Blue Collar Scientist

Back at the end of last month, I posted briefly on victims of creationist persecution, suggesting that I might work on finding sources and additional details for some of the cases I posted about.

Well, I never did, because I’m lazy, and because I’m approaching the deadline of a major software development and deployment project, accompanied by a trip to astronomical observatories, at the end of April - there has simply been no time. However, prominent Boston-area skeptic Blake Stacey took up the task, and has done yeoman work completing it.

So please head on over to Science after Sunclipse for the full story of ten people who have been harassed, threatened, assaulted fired, or killed by creationists who were upset that they were teaching or promoting evolutionary theory.

Then head over to Bug Girl’s blog for some additional cases of creationists threatening scientists with violence, and this post on the Kanawha Texboook incident, in which Christians led by a local reverend burned down elementary schools, planted bombs in school busses, and shot at people because they were upset over a recommended reading list for schoolchildren.

And as you do this, think about this for a moment: It is the creationists who shrilly insist that only through their god can anyone have any morality. Yet they are the ones burning elementary schools down, killing their enemies, getting them fired from their jobs, and threatening them with violence when they don’t get their way. This is wrong. If you are reading this, you are learning about the wrong-ness of all this behavior from a scientist; it isn’t coming out of the bible and I don’t claim any particular religious inspiration for this realization. What we have here, folks, is the moral and ethical result of my simple, straightforward, evolved sense of altruism: it is wrong to resort to violence against people you simply disagree with.

And also consider that the creationists - the same ones who resort to harassment, threats, and violence - have made allegations that scientists are the ones making the threats and getting people fired. But of course, that isn’t true - and it makes perfect sense: why would we be surprised that the kind of people who would set fire to an elementary school when they don’t get their way would shrink from lying?

BBC is reporting that researchers have discovered that certain biomarkers present in the blood are indicative of mood disorders, and that their concentration correlated with the severity of the disorder. The researchers hope the discovery will lead to a blood test that could be used diagnostically, and to objectively assess the impact of medication.

Lead researcher Dr Alexander Niculescu said: “This discovery is a major step towards bringing psychiatry on par with other medical specialties that have diagnostic tools to measure disease states and the effectiveness of treatments.”

Indeed. Psychiatry is vulnerable to a number of criticisms, some less valid than others, due to the relative lack of ways to quantitatively support a diagnosis. Even within the skeptical community, there is a diversity of opinion on the reality of various psychiatric diagnoses and the effectiveness of treatments. But with denialism of psychiatric medicine widespread in groups such as the Scientologists, one wonders whether this could become a new piece of evidence in the debate.

“Although psychiatrists have been aware that bipolar illness and other psychiatric conditions produced molecular changes in the brain, there was no way to measure those changes while the patient was living.“

That’s certainly a drawback.