personal account of this energetic young lady.

Getting to Know Her

The first time I spoke with Juila was when she contacted me thru Facebook after seeing my New Year’s tribute to Peter here in this blog. She indicated that she was in contact with Peter’s mother who had inherited a great deal of Peter’s literary memorabilia, some of which she was letting Julia share on the web.

We chatted on Skype a couple times times after that. We communed over the ghost of Peter, his legacy and his works. She probed my calcifying neurons for first person recollections and stories from my calls and correspondence with Peter, the majority of which (sadly) came during the hectic months of his arrest and deprivations under the thumb of America’s fascist drug warriors.

Julia shared with me that Peter’s mom was reluctant to publicize the more risqué or controversial aspects of Peter’s political life. Julia’s main interest in honoring Peter was his poetry and self-help writings.

All that touchy-feely emotional hoodoo is just fine by me (and the 32.4% of me that is gay), but the rest of me negotiated stridently with Julia for a much more prominent emphasis on the politics of the subject that cost Peter his life. She agreed and promised to discuss the issue with Peter’s mom.

She seemed a rather shy and reluctant spokesperson at first, but as the last couple years have shown, her message and music have bounced to one event or the other all over the planet (or at least a tri-country area).

She’s some kind of a hippie-chick rock goddess guru within the medical marijuana community these days now that she’s embraced my early mentoring. I’m too old to even keep up with her frenetic pace on Facebook, but I proudly point her out as a protege and someone I knew before they got famous.

Enjoy.

PZ and his Pusillanimous Pixies

As the most prominent atheist comedian on the planet,I give thanks to the many godless blessings that PZ Myers and his not-so-merry band of Girlyban Skepdinks have provided me. A virtual cornucopia of idiocracy to choose from. The only other comedic assignment with more low hanging fruit than I’ve been provided would have been writing jokes for Bill Mahr during the Bush administration. I could have never have imagined (We all knew!) it would still be going strong at this late stage of the game.

But I don’t make the news, I just report it. PZenu and the pusillanimous pixies of Feminology are holed up over at Pharyngula, which to those unfamiliar with Feminology, is the Internet equivalent of the safe haven carved out by Scientologists in Clearwater FL. Like their cohorts in nonsense, the Feminologists were quick to invent their own rules and jargon. Being blocked and banned as a suppressive person was their initial mimicry. Here we are a couple years on, and now they’ve got an automated process for blocking content off their computers that’s even slicker than the blocking software the Scientologists make their people use to protect them from vicious (truthful) Internet content!)

I swear on the imaginary soul of my long departed mother that I am only adding the tiniest bit of hyperbole as I recount these cult-like similarities, and we haven’t even touched on the Feminologist-specific jargon issue yet! Suffice to,say that those idiots over at Pharyngula HQ are so Out Tech on proper skepticism that rehabilitation seems out of the question. The girls over at the PeezOrg have spent way too much time hooked up to their she-meters. There is always a little hope for their recovery but that’s assuming you could wrestle them away from their firm grasp of PZenu’s balls in the first place (Please no photoshops! (I see it already!)) I run a clean ship over here.

This will probably break the heart and soul of those like Michael Nugent (pity the poor dumb bastard) who favor a policy of NOM (non overlapping menseshysteria) between skepticism and the outright bat shit insanity that appears in faithless femininity, but I see no place for allowing evidence free claims to invade and dilute organizational attention away from the mission of figuratively (trigger warning) bitch slapping creationists and Jeebus slobberers who employ the same techniques (tactics).

One final little dingle dongle to make note of. A sad reminder that the virulent nature of memes (both good and bad-thank you Richard Dawkins) goes on unabated, and can laterally transfer from one group of pusillanimous pixies to another. In the latest example it caused a death (of Adria Richard’s career) and she wasn’t even a part of the skeptic movement! It’s not “something in the water” at conferences or a germ picked up off an unsanitary toilet seat at the buffet restaurant loo (unless that’s where Adria happened to be sitting when she got infected reading the Rebecca Watson Slate article e.g.). There is protection available for those who need it. Simply following this blog or my Twitter feed is a good first step.

Hat Tip to the many positive women of skepticism. Their inspiration and support instills a tingling sense of wonder in the nether regions near my dangling tender jiggly bits. I would name them but I’d sound like Brigham Young reading off a list of his many wives and besides, I’d never kiss and tell.

Enjoy.

Joe Washington

Watching and documenting the liars for Jeebus crowd has my bullshit sensitivity meter locked in so tight it was impossible to miss this right wing inspired gun nut Facebook post today:

The propensity of the Conservative party to lie about every other subject, coupled with the certainty that good old George never said anything of the sort set me to Googling. A search on that exact phrase, if it is indeed a Washington quote, should render hits from a plethora of serious presidential scholars. So, what were my results :

The quote is superimposed on one YouTube video:

It appears to be taken from a Christian Fundamentalist web page (Powered by “the Holy Spirit” the light within) posted by some guy named Joe Spenner, who apparently thinks putting quotes in the title of his web page makes his lunatic rambings attributable to Washington:

Be on guard for this kind of right wing tripe. It is pervasive and obnoxious but people are quite easily led astray by Republicans who then attribute it to the devil, or Obama.

Enjoy.