In James Shapiro’s history of the Shakespeare skeptics, Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare, he mentions in passing a historian and Lutheran minister with the irresistible name of Samuel Mosheim Schmucker. 
Schmucker was the author of a work entitled Historic Doubts about Shakespeare, which may have been the first published work suggesting that Shakespeare, if he even existed, never wrote the plays attributed to him. It’s strong stuff:
British national pride must needs have some great dramatist to uphold the nation’s honor. For politic reasons Shakespeare was selected as the most suitable person to bear the imposture and the glory. Greatness thus became associated with his name. He became, in the progress of time, and from the influence of confirmed prejudice and ignorance and pride, supreme in the literary world.
This was in 1848, almost a decade before Delia Bacon would elliptically suggest the plays were actually written by Francis Bacon. Schmucker was independently the first, though he never suggested a substitute author.
But what’s this? The subtitle of Schmucker’s book was Illustrating Infidel Objections Against the Bible. Yes, in fact the entire work was a parody, aimed at Higher Criticism in general and David Friedrich Strauss in specific. Schmucker was aghast at how Strauss had taken a scalpel to the New Testament and concluded that the Gospels contained almost no historical content. And so Schmucker tried to turn the same arguments against Shakespeare. Surely no one would suggest that Shakespeare hadn’t really written those plays. Right?
I used to do something similar to Schmucker whenever the topic was the denial of evolution. Whenever someone trotted out the old line about evolution being “just a theory,” I’d shoot back, “just like the germ theory of disease.” It seemed like a good rejoined. After all, who’s going to deny one of the bedrock theories in medical science?
So I was a bit pained to read this otherwise excellent article at Respectful Insolence : Yes, there really are people who don’t accept the germ theory of disease.
Medicine does, however, have its version of a theory of evolution, at least in terms of how well-supported and integrated into the very fabric of medicine it is. That theory is the germ theory of disease, which, as evolution is the organizing principle of biology, functions as the organizing principle of infectious disease in medicine. When I first became interested in skepticism and medical pseudoscience and quackery, I couldn’t envision how anyone could deny the germ theory of disease. It just didn’t compute to me, given how copious the evidence in favor of this particular theory is. It turns out that I was wrong about that, too.
Damn.
That link to the germ theory denial is busted. And I really wanna see it!
Fixed. Damn WordPress and it’s intolerance of curly quotes.
More like Poe’s Law rules the USA. Most people in Europe is still sane, thank you very much.
P.S.
I thought you were going to quote the latest example of the law: apparently, American conservatives have concluded that the Theory of Relativity is a liberal plot:
http://www.cynical-c.com/?p=18745
Not long after my deconversion from fundamentalism, I ran into one of the guys I used to go to church with while I was out walking downtown. We started talking about stuff, and at one point he claimed that my local newspaper had run an article talking about how ‘Einstein’s theory of relativity had been disproven.’ No shit. I just nodded and said, ‘Oh? Huh.’
The paper had some article about a discrepancy in one measurement of the radius of protons from theoretical predictions. The difference was 4%, far larger than the margin or error or than standard model could easily account for, but not so large that the results could not have been in error. If those results are confirmed, it does mean there is something wrong with the standard model of physics, but not necessarily the theory of special relativity.
As for conservatives saying SR is a liberal plot . . .
hooooly shit. I had never heard of that. I didn’t read through all the “counterexamples” on Conservapedia, but the ones I read were hilariously flawed to the extent that it was even obvious to me that they were not counterexamples. They included, for example, spooky action at a distance (which deals with the nonlocality of space, not SR), the perihelion of Mercury (which cited no sources and regardless would deal with GR not SR), some laughable misunderstandings of the math involved (they asked about what would happen if you applied a force perpendicular to an object in motion as though this were somehow difficult to imagine), the pioneer anomaly (which could be caused by any number of things), the flatness of space (which is a hierarchy problem in cosmology and has nothing to do with SR) and Jesus’ miracles. And so much more.
They also seem to think that the “theory of relativity” is one theory and that it implies that everything is relative from mass to morals.
I mean, are they even trying?
Haha, people in Europe, sane.
Anti-vaxxers are constantly plotting evil in Germany, together with proponents of the so-called “new German medicine”, some of whom are clearly neo-Nazis, fundies are rioting, for lack of a better word, in Poland right now, Cherie Blair and her husband were deep into New Age-y bullshit, and Ann Widdecombe just said something pro-creationist, and stupid, again.
Europe is just as crazy as the rest of the world; we just tend not to publicise it that much.
Dude, all those examples compared to America is like saying the Portuguese basketball league is on par with the NBA.
That’s why homeopathy is a government-sanctioned and paid for “treatment” in the US, obviously.
Oh wait…
Nooo. Your “treatments” are so much more sofisticated:
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/nov/03/nation/na-health-religion3
I’ve used that same argument before and I don’t think it’s weakened by the fact that some people doubt both theories (though, obviously, if your interlocutor does, it’s not going to be very convincing).
Someone I know was once complaining that universities would only hand out biology degrees to people who accepted evolution, and it was “only a theory”. I made the parallel of a medical university run by people who believe all diseases are caused by demonic possession rather than according to the germ theory of medicine, and can be cured not be traditional means, but by prayer? Should graduates of such schools be allowed to call themselves medical doctors? Would you want such a person as your physician?
They agreed that germ theory was a “fact” and not a “theory” (in the layman’s meanings of such terms), but didn’t agree that it had any bearing on evolution. Sigh.
I’ve encountered the same set of beliefs. The person was livid because ‘the government’ wasn’t producing H1N1 vaccine fast enough, and yet mad at the liberal media for suggesting that the virus had evolved. She also left room in her cosmos for the occasional demonic assault and the notion that as you ‘get closer to God,’ you were liable to be more bedeviled.
Completely off-topic, Wintermute, but I just picked up Neuromancer at the library for the first time in decades! I am a major, major William Gibson fanboy!
Hurrah!
This is a good post, and you should feel good. Also, I want that book about Shakespeare now ^^v
I like the theory that Marlowe escaped to Italy, where he continued writing plays and had the boring Shakespeare publish them for him. There was a book about this, but I had no way to be able to judge the evidence, I just found it romantic.
I still cant believe that Victoria Jackson is completely serious, without even a hint of sarcasm or irony.
Isn’t she certifiably insane?
Hey, with people like her on their side, it makes my argument so much easier. I mean, how can you NOT laugh at that loon.
A surprising percentage of alt-medicine folk deny part or all of the germ theory of disease. Objections generally center around Pasteur in the same way objections to evolution generally center around Darwin. And somehow they make even less sense.
A better rejoinder would be “Just like the Theory of Aerodynamics”. People can see planes flying. :-)
That’s jes’ cuz Gawd holds ‘em up there, ain’t got nuthin’ to do with no science-y talk!
Germs, round earth, vaccines, moon landing, evolution, gravity…
I’m pretty sure that, deep in the bowels of /b/, there’s a sub-rule that “For any given painfully and stupidly obvious occurrence, there is a denier.”
Fire, water, air and dirt,
Fuckin’ magnets, how do they work?
I don’t wanna talk to a scientist,
Y’all motherfuckers lying, and gettin’ me pissed.