Topic: Episode #228

[Steven Novella]

Trinoc - I uploaded the podcast in one shot - no reloads.

[seaotter]

You know, I've never followed this thread as soon as the podcast went up.  You people are maniacs with the WTN.

Whatever it takes.

[gone]

I know enough about food science to know that if they make that artificial meat legal to sell, the food scientists can make it taste delicious. 

[Chew]

You know, I've never followed this thread as soon as the podcast went up.  You people are maniacs with the WTN.

Whatever it takes.

And we prefer to be called unbalanced, not maniacal.

[stands2reason]

The misogyny coming from the anti-vaxxers is odd, especially considering that the best "evidence" they have is the mommy instinct. And the old hat about how science is just oppression by men.

[Beep Boop Boop]

The misogyny coming from the anti-vaxxers is odd, especially considering that the best "evidence" they have is the mommy instinct. And the old hat about how science is just oppression by men.

You know we really should hammer the insane part of their arguments.  Jenny McCarthy believed her child was the next step in human evolution.  Seriously, what idiot can claim with straight face that their instincts are more important when you believed that your child is the next step in human evolution.  I can't believe how idiotic Handley was to try and claim saitire when there are multiple posts  posts on Age of Autism that actually thinks that vaccination is a form of genocide.  The picture is nice in showing their insanity but not necessary.  I'm surprised at how many references to the word genocide are found in their posts.
EDIT:
Holy fucking cow!!!!!!   Some of those comments are really scary.   

For seventeen billion dollars in research funds for a vaccinated/never vaccinated study and vaccine safety review, I'll go to the Congo and stand in for the victims. I'm sure I could find other bidders among autism moms. Some could bid broken limbs, others cracked teeth or head injuries. For seventeen billion, I'm sure many of us would agree to any form of torture short of death, immobility or AIDS, simply because we have to stay alive and at least somewhat mobile for our kids.

I'm wondering if I should start collecting these posts into a blog. 

[Trinoc]

Trinoc - I uploaded the podcast in one shot - no reloads.

Very odd. I wonder whether the server stores the file in chunks and unlocks it while you upload the next bit. No big deal for a podcast, but for something like a shared database it could be a disaster! The usual way would be to upload the whole file to a temporary file and then rename it when complete, keeping the lock on during the whole renaming process. I'm not suggesting you need to do this yourself -- the upload program ought to do it.

The first download stopped at one hour and 17 seconds.

[Mick]

It's interesting that Dr Novella touched upon the "accommodationist" debate, which is for me one of the more fascinating things happening recently in the skeptical community.


Though I personally haven't seen the term thrown about willy-nilly the way he seems to suggest it has been.

[MisterMarc]

Re: AoA comments -
Appalling, as usual, but is it fair to hold AoA accountable for the comments on their blog postings? Sure, the picture is horrible and worthy of disdain, sure the comment of the one woman who is also a major player in the movement is worth pointing out. The rest, though....anyone who has spent 5 seconds reading comments on blogs know that the world is full of assholes. I certainly don't hold the SGU accountable for every jerk who says something stupid in the forums.

Re: ClimateGate hullabaloo -
I'm confused about the claims made by some, that this is the "smoking gun" in the argument against climate change. I'm wondering, is the CRU the only source of data that scientists used for their findings? Have no other scientific bodies done similar research, and had findings that supported warming claims? Or are deniers (yeah, I said it) arguing that evidence of wrongdoing in this instance is evidence for fraud throughout the climatological scientific community?

[Beep Boop Boop]

Appalling, as usual, but is it fair to hold AoA accountable for the comments on their blog postings? Sure, the picture is horrible and worthy of disdain, sure the comment of the one woman who is also a major player in the movement is worth pointing out. The rest, though....anyone who has spent 5 seconds reading comments on blogs know that the world is full of assholes. I certainly don't hold the SGU accountable for every jerk who says something stupid in the forums.

Except they moderate every single post so whatever assholes exist exist because they allowed them to.  At that point any idiotic jackass that posts on their blog is fair game.

[PrismPaul]

First let me get my complaint out of way: What a shame to waste the podcast time on that whole "denier vs. skeptic" thing rather than the actual issues involved.   If you really think that "denier" applies to such a minor subset than why waste time on them?  Address those that you agree are true skeptics, for goodness sakes!  That's where the interesting stuff is!  That's what your show is about, after all!  <end of bitching>.

I think it's worth pointing out that the pronouncements of skeptics that you find premature and extreme are much less so for those that have been following this issue closely.  The data and programs in question are not just any old data and programs behind any one of hundreds of confirming studies, but rather a very key set of data and a rather key set of programs central to large underlying assumptions behind the oft-referenced "consensus".  Those skeptics that have been trying to get this data have long argued that it is extremely suspicious for such important stuff to be held so closely.

Likewise, the "Team" of scientists implicated here are not just (as is often portrayed) "a handful of the thousands of scientists that are in lockstep about AGW ", but rather the few key scientists that have been leading that parade.  It is often said that "paper after paper" and "study after study" reaffirms what these guys have said.  But the key assumptions that underly the IPCC conclusions - both retrospective reconstruction of climate history and modeled forecasts - that are the core basis of AGW assumptions referenced again and again and again, come directly from this group and are precisely the topics directly referenced in the questionable emails.

All that aside, at root I am thoroughly confused by you guys on this.  This just seems like such a fantastic area in which to dig in and explore the various controversies (objections on quality of models, quality of reconstruction techniques, appropriate frames of reference for interpretting trends, alternative explanations for warming, on and on...).  What better, more pertinent area to practice skepticism live and in person?  Dig into something like the hockeystick story!  What happened?  What went wrong and right?  What fallacies were involved?  Where did science shine, and where did it break down?

I mean it's easy as hell to debunk the UFO's, fortune-tellers, ID folks, etc, etc.  That's not much opportunity to demonstrate skepticism anymore, is it?  That's all just become eye-rolling.  Here we have fresh topics just screaming for clear-headed, objective, "kool-aid free" analysis, and it's critical to public policy happening now.   Yet it seems like you guys always just sort of skirt around the edges and say "Yeah, it's good to be skeptical about this, but there does seem to be a concensus more or less... anyway, moving right along..."   What's keeping you from diving in on the specifics of some of this stuff?

Steve, you stick your toe in the pool when you mention 1) that some of the closely held data was not owned by the CRU, and 2) that some of what sounded like "cooking" might have been "homogenizing" (which reminded you of a moon hoax parallel).  And then you say "let's investigate first" before jumping to conclusions.  I won't go off on these two points, but trust me, there's a ton out there to investigate on these things alone.  Both points have been thoroughly discussed among skeptics and were the subjects of heated debate prior to these emails being released.  I hope you really do follow through and spend some time - really listen to what legitimate, qualified skeptics are saying and have been saying for a long time on this - and really follow through on that investigation.   I think we could all benefit hugely if you turned that brain of yours and that skeptical mindset onto this issue objectively and in an appropriate depth. 

Please don't just "follow" this story, I implore you.  Dig in!!!!  How about getting a well qualified AGW skeptic on the show for an interview?  That would be an awesome place to start.  (I'd be happy to set that up for you - just ask - I'll do all the legwork).

Okay, I feel better now.  I guess.

(Just wanted to add that I really appreciated the way Steven broke the issue down into all it's component questions - that's very refreshing to hear, and again just goes to show how rich and complex this area is.)

Thanks for everything you do!

[MisterMarc]

Does Steve have a dog? I kept hearing a jingling in the background when he was talking...sounded like a dog chasing a toy or rolling around or something.

[seaotter]

It's interesting that Dr Novella touched upon the "accommodationist" debate, which is for me one of the more fascinating things happening recently in the skeptical community.


Though I personally haven't seen the term thrown about willy-nilly the way he seems to suggest it has been.

Haven't heard it at all. Guess I'm not hanging out in the right crowd. Now I have heard the atheists complaining about being sidelined.

[Beep Boop Boop]

Please don't just "follow" this story, I implore you.  Dig in!!!!  How about getting a well qualified AGW skeptic on the show for an interview?  That would be an awesome place to start.  (I'd be happy to set that up for you - just ask - I'll do all the legwork).

That is the perfect way to delude yourself into thinking that you have any clue what the hell you are talking about despite lacking any relevant knowledge.  You basically have no ability to distinguish bullshit from reality.  I can show you anti-vaxer articles from the Huffington Post which shows that while these "skeptics" knew enough to do research they actually lacked the knowledge to interpret what the read.  It was really sad too.  They were using laws governing industrial chemical waste to prove that thimersol is toxic waste when with that same logic would mean that beer and a lot of jewelry is toxic waste also.

[PrismPaul]

Re: ClimateGate hullabaloo -
I'm confused about the claims made by some, that this is the "smoking gun" in the argument against climate change. I'm wondering, is the CRU the only source of data that scientists used for their findings? Have no other scientific bodies done similar research, and had findings that supported warming claims? Or are deniers (yeah, I said it) arguing that evidence of wrongdoing in this instance is evidence for fraud throughout the climatological scientific community?

The following is from an article written before the email leaks by a prominent (I believe clearly well-qualified) skeptic here: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10578

In the early 1980s, with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, scientists at the United Kingdom's University of East Anglia established the Climate Research Unit (CRU) to produce the world's first comprehensive history of surface temperature. It's known in the trade as the "Jones and Wigley" record for its authors, Phil Jones and Tom Wigley, and it served as the primary reference standard for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) until 2007. It was this record that prompted the IPCC to claim a "discernible human influence on global climate."

I recommend the article and others by Micheals who I think is an honest and careful skeptic.  But to the point of your question, this data is very central to the IPCC conclusions.

NASA and NOAA have surface data too, but with their own problems from what I’ve learned so far.  Then there’s satellite temperature data from NASA, but the guys behind that are themselves prominent skeptics of the idea that AGW is a serious problem:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Christy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Spencer_%28scientist%29

I haven’t formed firm conclusions myself on this, but have been doing little else but reading about all this in the last few days….