Orange Coyote

If we abolish the Vice-Presidency …

2008-10-06T09:55:00.000-07:00

Dear Editor:

Bruce Ackerman makes a compelling case that the Vice-presidency is a “design flaw” in the constitutional order created by our founders. But he neglects what the vice-presidential pick tells us in modern elections.

One of the most important things that a President does is to appoint people. The federal government is far too big for one person to run alone, so (according to the Heritage Foundation) a President must make about 3000 appointments, from his nominations of Supreme Court Justices and Cabinet Secretaries to much lower-level government officials. But the only personnel decision that voters get to see before the election is the vice-presidential pick.

So if the vice-presidency is to be abolished, may I suggest that presidential nominees instead nominate all or part of their Cabinet before the election? This would give voters some idea of whom the President would appoint and how he would make decisions. This would also give voters a better idea of what to expect from a President’s administration than they now have. (A similar proposal, but one including a vice-president, was described by the late M. Scott Peck in The Different Drum as a “community presidency”.)

Junk Science in L.A. Times

2006-10-17T11:27:00.000-07:00

Dear Editor:

In Lloyd Grove’s article on gossip columns (Oct. 15, 2006, p. M3), he stressed the need to “nail down” a story before publishing. Yet the Times fails to follow this good advice when they publish, on the very same page, Bettina Aptheker’s charge of sexual abuse against her late father, Herbert Aptheker, based only on recovered memory therapy. This discredited technique has also been known to generate memories of alien abductions that seem quite real to those who hold them. (Would the Times have published such accusations against aliens?) She recognizes this problem when she mentions “false memory syndrome”, but fails to respond to this possibility (other than to simply reaffirm her accusation).

Aptheker makes it seem like her father might have confessed. We only have her account of this, but even that is not quite clear. He allegedly asked “Did I ever hurt you…?” as if he might not have remembered doing such a terrible thing himself. And we are not told just what he apologized for.

It is tragic that Aptheker has memories of sexual abuse. Unfortunately, without corroborating evidence we cannot know whether these memories are genuine or therapy-induced. Shame on the Times for publishing an accusation against someone who cannot respond based only upon pseudoscientific evidence.

Conspiracy Theorists

2006-10-05T08:57:00.000-07:00

I recently had an on-line discussion with a 9/11 conspiracy theorist. This was obviously not a scientific survey of conspiracy believers, but I have no reason to suspect that he was not representative. Nonetheless, I think I can draw some interesting conclusions about these conspiracy theorists (in spite of the extremely limited sample) from our exchange:

1. There is no evidence for the conspiracy theories being offered.
2. Those touted as experts are often making claims far from their fields of expertise.
3. Conspiracy theorists cite a lot of poor quality scholarship. (This is common in pseudo-sciences.)
4. True believers are often unwilling or unable to acknowledge rather simple errors.

And perhaps most disturbingly:

5. There is an element of the extreme left-wing that hates American conservatives more than Arab terrorists so much that they are willing to blame American officials for the 9/11 atrocity in spite of the lack of evidence. Apparently this is also true for an element of the extreme right-wing, but it was clearly a leftist that I was debating.

So in the second letter here, Dr. Sandra Sutphen is mistaken about who the conspiracy theorists are. It's not just rightist kooks who are conspiracy mongering. All such nonsense that I've heard personally has come from leftists (who, incidentally, are not kooky on non-political topics). I realize that my sample is probably biased, but 21st century conspiracy mongering is hardly a phenomenon of the right.

Keeping a crazy idea to itself

2006-09-27T15:07:00.000-07:00

Sam Harris wrote a brilliant op-ed piece in last week's L.A. Times, but he engages in a bit of lazy moral equivalence when he writes:

Indeed, it is telling that the people who speak with the greatest moral clarity about the current wars in the Middle East are members of the Christian right, whose infatuation with biblical prophecy is nearly as troubling as the ideology of our enemies.

Troubling? Indeed. But "nearly as troubling"? Hardly. The comedian Bill Maher may have said it best when he said that "their" religious fanatics are scary while "ours" are merely funny. (I'd be grateful if someone knows his precise words, or can link to them, would post this in the comments.)

So why should we find Christian rightists less scary? Besides the obvious, when Christian rightists hold political offices in this country (the U.S.A.), they do not discuss Biblical prophecy in their official capacity. I don't much care what they say in their churches on Sunday, although I'm not aware of anything significant any politician has said there either. One might argue that I should be scared by "the end is near preaching" even if politicians are smart enough not to endorse it in public.

But I'm not scared because Americans (who are hardly unique here) of all kinds of ideologies seem pretty good at compartmentalizing their irrationalities. And this is a good thing! That is, many, if not most of us, have some loopy thing we believe. But we are still able to be competent, intelligent people, because we keep our crazy idea isolated. That is, someone can believe the end is near on Sunday, and then work and save for the future from Monday to Friday.

So it's not mere irrational beliefs that scare me. (I suspect that we all have those.) What scares me is those who fail to contain those beliefs.

Hypocrisy, Irony, or Rationality?

2006-09-22T13:54:00.000-07:00

Charles Krauthammer today calls attention to the irony of saying "Don't call us violent or we'll attack you." This is truly ironic, for I cannot imagine a surer way to convince someone that they are accurate in their accusation. Thomas Vaughan Church describes this as hypocrisy. In some sense it is, but the intention cannot be to convince. As Krauthammer says, “The point is intimidation.” It seems to work quite well at that, so this ironic behavior is actually quite rational, in that it has the desired effect of silencing some (perhaps many) critics.

Technorati Profile

2006-09-21T20:24:00.000-07:00

This post should start a Technorati Profile for this blog.

But also note the following amusing (but meaningless) rating for this blog:

Conspiracy Theories and Gossip

2006-09-19T11:12:00.000-07:00

Phil Molé (writing in eSkeptic) does a very nice job explaining why there is NO evidence supporting the 9/11 conspiracy theories. He then gave a number of reasons why these stories are believed regardless of this. But I think that he missed one important cause, and this has to do with the nature of gossip. Conspiracy theories are a kind of rumor, and like other rumors, one is more likely to believe and pass on one which tend to confirm what you already believe or want to believe. (Thus rumors tend to tell us more about the person who tells them than what the world is like.) But another purpose of gossip is to hurt (or attempt to do so) the person you are gossiping about. You are less likely to pass on a juicy bit of gossip about someone you care about.

Molé, reporting on a 911truth.org conference he attended, observes that those conspiracy theorists do not act as if they “believe what they are saying”:

Here was a group of about 400 people gathered to openly discuss the evil schemes of the U.S. government, whom they accuse of horrible atrocities in the service of establishing a police state. But if America really was a police state with such terrible secrets to protect, surely government thugs would have stormed the lecture halls and arrested many of those present, or would at the very least have conducted behind the scenes arrests and jailed the movement’s leaders. Yet even the most vocal leaders of the 9/11 Truth Movement are still going strong, and no one at the conference seemed very worried about government reprisals. This fact seemingly indicates that at some level, the conspiracy theorists themselves don’t really believe what they are saying.

So why might they say it anyway? For the same reason that you might pass on (or make up) a nasty rumor about someone you dislike: it can damage their reputation. Thus gossip can be seen as indirect way of attacking someone. Unable to successfully attack the Bush administration (e.g. in recent elections), conspiracy theories try instead to spread a nasty rumor. Doing so is bound to be counter-productive, as such poisonous discourse will make many of us likely to regard such people as kooks and dismiss their legitimate criticism out of hand. However, it may be that poisoning the discourse, and thus the body politic, is precisely what is desired (perhaps to make governance more difficult).

So when Sam Harris, in a must-read article from Monday’s L.A. Times, writes:

A nationwide poll conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University found that more than a third of Americans suspect that the federal government "assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East;" 16% believe that the twin towers collapsed not because fully-fueled passenger jets smashed into them but because agents of the Bush administration had secretly rigged them to explode.

I don’t believe that these poll respondents are being honest. Instead, I take their answers as a swipe against the Bush administration. Thus the poll is really a measure of hostility rather than belief. And these numbers demonstrate that the conspiracy theorists have been somewhat successful in poisoning the body politic.

Conspiracy Theory Appeal

2006-08-31T11:45:00.000-07:00

What is the appeal of conspiracy theories?

The terrorist attacks of 9/11, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy have several things in common. They were terrible events that remain seared in the memories of all Americans who are old enough to remember them. And they’ve both given rise to numerous conspiracy theories. Because there is no evidence for these conspiracies, mutually contradictory conspiracy theories are advocated, based on the prejudices of the believer. For JFK’s killing, stories about Cubans, the Mafia, and the CIA circulated. Regarding 9/11, anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists blame Israel, anti-Americans blame Bush, and pro-lifers blame abortion. Peter Bagge’s cartoon at: http://reason.com/hod/cartoon.pb090602.shtml makes this point much more eloquently than I can. (A picture is indeed worth 1000 words.) It is interesting that there seems to be a positive correlation in believing in conspiracy theories for both these events.

Appeals to ignorance (we don’t know what caused X, so you should accept my far-fetched hypothesis) are a common part of conspiratorial arguments, but I think there is a more fundamental fallacy. It is the expectation that causes should be proportional to effects. (Does anyone know if this fallacy has a proper name?) That is, it should not be so that a loser like Lee Harvey Oswald should be able to bring down the President, so he must not have. The naturalistic fallacy, confusing what is so with what ought to be, is clearly at work here. But I think there is a bit more.

These two events had a big emotional impact on Americans. And the explanations, a lone gunman and a group of foreign terrorists, were emotionally unsatisfying to many, even if they were correct. So the conspiracy theories are believed not based on any evidence for them, but because they are more emotionally satisfying to the believer. Thus, they are a lot like religious beliefs, and seem to be held with the same fervency.

Classic Rock and African-American Artists

2006-08-09T14:39:00.000-07:00

I got a lot of feedback on this article. Some readers wrote to complain that I had called the lack of African-American artists on Classic Rock radio "racist" when in fact I had argued the opposite. It seems that the real culprit is a too-narrow idea of what classic rock is (or "format", my third proposed explanation). Two other great artists who get short-shrift from classic rock stations are Elton John and Billy Joel. So it seems that "Classic Rock" is also limited to guitar-based, as opposed to piano-based, rock. But I'm happy to report that locally, Arrow 93.1, which was just another classic rock station, has changed formats to Jack-FM which does not seem to be limited by these old format restrictions.

Updated Presidential Rankings

2006-08-09T13:54:00.000-07:00

The Wall Street Journal and the Federalist Society have updated their presidental rankings to include George W. Bush, who is ranked 19 out of 40. The accompanying article explains that Bush is unsurprisingly controversial, so that his "Average" score is the result of both very high and very low rankings among their board of scholars. Unfortunately, the article does not go into the kind of detailed explanation of their earlier book (which I reviewed for the KUCI website) or show how he ranks as a controversial president. (The higher the standard deviation of the ratings, the more controversial the president.)

Leave Foreign policy to the Feds

2006-08-08T20:30:00.000-07:00

The Irvine City Council is being forced to waste a lot of time dealing with a letter a city official signed with the Xuhui District of Shanghai, which was our new sister city in China. Apparently, the first letter affirmed America's "One-China" policy and promised to break our sister city realationship with a city in Taiwan. Now they are having to spend a lot of time rescinding the new relationship and dealing with angry constituents.

America's relationship with China, and in particular, our "One-China policy", is complicated, as it involves strategic ambiguity. But our city officials should not be dealing with that; they should leave that to the Federal Government. But why are they dealing with it at all? What is the value in these sister-city relationships? I guess they are fun and interesting for schoolchildren. But, did Irvine taxpayers foot the bill for their trip to China? If so, then I doubt this is worth it. Sister city relationships could be set up via mail (or today, via email) by non-governmental organizations (e.g. Chambers of Commerce) so that taxpayer money is not spent, and the time of government officials is not wasted.

The Root Cause

2006-08-07T21:57:00.000-07:00

Tikkun published a very reasonable and well-intentioned ad in the L.A. Times on Sunday. It called for "an International Peace Conference to impose a fair and lasting solution to all aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to the conflict between Israel and other states in the region." I wish them all the best with this. If only it were possible.

Shortly after 9/11, I interviewed the Muslim Student Union at U.C. Irvine on KUCI. (You can stream the interview here or download it here.) Toward the end of the interview (at about 33 minutes) they were very clear that Israel had no right to exist. They longed for the day, "before 1948, when the Jews, Christians, and Muslims were in harmony" (a day that never was). But they were clear that their gripe was with the creation of Israel in 1948, not the additional territory or people it acquired in 1967. (This would be like wishing the U.S. was as it was before 1776, i.e., not at all. At least they were consistent. They also seemed to say that it was unfortunate that the U.S. exists.)

So as Charles Krauthammer notes "the fighting is about 'the ... 1948 issues, rather than the 1967 [issues]' " Sadly, this is the issue for some American Muslims as well, but I thank the MSU at UCI for making this clear to me.

So may Tikkun's dream of a real peaceful future (rather than a fictional past) soon come to pass. But I do not see how this is possible when one side nurses a grudge about the very existence of the other side.

Tblong: Albright's Blunder

2006-08-05T19:35:00.000-07:00

What has happened to the claim about a half-million dead children due to U.N. sanctions on Iraq, discussed below and at: Tblong: Albright's Blunder ? I suspect that it is now rarely heard because the casualties from the Iraq war, as high as they have been, have been so much lower than this number. If "half million children ha[d] died" as a result of sanctions, then putting a stop to that would STILL justify the war on humanitarian grounds alone. So I suspect that no one beleives that number now. Since it no longer serves an anti-American agenda, those who made the argument before can probably now see the problem of appealing to Albright's authority.

A Two-Dimensional Political Nomenclature

2006-07-31T12:24:00.000-07:00

Libertarian, Liberal, Conservative, Authoritarian:
A Two-Dimensional Political Nomenclature

There are of course limits to such a one-dimensional classification scheme implied by such words spectrum, left, and right (as in my previous post). The Advocates for Self-Government, a Libertarian organization, have a useful two-dimensional classification scheme. To illustrate this, they have set up their World's Smallest Political Quiz, which is quick, easy, and fun. They set up two axes, one for "personal issues" and one for "economic issues." Thus liberals score in the left corner, conservatives score in the right corner, libertarians score in the top corner, and authoritarians (now called "Statists" in the new version of the quiz) score on the bottom corner.

The test has been improved in the past year or two. Older versions of the test consistently told me that I was a "left-liberal," while the current test has me hovering around the intersection of centrist, liberal, and libertarian. While this describes my own political evolution, I do not think my views have changed that much recently. Rather, I think this change reflects that some of the more radical libertarian statements ("End taxes", open borders) have been replaced by more moderate positions (cut taxes in half, "no national ID card").

Less extreme libertarian positions make it more likely that many individual test-takers (including your humble blogger) will score closer to the upper corner, and thus more libertarian. Since one purpose of the test is to help libertarians find each other (i.e. to help organized Libertarians recruit members), one might object that the test has been biased to attract more recruits. The Advocates themselves do a nice job of responding to this, but briefly, an accurate test best serves their interests. Any organization wants to recruit the right people; new members who actually disagree with the fundamental precepts of an organization are bound to do more harm than good. I welcome comments below on whether you regard the new quiz as an improvement.

A two-dimensional classification scheme remains a simplification, but this four-cornered scheme is nonetheless useful. However the traditional one-dimensional left-liberal-conservative-right scheme remains useful because a great many people find themselves on this axis. (I welcome comments as to why this is so; I hope to explore this in future blogging.) That is why we have (and need and use) both sets of terms.

Leftist, Liberal, Conservative, Rightist

2006-07-24T18:53:00.000-07:00

Leftist, Liberal, Conservative, Rightist
American Political Nomenclature

I have noticed an asymmetry in much American political discourse. There's a big difference between liberals and leftists; this is recognized in the common and distinct usage of both terms. But there are also important differences on the right-side of the political spectrum that are not so recognized. Typically the word "conservative" gets modified into something like "arch-" or "ultra-conservative." I propose that we replace such terms with "rightist." This has a pleasing symmetry and recognizes that no important group is monolithic. I will endeavor to use this terminology in this blog.

Britt on Fascism in Free Inquiry

2006-07-21T16:03:00.000-07:00

Britt on Fascism: An Open Letter to the Editors of Free Inquiry
By Douglas E. Hill © 2003
This was originally published on the Students for Science & Skepticism website.

In “Fascism Anyone?” (FI, Spring 2003), Lawrence W. Britt implies, but lacks the courage to state directly, that the United States has become fascist because it shows twelve characteristics of fascism that he lists. Yet he cites no examples, and an honest look will show that the U.S. simply lacks many of these characteristics.

Britt writes that fascists control the mass media (item 6). America has clearly not seen any such control regarding the war with Iraq. Criticism of the Bush administration’s policy was freely published, in major media such as the New York Times, not to mention smaller publications such as Free Inquiry. Large, freely held, anti-war demonstrations were covered in all the major media. Even the hawkish opinion sources reported and criticized the arguments and activity of those opposed to the war.

Britt claims that fascist governments show “rampant sexism” (item 5). (Britt fails to explain how much more sexist the fascist regimes were than those that preceded and succeeded them.) American women today have legal protections and opportunities unequaled in history; for example, the President’s National Security Advisor and four of his cabinet secretaries are women. One might wish for more, but this can hardly be called “rampantly sexist.” Compare this to the sexism of the Taliban regime that we destroyed.

He says that fascists “suppress or eliminate” the “power of labor” (item 10) as well as academic freedom (item 11). Yet here at the University of California, Irvine, my union (the Student Workers Union of UAW) and others continue to operate freely, and professors and students freely express their views. Many professors also enjoy the additional protection of tenure.

Britt also worries about “expressions of nationalism” (item 1); so let me ask him, what level of patriotism is appropriate in a democracy, especially after it has been attacked? Am I a fascist if I fly the flag on July 4?

Britt‘s last characteristic of fascism is “fraudulent elections” (item 14). Fascist regimes sometimes have indeed had non-competitive plebiscites but have also suspended democracy altogether under the guise of national emergency (which he ignores). But competitive American elections continue on schedule, even since 9/11. Britt complains of “turning [an election] to a judiciary beholden to the power elite,” perhaps referring to the Bush vs. Gore decision. Unfortunately he fails to criticize this directly or explain why this is similar to incidents in fascist countries.

Britt either has no appreciation of the freedom we enjoy in this country and no idea how bad fascism really is, or he is resorting to innuendo (it is not even clear enough to be called “name-calling”) in place of argument. Let him give examples of fascism, if he has any. If he is unhappy with Administration policy, let him criticize it directly, as your editors do in the same issue.

Yours in Reason,
Douglas E. Hill

When this letter was originally written and posted (2003), Mr. Hill was a graduate student in Logic and Philosophy of Science and Vice President of Students for Science and Skepticism at the University of California, Irvine . He is speaking for himself here. This letter was sent to Free Inquiry in May, 2003.

Albright's Blunder

2006-07-21T15:41:00.000-07:00

Albright's Blunder
by Douglas E. Hill, © 2002, 2004

This was originally published in the December 2002 Irvine Review. Since then, Madeleine Albright, to her credit, has acknowledged this error in her autobiography (Madam Secretary , 2003, Miramax Books, pp.274-75).

Critics of U.N. sanctions against Iraq often claim that the sanctions have killed half a million Iraqi children, and offer as evidence Madeleine Albright's admission of this on “60 Minutes.” Yet Albright’s response proved nothing other than her incompetence as a diplomat by answering, rather than challenging, a loaded question. Diverse speakers and writers at UCI, including Najeeb Kahn in the New University (1999), Dr. Mark LeVine (Cross Cultural Center, October 24, 2002), and a speaker introducing a video on Iraq sanctions (in the Crystal Cove auditorium) have all cited her remarks. Given the frequency that opponents of sanctions cite her remarks, she has gotten surprisingly little criticism from sanctions supporters and others who suspect that Iraqi government policies have something to do with child mortality there. Here's the quote, from when Lesley Stahl interviewed then U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Madeleine Albright on "60 Minutes" on 12 May 1996:

Lesley Stahl: "We have heard that a half million children have died (as a result of sanctions against Iraq). I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?"

Madeleine Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it."

Stahl said, "we have heard." She did not say, "we have data," or even better, offer an outline of the data that allegedly shows this. It should not be surprising that in a totalitarian society like Iraq, learning the rate of mortality of its children, and the causes of that rate, is quite difficult. (Determining such causes is a difficult job for epidemiologists even in a free society.) In fact, this is a topic of no small controversy. David Cortright wrote in The Nation in 2001:

... [T]he 1999 report "Morbidity and Mortality Among Iraqi Children," by Columbia University's Richard Garfield, ... estimated the most likely number of excess deaths among children under five years of age from 1990 through March 1998 to be 227,000. Garfield's analysis showed child mortality rates double those of the previous decade.

(These numbers indicate a longer period with less than half of the numbers that Stahl cited.) Thus no one argues that there is problem of excess child mortality in Iraq, but the numbers and cause are a matter of controversy. But note what Stahl did: she did not ask Albright how many children had died, or what the cause was. She used an old interrogation trick: she asked a loaded question. This is a question, which like “do you use a club when you beat your wife?” incriminates you whether you answer yes or no. She asked if the price was worth it.

And Albright walked right into this trap. She did not dispute the numbers, or the cause. She just said, essentially, "yes" to a loaded question. If a lawyer is representing you, he had better not answer a loaded question in such an incriminating matter (and he had better not let you answer one either). But as an Ambassador, Albright was representing all Americans. A diplomat worth her salt would have known this. But apparently Albright did not.

It is a scandal that her response did not prevent Albright from becoming Secretary of State, and thus in charge of American diplomacy. It showed incompetent diplomacy for her to answer in the manner she did, even if the numbers and cause implied by the data in the loaded question were true. But while the numbers are in question, the facts do not support the sanctions as a primary cause. When Albright was Secretary, her own State Department refuted that U.N. imposed sanctions could be a cause of these casualties, when it wrote in a document released 13 September 1999 (and updated 24 March 2000):

Sanctions are not intended to harm the people of Iraq. That is why the sanctions regime has always specifically exempted food and medicine. The Iraqi regime has always been free to import as much of these goods as possible. It refuses to do so, even though it claims it wants to relieve the suffering of the people of Iraq.

Thus a stupid reply from Albright cannot be used to claim that the sanctions are the cause when a careful study from her department disputes this. A later report from the State department, of 26 January 2001, also supports the claim that it is Iraqi government behavior that is so hurting its citizens:

During this period [June to December, 2000], U.S.$7.8 billion were available to Iraq for purchases during this period, yet Iraq submitted purchase applications worth only U.S.$4.26 billion - barely 54 percent of the amount available for purchases to help the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people. In key sectors of the Iraqi economy, Saddam's regime's disregard for the welfare of the Iraqi people is made plain.

As to what could be causing the increase in mortality, Cortright in The Nation cites a UNICEF study by Mohamed Ali and Iqbal Shah that seem to show that it is not in fact the sanctions that are primarily responsible for the increase in child mortality:

In south-central Iraq [under Iraqi government control], child mortality rates rose from 56 per 1,000 births for the period 1984-89 to 131 per 1,000 for the period 1994-99. In the autonomous Kurdish region in the north [subject to the same sanctions] … child mortality rates actually fell during the same period, from 80 per 1,000 births to 72 per 1,000.

Thus despite the sanctions, the mortality rate is higher only in the areas under Iraqi government control, suggesting that it is that government, rather than the sanctions, which bears primary responsibility. If the numbers are as grave has a quarter- to a half-a-million dead children, then there is a strong humanitarian argument to liberate Iraq from the tyranny holding Iraqi children hostage like this. And it is unfortunate that an American diplomat who was to become U.S. Secretary of State would aid those who wish to blame the U.S. by conceding that U.N. sanctions are responsible when the evidence does not support this.

When this was originally published (2002), Douglas E. Hill was a graduate student at UCI in Logic & Philosophy of Science, vice-president of Students for Science & Skepticism, and hosted "Campus Talk UCI" Mondays 4-5 pm on KUCI 88.9 fm.

Skeptical Commentary won 2001 Pulitzer

2006-07-21T15:39:00.000-07:00

Skeptical Commentary Wins Pulitzer Prize
By Douglas E. Hill, © 2001
This is a slightly corrected version of an article originally published in the September 2001 issue of the Skeptical Inquirer.

The Pulitzer Prize Board awarded the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Commentary to Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal “for her articles on American society and culture.” Notable among the ten articles cited by the Board were five articles challenging questionable allegations of sexual abuse. (Four of the cited articles commented on the 2000 U.S. Presidential election and the remaining article discussed Rudolph Giuliani's recommending a pardon for Michael Milken.) A jury of seven journalists nominated Ms. Rabinowitz among four finalists, from which the Pulitzer Prize Board chose her as the winner. (She was nominated after the original three when the Board requested "a broader choice".)

Ms. Rabinowitz has long used her Wall Street Journal editorial page column to criticize dubious sex-abuse prosecutions and champion the falsely accused. She was previously nominated in 1996 for the Distinguished Commentary Pulitzer "for her columns effectively challenging key cases of alleged child abuse.” For “her journalistic achievements and … her writing on false sexual abuse charges” the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers awarded her its 1997 Champion of Justice Award. Ms. Rabinowitz was also nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism in 1995 and 1998 for her television critiques, and in 1993 the American Society of Newspaper Editors awarded her a Distinguished Writing Award for Commentary.

Of the five skeptical columns cited by the Board, two dealt exclusively with the Fells Acres day-care prosecution of Malden, Massachusetts, for which Gerald Amirault remains imprisoned. (He has been released since this was originally published.) One dealt with the difficult aftermath of those who have been released after long struggles to prove their innocence in these dubious prosecutions of alleged sex-rings that occurred in places such as Wenatchee, Washington, and Dade County, Florida. The freedom of Violet Amirault (Gerald’s mother) was short-lived, but others had to find jobs and deal with residual legal problems on long-depleted finances. Grant Snowden required an attorney to get his name removed from a list of sex-offenders. Carol and Mark Doggett fought to have their children returned. Cheryl Amirault (Gerald’s sister) made a deal with prosecutors for her release, and so must endure the indignities of probation while forbidden to speak with television reporters. They all must face the fact that no one will be held accountable for their prosecutions, or for tenaciously fighting against their releases (even when the technique used to build the cases against them--the leading and often coercive questioning of children--was discredited).

Another column cited by the Pulitzer Board details the case of New York City doctor Patrick Griffin. A patient accused him of oral sodomy after he refused to testify in a lawsuit filed against the patient’s landlord that her medical condition was caused by her landlord’s wrongdoing. The last cited column tells the story of David Schaer, and the lack of due process he received from Brandeis University when he was accused of sexual misconduct.

Ms. Rabinowitz is the author of New Lives: Survivors of the Holocaust Living in America (1976, Alfred A. Knopf, New York) and co-author, with Yedida Nielsen, of Home Life: A Story of Old Age (1971, The Macmillan Company, New York). Her prize-winning work can be read at the Pulitzer.org website: http://www.pulitzer.org/year/2001/commentary , and her continuing work can be read at: http://www.opinionjournal.com/medialog and on the editorial and television pages of the Wall Street Journal.

When this was originally published (2001), Douglas E. Hill, was a graduate student in Logic & Philosophy of Science and president of the Students for Science and Skepticism at the University of California, Irvine.

Orange Coyote blog

2006-07-21T14:43:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my new blog, Orange Coyote. I’m an adjunct professor of philosophy in the Cal State System. I got my Ph.D. at the University of California, Irvine, where I also founded Students for Science and Skepticism (SSS). (This club is now being restarted by some new students.) I also hosted Campus Talk UCI on KUCI 88.9 FM in Irvine, where I had the opportunity to interview many interesting guests. I intend to discuss some of those interviews in this forum.

My many interests include philosophy, politics, science, and skepticism, and I will use this forum to apply these to world, national, and especially local issues (here in Orange Country, California) as I have time and interest.

But I am going to begin by posting some articles I wrote that were originally published on other websites, but for various reasons are no longer available there. I welcome your comments on these older articles, as well as my more timely forthcoming posts. And although I’ve been on the internet for a long time, I’m new at blogging, so please bear with me.