Pseudoscience

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“Shallow Gal” (Detox products)

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If needing to detoxify, Gwyneth Paltrow offers a seven-day regimen that features almond smoothies, miso soup, and cucumber juice. Then there is the day eight menu of whatever is being served at your funeral dinner.

Because anyone needing to detoxify would be dead by then. In fact, the only persons who need detoxified beyond what the body can manage are longtime drug addicts, and they must be treated by medical specialists dispensing prescription drugs.  

Julie Beluz at Vox noted that Adam and Eve’s fruit consumption got them kicked out of the Garden of Eden and the idea we need to atone for our dietary transgressions continues today. Purification rituals are recorded in the earliest histories and are still part of religions. Appealing to this idea that we must cleanse ourselves are an ever-growing list of products.

But as to what we are being purified from, the detox sellers are unable to tell us. In 2009, Sense about Science asked 15 such merchants which toxins their products would remove. None could do it, despite the array of smoothies, supplements, shampoos, creams, shakes, juices, pills, tea bags, face masks, bath salts, brushes, body gels, and pads on the cleansing market. Were these products legitimate, sellers would have been able to identify the toxin, measure it, explain why it’s causing maladies, and describe how their products remove it. Dr. Scott Gavura wrote on sciencebasedmedicine.com, “To establish that even a single chemical can cause disease requires a significant amount of research, i.e. the entire field of epidemiology.”

About 5,000 years ago, people thought toxins were produced exclusively inside the body. Not a whole lot changed until the 19th Century, when one mistaken idea replaced another. For most of the 1800s, people thought toxins from feces would be absorbed back into the bloodstream and make us sick. This was dubbed autointoxication and it was attacked with leeches, which could be called the first detox therapy.

Then early in the 20th Century, scientists began better understanding physiology and the causes of disease, and they realized there was no autointoxication to be detoxed from. Illnesses and disease were fought with lifestyle choices, vaccines, and antibodies.

With that, detoxing should have died a painless death. But a misunderstanding by some of how the body works, coupled with celebrity endorsements, have made detox one of the most lucrative scams in the country. There are two primary approaches when peddling products that attack unnamed toxins. One is to keep it general enough that the symptoms will apply to almost anyone, such as headaches, nausea, or fatigue. The second approach warns that without Modern Alternative Mama’s Organic Apricot Face Scrub, we are at grave risk of imminent cancer, Alzheimer’s, or ALS.

The most invasive of these techniques is colonic irrigation, in which a hose in inserted up the most private of parts and is said to wash away mucoid plaque and toxic sludge. Indeed, after such an irrigation, there will be no mucoid plaque or toxic sludge, as these do not exist.

Other merchants give visual reassure. Colon-cleansing tablets turn excrement into a substance akin to plastic. The user then produces a rubbery brick that is assumed to be toxins in concentrated form. Then there are detoxing foot pads that turn black overnight. But this is from the reaction of moisture to the pads, not from toxins being drained. Similarly, detoxing foot baths turn the water brown, but this is because of rust generated by the corrosion of iron electrodes.

Peddlers get away with it by appealing to irrelevant authority such as actresses, and by relying on a population that is all too often scientifically-challenged. As one example, the New England Journal of Medicine has criticized these products, but 18 times more subscribers read People, which praises Paltrow’s detox diet.

Another factor in the industry’s success is laziness. Customers can eat, drink, and apply the right substances, then pat themselves on their banana cream-lubricated back and wait for optimal health to arrive.

This sham industry often relies on the naturalistic fallacy. This is a great irony because the body’s natural processes will detox for us. The skin, liver, kidneys, and lymphatic and gastrointestinal systems will get rid of the guck. They work together to turn potentially harmful substances into matter that can be safely stored or eliminated. The liver self-cleans, so toxins won’t accumulate there. It functions just fine unless one has a liver disease, at which point you need the ER, Dr. Oz’s kale conditioner.

While detox products make their manufacturers a lot of money, a majority of us don’t buy them. If the peddlers were right, this would mean most of us have bodies that are continually accumulating toxins that have no way out. Were this the case, I would be howling in agony instead of sitting here happily typing away while listening to a Kavin Senapathy podcast and sipping nonorganic tea.

 

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“Bad moon revising” (End of the world)

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Last week’s end of the world came on Friday during a Black Moon. The second new moon in a calendar month is normally referred to as blue moon, but the color was changed by wannabe seers to make for a more sinister satellite.

Various tweets, blogs, and vlogs predicted end was coming Friday, with most saying it would mark the return of Jesus. Never addressed was why a manmade concept like a month would be relevant to a god deciding when to destroy his creation. As to why this second full moon of this month as opposed to any previous one would be the catalyst was mostly unexplained, though some tried to tie it in to the Jewish feast of trumpets, which began three days after the Black Moon.

As in previous Christian-themed astronomical doomsdays, the key Bible verses were in Luke, chapter 21: “There shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations. Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and looking after those things which are coming on the earth.” With words this vague, one can create any meaning. It never outlines what the signs are, what they mean, or how to recognize them. Additionally, the verses establish no timeline, so believers can claim they have validity 1,900 years after being written.

Doomsayers point to disparate events such as beheadings, earthquakes, marriage between other than one man and one woman, and a Hindu giving the opening Congressional prayer as signs that Jesus is about to return. Yet decapitations, natural disasters, polygamy, and Hinduism all predate the birth of Jesus.

Christians who declare that the end is near must ignore the Bible verse that says only God knows the end date. They are willing to commit this blasphemy because they find it exciting to think they are living close to the end and it makes them feel in the know to interpret current events thusly. Best of all, it means everlasting bliss is tantalizingly close. Some keep it vague (“The end is approaching”), some are more specific (“Jesus will return in our lifetimes”), and some like Harold Camping set a date.

These are all representatives of the dominant variety of apocalyptic thinkers – the religious – while other persons subscribe to a pseudoscientific line of cataclysmic thought.

Since most religions don’t have an equivalent of Revelation, most faith-based doomsdays have a Christian flavor, though not always. One blogger calculated that the Black Moon coincided with the Greek goddess Hecate’s visit to Earth, which he said takes place every 200 years. During her latest stop, she was to mate with a demon, with the offspring’s fate being to devour our planet.

Overall, the Black Moon predictions drew little attention, but doomsday warnings are regular features on our extant world. The most well-known of recent years came from Camping and readers of the Mayan calendar, but there have been similar predictions for centuries.

Few persons making these cataclysmic predictions are fearful. It’s the end of the world as they know it and they feel fine. This is because they think the impending doom validates their religion and will transport them to a higher plain for eternity. That’s how Marshall Applewhite got Heaven’s Gate members to overdose on barbiturate-laced chocolate pudding in order that their souls would levitate to a spaceship being shielded by the Hale-Bopp comet. Though not lethal like Applewhite’s prediction, John Hagee makes end of the world prognostications at least a biennial event. And Pat Robertson predicted world judgement by the end of 1982.

These predictions excite those making them, and most of us can relate to some degree. Be it the plausible The Day After or the glut of TV zombies today, it’s fascinating to be given a window to cataclysm. Watching a program about an asteroid slamming into Earth and the aftermath, we get to be among the survivors. The story of life on Earth is amazing, but without an ending the tale seems incomplete. For most persons, doomsday in entertainment form is enough, but others long for it to be real. In some cases, the desire is so strong that even failed predictions won’t dim their enthusiasm.

In fact, when those predicted days end up being apocalypse-free, most followers stay on board the Crazy Train. This is due to extreme cases of cognitive dissonance. They refuse to accept that the time and energy they put into prepping for it was wasted. They cannot deal with the thought of having given away their money and possessions in vain. So the redouble and might say their piety saved the world from judgement. That’s what Dorothy Martin and her followers declared in 1954. Others accept their messiah’s assurance that it was merely a minor miscalculation. After his fire-from-the-sky guarantee fizzled, Camping changed the date to a few months later. Camping died shortly thereafter from non-sky inferno causes, and his protégé Chris McCann did another recalculation and arrived at Oct. 7, 2015.

Similarly, when the Mayan apocalypse didn’t happen, believers reinterpreted the date as June 4, 2016. This was the same experience of William Miller and his followers. He had guaranteed the end of the world as 1843, then had to adjust to 1844. Camping and Miller could have said their original calculation was off by 100 years and prevented a second public failing while keeping the parishioners and their money. But persons with their mindsets are unable to do that. It has to be in their lifetimes or it loses value to them. I have come across hundreds of end of the world predictions and have never seen one that would take place after the prognosticator’s probable lifespan.

Very few predictions of our planets demise center on notions such as the all-time tsunami, Earth’s core bubbling up, or even the plausible nuclear war. Most come from above, either a vengeful god or a rouge planet, or for maximum impact, a rouge planet launched by a vengeful god.

People have always been drawn to celestial bodies for their sense of wonder. In 1502, Jamaicans refused to let Christopher Columbus come ashore. He knew an eclipse was coming and told the natives to comply with his demands or his god would take away the moon. When this seemingly happened, the natives were alarmed, and not merely because they had a displeased deity on their quivering hands. The moon was central to their lives, being the focus of festivals and determining the planting and harvesting seasons. With it gone, their lives would be turned upside down and might even come to an end. Columbus told them he would supplicate to his god on their behalf if they would agree to his demands. Of course, they agreed.  

The moon can still be a source of wonder, as we can marvel at men having been there, or might erroneously consider a full one to be a cause of loony behavior. To some, eclipses, meteors, and star showers can seem to have supernatural overtones, usually detrimental ones. And of all the portents of doom, none is more complete or compelling than the one that ends it all. Most of these doomsdays have a religious bent, but some prefer a science fiction approach.

A 1997 book by Richard Noone laboriously titled, “5/5/2000 Ice: the Ultimate Disaster,” predicted a worldwide extinction by freezing. According to Noone, the Antarctic ice mass would be three miles thick by the titular date, by which time the planets would be aligned in the heavens. Not sure what that means, nor would I be any more likely to understand it after pouring over Noone’s 350 pages of detailed diagrams and extensive explications. The book is still available for purchase, way cheap.

Noone’s idea has flittered, but one of the most enduring SciFi suggestions for how Earth will end centers on it being targeted by a ninth Solar System planet, Niburu. This comes mostly from Nancy Lieder, the only Earthing in contact with aliens from Zeta Reticuli. Through her brain implant, they told her Niburu had gone rouge and was going to throw Earth off its orbit, giving inhabitants either a fiery or icy death, depending on which way we are hurtled. This was to take place in 2003. When this failed to materialize, she received a second, corrected message, but won’t give this date because world governments would declare martial law and imprison us all in cities. Why would lifetime banishment in Seattle be so bad? Because the countryside will offer salvation for some reason or other. At any rate, Niburu is said to be four times Earth’s size, meaning it would be visible, perhaps to the naked eye and certainly to telescopes. When this was pointed out, a hasty ad hoc rationalization was trotted out that it had been hidden behind the sun for all these years, a geometric impossibility.

There are an assortment of doomsdays that center on the alignment of celestial bodies doing damage, but the only bodies whose gravity significantly impact Earth are the sun and moon. Bodies will always align in certain ways, but all are unrelated to Earthly oblivion. By contrast, the flipping of Earth’s poles does take place, but won’t kill anyone, not even the penguins. It takes place over thousands of years and is not an immediate occurrence, and so is no threat.

By far the most well-known of the SciFi hypotheses was Y2K. The supposed inability of computers to differentiate 2000 from 1900 was to be the cause of calamity, from crashing airliners all the way to self-launching nuclear missiles. In the end, the most harmful result was the rare ATM malfunction. This was especially inconvenient to the families who had run low on cash after making food, supply, and shotgun runs as part of their Y2K drills.

The most ironic thing about this desire for doom from the religions and pseudoscientific is that there are genuine scientific reasons to suspect a horrific ending. Earth could be swallowed by the sun, or it might end earlier than that. UK astrobiologist Jack O’Malley-James predicts that environmental changes will lead to the extinction of all Earthly inhabitants within 3 billion years. He says oceans will evaporate and the last organisms left will be microbes in the few water enclaves on what is otherwise a massive, uninhabitable sand dune.

His ideas are based on scientific models, observation, data, and inference, so they hold little interest for the likes of Hagee, Camping, Lieder, and Noone. But an even bigger reason for their indifference is because this doomsday takes place in a distant future. They may not think the world revolves around them, but they do think that the end of the world does.

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“Bland Old Party” (Porn crisis)

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If the topic is cleaning up dirty air, dirty water, or a smoker’s dirty lungs, the Republican Party takes a hands-off approach. But when it’s dirty movies, magazines, and websites, the platform encourages legislation, if not censorship. At the 2016 convention, the GOP added a plank that declared, “Pornography, with his harmful effects, especially on children, has become a public health crisis that is destroying the lives of millions.”

If this alarmist language were correct, society would have started hemorrhaging in the mid-1990s, when Internet access became more common. And with most persons today having about four ways to access porn at any time, our country would be in a total freefall and a zombie-infested dystopia.

This is not the case and no evidence was offered for the plank’s claims, nor does there seem to be any. According to The Hill, a 2009 review of studies concluded that porn was not addictive, was unrelated to unsafe sex practices, and did not make purveyors more like to commit rape or assault. Focus on the Family founder James Dobson is fond of pointing out that a majority of rapists have regularly viewed violent pornography, but he was committing a causation/correlation error. Persons inclined to commit these crimes want to view images that fuel their twisted fantasies. By contrast, someone disinclined to rape would be no more likely to do so after watching I Spit on Your Grave than they would be to hit the links after reading Golf Digest.

There is also a linguistic issue. While a few persons may struggle with watching obsessively or have other problems with pornography, that would be an individual concern, not a public health issue. “Public health” suggests something that impacts everyone: Clean water, improved sanitation, quarantines, immunization, and water rationing during droughts.

Legitimate public health initiatives would be eradicating malaria-carrying mosquitoes, giving free polio vaccinations to underprivileged children, and testing food for e. coli. These are all attempts to protect individuals who are not engaging in risky behavior. That could not be said of restricting pornography.

Similarly, bans on Big Gulps, trans fat, clove cigarettes, and even heroin and methamphetamines are unrelated to public health. True, some of those issues can indirectly impact others, but none will have widespread impact. For that, you need unregulated emissions, an invasive venomous species slipping through customs, or a previously eradicated disease becoming endemic.

A smoker who eschews seatbelt use can cut his risk of disease and improve his chance of making it home alive by snuffing the cigarettes and buckling up. No collective action is needed, nor is there public benefit to the lone smoking driver doing so.

Porn is certainly not my thing. It is the only movie style that keeps action from being my least favorite genre. I’m more of a Bela Lugosi man. But if you’re into it, watch away. It’s almost certainly harmless to you and definitely harmless to me. It will no more unravel society than my watching Dracula will cause mass exsanguination.

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“You really aren’t a heal” (Bogus healing)

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Pretend healers generally fall into one of three categories: the religious, those appealing to tradition, and those allegedly accessing cutting edge technology.

Oral Roberts employed faith healing while simultaneously raising funds for what would seem to be a superfluous hospital. It was a staple of revival tents, where the healers  could hightail it out of town before the long-term results were assessed. They are still regular features of Pentecostal congregations, where the lack of success is more obvious, but downplayed as being part of God’s will, which would seemingly make those appeals to deity unnecessary. Any seeming successes are highlighted in a ceaseless cycle of classical conditioning, magical thinking, communal reinforcement, and selective memory.

Faith healers made a smooth transition to the television era, as their shtick was a natural for this budding entertainment medium. But the Internet has been far less kind. Most YouTube videos on the subject are of healers being busted or having their tricks revealed. These exposés were more laborious in the old days since not anyone could just put a video product together. Still, there were successes. James Randi’s most public victory was his Tonight Show appearance when he exposed how Peter Popoff was using an earpiece and his accomplice wife to divinely determine the affliction of audience members. Popoff would declare them cured, telling them to throw away their hearing aid or assuring them that their bouts of internal bleeding were over.

While Popoff was a huckster, some faith healers genuinely believe in it, with terrifying results. Idaho is home to the Followers of Christ sect, whose members cruelly deny pain relief medication to their children and allow them to die in agony, all protected by the law.

The second category of pretend healers, the traditionalists, also have practices that can be deadly. This month, actress Xu Ting died from a cancer after using moxibustion and other Traditional Chinese Medicine in lieu of chemotherapy. The Beijing Evening News quoted a TCM proponent, who asked, “There are many cancer patients who still pass away after receiving chemotherapy. Does this mean it is also a sham?”

This is false equivalence, where a shared trait between two subjects is assumed to show they are equal. Here, the equivalence is false because chemotherapy has cured millions of cancer patients, moxibustion zero. Yes, it turns out that the burning of dried mugwort on a body does nothing to arrest rouge cell growth.

With moxibustion, mugwort is applied to corresponding meridians. As these are made up, they vary by practitioner. It would be like having a stethoscope placed on your chest, leg, or ear, depending on which physician you favor.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine and its offshoots, the overriding idea is that chi runs along meridians, which get clogged, resulting is illness and disease. The usual claim is that the procedures and techniques date to thousands of years ago, though most can only be traced to Mao, who didn’t believe in it, but who promoted it to foster Chinese nationalism.

With moxibustion, the purpose is to warm the meridian points. Moxibustion has various methods and accompanying levels of unnecessary pain. Some practitioners merely leave the warmed mugwort near the skin, some apply it for a short while, and others keep it on until blisters form. Practitioners calls these blisters “purulent moxa,” while mainstream medicine calls them second-degree burns. Like most alternative medicine, moxibustion is said to be effective for almost any illness or ailment, as opposed to a specific condition that genuine medicine treats. Skeptic leader Dr. Mark Crislip, while advising against moxibustion in general, has an especially strong admonition that it not be used as burn therapy.

Probably the best known pretend healer of olden times was Franz Mesmer, whose eponym is with us still today. He “mesmerized” women by convincing him he could use magnets to cure their blues, illnesses, and maladies. He later concluded he could get the same results just waving his hands, so the magnets were jettisoned for gesticulating phalanges.

Pretend healers today use both approaches. Sound therapy employs tuning forks, shamans ring copper bowls, and crystal healers have at their meridian-enhancing disposal a large collection of shiny doodads. These accoutrements can create a seemingly more authentic character, such as a bead-wearing Shaman or a Native American healer with feathers and drums.

By contrast, aura readers, chakra repairmen, and Reiki nurses have no products, which must really save on storage space. They feel they can cure without hands or instruments, and more importantly, have customers who believe it, too. And if only needing to get within 3 inches of someone, why not within 3,000 miles? Some of the more enterprising offer their healing online.

Meanwhile, the Internet is an obvious avenue for those using the third category of pretend healing, the cutting-edge variety. These folks also make use of the appeal to tradition’s lesser-known opposite fallacy, the appeal to novelty. This is when a product or idea is considered sound only because it is new. It’s easy to see how this notion could take hold. Imagine someone using a GPS when they hear on their Smartphone via satellite radio about the latest gizmo panacea. However, when the cure is announced in an advertisement or a YouTube video instead of in a peer-reviewed journal, it is almost certainly more science fiction than fact.

Examples include supposed medical products that claim to use vibrating sub-atomic particles, biofields, faster-than-warp tachyons, or a reengineering of neural pathways. This verbiage is meant to impress the listener, or at least befuddle them into not asking probing questions. Many times the seemingly cutting-edge words are just made up, while at other times they are misused.

From takoinic.com, here is a description of tachyon energy that veteran skeptics will see as little more than chi and meridians dressed up for the Cyber Age: “Tachyon energy is a life-force that exists infinitely throughout the universe. It is an organizing force field that diminishes chaos by increasing order and coherence in any system. These products restore and increase your energy and vitality. This encourages your body’s life support system and enhances the natural defense mechanisms to promote wellness.” As expected, anonymous anecdotes are used in lieu of double blind studies.

One cannot wonder too long in this field without encountering the word Quantum. From the One Mind, One Energy website: “Science, through Quantum Physics, is showing us that everything in our universe is energy. When we go down on a sub-atomic level we do not find matter, but pure energy. Some called this the unified field or the matrix.”

This website tries to piggyback on legitimate science by pointing out that Earth was once thought to be the center of the universe, but today we know it sits in an arm of the Milky Way, which itself is one of untold billions of galaxies. “Our frame of knowledge is constantly changing since science is showing us new truths. Our frame of knowledge has been changing as long as we have lived on this planet.”

This is all true, which cannot be said of the conclusion they reached, which is that the key to good health is to buying their music and its incorporated subliminal messages.

The website also puts emphasis on a literal mind over matter: “We need to believe that anything is possible. Cutting-edge research and experiments from leading scientists have shown that human intention can influence physical matter. Also, quantum (there’s that word again) experiments have revealed that our consciousness is part of creating the world we see around us. We all have this power.”

To combat the skeptical and credulous, the website employs the Galileo Gambit, a frequent ploy of the pseudoscientist: “Inventors throughout history have had a hard time being accepted and believed by their fellow man when they invented something new.” This is also another manifestation of the false equivalency fallacy. Like Tesla and Galileo, this website had its ideas ridiculed. Unlike Tesla and Galileo, One Mind One Energy has yet to be vindicated through its enhancement of Mankind.

And while the futuristic healers’ body count is much lower than their faith and chi-based counterparts, there have been fatalities. Mary Lynch and Debra Harrison were convinced that disease is caused by extraneous energy being trapped between cells. Lynch was a retired physician who and claimed to be taking medicine to the next level in something she called Consegrity. The idea was to heal by releasing this trapped energy.  Lynch and Harrison were their own guinea pigs and they succumbed to untreated diabetes and a toe infection, respectively.

If desiring a closer walk with Jesus, an adjusted aura, or communion with a higher plain, by all means, seek out Old Time Religion, the New Age, or Novelty Newbies. But if needing to mend a fractured leg, halt a bacterial infection, or close a spurting artery, please go to the hospital. Preferably not the Oral Roberts one.

 

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“Bang the Dumb Slowly” (Big Bang denial)

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I would be substantially out of my element when discussing the Big Bang beyond the basics. By contrast, I am competent to address Big Bang denial.

First, however, the basics I mentioned. The Big Bang is the prevailing theory for how the universe reached its present state over the last 13.7 billion years. A Cliff’s Notes of the Cliff’s Notes version would look something like this: After an initial expansion, the universe cooled enough to allow the formation of subatomic particles, then atoms.  Next, giant clouds of primordial elements coalesced to form stars and galaxies,  eventually giving us what astronomers see today.

Evidence for the Big Bang includes the observed formation of new stars and planets, the amount of light elements in the universe, and the cosmic microwave background. Let’s take a look at how deniers handle this, or more accurately, can’t handle it.

As to the formation of new stars, Answers in Genesis concluded that God may have made gas clouds already in the process of collapse and the results are the stars astronomers see forming today. This assertion has zero scriptural support and, coming from an organization dedicated to Biblical literalism, reveals just how problematic this issue is to its members

Now onto the amount of helium, hydrogen, and lithium in the universe and why this matter matters. The average amount of these three lightest elements in certain stars today reflects the primordial abundance of those elements produced by the Big Bang. The match between these observed abundances and predictions in Big Bang models is consistent.

What say you, creation.com? “Scripture teaches that God recently created a finished cosmos, and the finished state of creation included the present suite of stable isotopes.” If the Bronze Age Middle East nomads who wrote the Bible really had identified isotopes, described quantum mechanics, made specific, accurate prophecies with names and dates, and commanded against rape instead of idol-building, I’d be hosting a blog promoting Biblical literalism instead of one on skepticism.   

But this blog it is, so onto cosmic microwave background, which is the earliest radiation that can be detected. Looking out into deep space is like looking back into time and astronomers can see that cosmic background radiation permeated the universe about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. The radiation formed after the universe had cooled enough for electrons and protons to recombine into hydrogen atoms. Photons were released and today this radiation is the cosmic microwave background.

While conceding it has no counterclaim to this, christiananswers.net nevertheless cautions, “The authority of the Bible should never be compromised for mankind’s scientific proposals.”

Meanwhile, Bar-Ilan University professor Nathan Aviezer takes a more conciliatory view. He doesn’t dismiss science, but also doesn’t present any. He considers cosmic microwave background to be the result of God separating light and dark in Genesis 1:4.

The most recent piece of evidence came for the Big Bang came this year with the confirmation of gravitational waves, which proved cosmic expansion. Rather than fumbling and bumbling my way through an explanation of the significance, I’ll defer to Michio Kaku:

“Einstein’s great insight was to realize that space-time is not empty, but more like a fabric that can bend and stretch and cause the path of objects to bend, giving us the illusion of gravitational force. And if the fabric of space-time can stretch, why can’t it also create ripples? Think of throwing a rock in a pond. Ripples will gradually radiate away from the splash and fill the surface of the pond. This is similar to what the scientists detected for the first time: Gravity waves rippling outward from the collision of two black holes a billion light years away.”

Thank you, Dr. Kaku for the scientist’s explanation. Now for the pseudoscience counterpoint, we bring in Dr. Danny Faulkner of Answers in Genesis. His retort is that scientists have been wrong before, so they might be wrong again. Of course, this has nothing to do with whether Abraham’s god created the universe. But Faulkner has an answer for that, too: “Creationists know from Scripture that the universe did not begin in a big bang billions of years ago. The world is far younger than this. Furthermore, we know from Genesis 1 that God made the earth before he made the stars.” Faulkner closes by suggesting that even if there are gravitational waves, God is causing them.

This is typical of Young Earth Creationists, who reject all science that conflicts with their interpretation of a specific Bible version. Their points are limited to quoting scripture and negative evidence from supposed deficiencies in scientific theory. They have yet to employ the Scientific Method in order to explain how creationism works.

Consistent with this, there are no creation articles in scientific publications. Jason Lisle, perhaps the only Young Earth Creationist with a Ph.D. in astronomy, refuses to submit any of his work to peer-reviewed journals. His stated reason is because the likes of Neil Tyson and Stephen Hawking never submit their work to his employer, the Institute for Creation Research. This is an especially hilarious excuse, but whatever the reason, bypassing peer review means failing to do complete science.

Here are a few points Lisle or other members of the anti-Big Bang Gang trot out. Keep in mind, even if these points were accurate, it is an invalid to conclude that it proves creationism.

  1. “Something cannot come from nothing because that would violate the First Law of Thermodynamics.” This assertion represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the topic. The Big Bang is not about the origin of the universe, but is rather about its development. No one knows what was there before or why anything went bang. Additionally, for a creationist to employ this argument requires Special Pleading since an exception must be made to allow God to spring into existence from nothing.
  2. “The Big Bang violates the law of entropy, which suggests systems of change become less organized over time.” In truth, the law of entropy is being obeyed. The early universe was homogeneous and isotropic, whereas the current universe includes the continued formation of stars and galaxies.
  3. “Atheist astronomers are out to disprove God.” First, this claim presupposes that the proof of God has been met. Second, this point doesn’t even mess with a scientific pretense and dovetails into what is at once an ad hominem and a straw man. Astronomers were trying to find out how the universe got to its present state and Genesis was merely collateral damage.

There are about a half dozen other points Young Earth Creationists bring up, but all fall into the negative evidence category and none are included in peer review submissions. As to their evidence for creationism, Answers in Genesis offers us this: “The Creator did not need matter, large amounts of time, energy, or anything else.”

Or this example: “A flashlight operates by converting electrical energy into light. Would it be rational to assume that the flashlight was created by the conversion of electrical energy into light? No, it was created by an entirely different process.” The author then concludes that this proves the universe was also created by other than naturalistic means.

Another point addresses the lack of verifiable antimatter. This is the focus on an ongoing astrophysics discussions, although to AIG it is “a powerful confirmation of biblical creation.” That’s not just jumping to conclusions, that’s a quantum leap. Or would be if AIG believed in such leaps.

 

 

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“Worried sick” (Wind Turbine Syndrome)

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Unlike the hysteria over chemtrails or cancer-causing WiFi, we know the birthplace and time for Wind Turbine Syndrome. This syndrome refers to a variety of maladies purported to be caused by proximity to the giant twirling devices after which the sickness is named.

Technical advancements frequently cause unfounded angst about health. Microwave ovens, TV sets, and home computers were all accompanied by concern amongst  hypochondriacs and those fearful of new technology. The same was true for telephones – first landlines, then cordless, and finally cellular, all of which were going to be responsible for nonspecific yet serious conditions.

The turbine panic began when pediatrician Nina Pierpont deftly sidestepped peer review and the Scientific Method to self-publish Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Report on a Natural Experiment in 2009. Pierpont placed an advertisement seeking anyone who both lived near a wind turbine and felt sick, then interviewed the 23 persons who responded. Next, she tied it up in a nice bow of post hoc reasoning and gave her newly-discovered phenomenon a name.

There are no studies to back up Pierpont’s conclusions. Instead, 18 research reviews about wind turbines and health have concluded there is no reason to suspect they are detrimental. Also, a meta study from 2014 showed there is no association between the turbine and unpleasant symptoms.

The symptoms most cited are fatigue, headaches, anxiety, insomnia, dizziness, and irritability, all of which are experienced by those not living near wind turbines. If wind turbines did cause medical problems, one would expect to see a connection between their installation and nearby persons experiencing symptoms. This is not the case. And there is no reason to believe that symptoms have increased since the early 2000s, which is construction of turbines became commonplace.

Furthermore, China has the most wind turbines in the world and there are virtually no reported cases of the syndrome there. In fact, the syndrome is limited almost exclusively to English-speaking countries, which are the ones whose media has featured coverage of this non-event. Additionally, surveys have shown that no one who has leased their land for the turbines has reported suffering from the syndrome. The same surveys also reveal that the residences of those reporting the symptoms are no nearer wind turbines than is the general population.

There have been suggestions that the syndrome could be caused by sound pressure, but this is Tooth Fairy Science, which is when an explanation is proffered before establishing that the condition is genuine. Besides, the idea falls flat because the level of sound pressure generated by wind turbines is far too low to cause people harm. An opposite but equally mistaken claim is that exposure to sound waves below the hearing threshold may be the cause.

In truth, this syndrome is an example of the Noncebo Effect, which is when harmful symptoms result from receiving negative information about a product. For example, some medical trial volunteers who are warned of potential side effects experience those effects even though they’re being treated with a sham medication. Wind Turbine Syndrome, then, is a psychosomatic disorder generated by heightened awareness of turbines and their alleged deleterious effects. It is caused not by proximity to wind turbines, but by proximity to information about the syndrome.

 

 

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“Shark Weak” (Modern megalodons)

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There are nearly 500 species of shark, most of which are harmless to humans, with obvious exceptions such as the hammerhead and great white.

According to Ryan Haput at Skeptoid, the fossil record reveals there was a much larger and more lethal shark millions of year ago, the megalodon, which likely could have devoured multiple great whites and hammerheads at once.

As part of its race against the History Channel to the bottom of the Stupid Pit, the Discovery Channel ruined one of its few remaining gems, Shark Week, by featuring a supposed documentary on a search for a living megalodon during the 2013 season. Like This is Spinal Tap, the mockumentary was hilarious. Unlike Spinal Tap, the producers were hoping to have it taken seriously. What is not funny is a network that started out as a science ally ended up producing faux documentaries they tried to pass off as authentic. They were busted when the supposed marine biologist leading the expedition was revealed to be actor Darron Meyer. The fact that they never found a living example did not keep them from naming the program, “Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives.”

This was allegedly a giant monster hunt but was actually just a wild goose chase. What’s sad is that a TV program whose mission was tracking down unverified creatures would be a fascinating, entertaining way of bringing zoology to the masses. But to actually succeed, the scientists and producers would need to pursue insects or maybe small reptiles in a rain forest. Meanwhile, cryptozoologists and Discovery Channel executives prefer their secretive animals to have fangs, claws, and the ability to shred humans with ease. Minor point here, but the megalodon search is not precisely a cryptozoological undertaking, since the animal once swam our oceans. Promoters are not asserting a new species, but the existence of a living fossil.

According to Haput, giant triangular fossil teeth were discovered at least as early as the 17th Century, by Danish naturalist Nicolaus Steno. These are the largest shark teeth ever, up to seven inches long. Haput wrote, “Estimating the size of the shark…is difficult because the majority of the fossils found are isolated teeth or disarticulated vertebra, but it was likely between 50 and 70 feet and weighed up to 100 metric tons.” Most exciting to the Crypto Crowd, it had a bite that would produce 10 times the force of a Great White commoner.

Based on the evidence, paleontologists conclude that the megalodon was a large predatory coastal shark that went extinct 2.6 million years ago.

In the Discovery Channel shlock fest, staged footage shows a boat being attacked, with the passengers concluding the damage is inconsistent with encountering an angry whale. The next obvious step is hyperbolic post hoc reasoning, so enter marine biologist Collin Drake, who deduces that it must be a megalodon because a giant fin was captured in a photo of a German U-boat in these same waters during World War II.

I love the concept of chasing a giant aquatic best, but want it to be done in The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms or Attack of the Giant Leeches. I don’t want it in purported science documentaries.

This one featured sonar readings, beached whales, and an enormous amount of magical thinking that tied those elements into a giant prehistoric shark. In fact, the only piece of evidence presented was a Megalodon tooth allegedly found in 10,000-year-old sediment. But paleontologists who examined the find concluded it was an example of reworking. This is where a tooth erodes out of its original encasement and is re-preserved in newer rock.

Dr. Steven Novella has said that alternative medicine uses science the way a drunk uses a lamppost – for support, not illumination. Similarly, the Discovery Channel will gladly embrace genuine science if it furthers its goals, such as establishing that a 100-foot beast swims amongst us, ready to devour surfers, seals, and maybe even a blue whale. So the Channel identifies climate change as the reason the animal has swum from the depths of the sea back to the coast. In their explanation, warming oceans have forced the super beast back to his old chomping grounds.

Near the end of the program, team members deploy a life size whale decoy and 5,000 gallons of chum. A blurry, shaky image follows, during which the monster is tagged before diving more than 6,000 feet. Drake concludes, “I believe we just encountered megalodon,” cramming his version of the Scientific Method into one sentence.

As noted earlier, the biologist was later revealed to be an actor. No coincidence there, noted oceanographer David Kerstetter. “If even one credible scientist had doubts about this, the Discovery Channel wouldn’t have had to use actors,” he said. “But there is no discussion among fisheries professionals whether Megalodon is extinct.”

Indeed, no fossils indicate a megalodon in the last 2.5 million years. Haput noted, “This date coincides with the rise of our modern composition of whale diversity, including the gigantic filter feeders like the blue whale, which were smaller in general during the time of the megalodon. This is also around the time we start seeing orca in the fossil record, suggesting that there may have been intense competition driving the megalodon to extinction or that orca evolved shortly after the extinction of the shark to fill that niche in the ecosystem.”

In her takedown of the documentary, Discover Magazine’s Christie Wilcox wrote that the Channel could actually have made a worthwhile documentary about the megalodon: “They were incredible, fascinating sharks. There’s a ton of actual science about them that is well worth a two hour special.”

When the Discovery Channel was justifiably excoriated for trying to pass fiction off as fact, executives meekly noted it included a disclaimer about events being dramatized. This would justify recreating an actual moment, but the no “Dramatized Events” umbrella is so broad as to include completely fabricated events, fake newscasts being called real, or claiming an actor is a marine biologist. In doing so, the Discovery Channel created a whopper bigger than the one they were chasing.

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“The martial plan” (No-touch attacks)

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The martial arts are a system of combat practices used for battle, competition, and fitness. The field is populated mostly by legitimate practitioners who instill their students with skill and confidence. However, martial arts’ ancient Asian roots and reverence for the past leaves it especially vulnerable to less scrupulous individuals, who claim to be passing on secret knowledge. They are willing, for a price, to pass on this blessed truth, continuing an exclusive line purportedly thousands of years old.

This truth includes the ability to kill or render an attacker unconscious without touching them, or perhaps touching them lightly. Fortunately, the ability to kill opponents with these tactics has never been demonstrated. But the ability to debilitate them has been alleged to work on many occasions. However, this almost always involves attacks from the students on the trainer. They charge him, only to be rebuffed by a swipe or jab in the air, which causes the victim to hurtle backward through the gym. It’s pretty much like Carrie without the pigs’ blood.

These demonstrations invariably fail when tested by a skeptic. Alternative martial artist Harry Cameron refused to try his invisible touch on Chicago TV news reporter Danielle Serino, saying he might unintentionally harm her since she lacked any martial arts experience. Sernio had anticipated this justification, so she brought along experienced jiu jitsu athletes, who withstood Cameron’s nonexistent blows. Cameron’s ad hoc rationale for this was that, as veteran martial artists, the jiu jitsu fighters had learned to “translate the energy.” So the technique he is selling is too dangerous to use on non-marital artists and won’t work on those who practice the arts.

In Japan, a Kiai master named Ryukerin also experienced a public failing of his technique, this time with a bloody twist. While Cameron only attempted to fell a noncombatant, Ryukerin claimed his technique would work during a fight, and he offered $5,000 to any modern Mixed Martial Arts athlete who could beat him. One fighter accepted the challenge and turned Ryukein into five and half feet of welts and bruises.

There are places on the human body that are vulnerable to injury and pain, and legitimate martial artists utilize attacks of these pressure points. But their bogus counterparts claim the ability to launch a disabling attack by manipulating qi. These alternative marital artists borrow that concept, and the accompanying notion of meridians, from alternative medicine. They claim their no-touch attacks disrupt the victim’s life force. However, qi has no discernible properties and those who claim they can detect it are unable to do so under controlled conditions. Qi has never been shown to exist, much less be available for manipulation in order to bag a judo trophy.

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“Left, right, wrong” (Brain hemisphere dominance)

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One of the enduring ideas about the human brain is that its hemispheres determine someone’s personality and cognitive skills. Those who are organized and good at math are considered left-brained, while those who are intuitive and artistic are labeled right-brained. Not sure where that leaves me, given my less than stellar grades in both algebra and drawing classes.

As it turns out, however, the idea of persons being either left-brained or right-brained dominant lacks a scientific grounding.

True, the brain is divided into left and right hemispheres, which are responsible for different tasks. But just because there are functions that take place in one hemisphere, that does not mean this drives personalities or cognitive abilities.

For one thing, not all cognitive abilities are specific to either left or right. Short-term memory depends on the frontal lobe, which is housed in both hemispheres. Also, long-term memory (if I’m recalling correctly) is maintained by neural connections that run throughout the brain.

Then there are abilities like vision processing that localize in one hemisphere for the benefit of the other side.

But let’s get back to the abilities that localize in one hemisphere, such as language on the left and music on the right. It is these delineations that likely gave birth to the left-brained, right-brained myth. However, researchers in a 2013 study examined subjects’ MRI scans and deduced there was no scientific basis for the notion of hemisphere-dominant cognitive styles. When performing tasks, the subjects showed activity in either the left or right side, but none of them demonstrated a pattern of being consistently dominant in one hemisphere.

Another reason for this myth is a misunderstanding of the results achieved by neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga and neurobiologist Roger Sperry when they were doing doctorate research. Sperry discovered that slicing the connective fibers of monkeys’ brains resulted in the right side of the brain seeming not knowing what the left side was doing. This suggested the fibers may serve as communication wires between the two hemispheres.

Gazzaniga found a similar effect in epilepsy patients when these fibers were severed to prevent seizures from spreading through the brain. When one of his patients who had had this surgery was shown a picture that only his left hemisphere could process, the patient was able to identify it. But when trying to process the image with his right hemisphere, the patient could only point at the picture, and was unable to name it.

Gazzaniga theorized that both hemispheres usually process an image, but that only the left can articulate what it is. Even though this research suggests the two hemispheres communicate with each other to help us execute cognitive tasks, popular culture has embraced an opposite idea that the hemispheres are segregated, and that this determines what kind of person we are and what kind of abilities we possess.

As to the difference between a neuroscientist and a neurobiologist, I don’t know. My left hemisphere is misfiring today.

 

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“Hear we go again” (Binaural beats)

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Many times, what skeptics see as scientifically invalid, New Agers see as mysterious and benevolent, and conspiracy theorists see as hushed up and dangerous. This can even apply to how headphones are used.

When two different tones are played in each ear, it creates the illusion of a single beat. These are called binaural beats and are touted by some as a way to have a safe, legal high. It is the auditory equivalent of the urban legend that dried banana leaves mimic marijuana.

While binaural beats exist, they do not affect the listeners beyond whatever pleasure they receive from the music. Those who assert it does much more than that base their claims on a misunderstanding of how brain waves function.

Brain waves are patterns of activity repeated several times per second and can be detected by an electroencephalograph. The basic brainwaves are their correlating conditions are: Delta (sleeping), theta (sleepy), alpha (relaxed), beta (alert), and gamma (hyper).

The crucial point, however, is that brain states produce brain waves; brain waves don’t produce brain states. Theta waves may be detected as you are drifting off to sleep watching Sesame Street, but replacing Grover’s ruminations with a gamma wave recording will not snap you back to a heightened state.

And it certainly won’t have the physical and mental benefits attributed to them by a number of proponents. These benefits include dieting, smoking cessation, memory aid, and pain relief. If desiring more of a New Age flavor, we are also promised a higher state of consciousness, third eye awareness, and chakra balancing. Makers of the I-Doser go so far as to claim different binaural beats are the equivalent of taking prescription medication. However, while a person may exhibit certain brain wave patterns while taking prescription medication for heartburn, we cannot create those waves to get the medical benefits. The music will do nothing to inhibit acid production or impact any other condition.

Many proponents cite as proof the experiments of 17th Century Dutch mathematician and scientist Christiaan Huygens. When Huygens placed two pendulum clocks side by side on a wall, he noticed the pendulums eventually became exactly opposite from the other. When one was at the far left of its swing, the other was at the far right. Binaural beat therapy practitioners consider this an example of how systems can become connected through an unexplained energy field.

However, Brian Dunning at Skeptoid explained that this is not what happened with Huygens’ timepieces. When Huygens took one clock off the wall, the effect disappeared. This is because when the pendulum swung, it imparted a tiny, equal, and opposite reaction to the wall. “And with two clocks on the wall,” Dunning wrote, “the system naturally sought the lowest energy level, per the laws of thermodynamics.” Thus, each pendulum swung counter to the other.

Lacking favorable results in double blind studies, proponents fall back on anecdotes. But these rely on the placebo effect and the power of suggestion. As Dunning noted, “If I give you a music track and tell you that it will cure your headache, you’re more likely to report that it cured your headache than you are to say, ‘It didn’t effect my headache, but it made my short-term memory better.’”

While New Agers are finding positive attributes that aren’t there, conspiracy theorists have spotted attempts to control our behavior. Not necessarily through binaural beats, but through the similar extreme low frequency waves. These cover the same range as brain waves, so some theorists believe that Illuminati reptilians or similar critters induced brain waves through HAARP and used them as a mind control device. Curiously, the perpetrators never used this power to convince the theorists of HAARP’s benevolence, or to subliminally suggest they bake them cinnamon rolls.