Joe's Blog

Entry 39: Being an Atheist Means You�re Pro-Science

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 02:31:16 GMT

Movie-making is clearly an ugly business. Yet another scienceblogging war of words has erupted over a film; this time, it�s Bill Maher�s Religulous. (Note that I�m about two months late to this party.) Actually, the issue doesn�t concern the movie itself, but rather an award Maher received because of the film. The Atheist Alliance International (AAI) decided to give Maher their Richard Dawkins Award (RDA). Here is AAI�s description of the honor.

The Richard Dawkins Award will be given every year to honor an outstanding atheist whose contributions raise public awareness of the nontheist life stance; who through writings, media, the arts, film, and/or the stage advocates increased scientific knowledge; who through work or by example teaches acceptance of the nontheist philosophy; and whose public posture mirrors the uncompromising nontheist life stance of Dr. Richard Dawkins.

Sounds reasonable enough, right? Religulous was pretty popular and well-received, so you�d think Maher deserves a spot among the pantheon of notable atheists that is the list of former recipients of the RDA: James Randi, Ann Druyan, Penn & Teller, Julia Sweeney, Daniel Dennett, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

You might think that, but you�d be very wrong. Bill Maher is a complete crank when it comes to medicine. Please don�t think I�m overstating this point; he�s not merely a shruggie, nor is he merely soft on seemingly-borderline alternative medicine modalities like chiropractic. He�s full out anti-vaccine, recently tweeting �If u get a swine flu shot ur an idiot.� He promotes dangerous quackery, though thankfully not that often on his shows. He seems sympathetic to HIV/AIDS denialism and even outright germ theory rejection. (Seriously.) In general, he is hostile to science-based medicine whenever the occasion to talk about it comes up.

Allow me to repeat one of AAI�s own criteria for their RDA: advocate increased scientific knowledge. You might be able to argue that some of the past recipients haven�t exactly hit home runs in this department, but certainly none of them have been as rabidly antiscientific as Maher. Rather than advocate increased scientific knowledge, he actively hinders and counteracts the spread of scientific knowledge. At the risk of belaboring the point, Dawkins himself criticized Maher�s views on medicine while he introduced him before wining the award. That might have been good damage control, had the damage not been long done.

The Problem, As I See It

I suppose this is a good problem to have, because it means atheism has gone pretty mainstream. The latest American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) results put the �Nones� at 15% of the total adult population and 22% of 18-29 year olds. (Nones, a pretty damn clever term, include atheists, agnostics, and deists, but not non-practicing religious people.) These are huge numbers!

Of course, with big numbers come a wide variety of people. The old picture of an atheist spending long hours in a dusty library contemplating the universe and god before ultimately determining and accepting that deities doesn�t exist really needs to die a fast death. Some people are atheists because they just don�t like religion. Some people are atheists because it�s trendy and counterculture. Some people are atheists because they hate religion. Some people are atheists because their friends are atheists. Some people are atheists because The God Delusion convinced them it�s a good idea. Some people are atheists because their parents are atheists. And, yes, some ~~huge dorks like me~~ people do still kind of follow that old picture to atheism.

While this is great, it also means that you can�t assume that atheists are automatically rational people. (Not to say you ever really could!) If reason didn�t lead all atheists to their atheism, then you cannot count on all atheists to be reasonable. I don�t know Bill Maher personally, so I don�t know what his �path� to atheism was. But, I know for damn sure that it wasn�t anything like skepticism. If it had been skepticism, then he wouldn�t be tweeting antivax propaganda and I wouldn�t be writing this entry.

Atheism can no longer be lumped with things like Science and Reason and Skepticism by default. This is a more consequential point than you might initially think. There isn�t a whole lot to promoting atheism in-and-of itself, in my opinion. Unless you are (i) encouraging people to become atheists, (ii) fighting discrimination against atheists, or (iii) advocating for atheists� civil rights, you�re overlapping another distinct movement that might not be automatically appropriate. Despite popular assumption and practice, none of the following concerns are inherently atheistic: evolution/creationism, secular government, anti-fundamentalism, science advocacy, or secular morality.

So, we need to be cognizant of the problems with merely promoting atheism. If your only criterion is going to be atheism, then you might be throwing a bunch of other important topics under the bus. The AAI, and to some extent Richard Dawkins, really hung science-based medicine out to dry by celebrating Bill Maher. Sure, he made a popular and funny movie about atheism. But, he also actively and literally promotes the spread of disease. Promoting atheism is important, as is confronting the excesses of religion. That having been said, intelligent design isn�t going to kill you. The breakdown of herd immunity, on the other hand, might actually kill you.

Simple, Right? Promote Skepticism Instead!

The obvious answer is to promote skepticism rather than atheism, right? If we view all this like a Venn diagram, skepticism is going to overlap much of what organized atheism strives for. While not directly addressing the metaphysical claims of religion, skeptics generally endorse a naturalistic worldview that is most compatible with liberal religions, deism, and atheism. Skeptics generally favor free inquiry, and would likely support atheists, atheist rights, and secularism as a principle. And, skeptics are of course pro-science.

While this sounds fantastic, skepticism is not immune to its own version of the Maher fiasco. In principle, it ought to be. In reality, skepticism is a movement comprised of real people. No real person is perfectly skeptical; everyone has their own biases and preconceptions and sacred cows. We don�t need to look further than the list of past RDA winners for our first example: Penn and Teller. Their show Bullshit! is awesome, but their strong libertarian views sometimes blatantly, drastically, and negatively impact their skepticism. Michael Shermer has the same problem. I wasn�t even upset at his last interview on Point of Inquiry; I was just disappointed.

Continuing the analogy to atheism, this is problem may only get worse if skepticism grows in popularity. You have to wonder if cargo cult skeptics aren�t going to become a problem. Again, the very ideals skepticism promotes ought to rule this possibility out, but it�s not a given that organizations or individual leaders won�t lapse into sloppiness or groupthink. The only solution is to promote skepticism, not individual skeptics or results skeptics currently agree on.

Bill Maher: Serious Business, Unfortunately

The Maher fiasco may not seem like that big of a deal, but I would argue it was important because it highlighted some significant underlying problems for the atheist movement. When some young-earth creationist stuffs intelligent design into classrooms with one hand and erects a plaque of the ten commandments in front of a courthouse with the other, it�s easy for everyone to link arms and sing songs and fight the good fight. But, once you enter into any remotely grey area, things get much more complicated very quickly.

Personally, I think this mess was bad enough to really question the strategy of making the promotion of atheism paramount. I�m certainly not suggesting that people should hide their atheism or that atheist organizations should disband. On the contrary, I think we need more outward atheism at both the personal and organizational level. But, the promotion of atheism cannot be done without reserve. Just as our cultural competitors are wrong that atheism=evil, we would be wrong to say that atheism=good automatically.

Promoting atheism is important, but doing so at the expense of science and reason is counterproductive. Without skepticism, other faith-based claims will readily fill the void left by traditional religions.

Entry 38: Supersense and Sensibilities

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:50:54 GMT

It's not too often that skeptics are chided for not being stringent enough in their skepticism. Plenty of people claim that skeptics are dogmatic or closed-minded or not truly skeptical, but more often than not this is a desperate attempt to hijack the good* connotations of the label skeptic for their own nefarious purposes. After all, it makes for a nice narrative: "I used to doubt [this], but now I've seen [the light]!" (Where the light might be that UFOs are real, evolution didn't happen, 9/11 was an inside job, global warming is a scam, etc.) Come to think of it, this is another common theme that could use a handy meme �

*In a debate, at least.

Anyways, Bruce M. Hood went ahead and did just that in his new book Supersense. That's hardly the only thing he covered in the book, as the subtitle (Why We Believe in the Unbelievable) makes clear. However, this relatively minor point is what I'm going to focus on in this entry. I haven't read Supersense yet, so I feel a little funny discussing it. Furthermore, I feel a little bad criticizing it, because the book seems fantastic by all accounts and has a prominent spot in my Amazon wish list.

All that having been said, I disagreed with a point Hood stressed in two separate interviews I caught recently (on the Point of Inquiry and Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcasts). This isn't a terribly huge deal, but it bugged me a bit and I think the interviewers dropped the ball in not asking Hood about this. That fact alone surprised me enough to open up Word and start typing, because I don't mind fanboy-gushing and telling you that DJ Grothe and Steve Novella regularly ask interviewees tough questions that had popped into my head. But, since these guys missed this point, I guess it's up to me to pick up the skeptical slack**.

**Not to be confused with Slack.

Making Sense of Bruce M. Hood's Supersense

The idea behind Supersense is that the human brain is hardwired to try and make sense of the world. This is obviously a good thing, because it is the basis of intelligence. But, this innate desire for explanations and associations routinely goes too far and results in superstitions and supernatural beliefs. Some coincidences are just that: completely coincidental. If two events only appear connected but are actually random, then there is simply no sense to be made of their (non-)association. This doesn't stop our brains from coming up with something to explain what happened, though. Throw in a few well-known cognitive biases, and people rapidly develop a fine-tuned supersense to explain the unexplainable.

Of course, science was developed for this very reason. Double-blind testing removes any inherent biases in the subject or tester. Statistics and probability can determine if an effect is real or merely perceived to be real. Careful observation eliminates memory and cognitive errors and biases. Reproducibility ensures that the phenomenon wasn't unique or spurious.

While this is all well and good, Hood has some bad news for people championing science and reason. He doubts that people will ever be able to abandon their supersense, because it is such an ingrained part of the human mind. This is certainly pessimistic, but it's tough to argue that he's wrong. I'd be willing to bet that the last physical newspaper ever printed in America will have a horoscope, and I'd also bet that my knee-jerk reaction to a positive prediction for the sign Gemini would be slight happiness.

Hood's other piece of bad news for so-called rationalists is that they're just as irrational as everyone else. And, not just in the instinctive sense I mentioned in the previous paragraph. Skeptics and scientists and atheists all have their own supernatural beliefs without even realizing it.

Out-Skepticking the Skeptics

Would you wear a sweater that was worn by a serial killer? Let's take it a step further: would you eat off plates that Jeffrey Dahmer owned? Imagine that contamination isn't a problem; the items have been perfectly cleaned and sterilized. Many people would absolutely refuse to do anything like this, even if offered money to give it a whirl. Some particularly morbid folks might go the other way, and collect artifacts from famous mass murderers. Either way, virtually everyone will have a strong reaction to an item owned by a serial killer, even if the item is otherwise unremarkable in every way.

This is a spectacular example, obviously. (The experiment sounds like something Richard Wiseman might do, and the macabre people sound like the subjects of a Chuck Klosterman essay.) The phenomenon persists at the personal level, as well. Imagine that your parents accidentally threw away your childhood teddy bear, but purchased a surprisingly accurate replacement on eBay to make up for it. Imagine that your husband lost his wedding band, but had an exact replica made from the same jewelry store where you bought the original. Imagine that someone offered you $1000 to replace the flag from a relative's military burial with an impeccable duplicate. Would you be indifferent to any of these hypothetically perfect replacements? Of course not!

Well then, according to Hood, you believe in magic. There is no physical difference between the original objects and the perfect copies. Thus, any special attributes you ascribe to the originals are completely supernatural. Only your supersense perceives the copies as simulacra.

Since no critique of modern rationalism (for lack of a better term) is complete without mentioning Charles Darwin and Richard Dawkins, Hood kills two birds with one stone by scolding Dawkins for fawning over some Darwin artifacts. Apparently, there's a documentary with footage of Dawkins bursting with excitement and inspiration while sitting at Darwin's antique desk (or something like that). According to Hood, this is no different than the faithful being inspired by a religious artifact. After all, it's just a desk. Hood also calls out MIT for having an apple tree supposedly descended from the tree that, according to legend, inspired Isaac Newton to develop his theory of gravitation. Even if the legend and heritage of the tree is genuine, an apple falling from this tree ought to be no more or less inspirational than any other apple.

Sentimental ≠ Supernatural

I'm making out Hood to be a mirthless hardass, and that's definitely not a fair assessment based on the interviews I've heard. I think his point was that everybody, even uber-atheist Richard Dawkins and super-scientific MIT students, has an active supersense. I can't speak for him, but I suspect his point wasn't to encourage everyone to utterly abandon their supersense. I got the impression that he just wanted skeptics to realize that they aren't perfectly applying their skepticism, so maybe they ought to get off their high horse and cut everyone else some slack.

He definitely gave me pause. I love museums, because I get a real kick out of historical artifacts and sites. I'd plant a seed descended from Newton's apple tree in my yard in a cocaine heartbeat, and I'd find it incredibly moving to sit at Darwin's desk. I'd be sad if my fianc�e lost her engagement ring, and I'd be horribly offended if you told me you swapped out my grandfathers' veteran's flags with replicas. In fact, looking around my room, I see tons of items whose value to me is almost entirely sentimental.

And, that is precisely where Hood misses the point. I haven't ascribed supernatural value to these objects; I've ascribed sentimental value to these objects. When I look at these objects, they evoke emotions and memories. The only power these items possess is the ability to elicit completely natural emotions.

People certainly can and do take this idea well into the realm of the supernatural. (The relics of saints and their associated miracles spring immediately to mind.) But, I think you can appreciate the sentimentality of an object without imbuing it with magic properties. Let's go back to the example of wearing a sweater owned by a serial killer. There probably are people who think the sweater is somehow cursed, but I would guess that most people are just repulsed because the sweater makes them think about mass murder. And, in case I'm giving people too much credit, I'll point out that, at the very least, skeptical people wouldn't think the sweater is cursed.

As Hood Pointed Out Himself, No One Is Perfect

Hood is definitely conflating sentimentality and magic. The emotions brought about by seeing or holding an artifact does not mean that you've assigned supernatural properties to the item. You have certainly assigned a nonphysical property to the item in question, but nonphysical doesn't necessarily mean supernatural.*** The sentimental item is special because it triggers memories and emotions, not because it is imbued with a ghostly imprint of its previous owner.

***Note that something physical does occur in your brain, namely the emotions and memories and thoughts the item evokes. Don't want you thinking that I'm hoisting myself on my own petard by appealing to a supernatural mind or soul.

Though you might not this so, this issue makes me want to read Supersense even more. I'd like to see how (or even whether) this topic was covered in the book itself. I'm wondering if Hood emphasized this point merely for the audience of the interviews I heard, because this wasn't the only way in which he reproached skeptics. He also called out skeptic/atheists/scientists/etc for being emotionless. Of course, he really shot himself in the foot here: first we're silly for having emotional attachments to things, but then we're too emotionless. Seems like the self-proclaimed skeptic's skeptic isn't being consistent! ;-)

Part of me wonders if this wasn't just a PR move. It certainly softens the blow to the credulous, and sounds pretty good to boot: skeptics are just meanies, and they're just as bad as you might be! It's tough to blame him, and to be honest I hope the tactic gave him inroads to reaching gullible people.

When I read Supersense, I'll give you an Entry 38a. For now, I strongly recommend it (based on the interviews and reviews I've heard) with the ultimately minor caveat I've covered here. I hope Hood keeps writing, and I hope he gets involved in the skeptical movement.

Entry 37: Theodicy

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:59:06 GMT

You see, these are the kind of things I doubt you can get at other people�s blogs. A mere five posts after I claim I�m going to try and dial back the length and ambition of my blogging, I decide to tackle probably the thorniest problem in the history of theology. Some might call it foolhardy, others might call it hubris; I call it Entry 37.

Theodicy is a branch of theology that tries to explain the Problem of Evil. The best exposition of the problem is probably the oldest known discussion of it, from Epicurus by way of David Hume (by further ways of Wikipedia and me):

Is god willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent.
Is god able to prevent evil, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is god both able and willing? Whence then evil?

This issue cannot be explained any more concisely than that. Many people claim that their god is all powerful, all knowing, and all good. However, how could evil exist in a universe managed by an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and benevolent deity?

There is no easy answer to this question. Scratch that � there are no good easy answers to that question. There are plenty of two word answers that suffice for most people: Original Sin, free will, the Devil. But, these explanations seem porous upon close scrutiny, and moreover they also seem mutually exclusive. As I�ve said before, a pile of crummy arguments does not equal a good argument. That kind of bookkeeping didn�t work for AIG, and it doesn�t work for theists, either.

Where I�m Coming From

As with Entry 32, the impetus for this entry is the science-faith integration meetings I�ve been attending. Theodicy was the topic of one of the meetings, and I just wasn�t impressed by the background reading or the discussion. You always hear about how sophisticated and intricate modern theology is, particularly when you�re an atheist talking to a religious person about something like theodicy. Often, the person you�re talking to will agree that you have a point with regards to other people�s faith, but their faith is backed up by subtle and profound theology. Reviewers dismissed Richard Dawkin�s The God Delusion via this argument so often that PZ Myers coined an internet meme for it: the Courtier�s Reply. �Of course their emperor has no clothes, but we have entire universities dedicated to studying our emperor�s magnificent garments!�

The background reading was a chapter in Denis Alexander�s Creation vs. Evolution: Do We Have to Choose? The book doesn�t seem terribly popular, and as such I haven�t been able to find much information about it or its author. Alexander is a Professor at a college in England, and he heads an institute there devoted to researching, publishing, and teaching about �science and religion.� (The institute is funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Nuff said.) A few reviewers of his book referred to him as an Evangelical Christian, but often angrily or indignantly because they didn�t like his positive treatment of evolution. All told, I�m not sure how well-regarded this book�s theology is, nor am I sure what denominational angle Alexander is coming from.

As for the folks at the meeting, I�m again hurting for denominational perspective. To use a loaded term, I suppose I would call them all �liberal Christians,� in that they aren�t biblical literalists or creationists or even cdesign proponentsists (except for our friend from Entry 32). Many of them seem to have strong science backgrounds, and they�re obviously interested in science enough to come to meetings about its intersection with their faith. I have no idea how much theology they�ve read or studied, but they certainly all had much more background knowledge than I do.

Down the Rabbit Hole

I don�t know if there�s a good way to approach a discussion of the myriad ways Alexander and the folks in the meeting tried to answer the problem of evil, especially since each could probably be its own entry. (PZ�s Courtiers are at least correct that plenty of ink has been spilled about those clothes, irrespective of their existence.) There are a lot of supposed explanations, but, from my perspective, they always wind up back at one of the Epicurean paradoxes. In addition, they�re mutually exclusive for the most part, so they don�t stack. Without further ado, let�s jump in with both feet.

Some people tried to argue that evil just doesn�t exist in a meaningful sense. Some actions or experiences might seem horrible to mere mortals, but they are ultimately good because god is omnipresent and (of course) good. This argument not only fails the smell test, but it�s obviously internally inconsistent for Christians. If not evil, then: (i) what tribulations will the afterlife be free from, and (ii) on what basis will a person be judged? Also, you have to wonder why people bother with all the following argumentation, if evil doesn�t really exist.

Once the existence of evil is established, the first thing people do is blame it on free will. God wants our love and worship, but it must be freely given to him. However, this collides with both ends of the Epicurean paradox. Even if evil arose solely from man�s free will, an omniscient god would still have known it was coming. Furthermore, an omnipotent god would still be able to stop it, if he so chose. Thus, god is the ultimate source of evil and continually allows it to happen. The only way out of this is to declare that free will is absolutely paramount; free will is so great a good that it balances all the evil in the world. That is okay* for now, but we�ll come back to it soon.

*Note also that by �okay,� I mean �consistent theologically but completely different than what the average person in the pew thinks about god.� I distinctly recall being told as a child that Jesus loves me. It would seem that Jesus loves my free will more than me, since his bookkeeping would imply that the freedom someone else could exploit to torture and kill me would be more important than my well-being.

Free will as the source of evil is a biggie, but it has a gaping hole: so-called natural evil. You�d have to burn a lot of calories to explain how a tsunami is not evil, but you�d have to burn even more to blame a tsunami on humanity�s free will. Hence natural evil. The only thing resembling a coherent explanation of natural evil anyone offered was that natural evil is a necessary consequence of the laws god imposed when he created the universe. Of course, this again makes god indifferent to the evil and pain and suffering his laws have resulted in. We�re back my criticisms of Professor Francisco Ayala in Entry 23: explaining away all the evils of the world by saying �god chose to make us via evolution� actually explains nothing whatsoever. It is a complete non-response to the charge.

However, the folks at the meeting assured me that this was no mere patina of abstraction. God works in mysterious ways, and his actions are utterly inscrutable. This is something I heard so often that I�m tempted to try and coin a meme for it, a la the Courtier�s Reply**. Of course, this is another non-answer. At best, I suppose it is an appeal to ignorance: we don�t know why evil happens, but god surely knows best. (And hopefully he�ll be so kind as to clue everybody in when we all get to heaven.) It is also inconsistent with the rest of Christian theology, because Christians are gravely certain about whole lot of other things concerning god and the universe. Am I to believe that god is so mysterious that we cannot comprehend evil, yet we�re positive that homosexual marriage makes baby Jesus cry? How can Christians be so confident of so much, if something as fundamental as good vs. evil is wholly incomprehensible?

**I�ll tell you what I want to do when I hear it: I want to bonk them on the head with something and say �Homey don�t play dat� like Homey D. Clown from In Living Color. There might be a pithy phrase somewhere in there, but I�m not seeing it.

My apologies for the snark, but Homey really don�t play the god-works-in-mysterious-ways game. Let�s bring the discussion back to free will. Another bookkeeping-type explanation for evil is that the suffering and pain it causes ultimately brings people closer to god. For instance, CS Lewis famously called pain god�s megaphone. So, evil is a net positive because it results in so great a good: leading people to god. However, god desires our freely given love. If he created (or permitted) evil so that we might be driven towards loving him, then he loaded the cosmic dice. So much for free will being all-important. I doubt many theologians would accept the notion that their god is a cheater, so they shouldn�t accept this line of argument.

The last major explanation that came up was a simple blaming of the devil, often in relation to original sin or the fall of man. This merely adds a storytelling element to the situations we�ve already discussed: an omniscient god would know this was coming, an omnipotent god could have stopped it, and it all happened because man had free will. However, I find it pretty interesting that many people try and make Satan much more than a narrative element. If Satan operates outside of god�s province, then you�re no longer talking monotheism***. Yet, if god knows/controls Satan, then we�re back to the problems outlined above (particularly the cheating issue). I�m also getting the distinct impression that this is all some twisted game for god. Our freely-given love is so important to him that horrible evils are permitted so that free will might exist, yet he created natural evils to push us towards him while permitting Satan to run rampant tempting us away from him.

***If you�re keeping count and maintaining monotheism, that would make it quadritarianism. While we�re tallying things up, I heard someone talking about The Word recently. What exactly is The Word, anyways? I�m certainly no expert, but it seems like it might belong in there. So, maybe we�re up to quintarianism. We should try to come up with another one, because sexitarianism is a pretty cool-sounding word. The Virgin Mary springs immediately to mind, for obvious and inappropriate reason.

Those are all the explanations/resolutions I can remember coming up at the meeting. I won�t claim that I was stunning the room with amazing counters and comebacks, but I do recall most discussions ending with either an Epicurean paradox or the god-works-in-mysterious-ways bit. And, every once in awhile, I was reminded that the great theologian George Michael had it all figured out years ago: I gotta have faith-a, faith-a, faith-ah! Frankly, I was expecting a whole lot more out of my first foray into theology. I�d call the lack of strong arguments stark, and I don�t think that�s putting too fine a point on it.

Replying to the Courtiers

The charge that many atheists aren�t versed in theology is probably fair. In our defense, I don�t know that anyone should expect us to study it. From the perspective of a nonbeliever, studying theology would be rather like arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. However, I don�t think this invalidates our opinions from the get-go. I�m sure most Christians have no knowledge of Hindu theology (or even the theology of the other Abrahamic religions, Judaism and Islam), yet they feel perfectly justified in rejecting the truth claims of Hinduism, and indeed all other religions.

In addition, it seems like a lot of this is a smokescreen. I paid a little attention to the theologian behind the curtain, and I was not at all impressed with him. Moreover, even if I�m missing or mischaracterizing something, there is little doubt that free will is the linchpin of all theodicy. As my first aside noted, this is technically fine but puzzling in practice. I don�t know that most Christians recognize or appreciate the importance of free will in their faith�s theology. Maybe they do; I simply don�t know. However, I do know that I�d be floored if I asked my grandmother what god�s greatest gift is and she replied �the autonomy to love him freely.�

Well, that�s all I have on theodicy. My parting thought is a quick call back to Entry 32. If you want to know why science requires methodological naturalism, you don�t have to look any further than the italicized lines at the beginning of this post. Ask yourself, what is the most parsimonious explanation of those apparent paradoxes?

Entry 36: Peter Singer Pwn3d Richard Dawkins about Vegetarianism

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 05:25:08 GMT

I suppose there isn't anything wrong with my title statement this week, because Peter Singer did indeed get Richard Dawkins to concede that he's wrong about eating meat in a Q&A after one of his lectures. This is something of a big deal, since Richard Dawkins spends most of his time responding to people who are out to catch him in a public "gotcha!" moment. I'm sure there are countless legions of the faithful who would love to stump him and gleefully return to church, bragging about how they slew this New Atheist dragon.

Peter Singer and Richard Dawkins largely agree about atheism, so that's not what I'm talking about here. Peter Singer is a Professor of Philosophy and Ethics at Princeton, and he might be the most influential and controversial philosophers alive today. His views on animal rights, world poverty, and abortion are particularly provocative. The particular incident I've been referring to concerns vegetarianism.

Oh Snap!

I haven't been able to locate a recording or even a transcript of the actual exchange between Dawkins and Singer, but the incident was discussed on an episode Point of Inquiry. In summary, Singer points out that evolution ought to make us realize that "species-ism" is nothing more than an immoral and unjustifiable prejudice. Once we get past the religious belief that humans were specially created by a deity and/or possess a supernatural soul, the moral distinction between a human being and an animal evaporates.

The rebuttal that springs to mind immediately is that human beings are more intelligent or capable than animals, and thus ought to have higher moral standing than other animals. However, this argument quickly falls to pieces when you compare a profoundly retarded human being to a chimpanzee. By any reasonable standard, the chimpanzee is much more of a moral and intelligent agent than the severely disabled human. Arguments like these are what drive Singer to his strong advocacy for animal rights and his support for euthanasia, abortion, and even infanticide.*

*You'll have to see his works for the details of his arguments and positions; I don't know them terribly well, and I disagree with many of them. For my part, this exact argument got me to admit to my undergrad Intro to Philosophy/Ethics Professor that, yes, I was a species-ist. I still admit that, but for what I consider a much more nuanced reason. You'll have to judge for yourself in the next section.

The great apes are the best place to start this discussion, but let's finish going over exactly what happened between Singer and Dawkins. Singer suggested that Dawkins hasn't taken the implications of evolution far enough. The notion of eating a human being is repugnant to most people, as it well should be. Furthermore, many people (Dawkins included) champion the rights and privileges of primates, due to their apparent intelligence and capacity for emotion. Singer then claimed that evolution demonstrates that these distinctions are completely arbitrary. Common descent means that we are ultimately related to all animals. We won't eat a fellow human being because they are like us; that is, we are closely related to them. But, we are also rather closely related to cows. Many societies grant extra, near-human rights to chimpanzees and gorillas because we are closely related to them, but we are also pretty closely related to pigs.

If we draw the line at the species level, then we are merely being species-ists. According to Singer, this is not morally different than when a bigot discriminates along racial, religious, gender, or ethnic lines. Prejudice is prejudice, and it's ugly and immoral.

Dawkins ceded this point to Singer, and admitted to being inconsistent. I believe he has since said that he regrets eating meat, but does so for social and selfish reasons. Some googling turns up evidence that he doesn't take issue with meat from well-treated and humanely-killed animals, but I'm not positive. (Regardless, any meat consumption would still technically be morally inconsistent, per Singer's arguments.) At the risk of oversimplifying or putting words in Dawkins' mouth, I would say that he accepts the validity of Singer's moral argument but does not (or cannot) follow it.

Settle Down, Vegetarians ...

Wow! Richard Dawkins smacked down for not understanding and embracing the implications of evolution. Who could have imagined it? It gets even worse, since he's rejecting this evolution-based morality for one ultimately derived from the vestiges of religion. Damn! And, just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, the attack came from the guy who wrote Animal Liberation, the book that launched countless animal rights extremists' careers.

Let's take a step back and look at Singer's argument. His point is that people who eat meat have arbitrarily drawn a moral line between their own species (homo sapiens) and the rest of the animal kingdom. He claims that there is no objective reason to discriminate between killing animals for food and killing other people for food, because you are ultimately related to all other animals.

I can sympathize with this sentiment. I personally wouldn't eat bushmeat. I often joke about trying gorilla or orangutan meat, pointing out that it would be kind of like eating a person. Without fail, this gets a rise out of people. Apparently, my friends and I aren't species-ists, but we are definitely order-ists. (If you went up to superorder, you'd encompass rabbits, and I suspect most people would be off the wagon and at the dinner table.) Though slightly more inclusive, the placement of our moral line is still arbitrary.

Well, so is Singer's. Though evolution teaches us that we are related to all animals, it also teaches us that we are related to all plants. We are also related to all fungi, protists, bacteria, and even viruses**. You are related to every living organism on the planet, from blue whales to palm trees to smallpox. If Earth happened to seed life on Mars, or visa-versa, then you are even related to Martians.

**This means that, depending on your choice of definitions, we might be related to things that aren't even alive! There is no consensus definition of life, but viruses don't always satisfy all the criteria of some definitions of "living."

Just as humans and primates are not inherently special in a moral sense, animals are not either. If most people are species-ists or order-ists, then evolution neatly demonstrates that Singer and other vegetarians are equally-prejudiced kingdom-ists. Dawkins was wrong to cede the point. Vegetarianism is absolutely not the logical consequence of evolution.

"But wait," Animal Liberation Front extremists scream as they dump paint on hamburgers, "look at my gruesome slaughterhouse videos!" That is a completely separate argument concerning a completely separate issue. Animals have the capacity to feel pain, and you can argue that inflicting pain on something that can experience pain is immoral. However, this has absolutely nothing to do with evolution or species-ism. It would be a distinct moral construct.

Moreover, I suspect this construct would be fraught with its own arbitrary moral distinctions. Plants react to distress; why is that not considered pain? What about the pain experienced by a field mouse going through a wheat thresher? Do the violent death throes brought about by pesticides count as pain for bugs? And, even these considerations ignore the trillions of microscopic elephants in the room: microorganisms. It seems like it would be impossible to construct a non-domain-ist moral philosophy, as our bodies mercilessly destroy countless bacteria daily.

Settle Down Again, Folks

Now, I know that I blithely dismissed a whole lot of philosophical and ethical discussions in that last paragraph. I have no doubt that Singer and plenty of other people have spilled tons of ink constructing moral systems that conclude vegetarianism is the only morally consistent way to live. I'm not aiming to refute those, and I won't even claim that I've addressed them properly.

My point is that species-ism is a frivolous charge to levy against meat-eaters, and furthermore I maintain that common descent is not something from which to construct a reasonable morality. Charles Darwin taught us that all living creatures descended from a common ancestor: we're all cousins, where we comprise all life on earth. You shouldn't accuse a meat-eater of inconsistency between bites of a carrot or mushroom. In terms of evolution, you have both drawn arbitrary lines on the tree of life. One is indeed more inclusive than the other, but both are prejudiced.

Let me again emphasize that I'm not dismissing vegetarianism or Peter Singer's specific moral philosophies out-of-hand. What I'm doing is pointing out that his argument to Richard Dawkins was terrible. Evolution does not provide us with a good argument for animal rights. Singer accused Dawkins of not following Darwin's ideas to their ultimate logical conclusion; on the contrary, Singer hasn't followed his own ideas to their logical conclusions. If you won't eat meat because you're related to the animal it came from, then you'd better not eat fruits or grains either! You also better hope there's no eternal judgment waiting for you, because your immune system is massacring countless relatives every day.

I'm sure Peter Singer and many other vegetarians have fine moral arguments for vegetarianism and/or veganism. I would guess they're based on pain or consciousness; no matter how you define those terms, I'd think most animals are rather close to humans and well beyond plants (which would themselves be well beyond microorganisms). But, this position is not the logical conclusion of evolution, nor does not mean meat-eaters are prejudiced. If you're going to appeal to evolution or anti-species-ism, you'd better be living off rocks.

Entry 35: Ear Infections

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 03:52:29 GMT

Stick with me for a minute: I promise there�s some juicy skepticism here. It�ll come right after this graphic personal part. (Full disclosure: I am not a medical doctor, so you shouldn�t treat any information in this article as medical advice.)

I have a pretty nasty ear infection, and that�s saying something because I�m pretty desensitized to them after getting them constantly as a kid. I have such a bad outer ear infection (otitis externa, or swimmer's ear) that my doctor couldn�t visually confirm whether or not I also have a middle ear infection (otitis media, or just �ear infection�). Something about inflammation and white pus covering various things � it�s a mess in there.

The discomfort finally got to me on a Sunday night, so I headed to Walgreens to look for something to tide me over until going to the clinic Monday morning. I wasn�t hoping for much, since I figured you�d need a prescription for anything with steroids or painkillers or antibiotics. But, I thought I might find some kind of drops to maybe soothe a little pain here or there.

When, what to my skeptical eyes should appear, but miniature bottles and eight tiny bulbs. I�m unfortunately familiar with the blue bulbs, since I have vivid childhood memories of leaning over the sink while my mom used one to squirt water into my ears to wash crud out of there. The thought of that sounded horrible even in my good ear, much less my throbbing one, so I left that section alone for now.

Turning to the bottles, there arose such a clatter. From me, that is. Homeopathy! We had Similasan�s Earache Relief, which not only soothes the pain but also stimulates the body to naturally heal ear infections. We had Hyland�s Earache Drops, which relieves pain and congestion without the sting of alcohol-containing products. And, we had a Walgreens knockoff, which we should to �Compare to Similasan!!!� Actually, you might as well compare it to tap water. The highest concentration of any ingredient in these remedies is chamomile at 10X; that�s one part in ten billion. (For comparison, capsaicin, the compound that makes chili peppers hot, is supposedly detectable by taste at one part in a mere fifteen million; see Entry 14 for the watery details on homeopathy.)

To add insult to injury, none of these products contained what PalMD of the White Coat Underground cleverly calls the Quack Miranda Warning. I�m sure you�ve seen these, since they�re all over supplement bottles and even some foods packages. The product will make a claim, asterisk it, and note that �These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, or prevent any disease.�

Well, then. I guess it makes sense that these products don�t have the Quack Miranda Warning. A product calling itself earache relief surely must actually treat a disease. Otherwise, the product would be an outright lie, wouldn�t it?� Wow, disclaimers like that let me say whatever the heck I want. This is fun!��

�That statement has not been evaluated by my nonexistent legal counsel. This blog is not intended to libel, slander, or insult any alternative medicine practitioner, manufacturer, or provider.

��No, it is not. M~~agic water~~ Homeopathy is srs bsns.

I left Walgreens empty-handed and annoyed. My only options for over-the-counter treatment were bottles filled with water and lies. Pretty crappy, right? Well, it gets worse.

Wet Behind (And In) the Ears

Talking to my doctor the next morning, I asked about how I could prevent ear infections. What did she think about using the blue bulbs? Should I try rinsing out my ears regularly, or at least when I feel an infection coming on? Are there science-based OTC products out there that I�m just not finding?

Her response floored me. The only thing worse for your ears than using the blue bulbs is using the non-prescription drops. Allow me to rephrase that: the worst possible thing you can do to your ears is to use the earache treatment products found at your local pharmacy.

You don�t want any excess moisture in your ear canal. Too much moisture in your ears is the most common cause of outer ear infections (hence the name swimmers ear), and extra moisture in there during an infection will only exacerbate the problem. The only exception is liquid that�s loaded with antibiotics and steroids, as is the case with prescription ear drops.

Amazing. The worst possible things you can do to your ears are the only �treatments� available over-the-counter in the pharmacy. I know I�ve said that three times now, but I find it incredible. Alternative medicine, indeed.

What should you do to prevent ear infections, then? The goal is to remove moisture, but you don�t want to use a q-tip. That�s one of those rare pieces of folk knowledge that happens to be correct. You might damage your eardrum or irritate your skin, and moreover you�re just not going to manage to get all the liquid out of there. Don�t stick crap in your ears!

What you ought to do is make up a mixture of white vinegar and isopropyl alcohol (1:2 ratio) and use a dropper to fill your ear canal with it. Let that sit for a few seconds, and then drain it into a cotton ball or tissue. The alcohol makes this mixture volatile, so that your ear canal dries out much better than when straight water is in there. The acetic acid in the vinegar keeps the pH in your ear low, which helps prevent infections (earwax is naturally slightly acidic for this reason).

My doctor says that she does this almost daily. She has a long history of ear infections (her ears sounded (heh) worse than mine), so she does this any time moisture might enter her ears: swimming, exercising, using headphones, showering, etc. That seems a bit excessive to me, but I�m definitely going to start doing it regularly once my actual infection is gone.

Homeopathy: Surprisingly, the Worst Thing You Could Do to Yourself

Homeopathy is an interesting CAM modality. On the one hand, you cannot downplay its breathtaking inanity. But, you also have to admit that it�s tough to directly hurt yourself with it. Though someone could indirectly hurt themselves with homeopathy (in that they might be passing up real treatments), odds are the water or sugar pill isn�t going to cause any harm. At gunpoint, I�d rather have folks taking a truly homeopathic remedy than going through something invasive or violent like acupuncture or chiropractic.

Except, of course, in this instance. It�s all fun and games until you make your ear infection worse. We can�t pin the blue bulbs on the homeopaths, but of course those aren�t quite as bad as the water drops. (You might successfully remove some infected wax, and you don�t let the water sit in there as you do with the drops.) No exaggeration: using homeopathic earache remedies is the worst possible thing to do to treat an ear infection.

It�s one thing when a CAM modality is nothing but an overblown, expensive placebo. It�s quite another when the �treatment� actively makes a medical condition worse. The makers of these products ought to be ashamed of themselves, and Walgreens ought to be ashamed for selling literally harmful products marketed as medicinal treatments.

Entry 34: The Flu Vaccine Is More Dangerous Than the Flu

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 01:21:24 GMT

I'm guessing you'll start hearing this one any day now. I first heard this claim a few years ago, after my school sent out an email offering free flu shots to students. That was well before swine flu dominated headlines and the vaccine-autism manufactroversy dominated skepticism, so it seems like the stage is set for this claim to make a huge comeback.

A Kernel of Truth �

The danger this claim refers to is from the autoimmune disorder Guillain-Barr� Syndrome (GBS). GBS is a real but rare (1-2 per 100,000 people) disorder that can indeed be triggered by immunization, thus slightly distinguishing this week's statement from the usual antivax nonsense. The precise cause of GBS is unknown, but symptoms typically occur soon after an infection. Flu shots are known to cause GBS, with roughly one in a million vaccinations resulting in the disorder.

GBS occurs when your immune system mistakenly attacks part of your own nerve cells rather than a target foreign pathogen. The outer layers of the nerves are damaged, resulting in weakness and numbness that spreads throughout the body. GBS is a serious disorder, requiring hospitalization and rather intense monitoring and treatment. An estimated 3-4% of cases result in death, but it is thought that most deaths are due to inadequate or nonexistent treatment. Prognosis is generally good, with about 80% of patients recovering fully. Still, 5-10% of patients are permanently disabled by the disease, making GBS one of the most common non-trauma-induced causes of paralysis.

� Popped Entirely Out of Proportion

Although GBS is indeed real (and pretty darn ominous), it shouldn't scare anybody away from getting the flu vaccine. Any medical procedure carries risk; after all, the puncture wound from the injection might later get infected and kill you. As always, you have to consider the relative risks. Over thirty thousand people die from the flu in a good year in America, making your overall odds of dying from the flu in a given year about one in ten thousand. These odds are low, but they aren't zero.

Of course, the situation is certainly more complicated than this. Healthy adults are much less likely to die from the flu than the elderly or infirm; on the other hand, infected healthy adults might spread influenza to highly susceptible people they interact with. Being sick for a week or so might sound better than chancing GBS via vaccination, but then again a regular influenza infection also puts you at risk for developing GBS. The flu vaccine contains thimerosal, but the furor over that preservative is pure antivax propaganda. A given year's vaccine doesn't protect against all the extant influenza strains, but they're pretty good about forecasting the most prevalent type.

The last complicating factor is that the 1976 swine flu vaccine resulted in GBS much more often than other flu vaccines. An outbreak of swine flu at Fort Dix killed an army recruit, and fear of a pandemic like the 1918 Spanish flu led to the government rushing to immunize the entire country against this swine flu. The pandemic fizzled, and moreover vaccination resulted in GBS at a significantly increased rate: ten cases per million vaccinations (rather than one per million). We do not know if this increased rate is something inherent to swine flu vaccines, or if it was a fluke possibly exacerbated by the vaccine being rushed.

Despite these complicating factors, getting the flu vaccine is a net positive. The odds of an adverse reaction to the vaccine are extremely low, and your immunity may prevent your or your loved ones' disease or death.

Odds and Ends

While we're talking odds, I think that odds are someone professing this week's statement has just picked up and passed along an antivax factoid. As bad as GBS sounds, one-in-a-million odds are worse than the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year (1 in 700,000). People tend to be terrible at judging relative risks. Parents live in fear of a stranger abducting their children; in reality, a child is much more likely to drown in a neighbor's pool than to be kidnapped and murdered. You have to look at these things objectively, because mundane-sounding deaths are no less deadly than spectacular-sounding deaths.

Any way you slice it, the risk you take getting the flu vaccine is lower than the risk of getting the flu itself. That's to say nothing of herd immunity considerations; every strain of flu you're immune to is one you cannot spread to someone else. Flu vaccines aren't compulsory, so you need to decide for yourselves whether or not to get vaccinated. Just be sure that your decision is based in reality, and not misinformation or misunderstood statistics.

Entry 33: Attacking Michael Pollan�s In Defense of Food

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:18:50 GMT

No, I am not attacking food. I wouldn�t even necessarily say that I�m going to disagree too seriously with Michael Pollan�s overall position. That having been said, listening to an audiobook recording of In Defense of Food was both frustrating and enlightening. He has some good things to say, but the way he approached the issue and the way he argued his points were terribly off-putting.

On the whole, the book sought to explain why Americans have so much trouble eating well. He came at it from many angles, ranging from our eating habits to our beliefs about nutrition to our relationships surrounding food purchasing, preparation, and consumption. He had a lot to say, both criticizing others and offering his own advice. Probably the best place to start would be at the end, where he revealed his seven word mantra:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

You might not think that there�s a lot to disagree with in those three sentences, but you�d be surprised. Let�s take them one at a time, and get into the meat (heh) of Pollan�s arguments.

Not Too Much

We�ll start here, because this sentence is the most obviously correct. Pollan isn�t saying much here, and to be fair he doesn�t claim that he is. If you only eat as much food as your body burns through in a day, then you�re never going to gain weight. (See Entry 19 for the details.)

Pollan used this section to make a number of lifestyle suggestions. He points out that people in many other modern cultures tend to eat until they are full, rather than eat until their plate is empty. On the sub-plate scale, portion control is key; using smaller glasses, spoons, and plates might help you eat less. You also have to look out for the unit fallacy, because not all single units of food are calorically identical. (People tend to think that all, say, muffins are equally good/bad regardless of their size.) He also suggests eating slower, enjoying your meals, and avoiding snacking between meals.

Nothing earth-shattering, but also nothing terribly controversial. While he doesn�t have rock-solid evidence that issues like eating-on-the-go or the unit fallacy directly contribute to America�s obesity problem, I�d say it�s obvious that they at least aren�t helping.

Eat Food

While this seems as much of an �uh-duh� as the previous section, this statement is actually quite a bit more controversial. Pollan�s point here is that he doesn�t consider much of what people eat to actually be food. Rather, the majority of the items on the shelves in your grocery store are food products. According to Pollan, the food is mostly around the perimeter of the grocery store: produce, meat, unprocessed dairy, and unprocessed frozen stuff.

I don�t recall Pollan ever strictly demarcating the food/food-product line, but he did give a handful of heuristics. Food products might be: anything your great-grandmother wouldn�t recognize as food, anything with more than five ingredients, anything with high fructose corn syrup, anything with ingredients you cannot pronounce, and so forth. In general, you want to avoid these things because they�re likely to be worse for you than supposedly �real� food.

As you might guess, this is little more than an application of the naturalistic fallacy. (This is the mistaken idea that supposedly �natural� things are automatically good for you; just ask Socrates about that one.) I regret laying the smack down on his point so succinctly, because it does have merit. There�s no doubt that eating pint of blueberries is better than eating a pint of H�agen-Dazs. However, the reason for this has nothing to do with your grandmother or your ability to pronounce the sixth ingredient in rocky road ice cream. The reason is contained within the foods themselves; specifically, their nutritional content.

This brings us to probably the most frustrating argument in the book: Pollan�s constant railing against what he calls nutritionism. This argument was doubly annoying, because he was completely wrong but again he had a very valid point to make. Unfortunately, he totally overshot this point in his zeal to make food scientists the villain of his story. And, when scientists are the villain, we get all sorts of fun antiscientific talking points. Ugh. (For the last time, it�s fraunken-SHTEEN, people!)

So, what is nutritionism? It�s a derogatory term to describe the notion that foods are �merely� the sum of their nutritional parts. This is silly on its own, unless you ascribe some kind of supernatural power to a whole apple. Hence my frustration. But, I understand where this sentiment is coming from. Scientists have identified three macronutrients (fat, carbohydrates, protein) and a few dozen micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, other chemicals) that are absolutely necessary for human survival. As such, many of these are listed on nutritional labels so that people can make sure to eat them.

So, does that mean that scientists think that an apple is merely a bag of carbs with some vitamins floating in it? No! Well then, does that mean that scientists think humans can healthily survive on a bowl of synthetic fat, sugar, essential amino acids, vitamins, and minerals? No! Pollan isn�t arguing against scientists; he�s arguing against the Wachowski brothers� writing in The Matrix. (Actually, if you remember the scene I�m referring to, they even gave anti-nutritionism a voice at the dinner table.) To again reluctantly characterize his crummy argument for a valid point, this is a strawman.

Scientists measure the things they can detect; what else would you like them to do? So, the science of nutrition has progressed by studying nutrients as they were discovered and determined to be important. There was no other way for this field to progress, and Pollan demonstrates this remarkably well by offering little but fallacious arguments for the contrary position. (Let�s call this idea paranutritionism.) The field continues to progress, and our understanding of nutrition continues to grow as more compounds and their complex interactions are characterized.

But, you might ask, what about those nutritional labels? What about the food pyramid? How about all those studies saying fat is bad? Or saying eggs are bad because of the cholesterol? Or claiming red wine is good because of the resveratrol? According to Pollan, these are the products of a corrupt system and evil reductionist scientists. And, once again, he�s right for the wrong reasons.

Pollan actually spends quite a lot of time detailing how political pressures and industrial consortia dictated much of our current nutritional labeling and recommendation schemes. Beyond the issue that he�s practically proposing a grand conspiracy theory, he deftly hoists himself on his own petard with that explanation. The nutritionism he so despises didn�t come from the food scientists he excoriates for it! It came from politicians bowing to industrial pressure, who in turn were bowing to the almighty dollar.

One last point, and then I promise that I�m finally done dissecting the recommendation that you �eat food.� Pollan loves omega-3 fatty acids. Adores them. Heaps so much praise on them that you�d think he was a nutter on Oprah selling acai berry ice cream. He might even have gone so far as to suggest taking omega-3 supplement pills, but don�t quote me on it. You know omega-3 fatty acids, right? Those chemicals discovered by reductionist food scientists and demonstrated to be an important singular component of good nutrition? Though Pollan nobly admitted some hypocrisy after gushing over this fat molecule, I think this is worth noting and speaks for itself.

Mostly Plants

Pollan didn�t advocate vegetarianism, but he did emphasize that you probably want to err on the plant side of things to maintain a healthy diet. In fact, you probably want to aim particularly at leaves; seeds are calorie-dense and fiber-poor, making them rather like meat in this regard. I don�t really have much of a problem with this suggestion, but I once again took issue with how Pollan arrived at his conclusion.

As I�ve hinted at, much of Pollan�s evidence for his beliefs about what to eat (at least when he wasn�t disingenuously resorting to �reductionist science�) came from looking at other cultures. Beyond his grandmother, he also discussed and surmised the eating habits of ancient and indigenous cultures. (And, beyond the naturalistic fallacy, this statement might be considered the fallacious argument from � anyone, anyone � antiquity.) He marveled that societies have thrived on all manner of diets, from high fat to high carbohydrate to high protein. Human prehistory covers the entire culinary spectrum, from fully vegetarian Jains to fully carnivorous Eskimos.

Wait a second � where did the Eskimos get their leaves to maintain their healthy diets? It would seem that the Eskimos� example is great for the first two words of Pollan�s mantra, but ought to be ignored while considering the last two words. Well, then.

Furthermore, how do we know that the diets of ancient societies even provided adequate nutrition? Imagine the worst possible scenario of the so-called Western diet: someone morbidly obese who consumes nothing but processed, high-calorie, low-micronutrient foods. This person will probably make it into their 40s or 50s without inordinate trouble. This is well past the life expectancy of your average prehistoric man. We can squabble about infant mortality and accidental deaths all day long, but the fact remains that our hypothetical dead-at-fifty Western diet glutton would have lived to be the oldest caveman on the block ten millennia ago.

How About: Move More, Eat Less, Try Different Foods

I really wanted to like In Defense of Food, both before and after I finished it. I think there are some very good points in the book, and you cannot deny that our culture needs to drastically change the way we approach food.

An apple is absolutely not equivalent to a sugar packet and a multivitamin. However, this does not imply that apples are magical, nor does it imply that Doritos are evil incarnate. Ideally, you�d like to eat more apple-like things than Doritos-like things, but don�t obsess over it and try to keep it all in perspective.

Perspective is key. When Michael Pollan gets roundly dismissed by a critic, it�s typically because they find him elitist or impractical. These are pretty fair labels; he is clearly a hardcore foodie, and he can be idealistic to the point of naivety. At one point he even suggested that people venture out into the wilderness to gather things to eat; I�m surprised he hasn�t been sued by the family of someone who took his advice and died after eating a poisonous mushroom.

I think making an effort at some of the lifestyle changes Pollan suggests would be worthwhile. But, you have to stay grounded. I love the farmers� market in my town, but the prices are high, the selection is paltry compared to the grocery store, and my schedule doesn�t allow me to devote every Saturday morning to shopping. I wish I had the time to cook elaborate meals from scratch on a daily basis, but there are plenty of others things I�d like to spend my time doing. Avoiding processed foods is a noble goal, but nobility has nothing to do with how little I want to cook anything beyond a bowl of cereal when I wake up in the morning.

In light of all this, I�ve decided to take my own stab at a seven word mantra for Americans to consider while working to avoid the dangers of the Western Diet.

Move more. Eat less. Try different foods.

The first two parts are self-explanatory. Per the discussion in Entry 19, everything boils down to the calorie balance. And, the only surefire ways to tip the calorie balance are to consume less of �em and burn more of �em. The last part hopefully covers the positive parts of Pollan�s message while avoiding all the baggage I�ve gone over here. Mixing up your diet will prevent you from missing key nutrients, will subtly make food a bigger part of your life, will keep you from eating Cheetos until you possibly overdose on artificial food coloring, and won�t necessarily cost you money or time.

Maybe I�ll get a chance to run all this by Michael Pollan. He�s been invited to my campus to give some talks this fall, so perhaps later you�ll get an update about what he thinks of my seven words.

Entry 01a: Update on the Blog

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 02:42:57 GMT

I just want to give my ~3 semi-regular readers a little update concerning the decreasing frequency of entries here. Part of the problem is certainly real life getting in the way of blogging, which is especially problematic in the summer when it's nice outside and sweltering in front of my computer. However, I'd be lying if I said the "Why Bother?" issue that probably kills most people's blogs wasn't a factor.

I had no delusions of grandeur when I started blogging again. I saw it as a personal outlet for a variety of things: my desire to write, my frustration upon hearing or reading silly assertions, my fondness for looking up random crap on the internet, and even scratching the pedagogical itch I sometimes have now that I'm done TAing. I always view any feedback I receive as gravy. (Delicious, well-appreciated gravy that I'm very thankful for, of course.)

That having been said, I do put a fair amount of time writing and researching these entries, and it does sting a bit to see some of them slide unread into my blog's lonely corner of the internet. I see this happen on extremely popular science-y blogs, as well. PZ Myers (Pharyngula) gets hundreds of comments per hour when he posts a picture of himself riding a saddled plastic dinosaur at the Creation "Museum," but his detailed and insightful posts about single research papers struggle to attract ten comments. Phil Plait (Bad Astronomy) posts amazing Hubble images and people go bonkers, but they largely ignore all the text explaining the images. Orac (Respectful Insolence) bombastically tears into quacks to a chorus of cheers and boos, while Steve Novella's (Neurologica) measured and meticulous takedowns of the same affronts to medicine tend to generate a fraction of the response. I'm guessing these guys sometimes feel the same frustration I do.

I thought I'd found a good solution to this problem when I heard about a new skepticism website launching. It was a bunch of regular folks coming together to write skeptical articles and organize them into a user-friendly website. This seemed pretty ideal to me, since I could have my blog as-is and submit the cleaned-up entries there to alleviate this buried post problem. Unfortunately, the site seems to have died before it even started, and that bummer definitely played a role in the entry situation here. Indeed, at one point Entry 01a was to be the announcement of my first article over there. So it goes.

So, where do we go from here? I don't want to stop blogging, because I do enjoy it. Probably the major factor stopping me from starting new entries is the time I invest, so I'm going to once again attempt to dial back the written length and required effort of these posts. Let's hope that the quality won't suffer a corresponding decline. Actually, maybe such a decline would help matters. If I start screwing things up, perhaps my visitors might experience a touch of the SIWOTI syndrome and leave some replies correcting me. And, after all, I keep on saying you need to be just as skeptical of me as you should be with the talking heads on TV ...

Anyways, I think you can expect more frequent entries in the near future. In particular, I've been hankering to flesh out some thoughts about Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, Peter Singer's opinions on vegetarianism and charity, and Bruce Hood's Supersense. These topics nicely highlight my problem, though. Each of these four entries would be a response to an entire book that I haven't even read (I listened to the audiobook version of In Defense of Food and caught a few interviews of Singer and Hood), and that makes writing a thorough discussion of the topics pretty tough. But, I need to realize that I'm writing blog entries a couple of my buddies and my parents occasionally read, not formal book reviews for Science or the New York Times.

I'm getting there. And, when I do, I'll get those entries up here. I'll also continue pestering that website I mentioned, and let you know when (or if) it's finally launched.

Entry 32: Science Assumes There Is No God

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 21:00:03 GMT

I recently started going to meetings of a science-faith integration club on my campus. A strange place for someone who doesn�t believe in god, I know, but one of my friends usually goes to them and thought I�d be interested in the discussions. He was right, because I really have enjoyed them. The few I�ve attended so far have been about Intelligent Design, so you can expect some entries in the future about certain articles from the ID �literature.� I�m going to limit myself to those scare quotes in regards to ID, because this week I�d like to discuss something else that has come up a number of times at these meetings.

One person in particular at the meetings is fond of talking about what scientists think. He has very strong opinions about what scientists like, dislike, assume, respect, do and don�t believe, and so forth. Full disclosure: he and I (and others) often clash at these meetings. I would classify him as rather anti-science, and many (if not most) of these statements he makes are simply strawmen. I don�t think he has a good idea of how actual scientists view the world, so he�s ultimately addressing a caricature of scientists that he�s created for himself. As an extreme example, he once declared that �scientists don�t like unresolved problems.� That must be why we all keep going into work to research said problems, huh?

That�s enough picking on our friend. This week�s statement is a point he often raises, and it�s a view that many of the other folks at these meeting share. They certainly have a point; the usual hypotheses tested in scientific experiments never invoke the supernatural. Any type of research involving such hypotheses is somehow qualified: alternative medicine, parapsychology, paranormal investigations, cryptozoology, faith healing, etc. Does that mean scientists have assumed that such things don�t exist? Why don�t scientists test out hypotheses involving god, if not because they�ve dismissed deities a priori?

Science Cheats!

Scientists largely ignore the supernatural simply because there is no tangible evidence for it. Now, you might think I�ve just callously dismissed and pissed off no less than five large groups of people (based on my above list). While I might have angered them, I haven�t actually said anything controversial. If there was abundant evidence of extraterrestrial visitation, then intelligent aliens coming to earth would be a natural phenomenon. If there was clear evidence for Bigfoot, then Bigfoot sightings would be natural phenomena. If psychics could unambiguously demonstrate their precognition powers, then seeing the future would be a natural phenomenon.

That�s how science gets to �cheat.� Once a phenomenon is established beyond reasonable doubt, it becomes part of the natural world. Up until that point, the concept in question is firmly supernatural. If unequivocal proof of ghosts is uncovered, then the conclusion would not be the supernatural is real! The conclusion would be ghosts are real!, and the Loch Ness monster would still be a floating log.

A quick tangential story demonstrates this �cheating� quite nicely. During a lecture about conservation of energy, one of my professors said that it is a law of nature and has never been violated. (It is a continuity equation, as I discussed in Entry 19.) But, he pointed out that someone once called him on that assertion. This person claimed that the conservation of energy has been violated many times, but physicists just make up new types of energy to keep the balance working. For instance, a chunk of uranium ore heating up would violate energy conservation until you invoked nuclear energy. Although this person was wrong (nuclear energy is a type of energy), I can see how s/he might have viewed this as science �cheating.�

Sorry � Science Finds Your Creation Myth Less Appealing Than Clay

The incident that directly prompted this entry was a discussion of abiogenesis. Our friend was particularly distressed that scientists aren�t exploring the possibility that god created life. They�re looking a self-replicating chemicals and layers of clay and lightning strikes and panspermia, but not god. Why are the first four hypotheses I mentioned valid to scientists, but not the last one about god?

The answer is simple: chemicals and clay and lightning and meteors are natural phenomena, while deities are supernatural phenomena. We have evidence that these natural things exist/occur, and so it is possible to build plausible hypotheses based on them. We do not have evidence for supernatural phenomenon, and so you cannot build a fruitful hypothesis based on the supernatural.

More important are the practical considerations. Aspects of the natural phenomena can be tested in a laboratory setting. What sorts of chemicals can catalyze their own replication? Can layers of clay act as crude vessels for life? Does lightning cause the formation of very complex chemicals? Can microbes survive long trips in deep space? On the other hand, the supernatural hypothesis defies testing. How could the idea that god created life from non-life be explored in a scientific manner?

Abiogenesis is a very open question at this time. The only currently appropriate answer to the question �How did life start?� is �I don�t know!� Somebody�s god may well have done it, but there is no reason to think so and no way to coherently explore that possibility.

Let�s switch gears for a moment, and imagine that an astrologer is arguing that he can explain abiogenesis:

Many people believe in astrology, and use it successfully in their day-to-day life. In the past, many scientists have been astrologers, particularly astronomers. We believe astrology works via the action-at-a-distance principle, which is established physics. Thus, the alignment of the stars also might have injected life force into formerly-inanimate chemicals. Scientists ought to consider this hypothesis.

How would you respond to this (assuming you�re not an astrologer)? You would say that astrology has no evidence, its popularity and history is irrelevant, its supposed mechanism is technobabble pseudoscience, and, most importantly, its abiogenesis hypothesis is untestable, unfalsifiable, and unscientific.

Replace all the astrology with theism, and you have the appropriate skeptical response to this week�s statement.

Without Evidence, It�s All Gremlins

If I were arguing against my own article, I would assert that scientists are being very closed-minded when they snub supernatural hypotheses. The most obvious issue here is that the supernatural might turn out to be fully natural, and so scientists might be taking good ideas off the table when they ignore the supernatural. Something wacky like quantum tunneling or time dilation would�ve been considered magical in the nineteenth century, and scientists who rejected such a concept would have been dismissing natural physics.

The issue here is that these scientists would have been correct in dismissing these hypotheses at that time, because there was no data to support them. Experiments at the time lacked the sensitivity (and/or ability) to detect quantum and relativistic phenomena, so these ideas were simply not testable. Once you allow untestable hypotheses into the mix, you�re lost in a sea of nonsense. You have absolutely no way to discriminate between competing ideas. If you�re going to believe that the electrons you cannot detect are tunneling through walls, you might as well say that gremlins are doing the digging.

�Woah, Woah, Woah! What About [Dead White Guy]?!�

Again imagining myself in my targets� shoes, I�d start arguing along philosophical or theological lines at this point. People have been discussing the supernatural for millennia, and the prominent thinkers of the past few were kind enough to write these ideas down and earn themselves Wikipedia entries. These discussions would of course provide fodder for countless entries, but we can succinctly slam this door shut for the purposes of this discussion.

Science trucks in the real world. It is a systematic method for understanding the environment around us. Evidence is paramount in science. Scientists need evidence to test hypotheses, and they cannot scientifically deal with things for which there is no evidence. This is why this entirely entry has been lousy with qualifier words: tangible evidence, testable hypotheses, unambiguous demonstrations, plausible hypotheses, etc, etc, etc.

In a handy-dandy two-word term, science requires methodological naturalism. Someone can philosophize until the atmosphere runs out of oxygen about the supernatural, but it wouldn�t affect the scientific method in the slightest. So long as the supernatural doesn�t lose the meta- in metaphysics and become physics, the scientific method simply doesn�t (and actually can�t) care.

Imagine that someone, right now, is publishing proof that a deist-type god exists. Their logic is impeccable, their premises valid, their reasoning sound, and their argument impregnable. Tomorrow, the entire world will have definitive proof that a deity exists. This fact would have no effect whatsoever on what I do in my lab the next day. If this deity (let�s call it J. R. �Bob� Dobbs, just for kicks) doesn�t interact with the natural world, then science has no bearing on it and it has no bearing on science.

Hypothesize or Abscond (That Is, Put Up or Shut Up)

The claims of my new friend notwithstanding, scientists do not assume the Christian god doesn�t exist. As a supernatural entity, a deity simply cannot be investigated scientifically. Scientific inquiry requires evidence, reproducibility, consistency, and clarity. If a concept or phenomenon possesses all these traits, then I assure you that it is not supernatural.

If a person ever makes this claim to you, I would reply with a simple request. Ask them to explain an experiment that would demonstrate that their god did or did not do something. I suspect the hangup will be falsifiability, so don�t let them off the (sky)hook in that regard.

Entry 31: Research Should Validate Alternative Medicine

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:38:45 GMT

Let's start with the impetus for this entry. I give you the recent statement by Senator Tom Harkin, D-IA, in regards to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) and its predecessor, the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM):

One of the purposes of this center [NCCAM] was to investigate and validate alternative approaches. Quite frankly, I must say publicly that it has fallen short. I think quite frankly that, in this center and in the office previously before it [OAM], most of its focus has been on disproving things rather than seeking out and approving.

That would have been this week's statement, but it would have made the title too long. Senator Harkin was instrumental in creating and shaping OAM/NCCAM, the branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that funds CAM research. The original stated purpose of this center was to rigorously and scientifically evaluate CAM modalities. This goal was, and may even remain, quite important. Some of these treatments were very popular yet very untested, so determining their safety and efficacy was an important public health matter.

But, Senator Harkin just admitted that NCCAM's charge wasn't actually to investigate alternative medicine. The goal of NCCAM was, apparently, to validate alternative medicine. This isn't merely a verbal flub, nor is it simply Harkin hoping that the hypothesis he bet his nickel on wins. Unless we pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, this is evidence of serious bias afoot at the NIH.

Investigate, Validate ... To-may-toe, To-mah-toe, Right?

NCCAM is charged with the scientific evaluation of alternative medicine. I'm not getting all civics-lesson on you here; this is the only way to actually determine whether or not any type of medical treatment works. While there are certainly pockets of mainstream medicine that aren't as science-based as they ought to be, medical treatments in general are investigated scientifically to determine their safety and efficacy. This is most readily apparent in drug trials: phase one looks for toxicity in healthy people, phase two tests the efficacy and safety in the target patient group, and phase three compares the treatment's efficacy to currently-available treatments.

Many alternative treatments have not been subjected to this rigorous evaluation, especially not prior to efforts like NCCAM. Alternative medicine was (and is) living off anecdotes and appeals to antiquity and popularity, the same sort of "evidence" that has kept the Four Humours in business for millennia (and counting). Rigorous scientific testing would determine once and for all whether or not these treatments worked.

But wait ... Senator Harkin isn't interested in whether or not these treatments work. He was looking for validation that alternative medicine does work. Thus, Senator Harkin already had his mind made up back when he started the OAM/NCCAM. He believed that alternative medicine worked; he just wanted science to give him an official-sounding rubberstamp to slap on it. Senator Harkin was convinced by the anecdotes and fallacies mentioned earlier, and his mind was and remains closed* to the possibility that CAM modalities might not work.

*Bear this in mind the next time some true believer calls you closed-minded: any true believer is far more closed-minded than a skeptic, since the true believer's mind is already made up and thus closed to the possibility that they are wrong. But, that's another story for another time.

Science doesn't work this way. While anecdotes are not worthless, they are only useful as generators of hypotheses. If tons of people are getting acupuncture and claiming that it somehow helped them, then it's worth investigating whether or not acupuncture has therapeutic value. The trick here is that these anecdotes don't themselves prove the efficacy of acupuncture, since they're completely uncontrolled and unverifiable. Any number of confounding factors could complicate the matter: maybe these people would've felt better regardless of what they did, maybe these people are misremembering, maybe these people just needed a little personal attention, maybe these people only claimed to feel better to placate the acupuncturist, etc, etc, etc.

A scientific study of a CAM modality would strive to reduce these variables to determine the actual efficacy of the treatment. The people participating in the study would be carefully and objectively monitored for unbiased data reporting. Half of the study participants would receive a placebo, so that the treatment outcomes could be compared to a control outcome. The testing would be double-blinded, so that neither the participants nor the therapists would know who received the placebo or the real deal. This entire process would be repeated at different institutions, so that subtler biases or even research misconduct could be circumvented. All these precautions would be necessary to eliminate the unconscious cognitive biases that creep into our everyday lives as humans. Only after these steps do we have a chance of knowing whether or not a treatment is effective.

If you'll allow me to be so bold (or italic), that last sentence bears repeating: Only after these steps do we have a chance of knowing whether or not a treatment is effective. What I've described is a scientific investigation of an alternative medicine treatment. Note the fundamental difference between this and a scientific validation of alternative medicine. Validation assumes that the treatment in question has already been proven effective. Validation is not something science does, except perhaps as training exercises. (Your chemistry labs during school could be considered validating already-proven knowledge.) Senator Harkin asked researchers to prove his beliefs correct, and then had the audacity to get annoyed at them when their data demonstrated that his beliefs are wrong. Senator, as the LOLcats would say: SCIENCE ... ur doin it rong!

Pseudoscience: The Only Bipartisan Thing in Washington

Senator Harkin communicated a variety of important points in his little spiel about alternative medicine. One aspect I haven't addressed is that he reminded us that woo is eminently bipartisan. Republicans certainly don't (and never did) have a monopoly on un-, anti-, and pseudoscientific positions. A lot of pro-science folks have been understandably pumped about the Obama administration after years of what some have gone so far as to call a Republican war on science. But, issues like alternative medicine make it abundantly clear that skepticism is necessary regardless of which political party is in power.

Complementary and alternative medicine needed to be investigated via science, not validated by it. Many skeptics feel that NCCAM was wrongheaded from the get-go, via the argument that research dollars ought to be allocated according to individual treatments' plausibility. While they have a point about prior plausibility, I disagree that NCCAM was unnecessary. I believe that public's fascination with CAM warranted some scientific scrutiny, at least to check the safety of these treatments. This is all academic, of course, since it's in the past. What matters is that NCCAM spent millions of dollars over eighteen years investigating alternative medicine, and has demonstrated the efficacy of precisely zero treatments*.

*Special aside time again! The bolding and underlining was not sufficient to highlight the starkness of that fact. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine has yet to establish the effectiveness of a single alt-med modality. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Furthermore, no flavor of CAM has been determined ineffective. It seems that further research is always required.

The time for special NIH centers to study one Senator's sacred cow is over. If alternative medicine advocates want federal research dollars to study their favorite modality, they should have to write grants and compete with other treatments on a level playing field. If the treatment actually works, scientists are going to find it and doctors are going to incorporate it into regular old Medicine (M). M gets to cheat that way. As a quick example, everyone used to think that stomach ulcers were caused by too much acid in the stomach. A couple guys during the eighties did some novel but overlooked work suggesting that bacteria caused ulcers, and eventually the evidence was abundantly clear and M changed its ways. This story even has a Cinderella ending, since these guys won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2005.

I assure you that the same could happen to a chiropractor or acupuncturist, but the onus is of course on them to prove their theories. Homeopaths should be even more excited by this story, since they'd also be shoo-ins for the physics and chemistry Nobels. Best of luck, fellas!