My questions weren’t of the 10:20:30 variety; I don’t suggest falsification criteria of my own, I merely ask what your falsification criteria are.
But as soon as you do that, you are denying science, that’s kinda the point.
You don’t get to pick and choose, because as soon as you do that the leigitimacy of everything else that you are doing collapses. Even if the other stuff is correct, you either got the right answer by chance (how would we know?), or you built the rest of your argument properly (how would we tell it apart from the stuff you did wrong?)
This is the frustration FX,
I’m not going to comment on nuclear reporting here, but there are other contentious issues that I do have an extensive background knowledge of. The “popular” side of that debate has an argument that is hopelessly, comically, riddled with innacuracies and outright lies. I am confident in the knowledge that leads me to that conclusion. The “corporate” side of that issue provides information which is sometimes biased, is almost always factually acurate. I am confident in the knowledge that leads me to that conclusion too.
I have a lot of sympathy for some of the arguments made by the “popular” argument, but it is effectively impossible for me to engage with them because I am unable to trust any information that they give me.
I may be talking to someone who is debating in good faith, but I have no way of knowing that, and I have no way of judging the extent to which that the information that they are providing in good faith has been contaminated by a handful of idiots who believe that dishonesty is OK if it’s for a good cause. I’m left with little choice but to go to the other viewpoint, because I can trust their facts.
I can try to read between the lines, but I can’t read between the lies.
Well, I get the impression that the only reason to label a woo belief as “right wing” or “left wing” is because it reminds you of a political stance that is right- or left-wing.
“That person believes in the healing power of Jesus. That reminds me of religious fundamentalism, therefore it’s a right-wing belief.”
“That person believes that nuclear power is a bad idea. That reminds me of hippie idealism, therefore it’s a left-wing belief.”
I’m sure one can easily find an ultra-left anti-abortion argument seriously advanced by someone (“It should not be the decision of an individual to deny the state another potential worker”), or an ultra-right pro-evolution one (“Nature gave the white man natural domination over the lesser races”), so why the need to politically classify at all? It’s like trying to sort people alphabetically and by height at the same time.
Beyond the fact that “the pill maker(s)” and CAM proponents are often one and the same (the supplement industry is a multi-billion dollar enterprise), I somewhat agree that NCCAM may be doing some good. It is useful to have an obvious counter to the claim that “no one is studying our woo because there’s no profit in it”.* However, there are lots of studies on alt med remedies being done outside of government-funded ones, and it’s questionable whether we need to keep pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into research that’s had so little return, when there are more promising avenues of inquiry that badly need funding.
And we need to do this badly. It should be a required part of the curriculum in public education. We could fund it in part through the monies currently going to NCCAM. 
*Speaking of logical fallacies, one of my favorites is when wooists boast about how herbs and “natural substances” are the basis of mainstream medicine and pharmacology owes so much to them, and at the same time complain about how “natural remedies” are ignored by mainstream medicine because they can’t be patented. :dubious:
I would have said, “And we badly need to do this.”
Because we’re already doing it badly.
Alternative medicine is an industry, pushed by vitamin and supplement manufacturers and television personalities like Dr. Oz. I’m betting that Tom Harkin gets significant campaign dollars from this industry, and I certainly don’t doubt that he has a ridiculous, pigheaded view of what the role of the NCCAM is.
But regardless of whether or not AM is total woo, there are plenty of consumers interested in it, and it makes sense to try and give them some guidance as to whether there’s any evidence of efficacy in any of the mindboggling array of products available, or whether they’re just being ripped off. The industry, obviously, would rather the government either butt out completely or promote their interests under the guise of regulating them. If the NCCAM is calling some AM products out as being worthless, then I consider that a positive.
It doesn’t help that the entire history of science is riddled with examples where pretty much every “expert” scientists were dead wrong, and couldn’t admit it.
Or worse, were blind to the greater consequences of the science they were involved in. Somehow now we think things have changed, and science can’t possibly be wrong about anything.
Do you actually know anything? It’s amazing that such a complex network of intermeshed ignorance can function.
For starters, I will bet money everyone on this forum is wrong about something scientific. Hugely wrong. Almost everyone is. Yet the arrogance of the ignorant would prevent them from admitting it, much less learning why they are wrong.
This arrogance may be tied somehow to the arrogance of the scientific denier.
Some of us are more wrong than others. I’m sure there is factual information that people on this board lack. But the smart money is on the scientific consensus.
It’s far more arrogant to think you can dismiss science you don’t understand and aren’t equipped to judge intelligently when there is overwhelming supporting evidence.
That is exactly what I am talking about. The people here who think they know it all are dead wrong about something scientific, yet they bemoan ignorant people being wrong.
I find intelligent educated scientific person in denial far worse than some religious whackjob doing it.
To be fair though, FX, you’re dumb as a box of hammers AND apparently ineducable, so there’s really no reason for you to even post.
I swear I did not pay him to say that.
Are you thinking of some specific topic? I’d be inclined to take that bet.
You have obviously never heard of Helen Caldicott.
Anti-nuclear activists make circular arguments. The won’t let us build storage facilities and complain about the lack of storage facilities. They won’t let use recycle the left over fuel and complain about the half-lifes. They make every nuclear power as expensive as possible to build and complain about the cost. Anti-nuclear nuts are actually the worst of the luddites.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv-mFSoZOkE
Correct, but the biggest feeder at this trough remains Sen. Orrin Hatch.
*"Far and away the largest recipient of campaign contributions from the supplement industry in the 2010 election cycle was Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) who took in $45,780, 59% more than the lawmaker in second place, freshman Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI). Sen. Hatch wasn’t up for reelection. Further, the supplement industry paid the lobbying firm of Walker, Martin and Hatch – in which Sen. Hatch’s son, Scott Hatch, is a partner – $125,600 in 2010 alone. Scott Hatch cannot lobby his father directly, but records indicate Jack Martin, a former aide to Sen. Hatch, lobbied for supplement industry clients…
Lobbying spending by the industry has increased 86% since the 109th Congress. Further, the political action committees (PACs) linked to the supplement industry have increased donations to federal candidates. In addition to Sen. Hatch and Rep. Amash, CREW found major recipients of supplement industry cash during the 2010 election cycle included Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), all of whom either sit on committees considering legislation affecting the industry or have an industry presence in their home states. The supplement industry is the third-largest industry in Utah, with revenues estimated at up to $4 billion a year."* (bolding added)
What you’re missing (beyond the likelihood that many of your examples of “scientific denial” are pre-20th century) is that “intelligent educated scientific” people routinely, when their positions are proved wrong, accept good new evidence and revised standards. Additionally, the evidence that refuted those prior beliefs came from the scientific community, not from proponents of woo/“religious whackjobs”. These folks cling to irrational beliefs long after they’ve been shown to be false.
Note that I didn’t say antivaxing was a left-wing belief - I said that most antivaxers were left-wingers IME. The distinction being that, while antivaxing as a concept falls somewhere outside of the spectrum that is usually gauged by the left/right dichotomy, on account of being nuts, the people who spew said woo tend to also have more sensible ideas/conceptions on life/political ideals which are not off the charts.
IOW, it’s not so much that a given woo is left/right-wing, but that the people who espouse that woo are left- (or right-)wingers otherwise. You don’t classify the woo, you classify whatever else makes a lick of sense to (or in) these people.
This thread probably isn’t the place to post such blatant straw men. Or did you mean to ironically put yourself square in the category of people being pitted?
Here’s another example of a leftist belief refusing to yield to actual evidence.
The “Guns in bars” thread was originally started to discuss a proposal in Virginia tothe law to allow concealed-carry permit holders to continue to wear their concealed weapons in a restaurant or bar that serves liquor. The then-extant law required that CCW holders switch to open carry before entering any establishment that served liquor.
Opponents of the law in that thread asserted that the law would lead to increased crime and violence in bars.
Ultimately the law passed. Eighteen months later, I resurrected the thread to point out that a Virginia newspaper had analyzed every single crime report associated with guns and bars, and found no increase – in fact, a slight decrease – in gun-related crime.
One poster’s reaction was to assert that that paper and the police were engaged in a conspiracy to hide crime statistics that would disprove their claims. And on the opther end of the spectrum, only one poster was able to admit that his predictions had been wrong.
Note that I wasn’t demanding a complete capitulation on the subject – someone could reasonably take the position, for example, that the single year was an anomaly, or that other external factors were in play. But of the science-loving, intellectual-honesty crowd that posts here, I found exactly one poster willing to say that his prediction about what would happen following Virginia’s law change was wrong.
I’m confused about your point. If Harkin is complaining that NCCAM is trying to disprove things, it just shows that NCCAM is doing its job. Science is all about trying to falsify things, not trying to prove them. If your point is that politicians don’t understand how science works, I hardly disagree, and this is not party limited. Proxmire was a Democrat. Still, this is a far cry from supporting creationism.
Economics is not science. Neither is engineering. We both know that there were a lot of politics involved, and it is hard to change even now that the incorrectness of this decision is becoming more clear. If you were representing a farm state you’d be on a different side, no doubt.