Pseudoscience

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“Lyin’ hearted” (Sphinx age)

SPHINX

 
I have been fortunate to do extensive travel andmy favorite of all the stops has been the Sphinx. Workers carved the man-lion hybrid, whose face likely depicts the Pharaoh Khafra, into a limestone bedrock hill. It remains one of the world’s most recognized sculptures thousands of years after its construction. But how many thousands of years is that?
Whether built by Egyptians or aliens, these workers left behind plenty of evidence of their time spent there. Radiocarbon dating evidence shows the tools, housing, and ovens employed by Sphinx workers were in use around 2500 BCE. Despite a strong consensus among archaeologists, geologists, and Egyptologists about this date, a few non-experts prefer a contrary timeline.

There was, for example, a 1990s television movie, The Mystery of the Sphinx: New Scientific Evidence, which suggests it was built much earlier. Also, science fiction author John Anthony West and alchemist René Adolphe Schwaller de Lubicz have both claimed the extent of wall erosion surrounding the Sphinx is much greater than other places in Giza. The duo claim this could only happen if the limestone lion had been exposed to the elements thousands of years before the consensus date of 2500 BCE.

But Skeptoid’s Brian Dunning points out that weathering can result from desert winds combining with native sand. Also factoring in is how soft the limestone would have been when the Sphinx was being built. Contrarians believe the weathering is  best explained by water that flowed near the Sphinx site during a period when there was much greater rainfall. However, archaeologists have excellent paleoclimatology data for the region, so they know rainfall there 4500 years ago was much heavier than what it is today.

Crucially, the Giza Plateau is high ground and the area encompassing the Sphinx and Pyramids is a summit and is therefore a highly unlikely place for water to flow to. Furthermore, almost all geologists maintain there is little reason to try and squeeze water erosion into this Egyptian equation. Dunning writes, “The pattern of erosion on rock depends not upon what’s doing the eroding, but upon the characteristics and hardness of the rock itself. It’s impossible to tell what did the weathering, water or wind.”

And according to geologist August Matthusen, “Variations in the rock usually account for the different weathering morphologies.”

There are a number of ways to explain why there is significant weathering found on the Sphinx’s deep west wall and no other place on the plateau. These reasons include salt crystal exfoliation, underground water, and excavation.

To make the alternate hypothesis work, contrarians propose the existence of an earlier advanced civilization that preceded Egypt. The deficiencies with this idea are the geological evidence presented so far and the lack of proof of a society large and advanced to build the Sphinx, then disappear – all without leaving traces of themselves.
In the Encyclopedia of Dubious Archaeology, Dr. Ken Feder writes, “There is no sign of an infrastructure necessary to support a large population of workers, no sign of the ability to produce a large agricultural surplus to feed the construction workers, no evidence of dormitories for housing them, no huge storage facilities for food, no great bakeries, no cemeteries in which to bury the workers who would have died during the construction project.”

And one doesn’t need an alternate history anyway. The Sphinx is magnificent enough on its own. My amazement when gazing upon this ancient wonder would not have been any more pronounced by thinking it was even older or by suspecting that sleuth pseudoscientists had exposed a cover-up.
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“Not a good sign” (Ape communication)

ORAN

Koko was a western lowland gorilla who became the world’s best-known primate for her apparent ability to master a rudimentary form of sign language. She hobnobbed with Fred Rogers, Robin Williams, and Hugh Downs, and made countless media appearances. 

However, once one got past the amazement, the fawning, and the desire to imbue Koko with anthropomorphic tendencies, there was little to support the idea that she was expressing her thoughts, emotions, and wishes. Koko’s TV time was not accompanied by appearances in scientific journals, empirical studies, or sound research. To split ape hairs, she and other primates could manage communication, but not language.

As Skeptoid’s Brian Dunning wrote, “If it works, why aren’t there signing apes everywhere? Why don’t ape parents teach it to their own young? If apes had any meaningful ability to communicate using sign language, many of those who interact with humans would do so. And everyone with a primatology degree would have experience communicating with them.”

Instead, we have only one famous gorilla and a smattering of lesser-known apes, none of whom have demonstrated signing ability under controlled conditions. One scientist who wondered if this could be accomplished was Herbert Terrace, who conducted experiments with a chimp in his Columbia University laboratory. As attractive as the idea of primate-human chit-chat was, Terrance found little validation of the notion.

Writing in Science, he concluded, “Our detailed investigation suggests that an ape’s language learning is severely restricted. Apes can learn many isolated symbols, as can dogs, horses, and other nonhuman species. But they show no unequivocal evidence of mastering the conversational, semantic, or syntactic organization of language.”

Rather, the observed apes used symbols to beg or would signal if they wanted to play, eat, drink, or be petted. They were no more using language than your cat is when she seeks attention by rubbing her head against your ankle. Claims that apes had managed sentence structure, syntax usage, and the ability to express thoughts and feelings were without merit, and represented humans interpreting what they wanted to.

Of note, Koko “signed” only with her handler, Dr. Penny Patterson, who herself published no research. Koko was not communicating via any known sign language, just an idiosyncratic version supposedly shared only by her and Patterson.
Videos of the duo in action show Koko paying little attention to her handler’s commands, even though Patterson constantly encouraged and commended Koko.

Moreover, the gorilla never initiated the back-and-forth, responding only when goaded by Patterson. If Koko had the ability to express that she was hungry, lonely, or tired, she seemingly would have made that known without having to be prompted. And she could have done so with more than one person. Instead, any supposed success was a message that only Patterson could interpret. Let me communicate my thoughts on that by declaring it to be hooey.

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“Carbon copy” (Climate change denial)

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Human activity is easily the largest source of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. And the increased amount of CO2 is the only way to account for the planet’s warming trend. These are the conclusions of 99.8 percent of peer-reviewed papers on the subject. With that, we will take a look at a few of the counter arguments, which one is far more likely to encounter in a Wall Street Journal op-ed or a Fox and Friends segment than in a climate science journal. 

One claim is that anthropogenic carbon dioxide is unable to effect the climate since CO2 makes up such a small amount of the atmosphere. This argument also holds that the amount of carbon dioxide produced by humans is negligible compared to what volcanoes emit. 

It’s true that CO2 does makes up just .04 percent of the atmosphere. But even at that microscopic concentration, carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation and therefore acts as a greenhouse gas. As to the second part of the argument, human activity produces 130 times more CO2 than a volcano. Besides, volcanic eruptions have a cooling effect on the planet’s average temperature since the resulting gases and dust particles block incoming solar radiation.

The contrarians are also right about 95 percent of the CO2 that is released to the atmosphere coming from natural sources. However, natural processes such as plant growth and absorption into the ocean act to pull the gas back from the atmosphere and cancel any effect it would have. Human activity, by contrast, is not accompanied by a cancelling effect and the additional CO2 lingers. The only way it could be offset is by growing enough plants or by mastering a hypothetical concept like carbon capture. Analyses of the changing ratio of carbon isotopes in the air confirm that deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels have accelerated CO2 levels 40 percent in less than 200 years.

The other side counters that since water vapor represents the most abundant and powerful greenhouse gas, it is to blame for rising temperatures, not anthropogenic CO2. This is a partial truth at best. Because while water vapor has an impact, that’s only true because of its interaction with the rising levels of CO2. Writing for Scientific American, John Rennie explained, “CO2 absorbs some wavelengths of infrared that water does not, so it independently adds heat to the atmosphere. As the temperature rises, more water vapor enters the atmosphere and multiplies CO2’s greenhouse effect.”

Therefore, CO2 remains the primary instigator of the rise in average global temperature. Additionally, NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt has noted that water vapor enters and leaves the atmosphere much more quickly than CO2, limiting water vapor’s climate impact.

A third claim is that climate scientists fail to acknowledge the existence of a warming period in the 15th and 16th Centuries, when temperatures were as warm or warmer than the present day. Scientists do, in fact, recognize this. A larger point is that the deaths, mostly from disease, of 55 million North American natives in the 16th Century meant less carbon dioxide was concentrated in the air. This is what drove the drop in average global temperature. The fact that the falling temperatures coincided with a mass die-off lends credence to the idea that manmade CO2 fuels climate change. This is further supported by evidence found in ice caps and tree rings.

A final claim is that the sun or cosmic rays are the real causes of global warming. However, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has noted that between 1750 and 2005, impact from the sun measures less than a tenth of the influence from human activities. Besides, CO2 and the other greenhouse gases serve to amplify any warming from the sun.

For an alternate viewpoint to all this, consult a nearby cranky uncle.

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“Planted evidence” (Plant sentience)

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A sentient plant is usually considered to be in the realm of science fiction. Think Audrey II from The Little Shop of Horrors. But some researchers are open to the idea that plants are capable of emotions and the ability to feel, perceive, or experience stimuli objectively. These Proponents compare electrical signaling in plants to nervous systems in animals.

Those on the other side of the debate consider this analogy superficial and think it fails to consider the brain’s functions and complexity. The model of consciousness developed by neurobiologist Todd Feinberg and medical professor Jon Mallatt ascribes to brains a certain level of structure and ability that enable the bodies that house them to have subjective experiences. The electrical signaling system in plants lacks these distinctions, they say.

Feinberg and Mallatt compared simple and complex animal brains, and in an interview with the Genetic Literacy Project, retired biology professor Lincoln Taiz said the duo “concluded that only vertebrates, arthropods, and cephalopods possess the threshold brain structure for consciousness. Plants, which don’t even have neurons, let alone brains, don’t have” this structure. Instead, he continued, “What we’ve seen is that plants and animals evolved very different life strategies. The brain is very expensive organ, and there’s absolutely no advantage to the plant to have a highly developed nervous system.”

As to electrical signals, plants use them like a distribution center to send charged molecules to membranes, and also to deliver internal messages. When the former happens it might cause a plant’s leaves to curl since ionic movement may force water to leave the cells, changing their shape. In the latter, when an insect chomps on one leaf, this might initiate a defensive mechanism in the rest of the appendages. These types of actions can make it seem like the plant is choosing its responses, but Taiz stresses the reactions are the result of genetic coding and fine-tuning via natural selection.

Plants might curl their leaves when touched or grow more rapidly near competitors. They can even seduce and trap  insects, with the Venus Flytrap being the best-known example. But Taiz, Feinberg, and Mallatt argue there is no sound evidence that indicates plants choose their actions, gain knowledge, or suffer pain.

One study cited by plant sentience proponents involves possible conditioning of the perennial flower mimosa pudica. In experiments, its leaves defensively curl when the plant is dropped. After many iterations of this without damage occurring, the leaves cease to curl. But when the plant is shaken, the leaves again curl, which seems to rule out fatigue as the reason that response stopped.

But this is a misinterpretation, Taiz cautions: “The shaking was actually quite violent. Because the shaking stimulus was stronger than the dropping stimulus, it doesn’t definitively rule out sensory adaptation, which doesn’t involve learning.”

So it seems that thinking, acting plants are still in the domain of movies and tabloids. That’s fine by me. I don’t much care for such notions as a killer cactus or poison oak having the ability to spew its sap.

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“Psi sigh” (Parapsychology)

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Psychology professor Etzel Cardeña wrote an article last year for American Psychologist that purports to show evidence for parapsychological phenomena. To bolster his case, Cardeña referenced quantum mechanics, the theory of relativity, and the block universe hypothesis, a model in which past, present, and future exist simultaneously.

As a counter to Cardeña’s claims, psychologists Arthur Reber and James Alcock penned an essay for Skeptical Inquirer, in which they opined that Cardena’s effort was the latest in a 150-year failed attempt to legitimize parapsychology. There reasons for these failures, they assert, is that every claim made by psi researchers violates fundamental principles of science.

Reber and Alcock did not examine Cardeña’s data since they considered it irrelevant.  As a comparison, they noted that pigs cannot fly, so any data that points to swine being independently airborne would be the result of “flawed methodology, weak controls, inappropriate data analysis, or fraud.” They focused not so much on Cardeña’s claims but on parapsychology’s in general.

One reason they did so is because, as they noted, parapsychology is a faux field that hasn’t progressed since its inception in the 1880s. Then, as today, the overarching theme is that there is an unidentified, untraceable “more” to our universe beyond atoms, molecules, senses, people, and planets. This grandiose claim comes with zero testable or empirical evidence.

One scientific law that would need to be violated for parapsychological claims to be true is causality. Effects have causes and, with psi, there are no causal mechanisms, and none have been hypothesized. More relevant, there is no consideration of if the supposed psi effects have one causal mechanism or many. There is also the issue of inconsistency. The skeptical duo ask, “If psychokinesis affects the roll of dice in a psi lab, why not at craps tables? If telepathy exists, why are our brains not constantly abuzz with the thoughts of those around us? For allegedly existing now, the future only shows up in parapsychology lab tests.”

Then there are violations of Time’s Arrow. Parapsychology asserts an ability to warp time, most glaringly when involving precognition. Psi researchers regularly love to drop the term “Quantum Mechanics” and they often do so when referencing the entanglement effect. This in an example of pseudoscience, where scientific terms are used, albeit incorrectly, to try and lend credence to a position. Now, it’s true that two spinning particles separated in space are entangled since the state of one is simultaneously aligned with the other. But this does not equate to a reversal of time; there are merely concurrent effects.

“The notion that the strangeness of the quantum world harbors an explanation of the strangeness of parapsychology is a false equivalency,” Reber and Alcock write. Indeed, this is the secular version of “I don’t know, therefore a god did it,” with quantum mechanics replacing the instigating deity.

Quantum mechanics is hellaciously complex and probably less than one percent of people fully comprehend it. That leaves ample room for confusion and in this large area is where pseudoscientists like Cardeña operate. But there’s nothing in quantum mechanics that would validate or necessitate paranormal occurrences.

Yet another law that would need to be violated for parapsychological claims to be valid relates to thermodynamics. Again, consider precognition. For the future to impact the present, this would necessitate violating the principle that energy cannot be created or destroyed in an isolated system. The act of choosing a playing card, a common technique in psi research, involves neurological processes that involves measurable biomechanical energy. The choice is presumed to be caused by a future that, having no existential reality, lacks energy.

Finally, we have an Inverse Square Law violation. In supposed telepathy, the distance between the two involved persons never seems to be a factor. This is inconsistent with the principle that signal strength falls off with the square of the distance traveled. Psi researchers again employ the entanglement effect as a possible explanation, but within quantum mechanics, there is no transmission of energy between the separated particles, they are merely entangled.

In conclusion, if psi effects were genuine, they would have already landed fatal blows to vast blocks of scientific knowledge.

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“Radiating optimism” (Healthful radiation)

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There are radiation horror stories centering on Hiroshima, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. However, there are also mundane matters like radioactive potassium occurring naturally in bananas and potatoes, among other edibles. There’s no way to avoid all radiation since we are exposed to it from our bodies – a disconcerting thought since doctors know ionizing radiation can damage and mutate DNA, which sometimes leads to cancer.

But like so much else, dose is the key. There is exposure in the form of dental and other X-ray exams that contribute to one’s overall better health. The same is true with a full-body CT scan. The Health Physics Society has established safety levels for radiation but cautions these amounts are just educated guesses. From the Society: “There is considerable uncertainty associated with the estimation of risk from relatively low doses.”

Depending on the amount, length, and frequency of exposure, there may be a risk from certain types of radiation, or maybe there isn’t. Dr. Harriet Hall wrote that in some cases, the risk is so low that tens of millions of people would have to be studied “to overcome the signal-to-noise ratio in the data, and the risk is confounded by varying background levels of radiation and other factors.” In short, there’s no practical way to study this issue completely.

While we can’t know for sure the danger levels for all types, there is no reason to assert that low-level radiation is beneficial, an idea championed by some and based on the notion of hormesis. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information website, “Hormesis is a term used by toxicologists to refer to a biphasic dose response to an environmental agent characterized by a low dose stimulation or beneficial effect and a high dose inhibitory or toxic effect.” In other words, a little can be good, too much can be bad or even fatal. For example, two Advil will help you recover while you lie on your back, while two bottles of Advil will put you on your back permanently.

Some proponents claim that low doses of radiation can kickstart DNA repair and make the recipient healthier. One such believer, T.D. Luckey writes, “Hormesis is the stimulation of any system by low doses of any agent. Large and small doses of most agents elicit opposite responses. A wealth of data presents irrefutable evidence of the benefits that radiation provides for a great variety of organisms: Decreased infections, decreased cancer death rates, increased fecundity and average lifespan in humans.” Luckey attributes these abilities to biological stimulation and suppression of genes, enzymes and other proteins that indicate an activated immune system. He insists there is evidence that ionizing radiation is essential for life.

However, in an article for Human and Experimental Toxicology, Kirk Kitchin and Wanzer Drane criticize the use of hormesis to assess risk/benefit ratios. For starters, they point out that hormetic dose response curves are mostly unknown. (The dose-response relationship refers to the risk of a defined outcome produced by the amount given and the level of exposure).

Second, the duo caution there is the chance of a random occurrence of hormesis, bedsides there being a little data on hormesis’ repeatability. There is also the possibility of post hoc reasoning, and the chance that hormesis represent the total of many different mechanisms and multiple dose-response curves – some beneficial, some negligible, and some toxic. In short, we are unsure if intentional exposure to low doses of radiation may carry benefit, but there is insufficient reason to assert this, and there could be a great danger in being wrong.

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“Salt and vinegar drips” (Homemade herbicide)

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A couple of years ago, my lawn mower was stolen, and the thief also made off with my Weedeater and hedge clippers. I bought a second-hand mower that was way worse than second-rate and it was soon taking up valuable shed space while no longer functioning. I followed with a new mower, which inexplicably conked out after two months. A repair got me precisely one more mow before the revolving blade machine failed again. I have taken to scavenging for neighborhoods kids and inquiring about goat rentals to keep our yard from resembling a swamp and having the city called on us.

So I have no time for concern about additional weeds on my property, but if that luxury ever develops, a safe, three-ingredient remedy has been touted on the Internet. This frequently-shared meme promises miraculous results from an amalgam of vinegar, Epsom salt, and dish detergent.

Advocates crow about the homemade product’s near-instantaneousness. Just as digital cameras rendered dark rooms obsolete, this can-have-it-all-now herbicide is said to vanquish vicious vines, dastardly dandelions, and gnarly grass on the same day a homeowner applies the weed killer.

While the claim is strictly true, it comes with a substantial caveat. Just like a deciduous tree that sheds its leaves or a perennial flower that withers in winter, the weeds remain a living organism that will return.

When a yard worker applies a genuine weed killer – i.e., a product made for that purpose – the leaves and stems absorb the ingredients and carry them to the plant’s roots. This results in the weed being executed, not in it being temporarily inconvenienced. The vinegar-Epsom salt-dish detergent lacks this ability and is capable only of choking out top growth. If the weed is perennial or has an extensive root system, it will rebound to annoy again.

Some proponents tout the homemade concoction as being more environmentally friendly than store-bought herbicides, but this is a misnomer.

Writing for Southern Living, Steve Bender notes that household white vinegar contains five percent acetic acid, which draws out the moisture from stems and leaves and immediately turns them brown. The roots, however, are never impacted. The homemade remedy only works on shallow annual weeds incapable of having their foliage torched. To kill perennial weeds with vinegar, one would need to apply horticultural vinegar, which has four times the acetic acid of its household counterpart.

There are multiple issues with this approach. First, the vinegar is an equal-opportunity killer and will zap any plant it comes into contact with, not just the ones you want gone. It will also take out worms and microbes that benefit the soil. Additionally, if used to eradicate weeds sprouting through the sidewalk or driveway, the acidic vinegar acid will begin to break down the concrete. Also, it can be detrimental to humans in the form of blistering skin and eye damage.

As to Epsom salt, it includes two essential plant nutrients, magnesium and sulfur, both of which promote plant growth, not stifle it. Using the salt as weed killer is counterproductive.

The third ingredient in this supposed herbicidal maniac, liquid detergent, serves to reduce the surface tension of a liquid into which it is dissolves. This makes sense and works great when the liquid is dishwater being used to clean up after a yummy helping of grilled cheese and French fries.

When applied as part of a putative weed whacker, it does help the other ingredients coalesce, but again, the final result is futile. Moreover, the detergent can dry foliage and might burn if applied in hot sun, so there’s a remote chance of an unplanned fire.

So after a day of gardening, add some vinegar to your chili, use dish detergent to clean the bowl that housed it, and sprinkle your bathwater with Epsom salt. But leave the weed killing to products designed for that purpose.

 

 

 

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“Pour some sugar in me” (High fructose corn syrup)

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I sometimes try preparing new dishes on the weekends. Other times, I am content with oatmeal and orange juice for breakfast, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch, and a frozen pizza for dinner. There are some folks who would deem the latter a deadly diet. These foods are full of high fructose corn syrup, which according to the scary script, can cause obesity, diabetes, heart disease, hyperlipidemia, insulin resistance, and other miscellaneous maladies.

However, there is no evidence HFCS causes excessive weight gain or health issues beyond what ingesting equal quantities of any other sweetener would lead to. The cause of obesity, some diabetes, and other ailments involves taking in more calories than what are burned. Writing for Skeptoid, Brian Dunning put it this way: “When you consume regular sugar the first thing your digestive system does is break the chemical bond and separate it into glucose and fructose. Once saccharides are in your body, it makes very little difference whether they came in as table sugar or as HFCS.”

The white granular substance most of us think of when we hear “sugar” consists of glucose and fructose, which are chemically bound into a larger, more complex molecule called sucrose. HFCS also consists of glucose and fructose, but they are mixed together rather than bound, allowing it to come in different blends. The more fructose relative to glucose, the sweeter the resultant product.

U.S. companies put high fructose corn syrup in many foods since farming conditions in this country are usually better for corn than for sugar. Indirectly, this means the syrup is cheaper for U.S. businesses and, since it is a liquid, HFCS is easier to handle and more affordable to transport. It further has advantages in baking, browning, fermenting, and moistness.

Historically, corn syrup had been so much cheaper than sucrose that companies used it to thicken foods and retain moisture. But initially, corn syrup was seldom used as a sweetener since it was less sweet than sucrose. Then in 1957, food scientists developed a process to convert some of the glucose in corn syrup to fructose, yielding a product that was 42 percent fructose and 58 percent glucose, which substantially increased its sweetness.

All this is why it is used in so many foods and this ubiquity is no cause for concern. For Science Based Medicine, Jim Laidler wrote, “Many of the sources that demonize HFCS list alternative sweeteners — cane sugar, honey, agave syrup, etc. — and claim they are healthier than HFCS, but those claims usually rest primarily on the fact that these alternatives to HFCS are ‘natural’ rather than any data showing that they are safer.” 

None of this alters the fact that a diet high in fructose could contribute to the diseases listed earlier. But the same is true with other sweeteners and those others may even have a more pronounced deleterious effect since one needs less HFCS to get the same level of sweetness. So if I don’t feel like cooking this weekend, I will eat my PB and J without undue worry.

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“Spring straining” (DDT)

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DDT is short for a 31-lettered, synthetic insecticide created during the Great Depression. Its initial use was to kill disease vectors such as mosquitoes, lice, and tsetse flies. It was so effective and beneficial that discoverer Paul Hermann Müller received the Nobel Prize for Medicine.

Subsequently it was used in agriculture to protect crops from a variety of pests, and again proved efficient at doing so. But in the late 1950s, detractors raised the alarm about possible health effects on people and animals. The main concern was that DDT was causing eggshell thinning that resulted in the death of embryonic birds.  

Following the 1962 release of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, DDT’s use was prohibited in many countries. While the ban has been cited by some as helping bird populations recover, others have characterized it as overzealous. Those in the latter camp consider its alleged detrimental effects to have been exaggerated. They further note that DDT has the sizable benefit of saving Third World lives through malaria reduction.

We now know that eggshell thinning can be caused by lead, oil, phosphorus, calcium deficiency, and dehydration. Stress can also be a factor for captive birds undergoing testing. While DDT could also be to blame, Skeptoid’s Brian Dunning wrote that several studies in the 1970s and ‘80s failed to correlate even high levels of the insecticide with thinning. To be fair, other studies reached a different conclusion, one that was consistent with what Carson suggested. After perusing the studies and examining the issue, Dunning wrote, “My conclusion based on a review is that there probably is a correlation, but it’s not a strong one; and at best it’s only one of many causes. Whether DDT is used or not would probably not have a large impact on bird populations.”

Further, Silent Spring focused mostly on bald eagles, a species that was already experiencing a significant decline because of habitat loss and over-hunting.  The Bald Eagle Protection Act and the bird’s placement on the endangered species list in 1967 spurred its successful comeback. Attributing this to a DDT ban is likely a correlation/causation error.

And even if a DDT ban has benefited bird populations, those in the Third World are dying because of it since the insecticide remains one of the most effective pesticides at fighting malaria. Although DDT remains legal for insecticide use where widespread malaria exists, money for combating mosquitoes often comes from wealthy donors in the West.  Those donors sometimes stipulate that DDT not be used, leaving recipient nations with less efficient options. That contributes to such results as 407,000 Africans dying from malaria in 2016, compared to zero killed by DDT.

 

  

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“Putz of speech” (Reverse speech)

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Reverse speech is an alleged form of cryptic communication which arises from the subconscious. Its primary (if not lone) proponent is David John Oates, who considers unconscious thoughts to be a repository of repressed truths, unvarnished honesty, and secret meanings. He asserts that the unconscious mind sends out backwards messages to the conscious mind every dozen seconds or so. Then the conscious mind straightness out the reverse message, filters it, and delivers it. To grasp the real meaning of speech, Oates says, we must tape it and play it backwards. If Oates has any peer-reviewed articles, written either forward or backward, to support these claims, he has yet to make them public.

Among his many unsubstantiated assertions is that toddlers learn to speak backwards before they learn to speak forward. He thus interprets babbling as being profound thought from the unconscious mind of a 2-year-old. Like pet psychics, Oates alone would be the one who could say whether it’s working or not and so he always has cover.

He likewise insists that since “reverse speech is the voice of truth, if a lie is spoken forward, the truth may be spoken backwards.” He adds this could help police learn where evidence is stashed or the name of criminal accomplice. This would be of limited value if the place or person were palindromic. 

These ideas seem worthy of a toilet, and indeed, according to his biography, Oates gained this breakthrough knowledge after accidentally dropping a tape recorder in his outhouse or similar locale. After that, the recorder would only play in reverse and he took this unintended new toy to ridiculous heights. First, his interest was in finding Satanic messages in music. But devilish digeridoos are ever so trite, so he expanded his empire and deduced that with the right training (provided by him at a hefty cost), anyone could learn to detect the true message of forward communication. With no way to test or falsify this, Oates’ claims remain unproven, but this also provides him with a convenient out whenever challenged. He’s the only one who knows how it truly works, so who can question him?

Other Oates claims include: 95 percent of our thoughts are subconscious; Reverse speech can unlock hidden memories, reveal physical health, and show personality and behavior traits; Reverse speech can even touch the soul. But this is trying to explain one unknown, unproven entity by employing another. Further, it is an instance of Tooth Fairy Science, where one attempts to decipher how something without first ascertaining that it exists.

One of Oates’ bigger tricks is saying that reverse speech can be metaphorical or symbolic. This allows him to twist meaning into any utterance. And like psychics or mediums, he tells customers what they want to hear. If the person says they killed JFK, Oates can reassure them that it means they metaphorically killed their American History exam.

Of course, all this is backed no neurological evidence or brain science. His notion that reverse speech occurs in the right brain has no studies or brain scans to support it. As the Skeptic’s Dictionary noted, “If the right brain were a source of reverse speech functioning, one would expect to see brain activity in the right brain just prior to the activity in the left brain when speech occurs.”

There is also the sizable matter of what evolutionary benefit there would be to reverse speech. When humans gained the ability not just to communicate but to formulate a language, it ranked up there with fire-making, wheel-inventing, opposable digits, and bipedalism as traits that put us on top. But there would be no value to the species if the true messages remained garbled and were a mishmash mess that would only be solved 100,000 years later by a 20th Century pseudoscientist. 

Oates cheerfully plays the Galileo Gambit, wondering, “Have we not yet learned from the lessons of history? Many of our great discoveries have come from outside the mainstream. Einstein, for example, was a high school dropout.” This is majorly wrong. Einstein was booted from a school for nonacademic reasons before earning his Ph.D. The larger point, however, is that just because a person was ridiculed in the same manner as Newton or Galileo or Wegner was, that doesn’t mean the person shares any other trait with members of this trailblazing trio. (For a further critical thinking lesson on this, look up the Composition Fallacy). It was these geniuses’ use of the Scientific Method that eventually validated their ideas. If Oates wants the same recognition and vindication, he needs to follow the same path. 

According to reversespeech.com, “If human speech is recorded and played backwards, mixed amongst the gibberish at regular intervals can be heard very clear statements.” This is a real stretch, though if one is inclined to listen to backward speech, one will occasionally be able to hear sounds that vaguely resemble known words, although most of it is completely unintelligible.

For the parts that might seem more like real speech, the power of suggestion and auditory pareidolia can come into play.  Oates offers no reason why only a small percentage of the speech would reveal secrets, nor does he offer any rationale for how all this would work.

While mostly comical, this highly creative interpretation of auditory gobbledygook can have tragic consequences. Writing for Skeptical Briefs, Mark Newbrook told the tale of a woman who interpreted her infant daughter’s backward babbling to be an accusation of child molestation against the father.

Newbrook further writes that the reverse speech hypothesis is fraught with “major methodological and theoretical problems.” For example, Newbrook states that Oates tries to make a distinction “between genuine Reverse Speech and phonetic coincidence, (which is) the accidental occurrence of very short sequences which are almost the same” forward and backward. Yet Oates is not consistent as to which sequences count as coincidental reversals.

A similar issue, Newbrook continued, is when “the reversal of the forward speech sequence yields another equally possible sequence,” such as would happen with the words “say” and “yes.” Oates considers such instances to not be reverse speech, but this is based on convenience, not empirical evidence. As Newbrook explained, “It is very important for him to exclude such sequences, because his theory implies that different speakers may produce different reversals of the same utterances, depending on their often covert attitudes.”

All in all, this makes for a backwards idea.