The Foodbabe, chemical illiteracy and The Chow Babe
This is actually quite a detailed article which contains quite a bit of what I want to cover here. The writer starts off with displaying some pretty alarming chemophobia, but ends up with a slightly more considered perspective on how to view the chemical substances that are around us day in, day out.
The misguided attempts of some activists who do not have sufficient understanding of chemistry or science to add anything to the debate are also mentioned.
Steven Novella from the excellent The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe (SGU) wrote a very nice piece on how mistaken the Food Babe is in her quest to try and stop "harmful toxins" in processed foods from killing us all.
There is one major toxin that does untold times more damage than any amount of aspartame, gluten, sodium benzoate, sodium monoglutamate, or high fructose corn syrup you could ever reasonably eat. It's in drinks that most people consume every week, or even every day.
Alcohol. Ethanol, to be precise. This flammable, harmful liquid is not suited to our metabolisms that are specifically designed to handle aqueous (water based) liquids, not non-aqueous solvents. The fact remains that anyone who drinks more than probably about a unit of alcohol a week is getting way more "toxic" damage from that than all the artificial colours, flavours and preservatives they eat combined together. I say this because peer-reviewed scientific studies have found most of these artificial ingredients to be safe, and we see everyday in our hospitals the damage done by alcohol consumption.
And yet, somehow alcohol gets a free pass. Probably because it's "natural"! Somehow it's more important whether something's natural than whether the data actually shows it's safe. So goes the naturalistic fallacy.
Hmm...as a chemist myself, the Food Babe's notion that any compound that contains an atom, species or functional group which is harmful in isolation, must be regarded as harmful in itself, is utter chemical illiteracy. Everything hangs on how the "harmful" species is when bonded. Or whether it is "free". The beauty of different types of bonding is that they can render certain groups inactive until the right conditions come along.
A couple of examples. An oft-quoted cure for heavy metals poisoning is the use of a chelating ligand such as sodium EDTA. (EDTA stands for ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid, this is the sodium salt to get the powder or solution form) to bind the heavy metal atom in a tight grip of nitrogen and oxygen lone pairs. The resulting complex contains heavy metals, and yet is harmless to the metabolism in the bloodstream. It can naturally pass out of the body without the heavy metal becoming dissociated into its harmful form. If you've had heavy metal poisoning you won't complain about the heavy metals still being there, if it's been deactivated.
Cyancobalamin molecules contain cyanide. Thing is, this molecule is also used in dietary supplements. It is a form of vitamin B12. VITAMIN.You know, those substances that tend to be somewhat vital. To try and reduce all this nuance down to the level of describing all chemicals containing potentially toxic constituents as "toxins" is very ignorant. I can't emphasise the number of intellectual shortcuts this person takes in reaching their conclusion. The ground these shortcuts take is so bumpy that it leaves the vehicle itself unsound upon reaching its destination.
There is a great parody page called The Chow Babe, I highly recommend it...
What Doctors Don't Tell You.
It makes a mockery of other people's genuine attempts to inform the debate by carefully searching for the facts rather than just shouting off on what they've already decided is true. Outrageous.
Quack merchants like WDDTY seem to be insistent that I must be a "pro-vaccine pro-GMO shill and troll", highly paid by the likes of Monsanto. I'm going to own those accusations by liking and following these great Facebook pages:
https://www.facebook.com/GenMods4Monsanto
https://www.facebook.com/provaccineshills?fref=ts
It's apparent that WDDTY advocates think that anyone who disagrees with them MUST be getting paid by the gestalt entity that is Big Pharma/Monsanto. Yeah, those "cheques" really make a difference I can tell you.
Instead, can I ask if it could perhaps be the fact that the wooster quack logic of WDDTY is unscientific, casually committing many logical fallacies, and is full of cognitive errors?
No, because their opinions are "facts".
The Foodbabe's latest pet hate is GMOs. So I guess at some stage we'll have to over AGAIN all the evidence which shows they are perfectly safe. Oh well, until then...
The Ched Evans debate
Just a quick thought on the Ched Evans debate.
It's all kicking off again as he is going to be released soon (I do hope you'll excuse that little pun of mine)!
If you wanna put yourself through the ordeal of reading about the case from 2012, if you've not done so already, you can go here
The whole thing was one big, complicated mess.
There is now a campaign to get Evan's former club, Sheffield United FC, to not reinstate Evans.
The BBC are covering the story here .
I hesitate to recommend this site as I suspect it to be highly biased in his favour. However it's not certain to me that it's completely untruthful. But there does seem to be some measure of rape apology on here. The most helpful thing of course would be to have a wide ranging debate on the social contexts of what constitutes true consent. A debate on how important it is to agree in a recorded form (written, audio or video) beforehand what is intended and expected.
Evans' girlfriend Natasha Massey has supported him in returning.
You may be surprised to hear that I'm not supporting the campaign to influence Sheffield United. It's up to them what they do and they have to be as accountable as anyone else. I agree that Evans needs to be able to have a career again. It's unfortunate if he will simply be re-signing for the same team I suppose. I imagine though, that little will remain the same for him and he'll obviously have to re-prove his footballing skills. I don't think it necessarily sends out a message that's he's been "forgiven". To me the campaign seems to be a bit misplaced and reeks of the constant harassment that people who are wrongfully accused of crimes sometimes receive even if they are acquitted. This is not directly comparable of course, but Evans served his time and deserves a second chance, although it is very problematic if he doesn't understand what he did wrong.
On moderate Islam
There is a superb article on the HuffPo by Ali A. Rizvi, from which I want to cover a few of the issues he discusses.
It's been knocking about quite a bit on podcasts and news sites recently, so I thought I'd mention the TV debate involving outspoken atheists Bill Maher and Sam Harris, and actor/director Ben Affleck.
Apart from agreeing on the God question, I don't agree with Maher on several issues, and actually tend to disagree with Harris about quite a bit, as I talked about in a previous post. However I think they're probably mostly right here - Affleck's arguments are completely unconvincing.
Unsurprisingly, overly politically-correct sources like the Guardian have sided with Affleck on this issue,
If we are to believe Affleck, then there is simply no way to criticise the bad ideas of Islam. It's no wonder that Affleck was left floundering so badly when asked about the statistics of what Egyptian Muslims think about apostates (people who lose their Muslim faith). Many think that these apostates should be put to death. Let's not lie about this - any percentage siding with this would be bad. The figure of 90% was presented, which he unhelpfully suggested was "not representative".
WTF? It's just horrific!
The examples of "internal Muslim dissent" he gives, with moderate Muslims reforming from within, are exactly what we want of course, but all these examples do is explain exactly why we are right about Islam having inherent problems. People like Aryan Hirsi Ali and Malala Yousafzai have rebelled from the dogmatic views that were imposed on them, so of course they are going to fight the system.
They're brave to do so, of course, but some emergent recalcitrance is hardly unexpected with what they face.
Our position is definitely not aligned with right wing racists on this issue, so it annoys me when people like Affleck insinuate that it is.
The Islam apologist Reza Azlan, whose views I find somewhat annoying, also weighs in here.
Actually, here's another great article showing why Affleck and Azlan are wrong:
This article, written by former Muslims and not just a white perspective, shows just how some journalists, scholars and political commentators need to wake up to the real doctrine of Islam as stated in the Koran, and call a spade a spade. They need to admit that taking the Koran with a pinch of salt is not only reasonable, but ultimately necessary to pave the way to peace and development in the Middle East, and resist the urges of extremists.
Alternatively, if you want to take an approach from another angle (and the point is this is not a cause everyone will believe in, even if they're non-religious, and is slightly offset from but still connected to that mentioned above), Malala Yousafzai is a great example of how it is possible to fight back against much of the bigotry shown by radical Islamists while still retaining your faith. She delivered a brilliant and moving speech after becoming the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.
What a charismatic and inspiring girl. Note how her "core value"(at least she repeatedly emphasises it) of wanting to become all she can goes directly against the grain of a patriarchal society, the likes of which are perpetuated by Islam. These societies expressly try and limit the role of women, outside being wives and bearing and raising children. Malala's is the type of reinterpretation of the doctrine that we need to see more often from within Islam itself.
