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Nov. 29, 2011 - Skeptoid
15:36
Skeptoid #286: Listener Feedback: Dorothy and Her Straw Man

Skeptoid responds to some feedback emails notable for their dependence on straw man arguments. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Positive Feedback and Straw Men 00:01:49
A lot of the feedback I get emailed on Skeptoid is positive, much of it extremely interesting, and often from people who know far more about that week's subject than I do.
But occasionally, maybe one in five emails, I get something negative, often from some crackpot or conspiracy theorist, and often making a straw man charge against whatever I said.
Sound interesting?
Well, let's listen to a few of these.
Dorothy and her straw man are coming up next on Skeptoid.
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You're listening to Skeptoid.
I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.
Listener feedback, Dorothy and her Straw Man.
Today we're going to dip once again into Skeptoid's listener feedback mailbag.
The Organic Food Misunderstanding 00:05:36
One of the common themes among my disapproving pieces of feedback is the straw man argument.
If you're not familiar with this term, a straw man is easy to knock down.
If your opponent's argument is strong, attack a straw man instead.
Construct a ridiculous caricature of what your opponent said, an obviously absurd point that's trivial to attack, and make yourself seem brilliant by attacking it.
It is with some pride that I note how prevalent straw men are in the negative feedback that I get.
It shows that what I actually did say usually stands up pretty well to scrutiny.
Let's get started with a couple of good straw man arguments from Jules in Point Place, Nebraska.
Jules heard the episode on organic food myths and offered the following feedback.
This has got to be some of the dumbest crap I've ever read.
Yes, there are evil hordes of organic voodoo witch doctors outside of my home trying to destroy McDonald's.
Organic food is not philosophically different.
It is different.
You want to dispute the merits of organic food, then fine, but at least come up with a thesis statement that doesn't read like a four-year-old baboon was writing propaganda for a teen magazine.
Whatever.
I hope someone terrorizes you by forcing you, gulp, to drink a cup of organic milk and a plate of organic nachos, followed by a cup of organic coffee.
I'm sure that will be the end of the world.
I don't recall asserting that there are hordes of organic voodoo witch doctors trying to destroy McDonald's, though I do appreciate the colorful imagery.
If I'd said anything like this, of course I'd make myself sound ridiculous.
So he begins by attributing the statement to me.
I knew more was coming, and it did.
He suggests that force feeding me organic food would terrorize me as if it were the end of the world.
This comment pretty nearly exactly misstates what I said, which is that there's nothing at all wrong with organic food, and that it's a fine product.
It's nearly impossible these days to go to the supermarket and buy a cart full of staples without some of it bearing the magic marketing label, organic.
So I can confidently state that I eat organic food all the time.
Jules' straw man is not only evident by comparing it to my actual text, but also by its glaring absurdity.
This is a straw man that's not even artful.
What I did say is that organic food is no better than the regular food it pretends to transcend, and I produced plenty of evidence to back that up.
By completely dodging the actual content of my episode, all Jules accomplished in the end was to illustrate that valid arguments against what I said are hard to come by.
Jarek from Kettering, Ohio, also made a straw man argument against my episode about Stalin's alleged human-ape hybrid soldiers, supposedly developed by the famous Russian biologist Ilya Ivanov, known for his dramatic improvements to the techniques for artificially inseminating farm animals.
However, the closest Ivanov ever came to creating human-ape hybrids was a proposal, never put into action, where he hoped to artificially inseminate African women with ape sperm at a clinic without their knowledge.
Jarek said, I was shocked at your appraisal of Ivanov as a giant in the field of biology, whose proper place has been unfairly overshadowed by a made-up fiction, mainly because it sounded like you approve of what he did.
Coming on the heels of talk about his attempting to inseminate human females with ape sperm without their consent, which is a horrendous goal, and I think even though the myth has overshadowed his real research, it is the concept of making human-ape hybrids itself that is repulsive to most people, and that is why they view him as insane, because he was actually trying to do that.
I went carefully back through the text of my episode and couldn't find anything that could possibly be considered an expression of support for Ivanov's atrocious ethics, nor would such a discussion have been relevant to the subject matter.
Jarek didn't appear to disagree with my conclusion that the creation of such hybrids probably never happened.
It's almost as if he was just trying to make me sound bad.
Not only was it a straw man argument, it was something of an ad hominem attack.
I'm wrong about my history of Ivanov because I have questionable ethics.
Jarek, whatever I think of Ivanov's ethics is not germane to the question of whether Stalin ever actually made human-ape hybrid soldiers.
Ali wrote in response to the wacko of the week in one of my email newsletters, Dr. Russell Blaylock.
In addition to speaking out against the flu vaccine, Blalock is a conspiracy theorist who has written about aspartame being part of a government plot to dumb down the population.
Ali said, I do get and enjoy your newsletter.
I do believe that aspartame is not good for you.
I believe studies have been done that show it increases appetite, for one thing.
And amalgam is also not good.
My dentist removed all the old fillings from my teeth many years ago because of its toxicity.
I do not personally know much about Dr. Blaylock, but he may be right on with many of his views.
By the same token, honestly, adequate studies have not been done on vaccination safety, for example.
I do not take the vaccines any longer and feel much better for it.
Christians, Broadcasters, and Science 00:03:25
Are you against him because he is affiliated with Christian broadcasting?
I suppose you think all Christians are morons?
Well, surprise, we are not.
I went back to the newsletter to see what Christian broadcasting had to do with anything.
I said, although most of his media appearances have been confined to Christian broadcasting, he also has three books out warning of the dangers of science-based medicine.
Does that mean I think all Christians are morons?
Clearly, that's a non-sequitur.
So her charge that I'm, quote, against him because he is, quote, affiliated with Christian broadcasting, is a straw man.
I said nothing of the kind.
Nor would I because that's got nothing to do with the bogus science he promotes.
Allie, I'm not against Christians or Christian broadcasters.
I oppose his dissemination of flagrantly untrue medical information that compels honest people like yourself to undergo costly, unnecessary, and potentially dangerous medical procedures, like having your fillings removed, and to convince you that it's dangerous for children to be immunized against infectious disease.
If you want to argue against those points, then you'll have to do a lot better than simply asserting your claims.
Do as I did and back it up with legitimate science.
In a world that can feel overwhelming, spreading thoughtful, evidence-based content is one of the best ways to make a positive impact.
Ask your local public radio station to air the Skeptoid Files, a 30-minute radio-friendly version of Skeptoid that pairs two related episodes promoting real science, true history, and critical thinking.
And in these challenging times for public media, we're offering these broadcasts for free to radio stations, available on the PRX Exchange or directly from Skeptoid Media.
It's an easy ask.
Just send a quick message to your station's programming director.
By helping to bring the Skeptoid files to the airwaves, you'll help promote the essential skills we all need to tell fact from fiction.
Just go to your local station's website, find the programming director's email address, or just their general email address.
You can even use the telephone.
I know that might sound crazy.
It's an old legacy device that allows real-time voice communication.
I know that's weird, but hey, it's an option.
The world can feel chaotic, but you're not powerless.
When you promote critical thinking, you can help your community tell fact from fiction.
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Together.
Get them to air the Skeptoid files from Skeptoid Media, available on the PRX Exchange, and they'll know what that is.
Strawman arguments are sometimes made by accident when you fail to adequately inform yourself on what your opponent has actually said or written.
Greg from London made such a strawman attack on my episode about the Fatima Miracle of the Sun, where a large crowd of Catholics thought they saw the sun dance around extraordinarily, but nobody else in the vicinity outside of the crowd noticed anything.
Nelson's Snake Oil Claims 00:03:12
Greg wrote, Wow, talk about dishonest.
You completely failed to mention that the phenomena was reported the next day in a secular newspaper.
A journalist who had gone to mock the event actually reported on what he saw and said it was inexplicable.
Why would you fail to mention this in the above write-up?
Is this fact not important?
It seems to me that you are not objective at all.
He's saying that I was deliberately dishonest in my analysis of the event in that I covered up the fact that newspapers reported it.
Not true.
My actual words were, photographs and articles plastered the newspapers of the world.
And newspaper accounts estimated between 30,000 and 100,000 worshipers gathered.
And much of the episode was spent on analysis of some of the photographs published in the newspaper accounts.
Greg either didn't listen very carefully or more likely did like many who are personally offended by my take on a given subject.
They read just enough to discover that I'm not supporting their viewpoint.
Then they skip straight to the comment section and post their admonishment.
If you don't want your position to be a straw man, you'd better be familiar with what you're arguing against.
Here's another straw man from Nelson in response to a student questions episode.
Brian, you are my choice for wacko of the year.
In considering your answers to the questions submitted by the person asking about the Health Science Institute and Graviola, you commit the same offense that you level at your so-called wackos.
I guess you don't have to actually look into the company or the substance to downgrade everything about it.
So being an organization of a few hundred MDs counts them as a bunch of snake oil salesmen, huh?
No, Nelson, I don't argue that they or anyone else are snake oil salesmen because of their membership in an organization consisting of MDs.
If that was my argument, then I would indeed be pretty silly and easy to refute.
Being a member of an organization is not what makes someone wrong.
Being wrong is what makes them wrong.
The rest of Nelson's message was familiar anti-pharma rhetoric, a few anecdotes about shady business practices of pharmaceutical companies, and an anecdote or two about alternative medicine accomplishing miraculous cures.
Nelson continued, I was a medical doctor undergrad, and when I learned about how aspirin worked to alleviate pain, as was in a general sense, not the exact pathways, because it is still not known.
I guess aspirin should be considered in the same category as snake oil then.
Another straw man.
If Nelson had stayed in medical school, he'd have learned that there is much unknown to pharmaceutical science.
We don't consider every drug to be snake oil when there's something about its mechanism we don't understand.
That's the case with many drugs on the market.
We consider them snake oil when they're proven not to work, yet quacks sell and promote them anyway, often using anecdotes very much like those in his post.
Keep that feedback coming.
Medical Schools and Unknown Drugs 00:01:29
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