And yet she liked him

Rebecca Watson weighs in on The Amazing Randi’s complicated legacy. Randi was probably the most charming human being I’ve ever met, and like Rebecca, I always enjoyed our moments together, but…

Perhaps it was that stubborn disbelief that led to our eventual falling-out nearly a decade ago. As one of the more prominent female skeptics, I began campaigning for the male majority in the movement to be more accepting of (or to at least to stop randomly groping and awkwardly propositioning) women. Many men pushed back, sending me rape and death threats. When a man announced on Twitter a few days prior to 2011’s TAM that he planned to “cop a feel” if he saw me, Randi refused to even bar the man from attending. I felt like it was too late to drop out, so I attended and felt awful the entire time. I didn’t go anywhere alone. It was the last time I spoke at TAM.

Privately, Randi apparently complained to mutual friends about me pushing feminism, trying to change the culture of the movement that he had fostered for the past few decades. He thought that by asking skeptics to be better, I was making the movement look worse. I suppose I was, and in the years that followed the attendance at his conference dropped and Randi’s organization, the James Randi Educational Foundation, officially blamed me for scaring women away. Randi retired from JREF later, and though there were people involved who wanted it to go on as a charitable organization, it quietly disappeared.

It also didn’t help that some (not all!) of the people Randi routinely promoted and featured in his conferences were so awful that they drove me away. Being a sexist asshole was never an obstacle to being welcomed to Randi’s big tent. Sadly, that diminished his long-term impact.

The Grand Prize for Pseudoscientific Gobbledygook goes to…the University of Pittsburgh!

This is an amazingly demented paper, titled Can Traditional Chinese Medicine provide insights into controlling the COVID-19 pandemic: Serpentinization-induced lithospheric long-wavelength magnetic anomalies in Proterozoic bedrocks in a weakened geomagnetic field mediate the aberrant transformation of biogenic molecules in COVID-19 via magnetic catalysis. It’s such a tangle of random inferences and wild-ass leaps, all built on a foundation of disbelief in the germ theory of medicine. And it goes on and on! Just the abstract is nuts enough!

Thoracic organs, namely, the lungs and kidneys in severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)-associated coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), exhibit silicate/glass-like (hyaline) and iron oxides-like deposits, which are like serpentinization-induced minerals. The discovery of the chiral-induced spin selectivity effect suggests that a resonant external magnetic field could alter the spin state of electrons in biogenic molecules and result in the magnetic catalysis of aberrant molecules and disease. We propose here that carbon dioxide-rich water-peridotite (a ferromagnesian silicate) interactions generate abnormal lithospheric long-wavelength magnetic anomalies (LWMAs) via serpentinization, during conditions with increased terrestrial water storage and atmospheric carbon dioxide, and a weakened geomagnetic field. Furthermore, we provide evidence supporting a hypothesis, which posits, COVID-19 is a pathologic manifestation of resonant LWMAs-induced magnetic catalysis of iron oxides-silicate-like minerals from biogenic molecules and the coronavirus from endogenous viral elements, with the virus particles capable of replication and transmission to other hosts. We propose that those LWMAs are associated with the production of iron oxides-silicate rock minerals in tectonic plates with Proterozoic cratons. Thus, severe COVID-19 outbreaks are/will predominately occur in Eurasia and the Americas and are governed by the spatiotemporal dynamics of terrestrial water storage and the semiannual oscillation of the weakening geomagnetic magnetic field. We propose that the ferromagnetic-like iron stores in humans are the unifying determinant for COVID-19-induced morbidity and mortality. Furthermore, we propose that Nephrite-Jade amulets (a calcium-ferromagnesian silicate) developed by Neolithic Chinese Medicine to prevent thoracic organ disease, may prevent COVID-19.

I read the whole paper by Moses Turkle Bility. It was a wild ride. Let me try to summarize the whole thing in non-gibberish.

  • They had two rooms full of immunocompromised experimental rats.
  • These rats had been surgically implanted with fetal human hematopoietic tissue for reasons unknown, but for an experiment that had been approved by the university.
  • A respiratory disease swept through the colony, affecting one room more than the other. Nothing is made of this observation.
  • COVID-19 is a respiratory disease. Therefore they called this a COVID-19-like disease. Gotta cash in on the hot topics, you know!
  • They dissected the dead rats and found hemorrhagic patches and silicate/glass-like structures in their lungs. These are not clearly evident in the photos, but OK…
  • Silicate/glass-like structures? Surely, this means the phenomenon is similar to the phenomenon of serpentization in geology! (I’m wobbly on what serpentization is, but here’s a short definition.)
  • Therefore, we must immediately delve deep into geological processes and oscillations in planetary electromagnetic fields. Ta da!

  • We assume Long-Wavelength Magnetic Anomalies Induces COVID-19 Via Magnetic Catalysis, not that silly germ theory or zoonotic infection by a zoonotically-derived virus. I guess we know what causes COVID-19 now, and it isn’t a virus.
  • Nephrite-Jade Amulets Interacts With LWMAs (long-wavelength magnetic anomalies) and prevents disease in thoracic organs. I guess we know what cures COVID-19 now.
  • There was no test of the effect of LWMAs on the rats. They also didn’t make itty-bitty jade amulets for them.

That’s all remarkable bullshit presented in a kind of rabid stream-of-consciousness form, with the major conclusions neither tested nor even logically implied by the circumstances that triggered the “study”. It was not so much a “study” as some guy’s rat lab being devastated by a disease, so he retreats to his office to make a lengthy rationalization based on Traditional Chinese Medicine and half-assed geology. No experiments were done, yet he leaps to all these bizarre conclusions. Just look at the diagram above, most of which is irrelevant noise stitched together with unjustified premises!

There is nothing in Bility’s CV to suggest anything but a background in competently executed biomedical research. He’s an untenured assistant professor, though. This is the kind of paper that, if presented to the tenure committee, would instantly call his stability and his ability to do good science into question. Poor guy.

Also, that Elsevier would publish such an idiotic, science-deny paper would question their competence as a publisher if we didn’t already know that Elsevier was an evil, corrupt company.

Uh-oh. This wasn’t a one-off weirdness. Bility has also published Stonehenge as a public health intervention device for preventing lithospheric magnetic field-induced emerging diseases and megadeath during periods of severely weakened geomagnetic field. Way to scuttle a career, guy!

The horror that is the skeptic/atheist movement

This is so painful for me: Hayley Stevens has posted a measured critique of James Randi. It’s all true: Randi did flirt favorably with eugenics and climate change denial. He was a stage magician, not a scientist, and I can say from personal experience, from multiple long conversations with him, that it’s true. He would shy away from such ideas if he knew he was talking to a scientist, but he’d let the nonsense leak out, still. He had a poor reputation with women — he didn’t have much to do with them, which obviously didn’t affect me much, directly, but it did mean he was much more comfortable with us Old Boys and led to underrepresentation of women in the movement. He occasionally let that slip out, too, like his remark downplaying the sexual assaults of Michael Shermer, “Shermer has been a bad boy on occasion”. He personally introduced me to Lawrence Krauss, and was part of a conversation in which Krauss asked me to not criticize a certain guy named Jeffrey Epstein; Randi just knew Epstein as someone who liked sexy women and who donated to Krauss’s science efforts. Randi was immensely popular, but his lasting influence could have so much greater if he hadn’t been so narrow in many of his views. I hate to say it, but Stevens characterizes that movement entirely accurately.

This one isn’t so painful: Eiynah has a podcast titled “Woking Up” in which she totally shreds Sam Harris. Without reservation, I’d say that Harris’s ongoing popularity has been a disaster for atheism or the “New Atheism”, whatever that is, and she exposes the fact that he’s awfully supportive of racists and makes terribly bad arguments against the Left. I enjoyed that one, since I’ve never been a fan of the Harris school of deceptive reasonableness in the service of the worst possible takes. It’s easy to see right through him, and the people who can’t simply favor his polite racism.

No gods, no masters, and no goddamn hero worship.

Called out by someone I never heard of

By chance, I just stumbled across this curious announcement:

Saturday Oct 30th ‘SPECIAL EDITION’ 1PM US Central/7PM UK on Quantum Eraser Channel –

Professor PZ Myers and Atheist Round Table: ‘DEBUNKED’ !

This “Quantum Eraser” guy is some kind of flat-earther, but otherwise I know nothing about them. I have a couple of questions, though. How do flat-earthers explain time zones? Also, do they use a different calendar than we do, since on my globe-shaped planet, 30 October is a Friday.

I’m also curious about how I got on the flat earth radar. Do they just assume, reasonably enough, that anyone with a science degree is going to find flat-earth BS to be absurd?

I blocked these guys long ago, why are they clogging up my mailbox now?

I’m suddenly finding myself getting swarmed by evangelicals from KKMS/AM980, the Christian talk radio station. I’d blocked them, but I guess they changed something to get past my filters. So what am I getting?

We’d like to add to your family’s movie library!

I could win a 6 pack of Kendrick Brothers movies! Nope, not interested.

Do you trust God in everything?

No.

Share this gift with your pastor!

It’s a pastor appreciation event sponsored by Crescent Tide Cremation Services. No pastor, not interested in cremation services yet.

Have you ever questioned how God is at work in the darkness?

I question everything anyone says about gods, so maybe. Except this is an ad for a book, so not that one.

Here’s my favorite!

Thank you for your loyalty! Here’s your 20% off code!

I am so loyal that I just refreshed my filters to delete all their messages, now and henceforth, until they tweak things again. Which they will.

Tired creationist arguments, again

Oh god no, not another Ray Comfort special. He (or rather, some outfit called Genesis Apologetics, which for some unfathomable reason thinks Ray Comfort’s narration is a selling point) has a new movie out, titled “Genesis Impact”, and of course it’s a wretched pile of incoherent nonsense. Here’s the trailer.

It starts off with the patented Ray Comfort trolling technique of hitting random lay people with rapid fire questions of the creationist flavor, which they are not prepared to answer with substantive evidence. They aren’t scientists, Ray. We know that if they were scientists, you’d chop out their answers on the editing room floor, because that’s how you roll.

But then, there’s a difference: this movie has a premise, beyond just Ray bleating out questions at random strangers, like most of his “movies”. In this one, a woman is reminiscing about the time she studied “both sides” of the evolution question, and confronted a science guy at a museum and peppered him with questions he couldn’t answer. I guess if you don’t have a confused civilian handy, you just script up a confused scientist and have a young girl crush him with creationist dogma. This is also a familiar genre; it’s basically “Big Daddy” in movie form, where the adorable Christian confronts a professor with imaginary problems in evolution, and he goes staggering back, trounced and questioning his life choices.

In this one, our Christian teenager troops up on the podium and says, “Sir, I have a question.” The “sir” is a giveaway. I’ve never been addressed as “sir”, ever — it’s practically archaic, calculated to make you think this is a respectful approach, when it’s anything but. She says, “Isn’t that an unusually long time without any transitions between apes and humans?” What does that even mean? What is the expected time? How do you judge an appropriate length of time when you are simply refusing to believe in any transitions at all?

“It looks like a lot of speculation, even exaggeration,” she declares, this random uninformed Christian. How would she know? Is she reading the scientific literature? “The earth is billions of years old, which allows evolution to take place,” answers the scientist, which isn’t even a reply to the statement she made. Cut to rapt audience, who look surprised that someone has confronted a scientist with these “difficult” questions. Right. I can tell already there’s going to be a lot of scripted stupidity in this movie, with the creationist making absurd claims and getting no pushback from the scientist…because the scientist’s answers are all written by a creationist know-nothing.

“I don’t mean any disrespect, but I believe that the theory of evolution is the most fluid, ever-changing theory on the face of the planet,” she says with a smile and a shrug beneath her weird shaggy wig. That certainly sounds like a Comfortism to me, the constant pretense of being respectful, because when you’ve got no meat to your answers, you think you can substitute for it with tone.

Fuck that noise, little girl. We’re not going to let you Gish gallop through a dozen ill-formed questions for the next hour and 7 minutes, we’re going to drill down through one and I’ll show you why it’s a stupid question, and we’ll go into the science behind what real paleontologists and geologists and evolutionary biologists say, and then you can go back to your Bible.

The whole godawful movie is on Amazon Prime, and I’ll probably watch the whole thing this weekend. Fortunately, it’s only 67 minutes long. Unfortunately, creationists can pack an awful lot of bullshit into an hour. Here’s the blurb:

Secular museum docent (Reggie McGuire) presents his best case for evolution at the natural history museum, but Christina (Hannah Bradley) has a few questions at the end of his talk that turn the tables… Christina’s questions dismantle evolution and her presentation of the Bible’s account of origins awaken many to the truth.

<snort> Yeah, right. She’s going to “dismantle evolution” with stupid questions. I’ll probably live-tweet the experience. Who knows? Maybe at the end I’ll emerge believing in the literal truth of Genesis I. (No, I won’t. I’ve attended this rodeo many times before, and it’s going to be an hour of garbage.)