So the laptop fund was successful, I've purchased a new laptop and I can begin updating again. So here we have another debate with the creationist felon Kent Hovind verses Dr. Matthew Rainbow. Rainbow has a lot of technical hiccups which takes away from the strength of his presentation, but shows a prodigious amount of patience for the creationist standpoint. He often takes the stance that God could be inserted into the process and denialism of an Old Earth simply doesn't match up with the evidence, but the two ideas are not mutually exclusive.
Alex Jones is every skeptic's worst nightmare. His ideology centers around the monolithic evil conspiracy theory that an agency (called "them") control the world around us with an iron clad fist. I'm surprised Chomsky even went on his show. The debate starts out with some agreement happening between the two on how power is aggregated away from the public sphere into elite control. Chomsky disagrees with Jone's assertion that the public is largely unaware of this. The program breaks into absolutely ridiculous commercials for chemical filters for your shower and so forth. At 22:50, Chomsky tells Jones that the counter to government propaganda is to think critically and not take what people say at face value. Jones calls Chomsky a "New World Order shill" at 35:15, because Chomsky disagreed with Jones over gun death statistics. My loathing for Jones again rivals that of a Fox News pundit.
Instead of reading two Christopher Hitchens books at the same time, I opted for reading Sam Harris' The End of Faith instead. I have to say, so far, its probably the best book I've read all year. Its better than Dawkin's The God Delusion and is extremely easy to absorb due to Harris' straightforward and entertaining style. Watch Sam Harris absolutely destroy William Lane Craig in this classic debate. He manages to make William Lane Craig look like a theological/moralistic nincompoop, which is actually hard to do. Out of the many christian apologists, Craig is one of the few cognizant debaters. Edit: I would also add that Craig tends to cling to one unfalsifiable proposition usually extracted from the main debate point. He defends this one proposition until the end, claiming victory when his opponent is unable to counter it, yet failing to make any meaningful counter-arguments.
This classic debate between Kent Hovind and Michael Shermer pits creationism against evolution as if they were two equally scientific ideas. Creationism, as Shermer repeatedly says in his rebuttals, is not science and not even close to being on equal footing. Just slapping the word science before or after a term does not make it so. We all know and love Shermer (he has some of his hair left in this debate!), founder of Skeptic magazine and author of Why People Believe Weird Things. I decided to look into Kent Hovind and his credentials to which I was immediately ROTFL (excuse my internet vernacular). From his Wikipedia article:
In 1988 and 1991 respectively, Hovind was awarded a master's degree and doctorate in Christian Education through correspondence from the non-accredited Patriot University in Colorado Springs, Colorado (now Patriot Bible University in Del Norte, Colorado, which no longer offers this program).[9]
Having a website called "Dr. Dino" has provoked some academics to look
closely at how Hovind presents his education and credentials. Chemistry professor Karen Bartelt has said that it is "very unusual for a person with a Ph.D., even a real one, to list oneself in the phonebook as "Dr Hovind", as Hovind has done."[10] [emphasis in original]. Barbara Forrest, a professor of philosophy, expert on the history of creationism and activist in the creation-evolution controversy, wrote that Hovind's lack of academic training makes it impossible to engage him on a professional level.
Other critics of Hovind have pointed out that Patriot Bible University is a diploma mill,
as it has unreasonably low graduation requirements, lack of sufficient
faculty or educational standards, and a suspicious tuition scheme.[12][13]
The school's current policies allow students to attain bachelor's
degrees, master's degrees, and even "Doctor of Ministry" degrees in
months, rather than years, for as little as $25 per month. Currently
Patriot offers a monthly fee, unlike most universities, which only
charge per-credit fees.[14]
Bartelt has stated that Hovind's doctoral dissertation is evidence of the poor requirements at Patriot and that Hovind lacks knowledge of basic science.
Also, most hilarious, since January 2007 "Dr." Hovind has been serving out part of a 10 year prison sentence for a litany of charges.
...after being convicted of 58 federal counts, including 12 tax offenses,
one count of obstructing federal agents, and 45 counts of structuring cash transactions. He is incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution at Berlin, New Hampshire.
This level of hypocrisy is astounding. It's somewhat reminiscent of the recent wire fraud charges brought against skeptical podcaster Brian Dunning. However Dunning doesn't espouse a hardline stance on biblical morality so I would say his case doesn't display nearly as much duplicity of character.
In this battle of intellects, we have Mike Plunkett, DDS, MPH the Dental Director of CareOregon Community Health, and Assistant
Professor at OHSU School of Dentistry.CareOregon Incorporated isOregon's
largest fully capitated Medicaid health plan, and is responsible for
delivering the comprehensive health care benefits of over 160,000
Oregonians on the Oregon Health Plan.In his role at CareOregon Community
Health, Dr. Plunkett provides clinical leadership for the integration
of comprehensive dental services into its existing four site primary
care clinic network [1]. We've also got Alejandro Queral, MS, JD a program officer for the NW Health Foundation. Alejandro has a law degree from George Washington University Law School,
an MS in Biological Sciences from Northern Illinois University and a BA
in Environmental Sciences from the University of Virginia [2]. Looks like Healthy Kids Health Portland (Portland's pro-fluoride grassroots organization) has some serious intellectual clout to bring to the table. Representing Clean Water Portland (the anti-fluoride grassroots organization) we've got Kellie Barnes a physical therapist(?) and Rick North the former CEO of the American Oregon Cancer Society, who also explicitly states he's not a doctor or scientist. I have to say CWP is a little out gunned here, especially since throughout the debate their only peer-reviewed, quality, scientific paper (Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA's Standards) they pull out in defense of their arguments has many enlightening statements in it (some of these are from my earlier fluoride mythology blog post):
Addressing questions of artificial fluoridation, economics, risk-benefit
assessment, and water-treatment technology was not part of the
committee’s charge. (p. 2)
The committee only considered adverse effects that might result from
exposure to fluoride; it did not evaluate health risk from lack of
exposure to fluoride or fluoride’s efficacy in preventing dental caries. (p. 2)
The report makes no concrete claims to any negative effects of
fluoride at the normal accepted levels of fluoridation other than dental
fluorosis. It continually calls for more studies to be conducted.
It calls for more studies and concern over possible negative human
effects based off of animal studies in which rats were given extremely
large (10 mg for 30 days in one) dosages of fluoride. The average rat
weighs 550 grams while the average human in North America weighs 80.7
kg. Toxicity is weight dependent. That's 10 times the recommended
human dosage to an animal that weighs 146 times less.
It references the already mentioned above study linking lower IQ
scores to fluoride that can be discounted because of its poor quality.
It even states: Without detailed information about the testing
conditions and the tests
themselves, the committee was unable to assess the strength of the
studies. (p. 208)
Strong evidence exists that the prevalence of severe enamel fluorosis is
nearly zero at water fluoride concentrations to below 2 mg/L. (p. 346)
This study says nothing about the safety or efficacy of community water fluoridation (at .7 ppm), it is a study measuring the toxicology of high doses of fluoride. It cannot be used to back arguments regarding the safety of community water fluoridation because, I reiterate, there is no evidence within the study that fluoride at the recommended .7 ppm level has any negative health effects whatsoever.
My latest reading material has been Christopher Hitchens' Arguably, a collection of random essays from the late/great atheist provocateur. Its rekindled my fascination with his debates, for he is without a doubt one of the best debaters I've ever watched and I'm extremely disappointed I was never able to see him in person. Hitchens will be forever remembered as a master linguist, literary expert, and possessing a rapier-like wit able to poke holes in any theistic argument.
This roundtable debate on fluoridating Wichita's municipal water supply aired on KPTS. It included Wichitans for Healthy Teeth members Pamela Amar, a lawyer, and dentist Dr Rob Daken against Dr. Steven L’Hommedieu of Advanced Alternatives for Health and Dr. Charles Hinshaw, the director of the Bio-Center Laboratory at the Riordan Clinic.
After the opening speeches, the moderator states "So many issues are reduced to 'Who do you believe?' and whether there are any unstated motives that might influence a position or another. What part does that play in this discussion?" The lawyer immediately responds, in true lawyer fashion, with "I don't think it plays a part as far as the leading studies showing what [the truth is]." I agree. But, I find it enlightening to examine people's professions and expertise to really understand why they might have certain biases against a particular position. Dr. Steven L'Hommedieu's Advanced Alternative for Health is exactly what it sounds like. It's an "alternative" medicine center. Here is a list of their services from their website:
Kinesiology
Natural Medicine
Nutrition
Chiropractic
Food and Environmental Sensitivity
Assessment
Heavy Metal and Chemical Detoxification
Acupuncture
Low Level Cold Laser Therapy
Microcurrent Therapy
Laboratory Testing and Imaging
Possessing a comprehensive knowledge
of kinesiology, natural medicine, nutrition, Chinese medicine and
chiropractic, he is able to logically integrate alternative and
science-based evaluations and procedures with cutting-edge accuracy [1].
Now, you can say that these services are "science-based" all day, but the fact of the matter is that most of these services contain large pseudoscience doses, well above the recommended level. As Richard Dawkins says, "There is no such thing as alternative medicine. There's medicine that works and medicine that doesn't."
Moving on, Dr. Charles Hinshaw works for the Bio-Center Laboratory at the Riordan Clinic. The Riordan Clinic is a natural health complex in Wichita that provides a holistic approach to medicine. They have testing, supplements, event-space rentals, lectures.
The Bio-Center Lab at the Riordan Clinic was established in 1975 and has
dedicated itself to providing accurate clinical analysis focusing on
nutritional medicine. Our specialties include testing for pyrroles,
histamine, spermidine, spermine, cytotoxic food sensitivities,
parasitology, analysis of red blood cell fatty acids and minerals, along
with many vitamins [2].
Sounds scientific enough, until you investigate an article written by Dr. Charles Hinshaw which is posted on the site. Entitled Flu Shots? Just the Facts, You Decide supposes that there is a real debate between scientists about whether flu vaccines are safe (there isn't). And he suggests getting the real "facts" about flu shots from the dreaded pseudoscience/alternative medicine guru http://www.mercola.com. I plan on writing a full debunking article on Dr. Mercola in the future (because he is often sourced by quack doctors) and will post a link here once its posted.
Neither of these men are dentists and both are steeped in pseudoscientific thinking. While this does not invalidate their arguments, its important to know as much information as possible to consider whether personal biases may influence their conclusions.
See also my fluoride mythologyblog post, for specific refutations of studies presented against fluoridation.
It frequently strikes me as particularly interesting that many left-wing people embrace various anti-science stances. This was shown to me time and time again while I was involved with the Occupy Portland movement, which was largely a left wing endeavor. I volunteered on the education committee and spent many days running/maintaining the Occupy library. Conversations with random Occupiers often led to anti-vaccination, government conspiracies (a lot of 9/11 truthers), anti-GMOs, and once or twice anti-fluoridation. There was one instance where I was "accosted" by a presumably right-wing individual who attempted to convince me that climate change is a lie/not caused by humans, as if that particular stance would make me abandon all left-wing ideologies if I accepted it as true. Since becoming a skeptic, generally I've become much more critical of embracing any ideological stances which may interfere with scientific bias. People are so quick to label themselves as anarchist, socialist, communist, liberal, conservative, or any other general political label without considering the generally accepted scientific biases that come coupled with any particular political ideological group. While I would generally describe myself as a radical, its hard to just blindly label myself as such from now on without tacking on some ancillary qualifiers, my new self-label being a pro-science radical. I would also encourage those on the side of science to start considering appending your own political views as such, lest you become additionally burdened with those commonly accepted anti-science stances of your own political label.
"One of the things that has concerned me in the last few years is there's been a real debate that essentially discredits science by saying that scientists are self interested, that the reason that people are researching climate change is that there is something in it for them and the practical impact of that really worries me because it allows people to ignore the vast body of scientific evidence, in an area like climate change, and cling to "Well, you know I don't feel hotter today than I did yesterday so its obviously made up." The example in Queensland that really worried me recently was the Queensland government giving permission to local councils to stop putting fluoride in water. Now, the biggest health intervention in dental care in Australia for decades is putting fluoride in water. Any dentist you talk to can tell you who grew up in Queensland where they've had less fluoride in the water, they've got a mouth full of fillings compared with people who've grown up with fluoride and it drives me nuts that we've got people in the Queensland Parliament saying, one guy who's a bodybuilder in the Queensland Parliament, that he would rather take banned substances for a year than drink a glass of water with fluoride in it. It's nuts." - Tanya Plibersek, Australian Minister for Health AUDIO ONLY (MP3)
In this Arizona debate Dr. Paul Connett, the founder of The Fluoride Action Network (FAN), and Dr. Howard Farran, DDS, winner of the Arizona Department
of Health Service Dental Public Health Award for his efforts in
fluoridating the City of Phoenix, trade blows over water fluoridation. I think Dr. Farran's initial presentation could have been more thoughtfully approached. I would have opened with attacking anti-fluoridation from the bottom up by examining belief, conspiratorial thinking, and the scientific method. Instead he begins by attempting to show the large scientific consensus on the effectiveness of fluoride, which your average anti-fluoridationist is already aware of. The house is obviously packed with anti-fluoride people, you can tell by their yells and the absence of clapping for Farran. Most of the studies which Paul Connett refers to are debunked in my previous blogpost so I feel like its unnecessary to say anything more about them except, like all conspiracy theorists, he loves cherry-picked data. He even references the same video for professionals to watch (the one covered in my fluoride mythology post) instead of reading his book.
This clash of titans between Lawrence Krauss, Micheal Shermer, Ian Hutchinson, and Dinesh D'Souza centered around the notion "Science Refutes God" was broadcasted, in a heavily edited form, on National Public Radio. This is the full unedited version. Its the first debate I've seen with Ian Hutchinson, a christian Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT and the author of Monopolizing Knowledge. Since I haven't read his book yet, I can only quote its synopsis from Goodreads.
Can real knowledge be
found other than by science? In this unique approach to understanding
today's culture wars, an MIT physicist answers emphatically yes. He
shows how scientism --- the view that science is all the knowledge there
is --- suffocates reason as well as religion. Tracing the history of
scientism and its frequent confusion with science, Hutchinson explains
what makes modern science so persuasive and powerful, but restricts its
scope. Recognizing science's limitations, and properly identifying what
we call nature, liberates both science and non-scientific knowledge [1].
One should not find it surprising that a religious perspective of looking at the world inflicts limits on the scope and breadth of science. "There are limits to scientific knowledge!", states the believer to which I retort, "Why are there limits to science?" to which the believer replies, "Because science can't prove God!" The two stars of this debate, in my opinion, are Lawrence Krauss and Dinesh D'Souza. Both make excellent points, are well articulated, and score major points for both sides. Watch Dinesh D'Souza destroy Daniel Dennet in this debate, although I think its partially because Dinesh is capable of yelling louder. Ian Hutchinson, while eloquently spoken, makes several easily rebuffed arguments. It's also an uncharacteristically poor performance from Micheal Shermer, who sounds somewhat flummoxed during certain points and rehashes other people's phrases a few times (Dawkins, Hitchens, et al.).
