My sympathies

I've given News-Gazette blogger Rhonda Robinson some crap over the years, but I'd like to offer my sympathies over the recent accidental death of her son.

More anti-science from the News-Gazette

Every once in a while, I poke my head in to the News-Gazette blogs. I'm not sure why; they're usually just about sports and weather and are only intermittently updated. (These people aren't actually paid to blog, are they?) One of the more disappointing ones is Rhonda Robinson's. Her history of promoting creationism, anti-vaccination, anti-contraception, and oh-my-god-the-Muslims-are-coming paranoia never fails to make me shake my head and fear for the future of the children she homeschools.

A couple of weeks ago, she came out with a blog entry about how recent school shootings are caused by the use of antidepressants. She has no actual information, but supports her conclusion through innuendo, insinuation, conspiracy-theories, and an appeal to alternative (i.e. ineffective) medicine.

Here is the sum total of her argument:

No doubt there will be calls for more gun control, tighter security, but what I want to know most is will they look in [NIU shooter Steven Kazmierczak's] medicine cabinet.

The overwhelming majority of adolescent and young adult shooters have all been on, or withdrawing from psychotropic medications.

That's the totality of her argument. These shooters were taking psychiatric medications, therefore the medications are at fault for the shootings. The fact that these men were taking antidepressants for a reason doesn't seem to register with her. The fact that they were actually mentally ill is, apparently, irrelevant.

Her appeal to authority is rich, too. She cites Julian Whitaker when he says:

...guns and movies don't cause these tragically frequent episodes of inexplicable violence. The real reason is written out on a prescription pad by psychiatrists and doctors all over the country-these monstrous acts were done not by criminals, but ordinary people high on prescription drugs.

What she doesn't mention is that Whitaker is an alternative medicine quack, who treats people by means of diet and exercise changes, nutritional supplements, and chelation therapies. He actually believes there is a conspiracy among drug companies to over-proscribe psychiatric medications to children.

I'm not suggesting that psychiatric medications can't have serious side effects, or that they're not over-proscribed. I'm just saying that jumping to the conclusion that these shootings were caused by these medications based on no other evidence that the shooters were taking these medications, and ignoring the fact that they had underlying mental illnesses, is an example of poor critical thinking. Using that kind of logic to propose these medications be outlawed, as Whitaker does, is reckless and irresponsible.

Robinson doesn't mention that the two deadliest mass shootings in US history, the 1966 University of Texas Clock Tower shooting and the 1968 California State, Fullerton massacre, were both perpetrated by men who were seriously mentally ill, before the age of antidepressants. One was committed by a man who was depressed and had a brain tumor, the other committed by a paranoid schizophrenic. Undoubtedly, if their cases were discovered today they, too, would be on antidepressants. But that doesn't mean you can blame the violence on Prozac.

UPDATE: Just reacting to some of the stuff that's come up in the comments. I just want to say that we know that starting antidepressants can lead to an increased rate of suicidal behavior, especially in young people. So it's not entirely unreasonable to think that there might be a possibility that we might see an increase in violent behavior as well. Also, I don't think it's unreasonable to hypothesize that abruptly stopping antidepressants could lead to strange changes in behavior. As terrible as mass shootings are, they are fairly rare, so trying to establish a cause is difficult, at best.

My main complaint in this blog post was just to point out that Robinson sees a mentally ill person on antidepressants commit an act of violence and jumps to the conclusion that the antidepressants were to blame. Furthermore, she does so without evidence. She then goes on to quote a alternative medicine quack that thinks these rare events necessitate a complete ban on these drugs in spite of the fact that they have improved the quality of life for millions of people.

Can we get some intelligence in the design of the News-Gazette?

I rarely poke my head in at the News Gazette blogs, because they're usually fairly inane. About a week ago Rhonda Robinson blogged "Expelled: No intelligence Allowed - new movie, old debate", which is more disappointing than her usual conservative, self-pitying blather. What's unusual about this column is that the density of logical fallacies is so high is threatens to distort the flow of cars on I-74 due to its graviational pull.

Intelligent design creationists spout the same claims over and over. They used the same tired old arguments so often, that you can actually refer to them by number. The Index to Creationist Claims categorizes and indexes the standard creationist claims, distortions, and half-truths in a nice, tidy list for reference. Here I'll point out Robinson's fallacious arguments:

1. CA202: Evolution has not been proven. Robinson writes, "Why is a 150 year old unproven theory accepted as fact..", when in fact, evolution *has* been proven, in so far as science "proves" things. This leads us directly to the next one:
2. CA201. Evolution is only a theory. This can only be attributable to Robinson's ignorance of what constitutes a theory. Perhaps it's unfair to expect her to be familiar with such things, but it's she that has chosen to pontificate on science and it is she that is talking out of her ass.
3. CA002.1. Evolution leads to social Darwinism. Robinson quotes Ben Stein's blog about his upcoming creationist movie, "Darwinism, perhaps mixed with Imperialism, gave us Social Darwinism..." As the ICC points out, this is just the "is vs. ought" logical fallacy. Even if evolution leads inexorably to Social Darwinism (which it doesn't), that wouldn't mean evolution was false. Science tells us the way the world is, not the way the world ought to be.
4. CA005. Evolution is racist. Robinson/Stein continue: "[Social Darwinism is] a form of racism so vicious..." Ironically, Social Darwinism started in 1944, over 50 years after Darwin died and 85 years after the publication of The Origin of Species. So, was evolution valid for the period in between?
5. CA006.1. Hitler based his views on Darwinism. Robinson/Stein write, "[Social Darwinism] countenanced the Holocaust against the Jews and mass murder of many other groups..." Again, no. The evil of the Holocaust requires no more scientific theory than the selective breeding of livestock practiced by farmers for centuries. Hitler also referred to the Jews as bacteria that needed to be eradicated and cancer that needed to be excised. Shall we next accuse modern medicine of being racist and anti-Semitic?
6. CB910. No new species have been observed. Robinson/Stein continue, "Despite the fact that no one has ever been able to prove the creation of a single distinct species by Darwinist means..." Except for the fact that multiple new speciation events have been observed in insects, birds, fish, and mammals.
7. CB090. Evolution is baseless without a theory of abiogenesis. Still quoting Stein, Robinson writes, "Darwinism also has not one meaningful word to say on the origins of organic life..." Evolution isn't about the origin of life on this planet. It's about the change in the characteristics of the individual species. Abiogenesis, or the origin of life, is more speculative than evolution, but that doesn't mean it's impervious to science, either. I'm not sure why Stein feels necessary to wonder about the origins of "organic" life. Does he know about silicon-based lifeforms that I'm unaware of?

That's one creationist claim every 70 words or so in this blog post. That's pretty impressive for 500 words.

What I find the most irritating is the continual put-upon tone she takes in the posting. She asks "Are we still free to disagree about the meaning of life?" and why creationism is "not allowed to be heard." She even goes so far as to ask "Are we still free to disagree about the meaning of life without fear of persecution?"

Seriously, persecution? Rhonda, get down off the cross, we could use the wood. You can complain about persecution when creationists stop making a mint peddling books to the ignorant.

Robinson whines, "This is about science, and the freedom of ideas." Science isn't really about ideas. That's philosophy. Science is about evidence, and creationsists have none.

Hopefully, creationists will someday come up with some arguments that they haven't been parroting for decades, ignoring the evidence mounting against them. Until then, I'm just bored.

(Oh, and The Squire is still around. He stops by the comments and pretty much gives Robinson a good blog-lashing. Get back to blogging, you slacker.)