The reason for this is probably obvious – skeptics are divided politically (this is an oversimplification but largely true) between liberals and libertarians, both of which seem to have strong and opposite opinions on the topic of global warming. As a result I have been simultaneously criticized for being too soft and too hard on global warming dissidents. I hope this means that I am striking an objective balance – but then, of course, I get criticized for striking a “false balance.” I have been told that I am losing my skeptical street cred, and that I have faith in global warming as a secular religion. Many people also seem to think they can divine my political persuasion from my opinions on global warming, but then proceed to make very incorrect assumptions on that score.

There has also been intense fighting on what to call global warming dissidents – the term I have settled on as the most accurate and neutral. Part of the problem is that dissidents come in a broad range of opinions. At one end of the spectrum there are what can only be described as deniers – those who engage in all the tactics of denialism against any notion of climate change. At the other end are those who accept the core scientific consensus of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), but are skeptical of some of the dire predictions and proposed fixes. And there is every permutation in between – defying easy categorization or labeling. So I use “dissidents” as a neutral catch-all.

What is most disappointing about the AGW controversy is the degree to which self-identified members of the skeptical community engage in less-than-skeptical discourse on this topic. I am mainly referring to the many dozens of e-mails I have received on the topic (every time I talk about it) but also on blogs and articles.

I would like to share with you an e-mail exchange I had recently with a global warming dissident. He is responding mainly to my recent discussion of “climategate” – which has really increased the nastiness of the discussion on AGW.

My personal understanding of the current state of climate science is this – the evidence is very solid that average global temperatures are trending up over the last century and that human forcing through CO2 production is the best current answer to explain this trend. If this trend continues (a somewhat big “if”) then there will likely be significant unwanted consequences – not for the earth, but for human civilization. Shifting around agriculture and shorelines will be inconvenient, to say the least. But there is admitted uncertainty in this, and we don’t know all the ways in which the environment will respond to CO2 and temperature increases. But, as is often the case with applied sciences, we have to act prior to certainty if we want to affect the outcome.

Further, the current plans for fixes to rising CO2 and climate change are as much political as scientific. I think the best solutions to focus on are those things that we would benefit from anyway. Let’s accelerate research and development into alternative energy sources and increased energy efficiency. Even if AGW is a non-issue, these will be good things. It’s a win-win.

I must admit I have not been impressed with those who have e-mailed me to try to convince me that AGW is pseudoscience, and that dissidents are the real skeptics. It seems that the more someone tries to convince me of this position, the more they push me in the opposite direction. The following e-mail exchange really is representative of what I receive. (Forgive the length of the exchange.)

Steve, I was heartened to hear your softened position on Global Warming in the Year End SGU, even though Rebecca is still rabid. Eventually, all of you will come to realize who were the real skeptics on this issue, and who were the Denyers. A quote from below article – if the shoe fits:

“The secular religion of global warming has all the elements of a Religious Faith: original sin (we are polluting the planet), ritual (separate your waste for recycling), redemption (renounce economic growth) and the sale of indulgences (carbon offsets). We are told that we must have faith (all argument must end, as Al Gore likes to say) and must persecute heretics (global warming skeptics are like Holocaust deniers, we are told).

People in the grip of such a religious frenzy evidently feel justified in lying, concealing good evidence and plucking bad evidence from whatever flimsy source may be at hand. The rest of us, and judging from polls that includes most of the American people, are free to follow a more rational path.”

from: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/How-climate-change-fanatics-corrupted-science-83396362.html

I responded with the opinion I outlined above, concluding:

When you dig through all the nonsense and look at the actual data – in my opinion it supports the conclusion that the planet is warming and anthropogenic forcing is playing a significant role. Where this will lead and what to do about it are less clear. There is still uncertainty, but one thing is sure – if we wait until we are certain about AGW it will be too late to do anything about it. It’s like waiting to treat a patient with possible cancer until after you are sure it’s cancer, because it has spread and is now incurable.

Here is part of the e-mailer’s response:

Thanks for the considered reply. We of course agree on many of the issues – I have always been in favor of pollution control, energy efficiency, alternative energy, recycling when efficient. But not Cap and Trade or Carbon Credits or other political/economic disasters. Regarding your cancer analogy, you don’t treat for cancer without the biopsy showing the actual cancer. If you saw the Walter Williams / John Coleman information I sent yesterday, the “warming” itself is now questionable because CRU dropped the coldest temperature data from the mix used to show global temps. And the anthropogenic forcing effect is very tenuous – and where we truly disagree on Truth and Relevance.

OK – this is where I like to dig in. Whenever I get a specific claim I investigate it for myself and try to find out what the real story is. It seems that when it comes to the AGW controversy the claims of the dissidents do not hold up under investigation. So, did the CRU drop data in order to create the false impression of global warming? Here is what I found.

Your point about the CRU dropping the coldest temperature data is a good example of why I am not impressed with the criticisms of AGW dissidents. You seem to be accepting uncritically the claims of the extremists on one side. My approach is always to investigate the claims first, see what both sides are saying, and then come to a conclusion.

It did not take me long to find this: http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2010/01/kusi-noaa-nasa/
A very reasoned and referenced analysis of this claim.

First, as far as I can tell the claim comes from here: http://www.climategate.com/climatologists-drop-806-cold-weather-stations-in-a-single-year

The claim of dropped data results from anomaly hunting followed by admitted speculations:

“Absent any public statement from climatolgists for such a strange act, I can only speculate that this a deliberate attempt to cause an artificial warming of the data set. I can think of no other valid scientific reason.”

Ah – an argument from ignorance. Well, he should have investigated first.

It turns out that stations are not being dropped from the data. It takes years and even decades to put together the hand-collected data from many stations around the world. So as you look back in time, those stations whose data has not been made available yet “drop off”. As the author above explains – if you look at the number of stations providing data 30 years from now you may see a spike around 2010 in the number of stations. In other words – stations are not being dropped, there is just a delay in getting data from them.

Second – you need to ask what should be an obvious question – is there any evidence that the stations which are currently missing from the data (for whatever reason) would skew the temperature results in favor of a warming trend. The answer to this is a clear no, from multiple independent lines of evidence. First – satellite temperature data would increasingly depart from ground station data if the ground stations were being biased in one direction. No such trend exists.

Second, when you compare stations with current data and those without current data, there is no pattern or bias toward warmer or cooler temperatures. So the core claim that cooler temperatures are being systematically dropped is false.

As a side note, the claim is about the GHCN, not the CRU.

This is representative of the entire climategate affair, as far as I can tell – although I am reserving judgment until all the facts are in. It does seem the CRU scientists were not following the rules of transparency and had developed a bunker mentality. It remains to be seen if they were engaged in “pious fraud.” What I reject are the premature conclusions of dissidents who were quick to assume that climategate confirmed all of their most extreme opinions.

So far, when you dig down to the real information it turns out that the anomalies in the data were just an innocent part of the scientific process – in this case the lag in data collection. This is true anomaly hunting and confirmation bias.

I am still waiting to hear a legitimate scientific argument from AGW dissidents why we should reject the claim that global warming is happening and is likely anthropogenic. I am not impressed by political arguments, calling my position a religion, or weaving liberal conspiracy theories.

I may be wrong – if you think I am then let’s discuss the science. My challenge to those who consider themselves global warming skeptics is, if you wish to truly earn that mantle, is to focus on scientific arguments. My opinions can be changed on this topic, I really have no stake in the debate at all – except the one that every human on the planet has, which is only served by knowing the truth, whatever it is. I hope global warming is not happening, it is nothing but a major inconvenience and crimp in civilization. I would love to just continue burning fossil fuels and not have to worry about the consequences.

So if you disagree with me, show me some science. And spare me the name-calling and conspiracy theories.

The YouTube UFO phenomenon (or “YouFOs” – yes, I just coined that) is a good way for budding skeptics to practice their skilz. This is purely armchair skepticism, unless you want to do some actual investigation, which can be fun too. But armchair skepticism has its place – it is an exercise in logic and plausibility. Someone is presenting you with evidence and you analyze it critically. You may not have the time or resources to do investigative journalism, or to replicate experiments. But asking good critical questions is an essential part of science, and since the burden of proof is on those making the claim it seems reasonable that they should be able to answer our questions.

Recently I was sent a link to this video:

Take a look and see what you think.

Here are the questions I typically go through when confronted with these videos. Keep in mind – no one would be more thrilled than I if we finally had convincing evidence for alien spacecraft visiting the earth. I am looking at these wanting to find compelling evidence. So far, I have not seen anything even remotely compelling, and this current video is no exception.

Detail and Perspective

The first gestalt question I ask is – can what I am seeing in this video be anything other than a large technologically advanced spacecraft? The answer, so far, is always a disappointing “yes.” This usually comes down to detail and perspective. This video, like most, is at such a distance and resolution that we can make out only a provocative hint of what we are seeing – but insufficient detail to really know what it is. It appears to be a hovering object with lights. Can it be a floating object, like a blimp? Sure. Can it be a small model? Yes.

Regarding perspective, it is remarkably difficult to judge size and distance (and therefore velocity, although not relevant to this video) when viewing an object against the sky, with no foreground objects for reference. We simply cannot tell how big this thing is.

Provenance

In order to be compelled by a video I would also like to know where it comes from. Often the source is unknown, with the lame claim that person does not want the attention. Equally dubious is when the dedicated UFO hunter comes up with the video. Encountering a real alien spacecraft would be a rare low-probability event. The chance that a UFO hunter happens to be the only one to capture such video is curious. In this case the video comes from ofuhunter, who has his own UFO page. Other than that, I have no idea who this guy is.

How long is the footage?

Let’s say you walk out of your house early one morning and see a flying saucer in the sky. You rush back into your home, grab your video camera, and start shooting. This is the real deal, and you are filming it. How long would you train your camera on the object? Would you get bored after a few minutes and stop? I know what I would do. I would film it for as long as it was visible. I would try to zoom in as far as possible and make sure the camera focused on the object. I would call my family members to get my still camera so I could take high resolution stills at the same time. I would call friend and neighbors.

But maybe I would not have time. Maybe the object would fly away after a few moments – but then at least I would have footage of the object flying away.

So why is it we get 24 seconds of the object just floating there? Ofuhunter tells us the rest of the footage is being examined by “experts” but we never seem to get the full footage. It just seems like an attempt to explain away what is a typical feature of either hoaxed footage, or video of something mundane. We are being shown a select bit of the video  – I suspect that bit which seems the most impressive but lacks any of the details that would help us determine what the object actually is. Let’s see it fly away. Let’s see it move in front of something so that we can get some perspective.

Of course, hoaxing a short video is easier than hoaxing a long video. And often when the entire video is viewed we can see some embarrassing elements.

Where is all the other footage

This is being presented as a UFO hovering over a populated area. So where is the video from all those other people who would have likely seen it also? Where is the official investigation? Where is the news media? This video is being presented as “final proof of UFOs” but the reaction is underwhelming. Showing the object from different angles by different cameras would help demonstrate its authenticity.

Cameras and video cameras are now ubiquitous. When unusual events happen, everyone can whip out a camera and start filming. If we were being visited by alien spacecraft that occasionally decided to hover over populated areas flashing lights to get attention, there would be numerous videos of the event. Eventually someone would capture compelling video. But it has just not materialized. We are getting the same ambiguous pictures and video we have always seen.

Conclusion

Whenever I express my assessment of the dismal state of UFO evidence, always a UFO believers comments that there is video that has one or more of the features I list as a mark of a compelling video. The problem is, there is no video that has all these features at the same time – and that is what it would take. This is just good science – a scientist asks, “can we know that this is really an alien spacecraft – have we ruled out every other plausible alternative?” The answer is always no.

Recently there has been an increase in those attacking skeptics and skepticism. One tactic is to attempt to intimidate critics and silence public debate through libel lawsuits or the threat of such suits. The blustering by Bonnie Vent and her minions following Mark Edwards’ latest post is a good example. Clearly, they are not familiar with libel laws in the US, or they hope that we are not, or they simply don’t care.

To be clear, we take very seriously our responsibility to be fair and factually accurate, and we will happily correct mistakes if they are pointed out to us. The original version of Mark’s article contained the word “apparently” to refer to second-hand information. This was probably enough of a qualification, but we strengthened it to “allegedly” just to be sure, and even added the caveat about the original source. (Read the post for details.)

Fortunately in the US we have rational libel laws. In order to prove libel the plaintiff will have to prove that the defendant wrote something that was wrong, they knew it was wrong, and they did it deliberately out of malice. In some states you also have to prove harm, but a few have what is called “libel per se” which means that certain accusations are considered automatically damaging to one’s reputation.

On the other hand, some states also have anti-SLAPP laws – strategic lawsuit against public participation. In essence, if you use a libel suit to silence a critic and remove their right to participate in free speech, you may be counter sued under anti-SLAPP laws. The courts, in short, have recognized the threat that SLAPP suits pose to first amendment rights.

The Canadian Supreme Court recently recognized this as well, ruling in one case:

The Supreme Court said it examined laws in other countries with similar legal systems, such as the United Kingdom and Australia. It found that Canadian law was strict by comparison and did not give enough weight to the value of free expression.

“This, in turn, may have a chilling effect on what is published,” said the text of one of the rulings. “Information that is reliable and in the public’s interest to know may never see the light of day.”

Unfortunately, English libel law is still in the dark ages, as some of our colleagues across the pond have discovered. Simon Singh is currently defending a libel suit in British court against the British Chiropractic Association (BCA). Apparently he stung them and made it hurt when he pointed out they promote treatments that are not supported by evidence. This resulted in a backlash against the BCA and a campaign to reform English libel laws.

Previously Ben Goldacre and The Guardian were the target of a libel suit from one Matthias Rath, for selling dubious treatments for serious illnesses, like AIDS, in Africa. Ben emerged victorious from this suit.

Back on this side, Robert Lancaster was threatened with suit by Sylvia Browne for his website, stopsylviabrowne.com. Robert refused to back down or be intimidated by Browne, who had not case against him. Unfortunately, Robert suffered a stroke and during his recovery period it appears that the registration for the domain name lapsed and the url was picked up by a psychic promoter.

Paul Offit and Amy Wallace from Wired Magazine have also recently been sued by anti-vaccinationist Barbara Loe Fisher, the head of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC). This one is over the claim by Offit printed in Wired Magazine that “she lies” – referring to Fisher. If it actually gets to court  it is likely, in my opinion, that Offit will be able to demonstrate that Fisher has made comments that are less than truthful. But usually in such cases the point of the suit is not to defend it in court, but simply to force a settlement.

Threat of libel is not the only way that the cranks of the world are trying to fight back against skeptics. They are also trying to take us on in their own critical writing, which of course they have the right to do. But just like with the libel suits, this strategy has been backfiring more often than not. It seems that if we irritate them enough, we can goad them into embarrassing themselves by trying to do something they clearly are not good at – critical analysis.

Recently Deepak Chopra, Rustom Roy, and Larry Dossey attacked Science-Based Medicine in the Huffington Post. Invariably such attempts butcher the skeptical position (always a marker of intellectual sloppiness) and just provide more fodder for us to criticize, and this was no exception. In the world of alternative medicine defenders on nonsense, like the three above, have an especially hard time because they do need to seem scientific while attacking science and defending pseudoscience. So it is easy to trip them up in self-contradiction. As David Gorski writes:

Dr. Dossey just spent two articles whining that his beloved CAM is being treated so very, very unfairly by promoters of science-based medicine, but from my viewpoint it’s being treated more than fairly these days; it’s being given a free pass, by and large. Again, that’s why I’ll repeat it one more time. If Dr. Dossey really wants CAM to be evaluated on a truly equal scientific footing with science-based medicine, I have one thing to say to him one last time:

Bring it on!

Mike Adams, editor of NaturalNews.com, has also felt the sting of skeptics and decided to fight back with his own rhetoric. In it he raises an army of particularly flimsy strawmen against skeptics, easily dismantled. He was joined by fellow natural guru Joseph Mercola, who attacked one of our Australian colleagues, Rachael Dunlop. Mercola’s comments were in such poor taste that his own followers flinched.

Speaking of which, the winner of the most callous, distasteful, and strategically moronic attack on skeptics of 2009 goes to the Age of Autism for their photoshopped picture of various critics of the anti-vaccine movement (including yours truly) eating a baby at Thanksgiving dinner. Even some of their devoted followers were put off by this despicable (and mysogynistic) display, and they quickly decided to take it down.

Conclusion

As the skeptical movement grows we will increasingly become the targets of counter-attacks like those I discuss above. Like it or not, we are engaged in conflict with the promoters of pseudoscience and an anti-scientific world view, and they will fight back. But we have shown in recent years that we can stick together and we will not be intimidated. Try to silence one of us, and the criticism will only be magnified 100 fold.

Bonnie Vent could have just taken Mark’s criticism and moved on, but instead she chose to try to have the criticism taken down, resorting to empty libel threats as an intimidation tactic. But all she has accomplished is to focus our attention on her all the more.

The BCA was soundly embarrassed by the attention they received as a consequence of their lawsuit. It even led to skeptical activists reporting instances of chiropractors making false claims, which in turn led to one chiropractic group advising their members to take down all claims on their websites (which seems like a curious admission that their claims do not hold up to scrutiny).

I am particularly amused when the purveyors of pseudoscience try to engage skeptics in critical analysis. That is our arena, and we will be happy to trounce them all day long. In fact, we want a serious discussion of logic and evidence – that is what skepticism is all about. If we can get them engaging us in such discussion that can only serve our ends. Even if they can demonstrate that they are correct about a claim – that is all we want, to base claims on logic and evidence.

More likely, however, we will get what Mike Adams served up – a frothing rant that is so disconnected from reality it accomplishes our work for us.

So keep it up, fellow skeptics. We are having an impact, and the cranks of the world are feeling the pain.

Transitional Fossils

This remains one of the most frustrating contentions (someone who is not charitable or afraid of being sued might say “lies”) of the creationists – that there are no transitional fossils. Meanwhile, there are countless beautiful transitional fossils telling a clear story of common descent. How can two sides have such a different opinion about what appears to be a factual claim – are there transitional fossils or not? Well, the fossils are there, and the scientific community is pretty solid on their interpretation. Creationists simply deny their existence as a naked assertion, or (the more industrious) trot out logical fallacies and their own personal ignorance of evolutionary theory in order to deny the transitional status of fossils.

What this latter strategy amounts to is pointing to legitimate scientific debate about how to assemble an evolutionary tree (what evolved from what and when) or cladogram from the fossil evidence. Reverse engineering hundreds of millions of years of the evolution of millions of species from the fossil record is challenging, and so there is constant debate about the details. Creationists make the mistake of confusing debate about these details with debate about the bigger picture – that the fossils show a picture of common descent.

But perhaps the most common creationist fallacy used to dismiss transitional fossils amounts to saying – “if humans evolved from apes, why are there still apes.” Casey Luskin from the DiscoTute, a particularly sloppy apologist for ID/creationism, makes this exact fallacy on a recent post from the Evolution News and Views propaganda blog.

Here’s the logical fallacy – it assumes evolution is like a ladder or chain – one species changes into another, and then another, in a direct sequence. But that has never been the scientific consensus on evolution. Rather, when speciation events occur, one species become two. These two branches can now go off in different directions. In many cases what we find are many such branching events within related groups of species. It may happen that one branch leads to significant morphological change – a new group. And then there will be many species within a morphological space between the original species and the one branch that lead to the new group.  Many or all of these species may be considered morphologically intermediate or transitional – but very few will be on the direct line that led from the original ancestor species to the new group.

Further, after a speciation event one species may remain relatively unchanged for millions of years, while the other branches further, perhaps adapting to a new environment. The relatively unchanged species may retain features that are considered primitive for the highly changed cousin branch for millions, even tens of millions of years. And so we still have amoeba, even though some distant cousin of the modern amoeba branched off and eventually led to people. But we expect that there are creatures (extinct and extant) that exist in the morphological space between amoeba and humans – and not surprisingly, there are.

This is an extreme example, so lets give some that are more pertinent. We hypothesize that birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs. This led to the prediction that we would find creatures that occupy the morphological space between birds and dinosaurs. And we have – starting with archaeopteryx, but exploding in recent years to a host of feathered dinosaurs, some flying, some not. Perhaps not a single one of the creatures discovered is an actual bird ancestor – it matters not. They are transitional. Further, as the fossil record of these creatures was scant it seemed that feathered dinosaurs were all from a later period than the earliest birds. But as we found more and more fossils, and the picture started to fill in, as predicted the time of the oldest feathered dinosaurs moved closer and closer toward the earliest birds, and now we have specimens that predate them – problem solved.

Luskin is now arguing that Tiktaalik – the fishapod that is a fish filling a morphological space when one branch of fish were evolving fins into feet and adapting to walking, is not transitional. It is a fabulous transitional species, from a time and place and with the features we would generally expect for such a specimen. But we are talking about evolutionary events that happened about 380 to 400 millions years ago, and while we have many specimens they represent a tiny fraction of what would be necessary to create something close to a complete picture or cladogram. And so scientists connect the dots as best they can, but understand that each new fossil discovery is likely to revise the cladogram. The big picture is clear – fish evolved into tetrapods around this time. The details are sketchy and subject to change with each new find.

So it is not surprising at all that recently, as presented in Nature, scientists discovered the tracks of an early tetrapod that dates about 10 million years before Tiktaalik. This only means that Tiktaalik was a cousin of the slightly older species that led to tetrapods – like a chimpanzees to humans. Imagine a hypothetical future scientist millions of years from now trying to piece together human evolution from the fossil evidence. Their only primate specimens are lemurs, monkeys, and Homo erectus. They hypothesize that Homo erectus is a primate, and therefore predict that they will find transitional species between monkeys and H. erectus, and they find the remains of a chimpanzee from today – a million years younger than their erectus specimen. This find would confirm the evolution of hominids from non-hominid primates, even though the chimp specimen comes from a time later than the hominid specimen – because it fills the morphological space between monkeys and hominids.

Luskin does not get this, writing:

The fossil tetrapod footprints indicate Tiktaalik came over 10 million years after the existence of the first known true tetrapod. Tiktaalik, of course, is not a tetrapod but a fish, and these footprints make it very difficult to presently argue that Tiktaalik is a transitional link between fish and tetrapods. It’s not a “snapshot of fish evolving into land animals,” because if this transition ever took place it seems to have occurred millions of years before Tiktaalik.

If tetrapods evolved from fish, why are there still fish?

PZ Myers goes into more detail about what these new tetrapod tracks mean for our cladogram of the evolution of tetrapods from fish. It does make changes, putting certain lines further into the past than previously believed. I fully expect that every new fossil find (until a much more thorough picture emerges) will modify this cladogram, and buffoons like Luskin will declare each time he notices that this must call evolution itself into question.

The Creationist Editorial

Local papers frequently publish editorials from local creationists, who demonstrate clearly the effect that anti-evolution efforts have had on the quality of science education in this country. Often they just regurgitate the creationist propaganda they have soaked up and pass them along as unsupported assertions. You might say that picking on such editorials is not fair because they do not reflect the best arguments of the creationists. The sad fact is that they do – the Luskins of the creationist movement use more sophistimacated words, but their arguments are the same. And, in any case, it is good to address popular public belief.

Oleson Joe Lyng wrote in the Mesquite Public News a representative editorial (yes, we can make the obvious joke that he forgot the “i” in the middle of his last name).He goes through a fairly standard list of false creationist claims, including that there are no transitional fossils. He wrote:

Sir Fred Hoyle, one of the world’s leading astronomers and mathematicians said before the British Academy of Science that the probability of life arising from chance were the same as the probability of throwing a six on dice 5 million consecutive times!

He starts with a bit of an argument from authority, but the assertion is simply wrong, and has long been refuted. No one believes that a modern cell arose directly by chance (a straw man). Living cells themselves evolved over millions of years. There was likely a period of chemical evolution, which requires only the existence of a molecule that can make a crude copy of itself. From that the various components of the cell could have slowly come together. We certainly have only scanty knowledge about how this process occurred – but it simply wrong that evolution requires the spontaneous assembly of something close to a modern living cell.

He continues (I am picking a few of his arguments – he strings many of them together):

The law of entropy in nature says that time itself causes degradation by natural processes.

Just put a new car in that junkyard and watch it rust and fall apart over the years.

Things in nature tend to deteriorate into chaos over time or become more disorganized than organized.

The old second law of thermodynamics gambit. Here’s a tip to future creationist editorial writers – before embarrassing yourself (it’s Luskin’s job to embarrass himself, but you don’t have to do it) by vomiting forth a fallacious argument that has been destroyed numerous times in public discourse, exercise your Google skilz and find out what the counter argument is. I have dealt with this one myself numerous times.

But quickly – I wonder how Mr. Lyng thinks an oak tree grows from an acorn. If nature only results in deterioration and chaos, that should be impossible. Oh yes, acorns are alive and can use energy to grow and organize matter into an oak tree. Right – and life, which can use energy to grow and organize, can also evolve.

It gets better:

God created everything, and when he created light he created it already present from far away stars so we could see them!

Is anything too hard for God?

Thank you, Mr. Lyng, for proving that creationism is not science. If God can do anything, and therefore all disconfirming evidence of creation can be dismissed by waving the magic wand of divine omnipotence, there is no way to scientifically test the assertions of creationists. They are not scientific hypotheses – and creationism is not science.

While Mr. Lyng is skeptical of evolution, his standards of evidence are somewhat more forgiving when it comes to the Bible:

They espouse the bible as being totally non-literal when in fact predictions about Jesus’ first coming to the earth were fulfilled literally.

For example, Jesus was supposed to be crucified between two thieves.

Jesus was to be buried in a rich man’s tomb.

Jesus also said that the temple would be destroyed in Jerusalem.

That happened in 70 A.D.

Essentially his argument is that a literal interpretation of the Bible proves a literal interpretation of the Bible. So he starts with a straw man – “they” (I think he means evolutionists) don’t necessarily claim that the Bible is “totally non-literal” – there are many books in the Bible, and some are more historical than others. But in any case, many biblical scholars maintain that the authors of the New Testament were aware of the predictions of the Old Testament at the time they were writing, and so used these details as literary devices to make the point that Jesus was fulfilling the messianic predictions of the Old Testament.

Answering a Commenter

By coincidence, a comment popped up on an old creationist blog entry from about a year ago. I might as well add them to the pot. Bostonbruins writes:

One day, when we die we’ll see who’s right, won’t we?
And, if the Creationists are right, then we’re happy in heaven, and if we’re wrong then who gives a crap anyways, right?
But, if the Evolutionists are wrong then it matters a whole lot… because you’ll be in hell. So I’m thinking it’s a far better bet to believe in Creation.

Most skeptical readers of this blog will immediately recognize this line of reasoning as Pascal’s wager – it’s such an old canard it has a name. But wait, Mr. bostonbruins, what about the other 180 odd religions of the world, many of which are mutually exclusive? What if they are right? And in any case, he is equating accepting the scientific consensus on evolution with atheism, which is incorrect, and also assuming that if there is a God he would mind terribly much if we spend our seven or eight decades in the flesh flexing that meat between our ears. What – you used logic and evidence to arrive at your own conclusions rather than believing uncritically the primitive words of my prophets, distorted by centuries of retelling and translation? Eternity in hell for you.

Next we get the false equivalence argument:

And, to whoever said that individuals who believe in Creation are ignorant… Creationists are definitely NOT ignorant. Neither creation or evolution can be proven. Don’t even bother trying to tell me that they can be, because you’re just straight up retarded if you try to say that. Both are theories, because science means you can create it over and over again. You CANNOT create evolution again. Neither can you create Creation. ‘Cause we’re not God. So it’s a matter of what you want to believe in.

Science is not about proof – its about logic and evidence. Evolutionary theory has explanatory power and (more importantly) is very successful at making predictions that are validated by later observations and research. Evolution is a successful scientific theory. Creation is not even a theory – it is faith.

And science does not require creating stuff over and over. Only some sciences deal with laboratory experiments. What about astronomy. I guess unless we can make our own suns we cannot scientifically investigate the nature of suns – what powers them, how they evolve over their lifetime, and what happens to them. As long as there is a way to test claims (like, say, comparing genetic sequences or digging up fossils) you can do science. You don’t need to cook up stuff in a lab.

And as further evidence that creationism is not science, bostonbruins then repeats the omnipotence fallacy – God is all powerful, so that magically explains all the problems with creationism that you might think of. So there.

Conclusion

Aah. I feel a little better now. At least until the next time a creationist looks at me cross-eyed.

Here is a pdf of the complaint.

The subject of the suit is the excellent article by Amy Wallace criticizing the anti-vaccine movement. Wallace was attacked for this piece by anti-vaccinationists – essentially because she got the story correct. Wallace pointed out that the science strongly favors vaccine effectiveness and safety, and that the anti-vaccine movement is dangerously wrong – hurting the public health with their misinformation. The anti-vaccinationists were apparently very upset over be called out by a mainstream journalist. They got a lot of bad press this year, the Chicago Tribune also did a series of articles detailing the dangerous pseudoscience of the anti-vaccine movement. Wallace’s article earned her a place in the infamous baby-eating photo (along side Offit and yours truly) that only served to further embarrass the anti-vaccine movement via the blog, Age of Autism.

The law suit, in this context, seems like just the next step in the campaign against Offit and Wallace.

The NVIC, despite its innocuous name, is an ideological anti-vaccination group, and they were targeted among others in the Wallace piece. Fisher found a sentence in the article that she felt she could build a libel case around.

Fisher, who has long been the media’s go-to interview for what some in the autism arena call “parents rights,” makes him particularly nuts, as in “You just want to scream.” The reason? “She lies,” he says flatly.

“She lies” will now be the subject of as much analysis as the term “bogus” was in Singh’s article about the BCA, so I might as well start. Critics often walk a fine line – we want to accurately portray the actions and claims of the targets of our criticism, without holding any punches, but we have to be clear in our terminology and careful not to inadvertently give the wrong impression. The term “lie” is problematic. It is not necessarily inaccurate, but it can carry implications not intended by the writer, because it may imply something about what another person knows or believes.

Often we speculate, when someone makes a claim that is demonstrably false, are they deliberately lying or are they grossly mistaken. But this is a false dichotomy. There is a vast gray zone in between. Making a claim without due diligence is a form of deception. Often people will make claims as if they are verified and documented truths, without acknowledging that the claim is controversial, or without really verifying the facts. People may care more about the utility of a claim and its relationship to their ideology than whether or not it is objectively true. Are making such claims lying? It is more than being wrong, but not quite a knowing lie.

However, when one is engaged in a public debate and advocacy about an important health issue, one has a responsibility to get basic information correct and to relay it in as unbiased a manner as possible. Being recklessly wrong in such a case may be the moral equivalent of lying.

On the NVIC website there are numerous examples of misinformation. For example, about squalene (a vaccine adjuvant) they write:

However, the use of squalene type vaccine adjuvants, which were allegedly added to experimental anthrax vaccines and made Gulf War soldiers sick, is controversial.

OK – they write “allegedly” so I guess they are covered. But this is still deceptive, and meant to scare people off vaccines. It turns out that there was no squalene in the anthrax vaccines given to Gulf War soldiers. And soldiers who developed unexplained symptoms in the Gulf War were not more likely to have antibodies to squalene. The anthrax vaccine-squalene-Gulf War syndrome connection has been completely demolished at every point. It is no longer “controversial” among scientists.

So is the NVIC statement above a “lie” or is it just sloppy misinformation – and is there a functional difference between the two?

The use of libel suits to intimidate critics and have a chilling effect on open discussion is an old strategy. As I said, the BCA attempted to do that by suing Simon Singh, taking advantage of the horrible English Libel laws. Uri Geller sued James Randi in the past for saying he cannot really bend spoons. Matthias Rath sued Ben Goldacre for criticizing his health claims. Skeptics have, to a degree, engaged in public criticism of pseudoscience with the constant threat of being sued. Even when such suits are legally unsuccessful, they can be financially ruinous and therefore an effective bullying tool.

The ability to sue for libel is an important right to redress legitimate wrongs. But this right can easily be abused to silence open discussion. For this reason many states have SLAPP laws (strategic lawsuit against public participation). Recently the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that the need for open public discussion of important issues is a legitimate defense against a libel suit.

This is also the point behind the Keep Libel Laws out of Science movement, which is partly a backlash against the BCA suit against Singh.

Now the anti-vaccine movement in getting in the game, using the threat of libel to place a chill on legitimate criticism of their dangerous misinformation. It is time for the scientific and skeptical communities to rally behind Paul Offit as we did Simon Singh. I suspect this lawsuit will backfire against Fisher as much as the Singh suit did against the BCA. Let’s take a close look at the claims Fisher makes and whether they constitute “lying”. I suspect she will not hold up well under close scrutiny, just as the BCA claims did not.

Skeptical analysis is all about shining the light of science into those dark places of dubious claims and ideology that fear the light. Libel suits are often used as a tool to shield against the light of open examination, but we should fight back by using them as opportunities to shine even more light. Fisher better put on her sunglasses.

I doubt there is a fictional character more famous than Holmes for his towering intellect.

Like any fan, I approach a new imagining of a favorite hero with some trepidation – and that is how I approached the new Sherlock Holmes movie starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law.

There is simply no way for me to discuss this movie without massive spoilers. So do not read on if you have not seen the movie and are planning to. I do recommend the movie – so go see it, and then come back and read the rest of this post.

If you have read this far, then I can assume you have seen the movie or don’t care,

First, let me say I was pleasantly surprised by the film. The previews made Holmes seem more like an action hero, but that was not the case. Holmes was more brawny than previous incarnations, but except for occasional fisticuffs, Downey’s Holmes was as effete, proper, and pompous as ever. But more importantly, he remained every bit the intellectual the character should be.

I liked the way Watson was portrayed. He was less Holmes lap dog and more his equal, every bit as sharp as Holmes. And it was obvious that Holmes really cared for him. The one small downside to this, however, is that Watson was less in his role of needing everything explained to him. So there was less running commentary on Holmes musings about the case.

This was a factor in my only minor complaint about the movie – the clues were not sufficiently accessible to the audience. Holmes figures things out by applying his rarefied knowledge, which is fine and is certainly part of the character – but there also should be a balance of those clues that can be reasoned out even without knowing ahead of time that a paralytic poison can be made from dehydrated rhododendron.

Perhaps this difference results from the medium – cinema vs book – but I don’t think that entirely explains it. My concern is that it makes scientific knowledge seem inaccessible – almost magical.

I have this quibble, however, because otherwise the movie was awesome and true to the rational icon of Sherlock Holmes. Throughout the movie the villain attempts to take control by using trickery to duplicate paranormal powers. He attempts to use fear and superstition to panic the masses. He even makes an all-out effort to get Holmes to abandon his strict adherence to rationality and “broaden his view” to accept the apparently paranormal happenings around him.

While watching the film I was concerned that the writers had thrust Holmes into a paranormal universe. That would have been a disaster, and I would be writing a very different review if that were the case. But in the end we are rewarded – Holmes did not waver from reason for a moment. And in the end reason wins the day.

And that, of course, is my favorite thing about the character of Sherlock Holmes. He is a celebration of reason, rationality, science, and knowledge in general. I have read that Arthur Conan Doyle (who himself believed in fairies and spiritualism) meant for Holmes to be a caricature of the hyper-rational snob. But Holmes took on a life of his own – it seems the public liked Holmes and his superstar intellect more than Doyle.

Recently we have seen a resurgence of the Holmes archetype in fiction. House is a carbon copy of Holmes, down to his narcotic addiction. The Mentalist, The Eleventh Hour, CSI, and Bones all have characters that channel the great detective.

And now Holmes is brought back to the big screen, with an obvious setup for sequels. I hope we are seeing a cultural backlash against the burgeoning irrationality of the last couple of decades. Let the pendulum swing.

I have read many articles about this little piece of anti-science propaganda, and I have spoken to several of the scientists who were exploited in the making of the movie (including our own Michael Shermer – they were interviewed under false pretenses and were horribly abused in the editing room, by all accounts). But still, seeing the movie for myself was a real experience.

For a scientific skeptic, the movie definitely takes place in bizarro-world. Ben Stein talks a great deal about how “Darwinists” (read regular scientists) have a particular world-view. I don’t think there is one world-view shared by all scientists who accept the evidence for evolution. But there certainly is a difference in significant aspects of the world view of science and that of the creationist/intelligent design crowd.

Most striking was their interviews with scientists who were discussing the role of religion in their lives, and relating their personal journey, which involved a waning of religious faith as their scientific knowledge waxed. These were highly cherry picked opinions, to illustrate the narrative written long before anyone was interviewed (they did not bother interviewing the likes of Kenneth Miller, for example – a Catholic evolutionist). But that point aside, I couldn’t help thinking while watching these interviews that the target audience of Expelled is meant to be horrified by these sentiments. Meanwhile, I found them quite uplifting – the liberating effects of reason and logic.

I could not have possibly gone into that movie with a lower expectation, but still it managed to surprise me a little with it childish storyline and manipulations. Yes – it had a storyline. It was written as if it were Ben Stein’s personal journey of discovery as to what is going on with Darwinism and Intelligent Design, and what he can do about it. What Stein “discovered”, of course, was pre-determined. Science leads to atheism. Darwinism leads to Nazi death camps. And the liberal, atheist, scientific elites are oppressing anyone with a different opinion.

It was nauseating. It was devoid of even the pretense of intellectual honesty.

I was also prepared by Richard Dawkins’ own review for the “Lord Privy Seals,” the non-sequitur illustrations of the narration – but they were worse than I had imagined. When Stein spoke of the hostility between science and religion, we were shown stock black-and-white footage of mobsters shooting their machine guns – as if we needed a generic illustration of “hostility.” These absurd illustrations came fast and furious during some portions of the movie – enough to insult the intelligence of a five year-old. I think this tells us something meaningful of the producer’s respect for their intended audience.

Next week on my podcast, the SGU, we will discuss the last decade in science and skepticism, including giving our picks for skeptical winners and losers (based upon advancing their agenda, not scientific validity).  I definitely place creationism/ID in the losers category. They have suffered legal defeats over the last decade, the Dover v Kitzmiller trial being the most significant. And while they have continued their fight against science, sharpening their strategy, it really has gained them nothing. Expelled, for me, stands beside Dover at the pinnacle of their failure. While this propaganda film may have effectively pulled the strings of believers, to everyone else it was an embarrassment, and exposed the ID crowd as the anti-intellectual children they are.

Dieting is also one of those issues that is more emotional than one might at first think. I have had the experience on more than one occasion of giving someone, in a very dry and calm fashion, my assessment of the evidence about low-carb diets, only to be met with righteous anger as if I had just trampled on a core tenet of their faith.  People are often touchy about what they eat and how much they weigh, and for those who have lost weight and credit a low-carb diet, the published evidence seems irrelevant. “Well, it worked for me” is the almost ubiquitous response.

I also think that people have far too much confidence in their ability to estimate their own caloric intake. The suggestion that perhaps they consumed fewer calories on the low-carb diet and that was responsible for their weight loss is met with outright denial.

There have been some recent studies that cast further doubt on the efficacy and even safety of low carb diets. But first a little background.

The literature on dieting is vast and complex, and we must separate out many distinct questions. Different diets can be assessed for their efficacy in weight loss and control, their heart health, their risk for diabetes, satisfaction, and their overall healthfulness. Evidence also needs to be considered for short term and long term effects. Long term weight control efficacy seems to be largely a factor of ease of compliance.

Like most medical/biological questions, the clinical literature is complex and there are no perfect studies – so how the strengths and weaknesses of various studies are considered can have a dramatic effect on one’s overall opinion. Some studies are too short, they vary in how they monitor compliance with the diet and other variables such as exercise, and on which outcomes they measure. Weight, of course, is the obvious parameter to follow, but there is also mood, cholesterol, insulin levels, and cardiac and diabetes risk.

My quick summary of this complex literature is as follows:

- The evidence strongly supports the conclusion that weight loss and control is dominantly (if not completely) determined by caloric intake. All diets that result in weight loss do so by reducing calories, and the macronutrient make up of those calories is irrelevant (to weight loss). Apparent advantages of low-carb diets are likely related to decreased hunger, which results in decreased caloric intake – but this effect is short term (3-6 months at most) and there is no long term advantage.

- Weight loss diets, in general, do not work. Most dieters will experience short term weight loss, but about 95% will fail to maintain their weight loss long term. Regular exercise seems to be critical for long term weight management (and is good for overall health), as is making lifestyle changes in eating habits, rather than “going on a diet.” Even still – most dieters fail. This likely means that we need to focus our attention on cultural, lifestyle, portion-size, and food manufacturing variables rather than individual dieting as a public health strategy to reduce obesity.

- Low-carb, high-fat diets are likely not heart healthy, although this data is mixed. It seems that there are negative effects of a high-fat diet, but these are offset in the short term by weight loss. So if one loses weight on a low-carb, high-fat diet the net effect is positive for heart risk factors. But since weight loss on such diets is almost always short term, the long term health effects may be negative. But evidence is mixed.

A recent study adds to this literature. Researchers did a randomized controlled trial comparing low-carb (20% carbs and 60% fat) and low fat (60% carbs and 20% fat) diets for 8 weeks. All food was weighed and logged and designed to provide 500 calories less than expenditure. All subject lost weight on this diet to the same degree, supporting prior evidence that calories, not macronutrient content, determines weight loss.

They also found that insulin parameters were the same between the two groups. So there does not appear to be any difference in terms of risk of diabetes. However, they did find an increase in arterial stiffness in the low-carb group. This could translate to increased cardiovascular risk. Other studies have also linked low-carb diets to increased atherosclerosis, which would explain the increased stiffness.

A 20 year epidemiological study, however, showed no increased cardiovascular risk from low-carb diets. So as I said, there is reason for concern about the heart effects of low carb diets, but the data is inconclusive.

This latter study also found that getting fat and protein from vegetable rather than animal sources was associated with lower cardiovascular risk. And this highlights another bottom-line conclusion from the literature – the focus on low-carb vs low-fat may be entirely misplaced. For weight loss and maintenance, portion control and regular exercise seem to be the key factors and macronutrient ratios seem to be irrelevant.

In order to avoid type II diabetes, weight control is key. But also it may be helpful to eat low glycemic index carbohydrates – those that turn to sugar more slowly and therefore have less of a demand on insulin function.

For heart health, the amount of total fat may be a factor, but this is unclear. What is clear is that they type of fat is a significant factor. Vegetable sources of fat have a protective effect, while animal fat increases cardiovascular risk.

In other words – how much carbs vs fat one eats should not be a major concern, and may be largely irrelevant. While the types of carbs and especially fats is important for cardiovascular health.

To summarize, in my opinion here are the best diet recommendations that can be made from existing evidence:

- Eat a varied diet, mostly plant-based

- Limit carbohydrates with a high glycemic index (simple sugars and starches)

- Do not diet for weight loss. Rather, employ reasonable portion control and exercise regularly.

- Whatever you do for weight control, make sure it is sustainable long term. You should be happy with your diet and exercise should be fun and convenient. Anything that seems burdensome will likely not last and be of no long term utility.

- And most importantly – completely ignore diet fads, diet books, or any product that promises easy weight loss. They are scams.

That is, right until it was revealed that the accusations were a hoax – there never was any crime. After the revelation there was barely a “nevermind” (ala Gilda Radner from SNL ) from those so free to moralize based upon the initial accusations. One exception was David Brooks who wrote:

Witch hunts go in stages. First frenzy, when everybody damns the souls of people they don’t know. Then confusion, as the first wave of contradictory facts comes in. Then deafening silence, as everybody studiously ignores the vicious slanders they uttered during the moment of maximum hysteria.

It feels to me, with the Climategate scandal, that we are in the frenzy stage of this witch hunt. But already the “first wave of contradictory facts” are coming in also.

Someone hacked into the computer network at the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia and published thousands of stolen e-mails and computer code on the internet. Global Warming dissidents (I won’t get into the whole “skeptic” vs “denier” thing here) then poured through the e-mails and came up with several statements they felt were smoking gun evidence of scientific fraud. To them, these e-mails confirmed what they had always suspected – anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a fraud perpetrated by a small cadre of liberal scientists.

Writing for the Telegraph, James Delingpole declared (or at least his headline writer did) that climategate was the “final nail in the coffin of AGW.” Fox news wrote: “This coordinated campaign to hide scientific information appears unprecedented.” And some declared this the greatest scientific fraud of modern times.

But is it really? Like the Duke “rape” case, it is prudent to first ask what actually has been going on at the CRU. Perhaps we should wait for an investigation before we hammer that nail into the coffin.

Here are some of the e-mails:

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.

Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?

Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.

Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.

We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.

“This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the “peer-reviewed literature”. Obviously, they found a solution to that–take over a journal! So what do we do about this? I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…What do others think?”

Certainly statements like these, coming from scientists, are very concerning, not to mention embarrassing. But they are not smoking-gun evidence of fraud. Those of us who have done research and published papers, or just worked with scientists, probably recognize some of the chatter as the normal kinds of discussions that happen in the messy process of science. Using a “trick” can simply be a euphemism (although poorly chosen) to refer to a statistical method. And “hide the decline” can simply refer to making a complex graph of data look better.

But there can be a fine line between analyzing data and “massaging” the data. So as I said – such statements are concerning, but potentially innocent, and should be independently investigated – but not prematurely condemned.

What about e-mails about refusing freedom of information (FOI) request for the raw data, and the accusations that the CRU “destroyed” their raw data? Again, very concerning – as a rule raw data should always be preserved, and should be made available for independent analysis. No one can reasonable deny this. But the emerging story is more complex.

For example, Jeff Masters explains that resistance to FOI requests was not an attempt to conceal fraud, but was resistance to harassing trivial requests by amateurs who were putting an undue burden on the data managers. In fact they suspected that some of the requests were meant to distract them from their work and eat up their resources.

I don’t know if this is true, but it is a plausible alternate explanation. It does reveal the “bunker mentality” that the CRU scientists had developed, and no matter how this shakes out that is a problem that needs to be addressed.

What about destroying data? This refers to the fact that the CRU threw out raw data backups in the 1980s (before the scientists responsible for the e-mails) that were on paper and magnetic tape when they moved their facilities. Further, they claim that much of this data is still available from the original sources and not lost at all.

Again – I have not seen confirmation of this latter claim, and I await the investigation and the revelations that will come in the next few months. But if true it potentially eliminates the accusation that data was destroyed as part of a cover up.

Dr. Phil Jones, the head of the CRU, has stepped down while the investigation is ongoing, and I think that is prudent. I also think that, given the controversy, we need absolute transparency with this data and independent analysis. This is actually a good opportunity to refocus on the science and evidence of AGW.

But I doubt that the maximally hysterical pronouncements of the extreme AGW dissidents, for whom this scandal was an instant confirmation of all their darkest accusations, will pan out. It seems highly unlikely that climategate will change the consensus of scientific opinion on AGW. It also seems unlikely that the degree of fraud that is being accused has in fact occurred.

One reason for this opinion is that, after pouring through thousands of e-mails, these are the worst that the AGW dissidents can come up with. The lack of more compelling evidence for fraud is itself very telling.

Some AGW dissidents argue that the e-mails are not the real evidence, but the computer code used to “analyze” data will be the smoking gun. I have not seen any definitive information about this, so far this is just preliminary accusations. Phil Plait points out that such computer code often goes through many iterations – it’s not as straightforward as you might think. Just because you can find older code that had serious flaws does not mean there is a conspiracy of fraud.

If early indications are representative, then it seems that the scientists are guilty of some poor judgment, poorly chosen words, and not dealing well with the pressures of being at the center of a scientific controversy. But even this moderate conclusion is tentative, and must wait for the results of a thorough investigation.

For global warming dissidents I recommend that you put your rhetoric in check. The witch-hunt frenzy so far in evidence cannot possibly serve you well. If it turns out there was real fraud at the CRU, you will still be criticized for being prematurely shrill and you will lose credibility. Also, the more extravagant your condemnations, the more likely it is that the reality will not be as bad as you are stating – and therefore even if some indiscretions come to light, you will have actually softened the blow because they will not be as bad as the worst hysterical claims. And of course, if it comes to light that no real fraud occurred, the credibility of AGW dissidents will have been dealt a severe blow.

If, on the other hand, you take a cautious and, dare I say, skeptical approach – say that the e-mails are evidence of a troubling attitude at the CRU and deserve full independent investigation, but show restraint in making premature accusations, then you can only win. If the CRU is cleared, you will be praised for your restraint and objectivity. And if any degree of malfeasance comes to light, you can portion your condemnation to the evidence, and will have gained a serious upper hand in the AGW debate. You will be taken seriously the next time you call AGW predictions into question.

I have received many e-mails and have read many blogs and articles on climategate, and find that those who were most adamant that AGW dissidents had been treated unfairly, were also the ones who were being the most hysterical and premature in their conclusions. While demanding to be taken seriously, they were behaving is such a way that almost guaranteed that they would not be.

I have also seen some reasonable responses from those unsure about the claims of climate change and just wanting to get to the truth, and upset that they are being painted with the same brush as the extreme fringe. I understand their concern, but they should not assume that responding to the extreme is equal to painting with a broad brush. We can do both – debunk the hysteria, while acknowledging there is the full range of opinions from dedicated AGW deniers to AGW true-believers. I do not mean to suggest that the truth is a matter of splitting the difference. In my opinion, the science so far favors the conclusion the AGW is real and a potential problem that should concern us. But there is room for ideology and irrationality on both sides of this controversy.

I don’t know what the lessons of climategate are yet – we need to see what actually happened first. But how people deal with climategate says a lot about their process. Those who are making bold claims based upon ambiguous, circumstantial, and out-of-context evidence, are not doing themselves or their side any favors.

Now – let the comment storm begin.

But at its heart, the complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) movement is about eroding science as an obstacle to selling bogus treatments.

I created the Science-Based Medicine site in order to confront the public opinion and academic angles of this important issue. But educating the public and exposing the flawed arguments and weak evidence of CAM does not directly address what is perhaps the most important front -legislation. Ultimately, it is laws and regulations that establish or weaken the science-based standard of care.

That is why Larry Sarner and Linda Rosa have brought together an international group of 42 physicians (and growing) to form the Institute for Science in Medicine. From the ISM website:

The ISM is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to promoting high standards of science in all areas of medicine and public health.  We are a watchdog group of medical professionals who believe the best science available should be used to determine health policy and establish a standard of care that protects and promotes the public health.  We oppose legislation that seeks to erode the science-based standard of care and expose the public to potentially fraudulent, worthless, or harmful medical practices or products.

Already we are faced with many urgent legislative issues. Our first press release deals with the stealth promotion of dubious treatments in the proposed health reform bills in the US House and Senate. These provisions would mandate coverage of non-science-based practitioners, essentially giving them equal status to recognized health professionals. While the provisions are promoted as “fair,” they are fair in the exact same way that teaching Intelligent Design along side evolution would be “fair.” These provisions essentially remove science and evidence as a way of distinguishing between which health care modalities are safe and effective and therefore worthy of use and reimbursement. Essentially these provisions would mandate that state and federal governments pay for worthless or harmful treatments.

These provisions are anti-consumer and anti-health as they would further erode the standard of care.

At the same time, in Canada there is a legislative move to allow Naturopaths to prescribe drugs. This is a good example of the steady expansion of the scope of practice that tends to occur once you license dubious “professions.” Naturopaths promote a wide range of unscientific health philosophies and treatments, such as homeopathy, the “water cure”, and nutritional pseudoscience. But they have been successful in acquiring licensure in some states and countries, usually with the old argument that licensure will provide quality control (but it never does). As Edzard Ernst said, (I’m paraphrasing slightly)  “The most meticulous regulation of nonsense must still result in nonsense.” Often one group of naturopaths uses licensure to remove competition from other naturopaths – but licensure never results in establishing a science-based standard of care, because naturopaths are not science-based.

Then, once licensure is achieved there is the steady lobbying for expanded coverage and scope of practice – beyond their training and expertise.

Other legislative mischief includes so-called health-freedom laws, now passed in about 15 states, that effectively remove the standard of care for so-called “alternative” treatments. What this means is that the state board of health cannot act against a practitioner’s license simply because they are engaged in sub-standard care, if they label what they do as “alternative.” If you cannot discipline sub-standard care – then there is no standard of care.

Sometimes such provisions are issue specific. For example, several months ago in Connecticut a bill was passed that states that the the board of health cannot act against a practitioner for treating “chronic Lyme disease” – again, specifically eliminating any mechanism for maintaining the standard of care with respect to a specific controversial issue.

What such laws represent, in part, is legislative arrogance – putting the political process above the scientific process of determining what treatments are legitimate.

We are still a relatively small group of professionals, with a mountainous and endless task before us, but the ISM gives us a mechanism to take on directly the more important legislative issues that come up. We will need to grow and expand our resources, and we plan on doing so.

And as always we will  need the support of the scientific and skeptical communities if we are to succeed.