kiwi_tea
10th May 2010, 1:08 AM
The Huffington Post is the most anti-science mainstream publication on the web, and it routinely publishes fake science without a moment's critical analysis or decent editorial oversight. It's infamous across the whole scientific community. HuffPo is the Sarah Palin of science. The atheists who gather there (I'm not one of them, I think they're in a losing battle in that venue) are distraught that mystical, populist and anti-intellectual agendas are literally being sold as science. I think they're trying to convert people because they see in that venue the destructive power that belief can have in day-to-day human life, like the death count associated with Deepak Chopra's cure-cancer-with-your-thoughts advice to real cancer victims, or the massive number of deaths caused by Jenny McCarthy's Green Our Vaccines crowd. Not to mention the unjustified and poorly-aimed hatred and paranoia this fosters against the scientific community, which of course deserves criticism, but it deserves reasonable criticism, not sermons from fundamentalists. Atheists and scientists who are masochistic enough to read the militant attacks on science at the HuffPo have a right to feel under attack. They are. And conversion, I suppose, seems to them the only solution to belief.
When I said this in the a few people clicked 'disagree'. This left me wondering... ...am I in the midst of people who would defend the Huffington Post's unofficial War on Science. I guess the only way to find out is to start a topic.
Here's the scope
This is a debate about science coverage in the HuffPo. Other mainstream publications should be brought into the discussion for comparison only.
Let's not turn this into a religious thread. There are questions here about what science is, that treads into religion's territory, but the focus should remain on whether HuffPo is distorting/attacking science.
If the debate becomes too firmly centred around the broader anti-vaccination movement then we should start a new thread for that.
The HuffPo's attacks usually come disguised as attempts to redefine science so that it can accept unscientific and unevidenced proposals. I'm going to start with a recent attack from Ervin Laszlo, who seems to be a new contributor, [url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ervin-laszlo/the-dis-ease-of-the-weste_b_561280.html]The Dis-Ease of the Western Mind (]All Other Religions thread[/url). Huffington Post contributors have an incredibly racist habit of talking about 'Eastern' and 'Western' modes of thought, as if there were particularly different ways of thinking between broader Asia and the rest of the world. Usually it's a way of mysticising credulousness, elevating personal biases to the status of 'knowledge', and 'othering' evidenced-based thinking as a foreign affectation. In Laszlo's case, he also builds an enormous strawman, as follows:
When someone asked Gandhi what he thought of Western civilization, he replied that he thought it was a good idea. It is indeed a good idea, because it's not entirely a reality. Western civilization -- more exactly, the Western mind that creates the civilization -- has a serious disease. It's a "dis-ease" that affects all of us in the West. And now we can have a better idea of what's behind it.
Take merely these characteristics of the Western mind:
* it sees things as separate, each thing on its own, connected merely by mechanistic relations of cause and effect;
* it's competitive: each individual is on his or her own, making his or her way in an impersonal and indifferent world;
* it disconnects the mind from the body: the mind only "drives" or "manages" the body as it would a car or an organization;
* it best understands the things it creates as artificial, synthetic things that can be readily and unambiguously manipulated;
* it disconnects the human from the natural; nature itself becomes the "environment" that humans can manage and manipulate to serve their interests;
* it categorizes, schematizes people and things, viewing them as abstract entities rather than as existing, living realities;
* it deals with the representations of people and things rather than with our living experience of people and things;
* and it views all things, nature included, as mechanistic kinds of systems, put together from their parts and capable of being manipulated by acting on their parts.
These traits add up to a dis-ease, to the long-discussed malaise of civilization -- Western civilization. Other civilizations have their own problems and failings, but the above traits are typically those of the Western mind: of the civilization created by the Western mind.
Of course, absolutely not one of these accusations is true of Western minds, and only one of them - the last one - is somewhat true of scientific minds. Laszlo is trying to imply there is a 'Western science' and an 'Eastern science', and that the Western science is too restrictive. This is nothing but an appeal to tribalism, Nationalism and racism. I maintain that what Laszlo calls a 'non-Western science' is not science at all, but rather an unscientific replacement that allows him his unscientific views without the burden of evidence. I'm going to address the first of these bullet points quickly.
["The Western mind"] sees things as separate, each thing on its own, connected merely by mechanistic relations of cause and effect;
This is a product not of the 'Western mind', nor of science, but of the way animals have evolved. Imagine a world with no categories, where we could not see things as separate from each other. As superficial as they might be, categories allow us to do essential things like recognise fruit from trampolines. No sentient animal could survive without viewing things as separate from each other. There is a beguiling illusion of separation, and in a sense, a fact of separation in that what we see as separate is material in different states. Categorisation affects all human minds, it is the scope that we live in, and yet Western scientists know this is an illusion. Nevertheless, the fact that everything is connected in that everything is matter or comes from matter, that's one of the basic underpinnings of the universe that science has revealed. This is an appeal to throw away distinctions and adopt some mystical, spiritualistic 'oneness' that, in fact, science already has its own much more pragmatic and evidenced version of.
As to everything that exists being "mechanistic relations of cause and effect", he pretends as if psychology - thoughts and feelings and faiths - don't exist to Westerners. But of course, no scientist, no Westerner, no human being honestly sees all the relationships on this planet as 'mechanistic'. Psychological relationships are too self-aware to be considered solely mechanistic. Rather, psychology is the resultant processes of mechanisms, made self-aware. The process - our mind - is made up of mechanisms, but our relationships with other minds are uniquely psychological.
Laszlo goes on to present a melange of real science, mixed heavily with non-science like the idea of 'Quantum Consciousness'. He pushes the idea that the Right and Left brain are fundamentally dedicated to creativity and reason respectively, when in fact their interactions are far more integrated and the Left/Right brain meme is largely a myth built out of the tiniest kernel of truth. A lot of what he says is literally nonsense. As in, it makes no sense at all:
The dis-ease of the Western mind is a product of historical circumstance. But it is not fated; we could overcome our one-sided heritage of the past. The key to it is using our brain more fully. This would give us a consciousness where the broad, holistic world of the right brain is linked with the pragmatic, skillful world of the left. This "broadband" consciousness without loss of acuity is the hallmark of what I called Quantum Consciousness. QC could be the next step in the evolution of the human mind, and it could be our salvation. Moving toward it by balancing your own approach to reality would be a good beginning toward curing the dis-ease of the Western mind.
So much nonsense. So many false premises and so much bad science and jargon, that it literally becomes a Gish Gallop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop#Debates). Instead of realistic theories of why there might be 'dis-ease' in anyone's life (eg, they aren't paid enough, or don't have adequate health insurance, or are forced to work too many hours, or are suffering an existential crisis), Laszlo adopts the most baroque, heavily-invented scenarios he can muster and tries (and it must be said, fails) to dress them up as science.
This is a running theme in the HuffPo. Vague ideas about the implications of quantum mechanics or any number of things: Pseudoscience. The vastest majority of HuffPo's science coverage is pseudoscience, and while it does run some decent stories they're very much in the minority. HuffPo has an evident editorial policy of presenting a false balance. Just like Creationists try to present Creation science as something a lot of scientists secretly believe, the HuffPo tries to present pseudoscience as mainstream. Anyone who doesn't have a decent grasp of science can be fooled by the HuffPo, and almost nothing they publish about science is trustworthy.
Other pseudoscience from the HuffPo:
- The Future of God: A New Theory of the Divine (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/the-future-of-god-a-new-t_b_498397.html)
- Evolution Reigns, But Darwin Outmoded (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/evolution-reigns-but-darw_b_309586.html)
- The Judgment on Vaccines Is In??? (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-carrey/the-judgment-on-vaccines_b_189777.html)
- Antibiotics Cause Cancer? (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-evans/antibiotics-cause-cancer_b_186968.html)
- Swine Flu: Protect Yourself and Loved Ones (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-evans/swine-flu-protect-yoursel_b_191550.html)
Scientists and journalists discussing the HuffPo:
- The Huffington Post’s War on Medical Science: A Brief History (http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=473) (sciencebasedmedicine.org)
- What do Fox News and the Huffington Post have in common? (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/12/what_do_fox_news_and_the_huffi.php) (pharyngula blog)
- The fake experts of HuffPo (http://scienceblogs.com/whitecoatunderground/2009/04/the_fake_experts_of_huffpo.php) (whitecoatunderground blog)
- Move over, Deepak, there's a new woo-meister at HuffPo (http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/05/move_over_deepak_theres_a_new_woo-meiste.php) (Respectful Insolence blog (Warning: Orac is snarky))
- The Huffington Post is crazy about your health (http://www.salon.com/news/environment/vital_signs/2009/07/30/huffington_post/index1.html) (Salon.com)
- More Anti-Science at the Huff Po (http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=1909) (Neurologica blog)
When I said this in the a few people clicked 'disagree'. This left me wondering... ...am I in the midst of people who would defend the Huffington Post's unofficial War on Science. I guess the only way to find out is to start a topic.
Here's the scope
This is a debate about science coverage in the HuffPo. Other mainstream publications should be brought into the discussion for comparison only.
Let's not turn this into a religious thread. There are questions here about what science is, that treads into religion's territory, but the focus should remain on whether HuffPo is distorting/attacking science.
If the debate becomes too firmly centred around the broader anti-vaccination movement then we should start a new thread for that.
The HuffPo's attacks usually come disguised as attempts to redefine science so that it can accept unscientific and unevidenced proposals. I'm going to start with a recent attack from Ervin Laszlo, who seems to be a new contributor, [url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ervin-laszlo/the-dis-ease-of-the-weste_b_561280.html]The Dis-Ease of the Western Mind (]All Other Religions thread[/url). Huffington Post contributors have an incredibly racist habit of talking about 'Eastern' and 'Western' modes of thought, as if there were particularly different ways of thinking between broader Asia and the rest of the world. Usually it's a way of mysticising credulousness, elevating personal biases to the status of 'knowledge', and 'othering' evidenced-based thinking as a foreign affectation. In Laszlo's case, he also builds an enormous strawman, as follows:
When someone asked Gandhi what he thought of Western civilization, he replied that he thought it was a good idea. It is indeed a good idea, because it's not entirely a reality. Western civilization -- more exactly, the Western mind that creates the civilization -- has a serious disease. It's a "dis-ease" that affects all of us in the West. And now we can have a better idea of what's behind it.
Take merely these characteristics of the Western mind:
* it sees things as separate, each thing on its own, connected merely by mechanistic relations of cause and effect;
* it's competitive: each individual is on his or her own, making his or her way in an impersonal and indifferent world;
* it disconnects the mind from the body: the mind only "drives" or "manages" the body as it would a car or an organization;
* it best understands the things it creates as artificial, synthetic things that can be readily and unambiguously manipulated;
* it disconnects the human from the natural; nature itself becomes the "environment" that humans can manage and manipulate to serve their interests;
* it categorizes, schematizes people and things, viewing them as abstract entities rather than as existing, living realities;
* it deals with the representations of people and things rather than with our living experience of people and things;
* and it views all things, nature included, as mechanistic kinds of systems, put together from their parts and capable of being manipulated by acting on their parts.
These traits add up to a dis-ease, to the long-discussed malaise of civilization -- Western civilization. Other civilizations have their own problems and failings, but the above traits are typically those of the Western mind: of the civilization created by the Western mind.
Of course, absolutely not one of these accusations is true of Western minds, and only one of them - the last one - is somewhat true of scientific minds. Laszlo is trying to imply there is a 'Western science' and an 'Eastern science', and that the Western science is too restrictive. This is nothing but an appeal to tribalism, Nationalism and racism. I maintain that what Laszlo calls a 'non-Western science' is not science at all, but rather an unscientific replacement that allows him his unscientific views without the burden of evidence. I'm going to address the first of these bullet points quickly.
["The Western mind"] sees things as separate, each thing on its own, connected merely by mechanistic relations of cause and effect;
This is a product not of the 'Western mind', nor of science, but of the way animals have evolved. Imagine a world with no categories, where we could not see things as separate from each other. As superficial as they might be, categories allow us to do essential things like recognise fruit from trampolines. No sentient animal could survive without viewing things as separate from each other. There is a beguiling illusion of separation, and in a sense, a fact of separation in that what we see as separate is material in different states. Categorisation affects all human minds, it is the scope that we live in, and yet Western scientists know this is an illusion. Nevertheless, the fact that everything is connected in that everything is matter or comes from matter, that's one of the basic underpinnings of the universe that science has revealed. This is an appeal to throw away distinctions and adopt some mystical, spiritualistic 'oneness' that, in fact, science already has its own much more pragmatic and evidenced version of.
As to everything that exists being "mechanistic relations of cause and effect", he pretends as if psychology - thoughts and feelings and faiths - don't exist to Westerners. But of course, no scientist, no Westerner, no human being honestly sees all the relationships on this planet as 'mechanistic'. Psychological relationships are too self-aware to be considered solely mechanistic. Rather, psychology is the resultant processes of mechanisms, made self-aware. The process - our mind - is made up of mechanisms, but our relationships with other minds are uniquely psychological.
Laszlo goes on to present a melange of real science, mixed heavily with non-science like the idea of 'Quantum Consciousness'. He pushes the idea that the Right and Left brain are fundamentally dedicated to creativity and reason respectively, when in fact their interactions are far more integrated and the Left/Right brain meme is largely a myth built out of the tiniest kernel of truth. A lot of what he says is literally nonsense. As in, it makes no sense at all:
The dis-ease of the Western mind is a product of historical circumstance. But it is not fated; we could overcome our one-sided heritage of the past. The key to it is using our brain more fully. This would give us a consciousness where the broad, holistic world of the right brain is linked with the pragmatic, skillful world of the left. This "broadband" consciousness without loss of acuity is the hallmark of what I called Quantum Consciousness. QC could be the next step in the evolution of the human mind, and it could be our salvation. Moving toward it by balancing your own approach to reality would be a good beginning toward curing the dis-ease of the Western mind.
So much nonsense. So many false premises and so much bad science and jargon, that it literally becomes a Gish Gallop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop#Debates). Instead of realistic theories of why there might be 'dis-ease' in anyone's life (eg, they aren't paid enough, or don't have adequate health insurance, or are forced to work too many hours, or are suffering an existential crisis), Laszlo adopts the most baroque, heavily-invented scenarios he can muster and tries (and it must be said, fails) to dress them up as science.
This is a running theme in the HuffPo. Vague ideas about the implications of quantum mechanics or any number of things: Pseudoscience. The vastest majority of HuffPo's science coverage is pseudoscience, and while it does run some decent stories they're very much in the minority. HuffPo has an evident editorial policy of presenting a false balance. Just like Creationists try to present Creation science as something a lot of scientists secretly believe, the HuffPo tries to present pseudoscience as mainstream. Anyone who doesn't have a decent grasp of science can be fooled by the HuffPo, and almost nothing they publish about science is trustworthy.
Other pseudoscience from the HuffPo:
- The Future of God: A New Theory of the Divine (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/the-future-of-god-a-new-t_b_498397.html)
- Evolution Reigns, But Darwin Outmoded (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/evolution-reigns-but-darw_b_309586.html)
- The Judgment on Vaccines Is In??? (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-carrey/the-judgment-on-vaccines_b_189777.html)
- Antibiotics Cause Cancer? (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-evans/antibiotics-cause-cancer_b_186968.html)
- Swine Flu: Protect Yourself and Loved Ones (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-evans/swine-flu-protect-yoursel_b_191550.html)
Scientists and journalists discussing the HuffPo:
- The Huffington Post’s War on Medical Science: A Brief History (http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=473) (sciencebasedmedicine.org)
- What do Fox News and the Huffington Post have in common? (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/12/what_do_fox_news_and_the_huffi.php) (pharyngula blog)
- The fake experts of HuffPo (http://scienceblogs.com/whitecoatunderground/2009/04/the_fake_experts_of_huffpo.php) (whitecoatunderground blog)
- Move over, Deepak, there's a new woo-meister at HuffPo (http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/05/move_over_deepak_theres_a_new_woo-meiste.php) (Respectful Insolence blog (Warning: Orac is snarky))
- The Huffington Post is crazy about your health (http://www.salon.com/news/environment/vital_signs/2009/07/30/huffington_post/index1.html) (Salon.com)
- More Anti-Science at the Huff Po (http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=1909) (Neurologica blog)