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Weiye Loh

Evaluating The Evidence for Cell Phones and WiFi « Critical Thinking « Skepti... - 0 views

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Mobile Wi-Fi Radio Waves Cancer Uncertainty

shared by Weiye Loh on 05 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • he “weight of evidence” approach to evaluation of causality is often vilified by cell phone and WiFi scare mongers as being an inadequate way to judge the evidence – often because it disagrees with their own sentiments about the science.  If you can’t disqualify the evidence, then you can go after the method of evaluation and disqualify that, right?  Of course, the weight of evidence approach is often portrayed as a dumbshow of putting all the “positive” trials on one side of the scale and all of the “negative” trials on the other and taking the difference in mass as the evidence.  This is how Dr. Phillips characterised it in his paper on electromagnetic fields and DNA damage, as well as his appearance on CBC Radio.  Of course, the procedure is much more like a systematic review, where all of the papers, regardless of their outcomes, are weighed for their quality. (The higher quality studies will have good internal and external validity, proper blinding and randomisation, large enough sample size, proper controls and good statistical analysis; as well as being reproduced by independent investigators.) Then they are tallied and a rational conclusion is offered as to the most likely state of the evidence (of course, it is much more involved than I am stating, but suffice it to say, it does not involve a scale.)   This is standard operating procedure and, in fact, is what we all do when we are evaluating evidence: we decide which studies are good and we pool the evidence before we make a decision.
  • Weiye Loh on 05 Jun 11
     
    n many discussions of the "dangers" of WiFi and cell phones, the precautionary principle is evoked. It is the idea that we have "an obligation, if the level of harm may be high, for action to prevent or minimise such harm even when the absence of scientific certainty makes it difficult to predict the likelihood of harm occurring, or the level of harm should it occur."  It is important to note that the precautionary principle or approach is required when we do not have a scientific consensus or if we have a lack of scientific certainty.  It is used often in European regulation of potential health and environmental hazards.  "Scientific certainty" is an important clause here, because it does not mean 100% certainty. Science can never give that absolute a result and if we required 100% certainty of no risk, we would not walk out our front doors or even get out of bed, lest we have a mishap.
Weiye Loh

When Science Trumps Policy: The Triumph of Insite « British Columbia « Canada... - 0 views

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Science Policy Drugs Pragmatism

shared by Weiye Loh on 08 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • As skeptics we obviously want to see science based medicine and effective methods to improve public health. What this means is that, we skeptics, want to see medicine like vaccines promoted instead of homeopathy; but, we also want to see science based policy as well. What Insite has proven is that the harm reduction policy is working, in fact, working better than the “war on drugs” policy that the Conservative government has been supporting. Since the evidence is pointing to harm reduction being a more effective method of controlling the harmful effects of drug addiction in society, it should follow that harm reduction as a policy gain the support of our government and health care providers.
  • what was really distressing was that the Harper Government wasn’t just arguing against the evidence (saying for instance that it was either wrong or misguided) but actually arguing in spite of the evidence. What they were saying was that, yes, harm reduction appears to be working…but that’s irrelevant because that isn’t the policy we want to use.
Weiye Loh

Skepticblog » A Post-Modernist Response to Science-Based Medicine - 0 views

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Postmodernism Science Medicine

shared by Weiye Loh on 26 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • One blogger, Marya Zilberberg at Healthcare, etc., has written a series of posts responding to what she thinks is our position at Science-based medicine
  • She is partly responding to this article of mine on SBM (What’s the harm) in which I make the point that medicine is a risk vs benefit game. Ethical responsible medical practice involves interventions where there is at least the probability of doing more benefit than harm with proper informed consent, so the patient knows what those chances are. Using scientifically dubious treatments, where there is little or no chance of benefit, especially when they are overhyped, is therefore unethical. And further, the “harm” side of the equation needs to include all forms of harm, not just direct physical harm.
  • Zilberberg’s response is the typical tu quoque logical fallacy – well, science-based medicine is not all it’s cracked up to be either, so there. She writes: Now, let’s get on to “proof” in science-based medicine. As you well know, while we do have evidence for efficacy and safety of some modalities, many are grandfathered without any science. Even those that are shown to have acceptable efficacy and safety profiles as mandated by the FDA, are arguably (and many do argue) not all that. There is an important concept in clinical science of heterogeneous response to treatment, HTE, which I have addressed extensively on my blog. I did not make it up, it is very real, and it is this phenomenon that makes it difficult to predict how an individual will respond to a particular intervention. This confounds much of what we think is God’s own word on what is supposed to work in allopathic medicine.
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  • This is also the fallacy of the perfect solution – since science-based medicine is not perfect, there is no legitimate basis for criticism of any modality.
  • Weiye Loh on 26 Oct 10
     
    A POST-MODERNIST RESPONSE TO SCIENCE-BASED MEDICINE
Weiye Loh

Skepticblog » A Creationist Challenge - 0 views

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Creationism Evolution Logic

shared by Weiye Loh on 01 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • The commenter starts with some ad hominems, asserting that my post is biased and emotional. They provide no evidence or argument to support this assertion. And of course they don’t even attempt to counter any of the arguments I laid out. They then follow up with an argument from authority – he can link to a PhD creationist – so there.
  • The article that the commenter links to is by Henry M. Morris, founder for the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) – a young-earth creationist organization. Morris was (he died in 2006 following a stroke) a PhD – in civil engineering. This point is irrelevant to his actual arguments. I bring it up only to put the commenter’s argument from authority into perspective. No disrespect to engineers – but they are not biologists. They have no expertise relevant to the question of evolution – no more than my MD. So let’s stick to the arguments themselves.
  • The article by Morris is an overview of so-called Creation Science, of which Morris was a major architect. The arguments he presents are all old creationist canards, long deconstructed by scientists. In fact I address many of them in my original refutation. Creationists generally are not very original – they recycle old arguments endlessly, regardless of how many times they have been destroyed.
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  • Morris also makes heavy use of the “taking a quote out of context” strategy favored by creationists. His quotes are often from secondary sources and are incomplete.
  • A more scholarly (i.e. intellectually honest) approach would be to cite actual evidence to support a point. If you are going to cite an authority, then make sure the quote is relevant, in context, and complete.
  • And even better, cite a number of sources to show that the opinion is representative. Rather we get single, partial, and often outdated quotes without context.
  • (nature is not, it turns out, cleanly divided into “kinds”, which have no operational definition). He also repeats this canard: Such variation is often called microevolution, and these minor horizontal (or downward) changes occur fairly often, but such changes are not true “vertical” evolution. This is the microevolution/macroevolution false dichotomy. It is only “often called” this by creationists – not by actual evolutionary scientists. There is no theoretical or empirical division between macro and micro evolution. There is just evolution, which can result in the full spectrum of change from minor tweaks to major changes.
  • Morris wonders why there are no “dats” – dog-cat transitional species. He misses the hierarchical nature of evolution. As evolution proceeds, and creatures develop a greater and greater evolutionary history behind them, they increasingly are committed to their body plan. This results in a nestled hierarchy of groups – which is reflected in taxonomy (the naming scheme of living things).
  • once our distant ancestors developed the basic body plan of chordates, they were committed to that body plan. Subsequent evolution resulted in variations on that plan, each of which then developed further variations, etc. But evolution cannot go backward, undo evolutionary changes and then proceed down a different path. Once an evolutionary line has developed into a dog, evolution can produce variations on the dog, but it cannot go backwards and produce a cat.
  • Stephen J. Gould described this distinction as the difference between disparity and diversity. Disparity (the degree of morphological difference) actually decreases over evolutionary time, as lineages go extinct and the surviving lineages are committed to fewer and fewer basic body plans. Meanwhile, diversity (the number of variations on a body plan) within groups tends to increase over time.
  • the kind of evolutionary changes that were happening in the past, when species were relatively undifferentiated (compared to contemporary species) is indeed not happening today. Modern multi-cellular life has 600 million years of evolutionary history constraining their future evolution – which was not true of species at the base of the evolutionary tree. But modern species are indeed still evolving.
  • Here is a list of research documenting observed instances of speciation. The list is from 1995, and there are more recent examples to add to the list. Here are some more. And here is a good list with references of more recent cases.
  • Next Morris tries to convince the reader that there is no evidence for evolution in the past, focusing on the fossil record. He repeats the false claim (again, which I already dealt with) that there are no transitional fossils: Even those who believe in rapid evolution recognize that a considerable number of generations would be required for one distinct “kind” to evolve into another more complex kind. There ought, therefore, to be a considerable number of true transitional structures preserved in the fossils — after all, there are billions of non-transitional structures there! But (with the exception of a few very doubtful creatures such as the controversial feathered dinosaurs and the alleged walking whales), they are not there.
  • I deal with this question at length here, pointing out that there are numerous transitional fossils for the evolution of terrestrial vertebrates, mammals, whales, birds, turtles, and yes – humans from ape ancestors. There are many more examples, these are just some of my favorites.
  • Much of what follows (as you can see it takes far more space to correct the lies and distortions of Morris than it did to create them) is classic denialism – misinterpreting the state of the science, and confusing lack of information about the details of evolution with lack of confidence in the fact of evolution. Here are some examples – he quotes Niles Eldridge: “It is a simple ineluctable truth that virtually all members of a biota remain basically stable, with minor fluctuations, throughout their durations. . . .“ So how do evolutionists arrive at their evolutionary trees from fossils of organisms which didn’t change during their durations? Beware the “….” – that means that meaningful parts of the quote are being omitted. I happen to have the book (The Pattern of Evolution) from which Morris mined that particular quote. Here’s the rest of it: (Remember, by “biota” we mean the commonly preserved plants and animals of a particular geological interval, which occupy regions often as large as Roger Tory Peterson’s “eastern” region of North American birds.) And when these systems change – when the older species disappear, and new ones take their place – the change happens relatively abruptly and in lockstep fashion.”
  • Eldridge was one of the authors (with Gould) of punctuated equilibrium theory. This states that, if you look at the fossil record, what we see are species emerging, persisting with little change for a while, and then disappearing from the fossil record. They theorize that most species most of the time are at equilibrium with their environment, and so do not change much. But these periods of equilibrium are punctuated by disequilibrium – periods of change when species will have to migrate, evolve, or go extinct.
  • This does not mean that speciation does not take place. And if you look at the fossil record we see a pattern of descendant species emerging from ancestor species over time – in a nice evolutionary pattern. Morris gives a complete misrepresentation of Eldridge’s point – once again we see intellectual dishonesty in his methods of an astounding degree.
  • Regarding the atheism = religion comment, it reminds me of a great analogy that I first heard on twitter from Evil Eye. (paraphrase) “those that say atheism is a religion, is like saying ‘not collecting stamps’ is a hobby too.”
  • Morris next tackles the genetic evidence, writing: More often is the argument used that similar DNA structures in two different organisms proves common evolutionary ancestry. Neither argument is valid. There is no reason whatever why the Creator could not or would not use the same type of genetic code based on DNA for all His created life forms. This is evidence for intelligent design and creation, not evolution.
  • Here is an excellent summary of the multiple lines of molecular evidence for evolution. Basically, if we look at the sequence of DNA, the variations in trinucleotide codes for amino acids, and amino acids for proteins, and transposons within DNA we see a pattern that can only be explained by evolution (or a mischievous god who chose, for some reason, to make life look exactly as if it had evolved – a non-falsifiable notion).
  • The genetic code is essentially comprised of four letters (ACGT for DNA), and every triplet of three letters equates to a specific amino acid. There are 64 (4^3) possible three letter combinations, and 20 amino acids. A few combinations are used for housekeeping, like a code to indicate where a gene stops, but the rest code for amino acids. There are more combinations than amino acids, so most amino acids are coded for by multiple combinations. This means that a mutation that results in a one-letter change might alter from one code for a particular amino acid to another code for the same amino acid. This is called a silent mutation because it does not result in any change in the resulting protein.
  • It also means that there are very many possible codes for any individual protein. The question is – which codes out of the gazillions of possible codes do we find for each type of protein in different species. If each “kind” were created separately there would not need to be any relationship. Each kind could have it’s own variation, or they could all be identical if they were essentially copied (plus any mutations accruing since creation, which would be minimal). But if life evolved then we would expect that the exact sequence of DNA code would be similar in related species, but progressively different (through silent mutations) over evolutionary time.
  • This is precisely what we find – in every protein we have examined. This pattern is necessary if evolution were true. It cannot be explained by random chance (the probability is absurdly tiny – essentially zero). And it makes no sense from a creationist perspective. This same pattern (a branching hierarchy) emerges when we look at amino acid substitutions in proteins and other aspects of the genetic code.
  • Morris goes for the second law of thermodynamics again – in the exact way that I already addressed. He responds to scientists correctly pointing out that the Earth is an open system, by writing: This naive response to the entropy law is typical of evolutionary dissimulation. While it is true that local order can increase in an open system if certain conditions are met, the fact is that evolution does not meet those conditions. Simply saying that the earth is open to the energy from the sun says nothing about how that raw solar heat is converted into increased complexity in any system, open or closed. The fact is that the best known and most fundamental equation of thermodynamics says that the influx of heat into an open system will increase the entropy of that system, not decrease it. All known cases of decreased entropy (or increased organization) in open systems involve a guiding program of some sort and one or more energy conversion mechanisms.
  • Energy has to be transformed into a usable form in order to do the work necessary to decrease entropy. That’s right. That work is done by life. Plants take solar energy (again – I’m not sure what “raw solar heat” means) and convert it into food. That food fuels the processes of life, which include development and reproduction. Evolution emerges from those processes- therefore the conditions that Morris speaks of are met.
  • But Morris next makes a very confused argument: Evolution has neither of these. Mutations are not “organizing” mechanisms, but disorganizing (in accord with the second law). They are commonly harmful, sometimes neutral, but never beneficial (at least as far as observed mutations are concerned). Natural selection cannot generate order, but can only “sieve out” the disorganizing mutations presented to it, thereby conserving the existing order, but never generating new order.
  • The notion that evolution (as if it’s a thing) needs to use energy is hopelessly confused. Evolution is a process that emerges from the system of life – and life certainly can use solar energy to decrease its entropy, and by extension the entropy of the biosphere. Morris slips into what is often presented as an information argument.  (Yet again – already dealt with. The pattern here is that we are seeing a shuffling around of the same tired creationists arguments.) It is first not true that most mutations are harmful. Many are silent, and many of those that are not silent are not harmful. They may be neutral, they may be a mixed blessing, and their relative benefit vs harm is likely to be situational. They may be fatal. And they also may be simply beneficial.
  • Morris finishes with a long rambling argument that evolution is religion. Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion — a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality . . . . Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today. Morris ties evolution to atheism, which, he argues, makes it a religion. This assumes, of course, that atheism is a religion. That depends on how you define atheism and how you define religion – but it is mostly wrong. Atheism is a lack of belief in one particular supernatural claim – that does not qualify it as a religion.
  • But mutations are not “disorganizing” – that does not even make sense. It seems to be based on a purely creationist notion that species are in some privileged perfect state, and any mutation can only take them farther from that perfection. For those who actually understand biology, life is a kluge of compromises and variation. Mutations are mostly lateral moves from one chaotic state to another. They are not directional. But they do provide raw material, variation, for natural selection. Natural selection cannot generate variation, but it can select among that variation to provide differential survival. This is an old game played by creationists – mutations are not selective, and natural selection is not creative (does not increase variation). These are true but irrelevant, because mutations increase variation and information, and selection is a creative force that results in the differential survival of better adapted variation.
  • Weiye Loh on 01 Mar 11
     
    One of my earlier posts on SkepticBlog was Ten Major Flaws in Evolution: A Refutation, published two years ago. Occasionally a creationist shows up to snipe at the post, like this one:i read this and found it funny. It supposedly gives a scientific refutation, but it is full of more bias than fox news, and a lot of emotion as well.here's a scientific case by an actual scientists, you know, one with a ph. D, and he uses statements by some of your favorite evolutionary scientists to insist evolution doesn't exist.i challenge you to write a refutation on this one.http://www.icr.org/home/resources/resources_tracts_scientificcaseagainstevolution/Challenge accepted.
Weiye Loh

journalism.sg » Racial and religious offence: Why censorship doesn't cut it - 1 views

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Community Regulation New Media Hate Speech Censorship Race Religion

shared by Weiye Loh on 11 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • All societies use a mix of approaches to address offensive speech. In international law, like at the European court of human rights and more and more jurisdictions, there is growing feeling that the law should really be a last resort and only used for the most extreme speech – speech that incites violence in a very direct way, or that is part of a campaign that violates the rights of minorities to live free of discrimination. In contrast, simply insulting and offending others, even if feelings are very hurt, is not seen as something that should invite a legal response. Using the law to protect feelings is too great an encroachment on freedom of speech.
  • Our laws are written very broadly, such that any sort of offence, even if it does not threaten imminent violence, is seen as deserving of strict regulation. This probably reflects a very strong social consensus that race and religion should be handled delicately. So we tend to rely on strong government. The state protects racial and religious sensibilities from offence, using censorship when there’s a danger of words and actions causing hurt.
  • in almost all cases, state action was instigated by complaints from members of the public. This is quite unlike political censorship, where action is initiated by the government, often with great resistance and opposition from netizens. In a string of cases involving racial and religious offence, however, it’s the netizens who tend to demand action, sometimes acting like a lynch mob.
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  • in many cases, the offensive messages were spread further by those reporting the offence.
  • What is the justification for strong police action against any form of speech? Why do we sometimes feel that it may not be enough to counter bad speech with good speech in free and open debate, and that we must instead use the law to stop the bad speech? Surely, it must be because we think the bad speech is so dangerous that it can cause immediate harm; or because we don’t trust the public to respond rationally, so we don’t know if good speech would indeed triumph in open debate. Usually, if we call in the authorities, it must be because we have a mental picture of offensive speech being like lighting a match in a combustible atmosphere. It is dangerous and there’s no time to debate the merits of that match – we just have to put it out. The irony of most of the cases that we have seen in the past few years is that the people demanding government action, as if the offensive words were explosive, were also those who helped to spread them. It is like helping to spread a fire while calling for the fire brigade.
  • their act of spreading the offensive content must mean that they did not actually believe that the expression was really that dangerous in the sense of prompting violence through reprisal attacks or riots. In reposting the offensive words or pictures, they showed that they actually trusted the public enough to respond sympathetically – they had faith that enough people would add their voices to the outrage that they themselves felt when they saw the offensive images or videos or words.
  • This then raises the question, why the need to involve the police at all? If Singaporeans are grown-up enough to defend their society against offensive speech, why have calls for prosecution and censorship become the automatic response? I wonder if this is an example of the well-known habit of unthinkingly relying on government to solve all our problems even when, with a little bit of effort in the form of grassroots action can do the job.
  • The next time people encounter racist or religiously offensive speech, it would be nice to see swift responses from credible and respected civil society groups, Members of Parliament, and other ordinary citizens. If the speaker doesn’t get the message, organise boycotts, for example, and give him or her the clear message that our society isn’t going to take such offence lying down. The more we can respond ourselves through open debate and grassroots action, without the need to ask law and order to step in, the stronger our society will be.
  • Weiye Loh on 11 Mar 12
     
    No matter how hard we work at developing media literacy, we should not expect to be rid of all racially offensive speech online. There are two broad ways to respond to these breaches. We can reach out horizontally and together with our fellow citizens repair the damage by persuading others to reject harmful ideas. Or, we can reach up vertically to government, getting the authorities to act against irresponsible speech by using the law. The advantage of the latter is that it seems more efficient, punishing those who cross the line of acceptability and violate social norms, and deterring others from doing the same. The horizontal approach works through persuasion rather than the law, so it is slower and not foolproof.
Weiye Loh

Skepticblog » Further Thoughts on the Ethics of Skepticism - 0 views

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skepticism Ethics Polarisation

shared by Weiye Loh on 13 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • My recent post “The War Over ‘Nice’” (describing the blogosphere’s reaction to Phil Plait’s “Don’t Be a Dick” speech) has topped out at more than 200 comments.
  • Many readers appear to object (some strenuously) to the very ideas of discussing best practices, seeking evidence of efficacy for skeptical outreach, matching strategies to goals, or encouraging some methods over others. Some seem to express anger that a discussion of best practices would be attempted at all. 
  • No Right or Wrong Way? The milder forms of these objections run along these lines: “Everyone should do their own thing.” “Skepticism needs all kinds of approaches.” “There’s no right or wrong way to do skepticism.” “Why are we wasting time on these abstract meta-conversations?”
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  • More critical, in my opinion, is the implication that skeptical research and communication happens in an ethical vacuum. That just isn’t true. Indeed, it is dangerous for a field which promotes and attacks medical treatments, accuses people of crimes, opines about law enforcement practices, offers consumer advice, and undertakes educational projects to pretend that it is free from ethical implications — or obligations.
  • there is no monolithic “one true way to do skepticism.” No, the skeptical world does not break down to nice skeptics who get everything right, and mean skeptics who get everything wrong. (I’m reminded of a quote: “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”) No one has all the answers. Certainly I don’t, and neither does Phil Plait. Nor has anyone actually proposed a uniform, lockstep approach to skepticism. (No one has any ability to enforce such a thing, in any event.)
  • However, none of that implies that all approaches to skepticism are equally valid, useful, or good. As in other fields, various skeptical practices do more or less good, cause greater or lesser harm, or generate various combinations of both at the same time. For that reason, skeptics should strive to find ways to talk seriously about the practices and the ethics of our field. Skepticism has blossomed into something that touches a lot of lives — and yet it is an emerging field, only starting to come into its potential. We need to be able to talk about that potential, and about the pitfalls too.
  • All of the fields from which skepticism borrows (such as medicine, education, psychology, journalism, history, and even arts like stage magic and graphic design) have their own standards of professional ethics. In some cases those ethics are well-explored professional fields in their own right (consider medical ethics, a field with its own academic journals and doctoral programs). In other cases those ethical guidelines are contested, informal, vague, or honored more in the breach. But in every case, there are serious conversations about the ethical implications of professional practice, because those practices impact people’s lives. Why would skepticism be any different?
  • , Skeptrack speaker Barbara Drescher (a cognitive pyschologist who teaches research methodology) described the complexity of research ethics in her own field. Imagine, she said, that a psychologist were to ask research subjects a question like, “Do your parents like the color red?” Asking this may seem trivial and harmless, but it is nonetheless an ethical trade-off with associated risks (however small) that psychological researchers are ethically obliged to confront. What harm might that question cause if a research subject suffers from erythrophobia, or has a sick parent — or saw their parents stabbed to death?
  • When skeptics undertake scientific, historical, or journalistic research, we should (I argue) consider ourselves bound by some sort of research ethics. For now, we’ll ignore the deeper, detailed question of what exactly that looks like in practical terms (when can skeptics go undercover or lie to get information? how much research does due diligence require? and so on). I’d ask only that we agree on the principle that skeptical research is not an ethical free-for-all.
  • when skeptics communicate with the public, we take on further ethical responsibilities — as do doctors, journalists, and teachers. We all accept that doctors are obliged to follow some sort of ethical code, not only of due diligence and standard of care, but also in their confidentiality, manner, and the factual information they disclose to patients. A sentence that communicates a diagnosis, prescription, or piece of medical advice (“you have cancer” or “undertake this treatment”) is not a contextless statement, but a weighty, risky, ethically serious undertaking that affects people’s lives. It matters what doctors say, and it matters how they say it.
  • Grassroots Ethics It happens that skepticism is my professional field. It’s natural that I should feel bound by the central concerns of that field. How can we gain reliable knowledge about weird things? How can we communicate that knowledge effectively? And, how can we pursue that practice ethically?
  • At the same time, most active skeptics are not professionals. To what extent should grassroots skeptics feel obligated to consider the ethics of skeptical activism? Consider my own status as a medical amateur. I almost need super-caps-lock to explain how much I am not a doctor. My medical training began and ended with a couple First Aid courses (and those way back in the day). But during those short courses, the instructors drummed into us the ethical considerations of our minimal training. When are we obligated to perform first aid? When are we ethically barred from giving aid? What if the injured party is unconscious or delirious? What if we accidentally kill or injure someone in our effort to give aid? Should we risk exposure to blood-borne illnesses? And so on. In a medical context, ethics are determined less by professional status, and more by the harm we can cause or prevent by our actions.
  • police officers are barred from perjury, and journalists from libel — and so are the lay public. We expect schoolteachers not to discuss age-inappropriate topics with our young children, or to persuade our children to adopt their religion; when we babysit for a neighbor, we consider ourselves bound by similar rules. I would argue that grassroots skeptics take on an ethical burden as soon as they speak out on medical matters, legal matters, or other matters of fact, whether from platforms as large as network television, or as small as a dinner party. The size of that burden must depend somewhat on the scale of the risks: the number of people reached, the certainty expressed, the topics tackled.
  • tu-quoque argument.
  • How much time are skeptics going to waste, arguing in a circular firing squad about each other’s free speech? Like it or not, there will always be confrontational people. You aren’t going to get a group of people as varied as skeptics are, and make them all agree to “be nice”. It’s a pipe dream, and a waste of time.
  • Weiye Loh on 13 Sep 10
     
    FURTHER THOUGHTS ON THE ETHICS OF SKEPTICISM
Weiye Loh

Rationally Speaking: Some animals are more equal than others - 0 views

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Animal Rights Morality Vegetarianism Ethics

shared by Weiye Loh on 13 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • society's answer to the question “Is it acceptable to hurt animals for our pleasure?” isn't always “No.” Odds are that most of the people who objected to the dog fighting and crush videos are frequent consumers of meat, milk, and eggs from industrialized farms. And the life of an animal in a typical industrialized farm is notoriously punishing. Many spend their lives in cages so confining they can barely move; ammonia fumes burn their eyes; their beaks or tails are chopped off to prevent them from biting each other out of stress; and the farm's conditions make many of them so sick or weak that they die in their cages or on the way to slaughter. As a society, however, we apparently believe that the pleasure we get from eating those animals makes their suffering worth it.
  • many people will object that eating animals isn’t a matter of pleasure at all, but of the need for sustenance. While that may have been true for our ancestors who survived by hunting wild animals, I don’t think it has much relevance to our current situation. First, it's questionable whether we actually do need to eat animal products in order to be healthy; the American Dietetic Association has given the thumbs up to vegetarian and even vegan diets. But even if you believe that some amount of animal product consumption is medically necessary, we could still buy from farms that raise their livestock much more humanely. It would cost more, but we could always compensate by cutting back on other luxuries, or simply by eating less meat. By any reasonable estimate, Americans could cut their meat consumption drastically with no ill effects on their health (and likely with many positive effects). Buying the sheer amount of meat that Americans do, at the low prices made possible by industrialized farms, is a luxury that can’t be defended with a “need for sustenance” argument. It’s about pleasure — the pleasure of eating more meat than strictly necessary for health, and the pleasure of saving money that can then be spent on other things we enjoy.
  • there are several reasons why people regard consumers of industrial farming differently than consumers of crush videos and dogfighting. The first has to do with the types of animals involved: pigs, cows, and chickens simply aren't as cute as dogs, bunnies, and kittens. I don't know how many people would explicitly cite that as the reason they're willing to inflict suffering on the former and not the latter, but it seems to play a role, even if people won't admit as much. People who have no qualms about a pig spending its life in a small, dark crate would nevertheless be outraged if a dog were treated in the same way.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Cuteness is a pretty silly criterion by which to assign moral status, though. It's not as if unappealing animals are less intelligent or less sensitive to pain.
  • And if you have any trouble seeing the absurdity of basing moral judgments on cuteness, it helps to try out the principle in other contexts. (Is it worse to abuse a cute child than an ugly one?)
  • But I think the biggest reason that different examples of hurting animals for pleasure elicit different reactions from people is not about the types of animals involved, but about the types of pleasure.
  • One objective difference people might cite is the fact that a desire to eat meat is “natural” while a desire to watch kittens being crushed is not. Which is true, in the sense that our species did evolve to eat meat while a fetish for crushing kittens is an aberration. But using naturalness as a criterion for moral rightness is a dubious move. First, it seems rather arbitrary, from a logical perspective, which is why it's often referred to as the naturalistic fallacy. And second, it would justify some pretty unsavory “natural” urges, like rape and tribalism, while prohibiting other “unnatural” urges, like the desire to wear clothing or to refrain from having children.
  • The closest thing that I can find to a morally relevant distinction between industrial farming, dogfighting, and crush videos is this: While it’s true that all three acts cause animal suffering in order to give people pleasure, the nature of that tradeoff differs. The consumers of crush videos and dogfighting are taking pleasure in the suffering itself, whereas the consumers of industrially-farmed meat are taking pleasure in the meat that was produced by the suffering. From a purely harm-based perspective, the moral calculus is the same: the animal suffers so that you can experience pleasure. But the degree of directness of that tradeoff makes a difference in how we perceive your character. Someone whose motive is “I enjoy seeing another creature suffer” seems more evil than someone whose motive is “I want a tasty meal,” even if both people cause the same amount of suffering.
  • And I can certainly understand why people would want to call a crush video enthusiast more “evil” than a person who buys meat from industrial farms, because of the difference in their motivations. That's a reasonable way to define evilness. But in that case we're left with the fact that a person's evilness may be totally unrelated to the amount of harm she causes; and that, in fact, some of the greatest harm may be caused by people whose motivations seem unobjectionable to us. Apathy, denial, conformity; none of these inspire the same outrage as sadism, but they've caused some pretty horrible outcomes. And if you believe that it's wrong to make animals suffer for our pleasure, but you reserve your moral condemnation only for cases that viscerally upset you, like dogfighting or crush videos, then you're falling prey to the trap that Isaac Asimov famously warned us against: “Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”
Weiye Loh

Mike Adams Remains True to Form « Alternative Medicine « Health « Skeptic North - 0 views

www.skepticnorth.com/...ike-adams-remains-true-to-form

Homeopathy Science Medicine Health News

shared by Weiye Loh on 22 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • The 10:23 demonstrations and the CBC Marketplace coverage have elicited fascinating case studies in CAM professionalism. Rather than offering any new information or evidence about homeopathy itself, some homeopaths have spuriously accused skeptical groups of being malicious Big Pharma shills.
  • Mike Adams of the Natural News website
  • has decided to provide his own coverage of the 10:23 campaign
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • Mike’s thesis is essentially: Silly skeptics, it’s impossible to OD on homeopathy!
  • 1. “Notice that they never consume their own medicines in large doses? Chemotherapy? Statin drugs? Blood thinners? They wouldn’t dare drink those.
  • Of course we wouldn’t. Steven Novella rightly points out that, though Mike thinks he’s being clever here, he’s actually demonstrating a lack of understanding for what the 10:23 campaign is about by using a straw man. Mike later issues a challenge for skeptics to drink their favourite medicines while he drinks homeopathy. Since no one will agree to that for the reasons explained above, he can claim some sort of victory — hence his smugness. But no one is saying that drugs aren’t harmful.
  • The difference between medicine and poison is in the dose. The vitamins and herbs promoted by the CAM industry are just as potentially harmful as any pharmaceutical drug, given enough of it. Would Adams be willing to OD on the vitamins or herbal remedies that he sells?
  • Even Adams’ favorite panacea, vitamin D, is toxic if you take enough of it (just ask Gary Null). Notice how skeptics don’t consume those either, because that is not the point they’re making.
  • The point of these demonstrations is that homeopathy has nothing in it, has no measurable physiological effects, and does not do what is advertised on the package.
  • 2. “Homeopathy, you see, isn’t a drug. It’s not a chemical.” Well, he’s got that right. “You know the drugs are kicking in when you start getting worse. Toxicity and conventional medicine go hand in hand.” [emphasis his]
  • Here I have to wonder if Adams knows any people with diabetes, AIDS, or any other illness that used to mean a death sentence before the significant medical advances of the 20th century that we now take for granted. So far he seems to be a firm believer in the false dichotomy that drugs are bad and natural products are good, regardless of what’s in them or how they’re used (as we know, natural products can have biologically active substances and effectively act as impure drugs – but leave it to Adams not to get bogged down with details). There is nothing to support the assertion that conventional medicine is nothing but toxic symptom-inducers.
  • 3-11. “But homeopathy isn’t a chemical. It’s a resonance. A vibration, or a harmony. It’s the restructuring of water to resonate with the particular energy of a plant or substance. We can get into the physics of it in a subsequent article, but for now it’s easy to recognize that even from a conventional physics point of view, liquid water has tremendous energy, and it’s constantly in motion, not just at the molecular level but also at the level of its subatomic particles and so-called “orbiting electrons” which aren’t even orbiting in the first place. Electrons are vibrations and not physical objects.” [emphasis his]
  • This is Star Trek-like technobabble – lots of sciency words
  • if something — anything — has an effect, then that effect is measurable by definition. Either something works or it doesn’t, regardless of mechanism. In any case, I’d like to see the well-documented series of research that conclusively proves this supposed mechanism. Actually, I’d like to see any credible research at all. I know what the answer will be to that: science can’t detect this yet. Well if you agree with that statement, reader, ask yourself this: then how does Adams know? Where did he get this information? Without evidence, he is guessing, and what is that really worth?
  • 13. “But getting back to water and vibrations, which isn’t magic but rather vibrational physics, you can’t overdose on a harmony. If you have one violin playing a note in your room, and you add ten more violins — or a hundred more — it’s all still the same harmony (with all its complex higher frequencies, too). There’s no toxicity to it.” [emphasis his]
  • Homeopathy has standard dosing regimes (they’re all the same), but there is no “dose” to speak of: the ingredients have usually been diluted out to nothing. But Adams is also saying that homeopathy doesn’t work by dose at all, it works by the properties of “resonance” and “vibration”. Then why any dosing regimen? To maintain the resonance? How is this resonance measured? How long does the “resonance” last? Why does it wear off? Why does he think televisions can inactivate homeopathy? (I think I might know the answer to that last one, as electronic interference is a handy excuse for inefficacy.)
  • “These skeptics just want to kill themselves… and they wouldn’t mind taking a few of you along with them, too. Hence their promotion of vaccines, pharmaceuticals, chemotherapy and water fluoridation. We’ll title the video, “SKEPTICS COMMIT MASS SUICIDE BY DRINKING PHARMACEUTICALS AS IF THEY WERE KOOL-AID.” Jonestown, anyone?”
  • “Do you notice the irony here? The only medicines they’re willing to consume in large doses in public are homeopathic remedies! They won’t dare consume large quantities of the medicines they all say YOU should be taking! (The pharma drugs.)” [emphasis his]
  • what Adams seems to have missed is that the skeptics have no intention of killing themselves, so his bizarre claims that the 10:23 participants are psychopathic, self-loathing, and suicidal makes not even a little bit of sense. Skeptics know they aren’t going to die with these demonstrations, because homeopathy has no active ingredients and no evidence of efficacy.
  • The inventor of homeopathy himself, Samuel Hahnemann believed that excessive doses of homeopathy could be harmful (see sections 275 and 276 of his Organon). Homeopaths are pros at retconning their own field to fit in with Hahnemann’s original ideas (inventing new mechanisms, such as water memory and resonance, in the face of germ theory). So how does Adams reconcile this claim?
Weiye Loh

Hacktivists as Gadflies - NYTimes.com - 0 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...hacktivists-as-gadflies

Hacking hacktivism Law Technology Censorship

shared by Weiye Loh on 14 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 14 Apr 13
     
    "Consider the case of Andrew Auernheimer, better known as "Weev." When Weev discovered in 2010 that AT&T had left private information about its customers vulnerable on the Internet, he and a colleague wrote a script to access it. Technically, he did not "hack" anything; he merely executed a simple version of what Google Web crawlers do every second of every day - sequentially walk through public URLs and extract the content. When he got the information (the e-mail addresses of 114,000 iPad users, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Rahm Emanuel, then the White House chief of staff), Weev did not try to profit from it; he notified the blog Gawker of the security hole. For this service Weev might have asked for free dinners for life, but instead he was recently sentenced to 41 months in prison and ordered to pay a fine of more than $73,000 in damages to AT&T to cover the cost of notifying its customers of its own security failure. When the federal judge Susan Wigenton sentenced Weev on March 18, she described him with prose that could have been lifted from the prosecutor Meletus in Plato's "Apology." "You consider yourself a hero of sorts," she said, and noted that Weev's "special skills" in computer coding called for a more draconian sentence. I was reminded of a line from an essay written in 1986 by a hacker called the Mentor: "My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for." When offered the chance to speak, Weev, like Socrates, did not back down: "I don't come here today to ask for forgiveness. I'm here to tell this court, if it has any foresight at all, that it should be thinking about what it can do to make amends to me for the harm and the violence that has been inflicted upon my life." He then went on to heap scorn upon the law being used to put him away - the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the same law that prosecutors used to go after the 26-year-old Internet activist Aaron Swart
Weiye Loh

"Cancer by the Numbers" by John Allen Paulos | Project Syndicate - 0 views

www.project-syndicate.org/...cancer-by-the-numbers

Data Interpretation Statistics Cost Benefits Harm Cancer Screening Health

shared by Weiye Loh on 25 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • The USPSTF recently issued an even sharper warning about the prostate-specific antigen test for prostate cancer, after concluding that the test’s harms outweigh its benefits. Chest X-rays for lung cancer and Pap tests for cervical cancer have received similar, albeit less definitive, criticism.CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphThe next step in the reevaluation of cancer screening was taken last year, when researchers at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy announced that the costs of screening for breast cancer were often minimized, and that the benefits were much exaggerated. Indeed, even a mammogram (almost 40 million are given annually in the US) that detects a cancer does not necessarily save a life.CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphThe Dartmouth researchers found that, of the estimated 138,000 breast cancers detected annually in the US, the test did not help 120,000-134,000 of the afflicted women. The cancers either were growing so slowly that they did not pose a problem, or they would have been treated successfully if discovered clinically later (or they were so aggressive that little could be done).
Weiye Loh

Should This Be the Last Generation? - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com - 0 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...ld-this-be-the-last-generation

Ethics

shared by Weiye Loh on 02 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Have you ever thought about whether to have a child? If so, what factors entered into your decision? Was it whether having children would be good for you, your partner and others close to the possible child, such as children you may already have, or perhaps your parents?
  • Some may also think about the desirability of adding to the strain that the nearly seven billion people already here are putting on our planet’s environment. But very few ask whether coming into existence is a good thing for the child itself.
  • we think it is wrong to bring into the world a child whose prospects for a happy, healthy life are poor, but we don’t usually think the fact that a child is likely to have a happy, healthy life is a reason for bringing the child into existence. This has come to be known among philosophers as “the asymmetry” and it is not easy to justify.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • How good does life have to be, to make it reasonable to bring a child into the world? Is the standard of life experienced by most people in developed nations today good enough to make this decision unproblematic
  • Arthur Schopenhauer held that even the best life possible for humans is one in which we strive for ends that, once achieved, bring only fleeting satisfaction.
  • One of Benatar’s arguments trades on something like the asymmetry noted earlier. To bring into existence someone who will suffer is, Benatar argues, to harm that person, but to bring into existence someone who will have a good life is not to benefit him or her.
  • Hence continued reproduction will harm some children severely, and benefit none.
  • human lives are, in general, much less good than we think they are. We spend most of our lives with unfulfilled desires, and the occasional satisfactions that are all most of us can achieve are insufficient to outweigh these prolonged negative states.
  • Weiye Loh on 02 Jul 10
     
    June 6, 2010, 5:15 PM Should This Be the Last Generation? By PETER SINGER
Chen Guo Lim

YouTube - Mika - Lady Jane - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

shared by Chen Guo Lim on 26 Aug 09 - Cached
  • Chen Guo Lim on 26 Aug 09
     
    while I was watching this video, I suddenly had a desire to share this video with my friends. Then I realised that there are serious ethics issues here. Such is the life of a NM4204 student. 1. Is it alright to video a clip of a live performance? Seeing as I have just spent a couple of hundreds on a ticket, surely I am allowed to bring home some memories. Leaving uploading online aside, is the act of recording infringing on rights? Seeing as it does not harm either party if the clip is stroed in my device, and I viewed at my own time. 2. By us (me that is to say) sharing this file while everyone in the class, have I stepped into the boundaries of infringing on copyrights, seeing as the playback of this clip asynchronously can constitute as a public performance right? In any case, enjoy this song first before you think about these. One of my favourite artist.
Weiye Loh

Management of gays revisited, part 1 « Yawning Bread on Wordpress - 0 views

yawningbread.wordpress.com/...ement-of-gays-revisited-part-1

Law Sexuality

shared by Weiye Loh on 23 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • Michael Hor noted that despite the vocal attempts to demonise gay people and paint homosexual orientation as injurious (including by some members of the ruling party) the government did not subscribe to such reasoning. Yet the government chose to keep the law.
  • The “key speech arguing for the retention of 377A” that Hor refers to was that made by Thio. Hor then goes on to discover that the government’s decision was bi-layered. The surface justification, going by the prime minister’s words, was that it would be symbolic — a “signpost of heterosexual orthodoxy”. Hor next asks what the motivation might be for wanting such a symbol. He examines the possibility that it could be to steer people towards heterosexual orientation, yet the government itself, from its own words, does not believe so.
  • As was well-known, the anti-gay movement was religiously inspired. The government however was neither dictated nor swayed by them, Hor said. In fact, the government “roundly rejected” the movement’s essential beliefs. Still, it appears that the government did not want to annoy them any further by leaving them empty-handed. That motivation alone made the government decide to retain 377A.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • But, Hor points out, Page 340: to give legislative effect to a norm which stems almost exclusively from Christian or Muslim beliefs does appear to be a curiously misguided decision. Take the example of the prohibition against eating pork — certainly a tenet of Islam and Judaism. No one would even suggest that we enact a law banning the consumption of pork in Singapore, even for Muslims, no matter how strongly these two religious communities feel about it.
  • With reference to the constitutional guarantee of equality before the law, Hor explains that this provision requires that, Page 340: law must not be “arbitrary”; there must be a “rational nexus” or “reasonable classification” between what the law targets and the purpose for which it is laid down.
  • Laws must be tested for “fit” and “weight”, he said. With respect to the former, the question is whether the classification of the target persons affected by the law fits the intended purpose of the law. As for “weight”, the question is whether whatever the problem the law purports to deal with is real and serious enough to justify the intervention of criminal sanction. Or is it mostly capricious?
    • Weiye Loh
      Weiye Loh on 23 Sep 10
       
      The weight of the law has to do with the probability that Foucault mentioned. 
  • decision to retain 377A is gravely problematic on both fronts. It does not fit very well at all. . . . If, as we have seen, the legislature was acting in some manner on the antipathy of certain segments of society towards homosexual activity, then the non-inclusion of women in 377A is a very huge omission indeed — more than half our population and presumably half of all homosexual activity.  It would be akin to subjecting half all our cars to a certain speed limit rule based on the colour of the car.
  • The element of “weight” is no less shaky. Can the sole purpose of accommodation of sectarian sensibilities ever be weighty enough to justify the criminalization of private sexual conduct between consenting adults? If the answer is “yes”, then it is hard to imagine for what earthly purpose the equal protection clause was written into the Constitution for. It is not the case that the Legislature has made a judgment that 377A activity is sufficiently harmful to society to attract criminal sanctions. . . the speech of PM Lee shows a clear belief that it is not so harmful — but 377A was to remain for, apparently, the sole purpose of appeasing those who disapprove.
  • It is not difficult to see that if the desire to accommodate a disapproving segment of society is reason enough, that would result in the evisceration of equal protection. . . Equal protection is about protection against prejudice, and if the government does not buy into the substantive arguments (of those who disapprove) for criminalization, then those putative reasons become, as far as the government is concerned, prejudice.
  • Weiye Loh on 23 Sep 10
     
    In Chapter 19 of a new book Management of Success, Singapore revisited, National University of Singapore law professor Michael Hor makes a strong argument that Section 377A of the Penal Code is unconstitutional. This is the law that makes it an offence for men to have sexual relations with each other, effectively criminalising male homosexuality.
Weiye Loh

Is it a boy or a girl? You decide - Prospect Magazine « Prospect Magazine - 0 views

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/...-girl-sex-selection-conception

Bioethics

shared by Weiye Loh on 01 May 10 - Cached
  • The only way to guarantee either a daughter or son is to undergo pre-implantation genetic diagnosis: a genetic analysis of an embryo before it is placed in the womb. This is illegal in Britain except for couples at risk of having a child with a life-threatening gender-linked disorder.
  • It’s also illegal for clinics to offer sex selection methods such as MicroSort, that sift the slightly larger X chromosome-bearing (female) sperm from their weedier Y chromosome-bearing (male) counterparts, and then use the preferred sperm in an IVF cycle. With a success rate hovering around 80-90 per cent, it’s better than Mother Nature’s odds of conception, but not immaculate.
  • Years ago I agreed with this ban on socially motivated sex selection. But I can’t defend that stance today. My opposition was based on two worries: the gender balance being skewed—look at China—and the perils of letting society think it’s acceptable to prize one sex more than the other. Unlike many politicians, however, I think it is only right and proper to perform an ideological U-turn when presented with convincing opposing evidence.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • A 2003 survey published in the journal Human Reproduction showed that few British adults would be concerned enough about their baby’s gender to use the technology, and most adults wanted the same number of sons as daughters
  • Bioethics specialist Edgar Dahl of the University of Geissen found that 68 per cent of Britons craved an equal number of boys and girls; 6 per cent wanted more boys; 4 per cent more girls; 3 per cent only boys; and 2 per cent only girls. Fascinatingly, even if a baby’s sex could be decided by simply taking a blue pill or a pink pill, 90 per cent of British respondents said they wouldn’t take it.
  • What about the danger of stigmatising the unwanted sex if gender selection was allowed? According to experts on so-called “gender disappointment,” the unwanted sex would actually be male.
  • I may think it is old-fashioned to want a son so that he can inherit the family business, or a daughter to have someone to go shopping with. But how different is that from the other preferences and expectations we have for our children, such as hoping they will be gifted at mathematics, music or sport? We all nurture secret expectations for our children: I hope that mine will be clever, beautiful, witty and wise. Perhaps it is not the end of the world if we allow some parents to add “female” or “male” to the list.
  • Weiye Loh on 01 May 10
     
    Is it a boy or a girl? You decide ANJANA AHUJA   28th April 2010  -  Issue 170 Choosing the sex of an unborn child is illegal, but would it harm society if it wasn't?
Weiye Loh

Singapore M.D.: A New Low for SMA - 0 views

singaporemd.blogspot.com/...new-low-for-sma.html

Alternative Medicine Science TCM Singapore

shared by Weiye Loh on 15 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • I am used to SMA's weak stance against alternative medicine, but this letter in the ST Forum today is a new low for the "professional" association.Unwise to criticise alternative medicine, says SMA
  • Notice how Dr Razak had not addressed Dr Ho's main focus, which were on the lack of evidence behind alternative medicine.
  • Instead of accusing Dr Ho of failing to "take SMA's proposal to amend the SMC ethical code in context", Dr Razak should perhaps ask himself why SMC's ethical code specifically makes that distinction between medicine and "complementary medicine" - as I have argued in my previous posts, just because practitioners of a certain mode of alternative medicine are registered does not mean that there is any evidence backing their claims; reality does not alter itself because of cultural beliefs, political decrees, economic conveniences, or public opinion.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • There are many forms of alternative medicine out there which are being sold to unsuspecting patients. Just because they are a part of our "cultural beliefs" or that they are renting shop spaces in our hospitals does not mean that doctors as a profession must accept them or not speak up against them. If you know that certain forms of alternative medicine are ineffective or indeed potentially harmful, but choose not to advocate against it because you do not want to be seen as "self-serving", what does that say about your strength of character? Will we rather our patients be harmed by such therapy than we be falsely accused of being self-serving?
  • If we claim to be a profession that is built upon science, if we claim to be advocates for our patients, then we must speak up even when we know it will not be well-received, even when we know it will offend.
  • SMA needs to ask itself whether it will choose what is expedient over what is right, and whether it is more important to be popular or to be intellectually honest.
Weiye Loh

SAY IT IN 17 WORDS: In Case You Missed It, Karin Calvo-Goller Explains it All for You - 0 views

plogspot101.blogspot.com/...you-missed-it-karin-calvo.html

Libel Academic Freedom Publication Selection

shared by Weiye Loh on 13 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • IMPORTANT NOTE: There is one point in this case that was totally misunderstood by many of the international observers and that point needs to be underlined here:  in France, no one goes to prison for libel. [All that a defendant in a lawsuit in France risks, such as the one that Calvo-Goller brought against Joseph Weiler, is a fine, and even then, even if the court decides in the plantiff's favor, against the defendant, even then, the defendant is not considered a criminal under French law since libel is a misdemeanor and not a crime under French law.]
  • I could not ignore Mr. Weigend's review and particularly [the suggestion] that, in my book, I had simply restated the contents of existing legal texts.
  • Q. How do you respond to the suggestion made by some observers that bringing the complaint in France amounted to libel tourism or forum shopping? A. I disagree with my critics completely. ... The court ruling states that "for reasons of preference ... she considered that only French law offered her a chance of being successful." But there was no option since, under two Israel Supreme Court judgments, at the relevant time (July 2007) the Internet was not considered'"contrary to the printed media, for instance'"to constitute a means of publishing what is deemed to be a libelous text or expression. I spoke to an American lawyer earlier, and I was told that in an American court, I would have had to prove "malice," among other [things]. ...
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The freedom to hold opinions and to express opinions is a right expressly provided in international human-rights covenants. This includes the freedom to criticize other people's ideas and works. These freedoms are the basic premise for the transmission and exchange of knowledge among others. However, one of the very few restrictions to the exercise of these rights is the respect of the rights or reputation of others. An author, [like] any human being, is entitled to the respect of his reputation. The publication of works of course exposes an author to criticism, but it does not deprive him of the right to the respect of his reputation. Fair criticism does not automatically mean that rights of the authors were disregarded. ...
  • In my view, fair criticism of someone else's idea can initially be put on the Internet without the agreement of the author. If an author finds the criticism unfair or erroneous and informs the manager or editor of the site accordingly, the author should be entitled to respond and be granted the same space as was accorded to the criticism, and'"I want to emphasize'"not only in the form of a comment. Where the author considers the criticism to be libelous and harmful to his reputation, another mutually agreed-upon reviewer should be found and, whatever the outcome, it [the review] can be posted. But in the meantime, the criticism should be removed. Words can cause tremendous harm, and there are higher principles telling us not to do so.
Weiye Loh

'A Gay Girl in Damascus' Is Actually a Married Guy in Edinburgh - Gawker - 0 views

gawker.com/5811169

Simulacrum Simulation Homosexuality Politics Post-Colonialism Blog New Media

shared by Weiye Loh on 13 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • At the time of the post describing Amina's arrest, "A Gay Girl in Damascus" was generally accepted at face value. But the young woman's story began to fall apart under the scrutiny of the bloggers and journalists attempting to fact-check it and follow up. She frequently canceled interviews at the last minute. A photo that Amina sent to The Guardian turned out to be stolen from the Facebook account of a British-Croatian woman named Jelena Lecic. NPR's Andy Carvin discovered that no one—not even her Canadian girlfriend—had met Amina in person.
  • MacMaster confessed on the blog: Apology to readers I never expected this level of attention. While the narrative voıce may have been fictional, the facts on thıs blog are true and not mısleading as to the situation on the ground. I do not believe that I have harmed anyone — I feel that I have created an important voice for issues that I feel strongly about. I only hope that people pay as much attention to the people of the Middle East and their struggles in thıs year of revolutions. The events there are beıng shaped by the people living them on a daily basis. I have only tried to illuminate them for a western audience. This experience has sadly only confirmed my feelings regarding the often superficial coverage of the Middle East and the pervasiveness of new forms of liberal Orientalism. However, I have been deeply touched by the reactions of readers. Best, Tom MacMaster, Istanbul, Turkey July 12, 2011 The sole author of all posts on this blog
  • MacMaster, fighting the good fight against liberal Orientalism, hasn't harmed anyone, huh? We wonder if "Amina"'s girlfriend feels the same way.
  • Weiye Loh on 13 Jun 11
     
    a post appeared on the prominent blog "A Gay Girl in Damascus" claiming that the blogger, an out Syrian lesbian who wrote under the name Amina Arraf, had been kidnapped by Syrian security forces. As it turned out, there was no Amina-just a guy in Scotland named Tom.
kenneth yang

SD ballot measure would ease restrictions on stem cell research - 1 views

PIERRE, S.D. (AP) - A proposed ballot issue to ease restrictions on stem cell research will strike a chord with South Dakotans because nearly everyone has had a serious disease or knows someone who...

ethics rights stem cell

started by kenneth yang on 21 Oct 09 no follow-up yet
Weiye Loh

Effect of alcohol on risk of coronary heart diseas... [Vasc Health Risk Manag. 2006] - ... - 0 views

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...17326330

Alcohol Bias Researh Methodology

shared by Weiye Loh on 22 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Studies of the effects of alcohol consumption on health outcomes should recognise the methodological biases they are likely to face, and design, analyse and interpret their studies accordingly. While regular moderate alcohol consumption during middle-age probably does reduce vascular risk, care should be taken when making general recommendations about safe levels of alcohol intake. In particular, it is likely that any promotion of alcohol for health reasons would do substantially more harm than good.
  • . The consistency in the vascular benefit associated with moderate drinking (compared with non-drinking) observed across different studies, together with the existence of credible biological pathways, strongly suggests that at least some of this benefit is real.
  • However, because of biases introduced by: choice of reference categories; reverse causality bias; variations in alcohol intake over time; and confounding, some of it is likely to be an artefact. For heavy drinking, different study biases have the potential to act in opposing directions, and as such, the true effects of heavy drinking on vascular risk are uncertain. However, because of the known harmful effects of heavy drinking on non-vascular mortality, the problem is an academic one.
  • Weiye Loh on 22 Apr 11
     
    Studies of the effects of alcohol consumption on health outcomes should recognise the methodological biases they are likely to face, and design, analyse and interpret their studies accordingly. While regular moderate alcohol consumption during middle-age probably does reduce vascular risk, care should be taken when making general recommendations about safe levels of alcohol intake.
Weiye Loh

Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog: Analysis of the Nisbet Report -- Part II, Political Views of S... - 0 views

rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/...-of-nisbet-report-part-ii.html

Science Politics Conservative Liberal Ideological Affiliation Data

shared by Weiye Loh on 24 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • One part of Matthew Nisbet's recent report that has received very little attention is its comparative analysis of ideological and partisan perspectives of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Nisbet shows that AAAS members are extremely partisan and ideological.  The word "extremely" is mine, and what do I mean by it?  Look at the figure above:  AAAS members are more partisan than MSNBC viewers and even Tea Party members.  AAAS members are more ideological than evangelical churchgoers but less so than Fox News viewers.  In both cases AAAS members are very different than the public as a whole.
  • Dan Sarewitz has discussed the problems with the ideological and partisan likemindedness of our scientific community, which has been exploited and reenforced in political debates: During the Bush administration, Democrats discovered that they could score political points by accusing Bush of being anti-science. In the process, they seem to have convinced themselves that they are the keepers of the Enlightenment spirit, and that those who disagree with them on issues like climate change are fundamentally irrational. Meanwhile, many Republicans have come to believe that mainstream science is corrupted by ideology and amounts to no more than politics by another name. Attracted to fringe scientists like the small and vocal group of climate skeptics, Republicans appear to be alienated from a mainstream scientific community that by and large doesn't share their political beliefs. The climate debacle is only the most conspicuous example of these debilitating tendencies, which play out in issues as diverse as nuclear waste disposal, protection of endangered species, and regulation of pharmaceuticals. How would a more politically diverse scientific community improve this situation? First, it could foster greater confidence among Republican politicians about the legitimacy of mainstream science. Second, it would cultivate more informed, creative, and challenging debates about the policy implications of scientific knowledge. This could help keep difficult problems like climate change from getting prematurely straitjacketed by ideology. A more politically diverse scientific community would, overall, support a healthier relationship between science and politics.
  • It should come as no surprise that the increasing politicization of science has come to make science more political rather than politics more scientific.  At the same time, the more partisan and/or and ideological that you are, the more welcome and comfortable that you will find the politicization of science, as it reenforces your preconceptions.
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  • It also fits perfectly into a political strategy that holds that arguments about science can help to resolve political debates.  Climate change is only the most visible of this tendency, where the empirical evidence shows that efforts to wage climate politics through climate science have had the greatest effect in magnifying the partisan divide.  Some are blinded by these dynamics -- for instance Chris Mooney excuses the extreme partisanship/ideology of AAAS members by blaming  . . . George W. Bush.
  • Anyone concerned with political decision making in a society that contains a diversity of partisan and ideological perspectives should be concerned that, in one sector at least, the experts that we rely on have views that are far different than the broader society.  One response to this would be to wage a political battle to try to convert the broader society to the values of the experts, perhaps through the idea that improving science communication or education a great value transformation will occur.
  • My sense is that this strategy is not just doomed to fail, but will have some serious blowback effects on the scientific community itself.  More likely from my view is that such efforts to transform society through science will instead lead to the partisan debates across society taking firmer root within our expert communities. This is a topic that deserves more discussion and debate.  Dan Sarewitz concludes provocatively that, "A democratic society needs Republican scientists."
  • It is important to recognize that hyper-partisans like Joe Romm and Chris Mooney will continue to seek to poison the wells of discussion within the scientific community (which is left-leaning, so this is a discuss that needs to occur at least to start within the left) through constant appeals to partisanship and ideology.  Improving the role of science and scientists in our political debates will require an ability to rise above such efforts to associate the scientific community with only a subset of partisan and ideological perspectives.  But science and expertise belongs to all of us, and should make society better as a whole.
  • anecdote is not the singular of data.
  • One benefit of the politicizing of science is that it caused smart people outside the field to look closely at what was going on behind the curtain. That has been harmful to the short run reputation of science, but helpful to the long run competence of science.
  • I think that the Nisbet report missed the point entirely.This is a better summary of the problem the AGW promotion industry is facing:http://www.publicserviceeurope.com/article/136/climate-fatigue-leaves-global-warming-in-the-cold#commentHere is a nice part:"The public's concern about global warming as a pressing problem is in marked decline not least because of the growing realisation that governments and the international community are ignoring the advice of climate campaigners. Instead, most policy makers around the world refuse to accept any decisions that are likely to harm national interests and economic competitiveness.They are assisted in this policy of benign neglect by a public that has largely become habituated to false alarms and is happy to ignore other claims of environmental catastrophe that are today widely disregarded or seen as scare tactics."Nisbet's intricate mechanisms resolutely avoid facing this reality, and in doing so is left with little meaning.
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