Nothing matches the shrill accusation that an assertion is not “fair and balanced.” Make a claim. Someone hollers “not fair and balanced” from the wings, and an opposing, contradictory theory, and the evidence for it, spring into existence. Poof. The surest thing in the universe- a punched return ticket on the Faith Train.

This is how the argument seems to work. No statement, opinion or fact can be credible, unless it is accompanied by the “other side of the controversy-“ a contradictory “fact.” Any point of view can be summarily dismissed unless it is accompanied by its negation: the credential of a balancing, opposing point of view.

No simply stated assertion can be valid.

But let’s face it. Facts aren’t each packaged with a bonus self-contradiction. Opinions don’t come with symmetrical counter-arguments attached. The worst ones certainly don’t. The bizarre utterances of Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck and their ilk are inflammatory, irresponsible and unsupportable. They do not politely supply opposing views.

We know that this apparent nonsense derails sensible conversation. We cannot quite make out why. We fumble with the baffling power this “fair and balanced” thing has in the minds of those who use it. This does more sinister damage than first appears. With some analysis we can see how it works. We can resist and reclaim.

The accusation that opinions or assertions are not “fair and balanced” does nothing (really) to discredit them. It does not constitute a counterargument. It isn’t even an argument. It certainly isn’t evidence. It is a personal attack on the person making it  – ad hominem– for being unfair and unbalanced. It pretends to discredit their legitimacy or authority or integrity. It contemptuously dismisses their standing to make an assertion or have an opinion.

We hear a commonplace aphorism about what makes a claim or a theory “scientific:”

To be scientific, assertions or theories are subject in principle to the possibility of disproof: that there is conceivable evidence that would contradict them.

(Karl Popper and provenance of theory of Falsifiability: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability)

Sometimes we hear this as a definition of science itself. It does have the ring of a “theory.” This alone doesn’t appear to mean much or do much harm in our culture wars. Maybe it confers some vague middle-brow legitimacy. It does in some trivial sense help to give meaning to the term “science” within the narrow box-canyon of unprovable, faith based beliefs. But it is not clear that we need it.

We often hear this little trope –this “theory” – foreshortened: The scientific is disprovable. This foreshortening is an error. To say that the scientific is disprovable is utterly different from the theory we attribute to Popper and Kuhn. It has proved to be a very damaging linguistic mutilation. It seems like a harmless (if mindless) trope, until we examine how it engenders murky, destructive beliefs that do startling damage.

We invite slippage and imprecision in the usage of the term “disprovable.” Can “disprovable” here mean “can be disproved?” Can it mean “disproved?” Uh-oh. “Scientific” theories are disprovable. Science Philosophers say so.” That means there is evidence that disproves them.

Anti-science polemic relies on a popular vulnerability to the mistaken idea that anything considered scientific has evidence that contradicts it.  Incredible. A “thing” is only eligible to be true if it is equally, symmetrically, not true! Any “theory,” any “evidence-based” claim, automatically manifests an opposing “anti-claim.” This will be in the form of a belief. It will be undetectable, undisprovable and unprovable. Like anti-matter and anti-gravity, this is anti-science. Yet it will convey a veil of scientific validity. Think this is crazy? Go ask someone at the local evangelical church.

It isn’t enough that recruiting scientific validity for an assertion invents an opposing belief. In the popular imagination, it implies that there is –equally scientific–  evidence to support that belief, and that this fictive evidence disproves the original claim. Under the rubric of… science!

Parenthetically, we know that evidence that contradicts (or disproves) a proposition does not affirmatively prove anything. But there is a popular belief that disproving or discrediting a theory or proposition somehow proves that a contradictory or opposing explanation exists and is true. 

This series of (in)convolutions is a mutilated, logical horror. It is muddled and fallacious enough to be difficult to disentangle. We are temporarily stunned and baffled by tautological shock-and-awe. Suddenly the rubric of science seems to somehow validate blurry, unstated claims that are overtly anti-science. We are wordless. We wonder why those who intone the magic words – fair and balanced– look at us, wordlessly, with such triumphant defiance. It is because we haven’t imagined the magnitude of the logical blunders that fly before our eyes.

We do get a useful inversion or (commutative operation) from our little “definition,” though. This is of more value to genuine thoughtful inquiry. It seems to be the real point. It goes beyond identifying what are credible speculations and claims about the world, and significantly, helps us see what are not:

Assertions for which there is no conceivable evidence that might contradict them are not regarded as scientific.

We seem to allow, without questioning, the following distorting simplification:

There is no conceivable (“scientific”) evidence that might support them. And this seems to be accepted as amounting to the same thing: Assertions for which there is no imaginable evidence are not regarded as scientific. There isn’t, and can’t be, any such evidence. Hence, they are not “scientific.” They are beliefs, taken on faith, only.

We are vulnerable to another foreshortening, too. We truncate: “faith-based beliefs are not subject to evidence that might disprove them” becomes “faith-based beliefs are not subject to disproof.” Popular usage interprets this as “faith-based beliefs cannot be disproved.” Say that again. Faith-based beliefs can’t be disproved. What have we done? If this strains credulity, pose this question at tea-bagging soiree and see how people really unleash the hunt for coherence.

This (inadvertent?) series of fallacies and errors distracts us from reasoning. We have gotten this far without remarking the obvious fact that scientific “theories” (like evolution and human causation for climate change) regarded as credible- not to say “true-” just do not have meaningful evidence that contradicts them.

“Rules For Axioms: I. Not to omit any necessary principle without asking whether it is admitted, however clear and evident it may be. II. Not to demand, in axioms, any but things that are perfectly evident in themselves.”

Blaise Pascal: Thoughts, Letters and Minor Works: Part 48 Harvard Classics. Blaise Pascal and Charles W. Eliot. F.F.  Collier New York: 1910 pp. 413

“Then there’s the problem of “balance” – the idea that reporters must give roughly equal space to two different “sides” of a controversy. When applied to science, especially in politicized areas, this media norm becomes extremely problematic. Should journalists really grant equal time to the small band of scientists who deny the causal relationship between HIV and AIDS when the vast majority of researchers accept the connection between the two? Should they split column space between the few remaining global warming “skeptics” and the scientific experts who affirm the phenomenon’s human causation? Again, experienced science journalists will know best how to cover such stories and will be aware of the scientific community’s very justifiable abhorrence of unthinking “balance.””

Chris Mooney & Sheril Kirschenbaum: “Unpopular Science”. The Nation (August 17, 2009 ed.). (Our emphasis.) http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090817/mooney_kirshenbaum

We know from clinical observation that right-wing, conservative “faith” operatives are anti-science. And to what purpose? They are intolerant of the “evidence-based” pursuit of public policy. Who profits by this? They resist the admission and consideration of factual knowledge and critical analysis into our public conversations about how we are to conduct ourselves. The Faith Card.

We acknowledge that right-wing doctrine is anti-science. We predictably foreshorten this to “faith is anti-science.” Is faith per se anti-science? I have no idea. How could I, really? I don’t believe I am making claims based on faith. I guess your faiths are anti-science if you say they are. Faiths are specific, particular and not “per se.” There is no recognizable category of as-yet formed faiths for which we can apply logical operators like “anti-science.” Maybe we should discipline ourselves to make statements only about specific, articulable beliefs or “faiths.” Faith is a noun. Do you have faith? Do you have cheeses?

We allow another unthinking inversion (commutation), this time of the trope “faith is anti-science.” We inadvertently give birth to another unfortunate, bastard linguistic error: “science is anti-faith.” Allowing this illogical imposture into the right-wing play-book has invited all sorts of mental mayhem.

If we set aside uncertain arguments about scientific “methods,” the body of science is nothing more (or less) than the accumulation of sensibly agreeable observations about reality. The body of physical science isn’t anti-faith. The body of social science is clear:

It is overwhelmingly evident that organized faith does staggering harm. Not only because it opposes science in public policy.  Not only because it is instrumental in power and oppression. Organized religion produces wholesale injustice and violence.

Beliefs for which we cannot imagine any evidence are a very special, very particular class of claim. They differ fundamentally from observations of reality. We are tricked into mistaking that they merit recognition and equal footing with the reasoned, the rational, the scientific –with claims that are within the ambit of observable evidence and actual theories. They do not. We are fooled into giving them some kind of “legitimacy through association.” They do not have similar gravity, or moral weight, or intellectual standing.

Let’s tally the damage we have done to sensible discourse.

Science and the scientific are categorically maligned as inherently contradictory and self-disproving. This disdains and dismisses all rational, logical discourse, not to mention those zany philosophers, as ridiculous, naïve and stupidly self-contradictory. Reasoned dialogue is mangled and reduced to nonsensical rubble. We can dismiss science itself.

This kind of malicious dishonesty mocks intellectual and logical integrity. No wonder we are confused.

We are obliged to summarily reject right-wing claims to recourse to “logic” or “reason” or “evidence,” or “science,” or, for god’s sake, “truth. They gave up any such claims too long ago for us to brook that bullshit. A reasoned response is an undignified disservice to mental –and moral– integrity. If we analyze with this kind of care, we can rehabilitate for ourselves the proper usage of the word “theory” from those who would appropriate and contaminate it. We can reclaim for serious conversation the terms “proofs” and “proved.”

By all means. Take seriously all ideas that claim to truth, meaning, and mere usefulness. Examine them rationally and with reason. Subject them to skepticism, counter-evidence and to possible disproof. Feel free –intellectually free– to discredit them.

But dismiss, without evidence, apology or justification, that which is presented without evidence. (Provide citation.) Do not dignify as “controversy” the shrill assaults of bitter, acquisitive extremists who would discard what we know.

So many things are just… true. And so many things are just… uncontroversial. And so many things are just… preposterous. Give no credence to unfounded claims to controversy. The unfounded belief and the reasoned, supported and “evidence-based” argument do not have the same standing. Disregard refractory, schizoid and insane demands that you be “fair and balanced.”  As we have seen, they do more harm than immediately appears. Let’s not be insane.

(end)

“Crude Parodies Which No-One Has A Right To Erase:” Camille Paglia

“There are very few instances where speech properly falls under government scrutiny, and those involve either fraudulent representations in business contracts or disturbances of the peace, such as shouting “fire” in a crowded theater or disrupting residential neighborhoods or campuses by noisy late-night reveling. In the latter, if offensive epithets are used, it is not the content of the worlds that is punishable but the fact that anything at all is shouted at that hour. Epithets and stereotypes are not fraudulent in a commercial sense; they are crudely distorted or parodistic versions of a substratum of historical truth or perception, which no-one, however well-meaning, has a right to erase.”

Camille Paglia: Vamps and Tramps (New York: Random House, 1994).

Pp 50-51

“Our Incomprehension Does Not Impede Our Understanding…” Steven Pinker

“Our incomprehension of (_____) does not impede our understanding of how (_____) works in the least.”
This is a quote from a Scientist. Wizards, aren’t they? Has anyone ever said such a thing before and been Wrong?
…
“But saying that we have no sicentifc evidence of (_____) is not the same as saying that (_____) does not exist at all.”

Steven Pinker, How The Mind Works (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997, pp 147, 148.

Here’s how Pinker filled in the blanks:

“Our incomprehension of (sentience) does not impede our understanding of how (the mind) works in the least.”
“But saying that we have no sicentifc evidence of (sentience) is not the same as saying that (sentience) does not exist at all.”

Fair and Balanced.  If you don’t quickly insert a counterclaim into your assertion, not only your claim, but you, our dear ad hominem Reader, will be shouted to pieces.

God help us if we aren’t Fair and Balanced. Nothing equals the trump power of the shrill accusation that a claim is not “fair and balanced” in sanctioning its contemptuous dismissal. Our paperwork will not be processed at all if it isn’t accompanied by the proper credential: an opposing “view.”

You, our dear Reader, know what we think of those who dismiss ideas because they are not “moderate” and “balanced” and “centrist.” And if you don’t, by gosh, you will find this essay to be well paired with our previous essay: http://www.takebackourlanguage.com/blog/2009/05/09/when-there-is-nothing-moderate-about-the-horrors-you-oppose-how-can-you-be-a-moderate/1559

Here’s how it goes. Our assertion can only be credible if we fairly present a balancing, opposing view. In fact- no observation can be valid if we do not supply its negation (in the space provided).

“Then there’s the problem of “balance” – the idea that reporters must give roughly equal space to two different “sides” of a controversy. When applied to science, especially in politicized areas, this media norm becomes extremely problematic. Should journalists really grant equal time to the small band of scientists who deny the causal relationship between HIV and AIDS when the vast majority of researchers accept the connection between the two? Should they split column space between the few remaining global warming “skeptics” and the scientific experts who affirm the phenomenon’s human causation? Again, experienced science journalists will know best how to cover such stories and will be aware of the scientific community’s very justifiable abhorrence of unthinking “balance.””

Chris Mooney & Sheril Kirschenbaum: “Unpopular Science”. The Nation (August 17, 2009 ed.). (Our emphasis.) http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090817/mooney_kirshenbaum

To be considered scientific, assertions are subject in principle to the possibility of disproof: that there is conceivable evidence that would contradict them. (We promise to supply later some proper citations of Stephen Popper and Thomas Kuhn).

The inversion of this is of particular value to thoughtful inquiry: that assertions for which there is no conceivable evidence that might disprove them are not regarded as “scientific.” This is useful: They are not  “disprovable ” (and hence not scientific). But this leads to an unfortunate shorthand reference: hence, scientific claims ARE “disprovable.” We think this shorthand is a linguistic mutilation and terribly unfortunate.

Popular usage has bastardized and perverted this. Anti-scientists seem to rely on an uncritical popular vulnerability to the idea that something can only be considered scientific if there is some evidence that contradicts it. Hence, a “thing” can only be regarded as credible -or “true”- if it is equally –and credibly- “untrue.” “Disprovable.” At will. Have been and will be disproved.

Theories. Let’s reclaim this word for ourselves so we can go back to using it in real, sober, reasoning deliberation. Overlooked in popular discourse is the condition that “scientific” theories (like evolution and climate change) that are regarded as credible -not to say “true”- do not have substantial evidence that contradicts them. They are not disproved.

Look at the injury this does not only to science, but also to public discourse (and language itself). Science, and very scientificness, are mangled and reduced to nonsensical rubble. By the way, the notional “the exception that proves the rule” is bullshit. Rules don’t have exceptions and exceptions don’t prove anything. Don’t get us started.

And who profits by this? Those who would hack away at intellectual honesty to advance ideological aims achieve this jaw-dropping perversity: nothing can claim to be “true” or valid or meaningful unless it stands there, proudly, with its arm around its own self-proclamation that it is untrue! Good god!

Science and the scientific are categorically defined as inherently contradictory and self-disproving. One cannot recruit a claim for scientific (or rational) validity for any assertion without suggesting that there is (equally scientific!) “evidence” to the contrary.

Thus- looky! we can discount, disdain and ridicule any scientific claim. Because it is… scientific. And we can dismiss science itself. Logic and rational discourse too. While we are at it. As ridiculous, naïve and stupidly self-contradictory. Woa!

That would be really perverse and insane, wouldn’t it? Any claim to truth is simultaneously and symmetrically a claim to untruth?  That, Reader, is what we have done.

Whatever else you, Reader, might do, don’t allow these people to fool you into allowing them to make claims based on “logic” or “reason” or “evidence,” or for god’s sake, “truth. They gave up claims to that kind of “truth” way too long ago for us to brook that bullshit. They have no claims to such things. We are more than justified, nay obligated, to shout them to pieces. We must save them from the embarrassment of their own screaming hypocrisy. Oh and, of course, you’ll agree that we must all applaud Bill Mahr’s film Religulous.

Please. Dismiss without evidence that which cannot be presented with evidence. Give no credence to the idea that these ideas or people operate within the realm of reason and proofs. They don’t, and it is a disservice to honest intellectual discourse to be fooled into responding. They attempt to make it look like the unfounded belief and the reasoned, supported argument have the same standing. They don’t.

By all means. Examine ideas rationally and with reason. Subject them to skepticism, contradiction, counterargument and disproof. Take seriously all ideas that claim to meaning, truth, validity, and mere usefulness. With intellectual integrity and honesty, feel free to discredit them. This our beloved search for meaning, and it is its own truth. This is the kind of truth we most admire.

But do not accept as “controversy” the shrill idiocies of extremists who challenge what we know. So many “things” are simply… uncontroversial. And so many are simply… true. Reject without argument assertions that an “opposing point of view” makes them controversial, or untrue… and vilify you, Reader, as not “fair and balanced.”

Dismiss, without reason, argument or recourse to sense, those who would deflect, dismiss and silence the obvious with refractory, schizoid and insane demands that you be “fair and balanced.”

Those Who Think Action Might Be In Order Will Be Called Men Of Little Faith: John Kenneth Galbraith

The market will not go on a speculative rampage again without some rationalization. But during any future boom some newly rediscovered virtuosity of the free enterprise system will be cited. It will be pointed out that people are justified in paying the present prices –indeed, almost any price- to have an equity position in the system. Among the first to accept those rationalizations will be some of those responsible for invoking the controls. They will say firmly that controls are not needed. The newspapers, some of them, will agree and speak harshly of those who think action might be in order. They will be called men of little faith.

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash 1929 (50th Anniversary Edition: Houghton Mifflin, New York 1979) Pp 190

The Monstrous Institution of Rumor: Robert Pogue Harrison

“We live in a world that traffics in rumors. From prophet to disciple, neighbor to neighbor, binding the living to the dead and the dead to the yet unborn in chains of persuasion. Society depends upon our natural disposition to assume what we are told: that the gods are of such and such a nature, that the “good” lies in this or that direction, that we are on earth to meet a set of obligations. We feast or starve at the table of laws, being believers. Sometimes we even believe in “freedom.” Freedom too is a rumor, as long as one merely believes in it. The pilgrims who set off for America sought in their separation from the European homeland a margin of freedom from the old tyrannies and prejudices of tradition. They arrived on a forested continent, a “well-wooded land,” and undertook an experiment in independence. To what did it lead? To more parishes of the of the predicted and predictable. Concretely speaking, to an even more insidious enslavement to nationhood, property, economy, industry, spectacle, and the monstrous institution of rumor called the press.”

Robert Pogue Harrison: Forests: The Shadow of Civilization. Chicago, 1992, University of Chicago Press.

PHYSICISTS CHALLENGE GODS; Lawyers Intervene

Switzerland, France and Germany –some of your more Godless countries- are home to CERN. CERN has several large particle colliders, and they are constructing another. It has been in the Pop-News lately.

Irresponsible journalists have suggested in otherwise science-free accounts that there are a couple of possibilities. They are IMPROBABLE, mind you. The probability may be VERY SMALL. That is, expressed by a VERY SMALL NUMBER. We mean, for god’s sake what are the odds, for the betting man, of his kind of thing?

In fact, it is not appropriate to try to understand such things by means of probabilities, or even statistics, for that matter. Even Pop-Stats! It is either physically possible for of these things to take place, or it is not. And if possible, either one or more of them will happen, or will not. It may be like getting hit by a train. Either you do or you don’t. This isn’t best understood or analytically described as a probability, when you are staggering around next to the railroad tracks, blind drunk, with obscenities written all over your forehead. It’s a sort of a maybe thing.

So. Could this collider create a Magnetic Monopole? Mind you, a very SMALL monopole. And what might then happen? You tell us. Seriously. Or could it create a VERY SMALL black hole, or zone of Extremely, Seriously Dense gravitational field? And what might then happen? Or a Strangelet for dear god’s sake? We can’t let them marry white women.

Well, our Journalists suggest, as a matter of Human Interest, that the World might wink out of existence in an eyeblink! Remember what your CRT screen looked like when DOS crashed and your monitor went green? There was that little, tiny flash of electron-white right before the Darkness? Well, we imagine that the not-world following such an event might be that kind of green. A sort of a late-night, down-at-the-rail-yard tequila green.

The bad taste, poor judgment and sheer ignorance of these accounts –and what they say about us- may not be so funny just by itself. But the idea, the thought of it, and the image of it, of the world just… winking out of existence, due to human fiddling about, is just hilarious. Seriously, we think the idea is funny, and we think it would be just uproariously funny if it actually happened.

The funniest and yet most pathological part of this story, though, is that Walter Wagner and Luis Sancho have filed a petition in a Honolulu court to stop the project. Nice a place as any, we suppose. The tragic folly of this bears some examination. They are, clearly, pretty worried about this thing. We mean, this could really fuck things up. OMG! And the hubris of those physicists. This puts Dr. Moreau and even Dr. Frankenstein in the weeds in terms of Trying to be Gods. This Folly must Be Stopped! Or a Bad Thing might Happen!

Think of the angst and ignorance of these people petitioning a US court to stop this. This is Science and Technology after all! And what U.S. court does anything this year? We are talking EYEBLINK here! An UNBELIEVABLY small amount of time!

The newspaper account that we saw just said it is too late, anyway. March of Progress and all. The account did say, though, that The Government responded with a “barrage of some 40 documents.” We wonder why they bothered, really. We suppose because they could. Oh, they’re lawyers. For the Government.

Those lawyers made a couple of nice points. They argued that the possible events that Mr. Wagner and Mr. Sancho are concerned about are “pure speculation.” Right. They haven’t happened yet. We think theoretical physics is called theoretical, right, because it’s speculative? Science ‘n all? Like evolution? Clearly, this Court could only have any standing to intervene and stop Something Terrible like this if it had Already Happened.

The lawyers argued too, that Fermi National Accelerator Lab is not subject to any legal action because it is not an “entity” but only a collection of assets of the Department of Energy. This is Good Law, but more than that it is Damn Good Physics! It isn’t even a speculative entity? It might be a non-entity, but we hope it is an anti-entity. We do hope that the theoretical physicists aren’t offended. While they do traffic in anti-matter, they also seemingly concern themselves with “entities.” They may believe themselves to be “entities,” unless they are Deists. In that case, betting is closed. We guess that Fermilab (and the Department of Energy) exist- or rather do not exist- in the same legal Black Hole as Blackwater. The names are strangely evocative, and they seem to have the same lawyers. Maybe they’ll all collide, and wink out of existence.

If we were afraid of a god, we suppose we’d be really afraid of what might happen after we and our Kind caused the World to wink out of existence.

But in truth, we really don’t think this would be such a bad thing, ourselves. As far as human folly goes, this may be just the anti-folly that the Doctor ordered. Just bringing her all to a nice, tidy, final perpetual tequila green wold be a rather funny, elegant and poignant way to bring a relentless and perpetual stream of hate, violence and destruction to an end, don’t you think? Wouldn’t this be a consummate act of a just god?

As for caution and conservation, we’re all for precautionary circumspection. we’re as troubled as y’all by the sheer stupidity of our ravaging and plundering of our global future- our headlong rush to ecosystemic annihilation. We’re dismayed that anyone swallows the doctrine that a bit of deliberation might Harm our Economy! Indeed- just what are conservatives conserving? The argument that there can be no public, civic action to avert disasters that haven’t Taken Place is the ultimate Gordian, hypocritical dissimulation of a neo-conservative doctrine.

But we are not too worried about particle accelerators. Ending the Game in that way would just be a lot more benign than a now-inevitable accelerating and comprehensive social and environmental collapse. That could hurt. We’re all kind of used to getting annihilated from video-games anyway, aren’t we?

Pop-Stat:

Patently ridiculous Popularly disseminated pseudo-Statistic. Pop-Stat. Presumes popular ignorance and absence of common-sense. Does violence to the meaning and power and dignity of statistical measure. Scrubs out possible credibility of statistics and measures. Certainly clouds and confuses, probably misinforms, and most likely deceives and befuddles. Impoverishes communication.

Got your own definition of a pop-stat? Got a great example of a Pop-Stat? Send it along! You could be our next Guest-Pop-Stat Contributor, and we’ll send you a hilarious t-shirt.