I had a very revealing conversation with Marcy Wheeler of Fire Dog Lake the other day, and haven’t been able to talk about it here due to being super busy with the protest stuff.

Basically, it boils down to this:

1) She will not admit she was unbelievably wrong about Toyota’s electronics in the wake of the NHTSA report, because:
A) Not a single auto expert works for the NHTSA
B) There are still lawsuits pending, however:
I) If the lawsuits are resolved in Toyota’s favor, they don’t count, because:
a) Marcy Wheeler talked to some disgruntled former Toyota service people in 2007, and
b) she can read Toyota’s corporate mind and just knows that they have secret chip problems, and
c) she isn’t providing any evidence for any of these assertions

Follow that? I know it’s pretty amazing. This is what always gets me about Marcy Wheeler’s ‘reporting’ and one of the things that drove me to abandon FDL, save for David Dayen’s work and a bit of the community blogging. Wheeler is free to make whatever fact-free, paranoid, borderline racist/nativist accusations she wants, so long as they’re against typical liberal bugaboos (corporations, Republicans, foreign companies). Sometimes they turn out to be true; just as often, they’re baseless. Her fans ignore the misses and exaggerate the hits, and thus, a star is born. About half of her posts actually take the form of her asking for indulgence as she ‘goes into the weeds’, aka, raves fantastically about her latest pet conspiracy theory.

It looks more than a bit like apophenia, honestly. She sees elaborate conspiracies everywhere. In the Bush era, this was slightly more likely to turn up ‘results’, simply because they engaged in so many conspiracies at once.

That’s not praiseworthy for Wheeler, however; it’s just a sad commentary on the Bush government.

Anyway, when I confronted her about her Toyota fixation from last year, now conveniently forgotten, she engaged in the delusional self-justification I described above for a bit.

Image of Twitter conversation up on Flickr. Roughly arranged in chronological order; timestamps are visible anyway.

It’s been, as they say, a long, strange road, but the results are in from the exhaustive NHTSA/NASA (yes, NASA) study on the Toyota ‘Unintended Acceleration’ problem, and the results are: it basically doesn’t exist:

NASA engineers studied Toyota’s (TM) electronic throttle for 10 months and found “no electronic flaws” that could have made the vehicles accelerate out of control, a report that came out today says. Toyota cheered the review, saying it “should further reinforce confidence in the safety of Toyota and Lexus vehicles.”

NASA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) put Toyota’s cars and trucks through the wringer. They examined 280,000 lines of code for flaws, bombarded vehicles with electromagnetic radiation, as well as testing the cars’ mechanical components.

“NASA found no evidence that a malfunction in electronics caused large unintended accelerations,” said Michael Kirsch, Principal Engineer at the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC).

To be precise; yes, Toyota sold some floor mats that an idiot could let get so tangled up around his/her feet that the brake pedal physically cannot depress to the floor. And yes, they had some pedals that themselves were slightly sticky, and wouldn’t bounce back from being pressed as fast as they should. Neither problem causes, from the car’s perspective, ‘unintended’ acceleration; in the first case, driver error leads to a floorboard too cluttered to depress a brake pedal, and in the second, you *did* intend to accelerate, the pedal didn’t press itself, it just doesn’t unpress fast enough afterward.

About this time last year, the media was awash in literally hysterical reporting about this ‘Unintended Acceleration’ problem. Mainstream outlets like ABC and NBC would report as fact the allegations of paid anti-Toyota hired guns like a Professor who rigged cars to do what he wanted by rewiring them, then claimed it was relevant to cars on the road, or obvious frauds who faked incidents to try and cash in via lawsuits.

At the same time, and to the lefty blogosphere’s eternal shame, people like Marcy Wheeler of Fire Dog Lake were engaged in outright scaremongering, if not race-baiting, against Toyota, alleging fantastic conspiracy theories (completely without evidence, as it turns out, since there was no evidence to be had, per NASA testing):

Witness David W Gilbert, an engineering professor at Southern Illinois University, was able to show that there are some errors in Toyota’s ETCS that do not generate an error code. As a result, in such a case, the car would never enter into failsafe mode.

Now Gilbert immediately informed Toyota of his finding–my best guess is he did so last November. But his finding was not among the things that Exponent tested, starting in December. However, when Toyota learned that Gilbert was testifying (those evil tricksy Democrats added him at the last minute) Exponent did middle of the night tests Monday night and managed to replicate his finding.

Mind you, Toyota consistently misrepresented what Gilbert had found. At first, Lentz said Toyota had not replicated his error, and only later admitted they not only had, but he knew about it. Then they claimed, both politely to the Committee and more rudely to Republicans, that he had hacked into their ECTS and therefore broken it. They consistently avoided discussing the evidence there is a dangerous error in their ECTS error system.

I find this bit really telling. Toyota got this information last year some time. They deliberately did not have their whitewash firm replicate it–though when they learned Gilbert could present his findings in a public forum, they were able to replicate the problem almost as quickly as Gilbert did (three and a half hours). Once again, this is evidence that Toyota has a number of things they are deliberately not looking for.

…

The advanced brake override system

I still can’t figure out why Toyota is ignoring all this–what is either so expensive or so damaging that they don’t want to admit to the real problem. But there’s a hint in the way they’re dealing with the brake override systems. As Lentz described, all new models will be fitted out with what–per Sean Kane–is an absolutely critical feature for Toyota given its problems with unintended acceleration. And they will retroactively put that feature onto seven of their models.

As it turned out, they weren’t ‘ignoring’ or hiding anything. There was nothing to hide, nothing to ignore, and Gilbert’s incredibly obvious hackery had no real world implications.

Toyota was right, and Marcy Wheeler and the many hysterical and conflicted American-car pushers/boosters in Congress eager to demagogue the issue were wrong. Period. Absolutely, categorically, unambiguously wrong.

I was right, on the other hand, and tried to warn her in particular off the evidence-free scaremongering; needless to say, that didn’t work out.

Now watch them ignore these findings.

Days like this, and posts like this garbage extolling the virtues of astrology, really make me glad I abandoned the reeking cauldron of stupid and poor management that, unfortunately, is the FDL community blog section (formerly called the Seminal, now called MyFDL or some other nonsense).

I mean, just look at this utterly delusional garbage:

Even though I have a strong background in science and firmly believe in the scientific method and the scientific tradition, I am a professional astrologer. Yup. Don’t ask me why it works; it just does, and I have studied and used the ancient art to good effect throughout my life. I make no apology for my interest, so if you hate astrology, please scroll on by.

‘professional astrologist’, haha, what a great euphemism for ‘con man or idiot’.

He later clarifies that he considers himself a professional but doesn’t charge in the comments. Which is… an odd definition of professional, but hey, that word has no business within a mile of astrology. Or any other form of religious hokum, for that matter.

I mean, seriously:

You will likely feel like you’re making a fresh start emotionally as the New Moon (16 degrees 5 minutes in Capricorn), which symbolizes your emotional self, is separating from the Sun (13 degrees 53 minutes in Capricorn), which is your source of creative energy. The only potential problem is that you may have trouble choosing in which direction to go, as the ideas and possibilities are likely to seem somewhat overwhelming. Fortunately, however, the Moon and Sun tend to be grounded and practical in Capricorn.

*snort* hahahaha… oh priceless. Seriously priceless. The relative position of the Moon and the Sun to an IMAGINARY SHAPE IN THE SKY will affect your brain. Somehow.

It’s maaaaaaaaaaagic.

Rayne pops up in comments there defending both the author’s smug dismissal of reality and critics based in reality. Funny how I couldn’t get a response from her for weeks, hell, months on FDL’s misuse of my content, but she can appear as if by magic when some asshat clown starts telling people that imaginary mystical forces will change their brain chemistry or alter their fate. Somehow.

I can’t get so much as an answer on my intellectual property, let alone a response to documented moderator abuse, but astrology needs defending? Quick, someone flick the Rayne-signal.

Priceless.

Next up, an FDL community blog series on why you should skip vaccinating your kids in favor of blood-letting.

I mean, is there ANY limit to what people can post there?

So long as they don’t personally annoy an anonymous moderator, I mean.