Smilodon’s Retreat to Anti-Science Proponents

I am a lover of science and a skeptic. I work very hard to promoted science, reason, and logic. In return, I am harassed, threatened, called a multitude of names and promoted on websites that specialize in sending out anti-science trolls. All because I disagree with someone’s pet notions.

Here’s the deal. Don’t come here an attack me. Your problem is with SCIENCE, not me. I report on what I read and see in science news and literature. The fact that science does not, in any way, support

intelligent design of living things

that GMOs are harmful

that humans are not the cause of global warming

and that vaccines cause autism

is not my fault.

It’s your fault for believing something that has no evidence behind it. It’s your fault for putting your own ‘knowledge’ (or lack thereof) over thousands of peer-reviewed research supported by 97+% of all scientists on the planet.

You can come here and attempt to discredit me all you want. Let’s be clear… no one cares. My blog (surprisingly enough) is not read by the major policy makers. My blog is not used as a source by scientists. All of your efforts are trying to convince me that science is wrong and whatever belief you hold is correct. That’s all you are doing. See below for how to actually accomplish that.

I am what you call “low-hanging fruit”. We all know that you come here to attack me because real scientists won’t put up with your crap and you have to have an outlet for your impotent rage when no one takes you seriously.

Please believe me when I say, that if I can’t answer your question, it does not mean that the entire science of evolution, genetically modified organisms, vaccines, and climatology is all wrong. It means that I can’t answer your question. If it’s even a valid question in the first place. I’ve seen lots of those too.

Let’s be clear about one thing. IF you could support your notions, then you could publish and be famously recognized as the person who finally defeated Einstein/Darwin/Pasteur/Newton/etc and the scientific theory of evolution/gravity/GMOs/vaccines/global warming/etc. But you don’t, because, dispite all the bluster and meanness and arguing miniscule point after miniscule point, there still is no evidence to back up anything you are saying.

If there was, then you wouldn’t shut up about it. Remember the Seralini paper? That was the factor that was going to end GMOs… until everyone discovered just how horrid that ‘science’ actually was. Remember Wakefield and his MMR causes autism study… that was 100% faked and retracted? Yes, the entire vaccine/autism thing was caused by one paper, who’s lead author faked all of the case studies. But now it has a life of its own.

So don’t come here calling me a fraud for reporting science. I’m more of a reporter than a scientist. You don’t like what I have to say, fine, talk to the people who actually said it. I have no input into their work.

And don’t come here without evidence to back up your claims. One commenter has recently decided that all my GMO reports are frauds because I don’t talk about kidney studies. OK, fine, present me with evidence that GMOs cause kidney problems. And if you mention Seralini (who has been censured by national science organizations for problems with his analyses), then I just know to ignore you.

I have made multiple pleas for ID proponents to provide evidence. I’ve offered to allow a guest post, no editing, for someone who can support any notion of ID with evidence. No one has even attempted it. I’ve asked multiple times for the page numbers in any of Meyer’s books where evidence to support ID can be found… not a single response from anyone. It’s not the whole book either. People who say that must not have ever read the book.

Finally, let’s talk about accusations of corporate payoffs and such. Yes, it’s true, many scientists make very little money. I make more than most university professors. But let’s think about this payoff scheme for a second. This website has a list of all articles published from 1 January 1991 to 12 November 2012 that had the keyword phrases “global warming” or “global climate change.” There were 13,950 articles produced. Of those, 24 specifically reject human caused global warming. Those 13,926 papers have 33,690 authors.

Just paying those authors, each $1,000 to fake results to support global warming would cost $33,000,000. That’s $1,000 to fake data and write (and support) a report that, if this got out, would result in immediate discrediting, probably the loss of a job. That’s 33,690 people who have to keep the secret that they were paid off (a measly $1,000, which might be two or three payments on a student loan), plus the people with the money to pay them and the banks and the rest involved. Plus, who on the side of human caused global warming has that kind of money? Let’s not forget the bloggers, reporters, and other writers who have to be either dupes (statistically unlikely that every single person reporting on this can’t be bothered to do any actual research or read these papers to find the flaws) or paid off as well. Finally, everyone overlooks the fact that the data sets are available for free on the internet. You can generally request data from any scientist, provided you meat certain requirements.

GMOs? The same. And that’s aside from the fact that humans have been consuming huge amounts of GMO food for over two decades with no measurable change in their health and the studies that show tailored chemicals (like roundup) are much better for the environment (and people) than the chemicals used in organic foods.

Vaccines, yes, every doctor in the world is being paid off to not give vaccines that save lives. Even if autism could be caused by vaccines (it can’t), the 1 in (some arbitrarily large number that’s never even been calculated) chance of getting autism from a vaccine is way better odds than dying of whooping cough, measles, mumps, or any of a dozen other major diseases that we can prevent with a single shot and a couple of boosters.

Evolution? Same thing. No peer-reviewed studies support ID or any form of creationism. No books even support it (go ahead, I’ve been asking for page numbers for over a year). Every single scientist practicing supports biological evolution and reject intelligent design and creationism. Could they all be wrong? No. Evolutionary principles are used in our daily lives. Everything from factory and airline scheduling to product development takes advantage of the principles of evolution. We can see it happening in the lab and in the wild. And there is nothing (except a complete misunderstanding of how evolution works) that prevents basic evolutionary principles of random mutation and selection to produce all of the diversity of life around us.

If you think that GMOs are bad, that global warming isn’t happening, that there is an intelligent designer, and that vaccines cause autism, then support your position.

Attacking the current position doesn’t work. Attacking one book or one paper out of the tens of thousands that support evolution, GMOs, global warming, and vaccines is a waste of time. Unless you can show that every single paper is fundamentally wrong, then attacking one paper or even a dozen probably won’t help.

What will help is something that none of these groups actually do.

If you think that it is possible that some features of biological organisms are best explained by a designer. Fine. Figure out the expected difference between a designed organism and an evolved organism. Explain why those differences are important, then go look to see what actual organisms show.

You could do the same for global warming and GMOs. The vaccine thing would be a little trickier because of human subjects, but surely there’s a process that could actually show that vaccines cause autism.

Of course, you have to do real science. Faking data like Wakefield or faking science like Seralini doesn’t cut it. I mean, if you use a rat genetically designed to develop multiple tumors after two years, then you discover that the rats have tumors after two years… well heck, doesn’t take a scientist to see that it doesn’t matter what the rat ate.

I’m going to end this rant now.

I know that this will make no difference to the people involved in this. Because they actually don’t care about science. They don’t care about knowledge. What they do care about is making sure that the ideology that they hold dear (for whatever reason) is the one that everyone listens to and respects. But people don’t and it pisses them off. They attack because they no that there is no support for their position. It’s all that they have.