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Nov. 21st, 2013 08:13 amI saw an interesting article.
"When Science doesn't count" by Maggie Gallagher.
You may know Maggie Gallagher as the anti-civil rights activist who figures that, if she doesn't like gay folks - oh, I'm sorry, if she doesn't like what I'm sure she describes as the EVIL SINFUL BEHAVIOR of gay folks...
You know, we should take a break here. One very standard Christian doctrine says that everyone is evil and sinful, and only saved, not by being good people, but only by the grace of God and by the sacrifice of Jesus. So, really, being offended by someone no more or less evil and sinful than yourself is walking around with a huge-ass log in your own eye. So following such a person - didn't the bible say something about the blind leading the blind?
Anyway. Where was I? She feels she should deny them civil rights, because as you all know the First Amendment says that your own personal feelings should be used as the basis of lawmaking in this country, but no one else's should, because, wow, if someone else's personal feelings could be used, that would be an injustice!
So, you might guess from this that I don't hold Gallagher in much esteem. And I don't.
But if I thought I held her intellectual rigor in contempt before, wow....
I won't link to claptrap, in part because today I'm too lazy. But she wishes to counter the notion that there is "no link between autism and violence". How does she choose to do this? By running a Google search, and finding multiple anecdotes of people with autism who have problems with violent behavior.
Because, you know, *no one* without autism has any violent or aggressive behavior right? And a Google search is sure to pull in a random sampling, right? And that there's really no difference between, say, aggressive, frustrated/frightened behavior, and shooting up an elementary school, right?
I will be fair - she actually pulled in an abstract from "The 19th European Congress of Psychiatry" where 43.3% of families reported "problems with aggression". Interesting, what "problems with aggression" means is left out - this is why good researchers *don't stop with the abstract*.
And "another recent study" - no citation given - showed that 68% "had demonstrated aggression to a caregiver, and 49% to non-caregivers". Along with the lack of a cite is a lack of explanation for what this means - it could mean any inappropriate behavior (as measured by NT folks) had happened, *ever*. Has anyone raised an NT child with *no* demonstrations of aggression? Do you perhaps understand how rare it is? Again, this is why one must dig for actual truth, rather than grab sound bites.
If there were justice in this world, such a piece of idiocy would cause Gallagher to be disdained by any and all who care about the truth. And perhaps it would, but we live in a post-truth society, where spinning and the news cycle matter more than actual reality.
There are times I wish I had no conscience; it surely must be easy to lie in such a manner, and it looks like it pays well for those who rise to the top of the liar's profession. But alas, I do care about the truth, and I do have a conscience. And I recognize that one can't serve both what is right (which many would equate with serving God), and money.
"When Science doesn't count" by Maggie Gallagher.
You may know Maggie Gallagher as the anti-civil rights activist who figures that, if she doesn't like gay folks - oh, I'm sorry, if she doesn't like what I'm sure she describes as the EVIL SINFUL BEHAVIOR of gay folks...
You know, we should take a break here. One very standard Christian doctrine says that everyone is evil and sinful, and only saved, not by being good people, but only by the grace of God and by the sacrifice of Jesus. So, really, being offended by someone no more or less evil and sinful than yourself is walking around with a huge-ass log in your own eye. So following such a person - didn't the bible say something about the blind leading the blind?
Anyway. Where was I? She feels she should deny them civil rights, because as you all know the First Amendment says that your own personal feelings should be used as the basis of lawmaking in this country, but no one else's should, because, wow, if someone else's personal feelings could be used, that would be an injustice!
So, you might guess from this that I don't hold Gallagher in much esteem. And I don't.
But if I thought I held her intellectual rigor in contempt before, wow....
I won't link to claptrap, in part because today I'm too lazy. But she wishes to counter the notion that there is "no link between autism and violence". How does she choose to do this? By running a Google search, and finding multiple anecdotes of people with autism who have problems with violent behavior.
Because, you know, *no one* without autism has any violent or aggressive behavior right? And a Google search is sure to pull in a random sampling, right? And that there's really no difference between, say, aggressive, frustrated/frightened behavior, and shooting up an elementary school, right?
I will be fair - she actually pulled in an abstract from "The 19th European Congress of Psychiatry" where 43.3% of families reported "problems with aggression". Interesting, what "problems with aggression" means is left out - this is why good researchers *don't stop with the abstract*.
And "another recent study" - no citation given - showed that 68% "had demonstrated aggression to a caregiver, and 49% to non-caregivers". Along with the lack of a cite is a lack of explanation for what this means - it could mean any inappropriate behavior (as measured by NT folks) had happened, *ever*. Has anyone raised an NT child with *no* demonstrations of aggression? Do you perhaps understand how rare it is? Again, this is why one must dig for actual truth, rather than grab sound bites.
If there were justice in this world, such a piece of idiocy would cause Gallagher to be disdained by any and all who care about the truth. And perhaps it would, but we live in a post-truth society, where spinning and the news cycle matter more than actual reality.
There are times I wish I had no conscience; it surely must be easy to lie in such a manner, and it looks like it pays well for those who rise to the top of the liar's profession. But alas, I do care about the truth, and I do have a conscience. And I recognize that one can't serve both what is right (which many would equate with serving God), and money.
