Happy Labor Day from some A-hole at Fox News

On August 29, Fox New's The Five ended with this:


This clip is particularly interesting in that it appears the commentator Eric Boiling, while expressing concern for the free market, apparently has no idea how free markets work. This is an excellent example of Missing the Point. What Boiling fails to understand is that in a capitalist economic system, labor is also part of the free market economy, and is subject to the same forces. When workers go on strike for better wages, they are using their collective power to pressure employers to increase wages. If there is no demand for jobs at the current minimum wage or workers refuse to do those jobs at those wages, free market forces dictate that employers will have to raise wages until they are high enough that people will be willing to do the jobs at the wages being offered. Rather than being a threat to the free market, this demonstrates exactly how free markets are supposed to operate.

As many commentators to the Media Matters post noted, it is interesting that the conservative (perhaps that should be modern-day Republican) vision of the free market seems to consist entirely of the view that corporations should be allowed to do whatever they want and take whatever they want with no accountability. Oddly enough, this is a view that is diametrically opposed to how truly free markets actually operate.

More Gold from the Surveillance Scandal

The revelations of the scope of the Surveillance State keep coming from Glenn Greenwald. This time the subject is the aptly named "Boundless Informant" program. This is a program that maps and details by country the amount of data that has been scooped up by the NSA. Of particular interest is the following picture and that bright yellow country on the left.

As with many of these stories, while the revelations are important and worth discussing, I want to focus on the responses. At the end of the Greenwald article cited above Greenwald quotes from Judith Emmel, an NSA spokeswoman interviewed by the Guardian. My favorite comment is her last one:

She added: "The continued publication of these allegations about highly classified issues, and other information taken out of context, makes it impossible to conduct a reasonable discussion on the merits of these programs."

I find this to be an incredible example of doublespeak.  Basically, Emmel is claiming that the disclosure of the existence of these programs interferes with our ability to reasonably discuss these programs. If we think about this for a second, we can see that this is a clear Non Sequitur that completely Misses the Point. How can we have a reasonable discussion on the merits of programs that are hidden from us and which we don't know exist? If Emmel (and President Obama as discussed in a previous post) were genuinely interested in having a reasonable discussion of this issue, they would welcome these disclosures.

In fact, it is as a result of these disclosures by the heroic whistle-blowing of Edward Snowden that we are finally actually having a discussion about the surveillance state. I realize that Emmel and President Obama would prefer the general population to remain ignorant, and that the NSA would just prefer to do whatever it wants without any oversight or "interference," but, at the risk of repeating myself, this is supposed to be a democracy, and a democracy can only function effectively when the populace is well-informed about what the government is up to. This is why people like Snowden (and Bradley Manning and Julian Assange and Daniel Ellsberg) are heroes; they were willing to sacrifice themselves and risk their lives to further freedom and democracy.

"Deer Crossing" signs aren't for the deer.

Kathleen O'Brian Wilhelm is a blogger for a news site that covers news in the samll town of Avon Lake, Ohio. One of her recent posts is so dumb and fallacy-ridden that at first I thought it must be a joke. As near as I can tell, it is not. Her post begins with the following:

Signs that read “Deer Crossing” and the like are going to continue to pop up throughout our country including Avon Lake, but who are these signs for? Deer cannot read, do not obey the law and probably will cross where they wish. Although adorable companions, it is hard to remember the last time that the news reported an animal talking, thinking or providing significant input for the benefit of society. Yet, these signs cost taxpayers like so much of government.

Yes, you read that correctly and this is not a joke. Wilhelm is objecting to "Deer Crossing" signs on the grounds that she sees no point in them because deer can't read. Aside from asinine stupidity, this is also a nice example of the Fallacy of Missing the Point. Wilhelm seems oddly ignorant of the fact that such signs are not there for the benefit of the deer, but for the benefit of drivers who should take special care to avoid hitting a deer (for those unfamiliar, deer are very heavy and basic physics tells us that if you hit a deer going at even a moderate speed you will total your car and likely seriously injure yourself in addition to killing the deer). That Wilhelm seems to ignore this obvious point is...bizarre.

However, the bizarreness continues. A bit later Wilhelm writes:

They are on this earth like trees to make humans’ lives better. As humans we must be kind to them, eat them when hungry, feed them when they are, but remember they are here to enhance our lives. 

In this passage she makes a pretty big unargued assumption about the role of animals. I assume this belief is a product of her religious background, but it is really Begging the Question to just assert this without providing any justification for it. 

Lastly, Wilhelm commits a pretty significant Non Sequitur when she writes:

Besides, it appears that this gesture of kindness to animals does not extend human to human. This President’s  Obamacare appears to welcome abortion of innocent babies. It is painful to think that there are those who  cry for seals while Obamacare  never blinks an eye at abortion.

The movie from a discussion of animals to a discussion of abortion coverage under the Affordable Care Act makes no sense, and one doesn't really have anything to do with the other. This is a classic example of a non sequitur as the comments about abortion do not follow from the earlier comments about our duties and responsibilities towards animals.

Upon first reading this article, I was fairly disturbed and disappointed that someone could get away with writing something so obviously moronic and ill-conceived, but much of my faith in humanity was restored by reading the comments. It appears that Wilhelm's readers, at least, are much more intelligent than her.

h/t to Pharyngula

Michael Shermer is an important figure in the atheism and skeptical community, but of late he appears to have gotten a wee bit...grumpy. In a recent screed for Scientific American he goes after what he sees as a liberal war on science. Rebecca Watson and PZ Meyers have done a great job of attacking the substance of the claims Shermer makes, but I want to look at the many fallacies he commits over the course of his article.

The first fallacy is the enormous Straw Man contained in the title of the article. Shermer is claiming that there is a liberal "War" on science, but the first major piece of evidence he cites is the fact that 41% of Democrats appear to believe that the earth was created less than 10,000 years ago and 19% deny anthropogenic global warming. These statistics are certainly disturbing, but it is unclear how they constitute a "War." As Rebecca Watson astutely notes:

Does this equal a “liberal war on science”? Hardly. A lot of people believing something inaccurate does not mean there’s a war – a war requires action, and conservatives are the people who are performing the actions: namely, introducing and sponsoring antievolution bills. While I’m sure that some Democrat must have introduced an antievolution bill, my Google skills have failed to turn one up. Bill after bill in state after state, conservative Republicans are the ones who are attempting to legislate their religious beliefs.

The next major fallacies arise when Shermer discusses liberal attitudes towards energy policy:

...progressive liberals tend to be antinuclear because of the waste-disposal problem, anti–fossil fuels because of global warming, antihydroelectric because dams disrupt river ecosystems, and anti–wind power because of avian fatalities. The underlying current is “everything natural is good” and “everything unnatural is bad.”

First, Shermer seems to be guilty of Missing the Point, because for each of the sources of energy on the list, the objections raised are legitimate and significant concerns. No one is denying the reality or effectiveness of these energy methods, but there are clear, scientifically documented side-effects for each of them. There is a waste-disposal problem for nuclear power, fossil fuels do contribute to global warming, etc. Any sensible energy policy should needs to take these scientifically proven problems into account when figuring out how best to provide for the nation's energy needs. That people point out that these problems exist is clearly not anti-science as Shermer would have us believe. Shermer is also guilty of a serious Inconsistency when he mentions global warming. A few paragraphs before he had criticized liberals for their anti-global warming attitudes, and now he is criticizing them for their concerns about global warming. So, according to Shermer, one is engaged in a war on science if one ignores global warming and one is engaged in a war on science if one acknowledges global warming and seeks solutions to mitigate it. Finally, the passage also commits a straw man in accusing people who seek a more sustainable energy system of committing the naturalistic fallacy.

The last topic Shermer address concerns attitudes towards genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and it is here that his argument makes the least sense. He writes:

Try having a conversation with a liberal progressive about GMOs—genetically modified organisms—in which the words “Monsanto” and “profit” are not dropped like syllogistic bombs. Comedian Bill Maher, for example, on his HBO Real Time show on October 19, 2012, asked Stonyfield Farm CEO Gary Hirshberg if he would rate Monsanto as a 10 (“evil”) or an 11 (“f—ing evil”)? The fact is that we've been genetically modifying organisms for 10,000 years through breeding and selection. It's the only way to feed billions of people.

This one is a bit subtle, but Shermer appears to completely miss the point. First, he claims that liberals are anti-science about GMOs, but all the examples he provides are not of people being opposed to GMOs, but of people being opposed to the activities of a particular corporation, Monsanto.  Shermer seems completely ignorant about the difference between these two sorts of criticisms, and thus his entire attack in this paragraph is a massive Straw Man. This is quite surprising because there is a great deal of incorrect information about GMOs that often gets repeated by folks on the left, but Shermer doesn't discuss any of this, instead presenting arguments that address completely different points.

I must say that after reading Shermer's post I am, frankly, disappointed. I have read and liked Shermer's work in the past, but when I see an essay like this that commits so many logical fallacies in such a short space, I am forced to rethink my earlier opinions of the man and his work.

Misisng the Point on Child Sexual Abuse

In a recent interview (since redacted due to the comments I will be discussing) with the National Catholic Register, Father Benedict Groeschel made some rather startling comments about the Catholic sex abuse scandal, in effect arguing that the priests who committed the abuse should not be blamed because the were seduced by the young children they abused:

[Father Groeschel]: A little bit, yes; but you know, in those cases, they have to leave. And some of them profoundly — profoundly — penitential, horrified. People have this picture in their minds of a person planning to — a psychopath. But that's not the case. Suppose you have a man having a nervous breakdown, and a youngster comes after him. A lot of the cases, the youngster — 14, 16, 18 — is the seducer.

This is an excellent example of Missing the Point as Father Groeschel appears to have absolutely no understanding about what is so objectionable about this abuse scandal. Let's assume for the sake of argument that there is a 14 year-old boy who is attempting to seduce a priest (a dubious assumption at best). If the priest then succumbs to that seduction does this in any way absolve him of his crimes? Given that the priest is an adult in a position of authority over the seducer, he has a moral and legal obligation to resist that seduction. Even if a 14 year-old is asking for it, the adult needs to be an adult and rebuff those advances, while hopefully explaining to the seducer why such advances are inappropriate. That Father Groeschel seems to miss this obvious fact calls into serious question his mental competency and also raises some additional disturbing questions about what the Catholic hierarchy is thinking.

Tinkerbell Science and the Higgs boson.

Sometimes an argument is so bad that it can be difficult to identify a specific fallacy. One reads the argument and knows it is nonsense, but it can be difficult to articulate exactly why. This is where the Non Sequitur and Missing the Point Fallacy come in handy. These are both essentially catch-all labels for fallacies in which the conclusion clearly doesn't follow from the premises, but where one can't be more specific (in some sense all fallacies are non sequiturs, but specificity is always to be preferred to vagueness whenever possible). As a case in point, see this article, again from Mike Adams on the Higgs boson.

To summarize, Adams essentially suggest that the Higgs boson was discovered because a bunch of scientists wished hard enough. That is, because they concentrated so hard on wanting the Higgs boson to be discovered, those conscious intentions brought it into being. Lest one think I am straw manning Adams, read the article for yourself, but here is one particularly representative quote:

CERN may not have discovered a new particle, it turns out, but may have inadvertently proven the power of mind-matter interaction.

Adams uses a great deal of weasel words like "may" but the general point should be pretty clear, the Higgs boson exists because scientists wished hard enough (Why I am calling this Tinkerbell science should be clear, if not this should explain it).

So, this is the claim, what is the argument? Adam's writes:

In other words, was the Higgs discovery actually the greatest intention experiment ever conducted? This is not a casual question. It reaches into the very nature of science itself and begs the question: Can human-run science ever truly be conducted independent from an observer? The answer, of course, is no. The subsequent question then becomes critical: Do observers alter the outcomes of scientific experiments even without any intention of doing so?

There are a great number of fallacies packed into this passage. First, the final sentence and the other rhetorical questions are clearly examples of Loaded Questions since they all assume the conclusion Adams is trying to make.  In addition, this is a good example of a Non Sequitur because the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises, and in effect reflects a significant misunderstanding of the scientific process (Missing the Point of science). The argument seems to be:

1. Science is done by human beings. 
2. Human beings are incapable of being completely objective. 
3. Therefore everything they do is radically subjective. 
4. Therefore there is no objective reality.

Now there is a kernel of truth in what Adams writes. Science is conducted by scientists, scientists are human, and thus subject to all the errors and biases normal human beings commit. However, to then go on and argue that there is no objective reality and because of this wishing really hard brings something into existence simply goes too far. There just isn't enough evidence to draw such a radical conclusion from what we are presented. In addition, things like the scientific method and peer review exist exactly to avoid the subjectivity of scientific conclusions. We certainly can't trust what CERN says just because they say it, and this is why all their research is made publicly available so that other scientists (many of whom do not care whether or not CERN is correct and who may in fact strongly wish that it is incorrect) can evaluate the evidence and conclusions. It is not a perfect method, but it is really the best method we have, and is far preferable to the Tinkerbell science Adams seems to be supporting.