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?

UCU supports the right of all women (including trans women) to safe spaces and the continuation of monitoring that can help identify discrimination against women, men and those who identify as non-binary. UCU also supports a social, rather than a medical, model of gender recognition that will help challenge repressive gender stereotypes in the workplace and in society.

So sex is by the by in academia.

That document is basically, "yeah man, oppression of women is real, we uphold academic freedom and debate and democracy. We had a vote, we read a bit of Greer and we've decided that there's no debate, get over it."

THESE PEOPLE ARE SO FUCKING THICK!

social, rather than a medical, model of gender recognition that will help challenge repressive gender stereotypes in the workplace and in society.

Doh it's fucking perpetuating it you

In disability rights circles the push is for the social rather than medical model of disability. It seems this idea is now being applied to sex and indeed anything and everything else.

Everyone is what they say they are.

What could possibly go wrong?

Why do we need universities? Qualifications are so oppressive.

I identify as a disabled black male with a PhD.

Yes I was trying to get my head around that bit.

I'm assuming it's because a number of disabilities are invisible? But they are still biological in origin and require definition in law. Certain things like prescriptions and oc health based laws rely on those definitions.

I too am a black disabled male with a professorship.

whether that same personal quality - a sort of humility about the goodness of the self - prevents people from becoming the bigwigs in any society

I often wonder whether it was all imagination and spin, that humility and decency used to be considered admirable qualities, and that society has moved to a model where greed and selfishness are now sought after and considered admirable qualities for leadership.

UCU also supports a social, rather than a medical, model of gender recognition that will help challenge create repressive gender stereotypes in the workplace and in society.

I have corrected their typo.

Nice work merry.

In disability rights circles the push is for the social rather than medical model of disability.

But context is everything in any such debate. Socially it does not matter what anyone calls themselves, but the minute there are protections or facilities provided for any group, then some kind of gatekeeping is required because there are way too many advantage-taking assholes in the world.

Apparently you can self diagnose autism now.

twitter.com/afroautpunk/status/1211203969567080449?s=21

*#AutisticPeopleCan

-be adults

-be self diagnosed

-be Black, Latinx, Asian, Indigenous or multiracial

-be girls or women

-be trans or non-binary*

Saying or implying that trans women are really men denies trans women their right to be women
This used to the basis for humour

now it we're supposed to actually believe it

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.

I can't even begin with how contemptuous I am of "sceptics" who require cast iron double blind controlled trial evidence for everything else except this.

There's a whiff of him feeling hard done by that he can't win the argument himself in his whiney comment about receiving 100+ tweets. Are we supposed to lose the argument as it's "unkind" to win it, even though our arguments are much more convincing and scientifically sound? I don't think so.

Stray comments with an IMO summary:

cracked science's tag, 'feelings don't care about facts,' is an ongoing debate in science communication. The lack of understanding of emotion around issues of science that are considered well-settled has been behind some of the greatest blunders in the last few decades (see vaccination);

the academics/scientists/doctors under discussion in this thread all have well-deserved reputations for research rigour (I'm leaving aside the chap who jumped into a discussion without the courtesy of any knowledge or quick googling) and from a quick consultation of the US database, none of the US people receive any funding beyond research funding and I've no reason to think differently of the UK people;

yes, breast cancer is overwhelming female (approx. 55K cases a year) and there are approx. 400 cases for men per year. I would also summarise that Cicely M's interest is sexual and reproductive health; Trisha G has had breast cancer and bc is David G's research speciality.

Thinking about financial scam bubbles - eg the famous South Sea Bubble of the early 1700s - they work because Person A doesn't do their research because they see that Person B, C and D who they respect is investing in it. Person A assumes that those people will have done the research, so they don't need to - it must be a good thing.

I suspect this is what is happening with academics and sceptics. And it all started because Stonewall leveraged its huge resource of respect to "back" the scam, which then snowballed.

It will take real life consequences, and a lot of people suffering, sadly, for that bubble of irresponsible investment to burst. Just like financial scams.

That's a really interesting point, kesstrel

Add on the government, healthcare, police and education systems also unquestioned "buy in" to gender issues.

Add on the government, healthcare, police and education systems also unquestioned "buy in" to gender issues.

Social contagion and well-placed people with access to sources of (respectable) official funding were behind the success of PIE for a long time.

I think that these people perhaps view transgenderist ideology that twa literally w as a kind, harmless fiction only mean, prejudiced people would be pedantic about.

Ergo, anyone questioning it is mean and prejudiced.

Ergo, arguments made by people questioning its universal harmlessness should be ignored because they come from bigots.

They assume only bigots would be pedantic about the polite fictions involved and then go on to take anyone questioning transgenderism as evidence of the existence of a group of bigots doing just that.

Because they 'know' that group of bigots exists, they also 'know' that the arguments come from bigotry and can be ignored.

It's completely circular thinking and so fast spinning it's nearly impossible to break into.

I suspect that even if someone could change their opinion on whether the polite fiction is harmless after all, it would take longer to remove the certainty about the existence of that group of clearly, simply, evil people called t--fs.

That t--rfs are out there being nasty for the sake of it is a separate thing they now just 'know' and which colours their reactions to anyone questioning tra narratives.

I suspect their belief in t--fs is much stronger than their belief that tw are literally w, or their personal belief in gendered souls.

Yes that's a very important point kesstrel.

I recently spoke to a Gp who has a commissioning role who is clearly very GC, no need to peak at all, but assumed stonewall is good with regards to supporting young people with exploring their sexuality. This is important as he can commission their services.

I very much agree with kesstrel and Arran.

I think, too, that you should never underestimate the power of peer pressure and groupthink. We have all puzzled at one time or another how otherwise intelligent people went along with the Nazis or with McCarthyism. Well, there's your answer. Even educated people will go along with fashionable ideas rather than stand out from the crowd.

It's particularly true on the left that certain ideas go together as a package. If you're anti-racist, pro-disability rights, pro-gay marriage, have liberal views on divorce and abortion and so on, then you must be pro-trans too - because the horrible alternative is to be a bigot, and that would just be too awful to contemplate. So best just to go along with it rather than apply any critical thinking. We can really see this at work with PIE in the 1970s - if you support gay rights, then you must support paedophile rights, and if you don't, then you're a bigot. Who's going to dare to speak out against that?

I also think that skeptics are particularly prone to groupthink - they are a very tightly knit group of people with their own unchallengeable orthodoxies. And there's a tendency on their part to think that because they're not religious, their thinking is purely logical and evidence-based. They no longer see their own biases. A few years ago Andrew Brown wrote a piece about the atheist Sam Harris's defence of guns, which shows exactly this process at work:

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2013/jan/07/sam-harris-faith-guns

I think there are many different things that play into this.

One like someone mentioned is the idea that even if we don't know what causes it, it is innate so must be accepted. It's totally on the back of gay and lesbian questions, and what's more some of the worst ideas around it - the idea that we should accept anything innate as ok is wrong on the face of it, and frankly we haven't really any very good scientific explanations about how much around sexuality is or is not innate. That this has been extended in recent years to include all kinds of sexual interests, fetishes, etc is even less justified. But all of these ideas are now regularly accepted as settled, and people have grown used to never questioning them.

Another is that many of these people in particular will take the view that sex and gender, though perhaps related, are not the same, and the words woman and man are about gender, not sex. They tend to take this as settled among all right thinking people. You will also see some make similar arguments that were used around SSM with regard to language - that we can use language to mean whatever we decide to use it for, even if in the past it has not been used that way, and especially if that use has been based on sexual discrimination.

The other reason which is particular to the skeptic community is that it is not really very skeptical, and it's often shallow. They have a very strong tendency to fall prey to scientism and while they will out of hand dismiss things that they see the medical community reject - or the medical community they think counts - they will also not usually question what they see as accepted by those people. So if they are American for example they will usually say midwifery is quackery and dangerous, despite the fact that many other countries with good medical systems say it is best practice. Or they will tend to see doubts about GM agriculture as anti-science, rather than considering the track-record of scientific interventions in complex ecosystems, or the sociological/economic arguments.

Since gender ideology seems to be accepted by the mainstream medical community, it's assumed to be scientific and those who question it are anti-science.

And there's a tendency on their part to think that because they're not religious, their thinking is purely logical and evidence-based. They no longer see their own biases.

This reminds me of an interview I saw once with Richard Dawkins, when The God Delusion came out. The interviewer asked him about epistemology, because his basic argument was about the nature of knowing and evidence. But Dawkins didn't know what epistemology was, and by the same token had no real knowledge about philosophical arguments about epistemology, including the kind of empiricism he was claiming.
He really thought, and I believe still thinks, that it is self-evident, without any need to justify, with no biases, nor inherent assumptions about reality. That's what he and many other skeptics believe differentiates it from religious or theistic systems. It's incredibly naive.

so on, then you must be pro-trans too - because the horrible alternative is to be a bigot, and that would just be too awful to contemplate

But then, what makes some people on the left able to step out of the package deal, and say, hang on, something's not right here ?

Why are some people able to go against the flow, even at considerable risk (reputational, mostly) to themselves ? And what is it that is lacking in those who don't ?

It's not education, it's not IQ, it's not - or is it ? - character. Nothing seems adequate to me to explain why some people (of similar politics, IQ, status) have applied rigor to the topic, and some people (similar politics, IQ, status) haven't.

I mean, to me the explanation that makes most sense at a gut level is that some people on the left have a genuine commitment to women as a class, which arises from a Marxist understanding of the importance of real life conditions, and which propels them to see and speak about the clash of rights. Whereas most people who would describe themselves as progressive or leftist either have a blind spot about women as a class (misogyny), or do not understand the importance of class and real life conditions (political ignorance).

So yeah, maybe they just don't like women very much and/or they are political imbeciles.

Why are some people able to go against the flow, even at considerable risk (reputational, mostly) to themselves ? And what is it that is lacking in those who don't ?

That's a question with much wider application than this issue. I don't have any answers, but I'd love to know why some of us question everything and others are willing to go along with received wisdom and don't give it any thought.

The Edinburgh Skeptics are, um, not very skeptical.

They had a talk from the Scottish Trans Alliance a few years ago. There was a fawning review of it by one of their members on their website...which they've since removed (it had attracted a few properly skeptical comments).

They had this guy talk to them too:

Apr 3, 2016

For our first Edinburgh International Science Festival 2016 podcast, we're pleased to bring you a talk by Prof. William Naphy. This event was easily our most attended event in years, with 100+ people in attendance.

Prof. Naphy's talk examines cultures which historically and contemporaneously have more than two genders. In particular, the talk considers how these societally constructed genders are understood within their society and the socio-cultural gender roles associated with them. Prof. Naphy also suggests that these traditional non-binary understandings of gender are being eroded and changed by Western concepts of sexuality which have developed in a strictly binary understanding of gender.

Having received degrees in Latin and Historical Theology from US institutions, Professor Naphy moved to Scotland to complete his doctoral studies at the University of St Andrews in Reformation History. Subsequently, he worked at New College (Edinburgh) and the University of Manchester before taking up his post at the University of Aberdeen in 1996. He is the author of numerous works on early modern history including 'Calvin and the Consolidation of the Genevan Reformation', and 'Born to be Gay: A History of Homosexuality'. He has appeared frequently in television documentaries including 'Art and Soul' presented by Richard Holloway (Primus Emeritus, Scottish Episcopal Church) and is regularly interviewed on television, radio and print media relating to issues of sexuality and gender in history and contemporary society.

edskeptics.libsyn.com/scifest-2016-how-many-genders-are-there-non-binary-cultures?fbclid=IwAR1pAEeOf5fGKJYtj-JQABYUpxD_zrK491plkrL-5xteNm_t5eva_j2G0rc

Is it just blind adoption of whatever they think conservatives will hate? A personal branding exercise - and the more riding on your brand, the more you have to be careful to delineate it from the 'enemy' ?