Salt City Skeptics Book Club: Spook

Last Wednesday, we had our first SCS book club at Coffee Connection where we discussed Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World. In my opinion, it was one of our best ever events. It certainly was, with the exception of the Darwin Day event, our most well-attended.

Lots of new faces, lots of great discussions. I did hear a few minor complaints that we didn't talk about the book more... It's true that we veered off-topic pretty quickly. I personally feel that's okay, that the book was more of a touchstone for starting conversation, but I'll try to keep that in mind going forward. I think our next book, on a more specific topic than the wide-raging Sagan book, will help with that issue...

In June, we'll meet and discuss Mary Roach's Spook. In Spook, Roach tackles claims of the afterlife, ghosts and the paranormal from a scientific perspective.

Roach is a science journalist with a very entertaining, engaging style who dives head-in and tackles an incredibly wide range of topics. Her other books, Bonk and Stiff (about the science of sex and... well, corpses, respectively) are a great read by all accounts. I've been meaning to read her books for some time, so I'm excited to jump in with Spook.

I heard this excellent interview with Roach on Little Atoms last year about Bonk, her latest book. (Friendly heads-up: contains very frank discussion of sex and sexuality, including pig masturbation, penis-stealing witches, and the "Thrillhammer.")

So, go buy Spook now! Also, for you Audiobook listeners, Spook is available on Audible.com.

A few notes on my last post...

Yep, I'm up late tonight... So I thought I'd take a minute to post a quick note about yesterday's post...

I feel obligated to follow-up on my last post about Larry King's interview with Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carey. In my post as originally written, I stated that CNN and Larry King Live did not allow for a rebuttal.

It seems I was quite mistaken on that. An anonymous commenter on my last post pointed out that indeed there was a rebuttal section. The video of the interview I saw initially did not include the follow-up, and none of the accounts I had read up to that point had made mention of it. I came away assuming a falsehood. I wrote the post in haste, and though I stand by it as it stands now, I no longer feel CNN was as much in the wrong on this.

I do still feel that the interview was more credulous than it should have been. Hearing King gush about the knowledgeably of Carey and McCarthy in lead-ups to this interview lent them a credibility which they do not deserve.

The fact remains that the there is no demonstrated link, no plausible causitive agent, and just plain no evidence for a link between autism and vaccination. (Check out David Gorski's account of the interview and the various links within it to see a thorough response to the various claims made by McCarthy.)

I just wanted to point out the importance both in general and to me personally in taking the time to verify facts, which is the essence of skepticism, the very purpose of this blog and its associated group. I will endeavor in the future to verify the factuality of my statements here, and I'm more than happy to be called on the carpet if something I say is incorrect.

An open letter to CNN and Larry King Live

This is an expanded version of a note I did actually send to CNN and the Larry King Live show:

I have to say that I'm disappointed at CNN and Larry King Live for last week's show featuring Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carey discussing the supposed link between childhood vaccination and autism.

It is irresponsible for CNN, with its reputation as the "most trusted name in news," to allow McCarthy, et al, to propagate unsupported claims about a link between childhood vaccination and autism for which the scientific evidence is not just weak, it is nonexistent (a fact acknowledged by McCarthy when she claims that she first diagnosed her son herself using her "mommy instinct," and that anecdotal evidence should be sufficient to conclude that vaccines lead to autism).

In fact, study after study shows that there is no causal link whatsoever between autism and vaccination. This isn't some cute story about a mom and her son overcoming an unfortunate affliction, this is a growing threat to public health. And it's an issue on which McCarthy is having a notable impact. Lives are at stake on this issue. People have died and will continue to die due to declining rates of vaccination, due in large part to the success of antivaccinationist rhetoric pushed by McCarthy and her ilk (indeed, McCarthy freely acknowledges that vaccine-preventable deaths are on the rise... and that she doesn't care).

As for what the evidence is, just this year Andrew Wakefield's study which began in earnest the vaccine->autism myth was found to be not just incorrect, but fraudulent; and the autism omnibus findings have lain waste to antivaccinationist claims. (Check out this post at Science-Based Medicine for a thorough excoriation of such claims. Be warned, it's a long article, but very much worth your time).

As I do not have children of my own, I cannot understand the pain that parents, including McCarthy, must go through upon discovering a developmental disability, such as autism, in their children. I do understand the desire to want to find something to hold on to, some kind of explanation, something or someone to blame. I believe that McCarthy is going down this road earnestly because she truly wants to have a positive impact...

But, as unsatisfying as it may be, autism can't be blamed on childhood vaccination. The evidence contradicts the claim.

Letting McCarthy and Carey present their unsupported claims on CNN is very much akin to letting a climate change denialist promote his particualr brand of unsupported nonsense, or letting Kevin Trudeau hawk some "miracle cure" as news. CNN's name would lend these views credibility, credibility they do not deserve. Though LKL did allow for a rebuttal, it would be wonderful to see a more thorough explanation of the safety and efficacy of vaccines, and an objective analysis of the supposed link to autism.

Open-mindedness

Here's a great little video on open-mindedness, specifically how the charge that skeptics are "close-minded" is innacurate, and that in fact those who accept unsupported claims and reject claims supported by evidence are, in fact, close-minded.

Absolutely work checking out.

[hat-tip: John Loftus]

What makes someone a skeptic? What makes someone a denialist?

I've previously tried to answer the question, "What is Skepticism?" I'll try not too cover too much of that same information here, but what makes someone a skeptic? What sets a skeptic apart from the general populace?

"What are you skeptical about?"
Probably the most common question asked at the Salt City Skeptics events by those not familiar with skeptical movement is, "So, what are you skeptical about?"

Now, I won't deny that many skeptics have pet issues, such as the evolution/creationism debate or psychics or alternative medicine. But every time I'm asked this question, it throws me off a little. I should be prepared for it by now, but I'm always caught off-guard. I've answered "well... everything!" before. But this is not a satisfactory answer, as it implies that skeptics are jerky curmudgeons who go around saying "I don't believe that" to everything they hear. To say one is skeptical of "everything" doesn't adequately communicate the process of skepticism. Skepticism is a filter; a toolkit: the pocket-version of the scientific method.

Due to a large overlap between the skeptical community and the atheist/agnostic/nonreligious community (to me, for instance, skepticism is a big part of, perhaps even synonymous with, "freethinking"), I've heard other people respond to this question with answers like "religion." While it's true that to most skeptics, religious beliefs are not immune to their skeptical eye, and indeed for many (such as myself) it's one of those pet areas that gets a lot of attention, But to me, setting oneself up as a "[insert topic here] skeptic" implies that some ideas, those that are not x, may be immune from skeptical inquiry.

Denialism is not skepticism
There's another issue at play here, though. My BIGGEST pet peeve is the self-application of the label "skeptic" by people who reject scientific inquiry or evidence that contradicts their viewpoint. This is the very antithesis of skepticism.

Be wary whenever you see someone call themself an "x-skeptic." This person is almost certainly an x-denialist instead. I've heard creationists call themselves "evolution skeptics." Another I've heard is "9-11 skeptics," which certainly sounds a lot friendlier than "paranoid antisemitic conspiracy theorist." It's pretty safe to just say you're "skeptical of the evidence," and using the term adds an air of reason to an unreasoned proposition. The problem is that the evidence is not on the side of these "skeptics." They deny the mountains of evidence in opposition to their claim. This makes them denialists.

Fun (and depressing) Experiment!
One group of denialists has been particularly successful at usurping the term "skeptic" for their antiscience agenda.

Let do an experiment: Open a new browser tab and perform a Google search on the term "skeptics." What do you find? For the lazy, the top ten results include Skeptic magazine, Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, the Skeptic's Annotated Bible (which is, by the way, rad... Yes, I just said "rad"), and other links very much in line with the skeptical movement; viz. science, rationalism and critical thinking.

Now, go to a daily newspaper's website and search for "skeptics." What do you find? You'll find that the term is used by the media in a very different way. I chose the New York Times. The top 10 results are nearly all about climate change.

"Climate Change Skeptics"
Far and away the most prevalent group of these "x-skeptic" denialsts are global warming or climate change "skeptics." Indeed so successful has this group of faux skeptics been at usurping the term that most of the headlines in the NYT search above do not even reference climate change, but simply use the term "skeptic" on its own. (For instance, the article "Lessons from the Skeptics' Conference" is not about The Amaz!ng Meeting, but rather a climate change denial conference).

Here are the first two paragraphs from an article entitled "Skeptics Dispute Climate Worries and Each Other":

More than 600 self-professed climate skeptics are meeting in a Times Square hotel this week to challenge what has become a broad scientific and political consensus: that without big changes in energy choices, humans will dangerously heat up the planet.

The three-day International Conference on Climate Change — organized by the Heartland Institute, a nonprofit group seeking deregulation and unfettered markets — brings together political figures, conservative campaigners, scientists, an Apollo astronaut and the president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus.

Sigh... First, I'd like to point out that a group committed to deregulation and "unfettered markets" can hardly be said to be objective on a topic with severe market policy implications. One's associations don't automatically invalidate one's evidence, of course, but it's of note how often groups with a financial stake in climate policy come out swinging on the "global warming is a hoax" team.

The article is quite right when it says that there is a "broad scientific and political consensus" about anthropogenic climate change and the need to curb it. That broad consensus is why most skeptics accept global warming. Because it's about evidence. On this issue, the evidence is in. And it keeps getting stronger. Each successive report from the IPCC, (the Nobel Prize-winning international team of climate experts most comprehensive studying global warming) is more conclusive, leaving less and less uncertainty for the denialsts to hide.

And oh how denialists love to hide in uncertainty. But this comes from a fundamental misunderstanding, whether by choice or by ignorance, of the very way science works. Science is ALWAYS uncertain. ALWAYS tentative. ALWAYS open to new evidence that will tweak or revolutionize our understanding on a given topic. That is how science WORKS. Hiding in a sliver of uncertainty is precisely the opposite of skepticism.

This is unfortunate. I worry sometimes that when I call myself a skeptic people assume that I'm an anti-science global warming denialist. I mean, I run a group with "Skeptics" in the name, and even I nearly cringe whenever I mention the term to someone, in part because of the word's associate with climate change denial. Luckily, I try to use this as an opportunity to show that skepticism -- real, solid, honest skepticism -- is awesome.

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UPDATED 3/26, 01:20: Run a damn spell check BEFORE you post next time, stupid.

Announcing Cafe Skeptique

For April's meeting we're trying something new. That's right! Instead of just filling our veins with a mild poison, we're actually doing something related to skepticism!

Join us at Coffee Connection (located a half-block south of our usual Piper Down) on April 8th at 7:00 for Cafe Skeptique (please tell me is that name is too cutesy!)

If you weren't already aware, we're reading Carl Sagan's book, The Demon Haunted World, a superb and easily accessible introduction to critical thinking and skepticism. Kaylynn will be driving a book discussion.

Haven't read it yet? COME ANYWAY! The book will be a springboard for conversation topics, but everyone can participate. (It's a fantastic read though, so I'd encourage you to pick it up!)

Hope to see you there!

Skepticism and Politics

Speaking to a couple of friends yesterday, the question of skepticism and politics came up. Specifically, should the Salt City Skeptics group take a neutral stance on political issues?

Some groups, such as the the New England Skeptical Society (the group who puts out the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe) try to stay politically neutral. They'll undertake politics when it overlaps with issues traditionally in the purvue of skeptical inquiry, such as when cdesign proponentsists attempt to get religious ideas inserted into public school science curricula. But for the most part, politics are off the table.

A short aside: I know there have been a number of people new to skepticism at our events. If you're one of them and haven't listened to the Skeptics' Guide podcast, go there. Now. Listen. Click the link above to hear individual episodes, or subscribe in iTunes. In my opinion, there is no better, or more entertaining, introduction.

Others skeptics are a lot more open about tackling political issues. There are a lot of skeptics who are politically quite liberal. Anyone who has read my personal blog will know that I'm among them. There are many well-known skeptics who would call themselves libertarian (Penn and Teller, for instance). I'm sure there are some politically conservative skeptics, too.

Bias certainly is a concern. I think that we all sometimes are a little quicker to jump on, say, a set of statistics cited by someone with whom we do not agree with politically. I know I am guilty of that. I think Penn & Teller, on their generally excellent TV show, Bullshit (along with Mythbusters, one of the only TV shows openly from a skeptical perspective), are occassionally guilty of letting their libertarian political perspectives flavor their content. On the other hand, they're pretty open about this, and if called on the carpet about an incorrect claim, they, like true skeptics, will gladly offer a correction.

Here's my take on the official stance of Salt City Skeptics and politics:

Whenever politicians or political bodies make a testable claim, that claim is open to skeptical inquiry. While this blog a political fact-checking site, political claims should not remain sacrosanct and outside the purvue of skepticism. We should demand the same standards of evidence from our representatives that we demand from anyone else.

As an example, let's examine gay marriage... See more in my next post.