Appeal to Incredulity & Scopie's Law
[back] Ad hominem

"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The large ones are kept secret by public incredulity."---Marshall McLuha
Scopie's Law
(a logical fallacy): "
In any discussion involving science or medicine, citing Whale.to as a credible source loses you the argument immediately ...and gets you laughed out of the room."

[Welcome to Pseudo-Skeptic land, and an Allopath get out of jail card. Orac invented a new logical fallacy (Scopie's Law), after a gang member to hide the fact they have no argument.  Mostly founded upon Appeal to Incredulity--unbelievable = untrue, so the more unbelievable items you can find the heretic believes in, the better, and easy to sell to Pyjama people or people with an investment in the status quo.  It is an ad hominem variant, a classic example of a Rationalization, and you can see they are just about building a Temple to it.  You get this one from pharma people (just shows the weakness in academic intelligence) who just can't argue their corner when faced with the truth (eg Brain Deer uses this).  They round up all the most unbelievable (to them) pages on whale, hold them up and hope that frightens people from  looking at all the medical pages that shred vaccination very easily. Shouting the popular buzzword CONSPIRACY or 'conspiracy theory' is standard fare. Some examples below, the homeopathic one being a common one with Allopaths like Ben Goldacre.  No doubt this will work in a big group of pharma people--the Pharma gang. This is David Aaronovitch's main 'argument' (an Oxford man using a logical fallacy).

See: Shills

[2008] The nuttiness that is Whale.to: Save Scopie’s Law!

"Newspeak was the official language ... The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits ... but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought should be literally unthinkable." Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell. 

Propaganda 1


Examples:
Voodoo Histories by David Aaronovitch
[
Neurodiversity] A Whale of an Expert
[Orac] The nuttiness that is Whale.to: Save Scopie's Law!

[Kevin Leitch] How urban legends get started
Scopie's Law

Richard Lindley said: (source)
So... a bunch of parents who were worried that vaccines damaged their children got together and did a study that confirmed their suspicions...
...but they have failed to get it published in a scientifc journal because
(a) they are the victims of the great BIG PHARMA CONSPIRACY
or (b) they are not trained scientists and the study is flawed
Forgive me for being somewhat skeptical.
Bryan, you have a habit of not linking to the studies you quote.  This is either lazyness, forgetfulness or a deliberate attempt to hide the truth.  Why are you afraid to let people see the study for themselves?  
Is it because option (b) is actually correct?

Right John, the coverup….tell me again – is it the Lizards or the Black Helicopters? Or is it the Lizards flying the Black Helicopters?--Kevin Leach  http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/?p=998#comment-52111

How about the flying dolphins, John?

Kind regards,

Becky http://jabs.org.uk/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2437&whichpage=2

John - no-one is ever going to take you seriously on any medical matter when the same site that purports to "prove" vaccine / autism links etc also purports to prove the authenticity of The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion, the flying dolphins, the Royal Familybeing lizards and the burning ley lines. (The fact that most of your "scientific" information is also utter nonsense doesn't help your cause either).

So once again, I claim Scopie's Law.

Kind regards


[This from a Wikipedia  Allopath editor, which was their only argument there--they used that to block all links to whale.to.]
"I agree with 86.128.165.240 that information about vaccines and their side effects should not be suppressed. However, the whale.to link is not an appropriate source for this information because of the competing extremist information and conspiracy theories as outlined on the RFC on Talk:MMR vaccine. As already reviewed by InvictaHOG, the commentary on Illuminati mind control, Jewish conspiracy, genocide via vaccination, Roman Catholics, psychic assassins, Mormons, Walter Cronkite, demons sacrificing girls for growth hormone, or links to alien implant removers distracts from the criticisms of vaccines and decreases the value of whale.to link." Andrew73 13:12, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Recently she wrote a rather stunning post illustrating the ties between an anti-vaccine “expert” and anti-vaccine lawyer and a web site that can only be described as a freakish hive of prejudice and nutjobbery. The web site is Whale.to, a clearinghouse not only for — to put it extremely charitably — less mainstream scientific ideas, but also for copies of the infamous anti-Semitic tract the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, anti-Catholic tracts, and writings tying vaccines to Illuminati plots http://www.popehat.com/2008/06/18/the-fiendish-flouridators-are-nothing-compared-to-the-vicious-vaccinators/

"Whale.to is one of the biggest repositories of altie woo, pseudoscience, conspiracy mongering, and New Age nonsense you'll ever be able to find anywhere. Anyone who uncritically cites anything from Whale.to as evidence to bolster his position clearly has a problem with critical thinking skills."--Orac


    Many people confuse homeopathy with herbalism and do not realise just how far homeopathic remedies are diluted. The typical dilution is called "30C": this means that the original substance has been diluted by 1 drop in 100, 30 times. On the Society of Homeopaths site, in their "What is homeopathy?" section, they say that "30C contains less than 1 part per million of the original substance."
This is an understatement: a 30C homeopathic preparation is a dilution of 1 in 10030, or rather 1 in 1060, which means a 1 followed by 60 zeroes, or - let's be absolutely clear - a dilution of 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000.
    To phrase that in the Society of Homeopaths' terms, we should say: "30C contains less than one part per million million million million million million million million million million of the original substance."
At a homeopathic dilution of 100C, which they sell routinely, and which homeopaths claim is even more powerful than 30C, the treating substance is diluted by more than the total number of atoms in the universe. Homeopathy was invented before we knew what atoms were, or how many there are, or how big they are. It has not changed its belief system in light of this information.
    How can an almost infinitely dilute solution cure anything? Most homeopaths claim that water has "a memory". They are unclear what this would look like, and homeopaths' experiments claiming to demonstrate it are frequently bizarre. As a brief illustration, American magician and debunker James Randi has for many years had a $1m prize on offer for anyone who can demonstrate paranormal abilities. He has made it clear that this cheque would go to someone who can reliably distinguish a homeopathic dilution from water. His money remains unclaimed. Ben Goldacre


Propaganda 1  On two separate occasions, someone mentioned something to me about terrorism, or the war on terror, and I responded by asking "you do know that there is indisputable scientific evidence that proves beyond any doubt that the Twin Towers were demolished with explosives, right?" For me, any discussion of terrorism has to begin with the understanding of what actually happened on 9-11, rather than what we were told to believe.
    On both occasions, the person I was talking to responded by saying "I heard that the president of Mexico saw a UFO."
    The first time this happened, I shook my head and thought to myself "what the hell is this girl thinking? Maybe the president of Mexico sniffs glue and sees all kinds of things, but what does one thing have to do with the other? How did she make the jump from 9-11 to Mexican UFO’s without a sentence between the two subjects?
    The second time it happened I thought to myself "Holy shit. This is a conditioned response." Somehow, the herd has been taught to immediately make an association with UFO’s, Bigfoot, or the ghost of Elvis whenever someone talks to them about crimes committed by people within our government. This is incredibly convenient for a government comprised of crooks and perverts, but how did they accomplish this?
......Look closely at every TV character who questions or mistrusts the government, and you will see that this behavior is linked with one abnormal personality after another. The sub-conscious lesson here is that anyone who questions the government or suggests they may be involved in any crime has an abnormal personality, so you can quickly dismiss everything he has to say. Through decades of repetition of these messages, you’ve been taught to ignore any criminality on the part of anyone in our government, and anyone who might make such an accusation. While you were being so trained, you were robbed of your wealth and freedom.
....Their mind makes an association between the important information, and the ridiculous information, and they feel confident that it’s nothing they need to worry about, but they may carry on the silly conversation about UFO’s and stuff just to be polite. Silently they’re convinced that because you tried to warn them about their criminal government, you must also spend your nights on the roof searching the skies for E.T.