The Adventures of Tobasco da Gama

Ben Goldacre has a fun article about a completely bogus story in the UK’s Sunday Express claiming “Jab ‘As Deadly As The Cancer’”, referring to the UK’s HPV vaccine and giving the impression of a direct quote. As Ben Goldacre explains, the Express quoted Dr. Diane Harper for the headline and claimed that she was one of the scientists responsible for developing the vaccine. Of course, it turns out that the only thing the Express got right was the fact that Diane Harper exists and is a medical doctor:

I did not say that Cervarix was as deadly as cervical cancer. I did not say that Cervarix could be riskier or more deadly than cervical cancer. I did not say that Cervarix was controversial, I stated that Cervarix is not a ‘controversial drug’. I did not ‘hit out’ – I was contacted by the press for facts. And this was not an exclusive interview.

If only she had a paid consultant to help frame her message, this whole misunderstanding could have been avoided! If she would just stop being SUCH a scientist, she wouldn’t be misunderstood like this. Obviously. Obviously.

This has always been my problem with Nisbet, Mooney, Olson camp. They’re extremely cynical about the stupidity of the public and ineptitude of scientists while simultaneously being incredibly naive about their pals and colleagues in the journalism industry. The fact that they can see this kind of blatant, deliberate misrepresentation and conclude that scientists are at fault makes them either criminally stupid or stupidly venal. But then removing planks from one’s own eye has never been as lucrative as publishing books and making films about the motes in others’, has it?

I’m busy planning for a vacation and a move, but I’m a little sick of having nothing but Twitter digests on my site. So, here’s a link to Harry Reid being a cowardly douchenozzle who can’t answer a simple, straightforward question.

Fuck that guy.

But just to cheer everybody up, let’s pair that with this post from John Cole. Think maybe the two things might be related? Perhaps. Cowardice never pays.

Via publius, I learn that the Obama administration has successfully agitated for a cap on executive pay for banks receiving bailout money. Makes sense, and the cap is set at a generous $500k. Combined with the previous story about Obama sending his peeps to shut down Citigroup’s purchase of a new private jet using bailout funds, this is fucking great news. It means we finally have a President who’s willing to stand up to the welfare queens of Wall Street.

It also means that we get to enjoy epic lulz like this:

“That is pretty draconian — $500,000 is not a lot of money, particularly if there is no bonus,” said James F. Reda, founder and managing director of James F. Reda & Associates, a compensation consulting firm.

I believe The Heavy has something to say about this:

Aww, David Duke is all butthurt about the RNC chair being a black guy. Somebody call the wahmbulance!

Today’s lulz brought to you by Pam Spaulding at Pandagon.

Read this Media Matters story about conservative responses to the ongoing economic depression (which I got from Mike).

Everyone knows that conservatives are very often idiots. They aren’t always, though. Sometimes, as that link shows, they’re just outrageously dishonest.

Seriously, as much as I try to remind myself about cognitive dissonance and ideological blindspots, I simply cannot wrap my head around the mental gymnastics that people go through to defend these indefensible positions. Maybe they’re doing it consciously, maybe not. I’m not sure which is worse, really.

Anyway, to sum up the info at the link: According to conservative dogma, tax cuts are the solution to all economic problems, always. Obama’s stimulus plan includes a tax credit to middle and working class individuals and families, the income class who are most likely to spend that money (either on necessities or, as I believe is more often the case, on luxury items they can’t afford on their usual post-tax income — which will do a lot to help the flagging retail sector). Hence the “stimulus”, as that money flows back into the economy. Obviously, since tax cuts are the solution to all economic problems and tax credits are effectively a form of temporary tax cut, conservatives are against this plan.

Obviously.

I hate to do this sort of thing, but the quote was too juicy not to share:

Joe Lieberman is an albatross wrapped in a quisling wrapped in an anti-personnel mine.

Pretty much.

I hope everyone who reads this also reads Pandagon regularly.

I haven’t written anything substantive in a while, so I hate to just toss down a link in lieu of my own thoughts, but I really thought that publius’ recent post on net neutrality over at Obsidian Wings was worth sharing. He does something interesting, which is reframe (in the proper, useful sense of the term — and no, I won’t stop provoking the reality-challenged “framing” idiots who think An Inconvenient Truth was a failure in science communication) the debate about net neutrality in terms of “openness”. He argues that when we say we want a neutral net, we really want one that’s open, in the same sense that the Eisenhower Interstate System is: any kind of traffic can use it, for any purpose, and everyone has access to it.

For instance, think about interstate highways. The reason that so many competitive markets exist on them (shipping, taxis, etc.) is because the government guarantees access to underlying roads (the “facilities”). No private party controls them — thus McDonalds can’t block Burger King trucks from using interstate highways. That’s sort of what net neutrality is all about — ensuring that this same openness exists for the next generation.

The crux of the argument is that government regulation is, counterintuitively, vitally important to maintaining the openness of the interstate system and likewise will be vitally important to keeping companies like Comcast from infringing on the openness of the internet as well.

The argument about regulation versus deregulation is therefore beside the point. What we should be asking is whether a given action advances openness. If deregulation promotes openness, we should pursue it. If, by contrast, regulation promotes openness, we should pursue that.

So go read the rest and stuff.

It doesn’t work. Some day, people will understand this. But not today.

Tim Robbins gave the keynote speech at the National Association of Broadcasters Show. Once the NAB found out what he was going to say, however, they ordered the press covering the event to turn off their cameras. They didn’t say anything about audio recorders.

And so, we can listen to the speech that frightened the NAB.

[Ed.: Blake informs me that the video was broken when he tried it. Here's the YouTube version.]

It’s a pretty good speech, actually. In it, Robbins calls upon the media to take some responsibility for their programming, to acknowledge their role as shapers of the culture, to rise above tabloid programming. That the NAB was so frightened of this message as to try to censor it speaks volumes about the kind of people who run our traditional media.

Well, to those guys I say… Tough shit. The message got out. And it will get far more attention for the fact that you tried to quash it. And the very fact that it got out underscores a vital concept, one Robbins didn’t mention but probably should have: adapt or die. Because we don’t need you any more.

I try not to do these, but I’ve got like ten different things that I set aside to write about, and I just haven’t been feeling compositiony lately. But first, a quotation from System of the World from the ever-awesome Neal Stephenson’s pleasantly-surprisingly-awesome Baroque Cycle. For background, Eliza is a former Turkish harem slave turned Duchess of Qwghlm by royal fiat and then of Arcachon by marriage, and she is financing the work of an African slave named Dappa who is traveling to world collecting, compiling, and publishing slave stories.

“Our only weapon against this willful ignorance is stories. The stories that you alone are writing down. I have in one of my boxes down stairs a little packet of letters from English men and women that all go something like this: ‘I have never had the least objection to Slavery, however your book recently fell under my eye, and, though most of the slave-narratives contained in it were mawkish and dull, one in particular struck a chord in my heart, and I have since read it over and over, and come to understand the despicable, nay execrable crime that Slavery is…’”
“Which one? Which of the stories do these letters refer to?” Dappa asked, fascinated.
“That is the problem, Dappa: each of them refers to a different one. It seems that if you put enough stories out before the public, many a reader will fine one that speaks to him. But there is no telling which.”

The parallel with certain recent tactical discussions in the atheist/pro-evolution blogosphere struck me while I was reading that passage, and furthermore it gets to the heart of what I find so bloody wrong about the approach advocated by Matt Nisbet. Message discipline is one thing, but trying to shut up people who aren’t repeating your particular message is quite another. It’s just plain true that you can’t predict what story will sway any given person, so why not put as many out there as we can? PZ’s and Richard Dawkins’ stories did it for me, and for a lot of other people, so clearly they have some value. And if others prefer John Wilkins or Chris Mooney or even Ken Miller, then it’s no skin off my back.

Of course, the scene goes on to compare that approach to grape-shot, which can cripple an opponent’s ship but not sink it, and Eliza concludes that they need a decisive cannonball to fire. Fortunately, Mike the Mad Biologist is here, and he seems to be holding something of suitable size and weight… (Thanks be to Rebecca for recording Mike’s presentation at Boston Skeptics in the Pub.)

Also on the subject of the thrice-damned framing debate, I really liked what Russell Blackford had to say about the whole mad business.

Jacques Distler [thanks for the correction, Blake] takes a look at the myth that Republican policies are good for the economy. He examines the numbers several ways, and… well, I didn’t call it a myth for nothing. (The site seems to be down for me, so here’s a Google Cache link just in case.)

Amanda Marcotte discusses a book about actually effective protests that are actually about things. She also segues into a discussion of the recent fad of reaching out to evangelical environmentalists on religious terms, and says this, which was awesome: “In other words, evangelicals who are willing to create an environmentalist movement can be appealed to on straightforward environmentalist terms. Highlighting what we have in common—we all want to save the environment, because duh, wrecking it is stupid and deadly—instead of pandering on what we don’t have in common is the way to create coalitions.”

Next, Blake commands us to increase the Google profile of some worthwhile sites. First, Cuttlefish, poet laureate of Pharyngula. (Is he the official poet laureate? He should be.) Also, the NCSE has an awesome site about the atrocious Expelled movie. It not only factually debunks the film’s claims, but also exposes the deceitful, cowardly tactics of the film’s producers. So, rock on.

Finally, everyone should be aware that Anonymous’ next anti-Scientology protest, Operation Reconnect, is scheduled for Saturday. Check around for your local city’s plans. It’s a global protest, so more likely than not something will be going on near you. Boston’s info is here.

WANT.

That is all.