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“To shining C” (Vitamin cures)

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We should usually defer to experts in their fields. If 99 percent of mechanics tell me my fuel injector needs fixed, I should have them undertake this repair. I should not seek that one outlier because I think the rest are beholden to Big Auto or because an online echo chamber convinced me my injector just needs sprinkled with a mix of high-octane gasoline and wheat grass.

But this deference only applies when persons are speaking to their areas of expertise. If 99 percent of those mechanics recommended investing in a certain equity fund, that suggestion would be much less persuasive. Following this advice would be committing the Appeal to Authority fallacy, which occurs when someone treats a person’s authority in an unrelated field as validation of something they believe in.

The website “Logically Fallacious” used the example of citing the Pope as proof that bread and wine turns into the body and blood of Christ when placed in a parishioner’s mouth. The Pope is an expert on matters related to the Catholic Church, but that doesn’t mean me knows anything special about chemistry, especially concerning an untested concept that would be at work were there any truth to transubstantiation.

Perhaps the most widespread case of this fallacy is the notion that Vitamin C will prevent or cure colds. This is based on a pronouncement by Linus Pauling, a world class chemist who won the Nobel Prize in 1954. He also did pioneering work in molecular biology and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962, making him one of only two persons to win a Nobel in two categories. New Scientist listed his as one of the top 20 scientists of all time.

When he touted the benefits of Vitamin C for fending off colds, believers presented these credentials as evidence for his position. But by venturing into anatomy & physiology, Pauling was going beyond his area of expertise. There’s nothing wrong with that, but support for his position needs to be based on the evidence for it, not on the fact that he won Nobel Prizes in unrelated fields.

Pauling exhibited two traits common to alternative medicine proponents: Subjective validation and an emphasis on anecdotes. After he was diagnosed with Bright’s disease, he began following a low-protein, no-salt diet augmented with vitamin supplements. He felt better after doing so, but rather than calling for this to be investigated via the Scientific Method he had used so successfully in his career, he announced that mega-vitamin therapy could cure sickness. Pauling’s observation that he felt better would have been a fine starting point – observation is the first step in the Scientific Method. But Pauling jumped straight to asserting the existence of a new field, “orthomolecular medicine.” This is the idea that varying the concentration of substances in the body can prevent and treat disease.

Dr. Paul Offit, one of the country’s foremost pediatricians, said Pauling’s unsubstantiated assertions, combined with his exalted position, made him “arguably the world’s greatest quack.”

Pauling earned this label with such positions that heart disease patients should forsake prescription drugs and surgery for lysine and vitamin C. While starting with colds, he continually expanded his list of illnesses he believed could be influenced by orthomolecular therapy and even suggested it could treat mental conditions. Quack quack.

While he published some studies that seemed to support his views, other scientists were unable to replicate them. Two of his studies centered on groups of 100 allegedly terminal cancer patients, with a claimed result that vitamin C overloads had increased survival as much as fourfold. A re-evaluation of this claim showed that the two groups were not comparable since the group plied with mega-doses of vitamin C was healthier when the study began.

This is typical of the findings that research Pauling’s claims. In an interview with NPR, endocrinologist Marvin Lipman, said, “There have been at least 20 well-controlled studies on the use of mega doses of vitamin C in the prevention of colds, treating the duration of colds, and treating the severity of colds, and in none has there been any good evidence that vitamin C in mega doses does anything.”

There are no properly-conducted clinical trials that suggest vitamin C will prevent a mild affliction like hay fever, a serious condition like cancer, or any malady in between. Some persons think that since some Vitamin C is good, lots of it must be great. But some studies suggest a small amount of beer can have health benefits and that’s no reason to suspect that three cases a week would therefore be extra beneficial.

With regard to Pauling’s cancer hypothesis, the Mayo Clinic conducted three double-blind studies involving a total of 367 patients in late stages of the disease. The studies found that giving patients 10,000 milligrams of vitamin C was no more effective than a placebo.

Pauling himself took between 12,000 to 40,000 milligrams every day before dying of, you guessed it, cancer. His ad hoc reasoning for this intensely personal failure of his hypothesis was that he would have gotten the disease earlier without the vitamin C overdose. This thinking means proponents always have an out. If no cancer develops, the treatment worked. If cancer does not develop, the patient failed to take enough of the cure.

Of course, vitamin C is still vital to good health. And because people are unable to synthesize it endogenously, we need to get it from outside sources. Fruits are better for this than supplements because our bodies absorb vitamins from food more efficiently. I know this because my mechanic told me.

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“Judgement daze” (Prophecy News Watch)

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Post hoc reasoning occurs when a person wrongly assumes that because two events happened in succession, one caused the other. This is fallacious thinking because it fails to consider other factors that might be involved. Post hoc reasoning is common in alternative medicine because of the fluctuating nature of many pains and illnesses, and because persons are more apt to try unorthodox methods when the discomfort is peaking. That’s why reflexology, Reiki, and aura cleansings have plenty of glowing testimonials but no double blind studies or control trials to support these anecdotes. Post hoc reasoning is also regularly employed by horoscope readers and ghost hunters.

But the most extreme example I’ve come across is from prophecynewswatch.com. This website focuses on U.S.-Israeli relations, most often in the form of dire warnings of what will befall America if it betrays its Middle Eastern ally. After the U.S. declined to use its UN veto on Security Resolution 2334 on Dec. 23, the website posted a story headlined, “10 previous times America faced major disaster after attempting to divide Israel.”

Whether the U.S. had tried to divide Israel in these instances is debatable, but our focus here is on the claim that such actions led to American harm. We will go over a few examples and the entire list is here if you are hard-up to kill some time.

The ominous article wastes little time in getting to the post hoc reasoning. In the third sentence, author Michael Snyder warned, “Over the past several decades, whenever the U.S. government has taken a major step toward the division of the land of Israel it has resulted in a major disaster hitting the United States.”

Besides post hoc reasoning, this is also example of subjective validation, which is when something that is routine seems profound because it has personal meaning. Also at work is selective memory. Snyder thinks the U.S. has betrayed Israel, so he will be looking for signs that Yahweh’s wrath has been unleashed, and he will remember it if he thinks this has happened. But he will not remember instances where the wrath is seemingly withheld, nor times where wrath was seemingly leveled without a recent rift in U.S.-Israel relations. For example, there was no anti-Israel activity in the days immediately preceding Space Shuttle explosions, the Beirut barracks bombing, the King and Kennedy assassinations, or 9/11.

As to the disasters that did befall the U.S. for being insufficiently obsequious to Israel, here is some of Snyder’s list:

  1. January 16, 1994. President Clinton met with President Assad of Syria to discuss the possibility of Israel giving up the Golan Heights. Within 24 hours, the devastating Northridge earthquake hit southern California.
  2. January 21, 1998. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived at the White House but received a very cold reception. President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright refused to have lunch with him. That same day the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, sending the Clinton presidency into a tailspin from which it would never recover.
  3. September 28, 1998. Albright was working on finalizing a plan which would have had Israel give up approximately 13 percent of Judea and Samaria. On that day, Hurricane George slammed into the Gulf Coast with wind gusts of up to 175 miles an hour.
  4. May 19, 2011. Barack Obama told Israel that there must be a return to the pre-1967 borders. Three days later, an EF-5 tornado ripped through Joplin, Mo.

California earthquakes, Midwest tornadoes, and Gulf Coast hurricanes occur every year and require no invoking of the supernatural. They are explicable through what we know about meteorology and geology. And Clinton survived the Lewinsky scandal to serve out his second term, and while the revelation might have been a personal embarrassment, it was not a national disaster. This, however, is a minor point. The main point is that Snyder offered no evidence that any of these incidents were the result of foreign policy or of being an ungracious dinner host.

To demonstrate how fallacious his thinking is, let’s look at some times where the U.S. worked to benefit Israel, only to befall disaster shortly thereafter.

On May 14, 1948, the U.S. became the first country to recognize Israel. Later that month, the Columbia River dike broke, killing 15 persons and leaving thousands homeless in Vanport, Ore.

The U.S. supported Israel during the Six Day War from June 5-10. 1967. Less than two weeks later, a Mohawk Air Flight plane crashed in New York, killing 34.

The Nixon Administration provided massive resupply support to Israel in the Yom Kippur War from Oct. 6-25, 1973. On Oct. 10 of that year, Spiro Agnew resigned. A few days later, Nixon ordered the firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox. This led to the first calls for his impeachment and eventually doomed his presidency.

Writing about the recent veto declination, Snyder noted the president had previously used it and the U.S. benefited. “When Barack Obama blocked a similar resolution that France wanted to submit for a vote in September 2015, it resulted in America being blessed, and we definitely have been blessed over the past 16 months,” he asserted, conspicuously lacking to give even one example.

The 16 months in question featured the Pulse Nightclub massacre, the Flint water crisis, 13 dead in a California tour bus crash, multiple innocent civilians killed by police, and eight innocent officers killed in retaliation. There was also Hurricane Matthew, which killed 26 Americans. Two hurricanes made the author’s list of times the U.S. suffered for forsaking Israel, yet one also occurred during a time he said we were being blessed for adequate kowtowing.

Snyder also ignores when good fortune occurs in the wake of abandoning Israel. His list included Oct. 30, 1991, when Bush the Elder opened the Madrid Peace Conference, bringing Israelis and Palestinians together for negotiations. Snyder noted this was followed by the “1991 Perfect Storm” which killed 13 people and slammed waves into Bush’s Kennebunkport home.

However, the rest of 1991 also brought Terry Anderson’s release, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, indictments of two Pan Am Flight 103 bombing conspirators, and David Duke’s gubernatorial race defeat.

Snyder is so determined to cram disasters into his narrative that he ascribes Hurricane Andrew making landfall to the Madrid Peace Conference being moved to Washington, D.C., the day prior. However, this move came after weather forecasters had already said Andrew was barreling toward Florida.

Snyder closes by writing, “Barack Obama has cursed Israel by stabbing them in the back at the United Nations. According to the Word of God we should be cursed as a nation as a result. And as surely as I am writing this article, we will be cursed.”

I too can prophesize and according to the Scroll of Skepticism, Snyder will count the next unrelated disaster as fulfillment of his prediction. 

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“Water haphazard” (Fluoridation studies)


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In the mid-1940s, some U.S. cities began adding tiny amounts of fluoride to public water supplies in hopes of fighting tooth decay. John Birch types suspected this was a communist plot and some eventually considered it a danger right up there with Buddy Holly and A Catcher in the Rye (although the Society itself only formally objected to the concept of governments making unilateral health decisions for the populace).

These days, Nazis have replaced Commies as the oppressive regime most associated with fluoridated water. There are some baseless online assertions that it was used in death camps to make the captives either compliant or stupid. Politifact interviewed U.S. Holocaust Museum historian Patricia Heberer, who insisted that none of the Nazi’s infamous medical experiments involved fluoride. Even if they had, it would be fallacious thinking to declare, “Nazis were evil. Nazis used fluoridated water. Therefore fluoridated water is evil.” The specific fallacy here is one of composition, where it is asserted that something that is true as a whole is true of any part of it.   

About 75 percent of U.S. homes today receive fluoridated water. I’m unsure what Minnesota’s policy was in the late 1990s, but fluoridated water there had a powerful opponent at the time, Gov. Jesse Ventura. In an interview with Salon, Ventura gave the  obligatory Third Reich reference, followed by a more reasoned stance about health care decisions being left to the parents, before getting to his primary point. “Fluoride is the main component of Prozac! What you’ve got is people drinking Prozac-water! Prozac calms you and dumbs you down so you’re less emotional.” With a rant like that, we can be sure Ventura hadn’t had any Prozac water beforehand. But equating one ingredient in a substance with the substance itself would be like calling Ventura a glass of water since his body is about two-thirds that.  

When Politifact contacted Ventura about his source for these claims, he provided them a link to prisonplanet.com, an Alex Jones site. Jones calls fluoridated water a chemical weapon meant to depopulate, which if true serves as a shining example of government inefficiency. Since this genocide-by-faucet effort began 70 years ago, the U.S. population has increased 130 percent.

Another fluoride folly from Jones is claiming that studies have shown that fluoridated water brings downs children’s IQ. Joseph Mercola and Mike Adams have also championed this idea, which they based on a press release distributed by Fluoride Action Now. Reuters mistakenly ran the release as a news article, thus spooking more people than if it had just appeared on Natural News or InfoWars. The release claimed that a Harvard review of 42 studies showed that U.S. children exposed to fluoridated drinking water suffered lower IQs. But going beyond the exclamation points and panic over stealthy mind control, we find the review made no such claim. In fact, none of the studies were about U.S. fluoridated water.

Mercola wrote that the studies linked moderate-to-high high fluoride exposure with reduced intelligence. These conclusions were likely correct, but Mercola is playing a word game here and hoping no one notices. He used these studies to bolster his contention that fluoridated water was a danger. Yet the amount of fluoride in most U.S. drinking water is between one-half and one milligram per liter, while the studies Mercola cited were dealing with persons exposed to between 2 to 10 milligrams per liter and who also ingested fluoride from burning coal.  

So while the studies showed that children who lived in areas with high fluoride exposure had lower IQ scores than those who lived in low-exposure areas, scale and context must be considered. With regard to scale, Dr. Steven Novella said: “Most of these studies’ high-fluoride groups used concentrations many times higher than allowable limits in the United States, and many of the low-fluoride groups had concentrations in the range that is optimal by water fluoridation regulations.” This means the negative IQ impact occurred only in areas where fluoride levels were much higher than what the EPA permits.  

As far as context, none of the studies involved populations exposed to artificially-fluoridated drinking water. Instead, all the studies came from parts of China or Iran that have endemic high-fluoride well water, in addition to the burning coal.

Many chemicals are benign at low doses, harmful at medium amounts, and fatal in high concentrations. The same Mercola website that called fluoridated water a danger to children ran an article that referred to kale as “a superfood unparalleled among green leafy vegetables.”

Yet Snopes pointed out that kale contains thiocyanate, which can kill if ingested in sufficient quantities. It would be absurd to suggest that kale could kill, but no more ridiculous than asserting fluoridated water is a public health menace. To the contrary, the CDC lists it as one of the 10 Great Public Health Achievements of the 20th Century. Drink it, brush your teeth with it, wash your kale off with it, you’ll be fine.

 

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“Bedeviled Ham” (Creationist anti-psychiatry)

'You say you have a horrible sense of doom and futility? Let's explore where that might be coming from.'Answers in Genesis marked its 23rd anniversary last week by listing its all-time accomplishments, which blogger Hemant Mehta noted included no contributions to our understanding of the natural world, no discoveries that advanced science, and no papers published in peer reviewed journals.

While giving nothing to science, AIG founder Ken Ham has given himself some name recognition, first through a “museum” that features humans and dinosaurs interacting, a depiction that misses the mark by 150 million years. Next, he built a park dedicated to the notion that at least two of every creature and their 15-month stock of food, water, and veterinary supplies fit on a boat, where the sanitation, plumbing, maintenance, and curation was managed by eight people. There was also a debate with Bill Nye in which Ham said no science or evidence would ever convince him these ideas were mistaken.

But while Ham is most identified with these creationist credentials, he has a less-known dogma that is far more dangerous if adhered to by the wrong person. For he endorses an extreme anti-psychiatry position that calls for all secular therapy to be supplanted by prayer and Bible study. He is not merely encouraging people to worship, he is saying those with significant mental issues should never seek help outside the church. He declares the Bible the supreme authority on mental issues even though its final chapter was written 1,600 years before the beginning of meaningful psychiatric care.

This position is the result of presuppositionalism, a belief which insists the Bible alone can explain logic, morals, science, reasoning, consciousness, and any other significant  area of life. It rejects any ideas that come from secularism, other religions, liberal or moderate Christianity, and some conservative branches. It is an extreme form of Christian apologetics, as well as being an extreme example of circular reasoning and the genetic fallacy. It allows proponents to claim victory or reject any argument simply because of who made it, and by invoking their interpretation of a specific Bible version.

Ham, along with AIG cohort Ernie Baker and Tempe, Ariz., preacher Steven Anderson are some of the more outspoken anti-psychiatry creationists. Their belief in absolute free will causes them to reject the concept that brain science and neurological processes can be the cause of mental illness. Anderson has declared, “No Christian ought to be on psychiatric medication. Don’t go to a psychiatrist, go get some preaching.”

Any suffering must be the result of sin and rebellion against God, so Ham, Anderson, and Baker dismiss psychiatric treatment as inherently flawed since it is not focused on rejecting sinful nature. No outside factor can be said influence a person’s behavior. It takes the reasonable position of a person being responsible for their actions and twists it into a self-loathing that rejects the scientific evidence for psychiatric conditions. It equates seeking help outside the Bible with not holding one’s self accountable. Baker wrote, “We blame our problems on our experience, but we cannot adopt that view without turning everyone into a victim that fails to take responsibility.”

As Baker, Anderson, and Ham know little about the field beyond it being inherently evil, they regularly confuse and conflate psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists, and also misunderstand terms and definitions. They may call a disorder an illness or a syndrome a condition. They sometimes, by coincidence, criticize unproven and quack treatments, but lump these and genuine treatments under the same Satanic umbrella. Their knowledge is so scant they sometimes refer to the science and research behind psychiatric care as “a philosophy.”

Ham doesn’t normally address this issue publicly, leaving that to his lesser known but equally uncompromising brother, Steve. Steve portrays mental illnesses as matters that will be fixed with prayer, laying on of hands, and singing hymns. He rejects the totality of psychiatric research and the notion of psychiatric conditions because they are part of a “secular worldview.” This, of course, says nothing about the legitimacy of the field and is an unsound reason for dismissing evidence. 

The “secular worldview” ad hominem is one of AIG’s most regular features, and in this case is employed to gloss over the fact that there is no support for their claim that sin is responsible for Asperger’s, Munchausen’s, and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. They deny the role of chemical imbalances, unresolved traumas, and genetics in mental health issues, and insist the focus should be on resisting the devil. It is faith healing for psychiatric conditions and in the case of suicidal patients could be just as deadly as treating a congenital heart condition by starting a prayer chain. Conclusions about whether a treatment works depend on clinical trial results, not the Hams’ reading of the King James Version.

Steve Ham further claims that mental health professionals call sins disorders so they can dismiss personal responsibility. Let’s consider two examples. First, he  claims Intermittent Explosive Disorder gives cover to emotionally abusive parents. In reality, the Mayo Clinic identifies this disorder as repeated, aggressive, and violent behavior that is completely out of proportion with what is justified for the situation. Treating it requires therapy and medication, not just trying harder to embrace biblical mandates about being slow to anger.

Another example is Oppositional Defiant Disorder, which Ham claims is just another label for disobedient children. But the Mayo describes this disorder as behavior associated with functional impairment that lingers for at least six months, and which features frequent and consistent temper tantrums, resentment, and vindictiveness. It goes well beyond the occasional childhood hissy fit and is not merely the result of sparing the rod and spoiling the child.

Still, Ham claims such psychiatric conditions are “rooted in sinful thoughts and behaviors.” So skeptic blogger Emil Elafsson performed a PubMed search, looking for papers that referenced both psychiatric disorders and sin. The more than 20 million papers published returned no results. So when Ham makes such claims, he is supported by zero research or scientific validation. 

By contrast, consider one example of how psychiatry works, as cited by Elaffson. He highlighted a University of Maryland study that revealed the role of neurotransmitters in causing anxiety. Because of this research and clinical trials, scientists and psychiatrists know which medications would be effective in treating anxiety by targeting specific neurotransmitters. Rather than suggesting this medication, Ham would have the suffering patient pray about their sloth and seek forgiveness for gluttony. 

Meanwhile, Baker tried to describe mainstream treatments for mental conditions with this straw man: “One therapist diagnoses low self-esteem and says you need to feel better about yourself. Another explains that your brain chemicals are out of balance and the wiring needs help to fire properly. Yet another says that you have all the symptoms of repressed memories.”

In actuality, treatments of mental conditions are largely uniform, the result of the scientific progress that Baker and Ham criticize. Elfafsson pointed out that low self-esteem is not a psychiatric diagnosis and, at most, would be a symptom. Also, the notion of repressed memories has long been considered a pseudoscience and would not be suggested by a reputable psychiatrist. Baker continues his psychiatric devaluation with, “The Bible reveals the root of all human problems: sin’s effects on the soul.” Like Ham, he cites no studies affirming this, nor does he offer any mechanism for how this might be tested.

He attempts to dismiss the entire field by writing, “The secular psychologies do not allow for an inherent sin nature, so it is hard to imagine how they could stumble upon the right treatment.”  He accidentally got this one right. “Stumble upon” would indicate occurring by happenstance, so psychologists would indeed be unlikely to stumble upon a cure, which is the result of deliberating seeking it. This happens through clinical trials, research, publication, peer review, and discovering medications and treatments.

Baker asserted that the cause of mental issues is made clear in his interpretation of Genesis 1-3 and that the only cure is Jesus (who it should be noted is conspicuously missing from these chapters). But this solution would fail to account for the clinical trials, cognitive behavior therapy, and medications that have proven successful without invoking Middle Eastern messiahs. 

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“Yammer and nail” (Polish dangers)

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One day when I was seven, I painted my nails. My reason for doing so was that I was seven. It seemed harmless enough until I realized it wouldn’t just wipe off like mud or magic markers. I spent a few mortified days venturing outside only when necessary and, even then, with hands in pocket.

Were this to happen today, the dangers according to some would be more serious than embarrassment and self-imposed social withdrawal. There is hardly any area of life so trivial as to be immune from fear-mongering and pseudoscience and today we’ll look at how this applies to nail polish.

Most of this stems from the results of a study concocted conducted by the Environmental Working Group and Duke University. The finding highlighted for alarm was that within 12 hours of polish use, subjects experienced a six-fold increase in their bodies of an endocrine system disruptor.

This tidbit seems disturbing taken by itself. The endocrine system controls metabolism, growth, tissue function, reproduction, sleep, and mood, so screwing with it would seem a steep price for slapping on some Max Factor Glossfinity.

Seizing on this, Healthy Holistic Living fumed, “This is particularly harmful to the young girls who use nail polish regularly since healthy hormonal development is an essential part of their growth.”

They also drew attention to most polish containing formaldehyde and toluene, which they say can produce asthma and impede childhood development, respectively. Similarly, Joseph Mercola objected to the presence of dibutyl phthalate. He wrote, “This is known to cause lifelong reproductive impairments in male rats, and has been shown to damage the testes, prostate gland, epididymis, penis, and seminal vesicles in animals.”

But these are blanket statements that fail to consider the chemicals’ dose, concentration, form, or use. Mercola’s words are horrible news for male rodent test subjects exposed to large doses, but none of these criteria apply to your typical Claire’s shopper.

The most demonized chemical in the Environmental Working Group study was triphenyl phosphate (TPhP), which indeed can mess with someone’s endocrine system. However, this is only in large amounts, such as what was endured by zebrafish who were made to swim in water heavy with it during one experiment, or rats who were fed large amounts daily in another study.

More fear-mongering from Holistic Health Living came in the form of this ad populum: “In Europe, more than 1,300 chemicals are banned from personal care products, compared to the U.S. where just 11 are banned.” This is made to make readers think that their medicine cabinets and vanity tables are hazardous waste sites. But governments and regulatory agencies pass laws and impose regulation based on misinformation or corrupt lobbying all the time. Banning ingredients should be the result of experiments and double blind studies, not something done because everyone else is doing it.

The logical fallacy train rolls ahead with more chemophobia: “The average U.S. woman uses 12 personal care products or cosmetics a day, containing 168 different chemicals.” Chemicals are in literally everything and the idea that they are inherently dangerous is a folly that pseudoscientists and fear-mongers get away with because large swaths of the population are unfamiliar with basic chemistry. 

That’s how we end up with this quote from EWG Executive Director Heather White: “The conclusion is inescapable. Any girl who paints her nails stands a chance of coming into contact with a potential hormone disruptor. The federal laws meant to regulate toxic chemicals in cosmetics and other consumer products are broken.”

There are no toxic chemicals, as toxicity is determined by dosage. Some have higher thresholds than others, but the chemicals that pseudoscientists rail against are usually found in tiny doses in food and clothing, including those that tailored to the Natural News and David Avocado Wolfe crowds. 

Challenging White for most hyperbolic warning is Mercola, who freaks out thusly: “Chronic exposure to toluene is linked to anemia, lowered blood cell count, liver or kidney damage, and may affect a developing fetus.” This is true, but chronic exposure occurs when auto repair and construction workers use products containing concentrated toluene for days at a time without wearing a protective mask. It’s not happening when a tween tries Revlon hot pink for the first time. 

But people who read the likes of Mercoala don’t understand this. That’s why Deepak Chopra sidekick Kimberly Snyder goes unchallenged when she blogs, “Toluene is used to manufacture paints, rubber, gasoline, airplane glue, and shoe polish. I’m pretty sure people wouldn’t smear this all over their skin, but when you apply it as an ingredient in finger polish, that’s exactly what you’re doing! Effects include vertigo, coma, seizures, cerebral degeneration, decreased cognition, and blindness.” What good is that nifty new neon orange on your nails if you can’t see it?

The detractors’ primary accusation contains a grain of truth, as TPhP levels will rise sixfold in the body 12 hours after use. Left out of this is how minuscule the amount is even after this sextupling, and what happens after another 12 hours. 

Doug Schoon, author of Nail Structure and Product Chemistry, explained, “The test subjects’ urine before applying nail polish was 0.00000000097 grams per every milliliter of urine and 0.0000000063 grams per milliliter of urine after.” And this infinitesimal amount is absorbed, metabolized, and excreted within a day.

While TPhP is commonly employed as a fire retardant, Schoon said it is used in much smaller doses when incorporated in nail polish, where it is used to give the polish flexibility and make it easy to apply. 

“They suggest that furniture fire retardant was added to nail polish, but that’s not accurate,” he said. “TPhP is used at 20 times the typical concentrations found in nail polish when used as a flame retardant. When used in nail polish, TPhP is a softening agent or plasticizer, not a flame retardant.”

Another scary tale was spread by veteran chemophobe Food Babe, who targeted D&C nail polish for including ingredients derived from coal tar. This is technically correct but outrageously incomplete. The derived product is added to other chemicals, changing its molecular structure and properties. The resulting product is then tested by the company for safety and subjected to FDA approval. But Food Babe knows her scientifically-challenged audience will interpret her words to think they are smearing coal tar on themselves. Bad Science Debunked pointed out the nail polish Food Babe sells contains the same extract she terrifies her customers with, but the focus here is on her claims rather than her hypocrisy, so let’s look at what she said.

She conducted an “experiment” in which she applied her nail polish and some D&C to a Styrofoam plate. The rival’s polish ate through the plate while Food Babe’s did not. She gleefully held up both plates, satisfied that she had Nailed It, so to speak.

But this happened because most nail polishes, including D&C, have a solvent that helps keep the polish in liquid form until is applied. Once it is put on, the solvent evaporates, leaving a solid film of color on the nails. Food Babe’s polish does not contain this solvent, which probably makes for a less efficient polish and certainly does nothing for safety.

Styrofoam is 95 percent air and a small amount of a polymer called polystyrene. The plates have little substance to begin with and polystyrene is soluble in nail polish solvents. This allows the solvents to dissolve the polystyrene strands and for air to escape. Therefore, the result of this experiment is not the “melting” that Food Babe described. The only thing it proved was that if one had the bizarre inclination to apply most nail polish to Styrofoam plates, the results would be deleterious. But it is safe to apply it to nails, as they are not mass-produced temporary dishware.

By the way, after about a week I was able to find some nail polish remover at my grandmother’s house and end my gender bender ordeal. I could once again play hide-and-seek without fear of ridicule. Then again, Snyder said the remover left me vulnerable to kidney failure.

 

 

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“Cornflakes” (Séralini GMO study)

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I understand how a person could be misled by the contents of an inaccurate TV news health segment or a Friend’s Facebook link. There are many demands on our time and society offers information in quickly-digested nuggets.

That’s part of the explanation for how long-discredited ideas can refuse to be extinguished. Even when an idea if publicly and repeatedly refuted, such an Andrew Wakefield’s vaccine-autism link, the claim can still find life in extremist circles. Another example still making the rounds is a study in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology by molecular biologist Gilles-Eric Séralini. He concluded there was a clear link between consumption of genetically modified corn and cancer in rats.

If one only had time to a glance at the headline or to skim a few paragraphs from an article, a person might well believe this. Compounding the problem is that such stories aren’t always limited to unscientific sources like Joseph Mercola, Food Babe, and Modern Alternative Mama. The mainstream press can also be taken in, the result of both a race for readers and a scientific illiteracy among journalists that is a microcosm of the culture.

As to the specifics of Séralini’s study, he used 100 male and 100 female rats that were divided into groups. Some were fed various amounts of GMO corn, either zero, 11, 22, or 33 percent of their diet, with the rest of their food being standard lab rat fare. Another group was fed GMO corn plus had RoundUp added to their water. Séralini’s study was redacted after heavy criticism from regulatory agencies and scientific bodies, then republished by Environmental Sciences Europe even though no further review of it had been done.

When Séralini announced his findings, he sent a press release that contained an unusual stipulation. Reporters could only see the study if they agreed to not confer with other scientists until this embargo was lifted. This preempted any criticism and eliminated any chance of balanced treatment. This was a red flag with an especially strong scarlet hue. Someone doing genuine science seeks scrutiny, not security.

Augmenting this strange request were shouts of alarm from the researcher, which is almost always a giveaway that the findings are based on an agenda, not analysis. Séralini also released a book and documentary in conjunction with the press conference, two more suggestions that his motivations were name recognition and financial gain.

At the conference, Séralini also circulated photos of treated rats with large tumors. As Science Based Medicine pointed out, “It is standard practice in such studies to establish an endpoint, such as tumor number and size, at which point the animal will be euthanized.” SBM suspects Séralini allowed the tumors to grow in order “to have the intended effect on public opinion.”

Of course, one could self-promote, make a buck, and even treat animals unethically and still produce sound results. It would be a genetic fallacy to dismiss Séralini’s findings only because of the source and its sense of self-importance. Rather, we must look at the substance. And in so doing, we find several problems with the study. Dr. Steven Novella highlighted some of these, which include:

  1. The strain of rats that were used are highly susceptible to tumors and are likely to produce a false positive.
  2. There were only 20 rats in the control group, just one-fourth as many as were in exposed groups.
  3. Séralini’s data reported that “some” of the test groups had a higher tumor incidence. This cherry picking is usually done by biased sources scouring a report, not by an impartial researcher announcing it.
  4. Rats fed GM corn had the same negative effects as those who drank water with RoundUp added. It is very unlikely that two vastly different items like GM corn and RoundUp-laced water would have the same effect, and this is a strong indication of a false positive.
  5. There was no dose-response mentioned, a glaring omission when looking for a toxic effect. The dose–response describes the change in effect on an organism  caused by differing levels of exposure. In fact, there did not seem to be the connection Séralini asserted since rats that ate 11 percent GM corn developed more tumors than did those rats who were fed 33 percent GM corn.
  6. Researchers did not control for the amount of food consumed, a huge error since excess consumption of any food can increase tumors in this type of rat.

Because of such deficiencies, the article was redacted. Anti-GMO groups were quick to insist this was a cover-up, but peer review is about more than releasing information, it is also about further testing and investigation.

Novella also noted the issue with publishing preliminary research. Studies such as Séralini’s should only be meant to be an indicator of what further research may confirm. Most journalists won’t understand the difference between a preliminary research finding and a confirmatory one. Throw into the mix an emotional issue and an embargo to prevent balance and one arrives at this headline from a French newspaper: “Yes, GMOs are poison!”

But let’s examine what the newspaper would have found if it had dug deeper and performed real journalism. For starters, the Sprague-Dawley strain of rats Séralini used have a two-year lifespan and are always at high risk of cancer. Three out of four of these rats develop cancer under normal conditions, and this study covered the normal lifespan for this strain.

Second, even if Seralini’s findings resulted from sound research, they would be an outlier. Scientists at the University of Nottingham reviewed 24 long-term studies and found that none of them concluded that consuming GM foods put rats at increased risk. Anti-GMO groups highlighting Séralini’s result is what science journalist Andrew Revkin dubbed the “single-study syndrome,” where anomalous results are heralded if they fit the desired narrative.

The response from the anti-GMO, pro-Séralini camps consisted almost entirely of logical fallacies. Pop quiz time, critical thinkers. See if you can identify the fallacy used in these instances:

  1. Gmoseralini.com answered attacks on the methodology by writing, “Many of the charges that have been made against the Seralini study could be leveled against the studies that have been used to approve GM crops.”
  2. Seralini responded that 75 percent of the scientists who criticized his work were working on GMO patents or for Monsanto.
  3. From GM Watch: “The decision to retract the paper followed the journal’s hiring of a former Monsanto scientist to its staff.”

The following are from Holistic Health Living:

  1. “If we are to accept the argument that Séralini’s study does not provide substantial evidence that genetically modified food is dangerous, then we must also conclude that the short-term toxicity studies funded by the agriculture industry on GM foods cannot prove that they are safe.”
  2. “It would be nice to believe that Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson would never accept money from biotech to change their opinion. But both of them visited Monsanto’s headquarters, and both of them began singing GMO’s praises immediately after that. Thankfully, not every scientist is for sale.”
  3. “Many countries all over the world ban the cultivation of GMOs, and many countries mandate that GMOs be labeled.”
  4. “Health problems are rising along with increased GMO consumption.”

Answers:

  1. Tu quoque, or the Appeal to Hypocrisy. Even if studies that arrived at pro-GM conclusions used faulty methods, this does nothing to advance the notion that Séralini used proper protocols.
  2. Ad hominem. Extra points if you identified as a specific type, the genetic fallacy. Séralini’s accusation is almost certainly untrue, but even if accurate, would be irrelevant to the legitimacy of the scientists’ criticisms.
  3. This is also an ad hominem and genetic fallacy since the focus is not on the challenge but on the person making it. This type of genetic fallacy is so common in the GMO debate that some skeptics put this subcategory its own subcategory, the Monsanto Shill Gambit. This is employed even when the person has no connection to the company.
  4. False Equivalence. Seralini’s faulty methods were outlined above and trying to throw all GM studies into the same category is nonsensical.
  5. Another ad hominem, specifically the Monsanto Shill Gambit again. Being unable to refute what Nye and Tyson have said about GMOs, they must resort to attacking the persons and fabricating a say-for-pay relationship.
  6. Ad populum. How many countries have done anything says nothing about whether it’s good or bad. An action’s legality is often unrelated to its fitness. Lunch counter protestors were criminals and SS members were enforcing the law. There are only two countries where women are a majority of the legislators, while nearly 40 percent of the nations punish blasphemy and extramarital relations. Applying the anti-GMO logic in these cases, we should only vote for men who endorse sodomy and apostasy legislation.
  7. Post hoc reasoning. Health problems are rising mostly because people are living long enough to experience them, thanks to scientific advances. Skeptical Raptor pointed out, “There are precious few ways to prevent cancer and avoiding GMOs is not one of them. “

Séralini was afforded the chance to publicly defend his research in a debate with University of Florida horticulturist Kevin Folta, but he withdrew two weeks before the event on the flimsy pretense that Folta was not a toxicologist. That is another example of committing a genetic fallacy, though mostly it’s just being a wuss.

 

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“Skull hypothesis” (Paracas skulls)

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A large set of skulls that look like they could have belonged to the Saturday Night Live coneheads was found several decades ago in South America. There are three competing versions for their origin, one each for fans of Cosmos, Ancient Aliens, and Benny Hinn.

The isthmus of common ground between the three camps is that Peruvian archaeologist Julio Tello discovered a few hundred mummies in the Paracas region in 1928. Fascinating as archeology can be, it usually holds little interest among non-practitioners, but these finds attracted more notice because of the greatly elongated skulls of some of the mummies. Anthropologist and geneticist Jennifer Raff explained that “many ancient societies in North and South America practiced cultural modification to the crania of their infants, resulting in distinctive skull shapes in the adult population.”

There is strong historical and archeological evidence for this, but about 80 years after the find, some creative explanations were finagled. One claimed that the skulls did not belong to homo sapiens but rather to alien-human hybrids. An alternate position to this alternate position was that the skulls were instead a confirmation of a few cryptic lines in the Old Testament.

Arguing for the hybrid angle, David Childress and Brien Foerster wrote the cumbersome-titled The Enigma of Cranial Deformation: Elongated Skulls of the Ancients. They suggested the skulls came from a highly-distinctive breed of creatures, a position they based mostly on a statement from 19th Century physician John James von Tschudi. He is quoted as saying he had seen a third-trimester fetus with a head as long as an adult’s.

But archeology blogger Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews investigated this and discovered this to be the result of either confusion or obfuscation on the authors’ part. The quoted doctor was referring to a cranium whose enlargement was much less pronounced than the mummified skulls that Tello unearthed. Tschudi was trying to find evidence for his hypothesis that there was a lost Andean people whose distinctions included slightly elongated skulls. An engraving of the baby showed it not in utero, but wearing a kilt while sitting in a position consistent with Andean mummies.

Foerster somehow managed to convince a museum employee to let him borrow some of the remains, and he claims to have had the human tissue dated through DNA analysis, which Fitzpatrick-Matthews says cannot be done. At any rate, this supposed testing involved no examination by anthropologists, archeologists, or biologists, and no input from natural history museums or university research teams.

Instead of a peer-reviewed journal, his findings were announced in a Facebook post quoting an anonymous geneticist. This secretive scientist said the discovery revealed an entirely new breed of creature, not quite human or ape, nor even related to any known Earthly being. There is no animal that accounts for the totality of a Phylum, yet this is what Foerster’s mystery man (or woman or alien hybrid) was asserting. These creatures were also said to be cursed with the inability to breed with any other animal, with the resultant inbreeding leading to their extinction. Exclusive inbreeding among a small population might doom a species. But saying it took place in this case represents piggybacking on legitimate science by shoehorning in an unsubstantiated ad hoc explanation instead of finding one through sound research.

Skeptic leader Sharon Hill outlined further problems with Foerster’s approach. “Science doesn’t work by social media,” she said. “Peer review is a critical part of science and the Paracas skull proponents have taken a shortcut that completely undermines their credibility. Appealing to the public’s interest in this cultural practice we see as bizarre – skull deformation – instead of publishing the data for peer-review examination is not going to be acceptable to the scientific community. Peer review exists to point out the problems that were missed by investigators.”

Additionally, ancientaliensdebunked.com noted that the scant information offered in the Facebook post revealed nothing about which skull was tested, what method was used to extract the DNA, how contamination was avoided, or how results could be replicated.

Meanwhile, there are those who prefer a supernatural explanation to an extraterrestrial one. The Nephilim are referenced in Genesis as being the offspring of “sons of God” and “daughters of men.” These vague terms lend themselves to many interpretations and these have included Foerster-friendly space aliens, fallen angels, giants, and descendants of Adam and Eve’s third son, Seth.  

The Biblical descriptions seem to suggest the Nephilim were the result of sexual encounters between demigods and young women. This is obviously unattractive to adherents of a religion based on unbending monotheism, so these verses are mostly ignored by evangelicals and Catholics. Even the uber-apologist Answers in Genesis can merely hem and haw its way through a non-explanation before concluding, “No one really knows what it means.”

Well that’s pretty boring. A more exciting deduction is that the Nephilim were about 36 feet tall, with six of those feet in the neck, sporting bony arms and massive torsos that were supported by three thick legs. That’s the interpretation of various sources, including Alex Jones’ infamous InfoWars site, which praised the Foerster announcement as “another example of scientific evidence piling up that the Nephilim actually lived.”

L.A. Marzulli expounded on this idea in his book Nephilim: Hybrids, Chimeras, and Strange Demonic Creatures.

Raff noted a series of blunders Foerster committed but which Marzulli ignored. This included failing “to sequence his own DNA, and that of the archaeologists, biological anthropologists, and anyone else who may have handled the remains, in order to rule out that any results might be inadvertent contamination from them.”

Overlooking such blunders enables Marzulli to announce to his credulous audience that the DNA “is not from an autochthonous Native American maternal lineage” and that it “fits the timeline of the diaspora from the Levant of Promised Land perfectly.” In his tale, the Nephilim traveled from the Middle East to the Mediterranean, then to Barbados, and onto Peru. In short, he extrapolated one unsubstantiated DNA sample into a tribe of giants with funny heads trekking and sailing from the Middle East to the Andes while leaving no trace of their journey.

As to skeptics like myself, Hill, and Raff, Marzulli wrote, “They’ll come up with every excuse imaginable in order to keep the evidence from the public.”

This claim of repression is typical of pseudoscientists and is the opposite of what we are doing. We want to see the results and to determine how they were obtained. We want to ensure the evidence is complete and can be revealed as either accurate or mistaken.

In doing this, Fitzpatrick-Matthews outlined reasons to believe the skulls belonged to neither transient behemoths nor intergalactic sightseers. Some of his main points were: 1. The mummies were wrapped in embroidered wool consistent with South American textiles. 2. They were positioned in a manner associated with Andean mummies who enjoyed exalted status during life. 3. Their resting places were adorned with ceramics specific to the region. 4. The tradition and method of producing the conical-shaped skulls is well documented.

For retorts, Nephilim-believer Michael Snyder pointed to Goliath as proof of giants, while the alien-hybrid enthusiasts at thegreaterpicture.com argued that “the humanoid-reptilian species Anunnaki have long skulls.”

 

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“Irregular scheduled program” (Neuro-linguistic programming)

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Neuro-linguistic Programming claims to combine neurology and linguistics in order to program a person’s brain and impact their mind, body, and actions.

Originators Richard Bandler and John Grinder further assert that NLP copies the abilities of geniuses so as to help patients reproduce them. One advertisement proclaims, “If someone can do something, anyone can learn it.” Yes, a handful of introspective couch sessions are all that’s in the way you being the second coming of da Vinci.

Despite its claims of fusing neurology and linguistics, the field cites no neurologists or neurological breakthroughs as being part of its creation. Furthermore, it is awash in undefined, fabricated terms, indicating its status as a pseudoscience. These terms include “eye-accessing cues,” “created reality,” “sub-modality,” and “micro-modeling.”

Supposed benefits include success in personal finance, romance, and business. Even if NLP delivered on these long-shot promises, it would still fall outside the psychological realm it tries to fit itself into. There are additional claims that NLP can produce vastly increased physical strength, as well as being able to cure phobias, depression, myopia, allergies, psoriasis, cancer, obesity, and dyslexia. This lack of specificity and grand claims are two more pseudoscience giveaways.

Additionally, the field is based on such shaky notions as unlimited potential and accessing the subconscious. There is no way of determining what a person’s potential might be and it is even more ludicrous to suggest that every person has infinite capacity in all areas. Also, there are no known methods for accessing a person’s subconscious. Yet the field is content to gloss over these glaring problems in its approach.

It also leans heavily on inferring messages from the patient’s body language, but there is not a universal non-verbal communication set. Leaning back with arms folded could reveal boredom, aggression, or the posture the person feels most physically comfortable assuming. The patient may be accused of being passive-aggressive by taking this position and when they argue otherwise, they may be told they are in denial since the subconscious mind is revealing their true feelings. There is no way to test these claims and it is erroneous to read much into non-verbal behavior, yet this remains one of the field’s key tenets.

Despite its claims of having psychotherapy roots and uses, it is shunned by psychologists and is employed almost entirely by those hosting motivational seminars or running New Age human potential workshops. Tony Robbins has made use of its ideas, but Joyce Brothers did not.

In fact, psychologists, neurologists, and linguists uniformly say NLP is based on mistaken notions of brain science and language, and there are zero controlled studies propping up this field. Its advertising is full of testimonials, not trials.

The usual technique is for the practitioner to ask a series of leading questions or suggestions to the patient. There are two primary models, the Meta and Milton varieties. Skeptic leader Brian Dunning described the Meta Model as requiring the clinician to be “a condescending jerk in order to exert influence.”

Here is his longer version of how the sessions play out: “It is a confrontational manner of speaking intended to dominate a conversation by nitpicking apart another person’s sentences. I may say, ‘I feel pretty good today.’ The Meta Model response is, ‘What specifically makes you feel good?’ And whatever I do come up with gets attacked the same way. ‘Exactly why does that make you feel good?’ And suddenly I’m on the defensive and am made to feel that I’m in error when the position I’ve taken is revealed by the questioner to be unsupported. It’s not psychotherapy, it’s high-pressure sales.”

Dunning described the Milton Model as the low-pressure sales alternative. In this modality, the practitioner is much more casual and likable, but still has the same ends in mind. For instance, he would handle the above scenario with statements like, “You are free to feel any way you like, but do you know why are leaning toward feeling happy,” or “Is there anything that could make you still happier?”

All this might work for sales, business negotiations, or manipulating relationships, but it is certainly not psychotherapy. The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry published results of a comprehensive study of NLP and concluded, “These therapies have offered no scientifically valid theories of action, show only non-specific efficacy, and show no evidence that they offer substantive improvements to psychiatric care.”

So if you want to be the next da Vinci, immerse yourself in aerodynamics, anatomy, architecture, astronomy, biology, botany, geology, literature, mathematics, mechanics, medicine, music, painting, paleontology, and sculpting. Or at least read The da Vinci Code. It will cost $100 less than an NLP session and will be more realistic.

 

 

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“Specious metal” (Colloidal silver)

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There is plenty about water to be thankful for, what with it sustaining life, playing a central role in a warm shower, and being an indispensable ingredient in lemonade. And while less vital than water, it’s also easy to appreciate the value of batteries. Quaffing that lemonade is all the sweeter when a 9-volt powered video game is in hand. But it turns out that my appreciation for these two items may have still been inadequate. For they can be used to produce colloidal silver, which alternative medicine enthusiasts tout as a cure-all.

Colloidal silver refers to submicroscopic particles that are suspended in a liquid, usually water. The alt-med community trumpets its ability to remedy any malady from Whooping Cough to warts. They also consider it to possess antibiotic, antifungal, and antiviral properties, as well as having the ability to boost immunity.

However, its use in legitimate medicine was largely abandoned in the 1930s when it was ushered aside for antibiotics. It may still have some small measure of benefit as a topical application, but even then it is far less potent than the likes of Neosporin

Colloidal silver has been shown to have antibacterial properties in vitro. However, laboratory promise doesn’t always translate into a cure or mitigation, and colloidal silver has no verified internal uses for any living being.

But it started to become embraced by fringe elements as part of the Y2K craze. With preppers and other panicky people worried about societal collapse, a supposed panacea that could be made from water and batteries suddenly had a market. Around the same time, rumors about antibiotic-resistant bacteria started getting around, and colloidal silver was touted as a forgotten miracle of nature that could combat this.

The most glaring side effect for obsessive users is resembling members of the Blue Man Group, minus the quirky talent. This is the result of argyria, a permanent skin discoloration caused by the concentration of silver salts. Other side effects can include fetal abnormalities and reduced effectiveness of antibiotics.

Colloidal silver advocates satisfy the alt-med quota of appealing to antiquity at least once by claiming that Greeks used silver containers to keep water fresh. What relevance this has to colloidal silver being able to cure gout or remove kidney stones is unexplained.

Dr. Mark Crislip noted that colloidal silver as defined by its users is something of a misnomer, and that its actual nature helps explain why it is of little medicinal value.

“The problem is that the silver is not dissolved but is a suspension that rapidly settles out of solution,” he said. “Colloids occur when one substance is evenly distributed in another without being dissolved, like albumin in blood, or fat in milk.”

So what is marketed as colloidal silver is mostly inefficient and is certainly incapable of painlessly curing 650 diseases, as one hyperbolic Science Digest article proclaimed. Despite this publication’s name, it features scant science and many claims that are hard to digest.

Similar sources praise colloidal silver for its widespread wonders, but proponents are unable to substantiate these boasts with animal models, case reports, clinical trials, double blind studies, or anything other than testimonials.

For this dearth of evidence, the Natural Society blames “the medical mafia and Big Pharma, who see this miracle product as a financial threat.”

The FDA and the European Union have enjoined several peddlers from ascribing internal curative properties to colloidal silver, and the Natural Society trumpets this as further proof of repression. Yet colloidal silver has not been banned and the Society is free to publish the recipe and encourage everyone to use it. If it were the panacea they claim, all disease and sickness would quickly be conquered. Besides, if the medical and pharmaceutical communities had the means and desire to ban cures, they never would have allowed the release of vaccines that target smallpox, diphtheria, and polio.

Furthermore, the same people who accuse the European Union of a cover-up will point to EU members banning GMO cultivation as proof that such organisms are poison.

But the Society seems downright rational compared to Natural News. Because some vaccines contain formaldehyde, this website claims that pro-vaxxers advocate injecting one’s self with embalming fluid. It has also railed against vaccines for containing mercury and aluminum, always failing to mention that these are in extremely minute traces, far less than what is in the “superfoods” that Natural News endorses.

And despite its all-caps, multiple-exclamation point objections to allowing metals to enter the body, Natural News strongly embraces letting in colloidal silver products that it sells. 

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“Flaming the fans” (Korean deaths)

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I have been fortunate to live in multiple countries and each have elements that give them character. In German restaurants, I shared my dining experience with dogs, who are welcome is such establishments. In a less charming recollection, I was chatting with two men and a young woman in Egypt when I asked the woman if she would like to play chess. One of the men cautioned me that mixed-gender amusements between unmarried persons are forbidden. If this game were to take place, the checkmate would be followed by my opponent being pummeled by her parents.

Then during my 20 months in South Korea, I was immersed in the most respectful and courteous society I’ve ever been around. But it also featured the most careless and  selfish drivers I’ve ever had to share a road with. So you might be cut off and berated by a motorist who three minutes earlier had addressed you with the utmost deference. My memories there also include the homogenized, hideous food and getting to cross three feet into North Korea on a tour of the demilitarized zone.

But most amazing to my Korean friends is that I slept with a fan on and lived to blog about it. For the Asian nation is home to a belief that leaving a fan on overnight is often fatal. While Americans might be amused by the idea of fan deaths, Koreans would think the same of our equally misinformed idea that swimming after eating can result in fatal cramps. The Korean urban legend, however, has some official teeth to it since doctors and government agencies warn against sleeping with a fan on. But a scientific analysis of the situation shows that the supposed fan deaths are misdiagnoses and also  instances of confirmation bias, subjective validation, and mistaking correlation for causation.

Some have speculated that Korean physiology, geography, or electric fan design are to blame, but all these explanations fall flat upon reflection. Koreans who move to other countries do not suffer these deaths, nor do residents of countries with similar climate and elevation. And there is nothing distinctive about Korean fans except that some are equipped with automatic shut-off features to guard against their nefarious nature. 

Electric fans have been available in what is now South Korea since the late 19th century, yet the supposed connection to untimely deaths only started attracting widespread notice in the 1970s. These incidents usually happened during the summer in a closed room, and most often involved a senior citizen sleeping alone.

But there is a non-causal relationship between summer deaths and fans running since that’s when people use them. And the elderly are always more likely to die than any other group and they are more vulnerable in hot weather.

Still, the Korea Consumer Protection Board cautions that doors should be left open when using the fans, on the belief that prolonged exposure could lead to water loss and hypothermia. The board also noted 20 cases of fan deaths in two years and attributed many of them to asphyxiation via electric fans or their likewise-lethal, climate-controlled-cousin, air conditioning.

Certainly, people die in Korea and some draw in circulated air for their last breath. But deducing a correlation between the two requires ignoring nonlethal fan use and deaths that take place without fans.

Proposed explanations are all over the morbid map. The most common culprit is said to be asphyxiation caused by wind currents. However, the deceased did not have the brain damage that would be consistent with such a demise.

Hypothermia is the second most popular guess and is allegedly caused by the fan evaporating enough perspiration from the victim’s skin that it sinks their body temperature. Yet Korea is wet year round, even more so during monsoon season when most deaths are said to occur, so this idea is implausible.

A competing notion is that when fans blow on sleepers, air currents reduce the atmospheric pressure on their faces by up to 20 percent, and that this also reduces oxygen availability by that amount. But if this were the cause, people spending a few hours outside on a breezy day would die, though they would at least get to spend their last moments at the lake or having a barbecue.

Other ideas are worth noting only for their absurdity. One is that the fan’s blades slice oxygen molecules in half. A less bizarre but equally wrong idea is that the fans produce carbon dioxide.

Brian Dunning at Skeptoid talked with two pathologists who have performed autopsies on Koreans who died with fans running. Dr. John Linton said, “There are several things that could be causing the fan deaths, like pulmonary embolisms, cerebrovascular accidents, or arrhythmia. There is little scientific evidence to support that a fan alone can kill you if you are using it in a sealed room.”

Similarly, Dr. Lee Yoon Song noted, “The victim’s original defects such as heart or lung disease are the main cause of death in these cases.”

Though sound, their positions are a minority in Korea, even among doctors. But there’s no danger here, short of a ceiling fan crashing down.