September 7, 2017 by Moline Skeptics

“Wishing Welles” (War of the Worlds broadcast)

TAXIALIEN

Though not my intent, I have riled a few people with my posts and comments about topics related to the skeptic movement. Some folks care little for probing questions about their great passions, be they psychic powers, ghost hunters, cryptozoological critters, or cancer-conquering baking soda.

But we should consider sound evidence even when it contradicts a cherished belief, and I strive to be consistent with this. When presented with enough proof, I have discarded ideas that I loved.

For example, while I don’t believe aliens have visited Earth, I once believed that people thought this was happening, and I found the story fascinating. Specifically, they were convinced invading spaceships were ravaging the eastern seaboard the night of Oct. 30, 1938. On that date, Mercury Theater on the Air broadcast Orson Welles’ radio adaptation of his near-namesake’s novel, H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds.

Producer and director Welles tasked script writer Howard Koch to frame the play as a radio broadcast featuring a series of breaking news events that interrupted mellow jazz. Each interjection became more disconcerting until finally Martian laser weapons were zapping and frying farmers, state troopers, and newscasters.

Some persons mistook the fictitious newscast for a factual one, with subsequent newspaper reports portraying this as the country losing its collective mind. Sociologists have pondered that this tale has endured because it speaks to the power of unrestrained media and has a vague Big Brother feel to it, as an unseen, baritone voice of authority deftly dupes the populace. A competing hypothesis is that modern listeners allow themselves to feel superior to Depression Era rubes who fell for such a preposterous notion. The latter hypothesis ascribes unjustified credulity to modern news consumers who unquestioningly pass around Poes and Onion articles as authentic.

As for my love of the tale, it had nothing to do with contemplating the reach of powerful mediums or wanting to feel uppity. It was just a story that was at once intriguing and amusing. No one died, no long-term harm was done, and it was all encapsulated in a well-written, well-acted theater program presented in entertaining crescendo style. For a few months, I made listening to the broadcast a bedtime routine.

For those who tuned in from the beginning, it was obvious that the broadcast was of a dramatic production. But listeners coming across it later might have taken it as fact. On the following day in headlines, and in the following half-century in American folklore, there were tales of near-suicides, impromptu minutemen armies, terrified citizens fleeing to churches and hilltops, and roads and phone lines being jammed.

But while there was panic, little of it centered on an early version of Space Invaders. Rather, the panic came in the form of all caps banner headlines, lawsuits against CBS, Congressional hearings, and calls to tighten broadcast regulations.

Subsequent research has shown that overreaction to the broadcast was localized instead of nationwide, and often came in the form of measured concern rather than full-blown anxiety. The freak-out was likely limited to parts of New York and New Jersey, with the exception of Concrete, Wash. There were persons outside those areas who were taken in by the broadcast and who telephoned relatives in the east, but these responses stopped short of panic.

The idea that millions were pouring into the streets to escape or confront the aliens is vastly different from reality. Four days after it ran a sensational report alleging this, the Washington Post ran a letter from a man who had walked down F Street during the broadcast and witnessed “nothing approximating mass hysteria. In many stores radios were going, yet I observed nothing whatsoever of the absurd supposed terror of the populace.” Then in 1954, Ben Gross, radio editor for the New York Daily News, wrote in his memoir that Gotham’s streets were “nearly deserted” that night.

One of the few instances of confirmed hysteria took place in Grover’s Mill, N.J., where the first alien cylinder was said to have landed. There, residents thought Martians had transformed the water tower into a war machine, so they turned their attention and rifles on it. Meanwhile, in Concrete, Wash., the broadcast reported that Martians were working their way west, destroying railroad tracks, highways, power grids, and communication centers in order to cripple the country. As this happened, a thunderstorm took out a power station and telephone lines. The sudden loss of electricity and phone service seemed consistent with the alien occupation report, so some residents took this as Concrete proof, so to speak, that their village had fallen prey to the invaders.

Despite just two verified cases of terrified throngs, headlines the next day blared, “RADIO FAKE SCARES NATION” and “FAKE RADIO WAR STIRS TERROR THROUGH U.S.” Hitler, who some listeners thought was responsible for the apparent invasion, called the alleged panic “evidence of the decadence and corrupt condition of democracy.”

But while there were tiny pockets who took the broadcast as truth, the reactions of editors and genocidal dictators were greatly unwarranted. There were other radio stations to choose from and there were plenty of activities to occupy one’s time besides radio. The most popular show in the time slot, by far, was the Chase and Sanborn Hour, hosted by Edgar Bergen and his wooden sidekick, Charlie McCarthy. I’m not sure I understand the appeal of a radio ventriloquist, but let’s stay on topic.

The strongest evidence for how overblown the supposed size of the panic was comes from a poll of 5,000 households taken by the C.E. Hooper Ratings Service. In the telephone survey, two percent responded they were listening to the Mercury Radio Theatre production. Of that two percent, none of them answered that they were listening to news reports of an alien invasion. True, some who took the play to be a newscast were fleeing from or seeking out the invaders and therefore would not have been home to answer the call. Also true is that some of those who thought there were interplanetary interlopers were basing this on third-hand accounts and not the broadcast.

Still, reports of a country teetering on the brink is inconsistent with an estimated audience of 2.6 million in a nation 50 times that size. Moreover, those 2.6 million included many who listened from the beginning and were aware all along the broadcast was of a drama and not a doomsday. Some who tuned in late took it for the theatrical production it was, while others thought the attack was courtesy the Nazis. The rest went with the Invaders From Mars conclusion. But that number would have been in the hundreds, maybe thousands, but certainly not millions.

The main culprits for propping up the mostly-mythical panic were newspapers. Editor & Publisher encapsulated the industry’s combination of haughtiness and concern over dwindling profits by fuming, “The nation continues to face the danger of incomplete, misunderstood news from a medium which has yet to prove that it is competent to perform the job.”

While newspapers were still fumbling around with linotype machines and changing the ink on their printing presses, broadcasters were filing reports on the same story in real time, hours before newspapers could hit the streets. Unlike the Internet, there was no way for newspapers to embrace this neophyte technology and use it for themselves. The War of the Worlds broadcast presented publishers an opportunity to smear the radio medium as sensationalist, unprincipled, and unwholesome – ironically by displaying those same traits.

Wire service articles conspicuously lacked names of persons who were said to have panicked. Subsequent investigations of reports about patients being admitted for shock at St. Michael’s Hospital in Newark, N.J., showed that this was untrue. American University communications professor Joseph Campbell has characterized the newspaper coverage as “almost entirely anecdotal and largely based on sketch wire service roundups that emphasized breadth over in-depth detail.”

While the number of persons impacted was greatly exaggerated, so too was the nature of their reaction. While there were reports of persons feeling “frightened, disturbed, or excited” by the show, this fails to differentiate between those who thought it was news and those who knew it was a play. One could well be scared or thrilled by a radio drama about invading aliens without thinking it was real.

Some observers suspect that the Depression and looming threat of global war left the relative few who did panic ripe for doing so. I disagree. People in 1950s, with the war won and economy booming, fell for a bogus story about Italy’s pasta harvest. The Roaring 20s gave us the Cottingley Fairies hoax. People believe crazy stuff without seeking confirming evidence regardless of what economic circumstances or technological developments define the era.

Much as I loved the tale and wish it true, evidence shows the panic was sparked not by a Martian militia, but by people’s alleged reaction to it.

September 1, 2017 by Moline Skeptics

“Remember the data” (Anecdotes vs. evidence)

While “Don’t knock it until you try it” is the cliché, skeptic leader Brian Dunning thinks a better suggestion is, “Don’t try it until you knock it.” He was being somewhat sarcastic, as no opinion should be formed until all available evidence is considered. But his point was that personal experiences are inferior to data.

When it comes to favoring personal experience, this mistake is most frequently committed with regard to alternative medicine therapies and products. People often trust their perceptions more than any other source. But clinical test results provide a much better assessment of efficiency than someone’s word that it worked.

Our senses are prone to error and not everyone’s are as pronounced as the next person’s. Further, we all carry preconceived notions, biases, and expectations. Then there are mood swings, good days, bad days, and medium days. Hence, the assessment of a person grabbed off the street will be filtered through his or her prejudices, biases, preconceptions, preferences, and forgetfulness. It is impractical that their anecdote will be proof that the product or procedure will work (or fail) for everyone.

That’s why scientists use controlled, randomized trials. These will overcome the biases and other weaknesses addressed in the previous paragraph. As Dunning explained, “If you want to know whether listening to a binaural beat will make you fall asleep, a science fan knows not to try it to find out. She knows her sleepiness varies throughout every day and she knows that the expectation that it’s supposed to make her sleepy skews her perception. Instead, she looks at properly controlled testing that’s been done. Those subjects didn’t know what they were listening to, they didn’t know what it was supposed to do to them, and some of them unknowingly listened to a placebo recording. She knows the difference between real, statistically-sound data and one person’s anecdotal experience.”

Trying an untested product compromises a person’s ability to objectively analyze testing data about that product. This is also true in areas beyond alternative medicine. It can come into play while reading a horoscope, seeing an alleged ghost, or attending a psychic seminar. A cousin of mine did the latter and afterward, she excitedly posted there was “NO WAY” the psychic have known what she did, save an esoteric ability.

This is known as subjective validation, where an experience being personally impactful is considered evidence that the phenomenon is authentic. But with psychics, there are issues regarding cold reading, selective memory by audience members, and the lack of confirmatory testing. In my cousin’s case, the experience resonated with her because she had an intense experience, but that is not controlled data. A test could be designed, and in fact have been carried out, and no medium has ever consistently performed better than chance.

Still, persons will insist they know something works because it did for them. But this is not necessarily what happened. During the 2016 Olympics, athletes tried cupping and elastic kinesio tape, two alternative therapies completely lacking in evidence and with no plausible working mechanism behind them. Desperate for the extra edge against fellow world-class athletes, Olympians tried them and their personal experiences convinced them it worked. Yet these swimmers, runners, and gymnasts also had access to personal trainers, excellent nutrition, regimented rest periods, massage, icing, and other attentiveness that guaranteed they would perform at their peak. Giving the credit for victory to cupping wins the post hoc reasoning Gold Medal. Michael Phelps, after all, had collected plenty of first-place finishes before he started overheating, misshaping, and discoloring his back. There’s also the issue of those who tried these techniques and came in 17^th.

Now we will examine another instance in which personal experience is treated as preferable to tested evidence. An Answers in Genesis chestnut is “Were you there,” which they genuinely consider a solid retort to proof about the age of the universe, Earth’s earliest days, and the development of homo sapiens. This is a vacuous, absurd reply. No one questions if Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence by asking historians if they were there when he dipped his quill into ink.

This supposed “gotcha” question reveals Young Earth Creationists’ substantial ignorance about how science works. As Dunning explained, “Scientific conclusions are never based simply on personal reports, but upon direct measurements of testable evidence. Nobody’s been to the sun, either, but we know a great deal about it because we can directly measure and analyze the various types of radiation it puts out.”

Likewise, chemists can’t see quarks and astronomers can’t see dark matter, but these entities can be measured and their attributes analyzed. The answer to a time-honored riddle is that a tree falling in forest does indeed emit soundwaves whether anyone is there to perceive them. Likewise, Earth formed, heated, and cooled regardless of whether this was being witnessed. Researchers understand the science behind the various dating methods that are used to determine this. In the same way that DNA is preferable to a witness at trial, radiometric dating, carbon 14 dating, and the speed of light are more important than the fact that no one from Earth’s earliest days is alive to recall it.

From those that deny something has happened, we move to those who assert that something has happened despite lacking concrete evidence for this claim. Specifically, some persons will wonder what’s the harm in using a product or technique if it makes a person feel better.

The harm can come in such forms as using Therapeutic Touch instead of antibiotics. Such methods not only waste time and money, but the patient may bypass legitimate medicine that would work. And in certain cases, such as with colloidal silver, black salve, and some essential oils, active ingredients are being ingested and overuse can be dangerous.

Another way in which personal experiences are trusted over clinical evidence is to claim, “I know what I saw.” Yet senses are prone errors, deficiencies, and bias. A popular video asks viewers to count the number of times a basketball is passed between a group of persons. When most respondents are asked to give that number, they usually give the correct response. But they also fumble when asked the follow up question, “What walked through the group while the ball was being passed?” It was a man in a gorilla suit ambling by, yet most viewers missed it because they were so consumed with keeping track of the number of tosses.

“Our memories change dramatically over time and were incomplete to begin with,” Dunning wrote. “And who knows how good was the data that your brain had to work with was to begin with? Lighting conditions can come into play, as can movement, distractions, backgrounds, and expectations of what should be seen. Possible misidentifications and perceptual errors all had a part in building your brain’s experience.”

That’s why Bigfoot sightings are not considered to be “case closed” proof of the beast’s existence. Anthropologists would need to look at testable evidence, which in the case of Sasquatch, is utterly lacking.

Out of frustration, aficionados of alternative medicine, conspiracy theories, cryptozoological critters, and a Young Earth will sometimes label scientists and skeptics “closed-minded.” But closed-mindedness includes refusing to change ideas no matter how much contrary evidence one is presented with. Since phone calls from 9/11 hijack victims described Islamic terrorists, Truthers concocted an evidence-free ad hoc assertion that those victims and the family members they telephoned were in on the government’s plot.

Meanwhile, being open-minded means changing your position when you discover you’ve been mistaken. I balked when I first heard that race was a social construct instead of a biological one. Using some of the reasoning addressed earlier, “I knew what I saw,” and clearly race had to be biological since I could see the difference between someone from Canada and someone from Nigeria. But as I learned about alleles, gene frequency, migratory routes, blood types, and the Human Genome Project, I changed my mind.

There are mounds of evidence that disprove such notions as chemtrails, chiropractic, a flat Earth, vaccine shedding being the cause of disease, and the first man being spoken into sudden existence 5,000 years ago. Yet hardcore adherents to these ideas consider the skeptic or scientist to be the closed-minded one.

People who assert this think of science as an unbending set of dictates from dour men in crisp lab coats or arrogant academics perched in ivory towers. However, science is a process that continually adapts, refines, improves, adds to, subtracts from, and alters data, according to where the evidence leads. And that refinement is subject to still further peer review, examination, and testing. That is why scientifically controlled data on the ability of a eucalyptus rub to cure rheumatism will always be preferable to what Aunt Tillie says.

August 28, 2017 by Moline Skeptics

“I disagree with you in theory” (Conspiracies)

Today we will look at why most conspiracy theories are bonkers. In doing so, we will look at what differentiates a legitimate conspiracy theory from the ones associated with tinfoil hats, multiple exclamation points, and Bohemian Grove references.

First, most supposed conspiracies would require a highly unreasonable amount of secrecy. Depending on the plot, it would necessarily involve hundreds, thousands, or even millions of participants. Real conspiracies collapse when an investigator uncovers it or an insider reveals the misdeeds. This is how the public found out about John Wilkes Booth’s conspirators, Tuskegee syphilis experiments, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, COINTELPRO, Watergate, the Lewinsky scandal, and NSA abuses.

By contrast, conspiracy theories asserted by Alex Jones and David Icke require accepting that any number of conspirators can seamlessly execute complex plans with untold moving parts and nimbly move around any unexpected obstacles without the plan ever coming apart or being exposed. And by exposed, I don’t mean a YouTuber, saying, “That is not enough blood for someone with a missing limb, so here we see more evidence that the Boston Marathon bombing was staged.” By evidence, I am referring to what Woodward and Bernstein published, what Ken Starr presented in depositions, what then-Bradley Manning released, and what the Citizen’s Commission to Investigate the FBI purloined from government offices.

The more people that know of the plan, the more chance it will be exposed. Each person added to the conspiracy is one more member that can be forgetful, get tricked, be blackmailed, succumb to bribery, or grow disillusioned. Every new recruit is one more person that could expose the plot out of spite, incompetence, guilt, or by accident. Conspiracies about hidden cancer cures, 9/11 being an inside job, and Earth being flat would have been exposed with mounds of specific, irrefutable evidence long ago if they were real.

But wait a minute, Mr. Critical Thinking Skeptic, are you not committing the survivor bias fallacy? Surely there have been evil doings by governments, corporations, or criminal enterprises that were never exposed, right? Yes, it is likely that some plots have stayed furtive. But that does nothing to bolster conspiracy theories that are being supported with flimsy evidence.

Manning and Edward Snowden both leaked around 700,000 documents apiece. Recalling other examples of genuine conspiracy theories and the evidence for them, skeptic blogger Emil Karlsson wrote, “The Watergate scandal had burglars being arrested, a money trail that could be followed and mapped, confessions, and several rounds of incriminating audio tapes. The IB affair revealed that Swedish government had a secret military intelligence and counterintelligence agency that the parliament was unaware of that monitored and registered people…and secretly infiltrated their organizations and attempted to provoke them into committing crimes. This conspiracy was exposed by two journalists and a photographer who got their hands on crucial evidence provided by a disgruntled employee. They then spent months stalking and photographing IB members and even intercepted posts sent between field agents and the headquarters of the organization.”

In a similar exposure, the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI burgled an FBI field office and made off with several dossiers, which they then forwarded to the media. That is how the bureau’s illegal program to surveil, infiltrate, and discredit U.S. political organizations came to light.

Compare that to what WAKETHESHEEPLE!! is offering for his, ahem, evidence. One example is a photo of a World Trade Center tower collapsing, with a couple of windows blowing out a few stories below the mushroom of smoke. The accompanying text reads, “Oops! We set off this explosion too early.” In reality, the windows blew out as the result of unequal pressure. Had the theorist performed diligent journalism by seeking out multiple physicists and architects, he would have gained this information. Instead, he was content to unilaterally deduce and announce what had happened.

On conspiracy theory websites, great evidence will be placed on family members not crying when being interviewed about their loved ones, and this argument from ignorance will be considered of greater value than coroner reports, ballistic evidence, and scores of witnesses. After a shooting in California, a police detective was telling news reporters about the importance of training for such events, and he said that previous drills had paid off. In relating this, he misspoke and said “the shooting, which we played out here today,” as opposed to “the shooting, which played out here today.” About the same time, a fellow law enforcement officer placed his hand on his face. These two events were presented as evidence of it being staged, with the detective accidentally revealing the ruse, which caused his co-worker to cover his face, in an “oh no” moment.

Sometimes such exposures are said to be done on purpose, albeit clandestinely. There have been several non-satirical attempts to tie Simpsons episodes into conspiracy theories. The idea is that that evil Hollywood Jews are tipping their hand at the atrocities they are about to unleash. This has included supposed references to 9/11 and even Pizzagate, more than 25 years before that especially ridiculous conspiracy theory surfaced. Similarly, a passport in The Matrix expiring on Sept. 11, 2001, is supposedly another clue. Of course, this requires ignoring any references to any other dates that appeared in any movie prior to the attacks. While the 9/11/2001 expiration date is mildly interesting, the Law of Truly Large Numbers is in play here.

Other than the no-planes notion, probably the most ridiculous 9/11 theory centers on a 1967 Newsweek cover featuring David Rockefeller. He appears in front of the New York skyline, with his watch at 8:55, which in the twisted mind of a conspiracy theorist, reads 9/11. Theorists are assuming a minimum 34-year-plan with thousands of participants, all based on a man’s location, religion, and jewelry.

Speaking of Truthers, their idea of 9/11 being an inside job means that hijacked airliners were superfluous. If the reasons for the attacks was to get the U.S. into war, why not just blow the towers up and still pin it on Muslims? Or just invade anyway without being attacked, the way the U.S. did in Iraq, Panama, and Grenada? American foreign policy is aggressive enough that no one would have found it strange if the U.S. staged another preemptive strike.

Let’s go back to the low evidentiary threshold most conspiracy theorists have. After the Ariana Grande concert bombing, the PA announcer tried to reassure the audience members that everything was OK so that they would file out calmly and avoid a stampede that would have magnified the tragedy. Footage from inside Manchester Arena showed that panicked attendees had started running, which prompted the announcer to implore, “Please take your time. There’s no need to bunch up. There’s no problems here. Just take your time and exit the building. Everything is fine. Walk slowly, there’s no need to run.”

In some conspiracy theory circles his reassurance that everything was OK was presented as evidence that nothing bad had happened. They also patted themselves on the back for exposing the announcement, which they claimed was not meant to be for public consumption, even though it was given in a crowded venue.

Of course, the theorists did no follow up to see if anyone was killed, talked with no police officers, no concert goers, no ER workers, and did not seek out the PA announcer. They just counted their assertion as proof.

Addressing the conspiracy theory, Snopes noted, “Greater Manchester Police confirmed that they have spoken to grieving families of the 22 deceased and that the coroner is performing postmortem examinations. Once this is complete, identities of the victims will be made public. Police are actively investigating the attack and have taken multiple people into custody. There is also ample footage taken by concert goers that shows everything from the moment the bomb exploded to people scrambling for safety. Authorities have identified the suicide bomber as 22-year-old Salman Abedi.”

Again, all these persons would need to be involved and stay silent for this conspiracy, which would serve no purpose, to have been executed.

Beyond the secrecy, another issue is that conspiracy theorists attribute inconsistent capabilities to those pulling off the plot. Masterminds are portrayed as impossibly brilliant in their management of persons, resources, planning, and execution. They are said to wield nearly unlimited power and cruelty, and are described as ruthless, intelligent, and efficient. They have planned for every contingency, are highly adaptable, have infiltrated the highest levels of government, science, and economics, and have untold minions ready to commit mayhem on their behalf. They conceal or destroy all evidence and ‘disappear’ those who try to expose them. Yet, they are unable to remove YouTube videos. They have the world’s greatest tech minds on their side, yet they are unable to take down websites exposing their dastardly deeds. The strongest argument against alleged conspirators having the massive reach of power attributed to them is that theorists still alive to expose them.

August 23, 2017 by Moline Skeptics

“Which nobody should deny” (Genocide denial)

Other than their tragic natures, there would seem to be little connection between the Srebrenica massacre and Typhoon Haiyan. They were separated by 20 years, one was in the Balkans while the other ravaged Asian island nations, and the former was a deliberate act, the latter a natural disaster.

Yet there is a tie-in, however tenuous and eye-rolling. Some who deny that the genocide occurred offer a novel explanation for the mass of uncovered corpses. In this tale, the massacre was a hoax and those responsible for perpetrating it furtively slipped thousands of Philippine typhoon victims into central Europe and dumped them in the Srebrenica burial sites. I’m halfway expecting a counter theory from HAARP conspiracy theorists that Srebrenica victims were transported to Southeast Asia and passed off as typhoon fatalities.

While the idea of a massacre/typhoon connection is absurd enough to dismiss out of hand, we in the skeptic community prefer to bolster our points with science, and in this case, we find that evidence in DNA. The massacre took place primarily in July of 1995 when Bosnian Serb soldiers from Republica Srpska and the paramilitary Scorpions slew 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys. According to The Atlantic, DNA advances have enabled war crimes investigators to document the massacre in minute detail.

In his Atlantic piece, David Rohde wrote that uncovering the remains was made difficult because Bosnian Serbs went to great effort to conceal victims’ bodies. Several months after the killings, they dug up many of the mass graves, dismembered the corpses, and hid them in dozens of locations. This means that body parts from one victim are often in multiple sites. Despite this challenge, the International Commission on Missing Persons collected 22,268 blood samples from Srebrenica survivors and matched them to 6,827 recovered bodies.

However, even this DNA evidence is dismissed by deniers. To conspiracy theorists, inconvenient evidence is part of the cover-up, evidence not uncovered shows how well it’s being hidden, and scientists and journalists who provide contrary information are in on the plot or blindly contributing to it.

Rohde quoted several Serbs who offered either denial of the entire massacre or insisted it had been exaggerated and only occurred in the normal course of battle. It is dismissed as a hoax perpetrated by Western powers, who are also blamed for fomenting conflict in the splintered Yugoslavia. In this theory, supposedly slain Bosnian Muslims are said to be either living in Germany or are instead dead Serb soldiers or Filipino typhoon victims. This denial is not limited to Serbs. The conspiracy theory finds adherents among Russian government officials and anti-Muslim U.S. conservatives.

Similar denials are leveled at the Holocaust and genocides in Ukraine, Armenia, Rwanda, and Cambodia, as well as the Nanking Massacre. These atrocities are accompanied by a denialist narrative in which a shadowy figure or cabal is out do disparage or destroy the nation, culture, or faith responsible for the genocide. Those perpetrating the hoax can be the CIA, Mossad, Saudi royalty, the Clintons, or whoever best fits the narrative.

In these denials, if mass murder was perpetrated, it was in self-defense. This is a double-win for the denial camp. They can defend their country or people while casting blame on a disliked party for perpetrating a self-serving ruse. As George Orwell observed, “The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”

In many cases, denial is the first reaction to news of the genocide, as it was in Srebrenica, when the victims were dug up and reburied. Some of the bodies were also burned. This moving and desecration of the evidence made further denial easier. Then when those remains were found, an ad hoc rationale developed that the corpses were of legitimate military targets. All this is standard practice for genocide deniers, who attempt to refute what happened or at least downplay it. Gregory Stanton, founder of Genocide Watch, considers denial a continuation of the genocide because it is part of a continuing attempt to psychologically and culturally destroy the victim group.

Meanwhile, blogger Emil Karlsson has touched on the characteristics of genocide denial. These include false attempts at moral equivalence between the side perpetrating the genocide and its victims. This, to the denialist, justifies any atrocity because there were good and bad on both sides, usually more good on their end. Or it can take the form of dehumanizing the victims and considering them unworthy of sympathy, so whether it happened or not doesn’t matter. One Internet meme tried to rebrand Srebrenica massacre mastermind Ratko Mladic as a mighty warrior who has been doing battle with ISIS since 1992, thereby equating murdered grade schoolers with an Islamic terrorists.

Another tact is misusing initial estimates done by governments. The first totals of genocide fatalities are usually done by government or military officials who lack the research and documentation capabilities of scientists and historians. These first estimates may be inaccurate, perhaps wildly so. This provides easy fodder for a genocide denialist, who cites the disparate numbers of proof of a lie. If the numbers go up, they are fraudulent; if they go down, it shows it was never a big deal anyway, especially in war. A similar tactic is to exploit new discoveries or corrected errors, as new information is taken as evidence that it was all fabricated.

Yet another strategy is to quote historians out of context. In Karlsson’s post, he wrote that holocaust deniers enthusiastically reference Raul Hilberg having said that it would be hard to prove that the Holocaust happened. Sliced off is his next sentence, where he explains how historians and researchers overcome any difficulties and confirmed the event’s horrible reality. Holocaust deniers also lift a passage from Arno Mayer’s book to make it seem like he asserts that evidence for Nazi gas chambers is sparse. What they leave out is that he was referring to the SS having destroyed most of the evidence for the chambers, which wouldn’t be possible if they weren’t there to destroy.

This shows how denialists can highlight any apparent inconsistency while ignoring the totality of evidence. In an article sympathetic to Srebrenica denial, World Net Daily wrote that 37 percent of the massacre victims were on voting roles in 1996, a year after what it calls “the alleged genocide.” Voting roles are usually only purged after one misses several elections, so this demonstrates nothing and certainly does not refute the DNA evidence of the nearly 7,000 confirmed victims.

Historians take their work seriously and will correct errors when found. Genocide denialists will advertise this not as admitting an honest mistake, but as the exposing of a cover-up. For instance, WND claimed that at least 100 persons in the Srebrenica memorial sites died of natural causes. Even if true, this is a tiny percentage of those buried and does not lessen the brutality of killing young boys and senior citizens because of where they were born and what religion they practice.

August 16, 2017 by Moline Skeptics

“It was a dark and stormy day” (Eclipse fears)

Eclipses initially inspired fear, but today we understand the mechanics behind them, so they inspire, um, well, I guess it’s still fear. At least among some groups. And I’m not referring to the science enthusiasts who are fretting that an all-day road trip may turn into nothing more than a cloud viewing.

First, the basics for any second graders or Flat Earthers who have stumbled onto the blog: A total solar eclipse happens when the moon is close enough to Earth and it simultaneously crosses the path of the sun. This results in the moon blotting out the sun for a few minutes and a shadow being cast on part of Earth’s surface.

For a competing hypothesis, we leave the astronomy book and head to a Flat Earth group active in Colorado, headed by Bob Knodel. This bunch was profiled last month by the Denver Post, and the article related this exchange between Knodel and his underling:

“How are we Flat Earthers supposed to explain to our friends the solar eclipse in August,” asked one attendee. The room fell silent. “We’ll have to do more research and get back to you on that,” Knodel replied.

While awaiting his further investigation, let’s look at a few other ways the approaching eclipse may have been handled by other Flat Earthers. I say ‘may’ because, while I consider my Poe-meter finely tuned, it does get tough with these guys.

Now, being a Flat Earther normally requires more than thinking our planet is a plane instead of a sphere. The belief sets up a series of ad hoc rationalizations. For example, the planet being dark and light simultaneously would be impossible on a flat Earth, so an idea was invented that the sun and moon do a continuous loop over Earth and remain a fixed distance away from each other.

This, in turn, requires embracing geocentrism and a stationary planet. This supposed static loop of Earth’s star and satellite, however, would make an eclipse impossible. Rather than admit this, Knodel and his ilk are engaged in unspecified further research. And while this research has yielded no explanation of what is blocking the sun if not the moon, Flat Earth proponents are still using the celestial event to try and bolster their cause.

For example, they argue that an object’s shadow can never be smaller than the object itself. They will use a ball and flashlight and point out the resulting shadow on the wall is larger than the ball.

This demonstrates why the Scientific Method embraces peer review and not self-produced videos. Mic.com quoted physics professor Will Kinney, who noted that treating the sun and a small flashlight as similar is the mistake here. While a flashlight sends out a narrow, concentrated beam, the massive sun sends broad light to all parts of the solar system.

Per the article, “Because of the sun and moon’s size and distance, they look like they’re the same size, but they’re not. You could re-create the solar eclipse at home, but not like it’s being done on YouTube videos. What you need is an extended light source that is at such a distance that it’s almost exactly the same apparent size as the thing you’re blocking it with.”

Beyond that, the only points I could find ascribed to Flat Earthers were probably Poes. A Reddit user described the upcoming eclipse as “maintenance downtime of the sun/moon hologram, which will get a firmware upgrade.”

Another argued that the moon is 400 times larger than the sun, so that’s why the latter’s light is being eclipsed. This was dismissed by Flat Earthers as trolling, not because of the complete lack of evidence for it – Flat Earthers are fine with such distinctions – but because it contradicts the Flat Earth model where the sun and moon are about the same size and always the same distance apart.

From here, we will move onto those who think the eclipse is real, but feel it entails more than an explicable celestial event.

We will begin with educateinspirechange.org, which embraces the most ubiquitous of the pseudoscientific approaches, the misuse of the word ‘energy.’ It managed to get that word in a dozen times during its essay on the eclipse. Here’s a sample: “As the Total Solar Eclipse gets closer, energies are rising more rapidly than ever. In the last few weeks, have you noticed people acting abnormal, like a person who is normally chilled out becoming anxious? This is because of the energy making its way to us.”

This is, of course, selective memory. In reality, some people act out of character during times of unremarkable celestial body positioning and others act normal during an eclipse. Still others bind together unrelated items and top them with a bow of post hoc reasoning.

Continuing, our anonymous author writes, “During this total solar eclipse, you will be engulfed much more intensely by the glittering streams of magical light beaming around the moon. I cannot explain with words how intense and magical this energy to come is.”

His stated inability to explain it with words doesn’t stop him from trying. Here are the results of those efforts: “The sun represents focus, self-expression, and is aggressive while the moon is something we use as a means of really putting our goals within reach. The total solar eclipse is a way for us to provoke external changes. It forces us into taking the route we have to in order to reach where we need to be.” That part could be seen as true, as some astronomy geeks are planning a route so they can see the eclipse in its totality.

Next, our writer “strongly suggests focusing on the moon’s energy and using your Labrodite crystals to get things going and provide you with a protective vibration.” He has no specific advice for those whose Labrodite crystal supplies are low, or who lack any vibrating protections. But he closes a mostly foreboding discourse by encouraging us to “not be afraid of what is to come.” Now there’s some advice of his that I can take.

Not all worry is about what will be overhead. In South Carolina, there have been concerns about what creatures the eclipse may unleash. The state’s Emergency Management Division tweeted a map of where eyewitnesses over the years have said they have spotted lizard people. The agency warned, “We do not know if lizard men become more active during a solar eclipse, but we advise residents to remain ever vigilant.” This increased awareness seems to be working, as no reptilians have been spotted this week in Myrtle Beach.

Meanwhile, sciencealert.com reports there is angst about the eclipse being the precursor of a collision with Nibiru. The gist of Nibiru beliefs is that this rouge planet will eventually either collide with Earth or throw it off its axis. Either way, Earthlings are hosed. This makes for a supple belief, as its ominous nature fits in nicely with awe-inspiring phenomenon, but its inevitability enables it to work when nothing special is going on.

Most often, though, it is when something noteworthy is happening skyward that Nibiru believers get excited – about our impending doom. The Hale-Bopp Comet’s initial appearance, in fact, was the genesis of the notion that a runway giant planet is coming to get us. Nancy Lieder predicted that Nibiru would annihilate Earth in 2003, which then became 2012, which then became she won’t say because it would cause panic, a justification whose lameness is only topped by its arrogance.

It is understandable why the ancients ascribed natural disasters and phenomenon to gods and goddesses. Lightning bolts being Zeus hurling a spear, wind being a bellowing giant’s breath, a tempest being an upset Neptune, got it. Similarly, it’s easy to see why an unexplained blotting of the sun would freak people out. But unexplained does not mean it was inexplicable, and astronomers eventually figured it out. Which is what makes Ann Graham Lotz’s take on the eclipse so pitiful.

Despite our complete understanding of what is happening and why, Lotz is determined to put a Bronze Age spin on it, punctuated by self-congratulation and self-righteousness. She quotes Joel 2:31, which reads, “The sun will be turned to darkness before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.” She cites this scripture without explaining why the eclipses that have come along since the verse was written have been free of Earth-changing calamity.

Lotz wrote that when reading this passage, “I knew with hair-raising certainty that God’s severe judgment was coming on America! The warning is triggered by the total solar eclipse of August 21.” This is nothing more than subjective validation and a belief that the strength of a conviction matters more than its accuracy.

As to the amateur astronomers and school children enthused about the event, Lotz has strong condemnation. “The celebratory nature regarding the eclipse brings to my mind the Babylonian King Belshazzar who threw a drunken feast the night the Medes and Persians crept under the city gate.” Ah, got it. This is all just a distraction that will enable to Iranians to conquer our heathen selves.

Where most of see the alignment of the astronomical bodies and the laws of astrophysics, Lotz sees a holy harbinger. “God is signaling us about something. Time will tell what that something is.” These impossibly vague descriptors will allow Lotz to claim any tragedy at any time as fulfillment of her prophecy.

The aforementioned ancients had little knowledge of what was going on in their world, so they constructed supernatural explanations. Initially, their gaps in knowledge were extremely broad and were filled in with concocted deities. As knowledge expanded, those gaps shrank and today there aren’t many left. There are a few, such as not knowing how life originated, and some folks find comfort in these gaps, thinking the lack of full scientific understanding means that their god did it. But Lotz takes it even further. Even though we understand what an eclipse is and why it occurs, she still insists in foisting her fears and fantasies onto it.

In summary, Monday will bring one of the following: Divine judgement, mass extinction via a careening planet, reptilian generation, a mysterious object overhead, magical moon rays, or a standard solar eclipse. In any case, I’m there.

August 15, 2017 by Moline Skeptics

“Brain on the water” (Brain Gym)

Our deepest ancestors came from the water and it has sustained life ever since. But can we ask even more of it?

Well, according to the folks at Brain Gym, drinking it in a particular manner can improve learning and increase mental agility. And it’s not just precise liquid consumption that can build cranial power.

The basic idea behind Brain Gym is that engaging in specific body movements can develop the brain and enhance learning. Techniques to accomplish this include crawling, drawing, rolling, swinging, bouncing balls, throwing beanbags, walking on beams, tracing symbols in the air, measured breathing, and gulping the aforementioned beverage in a particular way. All this will allegedly make learning more seamless and quick. Other benefits include playing sports more efficiently, having more drive, and being a jolly all around good chap.

Brain Gym was a 1970s creation by Dr. Paul Dennison his wife, Gail, and the couple borrowed heavily from the techniques of the applied kinesiology. This pseudoscience teaches that the diagnosis and treatment of disease can be achieved by testing muscles for strength and weakness. It is to muscles what the feet, eyes, and spine are to reflexology, iridology, and chiropractic, respectively. Applied kinesiology’s techniques are little more than employment of the ideomotor response, unconscious resistance or lack thereof, and applied pressure.

Brain Gym, then, takes applied kinesiology’s ideas and incorporates gyrations to purportedly usher in sweeping mental benefits. There have been a few vanity and self-published studies on these claims, but there’s nothing in legitimate scientific literature to support them. Moreover, these assertions are chock full of pseudoscientific goodness, which happens when one invents words that sound scientific but are not, or where one misuses science terms.

For example, one of Brain Gym’s primary tenets is that the brain’s two hemispheres should be acting in coordination. It’s true that different parts of the brain must communicate with each other for proper brain function, so there’s the science. But from this, the Dennisons jump to unjustified conclusions by trying to marry this neurological basic with light aerobics and arriving at improved mental agility. This gets even more bizarre when it leads to claims such as yawning being able to improve eyesight.

More pseudoscience is seen in the description of what happens when fingers are pressed together: “This shifts electrical energy from the survival centers in the hindbrain to the reasoning centers in the midbrain and neocortex, thus activating hemispheric integration. Then the tongue pressing into the roof of the mouth stimulates the limbic system for emotional processing in concert with more refined reasoning in the frontal lobes.” There are several big, impressive sounding words there, but it’s unsubstantiated gobbledygook with no connection to learning.

Brain Gym holds that optimal brain function occurs only if motor skills are learned in proper sequence. It even deduces that if children are developmentally disabled, it may be because they walked before they crawled. Therefore, they conclude that the cure for mental retardation may be crawling exercises. This is offensive to the developmentally disabled, their families, and most decent folk. This offense would be irrelevant if the crawling technique worked, but there is no peer-reviewed literature anywhere to support this extraordinary claim. A similarly baseless claim is that reading difficulty stems from mixed cerebral dominance. For me, reading difficulties usually arise when I come across terms like mixed cerebral dominance.

There are still other claims that these exercises can improve faulty vision, or that vision exercises can reverse learning disabilities. In response, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Ophthalmology, and the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology issued a joint statement strongly discrediting these ideas.

The Brain Gym website’s FAQ calls the program “distinctive, as it addresses the physical rather than mental components of learning.” Distinctive, yes. Effective, no. Brain Gym activities may be fun, build camaraderie, and provide moderate exercise, but they are unrelated to improving one’s ability at reading, writing, or arithmetic.

The program also places value of “brain buttons,” which are described as points on the neck that, when touched in certain ways, will stimulate blood flow to the brain. This is akin to chiropractic meridians or new age healing chakras and have no biological basis.

Other joys are wiggling one’s ears to “stimulate the reticular formation of the brain” and rocking head back and forth to improve “comprehension and rational thinking.”

Despite starting in California, Brain Gym is mostly a UK phenomenon and the Guardian’s resident skeptic, Ben Goldacre, leads the charge against the program. He regularly fields e-mails from frustrated students, who find the techniques’ supposed benefits ludicrous.

“They’re actually taught that if one holds drinking water in the mouth for a few seconds, it will go through the roof of the mouth and be absorbed by the brain,” an exasperated Goldacre reports.

Water, water everywhere, still won’t help you think.

August 11, 2017 by Moline Skeptics

“Doctored evidence” (Exorcism)

Dr. Steven Novella is a leader of the skeptics movement and in this capacity regularly has to fend off damage done to the name of his employer, the Yale Medical School, by his coworker, Dr. David Katz. The latter uses the university’s reputation and resources to endorse all manner of unproven techniques and procedures and then calls them medicine.

On top of this, Novella has now another prominent man with Yale ties to do battle against. Dr. Richard Gallagher, a Yale alum psychologist, has expressed belief in demon possession and has found sympathetic forums in CNN and The Washington Post. The issue is not so much Gallagher’s belief as it is his dangling of his education and scientific background to try and bolster this contention. As we will see, this appeal to authority is only one of a half dozen logical fallacies Gallagher commits in making his case for diabolical disturbances.

CNN’s piece this month featured extensive quotes Gallagher fed to credulous interviewer John Blake. It also contained a token appearance by Novella, who is only mentioned beginning in the 63rd paragraph. Up until then, Blake had unquestioningly allowed Gallagher to talk of persons levitating, objects flying off shelves, victims speaking perfect Latin, and a 90-pound woman throwing a 250-pound man across the room.

The CNN piece is less evidence for demonic possession than it is for Gallagher being in possession of fallacious thinking skills and faulty reasoning.

For example, he claims that allegedly possessed persons display hidden knowledge, such as how the exorcist’s mother died or what pets he owned. But this could be explained through cold reading. As to demonstrating unexpected strength, Novella noted this would not be unusual for someone hyped on emotions and fueled by adrenaline. As to the Latin, there is no telling if the person had ever studied the language, nor is there reason to suspect this would be a favored method of communication among Satan’s soldiers.

There is also the sizable issue of all this being hearsay. Gallagher provides no video evidence nor any other means of documenting his extraordinary claims. It is reasonable to expect more proof for claims of flying people and objects than a person saying it happened. There is no way to try and corroborate his tales or examine them for signs of trickery, hidden accomplices, or fabrication.

Further, even if these phenomenon had occurred, they are unexplained and it is the appeal to ignorance to fill in that gap with invisible visitors from the underworld.

Other than the anecdotes about defying the laws of gravity and physics, the cases cited by Gallagher are explicable through cold reading, educated guesswork, selective memory, and subjective validation.

What Gallagher lacks in evidence and substantiation, he makes up for in ad hoc reasoning. Specifically, he says demons won’t submit to lab studies or video analysis because they want to sow doubt, not confirm their existence.

To this, Novella retorted, “Skeptics will recognize this a special pleading, otherwise known as making up lame excuses to explain why you don’t have any actual evidence.”

Similarly, Gallagher credits demons with being tricky and able to avoid persons when they choose. Novella notes this is nearly identical to the rationale offered by aficionados of other unverified phenomenon. They claim aliens are too advanced to allow themselves to be observed, that Bigfoot has mastered stealth, that psychic powers are dulled by a skeptic’s negative vibes, or that western medicine is incapable of testing its eastern counterpart.

Novella reports that he has seen scores of videos of alleged exorcisms and they all lack any spectacular footage. No unimagined strength, no spinning heads, no sudden recitation of a dead tongue, nobody taking flight, no little girl slamming a man into the wall with a flick of her wrist.

Again, Blake tosses a bare bone to skeptics near the end of his story by giving Novella a brief say. But even this is followed by Gallagher being allowed to respond to his opponent’s criticism, while the token doubter is afforded no such luxury. Then the story ends on a sympathetic note for the exorcist.

I have noticed a decline in CNN’s standards. They still put out lots of good products, but allow themselves to be taken in by the occasional tripe, so this story was none too surprising. By contrast, I was saddened to see that the publication responsible for the Pentagon Papers and exposing Watergate had allowed itself to become a venue for such topics.

In his Post column, Gallagher gives passing praise to skepticism and science before veering sharply into the appeals to personal incredulity and ignorance. He wrote, “The subject’s behavior exceeded what I could explain with my training. I could only explain it as paranormal ability.”

A basic distinction of the skepticism and science Gallagher had earlier alluded to is that an event being unexplained does not make it inexplicable. Nor is the observer granted carte blanche to fill in the blanks with the answer he favors. For evidence to be of any value, it must be attained through the Scientific Method.

Toward the end of his column, Gallagher fires off two more logical fallacies. He commits the appeal to consequences by bemoaning, “Those who dismiss these cases unwittingly prevent patients from receiving the help they desperately require.” And those psychologists who encourage mentally ill patients to engage in guerilla warfare against furtive monsters are committing malpractice.

Gallagher completes his traipse through the fallacy landscape with an ad hominem, calling skeptics “closedminded, “vitriolic,” “unpersuadable,” and “materialist.” Even if all that is true, it provides zero evidence that demons are being conjured on Gallagher’s couch.

August 7, 2017 by Moline Skeptics

“Grey doesn’t matter” (Nanotechnology hysteria)

Nanotechnology refers to the engineering of functional systems at the molecular scale. There are thousands of nanotechnology products, including components in such diverse items as tennis balls, beer bottles, flak vests, power drills, and home pregnancy tests. In all these instances, nanotechnology allows manufacturers to design the precise, optimal product when the specific arrangement of molecules may not exist in nature, or may be impossible to construct with conventional engineering.

Like any technology, there is potential for harm through error or intent. But while there are what could be called “nano-weapons,” these are all conventional weapons that incorporate nanoscale material in some way. It does not refer to a swarm of tiny robots who escape from a 1950s SciFi flick and rummage about in our bodies subcutaneously.

Still, there are concerns with how nanotechnology could be used, with some opponents more measured than others. There have even been two unsuccessful attempts on the lives of nanotechnology researchers in the last decade by eco-anarchists.

Among those who are not failed assassins, there are some more legitimate worries, such as the resultant tiny particles perhaps being hazardous to the respiratory system in the same way that asbestos is. This is a reasonable concern, but any new material can be unexpectedly hazardous, so the potential problems of nanotechnology are not unique to this particular scientific advancement.

What stokes most of the fear is the notion of self-replicating nanobots being the catalyst for an impending doomsday. In this scenario, the exponential growth of these machines require them to devour Earth’s materials along the way.

Eric Drexler’s book Engines of Creation first raised the possibility of this occurrence. He coined the term “grey goo” to describe the proverbial living mass of nanobots. He proffered a scenario whereby a runaway reaction produces more grey goo than the entire mass Earth in less than two days. However, this idea assumes the continued availability of both raw materials and a fuel source for these created critters.

Brian Dunning at Skeptoid noted that these nanoscale machines would have to do their construction by selecting and placing one atom at a time. Besides being hampered by this laborious process, these hypothetical nanobots would also have substantial power needs and would generate tremendous heat waste. And, Dunning continued, “Unless they were in an environment consisting solely of carbon and hydrogen atoms, nanobots would quickly become mired in a swamp of useless, unwanted molecules. Their ability to spread physically is likely always going to be confined to a very specific given resource.”

And as machines, they are reliant on outside help. Our most advanced commercial airliner would be of no value without fuel and pilots, and it would eventually break down without preventive maintenance, spare parts, and safety inspections. Similarly, nanobots would fail without a support network. They also must still be given instructions from an external computer, and this lack of autonomy is a built-in safety measure against any grey goo apocalypse.

August 2, 2017 by Moline Skeptics

“False alarm” (Manufactured memories)

Head And Mind Puzzle

We all have false memories but when these surface during criminal trials, there are severe consequences. Probably the most infamous example is the McMartin preschool injustice in the mid-1980s. A few years later, advertising executive Gary Ramona spent five years in prison after his daughter was goaded by two overenthusiastic therapists into thinking he had raped her as a child.

Criminal psychologist Julia Shaw is an expert on how false memories form and is sometimes called as a defense witness. She also works with members of law enforcement and the military to suggest interrogation techniques that will make false confessions less likely.

Shaw listed several factors that cause a person to “recover” a “lost memory.” It matters who the accuser was with when the memory was recalled, what questions were asked, and what their state of mind was. Were they vulnerable to a therapist implanting a constructed memory, such as which happened in the Ramona tragedy?

It is usually telling when a traumatic memory surfaces for the first time during therapy conducted decades later. That’s what happened to Eileen Franklin, who at 29 instantaneously “recalled” in a hypnotherapy session that her father George had raped and killed her childhood friend. Subsequent recollections included vivid images and specifics of the event. She knew what type of jewelry the victim was wearing, where curves in the dirt road near the killing site were, and how dense the surrounding forest was. She also recalled that the deceased was concealed under a mattress.

However, detectives later realized that all the details she had given had appeared in newspaper accounts of the case. The only exceptions were things that Eileen had gotten wrong. For instance, the victim was found wearing two rings, not the single silver one she had recalled. She was also mistaken on the time of day it occurred. There were other inconsistencies. The mattress covering the victim was too big to fit into the Franklins’ car, which is where Eileen said her father retrieved it from. Still, Franklin was convicted, then released six years later after DNA evidence showed he could not have committed the crime.

Eileen’s case had the major tell-tale signs of false memory: Sex abuse by someone known to the victim or witness and the repressed memory being brought out during hypnotherapy or psychotherapy.

Let’s spend a little time going over these techniques. The Quad Cities’ Genesis Health System has continued its embrace of pretend alternative medicine by offering hypnotherapy, which it describes as “accessing the subconscious to rearrange the associations that drive your daily behaviors. Hypnotherapy is a treatment focusing primarily on your subconscious. Hypnosis is a natural state people slip in and out of all day long, and hypnotherapy merely takes advantage of that state to better understand the client’s mentality.”

Sounds like all this can be a post for another day. For now, we’ll let it suffice that hypnotherapy can be of limited use in a few instances, but should be avoided by someone trying to work through deep-seeded issues. Further, any “revelation” that emerges when a hypnotherapist coaxes a mentally anguished patient to dig deeper should not be the impetus to incarcerate the alleged perpetrator.

Psychotherapy, meanwhile, is defined as “the treatment of mental disorders by psychological rather than medical means.” It can be valuable and beneficial, but any spontaneous memories from 25 years ago should still not be a precursor to criminal charges.

Cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Loftus worked with defense attorneys to get Franklin’s conviction overturned and her involvement in the case spurred her to do pioneer research into false memories.

The idea of repressed memories gained traction in the era of McMartin, Geraldo specials, and UFO abduction tales. In these and similar instances, patients were encouraged to visualize, to let their mind wander to where the therapist guided, and to use their imagination to access repressed memories. And few of them were recalling that extra yummy ice cream cone from 15 summers ago. They were dredging up trauma.

To determine how susceptible a person might be to suggestion by an authority figure, Loftus recruited 24 participants and gave each of them narratives outlining four experiences from their childhood. Three of the stories came from their parents’ recollections, while the fourth was a work of fiction. In this outlier, the subject was said to have been lost at the mall, then returned by a stranger to their parents. Participants were directed to write down as many details as they could about the four storylines. When interviewed about their recollections, some began to share the emotions they experienced while being lost and then returned. Some even detailed the rescuer’s clothing, even though none of this had happened.

One-fourth of the subjects ended up recalling this event that never occurred. Loftus stressed the importance that the other person in the room can play in false memories popping up. “The key is suggestibility,” she said. “Often, false memories develop because there’s exposure to external suggestive information. Or people can draw inferences about what might have happened.”

In such situations, persons can assume pieces to fill in the gaps. These embellishments may come from other people’s accounts, their own imagination, or their current situation.

Being convinced that one wandered from the mall’s play area in Kindergarten is one thing, but what if the accusation were of something sinister? Shaw wondered if she could get the same response when trying to convince someone they had committed a crime. Inspired by the Loftus experiment, Shaw told 30 recruits that she had received details from their acquaintances about a time in their teens when the participants had assaulted someone or stolen something. To make it more believable, Shaw included accurate biological information, such as where they were living at the time, where they normally hung out, and the name of their partner in imagined crime.

After the initial meeting, none of the participants could recall the false memory. But every night for three weeks, subjects were encouraged to spend a few minutes visualizing the event. Utilizing the techniques she knows therapists (with either well-meaning or vindictive intent) employ, Shaw eventually convinced 70 percent of the subjects they had committed this non-existent crime. All that had been required to achieve this were weaving elements of truth with consistent pressure to visualize the event.

July 31, 2017 by Moline Skeptics

“Science defiance” (Anti-science tactics)

There are a variety of anti-science beliefs, but proponents of them all follow the same disingenuous techniques to further their agenda.

One trick is to rely on bogus experts. Linus Pauling won the 1954 Nobel Prize for chemistry. Later, he made unsubstantiated claims that an overload of vitamins, especially C, can cure or mitigate nearly any malady. Conditions that vitamins can’t impact, like ALS, would have never happened if the orange juice regimen had started earlier. Pauling has many fans in the alternative medicine crowd and, lacking any legitimate research to support his idiosyncratic position, they will point to his elite honor in an unrelated field for support.

Another big one is false balance. There are tens of thousands of peer-reviewed papers on evolution in geology, anthropology, and biology journals. This compares with zero such papers on creationism. Yet when pushing for creationism in public school biology class, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal asked scientists, “What are you afraid of,” as if he were merely calling for reasonable presentation of two equally valid positions.

So whenever there is something like a Bill Nye-Ken Ham debate, it is one-against-one and this can portray a false balance between the two ideas. Yet Ham admitted that no amount of evidence would change his mind, so there was no genuine give-and-take like one might see in a debate on specifics of the tax code.

We also see the false balance card played with regard to climate change. An opinion page might feature someone arguing for AGW, and another against it, and this might create the impression of the ideas having equal weight. But based on the papers published in peer-reviewed climate change journals in recent years, the true numbers would have maybe 15 column inches for the denial camp and an encyclopedia-sized publication for the other side, representing the 99.8 percent of peer-reviewed papers that have been published this decade.

There is also playing up a conspiracy angle. The most widespread conspiracy comes courtesy the Flat Earthers, who have concocted a cover-up that brings together North and South Korea, Iran and Israel, and India and Pakistan. Also in on the plot are every satellite manufacturer, airline employee, astronaut, and ulta-high altitude jumper Felix Baumgartner. While NASA is often cited as the central evil figure, this conspiracy would have to precede the agency by more that two millennium, to at least Eratosthenes in the Third Century BCE. It then continued through ancient Greece and Rome, onto circumnavigation by Ferdinand Magellan’s crew, and then the Foucault Pendulum.

Rather than questioning the mounds of peer-reviewed science supporting evolution or climate change, deniers level charges of “religious zealotry” at the researchers and their supporters. We see the same strategy by those opposed to GMOs or vaccines. Pointing out that genetic modification saved the Hawaiian papaya, that insulin is a GMO, or that genetic modification transfers no more than four genes compared to thousands in traditional breeding, will be answered with an evidence-free assertion that the poster is an industry plant. Beyond being a wild conspiracy theory, the shill accusation is also an irrelevant ad hominem. If the person were being clandestinely paid to post the previous information, that has no bearing on its accuracy. Similarly, a pro-vaxxer noting the difference between mortality and morbidity might be answered with, “You’ve been blinded by government and Big Pharma propaganda.”

In a local example last year, WQAD meteorologist Kevin Sorenson explained the science behind airplane exhaust and pointed out this makes for harmless contrails, not mind-bending government poison. Without bothering to counter his science, detractors fantasized about the day “coming soon” when he and his children would die a horrible death from airborne chemical warfare.

Then we have cherry picking, which involves plucking a tiny piece of informational fruit and ignoring the rest of the tree. For instance, a favorite of climate change deniers is a chart showing that global warming peaked in 1998 and that average global temperature today is no more than it was then. But that’s because of an unusually strong el Niño that year. A graph starting in 1997, 1999, 2007, 1957, or 1857 would show a clear warming trend.

Another example comes from incompletely quoting Darwin when he wrote, “To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.”

Some creationists stop the quote there, but Darwin spends the subsequent sentences explaining why the apparent absurdity is grounded in reality. He continues, “Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory.”

Yet another tactic is to sow doubt on the research by casting aspersions on the researcher. University of Florida horticulturist Kevin Folta has been the focus of much venom from anti-GMO camps. The university has received thousands of FOIA requests to turn over all his work-related correspondence. There is no reason to suspect wrong-doing, it is done so that a time consuming process will keep Folta from his work as a food science researcher. Folta’s employer has also been the subject of a telephone and e-mail campaign to fire him. This demand stems from a claim he was secretly on the Monsanto payroll. In truth, all he had done was speak at one seminar the company partially sponsored. He spoke as the independent researcher he is and was not compensated one penny by Monsanto. Undaunted by these facts, one vigilante group went so far as to make his wife’s usual bicycle route available online.

For all the time and effort his detractors put into this harassment campaign, they have never questioned his science. After his public presentations, he holds a question-and-answer session and patiently stays until every query is fielded. Yet his critics don’t show up at these, they only attempt to destroy the person.

Similarly, Dr. Paul Offitt engenders homicidal rage among anti-vaxxers (I’m not exaggerating, I’ve seen online posts yearning for his death-by-stabbing). Neil Tyson and Brian Cox are the bane of Flat Earthers and geocentrists, who call them all manner of names yet can never direct this energy into a scientific method study or peer-reviewed submission stating their case. Climate change papers are dismissed with “follow the money,” while the authors are labeled government payroll whores, even though some are employed by private industry. Meanwhile, Darwin rates just below Satan and Judas in the hierarchy of a fundamentalist’s most reviled entities.

Yet another trick is to selectively highlight science they think offers support for their position. One of the more frequent manifestations is when creationist argues that evolution would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. But while the Law states that total entropy will increase over time, this only applies to a closed system. I strongly suspect that most making this claim couldn’t tell you what the First or Third Laws are, and that they only heard the Second and its subsequent creationist talking point from a fellow believer.

Similar tactics are utilized by anti-vaxxers and alternative medicine proponents, prompting Steven Novella to quip that these groups use science in the way a drunk uses a lamppost: For support, not illumination.

Then we have moving the goalposts, where when a challenge is met, rather than conceding the point, a further challenge is issued. When On the Origin of Species was first published, detractors flatly denied evolution. Then it came to be observed both in nature and in a petri dish. Rather than acknowledge that this confirmed Darwin’s ideas, deniers insisted that biologists were observing only incremental change and that the animal was merely adapting and becoming more efficient, but that a series of such changes would never lead to another animal a million generations later. In all this, they failed to explain what would constitute speciation.

Based on the geologic column, comparative anatomy, and DNA, scientists might conclude that one fossil is a precursor of bears and that another species found much deeper in the column is a still earlier ancestor. Creationists, while offering no support for the position, will insist these two fossils are unrelated creatures whose similar anatomical features and placement in the geologic column are coincidental. They will then issue a challenge that an intermediate species between the two be found.

When this is produced, it is claimed that this is not a middle-stage animal, but rather just a distinct third species, again with coincidental geologic column placement. The goalpost is moved yet again and another challenge is made to find a species between this latest middle find and the two between it.

The biggest comeback to such challenges was the discovery of Tiktaalik. It had features of both fish and the four-legged tetrapods. It had fins, scales, and gills like fish, but also flat head and body, and eyes on the top of its skull, like a crocodile. Unlike fish, it had a functional neck, and had ribs resembling those of early tetrapods. There were various creationist reactions to this major find, but none of them were, “Yep, you’ve met all the requirements we’ve asked for. This is the final piece, evolution has been proven.”

Another tactic is to think that casting doubt on one mechanism of a field can invalidate the field in totality. Of course, the questioning of that mechanism is often in error. They might ask, “If man came from chimps, why are there still chimps?” This expresses a fundamental misunderstanding of the evolutionary tenet that man and the apes share a common ancestor.

Or they may credit improved sanitation for the decline in disease rates, ignoring that this would have no impact on airborne illnesses or realizing that countries with horrible sanitation, like India, still show dramatic reduction in disease following widespread vaccination.

Then we have a flat Earth meme showing a wet, spinning tennis ball with the water shooting off from it and saying this shows what would happen if Earth were likewise a rotating spheroid. They are blissfully unaware that the gravity which helps draw the water from the tennis ball is the same force confining ocean water to Earth.

This more detailed explanation was provided by an anonymous Reddit poster: “Rotation isn’t measured in miles per hour, but in Revolutions per Minute. The Revolution of Earth is per day, there are 1,440 minutes in a day, so the RPM is about one-seven ten thousandths. By contrast, a spinning tennis ball is going much faster. The ball is unable to generate enough of its gravity to capture and hold anything including water. The water in the meme is also inside the gravitational forces of a planet which also overpower the ball. The ball lacks sufficient mass to counter centripetal force of the spin applied.”

Still another anti-science strategy is the manufactroversy. One of the more prominent examples is Climategate, where a hacker broke into the University of East Anglia to copy thousands of computer files and e-mails.

Most of the e-mails delved into the minutiae of climate research and analysis, or offered details of conferences. The manufactroversy focused on a small number of e-mails, such as one in which climate scientist Kevin Trenberth wrote, “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” This was part of a discussion on the need for better monitoring of the energy flows involved in short-term climate variability, but was presented by deniers as proof that all climate scientists were perpetrating a broad hoax.

The most frequently-recited Climategate quote came from a Phil Jones e-mail. He related using “Mike’s Nature trick” in a 1999 graph for the World Meteorological Organization “to hide the decline” in proxy temperatures derived from tree ring analyses, even though measured temperatures were rising. In mathematics, a ‘trick’ refers to a way of dealing problem, and ‘decline’ here referred to the tree ring divergence problem. But these meanings were twisted and the scientists were presented as conspirators, even though these accusations were made during the warmest year on record.

Another tactic is to compare themselves with Einstein, Newton, or Galileo (though geocentrists avoid this one). The idea is that they are being opposed for their maverick thinking and that scientists are scared of having their pet positions founder. Yet science reserves its greatest accolades and awards for those who disprove conventional wisdom. If the purveyors of cold fusion, perpetual motion machines, and q-ray bracelets successfully made their cases through the employment of the Scientific Method and peer review, they would likewise be lauded.

Finally, scientists, being Homo sapiens, sometimes make mistakes. Carl Sagan famously said of science, “If you’re not making mistakes, you’re doing it wrong. If you keep making the same mistakes, you’re really doing it wrong. And if you don’t admit they’re mistakes, you’re not doing science.” But anti-science type see this as evidence of institutional incompetence rather than trial-and-error.

Medicine has moved on from trepanation and leeches, whereas Reiki is done the same now as when it began in 1922. Science uncovered the Piltdown Man hoax and owned up the errors in Nebraska Man and adjusted its thinking accordingly. Yet Nebraska Man is still presented by creationists as evidence of evolution being in error, as if one corrected mistake by one anthropologist negates the entire biology field.