Van Halen famously insisted on having no brown M&Ms in their bowls backstage. This was not based on a color-based munchies preference, but was rather the band’s way of ensuring their contract had been read.

Another creative, albeit in this case distasteful, use of M&Ms will be the focus of this post. In this instance, the candies are at the center of a hypothetical, foreboding challenge in which a small fraction of them have been poisoned.

Presented a bowl in which, say, three percent of the M&Ms would have fatal results if ingested, a person is rhetorically asked is they would gobble a handful. They clearly would not, so the analogy then compares the sweet treats to Hispanic immigrants, Muslims, AIDS patients, or some other group the speaker holds in low regard. Perhaps only three percent of them are bad apples, but we need to chop down the entire tree since we have no way of knowing which is which. The analogy is usually employed by xenophobes but has sometimes been those on the far left to portray men as monsters that need guarded against.

Regardless of whether it comes from the left, right, or someplace else, the analogy is a mistaken one. When this comparison of people to candies is made, the speaker implies that demonizing an entire population is as legitimate as declining to gobble a handful of potentially deadly tiny round confectionaries.

To see how mistaken that analogy it is, use the point against the person making it. Let’s say someone uses the comparison to insist that we should err of the side of caution and deny entry to persons of Middle Eastern ancestry. Counter that position by saying that while most MAGA hat wearers are not violent hatemongers who would attack minorities, three percent of them might do so. Therefore all persons expressing xenophobic sentiments should be stripped of their citizenship and deported. Unless the proponent is likewise willing to embrace this position, he or she doesn’t truly believe in the comparison.

Further, the analogy implies that we could reduce the risk to zero by avoiding all M&Ms. In the same way that the color-coded National Terrorism Advisory System includes no all-clear and thus keeps us in a perpetual state of worry, the M&Ms in the analogy are meant to cause perpetual concern. The only way to be sure to avoid danger is to avoid them entirely. The candy analogy seems to work because most people would not eat one M&M if there was even a .0001 percent chance of being poisoned. But nothing is ever risk free and no analogy proponent would think we should avoid getting out of bed, an event that kills dozens of people a year.

Also, even if you happen to come across a dangerous member of the derided group, you may well escape unscathed, whereas with the poisoned M&M, death is a certainty for anyone who consumes it. Therefore, the danger posed by the group member is greatly exaggerated when compared with how likely they are to harm a specific person.

Finally, the analogy falls flat since M&Ms all look the same, except for the color difference, and there would be no way of knowing which ones were poisoned. But when it comes to people, background checks and indicators give us a good idea of how dangerous a specific Hispanic, Muslim, or other group member is likely to be.

There are those who insist there is no such thing as coincidences. And not by coincidence, most of these people are largely unfamiliar with concepts like the Law of Truly Large Numbers, subjective validation, selective memory, and post hoc reasoning. Additionally, they prefer to feel that they are in control, or that they at least have a benevolent higher force acting on their behalf.

This need to feel in control hampers the acceptance of randomness and downplays the role that luck, both good and bad, plays in everyone’s life.

Writing in Psychology Today, Dr. Ralph Lewis told of a flight attendant who, through a series of mishaps, was unable to get onboard one of the ill-fated Sept. 11 flights. While this no doubt had deep personal meaning to her, there is no need to tie any cosmic force or higher power into it, any more than there is reason to put the blame for the lives lost on anyone but the terrorists.

Lewis works as a hospital psychiatrist, where he sees “patients grapple with the randomness of adversity and the lack of control over life’s outcomes.” Indeed, we as a species naturally seek patterns in life, to the point of finding a face in our Honey Nut Cheerios. This has often been beneficial, such as when our hominin ancestors recognized a trend that going near large-fanged beasts leads to ill results. Or their realization that a certain stripe or color meant a plant can be safely consumed.

But Lewis writes that we notice patterns so frequently that we detect them where none exist, and therefore erroneously tie together disparate occurrences. In some cases, that further leads to deducing that invisible entities conspired to make this happen. These forces can take the form of a god, demon, karma, or even vaguer concepts like spirituality, oneness, or there being “something more.”

A related factor is mankind’s love of stories. Lewis explains that we prefer “grand narratives with an overarching point and a satisfying end.” It’s bad enough when we are deprived of this at the movies. But when we are left without a satisfactory explanation for why a Kindergartener gets leukemia or why a man is wrongfully convicted, it’s much more difficult to grapple with.

Also coming into play is the Law of Truly Large Numbers. With billions of people undertaking hundreds of actions every day, it would be incredible if there were NO instances of amazing coincidences and occurrences. These can be explained with the Law and there exists no reason to infer into a higher meaning to it, no matter how much subjective validation may lead one to wish otherwise. Subjective validation refers to thinking something powerful is at work because it has personal meaning or connection. But the amount of emotion felt is unrelated to whether a fortuitous occurrence has a cosmic cause.

One reason people may think a hidden power is at work is because humans take more notice of events or items that impact them or that they find interesting. Lewis offered a hypothetical example of a woman who is contemplating motherhood.

She will likely pay more attention to baby product advertisements and may even interpret them as an omen. Similarly, when facing adversity or a serious illness, people can recoil at the idea of it being determined by random chance instead of a plan that needs to be foiled. A lifelong smoker who contracts lung cancer is unlikely to feel this way, but someone who has never lit up and becomes afflicted with the disease just might. While the feeling that our life and universe are being controlled can bring comfort and reassurance, in cases such as the non-smoking lung cancer patient, it can instead cause feelings of being abandoned and spurned.

But Lewis writes that when people understand that the universe has no inherent purpose or grand design for our lives, the mystery of why bad things happen to good people or good things happen to bad people vanishes. And anyway, our species’ evolution and its development of technology and civilization is more captivating and inspiring than assigning that history to supernatural forces.

I sometimes hear tales about a childhood that consisted of unsupervised swimming, heavy whiskey drinking, riding in the back of a pickup truck, and living with asbestos and lead paint. This penalty-free daring continued in adulthood with helmetless motorcycle rides, and we’ve all heard from the 95-year-old great aunt who boasted about smoking a pack a day for three-quarters of a century. The insinuation is that none of these are a big deal since the person made it through unscathed.

But these are instances of survivor bias. Those who died doing those things are not here to tell us about it. There are also those who suffered nonlethal harm as a result. Dismissing those occurrences, especially when they are the norm, is the epitome of survivor bias, which relies on anecdotes over data. A person committing survivor bias focuses on entities that have made it through some selection, ordeal, or process, and assumes that represents the whole.

A person may say, “I wasn’t vaccinated and I’ve stayed healthy, so they’re unnecessary.” Or, “I have voraciously consumed ribs, eggs, and whole milk all my life and have below-average cholesterol. Those doctors and scientists don’t know what they’re talking about.” These conclusions take a sample size of one and apply it to the entire populace. They may even entail dismissing decades of properly-done research and empirical evidence. 

Moreover, even if a person turned out OK with a childhood of frequent smoking, drinking, and spankings, maybe he or she would have been even better without them. It might be more accurate to say that they turned out fine in SPITE of those things.

Then there’s the matter of where the ‘fine’ threshold lies. Is it merely maintaining mediocre employment while marrying, having children, and avoiding prison? I’ve heard persons who have managed not much more than this proclaim that they’ve “done OK.”

With regard to spanking, consistent research shows an increase in likely negative outcomes for those who are subjected to it. Unilaterally declaring that one has achieved an arbitrary benchmark of “doing OK” to assert that spanking is harmless is to dismiss sizable evidence to the contrary.

Another way of how it might work. One may say, “Vegans are so annoying, they always have to mention what they don’t eat.” But you are only hearing from vegans who tell you their dietary choices, not from those who refrain from doing so.

Survivor bias is also a regular feature of religion. In an interview with Larry King, Billy Graham cited a women who avoided a fatal crane plash through a series of delays that at the time seemed annoying but proved serendipitous. When Graham credited this to God, King pointed out there were scores of others who DID get on the plane.

Speaking of manned flights, the survivor bias term took root in World War II when Navy researchers studied damaged aircraft returning from missions. Their consequent suggestion was to add armor to the most-afflicted areas.  However, statistician Abraham Wald noted that researchers were only examining fighter planes that had made it back, meaning they could survive heavy hits to the affected areas. The better idea, he said, would be to galvanize parts of the plane that showed little to no damage since that is probably where planes that were shot down had gotten struck.  

Let’s look at some other examples. A study showed that cats which fell from less than six stories paradoxically had greater injuries than those who fall from six stories or higher. The initial suspicion was that the falling felines reached terminal velocity after righting themselves at five stories, after which they relaxed, leading to less severe injuries. However, a Straight Dope column suggested this was probably survivor bias since few dead cats would be brought to the veterinarian. Most of those who fell from six stories or more we likely killed on impact.

Now onto the plant world. Lianas are parasites that feast on trees, and the hosts of these unwelcome guests were seen to mostly be slow-growing and shade-tolerant. This led to a belief that lianas have stronger negative effects on these tree types. But further research showed liana infestation is actually more detrimental to trees that are light-demanding and fast-growing. So much more damaging, in fact, that it usually wipes them out, meaning researchers are less likely to find them.

The trees died, while failing mutual funds have a more figurative death. They are shuttered or absorbed into another fund. This means an investment company can accurately claim to be offering a better opportunity than what its track record would suggest since the mutual funds they are advertising are succeeding while those that failed have gone away.

During my time in Germany, I gazed in awe at the beautiful baroque architecture. But while it was amazing craftsmanship, that doesn’t mean J.S. Bach was surrounded only by stunning building designs in his time. It means those were the ones that survived because they were so amazing while the ugly ones were torn down.  

Likewise, most of us love stories with heroines like Barbara Corcoran, the Shark who turned a $1,000 loan into multibillion dollar business empire. But the idea that anyone with the right grit and inspiration can likewise become a successful entrepreneur, author, actor, soccer player, or inventor is survivor bias because we never see the failures. Nirvana and Apple both started in a garage, but there are many more bands and businesses who never left it.

My journey to skepticism was a meandering one with regular rest stops. I always thought psychics, astrologers, and Ouija boards were silly, but in the seventh grade I was friendly to notions of ghosts, alien visitors, Nostradamus, and the Loch Ness Monster firing from the Grassy Knoll.

That started to change when a friend picked up the James Randi book, Flim Flam! This terrific tome explained how fraudsters worked and outlined how misinterpreting or distorting data can lead to mistaken beliefs in phenomena such as the Bermuda Triangle

But in my late 20s, I still remained vulnerable to the appeal to nature fallacy and would accept personal testimony in lieu of double blind studies. Part of that was because of where I lived. I was surrounded by the Green Mountains, so when someone spoke about the power of nature, I associated it with the flowing streams, verdant hills, and amazing autumns I was treated to. The town I lived in had a population of 13,000, the same size as the place where I grew up.  That’s where the similarities ended. Those 13,000 Green Mountain boys, girls, men, and women included Wiccans, burned out hippies, naturopaths, and all manner of spiritualists and spirit-seekers. While I doubted those who said they were communicating with garden fairies, I believed in the purported power of wheatgrass and took it as true when someone told me a pine cone cured their rash.  

But those beliefs melted away as I started reading Discover and got a grasp on the basics of science I had sprinted from in high school and college. To try and make up for lost classroom time, I would pick up publications like Cliff’s Notes edition on chemistry. The good thing about it was that it was a $10 chemistry education. The bad thing about it was that it was a $10 chemistry education. But I was on the right path regardless.

The final holdout for me was Roswell. The government had changed its story about the incident so many times that it had little credibility on the issue. Further, it would be closedminded to think life could not exist elsewhere and arrogant to think Earthlings are without question the most enlightened creatures in the universe. My belief in a crashed spacecraft started to evaporate when I considered the time it would take aliens to reach us, even from a relatively close exoplanet. This got me looking into it deeper, and when I concluded four foot critters had not wound up in the New Mexico desert, my conversion to all-out skepticism was complete.

My gradual embrace of the movement is among the reasons I refrain from personal attacks on those who see these ideas from a more credulous perspective. We are all here to learn and should be capable of being persuaded by evidence. Besides, a personal attack will alienate the recipient, will be irrelevant to the point, and is unbecoming of a man purporting to blog about critical thinking.

Besides, I screw up, too. Today we will review some of the things I have gotten wrong in this forum. And I don’t mean just pointing I once wrote that Moline seemed to have about one chiropractor for every 2,000 persons when I now realize it’s about one for every thousand (sigh). Rather, we will look at when I have gotten substantive issues wrong, how I came to realize my errors, and what I have done about it.

The one that I most wish I had gotten right was when I wrote that 100 percent of Reiki practitioners have no medical training. I wrote this as a means of highlighting the practice’s lack of scientific backing or confirmatory double blind studies. While I have seen nothing since then to suggest Reiki has this evidence on its side, I was mortified to learn there are many nurses who ignore this and use Reiki on hospital and clinic patients. My mistake was being blissfully unaware that faux medicines had infiltrated legitimate institutions. When I learned that included hospitals in Moline, I launched an unsuccessful one-man campaign to change that. 

Around the same time, I blogged that a person following the Paleo diet would have difficulty getting enough fiber. A reader who followed the diet pointed out the Paleo allows for plenty of crunchy vegetables, so my assertion was erroneous. I thanked him for pointing this out, noting that I want all nonsense exposed, even if it appears on my blog. 

Next we’ll examine a point about which I was correct – but mistaken about what it meant. I wrote there was more formaldehyde in a pear than in a vaccine, which is true. But then I read on an anti-vaxxer’s blog that eating a substance was different having it injected subcutaneously because of the way the body would process it. By way of comparison, one could add a dash of mamba venom to the morning orange juice and suffer no ill effects. This does not mean that formaldehyde-containing vaccines are dangerous. It comes down to dose, and the amount in immunizations is far below the hazardous threshold.

This highlights the importance of being willing to consider angles that conflict with what we believe. While the anti-vaxxer was wrong on his overarching themes, he got this one item right. Because I considered this specific position and fact-checked it, I now know that when jousting with anti-vaxxers, I should reference dosage, not make the accurate but meaningless point about formaldehyde in fruit.

Keeping with emotionally-charged issues, I once wrote that circumcision was based entirely on religion and tradition and had no redeeming medical value. I have since learned of 40 studies that suggest there may be one benefit. One such study was of Ugandan couples, where the woman was HIV positive and the man was not. In the study, no infections occurred among the 50 circumcised men over 30 months, whereas 40 of 137 uncircumcised men became infected during this time. Both groups were given instructions on preventing infection and were supplied with condoms, though only one men in 10 used them.

The scientific reasons behind the HIV transmittal among the uncircumcised is that the inner surface of the foreskin contains Langerhans cells with HIV receptors, and those cells are probably the virus’ primary point of entry.

I maintain my objection to removing a healthy, functioning, highly innervated piece of flesh from the most vulnerable members of society. We don’t lop the breasts of developing females even though doing so would eliminate almost all instances of breast cancer. Circumcision should be an adult decision, as should the condom use that would prevent the great majority of transmissions from an HIV positive female to an uncircumcised male. But my future anti-snip rants will include the caveat that studies have shown it to reduce HIV transmission rates in Africa.

Moving on, I whiffed on my claim that there were no ape fossils in North America. I made this mistaken point while arguing against the likelihood of Bigfoot. A reader responded that there were indeed primate fossils on the continent. She provided a link to a reputable source, Popular Science. That article quoted Dr. John Flynn, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History. Flynn said the fossil record confirms there were primates in North America 50 million years ago.

I did not label him a shill for Big Sasquatch. I did not pull the secular equivalent to the Answers in Genesis statement of faith by declaring evidence invalid if it contradicted my unbending, preconceived notions. I accepted the proof and no longer make this disproved point when debating the existence of lumbering bipedal hominids outside a WWE ring.

Since I mentioned Answers in Genesis, let’s close with a claim from an admitted AIG disciple. Again, we will see that shutting off off everything from a person with which you disagree will eliminate the chance of learning something valuable from the exchange.

I wrote that bird and human embryos have gills, indicating common ancestry with fish. A creationist blogger responded, “Humans never have gill slits. We have pharyngeal pouch wrinkles which – if you squint just right – look a little like fish gills, but which are never slits into the baby, and which are never used in respiration and so are nothing like gills. No gills, no slits, no gill slits.”

He is correct on linguistic grounds, but not as far as this structure pertains to humans’ deep ancestry. What human embryos have are, in fact, not gills, but they are still signs of evolution. Dr. Jerry Coyne, University of Chicago biology professor emeritus explained, “Both chick and human embryos go through a stage where they have slits and arches in their necks like the gill slits and gill arches of fish. These structures are not gills and do not develop into gills in chicks and humans, but the fact that they are so similar to gill structures in fish at this point in development supports the idea that chicks and humans share a common ancestor with fish.”  All vertebrate embryos develop these structures, which are almost certainly vestigial remnants of the clefts of our fish ancestors.

Tony Britain added that when saying the folds aren’t slits, creationists are “partly correct, if by slit one means an unobstructed opening from the outside of the neck region to the inside of the throat of mammal embryos. They are technically correct as far as normal mammal development goes, however this is not the case with all non-fish vertebrates, nor is it always the case with mammals including humans. In most normal amniotes, the only thing keeping us from having at least one open slit in our first pharyngeal clefts are the thin membranes of skin, the ear drums. Without your ear drums you would have open channels from your outer ears, through your middle ears and Eustachian tubes, into your throat.”

Vestigial wing buds of kiwis do not enable the New Zealand bird to take flight, yet we still call them wings. It’s the same concept with the human embryo feature. Whether called gills or pharyngeal structures, they are vestigial traits. Even though they no longer develop into functioning gills, they are homologous to those characters in organisms where such functions develop.

I have this argument in my arsenal only because I entertained a creationist response and investigated what he wrote. Never be afraid to consider competing notions; in fact, be wary of straying into an echo chamber.

My ideas will not always be right, as the above examples show. I have been wrong before and will be again. There’s no shame in that. The shame would come in not admitting it and failing to allow my thinking to, how shall we say, evolve.