Mass hysteria

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“All I got was this lousy T-shirt story” (Windshield urban legend)

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Traditionally, urban legends came from an unknown source and were passed from one credulous listener to the next. Whether it was the $50 Porsche sold by a spurned spouse or a little girl embedded in the grill of a drunk driver who was unaware of his deceased passenger, there was never a name, place, or time associated with the stories, nor were such details requested.  

But today a legend may have a known starting point and might be followed with requests for proof. Conversely, it can be heard by millions of listeners within hours instead of years.

All this came together last week when a teenage Facebook poster wrote about finding a wadded-up shirt wrapped around her wiper and pinned to her car’s windshield. Ashley Hardacre found this out of place fashion piece after finishing work at Genesee Valley Mall in Flint, Mich. She promptly drove away, then warned others.

“There were two cars near me and one was running so I immediately felt uneasy and knew I couldn’t get out to get it off,” she wrote. “I knew better than to remove the shirt with cars around me so I drove over to a place where I was safe and got the shirt off.”

It would be hard to imagine a more mundane occurrence than a nearby running car in a mall parking lot. Yet, combined with the anomalous shirt, stories she had heard, and a heightened sense of either awareness or paranoia, the vehicle became part of a criminal plot with her at the center. 

Hence, the city most known for its wretched water supply was thrust back into the spotlight, with Hardacre’s post being shared nearly 100,000 times. She told CBS News her mother had warned her about criminal ploys to lure women out of their cars. “A lot of people think it is fake or it won’t happen to them,” she said. “But you can never be too safe.”

Never being too safe is a mindset that has resulted in products that protect cell phone users from brain cancer even though cell phone emissions are easily in the safe part of the EMF spectrum. It has also resulted in criminal charges for parents who let their children play in the park.

Several commenters joined Hardacre in her overreaction. A typical response was by John F, who posted, “This is a common practice for criminals who are either looking to carjack someone and unfortunately there are plenty of these type stories in bigger cities and young woman HAVE been abducted, raped and/or murdered using this type of situation.”

More often than not, police contribute to the panic, but in this case, Flint Township detective Brad Wangler downplayed the danger. “Nothing like this has ever happened before,” he said. “There have been no other incidences like this. It’s unknown as to what or why or who did this.”

Still, from now on, when Hardacre goes to her car after working until close, she will do so accompanied by mall security or police. There’s nothing wrong with added protection, but a shirt on a windshield is not a sound impetus for this beefed-up security. The overwhelming majority of assaults, rapes, and abductions are managed without enlisting the aid of a flannel fashion piece that is competing with a flyer for windshield space.

Some media sources conflated Hardacre’s story with a report from a verified sex trafficking victim. Snopes wrote that these reports made no effort to differentiate the gang rape victim’s account from the unrelated windshield caper. Some of the more irresponsible even quoted law enforcement officers who described the wrapped shirt as standard part of human trafficking.

Far from being normal procedure for conspiratorial kidnappers, the shirt turned out to be a prank, though clearly a very lame one. Not exactly on par with getting opposing fans to use placards to unknowingly announce, “WE SUCK.” Police interviewed the two men who placed the shirt and the derelict duo said they were shocked some persons found human trafficking overtones in it. Also, surveillance video shows they left an hour before Hardacre found the shirt, meaning they were not in the running car that had increased her panic.

Another difference between urban legends or yore and today is that sometimes, such as in this case, they can come to a neat, tidy close. I just wish the running automobile had been a clown car.

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“Super Bull” (Human trafficking)

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After scoring three points in 43 minutes, the New England Patriots exploded for 31 points in half that time and won another Super Bowl. They refused to die, a distinction they share with Super Bowl urban legends. First, it was the notion that the unofficial national holiday was also the busiest day of the year for domestic violence. Washington Post reporter Ken Ringle shot that rumor down, but now the game is falsely associated with human trafficking.

Like the myths surrounding missing children, these are topics in which persuading people can be difficult. Missing children, battered spouses, and human trafficking are some of our most serious issues and writers must choose their words carefully or risk being seen as insensitive and alienating their audience. So to be clear, human trafficking is an abomination of utmost concern – but there is a supposed tangential element of it that is being misrepresented.

The main perpetrators of the myth are politicians, sometimes aided by irresponsible reporters and law enforcement agents.

Elected and appointed leaders in host cities and states seem in their own competition for who can make the most hyperbolic statement. U.S. Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey proclaimed, “One Super Bowl after another after another has shown itself to be one of the largest events in the world where the cruelty of human trafficking goes on for several weeks.”

When he was Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott called the game, “the largest human trafficking incident in the United States.” Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels used the issue as a literal political football when he encouraged legislators to up the fines and prison terms for convicted traffickers and stipulated, “We must do it in time for the Super Bowl.”

NGOs get in on the antsy act as well. International Justice Mission members loudly declared they would rescue trafficked women at Super Bowl XLV, then quietly hoped everyone would forget about this pronouncement when they found no such victims.

The rumor has been around for at least a decade, but a 2011 report by the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women showed no evidence of any host city experiencing a spike in this activity as the Super Bowl approached.

The report is six years old, but the claims made then still hold. Examinations of arrest data in Super Bowl cities have revealed no increase in arrests for kidnapping, forced prostitution, pimping, or other charges that would be associated with human trafficking.

Most recently, Reason examined the arrest records for Harris County, Texas, during last week’s Super Bowl. The logs showed no arrests for sex trafficking, soliciting a minor, pimping, promoting prostitution, compelling prostitution, or any other charges that would suggest human traffickers were competing with football fans for hotel rooms.

Faced with this, some myth proponents consider the lack of arrests as proof that publicity about crackdowns is working. But this is similar to the tale of a man who banged a drum to keep giraffes out of the city square and cited the lack of tall ungulates as proof his plan was succeeding.

Evidence of a correlation between a city hosting both the Super Bowl and an influx of human traffickers just isn’t there. Even the one time that there seemed to be, it was the result of selective evidence and correlation-causation errors.

New Jersey authorities increased their focus on human traffickers prior to Super Bowl XLVIII, and ended up rescuing 16 children – clearly a desirable result. But this operation had taken place in areas up to 30 miles from the Meadowlands and went on for MONTHS, with the announcement strategically made during game week. This was disingenuous and it only proved that an increase in arrests for any offense in any jurisdiction will happen if that’s what authorities prioritize. If Des Moines police focus on litter reduction and funnel resources into that, there will be an uptick in citations for carelessly tossing aside Big Mac wrappers.

 

 

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“Devil may scare” (Satanic Panic)

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There is Sasquatch, Yeti, Nessie, and dozens of less-celebrated cryptos. But the most enduring monster whose existence has yet to be verified is Beelzebub, the devil, Lucifer, Apollyon, Satan, the Dark Lord. This many-monikered beast, unlike the rest of the monsters, is indirectly responsible for much misery.   

Now, for being the embodiment of evil, the cloven-hoofed one has never harmed anybody himself. But there have been some who committed atrocities in his name, such as Richard Ramirez who went on a spree of break-ins, rapes, and murders with an inverted pentagram tattooed on his palm. There were a few others who did similar deeds, but the most frequent Satanic byproduct are baseless accusations made against someone.

Those took place in 17th Century Salem and continue today with Pizzagate. I saw one online poster who claimed that 800,000 children are snatched each year by Satanists. She was basing the figure on information provided by the National Center for Missing and Exploited children. But she was basing the reason for their disappearance on negative evidence, wild speculation, and filling in the sizable gaps with her agenda. While about 2,000 children a day are reported missing, this figure includes children who show up 45 minutes later to announce they had taken the scenic route home from school. It includes those who got hurt while hiking and are rescued four days later. It includes runaways, children who are abandoned by their parents, and those who are kidnapped by noncustodial mothers or fathers. Just 1.4 percent of missing children are taken by strangers, and most of these kidnappers worship another deity besides Satan or no deity at all.

So even if five percent of the kidnappers were Satanists, this means that six children are year are taken by devil worshippers, not 800,000. The poster had made the preposterous claim to bolster the case for her belief in Pizzagate – a tale twisted and bizarre even by the ridiculous standards of conspiracy theorists. This theory has expanded to potentially include any pizza joint, any business adjacent to a pizza joint, and anyone who even once patronizes these establishments. All this is said to be part of a nationwide kidnapping and child rape ring, led by Lucifer his Satanic sidekicks, Hillary Clinton and John Podesta.

This is a new twist on an ancient idea. The devil figured prominently in Paradise Lost. New Testament writers blamed him for sending a herd of pigs over a cliff and for causing people to fling themselves into a fire. He even appears to win an argument with the archangel Michael over an unspecified issue regarding Moses’ corpse in Jude –  perhaps the most unhinged, bizarre, paranoid, threatening, rambling, and doomsday-desiring book in the Bible. And though it was likely due to a translation error, Satan makes one cameo in the Old Testament when God permits him to destroy Job. The horned one even takes the blame for future carnage and calamity, in Revelation.

But our focus will be relatively modern. Anton LaVey penned the Satanic Bible in the 1960s and become a cult celebrity. He played the devil in Rosemary’s Baby in the 1970s, a decade that also gave us The Exorcist, The Omen, and cattle mutilations that some pegged on Satanists.

In 1972, Mike Warnke wrote a book in which he claimed to have previously been a Satanic high priest, a position from which he witnessed mandatory blood sacrifices, ritual rape, and child abuse. A few years later, Michelle Smith wrote Michelle Remembers, in which she insisted the she recalled seeing children kept in cages, adults having fingers sliced off, and even baby sacrifices. Neither Warnke nor Smith could provide any names and were unable to lead police to any perpetrators, victims, or corpses. This set the tone for what was to come: Over-the-top claims followed by panic and sometimes false convictions, but never a capture of any felonious Satanists.  

Onto the 1980s, lowlighted by Geraldo specials and the almost-requisite inclusion of the adjective “Satanic” before the phrase “heavy metal band.” This, even though for every genuinely Satanic band like Deicide, there were 100 Judas Priests, for whom 666 was just another number. And for all the panic about devil worshippers, the damage was actually being done by child-molesting Catholic priests and Christian televangelists caught in a series of scandals.

A few wayward derelicts may have dabbled in the dark arts and performed a few silly rituals, but most were doing it for the thrill of being iconoclastic outcasts, not because they were truly evil. For instance, when I was 20, I saw a truck that had been spray painted with the slogan, “Kill For Satin.” It had been thrown on there by a hoodlum who was either linguistically-challenged or who was showing unusual fealty to smooth fabric.  

To be clear, there were about half a dozen murders attributed to demons’ minions in the 70s and 80s, but this was uncovered by means of traditional law enforcement and confessions, not from the revelations of someone privy to the inner workings of Satanic cults or from daytime talk show investigations.

On Saturday Night Live, Jon Lovitz portrayed a devil who made failed attempts at wickedness, while the Church Lady chastised her guests for being under Satan’s spell. Indeed, much of this had a comic edge to it, but there was a much darker side that featured many ruined lives. Not ruined by Satanic cult members, who killed very few, and who certainly represented a microscopic percentage of the homicidal maniacs. Rather, innocent lives were ruined by the collective hysteria of parents, press, and prosecutors. The result was the loss of freedom for innocent persons accused of kidnapping, torture, sexual abuse and murder.

This Satanic Panic was an example of a moral panic, which Blake Smith of Skeptoid defines as “a cultural event wherein people become hypervigilant to a threat to the status quo and tend to throw reason and rationality out in favor of seeking protection from the perceived threat at all costs.”

A recent moral panic example would be last year’s glut of clown sightings. Past examples include the 1920s Red Scare, which was a virtual Commie lovefest compared to the House Un-American Activities Committee and Joseph McCarthy hearings 30 years later.

With regard to the Satanic Panic, it promoted the notion that organized cults of Luciferians were clandestinely controlling childcare facilities and using their positions to molest, murder, dismember, and torment. 

The most infamous case was the McMartin Daycare trial. Judy Johnson’s 2-year-old son had a reddened rectum and trouble using the toilet, two facts which convinced her he was being molested at the daycare center. Other parents were asked to look for evidence this was happening to their children as well.

Toddlers barely old enough to talk were coached into giving the “correct” answer and, eager to please adults, did so. The paranoia was so extreme that Johnson even claimed her son had reported seeing daycare members fly about the room and many persons believed this. There were reports of secret tunnels and rail tracks beneath the daycare center that would transport the children to other buildings to be tortured and molested. Hot air balloons were offered as another means of transportation, though this would seemingly be superfluous for someone who could fly. Despite the ease with which such ideas as hot air balloon rental and subterranean transportation could be checked out, this wasn’t about logic or facts, it was about fear and revenge.

None of the McMartin defendants were convicted and some were never even formally charged, but some still spent years in jail, unable to pay the seven-figure bail amounts that were also part of the panic. It was at the time the longest, most expensive trial in U.S. history and it was all based on such notions as flying Satanic daycare workers.

This injustice was not enough to slow the paranoia. Dan and Fran Keller spent 20 years in prison after being convicted of molesting children at their daycare center in Oak Hill, Texas. Transportation again figured prominently in the case, with the victims allegedly flown out of the country to be molested in a Satanic orgy perpetrated by Mexican soldiers before being shuttled back in time to be picked up by their parents. Other claims were babies used as shark food and children being forced to watch the sacrificial slaughter of kittens and puppies. The Kellers were released when the doctor who had provided the only physical evidence at their trial recanted.

In both daycare cases, children ages 2 to 5 were asked leading questions and praised when they gave the desired response. They were even allowed to mix with each other in between giving testimonies and were encouraged to collaborate and come to shared conclusions.

A bizarre false confession led to another conviction, this time of Paul Igraham, whose daughter accused him of sexual abuse. Imgram was a committed Pentecostal who had no memory of the alleged attacks, but surmised that a demon must have seized control of him.

So when his daughter claimed to have been in ceremonies in which 25 babies were sacrificed and in which she was raped 800 times, he figured it must be true and that the devil made him do it. There was no physical evidence or other witnesses despite these horrors being allegedly being perpetrated by a large cult over many years. No matter in the era of the Satanic Panic, and Ingraham spent two decades in prison.

While these devilish tales took place in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, Pizzagate shows that the notion still has life. When it comes to getting people to act irrationally and believe the farfetched, few things can match the fear that the devil inspires. As our spray painting buddy would put it, “Satin rules!”

 

  

   

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“Water haphazard” (Fluoridation studies)


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In the mid-1940s, some U.S. cities began adding tiny amounts of fluoride to public water supplies in hopes of fighting tooth decay. John Birch types suspected this was a communist plot and some eventually considered it a danger right up there with Buddy Holly and A Catcher in the Rye (although the Society itself only formally objected to the concept of governments making unilateral health decisions for the populace).

These days, Nazis have replaced Commies as the oppressive regime most associated with fluoridated water. There are some baseless online assertions that it was used in death camps to make the captives either compliant or stupid. Politifact interviewed U.S. Holocaust Museum historian Patricia Heberer, who insisted that none of the Nazi’s infamous medical experiments involved fluoride. Even if they had, it would be fallacious thinking to declare, “Nazis were evil. Nazis used fluoridated water. Therefore fluoridated water is evil.” The specific fallacy here is one of composition, where it is asserted that something that is true as a whole is true of any part of it.   

About 75 percent of U.S. homes today receive fluoridated water. I’m unsure what Minnesota’s policy was in the late 1990s, but fluoridated water there had a powerful opponent at the time, Gov. Jesse Ventura. In an interview with Salon, Ventura gave the  obligatory Third Reich reference, followed by a more reasoned stance about health care decisions being left to the parents, before getting to his primary point. “Fluoride is the main component of Prozac! What you’ve got is people drinking Prozac-water! Prozac calms you and dumbs you down so you’re less emotional.” With a rant like that, we can be sure Ventura hadn’t had any Prozac water beforehand. But equating one ingredient in a substance with the substance itself would be like calling Ventura a glass of water since his body is about two-thirds that.  

When Politifact contacted Ventura about his source for these claims, he provided them a link to prisonplanet.com, an Alex Jones site. Jones calls fluoridated water a chemical weapon meant to depopulate, which if true serves as a shining example of government inefficiency. Since this genocide-by-faucet effort began 70 years ago, the U.S. population has increased 130 percent.

Another fluoride folly from Jones is claiming that studies have shown that fluoridated water brings downs children’s IQ. Joseph Mercola and Mike Adams have also championed this idea, which they based on a press release distributed by Fluoride Action Now. Reuters mistakenly ran the release as a news article, thus spooking more people than if it had just appeared on Natural News or InfoWars. The release claimed that a Harvard review of 42 studies showed that U.S. children exposed to fluoridated drinking water suffered lower IQs. But going beyond the exclamation points and panic over stealthy mind control, we find the review made no such claim. In fact, none of the studies were about U.S. fluoridated water.

Mercola wrote that the studies linked moderate-to-high high fluoride exposure with reduced intelligence. These conclusions were likely correct, but Mercola is playing a word game here and hoping no one notices. He used these studies to bolster his contention that fluoridated water was a danger. Yet the amount of fluoride in most U.S. drinking water is between one-half and one milligram per liter, while the studies Mercola cited were dealing with persons exposed to between 2 to 10 milligrams per liter and who also ingested fluoride from burning coal.  

So while the studies showed that children who lived in areas with high fluoride exposure had lower IQ scores than those who lived in low-exposure areas, scale and context must be considered. With regard to scale, Dr. Steven Novella said: “Most of these studies’ high-fluoride groups used concentrations many times higher than allowable limits in the United States, and many of the low-fluoride groups had concentrations in the range that is optimal by water fluoridation regulations.” This means the negative IQ impact occurred only in areas where fluoride levels were much higher than what the EPA permits.  

As far as context, none of the studies involved populations exposed to artificially-fluoridated drinking water. Instead, all the studies came from parts of China or Iran that have endemic high-fluoride well water, in addition to the burning coal.

Many chemicals are benign at low doses, harmful at medium amounts, and fatal in high concentrations. The same Mercola website that called fluoridated water a danger to children ran an article that referred to kale as “a superfood unparalleled among green leafy vegetables.”

Yet Snopes pointed out that kale contains thiocyanate, which can kill if ingested in sufficient quantities. It would be absurd to suggest that kale could kill, but no more ridiculous than asserting fluoridated water is a public health menace. To the contrary, the CDC lists it as one of the 10 Great Public Health Achievements of the 20th Century. Drink it, brush your teeth with it, wash your kale off with it, you’ll be fine.

 

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“Flaming the fans” (Korean deaths)

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I have been fortunate to live in multiple countries and each have elements that give them character. In German restaurants, I shared my dining experience with dogs, who are welcome is such establishments. In a less charming recollection, I was chatting with two men and a young woman in Egypt when I asked the woman if she would like to play chess. One of the men cautioned me that mixed-gender amusements between unmarried persons are forbidden. If this game were to take place, the checkmate would be followed by my opponent being pummeled by her parents.

Then during my 20 months in South Korea, I was immersed in the most respectful and courteous society I’ve ever been around. But it also featured the most careless and  selfish drivers I’ve ever had to share a road with. So you might be cut off and berated by a motorist who three minutes earlier had addressed you with the utmost deference. My memories there also include the homogenized, hideous food and getting to cross three feet into North Korea on a tour of the demilitarized zone.

But most amazing to my Korean friends is that I slept with a fan on and lived to blog about it. For the Asian nation is home to a belief that leaving a fan on overnight is often fatal. While Americans might be amused by the idea of fan deaths, Koreans would think the same of our equally misinformed idea that swimming after eating can result in fatal cramps. The Korean urban legend, however, has some official teeth to it since doctors and government agencies warn against sleeping with a fan on. But a scientific analysis of the situation shows that the supposed fan deaths are misdiagnoses and also  instances of confirmation bias, subjective validation, and mistaking correlation for causation.

Some have speculated that Korean physiology, geography, or electric fan design are to blame, but all these explanations fall flat upon reflection. Koreans who move to other countries do not suffer these deaths, nor do residents of countries with similar climate and elevation. And there is nothing distinctive about Korean fans except that some are equipped with automatic shut-off features to guard against their nefarious nature. 

Electric fans have been available in what is now South Korea since the late 19th century, yet the supposed connection to untimely deaths only started attracting widespread notice in the 1970s. These incidents usually happened during the summer in a closed room, and most often involved a senior citizen sleeping alone.

But there is a non-causal relationship between summer deaths and fans running since that’s when people use them. And the elderly are always more likely to die than any other group and they are more vulnerable in hot weather.

Still, the Korea Consumer Protection Board cautions that doors should be left open when using the fans, on the belief that prolonged exposure could lead to water loss and hypothermia. The board also noted 20 cases of fan deaths in two years and attributed many of them to asphyxiation via electric fans or their likewise-lethal, climate-controlled-cousin, air conditioning.

Certainly, people die in Korea and some draw in circulated air for their last breath. But deducing a correlation between the two requires ignoring nonlethal fan use and deaths that take place without fans.

Proposed explanations are all over the morbid map. The most common culprit is said to be asphyxiation caused by wind currents. However, the deceased did not have the brain damage that would be consistent with such a demise.

Hypothermia is the second most popular guess and is allegedly caused by the fan evaporating enough perspiration from the victim’s skin that it sinks their body temperature. Yet Korea is wet year round, even more so during monsoon season when most deaths are said to occur, so this idea is implausible.

A competing notion is that when fans blow on sleepers, air currents reduce the atmospheric pressure on their faces by up to 20 percent, and that this also reduces oxygen availability by that amount. But if this were the cause, people spending a few hours outside on a breezy day would die, though they would at least get to spend their last moments at the lake or having a barbecue.

Other ideas are worth noting only for their absurdity. One is that the fan’s blades slice oxygen molecules in half. A less bizarre but equally wrong idea is that the fans produce carbon dioxide.

Brian Dunning at Skeptoid talked with two pathologists who have performed autopsies on Koreans who died with fans running. Dr. John Linton said, “There are several things that could be causing the fan deaths, like pulmonary embolisms, cerebrovascular accidents, or arrhythmia. There is little scientific evidence to support that a fan alone can kill you if you are using it in a sealed room.”

Similarly, Dr. Lee Yoon Song noted, “The victim’s original defects such as heart or lung disease are the main cause of death in these cases.”

Though sound, their positions are a minority in Korea, even among doctors. But there’s no danger here, short of a ceiling fan crashing down.

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“Aye, robot” (Artificial Intelligence)

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In high school, my history teacher related that in the 1930s, vehicles rolling down the road averaged 5.2 occupants apiece. Cars were still a relative novelty, families who had them likely only had one, and people knew their neighbors better than today. So everyone piled into one DeSoto or Packard and headed to the dance halls and general stores.

As the Depression gave way to a postwar economy and interstate highways were built, more persons began driving, and the average number of occupants per vehicle went down. That dwindling continued until, by the teacher’s 1985 presentation, the average vehicle had 2.3 occupants. Extrapolating the trend, he deduced that by 2020, the average vehicle would have 0.5 occupants, meaning that every other car would have no one in it.

He delivered this with his usual deadpan manner, causing some in the classroom to think he really believed it. In fact, he was demonstrating how statistics can be misinterpreted by mistake or misused on purpose.

The great irony is that we now have the technology to inadvertently validate his faux prediction. Safety concerns will probably preclude that from happening, although that’s not necessarily logical. Computer cars that don’t get distracted and which have built-in safety features are better than the lunatic who almost ran me off the road this morning.

Driverless cars are a reality, although they always have a person ready to take over the navigating and negotiating of the streets if the system fails. The cars are the result of Artificial Intelligence, which has also given us automated financial transactions, Kasparov-vanquishing Deep Blue, and Semantic Scholar, a search engine for academic research.

Despite these impressive gains, the media’s treatment of AI is less than kind. This has always been the case. While concepts like The Matrix and The Terminator far pre-date Shakespeare, even his brilliant work paints a motif about the omnipotence of providence and royalty. Macbeth and similar tragic characters mess with these designs at their peril. From Frankenstein to The Twilight Zone, and even in real life examples such as the first test tube baby, many persons assume ominous results if humans venture beyond what a god or nature has allotted them. 

Hollywood can largely be forgiven. A movie about AI being used to seamlessly improve a car dealership’s algorithms would likely not be a blockbuster even if you spotted it Alec Baldwin and Renée Zellweger. The mainstream press, however, has no such excuse for its sensationalism. One example of the media going overboard is how it handled an open letter about AI’s future which was penned by the Future of Life Institute. The letter read in part, “Because of the great potential of AI, it is important to research how to reap its benefits while avoiding potential pitfalls.”

According to Popular Science, this measured idea was turned into something more disconcerting. Headlines blared, “Artificial intelligence experts sign open letter to protect mankind from machines” and “Experts pledge to rein in AI research.” Contributing to the angst are Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, two giants in their fields who go beyond their areas of considerable expertise to warn of AI calamities. That they are speaking beyond their normal fields is not a reason to dispute what they are saying – no genetic fallacies here – but their lack of substantiation and support are the issue.

The panic most often takes the form of contemplating what happens when the machines that Mankind has invented reach the Singularity. This is the moment at which AI is capable of improving itself. This, in terrifying theory, could be used to enslave, destroy, or at least inconvenience us.

But at what point would this be possible, and what precisely is AI? Per the Oxford Dictionary, AI refers to computer systems that are able to perform tasks that had previously required human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision making, and language translation.

The Internet has more information stored in it than the most knowledgeable person ever, by a very comfortable margin. But there is a difference between knowledge and intelligence so the Internet would not by itself by AI, though an Internet that could search itself might be. Also, it can be used to facilitate other AI notions, such as those outlined by Oxford.

But this is getting way, way ahead of ourselves and our technology. Computer scientist Oren Etzioni explained in Popular Science why the Singularity is a long ways off, if it’s even plausible.

“We’ve had some real progress in areas like speech recognition, self-driving cars and AlphaGo,” he said. “But we have many other problems to solve in creating artificial intelligence, including reasoning. For instance, a machine would have to be able to understand that 2+2=4 and not just calculate it. Natural language understanding is another example. Even though we have AlphaGo, we don’t have a program that can read and fully understand a simple sentence. The true understanding of natural language, the breadth and generality of human intelligence, our ability to both play Go and cross the street and make a decent omelet are all hallmarks of human intelligence. All we’ve done today is develop narrow savants that can do one little thing super well.”

Besides being a long ways off, if even possible, we cannot say with certainty that AI would even result in what alarmist headlines suggest. Would reaching the Singularity be detrimental in the form of Asimov-defying robots, would it be beneficial like the Jetsons’ maid, or would it be something neutral, like AI keeping itself entertained because we were too slow to be of interest to it?

The entire concept is predicated on well above average human intelligence being achieved, perhaps even going so far as accomplishing the accumulation of as much intelligence as is possible. As such, AI could resolve conundrums we never considered solvable or even knew existed. This super advanced knowledge could include realizing the benefits of altruism, causing AI to gift us with immortality, beyond warp speed travel, and the ability levitate objects so we can retrieve the Doritos without getting up.

Or maybe none of this happens, good or bad, so for now, there’s no reason to arrest a developing technology.

For the risk to become real, a sequence of ‘ifs’ would have to occur: 1. Scientists would have create a human equivalent of AI. 2. This hypothetical HAL would need to achieve a full understanding of how its inner workings function. 3. The AI would need both the desire and means to improve itself. For instance, it might gain the knowledge of how to build a better version, but lack the requisite appendages to do so. 4. If achieved, this self-improvement would need to be able to be continued until it reached a still-undefined superintelligence. 5. It would need to accidentally or intentionally start using this superintelligence to annihilate us. 6. In the decades or centuries leading up to this, our top scientists and computer programmers would need to have failed to account for this or have an effective safety valve in place.

To be fair, working on the issue outlined in number six is what the alarmists are getting at. But right now we are so far from this that we wouldn’t know how to approach the problem. We don’t know what form a malevolent AI would take or how to start working against it. Science works best when it concerns itself with what is observable, knowable, and testable, and these qualifiers currently allow for no room for plotting a preemptive strike against an invading android army. 

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“Tasting the fifth” (MSG hysteria)

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Before GMO was a term or a thing, before gluten was known to anyone besides dieticians, and when “organic” was a word limited to advanced chemistry classes, MSG reigned supreme in the Field of Food Fears.

While it has given way to other unfounded panics, concern over monosodium glutamate still exists and “No MSG” signs are obligatory adornments to Chinese restaurant storefronts.

Meanwhile, umami is afforded grand status and is considered a staple of the culinary in-crowd. Enterprising chefs have built lucrative careers centered on this fifth taste, which is a darling of the Food Network and similar outlets. When an Umami Burger chain opened in New York City, customers waited three hours for a table.

The fifth taste is treated as the culinary equivalent of finding the Fifth Dimension, while MSG gets kicked out like a fifth Beatle. Yet they are chemically related and umami is detected by the receptors that MSG targets. When the three-hour wait was up, customers began chomping on a burger that contained 2,185 milligrams of glutamate.

The tale began in 1908 when scientist Kikunae Ikeda pondered why a certain Japanese vegetarian soup tasted meaty. In his lab, Ikdea isolated the soup’s seaweed, dried it, and noticed that a crystalline form was developing. Tasting the crystals, he found them to be soup’s mystery flavor. Ikeda deduced that the amino acid glutamate was largely responsible for producing this distinctive flavor. He received a patent for MSG and began producing it. He named this taste umami – essentially Japanese for delicious – and salt, sweet, sour, and bitter welcomed a new member to their fraternity.  

A great flavor revolution had begun, but 60 years later, Dr. Ho Man Kwow wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine that he had experienced numbness, weakness, and heart palpitations whenever he ate at Chinese restaurants. He suggested MSG was to blame. This post hoc reasoning gave way to mass hysteria, and Chinese Restaurant Syndrome was born. Anti-MSG books were published and Chinese restaurants moved to eliminate MSG foods from their establishments.

However, a more measured response took place in the form of double blind scientific studies. And in 1993 a study showed that MSG symptoms occurred at the same rate whether a person was consuming MSG or a placebo. That was followed two years later by a report that concluded MSG is safe when “eaten at customary levels.” Then epidemiologist Matthew Freeman published a review of 40 years of MSG research and concluded that, “Clinical trials have failed to identify a consistent relationship between the consumption of MSG and the constellation of symptoms that comprise the syndrome.”

In fact, the no-MSG trend is a Western idiosyncrasy, so the Chinese would be suffering perpetual fatigue and discomfort if this phenomenon were real. Still, to avoid the MSG label and its unfounded stigma, most persons who target the umami audience will use natural glutamates instead of what Ikeda discovered. But chemically, these are the same.

There is little beyond anecdotes to suggest MSG consumption will result in unpleasant symptoms. These symptoms include headaches and other pedestrian annoyances, but for those who prefer their fears more exaggerated, we have Joseph Mercola, who claims MSG will cause brain damage that leads to ALS, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s.

He bases this on an assertion that MSG is a toxin which instigates a pathological process that damages nerve cells by excessively stimulating neurotransmitters. I could come across no science to support this, a distinction I suspect I share with Mercola.

The blogger Skeptical Raptor noted it’s possible that a microscopic percentage of the population could be at risk of negative reactions owing to the relationship between the glutamate ion and neural transmitters. But even if that were the case, it is supremely unlikely that one could consume enough MSG to cause this.

And even if that could somehow happen, the population as a whole wouldn’t need to avoid MSG any more than everyone should bypass Reese’s Pieces because a few among us have peanut allergies.

 

 

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“Do you want lies with that?” (Fast food hysteria)

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McDonald’s is not my first culinary choice, nor even my 11th. But my home decision-making is limited to when schoolwork is done and when bedrooms are cleaned, so my five children see to it that we end up at the Golden Arches once or twice a month.

There, many dangers await, according to an assortment of gruesome graphics and frightful photos. We’ll look today at the stated dangers of a standard meal of a Big Mac, fries, and Coke. First, though, a couple of more items that appear in announcements featuring capital letters, multiple exclamation points, and exhortations to arise from slumber.

One video shows a McDonald’s cheeseburger being dipped in acid. The commentator notes that four hours later, it is merely darkened, not broken down, and invites viewers to imagine this black blob festering inside of them. However, the acid has no digestive properties, nor is it in someone’s stomach working with other organs to break the food down and dispense it through the body for nutritional benefit. The experiment is pointless from a scientific standpoint, but does meet its fearmongering intent.

Another video is of a hamburger that is said to be from two to 14 years old, yet neither this former cow nor the bun that houses it has begun to rot. There is no way to verify the hamburger’s age, but the claim could be true, and it has nothing to do with a plot between evil corporations, mad scientists, and Grimace. It has everything to do with storage. Lacking sufficient moisture in the food or surroundings, bacteria and mold will not grow and decomposition will not occur. A hamburger’s size and shape allow it to repel moisture quickly, which makes decomposition even less likely. And that’s true whether it’s a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, a Jumbo Jack, or Amy’s California Veggie Burger.

Now onto the main course. A trio of viral graphics purports to establish that a Big Mac, Coke, and fries make for a most malevolent meal. We already know what happens to someone when they consume tens of thousands of Big Macs and Cokes. They make a couple of documentary cameos, get a book published, and become a slice of Americana and a borderline D List celebrity.

But the focus here is one serving of each, so let’s start with the sandwich and its distinctive two lower buns. The first point in the graphic is that the Big Mac hooks us because of how our ancestors adapted. It reads, “Our brains evolved during a time when food was scarce, so we became adept at choosing high-calorie foods.” This is meant to suggest that our Neolithic grandpappies needed high-calorie meals to survive because their brains were developing, but that we no longer need this and yet continue to crave it. Combined with our hunting-gathering now being limited to us foraging in the vicinity of the deep freeze, our bodies are paying a (literally) heavy price. But this point has the connection between high-calorie food and brain development backwards. It’s not that our brains evolved and grew, necessitating that we eat high calorie foods to compensate. Rather, we developed our cognitive function from scarfing food that was high in fat and protein, causing our brains to grow and develop.

Whatever the evolutionary impact of Big Mac consumption, the graphic next warns us that it will “trigger your brain’s reward system by releasing a surge of feel-good chemicals such as dopamine, which induce feelings of pleasure.” This is accurate, but is a half-truth without context. Anytime pleasure is received, dopamine is released. So if one enjoys Big Macs, here comes the neurotransmitter rush. This goes for any food, as well as roller coasters, poker, and listening to Beethoven, if one enjoys those pursuits.

The second half of this point reads, “This process works in a similar way to cocaine and contributes to the likelihood of compulsive eating.” This is at once the guilt-by-association and composition fallacies. For any neophyte critical thinkers out there, first, welcome to my blog. Second, a composition fallacy is when someone takes two items that maybe have something in common and asserts this means they are alike in totality. But while Big Macs and cocaine are both ingested and may enhance released dopamine, the similarities end there. No one goes into beef withdrawal, the special sauce doesn’t tear families apart, and no mother has ever given birth to a pickle-addicted baby.

A third claim warns of excessive amounts of high fructose corn syrup and sodium. Yet there are just seven grams of the former, compared to the 30 grams in fat-free yogurt. The sodium is a little high, but at just over 40 percent of the recommended daily limit, is not a dangerous amount. The graph further claims this could lead to dehydration, yet sports drinks contain sodium precisely because of the role it plays in replacing electrolytes lost through perspiration.

Next is an assertion that the Big Mac takes 51 days to digest. This is off by 50, by which I don’t mean that it takes 101 days. The graph offers no source for this and it has now gone from half-truths to zero-truths.

It then veers back to half-truths by accurately listing what is in the two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun. But it never bothers to explain the relevance and this is meant only to appeal to chemophobia. This is accomplished by  referencing ammonium sulfate, azodicarbonamide, and many other polysyllabic offerings. One could do this with almost any item, including human blood, green tea, and bananas.

Enough about the sandwich, on to what we are going to wash it down with. A second viral graphic makes some astonishing claims about what happens when one drinks a Coke. First up is the assertion that the 10 teaspoons of sugar in a serving would make the consumer vomit if it weren’t for phosphoric acid that makes it less sweet. But BuzzFeed quoted Dr. Kimber Stanhope, a nutritional biologist, as saying, “This is not true. We have studied hundreds of participants in our studies who consumed beverages that contained more than 10 teaspoons of sugar, but no phosphoric acid. No one ever vomited due to the sweetness, and I don’t remember any of them ever reporting that they felt nauseated due to the sweetness.”

The graph also attempts the dopamine/drug gambit: “Your body ups your dopamine production by stimulating the pleasure centers of your brain. This is physically the same way heroin works.” The composition fallacy was addressed earlier, so here I just want to focus on the problem with cherry picking. A dopamine deficiency could lead to Parkinson’s, so taking this one isolated fact, a person could claim this shows that chugging away on Coke while shooting up heroin would be a beneficial for avoiding nervous system disorders.

Yet another tale of lurid lunches and diabolic dinners centers on McDonald’s French fries. The associated graph purports to show the difference between what we in the U.S. consume, compared to our northerly neighbors. Our fries are supposedly crammed with 17 dangerous Frankenstein concoctions, while the fortunate Canadians are worry-free.

Again, the chemophobia is almost as heavy as the ketchup I prefer on my fried potatoes. A long series of chemicals are listed without explaining what it means or why it should matter. And the truth is, dimethylpolysiloxane is there to reduce foaming and oil splattering, while sodium acid pyrophosphate is added to prevent the fries from turning gray. These agents and the rest play an important role and are all safe. Another key point is that toxicity and danger are determined by dose, not chemical or element.

When I pointed all this out to the Friend who posted the graphic, he lamented, “Why can’t we just have fries, salt, and ketchup?” Yet those could be made to sound scary if one doesn’t know better. Salt is a fusion of sodium and chloride, which are potentially dangerous on their own. Sodium will even explode under the right conditions. Ketchup has monosodium glutamate in it and potatoes contain chlorogenic acid. When I typed that last one, it gave me a squiggly line underneath. They don’t even know what it is and they are feeding it to our children!

When Mike Barrett at naturalsociety.com, writes, “McDonald’s fries contain a petrol-based chemical called tertiary butylhydroquinone,” he is either being ignorant or a fear monger. This ingredient serves as a food preservative and Barrett’s point is no more valid than him questioning the efficiency of Exxon’s gasoline because it has a common ingredient with a tasty side order.  

Barrett next asks, “Did you know that McDonald’s French fries contain a form of silicone found in Silly Putty?” I did not, though I was aware that the same element or chemical can be used safely in multiple products, as what it’s combined with will change its properties.

With a wealth of scientific information readily available, there is no excuse for spreading fear over facts. Had Barrett conducted a Google search, he would have found websites like chem4kids.com, where concepts like chemical reactions are explained in deliberately simple terms. I will make a point to introduce my children to that site the next time we access McDonald’s WiFi.

 

 

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“Billy goat’s bluff” (Cubs curse)

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The Chicago Cubs had Major League Baseball’s best record this season and are in position to win the pennant and World Series for the first time in 71 and 108 years, respectively. The last time the Cubs won the pennant, World War II had ended the month prior, while their last World Championship came midway between the Spanish-American War and World War I. Newspapers announcing that Cubs victory cost one cent.  

Two years prior to that, the Cubs won 116 games, the MLB record. When that team lost the World Series, there was no talk of any other cause than pitching, hitting, fielding, and base running. If such a monumental post-season letdown were to happen today, it would be considered a further vindication of the Curse of the Billy Goat.

The story has multiple versions, but the gist is that an enraged tavern owner declared in 1945 that the Cubs would never win the World Series again. After being a Wrigley Field regular all season, the goat was given the boot during the Fall Classic. Even today, the owner’s words have held true. Countering the idea of a curse is that when it was uttered, there were already 37 non-goat related championship-free seasons and the Cubs had lost their last seven World Series.

Belief in curses is a form of magical thinking, where two events are tied together and one said to cause the other, without considering other factors. Before going further, I want to stipulate that Cubs fans who cite the billy goat are different from believers in Tarot Cards or Ouija boards. There are people who genuinely believe in the power of those things, whereas few persons actually think a sports curse is real. A devotee of the sports page is going to have much less concern over a billy goat than a fervent Gemini will have over an ominous horoscope. Baseball fans spend the season analyzing possible trades, batting order changes, and middle relief shortcomings, with curses only being discussed late in contending seasons. Meanwhile, the horoscope enthusiast plans the totality of their lives around its words.

To further demonstrate the difference, consider how the two types react when prophecies are negated. When Boston’s Curse of the Bambino was reversed in 2004, Red Sox fans were euphoric. By contrast, astrology believers react with hostility when it’s pointed out horoscopes don’t work, that they merely contain general terms that would apply to most people and also mostly tell readers what they want to hear. If anyone believes in the billy goat curse, it is likely someone who believes in curses in general and not an octogenarian Cubbies fan fretting that it’s going to happen again.

So the point of this post is not to argue against the reality of sports curses, it’s to analyze why rational persons can become captivated by something they don’t believe in.

For this phenomenon to occur, the first requirement is that an alleged incident be highlighted as the starting point. This will allow the mass delusion and feeling of tormented community to take hold. If the billy goat had been allowed into Wrigley Field, maybe no curse would have ever been associated with the team. But once it got affixed, it was highlighted during Cub collapses in 1969, 1984, and 2003.

This leads to the second necessity, which is that at least some of the failures have to happen in spectacular fashion. Fans are by nature a nervous bunch and they can get caught up in the idea of a curse when their team repeatedly falls short despite getting close. The Red Sox were said to be under a curse for selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees and they found incredible ways to lose late in the season at least a half dozen times. However, the championship drought endured by the Chicago White Sox began before Boston’s did and ended after it, yet the Pale Hose were not usually said to be under a curse. This was because they appeared in just one World Series from 1920 to 2005, they seldom had a division lead to blow, and they pretty much just sucked. A series of fifth-place finishes has none of the pizazz that comes with ground balls between the leg and base running blunders in late October.

A third factor is the human desire for explanations and an aversion to randomness. Evoking a curse can take care of these both. It is reassuring and satisfying for one play to serve as a microcosm for a gut-wrenching failure and latest curse manifestation. In Boston’s most infamous loss, Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, Jim Rice was thrown out at home by 20 feet after a horrible third-base coaching decision. Yet almost no one remembers that play and even Bob Stanley’s wild pitch, uncorked with a runner on third and Boston one out away from winning the Series, isn’t shown once for every 100 times that Bill Buckner’s error is broadcast.

The idea of external powers coming into play only applies when losing. When the Red Sox finally won the World Series, no one credited this to Ted Williams’ ghost. Rather, the resiliency of a team that rallied from down three games to none in the ALCS to win eight straight times was credited. There is no satisfaction in attributing a thrilling championship run to the cosmos, but it can be reassuring to blame invisible sinister forces when things unravel.

Of course, the idea of a Cubs curse is silly. It’s really the Indians that are afflicted.

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“Masked hysteria” (Clown sightings)

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Five weeks ago, I addressed the phantom clown panic in Greenville, S.C. There had been sporadic reports like these since the early 1980s, but this was the first in a few years.

These trends are usually like delivery pizza. Good to consume for a few hours, and under certain conditions, can still be ingested two days later. After that, the pizza becomes unpalatable and the social media trend is supplanted by the next outrage, racial remark, Pop Warner football play, or celebrity mishap.

But like the classic compact car skit, the clowns just keep coming and coming. Even a divisive presidential campaign can’t keep a bad clown down. There have been reported clown sightings in at least a dozen states, and Moline had its first reported sighting yesterday. Despite not knowing the who, when, where, why, or how, the Dispatch-Argus posted this grainy image on its website.

Faux news sites are generating clown stories that get passed around as legitimate. In these hoax articles, the clowns can be either the victims or perpetrators. One story had a clown being gunned down in Indiana, while another article centered on clowns murdering 23 Canadians, as the absurdity assumed an international flavor. One widespread image even appeared on the Tennessee Highway Patrol Facebook page and was supposed to be of a clown that had tried to lure children into the woods. The problem was that the location kept changing depending on where poster sharing the image lived.  

Twitter has a ClownSightings hashtag so people can share photos and videos of menacing Bozos. The photos are often revealed to be downloaded stock footage, while with the moving pictures, it’s impossible to tell if someone happened upon a clown or fabricated the whole shoot.  

Almost every day brings at least one piece of clown news, but in no case has anyone been harmed or abducted. In fact, the only threat seems to be from keyboard warriors who promise to harm, mutilate, or murder any hometown harlequins they come across, dad nab it.

Even a couple of police officers have publicly endorsed the shoot first, ask questions later approach. I suppose a cream pie to their painted face might be acceptable, but how did we get to a state of condoning second-degree murder because someone looks funny?

One update from my previous post is that there now have been nearly 20 arrests, though not usually of clowns. Three were of persons in clown outfits, but most were for filing false reports of said costumed individuals. One young woman made up a story to cover for being late to work. And some teens were caught insinuating that an insane clown posse would swarm their school. Similar online threats were made in Texas, California, and New Jersey, the latter suggesting that a “Wally” was about to go bonkers.

As to the arrested clowns, a Fairmont, W. Va., man was taken into custody after donning a mask and chasing children with a baseball bat. Then two teens in clown masks were arrested for a similar offense perpetrated with sticks.

Those arrests were justified, but people are calling to report the mere presence of a clown, and law enforcement officers are jumping in the Batmobile and chasing these Jokers, then putting out warnings to the public. This raises the matter of what crime is being committed. There are some jurisdictions where covering your face is illegal, and where that’s not the case, prosecutors might be able to finagle a charge of intimidation or something similarly vague.

A man in Middlesboro, Ky., was arrested for simply wearing a clown mask, as a city ordinance prohibits covering one’s face in public. So if seeking a clown career, avoid Middlesboro, and the same goes if desiring employment as a welder or hockey goalie. Meanwhile in Lakeville, N.Y., Christopher Hooper posted a picture of a clown he said he had seen in a park. He cautioned parents to not let their children go out alone or after dark. When it was discovered he had made this up, he was arrested for filing a false report even though he had never contacted law enforcement.

Despite the dubious nature of some of these charges, and despite no one being harmed or threatened, police resources are combating this phantom menace and the public seems mostly supportive. And civilians are not necessarily waiting for the police to respond. An anonymous woman in Auburn, Maine, reported that a clown mouthed the word “bang” at her while driving by and positioning his finger like a gun. She allegedly responded with an authentic firearm, and the car made a speedy getaway, presumably to Yakety Sax. A few days later in Bardstown, Ky., a man fired into the air after mistaking a woman for a clown. “Oh, sorry, Miss, but with your curly orange hair, and me being without my glasses and all.”

Some police seem ready to endorse such vigilantism. In a Dallas suburb, police officer Latrice Pettaway wrote on her personal Facebook page, “Pop a cap in the first clown you see. Someone needs to just hit one and the rest of these fools will learn.” In West Virginia, in the clownish-sounding town of Paw Paw, police chief James Cummings threatened, “If someone sees you dressed like this they have the right to defend themselves. I will stand behind anyone who feels they need to protect themselves from clowns. You should expect for citizens to beat you.”

Though not endorsing this Charles Bronson Death Wish approach, police in Modesta, Calif., nonetheless warned, “If you see individuals dressed as clowns, avoid contact and report the circumstances to us immediately.” “Um, yes officer, I’d like to report a highly Caucasian male with bright red hair and size 25 shoes peaceably assembling. He appears to be searching for some semblance of a life.”

The top non-firearm overreaction goes to the San Jose, Calif., school district for banning Halloween costumes that conceal the wearer’s identity. Why not go all the way and ban candy and any sense of merriment as well?

These aren’t second graders concerned about monsters under their bed. These are persons aged 20 to 60 freaking out about unverified jesters. Even a member of the White House Press Corps asked press secretary Josh Earnest about his take on it. And the Dallas CW affiliate pondered if law enforcement should be tracking sales of clown costumes. “Do you have a license for that comically oversized nose, sir?”

These panics happen all the time, with previous focuses being on witches, Jews, Satanists, communists, Dungeons & Dragons, or heavy metal. The huge difference now is social media. With ease, any prankster can produce an image that gives the satisfaction of instant feedback. Such Tweets and posts are the descendants of campfire stories and sleepover tales, just with a less intimate audience and more imagery.

I liken this to another great farce, Spinal Tap. They were initially a fictitious band, but blurred the lines by releasing albums and touring. Similarly, the clown sightings were at first fabricated, but now seem to have entered a phase where at least a few of the sightings are real. They are being perpetrated by those who want to be part of this insatiable phenomenon, and their antics in turn fuel more anxiety. This is a self-perpetuating phenomenon, and the more it grows, the more people there are that want to pull a prank, pull a hoax, or pull a trigger.