James Delingpole likes to see himself as some maverick voice, alone in the old wilderness. The only one eyed king in a kingdom of the blind, who can see the whole man made climate change thingy for the elaborate fraud that it is. He claims that this is why he is "reviled" and not because of bad methodology. So it doesn't really help his cause when he writes articles defending homeopathy, and wheels out all the straw man arguments all homeopathic apologists are presumably honour bound to wheel out. You know the "scientists have been wrong before." "It's just like a new religion." and so on.
Tom Chivers has a new post debunking the argument Delingpole makes. He makes perhaps the best counter argument to the claim that people who dismiss homeopathy (or CC deniers) are just as bad as the inquisitors persecuting heretics:
"I’m sure some people do get overly aggressive about some of these things (alas, we don’t all have James’s saintly good manners when it comes to dealing with those with whom we disagree). But the point of scepticism – true scepticism – is that it is constantly evaluating. So, I promise you, if Ben Goldacre, or James Randi, or I (to put myself in some serious company), were to be presented with solid evidence that homeopathy worked, we would alter our position. I don’t even know what “evidence” you could present a Spanish inquisitor to convince them that Jewish children shouldn’t be forcibly converted, or what evidence you could give a witchfinder to show that witches don’t actually exist. The comparison is a nonsense one.
I'll have to remember that one!
Tom Chivers has a new post debunking the argument Delingpole makes. He makes perhaps the best counter argument to the claim that people who dismiss homeopathy (or CC deniers) are just as bad as the inquisitors persecuting heretics:
"I’m sure some people do get overly aggressive about some of these things (alas, we don’t all have James’s saintly good manners when it comes to dealing with those with whom we disagree). But the point of scepticism – true scepticism – is that it is constantly evaluating. So, I promise you, if Ben Goldacre, or James Randi, or I (to put myself in some serious company), were to be presented with solid evidence that homeopathy worked, we would alter our position. I don’t even know what “evidence” you could present a Spanish inquisitor to convince them that Jewish children shouldn’t be forcibly converted, or what evidence you could give a witchfinder to show that witches don’t actually exist. The comparison is a nonsense one.
I'll have to remember that one!
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