Pseudoscience

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“Bee gone” (Colony collapse disorder)

bee

For 10 years, European and American beekeepers have been experiencing larger than expected losses in their populations. After leaving for the winter, more bees than before are failing to return to the hive. This has been dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder.

Scientists have a pretty good idea what is causing the problem, but because of its complexity, are unsure of the precise manner to attack it. A USDA release identified the probable culprits: Invasive mites, insect pests, pathogens, pesticides, the Africanization of managed colonies, and nutritional deficiencies that are due to the lack of forage. Unfortunately, having a good idea as to the cause doesn’t translate into an easy fix. There are a number of complexities to weave through. There are many invasive mites and pathogens, for instance, and deducing which ones might impact CCD requires significant research. Also, many of the culprits overlap and untangling all this is arduous.

By way of comparison, bark beetles have caused a reduction in the number of coniferous trees in the western United States. However, targeting bark beetles would not be enough of a strategy. The insects are endemic to conifers, but drought is what’s causing the trees to be susceptible. Without the drought, the trees would be able to thwart the beetles. Without the beetles, the trees would survive the drought. But combined, the beetles and drought are lethal to the trees. And this involves only two factors, both of which are known. CCD is much more complicated, involving at least six factors, each of which have multiple components. Solving CCD will take time, effort, research, and money.

While this happens, some persons will pounce on this opportunity to advance a pseudoscientific agenda. No good tragedy can go to waste without Monsanto being pegged as the perpetrator. According to many a meme, the bees are being killed off due to Roundup. However, this is a herbicide, meaning it operates on a plant enzyme that is not present in bees. Furthermore, its use is inconsistent with the geography and temporal nature of Colony Collapse Disorder.

No anti-GMO claim has been backed by sound science, so let’s continue that trend by blaming GMOs on CCD. The accusation is that the bees pollinate genetically modified crops, which in turn poison the bees. But genetic modification transfers agricultural benefit, not poison, to a crop. A meta-analysis of independent studies showed that GMOs were not effecting bee survival. Besides, GMOs also lack geographical and temporal correlation with bee colonies.

Anyone sharing links about Roundup or GMOs’ role in the Beepocalypse had best not do so on their cell phone. According to a third reactionary rumor, cell phone signals are the reason the swarming, stinging insects are disappearing. But since these signals are non-ionizing radiation, they won’t change an electron’s orbit. This means they are unable to trigger a chemical reaction, and so are harmless to living creatures, a group that includes bees.

Roundup, GMOs, and cell phones are frequently assailed in alt-med and conspiracy circles, but if preferring a less traditional target in this case, consider torison physics.   This fabricated field rests on the notion the quantum spin of particles can cause emanations lacking mass and energy to carry information through vacuums faster than warp. As to what that has to do with CCD, the idea is that the emanations are disorienting the bees, causing them to wonder from the hive forever. This is a case of Tooth Fairy Science, where an assertion is made about a phenomenon without bothering to establish that the phenomenon exists.

Back in reality, scientists are employing different approaches, such as trying to determine what pesticides, and at what dosages, produce which effects, and how this can combat CCD. In one success, a British apiarist developed a strain of bees that proved resistant to varroa mites. I anticipate a counterargument that it’s because the bees don’t use cell phones.

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“Not digging it” (Pseudo-archeology)

moai

In an episode centering on the best-known fictional skeptic, Lisa Simpson, Principal Skinner announced, “All honor roll students will be rewarded with a trip to an archaeological dig. All detention students will be punished with a trip to an archaeological dig.”

While Nelson Muntz and Jimbo Jones would have no interest in Crimean vases or Incan jewelry, they might be enthused about skulls of alien-homo sapiens hybrids or death lasers from a lost tribe of Neolithic geniuses. If a real-life Skinner wanted to encourage this interest, he would have many pseudo-archeologists to choose from.

Pseudo-archaeology reaches conclusions about the past while bypassing the methods of gathering data and analysis that define the archeological field. The most defining feature of pseudo-archeology is reaching a conclusion beforehand, then seeking confirming evidence in order to promote an agenda. This was on display in 2012 when apocalyptic meaning was ascribed to Mayan inscriptions and structures.

One of the most prominent pseudo-archeological notions today is that extraterrestrial beings created ancient treasures such as the Pyramids, Stonehenge, and Moai. Other pseudo-archeological explanations credit these sites with mystical powers or with having a supernatural origin. While the ET and New Age explanations both seek to downplay the ingenuity of ancient peoples, an opposite but equally wrong idea is that those early humans managed technology greater than what we have today, but those advancements were lost in places like Atlantis and Agartha.

Religion can also be a factor. Whereas a legitimate archeologist may scientifically deduce that a femur is 150,000 years old, a Christian fundamentalist and his Hindu counterpart may arrive at figures of 5,000 and 5 million years, respectively. They base these numbers not on the evidence, but on their interpretation of scripture.

Similarly, competing pseudo-archeological claims were made when Kennewick Man was unearthed in Washington in 1996. Mormons touted it as evidence for pale-skinned inhabitants of ancient America, while neo-pagans considered it proof that Vikings had made it to present-day Tacoma. In truth, Kennewick Man’s bones showed he had a close genetic tie with today’s Native Americans.

Nationalism is another incentive, from mounds in North America being credited to pre-Columbus Europeans, to alleged pyramids in Bosnia, to asserting that the Irish are one of the lost tribes of Israel. Tamil nationalists even insist that a lost continent called Lemuria stretched from Madagascar to India to Australia, and was the cradle of civilization.

Some pseudo-archeological ideas are blatantly racist, such as conclusions of Aryan superiority arrived at by the Nazis. Others are more subtle, such as the idea than lost tribes from a far-flung locale were responsible for accomplishments of indigenous peoples in America, Africa, and Australia. Not all pseudo-archeology is this nefarious. The idea that there was a single goddess worshipped by persons across the world in the Paleolithic and Mesolithic Eras is not evil, it’s just mistaken, and was arrived at by misinterpreting sites and artifacts.

According to archeologist William Stiebing Jr., such conclusions are arrived at partly because pseudo-archeologists provide simple answers to complex issues. Another regular tactic is noting similarities between various artifacts from disparate cultures and using this this to bolster the idea they indicate a common source. For instance, Ken Ham has pointed out that dragons are featured in art work of ancient cultures in both Asia and North America. He deduces that since artists from these cultures never met or saw each other’s work, it means dragons were real. The dragon drawings actually look quite a bit different, but even if they looked the same, that would speak more to the human creative process than it would to the reality of flying fire-breathers. Other pseudo-archeologists have used Ham’s line of reasoning to argue for the existence of sea monsters, leprechauns, and various cryptids. But we need fossils, not ceramic paintings, to reach such conclusions.

Here’s another reason literature is a poor substitute for site digs and potassium-argon dating. Shakespeare is most revered writer in the English language, but he was unconcerned with historical or geographic accuracy. He was telling tales laden with life lessons. Using Titus Andronicus to support an archeological claim would be silly. Yet pseudo-archeologists do the same with myths from the Greeks, Aztecs, and Native Americans. When deficiencies such as these are pointed out, the ad hominem response from pseudo-archeologists is that they are being persecuted by entrenched scientists and academia. For example, humansarefree.com had this to say about Wikipedia editors disallowing their adjustments on an article about alleged Bosnian pyramids: “The Bosnian pyramids should not exist, so the world’s elites are doing their best to keep them that way. Who are the anonymous persons who are controlling the world’s information? Only Wikipedia insiders know.”

Another thing Wikipedia insiders know is that presenting falsifiable theories and following the Scientific Method, to include peer review, is how someone purporting to do archeology gets taken seriously. Geologists and archeologists analyzed the Bosnian site, its history and excavations, and concluded the hills are natural formations called flatirons. These are steep-sloped, triangular landforms created by the differential erosion of rock over softer strata.

Most persons don’t know squat about archeology, especially concerning other cultures. This makes it easy for pseudo-archeologists to spread misinformation. Whereas few will see the inside of a graduate level archeology course or brush off a chalice in a Minoan dig site, we’re are all exposed to Ancient Aliens and the notion of King Tut’s curse.

While far less known, another example of pseudo-archeology are the Dropa Stones, which allegedly contain first-hand accounts from inadvertent extraterrestrial visitors. Their spacecraft crash landed and we, in good Earthling tradition, slaughtered them.

Whereas some stories have small plot holes, Dropa Stones are more like a plot hole with some small stories thrown in. According to the script, an unnamed archeologist found a tomb in Tibet that featured four-foot skeletons, vaguely humanoid, but with massive heads. They shared this space with smooth, one-foot-in-circumference rounded stones featuring two grooves originating from a hole in the center. These discs totaled the quite specific number 716. They were 12,000 years old, though how this figure was arrived at was, like most of this whopper, unexplained. Also conspicuously absent are the skeletons, the tomb, the discs, the archeologist, and the man who translated the discs from an alien language. In short, everything the story is built on. There are photos of the alleged discs, but they are not one foot in circumference, nor do they have two grooved circles on them. The photos are mostly of jade discs about 5,000 years old.

With regard to the lack of visible alien language on the discs, this is explained away by the markings being so small they can only seen with a magnifying glass. The man who would have held the magnifying glass, Tsum Um Nui, was never photographed or interviewed, and had no known public presentations. We have no confirmation about his appearance, publications, references, education, or favorite Pez dispenser. He is almost certainly fabricated.

Of all the gaping, sucking holes in this preposterous tale, perhaps the biggest is the issue of translating a completely unknown language. Some forgotten languages can be at least partially reconstructed if they have the same root as a living language. But this requires a decade of dedicated work by highly-skilled linguists. In the Dropa Stones case, the tongue of aliens was deciphered by one guy in a few weeks. Sounds like the work of an Atlantis superman.

 

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“The tooth comes out” (Tooth Fairy Science)

tooth

When my children put teeth under their pillow, they wake up with substantially more money than I did at their age.

If attempting to ascertain why, I could examine various factors, such as whether the amount the Tooth Fairy leaves has kept up with inflation, if the Fairy values incisors more than molars, and if the time in between lost choppers impacts the amount left. I could query 1,000 children, analyze results for socio-economic trends and determine if there is a correlation between the frequency of Tooth Fairy visits and the sell of home security systems. I may even endeavor to conclude once and for all if the Fairy is male, female, or androgynous. The findings could be put in a snazzy hardcover book with impressive graphics and detailed footnotes. Yet none of this would establish that a stealthy, mobile spirit is replacing extracted calcified objects with cash.

Tooth Fairy Science refers to doing research on an unverified phenomenon to determine what its effects are, rather than to ascertain if it exists. It is post hoc reasoning in research form. The phrase was coined by Dr. Harriet Hall.

This shoddy science is a regular feature of studies into ghosts, cryptozoology, reincarnation, alien visitors, alternative medicine, parapsychology, and creationism.

I have three co-workers who believe our office is haunted. Curiously, this spirit only manifests itself when the workers are by themselves at night. Perhaps he is nocturnal and dislikes crowds. We have ample video and audio equipment in the office, and we could set these up and record what times bumps most occur, detect any unexplained shadows, and note any high-pitched whistles. This data could by analyzed and a conclusion reached about the ghost’s characteristics. But this would not take into account wind, pipes, electromagnetic interference, or a worker on floor above coming in at 11 p.m. We would have to assume the ghost’s existence and attribute these factors to it.

Similarly, cryptozoologists will shoot sonar into Loch Ness or look for disturbed vegetation in Bigfoot’s supposed stomping grounds, then attribute any findings they consider consistent with their monster to be proof the animal was there. As such, they do not consider other explanations, such as the sonar detecting a bloom of algae and zooplankton, or a warthog beating Sasquatch to the trap.

That’s because when Fairy Tale scientists uncover data that is consistent with their hypothesis, they assume the data confirms it. For example, psychiatrist Ian Stevenson spent years collecting stories from people who claimed to be reincarnated. He used these anecdotes to support his belief in reincarnation, and he used reincarnation to explain the stories, a textbook case of circular reasoning.

Moving onto alien abduction, John Mack talked with persons who claimed to have been taken by extraterrestrial beings. He assumed the stories to be real instead of considering that he might have implanted the ideas by asking leading questions, such as, “Was the alien about four feet tall,” as opposed to “How tall was the alien?” The mental state and susceptibility of the subject was not considered, nor were explanations like fraud, attention-seeking, or sleep paralysis. 

Alien abductees aren’t the only subjects that spend time on a Tooth Fairy scientist’s couch. So do alternative medicine patients. Chi, meridians, and blockages are assumed to exist in “energy” medicines such as craniosacral therapy, iridology, therapueitic touch, reflexology, chiropractic, Reiki, Ayuvedic, and more. I have addressed the rest of these in previous posts, so we’ll address Therapeutic Touch here.

First, Therapeutic Touch is neither. The practitioner’s hands are close to the patient, but are never on them. As to the therapy part, practitioners claim to be able to sense a patient’s “human energy field” with their hands, then manipulate the field by moving their hands near a patient’s skin to improve their health. Scientists have detected and measured minute energies down to the subatomic level, but have never found a human energy field. Nine-year-old Emily Rosa designed a controlled test of the practice which Therapeutic Touchers failed spectacularly. Any seeming success is because of the fluctuating nature of many illnesses, the placebo effect, confirmation bias, and nonspecific effects. The latter is a common error and refers to confusing the effects of practitioner-patient interaction with the supposed effect of the treatment.

In a test that proponents claimed proved Therapeutic Touch’s validity, researchers gauged the effects of the technique on reducing nausea and vomiting in breast cancer patients receiving chemotherapy. All patients were on the same chemotherapy regimen and they were randomly divided into three groups of 36 patients. The first group received usual Therapeutic Test treatment, the second group got a similar treatment except the practitioners’ hands were farther from the patients, and the third group received no treatment. A single practitioner performed all the treatments, which was fatal to conducting a proper study because he should not have known which patients were receiving which treatment.

Since there is no evidence the energy field exists, there can be no evidence that how far the practitioner’s hands are from the patient would make a difference. The alleged energy can’t be measured, so there’s no reason to believe any energy was transferred to, or benefited, any patient. While the authors claimed the study showed Therapeutic Touch worked, they had failed to establish that the central feature of the practice even existed.

Likewise, parapsychologists are quick to point to rare instances of a subject performing better than chance as proof that various forms of ESP are legitimate. Unsatisfactory results are considered as the power being unable to be accessed due to cosmic interference, negative energy from a skeptical observer, or some other ad hoc reason. They look to justify the failure as owing to a particular cause rather than the cause being that the power doesn’t exist.

Then we have the creationists. The Institute for Creation Research website informs us, “The very dependability of each day’s processes are a wonderful testimony to the design, purposes, and faithfulness of the Creator. The universe is very stable. The sun always rises in the east and sets in the west. Earth turns on its axis and always cycles through its day at the same speed every time.”

All of these phenomenon are explicable through known laws of physics and astronomy, and the ICR has affirmed the consequent by saying if there is order in the universe, there has to be a god controlling it, and since we see that order, a god exists. They attribute any majesty to this deity without bothering to prove his existence first. It’s one thing to do this as faith in one’s religion. It’s quite another to claim this as science while bypassing the entire Scientific Method.

I’m going to have to wrap this up. My daughter lost another tooth so I’ve got more research to conduct. 

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“Got any change?” (Anti-science groups)

SCIENCEBOOM

Third basemen who make two errors in the second inning are sent back to that position in the third. Defense attorneys who lose a trial are still trusted with a client’s case the next week. And chefs who send out the wrong dish are allowed to serve future customers.

Some persons, however, seem unwilling to extend this redemptive mindset to science. The thinking is that past mistakes from the field mean that any other conclusions it reaches are at least suspect, if not dead wrong.

First off, it’s good to admit when one is wrong and adjust one’s thinking when presented with new proof. But admirable traits aside, the larger issue here is to understand how science works. It is more than beakers, telescopes, and magnetic resonance imaging. It is an unending cyclical process aimed at learning the truth. It is self-correcting, self-criticizing, and invites critical examination. If we knew that all science was correct and complete, lab coats would be traded for swimming suits, and we would retire the field. Instead, there is no settled science, nor is there any all-knowing, all-powerful entity that declares, “This and this alone is science, and that shall never change.”

Indeed, change when justified is what science is all about. A physician may treat a pneumonia patient with antibiotics, which are the consequence of discovering, understanding, and embracing Germ Theory. By contrast, chiropractors still insist that an unknowable entity called Qi is blocked, allowing pneumonia and all manner of other ills to assault our bodies, necessitating spinal manipulation.

Another example of changing positions when justified centers on climate science. A frequent tactic of climate change deniers is to highlight Time and Newsweek articles in 1975 that portended global cooling. There were some scientists who thought global cooling was coming, but there were more who thought this to not be the case. But both camps employed the Scientific Method to arrive today’s consensus that anthropogenic global warming is real. Again, this is not sacred writ and anyone with contrarian evidence is encouraged to submit it to a reputable journal for peer review. Instead, producers of “Climate Hustle” send their findings not to a journal, but to a theatre.

In 1922, Harold Cook found a tooth remnant that he considered part of the the first developed primate discovered in North America. It was dubbed Nebraska Man. Further research and digs revealed that the tooth actually belonged to an extinct pig, and the claim that it was a primate was retracted in the journal Science. Searching for and finding new evidence, then adjusting when warranted, is one of the hallmarks of science. Ken Ham is correct when he says, “Science was wrong about Nebraska Man,” but he fails to follow up with, “Science uncovered the erroneous thinking about Nebraska Man.”

Like all persons, scientists make errors. The difference is that anthropologists are no longer zealously defending Nebraska Man. Meanwhile, Ham says humans were created in their present form 5,000 years ago in a six-day old universe. This position requires ignoring the totality of anthropological, geological, and astronomical evidence.

Another anti-science trope, this one from the anti-GMO and anti-vax throngs, trumpets that science gave us DDT. Besides poisoning the well, this statement is another illustration of failing to understand how science works.

Paul Hermann Muller received the Nobel Prize for discovering how efficient DDT was as an arthropod exterminator. This led to typhus, dengue fever, and malaria being nearly wiped out in Europe. Later science learned the negative impact DDT had on some sea life and birds, among other creatures, and its use was curtailed. DDT is still used to control insect vectors, and it was through the Scientific Method that researchers determined DDT’s value as a pesticide, and then learned of the environmental dangers and what steps were needed to use it safely. 

For all their wailing about science, these groups are giving us nothing themselves. The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health has been around since 1992 without announcing a cure or treatment achieved through alternative medicine. In 40+ years, the Institute for Creation Research has yet to contribute to our understanding of biology, anthropology, or astronomy. Anti-vaxxers have yet to concoct a cure for Alzheimer’s using red sage root and dandelion stems. Climate change deniers level charges of hoaxes, false data, and criminality, but have contributed just two of the more than 13,000 peer-reviewed papers on the subject in the last five years.

Meanwhile, genuine science is providing you air-conditioned comfort and freedom from polio as you read this on your iPod.

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“No energy” (New Age medicine)

DOGHEALER

Because energy is a word everyone knows but far fewer understand, it is a convenient umbrella term for those in the New Age healing and empowerment movements. Types of energy said to be available for our benefit include chi, prana, vibrational, orgone, crystal, vital, and the most polysyllabic yet, bioelectromagnetic.

It is sometimes insinuated that this energy hails from another dimension, consistent with some scientists thinking there is a fifth dimension and maybe even a 15th. Of course, there is a huge difference between postulating something’s existence and declaring it to be the source of medicine and tranquility.

These movements fuse the ancient and the futuristic. They are descendants of vitalism and faith healing, but also coopt words like quantum and make up undefined terms like biofield. Misrepresentation of energy is what these fields are built on. Energy has a number of different forms, all of which center on the ability of an object or system to do work on something else. These forms include kinetic, thermal, chemical, electrical, electrochemical, electromagnetic, and nuclear. An excellent, concise rundown of these forms is available here.

Whatever form energy comes in, it will have certain properties. First, it can be transferred from one object or system to another through the interaction of forces between the objects. Second, energy can be converted from any form to another. In some cases, this happens regularly, while in other cases it is only theoretically possible. In all instances, these transfers are impacted by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which in simplest terms states that as energy is transferred or transformed, more and more of it is used. Thirdly, energy is always conserved, and never created or destroyed, as stipulated by the First Law of Thermodynamics. 

Energy is not its own entity, but is rather a property of other things. Hence, energy healing is as nonsensical as trying to cure someone with mass or volume. Energy is not a self-contained force that can be obtained through chants, gyrations, or ersatz electronics.

Batteries, windmills, and nuclear power plants work in ways that are measurable and knowable. By contrast, New Age counterfeit energy is unknown, undetectable, and undescribed. Here are questions I have put to energy healing proponents without receiving anything besides silence and stammers: What type of energy is it? How is it stored? What is its source? What instruments are used to detect or transfer it? What unit is it measured in? How do you determine how much energy is being used? What is a safe amount and how do you prevent this threshold from being crossed? Proponents will talk of unblocking, harmonizing, unifying, tuning, aligning, balancing, and channeling this force without offering how this is accomplished or even what the force is.

In the best-known physics equation, Einstein revealed that energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. Brian Dunning of Skeptoid explained this means that, “Speed is a function of distance and time, so energy can be expressed in mass, distance, and time. That’s how we define work that can be done. Energy is a measurement of work. If I lift a rock, I’m inputting enough potential energy to dent the surface of the table one centimeter when I drop it.”

Nowhere did Einstein mention life force, disruptions in the aura, or discordant frequencies of sickness. New Age energy involves no mechanics, electricity, or atomic nuclei. I have seen hundreds of New Age energy claims, with nary a reference to ergs, joules, electron volts, or calories (unless talking about weight loss that will come via energy appetite suppression).

Dunning suggests substituting “measurable work capability” for “energy” when encountering New Age healing advertisements. This will highlight the claims’ ridiculous nature, as we can see in this example: “The release and ascent of the dormant spiritual measurable work capability enables the aspirant to transcend the effects of the elements and achieve consciousness.”

Despite the science vacuum that is the New Age energy field, it was supported for five years by the National Institutes for Health. Taxpayer money and the University of Arizona’s reputation were sacrificed in the name of magic healing at the school’s Center for Frontier Medicine in Biofield Science. I am tempted to include a mocking, condescending line here, but can meet that intent by quoting the center’s website: “We conducted a series of experiments examining the effects of Reiki on e. coli bacteria and biophoton emission in plants.” It also lets us know that, “The findings were again too controversial for mainstream journals,” a euphemism for, “Scientists weren’t buying our preposterous conclusions.”

While no peer-reviewed journal would touch them, that didn’t stop their leader, Dr. Gary Schwartz, from publishing, “The Energy Healing Experiments: Science Reveals our Natural Power to Heal.” Like much good pseudoscience, the treatise is lacking in data but bursting with anecdotes. This includes Schwartz claiming a preschooler’s heart condition was cured by a touch from a Hindu holy man. Another story has a patient being cured from 1,000 miles away from a clinician harnessing a cosmic elixir. Again, these are the claims of a man who says bias is the only reason reputable journals reject his work. This is a frequent gambit of pseudoscientists, to claim a conspiracy is keeping them from being the latest in a line of vindicated geniuses that includes Galileo and Alfred Wegener. Glad to be doing my part for the conspiracy.

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“Selective disservice” (Anti-vaccine claims)

MOUSEMEASLES

About a dozen West Virginia lawmakers celebrated the re-legalization of raw milk this year by quaffing the cow juice, which they promptly vomited up before spending the next few days bedridden. The delegates blamed their sickness on a stomach virus unrelated to the consumption of raw milk.

While it would seem unlikely that they all happened to get the virus at the same time they drank the raw milk, it’s remotely possible. Correlation and causation must always be considered and maybe one of the delegates had a stomach bug he passed onto others during the celebratory libation.

In any case, adults should be able to consume the beverage of their choice and can deal with the consequences, be they stronger bones or brucellosis. Similarly, the propriety of seat belt laws can be debated, but almost no one would argue against infant car seat use being mandatory.

But when it comes to vaccines, opponents are not arguing for something equivalent to an adult chugging unpasteurized milk while driving with the safety belt unfastened. The cause they promote impacts their children, as well as persons who are too unhealthy or too young to be vaccinated.

Sometimes the anti-vaxxers will just make it up, such as Modern Alternative Mama claiming her Google searches have made her more learned than any physician on the issue. This is an egotistical absurdity that most people would ignore. However, it’s more dangerous when anti-vaxxers present evidence that is correct, but incomplete.

In the mid-1970s, there was an automobile race between two teams, one from the United States and one from the Soviet Union. The Americans won, with TASS reporting that the USSR had taken second place and the USA next-to-last. When anti-vaxxers present numbers that are technically correct but greatly disingenuous, it can make a normal person begin to question the efficiency of one of medicine’s greatest achievements.

A frequent claim is that improved sanitation is responsible for the decrease in disease. Sanitation is a public health benefit, but does nothing for an airborne disease like rubella, which has been eliminated in the United States, or for smallpox, which has been eliminated everywhere. Vaccines were the reasons for these successes and they have also reduced or eliminated diseases that are not airborne. But anti-vaxxers use selective facts to argue that vaccines played little or no role.

One example is a chart showing measles death rates in the United States. It features a sudden drop in 1900, followed by a minor peak 15 years later, and finally a tapering off that goes down to very few deaths in 1963, the year the vaccine was introduced. The insinuation is that measles deaths were already on the way out and would have ended even without vaccination.

But this chart only addresses mortality. The number of cases, however, were consistently 500,000 to 800,000 annually. This lasted until the vaccine was introduced, and within seven years the numbers were down to almost zero. The same thing happened with Whooping Cough, with anti-vax charts again showing only the mortality rate and not the morbidity rate. If hygiene was enough to prevent disease, chicken pox rates would have plummeted before the mid-1990s. Instead, there were a steady four million cases per year until the varicella vaccine was introduced, and since then occurrences have gone down 85 percent. Also relevant is that death rates from diseases were going down largely because of health care advancements. Death rates for polio, for instance, declined due to the iron lung.

Besides use of selective numbers, anti-vaxxers will also play to chemo-phobia. This is a winning strategy in a nation that is becoming less scientifically literate, and even easier to peddle to the already science-compromised anti-vax crowd. A typical approach is to mention that a vaccine has such-a-such a chemical in it. This is done without pointing out that the dose makes the difference. Modern Alternative Mama will gladly munch an organic pear that has 50 times more formaldehyde than the vaccine she is railing against. Moreover, the human body naturally produces more formaldehyde than what vaccines contain.

Licking two tablets will not take away your pain, taking two tablets should do it, and taking two bottles of tablets will take you away. The same concept works for any ingested chemical. Mercury, aluminum, and sodium are used as preservatives in vaccines and come in minuscule amounts, much smaller than what we find in the foods and beverages we consume daily.

Another instance of demagoguery is displaying a doll with two dozen syringes stuck into it and ominously telling passersby that children will receive this many vaccinations and boosters before middle school. This needle doll is another example of selective reporting. It’s true that the two shots most children received in 1940 had quadrupled by 1980, and that the 1980 number had tripled by 2010. Left out of this tidbit is that the number of antigens in the vaccines has decreased dramatically. The vaccine schedule in 1960 would have included about 3,200 antigens, compared to about 125 today. This is mainly because patients in 1960 received the whole-cell pertussis vaccine instead of its acellular successor. The former has about 3,000 more antigens.

The current schedule calls for 14 immunizations by age 6, and each is for a disease that would cause serious illness or death in unvaccinated populations. So to be accurate, anti-vaxxers should remove the syringes from the doll, have it represent an unvaccinated child, and then place it in an iron lung, wheelchair, or toddler-sized coffin.

 

 

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“In-clined to disagree” (Race realism)

RAINBOW

From something as influential and honored as the James Randi Educational Foundation to something as irrelevant as this blog, there is a strong consensus among skeptics as to what we believe. Trips to almost every skeptic website will show the same doubts about conspiracy theories, alternative medicine, the paranormal, the supernatural, monsters, and aliens.

Disagreements are limited to certain aspects of a topic. Two skeptics may have different takes on why Reiki is the most prominent energy medicine, while the similar Pranic Healing is little-known, but both skeptics would agree that the treatments are equally worthless. The same skeptics may also have different views on why most chemtrailers have come to embrace this cause, but both would find the concern unfounded.

So it was noteworthy when I had my first experience of seeing a significant departure from the usual skeptic positions from one of our leaders. A past president of the James Randi Educational Foundation made a couple of posts stating he believed race to be a biologic concept, unlike the social construction most skeptics consider it.

I am all for considering new positions when given evidence, so I decided to engage the past president. I asked him to name the races, figuring this would be a good starting point and a reasonable request to make of someone who considers race a biological reality.

He never answered the question. He did, however, get into a pissing contest with a couple of more posters who joined my thread. I have extremely high expectations of someone who was the JREF president, and was profoundly disappointed at what transpired. He presented no evidence for his position and was content to belittle those who disagreed. In fairness, he didn’t open with personal attacks, the thread just deteriorated into it, and the other combatants weren’t exactly diplomatic. Still, it was unbecoming for someone of his stature. More importantly, I was unable to ascertain why he had adopted his position on race and what he considered evidence for it.

Had he dialogued with me, here is the point I would have raised. The most common supposed trait of race is skin color, which is directly tied to the intensity of ultraviolet light dependent on latitude. Put another way, someone’s skin color lets us know his or her ancestry relative to the equator. But while we see the color, we don’t see other traits that are distributed without regard to race. For instance, Belgians and Ugandans have very different skin color, but when it comes to the distribution of the ABO blood group, they are closer to each other than either are to the Chinese.

University of Michigan anthropologist Loring Brace has observed that such variations are distributed along geographic gradations know as clines. Attempting to categorize groups by skin color, hair texture, and facial features requires ignoring unseen differences that cross racial boundaries. While melanin follows a predictable pattern north and south, other clines spread out from specific points.

There are no distinct, non-overlapping genetic groups, and members of what are called races do not share the same genetic sequence. In fact, there is more genetic variation among Africans than in all other world populations combined. The Human Genome Project has taught us that people who have lived in the same geographic region for many generations may have some alleles in common, but no allele will be found in all members of one population and in no members of any other.

University of Iowa professor Angela Onwvachi-Willig said, “There is no gene or cluster of genes common to all blacks or all whites. Were race real in the genetic sense, racial classifications for individuals would remain constant across boundaries. Yet, a person who could be categorized as black in the United States might be considered white in Brazil or colored in South Africa.”

Similarly, the Irish were considered non-white in the 19th Century United States. And failing to include Hispanics in a separate category is inconsistent with the breakdown by skin color that otherwise defines race in the contemporary U.S. These examples show the subjective nature of these delineations.

A frequent question centers on afflictions that are more common in certain groups, such as sickle cell anemia among blacks. Such examples are usually a case of mistaking correlation and causation. In this instance, a mutation in the 11th pair of chromosomes is what causes the disease. This mutation originated in areas of the world where malaria was common since people with the trait do not get a particular strain of that disease. So the cause is not race, but rather an adaptation to a malarial strain.

In short, understanding the “Biological reality or social construction” issue requires getting under someone’s skin. 

 

 

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“Evolving position” (Evolution denial)

Human – business evolution

A longtime acquaintance asked if my position on the origins of homo sapiens was based on faith, belief, a combination of these, or neither. 

It is not based on faith, which is a necessarily religious concept. I define faith as holding onto a position regardless of the evidence. All of my positions are based on evidence and observation, which means they change if warranted by the science. If research reveals a spontaneous generation of a complex life form in the fossil record, that would shoot holes in evolution, and I would adjust my thinking accordingly.

By contrast, Youth Earth Creationists insist the universe is 6,000 years old even though we can see the light from stars millions of light years away. They argue that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time, an idea refuted by the geologic column and radiometric dating. Their positions are unmoved by science and proof, making it the definition of faith.

Continuing with what my position is based on, belief would be a better word than faith,  but it’s still inadequate. Belief is defined as “an opinion, conviction, or confidence,” or “a feeling of being sure that someone or something exists or that something is true.” Feelings or opinions have no place here, so evolution is not a matter of belief. It’s a matter of being able to understand its mechanism and process. By way of comparison, I don’t believe 5 x 5 = 25, I understand how elementary mathematics work.

The question from my longtime acquaintance was accompanied by a video of Abdul Rashid asking biology students a question, then asserting that their unsatisfactory responses disproved evolutionary science. It was further implied that this was proof of creationism, an assertion critical thinkers recognize at the negative evidence fallacy. Close to 100 percent of the products I’ve seen from Evolution is a Lie, the Creation Research Institute, Answers in Genesis, et al, are manifestations of this fallacy. They relate no science showing evidence of creationism. They instead highlight alleged deficiencies of evolution and wrongly think this is a point for their position.

All this came into play when my 8-year-old son asked me where humans came from. Not where baby humans come from, that was another conversation. Rather, he wanted to know how humans got here on Earth. Since what we know about evolution is based on verifiable, testable, falsifiable, and observable research, I was able to tell my son that humans evolved from an ape-like ancestor, through the process of natural selection, whereby beneficial mutations enable populations to adapt to their surroundings. Because of his age, I didn’t say that in so many words, and it was picture heavy, but the key point is that I can know it to be true because I understand what drives the process, how it works, and the evidence supporting it.

If evolution is true, stratas of the geologic column should reveal a succession of hominid creatures with features that are progressively less apelike and more human-like. And that’s what the fossil record shows, including the appearance of hominids capable of a bipedal gait about 100,000 years ago. As my son grows older, he’ll get more of an understanding and we can go into more detail. When that happens, here are some negative evidence arguments he may encounter from creationists. 

The silliest and simplest, and hence likely the first one he will encounter, is “Were you there?” Seriously, this is passed off as a point by Ken Ham and his ilk. And no, neither my son, Lewis Leakey, nor Stephen Jay Gould were there, nor do they need to have been. Science goes where the evidence leads, which is why DNA testing and fingerprints are better evidence than an eyewitness during a home burglary trial. Likewise, the fossil record, comparative anatomy, and so on are windows to evolution.

Subatomic physicists don’t see electrons, astronomers don’t see dark matter, and archaeologists didn’t see Greeks developing farm implements. These scientists make discoveries based on inferences and employment of the Scientific Method, and biologists work the same way.

While not ridiculous like “Were you there,” a similar ploy is to construct a deliberately narrow definition of science meant to necessarily exclude evolution from being so described. The crucial claim is that it must be observed, and the Rashid video centers on the interviewer trying to get biology students to admit this has never happened with evolution. In truth, evolution has been observed; more on that later.

But first, a definition. Science is a set of methods for empirical hypothesis testing. Done properly, it is able to support or refute some testable idea.

As Dr. Steven Novella noted in his response to the Rashid video, creationists prefer an inaccurately rigid definition of science that stipulates it must be observed at the precise moment it is happening (although that leaves them unable to meet their own criteria when arguing that God created man in his current form 5,000 years ago).

And evolution has been observed, most prominently in Richard Lenski’s ongoing e. coli experiment at Michigan State University. It has also been observed on three Florida islands. In 1995 researchers introduced brown anole lizards onto these islands, and when the researchers returned in 2010, they learned that to evade the invasive brown anoles, native green anoles had moved to higher perches. Consequently, the green anoles had developed larger toepads with more fringes in order to  provide increased surface area. This improved the lizards’ ability to cling to narrow, unstable branches. In short, they had adapted due to random mutation and natural selection, the driving forces of evolution. 

In addition to these direct observations, scientists base their conclusions about evolution on fossils, genes, population distributions, comparative anatomy, and developmental biology. These observations include learning that there are species that live exclusively in isolated locales, which is consistent with the idea of evolution. Examples include glowworms found only on New Zealand, giraffe weevils found only on Madagascar, and scaly-toed geckos found only on Vanuatu.

Also like other scientists, evolutionary biologists check the physical evidence to see whether it leads to verifiable predictions. That’s why anthropologists were looking for evidence of a hominid ancestor in the horn of Africa when they came across one of the field’s most significant finds, Lucy. It’s also why biologists suspected they might find a creature with features of both fish and land dwellers near Ellesmere Island, which led to the Tiktaalik fossil.

Just a few months ago, I had to explain to a successful 47-year-old man that evolution does not teach that humans descended from monkeys. He also wanted to know why there would still be monkeys if this were the case. A common response to such questions is to criticize science education, but I cannot put the blame on our public school system. There would be rare exceptions, such as parts of Louisiana and Mississippi where creationism is snuck into biology class, and where a student may be leading an insular existence where these notions are reinforced at church and home.

Otherwise, persons are without excuse. The information is easily accessible to anyone that wants it. A cursory Google search will reveal that evolution teaches that monkeys and other primates share a common ancestor with humans. The same search will show that we know this because of the geologic column, our sharing of 98 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees, and other anatomy inferences. The website will further reveal that when an evolving species becomes isolated from the main family it split from, it will eventually acquire characteristics that make it distinct. The parent species may survive or go extinct.

Creationists will sometimes say that evolution cannot explain the origins of life, and this assertion is perhaps the only common ground they and evolutionists occupy. Abiogenesis studies how life may have arisen from non-living matter and includes a combination of laboratory experiments and an examination of genetic information from today’s organisms. Evolution is a separate field centering on the study of inherited characteristics in biological populations over time. Trying to count being unable to explain how the first living organism got here as a strike against evolution is as nonsensical as dismissing the entire physics field because botany has yet to produce a blue rose.

My position is, quite literally, an evolved one. I was once a 15-year-old Young Earth Creationist asking my erudite biology teacher where each preceding life form came from. We kept going at least as far back as her positing that a lighting strike into a body of water may have produced Earth’s first life form. Which caused me to ask where the lightning came from, and what happened before that, and before that, and eventually her answer was, “I don’t know.” I took this as a weakness in her line of reasoning, whereas today I realizing that admitting one doesn’t have all the answers, but is still looking for them, is something commendable. And it never occurred to me that I was just as unable to explain where God came from. I was still several years away from understanding the fallacies of negative evidence and special pleading.

Some creationists say how awful it must be to think one came from an apelike creature or something resembling a salamander creeping though the slime. This is the appeal to consequence fallacy and, as such, has no bearing on whether these descriptions of human origins are true.

Another common creationist objection is that it’s inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, much less the humans that house them, could result from chance. First, their inability to comprehend is irrelevant to whether it’s happening. That is merely the personal incredulity fallacy. Second, this argument misstates the role chance plays in evolution. Chance does determine random mutations, but natural selection is the opposite of chance. Natural selection preserves advantageous traits, enabling biological populations to adapt to their environment. Because of this, a single-cell organism that lived in water 3.5 billion years ago is the deep ancestor of an 8-year-old who is having the process explained to him.

 

 

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“Unappealing bananas” (Naturalistic fallacy)

MULECAR

The appeal to nature fallacy rests on the easily disprovable assumption that nature is necessarily good. It comes in forms such as, “I use herbal medicine because it’s what nature intended,” or “I won’t vaccinate because natures knows best.”

This assumption relies on nature being conscious and benevolent. Of course, nature is not conscious and, while human interaction with it may be good, bad, or neutral, it’s all by coincidence, and comes with no intent on nature’s part.

Berries that grow wild do so because the soil, conditions, and weather are conducive to that happening, not because nature wants to bestow upon us a free source of Vitamin C. Plants that excrete chemicals which lead to medicine don’t have our inflammation reduction in mind. It’s the result of natural selection and climate. Canada geese fly in formation for means of transportation and migration, not for our esthetic enjoyment.

What’s more, those who appeal to nature don’t realize many of their examples of it are actually unnatural. The banana, for instance, is synonymous with potassium and is one of the healthier foods available. But the one we eat is not natural. It has been modified over thousands of years, from a tiny, green fruit full of large, hard seeds, to today’s easily-peeled, delectable Corn Flakes accompaniment. Cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, savoy, and kohlrabi are all modified versions of brassica olearacea. This plant can usually only grow near limestone sea cliffs, but thanks to unnatural modifications, we have an abundance of leafy greens to eat. A diet high in these unnatural vegetables goes a long way toward reducing one’s chance of experiencing natural cancer.

Probably the best way to cure someone of their naturalistic fallacy is with a trip to the Australian Outback. If the sun, wind, and other natural elements don’t do them in, there are scorpions, taipans, and even a venomous snail. The flora can be deadly as well. One mushroom indigenous to the Outback will, if consumed, produce two days of anguish and pained vomiting, followed by death unless a liver transplant can be effected. Then there is the Stinging Brush, whose tiny hairs have been responsible for at least one human fatality. Another victim who survived the plant described his encounter with nature thusly: “For three days, the pain was almost unbearable. I couldn’t work or sleep. The stinging persisted for two years and recurred every time I had a cold shower. It’s ten times worse than anything else.”

Leaving Australia for Africa, lions may seem majestic when they roam across the savannah with their manes waving. But the lion ripping a zebra’s back open with its claws and gashing its jugular vein with knife-like canines is also nature in action. Nature is what the Discovery Channel aired during its glory days. It is not represented by the adorable, chirping, cooperative gang of anthropomorphic animals in Disney movies. Examples of nature include poison oak, tapeworms, smallpox, earthquakes, hungry polar bears, and mercury poisoning.

Some people prefer to double dip their naturalistic fallacy and add the appeal to antiquity. They may say, “That’s the way people did it for thousands of years.” And in this naturopathic Shangri-La without gluten, vaccines, antibodies, or GMOs, and where food was grown locally and the medical treatment was herbs delivered by shamans, the average lifespan was one-fourth of what it is today. Since 1900 alone, the average lifespan has risen 50 percent, owing mostly to vaccines and antibiotics.

Some who appeal to nature claim that sanitation is the real reason for this, which is kind of strange since plumbing, sewers, and solid waste disposal are unnatural. But hypocrisy aside, the claim is only partly accurate. Sanitation was a major plus for public health, but sanitation standards in the developed world have changed little since being introduced. Meanwhile, lifespans keep increasing even though sanitation standards have been steady.

Another argument from the naturalistic crowd is that without vaccines and antibiotics, homo sapiens would evolve resistance to disease and, eventually, nature would act to our benefit. While this might be possible, the idea that this could happen a million years from now is a lousy reason to let your child die from polio today.

Besides, pathogens evolve just like humans do so natural selection might work against immunity. Whenever a new mutation arises, the pathogen may evolve a response to it and this could lead to an even more lethal disease.

Truth is, those who live this fallacy already realize how unnatural products improve their lives. They learn of all-natural shampoos on an unnatural blog; they live somewhere other than a cave; their organic squash in kept fresh using an unnatural storage method; and the hybrid that gets them to their anti-GMO protest is a Prius, not a mule.

 

 

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“Fusion delusion” (Cold fusion devices)

frozenstar

Dr. Steven Novella has ruminated that cold fusion might enable jet packs, flying cars, and the end of reliance on fossil fuels. With all manner of tremendous applications, both practical and amusing, there would seem to be a strong incentive to find a way to produce massive amounts of energy while outputting very little.

However, as Novella noted, cold fusion is highly unlikely, to the point of not even having a theoretical model to work with. Because of this and numerous public failings after many promises, there are only about 100 persons seriously pursuing it, and only a tiny percentage of those are bona fide scientists. It’s OK to research and experiment, of course, but those doing it should be honest about their methods and findings, should submit for peer review, and should invite inspection and questions. With few exceptions, this is not how cold fusion proponents operate.

Cold fusion is a hypothetical type of nuclear reaction that would occur at room temperature, compared with the (very) hot fusion that takes place within stars. It has been pursued since the 1920s, with several tantalizing but untrue claims made on its behalf. The most spectacular failure was the Stanley Pons-Martin Fleishman debacle in 1989. This electrochemist duo had published an article in a science journal asserting they had achieved cold fusion. They made the cover of several national magazines and were a worldwide sensation for a few weeks.

Many scientists tried to replicate the work, with a few seeming successes. However, further investigation revealed that these were due to inaccurate heat measurements that resulted from faulty equipment. Furthermore, none of the experiments were showing the neturon flux that would result from fusion.

The attempts to replicate the alleged Pons-Fleishman findings fueled a surge in funding research, but this dried up after the experiments repeatedly fizzled. The few who attempt it today receive little if any funding and the field has become insular, opaque, and resentful of mainstream science, which it thinks is repressing it. In other words, it is a paranoid pseudoscientist’s playground.

There are highly complex, very technical descriptions of how time travel might be possible if 100 hypothetical methods go precisely right and another 100 speculative technological advances are developed. Cold fusion devices are similar. Coming up with one is about as likely as transporting George Washington back to witness it.

It would require, among other obstacles, joining nuclei lighter than iron into heavier elements. This demands a lot of energy since the nuclei must overcome significant electrostatic resistance to manage this. Regular fusion happens because of the high temperature and pressure in a star’s core. Being able to do that without those temperatures and pressure is the behemoth of a problem that almost certainly dooms cold fusion dreams.

Still, feeble attempts continue, with infrequent demonstrations that go nowhere. In order to be convincing, a cold fusion demonstration would need to show proof of gamma radiation, as well as heavier elements that result from fusion. Most tellingly, there would need to be gobs of excess energy. Instead, any seeming excess energy is infinitesimal, so little that experimental error may be the cause. Despite lofty promises, cold fusion advocates have yet to produce a working model. The best example would be for a demonstrator to give a presentation in an auditorium powered by his or her cold fusion device.

In lieu of this, we get years of talking about almost being there and of continual repression. The latest manifestation is the Leonardo Corporation’s ECAT device. The corporation’s website includes a description of what the ECAT is, how it works, and who invented it. But when it comes to answering when it can be purchased in order to fuel those jetpacks, we get this: “The ECAT currently operates as a pilot plant, gathering useful data to feedback in preparation for the mass production which is planned to start late 2016 to early 2017.” This date have moved to the right several times and is a microcosm of the cold fusion crowd’s shadowy operations.

Meanwhile, the Norwegian company R&D says it will have such a device to the world within 10 years. One believer, who seems reminiscent of Charlie Brown running toward the football, posted his feelings about the latest tease and those who would suppress it. It was a typical cold fusion advocate ad hominem, featuring hostility to criticism and strawmen. “I am appalled that the so called scientific community has so little vision.” (He posted this to the Internet using an iPhone). “The insults from the physics associations around the world indicates to me they are a little worried. Cold fusion makes them angry and gives them a headache. There are no facts of physics, only theory.” He must have wrote that while experiencing weightlessness instead of gravity.

The poster then complains that the few dozen persons who are pursing cold fusion devices are not taken seriously, a problem that would be fixed by one of them inventing it.