Pro-science

Marginalizing people

2013-02-09T11:03:00.002+01:00

Back in September, I visited a Danish refugee camp together with a group of other people. The reason I went there, was that I wanted to get a better understanding of how Denmark treats refugees who have come to the country.

Refugee camps are places where people claiming refugee status live until their cases have gone through the process. Until recently, these people were not allowed to live outside those camps - a new law has loosened up those requirements, but the majority still have to live there, as there is no-where else for them to live.

Refugee camps are usually set up in old institution, such as former mental hospitals and foster homes, or in old military compounds.

I am, and have always been, against refugee camps for a number of reasons, the most important being that they marginalizes the people living there. People living in refugee camps are not living in a normal setting, and they cannot do a lot of everyday things the rest of us takes for granted.

My visit to the camp made this even more clear to me. We visited a camp called Avnstrup, which is about an hour away from Copenhagen going by train and bus. Half an hour on each.

The above picture is of the bus schedule, which shows when the buses departs from Avnstrup - it is also the times when the bus arrives. This is the only bus which goes to Avnstrup, and for most people, there are no other means of transportation to and from the camp.

I took the picture because I think it clearly shows how hard it is for people living there to go out and do anything - e.g. during the weekends, the bus only runs every three hours, and for a very limited period of the day. On Sundays, the first bus is at 12 and the last is at 9 PM - if you take into account the time spent on transportation, it only gives people 7 hours if they want to go into Copenhagen.

On weekdays, the last bus also runs at 9 PM, which means that if you've spent the day at some kind of study in Copenhagen, you won't really have time to do anything else than hurry home.

This is clearly a horrible way of getting people to integrate into society - keeping them isolated from it. Unfortunately, to some politicians, that's feature, not a bug.

Never give up, never surrender

2013-02-09T10:23:00.003+01:00

Never give up, never surrender

The above quote is of course from the movie Galaxy Quest, where it is the catch-phrase of Alan Rickman's character. Or at least, the catchphrase of the character that Rickman's character plays. Confused? Well, you've obviously not watched the movie, and you should stop reading right now, and go watch it.

Why am I using that quote? Well, it was the quote that sprang into mind when I read about Lee Moore's attempt to create a "cease fire" among the fractions in skepticism and atheism (for more reactions to his suggestion, see these posts by Stephanie Zvan and Ophelia Benson).

The fractions that Lee Moore wants to create a "ceasefire" between, are the fraction that thinks that sexism is a problem, and should be addressed, and the fraction fighting this every step along the way. The first group, which I belong to, are trying to get stuff like harassment policies implemented at convention, working for more female speakers, and address occurrences of sexism. The other group, which I am firmly against, spend their time on personal attacks, making threats, and trying to get feminists shut out of the atheist/skeptic/secular movement. The level of time and energy they will spend on attacking their favorite targets is truly sickening.

Going back to the quote. The reason why it sprang into mind, is that this is my feeling on the matter.

To clearify: I wouldn't mind a ceasefire between the two fractions, since in reality, there is only one fraction attacking, the other fraction is trying to introduce change. Yes, this sometimes involves calling out specific people for sexist behavior, but it never, ever involves personal attacks (just a note: spare me links to people on my side insulting people on the other side - those insults are hard-earned, and come as a reaction to the vile behavior they spend so much time on).

But that's not what's meant, when Lee Moore makes his (in my opinion dishonest) attempt to negotiate a ceasefire. Instead he is creating a false equivalence, which I reject. When one group of people are trying to make the movement more inclusive, and the other group is trying to not only stop this, but also to drive the first group out of the movement through harassment, then they are not equal, and to try to create some kind of image of this being two groups, which both have justified grievances (as Lee Moore has said), is dishonest bullshit, and in my opinion, an obvious attempt to give the side with the vile scum some sort of credibility.

Well, I am on record saying that I embrace deep rifts, and I see nothing in Lee Moore's attempt to create false equivalence which would lead me to change my views. There is nothing that the scum on the other fraction could do or say, which would change my view off them and their behavior, and the only way I would accept having anything to do with them, would be if they rejected and renounced everything they stand for at the moment. That would be the "ceasefire" terms I would accept - complete and utter surrender from their side. Somehow I don't think it will happen, but until it does, there is no need to even mention the possibility of a ceasefire.

One more thought: I can't help thinking that Lee Moore knows all this, and his attempt is happening in order to give the impression that the other people have something to offer the movement, and that the movement should not shun them. Well, guess what - I don't think they have anything to offer the movement, and I think that the movement as a whole should take a hard stand against people who behave the way they do. Luckily, it seems like most of the major organizations and conferences in the movement agrees.

A note about comments: On this blog, all comments goes into moderation (mostly due to spam). Any misogynist, racist, homophobic or otherwise vile comments will not be published. Any long, incoherent rants will probably not be published, except perhaps for people to ridicule.

Book recommendations

2012-12-09T18:34:00.001+01:00

We're getting close to the end of the year, so I thought I'd make a list of non-fiction books I've read in 2012, that I would recommend to others.

Rebecca Skloot: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
What can I say about this book, which hasn't been said before? Nothing really. Ever since it came out, it has been highly praised by everyone that has read it, and for good reasons. It is an amazing books, which tackles an incredibly difficult subject with great respect.

Skloot tells the story about Henrietta Lacks, and the immortal cell line that was cultivated from her cells. This is a fairly unknown story, and well worth telling in itself. Skloot goes further though - she also tells us about Lacks' family, and how they have been misinformed and left uncompensated by the scientists, using their mother's cells.

In other words, it is a powerful, moving book about one woman's priceless contribution to mankind, and how her role has been ignored.

Bill Bryson: At Home: A Short History of Private Life
Bryson is a great storyteller, and this book highlights this ability. He tells the stories of everyday things, using his house as the basis, exploring each room in turn.

Richard Wiseman: Paranormality: Why We See What Isn't There
Wiseman is a former magicians turned psychologist, who follows the old tradition of using his conjuring skills to expose how people get fooled, but unlike other magicians, he also puts his knowledge og psychology to good use, explaining how people not only get fooled by others, but also by themselves.

A light and entertaining read, and while people who have read other books on the subject, might find it somewhat basic, it is a good introduction.

Mark Henderson: The Geek Manifesto: Why science matters
Henderson has written a book which calls for better science in policy making and more public involvement by scientists. Enough people agreed with him that each and every English MP received a copy of the book.

The book is a great call to action for people willing to defend skepticism and science. I don't agree with every stance Mark Henderson holds, but I think his basic message of public involvement is important, and a real inspiration.

Michael Specter: Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Harms the Planet and Threatens Our Lives
While Henderson's book explains how scientists should do more to inform people about science, Specter's book tells the story of the people misinforming people about science.

The books is not without its flaws, and I think Lindsay Beyerstein's review is fairly well-balanced, and explains it well.

David Michaels: Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health
Another book dealing with denialism, this time the professionals. Michaels book explains how the same companies and people have offered their services, every time some corporations have felt the need for some good, old doubt of what the science tells us, no matter the cost in human misery.

If this books doesn't infuriate you, I don't know what will.

Jeff Ryan: Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America
And now, to something completely different. Ryan's book tells us about the rise of Nintendo, and the fascinating characters involved, both fictional and real.

As an aside: Until I read this book, I had never realized that the man in Donkey Kong was Mario.

James Shapiro: Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?
One of the most enduring literary conspiracy theory around is the idea that Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare. People pushing this conspiracy theory have put forward a number of other candidates, and made numerous arguments for why those people are better candidates than Shakespeare.

Shapiro takes apart each and every one of these candidates, and not only provides good arguments for why they didn't write Shakespeare's work, but also for why William Shakespeare is the best, indeed the obvious, candidate for being the writer of Shakespeare's works.

Challenging your assumptions

2012-12-09T14:52:00.001+01:00

As people know, I am a skeptic, and I try to consider the sources when I read some science-related news. I also try to get to the primary sources, if at all possible.

Unfortunately, this is learned behavior, and while I have always tried to read primary sources, I wasn't always as good at considering the source, which means that I've picked up some wrong information along the way, without realizing it.

Last Friday I was at a Christmas party at my work, and during that party I had a conversation with another guest, in which I mentioned the "fact" that aspartame had been shown to affect the metabolism of people, if consumed in large quantities.

This is a fact I had picked up some years ago, reading a paper on it.

As luck had it, I was talking with a scientist, who actually knew something about the subject, and she challenged this fact, asking me where I got that from. I, truthfully, replied that I had read it in a paper, so I was fairly confident about this.

Well, she asked me to find that paper for her, and sendt it to her, as she found this fact rather interesting, and contrary to what she knew about the subject.

So, having spent the last couple of hours, trying to find the paper I had read, I have come to the conclusion that it doesn't exist, and that my conversation partner had been quite right in being skeptic.

Oh, I found plenty of articles about the negative effects of aspartame, and even some which looked like scientific papers, but when you looked at them, it turned out that they were anti-aspartame propaganda dressed up to look like science.

All in all, this was probably a valuable experience for me. I will certainly be more careful about stating scientific "facts" that I have picked up along the way, if I am unable to recall exactly where I have read about it. There is so much pseudo-science, and outright anti-science out there, dressing up as science, that it is easy to get fooled, even if you are a skeptic.

As an aside: There certainly is a lot of anti-aspartame propaganda out there. Anyone knows what feeds into that? I seem to recall hearing about the sugar manufacturing companies trying to affect the sales of artificial sweeteners, but given my recent lesson, I know better than relying on my memory when it comes to these things.

Sexism in IT, again

2012-10-02T20:25:00.002+02:00

Note: This is a cross-post from my IT related blog

I'm currently at the GOTO conference in Aarhus, where I am spending a lovely time going to some great talks and meeting some great people, and I had planned on spending the evening blogging a bit about my impressions from the first couple of days at the conference.

Had.

That was until I had lunch with a couple of other people, and I heard about this incident (opens in a new window). Please go there and read the post.

As people who have been around me since I heard about this will attest, I've been pretty damn furious ever since first hearing about it, and then reading Cerian's blogpost (which was posted shortly after I heard about the episode).

I don't think I really have to explain why this incident makes me furious, but for good measure I will try to do so.

First of all, it is an incredible rude way to behave, and even if there were no other considerations, I think that unwarranted rudeness against complete strangers at a conference shouldn't happen.

But of course, it is not just the rudeness - it is the sexism that really gets me angry.

Can anyone even for a second imagine that a guy would have been addressed in that way? Yes, I am sure that there a few men who have been accused of being hired because of their looks, but it is not something people would say about a complete stranger that they had never met before, much less to that complete stranger. I mean, WTF? How can anyone think that it is OK?

Unfortunately, for women, this is a common remark, though not usually said directly to their face (though it happens all too frequently as well).

And it is not just men who makes this sort of remarks.

When we had a meetup of the bloggers/web media people before going to GOTO Aarhus, there was a woman among us who expressed her opinion that among the women studying Computer Science, there were two types:
1) The pretty ones, who got their (male) group members to do the work, and thus, couldn't code.
2) The non-pretty ones, who had to do their own work, and thus, could code.

In her mind, it was obviously not possible to be conventionally pretty, and be able to code.

I could now make some kind of argument about knowing pretty female programmers, but that would just be feeding the sexism. Rather, I'll just say that I cannot fathom why anyone would think it is acceptable to make that sort of comments, yet here there was a woman publicly stating these things. Among people she didn't know.

We seriously have a long way to go. A very long way.

Now, back to the incident. The thing that made me furious about the incident was not the fact that it happened (though that should be enough), but the fact that nobody spoke up when it happened. This is not mentioned in the blogpost about the incident, but I asked Cerian about it, and there wasn't. Or rather, one person said to her that she should ignore it, but nobody said anything to the guy about it.

The GOTO conference has an incredible good track record when it comes to not only getting female speakers, but also getting female attendees (once having to go to court for the right to give a discount to women in order to make the gender less underrepresented - a court battle they won). Yet, even at such a conference, not only does a guy feel entitled to make this sort of remarks, but nobody spoke out against him.

That shows me that the whole culture is still sexist at its core. Not that I think that the people who was there with Cerian are particularly sexist, or even that they agree with the guy, but I do think that they can't see how this sort of remarks are not only incredible hurtful towards Cerian, but also helps create an atmosphere where women, or a sub-group of women, don't feel welcome.

We, the IT sector as a whole, need to change that. Not only because it robs the sector of so much potential talent, but also because it is the decent thing to do.

So, if you see this sort of thing happening, speak up, and make clear that you don't find that sort of stuff acceptable. This is the only way to change the environment, and get rid of the sexism. We need to stop implicitly accepting this behavior by keeping quite, and instead explicitly express our disdain of it.

And it is important to note that it is extra important that we men are very active in doing this, showing our support in changing the environment.

On those words, I think I only have left to thank Cerian for speaking up, and that I hope that there will be some kind of official reaction from the GOTO conference. I know for sure that I will be following up on this issue, so expect more blogposts dealing with sexism, GOTO, and IT in general.

Prioritizing diversity

2012-08-01T15:20:00.000+02:00

Every time anyone talks about how to deal with the underrepresentation of minorities and women in many fields, and especially at the manager level, there will always be some white men pushing back, and talking about how the evils of affirmative actions and quotas are harming the poor white men, and resulting in companies having to hire unqualified people. Also, don’t you know that there are fields where men have a hard time getting jobs?

This is, of course, absolute bullshit, and I will to explain why that’s the case, while explaining how a good way of trying to deal with underrepresentation works. I call it simply “prioritizing diversity”.

I will start out with two notes:

The ideas I present here are not mine, but are actually how the policies are implemented in some companies. Very successful companies, I should add.
This post is not about whether diversity is a good thing or not. It is based on the premise that diversity is something to strive for. I will probably write a post in the future on why this is the case, but this is not it. So, please don’t try to start an argument about this point in the comments.

OK, that out of the way, let’s start with dealing with the strawmen raised by the privileged people afraid of losing their privileged position.

First of all, the aim is to have the greatest possible diversity in all fields and in all positions. There are some rare positions where this is not possible (I am sure you can all think of some), but in the vast majority of positions, this is not the case.

Second of all, when I talk about diversity, I am talking about diversity in backgrounds, genders, races (a concept which I don’t really accept, but which is a useful shorthand in this case), sexual orientation etc. I am not talking about diversity in opinions, and often not in education. If someone wants to be a doctor, they really should have a medical degree, and be willing to do their job, regardless of e.g. religion. A would-be pharmacists who doesn’t want to sell condoms, is not suited for the job.

I hope we are all still on the same page.

Going back to how to deal with underrepresentation, or rather lack of diversity, it is obvious that any measures need to start with the recruitment process, and be involved in the promotion process.

Starting with the recruitment process, it is the simple truth that for any position, there are a large number of qualified candidates. This means that after everything is said and done, there has to be some kind of arbitrary method of making the final filtering, before choosing who to hire. Well, that arbitrary method might as well be diversity. Who adds the most diversity to the organization? Yes, there might be someone else who has, on paper, better qualifications, but that is only true if you don’t consider adding diversity a qualification. I certainly do. Also, remember, we are talking about prioritizing among qualified people for the job – it doesn’t matter if the others have e.g. better educational qualifications; they all have good enough qualifications.

This should hopefully lead to more underrepresented groups being hired, on basis on their qualifications, which, as I said, includes adding diversity, helping reduce groupthink etc.

Next important step is of course, working with prioritizing diversity when promoting people. This is much trickier. People tend to look at people similar to themselves when looking for material for promotion. Here quotas might be necessary for a period of time, but hopefully, a clearly stated guideline of prioritizing diversity, as well as proper review of proposed promotions to vacant positions, will make this unnecessary.

Perhaps something similar to how I understand the Finnish rules are for gender-disparity in the company Board of Directors. Companies have to have a certain percentage of women in their board. Otherwise, they have to include a statement with the public financial statements explaining why they don’t.

Apparently, very few companies have a problem finding qualified women for the Board of Directors.

How this could be implemented is of course the question, and really depends a lot on the companies involved. But a lot of it, really has more to do with changing the attitude of the company, so everyone understand the value of diversity, and why it should be prioritized.

So, to sum it up, prioritizing diversity will obviously have a negative impact for the in-group, who currently form the recruitment ground for a given field or type of position, but it will not lead to unqualified people getting hired, and it definitely is beneficiary for the people outside the in-group.

A final note: This blogpost owes a huge debt to Rebecca Parsons, who made the idea, of using diversity as a final selection criteria, click for me.

A house divided

2012-07-16T15:44:00.001+02:00

“A house divided against itself cannot stand” - Abraham Lincoln June 16, 1858 (based on Mark 3:25)

I am sure that I am not the only one who has observed the rifts in the atheist and skeptic community and thought of the above quotation (not only am I sure; I know this for certain, as people have used the quote). I think of it, and think it applies, but I also think of the Danish expression “Lad falde hvad ikke kan stå” (“let fall what can’t stand”), which is originally from a socialist song, Socialisternes March (march of the Socialists), written in 1871 by Ulrich Peter Overby. This expression also applies to the current situation in my opinion.

For those unaware of what the rifts are about, they relate to the sexist atmosphere which exists in the community, especially during conferences. The problems of sexism has been raised by several through the years, but the current crisis is generally considered to have been started by the vile and misogynist reactions to Rebecca Watson making a rather minor point about this in a video about a conference.

Of course, some people will refer to other starting points, but it is really not relevant, since the end result is the same: the atheist and skeptic community is currently divided to a degree which probably hasn’t been seen before. The division is between those who are fighting the sexism and those who are actively fighting the people fighting the sexism (fighting should not be taken literately in either case). There are of course many people involved in neither camp.

The people fighting sexism are working on things such as getting the wider community to acknowledge that there is a problem, getting people to speak out against sexism and misogynist behavior, and getting conferences to create and enforce harassment policies. It should be noted that the people involved in this are not claiming that sexism is worse among atheists and skeptics than among any other group, rather they are saying that it is a problem which should be addressed.

Among the people fighting against sexism are PZ Myers, the pharyngulites (commenters at the Pharyngula blog), Rebecca Watson and the other Skepchicks, most FreeThoughtBlogs bloggers, Amanda Marcotte, and many more. It also seems like most conference organizers including CFI and American Atheists have come down on this side.

Opposing those are prominent people like Abbie Smith/ERV, Paula Kirby, Russell Blackford, a bunch of commentators generally referred to as the slime pitters, thunderf00t, and to a lesser degree Richard Dawkins and DJ Grothe. Given Grothe’s position at JREF and TAM, it should not surprise anyone that TAM is the only prominent conference to not acknowledge the need for a harassment policy which is enforced. This is rather strange, as TAM actually had a harassment policy in place in 2011, but unfortunately enforced it rather badly (part of enforcing is making reports of incidents, which was what TAM failed at – they handled the actual incidents rather well, according to all reports I’ve seen).

It would seem obvious that this is not an ideal situation, and if it continues, it will tear the community apart.

Well, if that’s what’s going to happen, so be it.

I’d rather have two communities than be part of a community which finds sexism and outright misogynistic behavior acceptable.

The two communities can work together on some issues (like fighting anti-vaxxers and creationism) and be on opposite sides when it comes to facing issues related to sexism. Many people in the broader skeptic and atheist movement won’t notice the difference, but those of us who actually care about these issues can choose which side we want to belong to.

There will, of course, be problems involved in this – the rifts are so deep that some of us won’t have anything to do with others. But this is not really an issue for members of the broader movement, who probably won’t notice or care. At most, they will find that some people are no longer invited as speakers at certain conferences, and that certain bloggers either no longer link to each other or write nasty stuff about each other.

So, to sum it up, there are deep rifts in the movement, and I think it is fine. Not only that, I feel more comfortable being in a smaller community within the movement, which doesn’t include people whose opinions and behavior I find repugnant. I can still appreciate the good work done by those people (like I did with e.g. Hitchens) without wanting to be part of the same community.

A note about comments: Currently all comments are moderated. This is due to heavy problems with spam. I will try to publish comments as soon as I become aware of them. Do note that there is zero tolerance for racist, homophobic, misogynist and bigoted comments.

Time traveling polaroids

2012-05-28T13:57:00.000+02:00

Earlier today I came across this "feel-good" article at the Los Angeles Times. Old Polaroid yields eerie development — a long-dead uncle

A random garage sale purchase surprises a 13-year-old with a picture of a relative he had never known.Old Polaroid yields eerie development — a long-dead uncle A random garage sale purchase surprises a 13-year-old with a picture of a relative he had never known.

The opening of the story sounded interesting, and I read the story, expecting it being about how a box of photos contained some photos of family member or something. Of course it wasn't. It was about a boy going on garage sales, and finding a polaroid camera:

At the third garage sale, he spotted an old Polaroid Impulse — a cool find, given that a lot of popular online photo filters imitate what these cameras used to do. He bought the Polaroid for $1. But it didn't work when he took it home. After looking at some videos on YouTube, he realized he needed another antique: film. He cracked the camera open and found a bit of history inside: a classic photo of a young guy and girl hanging out.

As I read that, I went "WTF???". He "cracked the camera"? Has the journalist writing the story never seen a polaroid? Doesn't he know how it works? There is no way a polaroid would stay in the camera, and there is certainly no way that the chemicals would work and produce the picture so many years later.

What's more: I posted a link to the story on my facebook wall, saying it sounds fishy, and one person mentioned that the clothes and the camera doesn't fit together. The clothes are from the seventies, while the Polaroid Impulse is from 1988. Obivously the camera has the ability to travel in time.

According to the article, the uncle died 23 years ago, which would barely make the 1988 photo possible, but the whole article makes it clear that the photo was taken some time before his death ("The family thinks the girl in the photograph was a high school girlfriend").

Two seconds of reflecting over the story would have told the journalist that it didn't pass the smell test.

Misleading headlines

2012-04-29T20:23:00.002+02:00

I came across this small fluff-piece about Keira Knigthley, which has an incredible misleading headline - it seems to be pure bait to get people to read the piece. So, what's the headline? Keira Knightley wants to become Catholic When seeing that headline, you'd probably think that it is about her wanting to convert to Catholocism, or about her saying how she would like to be a Catholic because of her respect for that particular faith. Well, it is not really.

Keira Knightley has said that she is desperate to become a Catholic because she would “just get to ask for forgiveness.”

The 27-year-old actress, who is an atheist, wished that she believed in God so her sins could be forgiven.

“It sounds much better than having to live with guilt,” a leading daily has quoted her as saying.

“It’s absolutely extraordinary. If only I wasn’t an atheist, I could get away with anything. You’d just ask for forgiveness and then you’d be forgiven,” she added.

So, basically, it is about Knightly saying that it is easier to be religious because you can ask for forgiveness instead of living with the consequences of what you've done. That's something rather different from what the headline indicates, isn't it? Well, on the plus side, my respect for Keira Knightley has gone up.

Reducing the risk

2012-04-29T10:44:00.001+02:00

Measles warning, a photo by Kristjan Wager on Flickr.

The Danish National Board of Health has started a new campaign, trying to make people get vaccinated against measles, offering free vaccinations to anyone born after 1973 (people born in 1973 and earlier will have to pay a fee).

The angle of the campaign is to make clear to people that measels isn't a harmless childrens' disease, but is quite dangerous.

The headline of the sign is "Over 100,000 Danes can be hit by an epidemic - are you one of them?"

It's alive!

2012-04-09T17:21:00.004+02:00

It turns out that I've started to miss blogging, so I guess it is time to fire up this old blog again.

I expect to write some new posts during the week.

Translations

2012-01-07T17:55:00.002+01:00

Sticker svin, a photo by Kristjan Wager on Flickr.

I am currently reading Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything by David Bellos, which is about translations (NY Times has a book review of it here).

While reading the book, I couldn't help think of this sticker which I took a picture of some months ago (the black one), since it is a good example of the problems with translations.

The sticker was in a Danish bar, and translated into English it would be "klistermærke swine" - yes the first word would be the Danish word, since the word sticker is not Danish, but English.

Of course, translating the text would make absolutely no sense, because the whole point is to make a linguistic joke. "Sticker" sounds similar to the Danish word for snitch ("stikker"). Snitches are often referred to as "stikker svin" which means "snitch swine".

As people can see, the brilliance of the sticker text looses a lot in translation (well, all of it, really), but trust me, I laughed out loud when I saw it.

Speaking ill of the dead

2011-11-27T18:41:00.002+01:00

Jerry Coyne has written a couple of posts about the death of Lynn Margulis over at his blog Why Evolution is True. The first one was rather respectful of her contributions to science and ignored her less than stellar contributions to science. The second post went into more details about her flaws.

In the comment section to the first post I dared to make the statement that Margulis was not a great scientist, but rather someone who made a great contribution to science, but otherwise promoted quackery such as HIV/AIDS-denial. Or as I put it:

I would think that great scientists as a minimum should be able to apply critical thinking to subjects, and be able to understand the scientific literature, even if outside their area of expertise.

Margulis was a HIV/AIDS-denier and a 9/11 conspiracy nut. She also frequently showed disregard towards the scientific method, and claimed that her ideas were dismissed because they flew against orthodoxy.

She did some great contributions to science, but as a scientists, she had deep, serious flaws, and promoted opinions which were not only wrong, but dangerous (e.g. HIV/AIDS-denial).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this wasn't taken too kindly by some of Margulis' friends and colleagues, who obviously felt that I was insulting the memory of their great friend. Or as one Michael J. Chapman put it:

I was Lynn’s friend and co-author for 20 years (look us up on Amazon). I also team-taught her courses on symbiogenesis, Gaia theory and protists. The comments here display a level of understanding of her work that might earn, at best, a C+ in one of her undergraduate courses. At worst, by contrast, are cowards who can’t even wait a while before slamming the departed. Yes I mean you, Kristjan Wager, so clearly envious of her fame, so clearly unworthy to lick the grime off her porch steps.

This comment speaks to the general idea of not speaking ill of the dead, and saying that if you do so, you have some kind of base motives for it. Well, fuck that - I don't play that game. If someone don't earn my respect during life, they certainly don't earn my respect by dying.

Personally I don't give a rat's ass about Lynn Margulis' contributions to science. I am not a scientist, and don't claim to be one. What I do care about is how she used her status, gained through her contributions to science, to promote dangerous ideas. She denied that there was such a thing as a HIV virus, using her reputation of "thinking outside the box" to indicate that other scientists were just dismissing her ideas because she flew against orthodoxy - something she had done before, and won.

I dislike all quacks, but if there is one sort of quacks I really hate, it's HIV/AIDS-deniers.

The family and friends of Lynn Margulis have lost someone close to them, but the rest of the world has just lost another quack. A quack who had contributed to the science in the past, but had gone on to endanger other people by promoting dangerous, and wrong, ideas, putting other people at risk.

I won't apologize for saying that.

How to hold a children's birthday party

2011-11-27T18:13:00.001+01:00

David Snowden uses the example of a children's birthday party as an example to explain complexity theory

Reversed roles

2011-10-14T12:49:00.005+02:00

Note: I should probably point out that in the following piece, I will follow the Danish tendency to not use peoples’ titles. For people not living in Denmark, this might seem disrespectful, and if it is perceived as such, I apologize, but the habit of not doing so is too ingrained in me, for me to start doing so now.

I was considering calling this piece “through the looking glass”, but that would have connotations of weirdness which I found inappropriate, since what I wanted to was to indicate that I had experienced the “other side” of the divide for once.

What divide you ask?

The gender divide. The gender divide in technology to be more specific.

People who have followed my blogs and twitter stream are probably aware that I am an out-and-open feminist, and that I regularly criticize my field (programming and IT consulting) for how women are marginalized, e.g. by the male dominance when speakers are picked for conferences.

This year I participated in such a conference; the GOTO conference in Aarhus, Denmark (the conference was formerly known as JAOO). Here the lineup of speakers was also heavily tilting towards men, but it is one of the conferences which actively tries to get female speakers, and they had managed to get some really great ones, including Linda Rising, Rebecca Parsons, and Telle Whitney.

Telle Whitney held a talk on women in IT, and all three of them participated in a meeting with the Ada Aarhus group, which was held after the talks on the second day of the conference.

I went to the talk, and participated in the Ada Aarhus meeting, and both of these things introduced me to the concept of being the outsider. Something which I understood, or at least thought I did, yet which I hadn’t really experienced before. I cant say I enjoyed the experience, but it was certainly enlightening, and it forced me to re-evaluate what I thought I understood on this subject.

Before going into how this happened, I want to back away a bit, and give a brief introduction to myself and that part of my background which is relevant.

First of all, as the sidebar says, I am a Danish IT consultant in my thirties. For those interested in the details, I am a .NET consultant, working mostly with large financial or public systems.

What the sidebar doesn’t mention, but which many people know, is that while I am Danish, I am also Australian. My mother was Australian, and while I grew up in Denmark, my childhood was a mixture of cultures - not only Danish and Australian, but also several others, since my childhood friends were also mostly of mixed backgrounds as well (though all with Western backgrounds).

This upbringing has left me unable to entirely relate to a typical Danish upbringing.

It is the small things that usually trips me up - the children's’ stories and songs that I haven’t heard, and the ones that I grew up with instead (would you believe that most Danish children don’t grow up with neither The Wizard of Oz nor Snugglepot and Cuddlepie?) - but it is also the inability of many to look beyond the borders, and think globally. The distrust of foreign things and multi-culturalism that people hold, thinking that anything foreign must be dangerous or less good.

This means that I am the outsider in some cases. But given that fact that I’ve grown up in Denmark not entirely so, and since I look Danish, I can always act in ways which allows me to fit in.

Going back to the woman in IT talk, Whitney talked about what companies and individuals could do to ensure women could advance in IT. A subject I feel strongly about. Yet when listening to the talk, I kept feeling that I was left out - that Whitney wasn’t talking neither to nor about me. The reason was that I am not in a position to make company decisions, and that the individuals that Whitney was talking to, about what they could do, was the women. Not the men. All the recommendations didn’t relate to me and daily life.

You know why? Because it wasn’t about me!

I knew this at an intellectual level. Yet I hadn’t realized the full impact until I experienced being left out. It bothered me more than I thought it would. My privilege kicked in, and I felt a bit of resentment at the gut level, while knowing fully well that this was how it ought to be, at the intellectual level.

If this was how I felt during a 50 minute talk, how must it not be for people who experience it day in and day out? E.g. women whose wishes and needs are ignored or LGBT people who live in a heteronormative society.

I cannot in any way pretend that I can relate to how they feel. But I can say that I understand it a little better now.

The Asa Aarhus group meeting, where both Linda Rising and Rebecca Parsons gave brilliant talks, just strengthening my understanding of this, and my realization of how little I can relate to how it would feel to experience this every day.

Internet lawyering

2011-08-13T17:51:00.002+02:00

If there is one type of behavior on the internet that drives me nuts, then it's internet lawyering. By this, I mean people making a big deal about the possibility of something or other being something else than it obviously is, trying to interpretet everything in the best light, and insisting that it's a valid approach, or rather that it's the only valid approach.

This is the sort of behavior where people try to convince others that inviting someone to your hotel room for coffee at 4AM could just be an offer for a caffeinated drink, and that we should ignore the whole cultural baggage (as shown in e.g. movies) associated with such an offer.

It's the same behavior which allows people to claim that people like Pat Condell isn't necessarily supporting a racist, xenophobic party when he endorses them, because it could be that he only supports some of their policies (ignoring the fact that their entire platform is based on racism and xenophobia).

Well, guess what? We don't have to buy into this bullshit. We are allowed to think for ourselves, putting things into the greater context. We are not participating in some fantasy courtroom, where we have to prove things, and where your "clever" evasions will save your client*.

Most of us happens to be reasonably intelligent people, and we have learned to read between the lines, so stop insulting our intelligence.

*Of course, in a real courtroom, this tactic wouldn't work neither. Judges are generally not stupid people, and while the e.g. US courts call for proving people guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, it doesn't mean that the judge and jury have to pretend that there can't be a non-literate meaning to what people say.

Repost: Nothing in Medicine Makes Sense in the Light of Homeopathy

2011-06-22T22:02:00.003+02:00

Note: Due to an upcoming job change, and a number of deadlines before then, I don't have time to do any blogging at the moment. Instead I will try to re-post some of my better posts from the past. The original post can be found here

I am not the first person to state this, but I think that it's important that we all keep up saying this: Testing of homeopathic medicine should end.

Why do I say this? Well, for a very simple reason: There is no evidence that homeopathy works. And what's more, the whole concept of homeopathy flies against everything we know about chemistry, physics, and physiology.

This blog post is triggered by a truly abysmal study where homeopathic medicine was compared to proper medicine used for treating moderate to severe depressions - there were numerous flaws in the study (which I plan to address in a later post), but the fundamental problem was that it was comparing medicine with remedies based on nonsense.

There is a famous essay by Theodosius Dobzhansky called "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution", which goes on to explain how our knowledge of biology wouldn't make sense except if evolution is true. One could write a similar essay, called say "Nothing in Medicine Makes Sense in the Light of Homeopathy", in which one explains how all our knowledge of medicine and physiology doesn't make sense if homeopathy is true.

I don't think this can be stressed enough.

It's not just a matter of science not understanding homeopathy. If homeopathy was true, it would mean that the basic building blocks upon which our knowledge is built would be wrong.

Given we know that this is not the case, homeopathy must be wrong. No, that's too mild; homeopathy must be absolute nonsense.

The basic concepts of homeopathy are things like "like cures like", miasms, and and the concept of "memory" in water, all of which is nonsense.

"Like cures like" (or law of similars) is the idea that medicine should be based upon things which gives the same symptoms as the original disease. This was perhaps plausible back when Hahnemann first proposed it two hundred years ago, but we now know that there is no truth to this idea. Sometimes the medicine will be based upon substances which gives similar symptoms, but mostly it won't.

Miasms are an old concept, in which diseases are caused by pollution or bad air. This idea was replaced by the germ theory of diseases, and is not taken serious by anyone except for certain branches of alternative "medicine" such as homeopathy, where they have added their own twists to the concept, but still stay largely true to the old Medieval concept.

The "memory" of water (or sugar for that matter) is the explanation used to explain how homeopathic medicine can have any effect. Homeopathic remedies are based upon the concept of diluting, in which the remedies are diluted to a degree where none of the original molecules are left (see this rather poor Wikipedia article for the numbers).

Oh, and the homeopaths also claim that the more diluted a remedy is, the more potent it is. Yes, this is really what they claim. No, it doesn't make any sense.

So, all in all, we know that homeopathy doesn't work. So, why the hell are we continuing to test it against proper medicine?

There are a lot of alternative "medicines" which might work, even if the concepts they are based upon are nonsense (e.g. acupuncture), and it makes sense to test these (so far, the effect of acupuncture seems to be placebo), but this is most certainly not the case with homeopathy. There is no way in which that can work.

Homeopaths might claim otherwise, but then it's up to them to explain how our basic understanding of chemistry, physics, physiology, and medicine is wrong in this matter, and yet works in every other case. In other words, it's up to the homeopaths to propose new theories in which homeopathy works, and which still supports our current state of knowledge, and until then, they should be ignored.

Not shunned, but ignored. Like we ignore perpetual motion machine builders, flat-earthers, and other weirdos.

Conventional medicine is not perfect, and our knowledge is expanding all the time, but theories like the germ theory of diseases are well established through science. We understand the mechanisms at play, and this knowledge enables us to fight diseases more efficiently. Much like our understanding of vira has helped us fighting other diseases more efficiently.

Why does claims of memory in water and strength through dilution bring to the table? In what ways are they expanding our knowledge? What diseases are we able to cure because of them? Nothing, none, and none are the answers. So stop bringing them to the table. Instead focus on the many valid ideas, which don't fly in the face of all the collective knowledge of the sciences.

Woos like to bring up Nobel Laureates Barry Marshall and Robin Warren, and their discovery that ulcers were caused by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori as an example of how outsiders can turn conventional knowledge on its head.

This is of course pure wishful thinking from their side. Marshall and Warren were very much part of the established scientific community, and while their proposal was received skeptically at first, it was not dismissed out of hand for some very simple reasons:

It was built upon evidence.

The mechanisms etc. all worked within conventional science and the mechanisms known at the time.

There seemed to be some problems with the prevalent hypothesis at the time.

In other words, not only did they work within the established science, they actually addressed some known issues and presented evidence for their claims.

Yes, it took some time (and a very drastic demonstration) to convince people, but the scientific and medical community was very willing to be convinced, and as soon as there were sufficient evidence, the new explanation was universally accepted in quite a short time.

This is how it is done.

So, in what way has proponents of homeopathy done any of this?

The truth is that most people with a basic understanding of science understands that homeopathy is nonsense of the worst order, yet money is still spent on testing this nonsense, demonstrating again and again that it doesn't work. Why? We know that it doesn't work, since we understand the fundamental flaws in the premises behind homeopathy, and we know that homeopathic remedies are nothing but water, alcohol, or sugar (depending on whether they are liquid or in pill form), so they cannot work any better than placebo - they ARE placebo.

Let's put an end to this.

All it does is to lend credibility to homeopathy in the eyes of observers who don't know any better. They think that since homeopathic remedies are continuously being tested, there must be something to them. Why do we let this misconception continue? Science wins nothing from these sham studies, and it only lends cranks an aura of respectability. Stop it.

Yes, I am very passionate about this - we are allowing a lie to continue perpetually. That's wrong. Homeopathy has been around for 200 years, providing no value to society as a whole, and generally decreasing the general level of health, and it's time to stand up and say so.

It goes without saying that I have only contempt for hospitals and doctors who provide homeopathic remedies to their patients. Homeopathic practitioners are usually acting in good faith, believing in their nonsense, but doctors and nurses should know better - they have an education behind them, which provides them with the knowledge necessary to understand what nonsense homeopathy is.

Copenhagen Skeptics in the Pub

2011-05-03T16:37:00.006+02:00

It is with some pride and happiness that I can announce that Copenhagen now has a 'Skeptics in the Pub' event. Skeptics in the Pub (or just SitP for short) is an informal event where skeptics can gather together and discuss subjects related to skepticism and science, while drinking beverages of their choice.

As the wikipedia article linked to above tells you, SitP has been around for quite a while, mostly in Anglo-Saxon countries. These events have strengthened the skeptic networks in the communities where they take place, and makes it easier for skeptics to connect to each other and share knowledge and views.

I have been aware of the event for a while, and have thought that Denmark would benefit from such an event, since pseudo-science and quackery is quite widespread here, while open skepticism is frowned upon as being impolite.

Then I visited Perth, Australia, a couple of years ago, and was lucky enough to be able to participate in two SitP events while being there (one of them was actually a 'Skeptics in the Park', with a nice BBQ in King´s Park), and this experience strengthened my resolve to start one up in Copenhagen.

During the 'Gods and Politics' conference in Copenhagen last year I overheard the head of the Danish atheistic society (Ateistisk Selskab), Stinus Lindgreen, talk with someone else about his next goal being to start up SitP in Copenhagen. Obviously I suggested we partner up in this venture, and we have now finally realized this goal. Along the way, we got TrineBM (who some of you will know from the comments at Pharyngula and Why Evolution is True) to help us.

The first instance of the Copenhagen SitP will be on June 8th at 7PM, where associate professor Mikael Rothstein, from the Univesity of Copenhagen, will talk about UFOs. Rothstein has written, among other things, a book on UFOs ('UFOer og rumvæsener').
The event will take place at Ørsted Ølbar.

The schedule so far (all are at 19:00 at Ørsted Ølbar):
June 8th: Mikael Rothstein
July 13th: No speaker, but socializing
August 10th: Lone Frank

Please note that all events will be in Danish

The facebook page for Copenhagen Skeptics in the Pub can be found here.

Knowing when to listen

2011-04-24T01:11:00.000+02:00

Anyone who have meet me can tell you that I'm not a quite person. I talk a lot, am opinionated, love to debate, and am probably slightly obnoxious in some peoples' opinion. People who know me better, can also tell you that I am generally a good conversationist, which is not the same.

Conversations are different from someone talking or from people debating. If someone just talks, the listeners are passive recipients. Debates on the other hand, are about convincing the other people involved about a given point. Conversations require something else - they require listening and thinking about what is being said, before responding. The listening and thinking part seems to be the hard part. Responding comes naturally.

So, what is the point of this post?

Well, the point is simply to point out that people in a position of privilege (e.g. me - a white, heterosexual man) need to learn to hold a conversation if they want to understand the challenges facing non-privileged people and/or to face their own privileges and the advantages they give.

When an organization, a group, or a conference wants to understand why there are so few participants from a given non-privileged group (women, ethnic minorities, LGBT people, physically challenged etc.), then they shouldn't have a debate within their own group, but instead try to seek out a conversation with people from said non-privileged group. During that conversation they should listen, and think, and ask for clarifications, and think some more. And then they should respond. Respond in a way that doesn't stop the conversation. Respond in a way that doesn't dismiss or diminish the challenges people from the non-privileged group face. Respond in a way which doesn't move the focus away from the subject. Respond in a way that demonstrates a genuine interest in understand, and in having a conversation.

If this is done, there can be a conversation. A conversation which will benefit all participants. A conversation which might lead to changes. A conversation which matters.

If you´re not interested in investing that effort into the conversation, then don't bother. Non-privileged people don't need to be told, again, by a privileged person that they are imagining things, too sensitive, or that they don't really have it as hard as the privileged person.

Homeopaths are dangerous for your health

2011-04-06T14:39:00.004+02:00

Let's be frank here - I have little love for pseudo-scientists and people promoting quackery of any type, but I reserve a special dislike for homeopaths.

Why you might ask?

Well, first of all, because of their ways of distorting scientific and medical research to support their ridiculous claims, even when their whole discipline flies against everything we know about science.

It's also because of their smugness, claiming that scientists (and science-literate people) are close-minded and unable to face the truth and/or in the pocket of "big pharma" (never mind the fact that homeopathy is a billion dollar business with practically no costs involved).

But mostly it's because of the danger they pose to the people they fool with their pseudo- and anti-scientific nonsense.

This danger comes not in the form of the so-called remedies they offer, but through convincing people that those remedies can cure things better than real medical remedies. Of course, homeopaths will claim that they are not saying that people shouldn't use those remedies, but that is bullshit. If you convince people that your remedy works better than normal remedies, without the side-effects that real medicine has, then obviously people will choose to use your remedies instead.

So, what set this rant off? Well, Edzard Ernst linked this page in a tweet. Warning: it takes you to natural news, which is a quack website of the worst order.

The title of the page is "Homeopathy may offer the best radiation treatment" - this is a dangerous claim, and hopefully no one who believes it will ever be in a position to make a decision based upon it.

As bad as the headline is, the content of the article might be even worse.

Homeopathy is a truly diverse and deeply effective natural health care system for every illness under the sun. Including radiation. How is this possible?

That's easy: it's not. One useful advice is that if someone make a claim that something can cure everything, don't believe them. It's simply not possible. Even anti-biotic, the life-safer with a wide range of uses, is useless against many things.

Homeopathic treatment doesn't treat the illness. It treats the person (or animal) with the illness. There is a subtle, but deeply important difference. And it means that the labeling of an illness is of little importance to homeopaths.

What exactly is the difference between treating an illness and a person? None of course. It's not like medicine makes the illness feel better, rather it either kills of the organisms responsible for the illness or it heps the body able to fight back.

So no, there is no difference, and to claim so, is bullshit.

But first it's important to realise that as we are all mortal, not every person can be curatively treated.

That's the only honest thing in the entire article.

Although much good can be done by experienced homeopathic home prescribing, protecting against radiation poisoning may not be one of them. This is much too serious.

"may not be one of them"? Radiation poisoning is the effect of exposure to ionizing radiation in too high doses - how the heck is sugar pills or water going to protect against that? The only protection is to avoid it (or to have some kind of barrier).

The best protection from this problem, which will probably be with us for many years,

Oh really - probably "for many years"? Yes, I'd think so - radiation exists in nature, and it's not like we humans haven't helped create more radioactive stuff.

is to ensure you improve on other areas of health care, such as

- a species specific, quality, natural diet
- a quality natural supplement, preferably a plant based superfood, which also has detoxing capabilities, such as blue-green algae, chlorella, spirulina
- exercise regularly
- if you are in the fast lane, slow down, perhaps learn to meditate
- make quality time for you (to smell the roses) or take up something you love to do, perhaps always wanted to do, but never had the time or money

Notice something about all these advices? None of them are any help in avoiding radiation poisoning. None. Some of them are quite sensible for avoiding stress and other lifestyle related disorders, but for radiation? You got to be kidding me.

With this healthy regime in place, the likelihood of suffering bad radiation poisoning will lessen, even in the worst affected areas.

No. You could probably argue that general health have an effect on how badly affected you will be, but in bad cases the poisoning will be fatal, no matter how healthy you are.

People who suffer from radiation sickness tend to have some symptoms which will be common to everyone (the early ones are nausea and vomiting, followed by headache and fever). Even these early signs are common to other illnesses, such as food poisoning and gastric flu.

These can then be followed by dizziness and weakness, symptoms that are still common to other less serious ailments. Finally you can experience blood in the vomit and stools, hair loss, chronic infections and poor healing capability.

All of these symptoms are only for milder radiation poisoning (with a fairly large survival chance). The more severe poisonings also includes things like purpura, cognitive impairment, and even ataxia.

These are all common radiation sickness symptoms that you can see in people who are receiving radiation treatment.

Except much worse of course, as people receiving chemotherapy are getting radiation under much more controlled circumstances, and in smaller doses than what trigger radiation poisoning.

The more uncommon symptoms, which will point to your most appropriate homeopathic medicine may include any of the following:

- an enormous fear of death which prevents you sleeping
- an aversion to being on your own
- a desire or aversion for a particular food or drink, including its temperature
- worsening of the complaints during a specific time of day or night
- an increased intolerance to variations in environmental temperature
- if the complaints are more one sided
- the nature of your nausea (constant or intermittent)
- the nature of your vomit (saliva, undigested food, frothy, black, bloody, etc)
- how you feel after vomiting (better, no improvement)
- along with many others.

None of these symptoms have anything to do with radiation poisoning. None.

I think I have found the source of the confusion - the author of the article is confusing radiation poisoning with anxiety. Since anxiety can often be helped with placebo treatments, homeopathy could probably help there. Radiation poisoning on the other hand, can't be treated by placebo.

Because of the complex nature of health and the seriousness of radiation sickness, the best treatment may come from an experienced and knowledgeable homeopath. S/he will base your treatment on a variety of your personal symptoms and traits. It is targeted for you specifically. Ten different people who suffer from radiation sickness are each likely to receive a different medicine.

Let me make this very clear: radiation poisoning is extremely rare, and usually only occur under circumstances where the risk is well known. If you somehow happen to be unlucky enough to somehow be at risk of radiation poisoning seek medical help immediately. Don't go to a homeopathy quack who offers platitudes about targeting you specifically - if you really are poisoned you a) won't be helped by placebo, b) won't have much time to get proper help. Yes, you can survive milder forms of radiative poisoning without medical intervention, but your survival chance will rise drastically if you get proper treatment.

Whether your radiation sickness comes from the environment or from a medical treatment, you can lessen it or perhaps cure it completely, with good homeopathic treatment.

No, you can't. You really can't. Claiming otherwise is lying, and it is dangerous to the health of others.

Regrets

2011-03-26T09:16:00.000+01:00

This is a slightly more personal post than most I've written, but I was moved to writing it after listening to the radio last night. The Danish radio channel P3 has a program called "Unga Bunga", where the two hosts Le Gammeltoft and Kjeld Tolstrup played some brilliant music. During the past week, Kjeld Tolstrup passed away only 45 years old, and last night's show was one long tribute to him by Le Gammeltoft and a lot of friends. Kjeld Tolstrup was, apart from being a radio host, the grand old man of the Danish DJ scene, whose influence on other Danish DJs and musicians in and outside Denmark cannot be overestimated - his passing away will leave not only the Danish music scene, but the international music scene, much poorer.

I never met Kjeld Tolstrup, and I've only rarely listened to him play. Yet, even so, he was a presence in the music/DJ scene I was aware of, and which I was happy was there. Now, he isn't there any longer, and I am sorry that I didn't use more opportunities to listen to him.

Regret is not a word I use often, since I find regret to be nonconstructive. I am of the philosophy that one has to look at where one is now, and operate from that point, instead of focusing on what one wish to have done differently in the past. I have, of cause, made wrong decisions in the past, and now pay the debt for it (both literately and metaphorically). Past choices will of cause limit future choices, but unless you can undo those consequences, focusing on the mistakes/unwise decisions, will only drag you down a dark path.

Still, due to past mistakes, I have come slightly risk adverse - this means that I try to avoid limiting my future options. If I have the choice between two paths, I will most likely choose the one that limits my future choices least, even if the other one is more interesting.

So, how does this tie up with yesterday's radio program?

Well, Kjeld Tolstrup was less than 10 years older than me when he died, and he managed to do so much for so many people - many more than I could ever hope to mean anything for, even if I lived till I was twice as old as him.
I am sure he didn't do that by being risk adverse - when he went to Ministry of Sounds and played, it carried much large risks than staying in Denmark, yet because he managed it, it also carried much larger rewards than anything he could have pulled off in Denmark.

This makes me think: Perhaps being risk adverse is actually more limiting than going down the paths that cut of choices? And perhaps those paths only impose limits in my mind, or expand my choices in other directions?

Who knows?

I certainly don't. But I will try to find out. I will try to make sure that I don't just make my choices based on being risk adverse, but instead make my choices based on what I'd prefer to do. I am sure this will be an interesting journey - and one thing I can promise is, there will be no regrets.

Re-post: Prosopagnosia [slightly edited]

2011-01-22T12:02:00.003+01:00

Note: This was an early post on this blog, back when I only had a handful of readers. Given the fact that my readership has grown somewhat, I thought it might be a good idea to re-post it, as it's a fascinating subject.

I first came across the phenomenon of Prosopagnosia, or face blindness, back when I read an article in Wired about the subject.

Basically it's the phenomenon of not being able to recognize faces. Not in the sense of not being good at remembering faces, but in the sense of not being able to recognize faces, including those of your own family and yourself.

Until recently it was thought it was only a phenomenon among people who damaged their brain through some kind of accident (the first well know example was apparently a soldier who was hit in the head, and after that was unable to recognize even his own wife), but now scientists have realized that it's much more widespread than that, and that people can suffer from this from birth. Brad Duchaine, a scientist studying this subject, estimates that 2 percent of the population is face blind.

One of the reasons why face blindness has gone undetected for so long, is the fact that people who suffer from it, are not aware how other people percept faces. This is of course not the case for people who get it later in life.
Another reason could also be that people are good at compensating. When I started needing glasses (when I was about 13 or 14), I learned to compensate for the lack of them, by being able to recognize people in the distance by how they moved. Since I stated wearing glasses I've mostly lost that ability again.

A most fascinating aspect of prosopagnosia is that it's very specific to faces. People who suffer from it, can recognize (and remember) other things as well as everyone else. This is probably due to the fact that faces are much more complex than other things, and demands more from the brain.
However, based on this abstract, it seems that at least some of the brain is able to recognize the person, yet the end result doesn't reflect this.

The reason for face blindness is probably genetic, since the trait has a inheritance pattern that is consistent with the trait being carried by a single gene.

Some further reading:
Face Blind - the original Wired article that got me interested in this subject.

Face blindness not just skin deep - CNN article about the subject.

Living in a world without faces - New Scientist podcast.

I’m Strange, You’re A Stranger - a blogpost from a blogger who suffers from prosopagnosia. The post is quite interesting, and also makes it clear that the problem is not only with human faces, but also animal faces.

I was doing some closet-cleaning the other week, and came across my portfolio of projects from when I took Commercial Art classes some years ago. One picture was an assignment: “Abstraction, select a natural object, create an abstract of that object”, cat, done in ink (dip-pen & pot of ink). I remember thinking about cats, and what qualities of the body shape define them as having “cat-ness”, and decided that it was the tail, the angularity of the limb joints, the pointed ears and the whiskers. But as I said, I tend to perceive things primarily by the mass and outline and by specific traits.

Most everyone did animals for that abstraction assignment, although the instructor pointed out that my drawing was the only one showing the animal from the back side, without the eyes. Mine was the only picture without a face!

Facebling.org - website of the Prosopagnosia Research Center Harvard University and University College London.

A bad time for anti-vaxxers

2011-01-16T21:44:00.002+01:00

My, my - this is definitely a bad start of the year for the anti-vaxxers.

First Brian Deer's articles in the British Medical Journal (How the vaccine crisis was meant to make money and How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed, with more on the way), and the BMJ editorial, where they put themselves on the line by making clear accusations of fraud against Wakefield (Wakefield’s article linking MMR vaccine and autism was fraudulent).

Most of the media picked up on this, and for once didn't try to "balance" the story, but instead actually made clear that Wakefield had no credibility.

Now, Salon.com has decided to removed a 2005 article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This article was one of the main reasons for me getting into the fight against anti-vaxxers (and more importantly, for Orac getting into the fight). It was co-published by Rolling Stones, which unfortunately hasn't removed the article.

Salon explains why they removed the article here

Words have consequences, part two

2011-01-09T11:29:00.005+01:00

Back when Dr. Tiller was murdered, I wrote a blogpost called Words have consequences, in which I wrote about Operation Rescue

Calling someone "America's Doctor of Death" is dehumanizing him to an extreme degree, allowing people to ignore the fact that he is a person, which again allows people to do things like murdering him. Operation Rescue might not have pulled the trigger on Dr. Tiller, but they created an environment, where someone could pull the trigger on him.

Now, after the Tucson schooting where several people, including a child and a federal judge, were killed, and a congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, was critically wounded, I want to revisit this theme.

Ever since the Obama election, the rhetorics on the right have been vitriolic, and used violent images. There have been cases where people carried weapons at events where the President spoke. There have been talks of "revolution" and sedition - heck, the Tea Party crowd takes their name from the very concept of an American revolution.

In this sort of environment, it is hardly surprising that someone will follow up on that rhetoric, and take violent action.

The choice of victim is not surprising either.

After all, a public supporter of the Tea Party, and a senior figure of the Republican Party, had used violent imagery targeted specifically at congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Before the midterm election, Palin posted the above map, showing which members of congress she wanted people to target, using cross-hairs to show the location of their districts.

After congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords managed to win over tea party favorite Jesse Kelly, Palin posted the following tweet

Combining the image of a cross-hair and using the word "RELOAD" sends a very violent message indeed, even if it is unintended - something which I don't believe it is for a second, given the general usage of such in the current US political environment. This imagery was meant to intimidate, to threaten even. Since the congresswoman didn't hide, someone took the rhetorics to its next logical level, and tried to murder her.

This is the sort of actions that the current US political environment breeds.

Yes, there were vitriolic, perhaps even violent, rhetorics under the George W. Bush presidency, but not as part of the mainstream debate, not from leading political figures. To try to make it seem so, is to make a false equivalent, and to let the people who created this political environment get away with it.

It is no coincidence that militias have been on a rise in the US since President Obama was elected.

At the moment, Sarah Palin and others of her irk are busy trying to distance themselves from the shootings, even to the degree of scrubbing the web from the sort of messages I've posted above. I don't for a second doubt that they are shocked, perhaps even horrified, over the fact that someone did the very thing that they have been implicitly advocating for two years. Yet this doesn't absolve them of their guilt, and we should not let them get away with having creating the environment where this sort of actions happens more easily. The people who uses violent imagery should be shunned by the rest of society, not get their own TV-shows.

Words do have consequences, and it is high time that Palin and her irk started to feel the consequences of their words.

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Reversed roles

Blogroll have been temporarily removed

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Words have consequences, part two