The State of Pseudoscience and Skepticism

[ArranUpsideDown]

I think you might need to scroll up to where Andy Lewis (MN's @quackometer123 iirc) answers the original challenge:

crackedscience: Looking for recent pseudoscience trends! Will be on a year-end TV show, talking about 2019 trends in health woo & possible 2020 pseudomedical things to look for. What have you seen?

Andy Lewis: The denial of sex as a material and objective reality - mediated by the infiltration of postmodernist style anti intellectual thinking into academic, medical, legal and social discussions of what it means to be male or female

Worth looking at some of the intervening exchanges (involves Emma Hilton) where leading medics, scientists and skeptics refuse to engage with either Andy or Emma and trade jibes followed by blocking:

twitter.com/Bleedinheart2MD/status/1210938352222031872

And, yes - some of the names in that thread are leading skeptical voices who have been at the forefront of tackling denialism.

What is happening to science, medicine, and the shared understanding of the need to tackle denialism or at least to maintain civil discourse about important topics?

So depressing. I know her work, have some of her books and don't see how she can preach evidence-based medicine and practice while taking this stance.

I honestly feel like I'm living in a parallel universe.

I have two twitters. One for professional reasons and also slightly nefarious; I keep it GC clean so I'm not blocked by anyone and can see tweets.

It is absolutely like a parallel universe. There's a lot of fawning by people I know over famous peeps they've briefly met eg Alice Roberts or just know on twitter and all ability to independently reason and employ critical thought has disappeared.

I cannot wrap my head around any of this.

Nor me. I find myself wondering whether they can see something I cannot, but I have never seen anyone come close to a persuasive argument.

I find this Tweet odd. He seems almost to admit that he is losing the debate, but thinks it’s too mean to contemplate. Doubly ironic as he has “facts don’t care about your feelings” in his profile.

Oops, wrong image.

Oh and I have his profile statement wrong...

Must learn to proofread...

His profile statement makes absolutely no sense in the context of his professed calling.

It's arrogance.

The belief that their intelligence is proof against blind spots ( the fact that IQ is no defence against cults runs counter to this, and forms yet another blind spot).

There's a particular dehumanising arrogance towards intersex people, whose lives form the basis of this so-called 'new biology'. I think that's just sheer nastiness. Plenty of that in the academy.

But yeah, I'd call it arrogance. And a habit of pronouncing, and having people hang onto said pronouncements. A lack of challenge in their lives from others.

Lack of religion does not equate to humility.

I wonder if it is also that in their minds they have categorised trans in the same way as lesbian and gay and therefore even if we don't know what causes it, it's innate and should not be discriminated against. Questioning it is discrimination. The reference to how hard it would be to be a trans person online would seem to support this. Despite the fact that GC people do not attack or verbally abuse those who identify as trans. Merely questioning the concept of trans is enough in the same way questioning who people are sexually attracted to would be unacceptable.

As has been said numerous times, appending the T to LGB was a masterstroke.

If, as mentioned, academics rely on WPATH then forensically assessing WPATH thinking should be on our to do list.

If there's one thing I've learnt from all of this, it's to think critically and not just blindly follow 'a side' - question every thing and draw your own conclusions.

Apparently reaching a certain academic level hinders this skill.

They appended the T to the LGB because they're following the PIE handbook - who did the same thing in the 80s. This is enlightening: www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26352378

@JanesKettle Yes I agree there is a lot of arrogance within the academic and medical community - as well as a lot of sexism, misogyny and playing G-d. All of which tallies with the T.

For it to be arrogance they would have to believe a single goddamn word they're saying and they clearly don't, because they can't make the barest defense. It's tribalism and lying to assuage feelings--that's the ones who aren't afraid, aka being coerced.

I can not think how Cicely Marston, Trisha Greenhalgh or any of the other relevant UK medical academics would have crossed paths with WPATH.

Both of them are very fine scholars.

This is something else. I've no idea what.

Nonetheless, do we need to retain the optimism that organised and methodical sceptical enquiry (note UK spelling for both) is a force that can be used to shape civic discourse and contribute to arbitrating disputed claims in the public sphere? (And we may be facing many of these in very short order in addition to the ones that we have already.)

If so, and we had the equivalent of a brains trust...If there were going to be a panel to discuss the UK medico-legal issues around this in a civil, fact-based manner (with ground rules that exclude the ludicrous claim about rightwing funding and suicide statistics etc.) - who would we want to see on this? Representing any relevant field or perspective?

Scientists. Medics. Researchers. Legal people. Philosophers. Bioethicists. Endocrinologists. Paediatricians. Embryologists and developmental biologists. Anthropologists. There must be many more.

What would the question/s be? How would lay people/people with lived experience be involved?

Gawd these people live in a wee bubble

Ordinary people know what sex people are

Yet the idiots are writing the lies that is being put into law.

Grr

I wonder if it is also that in their minds they have categorised trans in the same way as lesbian and gay and therefore even if we don't know what causes it, it's innate and should not be discriminated against.

I'm sure this is a large part of what is behind many people's instinctive support for transgenderism and the refusal to discuss it. But it would be helpful to have a definition of what transgenderism actually is, preferably one that is as easy to understand as the definition of what it means to be lesbian or gay.

What is transgenderism?

I've been doing a lot of thinking over Xmas, and gave tribalism some thought. It's a funny little paradox, really - you have scientifically-minded people here who understand the need for variation and diversity from a healthy organism or society point of view (basically needing more than sameness to thrive in different situations).
And yet, when it comes to a completely baseless orthodoxy, they are defaulting to an impotent tribe of lock step conformity, rather than an actual multiplicity of viewpoints.

I suppose I comfort myself that a tribe like that will eventually dissolve without any variation to accommodate a shifting environment. But, bloody hell, it's so frustrating being mocked for the Sky Fairy stuff by people who think my sex is a feeling in a head, because they want to be kind.

Somebody who fancies his intellect, reasoning, and persuasive skills 'jumped in to take [Terfs] on' (approx. his phrasing) and is accusing those who respond to him as acting in bad faith. Now, some of the arguments are less than optimal but he could so easily google some of his own assertions to discover that he is wrong (the sports ones in particular as he's unaware that McKinnon argues against taking T suppressors etc. as a breach of human rights):

twitter.com/frost11b/status/1211075792249200646

There seems to be no sense that he needs to research before engaging and has no idea of how much he doesn't know.

There’s a reason physicians make some of the best marks for con artists. According to the con artists, physicians overestimate their own intelligence as well as their street-smarts and almost never, having made a decision, question themselves.

The working class, as it happens, make the worst marks: they question everything.

So who actually is the stronger intellect?

Trisha Greenhaulgh wrote a book on breast cancer because she's a GP, had it, and had a friend with similar expert insight.

They must not have identified out of having a cancer which affects females because they had a massive book advance. It's the only rational explanation.

I do understand tribalism; it takes quite an effort to think outside one's tribe on many topics.

This one though - the basic claim is so poorly substantiated - that men are women because they say they feel like women (and vice versa) - how can it be remotely difficult to think outside the tribe on this one ?

When you spend one solitary moment on it, knowing what we know merely from living in the world, perhaps from observing other mammals, it is an utterly senseless claim from which so much that is problematic about TRA demands arises.

I do agree there's a kind of collective guilt around the treatment of gay men and lesbian women during the 20th C - but that guilt is strangely being assauged, not through apology to those communities, and ensuring those communities (esp lesbians) are safe and respected, ut by directing proactive affirmation at another group entirely.

So less guilt, more PR?

There's an immense amount of selfishness in their stance. Men (and women) who cannot empathise with a sexual assault survivor, or with a brain damaged female prisoner. Or worse, who do possess empathy but choose not to 'waste' it on women.

Ever since I was a wee one at primary school, and learning about Anne Frank etc, I've always wondered whether I'd be the kind of person who hid Anne, or the kind of person who collaborated, or didn't ask questions and protected myself with ignorance. I'm never altogether sure that I'd do the right thing.

I wonder whether people need to have that kind of humility about themselves - to question their 'goodness' - in order to eventually make a stand, and whether lack of that same personal quality - a sort of humility about the goodness of the self - prevents people from becoming the bigwigs in any society. Idk. Just musing.

It's incredible to me. It's hard for me to believe people are actually lying. They are certainly very lazy, however, and should cease spouting off about things they haven't properly investigated.

-lack of-

Ergh

Para should read

I wonder whether people need to have that kind of humility about themselves - to question their 'goodness' - in order to eventually make a stand, and whether that same personal quality - a sort of humility about the goodness of the self - prevents people from becoming the bigwigs in any society. Idk. Just musing.

That bbc article with the clip from the 70s is notable in the twisting of language by the two PIE men, "the definition of maturity is yours," "reciprocal relationships," and so on.

I don't know if it's relevant but I was recently told that the university union has been completely captured.

This document presents UCU's position on trans inclusion. The position is based on policy made at UCU annual congresses and explores key concepts which inform the position such as intersectionality and academic freedom:

I mean, JFC, look at the first paragraph of this statement by them on trans policy.

Note the complete lack of trans men. Note the complete ignorance of safety for women.

How can you have the academic freedom to state that sex is real under this kind of nonsense?

Website:

https://www.ucu.org.uk/equality

Pdf:

https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/10564/UCUs-position-on-Trans-inclusion/pdf/TransinclusionnNovember2019.pdf

Thought police will be watching twitter.