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“No deposit, no discern” (Worldwide flood)

DOPEY

Young Earth Creationists are a Christian fundamentalist subset who dismiss any evidence for a universe older than a few thousand years. They also hold a literal interpretation of Genesis, meaning they think Earth was completely covered by water following a flood that would have dwarfed any that a Hollywood blockbuster could muster. Much evidence works against the idea of worldwide flood 4,400 years ago, but our limited focus here centers on ecology.

In the flood fable, Noah brought animals aboard his ark in pairs or septets. To get around the sizable obstacle of about 50 million critters fitting onto a ship the size of 1.5 football fields, YECs fabricated then notion of “kind,” which they never define or quantify. From each “kind,” thousands of different species are said to have emerged. To YECs, this does not count as evolution since there is no change from one kind to another. They reluctantly allow for incremental, minor adaptations and will allow that a squirrel’s fur may change to a more advantageous color. However, the bushy-tailed rodent could not have a prehistoric horned gopher as its ancestor from 100 million generations ago.

This is a desperate, ad hoc hypothesis to try and get around scientists literally observing evolution in action, such as with Richard Lenski’s ongoing e. coli experiment or with the Florida lizard that was seen developing a toe pad to escape an invasive species. This raises another issue, as to why an organism would need to adapt at all if it and its surroundings were created by an infallible designer, but perhaps that’s for another post.

A “kind” is very roughly analogous to the biological grouping of Family. The only criteria for which animals belong in each “kind” seems to be similar appearance. For example, a horse, zebra, and donkey would be in the same kind, but a horse, opossum, and turtle would not.

According to retired geology professor and Skeptical Inquirer contributor Lorence Collins, there are up to 50 million species today, and many more times that of cousin species that have gone extinct.

YECs think fossils of both extinct and extant species were buried in sedimentary rocks deposited by the great flood. YECs further believe that all these creatures were created at the same time. Yet all known sea reptiles, such as ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, are found in fossils from the Eocene Epoch, while those layers feature no such fossils from sea-living cetaceans like dolphins, whales, and porpoises. Those extinct sea reptiles filled the same ecological niche that cetaceans do today and both groups swam in the same locations. Yet a YEC will insist that all cetaceans survived the flood but not a single sea reptile did. For this to be true, cetaceans and sea reptiles occupying the same parts of the ocean would have to have been completely segregated by the flood, which then killed all sea reptiles and spared the cetaceans.

The truth, Collins wrote, is that sea reptiles went extinct well before mammals began adapting to ocean life and became ancestors of today’s cetaceans. The geologic column and distribution of sea reptile and cetacean fossils bear this out.

We now leave the sea for the sky but encounter the same problems with Young Earth Creationism. There are about 9,500 species of birds on Earth today and an additional 10,000 extinct bird species that have been found in sedimentary rocks, which were deposited 4,400 years ago in the YEC narrative.

Young Earth Creationist Jean Lightner suggests that aboard the ark were 196 pairs of bird “kinds,” which evolved into 10,000 extinct species and 9,500 living ones. This is an instance of special pleading, as a group that mostly rejects random mutation and natural selection will, out of extreme convenience, adopt a hyper version of evolution in order to make their timeline work. But to produce the 19,500 species of birds from 196 pairs in 4,400 years would require evolution taking place exponentially faster than what any observation of genetic change has indicated is possible.

Now onto land animals and more deficiencies in the YEC model. YECs would presumably consider elephants, mastodons, and woolly mammoths to be in one “kind,” distant cousins descended from a pair of lumbering beasts who took up the Ark’s trunk space.

However, about 10,000 fossils of extinct elephant relatives have been found from Africa to Iraq, and millions of mammoth fossils have been unearthed in Siberia. Consider how long it takes elephants to reproduce. They have a 22-month gestation period, some species only begin to procreate at age 20, and they will have offspring only about every five years. These are fatal blows to the notion that hundreds of species totaling millions of mammoths, mastodons, and elephants came into existence and were dispersed over thousands of miles in a period lasting barely 2,000 years.

Meanwhile, there are about 35 extant and 150 extinct feline species, which YECs say all came from a pair that boarded the ark, a cat walk if you will. But again, there would be inadequate genetic diversity to allow for this much branching of a species tree in 4,000 years, which is the blink of an evolutionary eye. There are similar examples among rhinos, canines, and bears. The number of extant and extinct members could not be crammed into such a short time period. There would be too few years to reproduce and have descendants evolve into this many different species.  

YECs face another insurmountable obstacle with plants. In China, fern fossils have been found in ash sandwiched between two coal layers. Per Collins, this is the result of volcano millions of moons ago that sent hot ash spewing and killed all plant life in the affected area. As it turns out, volcanic ash is excellent at preserving plant fossils and these highly delicate leaves were sustained when surrounded and covered by these fiery remains.  By contrast, if the plants’ leaves had been deposited in sediments that were transported by rushing water that had fallen at a rate of 360 inches an hour – 25 times faster than any recorded deluge – they would have been torn apart and mixed with fragments of different plant types.

  

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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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“Three confined mice” (Lavender anxiety cure)

gogh lav

There is a lot to be said for pleasant aromas, but their having the ability to cure significant medical conditions should not be among them. Still, some people make such assertions, but these notions have no backing from double blind studies, clinical trials, or empirical evidence.

Last month, however, news about lavender inhalation being effective for treating anxiety was published in the mainstream press. The stories weren’t about persons being able to be put at peace after a rough day of work and traffic by burning lavender incense and playing R. Carlos Nakai and gazing at a lava lamp. The authors were claiming that someone suffering a known psychiatric disorder could be cured by sniffing a Mediterranean herb.

As a skeptic blogger and anxiety sufferer, the pseudonymous Gid M-K took note of these assertions. While the suffering part of him hoped it was true, the epidemiologist and skeptic side of him knew to approach the news cautiously. And when he examined the research, he learned the study merely compared caged mice who had been exposed to linalool for 30 minutes with those who had not.

The study’s authors found that, following this exposure, the rodents performed slightly better when measured for some aspects of anxiety. But that is a light year away from lavender aroma curing the disorder in humans. It was one study with a small sample size, rodent studies seldom translate into human successes, and the research did not involve lavender.

Gid M-K noted that lavender contains hundreds of chemicals, one of which is linalool. Linalool is also found in many more substances, including cinnamon, cannabis, and a majority of cleaning supplies. Huffing Mr. Clean won’t wipe out heightened levels of unease, dread, and worry, and neither will sniffing lavender bath pearls. In fact, M-K cited a systemic review of nearly 50 studies which all found aromatherapy to be of no medicinal value.

There’s also the issue of mice traits probably not transferring to humans. M-K wrote, “Even if you could extrapolate this study to people  — and you can’t  —  the treatment was a half-hour exposure while locked in a cage saturated with the chemical. Imagine trying to replace anxiety medication with popping off into a dark cell every few hours to sit in silence while being sprayed with perfume. It’s not exactly a realistic treatment.”

Yet this was lauded by outlets like the Daily Mail as a breakthrough treatment via the extraordinary power of olfactory sensors. Sadly, we often see one-sided shoddy journalism like this in publications that don’t specialize in science.

Over the past year in Moline, the Dispatch-Argus has written flattering, uncritical articles about healing oils, ghost hunts, and psychic awareness. I have written letters to the editor when this has happened and the dismissive missives been published. I have also noted to myself that I should offer the paper my services as an amateur but seasoned skeptic when the next psychic and paranormal fair rolls around – an event the newspaper covers with an annual fluff piece. Let me now make a public declaration that prior to next year’s fair, I WILL contact the Dispatch-Argus and offer to provide another viewpoint. And I’ll be in especially good shape if next year’s fair has an aromatherapy booth.

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“Cast a wrong shadow” (Soros conspiracy)

SHADOW WOLF

George Soros is a self-made billionaire hedge fund manager who makes substantial donations to progressive causes worldwide. While those on the alt-right might agree with that description, they also paint a much more sinister picture of him. This includes claims he was a Nazi soldier even though when World War II ended, Soros was a 14-year-old Jew.

His legions of opponents also consider progressive political protestors to be Soros stooges on his payroll. He first came to be widely reviled in conservative circles when he opposed the second Iraq war. During such times, many persons lob irrational accusations drenched in nationalistic fervor. In addition to some right wingers lambasting Soros, The New York Sun called for the imprisonment of anti-war protestors, the Dixie Chicks became pariahs for their mild criticism of the president, and Abu Ghraib whistleblowing hero Joe Darby was labeled a traitor.

While those other instances have faded from memory, the Soros conspiracy theory endures. Glenn Beck labeled him a marionette master who controls the world. Bill O’Reilly called him an “off-the-charts dangerous extremist who wants open borders, a one-world foreign policy, and the legalization of drugs and euthanasia.” Such descriptions enable the speaker to cram all of their and the world’s problems into a bite-sized capsule. It’s much easier than finding solutions to complex issues. It’s also more attractive to blame everything on an impossibly wealthy, influential, and diabolical Jew.

Theorists holding these views think Soros runs or helps control a shadow government that has unlimited power save the ability to shut down YouTube videos exposing it. And despite wielding this unchecked influence and possessing a ruthlessness in executing world dominion, his progressive puppets control neither the White House nor the Senate.

There is a counter belief by some left-wingers that the Koch brothers control a shadow government that benefits Republicans and, to a lesser extent, Libertarians. My objections to any such claims are nonpartisan and my concern is only with conspiracy malarkey. Anyone making these types of claims against the Koch brothers is equally wrong and just as batty.

There is no denying Soros’ ability to influence policy and move markets. Once in the 1990s he traded so many Malaysian ringgits that is caused the currency to substantially devalue. This led Malay Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad to declare, “We do not want to say that this is a plot by the Jews,” which is poorly-veiled code speak for, “We do want to say that this is a plot by the Jews.” Mohamad continued, “But it is a Jew who triggered the currency plunge.”

Soros learned early and up close about the harrowing specter of anti-Semitism. He survived the German invasion of his native Hungary and his opponents have obscenely twisted this into a narrative where a Holocaust survivor was a Nazi or one of their collaborators. In actuality, that’s who Soros was hiding from. When Soros was 13, his father changed the family name to Schwartz and also purchased papers identifying the family as Christian. He also had his son portray himself as the godson of a Hungarian official. This official protected Jews in an occupied country, a la Oskar Schindler.

One of the official’s responsibilities was to catalog properties the Nazis seized and he once took the teenage Soros with him, though Soros did none of the inventory. He hung out with staff members at the looted estate and learned horsemanship. This equestrian excursion described in conspiracy theory circles as Nazi enablement and collaboration.

Following the Allied victory, Soros studied at the London School of Economics and later devised a monetary theory that helped make him a billionaire many times over. He once even experienced a 10-figure rise in his net worth in 24 hours.  As an extremely wealthy Jew who fills liberal coffers and who has shaped the course of markets and policies, Soros is obvious conspiracy theory fodder. As such, there are long-refuted lies still making the Internet rounds, including a photo of Auschwitz clerk Oskar Groening, which is wrongly claimed to be a picture of Soros in Nazi garb.

While painted as the moneybags of a far left deep state, Soros’ politics are more nuanced. True, he has made contributions to organizations fighting for migrant welfare and criminal justice reform. But he has also criticized the hijacking of the #MeToo movement by political opportunists and has said the reason he won’t donate to moderate Republicans is that the association with him would harm those politicians. In fact, before he became the focus of conspiracy theories, Soros made donations to the GOP. Further, one of the reasons he has pumped many millions into Eastern European countries is because of his first-hand experience with the horrors and shortcomings of communism. What’s more, his biggest donations have been outside the political realm; he has given nearly a billion dollars to those former Soviet bloc countries to help them privatize industries, a notion beloved by Republicans and Libertarians.

Conspiracy theorists often speak of powerful Jews trying to run the world. But they want to be the ones revealing this secret. Since it’s well-known that Soros is an extremely wealthy, politically influential Jew, the theorists dig for something deeper so they can maintain their status as members of the enlightened few. That’s why they accuse him of running of a deep state, but that is a self-defeating claim. Someone controlling a shadow government would be, as the name suggests, far removed from the limelight and would be someone we had never heard of.

 

 

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“Caput-o” (Theresa Caputo)

COLDREAD

My cousin came back enthused about the Theresa Caputo Experience and was joined in her gush fest by several Facebook Friends. I refrained from responding, as my spiel would have been a bit much for a social media reply and more appropriate for a blog post. So here we are.

Caputo uses a mix of hot and cold reading techniques. The latter refers to throwing out general guesses, vague enough that they will connect with multiple persons in an arena audience. It also requires a trained mind and ear, the ability to read body language and facial cues, and a talent at gauging reactions and adjusting fire. Caputo also employs a tragic-comic emergency chute if the reading flops. She will ask if someone near the subject can relate to what she is saying and if so, will insist that was the spirit she was picking up. It’s sort of like a radar-gun cop who clocks the wrong driver for speeding, except in Caputo’s case there are no crossed signals, just a fabricated one.

Illusionist and skeptic leader Mark Edward calls this technique piggy-backing, borrowing a phrase Caputo uses to gloss over misfires. When Caputo gets something wrong, Edward notes that she says the silent missive must have been meant for someone else, who will usually pop up after a few more generalities are tossed out. She gives herself even more leeway by using phrases such as “brotherly” or “father figure” to describe someone, meaning it won’t necessarily have to be a male relative to resonate.   

As to hot reads, there are the flaming ones favored by televangelist Peter Popoff, who had his wife funnel information about congregants to him via an earpiece. Caputo’s preferred hot reads are not quite that scorching, but they are above room temperature. Her team scours social media sites to learn specifics about selected audience members. Further, those with whom she spends most of her time are seated near the front and have received Captuo readings before. The cousin lavished praise on Caputo for knowing so much about a woman whose husband had died in a plane crash. But Caputo could offer accurate specifics of the tragedy and the deceased man’s life because she had gleaned this information from multiple in-depth sessions with the widow.  

Caputo’s capers were most vividly revealed by Edward on Inside Edition. In the exposé, Caputo was heard asking a subject, “Why am I picking up baby clothes?” The woman answered, “I just put up a bunch of pictures of baby clothes on my Facebook page.” Indeed she had, which is why Caputo mentioned the infant apparel. She has similar tidbits on select attendees and a corresponding seating chart during her performances. Plus, she is cued, directed, and clandestinely corrected by staff members — persons who should be superfluous for a woman with a direct line to the netherworld.

Audience members swoon over these supposed revelations, but Caputo is a grief ghoul who for a hefty charge will dole out words loved ones think they want to hear but which in the long run keeps them in a perpetual heartbroken state and prevents them from moving on. Making it seem like the deceased are in the same room communicating with them provides temporary comfort, but this blossoms into an extended mourning which can only be alleviated by another peace-for-a-price session.

Captuo feebly tries to counter the charge of cold reading by saying there are only so many ways to die. While that may be true, the number of ways one can meet the end is a separate issue from whether she is cold reading. And when she speaks of “a sister who was lost at night on the highway,” it will likely score a hit in an audience of 6,000. Caputo would have zero chance of success were she to say, “Bonnie Adamson from Elkhart, Ind., who died from a stroke on July 1, 2010, wants her sister from Plainfield, Ohio, who is seated in the eighth row to know that she is at peace.”

Of course, they are ALWAYS at peace or forgiving or where they want to be. In thousands of reads, Caputo has yet to find a spirit with a tinge a bitterness, regret, or who is plotting revenge from beyond the grave.

Jaime Franchi of the Long Island Press approached a Caputo live show with what was initially a gullible mindset. Frachi been impressed by an earlier psychic who described Frachi’s father as a veteran who liked to cook and who had a needling sense of humor.

But as she learned about cold reading, she came to see what was happening. At the Caputo show, the host told audience members anything they could relate to was a message from deceased loved ones. She continuously reminded those in attendance that she was speaking for the dead. For an audience that needed little prompting, this admonition from their anointed one was sufficient. Indeed, Caputo events are filled with subjective validation, a yearning to believe, and creative interpretations.

Audience members even help her fill in the tractor-trailer-sized blanks. Frachi wrote that Caupto addressed a woman who had lost her uncle, saying he had drowned. After the niece said he had died of pancreatic cancer, Caputo continued to hammer the death-by-water theme. When the niece stood firm, Caputo tried to piggy-back that notion onto someone else, again without success. She then insisted there was a mother present whose toddler had died in a small swimming pool, but again no one spoke up to rescue Caputo from this floundering. Eventually, the family member mentioned that during his final days, the uncle’s lungs filled with fluid, and Caputo declared victory for what any skeptic or impartial observer could clearly see was a resounding public defeat.

There are many such times, where Caputo’s creativity enables her to claim success no matter the outcome. Frachi wrote that she asked one audience member, “Why do I feel like you were holding your son when he died?” When this failed to register, Caputo clarified that she meant the mother was always there for her son. Of course, this flexibility is only displayed when Caputo is wrong. If the mother had said, ‘Yes, I was grasping him on his deathbed,” Caputo would never have replied, “Oh no, I just meant it figuratively, that you were always there for him.” 

Philly Mag journalist Victor Fiorillo also attended a Caputo event and came away equally unimpressed. He wrote, “She says generally vague things that she’s getting from the beyond — an older man who has passed, a young man who died violently, someone who committed suicide, the number seven, etc., and waits for someone to nod their head or raise their hand affirming the connection. She doesn’t walk up to a particular person and say, ‘“Your father died three weeks ago of cancer.’”

She homes in on members who connect with her and meanders from those who don’t. If initially failing to get an affirmative response, she plows on until someone relates. According to Fiorillo, she asked an attendee, “Did he write you a note shortly before he died saying I’m sorry?” When told ‘no,’ Caputo grabbed her own rebound and insisted, “The next time you’re in a card store and you see a card that says, ‘I’m sorry,’ know that this is from him to you.”

And next time you read that Theresa Captuo is a grief ghoul who uses cold reading to prey on victims who are at their most vulnerable, know that that came from me.

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“Hippie Birthday” (Free birthing)

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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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“Don’t do the time if you can’t do the crime” (False confessions)

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Someone accused of a heinous crime they didn’t commit will likely be scared and confused, and after hours of intense questioning, will also be weary and sleep-deprived. Which means they may make poor decisions about whether to continue speaking or to have a lawyer present. Add to this mix the claim that evidence has been found again them and one can end up with the terrifying reality of a person admitting to something that they didn’t do and which will deprive them of their freedom and reputation. This is even more likely if they can be persuaded that they will be allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge than what they are being accused of.

In an article for Debunking Denialism, Emil Karlsson wrote that authors of the police manual Criminal Interrogations and Confessions insist that if law enforcement officers ask certain questions of suspects and study their behavior and responses, they can make accurate determinations of guilt or innocence 85 percent of the time.

However, the study on which that assertion is based had no control group and no reliable way to determine the actual truth of the criminal cases where these techniques were used. Further, research shows that alleged signs of deception, such as nervousness and darting eyes, may not be that at all. Still, confirmation bias and subjective validation will make the percentage of successes seem greater.

The most common method of getting suspects to confess is through the Reid technique, which combines a hostile interrogation which assumes built and lying about evidence against the accused. In traditional good cop-bad cop fashion, there will eventually a more sympathetic ear offered to the accused as the interrogator tries to understand the reasoning behind the crime or to mitigate its circumstances. Then, contemplating the consequences of, say, being convicted of first-degree murder and pleading guilty to manslaughter, the accused may break down and make a false confession.

The introduction of manufactured evidence is crucial. Experiments have shown that false evidence used against the accused can double the number of persons who confess. In one such study, subjects filled out a computerized survey and were warned that if they hit the alt key, the machine would crash and the data be lost. If a subject were wrongly accused of doing this, half of them confessed to having done so. But when a purported eyewitness mendaciously claimed to have seen the alt key pressed, the confession rate rocketed to 94 percent.

And once a confession is made, the damage is usually irreversible. Karlsson wrote that studies utilizing mock jurors show that “confessions have an extraordinary high impact of decisions. Even when conclusively proven to be coerced, jurors are not able to discount their influence and thus cases where coerced confessions are presented and jurors are explicitly instructed to ignore it have a higher conviction rate than the same cases without a confession.” Even if the confession is false, proven to be coerced, and buoyed by no other evidence, the accused is much more likely to be convicted. If the defendant is painted by the prosecution or police as being unstable, that makes it even worse.

A lab study using an actual case demonstrated this. Researchers broke volunteers into four groups: A control group given the real story; a group given the real story but with a false confession thrown in; a group that got the real story but with an irrelevant testimony from police about the suspect’s emotional state; and a fourth group that heard both the false confession and irrelevant testimony.

The base rate conviction rate was 53 percent, a false confession increased that to 63 percent, while irrelevant testimony reduced it to 48 percent. But if hearing both the false confession and irrelevant testimony, mock jurors voted to convict nine times out of 10.

 

 

 

 

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“Long-term project” (Holographic moon)

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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.