Welcome to the Morning Heresy, CFI’s thrice-weekly roundup of news and headlines for the reality-based community. This will be our last column in 2024, so let me wish all of you a safe and happy new year!
Skeptical Inquirer columnist Nick Tiller unveils his picks for “The Mount Rushmore of Wellness Bullsh*t.”
Who are the four individuals most responsible for shaping the values and perverse incentives of today’s Wild West of wellness? Who deserves a place on the Mount Rushmore of wellness bullsh*t? To borrow from A Christmas Carol, “Rise! And walk with me!” on a journey to visit the ghosts and hosts of wellness past, present, and future.
I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but I’m sure you can guess at least a couple of them without my help…
Horrifyingly, one of the obvious guesses also happens to be the pending nominee to run the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. As such, RFK Jr. is the topic of two more new Skeptical Inquirer pieces. Up first is Jonathan Jarry’s “Kennedy’s Anti-Science Crusade Does Not Belong in the White House.”
If a flat-earther were put in charge of The Planetary Society, there would be agreement between the two parties that the Earth exists but not much else. The nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services…is on par with the above lunacy.
Natalia Pasternak describes Kennedy as “the Ecumenical Denier,” promoting anti-science nonsense from all sides of the political spectrum.
Most of the positions advocated by RFK Jr. are not supported by scientific evidence. But many have ideological support on the left or on the right. This might favor or complicate his confirmation by the U.S. Senate. But if he is confirmed, United States is in for very difficult times. As a Brazilian scientist and a microbiologist who was very active during the COVID-19 pandemic, I know firsthand what it means to fight health disinformation that comes from the government.
Elsewhere, Paul Offit is quoted in this NBC News story about the “enormous influence” RFK Jr. could have over childhood vaccination programs as health secretary.
“He could make vaccines more difficult to get paid for,” said Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “He could make them less available.”
Offit and other experts also said they’re concerned about Kennedy’s influence over new vaccine approvals and whether he could slow the approval process down.
Make sure to bookmark Quackwatch’s new “RFK Jr. Watch” resource page to keep up on the torrent of Kennedy-related news and opinion that’s sure to keep coming—and share it far and wide!
Congratulations to CSI Fellow Joe Schwarcz of the McGill Office for Science and Society; on Wednesday, Schwarz was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada. And thanks to The Association for Science in Autism Treatment (ASAT) for their public commendation of Stuart Vyse and his recent Skeptical Inquirer feature, “A Life Shattered by Pseudoscience.”
We’ve written at length about the underrepresentation of “Nones” in American politics. In a recent New York Times opinion piece Jessica Grose argues that, rather than fighting for—and usually losing, handily—the “white Christian” voting bloc, Democrats should focus on a cohort that makes up roughly a third of the U.S. population.
I often hear people talk about how Democrats can win back some white Christian support, as if that should be the party’s priority in the coming years.
But with Democrats searching for their future, they’d be foolish to ignore a large and growing religious group that is already in their corner: the Nones.
Religion News Service summarizes some of the key takeaways from the Pew Research Center’s latest report on government restrictions on religion around the world.
[The report] named Egypt, Syria, Pakistan and Iraq as the countries where both government restrictions and social hostility most limit the ability of religious minorities to practice their faith.
Governmental attacks and social hostility toward various religions usually “go hand in hand,” said the report, the 15th annual edition of a report that tracks the evolution of governments restrictions on religion. […]
Close behind the four countries that scored very high on both scales were India, Israel and Nigeria.
We don’t hear conspiracy theorists do the full Jerry-Orbach-at-the-end-of-Dirty Dancing admission nearly often enough, so take a moment to enjoy this video of Flat Earther Jaren Campanella, live in Antarctica, finally acknowledging some basic facts about the universe. But what brought him to Antarctica in the first place? News Radio KFBK explains:
The audacious adventure, dubbed ‘The Final Experiment’…saw a select group of Flat Earthers and skeptics travel to Antarctica to observe the sun. If it remained in the sky for 24 hours, this would confirm that the planet is a globe, which would contradict the conspiracy theory as it posits that the sun must set behind ice walls surrounding the Flat Earth.
As 2025 approaches (and the above stories all demonstrate), the stakes for science, reason, and secular values have never been higher. The Center for Inquiry is on the front lines of the fight to defend evidence-based reasoning and humanist principles, and we cannot do it without your support. Right now, you can double the impact of your donation: every gift made to CFI this December will be matched dollar-for-dollar, up to $250,000, doubling our ability to combat misinformation and defend rational thought as we step into the new year.
Thank you for standing with us to champion a more rational and compassionate world!
Programming Note: The Morning Heresy will be on hiatus from December 23 – January 3. We’ll resume our thrice-weekly schedule on Monday, January 6. Have a safe and happy new year!
Linking to a story or webpage does not imply endorsement by the author or CFI. Not every use of quotation marks is ironic or sarcastic, but it often is.
