Direct link.

(Previously: here, here, and here..)

As I said recently, even though my identity is no longer a semi-secret, I don't promote my firm or my legal career on this blog. My firm has noting to do with Popehat's content and exercises no editorial control over it. I write here to promote issues that are important to me, for self-expression, because the community of readers and bloggers and commenters is a joy, and because I learn from that community every day. I certainly don't name clients and talk about their cases in an identifiable way here.

Today, with a client's permission, I'm making an exception. I'm doing so to tell you about the successful resolution of a First Amendment pro bono case. I'm doing so because the case is all about free speech, bogus legal threats, and SLAPP suits, some of Popehat's core topics. Sure, it's no Marc Stephens drama, but it's in our wheelhouse.

The pro bono client is Michael Hawkins of For the Sake of Science, and the adversary is Dr. Christopher Maloney, a licensed naturopath in Maine. You can read Michael Hawkins' account of the case here. This is my account.

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Conventional wisdom changes over time.

There are two ways to discuss this, the crude, and the technical.

If you're crude, it's fun to discuss things the technical way; if you're technical, it's fun to discuss it crudely. I'm a a bit crude and a bit technical, so I'll share my thoughts on how convention wisdom changes in both ways.

The crude first.

There are two folks sayings (one is actually a Gandhi quote, but that makes it sound a bit high-falutin', so let's just ignore that weird old sexually hung-up dude and call it a folk saying). Anyway:

Science doesn't advance when minds are changed; it advances when old scientists die.

and

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

The point being contrary to the nice crisp models of the scientific process, (a) the more data you get to support your side, the more vehement the other side gets, and (b) there's no amount of data that can convince some people. You just have to wait until they get somewhat less attractive, and corpsified, and gross, and then continue the conversation over their age-whithered remains.

Now the technical:

Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is one of those books that everyone with pretensions to intellectualism should read.

For that matter, so is C.P. Snow's essay "The Two Cultures".

The difference is that I've actually read The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. It's not quite as deep – nor as original – as its reputation suggests, nor could it be. The name of the book has become something of a totem – loaded (not "freighted". I hate that term. Unless there are actual, literal forklifts or cranes involved you can stick your "freighted" right next to your "fraught" in your hipster-pretentious-J-school three ring binder, and shelve it next to Salon.com and the NYT style pages).

Uh…where was I?

Right, right. "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions". "Freighted". "Hipsters".

Anyway, the name of the book is loaded with a lot of cultural signifiers and baggage, because that's what pretentious intellectuals do, and because the book is a convenient stick in the dirt and thus its title is as good a phrase as any to label that patch of ground.

The patch of ground being the social process by which conventional wisdom changes.

Kuhn argues (to simplify) that at any given point in time there is a dominant theory. If the theory is hugely dominant, and there are no observed problems with it, there's little action, and no one much cares.

Had any rousing debates about electron shells, the mass of a neutron, of the photovoltaic effect recently?

Nor have I.

However, from time to time, a theory that was dominant gets some countervailing data piled up against it.

…and then a bit more.

…and then a bit more.

In theory there's no difference between the model of the scientific process and the actual practice of science.

…but in actual practice there is.

In theory academics of whatever stripe – physicists, chemists, economists, political scientists – would welcome contrary opinions and contrary data.

We all know what we really see, though: anger, fear, and outrage.

This is because the theory of the scientific process oversimplifies: it forgets that academics are first and foremost humans, and humans are the end product of a whole butt-load of tribal living.

…and when it comes to tribal living, the powerful get first choice of meat and first choice of nubile hunter-gatherers-of-the-curvy-variety.

Thus we humans can be fairly prickly about power, status, and signaling (you can Google up Tyler Cowen and Robin Hanson on your own). When it comes to power dynamics in the nerd – ah – academic set, there's something a lot worse than being challenged by the first-row, second-seat sax player, or having your rook snatched by the kid with an Elo score one notch down from yours. These challenges will just have you lose one or two ranks. The thing that's a lot worse is being kicked out of the group all together: being made a laughing stock and mocked as utterly, entirely wrong.

And, of course, this is exactly what the scientific process – as it's SUPPOSED to work – threatens to do to non-ideal actual-human-meat academics.

So the Old Guard fight as hard and as long as possible…and they get more and more angry as the evidence piles up against them.

…and eventually the expire and the old much-hated ideas are allowed to be spoken in public.

Paul Graham touched on this in his essay What you Can't Say:

To launch a taboo, a group has to be poised halfway between weakness and power. A confident group doesn't need taboos to protect it. It's not considered improper to make disparaging remarks about Americans, or the English. And yet a group has to be powerful enough to enforce a taboo.

Anyway, having quoted two bumper stickers, one philosopher of science, and one start-up millionaire (as well as mocking a universally-beloved 20th century saint), I arrive at my point:

After almost 150 years, the idea of the universal welfare state may be crumbling before our eyes.

The welfare state – at least the American version of it – is like a shark that must constantly swim forward or die. It's like an embezzling employee who must not only show up at work every day to cover her tracks, but must steal more and more to cover the old debts plus new expenses. It's like a Ponzi scheme.

In fact, it's not like a Ponzi scheme, it is a Ponzi scheme. Both at a concrete level and at a conceptual meta-level.

The American welfare state must constantly grow because it is as much a social system of outrage, signaling, and demonstrated "compassion" (those damn dirty apes – uh, I mean "humans" – again). If you're a good progressive and you're born into a system that already has emergency health care for the poor, welfare, free schooling for all, etc., etc. ad nauseam, then how do you demonstrate to the 20th century version of the hunter-gatherers-of-the-curvy-variety that you're a good person with all the right opinions and thus deserve a bunch of crazy monkey sex worthy of a Dan Savage column?

You agitate for even more welfare statism.

(I note that I could have merely referenced the hedonic treadmill to explain all of this, but that wouldn't have allowed me to use the phrase "crazy monkey sex", and I bet Ken two free hours of dental-expert-witnessing that I could work that phrase into every single post for the remainder of the year. I won't even tell you what I get if I win.)

And thus we run into the problem we see today: the economic meltdown.

As Margaret Thatcher famously said "the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money".

Bush bought an election or two by buying off the votes of elderly with prescription drug benefits.

Obama's been trying to buy himself a second term since Day One buy buying GM from its creditor/owners and handing it to the unions…along with a thousand other equally stupid schemes.

…but the moment of reckoning that many of us have seen since the 1980s has finally arrived.

We've run out of other people's money.

You can see the graphs everywhere in the economic blogosphere: expenditures racing far beyond revenues and never ever ever being caught.

This leads us to the second shoe drop, which is only a few years away: the point where the government is not just spending wildly more than it takes in, but the point where it becomes physically impossible to even keep up with the interest payments on the debt.

And then the – uh – gripping foot drops a third shoe: as the market sees this point coming, it gets more and more leery of lending any more money to the government, thus bidding up the interest that the government must pay in order to borrow additional dollars.

This is basically a tripwire: as soon as the apocalypse can be seen on the horizon we're rapidly accelerated towards it.

So, back to Kuhn and others: this has all been clear to some folks for a quarter century or more, but it's finally becoming more and more clear to the average man in the street.

In a better world the Krugmans and others would say "hmm…this isn't how I expected things to play out; perhaps my theories are wrong".

…but the Krugmans and others are afraid of losing their status and their access to crazy monkey sex (although I think the NYT still pays in dollars and suggests that columnists go procure on their own…although I admit that that may change as the dollar devalues).

Over the last few decades libertarianism / governmental minimalism / the night watchman state has gone from being a term that most folks had never heard of, to being a concept that just a bunch of low status geeks and freaks chatted about in between rolling the d20, to being a virulent / arrogant / hateful / racist concept.

The welfare state is dying, the evidence is becoming more and more clear, the Chief Monkeys are losing their power, and the world is about to undergo the kind of intellectual revolution and tumult that it only sees once every few centuries or so.

Punctuated equilibrium – it's not just for meatspace evolution any more.

P.S. Hi. I'm Clark. Nice to meet y'all.

If CERN is correct, the little neutrino the Europeans just measured breaking the speed of light means that everything anyone knows is wrong.

We've taken our first step into a larger universe.

I will begin by making an exaggerated claim which shows that I do not understand the scientific research at issue, nor indeed do I understand science at all, nor am I aware (because I hardly bothered to read the article) that it was written a year ago.

Second, I will link to and quote a portion of the article that shows the reporter is also a scientific ignoramus.

In this paragraph I will briefly (because no paragraph should be more than one line) state which existing scientific ideas this new research "challenges".

I will follow up with an arcane reference to a British science fiction tv series that hasn't aged well, but assume readers will get because I enjoyed the show when I was a child.

Finally, I will state that the reporter's ignorant summary of the scientific research supports my moral and political prejudices, denouncing those who disagree with me as morons whose beliefs endanger the world, or society, or children, as proven by science.

At the close of my post, I will write a brief, three letter word attached to a hyperlink (perhaps "Via") through which I grudgingly admit that I did not find the article myself (because who has time to read newspapers?), but got it from a more popular blogger.

HEADACHES OF THE HOME OCTOPUS ENTHUSIAST: "The repeated disappearance of crabs or fish from nearby tanks has sometimes turned out to be “late night snacks” for a hungry octopus that is able to figure out that there is food a short distance away – the clever octopus figures out how to escape it’s tank, capture a quick snack, and then return home to enjoy it’s meal." With guidance on the proper toys to keep your octopod stimulated.

PERPETUAL DOOMSDAY PROPHET PAUL EHRLICH (most famous as the loser of a sucker's bet) whines that the world's worst problem is that there are too many rich people in it. Funny, I always thought the world's biggest problem is that there aren't enough rich people in it.

CLARKE'S THIRD LAW MEETS MOORE'S LAW?  HP advances next-gen 'memristor' memory technology.  "Memristors were first described in 1971 by a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to that, scientists knew of only three basic circuit elements — the resistor, the capacitor and the inductor. Professor Leon Chua posited that there was a fourth.

Decades later, scientists at HP proved that memristors existed…  although working memristors [have] been built in the labs, scientists didn't know exactly what was happening inside the tiny structures. So while HP was already confident it could commercialize the technology, this discovery will allow it to greatly improve its performance…."

Read the whole thing.

FASTER, PLEASE: A simple blood test can predict longevity above 60.  When it comes to telomeres, size does matter.

FASTER PLEASE: Johns Hopkins researchers identify bacterium that kills malaria in mosquitoes. The team that can turn this into an injectable serum for humans will make Jonas Salk will look like Doctor Nick.

Like most people, I'm lazy.

As a result, I was always at most indifferently competent at math and science. Sure, I did well enough in high school to get into a good college. That's because they stuck me in the slow classes for math and science, I earned perhaps a 75%, and it got curved up to an A-. I escaped before it became clear that I was faking pre-calculus and chemistry, because they involved facts and skills and work, not self-expression. Then, at Stanford, I took the year-long three-unit "Physics for Poets" track to satisfy my math, biological science, and physics requirements. How does the Pythagorean Theorem make me feel? It makes me feel good. Watch me write a ten-page paper about that. I can dash out ten-page papers in my sleep; that's not work.

As a result of my laziness, I am willfully ignorant — practically innumerate and scientifically demi-literate. Thus, when I evaluate the scientific issues of the day — from global warming to evolution — I am, on some level, succumbing to an argument from authority. Which people spouting science I barely grasp, using methodology I can't follow past the Sunday-supplement level, do I believe?

As it happens, I find the evidence (as I understand it) of evolution to be very substantially more convincing than the criticisms levied against it. Similarly, I find the evidence of a global warming trend more convincing than the evidence and arguments to the contrary. The weight of consensus on one side or the other is one factor, though by no means a deciding factor. The whys and wherefores of that are far beyond the scope of this post.

This leads me to another sort of laziness, a type that I've tried (with mixed success) to avoid. Should "belief" in evolution and global warming (and particularly man-made global warming) be used as a quick and easy way to separate people whose views we should consider from those whose views we may safely ignore?

Some seem to think so. Take this post by DougJ at Balloon Juice, which suggests that one way to separate "reasonable conservative blogs" from the chaff is to ask their writers and commenters whether they believe in evolution or in a rise in the planet's temperature over the last 30 years. Jason Kuznicki at League of Ordinary Gentlemen bites, as does James Joyner at Outside the Beltway, and Will at League of Ordinary Gentlemen satirizes.

Though DougJ might not disqualify me from the ranks of reason based on my answers to his two questions, and I might agree with his own answers, I think the questions are carrying intellectually lazy and objectionable baggage, especially when coupled with an inquiry into whether other people are "reasonable" and their writing worth reading.

Here's the thing: people with unscientific, irrational, and foolish ideas about evolution and global warming might still have something worthwhile to say about other topics. Take, as one example, Senator Tom Coburn. Coburn doesn't believe in global warming. He also thinks that lesbian gangs were terrorizing Oklahoma's school bathrooms. But he's a been a vigorous critic of earmarks. He's right to attack earmarks, and no less right because he's a nut on other issues. If he's the lone voice in the wilderness on earmarks, and we refuse to engage his criticisms because they're coming from a lesbo-potty-phobic global warming denier, then we're being lazy and cowardly. On the other hand, there are plenty of people, and groups, that believe firmly in evolution and global warming, but can't be taken seriously as bastions of science or reliable political analysis. You won't find much creationism or global warming denying at the Huffington Post, but you will find it to be a cesspool of junk science and assorted twittery.

Honest people — people who care about issues, and not crass group identities — ought to resist the strong human drive to construct rationalizations for ignoring competing viewpoints. "We can safely ignore and marginalize any blog where most of the authors or commenters don't believe in evolution or global warming" is lazy tribalism, just as surely as "we can ignore any bloggers and blogs that don't support Sarah Palin" or "we can ignore any bloggers or blogs that don't oppose the War on Drugs." It's all a cheat, a form of shorthand — a quick way to separate, in our mind, people who belong from people who don't. It may unclutter your RSS feed, but you're not going to learn much that's new, you're not going to challenge yourself.

I read any number of blogs written by people who, if they noticed me, would conclude that I am evil, or a moron, or not worth consideration. I read PZ Myers, even though he would think me an idiot and a sheep for going to church, because I learn things from him. I read Balloon Juice, including the aforementioned DougJ, despite the din of simplistic sneers and jibes about "glibertarians," because I learn things from them, and because their criticisms help me test and question my views on issues. I'm not claiming to be a paragon of open-mindedness — I find some blogs and bloggers simply too insufferable to read. But that's usually not because they hold views I find to be wrong, or even ridiculous. It's usually because of the way they treat diverging opinions. And the fact that I'm willing to read and consider people who don't believe in evolution, or global warming, doesn't stop me from criticizing or even ridiculing them on those issues.

We're already inclined enough to focus on expression that congratulates us for our preconceptions. We don't need more excuses. Labels are and you-must-believe-this lists are excuses. Use them sparingly, if it all.

We live in a world where junk science abounds. Jenny McCarthy is viewed as a scientific authority based on "mommy instinct." Vaccine opt-outs increase in enclaves of the affluent and well-educated. Complex scientific issues like global warming are addressed on schoolyard name-calling level by both sides of the debate.

How can scientists make things better? Perhaps by being open about the scientific process and not engaging in politician-style behavior that encourages the junk-science-addled populace to believe that science is a big scam run by shadowy insiders, and that they ought to put their faith in talk show hosts and herb peddlers and people they read on the internet.

Scientists can make things better by not acting like L. Harry Edmunds, Editor of The Annals of Thoracic Surgery.

The blog Retraction Watch noted that the Annals of Thoracic Surgery withdrew a 2004 study on a medical topic, but offered a less than illuminating explanation. Retraction Watch asked for more details. That's what people invested in the scientific process do — they ask for more information. Journals that are generally interested in advancing scientific knowledge in their field should be invested in that as well. But L. Harry Edwards wasn't.

We had the pleasure of speaking this morning with L. Henry Edmunds, Jr., the long-time editor of the Annals of Thoracic Surgery, who gave us a better sense of why his retraction notice was so delicately worded. Edmunds, responding to question of why the letter didn’t say more about the matter:

"It’s none of your damn business."

Ranting against “journalists and bloggists,” Edmunds, a cardiac surgeon at the University of Pennsylvania, said the purpose of the retraction notice was merely

" to inform our reader that the article is retracted."

Curiosity and details be damned! After all, he added,

"If you get divorced from your wife, the public doesn’t need to know the details."

Here lofty scientific goals run headlong into mundane scientific reality: scientists are people, and many people are assholes.

If the Annals want to be taken seriously, and contribute to the body of scientific knowledge without contributing to woo-woo superstitions about science, then they ought to hire an editor who is invested in the scientific process rather than invested in being a grumpy old man, shouting at kids to get off his lawn.

Via.

Bloggers are officially too boring to be officially classified any more:

The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (due out in 2013, and known as DSM-5) has eliminated five of the 10 personality disorders that are listed in the current edition.

Narcissistic personality disorder is the most well-known of the five, and its absence has caused the most stir in professional circles.

Via Ann Althouse, who doubtless would have written more about it, had she not been so excited about being mentioned by Rush Limbaugh.

How else to explain Sergeant Jonathan Burke, of the Delaware County, Ohio Sheriff's Department, who arrested Melissa Greenfield for the crime of possessing a deadly "cell-phone gun."

Sgt. Jonathan Burke wrote that he repeatedly ordered Greenfield to place the "unknown" object in her pocket and keep her hands free. When Greenfield refused, she was arrested and charged with obstructing official business and resisting arrest.

Burke wrote in his report that he feared that Greenfield could have been holding a dangerous object such as a "cell-phone gun."

Here in present time, the cell-phone gun hasn't yet been invented. Our primitive technology has barely reached the cell-phone camera, which is what Greenfield insists she was pointing at Sergeant Burke. As he questioned her boyfriend, who was not arrested, for some reason.

Insidious time traveling woman!  Go directly to Time Prison!

It's good to know that brave officers like Sergeant Burke are on the scene to protect us from not-yet-invented weapons of mass destruction like the cell-phone gun. Of course some, foolish skeptics who probably also believe that the flat earth was created 6,000 years ago, might say that Sergeant Jonathan Burke is a liar who should be fired from his job, prosecuted for obstruction of justice, and sued for false arrest and malicious prosecution.

But I'm glad he's out there, protecting us all from wormhole loops, chrono-vortices, causal paradox anomalies, time meddlers who want to kill baby Hitler, and Daleks.

Michael Bellesiles, step aside.  Sure, you're America's most prominent academic fraud, but do you have a name as childishly humorous as "Anil Potti"?

Researchers have stopped three clinical trials that rely on the work of a Duke University scientist who may have falsely claimed to be a Rhodes scholar on applications he submitted for federal grant funding.

Overlawyered moment:  He either claimed to be a Rhodes scholar, or he didn't.  He either is a Rhodes scholar, or he isn't.  There are only four possibilities here.  Given that you're confident enough to print the story, you can avoid the "allegedly" and "may have" weasel words.

The problem with this country is that people don't say what they mean, and don't mean what they say.  Am I the only person who thought the funniest moment in the entire Journo-List scandal was pencil-necked dweeb Spencer Ackerman's suggestion:

What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.

Really? You thought an audience of NPR producers and Washington Post bloggers would literally throw a right-winger through a window, take a snapshot of the corpse, and terrorize his family with photos of the gory mess?  At Christmas?

What in the Hell is wrong with this country, where everyone feels the need to put a "smiley" on sarcastic suggestions that one's political foes be killed by defenestration?  Edward R. Murrow wouldn't have been afraid to say that Joe McCarthy should be thrown out of a window, even though weasel words and emoticons hadn't yet been invented.

Anyway.

the three trials are testing the genetic findings reported by cancer researcher Dr. Anil Potti and his colleagues. Last week, Duke placed Potti on administrative leave after allegations arose that on grant applications he embellished his résumé with the prestigious Rhodes scholarship.

Enrollment in the trials was halted Sunday at Duke and elsewhere. The next day, a letter signed by 31 researchers at universities across the nation sharply criticized the work conducted by Potti and Dr. Joseph Nevins, another Duke cancer researcher, noting "serious errors" in their science.

Fortunately no one has died in clinical trials of Dr. Anil Potti's non-Rhodesian work.  I said before, many of them don't really care about you.  You're just a meal ticket, someone whose money is to be digested then flushed down the Anil Potti.

Scandals like this, Climategate, Journo-List, and too many others to name wouldn't be nearly as frequent if the professions would only police themselves.  But that's beside my main point.

The main point is that, somewhere out there, there's a fake Rhodes Scholar named Dr. Anil Potti.