Science Guardian

Professor drives nice point through Frog’s heart

Consensus is not the measure of a paradigm

Lists signs it is ripe for replacement, points to censorship

Buy his book!

Henry Bauer, author of the comprehensive and well phrased book on the failings of HIV∫AIDS mentioned below, The Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory by Henry H. Bauer (McFarland Publishers, 2007, $35) alerted us today that the Public Library of Medicine “has warmed the cockles of my heart by posting the following” as email:

Consensus in science

Henry Bauer

Professor Emeritus, Chemistry and Science Studies

Virginia Tech

E-mail

Competing Interests: As revealed in the letter, I am author of a dissident HIV/AIDS book

Submitted Date: September 06, 2007

Published: September 10, 2007

Smith and Novella fail to define ‘rigorous scientific standards’, and apply implicitly this single criterion: accordance with the prevailing mainstream consensus. Evidently they accept as unproblematic a ’strongly held consensus opinion of the scientific community’ that has persisted for ‘23 years’. This begs questions grappled with in a century’s worth of scholarship in science studies (history, philosophy, sociology, etc., of science), thereby ignoring fundamental insights about scientific activity. Amateur pundits – including scientists, journalists, and others – continue to rely on such discredited notions as ‘the scientific method’ and ‘falsifiability’ even as scholarship in science studies long ago demonstrated their inadequacy and abandoned the quest for a definable distinction between science and pseudoscience (1). Pseudoscience is like pornography: it cannot be defined, only ‘recognized when we see it’ – albeit different people judge any given case differently.

A mainstream consensus in science is useful in the short run, as a summary of empirical data and a guide to further research, but it is no absolute truth. Indeed, the mainstream consensus almost always proves inadequate in the longer run: science progresses precisely by modifying a ‘well-established’ consensus in fundamental ways or by overturning it entirely in scientific revolutions (2). Most important to note and not widely appreciated is the fact that before such a paradigm shift, the mainstream typically resists strenuously what eventually becomes the new consensus (3). The contemporary attacks on ‘HIV/AIDS denialists’ (including the frequently ad hominem features of those attacks) illustrate well that typical circumstance.

Among indications that HIV/AIDS theory, like so many consensual scientific beliefs before it, is destined for replacement are these: Gisselquist et al. (4) have shown that sexual transmission of HIV cannot explain the purported epidemics in Africa; an insider has revealed that the estimates promulgated by UNAIDS are unrealistic (5); the totality of official data on HIV tests in the USA are incompatible with the demographics of an infectious and sexually transmissible agent (6). The latter analysis by the present writer has been described in non-partisan sources as ‘credible’ (7) and ‘important . . closely reasoned . . . systematically demolishes the theory – more correctly the hypothesis or conjecture – that . . . (HIV) causes . . . (AIDS)’ (8). The first review to appear in a mainstream AIDS journal (9) is not uncritical yet acknowledges the book’s demonstration of ‘major failings of HIV epidemiology’ and that ‘competent and qualified people who questioned the orthodoxy have been largely excluded from the leading journals’ – illustrating the resistance to change noted above.

Smith and Novella are simply wrong in taking a prevailing mainstream consensus as a sound or sufficient basis for criticizing the views of well qualified individuals who dissent from that consensus.

References

1. Laudan, L. 1983. The demise of the demarcation problem. Pp. 111-27 in Physics, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, ed. R. S. Cohen and L. Laudan, D. Reidel.
2. Kuhn, T. S. 1962/70. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press.
3. Hook, E. B. (ed). 2002. Prematurity in Scientific Discovery. University of California Press.
4. Gisselquist, D., R. Rothenberg, J. Potterat, and E. Drucker. 2002. HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa not explained by sexual or vertical transmission. International Journal of STD and AIDS 13: 657-66.
5. Chin, J. 2007. The AIDS Pandemic. Radcliffe.
6. Bauer, H H. 2007. The Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory. McFarland.
7. Eberhart, G. 2007. C and RL News (College and Research Libraries News) 68, 6 (June).
8. W. F. Shughart II, Public Choice, in press.
9. Potterat , J. J. 2007. International Journal of STD and AIDS 18: 645-6.

Henry H. Bauer lives in Blacksburg, Virginia (tel is (540) 951-2107) and is editor-in-chief, Journal of Scientific Exploration and dean emeritus of arts & sciences, and professor emeritus of chemistry & science studies, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University.

We will do a review of his book as soon as we have time, but already we can say it is well worth paying even $35 for (it is a textbook) though it is only a small paperback (282 pages). Written in scholarly and polished prose, it is notable for the graceful accuracy of its phrasing, which accomplishes what NAR tries and often fails to do, which is to describe what is happening in an accurate way that tells all, without any loaded phrases of the journalistic kind.

Its content deserves to be much bigger in format than 9×6in, since it is unusually comprehensive and covers the topic against a background of the history and philosophy of science, since Henry Bauer has made a specialty of writing about, assessing and publishing paradigm challenges. In this case it appears that in a remarkably short time he was able to penetrate to several new understandings of why the paradigm won’t fly.

His book is listed at McFarland in North Carolina whose order line is 1-800-253-2187. They have sold 300 of the first two printings, with only 44 left this morning. That’s about 300 people with sufficient interest to pay $35 and be well informed by a seasoned observer of paradigm disputes, surely worthwhile if you are involved in this issue in any way.

We wonder how much of Bauer’s willingness to deal with this topic fearlessly has to do with the fact he is emeritus and thus somewhat beyond the vengeful strictures attempted on other critics in this paradigm arena, which have included attacks on the jobs as well as character of paradigm critics.

Judging from his accomplished work in this area, we imagine that his institution has always been enlightened in this realm, and any underhand tactics by the likes of John P. Moore, Nancy Padian and Mark Wainberg, whose belief in HIV impels them to write letters of complaint to the administration officials of universities and others that harbor critics would get short shrift from Virgina Polytechnic.

We like generals with medals too, but will they say the Emperor is naked?

Henry and Gordon teach Tara science history

When the credentials issue is a red herring

Getting back to our curmudgeonly dissection of the recent loud, off key trumpet blast in defense of the HIV/AIDS paradigm, HIV Denial in the Internet Era, at the NSF Public Library of Science by the trusting Tara C. Smith of Iowa and her helpful older colleague Steven P. Novella of Yale, we now examine the largely spurious issue of credentials, since after the title, the next thing mentioned are Tara and Steven’s credentials to pontificate on the web pages of the NSF Library of Science on how the eternal verities of paradigm challenges in the history of science can be applied to the critics of the HIV∫AIDS paradigm. That’s the one that states that HIV is the indisputable single cause of the most variable global disease of all time.

For the paper comes with the following author attribution:

Tara C. Smith, to whom correspondence should be addressed (email: tara-smith@uiowa.edu) is with the Department of Epidemiology, University of Iowa College of Public Health, Iowa City, Iowa, United States of America. Steven P. Novella is with the Department of Neurology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America.

Why is the issue of credentials spurious? Let’s see. Credentials imply a reason to be believed, on some level. But is this relevant to paradigm disputes? We would say not, since those with the “best” ie biggest pile of conventional credentials – positions with leading institutions, prizes awarded by committee, funding awarded by peers, textbooks contributed to, and so on, very often are the same people who subscribe to a paradigm by reflex, knowing which side their bread is buttered.

Foot soldiers of conventional belief

Both Tara and Steve are fully paid up junior members of the established order willing to prove their loyalty at any juncture, judging from their appearance. In fact, we imagine that you can gather a good impression of Tara and Steven’s mental styles simply from their publicity photos, which establish both scientists as very presentable – in Tara’s case, undeniably pretty, scrumptious as a sponge cake with icing in a wholesome and trustworthy way, in Steven’s case, strikingly personable and strong featured, and well situated in a Yale office in a white coat, ready to win funding, do neurological research on neuromuscular disorders and teach the young ‘uns what has been achieved so far.

We are suitably impressed, for sure. These are the kind of conformists you can trust, who know their conformist stuff. They are the faithful torch bearers of science, who study their material well, and know how to behave at meetings and conferences. Not just impressed, we lik’em! No trouble will come from Tara or Steve for the current paradigm in any field, we imagine. They can be counted on to defend it strenuously, even if a conference is called specifically to examine whether it as true or not.

For what else do they know? Their skepticism is exclusively reserved for the unconventional. These are journeymen scientists, constitutionally incapable of questioning what we all “know”, in the Einstein, Feynman or Duesberg mode. They are the scientific equivalent of government officials and corporate executives, whose testimony in favor of their boss or their product is uncrackable.

Hold on, you might well object, we can’t have this. We have no right to speculate so cynically without more data. You can’t tell much from a photo, or even several. You need much more data. Agreed, we apologize. But look what further research reveals.

Novella is a skeptic!

Turns out that assistant Yale professor Steven Novella is known as a skeptical investigator of paranormal research, and any other fringe shenanigans he can get his hands on. He is the co-founder and president of the New England Skeptical Society, associate editor of the Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine, and the Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice, and host of The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe, a weekly podcast discussing paranormal topics, pseudoscience, and skepticism. He is a member of the Advisory Board of Quackwatch and the American Council on Science and Health.

A true skeptic, you might say, well qualified to evaluate HIV=AIDS skepticism without prejudice. Well, the problem is that he is the other kind of skeptic, very willing to practice his skepticism but only on the favorite targets of the entrenched establishment. Such men win the accolade of “skeptic” in the safest possible way, “inside the tent pissing out”, as Lyndon Johnson might have put it.

But he is not, evidently, willing to turn the eagle eye of his skepticism on an established belief, certainly not in this case, that’s for sure. We find such people not very helpful, because they wear blinkers which prevent them from fully understanding the crucial point about scientific skepticism. It is not merely for protecting conventional wisdom.

Yes, in the name of good science we want to defend sense from the nonsense, and protect hard won knowledge from the crackpots and the charlatans and the honestly mistaken who challenge it, who are simply, provably wrong. These are the easy targets.

But there is a more fundamental task for skeptics in science in the opposite direction. We want to maintain a certain skepticism about what most of us already believe. This is because fundamental scientific progress is only won through originality that improves and replaces conventional wisdom. The ruling paradigm in science is by definition what gives way when a real leap forward in understanding occurs.

Flouting the lessons of history

The ruling belief is what needs to be protected from artificial preservation from insiders in science, those who are so fond of the status quo that they are psychologically blinded to the merit of new ideas, or the defects of old ones. They cannot evaluate new knowledge objectively if it threatens their stock in trade, and what they often do as in Tara and Steven’s case is take the easy way out, automatically assuming that anything outside common wisdom and consensus must be suspect.

They don’t open the door to review wide enough, if at all. They may even slam it shut.

Judging from their demeanor and their arguments, Tara and Steven are this conservative type – upholders of scientific tradition, and suspicious of change. Nothing wrong with that on the face of it, but good science demands something more complex if it is to flourish, and if bad paradigms are not going to be kept long past their due date. stinking like rotten fish but with the Taras and Stevens of the world impervious to the smell because it is what they are used to.

This kind of reflex conservatism can be a real problem. It particularly burdens alternative medicine, whose contributions are often overly resisted and repressed in favor of the outmoded treatments they might replace. The briefly successful effort to expand the attention of the NIH to alternative medicine, for example, seems to have degenerated into little more than a takeover of its funding by established institutions pursuing relatively unoriginal avenues which don’t threaten established regimens and treatments.

Thus at Sloane-Kettering, we hear, public funds are said to be used to treat the stress of cancer with music therapy and aroma therapy in a department that spends more than a million dollars of public money annually, and then charges patients on top of that (a CD of Tibetan music and a can of scent spray would do just as well, our disgruntled critic claims, instead of spending “big money on something that won’t help the cancer”) while nutritional approaches are relatively ignored, since they tend to be advocated as alternatives to chemotherapy and surgery, rather than supplements, and therefore threaten the status quo.

Defending Daddy to the utmost

Speculating again without enough data, we fancy this defensiveness translates psychologically into love for the establishment as a father substitute, in line with the religious impulse which commentators such as Tara and Steven seem to be taken over by in defending the status quo in HIV/AIDS without troubling to go deeply into the subject.

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Truth be told, it is a sign of the stark bankruptcy of the HIV=AIDS paradigm that so many lay people outside science whose professional qualifications are so far from the specialty of retrovirology see and understand the problems so well after teaching themselves what is going on.
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We suspect that this is the reason that both these highly presentable and reliable scientists have only thought in shallow terms about the big issues they are trying to deal with in HIV∫AIDS in this notably unsuccessful essay, which exactly proves our point. The tract is exhibit #1 if you want to demonstrate a reflex and presumptive response to paradigm dissent, in this case the glaringly flawed premise of HIV/AIDS, that a virus is the culprit.

That consideration defeats any attempt to go by credentials in weighing what scientists say when they dispute a big paradigm, since position and respectability flow a lot more freely to supporters of conventional wisdom than they do to critics and original minds like Richard Feynman and Peter Duesberg, not to mention Galileo Gallelei, who try to replace it.

They are liable to end up in the village stocks having turnips thrown at them by the peasants, if they manage to escape the Inquisition. That is, until they win out and are awarded the Nobel for their new view, and the old one is consigend tio the dustbin of history. Then the world reverses its spin and rotates around them and their ideas for a change, without anyone bothering to apologize for the roadblocks put in their way.

Unfortunately this doesn’t happen when paradigm publicists such as Anthony Fauci of NIAID lead the attack on paradigm critics by successfully stifling coverage of their ideas, and promoting the ideas of defenders, resulting in this kind of essay, more or less a collection of turnips, ending up at the National Science Foundation’s Library of Science, instead of one by Peter Duesberg, which would be a lot more educational, since it would be by one of the most distinguished, original and courageous minds in science, who has never been shown to cultivate one turnip in his garden of publications, which to some connoisseurs of literate science might be seen to include intellectual roses.

But then, who is the man behind the Library of Science other than Harold Varmus, whose Nobel for modest accomplishments was won at the expense of Duesberg’s, some critics say. Possibly to Varmus the credibility of Duesberg is a giant turnip, we wouldn’t know. All we do know is that when you mention to Varmus the view that oncogenes may not be all that they are cracked up to be, he is liable to answer, “Oh, so you are a Duesbergite!”

Why no credentials may be the best credentials

Anyhow, this is why credentials are not something which occupies intelligent people very long when paradigm replacement is being discussed. So when we read further along in the essay that

Indeed, many of the signatories to this statement (in support of paradigm review) lack any qualifications in virology, epidemiology, or even basic biology.

we don’t pay much attention. Truth be told, it is a sign of the stark bankruptcy of the HIV=AIDS paradigm that so many lay people outside science whose professional qualifications are so far from the specialty of retrovirology see and understand the problems so well after teaching themselves what is going on.

Credentials have their place, of course. Like Tara, we like to include the credentials of the speaker or writer is gauging what weight to give their data and opinions, if they are new to us. When seeking sources on any topic we like to deal with experts, and respected generals of a field, because they are more reliable – on the conventional wisdom – seem ideal.

However, when the wisdom is disputed, it is much likely to be improved by the maverick and the outsider than the trusted curators of the standard belief. All those investigating a disputed paradigm in science have to remember that.

Henry Bauer nailed it in new book

In fact, as Henry Bauer suggests in his fine new book, the Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory (McFarland, 2006, unfortunately $35 because it is a “textbook”), this factor plays a big role in holding back the big advances of science. His Chapter 15 is titled Maintaining the Monopoly and has many sections which apply to the Tara Tantrum, as the publication under discussion might be named – Controlling the Data, Censoring, and Evading, Misrepresenting and Ad Hominem Attacks included.

In Ignorance of How Science Works, Bauer notes this:

Researchers are typically unaware that unorthodox views should be attended to precisely because they might hint at an important advance.

Maybe Tara and Steven should read that chapter, which also notes that

Public controversies might generate more light and less heat if there were a wider undertsanding of how science progress.

See also Henry Bauer’s Preface to his book.

All this is not so surprising, after all. Naturally newcomers to a field can view beliefs with a fresh, objective eye which reveals flaws and promising new avenues hidden from insiders who conform socially and emotionally to a shared ideology as their given stock in trade, one in which they are heavily invested, which tends to lend their proclamations of its inviolable truth a heartfelt sincerity the naive can easily mistake for genuine belief in its indisputable validity.

Beliefs which are needed for membership of your institution and for the emotional and financial support of your family cannot safely be objectively assessed by any member without inheriting money, saving up for twenty years or winning the lottery or a stock market gamble first, or some other way of gaining financial independence. Apparently this cynical consideration hasn’t yet penetrated the innocent minds of Tara and Steven, possibly because they are already wrapped by the many silken strands of this influence, which we have included in the logo of this blog. So their essay arises from it, being prompted consciously or not by the urge to polish apples for the teacher.

That presumably is what prevents such fine and well tutored minds, including a trained epidemiologist, after all, from perceiving the outrageous inconsistencies with science and common sense flaunted by the HIV∫AIDS wisdom they love so well. How else can you account for the fact that a highly vocal, shoot from the hip young epidemiologist has not been able to detect that there are gaping chasms in the epidemiology of HIV∫AIDS, even if she cannot see the impossibilities of the virology. Does she really not see that New York City and subtropical Africa are enduring quite different phenomena? Does she honestly believe that a gay disease in two continents can be heterosexual in the other three?

Meanwhile Gordon Stewart, a consultant to the World Health Organization and a first rate epidemiologist, concluded long ago that HIV is not a credible cause of AIDS, and in 1989 made accurate projections showing no spread of AIDS in the UK outside the risk groups, but the WHO, or the Royal Society or the Royal Statistical Society when they requested them. Stewart is quoted by Bauer as saying that

The censorship maintained by the international consensus of experts in the main research councils, learned societies, official committees, and WHO is unyielding; so also are the main channels in radio, television and the press….In my 57 years as a professional, I have never encountered anyhing like it nor did I ever think that I would in the world of medical science where, as in all other science, difference of opinion is the sine qua non of all advance.

Of course, what Stewart and other idealists overlook in judging others by their own gentlemanly ideals is the long litany of human foibles emblazoned on the banner logo of this humble blog (see top of the page), which account for modern misbehavior, such as hatred of whistleblowers, vindictive pleasure in squashing those out of step, and so on, in modern systems of organization, of which science is now one.

In fact, it is now appropriate to perceive this field of science as a global corporation, and its leaders as equivalent to the tobacco executives swearing to a Congressional committee that they believed smoking is good for you, and no harm had ever been shown. That is what HIV∫AIDS leaders now say about drugs, with equal justification ie none at all (see previous post).

Credentials may not be relevant

So to summarize: what are the real conclusions here?
(Please forgive the writer for repeating things, this is for the benefit of newcomers to this arena, who like a member of the press on the phone today, may arrive with this level of understanding of the issue: “But is there a debate? Surely it is a virus, they have seen it in the microscope!”:

1. Credentials are not necessarily relevant as long as outsiders can understand what is said and written. This is not a credentials battle, but a battle of reason and data. Credentials weigh on both sides of the balance of a paradigm dispute. As science advances, by its very nature it topples the current paradigm and all the bemedaled science generals who invented it, adopted it, researched it, preach it, teach it and live by and on it. High credentials in a field are as much grounds for suspicion as for credibility, when leaders are heavily invested in the ruling belief.

2. Lay commentators have in this issue have contributed a great deal to the understanding of the suspicious origin of the paradigm and its enduring flaws. Not surprisingly, since there is plenty of other professional expertise (market research, statistics, investigative journalism, political savvy) that can be brought to bear with advantage, not to mention sheer intelligence, and the advantages of outsider objectivity, many outsiders have come to see that HIV∫AIDS is suspect. Lawyers, for example, and insurance experts we have always found have no trouble at all in rapidly appreciating the outlines of this folly when we mention it.

3. Peter Duesberg’s qualifications remain supreme, as the one scientist in the world with a fine mind who has had the courage to research the entire range of possibilities and maintain against the heaviest possible opposition and sanctions his original conclusion and arguments against all attempts to undermine him and put him out of action in science. In other words, there is no other person on the planet who has devoted so much careful analysis to the paradigm and its supposed justifications, and the quality of his thinking is readily apparent to anyone who reads his fine papers (see for yourself at Duesberg.com).
In its precision, coverage and literacy, his work speaks for itself, in its superiority to the replies of his oppnents, and would be sufficient credential in itself even if this excellent scientist wasn’t a California Scientist of the Year, an NIH Outstanding Investigator, a member of the National Academy at 50, and the originator of two fields in modern scientific research, one of which he renounced as inaccurate (oncogenes), the other a new path now being adopted in cancer by his elite peers, and public spirited in the extreme ie even at the cost of loss of all public funding and a Nobel prize to boot.

Not to mention having to suffer the indignity of numberless local yokels throw turnips at him.

Sorry to say it, but judged on the basis of credentials alone (which we would never advise) the likelihood of the two authors of HIV Denial in the Internet Era being right in their assumption that he is wrong is about the same we calculate as the sun failing to rise in the East tomorrow.

Special note to subscribers: We will continue with our analysis of the turnips in the next post on the topic of Tara and Steven’s Frog, which will finally deal with the content, having now got past the authors’ names.

Crowe reads Journal of AIDS with meme-free vision

“The drugs work”, don’t they? Well, they kill babies

Collateral damage small price to pay for HIV protection – circumcision doesn’t protect!

David Crowe of the Alberta Reappraising AIDS Society has been reading the August 20 2007 issue of the Journal named “AIDS”. He is not wearing the meme prescription glasses supplied free by the editors and researchers of that leading journal, so they may not like what he finds.

His comments are bold in [] brackets:

[This issue of "AIDS" also has two articles on how to properly stop taking AIDS drugs. I guess they are worried about people both stopping drugs AND stopping visiting their doctors...]

[Severe side effects in a little girl due to exposure to AIDS drugs in the womb]
“A 7-month-old girl was admitted to intensive care following resuscitation for a severe metabolic acidosis. Her mother had started highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) at 6-weeks gestation before she knew she was pregnant…The mother…was asymptomatic prior to starting HAART with combivir and nevirapine for a CD4 of 200 million/L and viral load of 280,000 copies/mL.”
Silf K et al. Methylmalonic acidaemia in a 7-month-old following maternal highy active antiretroviral therapy during pregnancy. AIDS. 2007 Aug 20; 21(13): 1835-1836.

Dear reader, let us expound on this for a moment. If you believe that HIV causes AIDS, you write and publish such a report without a single pang of self-questioning, because these deadly side effects are merely the collateral damage of the top priority aim of keeping the virus at bay, even when the mother has no symptoms. Such is the power of the HIV∫AIDS meme. To those uninhabited by the AIDS meme, however, like David Crowe, the concern is the effect of antiretroviral drugs on the foetus, here exemplified as something which can kill at seven months after birth.

Ants in the anthill – almost none

Perhaps in this context it might be worth reflecting that 280,000 copies per milliliter may sound like an infestation of virus comparable to ants in an anthill, but what it actually signifies, even to meme ridden researchers, is less than five intact infectious copies per milliter. To be precise, 4.7 copies per ml, since there is only one fully intact infectious virus per ml if the viral load is 60,000 (see Piatak M. et al, Science 259:1749=1754, 1993)(”The PCR method they use overestimates by at least 60,000 times the real titre of infectious HIV: 100,000/60,000 is 1.7 infectious HIVs per ml, hardly the “virological mayhem” alluded to by Wain-Hobson… infectious units, after all, are the only clinically relevant criteria for a viral pathogen.” – Peter Duesberg and H. Bialy. HIV An Illusion. Nature, 375:197, May 18, 1995)

Positive and healthy for 36 years

[36 year long-term-non-progressor who, despite not knowing his status, did not transmit to his wife]
“In June 2006, a 77-year-old Japanese man with an acute asthma attack was admitted to our hospital in Yokohama, Japan. A pre-admission HIV screening test by enzyme immunoassay unexpectedly detected his HIV seropositivity…strong seroreactivity to HIV-2, but not to HIV-1 [and further tests confirmed this]…He had no history of engaging in high risk sexual contact and substance abuse in the past. Both his spouse (72 years old) and their son (34 years old) were HIV-negative. He, however, had a near-fetal[sic] motor accident in Senegal in June 1971…he received a large unit of blood from a number of volunteer Senegalian donors. He has never been transfused with blood products except on that occasion…After 8 days, he was discharged from hospital…His CD4 cell count was 827 cells/µL…He continues to be [a] long-term nonprogressor”
Utsumi T et al. An HIV-2-infected Japanese man who was a long-term nonprogressor for 36 years. AIDS. 2007 Aug 20; 21(13): 1834-5.

Another example of how the meme addles the brain of otherwise smart researchers. 36 years! Maybe the latent period of HIV-2 should be raised to average 20 years. Did they suggest he take ARVs after leaving hospital?

Babies do well as they die

[Dying is apparently the new "doing well"... ]
“A total of 439 [Malawian] children started on ART [anti-retroviral therapy]…By September 2006, 49 children (11%) had died, of whom 35 (71%) died by 3 months and 44 (89%) by 6 months. The cumulative incidence of death at 3, 6, 12 and 24 months after ART was 8, 12, 13 and 15%, respectively…CONCLUSION:: Although children do well on ART, there is high early mortality [!]”
Bong CN et al. Risk factors for early mortality in children on adult fixed-dose combination antiretroviral treatment in a central hospital in Malawi. AIDS. 2007 Aug 20; 21(13): 1805-1810.

In the meme warped view, death is not too high a price to pay for avoiding the depredations of the Virus. You only lose one in six children in two years, after all. The rest may be sick from the not yet fatal effects of the drugs, but they are triumphant over HIV.

[More evidence of the infant deaths that formula feeding is causing, although the authors of this study don't actually supply the raw death rate]
“The World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF recommend that HIV-positive women should avoid all breastfeeding only if replacement feeding is acceptable, feasible, affordable, sustainable and safe…[This study was a] Prospective cohort study of 635 HIV-positive mother-infant pairs across three sites in South Africa to assess mother to child transmission of HIV…Three criteria were found to be associated with improved infant HIV-free survival amongst women choosing to formula feed: piped water; electricity, gas or paraffin for fuel; and disclosing HIV status…Infants of women who chose to formula feed without fulfilling these three criteria had the highest risk of HIV transmission/death [the risk of death alone is not given]”
Doherty T et al. Effectiveness of the WHO/UNICEF guidelines on infant feeding for HIV-positive women: results from a prospective cohort study in South Africa. AIDS. 2007 Aug 20; 21(13): 1791-1797.

Even in South Africa, one of the very few places where the global meme has not yet turned the entire population into paradigm pod people, they are pushing bottle feeding in a food and hygiene challenged society where breast feeding is one of the best protections against nutritional deficits and infection for helpless babies and their hapless mothers.

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Perhaps in this context it might be worth reflecting that 280,000 copies per milliliter may sound like an infestation of virus comparable to ants in an anthill, but what it actually signifies, even to meme ridden researchers, is less than five intact infectious copies per milliter. To be precise, 4.7 copies per ml, since there is only one fully intact infectious virus per ml if the viral load is 60,000…
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By the way, what does a meme free observer suspect, if piped water, electricity, and fuel correlate with lower HIV transmission/death? Could it be that other diseases are being kept at bay here, so death or HIV positivity (through cross reactions with other agents such as TB) shows up less often? Enquiring minds not yet paralyzed by the AIDS meme might ask this question.

Contraceptive hormones test positive, but circumcision doesn’t help after all!

[Hormonal contraception makes women more likely to be HIV+ but ...]
“Data were from a prospective cohort study of 1206 HIV-1 seronegative sex workers from Mombasa, Kenya who were followed monthly…233 women acquired HIV-1 (8.7/100 person-years)…In multivariate analysis, including adjustment for HSV-2, HIV-1 acquisition was associated with use of oral contraceptive pills [adjusted hazard ratio (HR), 1.46] and depot medroxyprogesterone acetate [aka DMPA or Depo-Provera, a contraceptive providing 3 months protection with each injection] (adjusted HR, 1.73).”
Baeten JM et al. Hormonal contraceptive use, herpes simplex virus infection, and risk of HIV-1 acquisition among Kenyan women. AIDS. 2007 Aug 20; 21(13): 1771-1777.

So the hormones or their effect cross react with the HIV antibody test, and render hundreds of sex workers ripe for antiretrovirals, even though their ability to infect truck drivers from Nairobi and spread AIDS through Kenya is nil, if we believe Nancy Padian’s study which showed no transmission at all in San Francisco among heterosexual couples except for that deduced by her imagination, which even then amounted to only one transmission in 9000 or so couplings.

So have these sex workers been put on ARVs, or what? Shall we guess?

Circumcision doesn’t protect!

[...but circumcision does not]
“Data were analyzed from 4417 Ugandan and Zimbabwean women participating in a prospective study of hormonal contraception and HIV acquisition…At baseline [start of the study], 74% reported uncircumcised primary partners, 22% had circumcised partners and 4% had partners of unknown circumcision status. Median follow-up was 23 months, during which 210 women acquired HIV (167, 34, and 9 women whose primary partners were uncircumcised, circumcised, or of unknown circumcision status, respectively). Although unadjusted analyses indicated that women with circumcised partners had lower HIV risk than those with uncircumcised partners, the protective effect disappeared after adjustment for other risk factors”
Turner AN et al. Men’s circumcision status and women’s risk of HIV acquisition in Zimbabwe and Uganda. AIDS. 2007 Aug 20; 21(13): 1779-1789.

So circumcision has no protective effect after all? But this is the latest thing! We can’t have contradiction of the latest hot fashion in HIV∫AIDS talk, not when we have whole conferences scheduled on it!

High CD4 count? Giv’em drugs!

[Large study of HIV-positive people not taking drugs. Shows a strikingly low death rate among groups with high CD4 counts ... and then recommends they should all be put on AIDS drugs...]
“17 609 [HIV-positive people] contributed a total of 30 313 person-years to the analysis of rates of AIDS or death in ART[anti-retroviral-therapy]-naive patients…The first AIDS events occurring at CD4 cell count >350 cells/mL were…examined: 63 (20%) were Kaposi’s sarcoma (compared with 16% overall), 62 (20%) oesophageal candidiasis (17% overall), 42 (14%) tuberculosis (13% overall), 35 (11%) herpes simplex (6% overall), 37 (12%) recurrent bacterial infections (6% overall), 20 (6%) Pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia (19% overall), 17 (5%) cryptosporidiosis (3% overall) and 13 (4%) lymphoma (3% overall)…[Table 1 shows that the risk of death in 100 person years is 0.32 for CD4 counts 350-499, 0.20 for 500-649 and 0.17 for over 650]…[despite this, the authors conclude]…Our findings suggest that risk of AIDS and death might be reduced by using ART to raise CD4 cell counts even among patients with high CD4 cell counts”
Rate of AIDS diseases or death in HIV-infected antiretroviral therapy-naive individuals with high CD4 cell count. AIDS. 2007 Aug 20; 21(13): 1717-1721.

“Our findings suggest that risk of AIDS and death might be reduced by using ART to raise CD4 cell counts even among patients with high CD4 cell counts”. So the fact that HIV doesn’t seem to result in death very often even for people under the death sentence of HIV antibody positivity if they don’t take drugs, and that many have high CD4 counts, this is a good reason to start giving the latter group death dealing drugs?

Perhaps our brain is not working very well, but this seems wrong to us too. What do you think, gentle reader?

As far as we are concerned, living in Alberta, Canada seems to give you a very clear perspective. Go to Alberta Reappraising AIDS Society for much good data on the HIV∫AIDS challenge and the latest news items on the battle front.

Cornell defender publishes evidence of his paradigm bankruptcy

Scurrilous piece attacks Duesberg personally, but is sometimes hilariously wrong

Self condemning move shows scientific confidence is absent

Recently Peter Duesberg, the Berkeley professor whom many agree would have the Nobel for his work in cancer if he hadn’t exposed the bankruptcy of the HIV=AIDS paradigm, was asked to comment on AIDSTruth.org by a journalist. He dismissed the site out of hand as nothing but a set of ad hominem attacks in the cause of paradigm defense, without valid intellectual substance.

With the publication of a piece yesterday that has attained a new low in this vein, John P. Moore, the macaque microbicide researcher at Weill Cornell who runs the site, has proved Duesberg’s point so effectively that paradigm critics are celebrating.

There is probably nothing in the history of the twenty three year old debate which so effectively shows that paradigm protectors such as Moore have no valid defense of the notion that HIV causes AIDS than this pitiable document, which ironically is a pot-kettle attack on Duesberg as a “malignant narcissist”, who is so disappointed by his career failures that he rejects the paradigm to compensate.

A heroic public and scientific spirit

This is utter nonsense, of course. Duesberg wrote his original dismissal of the AIDS paradigm for Cancer Research at 50, as a newly minted member of the National Academy and Fogarty Fellow and visiting scientist working in a retrovirus lab at the NIH where he was viewed as a golden haired boy in science, upon whom the NIH had lavished a $350,000 per year, five year Outstanding Investigator Grant to do with what he wished.

Unfortunately for his peers, lesser scientists whose pockets were larger than their minds, he reviewed and rejected HIV=AIDS, and unlike many others who had expressed doubts, he never caved in.

This heroic record of scientific integrity in the service of the public interest has now lasted twenty three years, during which Duesberg has suffered the massive penalty of not being able to obtain one red cent more in NIH funding, despite innumerable grant applications supported by senior members of the scientific community, together with a serious drought in conference speaking invitations and assigned graduate students, who are not allowed near him in case he teaches them better. And now for his pains he has to suffer the display on the Web of ignorant, misleading and insulting papers by anonymous nonentities.

Duesberg’s joke – represented as Gallo envy!

However, there are some amusements in this diatribe. One is that so anxious is the writer to tar and feather Duesberg with ill founded character assassination – let’s say it again, there is probably no prominent scientist who is so squeaky clean in his work and publicly responsible motivation as Duesberg, who unlike his most prominent opponents David Baltimore and Robert Gallo has never been accused, let alone officially condemned for scientific malpractice and skulduggery – that he tries to use an incident which above all speaks for Duesberg’s endlessly resilient sense of humor, which has survived so much exposure to the worst side of human nature, as exemplified by this shamefully crude attack.

We refer to the famous incident where Duesberg arrived at a conference in Europe where Gallo would be a fellow speaker and mischievously told the attractive woman at the sign in table “I am Dr. Gallo!” His joke didn’t last long – “Are you sure?” she asked doubtfully, “You don’t look like him!” – but it earned him a date which turned into Duesberg’s second marriage, soon blessed with a lovely child, a son.

Here is the compleat assassin’s humorless take on this tale, in a footnote to his (surely not her?) masterwork:

Reportedly, Duesberg’s envy of Gallo even prompted him to impersonate his perceived rival. According to Harvey Bialy, Duesberg first met his current wife while pretending to be Robert Gallo at a conference sign-in table. (Oncogenes, Aneuploidy, and AIDS. A Scientific (sic) Life and Times of Peter H. Duesberg, Harvey Bialy, The Institute of Biotechnology of the Autonomous National University of Mexico Press, 2004, pp. 1801.)

We have to say here that we believe that a lack of a sense of humor is one failing that seems to go with the kind of scientific gangsterism perpetrated on Duesberg over the last twenty three years, and we believe that it is a completely reliable indicator of a wit which is either dim by nature or rendered slow by the necessity of keeping pretenses alive.

A welcome character assassination

The full title of this self-defeating document is “Malignant Narcissism in the Cancer Lab: Duesberg’s AIDS Denialism Is Driven by Ego Inflamed by Professional Failures”. Unfortunately, it is posted only as a PDF, and therefore may be viewed by fewer passers by than it deserves.

However, it is at the top of AIDSTruth’s offerings of “Scientific Evidence that HIV Causes AIDS” at the moment, on its front page, so critics of the paradigm are busily publicizing it as far and wide as they can, for rarely in the history of scientific discussion has there appeared such a self incriminating document.

Here are a few random examples of its occupation of moral and social high ground when lambasting the dastardly Duesberg:

What drives Peter Duesberg to act with such professional recklessness and social irresponsibility? His fellow denialists regard Duesberg as a hero who has used his scientific training bravely to combat an oppressive “scientific establishment.” With little or no knowledge of Duesberg’s personality, character and history,2 they liken him to Galileo Galilei; they compare Duesberg’s struggles with “the scientific establishment” to Galileo’s early 17th century challenge to Rome’s dominance in astronomy and philosophy. But, as Bob Park has noted,3 “to wear the mantel ((sic – NAR Ed.)) of Galileo, you must first be right.”4 And Duesberg is woefully wrong on the science of HIV/AIDS. Furthermore, Galileo’s motivations were honorable, a defense of scientific thought against the reactionary forces of religion. In marked contrast, Duesberg’s motives, as many senior scientists of his generation can attest, are questionable at best: his is driven not by science but by an insatiable ego.

One of the most evocative descriptions we have heard of Duesberg is that he is a “malignant narcissist,” a man who cannot tolerate the greater career success of his peers. It should be recalled that Duesberg had seriously damaged—and arguably destroyed—his own potentially world-class scientific career some years before AIDS first came to the attention of the public. He did this by attacking, with no justification, the work of scientists of the caliber of Harold Varmus, Michael Bishop,5 and others whose work on viral oncogenes and cancer was later recognized with the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1989. Dissatisfied with his own progress and the resulting relatively meager recognition of his work, Duesberg resented these increasingly renowned scientists and criticized them privately and, later, publicly….

When it became clear that Robert Gallo had made major scientific breakthroughs in the early years of AIDS research, Duesberg’s ego was inflamed again. He was unable to tolerate the success and public recognition of another member of his scientific generation of virologists.14 So he attacked, again aiming to belittle and criticize a former colleague whose research was receiving vastly more public and professional attention than his own. Duesberg’s aggressive actions were not really about the science of HIV and AIDS; they were merely packaged as such. In reality, they were personal attacks on Bob Gallo’s leading role in this new field, attacks born of a jealous rage,15 just as his criticism of Varmus, Bishop and others had been only a few years earlier.

And so on and so on, with a few specific allegations that Duesberg made scientific errors in his critiques that are quite wrong, and which we will deal with later once Tara’s frog is out of the way.

The inner wound of paradigm protectors

But any reader can pick up on the attitude with which this grubby document is imbued. The author clearly intends to savage Duesberg with every weapon at hand including the kitchen sink. Whence this animosity, one wonders? The only plausible motivation we can imagine is that Duesberg’s spoiler effect is touching on the universal inner flaw of defenders of the HIV=AIDS faith, who are often – as in the case of Martin Delaney, whom we originally suspected was the author of this thesis – surviving financially only courtesy of the drug companies involved in this field.

This inner wound, which when touched upon continually by the endlessly penetrating Duesberg results in cries of hurt rage, is the inner conflict felt consciously or unconciously by those who know very well, whether they admit it or not to themselves, that they have sold out, intellectually speaking, and that they hear an inner voice that tells them, “Hello, Mr Hyde!” Given the price of admitting that they are wrong and have sold out their own honor and intelligence, and the health and lives of those that listen to them, it is not surprising that desperate, vindictive and wholesale efforts to silence Duesberg result.

Here we should mention once again the behind the scenes activity conducted by John Moore, Nancy Padian, Mark Wainberg and presumably others to try to pry loose from their jobs and positions in the academic world anyone who seriously opposes them, efforts which have been proudly claimed by two of these miscreants in a recent article posted on the web site of a Canadian newspaper, and covered here in a previous post.

Thank you Dr Moore

The seven page paper is unsigned, so for the moment John Moore himself must take all the credit for it (presumably it is not by one of Dr. Moore’s macaques, despite its bad manners). We guess it is by him, since the language matches phrases like “jealous rage” in Moore’s review on AIDSTruth of Duesberg’s book, Inventing the AIDS Virus, and Moore’s review of Bialy’s book on Amazon. Also, we have already detected in Moore the tortured psyche referred to above, which leads him to castigate “denialists” in public while supporting their conclusions quietly in papers read only by insiders (see earlier posts).

If not Moore, then Martin Delaney, with editing by Moore. Delaney is a gay activist who runs Project Inform whose drug company financed defense of the paradigm and of Dr Bob Gallo knows no bounds, and who is known for his similar smear attack on Celia Farber in a letter to the Observer, and several earlier attacks on Duesberg. However, since Delaney harps on homophobia as his favorite theme in his political onslaughts, it seems clear that this is by Moore, apparently too sensible, in the end, to take direct credit for such slander. But we have no data yet other than language and style pointers.

We at NAR congratulate Dr Moore for his signal contribution to the crumbling of his favorite paradigm, on behalf of which the AIDSTruth site and its exclusively non peer reviewed documents in support of HIV=AIDS form the most obvious reason for doubting the belief.

For it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to ask, if the HIV=AIDS paradigm is unquestionably the best way of accounting for the variety of illnesses in the world that are now gathered under the AIDS umbrella, and the critics so abysmally wrong in rejecting it, and their leader and scientific guiding light motivated only by love of himself and envious hatred of John Moore and others who cling to the paradigm as if it was a lifebelt, why the need for ad hominem attacks?

Surely the “Scientific Evidence that HIV Causes AIDS” would be enough to speak for itself, and thoroughly crush any opposition? Any convincing accumulation of evidence would allow defenders of the paradigm such as John Moore and his scientific and gay activist colleagues on AIDSTruth to behave with complete assurance. The evidence would be genuinely “overwhelming”, and allow them to confidently face and overcome copious objections even from Peter Duesberg.

Clever though he may be, Duesberg would be defeated intellectually, regardless of the renowned quality of his treatises on the topic, carried in peer reviewed journals from 1987 to as recently as 2003. Not to mention his enduring lab science, which even though conducted under humiliating financial handicaps, stemming from the unwillingness of his peers to shoot themselves in the feet by allowing him NIH funding, has resulted lately in a promising new path in cancer research already adopted by some of his peers.

This line must be as promising as we believe it is, since it has been taken up by other elite researchers, who are so keen on it that they appear to be trying to take it over, and credit themselves for the breakthrough.

Moore’s big giveaway

But one thing is certain. If the paradigm claimants had a solid case, there would be no need for scurrilous ad hominem attacks, so intellectually crude and emotionally primitive that they will be an embarrassment to Weill Cornell and a giveaway sign of the bankruptcy of the paradigm for years to come.

But this self-confidence, it is clear from AIDSTruth, is completely lacking. There is no other site we know of now or in the recent past which so dwells on ad hominem counter attacks on intellectual critics of a paradigm. And now we have the “Malignant Narcissist” paper.

Long may it be up on AIDSTruth, so that the world can take note. Actually, given that Google has eternal cache memory, the Internet never forgets. So even if Moore comes to his senses and takes this self incriminating document down, it is likely to be around forever.

We congratulate him on his achievement. Perhaps it will find a place on his Cornell Honors and Awards page, which is so far empty.

Here is the complete text for reference, just in case Moore takes it off his site (he has already removed some material, we have been told). Mistatements and errors including ones of spelling and grammar are highlighted by us in bold, and misrepresented and misunderstood facts in italics. We have no good information on Duesberg’s dealings with the companies mentioned in the long tilt against his business integrity, which seems to be sourced entirely from the Internet, but we know Duesberg well enough to be quite sure he has never misled anyone in this realm, as he has not in science:

Malignant Narcissism in the Cancer Lab:
Duesberg’s AIDS Denialism Is Driven by Ego Inflamed by Professional Failures

Peter Duesberg, a professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, is widely regarded as the founder and core proponent of HIV denialism. When other scientists and clinicians who were initially cautious about accepting early reports that HIV exists and is the primary and necessary cause of AIDS were persuaded by the mounting evidence, Duesberg dug in, insisting without data that HIV is a harmless passenger virus. He attributed the explosive epidemic of compromised immune systems and AIDS-related illnesses and deaths in widely disparate populations with nothing in common but the virus—gay men, hemophiliacs, injection drug uses, surgical patients who received transfused blood, infants born to women with HIV, health care workers stuck by needles, heterosexually active South Africans—to a variety of other discrete causes. Duesberg was the first to make many erroneous assertions that have been repeatedly debunked and yet are persistently reiterated, without evidence or reason, by other denialists.1

Because Duesberg is associated with a great university and has worked with viruses, the disinformation he has spread has carried greater weight than that of other HIV denialists, many of whom are associated with other pseudoscientific beliefs (creationism, alien abduction, vaccination as the cause of autism, etc.). Duesberg’s institutional authority and persistence have resulted in countless deaths of HIV-positive people from AIDS—those who believed his claim that their health would not be impaired by their HIV infection, and those who were denied access to treatment when their government (as in South Africa) or their parents (as in California) were influenced by him. Yet denialists portray Duesberg himself as a victim whose professional career has suffered because he maintains his position against the “AIDS establishment”— he refuses to admit that he is dead wrong.

What drives Peter Duesberg to act with such professional recklessness and social irresponsibility? His fellow denialists regard Duesberg as a hero who has used his scientific training bravely to combat an oppressive “scientific establishment.” With little or no knowledge of Duesberg’s personality, character and history,2 they liken him to Galileo Galilei; they compare Duesberg’s struggles with “the scientific establishment” to Galileo’s early 17th century challenge to Rome’s dominance in astronomy and philosophy. But, as Bob Park has noted,3 “to wear the mantel of Galileo, you must first be right.”4 And Duesberg is woefully wrong on the science of HIV/AIDS. Furthermore, Galileo’s motivations were honorable, a defense of scientific thought against the reactionary forces of religion. In marked contrast, Duesberg’s motives, as many senior scientists of his generation can attest, are questionable at best: his is driven not by science but by an insatiable ego.

One of the most evocative descriptions we have heard of Duesberg is that he is a “malignant narcissist,” a man who cannot tolerate the greater career success of his peers. It should be recalled that Duesberg had seriously damaged—and arguably destroyed—his own potentially world-class scientific career some years before AIDS first came to the attention of the public. He did this by attacking, with no justification, the work of scientists of the caliber of Harold Varmus, Michael Bishop,5 and others whose work on viral oncogenes and cancer was later recognized with the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1989. Dissatisfied with his own progress and the resulting relatively meager recognition of his work, Duesberg resented these increasingly renowned scientists and criticized them privately and, later, publicly.

Duesberg’s Cancer Research Is Ignored

The trajectory of this ego-driven criticism may be traced in the scientific literature and peripheral documents. Once exemplified by tedious, behind-the-scenes quibbling about the nomenclature of oncogenes (see, for example, this self-indulgent letter in the Harold Varmus collections: PDF 6), Duesberg’s private arguments and frustration soon spilled over into the public arena. During the mid-1980s, Duesberg’s published reviews on oncogenes and their role in cancer became increasingly shrill. At first, his criticisms were posed as simple questions. “Retroviral transforming genes in normal cells?”7 was the title of a 1983 review. Quickly, the questions became loaded and increasingly insistent: “Are activated protoonc genes cancer genes?”8 and “Activated proto-onc genes: sufficient or necessary for cancer?”9 By 1987, we observe in his titles the Duesbergian denouement: absolute certainty, the pronouncement ex cathedra, the statement of belief as (untested) “fact”: “Cancer genes generated by rare chromosomal rearrangements rather than activation of oncogenes;”10 “Latent cellular oncogenes: the paradox dissolves;”11 and “Cancer genes: rare recombinants instead of activated oncogenes (a review).”12

Even assuming, generously, that Duesberg had any valid scientific points at the outset of his descent into dissent for dissent’s sake, he tossed them aside to make way for empty rhetoric and overblown claims. Dismissing the progress of decades as worthless, Duesberg decided on his own, against the published evidence, that oncogenes and mutations had no role in cancer whatsoever.13 Because he was both transparently wrong and immoderate in making his claims, Duesberg burnt many bridges to the scientific community at that time. He was, accordingly, already regarded as a controversial figure, and worse, when people began dying from AIDS and research into the cause of the destruction of the immune system began.

Duesberg’s HIV Denialism: Egotism without Expertise

When it became clear that Robert Gallo had made major scientific breakthroughs in the early years of AIDS research, Duesberg’s ego was inflamed again. He was unable to tolerate the success and public recognition of another member of his scientific generation of virologists.14 So he attacked, again aiming to belittle and criticize a former colleague whose research was receiving vastly more public and professional attention than his own. Duesberg’s aggressive actions were not really about the science of HIV and AIDS; they were merely packaged as such. In reality, they were personal attacks on Bob Gallo’s leading role in this new field, attacks born of a jealous rage,15 just as his criticism of Varmus, Bishop and others had been only a few years earlier. In 1993, “Duesberg charged that the authors of a study in Nature showing that only HIV positive drug users developed AIDS had fabricated data; the charge was found to be groundless by an independent panel at the University of California, Berkeley.”16 One of the authors of the Nature paper, Warren Winkelstein, describes the bizarre behavior of Peter Duesberg in a published interview in the Online Archive of California: Supreme).17 Rather, Duesberg exploited his membership in the National Academy of Sciences by publishing several rambling reviews on HIV. His arguments were based on misunderstandings and misreadings—perhaps intentional—of the existing literature. The scientific community roundly rejected his half-baked ideas, and, as years passed, Duesberg was forced to stoop to second-tier, then third-tier journals and worse to find an audience. Sadly, some of his readers were not trained in science, and many of those fooled by Duesberg’s sophistry were the very individuals who stood to lose the most from believing him. For a few examples, see Consequencesand Bialy Quotes and Bialy), had joined Insight Medical Group’s medical advisory board for the cancer test, now renamed “Anucyte.” Bialy is the author of a hagiographic biography of Duesberg and was “retired” earlier this year from his last academic affiliation at UNAM in Mexico.

Another recent addition to Modern Technology Corp’s cadre of experts is an eye doctor named Marc Rose, who expanded his interests from sight preservation to male menopause, anti-aging and “life extension.” He is active with the Cancer Control Society, which among other things organizes bus tours of Tijuana cancer clinics that sell laetrile and other unproven nostrums to desperate people. Rose will bring this expertise to the further development and marketing of the Anucyte test.

The CEO of Modern Technology Corp, Anthony Welch, says he studied Electrical Engineering for 2 years (1986-88: he does not claim that a degree was awarded) at the University of Mississippi, and now claims to be a law student at Concord School of Law. (Concord School of Law is an on-line school that does not accept students without degrees.) Despite extraordinary financial losses, deep corporate debt, consistent failures to earn promised revenue, and many complaints to the SEC from angry investors, Welch has been paying himself a very hefty salary—almost $300,000 for the 2006 fiscal year. His CFO, Robert Church, resigned from the company June 2006, reportedly because financial statements required by the SEC were always late. Welch reportedly took over these duties himself.

Insight Medical Group promised “to provide ongoing financial support to Peter Duesberg’s lab … [which] …agrees to work closely with Insight Medical Group to improve products and technology”21 That is to say, Duesberg is a principal of a subsidiary that has as its sole asset an offshore lab (which may or may not exist) for a cancer diagnosis technology that has not been clinically tested or approved by the FDA or any other objective institution. The CEO is regarded by investors as unreliable; the company is, at best, poorly managed. Perhaps Duesberg, Bialy, Rasnick and Welch thought that Duesberg’s article about his aneuploidy theory in Scientific American in May, 2007, would at least temporarily inflate the value of the stock of the company, which they could then dump (see this critique: Critique of Duesberg’s article). But the SciAm article has not helped Modern Technology Corp’s stock price at all: it’s down to $.004—that’s less than half a cent—a share from about $1.50 a share two years ago. (In fact, the loss is much greater when a “reverse split” is calculated in.)

In early August, 2007, the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC) revoked the corporate charter for Modern Technology Corp, and the company’s right to transact business has been forfeited. It seems the intellectual property of the super-duper cancer detector had already been returned to Duesberg and Rasnick in the wake of the stock’s death spiral—the half million in stock they got is now barely worth pennies on the dollar and they must have felt humiliated, cheated, and angry. Modern Technology Corp, however, retains the marketing and distribution rights, leading to new alliances with the immortality gurus at the “Life Extension Foundation.” (“The Foundation’s objective is to develop methods to enable people to live in health, youth and vigor for unlimited periods of time.”22) The company has also scheduled a presentation of the AnuCyte cancer test at the quackery conference of the “Cancer Control Society” in September 2007.23

Given Duesberg’s malignant narcissism and his history of lashing out when he is professionally humiliated, the pathetic failure of his foray into entrepreneurship with AnuCyte and the product’s current association with most abased forms of pseudoscience—eternal life, magical cancer cures—may well provoke another wave of scientist bashing from HIV denialism’s most prominent proponent. We’ll be watching for it.

For example, Duesberg stated that HIV could not be the cause of AIDS because it does not fulfill Koch’s postulates, a 19th century 4-part test for establishing causality. HIV does fulfill Koch’s postulates (see Tim Teeter’s “HIV Causes AIDS: Proof Derived from Koch’s Postulates” at The Body). Nevertheless, denialists have robotically claimed that it does not since Duesberg’s 1988 article “HIV is not the cause of AIDS” (Science 241:514-516).

2 Duesberg’s biographer, Harvey Bialy, constitutes a possible rare exception. Most of Duesberg’s “allies” do not know him at all, much less so than the reputable scientists with whom he worked for many years and who are now some of his most authoritative critics.

3 See here

4 This tactic is known as the “Galileo Gambit”
(Orac) so often employed by pseudoscientists of all stripes; see also this satire at
AIDS Truth – How to Be A Crank.)

5 The contempt in which Duesberg and his allies hold these highly-respected individuals is evidenced in Harvey Bialy’s biography of Duesberg, where Michael Bishop is faulted, among other things, for having an “Anglican priest” as a father. (Oncogenes, Aneuploidy, and AIDS. A Scientific (sic) Life and Times of Peter H. Duesberg, Harvey Bialy, The Institute of Biotechnology of the Autonomous National University of Mexico Press, 2004, p. 10.)

6 Here, Duesberg argues testily and at length about nomenclature, declaring that he does
not, and will never, use the terms proposed by Varmus and colleagues. Later, Duesberg
himself both accepted and employed the apparently objectionable formulations.

7 Nature. 1983 Jul 21-27;304(5923):219-26

8 Haematol Blood Transfus. 1985;29:9-27

9 Science. 1985 May 10;228(4700):669-77

10 This title appeared both in: Haematol Blood Transfus. 1987;31:496-510’ and in: Med
Oncol Tumor Pharmacother. 1987;4(3-4):163-75

11 J Cell Sci Suppl. 1987;7:169-87

12 Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1987 Apr;84(8):2117-24

13 The association of cancer with aneuploidy has been recognized since the dawn of modern cancer research a century ago. Duesberg is not the first, nor remotely the most important, contributor to knowledge on this front. Duesberg has distinguished himself, instead, by his curiously unswerving—and, many would argue, unscientific—insistence that aneuploidy is the be-all and end-all of cancer, to the exclusion of all other factors. See an Internet critique of Duesberg’s views on cancer, including a reference to a related biotechnology company in which Duesberg and his close friends now have a financial interest
(Insolence blog).

14 Reportedly, Duesberg’s envy of Gallo even prompted him to impersonate his perceived rival. According to Harvey Bialy, Duesberg first met his current wife while pretending to be Robert Gallo at a conference sign-in table. (Oncogenes, Aneuploidy, and AIDS. A Scientific (sic) Life and Times of Peter H. Duesberg, Harvey Bialy, The Institute of Biotechnology of the Autonomous National University of Mexico Press, 2004, pp. 1801.)

15 Duesberg admits as much in a statement recorded by his close friend and biographer Harvey Bialy: “It was largely a personal matter. I could not refrain from looking hard at any hypothesis Bob [Gallo] was behind” (ibid, p. 61).

16 pdf here at Science

17 From Judge Sulan’s verdict. What the Judge says about Turner and Papadopoulos-Eliopoulos would apply equally accurately to Duesberg, as he too has performed no experimental research on HIV/AIDS. Another significant feature of the evidence presented by the appellant’s witnesses was their failure to provide an alternative theory to explain the observations that led to the discovery of HIV/AIDS. Rather, their evidence sought to demonstrate that the HIV had not been proven to exist by critiquing the work of others. As such, the appellant’s witnesses did not criticize the conduct of HIV research on the basis that it conflicted with their own research, experiences or observations. Instead, their evidence was in the form of a critique, in which they identified perceived flaws in the scientific process and research findings that had led the mainstream scientific community to accept the existence of HIV.

18 >a href=”http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/12/070312fa_fact_specter “>Specter

19 For background to MODC by technology writer Julie Jacobson, see Cepro.

20 Insight Medical group

21 Prime Newswire

22 Modern technology

23 here; see also Cancer Conrol Society

Reporter and editors of Times cannot calculate one man’s budget accurately

Captain Sloan needs to check John Leland’s arithmetic

Helpful indication for readers that double checking necessary even at simplest level

Not wishing to cause the delightful if somewhat naive Tara and her right hand man Steve any cause for complaint that we are picking on them needlessly, since the Times is a far greater purveyor of paradigm pusillanimity than the Tara duo ever could be, we offer an example of how Times reporters and editors are thoughtlessly incapable of checking their own stories even on the most interesting topics, as they issue from their keyboards, at least on a holiday weekend.

According to A Way Out of Debt by Way of Iraq, which we read yesterday over an espresso after lunch, a quick assignment to Iraq might be a fast way of paying off credit card debt.

It took only a moment’s perusal to find that the entire story was vitiated by John Leland’s reportorial handicap, apparently shared with the editors, of being unable to add.

Look at this stuff, and weep for the intellectual standards of what used to be the world’s greatest newspaper, one which didn’t earlier need a note attached to every article saying “Beta Draft: Written subject to checking by readers”.

Nick Sloan was $68,021.35 in debt earlier this year when he decided he needed a change. Mr. Sloan, 26, is a captain in the Air Force, and was stationed in Colorado Springs. Looking at his financial life, he saw only a series of bad decisions.

So he made what he calls a “radical” break: he volunteered to go to Iraq. In May he arrived for duty in Baghdad.

“I came to the realization that I was so far over my head, I had to do something drastic to increase my cash flow,” Captain Sloan said by telephone from the Green Zone, where he now receives extra pay and has minimal living expenses. “Iraq did that.”

OK, so what do we absorb from this paragraph, as far as Nick’s budgetary challenge is concerned. Surely it is that

Mr Sloan arrived in Iraq in May with $68,021.35 in debt.

Then we have this, according to the paper of record:

Since arriving in Baghdad, he has gotten his debt below $4,000. He monitors his finances on the Internet, and started a blog (Sloan Investments) to help his peers avoid his mistakes.

from which we learn that the Captain has discharged all but less than $4,000 of the above $68,021.35 in debt.

Since arriving in Baghdad, he has gotten his debt below $4,000.

Finally, much further on, we read this:

His full monthly pay from the military, including hazardous duty bonuses, is $6,031.74. He pays Social Security and Medicare, leaving a take home amount of $5,695.76 a month.

In other words, if Captain Sloan never spent a penny of his pay, he would only have $5,695.76 to pay down his debt every month:

His take home amount is $5,695.76 a month.

However, the full report, which went straight through from the hands of John Leland, 37, and his editor to the page of the newspaper published yesterday, apparently without passing through the minds of either, also informs us of a few expenses:

“I think the defining moment for me was when he called and said: ‘I want you to know I’ve taken out life insurance. You have $100,000 if something should happen to me,’ ” she said. “It left such a sour feeling in me.”

– that is, his mother reports he took out $100,000 life insurance for her. So we have

The Captain bought $100,000 life insurance for his mom.

Also we have

Apart from an occasional haircut, or dried fruit, he said, “every paycheck I get goes straight toward my debt.”

ie he has some other minimal expenditures involving necessary haircuts and a taste for dried fruit:

Otherwise he only bought haircuts and dried fruit.

A mere $100,000 life insurance for his mom sounds pretty cheap to us, but perhaps it is inordinately expensive. All in all, however, it seems safe to say that he is spending no more than $600 a month on these items, leaving $5000 a month net to square away his credit card debt.

Captain Sloan is putting $5000 a month to paying off debt.

Given that he arrived in Iraq in May, according to Leland’s telephone interview research, that implies a maximum of four months at $5000 a month, or $20,000 in total. Say $25,000 if we count September.

But according to John Leland, he has paid off $64,000.

This leaves a gap of $39,000 he has paid off in some other way.

According to John, Captain Sloan

makes $100 a month from renting his house in Colorado Springs, after paying for the mortgage. He also sold things and simplified his life. He eats at the chow hall rather than Pizza Hut and uses a Sony Reader to scan free books on the Internet.

In other words,

He makes $100 a month renting his house, and he has sold things.

To recap: Here is the information on which you or any handy 12 year old can check the Times’ arithmetic:

Mr Sloan arrived in Iraq in May with $68,021.35 in debt
Since arriving in Baghdad, he has gotten his debt below $4,000 ie paid off $64,000.
His take home amount is $5,695.76 a month.
He makes $100 a month renting his house, and he has sold things.
The Captain bought $100,000 life insurance for his mom.
Otherwise he only bought haircuts and dried fruit.

What’s the bottom line here? It is that the misreporting of John Leland and the headline writer has the reader excited about Iraq as a quick source of wealth, one that can pay off $64,000 in credit card debt in four months.

In fact, Captain Sloan “sold things” for double the sum he saved up.

All of this leads to a rather unexciting non Iraq headline:

Way out of Debt by Selling Car and Other Stuff.

The truth is that Sloan paid off $20,000 in four months by risking his neck in Iraq, and the remainder of $45,000 left at the beginning of September he was able to pay off only because he “sold things” – presumably his $35,000 2005 Nissan 350Z:

Captain Sloan borrowed another $35,000 last year to buy a 2005 Nissan 350Z, bringing his debt above $68,000. He was using one credit card to pay off another and considering a payday loan to meet his regular expenses.

So he must have sold this machine, presumably for less than what he paid, say $30,000.

Correct us if we are missing something, but this means that it was not so much a matter of A Way Out of Debt by Way of Iraq, as a Way out of Debt by Selling his $35,000 Car and $15,000 of Other Stuff.

Iraq contributed – at the risk of his life, and his mother’s misery if he is killed – less than one third of his escape from debt.

Oh well, at least he is somewhat on track for his $50,000 saved by the time he exits:

In his case, he said, he plans to leave the military in May 2008 with $50,000 to start a real estate business. “I’ll do whatever my country asks of me, but if there’s a way to benefit my life, I should definitely take it,” he said.

Wait! At $5,000 a month, he will fall short, saving from September to April, which is eight months, by $10,000.

Shouldn’t someone tell him that he will start his real estate business with less money that he expects by simply relying on his own poor arithmetic, allied to Leland’s equally poor arithmetic checking?

Why does this matter?

We leave it to readers and John Leland (click left, the nice young wide eyed fellow on left) to decide if this is misleading, or a suitable contribution to the paper of record. Perhaps Tara’s tall tales have left us curmudgeonly, but we think that the Grey Lady will be getting a few more grey hairs, or we will, if this kind of thing keeps up.

Dammit, we thought that the Times was reliable a few years ago. Then we had its execrable performance in HIV∫AIDS non reporting. Then Jayson Blair. And now we have this kind of thing, just when we were about to join up for Iraq.

At least we now have a reason not to let the Times pile up in the cellar for future reference.

Meanwhile we think there is a very helpful lesson here for all readers currently swallowing the Times and Tara’s long nosed briefings about the HIV=AIDS paradigm:

Mentally review any story in the Times before treating it as gospel.

We’ve been saying this for years about their AIDS stories, of course, but few listen. So most go on year after year, believing that antibodies cause disease, and that you can catch antibodies from someone else in sex, and that disease can rise and fall dramatically in a population while the antibodies to its supposed agent maintain a steady presence, that a disease can change its infectiousness and symptoms radically over time and place, that drugs can save you from disease by killing you, and so on.

But heck, who are Times readers to know better, if their editors don’t?

The whole story:

The New York Times
September 3, 2007
A Way Out of Debt by Way of Iraq
By JOHN LELAND

Nick Sloan was $68,021.35 in debt earlier this year when he decided he needed a change. Mr. Sloan, 26, is a captain in the Air Force, and was stationed in Colorado Springs. Looking at his financial life, he saw only a series of bad decisions.

So he made what he calls a “radical” break: he volunteered to go to Iraq. In May he arrived for duty in Baghdad.

“I came to the realization that I was so far over my head, I had to do something drastic to increase my cash flow,” Captain Sloan said by telephone from the Green Zone, where he now receives extra pay and has minimal living expenses. “Iraq did that.”

In a nation swimming in debt — prime, subprime, adjustable, student, payday — debt reduction is coming to resemble dieting, a province of gimmicks, good sense, talk radio and endlessly resourceful scheming. Though there is as yet no South Beach Debt-Loss Plan, for Captain Sloan, there is Iraq.

“I hate to make it seem like I’m here just for money, because it’s not true,” he said. “There’s many worthy things about being here. But if I can use this to my advantage, I definitely should.”

Since arriving in Baghdad, he has gotten his debt below $4,000. He monitors his finances on the Internet, and started a blog (Sloan Investments) to help his peers avoid his mistakes.

“I’ve met people who’ve gone on to one or more tours just to get out of debt, with jobs much more dangerous than mine,” Captain Sloan said. “One soldier in Afghanistan said, ‘That’s why I’m here, to get out of debt.’ ”

Financial counselors who work with military families say that this solution — volunteering for deployment to get out of debt — is rare, but that debt is a problem in the armed services, as it is in the country at large. In 2005, military charities for all branches of service provided $87,332,758 in emergency no-interest loans or grants to 100,808 service members in financial distress.

“The military reflects the society from which the people come, so right now that means carrying a lot of debt,” said Adm. Steve Abbot, who is retired from the Navy, the president of the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society, a military charity organization.

More commonly, Admiral Abbot said, deployment to war adds to families’ financial pressures.

A Defense Department survey of active-duty service members found that in 2006, 11 percent reported failing to make a minimum payment on a credit card or military credit account in the preceding year; 11 percent said they had been put under pressure to pay bills by a store, creditor or bill collector; and 7 percent had bounced two or more checks. (The percentages were all down from previous years.) In response, payday lenders concentrate around military bases, the researchers found.

Last year Congress passed legislation prohibiting payday lenders from charging service members more than 36 percent — effectively ending payday loans to military personnel — but the measure is not scheduled to take effect until October.

Captain Sloan’s debts began at the Air Force Academy, with a low-interest loan of $25,000.

“It was this awesome loan at 1 percent interest, and I just squandered it,” he said.

Captain Sloan borrowed another $35,000 last year to buy a 2005 Nissan 350Z, bringing his debt above $68,000. He was using one credit card to pay off another and considering a payday loan to meet his regular expenses.

“When I look back, I feel somewhat ashamed that I got myself in this position,” he said. “But at the same time it was necessary for me to learn to manage my finances. When you can’t pay your monthly bills, you need to make some changes.”

Like many of his peers, Captain Sloan entered the service with little financial knowledge. His father, who died when he was young, supported the family on a disability pension from the Army. His mother, Linda, said she had done little to teach her two sons about money.

“My training in finances was very poor,” she said. “I didn’t expect my sons to make better decisions, without finding out on their own. My training was, you don’t buy things you can’t pay for. But we’re trained by the media that you have to have things and you’re owed those things.”

Captain Sloan said he kept his debts hidden from most of his friends and relatives. His mother, who opposes the war, said she did not try to dissuade him.

“I think the defining moment for me was when he called and said: ‘I want you to know I’ve taken out life insurance. You have $100,000 if something should happen to me,’ ” she said. “It left such a sour feeling in me.”

Captain Sloan said the toughest sell was his fiancée.

“She took decision the hardest of anyone,” he said. “Initially she was against it. I think I won her over eventually. It was a matter of looking at the numbers. We could start our marriage in debt, or I could do this. The numbers were very telling. Drastic measures are required.”

In the Green Zone, where he works in intelligence, he has few opportunities to spend money.

All his income is tax-free under the Combat Zone Tax Exclusion and he gets an extra $225 a month imminent danger pay and $100 “safe” pay to improve his living conditions. “The real benefit is that it’s tax-free money,” he said. “I really don’t feel in imminent danger on a day-to-day basis, but there have been times my heart did skip a beat or two.”

Apart from an occasional haircut, or dried fruit, he said, “every paycheck I get goes straight toward my debt.” His full monthly pay from the military, including hazardous duty bonuses, is $6,031.74. He pays Social Security and Medicare, leaving a take home amount of $5,695.76 a month. He makes $100 a month from renting his house in Colorado Springs, after paying for the mortgage. He also sold things and simplified his life. He eats at the chow hall rather than Pizza Hut and uses a Sony Reader to scan free books on the Internet.

But even in the relative safety of the Green Zone, Captain Sloan said, he sees his fellow service members taking unnecessary risks — by not saving their combat pay.

“I see that a lot from guys here, especially the younger guys,” he said. “They’re not afraid to spend their money. I do my best to tell them: ‘You’re risking life for this money. It should go to something better than a new computer or junk.’ Some listen, some don’t. They don’t want to change. They’re used to buying what they want.”

One young airman told him: “My wife is already letting me buy a new Nissan Titan and a 60-inch TV when I get home. Now, I just have to decide between a hot tub or Jet Skis.”

Captain Sloan’s first question was, “Have you thought about maybe putting it into a retirement account?”

In his case, he said, he plans to leave the military in May 2008 with $50,000 to start a real estate business. “I’ll do whatever my country asks of me, but if there’s a way to benefit my life, I should definitely take it,” he said.

Almost every line is misconception or misstatement, but none detected by outsiders

Tara and Steven could claim HIV was panspermia from the moon, and blind bloggers would chortle “Right on!” Why?

Smearing as giveaway

After the world record preamble of the previous post, we are ready to consider, how much of HIV Denial in the Internet Era, the essay at the Public Library of Science by the energetic Tara C. Smith of Iowa and her silver haired, white coated colleague Steven P. Novella of Yale, is valid?

Blind leading the blind: bloggers applaud essay

According to bloggers who have picked up on a reference to it at Daily Kos, which has since removed any critical comment from “deniers”, we learned from Comments here, it all goes without saying, and without reading it with any critical faculty whatsoever, in the Hank Campbell mode. (Click the pic to enlarge a painterly vision of what is happening here)

Thus at Educated Guesswork, a site whose expertise lies in tech toys and networks:

This Public Library of Science article by Tara C. Smith and Steven P. Novella, paints a pretty grim picture of the HIV Denialist movement. Now, you may have thought that this was pretty much limited to Thabo Mbeki and Peter Duesberg, but no, it turns out that the world is full of whackjobs. Smith and Novella aren’t interested in arguing that HIV causes AIDS—a proposition which is fairly clearly true—as discussing how movements like this survive.

A “proposition which is fairly clearly true”… Hmm..We like the “fairly clearly true”. Since Tara Smith and Steven Novella imply it is true, and that denialists are wasting their time, it must be fairly clearly true? Why the pseudo-judicious “fairly”? We take it that this is the author’s impression, and he is sure, having no data on the issue whatsoever, that since it matches everything he has heard before, it must be true.

The blogger continues, with a statement that we agree with wholeheartedly, though possibly not in the way he means it:

This bit about “fair play” is really important. One of the underlying norms that makes science work is that people to some extent adjust their beliefs in response to contrary evidence. Obviously this doesn’t happen all the time, but when you’re dealing with someone who’s not interested in the evidence at all but merely
using it as a sort of prop to attempt to defend their position then that isn’t an argument, it’s just contradiction. At some point the proper response becomes to just ignore the offender, but then they claim that the orthodox community won’t listen to them. It’s obviously very hard for a layman to disentangle who’s right.

The one sided assumption that it is the “whackjobs” who need to adjust their beliefs is breathtaking. As it happens the paragraph is perfectly true, just not in the way that the author imagines. It applies very well to the paradigm.

As can be seen, this kind of facile blogger comment is vitiated by its unwarranted assumption that “denialists” must be wrong by definition, since they are opposed to the wisdom we know and love, as part of our identity, and bulwark against the chaos of an uncertain world. It is opinion based on emotion, not data, which according to some cynics and critics of the education system in this powerful country is typical for most political views here. In fact, some might say that virtually the entire population is artistic rather than scholarly in their approach to knowledge as a result of modern schooling, and that this training permeates even science. We have no opinion on this since since we have no data, but we have to say, if it is true, then this essay is a prime example.

The CIPIS “intellectual strategy” – to quote is enough to condemn

A similar behavior is seen at CapitalistImperialistPig, where there is no analysis at all in the mention of “Tara C. Smith and Steven P. Novella have an article on the subject in PLOS Medicine: HIV Denial in the Internet Era. (via DarkSyde at Daily Kos)”. After the quotes from the masterwork the single comment is

“The ocean of stupidity is wide and deep, and my spoon is so small.”

This confident insult follows three paragraphs quoted from tyro Tara’s treatise, and exhibits not only the presumption that all critics must be wrong if they question established science, but a more interesting and subtle implication that is also a chief feature of the Tara approach:

To indicate that a statement must be foolish and untrue, it is enough to quote it.

This principle provides the secure smugness of CapitalistImperialistPig’s dismissive line, since merely quoting ‘proves’ the rejection of the ‘denialists’ is right, since their statements must by definition be deluded, since they conflict with the conventional wisdom.

As it happens, this is precisely the logic followed by Tara (pic, left, the original blog self-portrait at Aetiology, which we love, but will consider any objections emailed to us) at many points throughout her treatise on “the current intellectual strategies used by the HIV denial movement”, as we shall see. We shall refer to it from now on as the CapitalistImperialistPig Intellectual Strategy, or CIPIS.

Unfortunately, though we always like to take short cuts we feel we cannot just quote the Library of Science Tara-Steven treatise and apply CIPIS to it, ie just assume that all readers will immediately see how specious and data poor it may be, although we know that all habitual NAR readers will instantly assess the true value of this historic contribution to an understanding of the paradigm critique of HIV∫AIDS.

The CIPIS approach is simply too complex for newcomers to understand, we believe. We are not sure, in fact, that we understand it ourselves. Does simple quoting a statement prove it incorrect? It is hard to see why.

So we are forced to explain precisely where things have gone wrong in the material worked up by the dynamic doctrinal duo defending against the devilish devious denialists attempted demolition of desirable dogma, and will now proceed.

The NAR-LOS Duck Shoot begins here

The debating stance of the authors is marked by the following compromising flaws in perception and style:

1. Prejudicial language (”deniers”) betrays unscientific ethos:

Library of Science POLICY FORUM Open Access

The Policy Forum allows health policy makers around the world to discuss challenges and opportunities for improving health care in their societies.

HIV Denial in the Internet Era

Tara C. Smith*, Steven P. Novella

Here we have the conclusion in the title, “HIV Denial in the Internet Era”. Criticism of the paradigm is tarred as “denial”, ie reality, proven and immediate visible to all sensible people, is being psychologically “denied”, in the manner of Holocaust deniers, possibly with similar unsavory motives.

The word is mind numbingly disrespectful and any reader with an open mind in scientific discussion will object to having his prejudices made up for him before he reads more than the title. But of course, this is not an open discussion of the science, this is an essay by the converted preaching to the converted. This is propaganda, not objective analysis.

But this is typical behavior of the paradigm defenders in HIV∫AIDS. The supporters of the most questioned paradigm in modern science, HIV=AIDS, rush to defend it by smearing critical reviewers as “denialists” and “deniers” who perpetrate “denial” of truth supported by “overwhelming evidence”. They are represented as no better than those who rewrite Dachau as a holiday camp.

In fact, of course, the ‘denialists’ are nothing less than attentive critics who draw on the best peer reviewed literature to show that the paradigm is not supported by the record – exactly the opposite of Holocaust deniers, in fact.

HIV paradigm critics are simply arguing that the paradigm should be replaced by a belief system which is supported by the studies and data in scientific journals, not one based on the claims of a few scientists who have led the world like a Pied Piper over the cliff of unreason.

What smearing shows

What does this misapplied smearing suggest in a scientific dispute? Is it behavior that would arise from informed opinion based on a firm foundation of data which proponents feel is unassailable? Or does it announce a signal lack of confidence, a shortage of reason and evidence, and an urgent need to find emotional and political defenses against threatening reasoning and data?

Anyone who has difficulty in deciding the answer is not equipped to participate in any scientific discussion, we would suggest, or write about it.

That would be anyone who does not see that the title announces the essay is founded on the prejudice and politics that good scientists banish from sincere discussion about what is likely to be true. Question everything including yourself may be the central ruling principle of good science, as Richard Feynman said in so many ways.

All good scientists know that the prejudicial defense of the ruling paradigm with politics is often the biggest brake on scientific progress. Unfortunately the news doesn’t always reach the journeyman level occupied by the hard working average scientist in these days when vocation has largely changed to profession.

What they fail to realize is that among journeymen scientists, just like the lay public, automatic defense of any entrenched belief is swift and prejudicial, since entrenched beliefs are emotional pillars of the psyche, not to mention the career, bank account, club membership and status of the believer. Once well established around the world, every paradigm has a defense army ready and willing to fight intruders at a moment’s notice.

It is only genuine scientists and philosophers, with perhaps a few good lawyers and comedians, who don’t have the reflex built in, like some primitive instinct.

But scientists who smear and disrespect their critics with words are by definition shamefully unprofessional, for the first principle professed by true scientists is the one engraved on the Socratic touchstone, “Question everything, including oneself.”

2. Denying their own denialism

Moreover, who is denying what? If anybody is a denialist it is surely the proponents of the status quo, who deny there are any serious questions that need be dealt with, when the science of HIV∫AIDS has more critics high and low who have written more debunking articles and books on this than any other paradigm extant in science.

They deny science, they deny sense, they deny data, and they deny respect – to their very much more scientific critics.

That is the denialism we recognize, and deplore. Not that anyone asked us, of course. But, it seems, someone has to say it. Apparently it is not obvious to the widely respected and hard working Tara and Steven or the bloggers such as Hank, Pig or Educated Guesser who cheer them on.

Sorry, in our intended rapid despatch of this flawed masterpiece we seem to have stalled at the title. We will press on in the next post, humbly apologizing to all intelligent readers for trite corrections of trite error.

Chastised as deniers by Orac, we analyze the state of mind of HIV-babes

Listing the political baseball bats used to knee cap critics of AIDS lore

Is the rush of the ignorant to support the paradigm Freudian?

Thanks to an alert anonymous commenter here (surely not the blogger himself?) we have found out that the young surgeon Orac, who writes the blog Respectful Insolence at SEED magazine’s blog hosting site Scienceblogs.com, and is therefore known as a fellow ‘Scibling’of Tara Smith, has penned the following post today talking up the attempt by Tara and Steven to put the dangerous denialists of HIV∫AIDS and their pseudoscience in their proper place as “essential reading on HIV AIDS denialism.”:

Respectful Insolence

“A statement of fact cannot be insolent.” The miscellaneous ramblings of a surgeon/scientist on medicine, quackery, science, pseudoscience, history, and pseudohistory (and anything else that interests him)

Who (or what) is Orac? Orac is the nom de blog of a humble pseudonymous surgeon/scientist with an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent’s posterior about his miscellaneous verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few will.

Essential reading on HIV/AIDS denialism

Category: Alternative medicine • Medicine • Pseudoscience • Quackery • Skepticism/critical thinking
Posted on: August 22, 2007 2:01 PM, by Orac

Fellow SB’er Tara Smith, and academic neurologist Steve Novella have written an essential primer on the dangerous pseudoscience and quackery that is HIV/AIDS denialism. It’s published in PLoS and is entitled HIV Denial in the Internet Era.

It makes a number of excellent points about the deadly quackery that is HIV/AIDS denialism, including how its advocates portray science as “faith,” shift the goalposts when asking for evidence for the HIV/AIDS hypothesis, and in general engage in all the same sorts of logical and scientific fallacies beloved by pseudoscientists and cranks like creationists, 9/11 conspiracy theorists, and many aficionados of alternative medicine. I was also disappointed to learn that the Foo Fighters promote HIV/AIDS denialism at their concerts.

Perhaps the most telling part of the article, which should be emphasized over and over and over again is this:

After so much criticism levied upon the prevailing theories by deniers, one might think they would have something to offer to replace HIV as the cause of AIDS. However, the alternatives they offer are much more speculative than the mainstream theories they decry as lacking evidence. Further, their arguments amount to little more than another logical fallacy, the false dichotomy: they assume that overturning the prevailing theory will prove their theory correct, by default.

Always remember that. The “theories” that HIV/AIDS denialists make for the cause of AIDS are nothing more than speculation with little basis in fact. They’re ephemeral, lightweight, with no evidence to support them. Like many cranks, HIV/AIDS denialists seem to think that if they can tear down their hated theory it will prove that theirs is the correct one.

Finally, if you want to see how pathetic the response to this article by HIV/AIDS denialists has been thus far, you have to look no further than Science Guardian, where the best the author can come up with is to make condescending and sexist comments about Tara:

((Click Show Button to continue this quote)) As a bonus attraction, visits to the site were long enhanced by the sight of Tara’s svelte portrait in form fitting costume, and the latest one is just as pretty as the first one she posted for a long time, though perhaps less like a bathing suit (we hope our appreciation of this first portrait here was not responsible for the replacement). We have reproduced it above, at the start of the mention of this attractive scientist.

However, the meeting this last weekend of science bloggers corralled at Seed Magazine’s ScienceBlogs site yielded some more realistic pictures of Tara from the beer drinking gatherings involved, and here is the best one we could find (left). Others are at A Blog Around the Clock, Neurophilosophy and Pharyngula. Readers with an interest in such research will see if intelligence correlates with beauty in the science blogging world.

The rest is no better, an evidence-free rant against the “dogma” about HIV/AIDS:

Intelligent readers will read this through for themselves and immediately see that it is nothing more than a John P. Moore type piece of prejudicial propaganda, a rote recitation of all the reasons why established wisdom endorsed by long established and trusted institutions relied upon by the media and the public, not to mention almost all scientists, physicians, health workers, policymakers and government officials around the globe, should not be questioned by independent critics, especially those without professional expertise in the science concerned, retrovirology and its two human diseases alleged so far, even if the scientific literature at the top level contains an ever growing pile of rejecting reviews and studies which contradict the basic tenets of the paradigm and its medical approach.

Of course, the funniest thing about this Science Guardian piece is this:

In the long run, Tara Smith and Steven Novella will learn the biggest danger of the Internet, which will eventually emerge as its dominant long run characteristic: its permanence.

Every single half baked, under researched opinion everybody writes on the world’s bulletin board will be there twenty years from now, when time itself will have ensured that any nonsense one ventures too precipitately for the wrong reasons will be exposed for all to see, as clear as the day it was scribbled, hanging like dirty laundry in the sun.

Let’s hope for their sake that all the signs in the scientific literature that Tara and her friend Steven are ignoring are somehow proven to be wrong, as they like to assume, apparently without examining them carefully enough. Since they all point in the same direction, to the eventual defeat of a paradigm which never genuinely flew, scientifically speaking, even at the beginning, this seems unlikely. More likely is their embarrassment, as grownups, at what they wrote as babes in the woods.

Tara and Steve will have little to worry about on that score. I’ll even make a not-so-bold prediction: Twenty years from now, HIV/AIDS denialists, if they still exist (and I fear that they will, given that irrational pseudoscience like homeopathy still exists 200 years after its founding and over 150 years after science could show that it was pseudoscience), will still be considered cranks.

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Comments

Thank you Orac, for posting this link. Cue the quacks, 3, 2, 1. . .
Posted by: DuWayne | August 22, 2007 03:54 PM

I was also disappointed to learn that the Foo Fighters promote HIV/AIDS denialism at their concerts.

What the crap? I didn’t know this. Their music’s pretty good, too. Crap, now I can’t like them anymore.

Posted by: Cain | August 22, 2007 04:00 PM

Orac, did you see that they over-wrote most of your comment at the Science Guardian? Remarkable and childish character slaughter on the part of the denialists.

Posted by: viggen | August 22, 2007 05:21 PM

This respectfully insolent piece is by Orac, a pleasantly ectomorphic young man who judging from his photo (above) last weekend at SEED’s NYC beer party is just as presentable as Tara, even quite possibly now her admirer for all we know, on a non-scientific basis as well as scientific, since they were both at this meet. That of course is none of our business, we are merely establishing our non-sexism, pace Orac and his accusation that our annotations on Tara are “sexist”, when of course we merely reported her habit of decorating the front page of Aetiology with pictures which speak for her personal charm, a sensible move which makes her blog a lot more bearable than it otherwise would be.

Anyhow Orac, as you see, is a self-proclaimed surgeon/scientist, whatever that is (”a humble pseudonymous surgeon/scientist with an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent’s posterior about his miscellaneous verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few will”), and he excoriates our last post as lacking substance in its repudiation of the Tara text which Orac, possibly following last weekend, unreservedly admires, so we feel bound to try and provide it, especially since Orac missed the part where we promised to do so.

Why is it worth deconstructing low level political paradigm defense?

What we have here, in the Library of Science essay on HIV Denial in the Internet Era by Tara C. Smith with the Department of Epidemiology, University of Iowa College of Public Health, Iowa City, Iowa, United States of America. and Steven P. Novella with the Department of Neurology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America is what can only be labeled a parade of misunderstanding, misstatement, misapprehension and misconcieved misapplied mistaken myth dependent muddle that in total amounts to a mammoth mental misdemeanour.

We have in one place almost the complete armory of paradigm defenders operating outside the realm of the actual debated science, self appointed paradigm promoters who pick up and use the ad hominem and political weaponry which serves scientists such as John Moore of Weill Cornell so well in their defense of HIV∫AIDS, a defense which has so little science in it (see Deadly Quackery (also permanently available as paradigm politics exhibit #1 in right margin here) and earlier posts here on John P. Moore) that it gives the game away to every intelligent reader, who knows without being told that a viable and valid paradigm that good scientists subscribe to has no need for politics in answering objections. Good reason and common sense will be brought forward, not politics and disrespect.

So we thought it worthwhile to take this opportunity to deal once and for all with the collection of political clubs which are used to beat off critics on this rather low level of public debate, to avoid dealing with the’ otherwise decisive list of unacceptable conflicts, inconsistencies and impossibilities they detect in the standard science, especially with the ever lengthening list of mainstream studies which now contradict it, the latest being the Lhose paper from Denmark, which shows that drugs double the death rate in the first year.

Apologies in advance

However, we admit that by the time we finished it we regretted giving too much attention to what proved to be even less than met the eye.

We admit we usually avoid the level of discussion on blogs such as Tara’s for the reason that so much of the comment is uninformed and politically and personally charged, and sadly enough this attempt by indisputably pretty paradigm tyro Tara and her handsome colleague (mentor? political advisor?) Steven is not the profound scientific-politico-philosophical treatise on a tremendously important and complex paradigm dispute that we had hoped for from her fluent pen.

In fact, too many of the answers we are forced to give to her points are ones which any critic of the paradigm could provide without hesitation. However, there are always some people, such as Hank Campbell of scienceblogging.com, our new Therapy Buddy, who have not heard of this debate before, and may come to New AIDS Review in search of a quick fix.

So instead of placing it in our circular file we therefore provide this far too long but thorough response to inform newcomers to the debate, such as Happy Hank, of why Tara may not be the authority on the paradigm dispute he seems to imagine:

“I appreciate that Dr. Smith was gracious enough to take some time and answer questions about the science aspects of this….
I can’t think of a single instance where science truth did not win in the end. Data is data and nothing drives scientists crazier than being deceived. If data comes out that proves HIV doesn’t cause AIDS, or even that the cures are worse than the virus, I am pretty sure a compassionate person like Smith will be first in line taking up the new position.”

If too many of our points are political and not “science” as Scienceblogger Hank seems liable to complain, we can only plead that the fault lies with what we have to examine.

The pot and kettle problem

One thing we notice is that Tara and Steven have based much of their text on the simple strategy of bouncing back the accusations of critics without answering them. And indeed it is true that superficially many points in the endless wrangling of the HIV=AIDS dispute in blogs and other venues outside journals are adaptable to both sides. Both can accuse the other of the same sin. Deciding to whom the winning point in these tennis games really belongs to can be difficult for the outsider, which is why it is a good defense move to those who need to cloud the issue.

Both sides say, for example, the other is compromised by self interest, bad science, and poor logic.

One side is said to ignore the peer reviewed literature, the other side says the literature is flawed by bad design and interpretation (in fact, the attack on the paradigm HIV=AIDS is peer-reviewed review of peer-reviewed literature).

One side says critics lack credentials, the other side says credentials go with loyalty to the system and not science (in fact, the rejection of the paradigm is led by the scientist with the best credentials of all).

One side says top scientists cling to the benefits of the paradigm, the other that critics likewise sell their alternative expertise and potions (in fact, the big money, and all the prestige and fame, is under the wing of the paradigm).

One side says established science is proven, the other that it resists change (in fact, paradigms are at first by definition the best answer science has, until they become entrenched, when their replacement by a better answer is difficult, as politics intensifies).

One side says the media and journals repress the critics, the other says they have had copious coverage (in this case, the critics were and are stifled by NIAID censorship of reporters and journal and media obedience led by the New York Times, Science and Nature).

The one exception to all this mirroring is that the critics of the HIV∫AIDS are generally more respectful to established scientists than the defenders are to them. As the essay shows, ad hominem insults (”denialists” “bizarre”, “pseudoscience” “quackery”) are a main weapon in the armory of pardigm defense.

That is why we don’t visit blogs much, since when behavior and intent are subjectively disputed, the argument is usually not worth weighing. We try to make the peer reviewed data and and its specific interpretation the focus here. But this is exactly what mostly is going on in the Library of Science essay – subjective politics drive both motivation of the essay and its analysis. This subjectivity is a diversionary tactic, adding up to mere disdain for the opponent and ignoring the data and the scientific issues completely.

None of the central difficulties of the supposed pathology of the Virus are dealt with by Smith and Novella, pace Hank Campbell, our new scientificblogging Therapy Buddy, now famous for ignoring the contributions of the blog host, and the more distinguished Henry Bauer, on the grounds that “My article is primarily dealing with the science aspects. Do critics of the ‘HIV causes AIDS’ mode of thinking have science to explain what happens?”, and then interviewing Tara without mentioning any of that at all (The Least Known War In Science: Does HIV Cause AIDS?), instead providing a platform for Tara’s misconceptions on top of his journalistically prone body.

But at least there is some order in the Library of Science material, which Tara and Steven “worked up” for publication, in her phrase, compared with the nonsense that usually serves as blog debate at Scienceblogs (see for example today’s post at Pharyngula Click Show to reveal)

PZ Myers PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris

To succeed in chaining the multitude, you must seem to wear the same fetters.

[Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, 1764]
Recent Posts

A href=”http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/08/denialists_exposed.php”>Denialists exposed

Category: Skepticism
Posted on: August 22, 2007 9:55 AM, by PZ Myers

Scienceblog’s own Tara Smith, with Steve Novella, has an article in PLoS on HIV Denial in the Internet Era. It describes some of the major players among the HIV deniers, and most importantly talks about their tactics. It’s useful even if you aren’t at all involved in that branch of biology or invested in that particular argument: one section is titled “Portraying Science as Faith and Consensus as Dogma” and that certainly struck a chord with me — that is one of the most common creationist arguments, as well.

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Comments
#1

bah, where was this article when i actually needed it?

Posted by: Brian W. | August 22, 2007 10:06 AM
#2

I was rather disappointed to see the Foo-Fighters were involved in supporting one of the denial groups.

Posted by: MartinC | August 22, 2007 10:36 AM
#3

I just gave that article a quick read – or tried to – until I got to the point about the mother who managed to kill her kid by, well, “stupiding it to death” seems the best description. WTF is going on here? It’s got to be religion aiding and abetting such stupidity, because anyone else who was engaging in medical child abuse with a breast-feeding infant would be in serious doo-doo (that’s the technical term) right?

This is a great case in point for Randi’s position that “woo woo kills” and, unfortunately, it kills the wrong people. Have you ever noticed it’s the kids that die, not the ‘breatharians’?

The “alive and well” site is offering a $50,000 prize for Alive & Well will present a cash award of $25,000 to the first person to locate a study that provides us with missing evidence about the accuracy of HIV tests(there’s more) — this might be a good way for some energetic young biology student to pay his or her way through a semester of college, no? I wonder if we publicize this in the right place if someone can take their damned money from them.

mjr.

Posted by: Marcus Ranum | August 22, 2007 10:40 AM
#4

Sheesh! Everyone knows that AIDS is caused by atheism…

Posted by: Thomas Allen | August 22, 2007 10:43 AM
#5

Thomas, I thought it was caused by homosexuality. Or Liberalism. Or both. Atheism too, you say? *ulp*

I woulda figured the Foo Fighters to be woo fighters. What a shame. I guess I won’t be buying their next CD…

Actually, it looks like the bass player started it all, but has managed to get at least some of the other band members on board. At a glance, it looks like they’ve been fooled by an argument that confuses corrolation with cause. (For example, “anal sex causes AIDS” … whoa.)

Posted by: Kseniya | August 22, 2007 10:52 AM
#6

The “alive and well” site is offering a $50,000 prize for Alive & Well will present a cash award of $25,000 to the first person to locate a study that provides us with missing evidence about the accuracy of HIV tests(there’s more) — this might be a good way for some energetic young biology student to pay his or her way through a semester of college, no? I wonder if we publicize this in the right place if someone can take their damned money from them.

That’s a scam just like Hovind’s “challenge.” No one will be able to provide a paper that lives up to their standards.

Posted by: Tara Smith | August 22, 2007 11:00 AM
#7

“Portraying Science as Faith and Consensus as Dogma” and that certainly struck a chord with me — that is one of the most common creationist arguments, as well.

Ditto AGW deniers, second hand smoke deniers, etc. These folks are getting their plays from the same book. (Not too surprising really since there’s a lot of overlap between the various groups.) The real problem is that these tactics work.

Posted by: Alexandra | August 22, 2007 11:00 AM
#8

That’s a scam just like Hovind’s “challenge.” No one will be able to provide a paper that lives up to their standards.

Yep. They say the same thing about Randi’s challenge. How do we break the cycle of “so-and-so is a liar and a cheat?” without stepping up to the plate?

Posted by: Marcus Ranum | August 22, 2007 11:06 AM
#9

The difference is that people who say that are lying. The contestants in Randi’s challenge have to meet their own standards. The contestants in Hovind’s have to prove to him and his cronies that god cannot exist.

Posted by: G. Shelley | August 22, 2007 11:18 AM
#10

AAAARRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!! I’ve dealt with the HIV/AIDS denialists before. They are a mixed bag and really just a few kooks in the grand scheme of things. Rather disturbing and disreputable folks.

1. Some are just mentally ill trolls who have latched onto HIV denial to center their mind derangement illness around.

2. Some are right wing Xians who want all gays to get AIDS and die because this is god’s plan.

3. Some are just malevolent miserable people who think making fun of and fooling around with people who have a horrible, incurable, and ultimately fatal disease is great entertainment.

4. A few are HIV+ and in denial. I doubt this group is a very large sector of the whole HIV denialist movement.

This is a reality denial belief that can and will kill those who are infected and buy into it. These days, with treatment, the average HIV+ patient will live 13 more years than untreated. In favorable cases it is more like 20 years. In the future it is likely to be even higher. It isn’t uncommon now for HIV+ patients to live long enough to die of something else, heart disease, cancer etc..

Posted by: raven | August 22, 2007 11:22 AM
#11

How do we break the cycle of “so-and-so is a liar and a cheat?” without stepping up to the plate?

The problem is that they’re ruling out the ways that we know to isolate HIV, and inserting a false standard as the “gold”: “direct isolation of HIV from fresh, uncultured fluids or tissues.” First, we know that it’s not always that easy to isolate HIV from these samples, hence co-culture methods are often used, which this “challenge” explicitly disallows. If it were an honest challenge, any routine method of virus isolation and characterization would be accepted, but they’re rigging the game against this from the start.

Posted by: Tara Smith | August 22, 2007 11:33 AM
#12

Sheesh people. You know there is a whole blog here at Sb on this phenomenon.

Posted by: MarkH | August 22, 2007 11:39 AM
#13

Sheesh! Everyone knows that AIDS is caused by atheism…

That’s right folks. It stands for Atheism Induced Death Sentence or Atheism Induced Sexual Deviance.

Posted by: llewelly | August 22, 2007 11:41 AM
#14

It is curious that when kooks argue against science by portraying science as ‘faith’, the science-illiterate often perceive this as a devastating argument against science. Yet when atheists argue against religion on the grounds that it is faith, the science-illiterate often see this as a point in religion’s favor.

hnPosted by: llewelly | August 22, 2007 11:47 AM
#15

True llewelly, although many people make the theory=religion link without being religious. I see many people saying global warming is just religion.

Even so I think it boils down to attempt to create false parity between belief systems. If science is just another religion (and since either all religions are valid/should be tolerated/are based on who has the coolest messiah) then creationism should be on par with evolution, altie medicine should be on par with evidence-based medicine etc.

Posted by: MarkH | August 22, 2007 11:51 AM
#16

The difference is that people who say that are lying. The contestants in Randi’s challenge have to meet their own standards.

I understand that. The problem is that the situation, by its very nature, is one where “whoever lies best, wins” – that’s not a recipe for the victory of rationality, is it?

I wish I had a few million bucks to endow a couple of grants at universities for real scientists to tackle woo woo head on. Wouldn’t it be great to see papers on the efficacy of homeopathy actually showing up in refereed journals? Or perhaps a couple of top-notch physicists trying to isolate The Hand Of God (after all, if prayer works there must be some linkage between the spiritual plane and the physical, right?) etc. Wouldn’t it be fine to be able to offer to pay for the PhD programs of some promising graduate students if they’d study some of this stuff? Part of the beauty of science is that failure to find something is sometimes just as important a result as an actual discovery…

I’m just fantasizing, I know. But it’s really sad to see that the best the science community can do to respond to their lie is to say “they are lying and Randi’s not.” I wish I had a couple hundred thousand bucks to hold a contest for the best submission against their “prize” and just google-stomp all over them.

mjr.

Posted by: Marcus Ranum | August 22, 2007 12:50 PM
#17

This is a reality denial belief that can and will kill those who are infected and buy into it.

So I guess it really is a case of “think of it as evolution in action.”

Tough luck for the kids but, well, I guess they were carrying dumbass genes from their denialist parents and it’s best for the species to weed them out early.

Posted by: Marcus Ranum | August 22, 2007 01:00 PM
#18

>>>It is curious that when kooks argue against science by portraying science as ‘faith’, the science-illiterate often perceive this as a devastating argument against science. Yet when atheists argue against religion on the grounds that it is faith, the science-illiterate often see this as a point in religion’s favor.>>>>

I my own personal experience (anecdotal) those people who suffer from denialism suffer in more than one area.
It seems to be personal and psychological in nature and very little reason is involved. They seem to be unable to accept that there personal perception of reality could be mistaken and will resist with all there energy any effort to show them anything that challenges their perceptions.
Which seems to me to be the opposite to reason and the scientific approach. For me it is seeing the “world” change when some new reasoning or evidence bring new clarity to the true nature of the world that we know. It is always humbling and uplifting.
The problem remains though how to deal with those who suffer from Denialism? How do we proceed when the results are so serious, war, disease, global warming, death and no new taxes.

Posted by: uncle frogy | August 22, 2007 01:12 PM
#19

I don’t believe in the link between heart contractions and cell oxygenation. It’s a big lie told by the CPR industry and Big Cardio. What they don’t want you to know is that, using only a pair of really strong prescription glasses (the kind that darken in the sun, those are really cool) and a jar of nutella, nobody has ever observed a single oxygen atom travel from blood in the chambers of the heart to the inside of a cell membrane elsewhere in the body. I also believe that haemoglobin is an atheist conspiracy and bagels are the final electron acceptor in our ETS.

Posted by: rayzilla | August 22, 2007 01:21 PM
#20

Part of the beauty of science is that failure to find something is sometimes just as important a result as an actual discovery…

Quite so. Google for “Journal of Negative Results”.

Posted by: David Marjanović | August 22, 2007 01:25 PM
#21

mjr (#16): The thing that bogus “prizes” like the one from “alive and well” are missing, are concrete examples of what sort of thing they would accept as actual proof. If you can force them to admit that *they cannot conceive of any observable evidence that they would accept*, then you have the crack that you can use to knock their whole charade apart. That’s also where you can differentiate them from Randi’s prize, where Randi has clearly stated any number of times exactly what sorts of things would win it if they could be done.

Posted by: tceisele | August 22, 2007 01:31 PM
#22

Just passed the article along to my family. I doubt my rabid global warming denying uncle and grandfather will truly appreciate the parallels between their beliefs and this paper.

I couldn’t keep myself from wriggling with glee as each ridiculous parallel was revealed between the different forms of denialism. It helps to highlight the absurdity of the arguments of the other types of denialism that are more common over here.

Posted by: Gimpy | August 22, 2007 02:29 PM
#23

Gimpy : I would be very careful about that, because seeing parallels betweeen his and other denjialisms can backfire and turn your uncle in a double, triple or even an universal denialist

Posted by: T_U_T | August 22, 2007 04:05 PM
#24

I couldn’t keep myself from wriggling with glee as each ridiculous parallel was revealed between the different forms of denialism. It helps to highlight the absurdity of the arguments of the other types of denialism that are more common over here.

Well, the manuscript actually started discussing parallels between HIV and evolution denial…we still hope to publish that somewhere, but we need to rework it now that this part has been published.

Posted by: Tara C. Smith | August 22, 2007 04:26 PM
#25

The “alive and well” site is offering a $50,000 prize for Alive & Well will present a cash award of $25,000 to the first person to locate a study that provides us with missing evidence about the accuracy of HIV tests(there’s more) — this might be a good way for some energetic young biology student to pay his or her way through a semester of college, no? I wonder if we publicize this in the right place if someone can take their damned money from them.

Like most of these types of challenges Maggiore has set herself up as the judge. You don’t just have to provide enough evidence to convince the scientific community. You have to convince her. In order to do this you will also have to demonstrate that she unwittingly allowed her own daughter to die from HIV infection.

Posted by: Chris Noble | August 22, 2007 07:13 PM
#26

What human condition do Denialists exploit if not credulity? I don’t “believe” that HIV >> AIDS at all. But the best research, labs, and qualified people agree on the state of knowledge. Guess what, it prob’ly isn’t perfect. Big Pharma is taking a slice in their usual predatory style. Gimme a demonstration that a peach pits and soap remedy is effective and I’ll use it should I be diagnosed.

Posted by: Skeptic8 | August 22, 2007 07:35 PM
#27

The “alive and well” site is offering a $50,000 prize for Alive & Well will present a cash award of $25,000 to the first person to locate a study that provides us with missing evidence about the accuracy of HIV tests(there’s more) — this might be a good way for some energetic young biology student to pay his or her way through a semester of college, no? I wonder if we publicize this in the right place if someone can take their damned money from them.

This is a sweepstakes contract. If it’s stated clearly, and if it could be done hypothetically, someone who presents the evidence has performed the contract and can collect the reward. If it’s a bona fide offer, Maggiore doesn’t get to deny real evidence — a court would decide that.

A good way to test it would be to assemble the evidence about the accuracy of HIV tests, present it and ask for the money. If the group refuses to pay, sue.

Before you go off muttering that I’m crazy, look up the case of Mel Mermelstein, who accepted Willis Carto’s challenge to prove that the Holocaust really occurred. When Carto rejected Mermelstein’s family records (most of his family died in the camps), a wealth of solid historical data, and the tattoo on Mermelstein’s arm, Mermelstein sued, and won. He’d performed the contract as specified in the offer, and the mere fact that Carto’s group insanely refused to recognize that performance did not change the fact that it was a bona fide offer, Mermelstein performed, and Carto’s group owed him the money.

You can read Mermelstein’s story here:
http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2006/08/28/mermelstein-holocaust-remembrance-hero/

The proceeds of winning this prize on HIV could go to a group studying the virus, or to a group treating the thing. What state is the offer made in? Get a lawyer to take a look at it there; if it’s a bona fide offer and not impossible on its own terms, it’s a prize waiting to be taken.

Hovind’s offer, by the way, calls for several chunks of “evidence” that would be absolutely impossible to provide. It’s not bona fide IMHO, but I’m not licensed in Florida.

Posted by: Ed Darrell | August 23, 2007 12:03 AM
#28

Foo Fighters are so off my Christmas* card and iTunes playlists.

(*Assuming the Evil Atheist Conspiracy hasn’t won the WoC by then, natch).

Posted by: NC Paul | August 23, 2007 05:16 AM
Post a Comment
.Not too bad a level of debate, we have to say, and we also believe that the suspicion that the “Alive and Well” challenge can never be satisfied is justified. But that awaits another post.

Debate successfully displaced to sub radar low level

The problem is that it is on this low level that almost all the public debate about this question now occurs. with the science, if any, reduced to sound bites. Even President Clinton told us he satisfied himself that all the doubt could be dismissed because the “drugs work, don’t they?” – the same answer as was given us by James Watson, celebrated Nobel prize winner. The only people who give the issue the careful consideration it deserves, fully referencing the literature, are the critics. This is the reason, above all, why they should be respected.

So let’s now deconstruct the writing of HIV babes Tara and Steven, as exhibited in their supposedly (inefficiently, for sure) peer-reviewed assault on truthseekers in HIV∫AIDS. In dissecting this literary frog, we can forgive them, perhaps, for their sins. For they are the sins of youth, where Daddy is still trusted implicitly as the guarantor of survival, and these two, like the youthful Orac and all the other Scibling bloggers at SEED, a magazine without critical faculties run by editors still in their very early twenties, are merely babes in the wood, unaware of what the grown ups are really up to (guess who copyrights all that Orac writes in his blog?).

For as we have cynically remarked in Comments, grownups who are such idealists they are prepared to write truthful blogs on this topic instead of make real money are few and far between.

Actually, let’s deconstruct the frog in a series of posts, since any close look and refutation of misapplied misconception typically takes 10x the space of the original, which is one reason why the paradigm glides on impervious to the endless objections of a myriad after twenty years.

But first, on this Labor Day weekend, lunch intervenes.