BAN #393: A visible asteroid pass, The power of nonsense

17 January 2022 Issue #393

January 17, 2022

What’s Up?

Look up! There’s stuff to see in the sky!

On January 18, a small asteroid called 1994 PC1 will safely pass by the Earth at a distance of about 2 million kilometers, five times the distance to the Moon. I expect there will be the usual conspiracy mongers on various social media playing it up, but we’re in no danger from this rock at this time. This is the closest approach for 170 years anyway.

[The orbit of the asteroid 1994 PC1 takes it about 2 million km from Earth (both arrowed) on January 18, 2022. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech]

But the thing is it’s a decently big asteroid, about a kilometer wide, so at that distance it’ll be within reach of small telescopes! I was going to write a bit about this, but then saw that the good folks at Sky and Telescope magazine have a great article with all the details. It’ll be about 10th magnitude at closest approach, which is actually bright enough to see with big binoculars from a very dark site, but you’ll need to know exactly where to look. The S&T article has all that.

Blog Jam

[Artwork based on exciting observations that found evidence of a second exomoon candidate, a moon orbiting an alien world. From Friday’s article. Credit: Helena Valenzuela Widerström]

Debunkening

You can’t debunk something unless it’s bunk to start with

A few years back I got an email inviting me to attend and speak at a weekend retreat series, a bit like TED talks, where people from various fields get together and talk about different topics in front of an audience, with breakout sessions and the like.

I’ve done stuff like this before, and it can be an incredible time, freely discussing things with smart people. It can be truly uplifting.

Before replying to the email I dug into the series history to see the kind of people they’ve invited in the past. I figure that’s just due diligence, but it also gives me a feel for the types of folks I’m likely to be spending time with. And, with malice aforethought, I do that to make sure I’m not being bamboozled or roped into a conference that says it’s one thing but is actually another. Some are deceptive.

The past guest list looked pretty good, but I saw a handful of previous attendees who troubled me. One who really bugged me was Glenn Beck, a far-right ideologue who is anti-science, among a very large assortment of other massive failings (note in that link I use ableist language which I now try to avoid).

So I replied back to the retreat series sponsor, saying it sounded interesting, but… “I am greatly troubled by speakers you have had in the past. While I'm happy to talk to people with whom I disagree, and even have spirited discussions over controversial topics, your past speakers include Glenn Beck… That is quite problematic. […] Beck has peddled a large number of baseless conspiracy theories and so polluted political dialogue that in my opinion he is one of the reasons intelligent discourse is nearly impossible today.”

And I added that because of this I would decline their invitation. If I accepted and then found out I would be on stage with someone like Beck, it would be… undesirable.

They replied back, saying they were non-partisan and that Beck was “focused on his ongoing journey towards redemption for the role he played in the paralyzing polarization we face today.”

I always chuckle when someone says their venue is non-partisan but they still invite clearly untrustworthy grifters. It’s the age-old “balance” issue, and it’s a baloney argument. You wouldn’t invite someone who believes in the tooth fairy to a dentist convention to balance out the medical professionals, or a flat-Earther to a geodesy meeting.

So I replied. “While I understand Beck's desire for redemption, and [your] interest in talking about it, what he did was so awful for so long that I am skeptical to the extreme of his motivation. I love a good redemption story, but he is very, very in the red when it comes to karma.”

Long, long experience in the critical thinking movement led me to that conclusion, so I reaffirmed I was declining the invitation.

So why bring this up now?

Beck is anti-vaccine. He got COVID-19 last year, he claims, and repeatedly said he didn’t need a vaccine because he now has “natural immunity”. We know and have known this is wrong, as variants pop up that are resistant to previously acquired immunity — note that the “common cold” is also commonly caused by a coronavirus and having a cold one year doesn’t protect you from getting it again the next — so talking about natural immunity is another in a long line of anti-vax talking points that’s dead wrong. Possibly fatally so.

Beck has said on his own show he is against vaccine mandates (as an aside, isn’t it weird that so many people who claim to be against COVID-19 vaccine mandates for kids to go to school don’t seem to have a problem with kids getting inoculated against chicken pox, measles, diphtheria, pertussis, etc. to attend school? Huh). Another big anti-vax claim.

Guess what: Beck has COVID, again. And he went on a radio show to spew even more anti-science crap, and saying that he’s treating it with ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, and fluvoxamine, none of which is approved for COVID and at least in the case of ivermectin there’s no reliable data showing it has any benefit at all and, ironically, is in fact likely to make you pretty sick. But that didn’t stop Beck from promoting them, at least indirectly.

So much for his “ongoing journey to redemption”. I have learned to trust my gut in situations like this, and this situation shows I was right.

The attention people get from angry demagoguery and releasing a fire-hose stream of nonsense against reality can be addicting, so much so that even if they start off knowing they’re lying grifters they can actually convince themselves that what they’re saying is true. I’ve seen that happen in conspiracy theorist after conspiracy theorist.

I’m not saying any one person is necessarily a grifter, just that the power of this sort of BSery can be difficult to walk away from, even after you’ve shed crocodile tears about the vast harm you’ve done on a far-right grievance-laden radio show attacking people who are actually trying to do some good in the world. Say.

In the meantime perhaps Beck will get better, but I doubt he’ll learn anything from this, and no doubt will still promote quackery and snake-oil. I wonder if he’ll even pervert actual doctors’ advice and drink plenty of liquids?

Et alia

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