Blogs / Bad Astronomy

Yesterday, the New York State Senate voted down a bill that would have allowed same-sex marriage, by 38-24. Not surprisingly, political party was the overwhelming determinant of the vote: while some Democrats voted against, all the Republicans did.

I am 100% in favor of marriage between consenting adults. Period. I’ve written about this many times (here and here and especially here). It’s not my business what flavor of humanity they love. I could go the route of saying that I have gay friends who deserve the right to get married, but that’s a cop out: it doesn’t matter whom I know. It’s a matter of equality, and we should know instinctively that equality is the right thing to fight for.

Not everyone sees it that way, of course. If you don’t like (for example) gays, or blacks, or women, that’s your opinion, and you have the right to that opinion. But you don’t have the right to deny them their rights.

NY State Senator Diane Savino said it best. She gave a speech on the Senate floor that should be required viewing for every citizen of these United States. It is simply phenomenal.

I agree with her. The idea that somehow gay marriage harms hetero marriage is one of the dumbest arguments ever, and is clearly simply a smokescreen for bigotry (unless they support this guy as well). How is my marriage weakened or lessened in any way if across the street, two men who are in love get the same rights I do? How does love lessen love?

And for those NY Senators — and people in other states — who voted against this simple act to give equality to all of your constituents: shame on you. Shame.

I just finished watching a live stream of a speech President Obama gave at the White House, pledging more support for science education in this country.

Woohoo!

[Edited to add: the speech transcript is now online, complete with Mythbusters shout-out.]

Science, technology, engineering, and math — STEM — education has been struggling for years. This new effort, called Educate to Innovate, is "…designed to energize and excite America’s students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics."

There are several avenues being taken, including partnering with the private sector. For example, Discovery Communications (the umbrella org for Discovery Channel and its sister channels) will be promoting science literacy, including a commercial-free science block of programming on the Science Channel, and STEM support for teachers.

I was particularly excited to hear Obama announce an annual science fair to be held at the White House! As he said, it’s time that people who have made extraordinary achievements in science stand beside athletes and others honored at the White House.

And as if he were channeling my brain, President Obama said this:

"We’re going to show young people how cool science can be."

Ah, hearing that is like a symphony to my ears. To which I’ll add: damn straight.

Also, I suspect that unlike many political statements, this is no mere lip service. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, is involved with this project, and at the press conference were Adam Savage™ and Jamie Hyneman — I know they’ll work hard to make sure this happens.

And it’s up to all of us, too. As I find out more about this I’ll post info here, and see what we all can do to make sure this not only becomes a reality, but persists as a concrete effort that will not sway with the political winds. Our future relies heavily on how well we understand science and technology, and if you read this blog you know full well how people manipulate the public’s misunderstanding of STEM topics for political gain. This must stop, and the best weapon is an educated public.

Picture from Lara Eakin’s Twitter feed.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Iraqi military employing useless dowsing magic wands to search for explosives at checkpoints, and how this has deadly results. This was based on an article in the New York Times, and the word has now spread far and wide.

Skeptic, physician, and journalist Ben Goldacre wrote about it in The Guardian, and Graeme Wood did so as well for The Atlantic. It was huge on tech and skeptic sites too, like Slashdot, MetaFilter, Gizmodo, and Bruce Hood’s Supersense blog.

It made a brief appearance on TV, too, in this segment on the Rachel Maddow Show:

And she mentioned friend of the JREF Hal Bidlack by name!

I have heard some rumors — as yet unsubstantiated but encouraging — that members of the U.S. government have taken an interest in this story, too.

What this all shows is that we need to stand up to nonsense and call it out, letting others know when they believe in garbage… especially when it will lead to people getting killed. If enough of us do it, then maybe, just maybe, we can get something done about it.

Remember:

It’s true for reality, too.

I was going to write about how Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and John Kerry (D-MA) were trying to somewhat slimily slip a provision into the health care bill about paying for prayer-based health services, but then wouldn’tyouknowit, Steve Novella (who apparently does not need to sleep or eat or breathe) beat me to it. Besides his take-down of the odd and wholly unrealistic beliefs of Christian Scientists, I’ll note that is has been pretty definitively proven that prayer doesn’t work in healing. So not only is this provision unconstitutional, it’s just an all-around bad idea.

I am no fan of pseudoscience, as you may have guessed. Dowsing is a practice that falls squarely in that field. It’s the idea that you can detect an object — usually water, but sometimes gold, or people, or whatever — using a y-shaped branch, or copper tubes, or some other simple device. Dowsers never really have a good explanation of how their devices work, but they tend to claim 100% accuracy.

However, James Randi has tested dowsers many, many times as part of the JREF’s Million Dollar Challenge. Not to keep you in suspense, but the money still sits in the bank. In other words, time and again, the dowsers fail. When a real, double-blind, statistical test is given, dowsers fail. Every single time.

That’s all well and good, and you might think it’s just another silly idea that nonsense-believers adhere to despite evidence. If someone wants to waste their money on a dowser, well, caveat emptor.

But what if your life depended on it? What if thousands of lives depended on it?

Such is the case in Iraq, where the military there is using what is essentially dowsing techniques to try to detect bombs in cars at military checkpoints. Let’s be very clear here: they are using provably useless antiscientific nonsense to try to find terrorists who carry explosives. They may as well use tea leaves, or palm reading, or seances.

This story just got major press; a reporter in Iraq wrote about it in the New York Times. It’s impossible to overstress how bad this situation is. Iraqi Major General Jehad al-Jabiri, who is the head of the Ministry of the Interior’s General Directorate for Combating Explosives, is a whole-hearted believer in this crap. He is such a believer that the Iraqi military are abandoning proven methods such as sniffer dogs.

Instead, the Iraqi have purchased hundreds of these so-called bomb-detection wands from a company called ATSC in the UK. The cost? Millions of dollars. Millions. On technology that James Randi has come right out and called "a totally fraudulent product". Bob Carroll of the Skeptic’s Dictionary agrees with Randi.

The NYT article also has expert advice from several explosives and military authorities (including long-time friend of the JREF Air Force Lt. Col (retired) Hal Bidlack), all of whom conclude that this device does nothing. Given the product description on the company’s own web page, I agree as well. The description makes no scientific sense at all; it claims it can detect ions from a distance without ever coming in contact with them, and that includes through lead, concrete, and more.

In other words, it’s magic.

This, however, won’t stop al-Jabiri, who chalks up any successes to the detector, and any failures to the operator. In a situation like that there is little hope he can be convinced him he’s wrong, especially when he says things like "I don’t care about Sandia or the Department of Justice or any of them. I know more about this issue than the Americans do. In fact, I know more about bombs than anyone in the world."

Really? Then why, as the NYT article indicates, did that dowsing wand fail on October 25, when terrorists detonated two tons of explosives killing 155 people? Four thousand pounds of explosives apparently got right past the magic wands’ sniffer. But at least they’re fast! Again, from the article:

Checking cars with dogs, however, is a slow process, whereas the wands take only a few seconds per vehicle. “Can you imagine dogs at all 400 checkpoints in Baghdad?” General Jabiri said. “The city would be a zoo.”

I suspect a zoo would be better than a slaughterhouse.

It’s arrogance and blind faith like that which has and will get people killed. And the people we’re talking about in many cases are our fighting men and women, people who have to put their own trust in the leaders in Iraq. This is not a game, not some lark. It’s real. And in this case, antiscience kills.

[This post, with minor variations, has been cross-posted on the JREF Swift blog.]

One of the problems with being an ideologue who abandons reality is that it makes for very, very strange bedfellows.

For example, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh — two guys who would rather soul kiss Michael Moore than be identified as lefties — have both jumped on the antivax bandwagon. Beck is spouting long-debunked paranoid antivax rhetoric, and Limbaugh is, well, he’s just being Limbaugh. He’s long planted his flag in knee-jerk anti-government silliness, never admitting that maybe, just maybe, sometimes the government is right.

I don’t know who this speaks worse for; the antivaxxers or the talk show bloviators.

In the end, though, we all lose. Because either way, this shows that nonsense doesn’t have political boundaries. Once you step off that narrow path that is reality, you’re surrounded by antireality in every direction. So it doesn’t matter if you face left or right; you’re still wrong.

If you want arguments rebutting the offal flying from the above group, go to Antiantivax, Joe Albietz’s swine flu FAQ, and Steve Novella’s antivax FAQ.

This is pretty cool: tonight, President Obama will have a bunch of professional and amateur astronomers over to the White House to show the First Family and a group of middle schoolers the sky. The event coincides with the International Year of Astronomy and World Space Week.

And may I say? It’s so so cool to finally have a President who respects science. Yay!