A Dose of Dumbass

Did anyone happen to catch NBC's Dateline episode named A Dose of Controversy, an expose' on the anti-vax movement? It was pretty good overall. A quick summary:

• The man who initially linked autism to the MMR vaccine, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, did so with a study that used 12 participants.
  
• More recent studies that have used 500,000 to several MILLION participants have found no such link.
• Nearly all of the 12 participants in Wakefield's study were involved in a class action suit against the makers of the MMR vaccine.
• Dr. Wakefield was a paid expert witness for the plaintiffs in this suit.
  
• Dr. Wakefield was, at the time of the study, applying for a patent on a vaccine to replace MMR.

The accusation drawn from these points is that Dr. Wakefield performed his study in a manner such that the evidence would fit the predetermined conclusion. I've heard of this before... who is it, besides the good Dr. Wakefield, that warps the evidence to fit the conclusion they want???

To put it mildly:

SCIENCE DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY.

Scientists are people who are concerned about the truth and use natural, recreatable evidence to find it. If all of the evidence does not agree with your hypothesis, even if you strongly want that hypothesis to be true, you must reject your hypothesis. When you are discriminative with the evidence or otherwise warp it in order to build a case for your personal hypothesis, you deceive yourself and others.

Creationists Are Liars.

Welcome to a new feature, Creationists Are Liars. This will be a non-regular section where I expose the blatant lies of creationists whenever they are brazen enough to draw my ire.

To be fair, most creationists really aren't lying. There are some, however, who warp the truth so badly that what they say is indistinguishable from telling a lie. A text book example is the dark art of quote mining.

Take, for example, this video posted over at the Force blog. It lists a plethora of quotes from seemingly reputable sources that, when carefully prefaced by the author of the video, make it sound like evolution isn't very well supported (by either the scientists or evidence). As far as the quotes go, they are accurate- but taken out of their original context and strung together with the opinions of the author of the video until the meaning is completely distorted. Now I ask you, dear reader, by warping the truth to impose a new meaning, how is this different than lying?

After watching the video, I realized that the easy thing to do was to assume that the video was just quote mining. I decided that it would be far more responsible to seek the truth myself. You will find, as I did, that 95% of the quotes could be found in their full context by simply googling the author and the quote. Many explanations can be found over at Talk Origins' Quote Mine Project. You'll also note that 100% of them can be found echoed at other creationist webpages, still completely out of context.

There was one, however, that threw me for a loop-

"[There is not] enough evidence from fossil material to take theorising out of the realms of fantasy" - New Scientist, August 1972, p.259.

On the web, I could not find this quote in its original context anywhere. I was also bothered to see such a phrase (with its implied meaning imposed by the video) pulled directly out of New Scientist.

It was at this point that I did the unthinkable- I went to the library. It was trivial to find the original line; it was the fifth line of a four paragraph book review:

"It is proving particularly difficult to understand the evolution of man: through what forms has he progressed--vegetarian or carnivore, quadruped or brachiator? When did he become a biped, when a toolmaker? How close is his relationship to the great apes? When did they diverge? We know too little of the timing or mechanisms of evolution, nor tis there enough evidence from fossil material to take our theorising out of the realms of fantasy."

That's right- this article (not even a true peer reviewed scientific article, but a mere book review!) does not doubt evolution, nor that we are close cousins to the great apes; it only declares that as of August, 1972, there was not enough evidence to fill in the minute details. The article continues that the title of the book being reviewed is misleading- it does not argue that we are not apes ourselves, but focuses on when we split off from the line that has become modern great apes.

There are two points to be made with this little exercise:
1) If you are actually interested in the truth, it often does not take much work to find it. A handful of Google searches was all it took to get me most of the way; a quick trip to the local library (not even an hour of work!) completed the journey. Given that it takes so little effort to sort fact from fiction, why do not more people do this?

2) At some point, a person found this quote in the context of the original article and isolated it in order to twist the original meaning, therefore lying to his or her audience. I am certainly not blaming Zach over at the Force blog. I'm not evening blaming the creator of the video, who likely found this isolated quote as it is presented in his propaganda piece. I put the blame on the original quote miner, who is undeniably a liar.

Good Internet Monday: AronRa

As I continue to argue with creationists around the web, I repeatedly refer to works of others that express the ideas of and evidence for evolution far better than I ever could. Among these are the videos made by YouTuber AronRa in his series, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism.

An example of his excellent work:

With GIM, I set out to share links that demonstrate how the web can be a medium through which someone's expertise can be harnessed to elucidate abstract ideas clearly and creatively. AronRa has all of this in spades.

Good Internet Monday: Talk Origins

I've learned quickly that the challenge of this article is to resist the urge to consistently grab low-hanging-fruit and work to grab more obscure pieces of the internet-- that is, if everyone knows about the sites I post about, what's the point?

I admit failure on this front today, but with good reason. I've been debating the validity of evolution online intensely over the past week, and am surprised that the level of understanding of the theory amongst the general public is so low. Furthermore, there are creationists who have flagrant misconceptions about the theory.

While I've been involved in my own discussions, biologist blogger PZ Myers (along with 300+ students, scientists, and secularists) has recently been to a trip to Ken Ham's odious creation "museum", a place where ignorance is not only embraced but flaunted.

With these two items in mind, I found it appropriate to designate Talk Origins(.org) as today's GIM appointee. This is a site dedicated to presenting the evidence, clarifying misconceptions, and harboring open discussion on evolution. It is a great place to visit for information on the most important theory in biology. Some people really need to see the section on evidence...

Seriously, Wendy... the evidence section... read it. All of it.

Don McLeroy gets grilled

As I've said before, education standards in Texas are important to the entire nation because of that state's influence on textbook manufacturers. The Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) is led by Don McLeroy, a career dentist and young Earth creationist (read: evolution denier and religious extremist). He has fought hard to have intelligent design and creationist teachings forced into science text books. To have this man weild so much power over this nation is very frightening.

It looks like the Texas senate may have had enough, however. At McLeroy's confirmation hearing, he was grilled by both Democrats and Republicans. There must be a 2/3 approval rate for him to be reinstated, and that is now a questionable outcome. Check out the Texas Freedom Network's live blog of the hearing!

EDIT: Some quotes from the blog to give you an idea of what McLeroy would like your kid to learn in public school:

5:36 - Sen. Shapleigh asks about McLeroy’s beliefs about evolution. McLeroy acknowledges that is is his personal belief that Earth is only 6,000 years old.

5:37 -McLeroy says almost everyone in his church rejects evolution and supports creationism. He describes himself as a young Earth creationist. He says he tells reporters that he wants to be up front and honest about his beliefs. “I think it’s a pretty rational view.”

5:54 - McLeroy: “I don’t see any way I’m imposing my religious views in anything I’ve done on the State Board of Education.”

5:57 - McLeroy: He rejects the suggestion that evolution is the foundation for studying all the biological sciences. “Genetics is the foundation. . . for studying biology. . . . Genetics is good solid science.” [Note: this is patently absurd. I suggest readers watch any Ken Miller talk about how genetics soundly supports our understanding of evolution and common ancestry.]

6:37 - Questions for McLeroy have ended. Now the committee is hearing testimony from others. First up is Dr. Ron Wetherington, a professor of anthropology from Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Wetherington served on the state board’s panel of “expert reviewers” for the science standards revision. He objects to McLeroy’s attempts to promote challenges to mainstream science because his religious beliefs are in opposition to evolution: “It is an embarrassment to have such a partisan religious bias, fundamentally anti-scientific, promoted by an appointed chair of the SBOE, and I urge you not to confirm this appointment.” [emphasis mine]

Hope for Texas?

Great article over at Panda's Thumb concerning the Texas Board of Education. Remember: being home to many text book manufacturers, the education standards in Texas effect a good portion of the country!

Fine tuned?

It has been argued that the entire universe is fine-tuned for life. Any changes to the fundamental physical constants would make it impossible for life to develop anywhere, especially Earth. For example, change the magnitude of the strong nuclear force and stars cannot produce heavier elements necessary for life. Change the gravitational constant slightly, planets and stars cannot form. Clearly, we have the perfect combination of fundamental constants in our world and that is why we are able to be.

I've never liked this argument for a few reasons. First, how does the arguer know that changing these constants wouldn't lead to life in currently barren regions, despite making Earth uninhabitable? How do they know that there are regions that wouldn't benefit (in terms of supporting life) from these changes? Secondly, we know that life is tenacious. When we think we know what the requirements are to produce and support life, we find something on our own planet that surprises us. An excellent example is the discovery of tube worms that live near undersea volcanic vents (these animals need NO sunlight and survive in incredibly hot waters!)

A scientist at the University of Michigan (hail to the victors) decided to test the impact of changing the fundamental physical constants on a developing universe. He ran computer simulations of many universes, each time changing the gravitational constant, the fine structure constant, and a constant that represents the rate of various nuclear processes. He found that one-quarter of all the simulations ran yielded energy-producing stars- the first and most essential building block in a life-supporting universe.

As usual, this is far from a final answer on this topic, but it continues to provide evidence that life is fine-tuned to the universe, not the other way around.

Win in Texas.

Oh, man... that was too close!
As Dr. Plait points out, the 7-7 tie means that we're likely to see this again in Texas. We dodged a similar bullet in here in New Mexico.