Michael Shermer used to be a good skeptic
Craig Shearer - 10 June 2024
When I first became interested in skepticism back in the 90s, I started finding communities on the internet (little did I know that we had our own skeptical organisation here in Aotearoa/New Zealand), and one of the prominent people I encountered was Michael Shermer.
Shermer has published many books related to skepticism, as detailed on his Wikipedia page, and was at the forefront of skepticism in the US for several decades. However, his star was tarnished by accusations by multiple women of sexual assault and harassment stemming from behaviour at conferences.
He’s also a staunch libertarian, and so seems to take political positions that tend to favour privilege. Anyway, that’s certainly up for argument.
Yesterday, I happened to be browsing X (formerly Twitter), and came across a post from a fellow software developer - not on the subject of software development. This particular post was re-tweeting a post from Robby Starbuck, who was promoting a press-conference style announcement from the American College of Pediatricians calling for an end to gender-affirming care - in their words “calling out all the major medical associations by name for pushing the gender transition craze on kids”.
That’s a lot of referencing going on there, so I’ll break it all down.
But, before we get to that, this morning I came across a post by David Gorski, also on X, calling out Michael Shermer for reposting the same content:
David Gorski has done fantastic work calling out alternative medicine, including vaccines and other medical treatments and technologies.
So, let’s look into all the players in this.
Firstly, Robby Starbuck is formerly an american music video director with an impressively long list of videos he’s directed. But, more recently, he became politically active, running for the US House of Representatives in Tennessee in 2022 (though it seems he was removed from the ballot by his party for not following the rules requiring that had voted in the previous primaries).
He is known as an anti-trans activist, having released a sensationalistic online “documentary” movie - The War on Children, which promotes the view that children are being attacked by social media companies, being groomed by drag queens, and being deliberately targeted for gender transition treatments and surgery - all dubious stuff in my opinion.
I watched the trailer for this movie, and it’s all pretty awful stuff. Of note is Starbuck’s interviewing style, which is to ask questions that seem to only have yes/no answers.
It was revealed that during the making of the documentary, Starbuck tried to dupe LGBTQ allies into unwittingly participating in the movie.
More insidious is the American College of Pediatricians who put out the statement, and who Shermer, by implication, is supporting.
The American College of Pediatricians is essentially a bogus organisation masquerading as a real organisation of paediatricians.
The American College of Pediatricians is described on Wikipedia as:
a socially conservative advocacy group of pediatricians and other healthcare professionals in the United States, founded in 2002… The group advocates against abortion rights and rights for gay, queer, and transgender people. ACPeds promotes conversion therapy and purity culture.
Reportedly, its membership was around 700 physicians as of 2022.
Compare that to the American Academy of Pediatrics, which is a professional organisation with a membership of 67,000 paediatricians.
The similarity of the names, no doubt deliberate, sows confusion in the minds of the public.
I’m always suspicious of doctors wearing white coats. During the height of the Covid pandemic, another professional-sounding organisation emerged: America’s Frontline Doctors - who appeared in a video on the steps of the US Supreme Court wearing white coats and promoting the use of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin for the treatment of Covid, and discouraging the use of masks and social distancing.
It turns out they were basically a right-wing political organisation, whose leader - Simone Gold - attended the insurrection on January 6th, and was later arrested for her participation, found guilty and sentenced to 60 days in jail.
Anyway, all of this is to say that Michael Shermer is (inadvertently?) promoting medical misinformation and pseudoscience, under the guise of skepticism.
As I’ve said many times, as skeptics we should recognise consensus of experts on any topic. The American College of Pediatricians does not represent the consensus of experts, but are instead a politically motivated fringe group pushing misinformation. As skeptics there are very few topics on which we’re the actual experts - maybe on paranormal stuff like the claims of psychics. We use a bunch of tools such as science and psychology to shine a light on bogus claims, but for things like medical interventions, we are best to defer to people who spend their lives actually working in those fields.
Now, I recognise that lay people - and that really just means people outside their field of expertise - often promote misinformation they are taken in by. In this case, my software developer user who I follow was speaking well outside his area of expertise, and clearly promoting a view he’s been convinced of.
But Shermer should know better. He should put aside his personal biases and political leanings and think more critically about the stuff he supports!