Clearly, I was wrong.
I underestimated the strength of Trump and his supporters.
We’re into new territory now. Heavens help us all.
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I created this blog 10 years ago. I’ve been posting to it occasionally and regularly over that time. My blogging has been quite random, mainly covering the boundaries between science and pseudoscience, but it’s also been a place to post my photos.
The original name of the blog was “Sunny Spells and Scattered Showers”, shortened subsequently to “Sunny Spells”. A few years ago, I became aware that another blog of the same name had been created. This other blog has been quite successful. It talks bravely about the very important topic of depression, a topic indeed close to my own heart.
In order to avoid confusion between our blogs, and perhaps to give my blog a name more attuned to the things I write about, I have decided to move to a new site: passiveimpressions.com. Over the weekend, I will move all my content will there. Any hits to this blog will be automatically redirected there.
Stay tuned. If you are a follower of this blog, I hope to see you on the other side.
It strikes me that Hillary Clinton is going to have one of the easiest campaigns of any candidate for American President in modern history.
In normal times, elections often focus on policies and the decisions likely to be made should they rule the country. Serious politicians will have thought at length about unemployment and growing the economy. They will have detailed plans on social policy, helping the marginalised, crime, education, health, transport, environmental issues and defence. This is to convey the impression that they are ready for government, that they have new ideas and that their policies are better than the opposition. In serious elections with serious politicians, these issues will be teased apart from every angle imaginable. The politicians will get grilled on their grasp of the issues; they will be hammered for their mistakes. Attritional battles will be fought on many fronts, requiring super human energy from the candidates.
These, of course, are not normal times. Clinton’s policies are wholly subsidiary to the personality and sheer instability of her opponent. She could have a plan to introduce compulsory military service for twelve year olds, or to drill a hole through the centre of the earth, or to chocolate-bomb Djibouti, and no one would care. As long as it’s her in the Presidency and not the impetuous man-child who happens to be the only opposition candidate in town, how bad could it be?
So while he rants about walls and guns, political correctness and single mothers, while he insults military families and respected judges and while he threatens assassinations and insurrections, Hillary can sit back, knowing that she doesn’t need to defend her policies in any great detail.
And honestly, that’s a great pity. In the end it’s these policies that will have the greatest impact on the lives of ordinary Americans and the rest of the world. A credible opposition would at least be able to apply forensic scrutiny to her platform, giving us an insight into the type of Presidency she might have in store. We already know what kind of dystopian disaster a Trump administration might be, but with Hillary, well, we’re going to have to take her word for it.
It takes an extraordinary person to go after a global pseudoscience network and dismantle it, piece by piece. The network involved is the Genesis II cult, whose schtick has been to promise “miracle” cures to parents of autistic children. If they would only drink bleach, or have it forced up their rectums, their children would be cured of autism. These people have made their fortunes by selling industrial bleach to vulnerable parents. They couldn’t care less who got hurt in the process. Despite negative publicity and widespread condemnation, they seemed unstoppable. Business is business, right?
Then someone – a parent of autistic children – took them on. Working with concerned parents in other countries, she got the media to take note. By contacting the papers, independent journalists, TV stations, radio stations and networks, she brought the church’s tactics into the light. Documentaries were commissioned, special investigations produced, exposing Genesis II for who they were. At this time, the cult and their associates are in disarray. The light of publicity has not been kind to them. Some of the perpetrators are in prison, and more criminal convictions may soon follow.
The person who helped to make this happen is Fiona O’Leary. Fiona is an extraordinary person who I’m proud to know. Based in West Cork in Ireland, Fiona spends hours each day following up leads, talking to people around the world, reaching out to parents and victims – all the while getting the message out about the bleacher cult and their tactics. Fiona herself is on the autistic spectrum, which perhaps contributes to her tenacity. She is courageous to a fault; she has a strong sense of justice and she won’t easily give up.
Enter Andrew Wakefield. Wakefield is notorious in pseudoscience circles, having been responsible for perhaps the greatest health scare in recent memory. The story of Andrew Wakefield is as bad a tale of professional misconduct as it is possible to find. After the publication of a now discredited and retracted paper that associated the MMR vaccine with bowel and brain damage, a public health crisis emerged that resulted in old-diseases making an unwelcome return, with avoidable injury and needless deaths following in their wake. Wakefield’s medical license was revoked after he failed to disclose financial conflicts of interest and ethics violations.
Wakefield has been working hard to restore his disgraced reputation. His latest attempt is “Vaxxed“, a documentary that attempts to create a parallel history of what really happened, while scaring the bejesus out of parents. The Guardian noted how the documentary ignores contradictory evidence, while rehashing utterly discredited claims. The documentary film-maker Penny Lane commented “this film is not some sort of disinterested investigation into the ‘vaccines cause autism’ hoax; this film is directed by the person who perpetuated the hoax.” The Washington Post said it should come with a warning label: “May cause irrational anxiety, especially if taken with an empty head.” Variety Magazine called it a “scientifically dubious hodgepodge of free-floating paranoia, heart-rending imagery and anti-Big Pharma conspiracy mongering.”
As far as I am aware, none of these highly reviewers received a threat of legal action from the producers of the movie. However, last week, Fiona O’Leary did. According to the legal notice sent to Fiona “We will ask for punitive damages and financial compensation for all losses to our business directly resulting from your actions.”
What utter cowards these people are. Fiona was within her rights to alert people to the vast problems inherent in the documentary – the facts left unsaid, the real story about what Wakefield had done, the treatment of his critics. “Vaxxed” is a piece of dangerous propaganda with a direct public health impact. By attempting to rekindle the mythical link between vaccines and autism, it puts needless guilt on parents of autistic children, implying – when there is no empirical evidence to back it up – that somehow they are responsible for what happened. If you were a parent and you knew the damage that such allegations could wreak, wouldn’t you be anxious to criticise them too? Clearly, Cinema Libre, like a classic bully, prefer to go for the small people first.
So, instead of accounting for the massive problems in their worthless and dangerous pseudo-documentary, Cinema Libre took a campaigner with a distinguished record of defending autistic parents and they threatened her with legal action. Honestly, I hope this move backfires on them utterly. They deserve every piece of bad publicity they get.
Further reading:
Vaxxed distributor threatened Fiona O’Leary – they’re afraid of facts
Cinema Libre Studios and Andrew Wakefield’s Vaxxed team threaten autistic autism mom
http://www.harpocratesspeaks.com/2016/07/cinema-libre-bullies-critics.html
http://www.eveningecho.ie/cork-news/us-film-studio-threatens-to-sue-autism-rights-advocate/2500229/
So here’s the story: a few days ago, Cara Augustenborg wrote an article for the Irish Examiner about Glyphosphate, the active ingredient in the the herbicide Roundup.
This raised some red flags with me and I said so on Twitter. What followed was a strong back and forth among me and some friends, and people who supported the article.
Cara has written a blog article in response, but in it she doesn’t really address the criticisms we had, and mainly restates her original points.
http://www.caraaugustenborg.com/latest-news/a-round-up-on-monsanto
In her response, my suggestion that she went on a Gish Gallop is mentioned, alluding to a rhetorical style of proving one’s case through quantity of arguments rather than quality.
The thing is, I do care whether Roundup is rigid and dangerous. If the science weighs in that direction, I would be happy to see it being restricted and banned. I have absolutely no skin in this game as I really am not a farming or food expert, nor do I care either way about Monsanto.
The only thing I do know for a fact is that there is considerable debate in the scientific community about glyphosphate and it appears that the author is taking a position that is actually out of step with our current knowledge about the product. Minority views are fine within science, but they need a strong evidence base themselves in order to change minds on the matter.
The second thing that I noticed about the article was that it failed to give a hearing or acknowledgment to the scientific consensus. It’s a style thing, but it comes across as polemical and self serving. The entire article supports the view that glyphosphate is bad. It uses studies to support this, but there are more studies pointing in a different direction, and these are entirely ignored. It’s a style thing as it comes across as cherry picking, i.e., here’s my position, now here’s everything that supports my position, therefore my position is right. This is flawed logic.
The last thing is that it doesn’t really address the food security question. If we remove it, what do we replace it with in order to ensure we can safely feed people? Honestly, if we get to a situation where we don’t need to spray crops to keep weeds and pests at bay, I would be very happy, so long as people have enough food. My understanding is that glyphospate is an important tool in the armoury. Let’s not replace it with something that’s worse for the environment, or something that puts global food supplies at risk.
And called an idiot.
Turns out I may not have just an army of one after all.
Thank you to the many friends I can call upon if this story goes further.
Here’s a short story.
Once upon a time people used to get sick a lot. Everything would be fine one day, then bang, the next day you were dying. Young kids mainly. They were lucky to still be alive at age five. Every now and then a big plague would roll through and randomly take lots of people away. A small wound could fester and kill you. Life wasn’t easy.
Doctors weren’t much help. They had this idea that sickness had something to do with too much blood. Often, their treatments were a lot like torture. And no painkillers either. Back then, people rightfully believed that if the sickness didn’t kill you, the doctors most certainly would.
Then, a doctor noticed something odd: something to do with not washing hands. People with dirty hands tended to make other people sick. Another doctor discovered that a small dose of good pox tended to ward away smallpox, that in its day, killed millions. Another man discovered that vitamin C could prevent scurvy. Another man came across a way to reduce pain during surgery. Small, incredible steps, but still lots of kids were dying. Nobody had an answer for it.
Tiny little creatures, smaller than you could imagine. They turned out to be a big part of the problem. Kill them and you could ward off hundreds of diseases. It took a while, but finally doctors found effective remedies. We call them antibiotics. Because of them, we don’t see so much TB or cholera these days. They used to kill lots of people too.
We discovered that our immune system had evolved to find the tiniest of invaders and destroy them. Prime it properly with tiny doses and you could prevent many diseases before they took hold. In this way, vaccines were invented to control deadly diseases such as measles and polio and whooping cough.
Other drugs were found and refined. Drugs that could treat some cancers. Drugs that gave greater pain relief and a better quality of life. And not just drugs, but therapies, health advice, early warning indicators, surgical procedures, and lots more.
And you know what? The number of children dying has been slashed. People don’t often die from simple cuts. Cancer is not the death sentence it once was. We are living longer, healthier lives with fewer bedridden days, choked up in pain.
This progress was achieved, not so much by some great idea, but because of many smaller ones, and something else: the learning that came from lots and lots of mistakes. Too much, too little, saw it too late, hit the wrong thing, gave up too soon. All these hard lessons helped doctors find better ways, to refine their techniques. That’s what medicine is: the sum total of what we know, through experiment, failure and hard experience, about what approaches work best when our health is at risk. Not perfect, but compared to 200 years ago, utterly amazing. It’s possibly the greatest achievement of our species since we started walking on this planet.
So why is it, that so many people want to ignore all this, or pretend it doesn’t matter? Why do they hark back to these earlier times, when so many people died? Perhaps it’s because medicine has been too successful, so it’s taken for granted? Perhaps it’s too technical, too elite, therefore creating suspicion? Perhaps there’s a longing for simplicity and simple solutions: a Donald Trump approach, as it were? Perhaps the complexity and messiness of medicine is too much for some? Perhaps it’s a demand for perfection; we cannot abide not knowing? Or maybe it’s all about show and celebrity and charisma these days, and not so much the pedestrian advice of your family GP?
All this is just conceit: at the core is a celebration of ignorance over hard earned knowledge – that our opinions, no matter how poorly thought out, are just as deserving of respect. It’s a voice of privilege, a voice from the comfort zone, ignorant of a time when knowledge, any knowledge, would have been a blessing. We live in strange times.
If we listen too much to the charlatans and ideologues and the crafted media voices, a time may well come where these wrongheaded beliefs take primacy over empirical knowledge. In which case, life could quickly regress to being nasty, brutal and short. With outbreaks of old diseases from communities that refuse to accept modern healthcare, we’re already seeing it. Hopefully it’s not a signpost to the future.
There is a broadcaster in Cork, Neil Prendeville, who has no problem promoting pseudoscience and instilling fear into people during his radio programme. He regularly invites a guest, Michael O’Doherty, whom he calls a healthcare professional, onto his show to expound on vaccines and antibiotics. O’Doherty has no medical qualifications. He is a quack healer whose shtick seems to be that natural is good, that the body is capable of healing itself without the need for modern medicine.
This stuff is dangerous. It is simply not true to say that our bodies are able to deal with every illness that comes along. The flu, a common disease, kills millions of people every year. Before modern medicine, deaths from smallpox, measles and TB were common. They are much less so now because of vaccines, antibiotics and antivirals. Where is the evidence for the great natural panaceas they keep talking about? In the face of an invader, eating berries and taking exercise won’t always cut it. That’s not how human physiology works.
Another pernicious lie that’s promoted is that when you get sick, it’s your fault. If only you had been thinking properly, or meditating the right way, or drinking the correct drinks, or eating the right foods, you wouldn’t have fallen ill. Sure, some lifestyles are decidedly unhealthy, but healthy people still get sick, all the time, through no fault of their own. Telling people that they are responsible creates unnecessary guilt while scaring them away from treatment options that might save their lives. It’s awful.
Prendeville says he is not anti-vaccinatipn, yet he regularly promotes anti-vaccination views. He promotes a culture of suspicion around medicine and medical practitioners. On a regular basis, he lays into the medical profession while promoting some of the worst pseudoscience imaginable. Not to put too fine a point on it, but he’s endangering people’s health.
Sure, if you are fool enough to believe him, the argument could be made that it’s your fault. But what of your children or elderly and incapacitated adults that might depend on you? What of innocent bystanders whose kids you might be putting at risk because you won’t vaccinate your children?
But what to do about it?
Write a strongly worded letter to Red FM? Send a complaint to the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland? What will that do, exactly?
Complain to my local TDs? What will that achieve, exactly?
Blog away like I am doing, to the 20 or so people who read this blog?
Write to the Irish Medical council and other healthcare agencies to let them know what he’s up to?
Is it a free speech issue, so better off being left alone? Do I keep quiet and suck it up?
I don’t know. All I do know is that a radio personality is abusing his power and influence to scare people away from practical healthcare, and it feels like nobody cares about it, except for me and my army of one.
Update: here is a link to the show in question. The Gardasil / vaccine discussion starts about 50 minutes into the show.
Update 2: I have amended a statement that Prendeville tells people not to vaccinate their kids, which is not correct. I have also had feedback that he introduces O’Doherty as a healthcare professional. I have corrected this also.
Another day, another speech by a cleric, frustrated that all their historic entitlements are fading away.
“The alternative is a vacuum that can express itself in nihilism and the growing phenomenon in our schools of self harm,” he said.
Fuck nihilism. It’s a trope used against atheists for so long, you would think it should be given an honorary peerage at this stage.
As an atheist for over 25 years, I feel about as un-nihilistic as it’s possible to be. I find meaning in so much: my friends, my children, my thoughts and my many different enthusiasms. The idea that this life is meaningless to me is laughable.
The truth is that meaning is not exclusive to the pious. There is so much wonder and fascination in this world that it would be impossible to get through it all in a lifetime, nay, twenty lifetimes. Finding meaning in things is what we all do, whether that be helping kids, building Lego towers, watching football or blogging random thoughts.
The non-religious life can be as rich in thoughts, emotion and meaningful achievement as anyone wearing the sunglasses of a faith. It just comforts some people to think otherwise.
The diminishment of religion in our schools will not herald in a life without meaning. The doors to a life of curiosity, fascination, purpose and love have always been open to us. You don’t have to believe in a deity to appreciate this fully.
Passive Impressions 
A mistake in logic.
Just because something happened before it, doesn’t mean it caused it.
Just because a footballer forgot to bless himself before a game, doesn’t mean that’s why they lost the match.
Just because a screaming sound was heard in the middle of the night, doesn’t mean your granduncle is going to die.
Just because a vaccine was given doesn’t necessarily mean it caused a sickness at a later date.
Other things: a virus, an infection, the ageing and growth process, genetics, a stressful situation, other people, might have caused it too.
Trying to figure out root cause is really, really difficult, but if you rush to a conclusion about cause, without doing the hard work, chances are you are going to be wrong.
The hard work, trying to figure out causes? We call that science.
And that is why you need to bring in scientific voices and scientific studies when you are discussing issues like vaccines, because they are the only people who have done the work to assess root cause.
Let me reiterate that. They are the only people who have done the hard work. They are the only people who must take the emotion out of it, who must control for bias, who must look at all the data, who must go about it the right way, in order to be taken seriously. They get penalised for taking short cuts, something that doesn’t happen when we give our opinions or talk about our experience.
If you exclude the scientific consensus and scientific voices from a discussion on vaccines, or if you think it’s “just another opinion”, then you are biasing the discussion. No ifs, no buts.
If you exclude the scientific consensus, you are not looking at the whole picture. And, you might be scaring people without just cause.
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