Did doctors really believe this?

Here is a great example of the Appeal to Inappropriate Authority, a fallacy in which one relies on some "putative" expert who shouldn't really be relied upon.

Picture of a doctor holding a cigarette with a pack of Camels on his desk. The caption reads, "More Doctors Smokle Camels than any other cigarette!"

Note that this ad does not claim that doctors recommend smoking. Instead, it implies that Camel cigarettes are healthier than other cigarettes because more doctors smoke them. While the ad isn't explicit, there is a clear Appeal to Authority in the claim that Camel cigarettes are preferred by doctors.

These ads were fairly common back in the 1950's until the a number of scientific studies started to be released that began to draw a clear connection between smoking and lung cancer. In addition, the FTC began to step up its regulations on tobacco advertising, essentially making ads like this illegal because they implied that some cigarettes were healthier than others or that cigarettes themselves did not pose any health risks. Much of this was dramatized on the TV show Mad Men, particularly the premiere episode "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes," which is a nice transition to this second example sent to me by a student:

Picture of a Physician holding a pack of Lucky Strikes. The caption reads, "20,679 Physicians say 'Luckies are less irritating' 'It's toasted' Your Throat Protection against irritation against cough. 

The Road to Anti-Amnesty is Paved With Fallacies

Atrios's worst person in the world for today is Ying Zh-Ye. This was bestowed upon her in honor of her editorial titled, "Immigration Reform 2013: The Road to Socialism is Paved With Amnesty." The thesis of this essay, though obviously clear from the title, is nicely summarized by Zh-Ye as:

By legalizing 11 million unlawful immigrants, the amnesty would likely have negative long-term impacts to this nation financially and politically.

Let's dig in to her argument, which is riddled with numerous fallacies. Her first argument for this conclusion involves citing at a Heritage Foundation report that claims that Amnesty would cost the US $6.3 trillion because all these immigrants would suck up $9.4 trillion in benefits (welfare, food stamps, etc.) and only pay in about $3.1 trillion in taxes. This is, right off the bat, a nice example of an Appeal to Authority. I don't know enough about how these numbers are calculated, but the assumption that every single immigrant will use more in benefits than they pay in taxes doesn't seem very reasonable. Furthermore, the Heritage Foundation is a right-wing think-tank that has a history of coming up with conclusions first, and then seeking data to support those conclusions. In any case, this report is then immediately contrasted with a reprot from the Cato Institute that comes to the opposite conclusion, namely that amnesty will be a net benefit to the economy. Zh-Ye dismisses this report, arguing:

It is true that overall GDP may appear to be bigger if currently under-the-table business activities are included, but it is not a healthy and sustainable growth, as it is associated with enormous government expenses. The purpose of a pro-growth theory is to promote an immigration policy which would make fiscal costs public and keep the corporate profits private.

As  one can see, Zh-Ye simply asserts that this is true, without providing any evidence that this is the case. Furthermore, I am unclear why a pro-growth policy would make the costs public and the benefits private, nor how this relates to the broader criticism of the Cato Institute. This would appear to be a nice example of a Non Sequitur.

Zh-Ye's next argument for her thesis concerns an imagined future conflict between all the newly legalized immigrants on welfare and the newly retired Baby Boomers who are collecting social security.

As the Baby Boomers retire, Social Security and medical costs will go up. At the same time, an exploding population of green-card-carrying immigrants would become eligible for welfare benefits in 2023. Hence, there is likely going to be major conflict between these two populations. Both retirement and welfare systems may start to default if politicians stretch younger taxpayers' ability to pay and support both of these enormous programs at the same time.

This passage clearly demonstrates Zh-Ye ignorance about these matters. In particular, she seems to be unaware that Social Security is separate from other Federal Budget items and does not contribute to the deficit. Furthermore, Social Security is self-funded, and is completely solvent through 2033. Thus, this predicted conflict between newly legalized immigrant welfare recipients and Social Security recipients is entirely a fiction invented by Zh-Ye that has no basis in reality.

Zh-Ye's final argument is the strangest and most incoherent of the three, and is summarized in the following paragraph:

Many immigrants have deep scars from socialism. They know how their home countries turned into one-party communist countries many years ago. They also learned, as a part of Asian history, how elite people were humiliated and tortured, little by little, begging for their rights, dignity, and properties. Unfortunately, America is not immune from turning into a socialist country if it imports large numbers of low-income immigrants to change its political landscape.

If I understand what she is saying, the argument can be summarized as follows:

1. Many immigrants come to the US fleeing the horrors (as they have experienced it) of Socialism.
2. In the US they will try to recreate the very thing they are fleeing from. 
3. Thus, increasing immigration will lead to Socialism

Ignoring for now the question of why Socialism would be a bad thing, it is clear that this argument is guilty of an Inconsistency. Why would people fleeing Socialism establish it in the place they are fleeing to? There is an additional inconsistency in that the article is ostensibly about Amnesty, meaning the immigrants in question are the ones who are already here illegally, but now Zh-Ye is talking about new immigrants who are fleeing Socialism with the apparent goal of establishing it in the US. The entire argument is self-contradictory, and really doesn't make any sense. In addition, it also appears to commit a Slippery Slope, arguing that the legalization of people currently in the US illegally will somehow (this is never explained) lead inevitably to Socialism.

 

Zh-Ye concludes, writing:

If this amnesty bill passes Congress and becomes the law, the U.S. may be at risk to lose a portion of its wealthy and upper-middle-class people, due to sharp tax increases and an unbalanced social structure. These people will take a good amount of talent, wealth, and jobs with them.

Again, if one thinks a bit deeply about this it makes no sense. Just where would these wealthy, upper-middle class Socialism-hating people go? To Europe? That is even more socialist than the US? China? Same problem with less freedom. The Middle East? Russia? Africa? An evil villain lair in Antartica? Again, the entire thesis of the piece is non-sensical, and once one thinks just a bit critically about the argument the entire thing just falls apart. This is a clear example of how a failure of critical thinking and analysis can lead someone to develop seriously wrong and incoherent opinions on an issue.

They're coming to cut your throat! And they have Korans!

On the September 18th edition of the Fox News show Your World with Neil Cavuto filmmaker Michael Lynch was interviewed about his new movie about illegal immigration. In the course of this interview Lynch commits a number of fallacies:


The most obvious fallacy is the use of Scare Tactics. Note that the video start with a news report about a prison break on the Mexican side of the US-Mexico border. Cavuto and Lynch then imply that all 130 of these prisoners are extremely violent and that they are making a beeline for the US. Note as well that we are told nothing about the prisoners. For all we know they may all have committed the Mexican equivalent of white collar crimes and are non-violent offenders. Even assuming that they are violent offenders, there is no evidence that every single one of them (or any of them) will head to the US. For all we know these escaped prisoners may make an effort to reunite with their families in Mexico. Furthermore, it is even possible that some of the prisoners are US citizens. We have no idea, the report gives us no information, but tries to scare us and make us afraid of all the murderous violent immigrants who are heading are way.

Lynch then almost immediately invokes 9-11, attempting to draw a link between illegal immigrants snaking across the US-Mexico border and terrorism. At this point it is worth noting that none of the 9-11 hijackers entered the US this way. All of them exploited legal means of entry. This is clearly an example of a False Analogy, as it is wildly inappropriate to invoke 9-11 when discussing the status of the US-Mexico border. Lynch doubles-down on this false analogy when he claims that someone is finding Korans and prayer rugs in the middle of the desert. I have no idea if this claim is true, but I find it highly suspicious. If in fact Muslim terrorists were sneaking across the US-Mexico border, I doubt that they would be scattering their holy book across the middle of nowhere.

From this Lynch then employs another Scare Tactic, claiming that not everyone is coming to the US to cut your lawn, some of them are coming to cut your throat. Again, no evidence or statistics are provided for this claim, Lynch just asserts it with the obvious intention of scaring the Fox News viewers into buying his movie.

We then see a nice example of Inconsistency when Cavuto asks Lynch why immigrants are coming to the US and Lynch responds, "Jobs," thereby directly contradicting his earlier assertion that at least some of the immigrants were coming to commit murder.

Lynch then transitions to an Appeal to Authority citing a positive review from some Fox News celebrity as evidence that his movie is worthwhile and important.

Finally he concludes with the classic huckster's pitch claiming that he has secret information that "They" (whoever "they" are) don't want you to see. In this connection Lynch implies that there is some large-scale conspiracy devoted to suppressing the truths that he, as a normal, hard-working American, is trying to expose. In general, when someone cites a conspiracy as the reason why no one will show their movie, we need to seriously consider the possibility that no one will distribute or screen the film because it sucks, not because it reveals some uncomfortable truth.

h/t to Media Matters

Appeals to authorities that really aren't

Following up on my earlier discussion of Rep. Akin's absurd comments about rape, it is worth thinking a bit about the evidence Rep. Akin's sites for his beliefs. As he put it in the clip, his opinions were formed on the basis of "what I understand from doctors." As I further noted, the doctor in question appears to be a fellow by the name of Dr. John C. Willke who first made his claims about magic vagina death venom in a book he co-authored with his wife Why Can't We Love Them Both: Questions and Answers About Abortion, first published in 1971. As a recent article published by Salon demonstrates, Willke is anything but a fringe character among anti-abortion groups on the right.

I bring this up as an opportunity to discuss the Appeal to Authority. This is a fallacy in which one appeals to the authority of some individual or group as support for one's position, where that supposed individual or group isn't really qualified to be an authority on that topic. This, of course, is exactly what Rep. Akin did with his claim that his position on rape and abortion was based on his consultations with doctors.

At this point, one might object by noting that Dr. Willke is an MD, having earned his degree from the University of Cincinnati in 1948. Furthermore, he practiced family medicine for much of his career, so doesn't this qualify him as an expert on this subject? The simple answer to this question is no, for several reasons. First, the fact that Dr. Willke was a practicing MD does not mean that he has expertise on how the female reproductive and endocrine systems operate. This is often confusing to people, but we must remember that the human body is incredibly complex and specialized such that knowledge about one area of the body does not generalize to another area of the body. For example, my mom was a cardiovascular pharmacologist for many years, having just retired fro the University of California, Irvine. She has a great deal of specialized knowledge about her discipline, but if she had other questions about medicine, or even about other branches of pharmacology, she would turn to other experts on the topic because, while her knowledge is quite deep, it is not very wide. This is, of course, exactly what we would expect from a medical researcher.  By contrast, in the case of Dr. Willke, as a family practitioner, he has a wide range of knowledge, but none of that knowledge is particularly deep. Again, this is exactly what we would expect from a practicing physician. The key point here is that his experiences as a family practitioner do not give Dr. Willke any expertise or authority on a topic as complex as the female endocrine system. For that, we would need to consult a medical researcher in that field, not a practicing doctor.

This brings up a second, larger issue, one discussed in the above referenced Salon article, which is the tendency of certain politicians, particularly on the right, to basically pick and choose the experts they want to believe. In addition, there is a tendency to pick out someone with a scientific credential who can then be counted on to generate scientific sounding information that supports whatever ideological position one has already decided on. In addition to Akin's views on rape, we can see this as well in the Republican party's dismissal of anthropogenic climate change. The key here is that when we are looking at a complex issue like female reproduction or climate change, we can't just defer to the judgment of one scientists or doctor, rather we need to look at what the consensus view among scientists who study the topic is. In the case of Rep. Akin's comments or global warming denial, the consensus view among scientists is clearly against these positions. And that is why people like Rep. Akin who rely on cherry-picked scientific evidence or one "expert" in the field are guilty of the Appeal to Authority.

Why the Bible is not a good source of scientific information

An Appeal to Authority is a fallacy in which one argues that something must be true because some authority said it. This fallacy often arises when the authority in question doesn't really have any expertise on the topic in questions (that is, the "authority" isn't really one). We can see a very nice example of this in a recent post on Answers in Genesis titled "The Origin of the Universe" by Dr. Werner Gitt. In the post, Dr. Gitt argues that evolution and the Big Bang Theory of the origin of the universe must be wrong because the Bible says so:

The earth and all the stars in the universe did not originate in a big bang; they were created independently and on different days. On the first day, God created the universe containing no stars, but only the earth. Only on the fourth day—when plants already existed—the stars and other planets were created. Thus, all stars are of the same age, excluding the three creation days. This differs completely, conceptually, and fundamentally, from the evolutionary model. The earth did not start its career as a glowing ball of fire, but it originally had water on its surface (Gen. 1:2). It is not the accidental by-product of a cosmic explosion, but—as is the case for the entire universe—it was made for a purpose: “In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands” (Ps. 102:25). During a conversation with Job, God clearly explained to him the conceptual (the foundation of all astronomical and physical data) and the geometrical dimensions of the establishment of the earth: “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? [or: drew up its constructional plans] Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it?” (Job 38:4). In the light of the biblical revelations, the evolutionary view of the origin of the earth and the universe is proved to be a series of false statements. [Emphasis added]

This is an excellent example of an appeal to authority. Dr. Gitt is arguing that because the Bible contradicts evolution and the Big Bang Theory, therefore evolution and the Big Bang Theory must be wrong. The only evidence for this claim is some passage written down several thousand years ago, before people had even a basic understanding of the nature of reality and science. These biblical passage were written by people who did not understand that germs cause disease, had no ideas about electricity or magnetism, didn't have calculus, didn't know about dinosaurs, etc. That the writings of these individuals (and yes, they were people, God did not write or publish the Bible, this was done by people) should be taken as authoritative simply boggles the mind, especially in light of the abundance of evidence provided by science on these topics.

In addition to this appeal to authority, Dr. Gitt also commits an interesting Inconsistency when he writes:

The physical law of the conservation of energy states that in our universe energy cannot be created out of nothing, neither can it be destroyed. Now what was the origin of the energy in the universe? The only possibility is an act of creation.

The inconsistency here is that Dr. Gitt is trying to use scientific discoveries to attack science. He relies on a scientific principle (a principle, I might add, that appears nowhere in the Bible) to attack other scientific principles. You really can't do this. Either you endorse science and the scientific method and follow its conclusions wherever they lead, or you reject it in favor of a life of ignorance. You can't selectively choose which science to believe and which science to ignore. You either buy it all or reject it all, and to selectively pick bits of science to support your position while rejecting others is a clear example of inconsistency.