Pseudoscience

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“The Scientific Wretched” (Scientific Method, or lack thereof)

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A fair portion of my posts contain the word pseudoscience. As such, I owe my ones of readers a description of what it is and how to spot it.

Pseudoscience is a nefarious form of nonsense that dresses itself in scientific clothing while failing to use the field’s methods and standards. The main motivators are ego, money, and trying to prove Genesis.

First, let’s get an understanding of how science is done so we can identify its impostor. The Scientific Method consists of the following:

1. Defining the question

2. Developing a hypothesis

3. Making a prediction

4. Testing that prediction

5. Analyzing the results using proper statistics

6. Replication

7. Peer review

8. Data sharing

Science is testable, falsifiable, and properly done using double blind studies. It is clear what the scientists are trying to discern, how they will test it, and how they will interpret the results. Pseudoscientific claims are grandiose, vague, and use ambiguous language. An advertisement may read, “This will increase alertness, strengthen immune systems, and block the flow of negative energy.” Nowhere are the processes explained, nor is the reader given any idea how to tell if these benefits have occurred. 

A certain giveaway is a lack of peer review. Pseudoscience practitioners prefer their work be lapped up by credulous masses rather than perused by Ph.D.s in the field. Closely related to no peer review is being disinterested in replication or outside verification. Science is a work in progress, while pseudoscience is presented as a done deal. There’s no need to go further since the panacea has been discovered or the secret formula unearthed.

Stagnation is another sign. An acupuncture patient today receives the same treatment that Confucius got. Compare that to advances in electronics over the last 75 years. Science continually adapts, evolves, and improves. At the other end of the spectrum from stagnation, pseudoscience might drastically overhaul its methods while keeping the same results. The theoretical ideas of Transhumanism have little resemblance to those of 50 years ago, but its proponents are still assuring us that immortal supermen are on the way.

Scientists are forever publishing in journals, holding forums, appearing on podcasts, and exchanging ideas. By contrast, a pseudoscientist works alone or with select cronies and lashes out at questions that request too much detail. Before reverting to their Frankenstein laboratory, they may unleash an ad hominem about critics being resistant to change or being Big Pharma shills. Science also explains its methods. Conversely, in almost 700 pages, L. Ron Hubbard never reveals how he reached his conclusions.

In science, the gold standard is a controlled, double blind study which involves a substantial amount of data. The use of statistics and an emphasis on statistical significance is also seen. In pseudoscience, the focus is on anecdotes and testimonials. If pseudoscientists are pressed on the lack of Scientific Method usage or the dearth of double blind studies, ad hoc reasoning abounds. Homeopath proponents and aromatherapists, for instance, have claimed such testing is impossible because each person responds differently to treatment. Crystal healers may claim they are using a holistic approach that includes working the mind, an area that can’t be measured. Creationist Jason Lisle asserts he has deduced how starlight from two galaxies away arrived here in 5,000 years. But he refuses to publish his work in peer-reviewed astronomy journals because astrophysicists don’t submit their work to creationist publications.

Also, beware the appeal to irrelevant authority, such as a doctor of economics weighing in on a weight loss miracle. Similarly, Intelligent Design proponents gleefully pass around a list of about 100 Ph.D.s who support creation. But this list includes persons with doctorates in history and English. Skeptics have countered with a List of Steves, a collection of Ph.D.s who reject creation. This list is 13 times longer and consists solely of men named Steve or women named Stephanie. Other examples of appeals to irrelevant authority are claims that a long-lost Mayan cure has been found or that an energy-boosting method is similar to what ancient Egyptians used. Another squirrelly technique is relying on an unrelated field. Cryonics advocates insist raising the dead will commence once nanotechnology does its part.

Also, beware the misuse of scientific terms. Alternative medicine gurus will mention energy, particles, and waves, but use the terms improperly. For years, cold fusion and perpetual motion were misused buzzwords in the pseudo-physics arena. They’ve been largely replaced with quantum. There’s almost no limit to what a pseudoscientist will claim when they toss that word into the sentence.

One of the hardest pseudoscience techniques to detect is quote mining. The most frequent violation is probably the creationist ploy of quoting this from On the Origin of Species: “To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.” They stop there, since the next sentence reads: “Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist…,” and goes on to explain the process. This is an extreme case, but any cherrypicking of data and reports is a hallmark of pseudoscience.

Another obvious sign is reaching one’s conclusion first. A person or group using this method is, by definition, failing to do science. The Institute for Creation Research’s mission is to find evidence that meshes Genesis with the Cosmos. Nessie hunters presume his existence, then seek evidence that supports it.

Pseudoscientists will also stealthily put the burden on the other side. They will make a claim, and if it can’t be disproven, will present this inability as proof their claim is true. For instance, creationists will say that evolution cannot account for morality so it had to come from God. Yet evolution is merely the change in inherited characteristics in biological populations over time. It has nothing to do with morality or anything besides animals adapting to their environment. And anyway, the insinuation that evolution fails to account for morality proves that it comes from God relies on the appeal to ignorance. Just because we can’t prove it doesn’t come from God doesn’t meant that it does. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The burden of proof always on the one making the claim. This can be closely tied to not be falsifiable. A magic jewelry hawker may boast, “This will balance your harmony,” a conclusion that could never be tested or falsified.

Then we have Moving the Goalposts, where an answered challenge is met with consternation, excuses, and a different challenge. When the Theory of Relativity was validated, Newtonian proponents embraced it. By contrast, Intelligent Design advocates for years claimed there were no fossils showing a sea creature evolving into a land dweller. Then Tiktaalik came along, so they switched their focus to there being no fossil showing an invertebrate developing a spine. And, of course, they’re again relying on the appeal to ignorance by claiming this lack of a particular fossil proves that the Abrahamic god created everything.

Finally, a pseudoscience red flag should is raised when ideology is involved. Lysenkoism taught that acquired characteristics, rather than genetic ones, were passed onto offspring. For example, if you cut the tail off of a mouse, the next generation would also have that feature. This had zero validity, but Soviets revered Lysenkoism because the Communist Party endorsed it as part of its ideology. Science promoters in the United States today face no threat of extermination from Joseph Stalin for pushing back against charlatans and hucksters, so pseudoscience should always be exposed. 

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“L. Ron Shuttered” (Scientology)

CLAMMANThe four main targets of skeptics are the paranormal, alternative medicine, pseudoscience, and religion. The one entity that fits in all these categories is Scientology.

It started in the early 1950s as a mix of hypnosis, science fiction, and terrible psychology. A few years later, L. Ron Hubbard founded the Church of Scientology after saying he discovered the soul (and its accompanying tax exempt status).

He outlines his ideas in Dianetics. Throughout the book, Hubbard makes vague, extraordinary, and unfalsifiable claims, such as “Dianetics contains a therapeutic technique which can treat all inorganic mental ills and organic psychosomatic ills, with assurance of a complete cure.” Grandiose, untestable, and non-peer reviewed claims like these are featured in many other pseudosciences and pseudomedicines. What differentiates Scientology from the rest is its $100,000,000 in annual tax free income.

If Dianetics truly is medicine, that means Scientologists should be arrested for practicing it without a license. Moving onto the pseudoscientific, Hubbard writes, “Dianetics is an organized science of thought built on definite axioms and natural laws and physical sciences.” However, Hubbard never uses the Scientific Method, never explains his research (generously assuming he conducted any), and subjected none of it to peer review.

The gist of it all is that mental and psychosomatic illnesses are traced to engrams. These are ghosts of unpleasant experiences. If something bad happens when hearing a lawn mower, hearing the same sound later might bring back that bad feeling or illness. Anxiety, claustrophobia, and hacking coughs all come back to the engram. There is no way to empirically test such claims and Diantetics “research” is limited to anecdotes from persons who may not be real.

Dianetics is an arduous read, full of undefined terms, unproven claims, and insufferable, tangential language. One example: “An engram is a definite and permanent trace left by a stimulus on the protoplasm of a tissue. It is considered as a unit group of stimuli impinged solely on the cellular being. Engrams are only recorded during periods of physical or emotional suffering. During those periods the analytical mind shuts off and the reactive mind is turned on. The analytical mind has all kinds of wonderful features, including being incapable of error.”

Imagine going through 600 pages of that. No telling how many engrams that has caused. Elsewhere, Hubbard writes, “Cells are evidently sentient in some currently inexplicable way. Unless we postulate a human soul entering the sperm and ovum at conception, there are things which no other postulate will embrace than that these cells are in some way sentient.” Hubbard here gets in three logical fallacies in just two sentences: The false dilemma, the appeal to ignorance and begging the question.

Like all good religions, Scientology creates both the problem and the solution. To get cured of an illness, you need a Dianetic therapist to release the engram. To do this, the Scientologist uses what Hubbard calls a reverie. He describes this as intense use of a faculty of the brain which everyone possesses, but only Hubbard got around to noticing. Hubbard goes through a verbose description of the process, but in the end it’s little more than one man telling another his worries. A bartender does that, plus you get a beer with it.

Accompanying these release sessions are a piece of ersatz electronics called an Electropsychometer, a sort of rudimentary polygraph. Per Dianetics, the meter is used to measure “the state of electrical characteristics of the static field surrounding the body,” a scientifically worthless claim. Usually, the subject holds something akin to a soda can with protruding wires, while repeating “Thetan.” Once free of engrams, the person “would be in full control of their mind and psyche. As such they would have special abilities, such as perfect memory and analytical powers.” So then, an hour with Scientology Man and one’s problems are solved for life, right?

In reality, sessions get more costly and can create a cycle of persons returning for more expansive and expensive cures. The meter, when used by a trained Scientologist, is supposed to show if a person has been freed of spiritual baggage. With a claim this vague, as well as there being no way to tell how the meter works or how the therapist is reading the data, the subject can be kept coming back indefinitely. With the money some people spend on this, they could have started their own movement.

Since it only became a church for legal benefits, Scientology barely ventures onto religious terrain. But when it does, it can compete with the Venusian telepathic communicators and Magic Underwear purveyors. It teaches that an alien dubbed Xenu led a contingent of space ships to Earth 75 million years ago and blew up some volcanoes. Aliens died in the explosion, with any persons that have come along since bearing the Scientology equivalent of Original Sin. Blurring the thin line between religion and the paranormal, Scientology holds that the alien genocide victims are still around in energy form, emitting negative vibes that Diantetics will protect from. Hubbard was a science fiction writer before penning Dianetics, so Xenu and his minions may be part of a shelved work.

Scientology doesn’t really address god, but Scientologists who attain a higher level can access Thetans, which are the dead space aliens. These are the same aliens that were best avoided before, but graduate level Scientologists presumably have some secret knowledge that allow them to do this safely. Scientology maintains man is immortal, but offers little about the afterlife or how people can increase their chances of a good one.

The movement has a litany of other oddities, such as believing in man’s descent from clams. Also, Hubbard was against both breastfeeding and baby formula. So he came up with his own concoction, one conspicuously lacking in vitamins. He was also against pain medication for birthing mothers, a great irony since he was also against noise in the delivery room. Then we have the Purification Rundown, where Scientologists ingest large doses of vitamins before hopping in the sauna for a five-hour sojourn. I actually do this one. Except the vitamins are in orange juice form and I skip the sauna part.

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“Spontaneous Humorous Combustion” (People going boom)

INFERNOIt is rather excellent to be referenced by both Charles Dickens and Spinal Tap. This distinction goes to spontaneous human combustion.

But while it has a long history in folklore, a close look at the supposed phenomenon finds little reason to believe it’s real. The term refers to a human bursting into flames because of heat generated by an internal chemical action. Common characteristics attributed to victims are a severely burned head and torso, unscathed extremities and unaffected areas around them, and a smell akin to perfume. Most telling, the other common factor is no witnesses.

There are a tiny handful of cases that have no determined cause, so there is a razor thin chance of it being due to spontaneous human combustion. But there are better reasons to think it’s not true, and making it a default or even eventual position is unjustified.

For a few centuries, many people believed being soused to be the cause. Perhaps persons felt this was divine retribution for sinning, or maybe it was due to a poor understanding of chemistry and anatomy. But this idea is unreasonable because there would be many more instances of drunk persons catching fire if it were true. I would have gone poof sometime in my mid 20s. Besides, it takes a Blood Alcohol Content of about .5 percent to hasten death. By contrast, one would need about a 60 percent concentration to set ablaze a water-ethanol mixture.

An equally unlikely idea posits that spontaneous combustion comes from static electricity. Static discharges can cause fuel explosions, but they can’t light up humans. If they could, you’d be in danger every time you drug your feet across the carpet. A drunk slinking across a room would have been in great peril, per the old way of thinking.

Since the middle of the 20th Century, the idea of spontaneous human combustion has been championed primarily by police officers and fire inspectors when unable to determine how a fire victim died with little damage to the surrounding area. In 2011, even a reputable British coroner ascribed a case to spontaneous human combustion because he could come up with nothing else.

But this commits a logical fallacy of Affirming the Consequent. The thinking here is, “If spontaneous combustion were real, the person would be roasted while areas around him would not be. This describes the victim and his surroundings. Therefore, this is spontaneous combustion.”

However, the human body is about 60 percent water, so it’s not terribly flammable. It takes two hours of being broiled at 1600 degrees to complete cremation. Short of quaffing two gallons of pureed oil rags, followed by a chaser of tanked oxygen, spontaneous combustion ain’t happenin’.

Most alleged cases can be resolved by considering the Wick Effect. Once a body is ignited by an external source, the Wick Effect from body fat would burn hot enough in some places to destroy bones.

This was demonstrated by Dr. John de Hann, who wrapped a dead hog in a sheet, poured on some gasoline, and fired it up. This Pig in a Blanket ended up almost identical to purported spontaneous human combustion victims. It took five hours to complete, so most of the pig was thoroughly blackened, but the extremities are surrounding area were unscathed. de Hann had selected a pig since it has the same fat amount as a person, lending more credence to his theory.

In supposed spontaneous human combustion cases, the victim’s clothing acts as a wick, with body fat being the fuel source. The burning clothes are maintained by liquid fat, causing a slow, controlled, burn. This burning is intense and long enough to cause great damage without spreading the fire. This explanation would also account for the perfume aroma, since sugars and fats are being vaporized.

National Geographic highlighted the case of a woman whose clothes suddenly caught fire and burned her thigh. She had put a seashell in her pocket, a seashell that was covered in sodium from a fireworks show. Later, she stuck a wet handkerchief in the pocket. This caused a fire, probably due to sodium reacting with water, thus releasing self-igniting hydrogen.

This demonstrates the type of events that could take place and lead to supposed cases of spontaneous combustion. There are humans and there is spontaneous combustion, but it’s unlikely they are ever combined.

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“Tower of Babble” (Xenoglossy)

TONGUESXenoglossy refers to making a big deal about babbling incoherently. More specifically, it is the purported ability to speak a language one has never been exposed to. There is no way to test the claims because researchers would have no way of knowing if the subject had studied the language before.

This ability is, of course, impossible. And there would seem little reason to pretend to have it. As such, there are only about a half dozen documented cases of persons claiming to have the ability, or someone making the claim on their behalf. University of Michigan linguist Sarah Thomason analyzed these cases and found them without merit.

In one case, an American woman supposedly spoke Swedish while under hypnosis. Since she used a vocabulary of about 100 words, this initially seemed legitimate (that she was speaking Swedish, not that she was doing it without having heard it before). But more careful research revealed 40 of those words were spoken first by the hypnotist. Another 30 words were cognates, words that have the same etymological origin and may sound nearly the same in two languages. There aren’t a lot of Swedish-English cognates, and that she would have 30 of them ready to rattle off seems to indicate she was speaking English, with it being counted as Swedish by the hypnotist, who was also her husband. The words she supposedly managed were poorly pronounced, but still written down in transcription as if her enunciation were flawless.

Another claim centered on a woman named Gretchen, with German being the language and hypnosis again the method. She mostly just repeated words the hypnotist was saying, changing only the intonation. She also improvised words that sounded German, but were not. Gretchen managed only a miniscule vocabulary with inconsistent pronunciation. Even a better performance wouldn’t have counted, as it was revealed she had prior limited access to German books and television.

The case that appeared to hold the most promise of being genuine came from India. It focused on a woman who was said to be able to speak Bengali without having been exposed to it. Unlike the first two examples, she was speaking the language. It was in a rudimentary but unmistakable fashion, similar to a 3-year-old. But a deeper investigation revealed she had heard the language as a preschooler and had attended an elementary school that taught it to first-graders. By the time her purported xenoglossy was highlighted, she was nearing middle age and seemed to have forgotten about the Bengali lessons from 30 years prior. She wasn’t being fraudulent, but also wasn’t demonstrating xenoglossy.

The best known case is about a girl known only by the pseudonym Rosemary. It is based solely on the works of Dr. Frederic H. Wood and his associate, Howard Hulme. Wood claimed the girl channeled an ancient Egyptian princess and spoke about 5,000 words or phrases, with Hulme jotting away.

All this appeared in a book, with no independent testing or even a confirmation Rosemary existed. Egyptologist Battiscombe Gunn examined the case and determined Hulme to be severely deficient in understanding ancient Egyptian. Any utterance that had even a remote similarity to ancient Egyptian counted as a hit. All this would be like trying to transcribe a Cannibal Corpse song. You would pick up almost nothing, but since you know they’re probably growling about blood and murder you would throw that in there.

The only contemporary case is that of Matěj Kůs of the Czech Republic. He was in a crash and after regaining consciousness, according to his friends, spoke perfect English. By the time the media and scientists showed up, his English was limited to “Go away,” or some such approximation.

Whereas xenoglossy claims are very rare, glossolalia is quite common. This is better known as speaking in tongues. Originally, there were two purported forms of speaking in tongues, both equally implausible. One was a flawless xenoglossy, with the person being able to fluently speak a tongue foreign to them. The other form held that listeners had the power to understand a language they never heard before. This was cited in Acts, with Paul claiming it fulfilled the prophecy in Joel that believers would have this ability in the end days. By my count, that puts us in End Day No. 710,000.

Besides early Christians, ancient Israelis and Apollo worshippers got in on the tongue fun. Today, speaking in tongues consists of strings of gibberish that make Ned Flanders’ ramblings seem eloquent. The speaker will eventually form a very loose pattern of similar sounds and inflections, but it is not a language.

Speakers structure their patterns, perhaps unconsciously, on their surroundings and audience expectations. There are sometimes accompanying physical reactions, also specific to locale. Some convulse, some go limp, while others are trancelike. With the speech being nonsensical, interpreters have a broad range to work with. They hear what they expect a person awash in the spirit to be saying, creating an instance of auditory pareidolia.

A study by psychiatrist Andrew Newberg at the University of Pennsylvania showed that persons speaking in tongues have a steep decline in function in the brain’s frontal lobe, which enables reason and self control. Meanwhile, there is increased activity in the parietal region, which oversees sensory information. This pretty much explains the rolling around on the floor yelping bit.

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“Smoked Ham and Rabbit Stew” (Pseudoscientists)

SMOKEDHAMRABBITSTEWMy favorite irony is someone using computer technology and the Internet to bash science. The main point of these screeds is usually to highlight mistakes science has made.

Indeed, it has made plenty. Carl Sagan said if you’re not making mistakes when doing science, you’re doing it wrong. He added if you keep making the same mistakes, you’re really doing it wrong. Finally, if you don’t admit the mistakes, you’re not doing science. Making mistakes is no disgrace. Refusing to admit them is.

This seems the logical time to introduce Ken Ham, head of Answers in Genesis. His organization’s Statement of Faith reads, in part, “No evidence in any field can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record.” It is one (rather lame) thing to have that as a philosophy. It is quite another to hold such a view and claim to be doing science. Science, in fact, is forever trying to prove itself wrong.

It is inadequate for Jenny McCarthy to note that her son was given a vaccine, developed autism, and then tie the two occurrences together. The Playboy Bunny would need her hypothesis to be tested in double blind, reproducible studies, with the results made available for peer review. In the case of vaccines and autism, that link was disproven in a series of those double blind, peer-reviewed studies. On July 1, a systematic review of these studies was published in the journal Pediatrics. It found, “There is strong evidence that the MMR vaccine is not associated with autism.” If a better study comes along and disproves this, it will be accepted. That’s how science works. In fact, science reserves its greatest praise for those who disprove conventional wisdom. Someone scientifically disproving evolution, for instance, would be as revered as Einstein and Newton.

The proper method of science is not to invent a conclusion, then find evidence that supports it, which is what creationists and cryptozoolgists do. Dr. Jeffrey Muldrum, an associate professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University, spends his time, resources, and talent foraging for Bigfoot. He believed in it as a kid and never gave up.

In the academic world, Muldrum is a pariah, as shunned as the monster he’s looking for. Muldrum is one of my least favorite characters because of his credentials. He should know much better. Somewhat to his credit, he has dismissed some pieces of Bigfoot evidence as hoaxes, rather than trying to cram them into his preconceived ideas. Further, he seems to be genuinely looking for evidence, as opposed to deciding ahead of time he will find it, then fulfilling that prophecy. But he puts stock in eyewitness accounts, a distinction belying a man of his education. Someone in his position should know that hundreds of pieces of weak evidence don’t add up to one strong piece. He should know a creature of Bigfoot’s description could not have a sustainable population that has escaped detection, especially with so many people searching in the place the beast supposedly resides. At a minimum, he should consider the possibility so remote as to warrant no use of resources, which could be spent on trying to find undiscovered bugs or small reptiles.

Still, he’s at least applying scientific principles in his search. For a much worse example, let’s go back to Answers in Genesis and its take on the age of Earth. Rather than addressing the scientific proof, such as Clair Patterson’s radiometric dating, the group simply chides geologists for not adhering to the Bible. Their evidence to counter Patterson’s is this: “A global, year-long, catastrophic flood did happen at the time of Noah. We can say this with confidence because of the clear authority in Genesis.” To reach this conclusion, they used no developed question, no hypothesis, no observation, no testing, no studies, no peer review, and certainly no science.

Here’s another goody: “Whose word we are going to trust: the all-knowing truthful creator or finite, sinful creatures who give us their books that contain errors and therefore are frequently revised?” They offer no retort to Patterson’s science or any support of an alternative theory. Just an ad hominem or two, an assertion that admitting errors is a fault, and declaring it was all made by an invisible sky creature.

To hopelessly understate the case, they are failing to employ the Scientific Method. The Method’s first step requires defining the question. And this means asking, “Why is the door slamming shut,” not “Which ghost is slamming the door?”

The next step is observation. James Randi notes that, “The plural of anecdote is not data.” Three hundred people claiming that jasmine cured their backache and increased their success in the real estate market doesn’t count as proof. It must be put to a scientific test, including the third step in the Method, developing a hypothesis. For instance, after observing that milkmaids seldom developed smallpox, Edward Jenner hypothesized that persons exposed to cowpox would eventually be immune to its more sinister cousin.

Next, the scientist tests his or her hypothesis with experiments and collects the data, without a preconceived conclusion. This is perhaps the key point of science: Attempting to nullify one’s hypothesis is necessary to promoting the field. Studies should be random, controlled, and double blind. Double blind means neither the subjects nor researchers know which is the test group and which is the control group. Then, results should be carefully analyzed using proper statistics.

Sometimes, these results cause a revision of the hypothesis, necessitating going back to the third step. If the hypothesis seems validated, the next step is to publish the results in a scientific, peer-reviewed journal. A creationist paper in an astrophysics journal would get swallowed up like objects in a black hole that the paper was probably trying to rationalize out of existence. Seeing if a claim stands up among world-class experts is an important part of the scientific process.

Ideally, the research should be repeated by others and the hypothesis may be slightly adjusted. This is because science admits its errors and shifts its thinking if warranted. Science long ago moved on from Piltdown Man, while Answers in Genesis is still asserting light can travel at thousand warp, or whatever its rationale is for being able to see stars millions of light years away in a 5,000-year-old universe.

In the Piltdown Man hoax, an amateur archeologist combined a modern human skull with the jaw of an orangutan and claimed it was an evolutionary find. Once radiocarbon dating came along, science disproved this.

Creationists still use Piltdown Man in their railings against evolution, even though it was science, not religion, that unmasked the hoax. If Piltdown Man was the only proof of evolution, it would be different. But there is a wealth of documented, researched, and peer-reviewed evidence showing man has a common ancestor with apes. The mountain of evidence for evolution also includes Archaeopteryx, Lucy, and Tiktaalik. Further evidence includes the geologic column and animals perfectly adapted for their environment, or existing only on Iceland, Madagascar, and Tasmania.

So far, I’ve spent precious little time addressing the anti-vaxxers, so let’s get back to them. Among the points some of them try to make is that science cannot be trusted because of its history. For instance, it will claim that scientists once thought smoking was healthy. This is doubtful, as what passes for evidence is usually advertisements featuring smoking doctors. But the more important point is that using the scientific method will eventually lead to getting it right.

By the late 19th Century, medical journals were publishing articles warning about smoking’s danger. By the 1930s, researchers had made the connection between smoking and lung cancer. Once studies using the Scientific Method were published, the scientific community was uniformly against smoking, and Surgeon General’s warnings were added in 1964.

Another frequent smear is that scientists thought thalidomide was safe. The truth is, it was the lack of scientific research that led to it being allowed on the market in West Germany. In the United States, the FDA rejected its use because adequate testing had not been done. Left out of the thalidomide rants is that the Scientific Method led to the discovery of its use in patients who aren’t pregnant. For instance, it is part of the treatment for leprosy.

In summary, science is an orderly, self-correcting process. Still, anti-vaxxers, cryptozoologists, and Young Earth Creationists continue to merrily spread their anti-science messages, probably by cell phone, Facebook, and Skype.

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“Bio-eccentric” (Biocentrism)

CHICKENEGGBiocentrism is a philosophy masquerading as a hybrid of astronomy, biology, physics, and physiology. Its main tenet is that life or consciousness created the universe, not the other way around. It couches itself in scientific terms and its main proponent is a prominent professor. But it makes no testable theories and relies on misinterpretation of physical principles. Arizona State University physicist Lawrence Krauss has said it makes for some interesting thinking, but has no scientific relevance.

The man who came up with the idea is Robert Lanza. He claims positions espoused by Descartes and Kant were primitive biocentrism. This shows an appeal to irrelevant authority, one of many logical fallacies he commits.

Lanza has had an accomplished career, including being on the team that cloned the world’s first early stage human embryos. He is an adjunct professor at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He still deals in legitimate science and research, but when his focus shifts to biocentrism, he morphs into Deepak Chopra Light. In fact, he can do more damage than his New Age sidekick. His wide-ranging scientific knowledge and impressive résumé could persuade incredulous persons who would otherwise dismiss the idea. He regularly transitions from scientifically proven facts to wild speculation without acknowledging the quantum leap.

For instance, he wrote: “Science cannot explain why the laws of physics are exactly balanced for animal life to exist. If the Big Bang had been one-part-in-a billion more powerful, it would have rushed out too fast for the galaxies to form and for life to begin. If the strong nuclear force were decreased by two percent, atomic nuclei wouldn’t hold together. Hydrogen would be the only atom in the universe.”

While all this is likely true, he reaches this conclusion: “These are just three of more than 200 physical parameters within the solar system and universe so exact that they cannot be random.”

This relies on the appeal to ignorance. Because we can’t show why his position could never be true, the default position is that it’s accurate. The onus remains on Lanza to bolster his claim with evidence. It’s not on others to disprove it.

His only fully legitimate claim is positing that we don’t understand where the universe came from. Even the Big Bang is an incomplete answer because it doesn’t explain what was the source of the original infinitesimal material or why it blew up. But that has no relevance on what he delves into next. He claims the universe only exists when being observed by a consciousness. This would mean that an exoplanet being detected for the first time only came into existence when the first astronomer saw/created it.

Then he rattles off these: “a) Scientists do not understand consciousness, b) We don’t know why the laws of the universe are fine-tuned to allow life to exist, and c) Space and time are mysterious.”

Combining the first point with his overarching position, he is arguing that something we can’t even understand can be known to be the key to creating life, space, and time. Going further, he deduces that all these mysteries prove that consciousness creates reality, a position that could charitably be called speculative. Lanza here is making a classic logical fallacy of pseudoscience: Confusing the unexplained with the inexplicable.

Observers can influence surroundings, as demonstrated by the Uncertainty Principle. But this is the result of one’s presence in tightly controlled quantum experiments. It is a non sequitur to use this as proof that consciousness controls macroscopic conditions. He even argues that a kitchen is not there unless someone sees it. Nothing in quantum mechanics supports this position. The kitchen will be there whether you’re restocking your Oreo supply or away on vacation. Security cameras obliterate this idea, unless an ad hoc theory is developed that film also has consciousness.

This is not his only misinterpretation of scientific ideas. He writes, “Consider the color and brightness of everything you see. Light doesn’t have any color or brightness at all. Nothing remotely resembling what you see could be present without your consciousness.” Here, we see another kernel of truth in a cob of nonsense. The sensory experience of color is subjective, but the properties of light are part of nature.

In another misuse of data, he writes, “We think it feels hot and humid, but to a tropical frog it would feel cold and dry.” When pointing out an amphibian to my sons on an 85 degree day, the comfort level will be different for the observed and the observers. But that temperature is determined by the kinetic energy of molecules, not some cosmic subjectivity. The only impact observers have on temperatures is that too many of them in a room will make it hotter.

Lanza also writes, “Space and time are simply the mind’s tools for putting everything together.” That seems a little cryptic, but I suppose we could allow it. We cannot, however, conclude that the mind using space and time to make sense of it all equates to the mind creating those phenomenon.

In short, the theory amounts to a hodgepodge of loosely related, mostly untestable ideas that assemble to form a chicken-egg conundrum since neither consciousness nor the universe could exist before the other does.

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“The Write Stuff” (Graphology)

SHOCKED MAN

Graphology is studying someone’s handwriting in an attempt to analyze their character and personality traits. Spirograph-ology is using multiple shapes and colors to create designs and is much more fun. But it has nothing to do with skeptic issues, so it’s back to graphology.

The graphologist will look at loops, dots, crosses, slants, spacing, and strokes, then try to use them as a graphite gateway to discern a person’s characteristics. The most obvious deduction about someone writing two pages by hand is that they are severely anachronistic.

In graphology, there is no peer review, uniform theory, or agreed upon standards, and it relies on claims that aren’t falsifiable. As such, the attributes associated with it vary widely, and include the ability to detect a person’s illnesses, morality, memories, past experiences, and hidden talents. Because of these competing theories, graphology claims are difficult to gauge. I found one graphologist online who claimed the technique could be as revealing as astrology, palm reading, and Tarot cards, a point which I must concede.

If doing a one-time analysis, the graphologist will typically employ the technique of sympathetic magic, also known as Like Affects Like. As applied to graphology, this means asserting simple ideas such as an introvert’s writing tilting to the left, while an extrovert’s tilts to the right. Presumably, this is reversed in Hebrew. The graphologist may claim that a dot directly over the ‘i’ indicates practicality, while an off-center dot means creativity. Sometimes, sinister motives are asserted, such as a slanted crossed ‘t’ being said to resemble a whip, indicating sadism. Looking at my writing, a sloppy living room might be correctly deduced.

If a person sees the same graphologist regularly, the graphologist will expand his claims of insights into the subject’s personality. What might seem like increased potency of graphology is really just the tester getting to know the subject better. It is similar to cold reading, only a little easier since some information has been given by the writer. Graphologists will say behavior and personality continually change as a cover against giving contradictory information. Or they will propose taking handwriting samples for analysis over many months so as to gather more information about personality traits. But it is being around the person (and their money) that reveals the personality, not the penmanship.

When the graphologist no longer has the luxury of reading the subject’s original words, the ability vanishes. The British Columbia Civil Liberties Union conducted one of few controlled blind studies of graphology. In the test, subjects wrote not on issues important or relevant to them, but simply copied from a magazine. In this study, the graphologists were no better at predicting personality traits than chance.

As to why a civil liberties group was concerned with the topic, it is because graphology can be used to deny someone employment. Despite there being no empirical evidence or research showing that graphology can determine a person’s abilities or personality, some companies use it when hiring workers. But the only way graphology can determine a potential employee’s compentence is if the applicant signs his name with an X.

Alleged successes are due to confirmation bias and communal reinforcement. I’m unsure where to find a graphologist, but per the online man referenced above, you can probably find one if you read some Tarot cards creatively enough.

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“Truth or Err” (Polygraphs)

pinocchio
There is no doubt polygraphs work. They accurately records changes in heartbeat, respiration, temperature, and blood pressure. But while polygraphs are physiological change indicators, it would be a lie to say they can detect one.

Though associated with relatively modern times, purported lie detectors have a long history. The ancient Chinese had suspects chew and spit out rice powder. If the powder was dry, the suspect was deemed a liar since it was believed fearful persons experienced a decrease in saliva. During the Inquisition, suspected liars were made to chew bread and cheese. If they choked due to a dry throat, this was considered proof of mendaciousness. Persons accused of witchcraft in Puritan America were submerged in water and, if they rose, considered liars. If they stayed submerged, they were shown to be honest and were vindicated, albeit victimized.

Polygraphs have as much use as rice and bread when it comes to weeding out lies. But they regularly appear in popular culture. And this, along with the graphs, needles, wires, and readouts, all overseen by men in white suits, give it an air of legitimacy.

Techniques vary, but the sessions usually begin with an examiner asking a subject general questions to establish a baseline. Then the serious questions are asked, with deviations from the baseline deemed to be lies.

Even the introductory questions can pose issues. The examiner may ask, “Have you ever cheated on a test?” Assuming most everyone has, a ‘no’ response will be seen as untruthful, even if it comes from a lifelong straight A student with no reason to ever do so. The examiner can then use that response as a baseline for determining deception, even though the response was honest. Also, if an examiner suspects a subject is untruthful, he could assume a more aggressive stance, making the subject more prone to a nervous response.

No science supports the idea of a correlation between physiological changes and lying. There are no studies suggesting examiners and their polygraph can detect lies at a significantly better rate than anyone else using a different method. There is no uniform physiological reaction to lying.

Furthermore, changes in heartbeat, respiration, and blood pressure can be caused by anger, embarrassment, fear, nervousness, sadness, or medical conditions. During one test of the polygraph’s efficacy, subjects were told, “I’m going to ask you an intimate and personal question.” This triggered the strongest reaction during the testing, even though no question was asked.

This highlights the polygraph’s biggest flaw: It cannot distinguish between deception and nervousness. An innocent person being grilled by police about a double murder won’t have all their mental and physical faculties. Since taking a polygraph test can make a subject nervous, it will be difficult for the baseline to be established. This will lead to inconclusive results, which can be interpreted as guilt.

Then there is the opposite issue, where a criminal like CIA spy Aldrich Ames can pass multiple polygraph exams. Likewise, most sociopaths will show no deviation from their baseline when being interrogated about a crime they committed.

Polygraph results are usually inadmissible in court and employers are generally proscribed from administering them. But governments are allowed to use them on their employees and this has led to ruined careers.

Counterintelligence officer Mark Mallah was considered deceptive when he denied ever having had unauthorized contact with foreign officials and was grilled for two days. Agents raided his home and placed him under 24-hour surveillance. It took 20 months for his full vindication to come. Mother Jones related the experience of Secret Service candidate Bill Roche, who had zipped through the year-long process until the final portion, the polygraph. The seven-hour session became increasingly belligerent, and Roche was accused of drug use, crimes, and workplace dishonesty. The hostile line of questioning made Roche more nervous, so the examiner labeled him deceptive and he lost any chance of being a federal law enforcement officer.

Despite incidents like this, governments continue to use polygraphs. Senator Richard Shelby led the drive to increase their use in the CIA, FBI, and Department of Energy. Shelby had his limits, however. He drew the line at extending its use to Richard Shelby. The FBI suspected he had leaked classified documents and wanted to test him, but he refused. And that’s the truth.

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“Falling flat” (Flat Earth proponents)

FLATEARTH

I’m feeling lazy today. I skipped the gym. I’m taking the children to the backyard instead of the park. And my skeptic laser is being focused on flat Earth proponents.

These were once an abundant breed, but Eratosthenes proved Earth was round, and calculated its circumference almost exactly, in the third century BCE. This was widely accepted within a few centuries, and Christopher Columbus’ first journey was about opening trade routes and determining Earth’s size, rather than a courageous gamble against superstition.

Deacon White, a 19th Century Hall of Fame baseball player was, until the modern incarnation of the Flat Earth movement, one of the last believers. I mention him primarily to have an excuse to include a quote of his which has nothing to do with Earth’s shape:  “No man is going to sell my carcass unless I get half.”

With that out of the way, we move onto the modern flat Earth movement, if it can be called that. Englishman Samuel Shenton was responsible for this lunacy lauch in 1956, although it was the result of ego, not eccentricity. Still in a round Earth mindset, Shenton floated the idea of an aircraft lifting off from England, hovering for a few hours while Earth rotates, then landing in the United States.

This wouldn’t work because a plane on the ground is moving with the surface of Earth and is imperceptibly going 1,000 miles per hour. When it takes off, it still has this speed. To fly east, the plane increases its speed relative to Earth’s surface and then overtakes it. If flying west, the airplane decreases its speed relative to the surface, and Earth chugs on by. I won’t be addressing north and south travel, due to the aforementioned laziness.

Shenton rejected these ideas, and postulated that his plan was shot down due to Earth being flat, and that a conspiracy was keeping this secret. Emboldened, he founded the Flat Earth Society.

The Society was still active in 1980s, headed by Charles Johnson. I talked with this man by telephone, and he assured me that, “The Flat Earth Society runs the world.” It certainly ran the flat Earth portion of it. At the time we spoke, in 1986, he and his wife were the theory’s only known proponents. Johnson said if Earth was round, people on the bottom would fall off. He compared Earth to a beach ball that drops to the ground. When it is picked up, grains of sand will stay at the top of the ball, but fall from the bottom. For any third graders reading this, Johnson was failing to realize the gravity that drew the sand to the beach would also keep people from plummeting into outer space.

When attempting to counter the flat Earth movement, the first protest usually lodged is that one would go over the edge. But Flat Earth Society members claim there is a 150-foot tall ice wall that encompasses the ring around the edge of Earth. There are no photos or videos of this because, according to the Society’s website, the wall has “snow and hail, howling winds, and indescribable storms and hurricanes in every direction. Human ingress is barred by unsealed escarpments of perpetual ice, extending farther than eye or telescope can penetrate, and becoming lost in gloom and darkness.” Since observing it even indirectly is deemed impossible, it remains unclear how Flat Earthers arrived at the 150-foot figure. Also, in spite of the impenetrability, the society maintains that NASA employees access the region to stand guard and prevent mortals from discovering the secret.

NASA are the Round Earther’s most sinister element, but they have plenty of cohorts, such as every GPS manufacturer, communications industry worker, and pilot. Also in on the fix is Felix Baumgartner, whose jump from the edge of space showed Earth’s curvature.

The second most common point made by normal people Round Earth proponents are pictures of the planet so shaped. The Apollo mission pictures were dismissed as fake by Johnson in the 1960s. By now, we have many more fake pictures, numbering in the thousands. Flat Earthers point out how easy it is to manipulate and stage photos today. For all this ease, we have yet to see a photo, real or fake, of the ice wall or anything else vouching for a flat Earth.

Johnson’s Flat Earth Society died with him, but another was started by Daniel Shenton (not related to Samuel through biology, just through illogical).

The group is very tiny and most members are British, so you are unlikely to encounter one. But if you do, here are arguments to use if inclined. These observations are consistent with a round Earth: 1, Seeing the top of ships first when they come over the horizon. 2, The farther one travels from the equator, the farther stars go toward the horizon. 3, If you put two sticks in the ground a few feet apart, they will produce shadows of different length. 4, The higher up you are, the farther you will see. 5, Every other known heavenly body is round. 6. When one half the world is light, the rest is dark. 7, During a lunar eclipse, a round shadow is cast on the moon.

Now that the Flat Earthers have been dispatched, it’s off to the backyard to take down my 5-year-old daughter in a game of one-on-one.

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“The Mozart Defect” (Mozart Effect)

MOZART
At the University of California-Irvine in 1993, Gordon Shaw and Frances Rauscher studied the effects of listening to a Mozart piano sonata on about 35 college students. They found that participants experienced a temporary enhancement in spatial-temporal reasoning abilities.

Subsequent attempts to replicate this finding failed more often than not. But even if the results were genuine, the study’s authors were making only a limited claim. Nevertheless, through a mix of misunderstanding, misinterpretation, and fraud, this possible temporary enhancement of spatial-temporal reasoning in young adults morphed into a conclusive permanent increase in intelligence for infants and toddlers. Proponents gleefully dubbed it the Mozart Effect.

What had been an eight percent increase in the ability to fold and cut paper was paraded as an improvement of 51 on the SAT. With reputable outlets like ABC News and the Boston Globe hawking the idea, buying Mozart CDs became a de rigueur part of the expecting process, along with hosting showers and designing nurseries. Don Giovanni was played at daycare centers and The Magic Flute was handed out in OB-GYN wings.

Georgia Governor Zell Miller proposed using state funds to provide every newborns’ mother with classical music. During the announcement, Ode to Joy played and the governor asked, “Don’t you feel smarter already?” Thing is, you can feel smarter without being so.

Perhaps the boldest claims were made by Don Campbell, who started a commercial website dedicated to the idea. He also wrote a book called the Mozart Effect, subtitled Tapping the Power of Music to Heal the Body, Strengthen the Mind, and Unlock the Creative Spirit. Campbell attributed these traits to listening to Mozart: Deep sleep, rejuvenation, intelligence, learning, creativity, and imagination, as well as the mitigation of anxiety, depression, dyslexia, autism, and 20 other diseases and disorders. Listening to Mozart can cure every malady except the one that killed him at 35.

Following the initial burst of enthusiasm, more serious and in-depth studies were conducted, with sobering results. Researchers at the University of Washington reported a decrease in standard language-development among infants after hearing the music.

Psychologists Kenneth Steele and philosopher John Bruer followed the protocols set forth by UC Irvine study and found no impact in a study of 125 students. Furthermore, Nature reported that studies with positive results tended to be associated with any energetic music, not just classical. Similarly, psychologists Christopher Charbris and Daniel Simons found that even the minor, temporary, limited-use effect touted in the original study only works if you like the music.

In short, meta-analysis found no improvement for IQ tasks and a statistically insignificant improvement of spatial abilities. This finding is hardly surprising, since the authors of the original study had never made the boasts associated with it. The duo put out a statement reading, “It has been widely reported that our study showed that listening to Mozart enhances intelligence. We made no such claim. The effect is limited to spatial–temporal tasks involving mental imagery and temporal ordering.”

Coming from the study’s authors, that should put to rest any debate about a supposed link between the music and increased intelligence. But as a final nail in the coffin: I listen to Mozart every week.