Pseudoscience

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“Snakes and blathers” (DNA in ancient artwork, India anti-science)

hindusnake

Today, we will examine a pair of claims floated in the past year that were presented as furthering human knowledge, but which were supported with almost no evidence. One is secular, the other religious, but our concern here is not with any spirituality or lack thereof, but with the truth.

The first example comes courtesy Jordan Peterson, a somewhat eclectic and iconoclastic Canadian psychology professor. While not a religious extremist like those in the other example, Peterson maintains friendly ties with the Christian right and on the rare occasions he has spoken about atheists, has had nasty things to say. In this instance, however, his claims don’t have a religious bent. He has periodically proclaimed, with inconsistent degrees of certainty, that entangled serpents in ancient artwork depict DNA strands.

Short for deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA is a molecule that contains a person’s hereditary blueprint and decides which amino acids are embedded in certain proteins and in what order they lie. As to its shape, Skeptic blogger Emil Karlsson writes that strands in a DNA double helix run anti-parallel, or in a head-to-toe fashion. The double helix also has a major groove and a minor groove, which are formed by the DNA molecule’s backbone.

A winding staircase would more resemble DNA than entangled snakes in artwork. The suggestion that disparate ancient people had all acquired knowledge of a structure that scientists only became aware of during the nascent years of rock and roll is grandiose claim, one which Peterson fails to support with evidence beyond suggesting a similar appearance.

There are better explanations than long-lost knowledge for why ancient artists would have employed twisting snakes in intimate positions. First, snakes entwine themselves when mating, so the images may represent reproduction, creation, or childbirth. In other cases, the serpentine symbols may depict a culture’s deities. They could also represent fear, as snakes fascinate many of us in a macabre sense. Some are venomous and they have striking differences from humans, with no arms, legs, eyelids, or visible ears, and having a narrow, forked tongue. It’s easy to see why an artist would consider them to be striking subject matter.

Peterson makes the point that intertwined snakes existed in ancient art from places as far apart as China, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Australia, and India. The insinuation is that the artists were drawing from a common source. Such thinking is a frequent error committed by Young Earth Creationists, ancient alien aficionados, and cryptozoologists. They think because lookalike images crop up in cultures that never intermingled, the characters existed in real life.

But this more accurately speaks to the commonality of the artistic process. Besides, the supposedly similar creatures usually don’t look that much alike. With snakes, the similarity is there, but that’s because humans know what the slithering reptiles look like, which is not the case with dragons, Yetis, and Andromedans. This leads to another strike against Peterson’s hypothesis: The ubiquity of snakes. Snakes existed in all these places, so their portrayal in artwork requires no extraordinary explanation.

Perhaps the most important point is that entangled snakes in ancient artwork have only negligible resemblance to DNA. Karlsson pointed out the substantial differences. First, the snakes do not mirror the DNA strands’ anti-parallel positioning. If the snakes were depicting DNA, they should run in opposite directions from each other, not be head-to-head. Second, the art does not include any structure resembling nucleotides, which run horizontally in DNA strands and which would connect the snakes is the artist was modeling DNA. Next, there are no structures akin to 5 carbon sugars, the part of DNA which resembles Tinker Toy assemblies. Finally, the snakes are without grooves.

Moving on to the second example, a trio of speakers this month at the Indian Science Congress made shocking claims that attribute relatively modern developments and ideas to writers of ancient Hindu scriptures and they deities they crafted.

Chemist and university vice-chancellor, Gollapalli Rao, cited an ancient Indian poem as proof that stem-cell research and test-tube babies existed in India thousands of years ago. And anyone with an in vitro fertilization appointment at that time could have flown there on one of the airplanes the country had been blessed with by Ravana, a deca-headed demon-god. Rao based this claim off his reading of the Hindu epic Ramayana.

Such claims always run in one direction. A religious person might try to bolster a favorite theological text by extracting a supposedly scientific interpretation from it. By contrast, no scientist ever tries to strengthen a peer-reviewed article by pointing out its consistency to a 4,000-year-old religious tract.   

Meanwhile, paleontologist Ashu Khosla credited dinosaurs as the work of Brahma. But at least he didn’t deny the behemoths’ existence, and Rao affirmed the science behind in vitro fertilization and flight. Much worse was speaker Kannan Krishnan, who contested the theories of Einstein and Newton because of Krishnan’s interpretation of Hindu scripture.

Fortunately, this highly-creative science was limited to three persons out of hundreds of attendees. In another piece of cheering news, event organizers promised that next year they will vet the speakers. So I’m guessing we won’t be hearing from Jordan Peterson and his snakes.

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“Crimes with orange” (Glyphosate in OJ)

OJDRINK

It is difficult to find orange juice containers without a Non-GMO label affixed. However, this is a redundant distinction since there are no genetically-modified oranges. These notices annoy food scientists and farmers, along with their skeptic allies. But they appeal to those who dread GMOs, such as the fearmongering group Moms Across America.

But kowtowing to this organization has done food companies little good since Moms Across America has launched another baseless attack against orange juice producers – that they drench their product in glyphosate.

This would seem highly unlikely for two reasons. First, glyphosate is made specifically for genetically modified foods, which oranges again are not. Second, it is never sprayed on trees, which is where oranges grow.

According to Kevin Folta, a University of Florida horticulturist and pariah to anti-GMO groups, the laboratory that announced the findings about glyphosate in orange juice is not an independent organization but is led by biotechnology opponent John Fagan. Of course, to dismiss findings because of their source is to commit the genetic fallacy ad hominem, which we strive to avoid. So let’s look closer at the claims and analyze them on their merits.

The testing of the tangy citrus drink was performed using a technique called LC-MS/MS, which Folta said can detect and measure glyphosate. “However,” he added, “the compound is detected in everything, so there’s no way to discriminate between a signal caused from glyphosate and a signal caused by some other compound that behaves in the same way during the chemical separation.” There would be no way to determine this absent a negative control, which the study failed to employ.

Further, there is no suggestion the testing was randomized, double-blind, or repeated. This means it’s unclear what kind of variation there was within the test or between samples. And even if the glyphosate detection was somehow real, Folta writes that the alleged amounts would be far too low to impact human health.  

Whatever the methods, the results were posted on the research organization’s website and not submitted to a peer-reviewed publication. The number one giveaway that someone is practicing pseudoscience is when they take their findings to a a sympathetic audience rather than submitting them for rigorous inspection to subject matter experts. So go ahead and drink orange juice unless you’ve always preferred Tang.

 

  

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“Sham-rock” (Irish slaves)

LEPCHAIN

As anyone who has successfully navigated fourth grade knows, west Africans were captured in their homeland, forcibly shipped to the Americas, and sold into slavery. The purpose here is not to rehash an elementary school history lesson but to delve into a contemporary counterclaim about a supposed subclass of those held in bondage.

Early in the 17th Century, penniless immigrants, most of them Irish, received an all-expenses-paid trip to North America in exchange for indentured servanthood upon arrival. This voluntary contract obligated them work off their debt for a set period that generally ran about five years. They received complimentary room and board but no other compensation. They worked off the cost of their transatlantic journey and gained training in a trade that provided them a valuable résumé boost.

All the while, slave labor helped fuel the agrarian economy in Colonial America. Slaves continued to be held for nearly 100 years after the signing of the ironically-named Declaration of Independence. Those held in this condition had no say in the matter, had no date of expiration to look forward to, and were never trained on a skill set that would benefit them later.

There are some aspects of slavery about which there are common misconceptions. For example, while Colonial America and the early United States are seen as the lone destination for those captured in west Africa, only about 1 in 12 ended up here. The rest toiled in the West Indies, present-day Mexico, or South America. And those who did end up here were more likely to work on a small farm, perhaps being the only slave there, as opposed to laboring on a plantation.

Many non-historians would be surprised by these facts, but they are accurate, and stating them is not an attempt to lessen the extent to which forced bondage is horrific. By contrast, claims that there were Irish slaves belong almost exclusively to white racists, who charge that modern blacks should get over it because decedents of early Irish settlers aren’t complaining about their lot in life.

But there are many errors with this way of thinking that go beyond bigotry. Most obviously, indentured servitude is voluntary, while slavery by definition is forced. Second, slaves were property and could be legally beaten or killed. While a destitute, indentured 17th Century Irishman servant may not have had the cushiest life, he was entitled to same rights and privileges of all free persons. Someone smacking his indentured servant upside the head could be punished for doing so.

Additionally, servitude was for a fixed period and was not an inherited condition. Finally, the servants were legally entitled to what the conditions of their contract laid out. This was not the case for those held in bondage, nor was there a Fugitive Indentured Servant law. Skin color was a necessary element to being a slave in the Americas. There were no white ones.

In most cases, indentured servitude in North America amounted to an apprenticeship. Persons barely in their teens would enter into an agreement that taught them a trade in exchange for putting this new talent to use for the other party. By the time they reached adulthood, they had years of training and practice that served them well.

The falsehood about Irish slaves has its roots in the distorting a late 19th Century treatise written by someone known only as Col. Ellis. Titled White Slaves and Bond Servants in the Plantations, it told of how someone named Gen. Brayne suggested to Oliver Cromwell that African slaves be imported to Jamaica. The goal was to reduce the reliance on indentured servants, who were treated poorly. Ellis explained that since owners “would have to pay for slaves, they would have an interest in the preservation of their lives, which was wanting in the case of bond-servants.” Those pushing the fabricated narrative of Irish slaves change this so that “bond-servant” reads as “Irish” or “Whites.”

Another lie is to portray skeletal Civil War prisoners as Irish slaves. One more absurdity asserts that 300,000 Irish slaves were sold over a decade in the 1600s. This number is nearly double the number of Irish immigrants, indentured servants or otherwise, who made their way to America between Plymouth Rock and Yorktown.

Irish slave claims have zero historical merit and are reserved almost exclusively for those who are working without compensation to push them, in a sort of indentured servitude to the alt-right.  

  

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“Wheat’s eating you?” (Glyphosate fears)

SSSS

Spaghetti can be topped with meatballs and Parmesan cheese, but according to some crusaders, it can also be accompanied by digestive aliments. Not only can spaghetti pose a risk, they say, but with any food made with wheat, thanks to the herbicide glyphosate. But these concerns are based on misunderstandings of how glyphosate is used, how widespread it is, and its toxicity level.

The most frequent claim is that wheat is drenched with glyphosate just days before going to market, leaving unsafe levels of dangerous residue which cause health issues when the food breaks down inside us.  

However, only about five percent of North American wheat farmers apply the herbicide in the days immediate before a harvest, and this is done because of its power as a drying agent. This may be needed in northern climes during wet summers. However, glyphosate (trade name Roundup) is not the most efficient method of achieving this, so it is not the first choice for most farmers.

Whatever product they use, one must always consider dosage when assessing safety. Herbicide labels are not suggestions, but rather federal law. Restrictions on the concentrations of glyphosate mandate that its dosage be equivalent to 20 ounces of Kool-Aid being mixed with 10 gallons of water and spread over a Canadian Football League field. 

On a related note, toxicity is determined by amount, not ingredient. “Lethal Dose 50” is a term for how much of an ingested substance will kill half of laboratory test animals. On this scale, vinegar and salt are more toxic than glyphosate. In fact, the EPA classifies glyphosate as a Group E, which it reserves for products that show no evidence of human carcinogenicity. Glyphosate has negligible toxicity, and any dose a person might be exposed to will be well within safety limits. Furthermore, farmers must abide by a Maximum Residue Level, which is the highest amount of pesticide that can safely remain on crops after application.

This entails more than just taking farmers at their word or believing that government regulations are adequate. There is substantial science behind the assertions of glyphosate safety.

A systemic review in 2000 found that, “No significant toxicity occurred. The use of Roundup herbicide does not result in adverse effects on development, reproduction, or endocrine systems in humans and other mammals.” 

More recently, a 2011 review reported that there was “no evidence of a consistent pattern of positive associations indicating a causal relationship between any disease and exposure to glyphosate.” 

Then in 2012, a review showed there was “no solid evidence linking glyphosate exposure to adverse developmental or reproductive effects at environmentally realistic exposure concentrations.” That same  year, another study “found no consistent pattern of positive associations indicating a causal relationship between total cancer or any site-specific cancer and exposure to glyphosate.”

Still, claims persist that glyphosate-saturated wheat is causing digestive ailments in North America, though these alarms are in the form of anecdotes instead of data. The panic is partly attributable to glyphosate’s indirect connection to GMOs, which are a boon to agriculture but which misinformed detractors see as a bane. Glyphosate has been used for 44 years, but has become much more common since genetic modification came along. The connection is that GMOs are Roundup resistant.

Glyphosate prevents nearly all plants from producing proteins they need to survive. So while it would kill a noxious weed, it would take out the desirable wheat as well.  At least until Monsanto devised a method to make GMOs Roundup resistant. Now, genetically modified wheat can be treated with glyphosate, a herbicide which repeated studies have shown to be harmless and which has a low toxicity.

So go ahead and safely eat that spaghetti. Or give into unfounded fear and leave more for me.

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“Hardcore wrap” (Weight loss wraps)

BUBWRAP

My yo-yo physique hasn’t rebounded for a while so I could handle this in multiple ways. I could choose to be indifferent about my waistline. I could decrease the calories consumed while increasing the calories burned. Or I could combine the two ideas and lose weight without effort through stomach wraps.

This should bring weight loss. But that is different from fat loss and the effects would be temporary. Water would be lost through sweating, which would cause modest, temporary effect to take place over the entire body, not just the wrapped area. I could wrap my chest or legs and get the same result, but purveyors of these products instruct customers to use the stomach because that’s where the bulge is.

In a world where mainstream media regularly gives credulous coverage to folk remedies, it is refreshing to see major outlets call bunk on this one.

CNN interviewed medicine professor Dr. Erica Brownfield, who told the network, “These results are going to be temporary and there is no scientific data to support what they’re claiming. Those fat cells, once you decompress them and take those wraps off, they’re going to go back to their usual shape and size.”

Meanwhile, ABC consumer correspondent Greg Hunter examined Suddenly Slender Body Wraps, which founder Victoria Morton claims will result in a whopping 6 to 20 inches from a one-hour wrap session. Like Brownfield, Quackwatch contributor Dr. Victor Herbert says that any weight loss will be through water and the effect will be fleeting.

Morton claims that in addition to water, customers lose “the waste, the stuff that builds up and makes us sick and tired.” Similar merchants claim toxin removal, but none identity what waste or toxin is being exorcised or how that would affect cellulite reduction.

For the ABC experiment, two volunteers wrapped themselves before dancing to an exercise video. Morton took before and after measurements and insisted both volunteers lost at least six inches. But upon further review of the video, Hunter noticed that “before” measurements were taken right above the navel, while “after” measurements were done several inches above that. Additionally, the “before” measurement came with Morton affixing her fingers behind the tape, making for a larger circumference. The “after” measurement came with the tape taut. If there was any loss in the belly button vicinity, it was gone by the next day when ABC conducted a follow-up measurement.

Some are attempting a more futuristic spin on the weight-loss wrap notion by implementing infrared generators. Clients lay on a bed while silicone pads are strapped one the subject and they remain under a heated blanket during the session. The supposed value is that the infrared waves will penetrate deep into fat cells, impacting body temperature, metabolism, and blood circulation. The heat then breaks down fats into a liquid form, which are in turn excreted along with still-undefined toxins.

But Discover spoke with Williams College physiologist Steven Swoap, who put the scientific kibosh on this notion by stating simply, “Fats don’t come out of sweat glands.” So for me it’s either apathy or more treadmill and less Pop-Tarts. And with a special this week on cherry and chocolate flavors, it’s an easy decision.

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“Search-and-annoy mission” (Quad Cities Psychic and Paranormal Fair)

no energy

With last week being Thanksgiving, I fittingly my made my annual pilgrimage to the Quad Cities Psychic and Paranormal Fair. In previous sojourns, I would either attend an hour-long presentation or hit as many tables as I could. After the former, I reported in detail on one of the fair’s many salespersons. With the latter approach, I gave snippets about a multitude of peddlers of the psychic, supernatural, paranormal, and alternative medicine. This time I went for a middle-ground approach, focusing on the specialized area of energy healing and speaking with anyone proclaiming this ability.  

When talking with alternative medics, I have unfailingly found that even the most rudimentary probe of their field leaves them flummoxed. They are used to hearing, “What can you do for my nagging backaches,” instead of being asked to explain the mechanisms behind such treatments. 

For the energy healers, I had three primary questions in mind: What kind of energy is it? How is it accessed? How do you measure it? Someone doing genuine energy work could explain these basics instantaneously. For example, an electrician would be able to tell me that a light bulb works by converting electric energy into light energy. He or she could further explain that a light bulb has embedded negative and positive terminals connected by a tungsten filament. When electricity is supplied to those terminals, the resultant flow of electrons cause the filament to heat up until it glows. Further, the electrician could tell me that this resultant energy is measured in watts, a derived unit of one joule per second which quantifies the rate of energy transfer.

Consider the previous paragraph to be the science lesson portion of the post because we now segue into how the Psychic and Paranormal Fair merchants answered those same queries.

The first stop on my search-and-annoy mission was with a therapeutic touch practitioner. She explained, or tried to anyway, that she was “Checking your energy and seeing how it’s in alignment. Energy comes through us.” I asked what type of energy it was and was told, “It’s an attunement to a particular type of energy. It’s just all energy that comes through. And it just works. You have energy all the way around you, I can feel it. I’ve been doing it for 25 years.” Doing it for a quarter century without being able to explain what energy is behind it or how it works would be like the aforementioned electrician being unaware that the light bulb must be screwed it clockwise.

I move on to the next energy merchant, who highlighted her energy clearing abilities. “We all get bogged down with things. You know, we go to Wal-Mart or a bar or a funeral home.” She continued that on these odysseys to discount stores, beverage distributors, and final stops, “We all get bogged down with things and you pick up things, it kind of clogs it up. And when you get an energy clearing, it clears all the energy off and you feel lighter and your chakras get balanced. It’s amazing.”

“What type of energy is it?”

“Um, like, you know, we have our energies. So they get bogged, we get our attachments, you know.”

“But I mean is it chemical, radiant, thermal?”

“It’s like a Reiki and shamanic energy clearing.”

“How do you access it?”

“Um, well, you use the angels and the divine and beings that you work with, like the angels and the divine and the avatars. You know, like we have the hierarchy and the divine, our avatars, and Michael the archangel.  

“How do you measure it?

“Well, when you’re not clear and your chakras are blocked and you have attachments on you, that’s where disease comes in.”

My trip to the fair was mostly comical, but her last statement shows the seriousness of scientific stupidity. Instead of realizing diseases have been eradicated and contained via Germ Theory, antibiotics, vaccines, bleach, soap, clean water, sanitation, and double blind studies, she credits, “Um, like you know, angels and Reiki and stuff.” That’s coming from someone in an advanced civilization and her mindset has permeated much of our culture.

Moving on, I came to someone offering two types of energy healing: Reiki and Theta. I may have gotten confused about whether she was talking about one, the other, or both, but I kind of got the feeling through the day it didn’t matter much; all are pretty much the same and equally pointless. Nevertheless, she extolled her ability to “channel energies from the universe into you.”

“What kind of energy?

“Just from the creator.”

“I mean, is it nuclear, electrical, motion?” She answered, “I don’t know,” which was by far the most accurate information and honest assessment I received that day.

While most of the energy healers highlighted ancient angles featuring shamanism or angels, at least one preferred the appeal to novelty instead of the appeal to antiquity counter-fallacy. She offered energetic and vibrational healing.

As to what kind of energy, I was told, “Source energy.”

“How do you access it?”

“I pull it from the source.”

The source comes from the source. That would be like a dentist telling you that your cavity comes from that hole in your tooth.

“How do you measure it?”

“I don’t have to. It’s intelligent, it goes where it needs to go.”

In that case, why would I pay someone to send it there?

So I sauntered to yet another table, this one proudly proclaiming its ability to use reconnective energy healing through shaman this or theta that. There, the purveyor informed me, “It has to do with the higher spiritual self. We can go in and help release that energy and make it heal almost immediately.”

“What kind of energy?”

“Energy.” Hmmm, could you be a little more vague? She doesn’t know what kind of energy she’s releasing; for all she knows it could be nuclear. She later clarified that it was “source” energy. Oh yes, I’ve heard all about that.

“Well, this source energy, is it sound, elastic, gravitational, thermal, what kind?”

“It’s a little bit of everything. It’s really about the vibrations, about Hertz. Like a tuning fork. When we work with a physical body, we work with the vibrational frequencies. In the magnetic field, they are what we call your auras.”

By using “frequencies” and “auras” in her description of how it works, she mixes a science term (though using it incorrectly) with gobbledygook. Frequency refers to how often a repeating event occurs during a specified unit of time. Auras are a fabricated anatomical feature with no basis in reality. The vacuous vendor’s misuse of a science term and her combining it with a pretend one are both pseudoscience trademarks.

She displayed plenty  more examples of such in her next spiel:

“In you center, because you’re electrical, it’s really about your electrical currents. When you bring in the flow of your meridians, it’s just like a little – it’s your polar, it’s your meridians and your mind and your energy and your field and whether you repel or attract. We want to bring all those into balance and get rid of the ick you get from microwaves, audio waves, EMF waves, cellular waves, and cell phones. We are bombarded and you get all staticy like an old rabbit ears TV. We take on those energies and get out of attunement, and like a car needs an alignment and tune-up, your physical and spiritual body needs the same thing.”

I came to this fair skeptical, but as she finished, I realized she was right about my mind becoming extremely cluttered. I was also wondering if she planned on further research, testing, and experiments on this ickiness she had isolated.

With all her meandering, I lost track of whether she was claiming to bring energy in or take it out. “Both,” she clarified. If that case, why not just leave it alone?

As to the energy she accesses, I asked, “How to you bring it in?”

“Energy comes directly from the true source, divine.”

“How do you measure it and know you are getting the right amount?”

She assured me that was done automatically. “When you pour water in a cup and it overflows, that’s what the body does. When it fills up with that energy, it loses what you don’t need. Your body will only take on what you can manage.”

Could you imagine that coming from your anesthesiologist? It would be unacceptable then and, while with our analogy-happy alternative medic would only take your money and not your life, it again shows the clear distinction between authentic and counterfeit medicines.

She closed by telling me, “There’s a lot of clutter out there and you never know when you’re going to bump into it.”

“That’s for sure,” I said. “And in some places it’s more concentrated than others.”

I moseyed onto another Reiki provider, who made the same hackneyed undefined energy claims.

“What type of energy is it?’

“I call it energy from divine, from God. We are just conduits, we don’t do the healing. We don’t determine where it goes.”

Here we see another difference between medicine rooted in science fact and one grounded in science fiction. Imagine a chemotherapist telling a cancer patient, “We don’t know what this is, how it works, or how we’re going to direct it to where it needs to go.”

“It is thermal energy, sound energy, motion energy?”

“The energy comes through you. It’s divine energy. You can’t even put a title on it.”

Oh, I can think of a word or two.

“How do you access it?”

“You get trained and attuned to it.”

“I mean, do you use a wand, a ringing bowl, a tuning fork, maybe a spork?”

“It actually just comes – your attuned physical energy will know what it needs.”

“How do you measure it?

“You don’t. You feel it, you feel the heat.”

“But if you can’t measure it, couldn’t you overdose?”

“You can’t. You can never to too much Reiki.”

Or too little.

Next was a theta healing table, featuring one of the more obscure versions of alleged energy medicine. While it is seldom seen even at alternative medic gatherings, the purported mechanisms sound familiar.

“I help people change what they want to change, shift what they want to shift,” the merchant told me. “And I do that by putting my brain into the theta brain waves. In that state, I can talk to whatever sources and ask it what needs to be healed.” If she’s hearing voices, she needs to see a doctor, not play one.

“What type of energy does it use?”

“It uses the energy of the creator, whatever divine source that is for you.”

“I mean, is it kinetic energy, potential energy, heat energy, light energy?”

“I can’t explain it. All I know is that it works if I use the technique.”

“With that technique, how do you access the energy?”

“I close my eyes, I lift my eyes up. I do a short mediations and that puts me into the theta brain waves.”

“How to you transfer that to the patient to heal them?”

“I’m not actually doing the healing.”

Then what the hell are you here for? I asked that in a more diplomatic way, but the gist was the same.

She answered, “It’s that very act of witnessing it that brings the healing.” Sounds sort of like Heisenberg’s Uncertainty principle, except for parts about being grounded in decades of sound scientific research, peer review, and replication.

“How do you measure it to ensure you’re using the right amount for healing?”

“Well, I’m asking the creator to do it, so if you believe in the all-knowing force, it will do what it needs to do. It’s all-knowing.”

Then is should know to heal without being asked to.

The day’s most awkward encounter was with a cherub-faced 14-year-old who I can only presume was running his first fair booth, and who was definitely being asked specifics of his healing modality for the first time.  

The following exchange is presented largely without the multiple 40-second pauses between question and answer and his repeated gazes back at the healing pyramid which accompanied him. He first told me that this 3-D triangle “allows energy to flow easier.”

“What kind of energy?”

“Um, like, right energy. To make you understand things easier.”

“How do you access it?”

“You just kind of sit there, relax.”

“How do you measure it, how do you get the right amount?”

He made a third awkward silent stare back at the pyramid, as if expecting the right answer to spring forth from within with the, um, like, right energy.

“It’s just kind of like gives you whatever is necessary.” I’ve always found the notion of a healing pyramid oxymoronic since such structures are where ancient Egyptians buried their dead.

I figured I had made the laconic lad’s day laborious enough, so I moved on to crystals, without which no psychic and paranormal fair would be complete.

“What kind of energy does this use?”

“Well, any kind, universal. There are different ways to use different energy for healing.”

“Which types of energy correspond to which types of healing?”

“Well, there’s universal energy basically. Each type of stone emits a different frequency and each stone has a different healing property.”

“How do you access the energy, through the stone?”

“Well, the stone emits its own. And then by holding it, it emits that frequency and you can pick it up and share that frequency and attune yourself to that. We are all energetic beings so we will change our frequency, the vibration of our frequency slightly and different energies help us in different ways.”

“How do you measure it, how do you know you’re getting the right amount?”

“You quiet yourself and you put the stone in your non-dominant hand.”

I had spoken to nearly a dozen energy medicine practitioners without buying anything, so my energy level was draining and I decided to challenge her no further and I made my way to yet another Reiki enthusiast.

“What kind of energy is it?”

“Um, well, it’s not only me using your energy, you can also use universal energy as well.”

“What type is it, nuclear, radiological, chemical?”

“It’s a little bit different for everybody. Some people see colors, some people feel intense heat, some people feel cold, some people feel nothing.”

I strongly suspect what category I would be in.

  

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“Sweet and dour” (Artificial sweetener hysteria)

SBArtificial sweeteners have been the subject of mass hysteria for decades. In the 1970s, studies fueled worries about the possible carcinogenetic nature of saccharin. However, this research involved rats being force-fed the synthetic compound at a rate that would have been like a person drinking 100 diet sodas a day for years.

In the early 1990s, the Internet’s first wide-spread smear campaign listed every malady in the history of Mankind as being the result of aspartame, which raised the question of why humans hadn’t been immortal prior to the artificial sweetener’s creation.

This year, there was an alarmist report about diet soda being responsible for Alzheimer’s, cancer, dementia, and the Smog Monster. This freak-out was based on a horrible misinterpretation of the study, which is what’s happening in yet another fabricated fizzy fear. This latest scare is that artificial sweeteners wreak havoc with one’s gut microbiome.

The human gastrointestinal tract is amazingly complex and is composed of multitudinous organisms that can either help or hinder digestion. These organisms can have a substantial impact on our health, either good or bad. Because of the microbiome’s key role in human wellbeing, research is constantly being done on it.

That includes a study which some media have given plenty of panicky play to. In this experiment, scientists poured artificial sweeteners on bacterial cells. At very high concentrations, most of the bacteria began to act stressed, and researchers deduced that artificial additives were the culprit. This was translated in the press as sweeteners being detrimental to human health.

This was an unfounded conclusion. For starters, the research considered only a few strains of e. coli, which are among the millions of different types of bacteria that have taken up residence in our gastrointestinal tracts. Further, the stressed reaction only occurred when e. coli were subjected to extremely elevated dosages. The bacteria started showing agitation after exposure to four grams per liter of aspartame. The human equivalent of this would be chugging two gallons of Mountain Dew in 15 minutes. Incidentally, I’d be might riled myself if strangers kept dousing me with sticky liquids.

Also, reactions from one type of organism seldom translate into the same experience for another type. Epidemiologist and skeptic blogger Gid M-K wrote, “Exposing cells to artificial sweeteners in a lab is very different to a person drinking diet soft drinks.”

Indeed, a 2016 systemic review of studies concluded there is little evidence of a substantial health detriment or benefit to ingesting moderate amounts of artificial sweetener.

This is much shorter than most of my entries, but I’ve got to prep a Thanksgiving meal, one that will safely include some Diet Cherry Dr Pepper.

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“Hippie Birthday” (Free birthing)

WOLFWOMAN2

The most poignant aspect of science denial is when those too young to make choices on the matter suffer for it. This includes infants dead from measles because of anti-vaxxers, a painful death or lifetime paralysis because readily available medical care was eschewed by faith healers, or  when a routine illnesses lingers because over the counter medication is bypassed for jasmine rubs and Reiki sessions.

Another example has emerged lately in the form of free birthing. This refers to intentionally giving birth away from a hospital, sometimes at home, but often in the forest, on a mountaintop, or even amongst dolphins.

The Daily Beast told one such tale centering on an infant named Journey Moon. The moniker is comical, but the story is anything but funny. She was stillborn after her pseudonymous mother attempted a free birth in the desert.

It was just she and her husband. No doctors, doula, nurse, midwife, or even a Lamaze instructor. Indeed, free birthers prefer to go it alone, maybe with a partner and hoping for an audience of ravens and wolves, surrounded by cacti, flowing rivers, and a full moon. They romanticize about long-gone eras where humans allegedly lived in concert with nature and spent most of their day outdoors.

But this is a romanticized version that ignores that the average life span was about 38, that a straw hut was cutting-edge shelter, and that the infant and birthing mother mortality rates were 20 times what they are today. And while free birthers want no one else around, they often have thousands of Facebook followers in groups set up for this specific purpose.  The mother profiled in The Daily Beast article had supporters who were only too happy to tell her she was a “legend” and a “warrior woman” who should “trust the process.”

That trust led to her having a massive urinary tract infection which killed her daughter before she left the womb. Free birthers consider it an issue of a woman’s autonomy and they feel the rate of unnecessary cesarean sections and episiotomies too high. That is a legitimate health issue, but if the welfare of the mother and baby are paramount, hospital birthing is the way to go.

The Daily Beast quoted OB-GYN professor Bruce Young, who said there is a one in five chance a home or other free birth would involve life-threatening complications for the mother or child. By contrast, the chance of the mother or baby dying in the hospital during birth is less than one percent. Stillbirth is a steep price to pay for being able to bypass an unwanted caesarean. And as Katie Paulson wrote in Patheos, “Childbirth is the leading cause of death for women and infants in the world.” That makes having it done in a hospital is the best health decision a woman can make when giving birth.

Free birth social media groups often remove any comments encouraging a woman to seek treatment. This creates an echo chamber where expectant mothers have their risky decisions validated. Such pages lean heavily on the Naturalist fallacy and are permeated with a vaguely spiritual appeal centering on concepts like primal urges and personal empowerment.

But there was no such power for the profiled free birther, who after three days of excruciating unobserved labor gave up and left the desert for a doctor. Even after the baby died, her mother maintained her meandering New Age mindset, asking the deceased newborn to “usher in the spirits of her future siblings when the time was right.”

Like an anti-vaxxer who thinks insulin causes diabetes or a Young Earth Creationist who thinks God created starlight in transit, free birthers live in an isolated reality where they are disconnected from facts and immune to change, reason, or evidence. Free birthers make the drastically mistaken claim that newborns have a better chance of surviving if they enter the world outside of a medical establishment.

Yet countries where women have regular access to medical care have much lower rates of maternal mortality and stillbirth than those that do not. Most developed countries have a stillbirth rate four per 1,000, whereas Third World nations have a rate 10 times that. The maternal mortality rate in those nations is even more pronounced, at 20 times those in developed countries.

Free birthers answer that data with anecdotes from expectant mothers who were given drugs without their permission or who were subjected to vaginal exams without their consent. These are serious issues if true, but such arguments overlook the crucial point of hospital safety and competence. By way of comparison, vaccines aren’t completely safe in every instance, but neither is polio. Free birthers defend it as a matter of choice. Maybe so, but it’s clear what the best choice would be.

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“Pleading heart” (Cholesterol contrarians)

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I consume cheese, milk, and butter, with halfhearted consideration about limiting my intake of such. But such concerns are unfounded according to some cholesterol contrarians who consider the lipid molecule benign or even beneficial. Stemming from this belief is an additional conviction that since cholesterol levels are irrelevant, no one needs statins to lower those numbers.

However, WHO and similar organizations consistently make it known that butter, cheese, milk, and red meat are fine in moderation and as part of a balanced diet. But they also stress that excess saturated fat may cause the liver to overproduce bad cholesterol, which can lead to heart disease, the country’s leading killer.

The cholesterol contrarians are led by Uffe Ravnskov, who insists “the reason why so-called experts say that I am mistaken is that the vast majority are paid generously by the drug companies.”

But while the funding for the research materials and laboratories may come from pharmaceutical companies, individual scientists receive no money from them. And the reason pharmaceutical companies fund research is for the same reason the auto industry pays for crash test studies. Both enterprises want their products to be as safe as possible because they are potentially liable if they irresponsibly put a dangerous one on the market.

As to cholesterol-conquering statins, the Guardian’s Sarah Boseley wrote that the metadata of studies published in the Lancet concluded that over five years, a daily statin would prevent 1,000 heart attacks, strokes, and coronary artery bypasses among 10,000 people who had already experienced one of these medical maladies. Further, statins could prevent heart attacks in those at increased risk because of high blood pressure or diabetes. Weight, age, blood pressure, and family history can help doctors estimate the chances of a patient having a heart attack, and statins are recommended for anyone with a 10 percent chance of one.

The SkepDoc, Harriet Hall, notes that prevention is much more than gulping statins and refraining from having a bacon double cheeseburger. A balanced approach would include healthy weight maintenance and exercise, a genetics also plays a key role. I have been a vegetarian for half my life and still have slightly elevated cholesterol levels. My love of cheese and milk contributes to that, but so does what I inherited.

Indeed, cholesterol is only one factor leading to heart attacks. Skeptic leader Robert Todd Carroll explained that, “There is not a strong body of peer-reviewed published research that shows that a person who eats a low-fat diet is guaranteed to have low cholesterol, which will prevent that person from getting atherosclerosis, which in turn will prevent that person from getting a heart attack. Nor is there strong evidence that a person who eats lots of animal fat will get high cholesterol and get atherosclerosis and die of a heart attack as a result. Other factors include past health history and the current state of your health, your family history with cholesterol levels and heart disease, your genetic predisposition to high cholesterol and/or heart disease, and do you smoke, are you grossly overweight, and do you exercise?”

While it is a near consensus among nutrition scientists that excess amounts of bad cholesterol is detrimental, those same persons hold that it is but one factor in a person’s heart attack susceptibility. But Ravnskov creates a strawman that those scientists feel diet alone causes high cholesterol, which in turn is the sole determinant for heart attacks.

He also misuses statistics to try and bolster his point. For example, he cited the Framingham Heart Study, which concluded that decreasing levels of cholesterol are associated with increased mortality among older participants. He interprets this to mean that either decreasing cholesterol is detrimental for all or that cutting cholesterol intake is a significant causal factor for mortality. He further notes that since 1970, fatal heart attacks in Japan have declined while animal fat consumption has increased. He considers this evidence that animal fat in the diet is not a major cause of heart disease and that “good cholesterol” is redundant.

But this is post hoc reasoning as wells as confusing correlation and causation. First, as an elderly person’s health declines, they tend toward malnourishment, which will invariably lower cholesterol. Second, persons are surviving heart attacks more often today because of better focus on proper nutrition and medical advances such as statins and a daily aspirin following such incidents. To prove his point, Ravnskov needs to show data that as persons increase animal fat intake, their chances of a fatal heart attack decrease.   

Ravnskov also considers it a myth that high fat foods cause heart disease since studies do not show that a diet high in saturated fat is a sufficient condition to bring on a heart attack or that a diet low in saturated fat is a sufficient condition to prevent a heart attack.

But he mixes up “cause” with “sufficient condition.” Carroll wrote, “Some causes are necessary but not sufficient conditions. For example, some viruses must be present and thus are necessary conditions for certain diseases to occur. But they are not sufficient conditions, as the virus may be present but not manifest itself in illness.” Similarly, a high fat diet by itself may be an insufficient condition to cause heart disease, but it can be a major contributing factor in some people, as can family medical history, smoking, obesity, and stress.

In another misunderstanding of statistics, Ravnskov noted that 20 percent of those who die from heart attacks have never had atherosclerosis so he therefore concludes that the condition doesn’t cause heart attacks. But only 10 percent of smokers get lung cancer, while just .1 percent of nonsmokers do. The reasonable conclusion here is not that tobacco is relatively harmless with regard to lung cancer since only 10 percent of smokers get it. Rather, the logical lesson it that smoking is hazardous because it increases one’s chances of getting lung cancer by 100 times.  

The cholesterol contrarian also plays the Galileo Gambit by saying he is persecuted for his beliefs. And perhaps he is. But that’s because he’s dispensing lethal medical advice, not because he’s being repressed by a powerful cabal of pharmaceutical executives, scientific stooges, and skeptic bloggers.

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“Long-term project” (Holographic moon)

HOLOGRAMMOON

Most conspiracy theorists prefer their iconoclastic status and for those wishing to take it even further, there are alternatives to the alternatives. These include the idea of Earth being hollow instead of flat; a fondness for Lumeria instead of Atlantis; and whispers that Israelis were behind 9/11 instead of the U.S. government.

Then we have the conviction that the moon is a hologram, which while not precisely inconsistent with flat Earth beliefs would leave little room for common ground. One of the few astronomical observations flat Earthers get right is that our satellite is indeed in motion. They believe it exists and moves about, while hologram proponents reject such notions.

While the idea of a holographic moon is comical, I was surprised by the anger that believers have over what they feel is a repressed truth. Of course, we here are much more concerned with their evidence than their emotions, so let’s dive into the former.

At the risk of stating the obvious, this leads us to YouTube. The user Crrow777 claims that when gazing skyward at night power glitches in an artificial electrical system are revealed. They probably are if one looks long enough and is determined to reach such a conclusion. But his corroborating evidence is limited to referencing three unidentified individuals with secret information and unspecified Russian scientists also in the know.

He leaves several questions unanswered, or unasked for that matter. These include: What causes a solar or lunar eclipse? What causes gravitational pull on Earth and the resulting tides? How do radio signals bounce off a three-dimensional light projection? How would a hologram emit gamma rays, which are detected coming from the moon?

Further, what is the incentive for the thousands of persons would need to have been in on this for millenniums and who exist in every part of the world, including islands several hundred miles away from any other land mass? Such as Bouvet, an uninhabited hump of coral 1,100 miles from any human and which is visited only annually by Norwegian scientists, who still see a moon when they’re there.

Residents of Tristan de Cunha are 1,500 miles from any other terra firma, yet even on this extremely remote, airstrip-free locale, someone would need to be present to perpetrate the ruse from the ground or broadcast it from a manmade satellite (like I said, hologram enthusiasts and flat Earthers don’t get along too well). Sailors circumnavigating the globe have always been able to use our satellite as a guide and modern-day jet passengers on a long distance overnight flight would see the hologram disappear.  

Moreover, how did the hologram plotter’s predecessors manage this 100, 1,000, and 10,000 years ago? Ancient cultures referenced the moon and based rituals, festivals, and planting and harvesting seasons around it. This was done by societies all over the world, meaning the conspiracy would have to have been coordinated with persons up to 10,000 miles apart who had no way of communicating with each other. 

The website revisionism.nl touches on parts of this by stating that the projection “could have been different things at different times and different places, depending on the technology available to the conspirators and the culture and beliefs of the population being deceived. Perhaps it began as a collective hallucination or a religious myth, or perhaps an especially bright star that came to be exaggerated over time. However the moon story started, early proponents of the hoax were swift to recognize how it could be exploited for their benefit, and shrewdly devised a scheme to use it to their advantage.”

Who they were, how they perpetrated it, what they gained, and how they passed the secret down for 50,000 years are all left unanswered, and no evidence is offered for this haphazard hypothesis.

Ccrow777’s cohort Dave Johnson opens his videos with a notice that includes personal attacks, hostility to opposing views, and superfluous apostrophes and articles: “I care less than NOTHING for your opinion or recollection’s from a Science book Dummies.”

Johnson points to a purple fringe that appear when he zooms in on the moon with his camcorder, not explaining why that would be consistent with a hologram or why a hologram would be the only explanation for a purple fringe.

The skeptic YouTuber ColdHardLogic replied that different colors of light refract while passing through a lens. Part of the lens function, in fact, is to bring light to a desired focal plane. And since different wavelengths of light are refracted by different amounts, they are focused at different points, and can result in visual phenomena since as purple fringes.

Gawker’s Dayna Evans unearthed a Facebook group asking questions such as how a supposed barren wasteland like the moon could glow. Since I’m assuming the persons asking this have no fourth-grade science books handy, I’ll let them know it’s caused by the sun’s light reflecting off it.

Meanwhile, revisionism.nl’s About section highlights continual changes to the moon’s brightness, shape, size, and color, though those changes would seem INCONSISTENT with a holographic projection. The site maintainers don’t entertain competing notions, but do allow some internal dialogue as to how conspirators display the image: “It could be a hologram, projected from various government installations throughout the world. It could be a large, crudely painted balloon held in place by helium and propelled by tiny sails and rudders, which is why it moves across the sky so slowly.”

A third option that’s floated, so to speak, is that chemtrails leave behind a screen on which the hologram is shone. This would push the notion of chemtrails back several thousand years, which would get conspiracy theorists excited, but it leaves unanswered the question of why this screen fails to respond to sunlight during times the hologram is seen during the day.

A fourth option to explain the cratered white rock in the night sky is that a round satellite formed 4  billion years ago when Earth collided with another planet, and gravity has kept this heavenly body orbiting our planet ever since. During this time, humans visited this astronomical neighbor and brought back souvenir rocks. Gotta tell you, I’m definitely getting good use out of this fourth-grade science book today.