Skeptico

Why Religion Really Doesn’t Have the Upper Hand over Science

There have been numerous anti-atheist articles popping up recently, mostly on Salon but elsewhere too. That’s their right, but you would think they would at least limit their articles to well argued ones. Or at least exclude arguments that have not already been easily refuted numerous times. (Admittedly that might not leave them with much to say, but that’s hardly atheists’ fault.) Case in point, today’s article at The Week by Damon Linker, Why atheism doesn’t have the upper hand over religion. Apparently this is something of a series from him, as he starts:

In my last column, I examined some of the challenges facing religion today. Those challenges are serious. But that doesn't mean that atheism has the upper hand. On the contrary, as I've argued many times before, atheism in its currently fashionable form is an intellectual sham. As Exhibit 653, I give you Jerry Coyne's latest diatribe in The New Republic, which amounts to a little more than an inadvertent confession that he's incapable of following a philosophical argument.

Except he gives us no example of how Coyne can’t follow a philosophical argument. Argument by assertion is rarely convincing, and is a poor start to his article. Regardless, what is Linker’s argument for how religion trumps atheism? It’s altruism. Seriously, get a load of this:

Or consider Thomas S. Vander Woude, the subject of an unforgettable 2011 article by the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg. One day in September 2008, Vander Woude's 20-year-old son Josie, who has Down syndrome, fell through a broken septic tank cover in their yard. The tank was eight feet deep and filled with sewage. After trying and failing to rescue his son by pulling on his arm from above, Vander Woude jumped into the tank, held his breath, dove [sic] under the surface of the waste, and hoisted his son onto his shoulders. Josie was rescued a few minutes later. By then his 66-year-old father was dead.

This is something that any father, atheist or believer, might do for his son. But only the believer can make sense of the deed.

Nonsense. The theory of evolution explains this very well. Those who were prepared to sacrifice themselves for their offspring were more likely to pass on their genes, since their offspring themselves were more likely to live longer and have offspring of their own. Also, our ancestors lived in large social groups, and those who helped other group members were more likely to be accepted by the group, and were therefore more likely to find mates and reproduce.

The funny thing is that Linker has heard of this, but the way he refutes it shows he has not understood it.

But of course, as someone with Down syndrome, Vander Woude's son is probably sterile and possesses defective genes that, judged from a purely evolutionary standpoint, deserve to die off anyway. So Vander Woude's sacrifice of himself seems to make him, once again, a fool.

Linker seems to think that evolved kin selection (which is what he is talking about) is a rational decision making process. Linker is suggesting that the father’s thought processes would be something like: ‘My son is going to die. If he does I won’t pass on my genes, so I must rescue him, even if I die myself. Oh wait – my son is sterile. No point in risking my life then, I’ll let him die.’ But that is an incredibly naive way of looking at it and not how it actually works. What actually happened in our evolutionary past is that those who developed altruistic feelings, especially those feelings towards their kin, were more likely to pass on their genes (because they were more likely to save their kin from dying young). Consequently, altruism became prevalent in human populations and now many humans are altruistic, especially towards their kin. It doesn’t matter if some of that altruism is “wasted” in evolutionary terms. Altruism has an evolutionary advantage in enough cases, that the few “foolish” acts (ie acts that don’t actually result in genes being passed on), are not significant. Linker would know that if he had spent five minutes researching the subject (and perhaps even reading Coyne’s book).

Those of us who have been debating creationists on the internet for years have heard such silly arguments from commenters numerous times and are not surprised to hear them again. However, I think we have a right to expect better argued articles than this one from a supposedly proper news outlet. Linker has the nerve to say that Coyne can’t follow an opposing argument, and yet Linker shows quite clearly his own inability to follow a well known, simple, evolutionary explanation. Talk about an intellectual sham. Linker’s hubris can not be demonstrated any better than by just quoting the last line of his article:

Don't buy it? I dare you to come up with something better.

You dare me? You moron, I just did. Unfortunately Linker’s article doesn’t allow comments, so his “dare” is just empty posturing. But at least it keeps him insulated from the uncomfortable feeling of learning about his errors. Which is why he will probably keep making them.

Seralini Study Withdrawn – Should Never Have Been Published

That abysmal Seralini study of rats fed on GMO grain is at last being withdrawn by its publisher. Junk science like this should never have been published in the first place, but better late than never (marginally). The reason given for the withdrawal is that the study does not show rats get cancer from being fed GMO food. Something most of us knew over a year ago.

The publishers have been careful to say that they found no evidence of deliberate fraud. I find that claim rather hard to believe though. What else do you call it when the study design was for 200 rats, but only 20 in the control group and no blinding? A study where 81% of the rats used get tumors anyway for this length of study. It’s hard to view this study as an honest attempt to see if GMO corn causes cancer.

How have anti-GMO groups responded? Guess. It’s not that hard. Yes, they think they have found a connection to Monsanto (scroll down in that link to “The Goodman Factor”). It is truly depressing to consider that there are large numbers of people in the anti-GMO world (all of them?) who genuinely think that once they have found a connection to Monsanto they have rebutted their opponents’ arguments. There is a new informal fallacy, Argumentum ad Monsantium, to describe this derangement. It’s really just a basic ad Hominem though – attacking your opponent rather than their arguments. One of the first things the critical thinker learns to avoid doing.

The most interesting comment on this withdrawal, in my opinion, was from Kevin Folta. A scientist himself, Folta asks what he would do if he’d received the the sort of criticisms of his work that Seralini had of his study. Folta replies that a real scientist would have the experiment performed again independently. A real scientist would also gear up to repeat the experiment himself without the flaws that drew the criticisms – perhaps a larger study, or one to test a putative mechanism. A real scientist would have started this work a year ago and so would be in a position now to update his critics on when the next sets of results would be available. It’s hardly necessity to mention that Seralini hasn’t done any of that.

The anti-GMO crowd are reacting in exactly the same way anti-vaccine crowd reacted to criticisms of Andrew Wakefield. Rather than reconsidering their previously held positions, they are supporting Seralini  even more strongly. As I wrote about Wakefield’s supporters four years ago, nothing would ever convince these people that their previously determined conclusion could ever be wrong. Nothing. As I keep saying, large numbers of GMO opponents are not interested in facts.

The Seralini Rule

I have a new rule for debating anti-GMO people:

If you favorably cite the 2012 Séralini rats fed on Roundup ready maize study, you just lost the argument.

If you cite this study as demonstrating any dangers in genetically modified food, you are either (a) so clueless as not to have spent 30 seconds checking to see if there are any reported problems in the study, or (b) so dishonest in citing a blatantly fraudulent study, that you are not worthy of any more serious consideration. You just lost the debate and you’re done. (Obviously you don’t lose the if you cite the study to demonstrate its flaws, only if you claim the study’s conclusions are valid.)

This is the study: Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize. Here is a summary of the main problems with the study:

• Unscientific study design. For example, only 20 control rats in a study with a total of 200 rats, and no blinding between control and experimental groups
• Large number of small sub-groups - 18 groups of 10 test subjects each making for a complicated experimental design virtually guaranteed to generate some positive results
• Cherry picking - ignoring negative results
• Poor choice of statistical analysis (a “fishing trip”)
• Poor choice in animal model - the rat type is prone to cancers with exactly the same incidence as that reported in the Séralini study whether fed GMO food or not
• No dose-response - a critical component of demonstrating a toxic effect (some rats fed higher doses did better than the others)
• Effects of feeding Roundup ready maize, and the effects of feeding Roundup (ie feeding rats the actual pesticide) were identical - a highly dubious result
• No idea of what the biological reason might be to give the claimed results
• Didn’t allow any outside comment on the paper before its publication and won’t release the data now and so the experiment can’t be replicated

Here are some links to independent scientists who explain the study’s flaws in much more detail:

1. Academics Review: Scientists Smell A Rat In Fraudulent Study
2. Declan Butler writing in Nature.com: Hyped GM maize study faces growing scrutiny
3. Respectful Insolence: Bad science about GMOs: It reminds me of the antivaccine movement
4. Steven Novella: The GM Corn Rat Study
5. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA): Séralini et al. study conclusions not supported by data, says EU risk assessment community
6. Mark Hoofnagle of Denialism Blog: Anti-GMO study is appropriately dismissed as biased, poorly-performed
7. Emily Sohn, a freelance journalist working for Discovery.com: GM Corn-Tumor Link Based on Poor Science
8. Deborah Blum: A rancid, corrupt way to report about science
9. Carl Zimmer: Journalists should not let themselves be played
10. Debora MacKenzie writing in New Scientist: Study linking GM crops and cancer questioned
11. John Entine of the Genetic Literacy Project: Scientists savage study purportedly showing health dangers of Monsanto’s GM corn and Does the Seralini Corn Study Fiasco Mark a Turning Point in the Debate Over GM Food?
12. Dan Charles, NPR's food and agriculture correspondent: As Scientists Question New Rat Study, GMO Debate Rages On
13. Kevin M. Folta: Rats, Tumors and Critical Assessment of Science
14. Scicurious, a postdoc in biomedical research: Under Controlled: Why the New GMO Panic Is More Sensational Than Sense

Compare this fraudulent anti-GMO study with the 600 studies (and counting) in the GENERA database, that show the safety of GM foods. Or if you prefer, 126 with independent funding (although lack of independent funding doesn’t invalidate a study).

Ask yourself: if anti-GMO experimenters are so sure of their conclusion, why would they not design a study that was based on sound scientific practices? Why would they not, in a study with 200 rats, have 100 controls and 100 experiment rats: 100 just fed on GMO food and 100 fed on non-GMO? Why make it more complicated than it needs be and confuse the results? Why not use rats that were less prone to tumors to start with, rather than rats where 80% or so will always develop tumors no matter what? Why not just design a study that would clearly show if there was any difference when rats are fed with GMO maize? The obvious conclusion is that they knew there is really no difference between GMO and non-GMO feed and so they designed a study to obfuscate and confuse.

Why This Matters

Most of the people citing this study this would ridicule climate change deniers for citing a dubious climate study, but when any study suggests GMOs are doing some harm, no matter how dubious the study, they report it uncritically. For example, the “Yes on 37” campaign (to require labeling of genetically modified foods) immediately and un-skeptically cited this study on its website.  Although they played it down a bit after the criticisms appeared, they still left the main claims on their website (still there now) and right before the election, secretly included the bogus claims in their phone bank scripts. What this shows is that such people aren’t interested in facts, but are only interested in pushing their anti-GMO conclusion that must be true no matter what the data shows. The scientific way is to follow the evidence, and change your views if the evidence contradicts what you previously thought. The anti-science way is to form your conclusion, and then twist the evidence to support your conclusion (by for example, designing a study like this one), and to ignore everything else. People who do this are not interested in science and there is no point in trying to engage them in any more debate.

November 28, 2013 – Update

I just learned that Seralini’s paper is about to be retracted by the Food and Chemical Toxicology journal which published it. Their statement says in part:

A more in-depth look at the raw data revealed that no definitive conclusions can be reached with this small sample size regarding the role of either NK603 or glyphosate in regards to overall mortality or tumor incidence. Given the known high incidence of tumors in the Sprague-Dawley rat, normal variability cannot be excluded as the cause of the higher mortality and incidence observed in the treated groups.

Translation: the study does not show that rats get cancer from being fed GMO food.

Watch now how anti-GMO groups will still defend Seralini, regardless, proving (again) my point that they are not interested in facts.

RFK Jr: Government Scientists are Lying

Some people simply can't accept reality. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is apparently writing a book that will prove, prove I tell you, that Thimerosal in vaccines causes autism. This is despite all the scientific studies that failed to show a connection, and despite Thimerosal being removed from childhood vaccines in 2001 while autism continues to rise. How does he explain this contradictory evidence? Simple. All the scientists involved are lying. Seriously. Oh yes and one more thing, he’s not going to publish the book. (Huh?)

Let’s back up a bit. Two weeks ago, Phil Plait wrote a Slate article, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Anti-Vaxxer. Apparently Kennedy wasn’t happy and telephoned Slate’s health and science editor Laura Helmuth, to complain. Her article about this call, So Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Called Us to Complain … is worth a read in its entirety. I especially liked the way Helmuth asked Kennedy’s representative to email her with details of the supposed error’s in Phil Plait’s article, and he wouldn’t, preferring instead a phone call. Of course, when you don’t have facts evidence or logic on your side, it is better to avoid responses in writing where those shortfalls can be easily exposed.

Anyway, the short version of what Kennedy told her is:

..thimerosal causes autism when injected into children. Government epidemiologists and other scientists, conspiring with the vaccine industry, have covered up data and lied about vaccine ingredients to hide this fact. Journalists are dupes of this powerful cabal that is intentionally poisoning children.

See? Government scientists are all lying. Scientists in numerous countries, presumably. And they are intentionally poisoning children. Intentionally - they mean to do it! Simple really. That’s that then.

Although Kennedy apparently found one scientist who was honest when talking to him:

[Kennedy] spoke to one scientist (he named her but I won’t spread the defamation) who, he said, “was actually very honest. She said it’s not safe. She said we know it destroys their brains.”

I asked the scientist about their conversation. She said there is in fact no evidence that thimerosal destroys children’s brains, and that she never said that it did.

Maybe Kennedy is the one who is lying.

Anyway, just standard conspiracy mongering so far. But there was one bit that did make me sit up and that was Kennedy bringing up the Simpsonwood conference again. That is, the disgraceful piece of dishonest quote mining that I wrote about eight years ago that was pulled by Salon when they realized they’d been duped. Here is how Kennedy explained that inconvenient fact:

“They [the scientists at the conference] panicked. They had a 3.5-hour discussion about how to hide this from the public, which I published in Rolling Stone and Salon. Salon later pulled it, said it was taken out of context. Read those quotes in [Seth] Mnookin’s book [The Panic Virus : The True Story Behind the Vaccine-Autism Controversy], not even in my article, better yet read the transcripts. [My bold]

There you go. RFK says we should read the transcripts and then we’d understand. Thing is, Bobby, I did read the transcript. All 286 pages of it. And the meeting did not conclude that Thimerosal was responsible for an increase in autism and did not discuss any cover up.

I explained all this in my 2005 article about Simpsonwood: Robert F. Kennedy Junior’s completely dishonest thimerosal article. Here’s the short version. There was a day of presentations of data with much questioning and discussion of the meaning of the results. Then the participants were asked to rate the possibility of a causal link (Thimerosal to autism) on a scale of one to six: one being a weak causal link, six strong. From page 189 to 222 of the transcript (remember, RFK says “better yet read the transcripts”) you can read of one attendee after another (with just one exception) grading the likelihood of a causal relationship as being either a one or a two. There was only one exception (Dr. Weil) who gave it a four. Guess which one Kennedy quoted.

Please do read the transcript as Kennedy urges. I did. There was no discussion about how to hide anything. If Kennedy really did read the transcript, then he is lying when he says it shows a cover up.

Kennedy also called Keith Kloor for another hour long monologue. (Apparently Kennedy likes to talk and not listen. Read Kloor’s description - it sounds like a nightmare.) As I wrote at the top, Kennedy told Kloor he has written a book that shows Thimerosal really does cause autism, and the book contains very strong evidence to support this position. Except Kennedy isn’t going to publish it because it would cause mass panic. Read Kloor’s report of his telephone call with Kennedy: It’s the Best of Times to Scare Yourself to Death:

[Kennedy] told me that the book he commissioned has a chapter “we were going to leave out, because it’s so controversial, but the evidence is so strong that thimerosal causes autism,” that he’s keeping it in.

Why would you consider leaving something out if the evidence supporting your position was strong? Wouldn’t that end the controversy? It makes no sense.

But read what followed:

Yet in the next breath he said he wasn’t going to publish the book (even though it has a publisher and is going through edits right now) because it is so explosive that he doesn’t want it to prompt a mass panic:

So Kennedy has the proof, really he has, and if you saw it you’d agree, except he’s not going show you. But read the Simpsonwood transcript and that’ll show the cover up. Except it doesn’t.

Incidentally Kennedy phoned Kloor in response to an article he had written recently, Is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Anti-Science? (Duh - clearly yes.) See the unhinged anti-vax comments to that post. I debated briefly with one excitable person posting as Joe Harris - read the veritable Gish Gallop of anti-vax fallacies and talking points. For example, Poul Thorsen means that dozens of scientific studies are wrong. Just Poul Thorsen’s name, all by itself. Except all it actually shows is that RFK was as clueless in 2010 as he was in 2005, and as he is now. Nothing changes.

Sylvia Browne Wrong / Psychics Useless Again

You will have heard the good news about three missing women - Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight – who just escaped captivity after 10 years locked up in a house in Cleveland. Here is something you’re less likely to hear in all the excitement and good cheer – in 2003 supposed “psychic” Sylvia Brown told the Mother of Amanda Berry that she was already dead.

“Can you tell me…Is she out there?” Berry’s mother Louwana Miller asked. “I hate when they’re in the water,” Browne said. “She’s not alive honey.”

Ugh! - “She’s not alive honey.” Honey! Stop Sylvia Browne has a more detailed analysis of the reading: Montel: Amanda Berry Reading.

Once again this old fraud played the odds guessing game and lost. Just like with Shawn Hornbeck dead. I mean, alive, and Sylvia Browne - Miners are alive! (oh, sorry, no they're not). And yet she continues as though nothing has happened, and dopes such as Montel still allow her on his show.

And also of note, once again, none of the professional “psychics” (Allison Dubois, John Edward James Van Praagh etc) were any use at all in finding these women (just girls when they were kidnapped) who had been held captive for 10 years. 10 years and nothing. Ditto remote viewers (eg Psi Tech, that still offers courses on remote viewing despite their confident prediction of where Elizabeth Smart’s dead body would be found). As always, all the psychics in the world were completely useless, in an area where, if psychic powers were real, they would have been able to make a huge difference.

Is “Right To Know” about GMOs the same as “Teach the Controversy”?

I was reading Keith Kloor’s article Teaching the Controversy. He likens the “right to know” campaign (the movement to label genetically modified foods) as a variation of the creationist “teach the controversy” strategy. There is no “controversy” over whether evolution is true or not (spoiler: it's true) and “teach the controversy” is just a bit of misleading framing to try to get their pseudoscience taught in schools. Kloor was saying this is the same as when anti-GMO activists frame the GMO labeling debate by saying that consumers should have the right to know what’s in their food. It’s an interesting point and there’s some truth to it, but I don’t think it’s quite the same. As much as I dislike conceding points to anti-GMO nuts, I have to agree that the right to know what’s in your food isn’t totally bogus. Many people are loath to eat GMO food, and they feel justified in asking for GMOs to be labeled.

My objection to Prop 37 and the labeling proponents is that food labeling should be based on the best available science, and not on a majority vote of a largely scientifically illiterate electorate. And that is especially true when that electorate has been influenced by the many misleading claims and fear mongering from anti-GMO groups. (Although they actually ended up voting against it in California.) There is no valid science that I have seen that provides any reason for blanket labeling of GMOs in food, and so in my view they shouldn’t be compulsorily labeled.

What if you still want to avoid GMOs? Well, there is nothing to stop producers of non-GMO food from labeling their products as such. That would seem to solve the problem without further regulation. There is a precedent for this - the organic industry regulates what can be labeled as “organic” food although there is no good science that shows organic food is any healthier than conventionally grown. (For example, see this systematic review of 240 studies comparing the health effects of organic and conventional foods. Steven Novella explained the review here: No Health Benefits from Organic Food.) In fact, the organic standard already excludes GMOs so if you are really concerned to avoid GMOs then just buy organic. In addition, many “no GMO” labels are already appearing on food. So in my view there is no need for an additional regulation to provide what is in reality useless information about GMO content.

While the anti-GMO movement is similar in may ways to intelligent design proponents and global warming deniers (bogus scientific studies, logical fallacies, changing goalposts, repeating claims long after they have been refuted), I don’t think the right to know is quite like teach the controversy. Similar in some ways, but not quite the same.

if you want to read about the latest examples of anti-GMO arguments that are based on complete misunderstandings of science, read Mark Hoofnagle’s article this week in Denialism Blog: Anti-GMO writers show profound ignorance of basic biology and now Jane Goodall has joined their ranks. Note the first two comments that are from the conspiracy nuts.

David Dilworth - Dishonest and a Liar. Also Still Wrong

Redundant tile. Harsh also, but true, as I will demonstrate.

I wrote my last post, Incorrectly Calling Logical Fallacies, to explain where David Dilworth had gone wrong in his claiming to have identified six fallacies in a single sentence. I have commented on his site at the post in question, my last comment being this one. Dilworth just doubled down on his errors by posting Skeptico’s Misconstruction of Basic Logical Fallacies – while Spreading his own Fallacy Fog (he likes his long titles). Unfortunately it’s just an example of missing the point, ignoring the difficult points, jumping at loopholes, dishonestly altering his blog to support his new arguments and lying about it and pompously declaring victory.

I just posted a comprehensive rebuttal as a comment at Dilworth’s blog, but he holds posts for 5 to 7 days before releasing them [Edit: he actually released the comment later the same day], so I just wanted to get one small part of it up there now. (The entire comment is over 3000 words.) The piece I wanted to cover was Dilworth's claim that he had defined his use of the word “Science” unlike Eisen (and therefore Eisen’s use was fallacious. It’s not, of course, but that’s what he’s claiming). This is how Dilworth argued this point:

..to help define and explain any terms I use that are unclear. (My use of the ambiguous term “science” is available here.)

He’s saying that he did define his use of the word “Science” in that August 2012 post, and so his use of it is not like Eisen’s. But this is not true since Dilworth only wrote that piece within the last week, in an attempt to cover up his mistake, and so it was not “available here” or anywhere as he claimed (ie he was lying).

How do I know that? The thing is, that page looked suspicious. I didn’t remember seeing it – I had looked around Dilworth’s site quite a bit before posting, and I think I would have seen the one page describing the thing I said he had not described. It also looked odd that the “References” section only had one reference in it. So I wondered if he had just added it. I tried The Wayback Machine, but it hadn’t archived Dilworth’s blog for over a year. Fortunately (but unfortunately for Dilworth) there is Google cache. This lets people see what your site looked like the last time Google crawled it – in this case a week ago. Check the Google cache of David Dilworth’s blog. The narrative is: This is a snapshot of the page as it appeared on Jan 25, 2013 04:29:27 GMT- that’s ONE WEEK AGO. And guess what – as recently as a week ago there was no “References” section where science is defined. David Dilworth wrote that and added it in the last week. His original “fallacies” post was there for almost six months with no explanation of the ambiguous term science. 

As Google cache gets updated eventually that page without the “References” tab will be gone. So I saved the screenshots.

Here is a the current screenshot – note the references tab with the “what do I mean by science” sub tab (ringed rather amateurishly by me). That’s what he said was “available” since August 2012 (click the image for a larger version).

Now look at the screenshot of the 1.25.13 cached blog. There is no “References” tab. Oops! Dilworth added that page less than a week ago and then implied it was there all along.

This shows that Dilworth’s claims of being not (very) emotionally attached to being right as evidenced by his willingness to acknowledge he make errors and to correct his own errors is also a flat out lie. He certainly has to stop claiming now that he is the one arguing honestly, the one willing to admit errors, the one applying the “principle of charity” as he calls it. He is clearly none of those things.

More to the point, it shows that Dilworth knows that his own use of the word “science” is no different from Eisen’s (or he wouldn’t have tried to cover it up). So Dilworth has to make a choice now. He has to choose either:

1. His (Dilworth’s) own post contained more ambiguity fallacies than Eisen’s, and he therefore has to apologize to Eisen for calling him a hypocrite, or
2. He has to agree that merely using the word “science” without fully defining it (as both Eisen and Dilworth do) is not a fallacy, and therefore he has to agree that his “fallacies” #1 and #2 are not fallacies.

Maybe there is a third option – offhand I can’t think of one. (By the way, the correct choice is #2.)

(Also BTW this is not a Tu Quoque fallacy as Dilworth claimed. I am not saying ‘you did it too so Eisen is not committing a fallacy.’ I am suggesting that neither of them is committing a fallacy.)

At the end of my yet unpublished comment, I wrote the following questions that arose from his post and my dismantling of it. You have to read my full (unpublished) comment to understand all of these, and this post is already long enough, but these are the questions.

Questions For David Dilworth

1. If you really are willing to correct your errors as you claim, why did you try to cover up your use of the undefined word “science” by writing a “What do I mean by “Science?” page and pretend it had been there all along? Isn’t that a sign of someone trying to hide errors, rather than correct them?
2. Now that we know you hadn’t defined what you meant by “science” the numerous times you used it, will you now either (a) admit that your article was full of logical fallacies too, and apologize to Eisen for calling him a hypocrite, or (b) agree that just using the word “science” without defining it is not a fallacy, and admit your fallacies # 1 and 2 are incorrect? Pick one. (Hint: the correct answer is (b).)
3. You claimed that the ambiguity fallacy is not equivocation. But according to Wikipedia, equivocation is ambiguity arising from the misleading use of a word. Aren’t you talking about misleading uses of word? If so, how is that not equivocation?
4. If you didn’t mean equivocation, what did you mean? Alternatives include amphiboly, accent, composition and division. Explain what you meant and how it applies to this case.
5. Why do you insist that all that is necessary to identify this fallacy is to show how a word has multiple meanings, when your own cited link, plus this one and this one disagree?
6. Show how someone could actually be fooled into believing GMOs are safe when they were not, due to the ambiguity. Explain exactly how this could happen. What would be the thought process? If you can’t show that you can’t claim a fallacy.

David, time to release my comment from “moderation” and answer the questions.

Incorrectly Calling Logical Fallacies

Regular readers will know that critical thinking involves knowing logical fallacies – recognizing them in other people’s arguments, and not using them in your own. But falsely calling fallacies is just as bad. Arguably worse, since using a fallacious argument just means you haven’t justified your argument - your argument could still be right for other reasons. Falsely calling a fallacy means you are saying something is wrong when it isn’t.

Recently I was researching something for this year’s Golden Woo awards, when I came across a blog post titled New World Record? Six Logical Fallacies with a Single Sentence promoting Genetically Modified Food, written by someone called David Dilworth – and I thought ‘that’s just what I’m looking for. Six fallacies in one sentence! I have to see that.’ Unfortunately the sentence didn’t contain six logical fallacies. On the contrary, the author of the post was wrong on all counts and obviously didn’t understand logical fallacies.

Dilworth’s post criticized an article by UC Berkley biologist Michael Eisen: The anti-GMO campaign’s dangerous war on science. Eisen’s article opposed California Prop 37 (the 2012 California ballot initiative to require labeling of genetically modified foods). Dilworth approved of the initiative. Here is Eisen’s supposedly fallacious sentence Dilworth’s post was all about:

For the backers of the initiative to claim [ GMOs might be harmful ] as a finding of fact is an outright lie, and an outlandish attack on science.

Obviously you can see the six fallacies in that sentence. No? Me neither.

I asked Dilworth for an explanation, and after the second attempt he replied with this comment detailing what he said were the fallacies. This is my summary of Dilworth’s claim:

1. None of the six fallacies he called were actual fallacies used in the sentence
2. One of them (what he said was a non sequitur) could at a pinch be described as an assertion fallacy (something just asserted, not supported). A bit lame though, when taken in context with the rest of the article.
3. One of the “fallacies” relied on something written in a different sentence, so it couldn’t have been a fallacy “in a single sentence” as claimed.
4. Dilworth employed a Straw Man fallacy and two Assertion fallacies of his own, to support his case for two of the “fallacies.”

I’m going to explain in detail where Dilworth is wrong. This post is going to be a bit long, but I think it’s worth doing because (1) I don’t like to see such nonsense standing unopposed, and (2) I do feel very strongly that understanding logical fallacies is a path to critical thinking and I hope that my analysis will shed light on what is, and on what is not, a logical fallacy.

Here is my analysis of each of Dilworth’s claims:

1 and 2 – Ambiguity Fallacies

1. Ambiguity fallacy: His claim of an “attack on science” is ambiguous about what he means by “science.” Does he mean scientific methodology, reasoning or facts derived from experiment – or some combination? It does make a difference. (It is also possible he means GMO scientists – but that would add an additional fallacy of falsely equating scientists with ideas of science.)

2. Ambiguity fallacy: Nor does he define the careless way he uses the word “safe.” (The word “safe” is not explicitly in the offending sentence, however the sentence refers to its earlier use.)

Does he mean “not harmful” or that the harms are only relative to the benefits?

Dilworth is calling these fallacies because there are ambiguous meanings of “science” and of “safe.” This is ridiculous.

Ambiguity or Equivocation is a fallacy if you use ambiguity in meaning, or different definitions of a word, to win an argument. For example, as I explained in my post about equivocation, people have said to me I have “faith” in science, therefore science is my religion. They’re using the different definitions of “faith” – (a) one meaning “trust” and (b) another meaning “blind faith with no evidence.” The fallacy is to claim I have definition b, when I have definition a. For it to be a fallacy there has to be an advantage to the different meanings. There has to be one meaning of the word where the argument is valid, and another version (the one the arguer wants you to accept) where it is not – otherwise it is not a fallacy. Dilworth’s own cited link even says this:

As a logical fallacy, Ambiguity occurs when linguistic ambiguity causes the form of an argument to appear validating when it is not.

Because of the ubiquity of ambiguity in natural language, it is important to realize that its presence in an argument is not sufficient to render it fallacious, otherwise, all such arguments would be fallacious. [My bold.]

Eisen isn’t doing this – he is not using linguistic ambiguity to try to win a point. He is simply using everyday words in the way most people understand them, with no attempt to benefit from ambiguity. Dilworth either didn’t read or didn’t understand his own link (the first hit you get when you Google “Ambiguity Fallacy”). At most Eisen is guilty of careless writing, but even that is a stretch. Dilworth is arguing like a lawyer – expecting every word to be fully defined with no ambiguity. But that’s not required to be free of fallacy.

Dilworth’s claim becomes even more ridiculous when you examine his own post. Read it and you will find the following references to the word “science,” none of which are defined:

1. Eisen’s article attracted me because I’ve been helping work for good science for a few decades
2. Eisen never mentions (or realizes?) that he and Food Safety proponents might each embrace science but have different philosophies or values.
3. What really makes me uncomfortable is when Eisen claims high authority as spokesperson for “Science,” then he’s purporting to speak for me and anyone else who cares about science.
4. The only other contact I’ve had with the GMO debate is a cordial letter I penned to a British GMO researcher who seemed to have a misguided proprietary ownership of Science
5. David Dilworth is the editor of likely the largest database of environmental impacts which compiles the best available science on over 1,000 different kinds of environmental harms, mitigations, and thoughtful, reasonable alternatives to avoid those harms.

That’s five uses of the word “science.” So Dilworth, according to his own reasoning, employed at least five Ambiguity Fallacies in this one post. (Of course they’re not fallacies, as I explained earlier. But Dilworth must think they are.) Dilworth doesn’t apply the same microscope to his own writing that he applies to the writings of someone he disagrees with. If he did, he might realize no fallacy had been employed by Eisen.

There is no “debating advantage” to Eisen for using words that might be interpreted differently. Consequently there is no fallacy.

3 - Proof Of Negative Fallacy

Next, assuming he intends safe to mean “not harmful” his position (claiming there is no possible harm from GMOs) requires a Proof of a Negative fallacy.

No it doesn’t.

First thing – it is not a fallacy to say you can prove a negative. The fallacy is to say you can prove a universal negative. For example, I can’t prove there are no white crows. I can search the world and see millions of black crows, but that wouldn't prove there wasn’t a white crow somewhere. If Eisen had said GMOs were never dangerous, had never harmed anyone and never would, he would be claiming to have proved a universal negative. (He’d be saying there were no white crows, anywhere.) But he isn’t doing that. He’s saying that the claims of the backers of the initiative are wrong (or as he puts it, a lie). He’s not “claiming there is no possible harm from GMOs” as Dilworth puts it. He just says that the studies, evidence or whatever the backers of the initiative are claiming as facts, are not true (ie he’s just saying that none of the crows they have shown him, are white). Eisen has not claimed a universal negative, he is claiming a limited negative. That’s not fallacious.

If you read a little further down Eisen’s article, you can see what he is really saying:

There is no compelling evidence of any harm arising from eating GMOs, and a diverse and convincing body of research demonstrating that GMOs are safe.

Note, not “no possible harm”, but “no compelling evidence of any harm…” Different things. The first would be a fallacy, the second, not.

Furthermore, Dilworth’s statement: “his position (claiming there is no possible harm from GMOs)” is not anything I can find Eisen saying. He doesn’t say that in the sentence, and I’ve searched his whole article and neither the phrase “no possible harm” nor “no harm” appear anywhere. So ironically, to build a case for a fallacy, Dilworth had to build a straw man fallacy of his own.

Dilworth misunderstands this fallacy. The real fallacy is to ask opponents of the initiative to prove a universal negative – ie to prove that GMOs are never harmful. Ironically, that is what GMO opponents do and what Dilworth is doing elsewhere (see below under the heading “Main Article”).

So #3 is definitely not a fallacy. Although Dilworth employed a Straw Man fallacy.

4 – Non Sequitur Fallacy

His claim of a “lie” is false since it is a Non-Sequitur fallacy (it does not follow).

That’s because committing a lie requires more than making a false claim, it requires the person making the claims to understand it is false.

Not really. All fallacies, strictly speaking, are non sequiturs (ie the conclusion doesn’t follow from the arguments presented). But the Non Sequitur fallacy refers to a conclusion that simply has no logical connection at all to the argument’s premises. Read, for example, the rational wiki on the non sequitur. See their examples – Eisen’s “lie” doesn’t really fit. If you accept for the sake of argument that the claims are false, a lie is one possible conclusion, and not something that simply has no logical connection. If anything, this would be argument by assertion (ie he hasn’t shown it is a lie), but IMO it’s really just a bit of careless writing.

So #4 not really a fallacy, but I agree you shouldn’t accuse people of lying unless you can demonstrate that they are. I’ll accept “argument by assertion.”

5 – Contradiction Fallacy

He claims GMO harm is a lie even though admitting “I’m sure they have a reference that justifies their making this assertion.” (!)

So — the first part of his sentence claims its a lie that GMOs might be harmful – while later admitting Food Safety people will have a study justifying their claim. That’s a
Contradiction fallacy.

First thing: the “while I’m sure they have a reference that justifies their making this assertion…” wording comes in the previous sentence. Therefore, this is not a fallacy in “a single sentence” as Dilworth puts it.

More to the point, it’s not contradictory at all. It’s quite possible for people to have studies and references, and to quote them when needed, while at the same time knowing the studies and references are lies. This should be obvious.

#5 Not a fallacy.

6 – Proof By Assertion Fallacy

This leaves his seemingly powerful assault with no valid support (there is no attack on science, no lie, and no valid argument supporting anything he claims with that sentence). That means his sentence taken as a whole is
worthless, making it a mere opinion; not a logical argument. “Proof” without facts is called a Proof by Assertion fallacy.

Dilworth is double counting. By that argument, any fallacy is automatically two fallacies – the original one, plus proof by assertion, since the original fallacy means the argument has no valid support (that’s what a logical fallacy is) and is therefore just assertion. So #6 is not a fallacy.

Also, Dilworth’s “there is no attack on science, no lie” claim is in fact two arguments by assertion of his own – Dilworth hasn’t demonstrated there is no attack on science and he hasn’t demonstrated there is no lie. He just tried to create ambiguity by introducing different definitions of science. He also demonstrated that Eisen hadn’t proven a lie, but he didn’t prove there is not one (we just don’t know).

Summary

1. At a stretch there is one logical fallacy (assertion that there was a “lie”). A bit lame though IMO, and not a major part of Eisen’s argument against the initiative.
2. Dilworth’s arguments to support two of the claimed fallacies involved his using a straw man fallacy, and two assertion fallacies of his own.
3. One of the claimed fallacies “in a single sentence” actually occurred in a different sentence. Why Dilworth thinks this is a fallacy “in a single sentence” is beyond me.
4. Dilworth’s entire post is one huge Argument by Assertion fallacy, since he didn’t explain in his post either (a) which sentence he was talking about or (b) what the fallacies were. Consequently Dilworth was just asserting there were six fallacies; he didn’t demonstrate that there were. I could argue this was six Argument by Assertion fallacies.

Dilworth did (after two days and two follow up emails from me) allow my comment which included many of the arguments above. He doubled down immediately with a reply that included this additional fallacy directed at me:

Since you claim to know what he means by those terms “Safe” and “Science”, let me respectfully request – can you please provide your definitions / interpretations of the terms – in the context of how Eisen used them.

An obvious straw man, since I never claimed “to know what [Eisen] means” by “Safe” and “Science” – I just wrote “He is simply using everyday words in the way most people understand them.” My beliefs about what Eisen meant, is irrelevant. The burden is with Dilworth to demonstrate that Eisen’s use of these words was fallacious – ie that there is one meaning of the word where the argument is valid, and another version (the one Eisen wants you to accept) where it is not. I did reply to that effect, but as of this evening (exactly five days after I posted my reply) my comment is still marked "awaiting moderation." [January 14, 2013 Edited to add: Sometime this morning, my comment was released from moderation, just over 132 hours after I posted it.]

Main Article

Dilworth's more detailed post calling even more fallacies, is just as bad. I’m not going into all of his mistakes, but see this fallacy he accuses Eisen of using:

Shifting the Burden of Proof Fallacy, Argumentum ad Ignorantiam. The above quote also falsely implies that the burden of proof is now placed with Food Safety proponents.

Duh, of course the burden of proof is with those claiming GMOs are unsafe. The burden of proof is always with those making the positive claim. GMO proponents can’t possibly prove a universal negative – that GMOs cannot possibly cause harm. That is the fallacy – asking for proof of a universal negative - and yet it’s what Dilworth expects Eisen to do. And get this: Dilworth, in this paragraph, expects Eisen to prove a universal negative. But in Dilworth’s “Fallacy #3” he accuses Eisen of claiming he had proved a universal negative and then states that this is a fallacy. So according to Dilworth, it’s a fallacy if Eisen claims to have shown GMOs are safe and it’s a fallacy if he says he can’t show GMOs are safe. Astonishing. This is what happens when you don’t understand what you’re talking about.

Also (couldn’t resist this one) Dilworth brings up Thalidomide – yes Dilworth is invoking the Science Was Wrong Before fallacy.

Finally, get a load of this:

The article's overarching theme is based on a fallacy formally called "Special Pleading." It means he attacks opponents for not meeting a set of standards (apparently "science reasoning") - while he violates those same standards (presumably you won't detect them). In short, hypocrisy.

First, no it’s not Special Pleading unless Eisen explicitly stated that different standards apply to him (another fallacy name learned, but not understood). Regardless, behold the chutzpah – Dilworth’s fallacy filled article (falsely) accuses Eisen of hypocrisy, for (drumroll) using fallacies. Breathtaking.

Dilworth’s posts are bad – maybe even A Straw Man gets AIDS bad. To call fallacies correctly, you have to understand them, and to do that you need to understand why they are fallacies. Dilworth gives the impression that he has just learned the names of fallacies without understanding them, and then tried to fit them to an article he disagreed with. To do critical thinking, you also have to examine your own arguments, and if you find they contain fallacies you try to re-write them without the fallacies. (And if you can’t, you consider changing your position.) Dilworth neglects to do this on an epic scale. The writings of woos are generally full of logical fallacies and claims not consistent with evidence. Dilworth’s articles are worse than most because his many errors and fallacies are dressed up in the language of critical thinking. But Dilworth is not a critical thinker, he is just an unorganized writer and confused thinker who decided to to fit the names of logical fallacies to an article whose conclusions he disagreed with. That’s not the way to do it and it’s why his articles are so completely wrong. He should delete these posts which are an embarrassment and apologize to Eisen for accusing him of hypocrisy.

The Golden Woos #4

It’s the new year, and so time for the fourth annual* Golden Woo Awards for outstanding work in the promotion of Woo in the previous year. Here are the winners for 2012:

* Except for years when I didn’t publish one.

The Egnorance Prize for the scientist or academic who said or did the silliest thing to support Woo

The 2012 Egnorance prize goes to theologian Alvin Plantinga, as justified by two articles by Jerry Coyne, The sophistry of Alvin Plantinga and especially Plantinga: Why God is a necessary being. As far as I can tell, Plantinga’s “why god is necessary” is just a rehashing of the Ontological Argument which I debunked over three years ago. Or as one of Jerry’s commenters remarked, the argument is:

God is defined as that which must exist.
That which must exist exists.
Therefore, God exists!

And no, you cannot define anything else as that which must exist. You just can’t, that’s why not.

As Coyne notes, this is what passes for “sophisticated theology,” a term I believe he has trademarked. Just think, Plantinga gets paid to write this drivel.

The most useless or misleading Woo study

The award goes to The John Templeton Foundation funded $5 Million Grant to Study Immortality. Yes, $5 Million to study something that no one can know exists, and if it does, no one has ever been there (and come back). So it’s $5 Million to study what people have made up about what they think the afterlife is. It’s hard to imagine anything much more useless.

The Larry King Prize for the media outlet that reported as fact the most ridiculous Woo claim

A crowded field, as usual. Nominees included the various websites reporting that Richard Dawkins’s family fortune came from the slave trade, and especially the Newsweek’s article headlined Heaven Is Real – an absurd thing to claim you know for certain, if there ever was one. Both worthy contenders. But I have to award the Larry this year to Dr Phil for his ‘psychics are real’ show featuring John Edward and CharMargolis. It’s not just that he reported this drivel credulously as fact. Many others have done the same (Dr Oz, I’m looking at you). The award is given to Dr Phil since he is supposed to be some sort of psychologist, and yet he couldn’t spot the obvious psychological tricks employed by these cold readers, nor could he recognize the psychological need of the victims to make hits out of wrong guesses.

The Chopra Award for the most drivel containing the most logical fallacies

Named for Deepak Chopra, whose support of woo with nothing but logical fallacies, is above and beyond what can reasonably be expected of any human being.

This year’s Chopra goes to Zack Kaldveer of the “Yes on 37” campaign (the 2012 California ballot initiative to require labeling of genetically modified foods). The title of Kaldveer’s article gives you a hint of the fallacy he is mostly relying on: Labeling Genetically Engineered Foods: Whose Side Are You On? “Whose side are you on?” It’s right there in the headline, followed by 1,300 words, the majority of which were nothing but (numerous) Ad Hominem attacks – smearing opponents of the initiative instead of rebutting their arguments. Add a dose of Appeal to Popularity, and Argument by Assertion and you have it all. There may be some good reasons why GM food should be labeled, but you don’t see any of them in this article. And just to be clear, a good argument in favor of labeling GMO foods would not include an argument in the form of ‘Safeway eliminated health insurance for its workers.’

I was a little reluctant to give this award to Zack since he is a friend of mine. In fact, I only learned of the article when he emailed me the link back in July. Since he is a friend, I didn’t do my usual paragraph by paragraph rebuttal. However, looking back at the year, I can’t think of another article that is made up almost entirely of logical fallacies and no actual content. I did try to look for one, but couldn’t find one that competed. I’m sure Zack doesn’t read this site, but if someone tells you about it Zack and you find this page – congratulations, you have won the 2012 Deepak Chopra Award. I imagine that would make you quite pleased.

The Blown Irony Meter Award, for being completely oblivious to the hypocrisy of their own actions or words in defense of Woo

The award goes to Lenoir City High School for denying a student the right to publish an article in its student newspaper. What was the article about? It was about how atheists don’t have the same rights as Christians in her school. The lack of self awareness shown by the school authorities is quite outstanding, and deserving of the 2012 Irony Award. As is the subsequent Streisand Effect, as her article was published elsewhere, gaining more publicity than it ever would have if it hadn’t been refused by the school.

The most ridiculous or bigoted act using religion as its justification

Always a crowded field – the examples too numerous to mention. This year I’m giving the award to the government of India and the Roman Catholic Church. The situation is that an Indian skeptic called Sanal Edamaruku debunked a “miracle” of holy water trickling as tears from a statue of Jesus (it was just faulty plumbing). The Indian government immediately accused Edamaruku of blasphemy, and he only escaped jail by leaving the country.

The Indian government should be ashamed that it has blasphemy laws on its books. But the real reason I am giving this award is the reaction of the Roman Catholic church. According to Edamaruku:

The Catholic archbishop of Bombay, Oswald, Cardinal Gracias, has said that if I apologise for the 'offence' I have caused he will see to it that the charges are dropped.

And there you see quite clearly what religion looks like when it gets everything it wants – it demands obedience and obsequiousness or it has no compunction about sending you to jail. Remember this when people talk about moderate religion, and when they say it’s only religious extremism that is the problem. What you see very clearly here is that when they are not restricted by secular reasoning and secular laws, religions’ natural state is extremism.

Miscellaneous Idiocy

This year I’m combining the most persistent refusal to face reality and Occam awards into one general award for miscellaneous idiocy. Agreed, all of these awards are for idiocy in one way or another. This is just a category for anything that would otherwise be missed.

The 2012 award goes to Andrew Wakefield. His ‘vaccines cause autism’ has been shown to be the result of fraudulent research and he has been struck off the register of UK doctors. Having failed with the science, he now tries his hand in the courts by suing Brian Deer – the journalist who exposed Wakefield’s faulty research. Of course, the absurd suit was dismissed, but I trust that this Golden Woo will be of some consolation.

Andrew Brown fails to understand the rules of secular debate

It really is about time the Guardian pensioned off Andrew Brown. Surely his poorly argued articles must be an embarrassment to them – perhaps they could trade him to the Huffington Post, or something. Take a look at his latest post where he claims that Militant secularists fail to understand the rules of secular debate. Really? Who are these “militant” secularists Brown refers to? Here’s how he defines them:

There are three kinds of people in Britain today who might be taken for militant secularists: that is to say people who are not just themselves unbelievers, but have an emotional investment in the extirpation of religious belief in others. There are the adolescents who have just discovered "rationality"; there are gay people who feel personally threatened by traditional monotheist morality; and, in this country, there are parents frustrated by the admissions policy of religiously controlled schools.

Well, I’m not a teenager, a gay person or a parent in the UK so I guess I’m not a militant secularist. But I’m also not engaged in warfare or combat, so perhaps Brown is, inadvertently, partly right for once. But he’s still mostly wrong.

But what about his main contention – how does he justify his headline, that militant secularists don’t understand the rules of secular debate? To find out, you have to read to Brown’s penultimate paragraph. There you will find his argument, which I reproduce in its entirety:

But the militant secularist takes for granted that "the religious" have no access to reason. There can be no reasoning with his opponents. All he can do is to repeat himself more loudly until the idiots understand.

One can only marvel at the vacuousness of that paragraph. What evidence does he offer to show that the militant secularist “takes for granted” that the religious have no access to reason? Well, none. He offers no evidence, not even one example. One could say that he just assumes, or takes for granted, that they do this. And it’s a ridiculous assumption. Just take a look at any atheist or skeptical blog, or any book by any of the leading atheist writers, and see if the arguments presented are based on just taking for granted that the opposition are not rational. On the contrary, you will find thousands of words analyzing the writings of religious apologists to demonstrate that they are irrational. Look at this post – I don’t take anything for granted, I demonstrate that Brown doesn’t offer any evidence (ie is not using reason) to support his contention. If you present arguments to show something then by definition you are not taking it for granted.

To paraphrase Brown’s sub-headline, Andrew Brown just assumes that “militant secularists” assume that 'the religious' have no access to reason – all he does is repeat himself, loudly. The only interesting question arising from Brown’s post, is who the hell is Andrew Brown any why does someone with such a poor grip on rational argument get to have a regular column in a national newspaper?

Dr. Phil Doesn't Understand Psychology

Or he put his knowledge on hold for this show.

After all these years, it still surprises me that people have the same old fake psychic cold readers on their TV shows. From Orac, I learned last week that Dr. Phil was going to have John Edward and Char Marglois on his show January 10. Can the producers of this show not have heard of the lame cold reading tricks these people use to fool their marks? It’s not as if they couldn’t have contacted the JREF for a detailed explanation of how it’s done (along with the information that Edward and others refuse to be tested for Randi’s million dollar prize, under controlled conditions). It’s also not as if there aren’t a number of skeptical web sites that have also explained this in some detail. Six years ago, I wrote John Edward Re-revisited - a detailed analysis of one of John Edward’s appearances on Larry King. In it I explained the psychology of the scam – for example, how the mark will feel the need to “help” the fake psychic, by suggesting answers and accepting misses as hits. And yet this is Dr. Phil. Isn’t he supposed to be some sort of psychologist? Surely, of all people, Dr. Phil should recognize the psychology of the shell game being played. Shouldn’t Dr. Phil, with his expertize in psychology, be the one to expose this racket rather than promote it? Well, except that his wife is obviously a credulous believer (more of that later). And ratings were also a factor – he showed a huge pile of emails from people wanting to get on the show. (Note to the producers – you don’t have to print out emails.)

Still, this would be an opportunity to play Cold Reader Bingo – to see how many regular cold reader tricks are used in a short period of time. Now, I’m sad to report that I didn’t get a complete line with the chart I randomly chose to use, but I did get hits on 12 out of 25 squares – not bad. And although the bingo card is obviously meant to make fun of these cold readers, its purpose is also serious – it exposes the lame tricks that they use again and again to fool their marks. Click on the Cold Reader Bingo link. In addition to the (randomizable) card, each of the cold reader tricks are explained in more detail in that post.

Against my better judgment, I decided to watch the show with a view to breaking down the techniques used. Doing this, I realized how much I miss Larry King. Yes, he would have these bozos on his show but at least CNN would publish a transcript so you could easily compare the guesses with what the mark actually agreed to. Well, there is no transcript that I could find, so I had to transcribe my own version – not word perfect, but good enough to demonstrate what was going on.

I’m going to focus on just three segments in the show:

1. Three sisters who were on first
2. Reading for Dr. Phil
3. Several reading by Edward on the whole audience (although we were only shown readings on two groups of people).

I’m not going to comment on the readings on Dr. Phil’s wife, or the reading on the producer – there was only so much I was prepared to watch, and Dr. Phil’s wife was, well I’ll be polite and say credulous. Also, there was also a numerologist, for some reason, and I didn’t watch that.

In the sections below I bolded the cold reader guesses, transcribed by me – not blockquoted as they’re not exact quotes (I only have so much time to waste on this nonsense, and as it is I had to watch each section at least five or six times to be sure I caught everything), but they are accurate in principle, if not verbatim. My summary of the marks’ answers and analysis, follow the bolded cold reader quotes.

Three Sisters

Three similarly looking, and similarly dressed women who want a reading, are called up to the front.

Margolis: Your Mother is with you, she says you brought something of hers  (with Margolis holding out her hands to mime the thing that was being brought). This is a standard cold reader guess. Most people bring some jewelry, or a watch. One of the women says “yes” and shows a tattoo of her Mother. So this was a MISS, since a tattoo is not something of her mother’s. However the woman accepts this as a hit. Standard cold reader / mark relationship, where the mark will accept a miss as a hit.

Margolis guesses they came together, and they confirm they are sisters.

Margolis (staring at the woman, trying hard to read a reaction): Did she die in an accident… [pause to look for response] a car accident or impact… [pause to look for response] er, er, er, er, er… I did write that piece down verbatim. Watched it five or six times to count the “er”s. Interesting to see the concentration in Margolis’s face as she stares at the woman and tries to guess what happened, expecting the mark to fill in the details. Unusually, the woman just shakes her head, but doesn’t say what happened.

Margolis Who else is Joseph [pause to look for response], Joe.. [pause to look for response], or John? [pause to look for response], John? Straight in with the “J” bingo square. Any name beginning with a J would count as a hit here. Woman confirms John is their step father. Note that the first guess, “Joe” is wrong. (As before, Margolis looking hard at woman to try to read any response.) The important thing to remember here is that any J name would have been accepted by the mark as a hit, and they had forgotten the initial wrong “Joe” guess. (HELLO – psychology 101, Dr. Phil.)

Margolis: He’s living, right? WRONG – he’s dead. (How can they constantly get this basic fact wrong and still have people believe them?)

Margolis: I get the feeling, he is looking up, while she is looking down. Interpreted later to mean that he is in hell, she in heaven. And yet it’s funny how Margolis would know he was in hell, when 10 seconds before, she thought he was alive. Either way, impossible to verify.

Here Edward jumps in and says is there a murder suicide connection? Strange wording. A “connection”? Why not just say, “was it a murder suicide? Lucky Edward: this is a hit.

Edward: Did she get you out of the house? Another MISS. One of the sisters was outside giving horse riding lessons, but the mother did not “get her out of the house.”

Edward: I don’t know if he shot himself, but I’m getting an impact, a blunt impact. Very WRONG. He actually slit his wife’s throat, and (hard to believe, but this what the woman said) slit his own. You don’t slit someone’s throat with a blunt instrument – you need something sharp. Edward was unlucky here – gunshot would probably have been the most likely thing.

Edward: Did you have an intervention to try to get him out? Another MISS. The sisters had moved out a year before, but there had been no intervention.

At Dr. Phil’s prompting, the sisters then explained in detail what had actually happened (ie the bits that Edward and Margolis couldn’t guess, which was most of it).

Summary of hits versus misses:

1. You brought something of hers – WRONG
2. Who is Joe – WRONG
3. He’s living, right? – WRONG
4. Did he die in an accident… a car accident or impact… er, er, er, er, er – WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, and five “er”s also WRONG
5. Murder suicide? – CORRECT a HIT!
6. Got you out of the house first – WRONG
7. Gunshot – WRONG
8. Blunt force – couldn’t be more WRONG – very sharp force, actually
9. You had an intervention – WRONG

Eight wrong and only one right.

Now, I understand that many people will be impressed by the murder-suicide guess. “How could he have guessed that?” they would say. But you have to understand that Edward frequently makes outlandish guesses, for example who died in a plane or car crash? / who has a leg or arm missing? / who committed suicide? / who was shot in a robbery? – I’ve heard all of those and more. It’s always presented as a question (as it was this time), so when no one fits the bill (and it often does not fit) he can quickly move on to the next guess. And the mark will rarely remember the wrong guess. But on the rare occasions he is correct it will look as though he must be real. This is why “Wild Ass Guess” is a bingo card square. But you have to compare these lucky guesses with the more numerous completely wrong ones, to see the pattern of what is really happening. Initially I was quite impressed with the murder/suicide guess; it was only after watching this section about 10 times (I’m not kidding – Edward speaks very quickly) that I realized that everything else they guessed was wrong. Confirmation bias in action: remembering the hits and forgetting the misses.

Dr Phil reading

Char Magolis’s reading of Dr. Phil consisted of names from Phil’s Wikipedia page and a few other articles you can find online, plus a few wrong guesses accepted as hits by Phil and his wife Robin.

First, we have the “hits” that can all be found on Wikipedia:

Do you have a J, Joseph or John connection? Phil confirms his father's name was Joseph. Information available on Wikipedia.

Is there a Steve? Phil confirms Stevens is his mother’s maiden name. Information available on Wikipedia. Although Margolis said Steve, not Stevens. And why would his mother would refer to herself using her maiden name? Would your mother, if she wanted you to know it was her, call herself by her maiden name? Has your mother ever referred to herself, when speaking to you, using her maiden name? Mine never did. Why would Dr. Phil’s mother do that? Why not just say “it’s your Mom, Jerry”? Or some other means of identification only Phil would know?

Who is Jerry or Gerald?  Er, that’s his mom too – Jerry. Information also available on Wikipedia. But why does Margolis not know that this is also his mother? Wasn’t she just talking to her? (There’s a lot of mumbling by Phil about his mother’s brother, who was also Gerry, or something. Not sure why, since it was already a hit with Jerry.)

Who worked with tools? Apparently no one. Although later Robin (Dr. Phil’s wife) is determined to make this obvious miss a hit, by reminding Phil that his father used to be a butcher. “Worked with tools” means a butcher? Quite a stretch. (Note again the psychology of cold reading – the mark is determined to convert the misses to hits. Again Dr. Phil HELLO, are you a psychologist or not?) Also, why would Phil’s father communicate with his son that he worked with tools (meaning he used to be a butcher), rather than just say, “hey, remember I used to be a butcher?” MISS.

Were you in an airplane and there was an engine problem?  Phil confirms a hit, but then we can easily know this would be a hit from this interview:

Dr. Phil has been a pilot since he was 16 years old. He has been through a number of instances on airplanes where his life was in jeopardy... [My bold]

Did you make a go-kart as a child? Robin later confirms this as a hit, because their son had an accident in his go cart. But this is actually a miss, because the question was “did you make a go-kart as a child,” not “did your son have a go-kart accident?” Also we know that Phil and his family used go-karts from this article:

“[Dr. Phil] showed the audience some pictures of his family enjoying ATVs and go-karts…

There is a guess about a cemetery that is a hit, and another one about railroads that is a miss, although Dr. Phil desperately tries to link to someone in his family who might have worked on the railroad.

• Hits from Wikipedia – 3
• Hits from other online articles – 2 (being generous)
• Real hits – 1
• Misses - 1

Useful information – zero.

Audience Readings

John Edward read two groups of women.

First one

Is there a male energy who has passed? Note that “male energy” has now replaced the “father figure” from the bingo card, that he used to use. And of course, someone has a male who passed.

Sagittarius connection? Well, Sagittarius is one star sign out of 12. Edward was talking to three women together, so I in 4 chance of a hit with just these three. Add all their friends, parents, children, almost a racing certainty someone knows a Sag. Turns out, a hit for one of the women. But, why did this woman’s dead husband ask about Sagittarius? Unless he was an astrologer, a strange thing to mention right up front. Why not just say, “I’ve got a message for Judy”? (Or whatever her name was.) The vague “Sagittarius” is preferred by the cold reader because it can fit so many more “hits” than a specific name would.

They tell me to talk about Robert or Michael, or “R” “M”? LOL – two bingo squares in one sentence.

Brain tumor, or something “brain related.” Do you understand? Edward’s favorite trick. He calls on his “Do you understand?” bingo square to get a confirmation (she understands what he said) when it was actually a miss (there is no Brain tumor, or anything “brain related.”) The woman responds with “I am a Sagittarius,” therefore making this section a hit, although Edward has missed completely with “brain related” which is now forgotten.

I repeat – the “brain related” miss is now forgotten by everyone. Only the “Sag” hit is remembered.

“You have my liver.”  This is accepted as a hit, as “a cousin of my husband” donated his liver to someone. Actually it’s a miss, since Edward was talking to the woman’s father. He said “my liver” remember? (A “cousin of my husband”? That’s not “my” liver.) Also, he said “you” have my liver. “You,” while talking to the two women being read (wife and daughter of the dead guy). Edward was trying another wild ass guess. Imagine if the dead guy had actually donated part of his liver to his wife or daughter – wouldn’t that look completely convincing, just like the “murder suicide” wild ass guess of earlier? Of course it would. But when it turns out wrong, Edward salvages it by saying that her father is now with this cousin of her husband. Edward, as always, the expert in turning misses into hits.

Edward talks about the dead guy having left a crucifix down the back of the chair he used to sit in at their home. On Dr. Phil’s website it says they checked when they got home and found a pen under the cushion. The miss of “pen” is accepted as a hit for “crucifix.”

Second Reading

Someone passed during open heart surgery, or in reaction to a surgical procedure.

The mark confirms her grandmother died during kidney surgery – actually a miss for “heart surgery” although he had left open the “a surgical procedure” to make sure he covered all options.

Is there a Sam, Sammy, something “S”. I actually did laugh out loud at this bingo square. Please note two things here:

1. We have now had all four bingo squares for initials: R, M, J and S
2. No other initials (or names, apart from Wikipedia ones) have been called, just the bingo square initials.

This is really so obvious – how can anyone think this anything but just guessing the most statistically common initials?

Something about month of May, or 5th. Bingo again – number 1 to 12. The mark confirms her daughter is Samantha and was born in May. To which I ask, so what? What is the point, why would this woman’s grandmother draw attention to her daughter and her birth month?

Summary

Hits on bingo squares (in no particular order):

1. J name
2. Male Energy (now used in place of “father figure”)
3. S name
4. Wild Ass Guess
5. Any number from 1 to 12 (“5”)
6. R name
7. Accepts miss as a hit (several of these)
8. M name
9. Multiple fishing questions
10. Head Area (I’m counting “brain related” – it’s funny how Edward has evolved different phrasings of these questions. It’s almost as if he has seen the bingo card.)
11. Dead relative is “OK”
12. Do you understand?

Plus numerous wrong guesses. Many accepted as hits; the rest forgotten. Dr. Phil, you need to go back to psychology school.

The Golden Woos #3

It’s the new year, and so time for the third annual* Golden Woo Awards for outstanding work in the promotion of Woo in the previous year. Here are the winners:

[* Except there were no awards last year, so we will include services to woo in the last two years.]

The Egnorance Prize for the scientist or academic who said or did the silliest thing to support Woo

The Woo goes to Professor John Haught, who during his debate with Jerry Coyne (Science and Religion: Are They Compatible?), informed us that “because my wife turned the gas on” is a different level of answer to the question “why is the teapot boiling.” Therefore religion is compatible with science. Which presumably means Haught believes his wife is god. Or at least, that she makes tea using supernatural powers.

The most useless or misleading Woo study

The award goes to Anna Enblom et al for this study on acupuncture. Strictly speaking the study was not useless. In fact it was quite useful for demonstrating that acupuncture is nothing more than placebo. (Although we already knew that.) What was misleading is the way Enblom et al chose to interpret the results, namely by saying that since both real and placebo acupuncture (yes I know all acupuncture is placebo acupuncture – you know what I mean) showed a benefit, acupuncture works. As Steven Novella wrote in Another Acupuncture Fail, “In the real world of scientific medicine … when a treatment works no better than the placebo control we conclude that – the treatment does not work.” For dishonest and misleading wording in both the abstract and especially in the press release, Enblom wins a well deserved Woo.

The Larry King Prize for the media outlet that reported as fact the most outrageous Woo claim

This year’s Larry goes to numerous TV stations for screening the Dr. Oz show. Examples of how steeped in Woo Oz has become are numerous, but as an example he promotes homeopathy. For some reason the video of the show doesn’t seem to play any more, but Oz calls on a Dr. Russ Greenfield who claims that there are “scientific studies” and “some data suggesting it really works.” (Although a lot more showing it doesn’t.) He talks about “essence” which is the “spirit literally of the medication,” although, confusingly, he also says that you “don’t want to use this for stuff that isn’t self limiting.” (Translation – it only works for illnesses that will get better by themselves.) For some reason this show seems to be on ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox, so any one of them can claim the Larry this year.

The Chopra Award for the most drivel containing the most logical fallacies

Named for Deepak Chopra, whose support of woo with nothing but logical fallacies, is above and beyond what can reasonably be expected of any human being. I was originally going to give this year’s award to Bill “the tide comes in and it goes out” O'Reilly, for saying that since we don’t know where the Moon came from, god exists. Well worth the award, in my opinion. But I’m afraid I had to disqualify O’Reilly. You see, good (and by good, I mean bad) though his argument was, he later had Deepak Chopra on his show to support him with it. And the thing about these awards is that they need to be all your own work. Having Chopra on to help you is cheating.

So on reconsideration, this year’s Chopra goes to Michael Egnor (a previous Woo Laureate) for inventing a new fallacy. Not content with repeating at nauseam the mantra “stuff changes and survivors survive” to describe evolution, when called on this obvious straw man, he claimed it was just a colloquialism. Genius! I’m not sure what the exact name for this fallacy is. I think it’s a form of equivocation, but I’m open to ideas. In any case, I don’t remember even the fallacy grand master pulling off a stunt like that, and so Egnor is this year’s worthy winner.

The Blown Irony Meter Award, for being completely oblivious to the hypocrisy of their own actions or words in defense of Woo

The Woo goes to Barbara Loe Fisher for suing Paul Offit and Amy Wallace following their (accurate) article about anti-vaccination nuts, while simultaneously writing that she wants A Fearless Conversation About Vaccination. By fearless, she means fearless for her and her anti-vaccine friends. She’s quite happy if pro vaccine people are in fear.

Now, this incident occurred in early 2010, so (although I am covering two years here) it wouldn’t by itself have been enough to warrant an award. But Fisher is nothing if not persistent, and clearly determined to win the award this year. In November she claimed that wanting the truth to be told about vaccines (and by “the truth” I mean, “the opposite of what Fisher wanted to say) was “intimidation.” Fisher is a totally un-self aware martyr who cries “intimidation” when someone writes letters she doesn’t agree with, but is happy to get her lawyer to issue SLAPP suits while claiming to want a fearless conversation. “Oblivious” and “hypocrisy” are two words that belong in the same sentence as “Barbara Loe Fisher,” and for that she gets this year’s Woo.

The most ridiculous or bigoted act using religion as its justification

In a crowded field, the Woo goes to Michigan Republicans, for amending an anti-bullying bill to allow bullying if the bullying arises out of a sincerely held religious belief or moral convictions. This was a bill that was originally named after a teenager who killed himself after being the victim of anti-gay bullying by Christians. Now, thanks to Michigan Republicans, bullying by the religious is officially encouraged. This is outstanding bigotry and absurdity, of the sort that mostly comes from religion.

That’s it for this year. Please tell me of any I missed in the comments. And any you wish to nominate for next year.

A Wonderful Life - Without Religion

CNN: shame on you. Not for publishing Larry Alex Taunton’s (“Special to CNN”) opinion piece on why the country would decline without Christian belief: My Take: When Bedford Falls Becomes Pottersville. Not per se. But for making it their main story. This was what greeted me when I turned on my screen this morning:

That was right in the middle, up front and at the top, on the home page of a supposedly “news” organization. Hard to miss. In case you can’t read the blurb, it says:

The 1946 classic "It's a Wonderful Life" is a fitting metaphor for a nation absent Christian belief, author Larry Taunton says. Those wanting to do away with the faith should be careful what they wish for, he says.

After a brief summary of the film and a couple of paragraphs of how “voters think America is in decline” he gets down to the thing he believes is causing all the trouble:

Richard Dawkins, the Oxford scientist and atheist provocateur, calls Christianity a “mental virus” that should be eradicated.

The professor should be more careful in what he wishes for. Like many others, he grossly underestimates the degree to which his own moral and intellectual sensibilities have been informed by the Judeo-Christian worldview.

Or alternatively, Larry Alex Taunton grossly overestimates such things. The notable thing about  these ‘oh noes, without Jesus life would be terrible’ pieces is just how little evidence they offer to support their view, and this one is no exception. Look at the arguments presented and marvel that CNN thought this worth publishing:

Jesus Christ said that his followers were to be like “salt”; that is, a people whose presence is felt for the good that they do. As a man or woman’s evil nature is gentled and restrained by the grace of God, there is a corresponding outward transformation of society. The data bears this out. According to the research of The Barna Group, Christians are the most charitable segment of the population by a substantial margin. Hence, any society that is liberally sprinkled with them has a greater concern for the poor, sick, orphaned and widowed - “the least of these,” as Jesus called them.

And yet the USA, of the rich nations in the world is one of the most religious, but has the greatest income inequality. While Sweden and Denmark, the least religious, are the most egalitarian with a comprehensive social safety net. More Than 9 in 10 Americans Continue to Believe in God, so how can unbelief be responsible for the problems Taunton identifies? How does Taunton explain all that? Well, by ignoring it.

(This is precisely what Nietzsche, and Hitler after him, hated about Christianity.)

Except that Hitler was a Christian, and Nazi racial ideology was religious, creationist and opposed to Darwinism.

But Christian influence goes well beyond benevolence: Our laws, art, literature and institutions find meaning in a rich Christian heritage. In his new book "Civilization: The West and the Rest," Harvard historian Niall Ferguson argues that the decline of the West can, in part, be attributed to the decline of a robust Christian presence in Western culture.

Note, not “Niall Ferguson,” but “Harvard historian Niall Ferguson.” Classic appeal to authority without, you’ll note, one shred of evidence to support the “argument.”

Ferguson’s point is largely an economic one, but the inference that Christianity has served to strengthen the fabric of life in the West as we have known it is unmistakable. T.S. Eliot made a similar observation: “If Christianity goes, the whole of our culture goes.”

T.S. Eliot now. Taunton sure loves his argument from authority.

That is just another way of saying that the difference between a nation with meaningful Christian influence and a nation without it is the difference between Bedford Falls and Pottersville.

It may be “another way of saying” it, but that doesn’t make it true.

To summarize, Taunton’s arguments that Pottersville shows us what life would be like without Jesus, were:

• Assertion
• Jesus said so
• Hitler (seriously)
• A Harvard historian said so
• T.S. Eliot said so
• er… that’s it.

Pottersville doesn’t even show us what life would be like without religion, it just shows what life would have been like if just one man hadn’t been born. The other inhabitants of the town were presumably just as religious (or non-religious) as they were before. As I recall, there was not even a suggestion that mean old Potter wasn’t religious. In reality, if we want to know what life would really be like with less religion we only have to look at Sweden and Denmark. And CNN is still the mistrusted name in news.

Philosophy Isn't Logic (Apparently)

Via Jerry Coyne I learn of some Remarkably stupid remarks by a sophisticated theologian. In the New York Times this week is an article about philosopher Alvin Plantinga, headlined Philosopher Sticks Up for God. Well maybe he does, but not with logic. Get a load of this reason why we should believe in god:

Mr. Plantinga readily admits that he has no proof that God exists. But he also thinks that doesn’t matter. Belief in God, he argues, is what philosophers call a basic belief: It is no more in need of proof than the belief that the past exists, or that other people have minds, or that one plus one equals two.

“You really can’t sensibly claim theistic belief is irrational without showing it isn’t true,” Mr. Plantinga said. And that, he argues, is simply beyond what science can do.

Brilliant. Just declare the laws of logic to be completely backward, and… er well that’s it really. If you can’t prove god doesn’t exist, then he does. To which I reply, well Mr. Plantinga, when are you going to repay the $1,000 I loaned you? What, you say, I never loaned you the money? Well, can you prove I didn’t? Because by your logic, if you can’t prove I didn’t, then I did. And I want my $1,000.

You have to marvel at the workings of the religious mind. So certain that god exists that you can just declare it true. That’s what philosophers do, apparently.

He’s no better in his criticisms of Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett either:

Mr. Dawkins? “Dancing on the lunatic fringe,” Mr. Plantinga declares. Mr. Dennett? A reverse fundamentalist who proceeds by “inane ridicule and burlesque” rather than by careful philosophical argument.

Proceeds by “inane ridicule and burlesque”? You mean like saying your opponent is “dancing on the lunatic fringe”? Do you ever think about any of the things you say, Mr. Plantinga? Serious question.

The article ends with:

“To call a philosopher irrational, those are fighting words,” he said. “Being rational is a philosopher’s aim.

Then you failed.

Michael Egnor's Straw Colloquialism

I’m a bit late to this one. Over three months late, to be precise. But I came across this this piece again by accident last week, and was reminded how bad it was, and I had to write something about it anyway. Especially as I just found the follow up post (more on that later). I’m talking about Michael Egnor’s defense of Ann Coulter: In which I take up P.Z. Myers' challenge on Ann Coulter and Evolution. The main thrust of Egnor’s post is to reduce evolution (actually just natural selection) to “stuff changes and survivors survive.” Egnor says this shows that evolution is mere tautology.

Before I start, a reminder of the definition of a straw man argument: it’s when you present a weakened, distorted, over simplified or absurd version of your opponent’s argument, and then you ridicule that weakened, distorted over simplified or absurd version of his argument and ignore the actual argument. When you refute the straw man version of an argument, you may to create the illusion of having refuted your opponent’s argument, but in fact you have only refuted your own weakened version of it. For that reason, attacking a straw man argument is fallacious.

OK, let’s look at Egnor’s post. He writes:

‘Stuff changes and survivors survive' isn't a scientific theory

Well, no it isn’t. But then that isn’t what the theory of evolution says. What Egnor appears to be describing is natural selection (which is part of the scientific theory of evolution). The critical piece he’s missing is the bit about favorable traits getting passed to descendants. That bit is essential for natural selection to work. And it isn’t tautology. Here’s a more accurate, although still simplified, description of natural selection:

1. The genetic variation within a population of organisms improve the chances of some organisms to survive longer than others
2. Survivors survive long enough to reproduce
3. The traits that enabled an organism to survive long enough to reproduce, are passed to its descendants.

This isn’t a comprehensive definition. Point #2 should probably be something like, ‘survivors that survive longer are statistically more likely to reproduce.’  Point #3 should say something about the increased probability of passing on the survivor traits to the descendants – perhaps that relatively more of the traits get passed to descendants. Also, it is not just survivors that are more likely to reproduce. A stronger male might reproduce more than a weaker one by fighting off its weaker opponents. The weaker one might still survive, it just might not mate. But I tried to keep my definition as close to Egnor’s version of it as I could get. That way, it’s easier to see where Egnor is going wrong. I think my definition is good enough. But is it tautology?

A tautology is a formula which is true in every possible interpretation. For example, “all bachelors are unmarried.” So Egnor is right that “survivors survive” is tautology. But consider my more correct version of natural selection:

The genetic variation within a population of organisms improve the chances of some organisms to survive longer than others

Genetic variation also reduces the chances of some organisms to survive longer than others. Sometimes it has no effect. Point #1 therefore isn’t true in every possible interpretation and so is not tautology.

Survivors survive long enough to reproduce

But not all who survive long enough to reproduce, get to reproduce. They might still not find a mate, might get frightened off by stronger competitors, or might be sterile. Also, some organisms that survive for less time (without the beneficial genetic variation) still reproduce. Point #2 therefore isn’t true in every possible interpretation and so is not tautology either. Egnor’s error is to say just “survivors survive” (which is tautology) without the “long enough to reproduce” (or the “statistically more likely to reproduce”) part. The scientific theory requires “long enough to reproduce” or “statistically more likely to reproduce” because without that part, point three won’t follow.

The traits that enabled an organism to survive long enough to reproduce, are passed to its descendants

But some traits are not heritable, and so will not be passed on. Also, those that are heritable don’t always get passed on since descendants get their genes from both parents – only one parent might have the “survivor” trait. It is not tautological that any random variable traits get inherited. Point #3 therefore isn’t true in every possible interpretation and so is clearly not tautology.

None of my three points are tautological. And you need all three for natural selection.

At this point I refer you again to my definition of a straw man argument. Compare “Stuff changes and survivors survive” with my three points, and tell me if Egnor’s version isn’t a weakened, distorted over simplified or absurd version. And we know that Egnor is really impressed with this argument because he repeats it 11 times. So add argumentum ad nauseam to straw man.

But (as the infomercial presenters say), that’s not all. PZ replied to Egnor. He ends with:

Every study of evolution is built around specific hypotheses about mechanisms, not dumb blind counts of nothing but the living and the dead, but measures of differential reproductive success against some detailed parameter of their genetics. All those terms Egnor cluelessly throws around — "natural selection, sexual selection, kin selection, group selection, reciprocal altruism, disruptive selection, diversifying selection, selective sweeps, background selection, adaptive radiation, punctuated equilibrium" — have specific, different meanings, and do not reduce to merely "survival".

PZ doesn’t actually use the term “straw man,” but that’s what he means. But here’s the really funny bit: Egnor replies to PZ in My reply to P.Z.Myers: atheism is a small cup. In this post Egnor really surpasses himself. He has an almost brilliant response to the straw man claim, one I’ve never seen before: he renames it as a colloquialism:

"Differential reproductive success of variants in populations", which means precisely that "relatively more successful replicators relatively more successfully replicate". Colloquially, 'survivors survive'.

It wasn’t a straw man, oh no, it was a colloquialism. Brilliant.

Except, when you think about it, not so brilliant. A colloquialism is a word or phrase that is common in everyday conversation rather than in formal speech. For example, “it’s raining cats and dogs.” The difference between this and Egnor’s “survivors survive” should be obvious. First, I don’t think many people (other than professional creationists like Egnor) use the phrase “survivors survive” to describe evolution. Second, and more importantly, a colloquial expression is not meant to be taken literally. So if “survivors survive” is colloquial then Egnor can’t use it to say that evolution is tautological. It’s as though someone looked out the window, saw it wasn’t literally raining cats and dogs, and concluded that it wasn’t raining. Of course, Egnor wants it both ways. When a biologist points out that “survivors survive” is not what evolution says, Egnor says, well it’s just colloquial. But when he wants to refute evolution, he uses it literally. Egnor needs to make his mind up.

What else does Egnor have? Well, in a masterpiece of cherry picking he refers us to Galton and eugenics (presumably an attempt to link evolution to the Nazis, although who can be sure what he is really getting at?), Haeckel’s faked embryos (irrelevant - early embryos do show many similarities) and Piltdown Man (a known fake from 100 years ago that was uncovered by scientists, not by creationists like Egnor). Egnor just ignores all the evidence collected in the last 100 years or more. I guess on Egnor’s planet, nothing must have been discovered since Piltdown Man in 1908.

Both of these pieces by Egnor are extraordinarily bad – even for him. Usually with Egnor’s posts, you do at least get the impression that there is an intelligent person trying to make an intelligent, even scholarly point. He fails quite often, relying on logical fallacies and ignoring points raised by his opponent (see especially the series of posts by Steven Novella dueling with Egnor on what causes the mind). But you do at least get the sense of an intellect at work, a measured, professional tone, someone who is trying to grasp an argument. But here you get none of that. Instead we have just the juvenile repetition of an infantile misrepresentation of natural selection, as though repetition and assertion were valid arguments if delivered with enough sarcasm. Perhaps that’s understandable when you consider what we now know to be Egnor’s prime source for his knowledge on evolution, namely Ann Coulter:

Well, nobody insults Ann Coulter without a reply from me. I love Ann Coulter (Platonically, of course). Love, love, love. She's basically right about everything, and the only thing I don't like about her books and T.V. appearances is that when she attacks atheists/Darwinists/liberals she's so clever that my sides ache from laughing. I still can't look at a picture of John Edwards without thinking of her name for him: 'Silky Pony'.

I have all of Coulter's books, paper and electronic (so I can always have her insights close). Coulter has more wisdom in one of her neurons than P.Z. Myers and his Pharyngula inmates have collectively in their telencephalons and diencephalons (I know, I know, that implies a materialist reduction of the mind. It's a metaphor).

Read that and consider the caliber of a person who actually believes anything like that. Rational Wiki quotes Scopie’s Law as “In any discussion involving science or medicine, citing Whale.to as a credible source loses you the argument immediately ...and gets you laughed out of the room.” I’d like to propose a new law – call it Skeptico’s Law, or Argumentum ad Coultarium if you prefer: “In any discussion, citing Ann Coulter as a credible source loses you the argument immediately ...and gets you laughed out of the room.” It would certainly save you a lot of time.

Stanislaw Burzynski - Another Bullying Quack

You know the story. Stanislaw Burzynski is a doctor in Texas who claims to be able to treat and cure many cancers with “antineoplaston therapy.” Except there is no evidence that he can. When a skeptical blogger wrote about this, pointing out the total lack of evidence for these claims, and the huge sums of money being asked of desperate people wanting to try the therapy, instead of responding with the evidence that his treatment really does work, the bullying quack (or technically a pretend-lawyer claiming to represent him) issued threats to sue anyone who does not immediately remove their posts from the intertubes. Hilarity ensued.

Here are a few recent posts from the best and brightest, summarizing the situation.

1. What kicked it all off: The Quackometer on the false hope of the Stanislaw Burzynski Clinic antineoplaston therapy for cancer.
2. This was followed by threats by one Marc Stephens, a not-lawyer representing the Stanislaw Burzynski Clinic antineoplaston therapy for cancer.
3. Orac writes about the threats, and says The Stanislaw Burzynski Clinic antineoplaston therapy for cancer is rank pseudoscience.
4. Rhys Morgan, a 17 year old Welsh blogger, wrote about the Stanislaw Burzynski Clinic antineoplaston therapy for cancer and called Stanislaw Burzynski a quack and a fraud.
5. The blogger referred to above then received threats from the same Marc Stephens, the not-lawyer for the Stanislaw Burzynski Clinic antineoplaston therapy for cancer.
6. The Quackometer writes about how the Stanislaw Burzynski Clinic antineoplaston therapy for cancer threatened the 17 year old blogger. He comments, “It is just likely that at 17 years of age, Rhys Morgan has already saved more lives by simply speaking out than Burzynski has in three decades with his fixation on his “antineoplastons.”
7. Orac writes about these additional threats from the not-lawyer representing the Stanislaw Burzynski Clinic antineoplaston therapy for cancer, and comments “Here's a chance for Dr. Burzynski to prove that he is, as he claims, a man of science. After all, sending an pit poodle like Mr. Stephens out to harass and threaten anyone who criticizes him is not the act of someone who is confident in the science backing his cancer treatment. Sending legal threats to a teenager for having criticized the pseudoscience of antineoplastons, as Stephens has done, is not the act of someone who has the evidence to back him up.”
8. Peter Bowditch of The Millenium Project also posts the threats from the Stanislaw Burzynski Clinic antineoplaston therapy for cancer. He writes, “One of the people attacked in the email, Dr Saul Green, can't defend himself because he died in 2007, but since when has recognition of facts ever bothered anyone associated with Burzynski.”
9. PAL asks is the Stanislaw Burzynski Clinic antineoplaston therapy for cancer threatening critics? He writes, “The first decade of the 21th century does not appear to have been a good one for Burzynski, at least as a legitimate cancer researcher. As is usual with people confronted by their own failures, they or their proxies may lash out.”
10. PAL also asks if the Stanislaw Burzynski Clinic antineoplaston therapy for cancer can do what it claims.  He concludes, “There is nothing on his own website that doesn’t make me uncomfortable.  As far as I can tell from my own reading, there is no public database of his results in treating cancer.  There is no way to verify the hyperbolic claims made by his supporters.  As a physician, I would advise any patient of mine to steer clear of this man.”
11. Steven Novella writes about the Stanislaw Burzynski Clinic antineoplaston therapy for cancer and concludes “Burzynski’s claims are not credible. His behavior is very atypical, and in my opinion is unethical, with all the red flags for cancer quackery. Potential patients and their families should be aware of these facts and be very suspicious of the Burzynski clinic.”
12. Phil Plait writes about the Stanislaw Burzynski Clinic antineoplaston therapy for cancer, pointing out that “according to the National Cancer Institute, “No randomized, controlled trials showing the effectiveness of antineoplastons have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.” That’s a bad sign.”
13. Even PZ gets in on the story about the Stanislaw Burzynski Clinic antineoplaston therapy for cancer, that he calls the domain of scoundrels and quacks.
14. As does Ophelia (writing about the Stanislaw Burzynski Clinic antineoplaston therapy for cancer).
15. Majikthyse writes about the clinical trials for sale by the Stanislaw Burzynski Clinic antineoplaston therapy for cancer.
16. Thanks to Ophelia I discover that Josephine Jones has a list of posts on the Stanislaw Burzynski Clinic antineoplaston therapy for cancer, which at least saves me from any more of this repetition. 76 links – I’m exhausted at 16. Josephine, I don’t know how you do it.

John Haught - Where's The Tea?

John Haught relented and allowed the release of the video of his debate with Jerry Coyne: Science and Religion: Are They Compatible? (Spoiler: Haught says yes; Jerry no.) This was only after Coyne allowed Haught to post this complaint. Haught’s initial refusal, and his lengthy complaint got me to do one thing I rarely do, namely watch an hour and a half long (with questions) video of a debate. Having watched it, I can say that Haught’s complaint directed at Coyne:

…you used the event primarily to launch a sneering and condescending ad hominem.

…is entirely without merit. I watched the whole thing and there was no ad hominem – Jerry Coyne attacked Haught’s arguments only. Haught needs to learn the meaning of ad hominem.

Haught also accused Coyne of misrepresenting Haught’s views, of taking them out of context:

You grossly distorted every quotation you used, and then you coated over your [mis]understanding of these statements with your own uncritical creationist and literalist set of assumptions about the Bible and theology.

The burden of proof is with those making the positive claim, so if Haught wants to claim that Coyne took his quotes out of context, it is up to Haught to show, in context, what the quotes actually meant and that this was different from the way Coyne represented them. In fact, I challenge Haught to take just one quote that Coyne used incorrectly, and explain what it meant, in context. Just one will do. As far as I know, he hasn’t done this anywhere (if anyone wants to post a link to where he has done this, please do). Until he does, we are justified in dismissing this claim without evidence, just as it was asserted without evidence.

There is one part of Haught’s talk that I wanted to examine. Haught is claiming that science and religion are compatible, it’s just that religion has access to some additional “layers” that science can’t access. To explain this, he uses a metaphor of a teapot boiling. You can watch him talking about this in the video, but I found a transcript of Haught’s testimony at the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial transcript where he makes the exact same argument, so to save transcribing the video I’m just going to quote that:

I think most of the issues in science and religion discussions, most of the confusion that occurs happens because we fail to distinguish different levels of explanation. And so what I advocate is layered or -- layered explanation or explanatory pluralism, according to which almost every phenomenon in our experience can be explained at a plurality of levels.

And a simple example would be a teapot. Suppose a teapot is boiling on your stove and someone comes into the room and says, explain to me why that's boiling. Well, one explanation would be it's boiling because the water molecules are moving around excitedly and the liquid state is being transformed into gas.

But at the same time you could just as easily have answered that question by saying, it's boiling because my wife turned the gas on. Or you could also answer that same question by saying it's boiling because I want tea.

All three answers are right, but they don't conflict with each other because they're working at different levels. Science works at one level of investigation, religion at another. And it would be a mistake to say that the teapot is boiling because I turned the gas on rather than because the molecules are moving around. It would be a mistake to say the teapot is boiling because of molecular movement rather than because I want tea. No, you can have a plurality of levels of explanation. But the problems occur when one assumes that there's only one level.

He’s saying that by analogy, “the water molecules are moving around excitedly…” is the scientific explanation while “I want tea” is the religious type of explanation: they’re different but not incompatible, and science can’t provide the latter explanation. The problem for Haught is that his metaphor is self-refuting. Science can tell us about water molecules vibrating, but it can also tell us if the kettle is on because someone wants tea. For example, we could observe the kettle and see if someone pours the boiling water into a teapot and makes tea. We can also check to see of someone drinks the tea or if they just pour it down the sink. In other words, “I want tea” is testable, so it is a scientific explanation. A huge flaw in Haught’s analogy is we know tea exists! Haught still has to show that there are religious explanations for things that are both (a) correct and (b) different from anything science or secular reasoning provides. In other words, Haught needs to show us that the “tea” in his analogy exists. Where’s the tea? Haught’s metaphor may demonstrate that such explanations could exist, but he has given us no reason to suppose that they do.

Jerry also pointed this error out in the Q&A (starting at time 15:05), stating that Haught “hasn’t given us a single bit of evidence” that  these other layers exist. So Coyne did respond to points that Haught made, despite Haught’s claim that he didn’t. So as as an argument it fails, and as a complaint that Coyne didn’t respond, it fails.  And yet, this seems to Haught’s main argument. One wonders which debate Haught was at.

There is just one other aspect of Haught’s talk that I want to deal with. This starts a couple of minutes into the Q&A session, and is so wrong that I transcribed the whole thing. He labels Coyne’s approach as “scientism” and criticizes it like this:

Scientism is the belief, the belief (I emphasize that term) that science is the only road for truth. Science says take nothing on faith as you just heard Jerry say, but it takes faith to accept scientism. Therefore, we shouldn’t accept scientism. The logic of this is so unsurpassably watertight that really once you say that you dismantle the intellectual credibility of everything that Jerry just said.

For someone who criticizes Coyne for not fully understanding his opponent’s position and for getting all his knowledge from creationist websites, Haught sure seems to like criticizing a distorted version of Coyne’s position – a simplistic version that is frequently presented on creationist websites. I don’t know if Coyne ever said that science is the only road to truth – I doubt it, and I certainly don’t think he said so in this debate. I’m pretty sure that Coyne’s position (and mine) is that science has proved to be the most reliable method we know for evaluating claims and figuring out how the universe works. And we do have evidence for that. (How does Haught think we can all watch him on our computers at home? Did the technology for this come from something other than science? Obviously not.) If Haught is claiming that there is a better method, it is up to him to justify that claim. Haught needs to explain his different method for evaluating claims, and provide evidence that it does indeed provide additional, correct information not available to science. If he cannot do this then this is just a fallacious and vacuous appeal to other ways of knowing. And the logic of this is so unsurpassably watertight that unless Haught can explain his other way of knowing (and show that it really provides new, different and correct information) Haught has dismantled the intellectual credibility of everything he just said.

Other reviews of the debate

Choice in Dying has a post Q&A: Haught on God: Bitter, Impolite and Wrong, where he says many of the things I have been saying, only longer.

Baseline Killer Guilty / Allison Dubois Wrong And Useless

After a five-month trial, and seven days of jury deliberation, Mark Goudeau was convicted yesterday in 68 out of 72 counts including all nine “Baseline Killer” murders in Phoenix, AZ. He was caught in December 2006 through the use of DNA evidence.

Also residing in Phoenix, AZ is pretend psychic (some redundancy there – all psychics are pretend) Allison Dubois, of the TV series “Medium” (and more recently “Housewives of Beverly Hills”) fame. Of course Allison, back before Goudeau was caught, couldn’t resist getting in on the act, playing the usual guessing games in the hope that her guesses would be close to the actual person they would eventually catch. As I wrote in July 2006 in Medium guesses about serial killer, Dubois’s guesses were generic, just playing the odds and utterly useless in helping the police catch the killer. Five months later they caught Goudeau, and as I wrote in Allison Dubois no help in catching killer, her guesses also turned out to be totally wrong. Allison Dubois told dumb reporter Bert Sass in July 2006 that the Baseline Killer:

• Is not from Arizona
• Is ready to bolt.. “I would look in California”
• Didn't have a father in his household growing up
• Had a mother he didn't respect but that he, on a strange level, loved and is a little protective of when somebody says something about his mother. It's a love-hate which he has for her…
• Tucks his long hair up in his hat to hide it
• Was in and out of juvenile detention as he was growing up

All completely wrong. (Read Allison Dubois no help in catching killer for the details.)

It is true that an earlier composite police sketch of a possible suspect showed a man with a hat and long hair. But I’m sure Allison didn’t see the newspaper reports of that, oh no.

Also, although Dubois was apparently able to see Goudeau’s non-existent juvenile detention, she completely missed the fact that he had spent 13 years in adult jail, in trouble for a variety of things including charges of kidnapping, sexual assault and aggravated assault in the beating of a woman – information that might have been useful to the police in chasing down a killer/rapist. Assuming you knew such things using your awesome psychic powers.

It is clear we can now say with extreme certitude that Allison Dubois was totally wrong and completely useless in capturing this high profile killer who terrorized her home town for over a year before he was caught.

Now of course, I know that prosecutors sometimes get the wrong person and that innocent people are occasionally found guilty. (And some still claim he is innocent.) But, the thing is, I’ve watched several episodes of that dreary “Medium” TV program that is supposed to be based on Dubois’s actual life, and one thing that happens on the TV show is that if the cops have the wrong person, the TV “Allison Dubois” provides accurate information so that the real culprit is caught and the innocent person freed. In fact, that happens regularly. If Goudeau really were innocent, now would be the time for the real Allison Dubois to lead police to the real killer. But of course, she won’t as she has no such abilities. Her website has no mention of either Goudeau or the Baseline Killings, despite her eagerness to be quoted before Goudeau was caught. And, fortunately, police don’t pay any attention to her anyway, despite what she claims. What a waste of space she is.

More on Allison's awesome psychic abilities

Skeptico on Allison Dubois:

Allison Dubois Reads Newspaper, Tells Police

Medium guesses about serial killer

Allison Dubois no help in catching killer

A walking, camera-strutting, fake-ghost-talking joke

Secretary to the dead

Burden of proof

The Two Percent Company on Allison Dubois

Allison Dubois Week

Allison DuBois - Even More of a Hypocrite Than Previously Thought

Polar Opposites

The Very Confused JB Handley

I haven’t posted for a while, I know – taking a bit of a break. But I had to make one quick post on Handley’s January 5 interview with CNN’s Parker / Spitzer. Click on the video to see the interview (it’s short) or click here for a transcript.

Before I start with what Handley said, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised and quite impressed by how Parker and especially Spitzer went about the interview. None of the usual false equivalence, “telling both sides”, they allowed Handley his say but pointedly challenged him on the facts. Get a load of this exchange:

Spitzer: I say this with overwhelming sympathy for you and for your son, but just listening to you I’ve got to ask the question: there isn’t a single study, and we’ve looked at all the science, that says there’s any causal link between these vaccines and autism. And I know you are saying there is

JBH: But that’s not true

Spitzer: there isn’t a study that disproves it, but there’s no affirmative causal link there. And so don’t don’t you think it would make more sense to look at other potential potential causative factors?

Wow – I’ve never seen this Parker/Spitzer show but perhaps I’ll start to watch now.

But on to Handley. You’ll remember I wrote last Ferbuary in The Two J.B. Handleys, how Handley had changed his story about how quickly after the vaccine shots, the kids regressed into autism. On Handley’s own Age of Autism blog he wrote:

It is exceptionally rare that I hear the story, “my son was 100% fine, and at 2 years old after one vaccine appointment he lost everything.” I have heard that story, but very rarely.

But in the January 5, 2011 interview he says:

I have personally talked to about a thousand parents who all report that their children where that regression took place immediately following a vaccine appointment.

So it’s exceptionally rare but he has personally talked to about a thousand parents who report it true. Hum. I guess when your claims get trashed so many times that you forgot where you moved the goalposts to, you occasionally get confused and contradict yourself.

Jon Stewart Epic FAIL

The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart is generally a very good interviewer, often asking his political guests some of the more difficult questions while remaining courteous and without making up straw man positions. He often asks the questions (and follow up questions) that many real journalists should be asking, and he clearly demonstrates intelligence and the ability to think on his feet and react to what his interviewees are saying. After watching him interview someone called Marilynne Robinson on The Daily Show Thursday (interview starts at 14.33 in) I have to say that in future he should stick to politics and leave science and/or religion alone.

Robinson apparently has a Ph.D. in English and a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and has just released a book called Absence of Mind.  According to Amazon’s product description:

Absence of Mind challenges postmodern atheists who crusade against religion under the banner of science. In Robinson’s view, scientific reasoning does not denote a sense of logical infallibility, as thinkers like Richard Dawkins might suggest.

Already you know you are hearing from someone who doesn’t understand even the basics of that which she seeks to criticize, since science does not claim anything even close to “logical infallibility,” it merely claims to be the most reliable method of investigating reality.  (Once the word “infallibility” is used by someone criticizing science, you know straight off that they will try to conflate science and religion. Only religion claims infallibility.) Of course, that’s just flap copy, but after listening to Robinson’s dopey arguments on Thursday I would suggest that in future she stick to writing fiction and leave any expose of the faults with science to someone who knows what they are talking about.

Robinson starts off the interview with an unsupported assertion (all transcriptions by me from the teevee):

ROBINSON: …people on one side of the argument have claimed the authority of science but they have not construed an argument that actually satisfies the standards of science.

A bold claim. One you might expect her to justify using (say) an argument that actually satisfies the standards of science. Let’s see how she does:

ROBINSON: I don’t think frankly that it’s scientific to proceed from the study of ants to a conclusion about the nature of the cosmos.

And a million scientists went, “huh?”  At this point, Stewart should have asked her WTF she was talking about (he actually just nodded and said “Right”), because I had no clue.  Robinson never explained what she meant either. Proceeding “from the study of ants to a conclusion about the nature of the cosmos”?  If anyone reading this has any idea what she was babbling about, please let me know in the comments.

STEWART: Who do you think is more afraid: do you think science fears religion more than religion fears science, or is there equal mistrust to go around?

The correct answer is that religion fears science – because science, bit by bit, has proved the various claims of religion to be totally wrong. Of course scientists sometimes fear the political power of the religious to muzzle science, to prevent the teaching of science where it conflicts with religious ideas. But science certainly doesn’t fear religion itself.

That would have been the correct answer. Not Robinson’s answer though, which was:

ROBINSON: I’m really not sure about the nature of the controversy because I know lots of religious people that [sic] love science and I know lots of scientists who seem to be completely at ease with religion. It’s the quality of science and the quality of religion that determines the nature of the conversation.

(Sigh.) It is disappointing to hear from supposedly intelligent people, arguments that have been refuted again and again. And for someone who is claiming to challenge postmodern atheists (whoever they are), you would think she could have first spend ten minutes reading a couple of atheist blogs where this question has been patiently answered again and again. I’ll try one more time. Yes, we know that some scientists can be religious. That is because human beings are very good at rationalizing incompatible information. It does not alter the fact that science has proven many of the claims of numerous religions to be completely wrong, which means that science and religion are in many instances, incompatible. Why is that so hard to understand?

Here’s where Stewart goes off the rails:

STEWART: I’ve always been fascinated that the more you delve into science, the more it appears to rely on faith. They start to speak about the universe as if, well there’s “most of the universe is anti matter [sic],” oh really, where’s that? “Well, you can’t see it.”  Well, where is it? “It’s there.” Well, can you measure it?  “We’re working on it.”

It’s a very similar argument to someone who would say God created everything.  Well where is he? “Well, he’s there.” And I’m always struck by the similarity of the arguments at their core.

Wrong Jon, just wrong. The arguments may appear similar superficially, but at their core they are fundamentally different.  (I’m assuming Stewart meant dark matter, not anti matter since “most of the universe” is actually dark matter and dark energy, not anti matter.)

Superficially, it may appear that “God exists” is similar to “dark matter exists” – superficially in that you can’t see either. But is that really the standard we should be applying when evaluating scientific claims? We can’t see something, so it’s faith? I guess Stewart's show must be based on faith too then, since I can’t see the radio waves hitting my satellite dish either.

Examining this less superficially, “at their core,” why do scientists say that dark matter exists? Well, dark matter was initially hypothesized to explain why the rotational speed of galaxies was faster than expected, given the mass of visible matter in the galaxies. Then, having hypothesized dark matter, additional ways of testing this hypothesis were devised – for example, gravitational lensing.  Dark Matter Exists. Dark matter has been tested, and so far it has passed the tests. Furthermore, if some different scientists in the future find evidence that contradicts dark matter, or if they come up with a better explanation for the observations than dark matter, the new explanation will be adopted and dark matter abandoned.

Those are the differences between science and faith, differences that Stewart has apparently not noticed in his extensive delving into science. Science is based on observation of the real universe, confirmed or dis confirmed by experiment, and always subject to revision when better data comes along. Religion is based on the authority of old texts, is resistant to dis-confirmation, and in many cases stubbornly refuses to change even when proven to be completely wrong. But yeah, both God and dark matter are invisible so they both rely on faith. Good insight there Jon.

STEWART: Is it that the human mind has created these two disciplines, each one sort of equally at the mercy of our limitations?

No, the problem is that one discipline is based on reality while the other is not, and yet the one not based on reality is given undeserved respect and freedom from criticism.

ROBINSON: I think it’s also true that until quite recently many great scientists such as Isaac Newton and so on were profoundly religious people.

Again – yes we know. This doesn’t mean that science and religion are compatible. Newton was an alchemist as well. He was wrong about that too.

ROBINSON: …we need the best insights from science and the best insights from religion.

What insights can we get from religion?  Name one – name one insight that we couldn’t get without religion.

ROBINSON: The gladiators from both sides are I think inferior representatives of both sides, and that’s where the conflict comes from.

No, the conflict comes from the fact that many religious claims have been proven by science to be totally wrong, and yet many religious people refuse to accept this fact, insisting that their religious fantasies be given equal (or even superior) credence to science.  Although I do agree that Stewart and Robinson are both inferior representatives in this subject.  “Absence of Mind” – a good description of how both Stewart and Robinson arrived at their arguments. Robinson comes over as a profoundly stupid person – one who has examined this subject superficially and thinks she has something profound to say, but who in reality is merely parroting arguments that would be ripped apart in minutes in the comments section of any one of a thousand atheist blogs.

One more point – I don’t buy the argument that Stewart is just a comedian and so shouldn’t be held to account. He clearly can be a tough interviewer when it suits him: just see his interviews with Bill Kristol, Ron Paul or any number of right wing politicians.  He wasn’t joking when he said “the more you delve into science, the more it appears to rely on faith,” he was making a serious point.