Guest post by Eamon Knight, originally a comment on Why should I?

On meta-ethics, I lean toward Error Theory (this week, anyway), and regard skepticism as a primarily epistemic stance. My usual approach to justifying moral behaviour is to note that it is in my rational self-interest to live in a society where I will receive cooperation from others, fair treatment, and some assistance when I stumble.

But as you note, this only gets us so far. My self-interest is conditioned by my middle-class status in society. For example: since I believe my chances of winding up as a mentally ill, drug-addicted street person are small, I might, if I’m being strictly rational, be reluctant to contribute (whether through private … Read the rest

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Wonderful Jane Donnelly of Atheist Ireland saying why the RTE shouldn’t have a daily call to prayer, aka The Angelus.

Jane’s a pistol.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YasmybU9Xe8

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Something I missed last July – Bill Donohue aka “The Catholic League” explains how wonderful Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries were, contrary to all the “myths” about them.

One contemporary example of prejudice is the popular perception of the nuns who ran Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries.

From the mid-eighteenth century to the late nineteenth century, the laundries housed “fallen” girls and women in England and Ireland. Though they did not initiate the facilities, most of the operations were carried out by the Sisters of Charity, the Sisters of Mercy, Good Shepherd Sisters, and the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity. The first “Magdalene Home” was established in England in 1758; Ireland followed in 1765 (the first asylum being a Protestant-run entity).

Notice … Read the rest

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One of the reasons skepticism can’t get you there is the fact that it’s always possible to ask questions like, “Why should I care?”

There are answers to questions like that, but skepticism isn’t the source of the answers. Skepticism will just keep asking why we should care. Skepticism won’t necessarily accept the answers. There are no skepticism-defeating answers to questions like that. There’s no “proof” that humans should look after each other.

That’s why some of us are getting so fed up with skepticism. There are people who think it’s the universal tool, that it’s the right way to approach all questions, that if it’s still asking questions then somebody is pulling a fast one.… Read the rest

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Or, stupid thought for the day, or, your moral reasoning machine is broken.

Another tweet, less interesting than the one I quoted earlier today.

I rarely use it myself but I see a liberal use of the word cunt to be a healthy reaction to those who seek to ban the word.

Of course you do. Bullies always do think that. If your younger sister told you to stop pinching her, you pinched harder, because that’s a healthy reaction to those who seek to ban pinching. If that skinny kid in glasses complained when you punched her in the playground, you kicked her for good measure, because that’s a healthy reaction to those who seek to ban punching. If your … Read the rest

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Speaking of the CFI Summit, anybody here going to be there? It’s October 24-27, in Tacoma, Washington, which is about 40 miles south of Seattle, on Puget Sound like Seattle, with a much better view of Mount Rainier than Seattle.

It has the Chihuly Bridge of Glass.

The schedule for the conference.… Read the rest

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An aphoristic little tweet got my attention an hour or so ago -

Think like a skeptic, act like a humanist

That might seem like a good recipe, but it isn’t. You can’t act like an X unless you also think like an X. Thinking and acting don’t bifurcate that cleanly – how could they?

No, it’s more difficult than that. Life isn’t easy. You have to combine the two, in thought and action.

I think about this in general a lot, and in particular especially right now because I’m on a panel discussing the two at the CFI Summit weekend after next.

Plenary session: “Humanism and Skepticism: Separate or Joint Agendas?”

Panel discussion chaired by Ronald A. Lindsay.

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A site admin lays it out on the Biology Online forum:

We would like to express our sincerest apologies to Danielle N. Lee (DNLee) and anyone else who may have been offended by the way our recently hired employee, Ofek, handled the conversation with her. Ofek’s behaviour was completely out of line and after gathering the facts we immediately terminated his employment. Ofek failed to show the respect and prudent behavior expected of him as a contributor to Biology Online.

From the moment that Biology Online started, it has always been a cordial avenue to exchange invaluable information and discussions among scientists, professionals, students, and biology savvy individuals from different parts of the world. Offensive and discriminatory behavior has

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Here we go again. High school football players. Important relatives. Small town. Party, alcohol, rape…and it’s the girl and her family who are punished.

The Kansas City Star details how the small town of Maryville turned against a newly-arrived family after 14-year-old Daisy Coleman reported that an older athlete had sex with her while another older male videotaped, after she was given an alcoholic drink at a party that left her barely able to stand. Her friend, a 13-year-old, was also made to have non-consensual sex.

After a thorough investigation by the local police however, clearly implicating 17-year-old Matthew Barnett in the sexual assault, charges were inexplicably dropped by the prosecuting attorney. Barnett, coincidentally, is the grandson of a

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Wow. She’s still at it. Obsessive-compulsive blog-monitoring.

Sara E. Mayhew @saramayhew

The copy/paste bloggers at #ftbullies are now block quoting block quotes. pic.twitter.com/WBvpbo0cIj

The picture is of a quoted passage on my post Hold that pose, now pout from the day before that tweet. I quoted John Holbo and included a bit that he quoted.

Yes, and? So what? Is Mayhew so sub-literate that she’s never encountered internal quoted passages before? It’s normal. It’s not some loopy thing that only I do because I’m one of the #ftbullies, it’s just a normal thing to do.

They go rooting around like Périgord pigs looking for truffles, digging through every post to find something to rage about. I must be … Read the rest

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Government waste – bad thing, right? Well here’s some government waste for you.

More than 10 years of planning, $10 million of government funding and  tireless work from the team that discovered life in a lake buried beneath an  Antarctic glacier earlier this year may largely go to waste because of the  government shutdown.

Oh that kind of government waste…

The WISSARD drilling program — a collaborative effort of 14 principal  investigators including glaciologists, geophysicists, microbiologists and others  from nine institutions across the country — is one of the largest programs ever  fielded by the U.S. Antarctic Program.

The team consists of more than 50 scientists, graduate students and support  staff members, who aim to explore the underbelly of

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Mariette DiChristina offers a fuller explanation in a blog post.

Scientific American bloggers lie at the heart of the SA website, pumping vitality, experience and broad insight around the community. Unfortunately our poor communication with this valuable part of the SA network over the recent days has led to concerns, misunderstandings and ill feelings, and we are committed to working to try to put this right as best we can.

We know that there are real and important issues regarding the treatment of women in science and women of color in science, both historically and currently, and are dismayed at the far too frequent cases in which women face prejudice and suffer inappropriate treatment as they strive for equality

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Ken White at Popehat takes a slightly different angle on the SciAm-Ofek-Danielle Lee train wreck. He agrees that it’s sexist but adds that it’s also marketerist.

Many bloggers have written about this as a clear example of how sexism is pervasive in the sciences.  After all, how else can you explain the interpersonal dysfunction of someone demanding free content from a female scientist and then calling her a whore when she refuses?

But I think sexism is, at least, an incomplete explanation.

I have no doubt that the scientific community is awash in ignorant and reflexive sexism.  I’ve heard too many stories from loved ones, classmates, and clients¹ in the sciences to think otherwise.  But human douchebaggery spins

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Update: this post is confusing if you haven’t read the one before it. The article is a good article; my commentary continues from the previous post.

Another article on DN Lee and Scientific American, Nobody Ever Called Einstein A ‘Whore’. (Yes, yes, frisson, blah blah collective outrage, yadda yadda impure motives. Noted, Jeremy, now go monitor someone else for a few years.)

Danielle Lee is another one of its well-known scientific writers. Lee, a biologist who studies animal behavior, mammals and the ways organisms interact with their environment, earned a doctoral degree in biology from the University of Missouri–St. Louis, was named Young Professional of the Year by the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis, and her urban

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So how are things going for Scientific American? Not very well, from what I can see. There’s a lot of very strong criticism of their move in taking down Danielle N Lee’s blog post about the editor at Biology Online who called her a whore when she declined to write for Biology Online for free. Most of it is coming directly from working scientists. That can’t be what they want.

I still haven’t seen any explanation of their reasons for taking down the post; as far as I know there hasn’t been one.

They can’t take refuge in the claim that their blog isn’t the right place for personal quarrels, because this wasn’t personal. Ofek and Lee were strangers, … Read the rest

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Leo Igwe writes:

I am writing to urge you to join as we protest the tour of the Pacific Region in November of the ‘General Overseer’ of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Pastor Enoch Adeboye. Pastor Adeboye is touring Canberra(November 10-11), Melbourne(12-13) New Zealand(14-15), Fiji(16-17),Solomon Islands (18-19), Papua New Guinea(20-21), Sydney(22-23), Perth(24-25).

The aim of the tour is to establish branches of the Redeemed Christian Church of God in these places. Pastor Adeboye is one of the pastors who openly used their sermons and preaching to rally public support for the anti same sex marriage bill which was recently passed by lawmakers in Nigeria.

Earlier this year he told a local Christian gathering that ‘Same sex marriage is anathema’ … Read the rest

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But what are they?

Editor in chief and Senior VP Mariette DiChristina explained on Twitter

Re blog inquiry: @sciam is a publication for discovering science. The post was not appropriate for this area & was therefore removed.

And got what is apparently an infinite number of replies – the page is still loading and I’ve been reading and scrolling for several minutes. The replies are stinging and clarifying.

A few:

Christie Wilcox @NerdyChristie

.@mdichristina Since when does @sciam censor blogs for lacking science content? No one took down my posts like this: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/2012/11/12/musical-monday-stay-near-me/ ….

Maggie Koerth-Baker @maggiekb

Expectation of free work is big deal. Treatment of women who refuse paradigm, even more.

Seth Zenz @sethzenz

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Ah, nice – Sean Carroll (the physics one) has a post on the how not to address a colleague who has the bad taste to be a woman issue, and Scientific American’s response to same.

Where I grew up, when people politely turn down your request for free stuff, it’s impolite to call them a “whore.” It’s especially bad when you take into account the fact that we live in a world where women are being pushed away from science, one where how often your papers get cited correlates strongly with your gender, and so on.

DNLee was a bit taken aback, with good reason. So she took to her blog to respond. It was a

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Good grief. Scientific American actually pulled DNLee’s post from their site yesterday. Wow.

I knew it was gone, because I clicked links to the SciAm post via three different tweets of DNLee’s and each one got a 404 – but I assumed it was a glitch, not a removal. Then DNLee tweeted the link to Isis’s post, and I put SciAm behind me. But now, also via Isis, via a comment at PZ’s, I learn that Scientific American deliberately took the post down and explained on Twitter why it doesn’t want it. Isis gives the details:

I was glad later in the day to see that DNLee had posted about her experience on her Scientific American blog.

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