The James Randi Educational Foundation givew out the Pigasus awards every year, and every single winner for 2008 deserves the high dishonor. Expelled won; so did Jenny McCarthy. It was a great year for woo, I think.
Speaking of Jenny McCarthy, she has another honor: the Jenny McCarthy Body Count site, which keeps track of the statistical casualties of McCarthy’s insane campaign against vaccination.
James Randi: SIWOTT (Someone Is Wrong On The Television) syndrome sufferer since 1972.
Oh, yeeeaaaah. Not just for the ludicrous products, but for Pastor Melissa Scott. Mesmerizingly maniacal.
Wow, 142 deaths caused by that nasty woman? I’ve gotta mention this in my sequel to “Nuke these morons off the face of the earth!”
Oh dear.
You’re talking about Jenny McCarthy, a celebrity who basically exists because her boobs are big.
PZ, seriously – talk about biology. You’re a biologist. What happened to the giant sloth? WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SLOTH, PZ?!
Talk about creatures, not preachers!
John Doe,
You’re outvoted.
Fuck off right quick.
As long as we’re handing out assignments, John Doe, I want you to talk only about the South African economy. Don’t argue with me, just get on it.
Watch it, PZ! I’ve got a sea worm and I’m not afraid to use it!
As for South Africa’s economy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_South_Africa
Change of subject for John Doe: who is JQ, and why is he awesome?
You’ve been sniffed out, Mr Doe.
The skeptic in me likes the choices. I do think the Jenny McCarthy body count can be a useful tool. But I find the numbers alarming.
I’ve been sniffed out? I provided that link.
You’re famous. And you’re a biolgist.
Is it really that unreasonable to ask you to talk about biology? Why do all famous biolgists make their living talking about religion?
You provided that link under a different pseudonym. You’re now playing games.
I really can’t stand liars, and obsessive kooks without a shred of honesty are contemptible. Bugger off.
John Doe ya big ho. You’re an idiot. You must only speak of Nascar and Religion and try name dropping too.
Why do all famous biolgists make their living talking about religion?
Because when physicists talk about religion (cough Penrose/Hameroff cough) they sound like they flunked remedial biology.
For some reason the subject of Jenny McCarthy and anti-thimerosal came up on local talk radio, and an observant individual pointed out that while mercury is regarded as among the most dangerous neuro-toxins, and even more dangerous one is botulism/botox, which Jenny McCarthy has regularly injected into her head! If it’s only killing the weak brain cells, it’s got a lot of work to do.
Ken, don’t forget <you know who>.
Jenny McCarthy will be on Larry King live tomorrow night… spouting bullshit on vaccines causing autism.. as Paul McCartney and Heather Mills went on Larry’s show, and spouted Humane Society bullshit talking points about the Canadian Seal Hunt.
Celebrity should never give you a voice on topics in which you are misinformed..
Aratina,
I wouldn’t want to disparage all physicists just because one of them (initials dh) has flunked remedial human being.
I have to disagree with the selection of Kevin Trudeau as someone who’s refused to face reality. Continuing to sell books that are making you truckloads of money even though you’ve been fined is just unethical con artist behavior. Maybe they need a biggest scumbag award.
Is it time to start referring to SIOTOTI syndrome?
(someone is off-topic on the internet)
What I really want to know is why the hell anyone even listens to these people!
When someone says something like that why don’t they look at them and say “Ummm… excuse me… Could you say that again? I think I had something crazy in my ear.”
How does that thought process work? “She has big boobs… she must be right!” or “That tin foil totally lets him shoot electromagnetic radiation from his eyes!”
I swear, they must be perpetually stoned or a 13-year-old who can’t make a tangible thought because they’re looking at a woman’s cleavage…
The stupidity makes my head hurt.
Long Answer to why people listen:
What happens is that person is given LOADS of access to the public. Celebrities get to be on TV and speak their crazy viewpoints and the hosts just coddle them instead of arguing how retarded they are.
People watching at home see the celebrity voicing his or her crazy ignorant stances without any counters. When the counters do come along, from professionals who know what they are talking about, people ignore it because their minds have already been made up and they don’t know who this person is. They’ve heard of Jenny McCarthy though.
Short answer:
People are stupid.
The Skeptico blog agrees that all of the winners deserved the dishonour, but disagrees that they qualify for the particular ones they got.
He was a bit mollified, though, after Randi edited the award categories.
Ah, Jenny McCarthy…I have so many fond memories of her mammaries, now they’re all tarnished by her stupidity.
Would it do any good to change the timing of vaccination of kids to after the autism symptoms usually become obvious and (at least for a decade or 2) have a simple autism screening test administered just before vaccination so parents can’t come back and say the vaccination caused the autism? I know the science has disproved McCarthy’s hypothesis, but she’s ignoring the experts, even accusing them as liars, and something needs to be done to reassure/educate the parents.
#24:
If the parents haven’t been calmed down by the overwhelming scientific evidence that already exists, I don’t think changing the timing would make much of a difference. Plus, there’s a reason vaccinations are given to a kid early on: we want the kids to have an immunity before they encounter someone with the disease. Delaying vaccinations could put kids at risk.
Dammit pzdummy, stop playing games! It’s obvious you love him; just say it!
It just wouldn’t be a thread on James Randi without David Mabus showing up and sharing his insanity with others.
And you are going to reincarnate in the next life with both AIDS and childhood lukemia… are you done making imaginary threats?
You wouldn’t know it, but unless you back up your assertions with evidence, then no-one is going to take you seriously…
Scienceblogs got technical difficulties ?
How this PZDUMMY troll manages to return back and back, while banned ? I
I wonder whether it is a death threat, instead of an assertion.
In this case I would prefer him NOT backing it up with evidence/corpses.
I consider my question answered. Someone should call the cops now.
T_U_T,
please ignore mabus,he is mentally ill.
So much woo, so little time.
Re: a variety of trolls: I think the facts about vaccination could be reasonably considered to be of biological interest. The fact that there is a well funded, publicly vocal anti-vaccination lobby basing their claims on misunderstandings of science and erroneous nonsense is of interest to scientists, science educators, and popularisers of science. So I think PZ has a valid professional basis to comment on this subject.
Not only that, where did the idea arise that people should only comment upon matters directly pertaining to their jobs? After my undergrad degree I briefly worked in an electronics factory, does that mean that at that time I was only to be permitted to discuss circuitry? Piffle, bollocks, bafflegab and fuckwittery. I might be late to the party but the John Doe’s of this world can clearly fuck themselves with a rubber hose. Best response (other than none) = contempt.
I think the death toll website makes a good point: ignoring good, well researched science leads to unnecessary deaths (are you listening Ben Stein?).
Bah!
Louis
When I’ve with you baby, I go out of my head.
And I just can’t get enough.
I just can’t get enough.
o.O
When I’M with you … sheesh.
All the woo got in my eye!
“Doctor? There seems to be electromagnetic radiation coming from my eyes. No, really. See, here’s this infrared radiation meter, and it’s measuring radiation coming from my eyes. Even when I close them.”
That “open letter” is neither open nor a letter. It’s more like incoherent ramblings punctuated with Youtube links. It’s too short to be proper Internet Crazy, though, so I rate it at 0.2 Tc. Better luck next time!
Sadly, she’s still one of the more well-known alums of our local University here– and I’m pretty sure she didn’t even graduate.
I’m more than a little nostalgic for the days when Johnny Carson ran the Tonight Show. He had a huge bully pulpit, and in his quiet way, used it to combat woo.
Today it seems like all the people who have the public’s attention — Larry King, Oprah, et al — are more into promoting nonsense than exposing it for what it is.
If I make a suggestion. Just as we have special, informative link for every time that we mention Expelled, why not link to http://www.stopjenny.com when we mention Jenny McCarthy?
It’s already on the 1st page of Google results. Maybe we can push it higher – maybe we can keep the numbers at the Body Count website down.
(I’ve no affiliation with the site BTW, it just seems informative, and, as noted, already riding reasonably high on Google.)
(And, of course, links made in blog comments like this one make no difference to Google rankings since they’re usually tagged with rel=”nofollow” – this is for people posting on their own blogs or websites.)
@Ken Cope>>> *chuckle* I missed the nuance the first time in #13, but that’s the one I was thinking of in #17.
Penrose’s main problem is probably flunking philosophy rather than biology. All the description of what the brain does in the world won’t mean anything to someone who thinks Gödel’s theorem proves that conciousness can’t emerge from anything known in physics.
Also, he seems to find maths too easy and that might be leading him astray. In Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Dennett mentioned that he’d put forward argument that mathematicians don’t break Gödel’s restrictions because we are performing a heuristic search through possible proofs rather than doing anything that completely reliably identifies arithmetic truths. Penrose claimed this didn’t fit with mathematicians experience at all. This seemed bizarre to me; I don’t know any mathematicians that don’t spend most of their time heading towards brick walls..
OMG!
Crystal Child/Indigo Child is just another word for ‘I think my child is special and I’m so stupid I get outsmarted by them.’
No wonder she’s off fighting against vaccines. If she was this hair-brained from the get go imagine her trying to care for a needs child. She wouldn’t be able to do it, so she puts on this tough face and runs amok causing havoc for everyone else. BTW I was listening to MNA a few weeks ago and it was disheartening listening to all those atheists moms call up and slander vaccines using nothing more than emotional misinformation.
I had not idea anyone listened to Jenny McCarthy while clothed. Go figure.
John Doe is an idiot.
McCarthy is at least partially responsible for helping to tear down the health care infrastructure of this country with her anti-vaccine witch burning escapades. He idiotic screeds on the subject will help cause larger outbreaks of diseases which we have had under control for years to re-appear.
She’s even OK with that. Just check out Orac’s latest post on the subject.
So Mr. Doe, is the public health care of the country not a science subject?
Hmmm… Is it just me, or is JD setting off anyone elses old, maybe banned, trolldar?
KematheAtheist #20 wrote:
Because they feed into a popular narrative which pushes a bunch of human intuition pumps. Some people have called it ‘pseudo-skepticism.’ Unlike the skepticism you find in organizations like the JREF, CSICOP, or Skeptic Society, it’s not science-based. It’s a distrust of certain authorities based on anti-intellectualism and a kind of naive individualism which plays particularly well to a certain segment of modern Western Culture.
The story goes like this: Those-in-Power are arrogantly trying to control people by claiming to know things. But there is a small group of mavericks who aren’t afraid to think for themselves, and on their own they’ve figured out that the Experts are all wrong! And nobody wants to believe them! But they’re fighting for what’s right and good!
In this particular case, they’ve managed to frame the anti-vax crowd as “Mother Warriors,” battling hard for the safety of their children with the weapons of self-reliance, resolve, and mother-instinct (which is, of course, sacred.)
It’s a very powerful narrative. All you have to do is buy into it, be included in the group, and a kind of smug virtue settles on you.
McCarthy is a narcissist who wrote a book about being pregnant, another about having a baby, another about being a mom and then one about having a sick child. It seems she is the only woman in the world to have given birth or raised a child. How can anyone trust this moron is beyond me. Her judgment is so poor she even admitted the father of her child said he would only relate to her sexually and left her when their son became ill. I cannot tell you how many seemingly intelligent parents I know that wont immunize their children because of the crap this woman says. I am friendly with one lady who gave birth to her 5 children at home (to avoid modern medicine interfering with her birth experience) and none of them are immunized. Guess what? Already two of them have Aspergers Syndrome. McCarthy is a good example of what is wrong with the education system in this country. People are not taught to think critically or do research. They are taught to follow charismatic leaders. McCarthy is a charismatic nut, as most narcissists are, and she is typical of the kind of woman that moms like to follow. Most women will defer to the tallest, loudest or the best talker in the group not the smartest or expert. Get a group of women together from any walk of life and see what I mean. I wonder just how much money McCarthy has made off her child?
As I have written here before, there are more effective ways of countering anti-vacc than by demonizing Ms. McCarthy. She’s very mediagenic, and a member of a highly-accredited class of victims — mothers of disabled children.
When you slam her personally you come across as cruel and uncaring, reinforcing the general public’s perception of scientists in general. Scientists as a class are neither mediagenic, nor sympathetic. This battle is being fought on her turf, not yours.
Is this about personality, or is this about results?
Penrose’s main problem is probably flunking philosophy rather than biology.
At the very least Penrose flunked learning how to make and support a compelling argument. As an exercise for a class, I chose to contrast Penrose and Kurzweil on their AI stances, and Penrose by advanced far more unsupportable positions. Just reading what he had to say about vision, practically word for word Dennett’s homunculus in the Cartesian Theater, was embarrassing. I’d like to hear Oliver Sacks’ take on Shadows of the Mind.
So when I attended this talk by Steve Omohundro, who wrote StarLisp for the Connection Machine and did graphics for Wolfram’s Mathematica, I was surprised by his response to what I thought was a softball question. His talk had been fun and compelling and full of references to lots of good reading that I’ll put on my list (the pdf is definitely worth a look). But then he mentioned qualia, so I asked him whether he thought consciousness was computable, or whether we’ll have to watch out for p-zombies, with consciousness being made of unexplainium, residing in Penrose’s Mysterian microtubules. He got all flustered, and said that since his first degree was in physics, he can’t just dismiss what Penrose says, and had to plead agnosticism regarding the nature of consciousness. I liked Hofstadter’s answer better, when I asked his opinion of Penrose’s thesis. He rolled his eyes and said, “I think he’s crazy!”
I can’t condone an argument advocating better framing, but am more sympathetic to post #50 after cringing at the misogynistic post it followed, with its phrase, Most women will defer to the tallest, loudest or the best talker in the group not the smartest or expert. Get a group of women together from any walk of life and see what I mean.
So, having damned near eradicated childhood diseases, science can’t compete with Jenny McCarthy.
Just trying to get my bearings, the room is spinning.
That’s some nice snark writing. The “something that will turn up in quantum gravity very probably in these specific molecule structures” idea has to be a future classic in the genre of “totally unhinged things that intelligent people once seriously considered”.
What is going on today?
Akiko #49 wrote:
Women from “any walk of life?” No. And this point almost certainly applies to men as much as women.
But I confess to a sneaking sympathy towards Akiko’s frustration, because most popular forums for women are low on the science, and big on feeding into a hunger for validation and ‘spirituality.’ It seems as if every time there is a “Women’s Expo” or “Workshops for Women” or anything else specifically aimed at females, it’s almost invariably going to mix reasonable things concerning breast cancer or financial advice with massive doses of pseudoscientific crap, ranging from naturopathy to psychics to “talking to your angels.” And all the pro-argument for feminism, being strong, and sticking up for yourself appears to be ranged on the side of this nonsense: those who criticize it are not being “supportive” or “tolerant” or “open-minded.”
I don’t think it’s a problem in the gender itself. It’s a cultural meme.
Bureaurocratis Minimus #50 wrote:
Perhaps. But too much respectful deference towards sympathetic spokespeople may simply feed the sympathy and only help turn certain issues into ‘sacred cows.’ Jenny McCarthy also appeals to the innate human desire to “get angry” at people trying to mislead you. It might not be a bad idea to fight her using her own tactics.
Or is this about demonstratable empirically derived results?
McCarthy is wrong. She is not only wrong but she is endangering many many others. She chose to put herself up as a spokesperson for stupidity. She should be called on it exactly because she is the person she is, namely an undereducated ill-informed and gullible loud mouth who happens to have a stage from which to shout.
It has nothing to do with the fact she is a woman. It is all about the fact she has a public voice an is choosing to use it to spread damaging falsehoods.
JREF is back on YouTube!
Here‘s Randi explaining the Pigasus Awards.
Rev,
too much respectful deference towards sympathetic spokespeople may simply feed the sympathy and only help turn certain issues into ‘sacred cows.’
Nobody has to defer to her, you can simply ignore her as a person and attack the ideas she promulgates without engaging her directly or mentioning her name. Actively attacking her is not helpful.
Jenny McCarthy also appeals to the innate human desire to “get angry” at people trying to mislead you.
Glad that someone else here recognizes that there is a psychological dimension to this.
Your statement cuts both ways as the people you most need to reach think that you are trying to mislead them. Which I’m not defending, but simply acknowledging as part of the terrain.
It might not be a bad idea to fight her using her own tactics.
How is that working out? Rates of vaccination going up?
Oops, my comments @ 58 were directed at Sastra @55, not the Rev @ 56.
Now re the Rev’s comments:
Or is this about demonstratable empirically derived results?
Depends on which demonstable, empirically-derived results you’re talking about. If it’s the efficacy of vaccs the target audience you most need to reach, credulous, woo-prone parents, is the audience least likely to be swayed by those arguments. These people are not going to have epiphanies, as it were, overnight and become rational.
I’m more interested in the metric of vaccination rates.
Again, is it about ego and personality, or is it about vaccinating kids and preserving herd immunity?
It has nothing to do with the fact she is a woman…
I didn’t say that. Think you’re confusing my comments @50 with those of Akkiko @ 49.
My girlfriend has one of McCarthy’s “comedy” books about her pregnancy, and as I read bits of it, (while sitting on the toilet, the only place it deserves to be read) I came across an interesting little tidbit…she decided for her own selfish reasons to not breastfeed her child. Soooo…the most basic thing she could do to benefit her child’s health was too inconvenient for her, but its the vaccinations that caused her child’s autism? Stupid, stupid, person.
Yeah probably some confusion on posts but anyway
If we as rational people know because of the evidence she is wrong, she should be shown to be so regardless of who she is.
If she was just an innocent mother who has an autistic child and was just ill informed that’s one thing. She’s taken it nuclear but promoting it the way she does.
Chances are we will never convince the true believers. I’m not even concerned with them much. It’s the ones that haven’t been informed yet and are so “damaged” emotionally by their situation and are prone to believing Jenny and the anti-vaxxers because they give them someone to blame (docs and drug companies), that I worry about and want to reach out to.
Should we ignore McCarthy now that she’s risen to the pre-eminent spokesperson for anti-vaccination?
Bureaucratus Minimus #58 wrote:
I understand what you’re saying but we may need to take several approaches here. As you point out in your next post, “credulous, woo-prone parents, is the audience least likely to be swayed by those (scientific) arguments.” One of the psychological tactics McCarthy is using is the appeal to the idea that “anyone can become an expert — because I did, you can, too.” As long as other people identify with her, she’s got a powerful message.
But McCarthy has serious flaws when it comes to her credibility — for good reason. Enough with the “Phd in Google.” She’s certainly vulnerable to a direct attack. She’s trying to frame herself sympathetically; if we seem to buy into that, we may lose a rather solid ground to stand on, one which could persuade those ‘on the fence.’
As for the rates of vaccination and whether they’re going up or down, Jenny McCarthy has had a lot of completely uncritical play in the media recently. I think it’s far too early to tell what “anger” from our side is likely to do. A calm, objective — and dry — approach may not be enough to weigh against vivid personal stories and “energy.”
The Pigasus winners deserve the award, as usual.
Trudeau also deserves 7 to 12 in the greybar hotel for his scams.
Speaking of which:
When a scientist goes off into the world of crankery or fraud they get hammered for it, and deserve it.
Somehow, when a celebrity does the same thing they get applause for it. The scientific and skeptical community need to be the ones in the back booing as well as the ones on the other side of the stage explaining calmly why it isn’t as Ms McCarthy says.
The South African economy is quite interesting. If you want to reinstate this assignment for Mr. Doe, I’ll be happy to grade him on his endeavors.
My sister took the Trudeau book out from the library as she wants to lose weight. (At least she’s smart enough not to buy the book.) I think people buy into diets like this (and other fad diets) because they promise results without a lot of work or effort.
Anyhow, maybe my sister should get a Piggy-sis award for buying into the woo.
I remember Colin Ross in the early ’90s, pushing the multiple personality disorder line, including high estimates of prevalence, and the ritual abuse stories. I still have to deal with some psychiatric survivors from that time.
He deserves this honour several times over.