Author: Moline Skeptics

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“Gravity Fails” (Anti-gravity devices)

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H.G. Wells dreamt up an innovation that allowed anything placed above it to be freed from gravitational constraints and rise or hover indefinitely. This works as science fiction, but in science fact, such a perpetual motion machine would seemingly violate the law of energy conservation.

Further, gravity cannot be blocked as if it were light or sound, said a highly-reliable source, Albert Einstein. For the General Theory of Relativity holds that gravity is a result of the way mass distorts space-time.

Those holding the opposing view embrace a highly hypothetical notion called electrogravitics. This faux field is populated primarily by enthusiasts of UFOs, free energy, and conspiracy theories. Internet videos purportedly show airborne capacitors working in a vacuum, meaning they would be receiving neither propulsion nor wind. The medium in which these devices are being demonstrated – online videos – allows for no independent testing of the claims.

Some proponents grasp onto the notion of gyroscopes, which produce a force that, when twisted, seems to lift operate independent of gravity. Although this force is known to be illusory, it has still led to numerous claims that anti-gravity devices have been achieved. None of these works have ever been demonstrated to work under controlled conditions.

Still, believers have hyped many inventions that supposedly achieved anti-gravity effects. In 1921, high schooler Thomas Townsend Brown noticed that Coolidge tubes seemed to change mass depending on where they were placed on a scale. Inspired, he refined a series of devices until he had managed to create a type of large capacitor which he asserted demonstrated anti-gravity abilities. Scientists who have studied Brown’s devices have found no such effects and instead attribute the observed force to ionic drift or ion wind.

In 1989, it was reported that a weight decreases along the axis of a right spinning gyroscope, but further testing showed null results. Three years later, Russian researcher Eugene Podkletnov claimed to have discovered that a fast rotating superconductor reduced the gravitational effect. Many studies have attempted to reproduce Podkletnov’s experiment, always to negative results.

Then Ning Li and Douglas Torr wrote in Popular Mechanics that they had built a working prototype of an anti-gravity device, but no further evidence of this prototype has been offered.

Meanwhile, Henry Wallace invented a series of rotating devices that consisted of rapidly spinning brass discs which he said created a gravitomagnetic field. Again, no independent testing or public demonstration of these devices followed.

To a skeptic, these repeated failures are a sign the devices don’t work as advertised. To a conspiracy theorist, it’s a sign our overlords are repressing valuable technology. Depending on how far down the rabbit hole a believer is, this technology is sometimes said to be the result of reverse engineering an alien spacecraft.

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“Smoke signaling” (Vaping deaths)

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The latest moral panic centers on a mysterious lung ailment seen amongst e-cigarette users. In the U.S., there have been about 150 persons hospitalized in recent months with perplexing lung ailments, all of which seem to cropping up after the patients vaped.

But all evidence suggests the cause is dangerous ingredients in black market vaping devices, not with over-the-counter e-cigarettes. According to Michelle Minton of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, “In every case where a product has been identified, the culprit was not vaping, but vaping illicit THC oil.” That means forbidding the currently-legal products will serve to exacerbate the problem.

Still, continuing the great American tradition of overreacting that we saw with comic books, rockabilly, and video games, we now have an outfit billing itself as Parents Against Vaping. One of its releases shrieked, “Our kids should not be guinea pigs for the JUUL experiment!”

No, they shouldn’t be, nor should adults be subjected to indirect harm from overzealous lawmakers. Consider one of the more severe cases, in which a Wisconsin man is laying in a medically-induced coma. He reached this unfortunate state of affairs by vaping with cartridges containing cannabis which he had purchased from an unlicensed, unscrupulous dealer. Not coincidentally, Wisconsin has some of the country’s most restrictive cannabis policies. In America’s Dairyland and states with similar stances, consumers wishing to vape with a dash of added THC are limited to illicit products that have never been tested for safety and for which the correct dosage is unknown.

Contrast that with legal products. Writing for the Foundation for Economic Education, Ross Marchand notes that “e-cigarettes, when legally manufactured, are 95 percent safer than ordinary cigarettes and are nearly twice as effective for quitting smoking as nicotine taxes or gum.”

Staying in the upper Midwest, Michigan, Gov. Grethen Whitmer stoked the manufactroversy by unilaterally imposing a statewide ban on the sale of flavored e-cigarettes.

Without citing a source to support her accusations, the governor chided companies for “selling vaping products using candy flavors to hook children on nicotine.” Wittmer claims there has been an uptick in e-cigarette usage by minors. But selling or providing these products to children is already a crime, so if anything, what is needed is more stringent enforcement of existing laws.

Still, the governor touted her desire to protect public health and announced she wants to shield the young from these terrible tasty temptations. But in so doing, she hampers the adults who switched to vaping as a means of ingesting a much less hazardous source of nicotine. Many of those attempting to break the habit have cited flavor variety as a vital tool to help the process.

Moreover, this is not a public health issue. That term should be reserved for the likes of vaccinations, fluoridated water, and clean air initiatives. One person permanently extinguishing e-cigarettes or even 10,000 persons doing so does not impact public health, as only the persons involved are benefited by the cessation.

And again, flavored e-cigarettes were already off-limits to the young. Hence, the governor’s decision does nothing to protect children, imposes dictates on those who are not children, and snuffs out not just e-cigarettes, but an industry that was helping its customers break an addictive and dangerous habit.

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“Not a good sign” (Ape communication)

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Koko was a western lowland gorilla who became the world’s best-known primate for her apparent ability to master a rudimentary form of sign language. She hobnobbed with Fred Rogers, Robin Williams, and Hugh Downs, and made countless media appearances. 

However, once one got past the amazement, the fawning, and the desire to imbue Koko with anthropomorphic tendencies, there was little to support the idea that she was expressing her thoughts, emotions, and wishes. Koko’s TV time was not accompanied by appearances in scientific journals, empirical studies, or sound research. To split ape hairs, she and other primates could manage communication, but not language.

As Skeptoid’s Brian Dunning wrote, “If it works, why aren’t there signing apes everywhere? Why don’t ape parents teach it to their own young? If apes had any meaningful ability to communicate using sign language, many of those who interact with humans would do so. And everyone with a primatology degree would have experience communicating with them.”

Instead, we have only one famous gorilla and a smattering of lesser-known apes, none of whom have demonstrated signing ability under controlled conditions. One scientist who wondered if this could be accomplished was Herbert Terrace, who conducted experiments with a chimp in his Columbia University laboratory. As attractive as the idea of primate-human chit-chat was, Terrance found little validation of the notion.

Writing in Science, he concluded, “Our detailed investigation suggests that an ape’s language learning is severely restricted. Apes can learn many isolated symbols, as can dogs, horses, and other nonhuman species. But they show no unequivocal evidence of mastering the conversational, semantic, or syntactic organization of language.”

Rather, the observed apes used symbols to beg or would signal if they wanted to play, eat, drink, or be petted. They were no more using language than your cat is when she seeks attention by rubbing her head against your ankle. Claims that apes had managed sentence structure, syntax usage, and the ability to express thoughts and feelings were without merit, and represented humans interpreting what they wanted to.

Of note, Koko “signed” only with her handler, Dr. Penny Patterson, who herself published no research. Koko was not communicating via any known sign language, just an idiosyncratic version supposedly shared only by her and Patterson.
Videos of the duo in action show Koko paying little attention to her handler’s commands, even though Patterson constantly encouraged and commended Koko.

Moreover, the gorilla never initiated the back-and-forth, responding only when goaded by Patterson. If Koko had the ability to express that she was hungry, lonely, or tired, she seemingly would have made that known without having to be prompted. And she could have done so with more than one person. Instead, any supposed success was a message that only Patterson could interpret. Let me communicate my thoughts on that by declaring it to be hooey.

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“Carbon copy” (Climate change denial)

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Human activity is easily the largest source of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. And the increased amount of CO2 is the only way to account for the planet’s warming trend. These are the conclusions of 99.8 percent of peer-reviewed papers on the subject. With that, we will take a look at a few of the counter arguments, which one is far more likely to encounter in a Wall Street Journal op-ed or a Fox and Friends segment than in a climate science journal. 

One claim is that anthropogenic carbon dioxide is unable to effect the climate since CO2 makes up such a small amount of the atmosphere. This argument also holds that the amount of carbon dioxide produced by humans is negligible compared to what volcanoes emit. 

It’s true that CO2 does makes up just .04 percent of the atmosphere. But even at that microscopic concentration, carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation and therefore acts as a greenhouse gas. As to the second part of the argument, human activity produces 130 times more CO2 than a volcano. Besides, volcanic eruptions have a cooling effect on the planet’s average temperature since the resulting gases and dust particles block incoming solar radiation.

The contrarians are also right about 95 percent of the CO2 that is released to the atmosphere coming from natural sources. However, natural processes such as plant growth and absorption into the ocean act to pull the gas back from the atmosphere and cancel any effect it would have. Human activity, by contrast, is not accompanied by a cancelling effect and the additional CO2 lingers. The only way it could be offset is by growing enough plants or by mastering a hypothetical concept like carbon capture. Analyses of the changing ratio of carbon isotopes in the air confirm that deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels have accelerated CO2 levels 40 percent in less than 200 years.

The other side counters that since water vapor represents the most abundant and powerful greenhouse gas, it is to blame for rising temperatures, not anthropogenic CO2. This is a partial truth at best. Because while water vapor has an impact, that’s only true because of its interaction with the rising levels of CO2. Writing for Scientific American, John Rennie explained, “CO2 absorbs some wavelengths of infrared that water does not, so it independently adds heat to the atmosphere. As the temperature rises, more water vapor enters the atmosphere and multiplies CO2’s greenhouse effect.”

Therefore, CO2 remains the primary instigator of the rise in average global temperature. Additionally, NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt has noted that water vapor enters and leaves the atmosphere much more quickly than CO2, limiting water vapor’s climate impact.

A third claim is that climate scientists fail to acknowledge the existence of a warming period in the 15th and 16th Centuries, when temperatures were as warm or warmer than the present day. Scientists do, in fact, recognize this. A larger point is that the deaths, mostly from disease, of 55 million North American natives in the 16th Century meant less carbon dioxide was concentrated in the air. This is what drove the drop in average global temperature. The fact that the falling temperatures coincided with a mass die-off lends credence to the idea that manmade CO2 fuels climate change. This is further supported by evidence found in ice caps and tree rings.

A final claim is that the sun or cosmic rays are the real causes of global warming. However, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has noted that between 1750 and 2005, impact from the sun measures less than a tenth of the influence from human activities. Besides, CO2 and the other greenhouse gases serve to amplify any warming from the sun.

For an alternate viewpoint to all this, consult a nearby cranky uncle.

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“Long moon shot” (Vril)

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In the 1870s, Edward Bulwer-Lytton of “a dark and stormy night” infamy published the novella Vril: The Power of the Coming Race. The tome centers on Aryan descendants who live beneath Earth and who harness a source of infinite power they dub the Vril. This resource enables them to end war, poverty, sickness, and to live in a one-class utopia. 

Part of this vision was taken as real by authors Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwels, who postulated that the Nazis had sought to build Vril-powered UFOs. Another claim was that a Vril society in Berlin served as a precursor to the NSDAP. An assertion from similar camps held that Third Reich leadership used the Vril-powered flying saucer to escape to an underground base on Antarctica or on the moon. Some insist Hitler planned to relaunch the war from one of these bases, though this idea evaporated once his lifespan was reasonably assumed to have passed.

In Bulwer-Lytton’s book, there is suspicion that Earth’s inside is running out of room, so the inhabitants may need to surface and overtake mortal men on the outside. The corollary is that the Nazis will do the same, aided by unknown super-weapons. Believers in this idea fall into one of two categories: Nazi wannabes who hope to recapture the glory, and those who are worried about this possibility. The Nazis were so brutal and powerful that there were fears they would regroup and strike again, an idea played out in the The Boys From Brazil.

When it comes to fascist ideas being adopted by a government and being used to spark a war, we should always be vigilant against this possibility. But concern about Third Reich members launching an attack from a frozen continent or airless satellite are far-fetched as best. Antarctica for decades has had year-round residents, none of whom have encountered the Nazi equivalent of Japanese fighters still in the jungle. And none of the moon missions have encountered any attempt by German insurgents to repel the lunar landings.

In 1937, science fiction writer Willy Ley, who had fled Nazi Germany, wrote that a group there called the Society for Truth had launched a search for the Vril. Some excited observers extrapolated this his claiming that the power was real, and that the society’s members had managed to construct a perpetual motion machine and other physics-defying inventions.

However, no reference to any Vril group in its supposed 1920s to 1940s heyday exists. There are no press accounts, no minutes from their meetings, no recollections from members in journals or diaries. They group was invented and existed only in the minds of believers.

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“Con man of the apes” (Hybrid primate)

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In the densest jungles of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, there is said to lurk a relative newcomer to the ape family. Witnesses have described the beast as large, upright, aggressive, and distinct from both chimpanzees and gorillas. It is called the Bili ape, after the forest in in which the animal is said to live. While eyewitness reports are considered weak evidence for validating the existence of a new creature, some of those witnesses brought back a potentially strong piece of evidence in the form of primate skulls purported to be neither chimp nor gorilla.

The story begins with what sounds like the first line of a joke: An author, a photographer, and a bushmeat activist walk into a museum. There, they saw skulls that, again, seemed to be not quite gorilla or quite chimp, but something in between. According to the display’s text, the craniums were collected in the Bili-Uéré region by late 19th Century colonists. Intrigued, the photographer from this trio, Karl Ammann, flew to DRC in in 1996 and found potential confirmation of an undiscovered ape. The primate resembled a chimpanzee but was larger, grayer, and behaved like a gorilla. It slept on the ground, whereas chimps usually snooze in trees to avoid predators. Ammann collected a skull from a deceased specimen and noted that it resembled a chimpanzee’s, except that it was larger and had a satittal crest akin to a gorilla’s. 

This potentially exciting find was put on hiatus for a few years because of the Second Congo War. But in 2003, Ammann returned to DNC accompanied by scientists and an experimental psychologist, Dr. Shelly Williams, who had received a $20,000 research grant from National Geographic. There followed a slew of stories based on Williams’ reports, most of which dutifully pronounced that a new great ape was amongst us. Citing the animal’s facial features, body idiosyncrasies, and utterances, Williams decreed the animal to be either a new species (the most thrilling possibility), a chimp-gorilla hybrid (still pretty cool), or a new chimp subspecies (meh). 

But, again, Williams’ doctorate was in experimental psychology, not in zoology or biology. That itself does not mean what she said was wrong, but it calls into questions National Geographic’s incentive in presenting her as a Ph.D. and letting readers assume it was in a related field to what she was commenting on. Her doctorate may also explain why outlets like CNN and the Associated Press didn’t ask more probing questions about her claims and just assumed she was a subject matter expert.

However, her claims were subject to immediate peer review in the form of responses from the biologists, primatologists, and anthropologists who accompanied her on the trip. This group of 13 scientists uniformly rejected her interpretations. And scientists currently in the Bili region are no longer reporting any sightings of hybrid apes or their corpses. 

One of the scientists who accompanied Williams was Thurston Cleve Hicks, who presented the results of DNA analysis at the International Primatological Society in Uganda. Results from three laboratories show that the Bili apes are ordinary members of a common Eastern chimpanzee subspecies, Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii. He also reported he saw them behaving in a manner consistent with chimps, such as guttural noises and rudimentary tool usage. 

This year, Hicks authored the definitive paper on Bili chimps in the official journal of the European Federation for Primatology. The paper mentions how their use of tools and some behaviors differ from other chimp populations, but makes no references to differences in appearance. 

About the only physical traits of Bili chimps that are different from other chimpanzees are a somewhat larger head, a slightly larger build, and a tendency to turn gray earlier. But these are all the result of specific allele frequencies, which commonly causes slight differences in dispersed populations. So there’s no new animal here, and the credulous reporting about it is something we’ve also seen before.

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“Faking your temperature” (Santa Barbara simoom)

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Legend has it that on June 17, 1859, Santa Barbara had a most unwelcome visitor, namely a sudden scorching wind that was unprecedented in heat and consequences. Animals were slain, people were injured, and crops ruined, all in three hours. 

As described, the phenomenon seemed more worthy of Venus than Earth and was referred to as a simoom, that being the Arabic word for “a sudden, hot wind filled with sand.” Skeptoid’s Brian Dunning researched the tale and while delving into newspaper archives, found that the term was relatively common in the 19th Century. Maybe it’s one we should bring back, along with gullyfluff (assorted stuff in boys’ pockets) or hobbadehoy (roughly equitable to tween).

To be sure, hot, sudden winds are a reality on California coasts. The Santa Ana winds and their lesser-known cousin, the Sundowner – which frequent Santa Barbara – contribute to wildfires in the region. Dunning described the winds as extraordinarily dry and with gusts that rival a hurricane’s. He added, “The wind is usually hot since it gets heated on the way by adiabatic forces.” I’ll have to admit, that adjective was a new one for me. It had me scurrying to an online dictionary, where I learned it refers to a process or condition in which heat does not enter or leave the system.

Most sources for this tale cite a 1966 book entitled Goleta, the Good Land. The author, Walker Tompkins, apparently used only one source, which had been written nearly a century before and which was penned 10 years after this supposed extreme and localized heat wave. That source was a work published by the United States Coast Survey. Geography professor George Davidson served as an assistant surveyor on that trip, and contributed this passage: 

“At about 1 p.m., a blast of hot air from the northwest swept suddenly over the town and struck the inhabitants with terror. It was quickly followed by others. At 2 p.m. the thermometer exposed to the air rose to 133°, and continued at or near that point for nearly three hours, whilst the burning wind raised dense clouds of impalpable dust. No human being could withstand the heat. All betook themselves to their dwelling and carefully closed every door and window. Calves, rabbits, and birds were killed; trees were blighted; fruit was blasted and fell to the ground, burned only on one side; and gardens were ruined. A fisherman, in the channel in an open boat, came back with his arms badly blistered.”

Of note, Davidson at no point ever claimed to have made these observations himself. Nor has anyone else, it seems. UC-Santa Barbara’s Bill Norrington asked fellow geography professor Joel Michaelsen what he thought about Tompkins’ version of the tale, and was told, “I never found any outside source to validate Tompkins’ story, and I am highly skeptical of its veracity. I don’t doubt that strong hot, dry downslope winds could kick up lots of dust and produce very high temperatures – but 110°F – 115° at most. The 133° just isn’t physically reasonable, as it would require the creation of an extremely hot air mass somewhere to the northeast. And given Tompkins’ well-known tendency to mix liberal doses of fiction into his ‘histories,’ and I think you have a strong case for discounting this one.”

Indeed, Tompkins’ version includes such improbable specifics as birds falling dead from the sky. As to the supposed super-scorching temperatures, those are supported by no official measurement. 

It has plenty of company in that regard. Meteorologist Christopher Burt compiled a list of claimed extreme temperatures and rated them from 0 to 10 for veracity. He found little substantiation for figures like 136 degrees (1920s in Libya) or 134 (1930s in Death Valley). As to the supposed simoom, Burt bestowed but a single point on its likelihood. 

He wrote, “There is no record of who made this measurement or exactly where it was made in Santa Barbara. Some later sources say it was made on a U.S. coastal geo-survey vessel. IF that is the case then the temperature is not possible since the waters off Santa Barbara in June are never warmer than about 70°F and any wind blowing over the ocean would have its temperature modified by the cool water.”

No researcher has ever uncovered evidence of the event and no meteorologist, journalist, or scientist at the time considered it exceptional enough to make note of until 10 years later. Given what we know meteorology and considering the conspicuous lack of documentation, the 1859 simoom seems more hot air than hot wind.

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“Khmer Ruse” (Angkor stegosaur)

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There exists an ancient temple carving in Cambodia that is interpreted to be a stegosaur by some folks. “Some folks” in this case being a euphemism for Young Earth Creationists. So anthropology professor Scott Burnett investigated these claims by spending two weeks at the site, named Ta Prohm, and at adjacent Khmer locations in Angkor Archaeological Park. He reported his findings in the latest issue of Skeptical Inquirer.

Young Earth Creationists use the supposed stegosaur depiction as evidence that dinosaurs and humans were contemporaries. YECs maintain that all extinct and extant life arose by supernatural means less than 10,000 years ago, so dinosaurs dying out 150 million years back would throw a T- Rex-sized bone into that idea. Even by YEC standards, the Ta Prohm stegosaur hypothesis puts dinosaurs crazily close to the modern day. The Khmer Empire lasted from the 9th to 15th Centuries, a period that includes Joan of Arc’s brief lifetime.

The stegosaur claim made by YECs rests on these four points: 1. The carving resembles a stegosaur; 2. The image is ancient and not a modern hoax; 3. There are other known animals represented at Ta Prohm, so the carving represents a real creature; and 4. Stegosaurs had to have been known to the sculptor.

YECs are correct on point two, so we will not delve anymore into that assertion. As to the first point, while the carving somewhat resembles a stegosaur, this interpretation is primarily based on one item – apparent dorsal plates in a ridge pattern along the creature’s back. However, conspicuously missing from this supposed stegosaur are a long neck, a small plain head, and cool tail spikes, all of which are associated with this particular dinosaur.

YECs retort that the carving’s large head and horn-like appendages represent a muzzle, and that its tail spikes were removed for safety reasons by the captive stegosaur’s owner. This ad hoc reasoning is indicative of one reaching a predetermined conclusion rather than examining the evidence. There are zero anthropological or paleontological discoveries that suggest dinosaurs were alive 1,000 years ago, much less any proof that they were domesticated by Mekong Delta inhabitants.  

Further, Burnett argues that the muddled muzzle notion guess fails to account for other anatomical inconsistencies. For example, the animal’s limbs are uniform, whereas stegosaurs had long hind limbs but short, stout legs up front. As to the putative dorsal plates – the one seeming consistency with stegosaurs – there are explanations that negate the need to jump to the dinosaur conclusion. For example, Burnett pointed out the supposed plates might instead be background foliage or decorative elements. We’ll come back to that point a little later.

For now, on to the YEC’s third argument – that since there are known animals depicted at Ta Prohm, the bas relief carving is therefore a stegosaur. This is at once the affirming of the consequent fallacy and a refusal to acknowledge that mythological creatures are represented at the site.

YECs are correct that some of the carvings are of known animals. Nevertheless, Burnett cautions against exaggerating “our ability to interpret art across cultures, let alone those separated by over eight centuries, and particularly out of context.” He added that the site includes mythological animals, as well as genuine beasts who are riding atop deities. What’s more, the dividing line between natural and supernatural fauna is a blurred one in Khmer imagery.

As to the specifics of Angkor Archaeological Park carvings, they are laden with Hindu and Buddhist symbolism. The artist who created the bas relief in question may have been depicting one of those religions’ mythological animals, which has a superficial similarity with a stegosaur.

Similarly, several carvings of supposed animals at the site may not be what YECs presume them to be. Rather than being a monkey or deer, they may be a mythological beast, in the same sense that Bigfoot looks like an oversize upright gorilla and the Loch Ness Monster could be taken to be a plesiosaur’s cousin.

Burnett points out that the Indian epic Ramayana is a frequent subject matter of stone carvings in the Khmer region. The tale includes anthropomorphic primate brothers who pursue a demon that lured their sister away assuming the form of a beautiful golden deer.

“The ruins are full of Hindu and Buddhist iconography and symbolism,” Burnett wrote. “Mythological and supernatural beings abound at sites in the region. Some are chimeric in nature, including at Ta Prohm a muscular animal sitting upright, with a bird beak and long ears or horns. It also bears plates along the back reminiscent of the ‘stegosaur.” This seems a fatal blow to YEC contentions that the carving has to be of a real animal and that stegosaurs must have been known to the sculptor.

To gain a wider perspective, Burnett spent 10 days visiting the Angkor Archaeological Park, accessing and analyzing dozens images. Burnett had suspected that the supposed dorsal plates could instead be background foliage. So he searched for other animal carvings with similar features to this one, and he also looked for any images that seemed to be of the supposed stegosaur but without the plates. He explained that he looked for carving of animals with “five key characteristics — quadrupedal posture, thick limbs of roughly equal length, an arched back, ornamented head, and long tail, in the absence of a sixth characteristic—dorsal plates.” And he did uncover a depicted animal that satisfied those criteria.

As to his suspicion that the plates were actually foliage, Burnett “found clear evidence suggesting that ornamental elaboration and vegetation are much more parsimonious explanations for the appearance of the animal. Dorsal ornamentation or vegetation is clearly associated with the animal immediately above the stegosaur. Even higher in the column of images that appear to be conveying a narrative of sorts, are plate- or petal-like depictions. On other occasions, vegetation might be seen underneath or behind animals.”

Finally, the YEC assertion lacks any evidence from the time period that would be consistent with dinosaurs living amongst the Khmer people. There are no dinosaur images on ceramics, paintings, or drawings from the era. More crucially, anthropologists have yet to find dinosaur bones among cultural deposits from this period. The terrible lizards are nowhere to be found among the exhaustive species lists compiled from Khmer and Sanskrit inscriptions at Angkor sites. Additionally, Zhou Daguan served as Chinese ambassador to Angkor barely a century after the supposed stegosaur image was created. He kept a journal that included descriptions of animals from that time and place, and he jotted down nothing that would be consistent with a late Triassic herbivore.

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“Ticked off” (Weaponized insects)

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A New Jersey congressman has convinced his colleagues the Pentagon should investigate whether the government once weaponized ticks, thus creating Lyme disease. This twisted tale has a second act in which the insidious insects are loosed and begin spreading the disease throughout the congressman’s home state.

The house unanimously approved Rep. Chris Smith’s amendment and according to Vice, the Department of Defense will investigate “whether any ticks or insects used in such experiments were released outside of any laboratory by accident or experiment design.”

Smith suspects the military may have considered ticks or other insects to be potential biological weapons delivery platforms during the Cold War. The alleged experiments were said to be carried out between 1950 and 1975 on Plum Island, N.Y., near New Jersey. Smith bases this mostly on the contents of Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons by science journalist Kris Newby.

The author describes New Jersey as “ground zero of this outbreak,” with Smith’s district being especially hard hit. To be sure, the Garden State has had its share of the disease, including 5,092 reported cases in 2017. In the Vice article, Newby surmises that the military may have focused on rickettsia, a tick-borne germ  that acts like a virus.

But entomology experts say the notion of airborne chemical warfare via parasitic arachnids is inconsistent with history, geography, and science.

“There’s evidence that Lyme disease was here before Columbus,” said,Phil Baker, executive director for the American Lyme Disease Foundation. Besides that, he continued, Lyme disease is not fatal, making it an unlikely candidate for a potential biological weapon.

Richard Ostfeld, who holds a Ph.D. in disease ecology, agreed with Baker that the tick’s long history makes Smith’s conspiracy theory highly unlikely.

“Both the tick and the bacterium that cause Lyme disease are ancient creatures,” he explained. “There is strong scientific evidence that the present-day forms of this bacterium diverged from a common ancestor at least 60,000 years ago.” Also, a mummy found in the Alps and dating back more than 5,000 years showed traces of Lyme.

Not only is the disease not of recent vintage, but it is found throughout the United States, as well as Europe and Asia.

“The notion that Lyme was created on Plum Island doesn’t represent the real geographic distribution of the disease in recent decades,” Ostfeld said.

Smith, however, is hopeful that the investigation will reveal something akin to a 1950s SciFi flick. He further hopes this will lead to a cure and stated, “The millions of people suffering from Lyme and other tick-borne diseases deserve to know the truth.”

The likely truth, however, is that it’s the investigation which is sucking taxpayers dry.

 

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“Not oil it’s cracked up to be” (CBD)

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CBD oil is touted as a cure or mitigation for a wide range of illnesses and conditions. CBD is one of many chemical compounds that are isolated from cannabis, with CBD and THC being the most well-known. THC is what gets marijuana smokers stoned, whereas CBD has no such impact.

But will CBD make a patient healthier? There are a few conditions it might help, but there is inconsistency among CBD products. Depending on location, CBD oil might be available only on the black market or have quasi-legal status, and in these instances, there is no oversight with regard to product quality and uniformity. By contrast, in some countries where cannabis is legal, licensed dealers must have independent validation of CBD and THC content, as well as verification of quality.

In either case, the evidence for CBD oil as a medicine is scant, and its efficacy is established for only a few conditions. Those include Dravet Syndrome and Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome, but there is insufficient reason to believe it acts as a painkiller, and there is zero evidence it treats or prevents cancer.

Now, CBD does have some impact on the body, which also means side effects. CBD oil can hamper or increase the effects of some pharmaceutical drugs, so any patient popping prescription pills should know the risk of combining their medication with CBD oil. Furthermore, aggression, anger, irritability, agitation, and sleepiness have all been reported with CBD products. With no set dosage prescribed and little in the way of controlled, double blind studies, unknowns about CBD oil include its efficiency, its long-term effects, and its safety.

The fact that marijuana was illegal for so long despite suspected medical benefits and it being much less dangerous than tobacco and alcohol seemingly lends credence to the idea that there was a government and Big Pharma cover-up. But in truth, legislation was based on panic, not corruption. And the pharmaceutical industry would have profited from the product were it legal.

While marijuana, which includes CBD has shown some medical promise, smoking it or eating it in brownie form would be far less efficient than identifying, isolating, and extracting the active ingredient and distributing it at the proper dosage.

Dr. David Gorski of Science-Based Medicine writes that most research cited by proponents as suggesting cannabis cures cancer are either in vitro or animal studies. Most often, these do not translate to human use or benefit.

Cannabis will not cure cancer, either in smoked form or extracted as CBD oil. Gorski further cautions that even in purified form, naturally-derived or synthetic cannabinoids demonstrate only modest antitumor abilities in preclinical models. This means they would have to be added to existing chemotherapeutic regimens to possibly have any benefit. Gorski explains, “If they do find their way into the routine clinical treatment of cancer, it will be through rigorous pharmacological studies and rigorous clinical trials, the latter of which, in particular, are painfully lacking.”

Further research is justified, but at this point, CBD oil’s status as a near-panacea is unjustified and such assertions are almost always a pseudoscience giveaway.