Be Excellent To Each Other

BETEO/BEEX if you would be so kind to listen to a fool ramble...

I am compiling the First Annual Skeptic's Top Ten Most Annoying Bullshitters in World Ever to put on my bloggy blog. So I'm doing a poll about it over at badscience.net.

But we've quite a few sensible and awesome skeptics/atheists/scientists/excellent people here so I thought I would throw the votes open to you too.

The aim is threefold:
1) To have a bit of fun.
2) To poke fun at the obvious people but also to highlight some complete bastards people don't know about - so more people know they are complete bastards.
3) Digg loves top ten lists


So if anyone wants to vote for some complete bullshitters in the world of science, pseudoscience and religion please say em below. You can choose up to a maximum of ten. They are weighted so your number 1 would get 10 points and your number 10, 1 point.

You can change your mind in later posts, so feel free to discuss:

Nb. I should point out this is a poll of "people I respect" and will be weighted as such - I'm saying this purely so that if a load of idiots find the poll somehow I can ignore them. And that it is preliminary at the moment and what not if I balls this up.

First name that springs to mind is Kevin Warwick

Ha, Captain Cyborg! Yes, I agree.

So:

1. Gillian McKeith.

2. Craster.

3. Captain Cyborg

4. The Church

5. L Ron Hubbard (I also particularly hate people who use their first name as an initial)

6. Um.. I'll come back later.

1 - Bruce E*BOOM*

*dies*

Here's a few to get you started:

• Patrick Holford Quack who thinks vitamin C cures AIDs.
• Danie Krugel Giving false hope to the vunruble with his DNAGPS Maddie finding machine.
• Andrew Wakefield - who started the whole MMR cause autism bullshit.
• Uri Geller
• "Dr" Gillian McKeith
• Peter Chappell - who sells mp3's to cure disease.
• Dr Matthias Rath - who spends his time convincing African countries that Garlic and Lemon is the appropriate treatment for AIDs and not antiretroviral drugs.
• The State of Arkansas - for prohibiting the teaching of evolution
• David Miscavge - head of scientology

This list is obviously written by a biology student, but never mind. I've tried to emphasise people whose views I think are actually dangerous, but as an obscure palentologist has made my list this obviously has not worked.

10 Points: George W Bush's Speechwriter. I'd imagine he's not just one person, and in fact an entire clique of people, so including him on this list is a bit dubious. But the manner in which extreme religious allusions are subtley worked into the speeches of the President is the most cynical and disturbing tactic I can think of in the cynical and disturbing world of politics, so for sheer manipulative power this takes top spot.

9 Points: Ken Ham. He's the head of Answers in Genesis, to my knowledge the largest and most influential creationist outfit that there is, managed to build a massive museum teaching Genesis as literal truth, with MAD ANIMATRONIC DINOSAURS, and has a vast website of misinformation and embarassing cartoons. It's worrying how compelling all his stuff sounds to the layman; AiG is something I think we should spend a lot more time arguing against as scientists as a result.

8 Points: Philip Johnson. Same as above, but for Intelligent Design. I know a scary number of extremely intelligent people who've been taken in by the merry rhetoric-and-misinformationpalooza that is his masterwork, Darwin on Trial.

7 Points: Thomas Kuhn. An extremely controversial choice! Kuhn is an extremely influential philosopher of science, and his work has influenced the way a lot of people who make important decisions about how it should be run think. The trouble is that his work is bollocks: based largely on rhetoric and questionable interpretations of evidence, his description of how science works bears little resemblance to almost every field of science that exists. It's embarassing that someone with such a low standard of argument is held in such high regard.

6 Points: Paul Dacre: As editor of the Daily Mail, his somewhat lax attitude to scientific accuracy has given us a huge amount of misinformation about pretty much everything in the world, giving rise to many basic misconceptions about things being freakishly common. Many of these are perpetrated by

5 Points: Melanie Phillips; a columnist who has lower research standards than the average poster on Gamefaqs. I'm perfectly serious about this statement; the women would get torn apart on almost any Internet forum, yet is a widely read and influential writer. This is a Very Bad Thing.

4 Points: Francis Fukayama: Because his ideas about History were really very wrong, and his ideas about Politics were really very dangerous. I'm not sure if social science should be allowed on this list, but I'm writing it so here he goes.

3 Points: John Gray, the author of the philosophy book Straw Dogs. Praised as a masterpiece of modern philosophy, it's an embarassing mess of a book that reads like it was written by what people who hate Atheists think an Atheist is like. Again, it's the sort of thing that wouldn't stand up on a reasonably intelligent forum or even blog; because depressingly forum posters have higher standards for this sort of thing than the broadsheet press appear to.

2 Points: James Lovelock. In sentiment I agree with the man on a great number of things, but his propensity for not backing it up with enough in the way of hard science bothers me enough for him to make this list. Global Warming is serious enough that we really don't need someone running around claiming to be an important scientist when his gifts are primarily rhetorical, and I worry that he does more harm to the cause than good.

1 Point: Simon Conway Morris. A famous-in-the-field paleontologist, his views on evolution that say it's so convergent that on any planet where life arises eventually things like humans will appear who will drink tea* wouldn't be so bad if it had the ghost of an argument behind it. Unfortunately his work has nothing of the kind, and he's another person who seems to be taken far too seriously in certain academic circes.

*- This is not an exageration. He has actually said this.

This post makes me sound far angrier than I am in real life, and I apologise.

Andrew Wakefield

Can I vote "The mainstream media" or is that too cynical?

Great stuff.
Some brilliant catches already.

It would be awesome if people could say why they've chosen people. As I've no idea who some of them are. The funniest/most damning reasons will make it into the post too...

No!

Not him!

Malc

No and, depressingly, No.

Who is that woman that wrote the book on babies that was lies lies lies?
Mr Chris knows.

I've no idea. But you did make me remember about the Baby Whisperer guy.

Man when I see his act I'm close to physically attacking the TV.

Gina Ford? But then that's not so much lies as just an evil childcare regime for people who didn't want kids in the first place and don't want them to impinge on their lives at all.

I have explained why, though. I toyed with the idea of putting Richard Dawkins on it for inadvertantly confirming the prejudice that evolutionary biologist equals religion-hater who WANTS YOUR FAMILY DEAD, and I have immense respect for his work that isn't The God Delusion. Lovelock's dodging of legitimate questions regarding the Gaia...um, idea (it's not even a hypothesis, really) for thirty years bothers me quite a lot, so he makes the list even though I agree with quite a number of his sentiments, and appreciate him for being so honest about what he believes our environmental future to be. Because I suspect he's right there if not about the super-organism.

Ooooh he's my choice! See Charlie Brooker for my reasons.

Can I just say 'Gillian McKeith' ten times?

That may make him an arse, but not a bullshitter presumably?

Fucking... Ummm... What's he called... Princess Dian PAUL BURRELL!

Three would probably be enough to invoke her.

As long as you are looking in a mirror, or something.

It's about a decade late, but Dr Fox.

To be fair I quoted you before you gave reasons.

But still, there have got to be more deserving of the list than him. Not sure who, but I imagine there are.

Malc

This is true, actually. While I think that Dawkins' principal argument in TGD is unsound, I don't believe for a second that it's insincere or been approached from a purely emotional standpoint. I'm not completely convinced this is the case for Lovelock, alas. There are probably much better people to put on the list, but it bothers me more when people who I mostly agree with seem to be bullshitting than when people like Gillian McKeith do it. As I don't think he really needs to bullshit, and he's in a position where doing so is damaging. I think.

When life gives you lemons, cure AIDS.

Chris Morris. Cake ended up being a made-up drug (from chemicals).

Wot? No Gillian Mckeith or Deepak Chopra yet?

Oh and I'll stick Tony Robbins name into the mix too.

Eloborate!

Malc

Is that the same John Gray who did those shitty Mars/Venus books and the laughable "what you feel you can heal" one? Because if so, I agree, he's a rotten little shit peddling pseudo scientific nonsense and questionable-at-best psychological generalisation to the gullible. I'd happily take a pickaxe to the authors of most self-help books, in fact. If I had no conscience I could make a fortune off bullshitting on that circuit, too.

I also second Gillian McKeith, although she seems to be on the way out now, thankfully.

Also, the small panel of people peddling those 'tragic childhood' biopics. Maybe it's just because I worked in a library, but I really am convinced that all those Dave Pelzer-alikes (and the man himself, who erased my sympathy by milking his story and putting out about six identical books instead of, y'know, writing a biography) are just the same room full of people making up a load of utter bullshit about child abuse, then tacking a generic title and sad child cover onto it with the same font and same background, and selling it as a testament to the human spirit, when it is in fact merely selling schadenfreude and the morbid fascination with human cruelty that dogs its readers. They inspire you, do they? Sure they do. Definitely not just your loving the dark side of human behaviour and being too ashamed to admit it, or anything.

So yeah, them.

Top place though goes to Ed Balls. One day, somebody who actually has a fucking clue what he's talking about will be made Minister for Education (my vote, as ever, will go to Philip Pullman). Until that day we will have greasy wankers like him whose sole positive contribution to education is making a lot of teenagers snigger whenever he introduces himself.

What vegetables said, basically. I was particularly unimpressed with his recent round of declaring that building lots of nuclear power stations would save humanity. Facts do not appear to support this.
And I get a sense of him implying that he knew we were all doomed looong before anyone else did, and you should have listened to him, which isn't very constructive.

As a librarian - - and also put Chat magazine and other atrocity exhibitions alongside thanks.

And good lord, my teacher friend Jon would certainly agree with the following...

It is not. If that John Gray was considered one of the most eminent modern philosophers by most broadsheet newspapers, I would weep very many tears. This John Gray is just kind of a bizarre parody of an atheist that is now real, or at least he was in Straw Dogs; he may have changed his beliefs now. He shows up in How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World by Francis Wheen, list-credentials wise.

Ahh, I never quite got round to reading that, despite seeing it several times at work last year.



Any teacher would agree, that's half the point. I know probably about fifteen teachers and they would all help bash his teeth in with a hammer so nobody could identify the body. You could literally walk into almost any school and find five better candidates. And that's not counting the teachers.

In my local WH Smiths they have a whole stand dedicated to "Tragic Life Stories". They may as well just call it "Misery Porn"

Am I the only one who nervously opened this thread, in case it was about Modz?

Um...ook?

Anton Szandor LaVey, and I mean that as a compliment. He made a lot of sensible points but didn't half mix in a fair share of bollocks to dupe folks with.

Keith bloody Vaz - you can't force home a moral point while draining your arguments of all contex. I'll bet he's got shares in Rocksar.

Russell T Davies - because the Xmas episode was utter bullshit.

I think you're being unfair to baldy there. There are more worthy candidates than LaVey and if you're going to have a go at him then blame Ayn Rand as the he based a lot of the teachings of the Church of Satan and The Satanic Bible on Objectivism.

But this is about skepticism in science and religion, surely? And not about television. Although before I realised that this made my first draft, embarassingly.

Of course, Rand set a precedent philosophically but LaVey bred his own flock and coralled the daft amongst them into bullshit corner. He was a true master of his own bullshit. And he put some of Rand's points into action. I'll always respect a doer more than a sayer.

Also, Satan rocks. And much as I like the current 'elders' in the CoS from what I've met of them, there'l never be his like again. The guy was a shrewd and playful character. Half of what we know about him would appear to have a less than solid basis in fact, but the only people who even give a shit are those like Aquino who set up rival organisations. Epic win, frankly. Also, dead a decade... hard to believe.

Dr Who is my religion. Certain episodes, when it ison form, are more believeable than any holy book

Really?



Pullman has some decent views, but I'm not sure he'd be particularly suited to running the nation's schools -

(a) his grasp of history seems slightly shaky, as above;

(b) he's too bloody miserable to be running the nation's schools; and

(c) he seems to want most of the children to be eaten by polar bears.

Fine, I can imagine a fair few kids may deserve an ursine mauling, but still. The Guardian letters page would explode.

Why would you be nervous?

Because I don't like seeing everyone shouting and being horrid to each other.

Must... resist... temptation... to... post... annoying... picture...

Oh, go on then.



"I want your baby in mah belly"

None of those things have anything to do with food rationing though, do they?

Granted, he goes overboard, but meh. He only really needs to know about education to be minister. For it. Something Balls doesn't.