Opting out of tribalism

Well, it's 2016, and given that this is an election year, seeing the turn of the calendar page makes me want to crawl in a hole and pull a blankie over my head until the second week of November.

It's not the political advertisements, nor the signs that spring up like fungus after a summer rain all along the roadside.  Those are bad enough, of course.  What I hate most of all about election years is the nasty vitriol a lot of people spew not only at candidates they don't like, but at the slice of the citizenry who support the opposite political views.

Let me give you an example, in the form of something a cousin of mine posted yesterday on Facebook:

Now, let me say right up front that my cousin posted this as a bad example, and followed it up with the following trenchant comment:

Almost all the people I know want mostly the same thing and care about the same things.  In fact, unless you asked, you wouldn't know what political party they belonged to. It's the stereotype that people are angry with, yet the individual people living their daily lives are very very rarely the stereotypical enemy we are told they are.

Which is it exactly.  Any time you paint your own tribe as the honorable and courageous and compassionate and rational ones, and the other tribe as the evil and devious and cowardly and two-faced ones, you are subscribing to a lie that would be shown up for what it is if you simply took the time to talk to a few of the people you're tarring with that brush.

But can't you find liberals who are this determined to foist beliefs on everyone?  Who, for example, are vegans and would like to ban all meat products?  Sure you can.  In fact, I know one.

One.  Out of all of the liberals I know, I know one who is so off the beam about the issue that she would like nothing better than to make sure no one ever eats meat.  And the conservatives I know?  I know one or two who are irrational, closed-minded xenophobes.  But by far, the majority of the people on both sides of the aisle just want what everyone wants -- a good job, a secure home, a safe place to raise children.  We may disagree on how to achieve those goals, but the number on either side who want to get there by shutting down all dissent by any means are (fortunately) few in number.

So I'm going to make a plea with all of you, whether you are conservative, liberal, or completely apolitical.  Stop posting blind rhetoric, because it is factually incorrect nearly 100% of the time.  Take the time to listen to people you disagree with.  Chances are, you'll find they're just as human as you are, even if you don't see eye to eye on the issues.  Stop demonizing people who belong to a different political party, ethnic group, or religion.  Those kind of blanket statements are not only unfair, they serve as a road block to thinking.  The kind of foolishness exemplified by the post from my cousin accomplishes nothing but dividing us, stopping dialogue and further fracturing the country along ideological lines.

I'd like to ask each of you to commit  for the next eleven months to backing off on the fist-shaking and saber-rattling, and (especially) think about what you post, forward, or "like" on social media.  Just remember what Oliver Wendell Holmes said: "No generalization is worth a damn.  Including this one."

The year in review

So it's the last day of 2015, and we here at Skeptophilia HQ would like to wish you all a very happy 2016.  This has been a year of milestones, including hitting 1.5 million lifetime hits (many thanks to my loyal readers for that) and seeing my first two novels published in paperback (Kill Switch and Lock & Key, available at fine bookstores everywhere, not to mention Amazon, links provided in the right sidebar, hint-hint).

I thought it might be entertaining to take a look back at some of the stories we've covered this year, and perhaps we'll be able to glean some kind of hopeful trend that the world overall is becoming less likely to fall for silly nonsense as time goes on.  So on this New Year's Eve, sit back and let's take a trip back in time to look at...

...2015 in review.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

We started off January with a bang, with a claim by Jim Stone of the site Environmental Terrorism that we shouldn't get vaccinated, because the government is secretly putting nanobots in vaccines that will have the effect of eating your brain and making you not believe in god.  Apparently the people behind all of this are, unsurprisingly, the Jews, who were implicated because the nanobots, which look suspiciously like bacteriophage viruses, are shaped a little like a Star of David.  If my own experience counts for anything, I had a flu shot this year, and have not noticed any particular uptick in my atheism, nor have I had any strange cravings for matzoh balls or gefilte fish.  But I'm certainly keeping an eye on it.

In February, we had another in the long series of claims that President Obama is the Antichrist, and secretly wants to convert all Americans to Islam, take away all of our guns, and release various disease-causing microorganisms into the American citizenry to cause havoc and despair.  (No word on whether one of those was the Jewish zombie nanobots we reported on in January.)  What impresses me about all of this is that if Obama is an evil arch-villain, he's a really bad one, because (1) none of the awful things his detractors have suggested he was up to have actually happened, and (2) if you look around you, the economy has actually improved; gas prices, the deficit, and unemployment are down; and in general, the country doesn't seem any worse off than it was seven years ago when he was elected.  However, it's not like the people who make these claims are doing so because of logic and hard evidence, so the good economic news will probably be cast as a smokescreen by Obama to distract us from all of the evil Antichrist activities he's up to.  You know how that goes.

March began with a viral post claiming that until recently, humans were unable to see the color blue, and the reason is that ancient languages had no word for "blue."  Put another way, if you don't have a word for something, you can't see it.  This claim fails on two counts -- first, that it doesn't square with the physiology of color perception (in fact, the retina has cones that have a peak absorption in the blue region of the spectrum), and second, there are plenty of ancient languages that have words for "blue." But the fact that it's clearly wrong didn't discourage people from reposting it all over the place, often with delighted comments like, "Wow!  I didn't know this!  This is so cool!", lo unto this very day.

In April, some researchers in Sweden showed us once again how easy our perceptual and cognitive systems are easy to fool with a clever experiment that convinced participants that their bodies had become invisible.  Besides the interesting light it sheds on (and right through, in fact) how our brains perceive the world, the experiment is being hailed as the first step in developing sensurround virtual reality.  Holodeck, here we come.

May brought us a baffling story about a British doctor who is knocking himself out writing papers trying to explain homeopathy using quantum mechanics.  The particular paper linked in the post is kind of a must-read, given that no one (to my knowledge) has ever tried to apply the Schrödinger wave equation to chakras before, and also because it has the unforgettable line, "the safest treatment strategy might be for the practitioner to proceed via gradual removal of the symptoms."  Which I have to agree with.  Having doctors proceed by making the patients' symptoms worse is seldom advisable.

In June we had an international incident in which a group of tourists from Canada and various countries in Europe decided to climb Mount Kinabalu in the province of Sabah in Malaysia, and celebrated their reaching the top by taking off all of their clothes for some naked selfies.  The whole episode evidently angered the gods, who responded by causing an earthquake five days later that killed eleven people.  The fact that none of the victims were the people who had gotten naked on the mountaintop didn't stop local officials from attributing the earthquake to god's wrath, so they rounded the tourists up and threw them in jail.  It took weeks and lots of intergovernmental wrangling to get them all released.  So just remember, if you're in an earthquake-prone region: the gods do not want to see your naughty bits, and if they are forced to look they will respond by smiting the absolute shit out of someone else.

In July we had the start of the scary government activity called Jade Helm 15, which was a highly secret and covert operation designed to overthrow the government of Texas and result in the declaration of martial law and the guillotining of innocent civilians, despite the fact that the military leaders who were in charge had multiple public briefings about it beforehand, with question-and-answer sessions and media releases.  That's how secret and covert Jade Helm 15 was.  And of course, the citizen-militia-types decided that they would turn out to keep an eye on the proceedings, and intervene if necessary, which didn't turn out to be necessary because Jade Helm 15 apparently was exactly what the military leaders said it was, a training operation for ground troops.  But this last in a long line of failed predictions won't stop the conspiracy theorists from deciding that the next time it'll be martial law for real, cross our hearts and hope to die.

Speaking of failed predictions, August saw the publication of next year's Farmer's Almanac, which predicted that we here in the Northeast were going to have a horribly cold, snowy winter.  Apparently, no one bothered to tell the Weather Gods this, because so far, we've hardly had any sub-freezing temperatures, and in fact it hit 70 F on Christmas Eve right here in upstate New York, a.k.a. the Frozen Tundra.  But just like with the Jade Helm conspiracy theorists, I doubt that'll have much effect on the true believers.  I'll make a prediction of my own, which is that Almanac sales next year will be just as high as this year, despite the fact that their forecast basically sucks.

In September we had another viral claim, this one even stupider than the idea that the ancients couldn't see the color blue; that if you eat more than six bananas, you'll die.  This one not only is wildly wrong, it's known where the claim started -- British comedian Karl Pilkington, who had included it in one of his standup routines.  But because comedians are considered more credible sources on dietary information than nutritionists, Death by Banana Overdose made it into mainstream media -- including the BBC.

October finally brought us some good news, when an anti-vaxxer organization called Safe Minds contributed $250,000 to fund a study of the connection between vaccines and autism, and the study turned up... no connection.  Surprise, surprise.  Once again illustrating the accuracy of Neil deGrasse Tyson's quote that "The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it."

November gave us a quick way to see if you're being targeted by the Illuminati; type your name into a Microsoft Word document, and see if the spellcheck function underlines it in red.  Red underline = too bad, you're scheduled to be terminated.  Which is good news for the John Smiths of the world, and not such good news for the Zbigniew Mstislavitches.  Maybe the Illuminati have something against people with odd names, I dunno.  In any case, neither my first, middle, nor last name got flagged, which is kind of strange given how much I ridicule the Illuminati.  You'd think that if they'd red-underline anyone, it'd be me.

In December, yet another worldwide cataclysm failed to show, this time in the form of the Christmas Eve Death Asteroid.  I don't know about you, but I'm getting sick and tired of these unreliable apocalypses.  If there's to be death and carnage and destruction, I want it at least to show up when it's scheduled.  I'm tired of having my last fling of sin and debauchery, and then nothing happens, and I have to go back to work all tired and hungover and disappointed.

So okay, maybe this year hasn't shown any progress toward decreasing silliness.  I suppose on the one hand, I should be glad, because such nonsense is what keeps Skeptophilia in business.  Also, I'm firmly of the opinion that you can't be deadly serious all of the time, and it's a good thing that periodically we're able to have a hearty laugh at how completely weird humans are.

In any case, allow me to renew my wishes that you have a wonderful New Year's Eve, and a happy and productive 2016 to come.  See you all next year!

A case of the willies

The topic for today's post comes from a loyal reader of Skeptophilia via a source I don't even look at any more, namely The Daily Mail Fail.

I avoid sources like this for the most part for two reasons -- first, they're low-hanging fruit, as skeptic-fodder goes, because whatever actual information they include is usually sensationalized, exaggerated, or outright wrong.  Second, I have no particular desire to send readers to those sites and boost their hit-counters.  They get enough ad revenue from their regular readers as it is; I would really rather not add to it.

So when a frequent contributor of topics for this blog sent me the link, I was reluctant to click on it, much less write about it.  But when I read the title of the article, I just couldn't help myself.

Because the title is, "God Made Eve from Adam's Penis, Not His Rib, Claims Religious Academic."

The gist of the story is that Ziony Zevit, professor of biblical studies at American Jewish University in BelAir, California, has come up with the idea that the Hebrew word "tsela" -- ordinarily translated as "rib" in the creation story -- instead "refers to limbs sticking out sideways from an upright human body."

So why the penis?  Why not, for example, the arm, which in most guys sticks out way more sideways than our penises do?  Two reasons, says Professor Zevit:  first, the number of bones in the arms and legs, not to mention the number of ribs, is the same in men and women, and you'd expect men to have one less bone somewhere if god had snitched one of 'em to make Eve.  Second, humans are among the few mammals that lack a baculum, a bone that reinforces the penis, which is why dogs (for example) so seldom need Viagra.

So anyhow.  After I recovered from nearly injuring myself laughing over this, I thought, "Okay, let me check my sources, here.  It is, after all, The Daily Fail.  They probably are misrepresenting Professor Zevit, or possibly even making it all up."

Hugo van der Goes, The Fall of Adam (1470) [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

But even stopped clocks are right twice a day, as my dad used to say.  This time The Daily Fail actually got it right.  Zevit did indeed make that claim, pretty much as outlined above, and his entire argument (if I can dignify it by that term) appeared in the September/October issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

If you're amused so far, wait until you hear the reaction from the readers of the journal.

"I write to express my disappointment with your magazine. I wish to cancel my subscription," wrote Sue Glaze of Maryland.  'That is plainly not a Bible teaching. I do not need and will not read articles that damage my faith or attempts to cause me to doubt what I know is the truth from the Bible."

Another reader, Reverend Randall Krabill, was equally outraged.  "How does Ziony Zevit's article have anything to do with Biblical archaeology?  I have never purchased a tabloid magazine in my life -- and I have no intention of ever doing so.  I certainly didn't realize that was what I was doing when I subscribed to BAR."

Another pastor, Don Brubacher agreed, calling the claim "outlandish," and supporting his opinion by going right to the top.  "As Jesus scathingly said: 'You blind guides! You strain out a gnat and swallow a camel.' (Matthew 23:24)."

This last comment is even funnier when you realize that people like Brubacher and his ilk have no problem accepting talking snakes, or a 600-year-old Israeli man rescuing kangaroos from Australia prior to a worldwide flood, but there is no way they'll accept that god made women from a piece of Adam's willy.

Of course, pretty soon the other biblical academics started to weigh in, and most of them were equally unimpressed.  Alan Hooker, a blogger on the topic of the Old Testament, pointed out a possible problem with Zevit's claim:

Firstly, the Hebrew text of Genesis 2:21 does not support the authors’ thesis. It reads, “Then Yahweh of the gods caused a trance to fall upon the man (Adam), and while he slept, he took ahat missalotayv…”  The phrase ahat (lit. “one of”) missalotayv (“from his tselas”) implies that whatever Yahweh took from man, there was more than one of them to begin with.  The construct form of ahad (one) coupled with the plural of tsela lends more weight to the traditional idea that this is a rib bone, and not the baculum.

Can't argue with that.  Most guys are equipped with only one wang, not to mention zero wang-bones (to use the technical terminology).  So Hooker may be on to something, there.

Of course, given that I am starting from the standpoint of not believing any of it, the whole argument strikes me as ridiculous.  They're taking a Bronze Age fairy tale, and trying to use scientific evidence to sort out how the fairy tale can actually be true.  But as usual, that leaves the most mystifying thing of all unsolved -- how, if Eve was made from any part of Adam, she (and every other woman since then) has two X chromosomes, while Adam presumably had an X and a Y.

Oh, wait.  "God works in mysterious ways."  Never mind.

So anyhow, that's today's episode of "How Many Angels Can Dance on the Head of a Pin?"  The whole thing leaves me with the general feeling anyone participating on either the pro-rib or pro-penis side of the argument is, in a word, insane.  Me, I'm done thinking about it, and in fact I think I need to go read some Richard Dawkins just to restore order to the universe.

Wagering everything we've got

Prior to the 20th century, lung cancer and emphysema were rare diseases.  When someone contracted either of these diseases, doctors took notice, simply because they occurred so infrequently.  But with the turn of the 20th century came the rise of tobacco consumption, and the formation of the big tobacco companies -- R. J. Reynolds, Lorillard, and Philip Morris -- who cashed in on the fad, and quickly rose to be formidable forces in the marketplace.

Doctors soon noticed the uptick in lung cancer rates, and it wasn't long before they figured out the strongest predictor of lung cancer occurrence.  Way back in 1939, Franz Hermann Müller of Cologne Hospital published a study of 86 lung cancer patients and a similar number of cancer-free controls, and found that the cancer sufferers were far more likely to have smoked than the cancer-free individuals did.

And of course, that information eventually found its way to the higher-ups in the tobacco industry.  As Robert Proctor points out in his paper "The History of the Discovery of the Cigarette-Lung Cancer Link: Evidentiary Traditions, Corporate Denial, Global Toll," it is clear from the documents that the people in charge of Big Tobacco knew about the connection -- but suppressed the evidence, or lied about it outright.  Proctor writes:

Tobacco industry insiders by the mid 1950s clearly knew their product was dangerous.  In December of 1953, when Hill and Knowlton were exploring how to respond to the uproar surrounding the publication of carcinogens in cigarette smoke, one tobacco company research director commented in a confidential interview: ‘Boy! Wouldn't it be wonderful if our company was first to produce a cancer-free cigarette.  What we could do to competition!’  Another remarked on how fortunate it was ‘for us’ (ie, for cigarette manufacturers) that smokers were engaging in ‘a habit they can't break’.  The mid-1950s cancer consensus was clearly (albeit privately) shared by the companies; and the reality of addiction was also starting to be conceded—at least in internal industry documents. 

UK cigarette makers also commented on the lung cancer consensus.  Three leading scientists from British American Tobacco (BAT) visited the USA in 1958, for example, and found that with only one exception all of those consulted—including dozens of experts inside and outside the industry—believed that a cancer connection had been proved.  Alan Rodgman at Reynolds  four years later confessed that while evidence in favour of the cancer link was ‘overwhelming’, the evidence against was ‘scant’.  Helmut Wakeham at Philip Morris about this same time drew up a list of dozens of carcinogens in cigarette smoke.  None of this was made public; indeed the tobacco industry throughout this time and for decades thereafter—until the end of the millennium—refused to admit any evidence of harms from smoking.

The result?  Proctor estimates that at current worldwide cancer rates, there is a death from lung cancer every twenty seconds.  90% or more of them would not have occurred had the individual not been a smoker.

1950s pro-smoking advertisement, meant to cast doubt on the link between lung disease and cigarettes [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Appalled?  Then consider, if you will, the parallels between this situation and the current campaign of disinformation and denial being waged by petroleum companies with regards to anthropogenic climate change.

According to an investigative report done by Inside Climate News, in 1978 Exxon launched its own carbon dioxide monitoring program, after reports that scientists were looking at a connection between carbon dioxide levels and global average temperature.  Between 1979 and 1983, Exxon, Mobil, Amoco, Phillips, Texaco, Shell, Sunoco, Sohio, Standard Oil of California, and Gulf Oil formed a task force to monitor and share climate research.

And what came out of this joint effort was, at first, an acknowledgement of the problem.  In 1980, Bruce S. Bailey of Texaco made what would be today a mind-boggling statement coming from a petroleum executive: that "an overall goal of the Task Force should be to help develop ground rules for energy release of fuels and the cleanup of fuels as they relate to CO2 creation."

But they very quickly realized two things; the problem was far bigger than they'd thought, and reducing carbon dioxide release was going to be very bad for business.  Soon, the delegates from the petroleum companies were singing a far different tune.  The CO2 and Climate Change Task Force was renamed the Climate and Energy Task Force, and by 1990 they had formed the Global Climate Coalition -- a lobbying group whose sole purpose was to cast doubt on anthropogenic climate change, and to make certain that the United States government did nothing to curb fossil fuel use.

As a communication between members of the GCC, recently made public by the Inside Climate News report, put it: "Unless 'climate change' becomes a non-issue, meaning that the Kyoto proposal is defeated and there are no further initiatives to thwart the threat of climate change, there may be no moment when we can declare victory for our efforts."

As far as the scientists employed by the oil companies, they certainly knew what was going on.  One, Raymond Campion of Exxon, wrote to colleague J. T. Burgess in 1979 that "warming of the atmosphere... may be noticeable in the next twenty years," and that natural oscillations in weather patterns would "worsen the effect."  They even requested input from the scientists; in 1980 John A. Laurmann of Stanford University was asked to address the members of the GCC, and told them that "the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is projected to double by 2038, [and] would likely lead to a 2.5 degrees Celsius rise in global average temperatures with major economic consequences...  [M]odels show a 5 degrees Celsius rise by 2067, which would result in globally catastrophic effects."

Their response?  To make sure that the information never gained traction beyond the scientists themselves.  Henry Shaw, a scientist at Exxon, said that such information shouldn't become common knowledge because it "may alarm the public unjustifiably."

The result was that until the mid-1990s, most people in the United States had never heard of climate change.  It got out eventually, of course -- but rather than making the fossil fuel industry retreat in disarray, they stepped up their campaign of denial in the media, and made sure that the advisory posts on the subject of energy production and the environment were occupied by pro-industry individuals.  For example, after George W. Bush was inaugurated in 2001, he appointed Philip A. Cooney, a former lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, as chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality.

Does the phrase "fox in charge of the henhouse" come to mind?  Especially given that when Cooney resigned in 2005 -- after allegedly doctoring reports to cast doubt on scientific consensus on global climate change -- he went to work for ExxonMobil?

And this is the group of people who are still, ten years later, driving climate policy in the United States.  They are still spending millions of dollars in a disinformation campaign, still funding candidates for public office who are unwilling to take away the petroleum industry's carte blanche, and still doing whatever they can to convince us that the last ten years of record-breaking temperatures and insane weather have nothing to do with anthropogenic carbon dioxide.  Jack Gerard, the current president of the American Petroleum Institute, has said that any federal mandate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is "destructive government interference."

But eventually the "la-la-la-la-la, not listening" stance of our government toward climate scientists will be revealed as what it is -- catastrophic mismanagement by the individuals who were elected to safeguard the citizenry of the United States.  Eventually the climate itself will cast a harsh light on the past forty years of evidence suppression and outright falsehoods.  And if this year is any indication, "eventually" might be coming awfully quickly.

Because this time, we're not talking about people getting cancer because they were misled by unscrupulous tobacco companies who cared more about the profit motive than they did about either public health or the truth.  This time, the stakes are higher.

This time, we are in a game with people who have a proven record of lies, evasions, and half-truths -- and what is being gambled on is the long-term habitability of the Earth.

Parsing political correctness

Haters of political correctness have a new target, and that is the Concerned Students of USD, who are demanding that the powers-that-be at the University of San Diego remove a statue of Father Junípero Serra from campus.  Serra was an 18th century Franciscan monk who founded the first nine Catholic missions in California, in locations from San Diego to San Francisco.  Serra's detractors -- and there are many -- have identified him with the policies of colonialism, conversion, subjugation of Natives, and eradication of pre-existing cultures in favor of Spanish Catholicism.

There are a lot of people speaking up against the move, however.  Nathan Rubbelke, writer for the conservative-leaning online journal The College Fix, was clearly in favor of keeping Serra's statue where it is.  "With his settlement, he converted, baptized and educated thousands of Indians," Rubbelke writes.  [I]n a secular sense, one might see Serra’s mission as colonialism, but that a religious perspective offers a different view."

He goes on to quote USD historian Michael Gonzales, who said that it was unfair to hold Serra responsible for the destruction of the California Native society, because the majority of the deaths were caused by disease.  "While scholars can criticize Serra and the Franciscans for lacking medical training," Gonzales said, "they cannot be held accountable for failing to understand the spread of diseases and microbes."

As you might expect, the truth is more complex than that.

Junípero Serra [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

First of all, it must be pointed out that the University of San Diego is a private Roman Catholic university.  Of course the people in charge there support Serra, who just this year was elevated to sainthood by Pope Francis.  They are starting out from the standpoint that however many Natives ended up dying (for various reasons), Serra was saving their immortal souls by establishing Catholicism in the region, so on balance, he was doing god's work.  It's unsurprising that they want to celebrate the person who was one of the founders of the faith in California.

And as far as the Concerned Students of USD, didn't you notice that you were attending a Catholic school?

That said, Serra's treatment of the Natives wasn't as beneficent as Rubbelke and Gonzales would like us to believe.  A Frenchman, Jean de la Pérouse, was a visitor to the Spanish missions of the 18th century, and was appalled at the way the Natives were being treated:

Corporal punishment is inflicted on the Indians of both sexes who neglect the exercises of piety, and many sins, which are left in Europe to the divine justice, are here punished by iron and stocks.  And lastly, to complete the similtude between this and other religious communities, it must be observed, that the moment an Indian is baptised, the effect is the same as if he had pronounced a vow for life.  If he escape, to reside with his relations in the independent villages, he is summoned three times to return, and if he refuse, the missionaries apply to the governor, who sends soldiers to seize him in the midst of his family, and conduct him to the mission, where he is condemned to receive a certain number of lashes with the whip.

Individuals who escaped more than once were brought back and whipped to death.

Robert Archibald, director of the Western Heritage Center of Billings, Montana, wrote the following as the conclusion of a paper about Serra and the missions in the Journal of San Diego History:

The missions were not agents of intentional enslavement, but rather rapid and therefore violent social and cultural change.  The results were people wrenched from home, tradition and family, subjugated to an alien culture and contradictory values.  Predictably these people did not submit to such treatment voluntarily and force became a necessary concomitant.  The result in many cases was slavery in fact although not in intent.  The principle emerges that decent people whose motives as judged by their own standards are excellent, have frequently violated other people who live by different standards.

Whether you're Catholic or not, it remains to be seen whether anyone should celebrate an individual who was, at least in part, responsible for such atrocities.

There's a difference between political correctness and cultural sensitivity.  A recent article in The Atlantic, "The Coddling of the American Mind," highlights this.  The authors, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, explore how in recent years the expectation that controversial issues be treated even-handedly and with sensitivity has morphed, in many colleges, into a demand that no potentially offensive topics be broached at all:

For example, some students have called for warnings that Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart describes racial violence and that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby portrays misogyny and physical abuse, so that students who have been previously victimized by racism or domestic violence can choose to avoid these works...  The current movement is largely about emotional well-being...  [I]t presumes an extraordinary fragility of the collegiate psyche, and therefore elevates the goal of protecting students from psychological harm.  The ultimate aim, it seems, is to turn campuses into “safe spaces” where young adults are shielded from words and ideas that make some uncomfortable.  And more than the last, this movement seeks to punish anyone who interferes with that aim, even accidentally.

So the same criticism that was levied earlier against the Concerned Students of USD can be aimed at what the article calls the "trigger warning movement" -- if all you want is to remain comfortable and to have your current beliefs and ideals left unchallenged, why are you in college?  Colleges should be about pushing against your boundaries.  Not to give offense deliberately, mind you; but to encourage you to question your own stance, and to understand more deeply that not everyone sees the world the way you do.  As I tell my Critical Thinking students every year, "You might well leave this class with your beliefs unchanged.  You will not leave with your beliefs unexamined."

The problem is that now any demand for reconsideration of our attitudes toward historical figures is thrown together with what Lukianoff and Haidt call "vindictive protectiveness" -- the implication that any discomfort college students experience is crossing the line into what amounts to the deliberate provocation of PTSD.

The problem is, conflating the two is simply incorrect.  You cannot equate the mindset of hypersensitive college students who expect to glide through life without ever being offended with the expectation that institutions of higher learning adopt a clear-eyed view of history, and a little bit of cultural sensitivity.  Asking an African American student to read Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart is hardly the same thing as having a bronze statue on campus of a sadistic bigot who thought he was doing god's will by torturing Natives who didn't want to adopt his beliefs.  Dismissing them both as ill-founded "political correctness" is drawing an oversimplified false analogy.

In other words, wrong.

A reason to keep going

This week we are seeing the final installment of the wonderful Washington Post weekly column "What Was Fake On the Internet This Week?"  It's not that the writer, Caitlin Dewey, has run out of material, that a wave of logic and skepticism has swept across the interwebz, rendering her job pointless.

Actually, it's the opposite.  After doing the column for a year and a half, Dewey is feeling defeated.

I understand her despondency, and I won't say I don't feel something of the same myself at times.  Dewey not only feels up against a rising tide of credulous idiocy, but also the inevitable money motive of the clickbait sites -- Now8News, The World News Daily Report, Before It's News, Above Top Secret, Infowars.  These all straddle the line between honest attempts to peddle a viewpoint, however crazy, and a completely pragmatic desire to devise headlines that get people to click the links and activate the advertising revenue it brings.

Dewey writes:

Frankly, this column wasn’t designed to address the current environment.  This format doesn’t make sense.  I’ve spoken to several researchers and academics about this lately, because it’s started to feel a little pointless.  Walter Quattrociocchi, the head of the Laboratory of Computational Social Science at IMT Lucca in Italy, has spent several years studying how conspiracy theories and misinformation spread online, and he confirmed some of my fears: Essentially, he explained, institutional distrust is so high right now, and cognitive bias so strong always, that the people who fall for hoax news stories are frequently only interested in consuming information that conforms with their views — even when it’s demonstrably fake.

Pretty hard to argue that point.

I was talking to my son about the problem yesterday evening, and his initial response was to agree with Dewey.  What she -- and I -- are attempting to do largely amounts to what my dad used to call pissing in a rainstorm.  (Had a way with words, my dad.)  But on reconsideration, Nathan said, "Well, think of it this way.  Let's say that of the people who read your blog, 90% are already rationalists and skeptics, and are only reading it for the amusement value, or to validate their own opinions.  That's still 10% for whom the issues are still in play.  How many hits do you get a day?"

"About a thousand, give or take," I said.

"So, that's a hundred people you're reaching every day who still might be convinced.  It's like the swing states in an election.  They may be few in number, but they're the ones whose votes count the most."

Smart kid.  And as he put it, "Having a hundred swing voters a day read your posts isn't too damn bad, when you think about it."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Couple that with an email I got yesterday from a loyal reader, who had the following to say:

Merry Christmas to you and yours, Gordon.  I want to take this opportunity to tell you how much I appreciate the time you put into being a voice of reason in the whirlwind of craziness.  I can't imagine how you keep plugging away at this, but dammit, someone needs to be saying these things.  Kudos to you, and I hope Skeptophilia is around for many more years.

It's not only the personal validation of Fighting The Good Fight that keeps me going; it's knowing that there are people who are still reading, thinking, and talking, and who might in some small way be inspired to keep it up by reading what I write.  Yes, the internet is full of sensationalist trash and clickbait sites; it's an awfully good conduit for bullshit.  But it also links minds from across the world, and I can't help but feel optimistic about that.  As ZestFinance CEO Douglas Merrill put it, "All of us is smarter than any of us."

So if you're reading this, thank you, whether you've come here because you're undecided, come to have your opinions validated, or come to scoff at someone you disagree with.  If you're still reading and thinking, you're doing what you need to do.  Even if there will always be people in the world who renounce logic and reason, there is nothing to be gained by the logical and reasonable amongst us staying silent.

Idiocy one-upmanship

A loyal Skeptophilia reader and frequent commenter sent me a reply to yesterday's post, about the office of Education Committee chair being filled by a creationist chemtrail-believer who thinks that the nation's problems would be solved if church attendance was mandatory.  The message said, in toto, "I see your Sylvia Allen, and raise you a Michele Fiore," followed by a link.

The link was to a story from ThinkProgress called "Nevada Lawmaker Says Cancer is a Fungus, Recommends Simply Washing it Out."  In it, we read about Michele Fiore, who has a weekly radio show, wherein we hear the following:

If you have cancer, which I believe is a fungus, and we can put a pic line into your body and we’re flushing, let’s say, salt water, sodium cardonate [sic], through that line, and flushing out the fungus…  These are some procedures that are not FDA-approved in America that are very inexpensive, cost-effective.

Inexpensive and cost-effective, sure.  But they aren't FDA-approved for a reason, to wit, injecting salt water and sodium carbonate into a cancer patient's pic line would have the unfortunate side effect of death.  Sodium carbonate, also known as washing soda, is a strong base, and is often used in soap manufacture, taxidermy, and as a silver polish.  You wouldn't want to drink the stuff, much less have it injected directly into your bloodstream.

Based on other places she's dispensed such wisdom, apparently she didn't mean sodium carbonate, but sodium bicarbonate.  In other words, baking soda.  Which likewise is perfectly fine for making biscuits, but is not meant to be put in a cancer patient's pic line.

If you're doing repeated facepalms over this, I haven't told you the most appalling part: Fiore served as Majority Leader of the Nevada State Assembly, and would still be in the position if not for her removal a few weeks ago (not for catastrophic stupidity, which at least would have been heartening, but for financial improprieties).  Worse still, up until last month, she was the CEO...

... of a health care company.

Her company, "Always There 4 You," says on its "About" page:

Always There 4 You is a locally-owned and operated business.  It has been serving the community for over 10 years. Your health and safety are secure with us.  If you don't want to worry your family members or trouble them with your daily care.  If you live by yourself and are either elderly or disabled, live a simpler life by getting aid from the kind and friendly staff of Always There 4 You.  We are trained to help you in all sorts of areas, With our in-home healthcare, you can get help with washing, bathing, preparing meals, dressing, taking medication, and doing light housework.  You'll also make great friends and companions!  Make life easier on yourself by getting help from Always There 4 You.

You'll also, apparently, get "sodium cardonate" in your pic line if you get cancer.

Encouragingly, the powers-that-be seem to be on to her, because in November Fiore lost her license to provide health care, and "Always There 4 You" closed.  Fiore was unrepentant, and blames the closure on harassment.  "The never-ending barrage of government red tape and regulations has made being in business not worth being in business," Fiore said, showing once again her knack for articulate exposition.

Oh, but you'll never guess what else!  She's also in favor of murdering refugees, not only here on American soil, but anywhere in the world!  She'll do it herself, in fact:

What, are you kidding me? I'm about to fly to Paris and shoot ‘em in the head myself!  I am not OK with Syrian refugees.  I’m not OK with terrorists.  I’m OK with putting them down, blacking them out, just put a piece of brass in their ocular cavity and end their miserable life.  I’m good with that.

So, think about it.  You've lost your health care license, you were removed as Assembly Majority Leader because of a million dollars in unpaid tax liens, you advocate shooting innocent people in the head, and you give health advice to desperately ill people even though you apparently don't know the difference between sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate.  What do you do?

You run for Congress, of course.

This is, I kid you not, a photograph from Michele Fiore's promotional 2016 calendar.

I would like to say, "Ha ha, I'm just kidding."  I would like even more to say, "Oh, but don't worry, there's no way she'll get elected."  But it's becoming increasingly apparent that you can be completely immoral, and also stupid to the point where it's a wonder you can walk without dragging your knuckles on the ground, and still win the majority of the votes.

So next November, keep your eye on Nevada.  We might just have someone in Congress who will make Louie Gohmert look like a Rhodes Scholar by comparison.