Pseudoscience

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“Losing the race” (Biological claims of race)

ZEBRAThe idea that we are all just one race, human, isn’t just a feel-good platitude or call for unity. It’s science.

Attempts to establish racial superiority using phrenology and craniology permeated the 19th and 20th Centuries and was used to justify slavery, Nazi ideology, and other atrocities. It hasn’t been limited to the light-skinned either, as Melanin Theory posits that black is the ideal color, with lesser pigments being emblematic of devolved races.

Craniology, the idea that the size and shape of the skull reveals a person’s intelligence and morality, was used by racists to argue that brain size separates superior races from inferior ones. This logic would mandate that elephants and blue whales be Earth’s most intelligent creatures, and would have meant Neanderthals would have never been supplanted by homo sapiens.

Charles Darwin’s works, On the Origin of Species and Descent of Man, shot holes in these bigoted beliefs. He showed that humans were one species without clear biological delineations amongst ourselves. Despite Darwin’s’ refutation, some twisted his ideas to argue that evolution favored superior races. The term “Survival of the Fittest,” often misattributed to Darwin, came from Herbert Spencer, who believed man could continue evolving until he reached an ideal state, with evolution extending to social arenas as well. Some racists have expanded this idea by insisting those who share their skin color are part of this push to racial superiority through evolution.

These ideas have been embraced by members of Appleby Baptist Church in Nacogdoches, Texas, who argue blacks are under the Curse of Ham. At the other end of the spectrum (or the same end, depending on how one looks at it), are a Black Hebrew offshoot, the Nation of Yahweh, whose members plotted to murder demonic whites on orders from God.

But members of Appleby Baptist and the Nation of Yahweh are indistinguishable biologically. Races are social constructions based on physical traits, primarily skin color, and to a lesser extent, hair and facial features. But this is no more legitimate than separating people by intelligence, height, or weight. There are some genetic differences in all of us, of course, but this is not race. In fact, the most genetically diverse peoples on Earth are all dark-skinned Africans.

One of the more amusing results of our DNA similarities came when racist Craig Cobb learned on a talk show that his ancestry was 14 percent sub-Saharan African.

Anthropologists theorize that Cobb owes his whiteness to the northerly migration of black-skinned populations. During and after this move, they ate more grains and fewer animals, meaning less Vitamin D in the diet. And while dark skin was a plus for protecting against UV radiation, it was a detriment farther north where the inability to absorb enough Vitamin D from the sun compounded the lack of it in the diet. This led to Ricketts. By contrast, being able to get Vitamin D from the sun provided an evolutionary advantage, so lighter skins were developed. These types of adaptations have occurred throughout history and led to what is called race.

That’s why scientists working on the Human Genome Project came up empty when examining the genome for DNA evidence of race. It’s similar to the way we have the same bones, muscles, tendons, and organs.

That’s because homo sapiens have been around for too short a time, and their migration has been too wide and frequent, for them to be divided into biologically distinctive groups. They originated in Africa about 150,000 years ago, with about 10,000 of them migrating to Asia, Europe, and Africa. Since then, 7,000 generations have come, a nanosecond by evolutionary standards. This short time, combined with a small founding population and its tiny genetic variation, means humans differ very little from each other despite some outward appearances. Dr. Harold Freeman of Human Genome Project said less than .01 percent of genes are reflected in appearance. Traits used to identify race, such as skin color, eye color, and nose width, are controlled by a tiny number of genes which can change rapidly in response to environmental conditions.

But what about the preponderance of sickle cell anemia among blacks, or hemoglobin disorders that afflict those of Mediterranean ancestry? Or what about the stunning ability of western Kenyans to consistently dominate marathons?

With regard to the illnesses, this is the result of ancestors of these groups developing a resistance to malaria. This was beneficial at first, but disastrous when doubly inherited. In this and similar cases, the high prevalence of distinctive conditions among a population is due to an ancestor bringing a unique mutation into the region.

As to the marathon winners, it’s a combination of genetics, culture, and training. Evolution is driven by random genetic mutation, so isolated populations will drift toward common traits. In the case of western Kenyans, this means longer legs, shorter torsos, and slender limbs, along with a more advantageous body mass index and bone structure. The cultural importance of marathon running in the region and an elevation of 7,000 feet are also factors. Hard work also plays a role.

So there are differences in populations, but this is genetics. The only races are the ones Kenyans are winning.

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“Bloody awful” (Chi Kung)

CHIKUNGSylvia Browne told parents that their dead missing child was alive, and vice versa. Uri Geller was unable to demonstrate his spoon-bending abilities on The Tonight Show when presented with utensils he couldn’t manipulate beforehand. And Sally Morgan looked at a picture of what she thought was a woman’s dead relative and began decoding messages from her. It turned out the woman had given a picture of herself.

But when it comes to public failures, the most bloody spectacular are those suffered by Chi Kung practitioners. The bloody part is literal, as they are turned into six feet of cuts and bruises when their magic powers fizzle.

Proponents boast that their practice harnesses the gracefulness of Tai Chi and the power of Kung Fu, then elevates them both. There may be some genuine martial arts and self-control taught. But for an insight into how spacey the idea can be, consider this description of its initiation ritual: “You open the top of your head and feel the white light power of the universe come into your body.” For maximum white light power, it advises doing the ceremony under a full moon.

One form of Chi Kung calls itself Yellow Bamboo, and it claims to be able to harness chi for protection and healing. It asserts the power to knock people over without touching them, or to withstand attacks without raising limbs. Unlike most spectacular claims, these are testable. In one YouTube video, a Yellow Bamboo guy stands unmoving on a beach while an attacker runs toward him. The stated ability is being able to use chi to deflect the attacker without touching him. Two of the three attempts failed. The third succeeded, as the power of Yellow Bamboo with combined with diving out of the way.

Chi Kung has fared no better in the attack mode. George Dillman had one of his prized pupils, a eighth-degree Black Belt, attempt to knock over someone without touching him. This was tried successfully on some of Dillman’s students before moving onto a skeptic. Despite various hand and arm contortions, assorted grunts and grimaces, and escalating frustration, the skeptic remained motionless. Dillman’s first ad hoc reasoning attempt was that the skeptic’s negative energy might be impacting Chi Kung flow. Perhaps sensing it would be a fatal blow to a defensive tactic if it doesn’t work when the victim doesn’t want it to, Dillman quickly changed tact. He asserted the person on the receiving end had stifled chi with tongue or toe placement. Curiously, he hadn’t taught these techniques to his students, yet the skeptic was able to unknowingly tap his anti-chi properties.

The worst victim of chi’s failure/his stupidity was a fellow in the Philippines who chopped his forearm with a machete, thinking magic powers would prevent injury.

When a Black Belt fails to knock over someone who is offering no resistance, it speaks poorly to the martial art’s potency. Still, Chi Kung advocates insist it can be used to explode an opponent’s organ or even kill him thorough a time-release illness. Ethical reasons prohibit putting either of these to a scientific test. But even the lesser abilities have no studies in their favor, only anecdotes and testimonials.

While these cases were all initiated by Chi Kung practitioners, challenges sometimes come for Jiu-Jitsu artists, who bemoan seeing martial arts reduced to extravagant claims and mystic chants. Chi Kung practitioners occasionally accept these challenges and attempt to ward off Jiu-Jitsu experts with their thoughts and glances. I’m normally not much on fortune telling, but the results of these encounters are predictable.

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“With disturbing frequency” (Sound healing)

BAGPIPE
When a plot involves Rockefeller, Nazis, pharmaceutical executives, and oboe players, it has to be good. Not good history, science, or music theory, but good something, perhaps good unintentional satire.

In September 1939, the British Standards Institute decreed that the note of A above Middle C would vibrate at 440 cycles per second. With this, 440 Hz became the standard tuning frequency for orchestras, musicians, and instruments. This seems innocuous, but add some Red Herrings, bad acoustic science, and a dash of pareidolia, and one finds something far different. For Leonard Horowitz, L.C. Vincent, and others in the Sound Healing Movement, this frequency yields discordant and destructive results. This happens, Horowitz tells us, because “matter is trying unsuccessfully to organize around these vibrations.” Horowitz, meanwhile, is trying unsuccessfully to organize a scientific-sounding theory around New Age terms.

In the glorious days of yore, Sound Healers assure us, mankind was blessed with sacred symmetrical vibrations. But for the last 75 years, we have been cursed with a tuning frequency that has caused destruction and illness. Moreover, these notorious notes suppress spirituality, intuition, and creativity. The standards were changed the same month that the most destructive war in history was launched, what more proof is needed?

Vincent ties this together with the best Affirmation of the Consequent I’ve ever come across: “The damage this artificial tuning has produced indicates the motivation behind its promotion.”

The British Standards Institute must share the blame, however. Vincent writes that J.D. Rockefeller, the Third Reich, the Illuminati, chemical companies, and bankers conspired to “impose this artificial tuning standard for the purpose of disrupting society, creating chaos, and fostering hostility, disease and war.” Before the frequency standards change, everything was rosy, other than piffling exceptions like World War I and global influenza.

Horowitz, meanwhile, claims that listening to music at 440 Hz will cause “Chakras above the heart to be stimulated, suppressing the heart-mind intuition and creativity.” This leads to disease and war, which benefits drug companies. But Horowitz does more than caution, he gives us the solution: Buy his products.

He competes with other purveyors for which Hz to use and for which has the best irrelevant ancient authority. Cures are guaranteed, whether one needs help for tendons or tension. Other benefits include expanded consciousness, DNA repair, brainwave alteration, and tapping into the Universal Love Constant. Horowitz asserts that, “All healing occurs from sonic waves or vibrations.” People are tossing away their money on Tylenol, surgery, and chemotherapy, when all they need is a good bass line.

Alan Howarth prefers 444 Hz, owing to his interpretation of ancient Egyptian planetary numerology and scales deduced from Pythagorean Number Theory. Wes Bateman goes with 424 Hz, based on some stuff found in the Pyramids and in some antiquated Mexican works. For Brian Collins, 432 Hz is the magic number because of what Ancient Egyptians and Greeks said.

Horowitz blows these neophytes out of the water with the ultimate ancient authority, the God of Abraham. He (Horowitz, not God) reports that 528 Hz provides the “good vibrations that the plant kingdom broadcasts in its greenish-yellow display, and is remedial to emotional distress and social aggression.”

Also, we learn that, “The world began when the Creator’s word acted on water and sound frequencies based on physics and mathematics were applied to it.” Horowitz has tapped into this power with his Water Resonator, otherwise known as a sticker that consumers slap onto a water jug. Doing this will “display the precise sound frequencies of creation and restore nature’s resonance energy and electromagnetic purity of water.” His ideas appeal to those seeking spirituality or refuge from the Laws of Nature.

Horowitz’s reasons for championing 528 Hz includes:
5+2+8=15; 1+5+6; 6 is sacred.
A mile is 5,280 feet
528 Terahertz is green
The golden ratio symbol is the first letter in the Greek word for love.
Room 528 was featured prominently in the movie Inception.

Since humans, who are about two-thirds water, can benefit, just imagine how much the ocean has to gain from this music. According to humansarefree.com, 528 Hz music was played toward the Gulf of Mexico after the BP oil spill, and the waters were clean the next day. Those responsible for this test claim it was corroborated by the Analytical Chemical Testing Laboratory in Alabama. However, the lab only attested to numbers claimed, it did not confirm that it was the result of subjecting saltwater to pulsating electronica.

The Sound Healing Movement appeals mostly to people who tend toward the mystic, but it makes attempts to reel in the more scientifically minded as well. Consider this doozy from altered-states.com: “Everything is in a constant state of vibration, and the most elemental state of vibration is sound. Everything has an optimum range of vibration, called resonance. One way to use sound to heal the body is to recognize that every organ and cell absorbs and emits sound, and has a particular optimum resonate frequency.” This spiel starts by referencing legitimate phenomenon, such as vibration, sound, range, and resonance. It then throws out terms particular to anatomy, like organ and cells. It then ties everything together with a pair of vivid verbs: absorbs and emits. The paragraph might sound impressive, but it never says anything coherent, never makes a testable claim, and offers no evidence.

Going back to 440 Hz, neither Horowitz nor Vincent ever explain how the conspirators knew it would have this cruel power. Nevertheless, Vincent claims the nefarious nature of 440Hz has been empirically proven. However, instead of citing studies bolstering this notion, he contradicts himself in his conclusion by writing, “I do not know if anyone can prove a direct causal link between a specific frequency tuning system with aggression, disassociation, paranoia and violence.” He continues, “Yet intuitively, I think my sources are correct.” It would be rather accommodating to concede him that point. So In the interest of finding better evidence, I’ll carry out a study.

First, I’ll put on some 528 Hz music. Many such videos are available on youtube.

First impression: The sound is very similar to hearing test, except the noise is more detectable and steady. This must mean 528 Hz has already improved my hearing.

Ten minutes in: Listening to this all day would make me want to throttle someone. So 528 Hz is helping me improve my patience and anger management.

Now, onto some 440 Hz music. This is proving difficult to find. Every selection that points out that it is 440 Hz is being done so to warn of its evil, or is offering to convert it to another frequency. OK, here we go. I have found Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 in A.

I found it pleasing, relaxing, and moving. And I’m not hungry, so it passed the war and famine tests. It could be giving me Alzheimer’s, but we’ll need another 30 years or so to complete that portion of the study.

Finally, I listened to “Train Kept a’ Rollin.’” This wasn’t trying to prove anything, I just wanted to hear it.

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“Communicate to failure” (Facilitated communication)

TYPIST
Facilitated communication is a technique said to empower those who have never had the ability to express their thoughts. Most clients are afflicted with autism, developmental disabilities, brain damage, or cerebral palsy.

The client sits at a keyboard and is asked a question by a facilitator or third party. Next, the facilitator grasps the client’s hand, wrist, or elbow, and gauges which way the client’s index finger wants to go. There is no explanation for how the process of getting a thought from a client’s head to a typewriter or computer monitor works. Still, when the idea surfaced in 1977, parents of clients were ecstatic. They were overjoyed to have a window into their child’s mind for the first time. However, scientists, educators, and skeptics had serious questions. Other than Syracuse University, which houses a facilitated communication institute, the field has been rejected by mainstream academia and medicine.

As to the issues raised, the most obvious was that the majority of clients, while supposedly typing through a conduit, were looking away from the keyboard. Many were laughing, shrieking, looking at the ceiling, babbling, or had their eyes closed. Accurately typing without having a reference for where the keyboard is would seem arduous at best. Second, even clients who had never been taught to read or write were typing grammatically-correct sentences.

Furthermore, demonstrations of the technique featured the client and facilitator both being shown a picture and being asked what it was of. This made it impossible to know if the client or facilitator was typing the answer. So tests were devised where, at first, a question was heard by both client and facilitator through a headset. Each time, a correct answer was entered. Next, the client was asked a question, while music was piped to the facilitator. Under these conditions, the client gave either the wrong answer or no answer every time.

In the second part of the test, clients who had seemingly communicated complex ideas were asked to point to the sky and were unable to do so. Also of note, there were no cases of a client using a word that was not in the facilitator’s regular vocabulary. Similar visual tests, in which the facilitator and client were shown different pictures, resulted in the facilitator typing the image that he or she saw every time. A crucial point in all these tests was that facilitators were always looking at the keyboard, while the client seldom was.

Other than three qualitative-research studies as Syracuse, none of which could be replicated by other researchers, scientific studies have emphatically concluded that the thoughts being typed are the facilitator’s.

Psychologist Daniel Wegner posits that this happens due to the ideomotor effect, which is most commonly associated with the Ouija Board. This describes what happens when a person’s expectation leads to unconscious control of their motor skills.

Most facilitators truly believe they are being helpful, and are apologetic and remorseful when shown the truth. The few who don’t accept the evidence resort to spitting out a variety of ad hoc excuses. For instance, some dismiss dismal test results by arguing the client was nervous or performs poorly in a controlled setting. As to why the facilitator could do it, but not the client’s parent, apologists say the client has formed a working relationship with the facilitator and is unhappy about starting over with someone else.

The glaring flaws of facilitated communication are even more problematic since its training encourages facilitators to fill in the gaps. Consider this advice they are given: “Facilitated communication is never as fast or as fluent as normal speech. Messages tend to be short, even telegraphic, and may omit grammatical bridges. It is not always clear what message the person is trying to get across.”

Trying to guess what the client is thinking has led to disaster, as there have been several instances of false sexual assault allegations, including two fathers who spent months in jail before charges were dropped.

As this became more well known, and with a damning documentary on the PBS program Frontline, Facilitated Communication advocates attempted some fresh spins. Syracuse’s Facilitated Communication Institute became the School of Education’s Institute on Communication and Inclusion. And facilitated communication’s new euphemism is Supported Typing. The goals, from the school’s website, are to “provide emotional encouragement, communication supports (such as monitoring to make sure the person looks at the keyboard) and physical supports to slow and stabilize the person’s movement. The facilitator should never move or lead the person.”

Encouragement and ensuring the person is looking at the keyboard are fine, but physical support from a facilitator remains problematic. And this could managed by resting the client’s arm on an artificial ergonomic support. As long as a facilitator is in contact with the client, the potential exists for manipulation, intentional or otherwise.

There are methods to assist those who otherwise wouldn’t be able to communicate, as Helen Keller and Stephen Hawking have demonstrated. But these are based on science, not wishful thinking and unproven ideas. As negative results piled up, facilitated communicators switched to qualitative research. With this method, clearly-stated goals, objective criteria, and double blind experiments were replaced with opinion and conjecture. For instance, “researchers” may have the client work with four facilitators, then decide that the client demonstrated consistent writing style, and count this as proof. Or they may look at their eyes and conclude that they are glancing in the right direction. These methods avoid the key question of who is controlling what gets typed and fails to, how shall we say, communicate sound science.

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“Nothing personal” (Myers-Briggs personality assessment)

MASKS
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is an assessment aimed at pegging one’s personality type. As a parlor game, it’s fine. However, it is most frequently used by businesses, which make hiring and promotion decisions based in part on the results.

This is an issue because the assessment is based not on controlled experiments and data, but on Carl Jung’s untested ideas and some tweaking that Isabel Briggs made using her intution. Scientists rely on controlled studies, not their hunches and memories, so that self-deception is eliminated, and to keep them from shoehorning data into a pet theory.

Respondents are assigned one of 16 personality types based on answers to a series of hypothetical situations. Next to not being based on data, the biggest downfall of Myers-Briggs is its ignoring of people’s complexities. The test assumes we are all-or-nothing in each category. No one is always totally introverted or extroverted. Everyone is going to fit somewhere between the two extremes. But in Myers-Briggs, someone who scores 51 percent introverted is considered 100 percent withdrawn. Also, this person, and someone 49 percent introverted, will be placed at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Another issue is with how many of the questions are phrased. They use absolute terms, such as always, every, and never. This allows for none of the wiggle room in which we live. The results are also contingent with how self-aware a person is. The responses are who you think you are, which may not jibe with reality.

Still another problem is that answers can be based on how one is feeling that day, or on recent events. Tests have shown that between 39 and 76 percent of respondents get a different result the second time they take the test, even if just a few weeks later. A test using sound science and statistics would produce results much more consistent than these.

Still, the ideas are general enough that the descriptions will apply, at least partially, to almost everyone. That means the results seem to score a hit, owing to the Forer Effect.

Despite these limitations, I decided to tackle the test. Here is a sampling of the hypothetical situations, along with my thoughts on them.

• YOU CAN EASILY READ BETWEEN THE LINES AND GET WHAT SOMEONE IS SAYING. If you missed what someone was trying to say, how would you know what they were trying to say?

• EMOTIONAL MOVIES CAN EASILY MAKE YOU SAD. If you find it emotional, of course it’s making you sad. Unless it’s a horror movie, in which case the emotion is fear. So I don’t really know how to answer this.

• YOU CAN BE INDECISIVE. That may or may not be true.

• YOUR MOOD CAN CHANGE VERY QUICKLY. What the hell is that supposed to mean?

• YOU ARE RATHER IMPATIENT. Coming on the fifth page of this test, you bet.

At the end, I got a notice that results will be e-mailed to me for a price. I have mixed emotions about this, as my personality type is prone to instant gratification, as well as being cheap.

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“Unsound waves” (Alpha waves)

WAVESAlpha waves are electric neural oscillations in the human brain. Since they occur during meditation, some advocates tout them as desirable. However, they also happen under unpleasant conditions, such as a throbbing pain and night terrors. They are simply the middle ground on Electroencephalography recordings, and there is no evidence a person is more peaceful, insightful, or receptive while producing them.

However, if one is just hankering to boost them there alpha waves, lie down, close your eyes, and clear your mind. No “Blissful Harmony Cactus” CD is needed. One needn’t buy, as one ad promoted, “Pharmaceutical-grade hydrolysates to rebuild the body’s collagen.” I’m unsure what that means, but perhaps I will after I increase my focus through alpha wave enhancement.

I decided to test the theory, and compare it with results championed by womenswisdom.com. By the way, this was penned by a guy named James, and combined with what was written, the website’s name seems doubly dubious. At any rate, I should now be reaping these benefits:

Creativity. I’m certainly having no issue whipping out this anti-alpha waves therapy post.

A sense of calm. That’s kind of hard with my children engaged in a cacophonous three-way battle for a Captain America shield eight feet away. If scientists invent any pill that gives tranquility under these conditions, I’ll pop away.

Decreased fear and anxiety. Those levels were already at zero, so maybe I’m a poor test subject.

It also promises “Super learning,” “Improved immune response,” “Problem solving,” and “Increased inner awareness.” Indeed, I am aware that I super-learned how to solve the problem of relying on a product that assures me an “Improved immune response.” Broad, untestable, and undefined terms like this are synonymous with quackery.

Since alpha wave therapy is not based on science, its claims vary in boldness. Some say it will just make one more relaxed. Others take that a step further and assert an altered state of consciousness will result. I once owned a new age album whose liner notes warned of the dangers of listening to it while driving, due to alpha waves. It was one of those albums best played in the presence of incense and a lava lamp, so I was unlikely to have it in my car. For maximum danger, I suppose I could have listened to it with the burning incense in my drink holder and my lava lamp plugged into the cigarette lighter.

Then we have some who advocate all of us simultaneously accessing the Schumann Resonances. The Schumann Resonances reside in the Extremely Low Frequency area of Earth’s electromagnetic field spectrum. The resonances are vaguely and superficially similar to alpha waves in people. So the idea is that getting everyone to meditate at the same time will harmonize Earth’s brain to alpha wave goodness. At the other end of the spectrum, conspiracy theorists assert that the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program is a mad scientist plot to practice mind control, or to negatively distort Earth’s consciousness, causing bad juju. However, no person or six billion persons can force a person or planet to enter a state of consciousness by manipulating brain waves.

Similarly, there is Theta Healing, which purports to facilitate immediate psychological changes in the patient. Gulp that hot chocolate with Theta Healing Marshmallows and ward off negative thoughts, zap that backache, and gets rid of that nagging lymphoma.

One urban legend holds that binaural beats common in a subset of new age music will get you stoned. It won’t work any more than smoking marijuana will cause one to hear “Dark Side of the Moon.”

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“Power plants” (Plant Kingdom sentience)

MONSTERPLANT
Grover Cleveland Backster Jr. sported a most excellent moniker and had an even more distinctive claim: That plants experience emotions and read minds.

He was an interrogation specialist with the CIA and, perhaps bored with hooking up prospective agents and communist sympathizers, decided to attach a polygraph to a plant. He did this in his science laboratory, also known as his living room.

First, Backster watered the plant to see if the polygraph indicated the plant was happy. To his surprise, it instead suggested (to him) that the plant’s response was similar to a person when asked an unpleasant question. He never considered that a fern isn’t a nervous suspect. He just jumped to the conclusion that the plant was trying to communicate to him. Plants react to physical and chemical stimuli, but since they lack nerves or sensory organs, they would seem incapable of sentience.

To understate the case, Backster failed to use proper controls in his study. The purported fluxes he recorded were probably due to a change in humidity since the readings were down right after a watering. Other possible causes were static electricity or movement in the room.

Still, pumped by his seeming discovery, Backster spent 14 minutes trying to get more reaction from the plant by torturing it in various ways. Instead of saying “This is stupid” and giving up, our intrepid plant doctor took this stagnation as a sign of it being bored. He may be onto something. Could you imagine spending all day as a scented geranium?

After getting no reaction, he went to the extreme with his CIA enhanced plant interrogation technique. He decided to burn one of its leaves. I came up with some crazy ideas myself while burning a leaf in my 20s, but never went this far. When he chose this course of action, Backster reported that this caused the polygraph needle to sway mightily. He took this as proof the plant was reading his mind. No other cause was considered, which would become a hallmark of Backster’s method. On the spot, he invented the field of plant psychology.

Backster’s experiments contained several scientifically fatal errors. He failed to explain precisely what he was testing and how he would do so. He used a polygraph, which measures a person’s blood pressure and heartbeat, not a plant’s purported emotions. He committed the logical fallacy of Begging the Question in assuming plants have the ability to feel and think.

To conduct the test properly, he should have had another party think or do something around the plant, then have a third person record the data. This should have been done at least 10 times, with independent parties examining the results and drawing their conclusions.

Despite the shoddy research and lack of independent verification, some persons embrace the notion. His ideas are championed by dowsers, energy healers, remote viewers, telepathic communicators, and a few Wiccans. They feel plants telepathically experience love and fear, store energy like batteries, and do something the proponents call “transducing bioenergetic fields.” These wide ranging, poorly defined claims reek of pseudoscience.

One of Backster’s fans asked him if he could influence chemical and metals as well. So he went to Times Square and tried it for a couple of weeks, apparently without success. This approach to experiment speaks to scientific ignorance. A reputable scientist would never respond to this speculation or employ such a research method.

Controlled experiments repeatedly failed replicate Backster’s findings, and he was criticized for failing to use the Scientific Method. His most public repudiation came during the 141st annual meeting of American Association for the Advancement of Science, where a panel of biologists found his claims unsupportable.

Botanist Arthur Galston told journalists, “We know plants don’t have nervous systems. But they do have little electrical currents flowing through them and are subject to outside manipulation.” Backster Backer Jim Cranford could manage only an ad hominem response: “Backster’s not a scientist and those guys don’t like to admit that anyone else knows anything. That’s pride and arrogance at its worst.” Curiously, neither Cranford nor Backster let us know what the plants were thinking about all this.

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“Washer and liar” (Laundry balls)

LAUNDRY2When looking into a claim critically, I first ascertain if a product or method has gone through a double blind test. It’s a good measuring stick, but it would be more interesting if I could carry out such a test myself.

To my good fortune, I have the apparatus to conduct one at home: My washer and dryer. They will be the testing ground for laundry balls, which supposedly make detergent superfluous and last 2,500 washes.

The clothes will be laundered in one of three ways: With detergent, with the laundry ball, and with hot water alone. As to the double blind element, the clothes won’t know in which manner they are being tested and my wife won’t know which pile of clothes is which when I ask her which is cleanest. For that matter, she doesn’t even know she’s been drafted for this assignment.

For the first portion of the test, I dressed my four oldest children and myself in identical jeans and T-Shirts and commenced to sliding, slipping, and sluicing in the backyard. This proved a painful experiment for my 46-year-old bones and muscles, but I have always resolved to donate my body to science.

We trudged back in, exhausted, sweating, and most importantly, filthy. While doing laundry, we kept with the science theme and I familiarized my 7-year-old with the Periodic Table. He was handicapped by being 7 and having me as his chemistry professor. But he memorized the symbols and numbers for hydrogen and helium, so at this rate we’re eight weeks away from success. We also got a lesson in acoustics when our conscripted scientist walked in. We discerned how far yelps of outrage will bounce back when hitting drywall. We were also tutored on optics, learning a glare can be laser-like without burning a hole through you.

A couple of hours later, we took our experiment results to the tester for product evaluation, or as she called it, wasting her time. Normally, I’d want at least one other person as a control, but it’s best to not question her conclusions. She picked the ones washed with detergent as best by far. She was mostly inconclusive on the other two. Some clothes washed in hot water alone seemed a little better than the ones washed with the laundry ball, and vice versa.

It turns out I got little for my activated water, manipulated electric field, and quantum mechanics. Maybe the instructions meant the same load needed to be laundered 2,500 times. I looked on the box to more closely examine some of the other claims. One noted that the laundry balls “emit far infrared waves.” This is true, since all materials emit far infrared waves. By this logic, the clothes should have laundered themselves. There was also a claim that the balls contain agents that neutralize chlorine. Chlorine is an antibacterial agent, so neutralizing it in washing water would seem counterproductive. Maybe that explains the dark green and brown splotches left behind. Another boast noted that the balls manipulate electric fields to form crystals, and these crystals retain their form in boiling liquids. It never explicates why this form matters or why this would make socks and pants cleaner.

I looked into the claims made by other laundry ball makers for comparison. Besides making these balls, the companies also seem to manufacture their abilities. Even though the products are similar and have the same goal, there exists little agreement on how they work. This is a strong indication they don’t work at all. There are many antacids and, while they have varying benefits and efficiency, there would be general consensus on why they were effective.

Some laundry ball users report a seeming increase in efficiency on certain types of stains, but this is the result of hot water washing as opposed to cold. Moreover, the mechanical action of the laundry balls could help clean a few types of stains, but you’d get the same result if you tossed in a golf ball, plus you’d increase the golf ball’s aerodynamics.

I learned in my research that silver has antibacterial properties. For a follow up, I could test the results of laundering with items from our jewelry box. But I’m in enough trouble with the evaluator as it is.

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“Purportual Motion” (Perpetual motion machines)

PERPETUL MOTIONI was fishing for a new topic and, at first, herbal medicine came to mind. But after looking over the evidence, it was clear that garlic, ginseng, and St. John’s-wort have proven benefits. There are other herbal remedies whose proponents claim abilities in excess of what has been shown, and there is a danger of overdosing. But the idea itself is not inherently pseudomedical. So I moved onto cryonics, but found this an honest field. Proponents acknowledge huge obstacles and admit the cryonics rests on a foundation of the barely theoretical and highly implausible. It’s pretty much a mesh of a Pascal’s Wager variant and H.P. Lovecraft. Cryonic businesses promise customers a frozen cadaver and they deliver.

I prefer to aim at full blown hogwash, so I kept searching until my scope landed on perpetual motion machines. In the skeptic movement, one’s ears are tuned to detect nonsense. Alarm bells go off when hearing terms like harmonic convergence and toxin cleanser. In the perpetual motion field, however, the device itself is the deceptive term.

Such a machine would be capable of running forever with no outside intervention or energy input. This clashes with the first two laws of thermodynamics. The first law states the amount of energy is constant and can be neither created nor destroyed. The second law states the amount of energy put into a system will always be more than the amount of energy that system puts out. So any machine will have inefficiency, even if it’s just friction or the load of the machine. A machine could never manage 100 percent efficiency, much less the 101+ percent that the more brazen proponents claim.

Historially, the most common types of perpetual motion machines are overbalanced wheels. This wheel is continually reinvented and continually failing. These wheels operate on angular momentum and a well-designed one will run for quite a while. But friction will eventually stop it. At some point, there will be insufficient force from the falling of one ball to raise the wheel to a point where the next ball overbalances.

If one is a good enough amateur engineer and magician, a perpetual motion machine charade can last long enough to keep an audience focused. But if it really worked, the only audience you’d be demonstrating for is the one watching you accept your Nobel Prize.

Purported machines are based on either deception or a misunderstanding of physics. In the former, demonstrators use a hidden source for additional energy, and bandy about terms like magnetic polarization, gravitational work, and zero-point energy to impress and confuse the scientifically illiterate.

Many perpetual motion machines create the illusion of motion by exploiting coefficients of friction. If pulling a tablecloth slowly, objects on the table go with it. But if a person yanks the cloth quickly and skillfully, the objects remain on the table since the friction coefficient drops. This principle has industrial applications, such as when a conveyor vibrates asymmetrically, going quickly one way and more slowly the opposite direction. People invent machines similar to this and think they’ve demonstrated perpetual motion. Failed claimants of the past 15 years include Yuri Potapov, Genesis World Energy, and Steorn Ltd. Steorn cancelled a demonstration when the device met with “technical difficulties,” a seeming impossibility for a perpetual motion machine.

Moving from the deceived to the fraudulent, Dennis Lee is one of the field’s more enduring names. However, the only thing he has in perpetual motion are the props in his shell game. Lee has been making claims about his ability to deliver free energy for the past quarter of a century without ever demonstrating this.

Eric Krieg of the Center for Scientific Inquiry attended Lee’s seminar to examine his tactics. Rather than science, Lee hit on the political, claiming victimhood from an international, decades-long conspiracy to keep his machines from the public. He had promised a demonstration, but rescinded that because he said government agents had infiltrated the audience to arrest him if he proceeded. He kept another promise, the one affording attendees the chance to pay $25,000 to become dealers of this unseen wonder machine. Lee has multiple fraud convictions, which he cites as proof of the conspiracy.

Then we have Tom Bearden, who holds that unlimited free energy can be extracted from the vacuum of space-time. He demonstrates a trio of pseudoscience hallmarks by calling himself a conspiracy victim, a scorned genius, and by being forever on the verge of discovery without making one. He also claims an associate was killed by a poison ice dart and warns of a ruse whereby government agents take out inconvenient inventors by rear-ending their vehicle, transporting them in an adjacent ambulance, and injecting them with a pernicious fluid. This must be working since all perpetual motion machines have been repressed.

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“Biorhythm blues” (Biorhythm cycles)

BIORHYTHMWhen Mark Spitz won seven Gold Medals in 1972, U.S. Olympic fans weren’t the only ones celebrating. Biorhythm proponents noted Spitz was at the peak of what they called his physical and mental cycles. These cycles allegedly dictate our health and actions. The cycles are said to begin at birth and go through a varying number of days, depending on which school of biorhythm thought one subscribes to. They are not to be confused with the circadian rhythm, which has been scientifically validated to regulate periods of sleep and alertness.

Five years after Spitz’s dazzling, biorhythm-fueled performance, Reggie Jackson hit home runs on his final four swings of the World Series, each blast coming off a different pitcher. However, Jackson’s biorhythm cycles were all at their nadir.

Biorhythmist Russ Streiffert had a retort for this seeming refutation of the theory. Streiffert posited that since Jackson’s cycles were all at their low point, he benefited from being recharged and synchronized. To summarize, negative days can be positive. And positive phase days can be negative, since much energy has been expended. Sort of how “good” and “bad” can both mean excellent, I suppose.

In the ballpark of ad hoc hypotheses, Streiffert had hit a grand slam. An even more creative ploy is asserting that some people are a-biorhythmic. So if the person’s results aren’t what the chart shows they should be, biorhythmists can make this claim. Taking the Get Out Of Jail free card even further, we learn that some people are a-biorhythmic just some of the time. Those times coincide with whenever biorhythm theory isn’t confirmed. These ad hoc hypotheses make biorhythm claims untestable and, thus, not scientific. They also make them unverifiable and, indeed, no biorhythm proponent has ever published a paper in a peer-reviewed journal.

Wilhelm Fliess first devised the idea as an offshoot of numerology in the 19th Century. Fliess was fixated with 23 and 28, so he chose those as the number of days in the cycle. A person’s fitness, alertness, and so on would be determined by these rhythms. Despite the hormonal differences in males and females, he gave both genders the same rhythm. This glaring error has never been addressed. It is also problematic that everyone would have the same rhythm despite the diversity in physiology among the population. Also left unexplained is why the cycle would begin at birth.

About a century after Fliess, 33 days become the more popular number. Others have proposed 38, 43, and 53 day cycles. While the methods were overhauled, the results were kept, which is a pseudoscience giveaway. The main idea is that one’s biorhythm foretells what kind of day is ahead. Where one is at in the cycle will determine what attributes are conferred, be it increased agility or susceptibly to illness. The worst day is when all cycles are in a transition phase. These are called Critical Days and they occur about thrice monthly. Rather than pouring over the mounds of data necessary to see if there is a connection, proponents are content to point out Clark Gable had a heart attack on such a day.

Even worse, some biorhythmists count the day before and after a Critical Day as being just as pernicious. This bumps the number of danger days to just past one in four, making any supposed comparison between those days and misfortune statistically meaningless.

Biorhythm proponents advocate keeping a daily log. This would be potentially more valid if the subjects recorded how each day went, then checked their biorhythm charts. Instead, people scan the chart first, then see what happens. This opens them to self-fulfilling prophecies and subjective validation.

This was best demonstrated by Patron Saint of Skeptics, James Randi. He had proponent George Thommen prepare some biorhythm charts. Then a subject followed it for two months and reported a 90 percent success rate. Randi then revealed the subject had been given Randi’s chart. Randi said this was by mistake and the “real” chart was given, with the subject finding it even more accurate. A second ruse was revealed, as this chart was really done for Randi’s secretary. Who knows, maybe Thommen would have detected Randi’s trickery if his alert cycle had been ascending.