When Neutrality Isn’t

The details are a bit tough to track, so here’s a timeline.

June 15th, 2021: Harriet Hall publishes a book review of “Irreversible Damage” to Science-Based Medicine.
June 17th: That book review is removed by Steven Novella and David Gorski, as “we felt there were too many issues with the treatment of the relevant science, and leaving the article up would not be appropriate given the standards of SBM [Science-Based Medicine].”
June 17th: The book review is reprinted by Michael Shermer on Skeptic.com, with an editor’s note that reads in part:

While we have long admired the excellent work by the contributors at Science-Based Medicine on issues like vaccines and quack alternative medicine claims, they have long openly displayed a far-left progressive political bias that has compromised their otherwise stellar reputation as a trustworthy source. In science, facts cannot be bent or silenced by politics, however well intentioned, for nature cannot be fooled.

After June 17th: That paragraph of the editor’s note is removed, presumably by Shermer himself.

I’ll have a lot more to say on this, if my drafts are any indication, but first I want to circle back to the editor’s note by Novella and Gorski. Note that while they claim there are many issues with the science Hall presents, they don’t go into detail. In fact, what I quoted is all they have to say on the subject. In contrast, they spend several paragraphs defending their neutrality. A sample:

Already there are false accusations that this move was motivated by pressure from readers. This is not the case. SBM had and never will cave to outside pressure. We have endured a great extent of such pressure, including the threat of lawsuits and actual litigation.

If you’ve been part of the atheist/skeptic movement for a while, this is no surprise. Novella in particular has tried very hard to be politically neutral and “above the drama” when any major controversy comes up. The problem, as I’ve pointed out before, is that neutrality favours the status quo and the status quo is sexist. That a desire to avoid drama is easily exploited, as if bigots deliberately cause drama it grants them more control over the commentary.

We will leave the comments open for now and encourage full, open, and respectful discussion of the topic by anyone interested.

If you haven’t had your head clouded by a neutrality fetish, you know exactly how “respectful” the discussion has been. Transphobes have been recycling all the tired arguments about sports I’ve covered in depth before. They’re receiving a lot of pushback, thankfully, but transgender people and their allies should never be forced to defend their humanity.

Kudos to Novella and Gorski for retracting that book review, which was the right thing to do. But all they’ve done is turn a body blow into a slap in the face. They knew the science behind this review was dodgy, but kept silent on why to avoid stirring up drama, and in the process let the bigots fill the silence with their own spin.

This apologia for censorship is dishonest. Notice that the authors, Novella and Gorski, can’t be bothered to condescend to explain exactly what it is about the book review that made its deletion necessary as a matter of “quality control.” For some reason, it was impossible to allow discussion of the review and the book. The claim that the action had nothing to do with the bleats of the censors urging suppression of the discussion is not plausible.

Turning off comments is just a click of a button, and would have avoided the inevitable transphobic shit-show. Instead, they let it happen in the name of a “full, open, and respectful discussion” they must have known wouldn’t actually occur. Rather than help transgender people, they’ve left them and their allies to mop up the mess while only putting in a token effort to assist.

Guys, don’t do this.

Slavery in Canada

What’s a Canadian to do in honour of Juneteenth? In school I learned we were the end point of the underground railroad, which ferried slaves out of the USA in the decades before their Civil War. And, well, that was about it. Yay Canada! I guess we never engaged in slavery.

A moment’s thought suggests that is nonsense. Britain did indeed ban slavery before the USA, but even my decaying history knowledge tells me that happened in the 1800’s, about two hundred years after the Brits landed. The Atlantic parts of Canada were heavily engaged in shipping, so there’s a non-trivial chance slave ships landed there in passing at least. If only we had some historical documentation about the subject.

[Read more…]

I’ve Never Understood This

Consider this scenario, instead.

YOU: I’m in the mood for a soft drink. What do you have?
ME: Just Coke and Pepsi, at the moment.
YOU: I’ll take a Coke.
ME: Here’s a Pepsi.
YOU: I thought you said you had Coke?
ME: Oh I do, you just look more like a Pepsi person to me.

This time around, it’s pretty obvious I’ve done something unethical. Given the choice of providing you with what you wanted, I instead imposed something else on you. Both alternatives carried about the same cost to me.

[CONTENT WARNING: TERFs and transphobia] [Read more…]

Fundraiser Update: Continue!

Well, I’m continuing anyway. I had such fun with Super Metroid last weekend that during the second part I suggested resuming it this weekend. When I then got word of how successful the fundraiser had been (while others have spilled the beans, I’ll defer to PZ for the big reveal), well, I simply had to.

As per my usual, I’ve already been streaming for an hour. You can catch up with it on Twitch, and later on the video will migrate to my YouTube channel.

Fundraiser Update: Still Chugging Along

This is another halftime post. I just managed a sequence break by bomb-jumping to get the ice beam, and I’m about to start a big long backtrack where I go back through prior areas with all my new gear. The second half of the live stream is currently active at this link, FYI.

If you like this, for loose definitions of “this,” consider donating to us or Skepticon to help pay off our legal bills. Either way, you can tune into the stream. Can’t make the stream? It’ll stay on my Twitch channel for two weeks, then migrate over to my YouTube channel.

Fundraiser Update: Super Metroid is LIVE!

As usual, I didn’t give myself enough time to write a post reminding you of the game stream before I started streaming. Oh well, at least I can make up for it during the break! The live stream is currently active at this link, and right now I’m just at the start of Brinstar.

If you like this, for loose definitions of “this,” consider donating to us or Skepticon to help pay off our legal bills. Either way, you can tune into the stream. Can’t make the stream? It’ll stay on my Twitch channel for two weeks, then migrate over to my YouTube channel.

Fundraiser: Mother’s Day Gaming

Howdy, strangers! Gawd, I think I’ve promised myself and others that I’ll start blogging again a half-dozen times or so, and up until this moment it’s never stuck. This time is different, if only because I have a good cause: it’s fundraiser time again at this blog network! I’ve got two contributions planned, the first of which is a gaming stream on Saturday and Sunday. Since the theme this time is Mother’s day, I thought I’d celebrate two famous mothers.

Mother Brain, from Metroid (1986); “Samus and baby Metroid“, by zgul-osr1113 @ DeviantArt.

Mother Brain, from Metroid (1986); “Samus and baby Metroid“, by zgul-osr1113 @ DeviantArt

According to the manga, Mother Brain raised Samus Aran when she was young, which played out pretty much as you’d expect. Aran and the Metroids are two different species (though Samus’ DNA is all kinds of mixed up, and like what is a species anyway?), but she spends some time protecting and nurturing a baby Metroid. Both of them check the minimum required boxes, and one’s even got “mother” in their name. It’s perfect!

Saturday and Sunday, at 10AM MDT, I’ll be streaming Super Metroid over on my Twitch channel. It’ll stay there for two weeks before migrating to my YouTube channel. I haven’t played the game in decades, so I’ll keep a map handy, but otherwise I’ll be winging it.

If you like this, for loose definitions of “this,” consider donating to us or Skepticon to help pay off our legal bills. Otherwise, you’ll see me in a few days.

Who’s up for some Undertale?

I’m starting to learn why Gabe Newell is worth $9 billion USD: Steam sales. A few times a month, Valve will send you an email that some game on your wish list has temporarily dropped in price by 75%. Even if you had no intentions of buying the game in the short term, some part of your brain screams “but what they never drop the price again?!” and tries to yank your finger to the “add to cart” button. I’m trying to build up a resistance to it, but in the meantime one of those snap sales led me to finally purchase Undertale. It’s one of those metatextual games that tries to get you to think about what exactly you’re doing within a game. Just take the about page:

In this RPG, you don’t have to kill anyone.

Each enemy can be “defeated” nonviolently.

Dance with a slime. Pet a dog. Whisper your favorite secret to a knight.

Or, ignore this choice and rain destruction upon your foes.

If the first words you’re told about a game are “you can do X! Or maybe not,” you know that there’s something special about X. And, indeed, there’s multiple endings that can be reached, depending on how your treat other people in the game. These first lines also call attention to the core loop of the typical video game, which usually involves slaughtering other people. Or if you’re playing an RPG, you instead spend a lot of time pick-pocketing the dead or breaking other peoples’ pottery for your personal gain. By placing that front-and-center, Undertale is also pointing out how video games force us to be terrible people thanks to lazy design.

Tune into my Twitch channel sometime in the next eighteen hours, and you’ll see me attempt this game for the first time. While there’s no active fundraiser at the moment, I don’t think there’s harm in reminding you of the links where you can donate to us or Skepticon to help pay off our legal bills.

Fundraiser Update: Past, Future, and Present

To my utter shock, I was no less than two minutes past the official starting point for today’s stream of Stardew Valley! That was the main reason I never announced the stream, in fact, I was too tempted by starting it on time to tab away and write up a blog post. For the next two weeks the video is available on my Twitch page, and after that will pop up on my YouTube archive.

As for the guide on streaming…. ugh. It turns out I have so many tasks to do that I forgot about a rather major one, so after today’s stream I couldn’t resume work on the guide. I’ve got a fair amount of it already in the can, but I don’t want to release anything half-baked. My workload should lessen up mid-week, which will allow me to resume work on it.

I really hate to delay that, especially given how generous everyone has been. We’ve raised an astounding $3,006.94 during this round for FtB! I was pretty convinced we’d never crack $2,200, but you’ve soundly proven me wrong. Thank you so much for helping pay off this network’s legal bills, it helps all of us sleep better at night. You better believe that I’m going to repay the generosity with the best guide to streaming I can muster.

But, in the meantime, I’ve got to crank up the volume and get coding.

Fundraiser: Among Us in Fifteen Minutes

Yeesh, I always forget how long it takes to encode video. All complaints aside, FtB’s Discord has started running a usually-weekly game of Among Us among the commenters and bloggers. For the fundraiser, I asked if we could record one of our games, and the group agreed! Lyrandar, Zankou, and myself recorded our streams, and Zankou did the heavy lifting of stitching it all together.

Follow this link, and in about fifteen minutes you’ll get to watch the results. If you like it, or just like what we do around here, think about forking over some funds to us or Skepticon to help pay off our legal bills. This is just one of many events we’re putting on, too! Check’m all out.