Bachmann's Scientific Illiteracy.

[Paulos23]

Perry took a bashing, Ron Paul is too old and still too outside the mainstream. There is Mitt Romney, but he may be too moderate - would getting moderate, disgruntled Democratic vote make up for the loss of the right-wing extremists? Could be, if he could get the nomination.

Huntsman is way too grounded in reality for today's Republican party, I think; it seems to be into scientific illiteracy as a valid worldview.

Huntsman would be one I would consider in the Republican field, with Romney a distant second. It would be nice to have a rational Republican candidate. Then I could match issues and policies instead of personalities and craziness.

 

[chaz345]

Sure, all women have to do is make absolutely sure their boyfriends and husbands always use condoms, make their husbands get certified HPV-free before trying to conceive with them and make sure their husbands never cheat without using a condom. That's so easy vaccines should be totally unnecessary.

He didn't say that the vaccine was unnecessary, he said it shouldn't be forced, and at least for the time being in America, he's absolutely right.

 

[keith99]

Your not listening, it all started THE VERY DAY I GOT VACCINATED. NOTHING LIKE THAT EVER HAPPENED BEFORE THAT DAY.

And how many millions get vacinated?

I'm betting at least one got in a car accident THE VERY DAY they got vacinated. Did the vacine cause the crash?

This reminds me of one of the other pets of the anti vacine crowd. Silver fillings. Now lets say for now that there is a problem with teh mercury in them and it is bad for you. (unproved, but letsd run with it for now).

I've seen several people claim they had their silver fillings removed and that they immediatly started feeling better. Anyone see the problem?

They should feel worse! The removal process will expose them to a lot more of for a short time. Any expose would be greater in the short run.

 

[chaz345]

ETA: Boys should also get the vaccine. Beyond simply attempting to achieve herd immunity, HPV has now been linked to various other cancers in men - including penile cancer and cancer of the throat. It's much more rare, and only one or two specific species of the HPV that do this, but it's still a consideration.

Using this reasoning, everyone should get vaccinated for absolutely everything there's a vaccine for, even if the disease is not present where they live and travel. Great idea. IT would be a boon to the struggling pharmaseutical industry. Oh wait....

 

[questftbest]

Michelle Bachmann is 100% correct. The government has no right to force 10 year old girls to have shots for STDs.

 

[Psudopod]

Probably only one thing he came into contact with had adjuvants specifically designed to weaken his immune system that were injected subdermally.

Adjuvants don't work that way. They stimulate the immune system, not weaken it. The whole pointof vaccination is to provoke an immune response, so weakening it would be foolish.

A disease that is completely preventable without the vaccine and a vaccine that has causes numerous girls much trouble.

You are talking about the HPV vaccine, which is very unlikely to be the one the CircaO2 is talking about. How much trouble has it been causing girls, and how does that compare to the trouble they'd face from HPV? And what about diseases that are completely unpreventable except by vaccination?

 

[DaisyDay]

He didn't say that the vaccine was unnecessary,

He implied that it was unnecessary by saying it was preventable by changing behaviors. The problem with that, is that you cannot change other people's behavior (such as a husband's previous sex contacts) to prevent harm to yourself.

... he said it shouldn't be forced, and at least for the time being in America, he's absolutely right.

I agree that it shouldn't be forced, but it should be strongly encouraged.

 

[Psudopod]

Originally Posted by Psudopod
And all the ev.idence points to man having a detrimental effect on the climate leading to warming at a faster rate than any other point in our history.
Last time I looked, man had no direct influence on the Sun, but if you say so.

Sorry, you were talking about climate. It's hard to keep up when you change the subject suddenly.

Good question. Let me re-phrase it slightly. "This is why having economically literate politians is important. If they can't evaluate evidence, how can they be relied on to govern the country in the best possible way? If a politian falls for something with no evidence like the idea that massive stimulus spending will create jobs and lift the economy, how can they be relied on to take an evidence-based approach to policing, defense, health care or foreing relations?"

While I agree that having economically literate politians is important, I'm not sure there is no evidence to suggest that a stimulus will have a positive effect on the economy.

 

[Drekkan85]

Using this reasoning, everyone should get vaccinated for absolutely everything there's a vaccine for, even if the disease is not present where they live and travel. Great idea. IT would be a boon to the struggling pharmaseutical industry. Oh wait....

It IS a good idea - particularly when HPV causes a (comparatively) common cancer not to mention other genital conditions in women and that by vaccinating only women you'll almost never achieve herd immunity.

 

[jayem]

Huntsman is way too grounded in reality for today's Republican party, I think; it seems to be into scientific illiteracy as a valid worldview.

It's worse than illiteracy. That term implies a simple lack of knowledge about science and the scientific approach. The Republican party today--or at least a highly vocal element--seems to reject, and outright oppose the findings of modern science. There's a train of thought in the party that apparently prefers pre-scientific tradition, anecdote, urban legend, and conspiratorial theorizing to empirically derived knowledge. It's very disturbing, and surpassingly sad.

 

[JBJoe]

And contracting cervical cancer through HPV is preventable, by changing behaviors. The government has no business forcing people to accept a vaccine, especially for a preventable disease

Okay, so let's carry out this little thought experiment:

Say my daughter finds Jesus, accepts him and is saved. She's committed to purity so I don't have her take the Gardisil vaccine because "there is no need." She walks down the aisle, at 22 years old, a virgin with a young man who was saved two years earlier. They love Jesus and each other and start a family.

When her oldest child is 7 years old, my daughter dies from complications of metastatic cervical cancer caused by HPV.

What behavior should she have changed?

What could we have done so that my 7 year old grandchild wouldn't have had to grow up motherless?

 

[DaisyDay]

It's worse than illiteracy. That term implies a simple lack of knowledge about science and the scientific approach. The Republican party today--or at least a highly vocal element--seems to reject, and outright oppose the findings of modern science. There's a train of thought in the party that apparently prefers pre-scientific tradition, anecdote, urban legend, and conspiratorial theorizing to empirically derived knowledge. It's very disturbing, and surpassingly sad.

You're right, denialism is more than mere illiteracy.

The article in the OP led me to read a couple of book reviews: Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives
and True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society

 

[Drekkan85]

Okay, so let's carry out this little thought experiment:

Say my daughter finds Jesus, accepts him and is saved. She's committed to purity so I don't have her take the Gardisil vaccine because "there is no need." She walks down the aisle, at 22 years old, a virgin with a young man who was saved two years earlier. They love Jesus and each other and start a family.

When her oldest child is 7 years old, my daughter dies from complications of metastatic cervical cancer caused by HPV.

What behavior should she have changed?

What could we have done so that my 7 year old grandchild wouldn't have had to grow up motherless?

Isn't it obvious? You should hire a private investigator to dig up every bit of dirt on anyone you are thinking of dating; including stealing samples of his genital regions to check in a lab.

 

[JBJoe]

Isn't it obvious? You should hire a private investigator to dig up every bit of dirt on anyone you are thinking of dating; including stealing samples of his genital regions to check in a lab.

I can just see the future now: "Dude, I think Julie wants to take your relationship to the next level. Some guy called me up asking for the names of all your past girlfriends or other girls you might have been intimate with."

or maybe, just after he gets on one knee and proposes shes says: "I love you so much, I really want to say yes, but I can't. I didn't bring a release form with me to start your background check."

Romance can blossom any ol' time, I tell ya.

 

[Drekkan85]

or maybe, just after he gets on one knee and proposes shes says: "I love you so much, I really want to say yes, but I can't. I didn't bring a release form with me to start your background check."

Romance can blossom any ol' time, I tell ya.

Pft, you just say yes there. Then you steal the sample behind his back and get it tested. All good relationships are built off of secrecy, lies and betrayal.

 

[thaumaturgy]

I s there any chance that you noticed my comment was couched in the present tense?

I am uncertain how that matters. Has God changed since the Middle Ages? Did new revelations come to the Church since that time?

I agree that modern day Christians are indeed as peaceful as any group. And most modern Christians would find killing someone in the name of their religion hard to swallow. But that doesn't change the fact that no religion is immune from this sort of thing.

I suspect almost any Muslim you would meet would be similarly wired not to kill someone based on religion.

As Nathan Poe has pointed out already quite effectively I suspect these changes in any given religion is more related to social "evolution" rather than theological pressures, unless of course you have information that shows how God has revealed more of himself since the Middle Ages that people didn't have before that time.

 

[Wolseley]

I can just see the future now: "Dude, I think Julie wants to take your relationship to the next level. Some guy called me up asking for the names of all your past girlfriends or other girls you might have been intimate with."

or maybe, just after he gets on one knee and proposes shes says: "I love you so much, I really want to say yes, but I can't. I didn't bring a release form with me to start your background check."

Romance can blossom any ol' time, I tell ya.

Gee, maybe there might be a trend back towards arranged marriages with candidates who are medically proven to be clean, and away from marrying for "luh-huv", ya think?

Romance has its place, but I'm afraid it's a pretty poor basis to build a permanent relationship on, frankly.

Again, just sayin'.

 

[thaumaturgy]

Not to the extent that the Sun does; and the Sun is what's behind global warming and/or cooling.

Obviously this is discussed at length in other threads but I'm sure your findings, Wolseley, will come in quite handy to inform the thousands of researchers across the globe who have found that anthropogenic forcings currently likely account for the biggest impact on changes in the global climate we are experiencing.

There's a whole sub-field of this topic called "Attribution Studies".

But of course since about 97% of the world's climatologists seem to believ that anthropogenic (man-made) global climate change is real I'm sure they simply just got it all wrong and you and the 3% who disagree are really onto something.

That's what it sounds like to me---but with these agenda-driven "scientific facts" it's usually all 'er nothin', as you know; any admission that there might be scientific evidence to the contrary of the pet theory causes the whole shebang to go kerpow, and we can't have that, now can we?

Actually that isn't a critique of science. Since all of us who do science deal with those painful little issues like "p-values" and statistical analyses and uncertainty you'd have a tough time finding any scientist who didn't agree that there's always some possibility of contrary data.

But hey, what would a scientist like me know about science? I only do it for a living.

Oh, yeah, sorry, I'm assuming you know what I mean by a p-value in statistics. If not, let me know and I can explain it to you at length.

 

[Vylo]

For anyone still confused about correlation vs causation, I present you with the classic example:

Studies have found that there is a strong correlation between ice cream consumption and murder.

Does this mean that ice cream causes murder?

The answer is no, heat leads to both increased ice cream consumption and violent crime as a result of the agitation caused by excessive heat.

 

[DaisyDay]

Gee, maybe there might be a trend back towards arranged marriages with candidates who are medically proven to be clean, and away from marrying for "luh-huv", ya think?

Just because they are clean when you marry them is no guarantee that they'll stay that way. Husbands and wives, even those who were virgins upon matrimony, have been know to stray. Even Christians!