A study in hiding truth behind a lie

Steven Pinker’s latest book — which I have no interest in ever reading, despite the fact that it’s getting reviewed all over the place — contains some interesting exercises in glossing over ugly truths.

You know, in everything I’ve ever read on the Tuskegee syphilis study — and there are lots of books and papers on the subject — no one ever suggested that the doctors infected the patients with syphilis. They didn’t need to. The truth was damned horrifying. The doctors in that study intentionally neglected to treat a treatable disease, allowing it to run its terrible course, just to see what would happen. They also failed to give the patients the information that would allow them to elect to go to a different doctor for treatment, because that would have defeated their purpose of watching spirochetes eat the brains of black people.

There is nothing forgivable in the facts of the story. Scientists watched human beings suffer and die to sate their sick curiosity and to get a few publications. It did not generate new knowledge, because we already had lots of information on the course of the disease. The information did not prevent harm to anyone, because we had an effective treatment already.

But hey, let’s put a happy spin on it! At least they didn’t intentionally infect anyone with the disease. There, it doesn’t sound as awful now, does it? It could have been so much worse! We can take this approach to everything. Sure, the US bombed villages in Viet Nam with napalm and Agent Orange and high explosives, but at least we didn’t nuke them. See how good and progressive we are? Oh, yeah, we may have prisoners held without due process in Gitmo, and we may have tortured them a little bit, but at least we didn’t infect them with syphilis or shoot them out of cannons or throw them into vats of acid. We could have, but because we didn’t, you need to respect our restraint and our growing humanity.

I must have cursed National Geographic by accident

Back in the dim and distant past, around 2011, when the dignified and staid National Geographic bought up my former blogging home, ScienceBlogs, there was a certain self-appointed guardian of the Purity of NatGeo who was infuriated that I might exist under the bold banner and yellow border of his beloved company. I was going to taint the brand! I was a horrible person who should be dismissed forthwith! I was a corruption, a depravity, a dissolute poisoner of the sacred spirit of science!

He was a little bit distraught about it all.

I’ve completely forgotten his name, but I’d be curious to know what he thinks now, now that NatGeo has completely shuttered ScienceBlogs after a couple of years of neglect, and now that NatGeo is peddling…magic…rocks…to people. Yep, they’ve really sold out. I guess they were envying Gwyneth Paltrow’s reputation and money.

It’s true. They’re sending out magic healing crystals to journalists.

The huge box Nat Geo sent me contained a book, some press material, and this glass water bottle with their name printed on the side. The >$70 bottle’s package advertises that it contains “carefully selected and ethically sourced gemstones representing the building blocks of earth,” including “wood,” “water,” “earth,” “metal” and “fire.” It came with an instruction and information manual.

Why does my water bottle have an instruction manual? It reads: “For the most precious moments in life! Gems raise the energy level of water. That’s been known for hundreds of years and scientifically proven. VitaJuwel Gemwater Accessories are not only Jewelry for Water, they’re a great tool to prepare heavenly gemwater like fresh from the spring.” The instructions are: screw in the gemstone vial, fill with water, and then wait 7 minutes.

You know how it works? Vibrations. NatGeo is promoting vibrations.

Some of the claims are really wild. At one point, the pamphlet says: “Everything in nature vibrates. Gems naturally act like a source of subtle vibrations. These vibrations inspirit water, making it more lively and enjoyable.” This is nonsense, and any reference to electricity in crystals (like piezoelectricity, when charge accumulates on some structures in response to physical stress) is neither exclusive to crystals nor relevant to healing or enlivening drinking water. (“Ha! Yeah. Nah,” astrophysicist Katie Mack told me in a DM.)

Now I feel really guilty. He was right. It was all my fault. That I was briefly (and under protest) sponsored by National Geographic was the causal agent that sent the whole venerable institution plummeting into a deep chasm of woo.

I’m sorry, everyone. I didn’t do it on purpose, it must have just been my bad vibes.

Rebecca Watson tells it like it is

Here we go again.

She’s exactly right on this, and her account of the Buzzfeed article matches mine: they researched that thing for months, and there was a point in the middle where I was expecting it to come out at any time that the reporter contacted me and told me it was on hold a little longer while they nail down a few more points. This was not some quick hatchet job.

It’s telling, too, that the critics of the article keep circling around the same ad hominems.

I keep seeing the same thing over and over again. We’re not supposed to believe the article because Rebecca Watson is cited in it (as is this mysterious awful person, PZ Meyers). A lot of people also jump on the fact that Melody Hensley is in it.

That really pisses me off — it’s a circular argument. Shitlords on the internet grabbed a picture of Melody from the internet, slapped the words “TRIGGERED” on it, and then used that meme to argue that she has no credibility. I’ve also seen them cite the odious Thunderf00t’s terrible video on her — which really was a cheap hatchet job — that implied that only soldiers ever get PTSD (wrong!) to say that her diagnosis of PTSD was a lie. And now, because she was harassed right off the internet and out of her job, they claim that she experienced no trauma at all, which makes no sense. It’s a contemptible argument.

It also makes me wonder what they think motivates Rebecca Watson and Melody Hensley. Neither of them have gained a thing from speaking out about harassment, other than more harassment, hate mail, death threats, and reputations smeared by assholes, all while the skeptic/atheist movements sail merrily along, changing nothing, pretending that all is well.

Oh, and here’s another comment that confirms what the women have been saying all along. It’s some of the conference organizers who are a significant part of the problem.

I had to point out to this guy that maybe the reason he doesn’t see any criticisms is that his bias is shining out brightly, and it’s quite likely that the women know better than to talk to him — he’ll just deny, deny, deny, and then turn around and call them a Crazy Woman. So he doubled down.

A True Skeptic, that. I guess I’m not who I think I am. And once again, the fact that a mob of jerks hounded Melody into a stressed-out retirement from the movement is used to discredit Melody, rather than the mob.

I’ll also mention that this conference organizer, who had not heard any complaints about his speakers in 7 years, then turned around and claimed that he’d heard from dozens of women that I’d sexually harassed them when I spoke at his conference. That’s the level of dishonesty we’re dealing with here — that’s the amount of disrespect atheist conference organizers deal out to the women attendees. And then they wonder why women and minorities show less interest in organized atheism.

Secular Women keep on working

This is a press release from Monette for an upcoming conference, Secular Women Work. They have a Kickstarter for donations.

Secular Woman and Minnesota Atheists are bringing back their activist training conference, and they’re using Kickstarter to make it possible. The Secular Women Work conference will be held in Minneapolis this August 24–26 and features accomplished activists Jessica Xiao, former program assistant at the American Humanist Association and current Prison Book Club Coordinator, and Greta Christina, writer and cofounder of Godless Perverts. Mandisa Thomas will be returning as well after another successful three years for Black Nonbelievers.

Come August, the conference will feature a full slate of exclusively women and genderqueer speakers. The original conference in 2015 highlighted the importance of “women’s work” in the secular movement. Secular Woman president Monette Richards explains, “The recent revelations that atheist figureheads and organizations knew and did nothing about Lawrence Krauss long before his recent #metoo reckoning demonstrate how far we still have to go as a movement in valuing the contributions of women. There’s no better time than now for another Secular Women Work.”

The conference has returned to Kickstarter to sell conference tickets and raise additional funding. The first Secular Women Work was the first atheist or skeptic conference to successfully crowdfund. “There’s a perception of waning interest in secular conferences. We think people are just looking for the right conference to take them to the next level in their activism. The Kickstarter lets us test our theory before committing resources”, said Minnesota Atheists incoming associate president Stephanie Zvan. The campaign launches today, and tickets will only be available through Kickstarter until it fully funds.

In addition to conference tickets, which will be transferable, the Kickstarter offers backer rewards such as t-shirts, custom SurlyRamics jewelry, and advertising space. Those who can’t attend but want to support the conference can buy and donate a scholarship to another activist. The campaign will end March 29.

The Secular Women Work conference will be heavy on skill-building and problem-solving workshops, with panels and speakers covering specialist topics. All workshop leaders, panelists, and speakers will be seasoned activists themselves. Additional speakers are expected to be announced during the Kickstarter campaign.

The conference will be held in the Humphrey School of Public Affairs on the University of Minnesota’s West Bank campus. Conference organizer Chelsea du Fresne explained that the venue was an important factor in making the first conference special. “Not only is the space wonderful for getting to know other activists, but being surrounded by so much political accomplishment is inspiring. Today, more than ever, those reminders that we can make a difference really matter.”

The conference is a joint project of the Minnesota Atheists and Secular Woman.

It’s a good cause, and I plan to attend. See you there!

Challenge is one thing, stacking the deck is another

The creationists are playing legalistic games again.

Policymakers in the United States are pushing to give the public more power to influence what educators teach students. Last week, Florida’s legislature started considering two related bills that, if enacted, would let residents recommend which instructional materials teachers in their school district use in their classrooms.

The bills build on a law enacted in June 2017, which enables any Florida resident to challenge the textbooks and other educational tools used in their district as being biased or inaccurate. In the five months after the state’s governor approved the law, residents filed at least seven complaints, including two that challenge the teaching of evolution and human-driven climate change, according to the Associated Press.

I have questions.

What do the creationists think this bill accomplishes? They can “challenge” science teachers right now, and they can recommend instructional materials. Go ahead. Disagree with me. Send me Chick tracts and tell me to replace my textbooks with those. You can do that! I’d find it very entertaining. I’d put it in my promotion review file for my colleagues to chortle over, and it would be helpful to me. But otherwise, you can challenge all you want, but I’m just going to ignore you.

What the bill actually does is increase the nuisance value of creationists and create additional costs for Florida schools.

With the law now in place, any county resident — not just any parent with a child in the country’s public schools, as was the case previously — can now file a complaint about instructional materials in the county’s public schools, and the school will now have to appoint a hearing officer to hear the complaint.

This is a law that enables teacher harassment. Nothing else. It’s not going to change the science at all, it’s just going to allow ignorant people to meddle in education — precisely the wrong people to empower.

Now I’d like to know more about this “hearing officer”. If it’s a guy with a wastebasket who sits in a room shuffling complaints to their appropriate destination, that’s just a waste of time and money; if it’s a guy who actually has some power to punish or otherwise affect teachers, then it’s a poison to education.

If you’re wondering what the obstacle to change in the atheist movement might be, here it is

There is a private meeting of the people who are ‘running’ the movement side of atheism; it’s called “Heads”, which sort of tells you what it is about. It’s the leaders of the various disparate groups that make up the movement. You might wonder what goes on there (I’m not and never have been part of it). Much of it seems to be about silencing the people who might drive change.

The structure of this year’s meeting changed after women voiced their opinions and concerns at last year’s meeting. Some of those opinions were unpopular and unwelcome, and during the meeting, the Chair of the Advisory Board of the Secular Coalition of America requested that the next meeting be available only to member organizations of SCA. SCA ran this year’s meeting, and the change was made, excluding Secular Woman and other smaller organizations.

People continue to write “where are the women” pieces about the secular movement after years of work to make us more inclusive. Women enter this movement, then leave with stories of being talked over, silenced, and valued for their bodies over their voices. As #MeToo continues to gather momentum, the leaders of this movement have changed the rules to specifically exclude Secular Woman, the only secular organization which focuses on the concerns and voices of women.

That’s right, the powers-that-be took action to exclude innovators and representatives of new ideas. You must be a member of their in-group to participate now. Perhaps you’re wondering who runs the show behind the scenes in the atheist “movement”. Here’s that advisory board.

Woody Kaplan – chair
Robert Boston – writer and spokesperson on the Religious Right and First Amendment issues
Richard Dawkins, D.Sc., FRS – evolutionary biologist and popular science writer who holds the Charles Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University
Daniel Dennett, D.Phil. – philosopher whose research intersects with cognitive science and evolutionary biology
Rebecca Goldstein, Ph.D. – author and philosopher
Sam Harris, Ph.D. – author, neuroscientist, and CEO of Project Reason
Jeff Hawkins – entrepreneur and inventor
Wendy Kaminer – author and social critic on civil liberties, religion and popular culture
Michael Newdow, M.D. – attorney, medical doctor and litigant in Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow which attempted to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance
Dan Okrent – author, best known for having served as the first public editor of the New York Times.
Steven Pinker, Ph.D. – psychologist, writer and Humanist Laureate
Salman Rushdie – novelist
Hon. Fortney “Pete” Stark – The first openly nontheistic member of the United States House of Representatives (1973 to 2013)
Todd Stiefel – founder and president of the Stiefel Freethought Foundation.
Julia Sweeney – actor best known for her androgynous character Pat on “Saturday Night Live” and her critically acclaimed one-woman monologue, “Letting Go of God.”
Doug White – a long-time leader in the nation’s philanthropic community, is an author, teacher, and an advisor to nonprofit organizations and philanthropists.

Some of them are all right. But way too many of them are, at best, defenders of the status quo, and at worst, representative of the nastier elements of atheism. Old boss, same as the new boss. And we probably will be fooled again, dammit.

Skeptic and atheist organizations suffer a failure of leadership

In a total coincidence, I woke up this morning and notice a box of old magazines by the bedside that my wife was planning to throw out, and on the very top was the back cover of Free Inquiry, with this advertisement:

And then, this morning, this article appears: Science Organizations Cancel Lawrence Krauss Events After Sexual Harassment Allegations. Like lightning, within days of the big, thoroughly-sourced article documenting Krauss’s shenanigans, the speaking engagements are sublimating away, leaving nothing but a greasy smear on floor of his reputation. He’s lost the odd event with Sam Harris last night, NECSS has announced that they don’t plan to invite him to future events, MIT cancelled an event, the American Physical Society has dropped him from their annual meeting — he has been Harvey Weinsteined practically overnight.

There are a few exceptions. That infamous cruise:

The BuzzFeed piece also cites an alleged incident in 2011 involving Krauss that I previously detailed in a 2013 post I wrote for the Heresy Club, a now-defunct blog network of young writers in the skeptic community. The blog post, which was removed shortly after its publication following legal threats from Krauss, described a 2011 incident in which Krauss allegedly propositioned a woman to engage in a threesome with himself and another woman (the request was reportedly turned down). The woman was at the time a guest on a cruise sponsored by the Center for Inquiry, where Krauss was one of the featured speakers. I also wrote in my 2013 blog post—and the BuzzFeed article reiterates—that at least one CFI employee implored the then-president of CFI, Ron Lindsay, to not invite Krauss on a planned 2014 cruise, citing the “report of unwanted sexual attention” she had received from the woman and other past offensive behavior. The CFI nevertheless invited him.

CFI has known about these problems as long or longer than other organizations. Nevertheless, CFI has long supported him.

Once, Krauss was barred from making contact with an undergraduate student by his university or from entering the campus without permission, following her harassment complaint, the BuzzFeed article reports. In another instance, the article says, a prominent research institute placed Krauss on its do-not-invite list, following a complaint made during a 2009 event where he guest-spoke. The article also reported that another prominent secular and skeptical organization, the Center for Inquiry (CFI), continued to invite Krauss to events even after having been made aware of several allegations against him and CFI employees requesting that he not attend in light of them.

Universities, like Case Western Reserve, apparently dealt with him effectively after due process (universities are notoriously slow at handling these internal matters). Professional scientific organizations cut him off with remarkable swiftness. CFI, on the other hand, is still struggling to figure out how to cope at least 7 years after the problem first raised its ugly head. The Center for Inquiry doesn’t even have a comment on the matter on their website; neither does the Richard Dawkins Foundation, despite their long association with him.

It’s dismaying that the skeptical/atheist organizations still have their heads stuck up their butts while the rest of the world passes them by. It’s especially troubling because I know there are good people at CFI who are seething about all this, but management has them locked down.

Time for some Secular Social Justice

I’ve managed to eke out enough frequent flyer miles that I can afford to fly off to Secular Social Justice on 7 April. Also, as usual, all it takes is reading a little Sikivu Hutchinson to get me fired up for it.

In April, the American Humanist Association is sponsoring the semi-annual Secular Social Justice (SSJ) conference in Washington, D.C. This first of its kind conference is designed to spotlight the intersectional, anti-racist organizing, activism and cultural work of secular people of color. When my comrade Donald Wright (founder of the National Day of Solidarity for Black Non-Believers) and I organized the first SSJ conference two years ago at Rice University in Houston, non-believers of color were struggling with the very same visibility and platform issues that they grapple with today. The majority often navigate between a white mainstream atheist world that has been hostile to intersectionality, black feminism and people of color, and socially conservative religious communities of color that view atheism as inauthentically black or tantamount to devil worship.

Sincere Kirabo, lead organizer for this year’s SSJ conference notes that SSJ “was developed as a direct response to pervasive complacency within the secular community that considers focus on matters of social justice issues unnecessary or a “distraction.” Countering that view, the conference will feature speakers and presenters from racial justice, law, public policy, queer, trans and immigrant rights activism, educational equity and humanist activism.

Finally, SSJ also speaks to a critical leadership vacuum in the mainstream atheist, humanist and secular movements. There are currently few to no people of color in executive management positions in major secular organizations (i.e., the Center for Inquiry, Secular Student Alliance, American Humanist Association, etc.). As a result, it is precisely because of anti-atheist religious bigotry, white atheist racism and the lack of culturally responsive secular organizations that the vast majority of non-believers of color do not feel comfortable openly identifying as atheist. And, until this shifts, the much-ballyhooed rise of the nones will only be a footnote for segregated communities of color.

This is the direction movement atheism has to take if it wants to survive and be meaningful. If I can help in any way, that’s where I want to make my contributions.

Now, one other little thing: the conference is taking place at All-Souls Unitarian Church, but does anyone know if there is an associated hotel for the event? Otherwise, I’m just going to book the nearest, cheapest hotel in the area.

I guess it’ll be another IMDB credit for me

I was informed yesterday that I am the ☆STAR☆ of yet another movie, a movie that I was not told about and just sort of stumbled into. I’m losing all respect for movie celebrities, though: apparently, the way a movie star works is to have some guy with a camera record you talking for a bit, and then they all go away, and you don’t even think about it for five years, and then suddenly this thing is available online and you see it and say “Oh crap, I was in that piece of shit?” and you never get paid. I’m beginning to wonder how those other movie stars can afford their beach houses in Malibu.

So here, you can watch my fabulous movie, Origins of the Universe: The Great Debate on Amazon Prime.

Oh, yeah, they also misspell my name, because of course they always do.

You don’t really want to watch it.

As I was watching it, I remembered the circumstances. I think it was a conference in Winnipeg; this guy asked me nicely if I’d answer some questions on camera, and I said sure, so I end up in this oddly lit hotel room with a stranger (I hate how that happens) and he starts firing questions at me, for about an hour. I had no idea it was a debate, but I guess that after the fact, it was. And then I literally went away and completely forgot about it.

The interviewer, Todd Cantelon, then spliced me in with other footage of such luminaries as Ken Ham and Terry Mortenson and David Menton and Jason Lisle and Georgia Purdom and PZ Meyers (oh, wait, that was me). It’s weird to be retroactively ganged up on, but I’m unconcerned, they were all idiots.

There’s also a woman named Mary P. Winsor who was interviewed, so I wasn’t alone on my side. She’s a historian of biology, and has written criticisms of Mayr’s claims about pre-Darwinian essentialism. I don’t know much about her work, but if she’s been opposing some of the ahistorical BS that Ernst Mayr spent a long lifetime injecting into the discourse, she and I are on the same side.

Anyway, it’s a long boring set of spliced-together clips of me saying a sentence or two, then Ken Ham babbling out his fallacious canned spiel about “observational science” and then more creationists talking, then another sentence or two by me or Mary Winsor followed by more nonsense from creationists.

Also, to spice it up, the creationists were recorded at the Creation “Museum” in some place where dinosaur roars and honks occasionally drown them out. Todd Cantelon pretends to be a moderator, but all of his segments were filmed in some spectacular red rock canyon somewhere. It’s kind of unfair that all I got was a grey Winnipeg hotel room.