Thursday, June 20, 2013

It's another conspiracy! Is Anthony Watts going to be incarcerated and forced to have psychiatric treatment?



Poor old Anthony Watts, who runs a science-bashing blog WUWT, is suffering another bout of conspiracy ideation, this time of the paranoid kind.  His brain melts when he sees certain names and words, like NASA, conspiracy, moon-landing, global warming, Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, Shaun Marcott, John Cook, or Michael Mann.

This time he posts part of an "essay" by some climate science denier or other called Ben Pile, who objects to the finding that conspiracy ideation is a weak predictor of science denial.  In response, Anthony Watts goes full on into paranoid conspiracy ideation, posting a reference to a Wikipedia article on "Political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union".

The Wikipedia entry describes how opponents of Leonid Brezhnev were incarcerated in psychiatric medical institutions.  It describes "political abuse of psychiatry" as:
...the misuse of psychiatric diagnosis, detention and treatment for the purposes of obstructing the fundamental human rights of certain groups and individuals in a society.

Diagnosing, incarcerating and treating conspiracy-theorising Anthony Watts


Anthony is scared he's going to be diagnosed, incarcerated and treated because he rejects climate science or maybe because he's a conspiracy theorist.  I don't think so, Anthony.  It's a nice idea, however if everyone who ever entertained a crackpot idea about anything were detained, the outside world would be a pretty empty place.

Watts frequently springboards into his world of paranoid conspiracy fantasies.  Ironically it often seems to be brought on by any discussion linking conspiracy ideation with rejection of climate science.  But really, almost anything can bring on an attack.  Here are just a few of the examples that I've picked up in the recent past:

3 comments:

  1. Oh damn and blast, they've caught on to our game. I'd send the re-education team to collect Mr. Watts for adjustment, but the whole fiscal cliff and sequestration affair has hit us hard. We're down to a single snatch-van and it's in the repair shop.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Surely the US Government can still send in the black helicopters?

      Delete
  2. Ah, wait a moment. The insects are back and it was them after all.

    wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/20/an-engineers-thoughts-on-key-agw-questions/

    (I've tried to do it so it won't link because, really, you don't want to read it)

    ReplyDelete

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