Winter term is starting at St Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia, where that distinguished political scientist Professor Shiraz Dossa is teaching “an introduction to political analysis and judgment”. That’s right, judgment. Not a quality Dossa exhibits when it comes to accepting invitations to academic conferences attended by Holocaust deniers, including Fredrick Toben (see below).

You would have thought that a conference on the Holocaust organised by President Ahmadinejad of Iran would have set off some alarm bells. But no. Dossa, a ferocious critic of Israel who believes that “the real anti-Semitism” consists of anti-Arab sentiment, headed off to Tehran in 2006 to hang out with Neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers and the Ku Klux Klan. We do not know, alas, whether Dossa found time to admire the model of Treblinka extermination camp, complete with trains, that Toben brought along to demonstrate the non-existence of gas chambers.

The professor’s justification for attending this obscene event? Here it is, from an article in the Literary Review of Canada:

The second western fallacy is that the event was a Holocaust-denial conference because of the presence of a few notorious western Christian deniers/skeptics, a couple of a neo-Nazi stripe. It was nothing of the sort. It was a Global South conference convened to devise an intellectual/political response to western-Israeli intervention in Muslim affairs. Holocaust deniers/skeptics were a fringe, a marginal few at the conference. The majority of the papers focused on the use and abuse of the Holocaust in Arab, Muslim, Israeli and western politics, a serious and worthy subject for international academic discussion. Out of the 33 conference paper givers, 27 were not Holocaust deniers, but were university professors and social science researchers from Iran, Jordan, Algeria, India, Morocco, Bahrain, Tunisia, Malaysia, Indonesia and Syria.

Dossa’s assurances seem to have satisfied St Francis Xavier University – after all, he’s still teaching there. On the other hand, his chances of living this one down seem slim: just try Googling his name.

Incidentally, he seems to have a Facebook profile. Anyone fancy becoming his friend? Fredrick?

Tags: Counterknowledge // 3 Comments »

The arrest of Dr Fredrick Toben must be giving Holocaust deniers sleepless nights. Toben was taken into custody by British police last week under an EU arrest warrant issued by the German authorities. He is accused of publishing material online “of an anti-semitic and/or revisionist nature”.

Plainly, this is an attack on free speech. Toben has committed no crime in this country – his awful website, the Adelaide Institute, is based in Australia. So we have a Australian citizen, arrested in the UK, because of German laws. David Irving: get on the next boat to Buenos Aires.

But it’s not free speech – or Toben’s petulant strain of anti-semitism – that I would like to examine. It’s his revisionism.

Toben is a German-born Australian. And, although his Philosophy Doctorate is from the (German) University of Stuttgart, he has spent most of his life in Australia where for many years he was a high school English teacher. So forget the “historian” or the “academic” labels. He isn’t either.

What, then, is his amateur opinion of the Holocaust? From his website, it’s difficult to tell, as the Australian government has imposed a gagging order on him. But this quotation certainly gives an idea:

I am operating under a Federal Court of Australia Gag Order that prohibits me from questioning/denying the three pillars on which the Holocaust-Shoah story/legend/myth rests:
1. During World War II, Germany had an extermination policy against European Jewry;
2. of which they killed six million;
3. using as a murder weapon homicidal gas chambers.

It is impossible to discuss the Holocaust with such an imposed constraint. I therefore am merely reporting on matters that I am not permitted to state. For example, if I state the Holocaust is:
1. a lie;
2. six million Jews never died, or
3. the gas chambers did not exist, then I would claim that I am merely reporting on what expert Revisionists such as Professors Butz/Faurisson, et al, are stating in public.

His position seems to rely heavily on the infamous Rudolf Report, which claims that the Gas Chambers of Auschwitz are a fiction. The report was comprehensively refuted by Richard J. Green and Jamie McCarthy of The Holocaust History Project. Toben lacks even the weakest of credentials as a historian or scientist. As a revisionist, he’s positively mediocre, having failed to respond to their article.

There are three pieces of information, all available on Toben’s Adelaide Institute, which I believe sum him up beautifully. First, President Ahmadinejad of Iran is called “the fearless President who speaks the truth”. Second, we learn about Barack Obama’s “communist leanings and terrorist mentors”.

Third? Well, I’ve saved the best until last. On 9/11, don’t you know, the Twin Towers were brought down by “Fourth Generation Nuclear Weapons”.

Tags: The Internet, Holocaust denial, 9/11 conspiracy theories, Counterknowledge, Pseudohistory // 3 Comments »

Nicky Woolf’s post below persuaded me to take a look at Steve Taylor, discoverer of the “Ego Explosion” that sent mankind on its downward spiral 6,000 years ago. On closer inspection, it turns out that only some races were affected by this disaster. Other peoples have remained unaffected, it seems:

[The problem of ego] is still the main difference between us and indigenous “unfallen” peoples such as the Native Americans, Australian Aborigines and the peoples of Oceania, and the reason why they have much more respectful attitude to nature than us, and a more spiritual vision of the universe. Our strong sense of ego “walls us off” from other people and nature, makes us unable to sense the alive-ness of the world around us, and may ultimately be responsible for our extinction as a species.  

Right. So, Steve, let me get this straight: you’re saying that some peoples are inherently superior to others, by virtue of their biological and cultural inheritance? And the difference between that and racism is…?

Tags: Cult archaeology, Counterknowledge // 7 Comments »

You are less healthy, less happy and less enlightened than a prehistoric hunter-gatherer. At least, that’s what Steve Taylor, author of The Fall: The Insanity of the Ego in Human History and the Dawning of a New Era, thinks.

Does your life feel empty? Do you feel like you’re just… not in touch with “the alive-ness of the world around us”? The answer’s simple, argues Taylor on Graham Hancock’s website.

Before 8,000 BCE, everything was fine and dandy. Prehistoric man experienced no “battle to survive, with everyone competing to find food, struggling against the elements, men fighting over women, and everyone dying young from disease or malnutrition.”No, that’s just what - note the sarcastic quote-marks - “science” wants us to think. “Evolutionary psychologists,” he continues, “see racism and war as ‘natural’ too.”

The vast bulk of his argument seems to rest on cultural reference to a “golden age”, as if the biblical story of the Garden of Eden, among others, is irrefutable evidence for the easy-going egalitarian lifestyle of these wonderful hunter-gatherers. We, a new “fallen” humanity, killed off these enlightened and wise beings, because of our “egos”. Taylor has hope for the future, at least. He points to the abolition of slavery and the death penalty, among others, as signs that we as a people are - oh thank goodness! - on our way back to how we used to be, chillin’ in a perpetual garden filled with helpful and non-poisonous berries and root vegetables, as well as the occasional helpful, tame and easy to catch herbivorous creature.

Oh, and no disease; that’s a symptom of an agricultural society. As, apparently, is sexual repression, so gird your loins everyone; in Taylor’s society, anything goes. (Hygiene is, for some reason, downplayed.)

“The only question,” he concludes, “is whether there is enough time left for these characteristics to emerge fully, before the old ‘fallen’ psyche leads us to self-destruction.” So I’m not waiting; I’m writing this article naked, in the middle of a windswept field.

Join me.

Tags: Graham Hancock, Pseudohistory, Pseudoscience // 8 Comments »

How do you turn an unremarkable scientific study into a news story? The answer, it seems, can be found in the national press almost every day.

On Friday the Daily Express reported that, “A nibble of dark chocolate a day could help prevent killer heart attacks.”The story continued, claiming that eating a third of a small bar daily could reduce the risk of heart disease dramatically - 25% in men and a third in women - by slowing “the hardening of arteries”.

Right. Lets examine the facts. For the moment, CBS news helps out:

The study was conducted by Research Laboratories of the Catholic University in Campobasso and the National Cancer Institute of Milan and has been published in the Journal of Nutrition… For the chocolate study, researchers identified 4,849 people in good health without risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as high cholesterol and high blood pressure. These participants were asked about their dark chocolate consumption.Chronic inflammation can lead to heart disease, so keeping inflammation under control is a major part of preventive treatment. Research has shown that patients who have a low amount of C-reactive protein in their blood have lower levels of inflammation.

People who eat dark chocolate regularly, in small servings, have significantly lower levels of C reactive protein, according to the study. This holds true even after accounting for any other potential confounding factors (such as differences in other dietary practices).

Immediately we get closer to the truth. The study actually shows that chocolate eaters seem to have less C-reactive protein which, according to another selected study, could have an impact on cardio-vascular health. But now for the killer blow. And because I’m a journalist - not a doctor - I’m going to hand over to the NHS’s official response to the story:

Despite what was reported in the news, this study did not directly assess whether chocolate can prevent heart attacks or slow the hardening of arteries. Instead it assessed the link between eating dark chocolate and levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) in the blood.

High levels of CRP indicate inflammation and has been independently linked with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Although the study found that these markers were lower in chocolate eaters, the study design is of a type that cannot establish that chocolate caused the reduction in CRP levels. Until more robust studies are carried out, a healthy diet and regular exercise are still the best way to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.

So, stuff your face with dark chocolate if you want. But don’t be fooled by the Daily Express story. More research is needed. Besides, you don’t want to get fat, do you?

Tags: NHS, Daily Express, Pseudoscience // 7 Comments »

A plug for the great Ben Goldacre of the Bad Science column in the Guardian is long overdue. He’s got a book out, and you should buy it. Now.

Here’s one reason why. Earlier this month, Ben won a historic legal victory against one of the most appalling merchants of counterknowledge in today’s marketplace – Matthias Rath, the vitamin pill manufacturer who denounces the prescription of Aids drugs in South Africa.

As a result, Ben is now free to tell the whole story of Rath’s disgusting activities. Indeed, he’s writing a second book devoted to him. We can’t wait.

Tags: Matthias Rath, Ben Goldacre, Alternative medicine, Africa, HIV/AIDS // 7 Comments »

It’s high time we talked about CERN.

The Large Hadron Collider project has hit headlines in the last couple of weeks, not for its awe-inspiring achievement or even its recent breakdown, but for concerns about the safety of the planet – nay, the entire universe.

This scaremongering video lays down the case for the ‘prosecution’.

But the more observant will notice that it does not make good on its initial claims of proof.

The narrator’s voice-over sarcastically exaggerates the word “scientist” when he refers to Stephen Hawking. Then, utterly blind to the irony, it demonstrates his own credentials with the simply idiotic:

“So lets take a look at black holes, and compare it to something similar in some ways, for example… fire.”

The patently ridiculous video then ends with a picture of the earth, which fades into a picture of a black hole, then into a giant floating question mark, and the words: “Do we know enough to safely run this experiment?”

The most chilling fact? This video has nearly 300,000 views.

Comments beneath include: “If this was completely safe they wouldn’t be building it 6 stories underground” and “it really scares me they should shut it down now before they could potentionaly [sic] kill us all.”

Nostradamus’ name is mentioned with knowing smugness by a few posters. This is counterknowledge heartland.

The most high-profile voice in the tumult is that of Walter Wagner. “Walter Wagner, who runs a botanical garden on Hawaii’s Big Island,” reported the Telegraph back in April, “and Luis Sancho, a Spaniard, have asked for an injunction to prevent the European Centre for Nuclear Research, or CERN, starting up the Large Hadron Collider.”

Unforgivably, the case has not yet been discarded, despite CERN not being under the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court of Honolulu.

An independent scientific inquest quickly and unanimously discredited Wagner’s claims, finding “no basis for any conceivable threat.” The full report is here.

The damage, however, was done. Internet groups pledged to vandalise the project, and may have been behind attacks by hackers on CERN last week. Scientists and CERN employees now have to deal with death-threats on a regular basis. Earlier this month, the BBC reported on an Indian teenager who committed suicide rather than face what drastically irresponsible TV reportage convinced her would be the end of the world.

Wagner’s is now not the only law suit currently filed against CERN. Last month, a group brought a case to the European Court of Human Rights to the effect that the LHC ran the risk of violating people’s Right to Life. Yes, seriously.

It is starting to seem as if Wacko Wagner has created his own little black hole of common sense – it’s growing.

Tags: CERN, YouTube, Counterknowledge, Pseudoscience // 16 Comments »

As if being mauled by Counterknowledge readers wasn’t enough, now he’s had richarddawkins.net banned in Turkey for being defamatory and blasphemous. No, really.

It will come as no surprise to long-time readers of this blog that the culprit is our old friend(s) Harun Yahya, whose lavish (but bollocks) “Atlas of Creation” - aptly branded a “glossy tome of lies” by one recent Amazon.co.uk reviewer - was sent out to schools all over the world in 2007.

Yahya once attempted to have Dawkins’ The God Delusion banned in Turkey for “insulting religion”. Thankfully, that case was thrown out by the Turkish courts. But it’s disheartening to now see the country’s Criminal Court of Peace acquiesce to Yahya’s insane demands, in agreeing that Dawkins makes defamatory statements about the Atlas of Creation and others of Yahya’s works.

Among the objectionable statements was the following slap-down:

[I am] at a loss to reconcile the expensive and glossy production values of this book with the breathtaking inanity of the content. Is it really inanity, or just plane laziness - or perhaps cynical awareness of the ignorance and stupidity of the target audience - mostly Muslim creationists.

The Guardian reports that:

It is the third time Oktar and his associates have succeeded in blocking sites in Turkey. In August 2007 Oktar persuaded a court to block access to WordPress.com. His lawyers argued that blogs on the site contained libellous material that it was unwilling to remove. Last April he made a libel complaint about Google Groups, which was subsequently blocked.

As John Ozimek of The Register notes, “One irony of this action is that [Yahya] benefits greatly from a freedom to publish that he appears unwilling to extend to others.”

In May of this year, Yahya was found guilty “of creating an illegal organisation for personal gain”. He was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, and is currently appealing the decision.

But, says Ozimek:

Before we pat ourselves too smugly on the back, we should recall recent events in the UK. The Daily Mail is fond of publicising details of individuals investigated by police for the various new “phobia” offences (”homophobia”, for instance). Many of these are no more than a storm in a teacup, but they reveal a worrying trend in our own psyche - and it is just two years since a victory by just one vote pulled the teeth of the Government’s much-vaunted Religious Hatred Bill. As it is, we now have a law that can be used against individuals who use threatening language that is targeted on the basis of religion.

Had that vote ended differently, we would now be living in a land in which anyone could be sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment for the crime of using insulting language, even if the insult was unintended and what you said was based on truth. Far from laughing at the absurdity of the Turkish courts, we would now be reading about the arrest of Richard Dawkins and his impending prosecution in the UK for religious hatred.

Tags: Richard Dawkins, Harun Yahya, Intelligent Design, Creationism, Counterknowledge, Islam, Pseudoscience // 23 Comments »

Time for another sip from the deep well of wisdom that is Echan Deravy, the Scots-born, Japanese-based mystic who is leading the “Earth Pilgrims” project.

Echan is proud of his Celtic ancestry. And why not? For he believes that the Celtic magic represented by the Stone of Scone and the Lia Fail stone in Ireland dates back to… can you guess? Yes! Ancient Egypt! Indeed, Echan believes that his ancestors may have included “an EgyptoIsraeliCeltic pilgrim priest”. Here’s a sample of his reasoning:

[The Irish stone] was principally used as the stone on which Kings sat to become annointed [sic] monarchs and that is a ceremony that clearly has its origin in Pharaonic Egypt. It is thus highly likely that this stone was first carried to the distant shores of Spain and Ireland from Egypt, and then on to Scotland by Scota’s descendants.

I love that word “thus”, so characteristic of the Graham Hancock school of historical logic. (Graham is another of the Earth Pilgrims.) Here is the full entry from Echan’s blog. It’s the usual rich brew, involving a Blair-backed conspiracy to hide the real Stone of Scone and our old friends the Knights Templar. True, the CIA aren’t directly implicated - but, never fear, Echan’s managed to slip in a wee mention of them!

Tags: Echan Deravy, Knights Templar, Earth Pilgrims, Cult archaeology, Graham Hancock, Pseudohistory // 9 Comments »

“Nullius in verba”, Britain’s Royal Society has as its motto – meaning (roughly) ‘no time for bullshit’.

But, this week, bullshit was what we got.

The Society’s Education Director, Professor Michael Reiss, called for creationism to be allowed back into the classroom.

In a speech at Liverpool’s Festival of Science, Reiss argued:

Just because something lacks scientific support doesn’t seem to me a sufficient reason to omit it from a science lesson.

He stated:

My central argument of this article is that creationism is best seen by a science teacher not as a misconception but as a worldview.

The implication of this is that the most a science teacher can normally aspire to is to ensure that students with creationist beliefs understand the scientific position. In the short term, this scientific worldview is unlikely to supplant a creationist one.

Other Society members were, unsurprisingly, indignant.

Sir Richard Roberts, winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine for his work on gene-splicing, said: “I think it is outrageous that this man is suggesting that creationism should be discussed in a science classroom”.

Reiss, an ordained Church of England Minister, then whimpered in a letter to the Guardian that he did not put creationism “on a par with evolution which is recognised as the best explanation for the history of life on Earth and for the diversity of species.”

But the Royal Society doesn’t take kindly to waffle – “you’re sacked”, was its response.

Good. Creationists use dodgy “facts” and woeful research to support a fundamentalist religious belief which directly contradicts scientific discoveries - taught correctly, evolution should always “supplant” creationism.

And for the record, Professor Reiss, creationism is not “a worldview”.

It can’t be. It refuses to view the world.

Tags: Creationism, Counterknowledge, Pseudohistory, Pseudoscience // 9 Comments »