You Ain't No True Scotsman, Bruv!

Maybe I've missed it, or blocked it out, but we seem to have been spared the regular pieties in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks - the ones trotted out by all mainstream politicians about how the true Islam is tolerant and peaceful, and terrorism has nothing to do with Islam.  That line doesn't seem to have had much of an airing.

For this, I am grateful.

Let's be honest: it's not true that jihadi or Islamist* terrorism has nothing to do with Islam.  It plainly does have something to do with it.  This in no way means that Islam is, or has to be, a violent religion; and I do believe that most Muslims are horrified by what's being done in the name of their religion.  There's a #notinmyname hashtag that testifies to this.  I don't think that people using it are liars, and I think also that the overwhelming majority of Muslims who haven't used it are likely to be in agreement with it.  But, howsoever tenuously, it is something to do with Islam.

In just the same way, witch-burnings have something to do with Christianity.  The Westboro Baptist Church has something to do with Christianity.  Neither is not the whole of Christianity, by any means.  Not even most, or a significant part of it.  But it is there.

It does noone any good in the long term to pretend otherwise, and denying this seems to be a version of the No-True-Scotsman fallacy:

N claims to be a Muslim
N commits some crime in the name of Islam
N turns out not to have been a true Muslim after all.

So when a witness shouted at the attacker in Leytonstone that "You ain't no Muslim, bruv", and it became a slogan for showing opposition to religiously-informed violence: well, it's an admirable sentiment, but... behaving violently in the name of a religion doesn't disqualify one from membership thereof.  A bad Muslim is still a Muslim, and its disingenuous to insist that Islam can be separated from reprehensible acts as a matter of principle in something like the way that being a Scot can be separated from taking sugar on your porridge in principle.

Actually, it's more than that.  It's empty dogmatism to insist that Islam as a matter of principle must be beyond criticism, and therefore anything that is liable to criticism must have nothing to do with Islam.

But I don't want this to be a post about Islam; my concern is more general, and it has to do with the rhetoric of being a "true" adherent to whatever the creed under consideration is.  Let's talk about it in terms of Pastafarianism, just to be as neutral as possible.

What is it to be a "true" Pastafarian?

So. Syria, then.

I don't know.

They're going to hold a vote in Parliament about whether to begin air strikes against ISIS targets in Syria.

Everyone seems to have an opinion on this.  Lots of people think that it's a good thing.  Lots of people seem to think that it's a bad thing.

I suppose that I'm expected to have a view in some way.  Workings of democracy, and all that nonsense.  Need to be engaged.  Important to take a stand.

It's hard to take a stand.

I don't know.

Dropping bombs on ISIS will make us de facto allies of President Assad, at least for the short term.  President Assad is deeply unpleasant.  We probably don't want to be allies with him.

BUT...  President Assad is, whatever else he may be, an astute politician.  He wants power, or survival if power's not available; not martyrdom.  He is at least on nodding terms with secularism; he isn't fighting a holy war.  His war is one of politics.  That makes him, at least on paper, the kind of person with whom negotiations are possible, and who will be concerned about when the game's up.

Maybe we should offer him a secure and peaceful retirement in London.  "When this is over, Bashar, just fuck off from Damascus, eh?  We'll make sure you're personally fine.  That's a price worth paying.  Just go quietly.  Good chap.  London suit you?  Geneva?  Moscow?  Tehran?  Your choice.  Just never go back to Syria.  Deal?"

ISIS are not, as far as I can see, in the slightest bit concerned about when the games up.  They'll think that surviving is a victory.  They'll think that being killed is a victory.

Assad might well be much the better of two evils.

The gratuitous sadism, and the cultural vandalism of ISIS are plenty of evidence for that to be the case.

So.

I don't know if dropping bombs on ISIS will work.  I'm inclined to think that it won't.

I don't know if refraining from dropping bombs on ISIS will work.  I'm inclined to think that it won't.

The kicker: I don't know what "working" would be anyway.

I can't be the only one who doesn't know this stuff.

There's a lot of coverage in the news who are certain one way or the other.

There's not so much of those who genuinely have no idea.  I think that there's a lot of us, though.

I don't even know if the certain people should be less certain.

I don't know where to begin.

How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bias

In a little while, I’m going to be giving a couple of lectures to my undergrads on a person with whose views I disagree; indeed, I would count myself as an opponent of the whole tradition from which he comes.  It’s quite a fun lecture to give, because the subject is quite straightforward.  It also lends itself to some fun digressions, and the occasional half-decent joke.  So in that sense, I’m quite looking forward to it.  (In the sense that it’s at 9am, I’m not.  But that’s a different matter.)

But there is a niggling doubt about whether I’ll be doing justice to the topic.  Granted that it’s desirable to be disinterested when giving a lecture, will it be possible to present the arguments in a dispassionate way?  I’m not sure it will; and this generates a problem about whether the lecture will be as disinterested as we’d intuitively want it to be.

Yet one other thing occurs to me: that it might be no bad thing to drop the aspiration to disinterest altogether.  If we do that, the problem vanishes.

The thought goes something like this.  A person who spends time thinking about a topic will, likely as not, come to hold a position.  We’d like to think that that position would be reached by means of a dispassionate examination of the evidence; but that’s unlikely always to be the case, not least because what counts as evidence, and how powerful that evidence is, will depend on the intellectual and theoretical commitments that one has.  At the same time, the sources and arguments being scrutinised may well impact on one’s general commitments over time.  This means that it’s often hard to tell whether one holds the positions one does because the arguments are powerful, or whether the arguments are perceived to be powerful because of the commitments that one has.

Lest we think that this is a problem confined to the humanities, it probably isn’t. 

Review: Carl Schneider and Censorship

The Censor’s Hand: The Misregulation of Human-Subject Research

Carl E Schneider

The MIT Press

(NB: I was commissioned to review this book for Pacific Standard in September; what's published here is the first draft, from early October.  After some suggestions from the editor, I submitted a revised second draft a couple of days later.  Neither draft has been published there yet, and I've no idea if and when that will change.  If anything does appear there, I'll provide a link.)

Not so long ago, Stephen Pinker provoked the ire of many bioethicists by appearing to launch an attack on institutional ethical review boards (IRBs).  Accusing them of hindering important work in science, he wrote that they should “get out of the way”.  Bioethicists responded by pointing out that there is a history of researchers behaving abominably – the go-to example in recent years being the Tuskegee syphilis study, in which black men were deliberately left untreated so that the natural course of the disease could be studied.  Ethical review, the bioethicists’ response goes, will not guarantee that nothing bad will ever happen; but it does reduce the chance.

Yet Pinker’s broad claim is not without support from within the bioethics community.  Thoughtful commentators have been looking at the institutional review board system for some while now, and arguing that it needs significant reform.  Could it be, some have wondered, that “bioethics” has become an end in itself, claiming an authority with which even many bioethicists are uncomfortable?  And if, then, there is a decent case for reform, how far should it go?  Some think that the system needs re-tuning; some think that it needs something approaching a rebuild.  And some think that a rebuild is too conservative: that the system is, and cannot but be, so broken that the only option is to get rid of it all together.  In this camp, we find Carl Schneider.  The Censor’s Hand aims to present the case not against IRBs as they are, but against IRBs tout court.

Book Release: Pioneering Healthcare Law

Pioneering Healthcare Law, a festschrift for Margot Brazier, was published last week.  Yes, it costs £95, but we already knew that academic publishing is deeply dysfunctional.

And this volume does have all kinds of insightful contributions to important debates in medical law, from all kinds of insightful and important people.

It's also got a chapter by me and Imogen Jones, which is much more of a jeu d'esprit (or at least aspires to be).  So that's nice.

Buy it here.

Homeopathy, Blacklisting, and the Misuse of Choice

(Cross-posted from the JME blog)

It seems that homeopathy might at last be facing some serious opposition from within the NHS, with the prospect of its being blacklisted being considered.

There's any number of people who'll be entirely on board with that. Homeopathy doesn't work.  Of course, a lot of medicines turn out not to work, or not to work well.  But the difference between homeopathy and unsuccessful drugs is that the latter are at least more likely to have a plausible mechanism - roughly, one of throwing molecules at other molecules, or coaxing the body to throw molecules at molecules.  Homeopathy doesn't even have that.  It relies on water having a memory.

At the very best, it contributes nothing. But it does cost money - not much, but more than none, and in the end, the taxpayer has to pony up for it.  Money is being wasted every time the NHS pays for homeopathic treatment, and that looks to be unjust.  (It’s not the most unjust thing in the world, but that’s neither here nor there.  Wrongs are wrongs, even if harms might vary.)

It might even get in the way of effective treatments, if patients use it rather than them.  That might mean that they’re worse off than they could otherwise be.  At the outside, it might mean that they’re a danger to others – they might be spreading illness by dint of not getting treated properly for it.

To that extent, Simon Singh strikes me as being bang on the money:

Think, Pig!

It's terribly passé, but I've started a blog.  After all, if there's one thing that the world needs, it's a fat, white, male, middle-aged, middle-class, failed academic banging on about whatever happens to have crossed his mind most recently.

Why, then?  I already blog on medical ethics elsewhere, and will cross-post my burbling from there here.  But I think about things that aren't medical ethics, and that correspondingly don't fit there.  So here I am.

This is a blog in which I will record some things that I think.  Many of them will be ethics or politics related; but many won't.  Some posts will be ill-considered and ill-judged.  Deal with it.  All opinions expressed will be as changeable as the wind.  A cleverer man than I once said that changing one's mind is proof that one has a mind at all.

Obviously, "Enzyme" isn't my real name.  It's a nom de plume that I've used elsewhere, and of which I've become fond.  It's not hard to find out who I am really if you're so inclined.

I might sometimes have guest posts.  Hell: I might sometimes have readers.  You never know.

As for the title:

POZZO:

Stand back! (Vladimir and Estragon move away from Lucky. Pozzo jerks the rope. Lucky looks at Pozzo.) Think, pig! (Pause. Lucky begins to dance.) Stop! (Lucky stops.) Forward! (Lucky advances.) Stop! (Lucky stops.) Think!

Silence.

LUCKY:

On the other hand with regard to—

POZZO:

Stop! (Lucky stops.) Back! (Lucky moves back.) Stop! (Lucky stops.) Turn! (Lucky turns towards auditorium.) Think!

LUCKY:

Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell and suffers like the divine Miranda with those who for reasons unknown but time will tell are plunged in torment plunged in fire whose fire flames if that continues and who can doubt it will fire the firmament that is to say blast hell to heaven so blue still and calm so calm with a calm which even though intermittent is better than nothing but not so fast and considering what is more that as a result of the labors left unfinished crowned by the Acacacacademy of Anthropopopometry of Essy-in-Possy of Testew and Cunard it is established beyond all doubt all other doubt than that which clings to the labors of men that as a result of the labors unfinished of Testew and Cunnard it is established as hereinafter but not so fast for reasons unknown that as a result of the public works of Puncher and Wattmann it is established beyond all doubt that in view of the labors of Fartov and Belcher left unfinished for reasons unknown of Testew and Cunard left unfinished it is established what many deny that man in Possy of Testew and Cunard that man in Essy that man in short that man in brief in spite of the strides of alimentation and defecation wastes and pines wastes and pines and concurrently simultaneously what is more for reasons unknown in spite of the strides of physical culture the practice of sports such as tennis football running cycling swimming flying floating riding gliding conating camogie skating tennis of all kinds dying flying sports of all sorts autumn summer winter winter tennis of all kinds hockey of all sorts penicillin and succedanea in a word I resume flying gliding golf over nine and eighteen holes tennis of all sorts in a word for reasons unknown in Feckham Peckham Fulham Clapham namely concurrently simultaneously what is more for reasons unknown but time will tell fades away I resume Fulham Clapham in a word the dead loss per head since the death of Bishop Berkeley being to the tune of one inch four ounce per head approximately by and large more or less to the nearest decimal good measure round figures stark naked in the stockinged feet in Connemara in a word for reasons unknown no matter what matter the facts are there and considering what is more much more grave that in the light of the labors lost of Steinweg and Peterman it appears what is more much more grave that in the light the light the light of the labors lost of Steinweg and Peterman that in the plains in the mountains by the seas by the rivers running water running fire the air is the same and then the earth namely the air and then the earth in the great cold the great dark the air and the earth abode of stones in the great cold alas alas in the year of their Lord six hundred and something the air the earth the sea the earth abode of stones in the great deeps the great cold on sea on land and in the air I resume for reasons unknown in spite of the tennis the facts are there but time will tell I resume alas alas on on in short in fine on on abode of stones who can doubt it I resume but not so fast I resume the skull fading fading fading and concurrently simultaneously what is more for reasons unknown in spite of the tennis on on the beard the flames the tears the stones so blue so calm alas alas on on the skull the skull the skull the skull in Connemara in spite of the tennis the labors abandoned left unfinished graver still abode of stones in a word I resume alas alas abandoned unfinished the skull the skull in Connemara in spite of the tennis the skull alas the stones Cunard

(mêlée, final vociferations)

One day, I will learn that speech, and - in a suitably boring meeting - I will raise my hand as if to make a point, and recite it.

Hello, world.