Mar 28 2008
The real Bullshit Bingo
I took it upon myself, to save you the effort, of collecting together some of the interblag’s lists of common denialist arguments. Feel free to add some more interesting ones in the comments.
The best place to start is John Baez’s Crackpot Index, a scoring system to help you decide if someone’s personal system of “advanced”, “revolutionary physics” is merely common-or-garden delusion or something altogether grander.
Many of the ideas in this list can be easily applied to other pseudosciences. Ben Goldacre recently posted a horrifying “lecture” from a homeopath that invoked Einstein, Hawkings (sic) and so on in the same vein. Only stupider — much much stupider.
And on the related topic of science journalism, Black Stacey has a list of Science Story Tropes which crop up all over.
It’s honestly hard to choose which one I hate the most. The “folk wisdom” stories are probably the most dangerous because people have a hard enough time disbelieving things they’ve “always known” — having distorted scientific evidence just makes things worse.
If you’re not sick of people taking liberties with reality and science from that homeopathy video, how about some Creationist Bingo? With a leap and a bound and some long-since refuted talking points you too can call the Earth an even 6000 years old.
Last on the list is Global Warming Denial Bingo with a useful set of links to refutations built in. Isn’t modern technology wonderful?
Are there any more good pages of a similar nature? I was surprised not to find a general woo/pseudoscience checklist. Maybe a gap in the market?
The simplest way to separate the morons from the honest intellectuals is to note that the morons spend their time insulting the minds of the honest thinkers. Morons are unable to win honest debates, so they instead insult and dismiss their opponents’ minds. Their favorite weapon is psychobabble. They can tell you all about the stupidity, the insanity, and the nasty motives lurking within the mind of anyone who disagrees with them. What they can’t tell you about is facts. Facts bore them and require knowledge. Psychobabble is so much easier. Just make stuff up about the inside of other people’s heads! Debate over! Cool! (When necessary, follow up with sarcasm).
Anthropogenic global warming is real (and scary too)! Anyone who disagrees is in “denial” and has probably been bribed by “Big Oil”. Case closed.
See? Wasn’t that easy?
Very true. I guess that was why your statement was devoid of fact. But did use sarcasm.
Exactly. Good that you are paying attention. However, you missed the point that “moron” is, itself, an instance of psychobabble. Better luck next time.