Happy 250th Birthday, Rebecca! What you describe in that first chapter — where he reproduces your failed-predictions list, relabels your analysis "Denialist Myth," and then either answers with a vague non-statement or quietly rewrites your point before debunking the rewrite — is the whole method in one specimen. He doesn't refute the argument. He relocates it under a heading that has already decided it's pathology, and answers the version he edited.
I just posted a piece on exactly this ("The Costume of Science"). The short version: what Kalichman does isn't diagnosis, it's profiling. A real diagnosis rules out the ordinary explanation before it commits — here, the ordinary explanation being that the person looked at the evidence and found it wanting. He skips that step every time. Your chapter-one experience is that skip, documented against a named person who can testify to what her own words actually said.
Grateful you reposted this ahead of the 2026 edition. The book is about to be handed to a post-COVID audience, and the method deserves to be understood before it is. https://rkoch.substack.com/p/the-costume-of-science
Suspicious minds? Heaven forbid we should allow ourselves to be skeptical. Isn't skepticism an important aspect of philosophy in general? I am sure that people like Michael Shermer and the late James Randi would agree. Or, maybe we are only allowed to be skeptical of things that are permitted by popular vote?
The 11th commandment -
Thou shall not thinketh for thy self.
Happy 250th Birthday, Rebecca! What you describe in that first chapter — where he reproduces your failed-predictions list, relabels your analysis "Denialist Myth," and then either answers with a vague non-statement or quietly rewrites your point before debunking the rewrite — is the whole method in one specimen. He doesn't refute the argument. He relocates it under a heading that has already decided it's pathology, and answers the version he edited.
I just posted a piece on exactly this ("The Costume of Science"). The short version: what Kalichman does isn't diagnosis, it's profiling. A real diagnosis rules out the ordinary explanation before it commits — here, the ordinary explanation being that the person looked at the evidence and found it wanting. He skips that step every time. Your chapter-one experience is that skip, documented against a named person who can testify to what her own words actually said.
Grateful you reposted this ahead of the 2026 edition. The book is about to be handed to a post-COVID audience, and the method deserves to be understood before it is. https://rkoch.substack.com/p/the-costume-of-science
As long as voices like these are suppressed, There will be adequate CONCENSUS and therefore science the sheeple can follow.
Suspicious minds? Heaven forbid we should allow ourselves to be skeptical. Isn't skepticism an important aspect of philosophy in general? I am sure that people like Michael Shermer and the late James Randi would agree. Or, maybe we are only allowed to be skeptical of things that are permitted by popular vote?