Pseudoscience

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“Truth and Consequences” (Polygraph)

POLY

In 2013, Chad Dixon was imprisoned after being convicted of threatening national security. Did he aid ISIS, copy Timothy McVeigh, or act as a courier for North Korean agents? Nope. Rather, he taught government job applicants how to pass polygraph exams. Prosecutors never questioned the validity of his techniques, but focused only on the fact that he taught them. This amounted to a de facto admission that the techniques work and that polygraphs do not.

At least they don’t work as far as determining dishonesty. The polygraph is able to record a subject’s blood pressure, respiration, pulse rate, and skin resistance. But this means it only that is able to detect rattled nerves, not prevarication.

In most polygraph sessions, the examiner compares responses to relevant questions with answers to control questions. The latter are intended to mitigate for the anxiety of being suspected of serious crime. Control questions concern misdeeds that are similar to those being investigated, but are broad and take such forms as, “Have you ever stolen anything?”

A person telling the truth is assumed to fear control questions more than relevant questions since control questions are designed to arouse a subject’s discomfort over abstract misdeeds as opposed to focusing on a specific crime. Greater physiological response to relevant questions leads to a being suspected of deception. Greater response to control questions leads to a judgment of no deception. If no difference is found between the two, the result is considered inconclusive.

However, deception is a cognitive function and there are no scientific studies that show the emotional response linked to prevarication can be measured. The National Academy of Sciences issued a comprehensive report on polygraph research, and concluded that it was “unreliable, unscientific, and biased.” It found 57 of the 80 research studies it looked at were significantly flawed. Some studies showed a success rate of no better than chance, and others performed still worse.

Despite this, polygraphs are still used on prospective employees of the FBI, CIA, and the Secret Service, even though needing to pass a polygraph test to land a prestigious job would make almost anyone nervous.

Another shortfall is that reactions to lying and being suspected crimes vary with each person. Aldrich Ames and the Green River Killer, Gary Ridgway, both passed their polygraph exams. This is because lying with no physiological change is standard for sociopaths. Others, by contrast, would get freaked out if being questioned about assassinating James Garfield. In Ridgway’s case, an innocent suspect failed the polygraph when asked the same questions that the perpetrator had been given.

Such false positives are common, which is unsurprising. Being falsely suspected of a crime, then being questioned by police detectives while hooked up to wires is going to be very stressful. Hence, the polygraph often causes the result it is meant to be determining.

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“A new pair of genes” (Evolution denial)

dish

I regularly run across claims from the biology-challenged that evolution has never been observed. Yet it is on display every day in Richard Lenski’s ongoing E. coli experiment at Michigan State University.

Since 1988, Professor Lenski and his compatriots have charted genetic changes in 12 initially identical populations of asexual e. coli bacteria. The researchers have observed a wide array of genetic changes, occurring in anywhere from one to 12 of the populations. The population reached its 60,000th generation two years ago.

To deal with the cognitive dissonance of observed evolution, creationists fabricated a  distinction between micro- and macro-evolution. Since it would be straining credulity for even Ken Ham or Kent Hovind to deny what was literally being seen, they needed to come up with the ad hoc rationalization that these changes were merely improving an existing species, not creating a new one. They have yet to explain what would constitute a new species (breeding abilities, new appendages, just looking way different?)

But even if one accepts the term macroevolution, the Lenski experiment has now shown an example of this in its first stage. That’s because one of the e. coli cultures has evolved the ability to use citrate as a carbon source. Until then, the inability to do this was one of the traits that defined the e. coli species.

To be clear, neither Lenski, myself, nor anyone else claims this is a new species yet, as speciation is not a single event. It is a series of processes, with a beginning stage of initial divergence, a middle stage where species-specific characteristics refine, and an end where a new species becomes a separate evolutionary lineage. From there, it begins its own diversified branch or goes extinct.

Some creationists say that science doesn’t count if it contradicts their interpretation of a specific Bible version. As such, I’m unsure why they even try to answer scientific research with their own creative biology. Why not just limit their response to quoting Malachi this or Heznekeriah that? But since they do sometimes try to sound science-y, we will examine their attempt to finagle their way around Lenski’s observation of macroevolution.

Leading the creationist charge is Scott Minnich, who has genuine scientific credentials, as he works as a microbiology associate professor at the University of Idaho. More specific to this case, he had a critique of the citrate-using e. coli find published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Bacteriology. He and his associates replicated Lenski’s findings, so the disagreement was over what it meant. Minnich’s overarching point was that since the bacteria gained its new ability by rearranging existing genetic elements, no new genetic information evolved.

University of Toronto biochemistry professor Laurence Moran compared that to “saying a new book…contains no new information, because the text has the same old letters and words that are found in other books.”

Minnich argued that since genetic information was merely moved around as opposed to being created that this was not an example of macroevolution. Yet an e. coli strain gained an ability it had never had before, so this could be a necessary step toward speciation.

Also, the result allowed microbiologists to observe the ecological and genetic factors that cause change in organisms – changes that over time can lead to a new species. Contrast that with summarily dismissing the notion of speciation because Genesis suggests otherwise.

Moran further explained: “A genome encodes not just proteins and patterns of expression, but information about the environments where an organism’s ancestors have lived and how to survive and reproduce in those environments by having useful proteins and expressing them under appropriate conditions. So when natural selection favors bacteria whose genomes have mutations that enable them to grow on citrate, those mutations provide new and useful information to the bacteria.”

Moran’s words describe one example of how evolution works. Existing DNA is modified to create new genes or regulatory elements from existing sequences. Genes and functions don’t just poof and appear, much as creationists would love for them to.

 

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“Healthy, wealthy, and lies” (Anti-GMO seminar)

MONSANTO

I strolled past the signs near the entrance proudly proclaiming that gluten-free food was available within. The store’s names stressed that the food was natural, leaving an unstated assumption that this was necessarily good. There was a detox section, although no one in it was receiving a liver transplant. There was also a sizable aromatherapy section and I was here for an anti-GMO presentation, so I figured I was deep in enemy territory. The organic dog food removed all doubt.

I was one of about a dozen attendees and presumably the only one doing undercover skeptic blogger work. I expected a one-sided presentation, but figured the speaker (a 67-year-old naturopath) would at least be aware of pro-GMO points in order to try and counter them. However, she had never heard of Golden Rice until I mentioned it. This is rice that is infused with Vitamin A, with a goal of preventing blindness in Third World children. Her retort was that Vitamin A should be distributed in other forms, without specifying this form, or how it would be paid for, transported, and delivered.

I thought we might have a chance at some evenhandedness when she described a GMO as “an organism which has been altered.” Anti-GMO types frequently prefer phrases like “manipulated into an unnatural state.” However, that hope vanished when she told us, “In the original Omen series, the antichrist was the CEO of a company thinly veiled on Monsanto. That is fitting, and they knew something.”

She touched on foreign policy as well. “Russia has totally banned GMO foods. They won’t have to launch a war, they will just be able to walk in and take our country because people here will just be zombies from eating that stuff.” I know the undead has been a saturated pop culture topic lately, but burned-out Commies vs. capitalist zombies, I think we’ve got a ratings winner there.

By the end she was explaining “how to avoid these Frankenfoods.” She also regretted that GMO opposition in the United States hasn’t mirrored what has happened in France, where she says the citizenry has ripped up cobblestones and dumped farm animal excrement in the streets. Indeed, the drive home was the one part of my seminar attendance that was without bullshit.

The Omen and Frankenfood references nicely mirrored the naturopath’s own horror tales. These included how 70 percent of U.S. foods are genetically modified and that these products cause liver malfunction and heart failure. And we are washing these GM foods down with aspartame-riddled drinks, which causes Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s. Yet we were somehow all alive and spry enough to be hearing this. The other attendees presumably douse themselves in patchouli oil before heading out to buy organic pears and honey lemon shampoo, but that wouldn’t explain why I’m still healthy.

There was frequent praise of organic produce. “Does it cost a little more? Up front, yeah. But do you know how much it costs to be in a nursing home’s Alzheimer’s unit?” This was asked without offering evidence that this is the inevitable destination for the GMO corn-fed amongst us. It also glossed over the fact that Alzheimer’s substantially predates the appearance of GMOs .

She repeated the usual ad populum associated with anti-GMO talk. She pointed out that 26 nations have banned GMOs, with “Europe” being one of the countries she listed. In truth, most of the countries she cited only ban portions of the GMO process. I was unable to get a definite picture, but I could only verify that Zambia and Zimbabwe have truly banned GMOs, meaning they outlaw their cultivation, import, and sale.

“There can be contamination in organic produce, but there’s a difference between 90 percent clean organic produce and 100 percent bad for you regular food.” What is 100 percent bad for your diet is no food, as some Zambians and Zimbabweans can attest.

In any case, the number of countries that have banned it has nothing to do with whether they are safe. Governments can and do pass bad laws based on bad information.

She described GMOs as “Round Up Ready,” which is only true occasionally. Most Round Up ready crops are GMOs, but not all GMOs are Round Up Ready. She used this introduce the idea that glysophate is a danger. Indeed, it can be, but like all chemicals, toxicity is determined by dosage.

I raised this point, asking, “Since the dose makes the poison, what is a safe amount of glysophate? For instance, if you had two acres, how much glysophate could safely be spread?” She answered, “There’s no safe level of glysophate, just none.” I decided to fact check this and came across the National Pesticide Information Center at Oregon State University. Its information about glysophate shows potential danger in certain conditions and doses, but it is far from the death sentence our neighborhood naturopath had guaranteed.

We were shown photos of severely bloated rats that supposedly had been fed GM soy. I’ll give the benefit of the doubt and assume that these rats were bloated for this reason. But if so, the studies test for such dangers, and when proven unsafe, the food is not allowed to be sold.

She made no mention of the 1,783 studies that indicate GMO safety, other than to say such studies are pushed through by wickedly wealthy Monsanto executives and a compliant government. Not all studies are industry-funded, though many are, and with good reason. Most automobile safety tests are funded by the industry, in part because they are liable if they sell a defective product. The same is true with those who sell genetically modified organisms.

Next, the naturopath offered, again without evidence, that industry and government elites “who push all this junk on us, you better believe they’re eating high-quality organic food.”

Between what she said and audience members chimed in with, here were some other memorable quotes from the day:

BEST POST HOC REASONING: “I have a friend whose adult daughter was struggling with infertility. She asked what she could do, and I said, ‘Get her off soy and tell her to eat organic.’ Now she’s pregnant with her second child.”

BEST POLITICAL BIPARTISANSHIP: “It doesn’t matter if it’s Republicans or Democrats. GMO stuff is Obama, and aspartame was Bush and Rumsfeld.”

BEST GRAMPA SIMPSON IMPERSONATION: “These people that are 20 and 30 years younger than I am are idiots and zombies, out there eating all this stuff. It effects the way you think, the way you reason, and your reaction time. In places where they don’t have GMOs, people are bright, they’re engaged, they’re energetic.” Or in the case of Zimbabweans, they are starving because President Mugabe won’t accept GM corn for drought victims.

As mentioned earlier, the only countries I could determine that have banned the cultivation, import, and sale of GMOs are Zimbabwe and Zambia. So unless the naturopath is vacationing exclusively in the Victoria Falls vicinity, at least some of the peoples she’s encountering on her travels are consuming GMOs. Attributing all pleasant character traits to a GMO-free diet, and all negatives traits to consuming GMOs, was part of the presentation’s continual post hoc reasoning.

BEST NON-GMO TERROR CITED: “Fluoride reduces people’s IQ by 10 percent.”

BEST OMINOUS, HUSHED, REPEATED USE OF THE WORD “THEY”: “They created the Zika disaster and then they say we’ve got a vaccine to treat it. They do that again and again.”

BEST REFERENCE WITH WORLD WAR I OVERTONES: “It’s mustard gas when you take a shower because the chlorine heats up the water and turns the water into it.”

 The naturopath closed with what she said was a true tale about a Greek nun.

 “She never kept more than a day’s supply of food. She ate what anyone offered her and she never got sick. Then she had a girl who came to stay with her who tried the same approach, and she got deathly sick the first day. The difference was that before the nun ate anything, she prayed over it, and the young girl didn’t.”

It seems, then, that the naturopath and her kind can dump their anti-GMO food campaign in exchange for praying before consuming it. I can live with that compromise.

 

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“Culture clubbed” (Lynn Andrews)

ANDREWSPICWhen I visit my wife’s hometown in the rural Philippines, I encounter a culture different from the one I grew up in. The religion is a Catholicism-witch doctor mix that includes a belief in a quasi-reincarnation which enables deceased relatives to sojourn in spirit or butterfly form. Neighborhoods are not quite tribal, but they feature a much stronger sense of identity than what is found in the United States. Most families grow at least some of their own food, usually rice and coconuts. While I’ve been warmly received in my handful of trips, it is unlikely that an outsider such as myself would ever be accorded access to the area’s deepest secrets and beliefs, even though I married into the culture. And it is much less likely that this scenario would happen six times to an interloper visiting disparate locations that prize tradition and secrecy.

But that is the claim of Lynn Andrews, who says she has been trained and mentored by shamans from various cultures, all of whom make up a highly-select group called the Sisterhood of the Shields.  

Her story of where these ideas and practices come from is almost certainly fabricated. Not that it matters much. Whether she came up with it on her own, or if she is heir to a multi-cultural conglomerate has no bearing on the legitimacy of what she’s peddling. And that is the notion that there is a magic emotional healing available through all of nature, and which has been used by every ancient culture and it still bursting through everyone’s chakra. Despite this ubiquity, it can only be accessed by purchasing it from Andrews.

Most of her writing features undefined New Age terms, but she is adaptable enough to throw in a dash of pseudoscience, such as, “Quantum physics, along with discovering the different ways the right and left hemispheres of the brain process information and function, are giving modern societies a greater understanding of the energy waves of life that bind us together and sometimes pull us apart when we are out of sync with the rhythms of our lives.”

In this sentence, she uses science terms, but tosses them into a gibberish gumbo. Quantum physics is the study of the behavior of matter at the molecular, atomic, and smaller levels. It is unrelated to society’s understanding of energy. As it happens, society’s understanding of energy is somewhat limited, as evidenced by the fact that Andrews and those like her get away with misusing the word. Her writing wows those who don’t know she is mangling terms, and the reader is left impressed, or at least confused and looking to Andrews to explain further. She also gets away with claiming to be on the cutting edge since her verbiage is unfamiliar.

While appealing to the future, she still makes the standard alternative medicine appeal to antiquity, writing, “These are the natural energies of the universe that Shamans have practiced for millenniums.” Of course, how long something has been used has nothing to do with its effectiveness.

Andrews excitedly reports that we are nearing the end of a 5,200-year Mayan cycle, a 1,000-year Incan cycle, and are entering a new Chinese cycle. In each case, this will lead to increased “cosmic wisdom, peace, harmony, and tranquility.” There have been multiple waits of 1,000 years or more, but they all happen to end in time for Andrews to take commercial advantage of it. Her energy waves do seem quite in synch after all. Even more, “new feminine energies” will use Lake Titicaca as a conduit, and pilgrims can soak these up by signing on for Andrews’ spiritual journey to Peru.  

With regard to this feminist energy, Andrews writes briefly about the “millenniums- long patriarchal oppression,” but never encourages voting, blogging, dialoging, campaigning, or organizing. Rather, the solution is to dress in natural fiber clothes, adorn sun jewelry, bang drums, and dance about a fire. Or more specifically, participate in these liberating activities at Andrews’ $800 retreats. There is also the option of paying $150 to talk with her by telephone for an hour. Or you can call me instead. Your cosmic energy won’t be any more attuned with Neptune or elk, but the chat is free and I will have Iron Maiden playing in the background.

If purchasing her phone services, seminar seats, or study programs, Andrews says students will be privy to knowledge she gained while apprenticing under shamans on four continents. Locales for these spiritual awakenings included the Yukon, the Yucatan, the Australian outback, the Himalayan foothills, the Pyramids, and Hawaiian shores. She never made it to Moline, Schenectady, or Tulsa. She knows the more exotic the locale, the more mystic it will seem to her followers. At some point in this spiritual journey, she claims to have been enshrined into the highly-secretive Sisterhood of the Shields, which numbers just 44 members. Furthermore, they appointed her as their spokesperson.

It is highly unlikely that Andrews gained access to folk medicine women from each of these cultures, and was encouraged to publicize what had been secretive methods. There is no indication of the Sisterhood’s existence separate from Andrews’ claims. These women from all parts of the world would had to have organized into an extremely tight group, then tapped an interloper to the spread cultural secrets of proud peoples. There is no good answer for how women raised in disparate cultures and religions would have sown together a seamless spiritual tapestry. In one case, Andrews  claims to be quoting a Lakota while using Cree terms.

Furthermore, she has cited Agnes Whistling Elk and Ruby Plenty Chiefs as two of her mentors, but  has never provided even a photo to document their existence. She did, however, relate that they had visited her again in 2014 and told her of a new vortex near Sedona that will open DNA doorways and provide energies from Mother Earth. Best of all, this new vortex coincided with the location of Andrews’ spring gathering that year. For several hundred dollars you get it all: Love, tranquility, and a previously unknown dimensional doorway.

Usually for my accompanying photo, I try to dig up something that highlights the ridiculous nature of the subject and maybe add some lazy Photoshopping. In this case I’m just using a picture from Andrews’ website because it accomplishes both of those goals nicely.

As to the words on that website, check this out: “Discover the ancient teachings of the Feminine Divine and learn how to heal and integrate your Sacred Feminine Energy Shield into wholeness. Through sound, action and intention, you heal the energy centers of your body – your heart, solar plexus and chakras. Move into Oneness and harmony with Mother Earth and the world around you as she shows you how to heal your life. This is the Way of the Wolf.”

In the end, is matters not whether these ideas are from Andrews alone or something cobbled together by herself and 43 other shamans. In either case, the result is pseudoscientific psychobabble that appeals to those comforted by platitudes, myths, tales, mysticism, and the appeal to nature fallacy, all wrapped in a bow of bastardized feminism.

 

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“Adjusted development” (Climate change denial)

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In a Phil Plait column on climate change this week, one reader posted a contrarian response. When asked to provide evidence of his claims, the reader told those he was arguing with to find it themselves. I sometimes encounter persons who erroneously shift the burden of proof, but this was a rare instance of someone adding the preposterous stipulation that their opponent provide the point they were arguing against.

For good measure, the reader added that any evidence on climate change doesn’t count if it comes from the NOAA, NASA, the International Panel on Climate Change, or skepticalscience.com, a website dedicated to the topic. Hey, it’s called climate change denial for a reason.

A couple of weeks prior to this, I read a column by Jay Taylor at the Liberty Alliance that also espoused the denialist position. To this, I posted my boilerplate response to such assertions:

“The central question of this issue is whether deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels contributes to more CO2 and other greenhouse gases, thus driving up average global temperature.

“99.8 percent of articles published in peer-reviewed journals over the past 25 years have concluded the answer is yes. If Taylor has evidence to the contrary, he is encouraged to submit his findings, methods, data sets, etc., to Science, Nature, or some similar publication. Instead, he bypasses peer review and takes his message straight to a sympathetic audience; doing so is the number one sign of pseudoscience.”

A reader responded to this by warning the government will use the issue to try and regulate businesses and power companies. This is the argument of consequences fallacy, and it bypasses the central point of whether the planet is warming and what’s causing it.

Later, the reader wrote that volcanoes are more responsible for rising temperatures than humans are. In truth, volcanoes cool the temperature. Volcano eruptions pump aerosols into the stratosphere, and these aerosols increase the reflection of radiation from the sun back into space. As to the carbon dioxide that volcanoes release, a 2010 study by climate scientist Pierre Friedlingstein showed that human activity normally releases about 35 gigatons of CO2 into the air each year, compared to about one-quarter of one gigaton from volcanoes.

I have yet to respond to the reader, but I assume his take on Friedlingstein’s data would be the same as his view of other scientists and their publications. He wrote, “The peer reviewed claim is a joke. Environmentalism is a religion to the left. It is defended as boldly as Allah by a Muslim. Both produce the same result. Misery for all who don’t subscribe to their point of view.”

Actually, I have yet to see a climate change denier stoned to death. But even if climate science were a religion with bold defenders, that would say nothing about the validity of the claims that are being made or denied. And dismissing peer review as being 5,000 climate scientists fabricating data in order to enrich themselves and provide the government cover to launch a Marxist-style takeover of the oil, gas, and coal industries is the definition of denial.

Making the scenario even more implausible is government hostility to the climate change position. Sen. James Inhofe has been the most conspicuous climate change denier in Washington, D.C., but he is danger of being usurped by Rep. Lamar Smith. In fact, it was Smith’s accusation that scientists are producing fraudulent data that Plait addressed in his latest column.

One of the deniers’ favorite talking points is that warming has slowed. This only works if you use 1998 as your starting point because there was an unusually strong el Niño season that year. Using any other year as the starting point shows a warming trend. However, this weak point for deniers became even more hobbled when NOAA published recalibrated data that showed the slowing since 1998 was less than had been thought.

Smith described this scientific recalibrating of data as an altering of the truth in order to push a nefarious agenda. However, let’s look at what really happened when past climate change data was recalibrated. First, the NOAA set up 114 pristine temperature stations. These stations include three temperature sensors that measure every two seconds and automatically send in data though a satellite uplink.

A frequent denialist argument is that urban heat sources can give contaminated data – and they are right. And these are the types of mitigating factors that are accounted for in the recalibration that Smith is describing as fraudulent and conspiratorial.

Scientists have been recording weather station measurements worldwide for 150 years. This data is used to determine Earth’s average temperature. However, over this century and a half, stations have moved, instruments have changed from mercury thermometers to electronic sensors, the time of day the temperature is taken has changed, and cities have sprouted around the stations. All of this opens the possibility of the temperature record being unreliable. To find out how much temperatures have really changed, scientists have to consider how the measurements were taken and under what conditions, then adjust accordingly.

As mentioned earlier, the adjusted data shows the slowing trend since 1998 is less pronounced than what scientists had thought. However, it also shows that the overall warming trend in the last 150 years is slightly less than thought. This finding is inconsistent with the theory that scientists are being paid to fabricate data to falsely make it appear things are heating up.

There was very little adjustment made for the period 2004 to 2015, consistent with improvements in equipment and methods over the years. Lead author Zeke Hausfather explained, “Over the last decade there are plenty of issues with the raw data, but they tend to roughly cancel out in their trend effects.”

NOAA’s adjustments account for faults in raw data and ensures temperature change is more accurately reflected. It works, even producing one result that deniers would like. Of course, this only further illustrates the evil shrewdness of the conspirators. Smith said the NOAA “conveniently issued its news release that promotes this report just as the administration announced its extensive climate change regulations.”

Sounds like he needs an attitude adjustment.

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“The ploys from Brazil” (Zika conspiracies)

mosquito

Since the outbreak of the mosquito-spread Zika virus in eastern Brazil nine months ago, the same region has seen an increase is the congenital defect microcephaly. A connection is suspected, but not confirmed.

But online conspiracy theorists would never become such if they bothered waiting for confirmation or even suspicion. Instead, within minutes, you can let your minions and cohorts know that Zika is being spread by genetically modified mosquitoes as part of a population control plot. Regarding the population control part, the theorists are right.  The  biotech corporation Oxitec began breeding specialized mosquitoes as a means to limit the flying insects’ numbers.

From Christie Wilcox at Discover, we learn these mosquitoes were genetically engineered to need a certain antibiotic to survive in the wild. Then when a wild female mosquito breeds with a male Oxitec one, it is a death sentence for the offspring. Wilcox explained, “If you release enough such males in an area, then the females won’t have a choice but to mate with them. There will be few to no successful offspring in the next generation, and the population is controlled.”

Now, what does all this have to do with a human birth defect that results in a small brain? The theorists’ main argument is the mistaken belief that the Zika outbreak began in the same time and place as the first Oxitec mosquito release. However, the virus epicenter is on the Brazilian coast, hundreds of miles from where the mosquitoes were released. And again, these mosquitoes are unlikely to be able to reproduce and there is no evidence they are carrying the virus.

A competing conspiracy theory concedes the genetically modified mosquitoes are not carrying the virus, but only because it does not exist. It is a ruse to further enrich Big Pharma with a new vaccine, which the government will use to further increase peoples’ blind obedience to it. This plot would had to have been hatched it least as early as 1947, when the virus was first identified (or fabricated, if you’re a conspiracy theorist).

Yet another evidence-free option to choose from is the claim that the virus is caused by the Tdap vaccine. Anti-vaxxers point out that the same year the virus began spreading, pregnant Brazilians began receiving the anti-pertussis vaccine in the third trimester. 

However, obstetrician and skeptic blogger, Dr. Amy Tutuer, noted that third-trimester Tdap vaccines are common worldwide, while the microcephaly outbreak is limited to coastal Brazil. Moreover, she said, “Microcephaly is a defect that originates in the early weeks of pregnancy when the brain is forming,” meaning an event in the third trimester would have no impact on a process that was completed months earlier.

If unable to decide which of these baseless assertions is most attractive, theorists can watch an Alex Jones video that, at various times, describes the virus as either nonexistent, the result of vaccination, or a Bill Gates plot to foment genocide. What skeptics would see as inconsistency, theorists see as sensationally supple and awesomely ambiguous.

 

 

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“Weather or not” (Chemtrails)

FEAR

Moline became the focus of chemtrail warriors last week when they learned WQAD meteorologist Eric Sorenson was addressing the issue using science. Sorenson posted a video explaining that contrails were merely hot jet engine condensation. He also ruminated that the government would be reducing its funding pool were it to engage in a taxpayer genocide.

The meteorologist related what happened next: “My video was shared on a geo-engineering page with a call for people to “Go get him.” Within minutes, the comments turned hateful and angry. One poster wished that my family be poisoned and that a brick be thrown through my head. There are dozens of people who believe I am paid by the government, and a surprising number of people wish me some sort of harm.”

One of the attacking posters seethed, “Anyone denying geo-engineering is in fear of losing their job. When you and your family are so full of aluminum you can’t remember each other, you might realize there is a huge scale weather modification going on.” This is a good example of how a conspiratorial obsession warps a person’s thought process. For in the first sentence, the poster calls Sorenson a liar. In the second sentence, the poster calls Sorenson the one being lied to.

The Sorenson story flittered away after a few days, but the chemtrail saga will endure. Posters such as the one who fantasizes about weathermen offspring being pumped with toxins have raised many questions about contrails over the years. Contrailscience.com does phenomenal job of cataloging these inquires and also answers them, on the outside chance that the questioner is genuinely seeking a scientific explanation.

The website features extensive interaction between the contrails and chemtrails camps, and provides good insight into the mindset of each. As one example, a chemtrailer ties together three unrelated items: A Guardian article about Great Britain supposedly being exposed to bacteria spraying during World War II; geo-engineering weapons previously proposed; and the lingering white lines he sees overhead today. A reader calling himself Uncinus pointed out the items having nothing to do with each other, then added, “None of the geo-engineering proposals would produce a trail that looks like a chemtrail.”

That brought this response from the chemtrailer: “The truth is eminent (think he means imminent). It will be revealed soon. Uncinus will disappear as if he never existed and there will be no one for all of his foolish followers to hold accountable for it. Then it will suddenly become so obvious to you, and you will ask yourself over and over, how could I have been so stupid!” The chemtrail warrior posted this is 2010, so I’m unsure what his definition of soon is. But he does provide a nutshell of conspiracy think. He provides no science, just some name calling accompanied by a warning about something that is perpetually nigh, yet never arrives.

The general idea he and his kind promote is that contrails are filled with dangerous amounts of chemicals – usually aluminum or barium – and the U.S. government sprays them on its citizens, intending to either kill them or engage in mind control. Countering this theory are the fact that its proponents are alive and able to think in a way contrary to their overlords’ wishes.

Many of them claim that yesteryear’s contrails were visible for no longer than auto exhaust is today. Short of unearthing a heretofore unknown database of contrail duration, we can rely on contrailscience.com, which documents non-hysterical references to contrails dating to before World War I. The website has also assembled hundreds of photos taken from books, photo albums, and newspapers that all point to lingering contrails having been with us for decades.

This is because contrails sometimes persist and spread, depending on the weather at the moment of dispersal. Contrails are the consequence of surrounding air and ice crystals from exhaust. They vanish when the ice turns to water vapor. They disappear more quickly in dry, warm air and linger in cold, humid conditions. In frigid enough temperatures, even automobiles can produce contrails. Depending on one’s viewpoint, this is further evidence of contrail innocuousness, or a frightening realization that there are millions more chemtrail disbursing agents amongst us.

Many chemtrail sites include links to an Arkansas television station’s story that allegedly uncovered dangerous amounts of barium that were said to be caused by airplane exhaust. The reporter was mistaken, and when the errors were brought to his attention, he altered his position. Full details on this case are here. But the point I want to make is that, to the theorist, the original story is irrefutable evidence of chemtrail danger, while every other mainstream article and newscast on the subject is wrong or part of the coverup.

Similarly, believers claim the government confirmed the existence of deadly chemtrails in HR 2977. In actuality, this bill bans space weapons, and commercial airliners are neither spacecraft nor weapons (excepting 9/11). But, again, the larger point is that this government “admission” is touted as unassailable truth, yet anything else the government tells us about chemtrails is a lie.

Another common line is that some patterns prove they are not mere contrails. But X’s, grids, and similar shapes are the result of air traffic, wind, and the weather, not the CIA pumping aerosol weapons at us. If the agency is trying to poison us, it is stunning evidence of government incompetence. For starters, they are turning chemical weapons on themselves with hundreds of daily flights into and out of D.C. Further, if aerosol is being spewed from an airplane, it would fall one foot per second, meaning it would take eight hours to reach its intended victims from 30,000 feet. This also means it would be spread over thousands of miles and thus be far too diluted to do damage by the time it reached Eric Sorenson’s nostrils.

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“Field of Schemes” (Torison fields)

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Torison fields are something Einstein discovered and about which I can tell my readers precisely nothing. But I can relate how a handful of fraudsters have coopted and mangled this idea. In these cases, torison fields are alleged to be bundles of energy through which neutrinos shoot through vacuums at speeds well beyond warp. This is one of the least known pseudoscience topics and I could only identify about half a dozen persons who subscribe to the idea. These include the Russian duo Atatoly Akimov and Gennady Shipov, who were funded by their government before being exposed and hightailing it to Thailand, where they sell ersatz medical products purporting to access these fields.

The nonchalant nature of claiming beyond warp speed is an obvious pseudoscience giveaway. In 2011, CERN physicists reported seeming to have observed neutrinos traveling two-billionths of a second beyond light speed. This was met with extreme suspicion in the quantum mechanics community, even among those who had done the research and who announced the findings. These scientists made it clear this finding needed to be rechecked, and that this was less to seek confirmation than to find out where the error lay. It turned out it was due to flaws in equipment setup.

By contrast, torsion field proponents claim speeds over 100 times beyond warp. With about the same velocity, they whip through the pseudoscience landscape and credit torsion fields with being responsible for ESP, levitation, telepathy, telekinesis, clairvoyance, miracle cures, perpetual motion machines, and alien spacecraft propulsion.

They also claim that neutrinos, which have almost no mass, can easily be detected by a homemade device sitting on their desk. Genuine neutrino detectors are massive, built underground to avoid background radiation, and have an infinitesimal winning percentage.

In the universe Atatoly and Shipova have created,  when massive objects rotate at high speed, they create torsion fields that move through space and interact with any matter they pass through and change the matter’s inertia. Massive objects, of course, would include planets and stars, but in this case, they also include pyramids, because one might as well add the ancient Egyptian angle to your cart while shopping at the alternative science store.

The only other active torsion field proponent I am aware of is Richard Hoagland. His signature item is a Bulova wristwatch hooked up to a precision frequency sensor, which is connected to a laptop and displays the watch’s frequency. Hoagland describes this as a tuning fork that can detect and measure torsion fields. He usually conducts experiments near large stone objects during an eclipse, presumably to add an element of mystery, although how anyone could buy off on this seems perplexing enough. This is self-tested, self-reviewed, self-validated, and self-congratulatory. He describes his results as “stunning,” “astonishingly confirmatory,” and “a technology that can save the planet.”

Yet he has never published data showing that he established a baseline for measurement or how he arrived at it. Further, in the only video showing Hoagland with his gizmo, he is failing to control its orientation. This would be like claiming a new comet sighting without looking into a telescope. Also, he has never explained how his apparatus would receive this information, nor attempted to falsify his hypothesis.

The only other guy I could find out in torison field was Buryl Payne, who claimed that these fields emanate from living organisms, be they humans, crickets, protozoa, or bananas. These fields can be detected by a Biofield Meter, which Payne constructed from household items. I was looking forward to building one and conducting my own experiments, but Payne’s link, like the torsion field crowd, is broken. That’s OK, if I want to read science fiction, I’ll grab some Asimov.

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“Watered down” (Masaru Emoto experiments)

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I wanted this post be about Michael Tellinger, who purports to fuse creationism with abiogenesis and evolution. He claims his research reveals how “evolutionists and creationists can finally co-exist in one pond,” presumably one comprised of holy water and primordial soup.

He asserts that God made a deliberately inferior hominid species 250,000 years ago, but that evolution began with Abraham and was further advanced by Jesus, who was the messiah without knowing it. Tellinger came to these conclusions through reinterpretations of the Bible, Sumerian clay tablets, and genetic engineering principles.

Alas, most of his work requires a subscription and the Moline Skeptics monthly budget is about four mills. So I will instead be testing the claims of Masaru Emoto, as doing so requires only access to water and rice, plus working vocal chords.

Emoto, who died in 2014, asserted water could be influenced by words. He separated water into 100 petri dishes and half of the samples were praised and half were scorned. Then each petri dish was frozen and Emoto said that when viewed under a microscope, the water which had been praised was in the shape of beautiful crystalline structures, while the berated beverage lacked symmetry and sported a jagged appearance.

However, in a post for Skeptoid, Carrie Poppy quoted former Stanford University William Tiller as saying it is easy to manipulate water’s crystalline structure with contaminants or by tinkering with its cooling rate. Emoto had no controls for this and there is no way to tell anything about the water’s temperature or other conditions when he made his observations.

More significantly, Emoto offered no evidence of water having auditory capabilities or language comprehension skills. Another problem is that he made no attempt to falsify his hypothesis, a necessary step in the Scientific Method. He did, however, follow the Pseudosceintific Method, mixing misused and undefined terms with the obligatory reference to vibrations. He said the water responded to flattering or belittling words because of “intrinsic vibrational patterns at the atomic level that is in all matter and is the energy of human consciousness.”

Emoto said even large bodies of water would believe it if they were told they were a bad little lake. He described observing one such body that appeared to him to resemble a pained person. He then chanted loving words in its direction and the lake made a smiley face, or some such pattern. Later, the body of a drowning victim was found in the lake, causing Emoto to conclude, “Perhaps, through the crystals, the spirit of this woman was trying to tell us something, and her suffering was alleviated in part by the incantation.” Short of submerging additional corpses, there is no way to test this theory.

Emoto expanded his repertoire to include food, specifically rice, to which hot water was added. The doused grain was split into three beakers, one being lauded, one being scorned, and the third being ignored. Emoto reported that the fawned-over rice had a pleasing aroma and texture. The insulted rice was blackened, and the ignored rice fared the worst, turning moldy. Emoto attributed this to “negligence and indifference being the absolute worst things we can do.” And here I’ve been letting my sack of rice languish in the cupboard, without adoration, criticism, or inquiring if it and the can of black beans were an item.

Emoto never revealed his protocols or if he used any controls, so his experiment cannot be replicated with certainty. But if it really was just a monologue with rice, there have been many attempts to copy it on YouTube, and Poppy performed one as well for Skeptoid. None of these experiments showed any change in the rice, meaning that Emoto was either fraudulent or unusually persuasive when gushing over his Uncle Ben’s.

The High Wizard of Skeptics, James Randi, pointed out the lack double blind testing. To test properly, Emoto should have had someone else love or loathe the samples, then give them back to him without Emoto knowing which samples had been subjected to which words. Upon further review, to do this properly, one wouldn’t waste time and scientific resources on seeing if calling water your good buddy would make for happy H2O molecules.

Randi offered Emoto the chance to test his ideas under controlled conditions as part of the Million Dollar Challenge, but Emoto declined. No worries, I attempted my own test.

I gave my 4- and 6-year old sons one Twix bar apiece and instructed them to either encourage or belittle the chocolatey caramel confectionary while I was out of the room. I came back five minutes later, but the test subjects had been consumed by my compatriots. That’s OK, we have plenty of candy bars, so this test is repeatable.

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“I say tomato, you say genocide” (Anti-GMO movement)

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In my skeptic blogger persona, I am OK with seeking an audience rather than having it come looking for me. I attend the annual Quad Cities Psychic and Paranormal Fair to engage clairvoyants, ghost hunters, and Shamanic healers. I have exchanged e-mails with the head of the Quad Cities Creation Science Association, though I’ve yet to elicit from him an explanation of how creationism works using the Scientific Method. Then there is the Facebook friend who presumably has never heard of Germ Theory and who thinks disease is the result of vaccines, not viruses. Not that diseases are any big deal, mind you, since honey-drenched lemons and a coconut water chaser will cure them all.

There have been some memorable conversations while trying to plant skeptic seeds. I had this online exchange with a 9/11 truther. While less profane, another truther insisted no evidence was needed that the government committed this evil deed because the government commits evil deeds, an especially literal example of circular reasoning.

While I have yet to score a full-blown convert, I plug away through the labyrinth of scientific stupidity, cognitive dissonance, and paranoia. Even in this arena, standing out as among the most unhinged is the anti-GMO throng. Extremists have burned testing fields, vandalized tractors, and attacked farmers. Mike Adams, the pinnacle of anti-science lunacy, even encouraged the murder of those expressing positive opinions about genetic modification.

In one of the more unfortunate cases, University of Florida professor Kevin Folta withdrew from public life because of unrelenting harassment. Folta had held regular podcasts and seminar presentations outlining the science of GMOs. This explication of biotechnology earned him the wrath of the anti-GMO militia, who hammered him with Freedom of Information requests for e-mails on his work computer. FOIA is valuable government accountability tool, but here the act was abused, and Folta was subject to it since he worked at a public university.

As anti-GMO activists had intended, Folta’s work was hampered him having to reply to the unending wave of requests. This was also a fishing expedition in which searchers were hoping to find evidence Folta was a biotechnology industry insider. One e-mail indicated that one of the seminars he spoke at was co-sponsored by Monsanto, although Folta was not paid by the company. This innocuous fact was absurdly presented as proof that he was being funded by Monsanto, he was called the company’s whore, and GMO Free USA is leading a campaign to have him fired.

Folta’s ordeal is unsurprising to me. In my dealings with anti-GMO types, I have never had one of them make an attempt at science. When pro-GMO activists point out that 1,783 studies suggest GMOs are safe, and that no studies reach the opposite conclusion, a common response is that the speaker is a Monsanto employee. Even if this were true, it would be an ad hominem that has nothing to do with the accuracy of the claim.

Opponents of biotechnology unknowingly making public proclamations of their ignorance when they dress as Crazy Corn Men, post memes of apples taking bites out of little boys, and carry signs with images of syringes being injected into wheat. Let’s take a closer look at the reality of genetically modified organisms, or as their opponents call them, Frankenfood.

Food has been modified and improved for millennium through artificial selection. GMO technology allows scientists and farmers to be more precise with these modifications and accomplish in a year what might have taken centuries. From Popular Science: “Scientists extract a bit of DNA from an organism, modify or make copies of it, and incorporate it into the genome of the same species or a different one. They repeat the experiment until they get a genome with the right information in the right place.”

This has yielded multiple benefits, including golden rice, which is infused with Vitamin A and could therefore help prevent blindness and infant mortality in the Third World. While it astounds me that anyone could be opposed a technology that prevents babies from going blind or dying, I know these people exist, so I searched them out and found Greenpeace. The organization wrote, “It is irresponsible to impose golden rice on people if it goes against their religious beliefs and cultural heritage.”Greenpeace, however, cited no examples of Sri Lankan and Angolan preschoolers being force fed golden rice. Then there’s the matter of expressing more concern for a hypothetical cultural insensitivity than preventable toddler deaths.

I’m unsure how diabetic Greenpeace members square their position on genetic modification with their health condition, as insulin is a GMO. Another triumph of genetic modification was saving the Hawaiian papaya. Additionally, some GMOs have developed drought tolerance and this biotechnology can be used to remove allergens from food. Genetic modification may even someday allow those with peanut allergies to enjoy one of life’s simple pleasures, the PB and J sandwich.

Most anti-GMO types think they prefer natural foods. Yet the food we eat today is wonderfully unnatural, having been modified for millennium. For instance, the original banana was tiny, green, and full of large, hard seeds. Even nature has produced a GMO, as the sweet potato developed when soil bacteria entered the plant and modified it. All this was clearly unknown to one online poster, who was mortified to learn that there was a hybrid of two broccoli plants out there. She wrote, “No, no no. Real food, please.” At least she said please. But what she has in manners she lacks in agrarian history acumen. For broccoli is a consequence of the selective breeding of wild cabbage plants over the last 2,500 years. What’s more, cauliflower, kale, kohlrabi, and Brussels sprouts were all bred from the same cabbage that is the great-grandpappy of today’s broccoli.

A frequent false claim is that GMOs, through the Round Up that is often sprayed on them, indirectly lead to super weeds. But this cannot be blamed on GMOs. Weeds do attempt, and succeed, at becoming resistant to Round Up and all other herbicides because that’s what weeds do. If not, there would be no more weeds.

Yet another fabrication is that Europe has banned GMOs. This is true in only two of 51 countries, and even if accurate, would be the ad populum fallacy that wouldn’t provide any evidence of GMO danger.

The anti-GMO crowd also confuses correlation and causation by saying that the increase in genetic modification is to blame for the increase in food allergies. But testing is required when genetic modification is attempted on foods known to cause allergies, primarily milk, eggs, nuts, soy, wheat, fish and shellfish. Biotech developers work with the FDA to ensure that any new GMO foods do not produce new allergens. This highlights the key point that, not only is there GMO testing, but  if there ever were a danger, it would be to a specific GMO, so demonizing the entire technology is unfounded.

Perhaps the most misinformed idea about genetic modification is thinking that almost everything about a GMO has been altered. This is why you get clowns driving around with tomato-fishes on their cars. In truth, only one to four genes are affected with genetic modification, while up to 300,000 genes are impacted when using traditional breeding.

It would be stating the obvious to note that there never has been a tomato fish. Less known is that there was never even a commercial tomato with fish genes inserted, and that this was another victory for GMO testing. Frost will inhibit tomato growth and one possible solution considered was to copy an antifreeze gene from flounder and transfer it to tomatoes. The resultant fruit was shown to be ineffective in trials and was never used since it would have been of no use to farmers. Nor would it be beneficial for farmers to grow, handle, and consume dangerous crops, poison their soil, and increase their use of carcinogenic herbicides and pesticides, all of which they would be doing if what anti-GMO types are saying was true.