By Matthew Coleman, on October 23rd, 2009
Today, upon logging into facebook, I was utterly and completely horrified to see this in my sidebar:
 WTF? Now, facebook isn’t known for having the best ads, but for some reason this one just ticked me off. Maybe it’s the fact that there is no option for “No, alien abductions are full of crap.” Maybe it’s the fact that they’re pushing another woo-stupid movie for the holiday season. Or, maybe it’s the fact that the poll numbers looked like this:
 Oh come ON! 69,000+ people had voted. On an advertisement for a movie. And almost half responded “yes.”
There is some poignant commentary to be made here about what people will believe. Something like: “If people believe in alien abductions, as absurd as the entire concept is, what else will they believe?” Or maybe: “Given that people are willing to accept anecdotal evidence and quack science as proof of the existence of aliens, what hope do we have of convincing them the value of real science and real evidence?”
Now, I know that it’s hardly a scientific poll. But even so, the Humanist in me would really, really love to believe that fewer people have their heads so full of woo that they’ll buy into anything.
Seen any other woo ads or polls? Let us know in the comments or in the forums!
Edit: It just doesn’t end! A refresh brought up this nonsense, from the same culprits: ...do aliens care about daylight savings?
By Matthew Coleman, on October 20th, 2009
A few rapid-fire links, pictures, and things of interest for Austin Skeptics:
By Matthew Coleman, on October 15th, 2009
Apologies if anyone showed after 7, but after I was at the pub alone for an hour I made the executive decision (as the only member present) to cancel the meeting.
By Matthew Coleman, on October 13th, 2009
Others can and will explain, better than I, why you ought to get vaccinated. Doctors, scientists, and senior skeptics will forever be able to describe why homeopathic alternatives are bupkis, and why herd immunity can tolerate a small percentage who go unvaccinated.
Unfortunately, in an article posted today over at New Scientist, pollsters from the University of Michigan have found that up to 40% of parents aren’t going to have their children vaccinated against H1N1:
In the US summer outbreak, the age group most hospitalised was children under 4. Yet 40 per cent of US parents say they won’t vaccinate their kids, according to a poll by the University of Michigan.
Many parents and health workers argue that swine flu is not dangerous enough to justify the potential side effects of a vaccine, but this week there were fresh warnings that the virus can cause serious illness. In Canada and Mexico respectively, 17 per cent and 41 per cent of people admitted to intensive care with the virus have died. In Mexico, half had no underlying health problems; in Canada 70 per cent had no major illness beforehand.
That’s a major, major problem. Kids–being kids–are unhygienic, virus-spreading creatures. If 40% go unvaccinated, outbreaks among them are inevitable: herd immunity only protects the freeloaders when 90% or more are vaccinated. Children under 4 are in the highest-risk group for hospitalization, and the numbers suggest that if you get it bad enough to be hospitalized, it’s bad enough to kill you.
One thing I’ve noticed–in the comment sections in many blogs, on tv, in homeopath rants and antivax rhetoric–is how fear is affecting the decision to vaccinate. Homeopaths don’t fear H1N1 because they believe that water will save them. Antivaxers may be afraid of swine flu, but they’re even more afraid of the shots that save lives and eradicate diseases. On top of that, chances are that you’re average Joe doesn’t fear H1N1; the outbreaks haven’t been severe enough, haven’t hit close enough to home to affect them.
I suspect that’ll change this coming winter, of course. Call me a pessimist, but with idiocy as rampant as it seems to be over health issues, the US population is bound to suffer a handful of major outbreaks and many more casualties. A peek at the news shows that the deaths have already started in and around Austin.
Of course, every year thousands of people die from regular influenza. What makes H1N1 different is that it appears to have a high kill percentage, and that’s nothing to sneeze about.
I’m getting vaccinated later this week… How about you?
By Jeff Hartley, on October 6th, 2009
WE HAVE BEEN KICKED OUT OF BALCONY AT CENTRAL MARKET. WE ARE NOW DOWNSTAIRS NEAR THE DOOR!
By Matthew Coleman, on October 5th, 2009
Back in July I wrote an article for my personal blog entitled “Eleven Reasons Why I Won’t Give to Your Charity,” and I decided that it was time to give it the skeptical overhaul. Austin is home to thousands of not-for-profit organizations (a recent search on the site www.guidestar.com (a non-profit information search engine) returned over 7000 results for Austin, TX), and as rational, skeptical individuals we ought to have some guidelines for when, where, and why we give to charity.
I’m not suggesting that my list is a be-all, end-all solution to your charity decision-making process, but it might just give you an extra excuse or two when confronted by insistent, petition-wielding rouges on the streets of our fair city.
Eleven Reasons I Won’t Give to Your Charity: Skeptics Edition
1. Money
Skeptics don’t tend to make money by being skeptics. In fact, I’m not sure that I know a single skeptic who makes a living by being skeptical, and by running a local skeptics group. That said, money is understandably an important commodity to the unpaid skeptic, so we ought to be careful about where we spend it, and how. After bills, caffeine addictions (or perhaps other vices), saving up in a troubled economy, and donating your spare time to your skeptics group, there likely isn’t much left to give away. Money: I ain’t got none, so you don’t get it either.
2. You’re a jerk
Nothing turns me off more than a charity or non-profit who is pushier than a used car salesman. The merits of your organization should stand on their own—if you need to incite moral disgust, outrage, or incredulity in your potential marks, you’re doing something wrong. I’m willing to listen to any rational arguments you may have, but insulting me will get you absolutely nowhere.
3. Time
You know what? I’m a busy guy. I work forty hours a week and when I get home I’m either taking care of my pets, planning my wedding, doing chores, working on my grad school applications, or chilling with my skeptic buddies. On the rare occasion that I do get some down time, I like to sit and read, play a game, or spend time with my fiancée. When you interrupt my dinner by knocking on my door, or when your “Can I have a minute of your time?” ends up taking twenty, I’m probably not going to help you out. Make giving easy. Let me browse your website when I’ve got time, and don’t expect me to make any instant decisions.
4. Hypocrisy
Chances are, you’re just the schmuck on the street and you’re not making the decisions for your organization. I understand, I really do. But if (for example) your organization takes government funds and then actively discriminates based on sexuality or religion, or you protest against the fuel efficiency of airplanes and then drive around a hulking behemoth of a fuel-chugging Russian boat then I’m not going to give you the time of day, let alone money or my signature. This is where skepticism really pays off when it comes to charities: a little bit of research can uncover a lot of nasty surprises, especially in an international organization.
5. Alternatives
Research. Research kills even the best sales pitches, because even though we might like what you’re selling, there’s always the chance that somebody does it better. If I’ve found another organization that I like better, does the same things as you do, and actually seems to have their act together, guess who is getting my money? That’s right – it isn’t you.
6. Fallacious sales pitch
This is, I’m sad to say, a true story. One day I was walking down the street and I came across a few Greenpeace workers who had already quite blatantly violated #2. When I repeatedly told them I wasn’t interested, one of the fellows said “You’ll care about the trees when there’s no air to breathe.” Wow, hey – an appeal to fear! Not to mention the fact that you’ve latched it onto a slippery slope, an either-or fallacy, and a red herring. Go ahead and stop there, because at that point I’ve stopped listening. Skeptics: arm yourselves! I’ll always and forevermore advocate knowing the most common fallacies—they’ll always come in handy.
7. Commission
A number of organizations hire students to go out and canvass neighborhoods or stop people on the street. Often these kids get paid minimum wage with a bonus for every signature or donation they get. Sorry pal, but if I’m going to give a few bucks to your organization, I’ll do it through their website. That way, I’ll have a better idea of where my donation is going (hopefully to actually further the cause), and I won’t just be giving you weekend beer money. My advice: get a real job, and if you still want to help out that organization either volunteer or donate some of your own money.
8. Religion
Your organization does good things. It feeds the homeless, runs a shelter, and gives counseling to victims of domestic abuse. One hitch: someone has got to be a member of X religion to get help from you, has to pray before getting food, or has to sit through a sermon as part of the counseling. Sorry mate, but I’ll find a secular alternative instead: see #5!
9. Departure from reality
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could stop all the violence in Africa, feed the world’s children, sort out the economy, eliminate communism, and end global warming, all at the same time? Some charities have a goal that is so ridiculously unrealistic that I’m just going to steer clear right off of the bat. I’m a pragmatically minded guy, and I’d like to give my money to someone who could actually do something with it. On top of that, a bunch of organizations rely on pseudo-science, fear mongering, or scripture to justify their goals or their methods. Thanks, but no thanks.
10. Priorities
There are big issues, and there are little issues. I tend to see big issues as ones that have an impact on a national or global scale, while little issues are ones that tend to be confined to a particular city or town. But then, there are those charities that just plain seem to have their priorities out of whack. I like to call these the “Overcompensate much?” charities, since they’ve gone ahead and tried to elevate a particularly minute problem into one on par with national crises. I’m not talking about local food drives, animal shelters, or support programs – each of those deserves support, even though they’re working on a small scale. No, I’m talking about the “Buy a new sidewalk for the 39th street cul-de-sac!” or the “Send my little Timmy off to Space Camp!” charities. No offense, but as I’ve said before: if I’m giving my money or my time away, I’d like to actually have it go somewhere useful.
11. Spam
I considered filing this under #2, but it is a whole new level of awfulness that couldn’t be contained by mere jerkery. I give you money. You take my personal information, and you give it to every other charity on the planet. Or, you blatantly sell it to advertisers. Or, worse yet, you yourselves just won’t stop sending me message after message, email after email, and phone call after phone call asking for “just a few more dollars.” Tell you what – I’ll decide if I want to give you any more of my money, and I’ll decide when and how I’m going to do it. That way, you can stop spending the money I gave you on asking me for more money, and I won’t have to recycle all of the junk you send to me.
So there you have it! Eleven Reasons: Skeptics Style. I didn’t need to modify my post much to fit this community, but if you’re interested in reading the original 11 you can head over to my blog!
By admin, on September 29th, 2009
It’s time again for our 1st Tuesday Monthly Meeting!
It looks like we are going to meet at least once more at Central Market.
When: Tuesday, October 6, 2009 @ 6:00 PM CST
Where: Central Market North, in the cafe on the south side of the building. We will meet upstairs.
By Matthew Coleman, on September 28th, 2009
In our daily lives, we compromise, often without a second thought. We make compromises with our friends and family, our work and our play, our wallets and our wants. We compromise because we recognize the need for give and take, for progress, for solutions to delicate problems. We compromise because we understand that if we don’t, we’ll never get what we want.
We’ve become so enamored with the concept of an ideal compromise that we’ve forgotten how absurd (and how absurdly dangerous) compromise can be. Just open up your American History textbooks (assuming that the Texas State Board of Education hasn’t gotten to them first), and look up the Missouri Compromise and the Three-Fifths Compromise.
And the Texas Board of Education is a great place to look when we’re talking compromise. Of the fifteen members, seven are ardent, anti-science fundamentalists while the remaining eight represent a moderate pro-science majority. But when it came time to vote on the science curriculum, the pro-science squad would only vote together when faced with an extreme amendment; as soon as a minimal compromise was suggested, one or more of the eight would jump ship and vote with the anti-science party, screaming “Compromise is good!” The end result was indeed a compromise, albeit in the pejorative sense–the pro-science members gave up their perfectly legitimate positions in lieu of weak, thinly-veiled, and unsubstantiated creationist jargon.
As skeptics, we need to be especially careful about proposed compromises and what they represent. A compromise between established medicine and alternative medicine might involve a physician (that is, an MD) using bits of proven herbal lore, but it doesn’t grant carte blanche legitimacy to the field of naturopathic medicine. A compromise between sane individuals and the so-called birthers doesn’t exist (in fact, can’t exist), but that hasn’t stopped some people from trying to bridge the gap.
When it comes down to it, a real compromise can only happen under very specific circumstances.
First off, the involved parties need to be able to communicate. Not talk at each other, not scream under the pretense of debate, but instead they need to have the ability to transmit ideas, concepts, and meaning to one another. For matters involving science vs. religion or even religion vs. religion, this poses a particular problem: because their base-line values and beliefs are diametrically opposed to one another, meaningful communication is nigh impossible.
Second, neither of the positions can be outright false. There is no compromise between “unicorns exist” and “unicorns do not exist.” For that matter, there can’t be compromise when someone offers proof of a proposition’s truth or falsity. The proof is either valid and sound, or it isn’t. You can argue until the cows come home about a given argument, but reality doesn’t care what we think of it: reality just is.
Last, a compromise needs to be between two or more positions that lie on a specific spectrum of possibility. If one side argues for genocide while the other argues for free health care for all, a meaningful compromise is impossible–it makes absolutely no sense to say that half should be killed and the other half should get free health care. But if we’re talking about one form of health care reform versus another, a useful compromise lies between the two.
As a community, we need to learn when to stick to our positions and when we can afford a little give and take. And even so, I’m not offering up the rules above as immutable, absolute facts: they’re more like guidelines, helpful suggestions to tip off our BS meters when we’re dealing with ideological opponents.
But with any luck, they’ll help us keep our compromises from becoming, well… compromised.
By Matthew Coleman, on September 16th, 2009
Today, I’m proud to be blogging for the Austin Skeptical Society, the voice of skeptical Austin. From here on out, I hope to provide you with ideas, insights, and perspectives on all sorts of topics with one aim in mind: getting you to THINK! You don’t have to agree with me, but I hope that what I write inspires you to action and critical thought.
I’m not big on introductions, so without further ado, let’s get on to the article!
On Snake Oils and Science
Recently I got into something of a conflagration on the internet. Pointless, I know, but it started fairly innocently: a Twitter acquaintance of mine commented on the Whole Foods fiasco, and in response I suggested the local Central Market as an organic / wholesome shopping alternative. Say what you will about the relative merits of organic foods, nutrition, and your weekly grocery bill, because I’m not going to get into that here. But what was interesting (and the reason it was important to tell you that this was on Twitter) was the fact that, mere moments after we made our comments I received an unsolicited message from Natural Grocers.
“Hello!” it said. “For yummy organic food, why don’t you check out the new Natural Grocers on Guadalupe!” Well, okay. Never mind that I had already been to the Natural Grocers in question, and never mind that even though it was within easy walking distance, I still preferred Central Market. No, in my humble opinion Natural Grocers isn’t so much of a grocery store as it is a front for Vitamin Cottage, a feel-good kind of supplement pusher that puts homeopathic remedies and cleansing concoctions on the familiar, untouchable “natural equals better!” pedestal.
Maybe it is a personal failing of mine, but I don’t take kindly to spammers in any form, so I decided to take the Natural Grocers twitter crew for a spin. We tossed some banter back and forth about why I didn’t plan on returning to their store when finally they linked to what they considered scientific evidence for the efficacy of nutritional supplements.
Each of the four articles they provided were penned by one Jacob Schor, ND, who in turn cited a number of medical and naturopathic journals. “Doctor” Schor is an accredited Doctor of Naturopathy, an impressive-sounding title which has absolutely no legal, practical, or medical meaning in 34 states, including Texas (ND’s aren’t even allowed to “practice” their medicine in Texas. The remaining states play kowtow to the Council on Naturopathic Medical Education, the leading accreditor of naturopathy schools, which never lets you forget that it has been “recognized by the U.S. Secretary of Education” — essentially meaning that they’ve agreed to follow the rules on student loans).
But let’s give him a momentary suspension of disbelief: he appears to have a highly advanced understanding of a very specific area of science, and when he doesn’t cite his own articles or quote from Wikipedia, he links to abstracts from places such as the American Society of Clinical Oncology, which appears to be a legitimate medical organization. Dr. Schor, who has been chosen as the spokesperson for Natural Grocers, cites real, honest, bona-fide science! Unfortunately, in the same breath that he uses to cite scientific sources he derides MD’s for not realizing the power of homeopathy sooner: “I feel like I’ve woken up this morning in an alternate universe where the medical powers freely accept the power of natural medicine.” I guess he wants us to ignore the fact that the most effective natural medicines went on to become simply medicine, which scientists then went and figured out how to make in usable quantities and ultimately made more effective. I guess we’ll have to forgive doctors for not realizing that one of a billion different natural compounds could be effective in a highly specific, incredibly limited manner.
At this point I had more or less abandoned the twitter argument in favor of something more productive (after all, I have a job, two cats, and a wonderful fiancée) but I couldn’t help but marvel at the intricate levels of woo they’ve set up to sell snake oil to the masses. The amount of effort these people have gone through to appear legitimate might as well have been spent actually becoming the doctors who actually do go out into the world, test which bits of herbal medicine work and which don’t, and provide a useful service to the greater population.
But then I suppose that there is always a market for snake oil, and the best pushers are those who believe it truly can perform miracles.
Remember folks, doctors (medical doctors, who went to medical school, studied medicine, learned in hospitals, and who are licensed to practice medicine) are there to help you. If St. John’s Wort actually did something, and it could be proven to do something beyond the placebo effect, you’d get a prescription for it when you went in for your annual checkup.
Just a thought.
By admin, on August 26th, 2009
Monthly meeting time!
When: Tuesday, September 1, 2009 @ 6:00 PM CST
Where: Central Market North, in the cafe on the south side of the building. We will meet upstairs.
This month we have some serious topics to discuss:
- Board elections
- Incorporation
- Membership plans
But it’s not all work and no play, because this month we will be having the first of our new monthly social event! Join us for the tentatively named Skeptics; Mmm, Beer! on the 3rd Thursday of each month.
When: Thursday, September 17, 2009 @ 6:00 PM CST
Where: Draught House Pub & Brewery, 4112 Medical Pkwy
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