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“Got any change?” (Anti-science groups)

SCIENCEBOOM

Third basemen who make two errors in the second inning are sent back to that position in the third. Defense attorneys who lose a trial are still trusted with a client’s case the next week. And chefs who send out the wrong dish are allowed to serve future customers.

Some persons, however, seem unwilling to extend this redemptive mindset to science. The thinking is that past mistakes from the field mean that any other conclusions it reaches are at least suspect, if not dead wrong.

First off, it’s good to admit when one is wrong and adjust one’s thinking when presented with new proof. But admirable traits aside, the larger issue here is to understand how science works. It is more than beakers, telescopes, and magnetic resonance imaging. It is an unending cyclical process aimed at learning the truth. It is self-correcting, self-criticizing, and invites critical examination. If we knew that all science was correct and complete, lab coats would be traded for swimming suits, and we would retire the field. Instead, there is no settled science, nor is there any all-knowing, all-powerful entity that declares, “This and this alone is science, and that shall never change.”

Indeed, change when justified is what science is all about. A physician may treat a pneumonia patient with antibiotics, which are the consequence of discovering, understanding, and embracing Germ Theory. By contrast, chiropractors still insist that an unknowable entity called Qi is blocked, allowing pneumonia and all manner of other ills to assault our bodies, necessitating spinal manipulation.

Another example of changing positions when justified centers on climate science. A frequent tactic of climate change deniers is to highlight Time and Newsweek articles in 1975 that portended global cooling. There were some scientists who thought global cooling was coming, but there were more who thought this to not be the case. But both camps employed the Scientific Method to arrive today’s consensus that anthropogenic global warming is real. Again, this is not sacred writ and anyone with contrarian evidence is encouraged to submit it to a reputable journal for peer review. Instead, producers of “Climate Hustle” send their findings not to a journal, but to a theatre.

In 1922, Harold Cook found a tooth remnant that he considered part of the the first developed primate discovered in North America. It was dubbed Nebraska Man. Further research and digs revealed that the tooth actually belonged to an extinct pig, and the claim that it was a primate was retracted in the journal Science. Searching for and finding new evidence, then adjusting when warranted, is one of the hallmarks of science. Ken Ham is correct when he says, “Science was wrong about Nebraska Man,” but he fails to follow up with, “Science uncovered the erroneous thinking about Nebraska Man.”

Like all persons, scientists make errors. The difference is that anthropologists are no longer zealously defending Nebraska Man. Meanwhile, Ham says humans were created in their present form 5,000 years ago in a six-day old universe. This position requires ignoring the totality of anthropological, geological, and astronomical evidence.

Another anti-science trope, this one from the anti-GMO and anti-vax throngs, trumpets that science gave us DDT. Besides poisoning the well, this statement is another illustration of failing to understand how science works.

Paul Hermann Muller received the Nobel Prize for discovering how efficient DDT was as an arthropod exterminator. This led to typhus, dengue fever, and malaria being nearly wiped out in Europe. Later science learned the negative impact DDT had on some sea life and birds, among other creatures, and its use was curtailed. DDT is still used to control insect vectors, and it was through the Scientific Method that researchers determined DDT’s value as a pesticide, and then learned of the environmental dangers and what steps were needed to use it safely. 

For all their wailing about science, these groups are giving us nothing themselves. The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health has been around since 1992 without announcing a cure or treatment achieved through alternative medicine. In 40+ years, the Institute for Creation Research has yet to contribute to our understanding of biology, anthropology, or astronomy. Anti-vaxxers have yet to concoct a cure for Alzheimer’s using red sage root and dandelion stems. Climate change deniers level charges of hoaxes, false data, and criminality, but have contributed just two of the more than 13,000 peer-reviewed papers on the subject in the last five years.

Meanwhile, genuine science is providing you air-conditioned comfort and freedom from polio as you read this on your iPod.

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“The Merchant of Menace” (Rothschild conspiracy)

ROTH

Before conspiracy theories were plentiful, easy to access, or even a term, we had the tale of the Rothschild family. Patriarch Mayer Rothschild was born to German paupers but became a shrewd moneymaker who started his own banking company in the mid-18th Century. At the time, many Jews were forbidden to own property, so they became adept at commerce and finance since liquid assets could be easily transferred or hidden. With substantial imagination, this constant movement and concealment of money became the cause of wars and a means of worldwide financial control. The family being Jewish made it easy to win over many believers.

Mayer Rothschild expanded his business to an empire by installing his five sons in the European banking centers of Frankfurt, London, Naples, Paris, and Vienna. While there are many flavors to the Rothschild conspiracy, the main theme is that the family keeps its fortune rising in perpetuity by instigating and funding an unending series of wars. Despite their incredible fortune, they are still so greedy that they are willing to put themselves at risk by starting wars that rage in their country of residence.

Depending on the conspiracy subset one prefers, the family also sank the Titanic, ordered 9/11, and broke up the Beatles. I think I’m joking about that last one, although it may be out there somewhere. They also tried to either wipe out their fellow Jews or greatly empower them, as they have been said to be responsible for both the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel. They have so much power that every head of state, CEO, and Mafia Don will kowtow to them, and the only ability they lack is being able to shut down WakeUpSheeple’s YouTube account.

The first widespread Rothschild conspiracy began with the English banking crisis of 1825, which had been brought on by the mismanaging of interest rates. Nathan Rothschild had previously bought massive amounts of gold from the Bank of England when metal prices were plummeting. When the Bank’s depositors started withdrawing most of their funds, the Bank suffered a liquidity crisis, so it borrowed money from Nathan. This was simply the buying of precious metals and an unrelated loan, yet it is passed off in conspiracy theories as the Rothschilds taking over the Bank of England.

Theorists lay out reasons the Rothschilds would allegedly benefit from wars, but even if true, it would require post hoc reasoning to use this as proof that they started them. The Rothschilds did make some of their money as arms dealers, but saying this funded wars would be like saying the Louisville Slugger Company is funding Major League Baseball.

Besides, historian Niall Ferguson has noted that by the mid-1800s, much of the Rothschild fortune was in government bonds, which would make instigating war fiscally illogical. Ferguson said wars tend to drop bond prices because they increase the chance a debtor state will fail to meet its interest payments since they might lose the war and some territory.

Consistent with this, the Rothschilds were partly responsible for helping maintain peace following the Franco-Prussian War. After Prussia won, it demanded harsh reparations that likely would have led to another war, much as like what happened after the Treaty of Versailles. This would not have been in the interest to those with money in French bonds, so the Rothschild Bank put together a syndicate that raised the money the armistice obligated France to pay.

The idea that the Rothschilds pull the puppet strings of countries at war is further countered by the family having their palaces and art seized by the Nazis, whom they were supposedly funding and controlling. The Third Reich also made a film that portrayed the family as manipulating the Napoleonic Wars for financial gain, and this is the genesis of the modern Rothschild conspiracy.

While the family amassed enough money that its members could have lived luxuriously from the interest on the interest on the interest, even they didn’t have enough to fund every combatant of both World Wars and virtually every other skirmish of the 19th and 20th Centuries. 

By the end of World War II, family members had branched into separate ventures with differing goals and incentives, and there was no longer a unified Rothschild establishment. Not that this has slowed down the theorists. One Internet meme claims the family is worth the preposterous amount of $500 trillion, more than twice the world’s financial assets. The richest Rothschild, Benjamin, is worth $2 billion, and only two family members are on the Forbes list, and no Rothschild companies are in the Forbes 200. This has spawned a sub-conspiracy that the Forbes family is helping keep  the Rothschilds’ true wealth secret.

While the family still has several highly profitable businesses, other entities are worth far more. As one example, Goldman Sachs investment firms make nearly 1,000 times as much money as their Rothschild counterparts.

However much money a Rothschild or anyone else has, any person with an interest-bearing bank account owns shares in whatever funds their bank invests in. Those funds own shares in other funds and public companies, and so on, so no single entity could control the world’s finances.

Another claim is that the Rothschilds own all or nearly all the central banks, even though these are publicly owned entities. One variation of this theme states, “There are only 9 countries in the world without a Rothschild Central Bank: Russia, China, Iceland, Cuba, Syria, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, and Hungary. Isn’t it funny that we are always at war with these countries?”

There are several reasons the U.S. has frigid relations with most of these countries, including conflicts over human rights, economics, geography, and trade. It has nothing to do with a family that somehow both harbors dark secrets and has their innermost workings exposed. And it’s hard to keep track of everything that’s going on, so I guess I missed the our invasion of Keflavik.

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“No energy” (New Age medicine)

DOGHEALER

Because energy is a word everyone knows but far fewer understand, it is a convenient umbrella term for those in the New Age healing and empowerment movements. Types of energy said to be available for our benefit include chi, prana, vibrational, orgone, crystal, vital, and the most polysyllabic yet, bioelectromagnetic.

It is sometimes insinuated that this energy hails from another dimension, consistent with some scientists thinking there is a fifth dimension and maybe even a 15th. Of course, there is a huge difference between postulating something’s existence and declaring it to be the source of medicine and tranquility.

These movements fuse the ancient and the futuristic. They are descendants of vitalism and faith healing, but also coopt words like quantum and make up undefined terms like biofield. Misrepresentation of energy is what these fields are built on. Energy has a number of different forms, all of which center on the ability of an object or system to do work on something else. These forms include kinetic, thermal, chemical, electrical, electrochemical, electromagnetic, and nuclear. An excellent, concise rundown of these forms is available here.

Whatever form energy comes in, it will have certain properties. First, it can be transferred from one object or system to another through the interaction of forces between the objects. Second, energy can be converted from any form to another. In some cases, this happens regularly, while in other cases it is only theoretically possible. In all instances, these transfers are impacted by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which in simplest terms states that as energy is transferred or transformed, more and more of it is used. Thirdly, energy is always conserved, and never created or destroyed, as stipulated by the First Law of Thermodynamics. 

Energy is not its own entity, but is rather a property of other things. Hence, energy healing is as nonsensical as trying to cure someone with mass or volume. Energy is not a self-contained force that can be obtained through chants, gyrations, or ersatz electronics.

Batteries, windmills, and nuclear power plants work in ways that are measurable and knowable. By contrast, New Age counterfeit energy is unknown, undetectable, and undescribed. Here are questions I have put to energy healing proponents without receiving anything besides silence and stammers: What type of energy is it? How is it stored? What is its source? What instruments are used to detect or transfer it? What unit is it measured in? How do you determine how much energy is being used? What is a safe amount and how do you prevent this threshold from being crossed? Proponents will talk of unblocking, harmonizing, unifying, tuning, aligning, balancing, and channeling this force without offering how this is accomplished or even what the force is.

In the best-known physics equation, Einstein revealed that energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. Brian Dunning of Skeptoid explained this means that, “Speed is a function of distance and time, so energy can be expressed in mass, distance, and time. That’s how we define work that can be done. Energy is a measurement of work. If I lift a rock, I’m inputting enough potential energy to dent the surface of the table one centimeter when I drop it.”

Nowhere did Einstein mention life force, disruptions in the aura, or discordant frequencies of sickness. New Age energy involves no mechanics, electricity, or atomic nuclei. I have seen hundreds of New Age energy claims, with nary a reference to ergs, joules, electron volts, or calories (unless talking about weight loss that will come via energy appetite suppression).

Dunning suggests substituting “measurable work capability” for “energy” when encountering New Age healing advertisements. This will highlight the claims’ ridiculous nature, as we can see in this example: “The release and ascent of the dormant spiritual measurable work capability enables the aspirant to transcend the effects of the elements and achieve consciousness.”

Despite the science vacuum that is the New Age energy field, it was supported for five years by the National Institutes for Health. Taxpayer money and the University of Arizona’s reputation were sacrificed in the name of magic healing at the school’s Center for Frontier Medicine in Biofield Science. I am tempted to include a mocking, condescending line here, but can meet that intent by quoting the center’s website: “We conducted a series of experiments examining the effects of Reiki on e. coli bacteria and biophoton emission in plants.” It also lets us know that, “The findings were again too controversial for mainstream journals,” a euphemism for, “Scientists weren’t buying our preposterous conclusions.”

While no peer-reviewed journal would touch them, that didn’t stop their leader, Dr. Gary Schwartz, from publishing, “The Energy Healing Experiments: Science Reveals our Natural Power to Heal.” Like much good pseudoscience, the treatise is lacking in data but bursting with anecdotes. This includes Schwartz claiming a preschooler’s heart condition was cured by a touch from a Hindu holy man. Another story has a patient being cured from 1,000 miles away from a clinician harnessing a cosmic elixir. Again, these are the claims of a man who says bias is the only reason reputable journals reject his work. This is a frequent gambit of pseudoscientists, to claim a conspiracy is keeping them from being the latest in a line of vindicated geniuses that includes Galileo and Alfred Wegener. Glad to be doing my part for the conspiracy.

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“I see someone reading this” (Psychics)

ICEBOOK

Penn & Teller gained their fame by putting fresh twists on the ancient art of magic. They followed this by becoming skeptic leaders, most prominently with Showtime’s “Bullshit!” and also appearing at most Skepticons. Despite this being their side gig, they are probably the second and third most prominent skeptics behind James Randi.

When their Showtime program debuted, a few people found it hypocritical that two guys who made their money fooling people would be going after mediums, faith healers, and astrologers for doing the same. This necessitated that Penn state the obvious: That the duo were admitting their performance was bogus, while those they were exposing as frauds presented themselves as authentic. These days, most people who pull rabbits from hats use the term illusionist instead of magician to eliminate any confusion about what they claim to be doing.

While there is a key difference between magicians/illusionists and psychics, there’s also a big difference in the people they are performing for. While an illusionist’s audience wants to be impressed, they are trying to figure out how it’s done and maybe even hoping for a screw-up. By contrast, those who comprise a psychic’s audience have no concern with how it’s being done and greatly want it to work. This desire to experience psychic ability is even more pronounced when there are emotions involving death, loss, and grief. That is why when a reading on an audience member is going nowhere, the member will lead the psychic back to fertile ground.

This difference between audience expectations for illusionists and psychics was starkly demonstrated when my cousin returned from a show that had featured both types of performers. She told me, “The illusionist wasn’t much, but he psychic was incredible! She knew I drove a Lumina and worked at Dillard’s! And she did the same thing for four other people, and got them all right! She knew one had a beagle and another was expecting her first grandchild. She did ten facts and got them all exactly right!”

I talked later with her wife, who revealed that the neighbor had filled out a card with precise information about her place of employment and her mode of transportation for getting there. So this was a hot read where the facts were fed to the psychic by one of her handlers. This is usually done by having the selected member and their pertinent information pointed out backstage, or by using a wireless earpiece, as Peter Popoff had done before being taken down by James Randi.

Mark Edwards of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry said of this method, “This is called ‘pre-show’ in the spook racket. Nobody seems to even consider that a psychic would be acting and using information they already knew. They take it on faith that everything they hear is coming from some divine source.”

But the psychic my cousin saw relied on cold reading as well, using incredibly vague language. “She told me, ‘I see a marriage.’” Most people are either married, used to be married, or figure they will be some day. And even if none of those fit, it could be a marriage involving someone besides the audience member. This lack of focus and specificity helps the charade.

The glowing report continued with, “She knew there was an anniversary.” A statement this general could be filled in with anything. In this case, the void was plugged in with, “Our child was born on the eighth anniversary of our first date.”

And there’s one more. “Then she said she was sensing a name that started with C. Of course she meant Connie!” No, she meant C which is why she said C. If she had meant Connie, she would have said Connie. She didn’t mean Connie, nor did she need to since my cousin filled in the rest. Her thinking the psychic knew her wife’s name was typical of someone who wants so much to believe that they will fill in the holes or the gaping canyons. A psychic saying, “Someone here works in customer service and I’m seeing the number 34,” becomes “He knew I worked at Lowe’s and that my boss was 34 years old!”

Edwards related how he performed for a mostly credulous audience using cold reading techniques. He threw out usual generalities such as a dog dying or someone having car trouble. Then he decided to go for something weird and more specific. “I’m seeing a clown standing in a graveyard and he’s putting flowers on the graves. Does that mean anything to anyone? And I see the name Stanley.”

He was startled when someone shouted, “There’s no way you could have known that! There was an old man in my hometown who used to dress-up in a clown costume and put flowers on the graves in the cemetery. My name is Cindy but for some reason that guy always called me Stanley.”

Edwards thought it might be a ruse, but learned the speaker was genuine, and it took an intense 30 minutes after the show to get Cindy calmed down and convinced that Edwards had made it up. It was a somewhat crazy coincidence, but the Law of Truly Large Numbers comes into play.

Also, despite the specific nature of his fabricated vision, Edwards hadn’t singled out Cindy. “If I had looked straight at her then delivered the clown in a graveyard line directly to her, that’s a whole lot different than saying, ‘Does that mean anything to anyone?’ or ‘Does that make sense to anyone?’ Watch and listen carefully to the medium next time, and you will see how easily this works.”

In the heyday of telephone psychics, a classic magazine advertisement pronounced, “If they were really psychic, they’d call you.”

This is not a minor point because it drives home the fact that someone with genuine psychic ability wouldn’t need to ask anything. Yet in live shows, it’s almost all questions from the psychic, rather than them stating facts. Except for hot reads, it’s never, “You in the third row with the yellow hat. Your sister died of lung cancer six years ago and you regret that you saw her just twice in her last six months.” Instead it’s, “I feel someone here has lost a family member they wish they had been closer to.”

If you ever find yourself at a live psychic show, I suggest the NBA shot clock game, where you see how often a psychic can go 24 seconds without asking a question.

Had Edwards had been a neophyte psychic instead of a veteran skeptic, he might have thought he had the Gift. That’s probably how a few of them get started. Sure they miss a lot more than they hit, but so batters with a .300 average. They reassure themselves with, “I don’t know where this is coming from,” or, “I don’t control this, I go where it leads me.” This enables them to justify any excuse or whiff, perhaps even to themselves, and certainly to audience members who want to believe that, “I see someone in business for themselves” means, “He knew I owned a bakery.”

 

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“Selective disservice” (Anti-vaccine claims)

MOUSEMEASLES

About a dozen West Virginia lawmakers celebrated the re-legalization of raw milk this year by quaffing the cow juice, which they promptly vomited up before spending the next few days bedridden. The delegates blamed their sickness on a stomach virus unrelated to the consumption of raw milk.

While it would seem unlikely that they all happened to get the virus at the same time they drank the raw milk, it’s remotely possible. Correlation and causation must always be considered and maybe one of the delegates had a stomach bug he passed onto others during the celebratory libation.

In any case, adults should be able to consume the beverage of their choice and can deal with the consequences, be they stronger bones or brucellosis. Similarly, the propriety of seat belt laws can be debated, but almost no one would argue against infant car seat use being mandatory.

But when it comes to vaccines, opponents are not arguing for something equivalent to an adult chugging unpasteurized milk while driving with the safety belt unfastened. The cause they promote impacts their children, as well as persons who are too unhealthy or too young to be vaccinated.

Sometimes the anti-vaxxers will just make it up, such as Modern Alternative Mama claiming her Google searches have made her more learned than any physician on the issue. This is an egotistical absurdity that most people would ignore. However, it’s more dangerous when anti-vaxxers present evidence that is correct, but incomplete.

In the mid-1970s, there was an automobile race between two teams, one from the United States and one from the Soviet Union. The Americans won, with TASS reporting that the USSR had taken second place and the USA next-to-last. When anti-vaxxers present numbers that are technically correct but greatly disingenuous, it can make a normal person begin to question the efficiency of one of medicine’s greatest achievements.

A frequent claim is that improved sanitation is responsible for the decrease in disease. Sanitation is a public health benefit, but does nothing for an airborne disease like rubella, which has been eliminated in the United States, or for smallpox, which has been eliminated everywhere. Vaccines were the reasons for these successes and they have also reduced or eliminated diseases that are not airborne. But anti-vaxxers use selective facts to argue that vaccines played little or no role.

One example is a chart showing measles death rates in the United States. It features a sudden drop in 1900, followed by a minor peak 15 years later, and finally a tapering off that goes down to very few deaths in 1963, the year the vaccine was introduced. The insinuation is that measles deaths were already on the way out and would have ended even without vaccination.

But this chart only addresses mortality. The number of cases, however, were consistently 500,000 to 800,000 annually. This lasted until the vaccine was introduced, and within seven years the numbers were down to almost zero. The same thing happened with Whooping Cough, with anti-vax charts again showing only the mortality rate and not the morbidity rate. If hygiene was enough to prevent disease, chicken pox rates would have plummeted before the mid-1990s. Instead, there were a steady four million cases per year until the varicella vaccine was introduced, and since then occurrences have gone down 85 percent. Also relevant is that death rates from diseases were going down largely because of health care advancements. Death rates for polio, for instance, declined due to the iron lung.

Besides use of selective numbers, anti-vaxxers will also play to chemo-phobia. This is a winning strategy in a nation that is becoming less scientifically literate, and even easier to peddle to the already science-compromised anti-vax crowd. A typical approach is to mention that a vaccine has such-a-such a chemical in it. This is done without pointing out that the dose makes the difference. Modern Alternative Mama will gladly munch an organic pear that has 50 times more formaldehyde than the vaccine she is railing against. Moreover, the human body naturally produces more formaldehyde than what vaccines contain.

Licking two tablets will not take away your pain, taking two tablets should do it, and taking two bottles of tablets will take you away. The same concept works for any ingested chemical. Mercury, aluminum, and sodium are used as preservatives in vaccines and come in minuscule amounts, much smaller than what we find in the foods and beverages we consume daily.

Another instance of demagoguery is displaying a doll with two dozen syringes stuck into it and ominously telling passersby that children will receive this many vaccinations and boosters before middle school. This needle doll is another example of selective reporting. It’s true that the two shots most children received in 1940 had quadrupled by 1980, and that the 1980 number had tripled by 2010. Left out of this tidbit is that the number of antigens in the vaccines has decreased dramatically. The vaccine schedule in 1960 would have included about 3,200 antigens, compared to about 125 today. This is mainly because patients in 1960 received the whole-cell pertussis vaccine instead of its acellular successor. The former has about 3,000 more antigens.

The current schedule calls for 14 immunizations by age 6, and each is for a disease that would cause serious illness or death in unvaccinated populations. So to be accurate, anti-vaxxers should remove the syringes from the doll, have it represent an unvaccinated child, and then place it in an iron lung, wheelchair, or toddler-sized coffin.

 

 

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“In-clined to disagree” (Race realism)

RAINBOW

From something as influential and honored as the James Randi Educational Foundation to something as irrelevant as this blog, there is a strong consensus among skeptics as to what we believe. Trips to almost every skeptic website will show the same doubts about conspiracy theories, alternative medicine, the paranormal, the supernatural, monsters, and aliens.

Disagreements are limited to certain aspects of a topic. Two skeptics may have different takes on why Reiki is the most prominent energy medicine, while the similar Pranic Healing is little-known, but both skeptics would agree that the treatments are equally worthless. The same skeptics may also have different views on why most chemtrailers have come to embrace this cause, but both would find the concern unfounded.

So it was noteworthy when I had my first experience of seeing a significant departure from the usual skeptic positions from one of our leaders. A past president of the James Randi Educational Foundation made a couple of posts stating he believed race to be a biologic concept, unlike the social construction most skeptics consider it.

I am all for considering new positions when given evidence, so I decided to engage the past president. I asked him to name the races, figuring this would be a good starting point and a reasonable request to make of someone who considers race a biological reality.

He never answered the question. He did, however, get into a pissing contest with a couple of more posters who joined my thread. I have extremely high expectations of someone who was the JREF president, and was profoundly disappointed at what transpired. He presented no evidence for his position and was content to belittle those who disagreed. In fairness, he didn’t open with personal attacks, the thread just deteriorated into it, and the other combatants weren’t exactly diplomatic. Still, it was unbecoming for someone of his stature. More importantly, I was unable to ascertain why he had adopted his position on race and what he considered evidence for it.

Had he dialogued with me, here is the point I would have raised. The most common supposed trait of race is skin color, which is directly tied to the intensity of ultraviolet light dependent on latitude. Put another way, someone’s skin color lets us know his or her ancestry relative to the equator. But while we see the color, we don’t see other traits that are distributed without regard to race. For instance, Belgians and Ugandans have very different skin color, but when it comes to the distribution of the ABO blood group, they are closer to each other than either are to the Chinese.

University of Michigan anthropologist Loring Brace has observed that such variations are distributed along geographic gradations know as clines. Attempting to categorize groups by skin color, hair texture, and facial features requires ignoring unseen differences that cross racial boundaries. While melanin follows a predictable pattern north and south, other clines spread out from specific points.

There are no distinct, non-overlapping genetic groups, and members of what are called races do not share the same genetic sequence. In fact, there is more genetic variation among Africans than in all other world populations combined. The Human Genome Project has taught us that people who have lived in the same geographic region for many generations may have some alleles in common, but no allele will be found in all members of one population and in no members of any other.

University of Iowa professor Angela Onwvachi-Willig said, “There is no gene or cluster of genes common to all blacks or all whites. Were race real in the genetic sense, racial classifications for individuals would remain constant across boundaries. Yet, a person who could be categorized as black in the United States might be considered white in Brazil or colored in South Africa.”

Similarly, the Irish were considered non-white in the 19th Century United States. And failing to include Hispanics in a separate category is inconsistent with the breakdown by skin color that otherwise defines race in the contemporary U.S. These examples show the subjective nature of these delineations.

A frequent question centers on afflictions that are more common in certain groups, such as sickle cell anemia among blacks. Such examples are usually a case of mistaking correlation and causation. In this instance, a mutation in the 11th pair of chromosomes is what causes the disease. This mutation originated in areas of the world where malaria was common since people with the trait do not get a particular strain of that disease. So the cause is not race, but rather an adaptation to a malarial strain.

In short, understanding the “Biological reality or social construction” issue requires getting under someone’s skin. 

 

 

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“Evolving position” (Evolution denial)

Human – business evolution

A longtime acquaintance asked if my position on the origins of homo sapiens was based on faith, belief, a combination of these, or neither. 

It is not based on faith, which is a necessarily religious concept. I define faith as holding onto a position regardless of the evidence. All of my positions are based on evidence and observation, which means they change if warranted by the science. If research reveals a spontaneous generation of a complex life form in the fossil record, that would shoot holes in evolution, and I would adjust my thinking accordingly.

By contrast, Youth Earth Creationists insist the universe is 6,000 years old even though we can see the light from stars millions of light years away. They argue that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time, an idea refuted by the geologic column and radiometric dating. Their positions are unmoved by science and proof, making it the definition of faith.

Continuing with what my position is based on, belief would be a better word than faith,  but it’s still inadequate. Belief is defined as “an opinion, conviction, or confidence,” or “a feeling of being sure that someone or something exists or that something is true.” Feelings or opinions have no place here, so evolution is not a matter of belief. It’s a matter of being able to understand its mechanism and process. By way of comparison, I don’t believe 5 x 5 = 25, I understand how elementary mathematics work.

The question from my longtime acquaintance was accompanied by a video of Abdul Rashid asking biology students a question, then asserting that their unsatisfactory responses disproved evolutionary science. It was further implied that this was proof of creationism, an assertion critical thinkers recognize at the negative evidence fallacy. Close to 100 percent of the products I’ve seen from Evolution is a Lie, the Creation Research Institute, Answers in Genesis, et al, are manifestations of this fallacy. They relate no science showing evidence of creationism. They instead highlight alleged deficiencies of evolution and wrongly think this is a point for their position.

All this came into play when my 8-year-old son asked me where humans came from. Not where baby humans come from, that was another conversation. Rather, he wanted to know how humans got here on Earth. Since what we know about evolution is based on verifiable, testable, falsifiable, and observable research, I was able to tell my son that humans evolved from an ape-like ancestor, through the process of natural selection, whereby beneficial mutations enable populations to adapt to their surroundings. Because of his age, I didn’t say that in so many words, and it was picture heavy, but the key point is that I can know it to be true because I understand what drives the process, how it works, and the evidence supporting it.

If evolution is true, stratas of the geologic column should reveal a succession of hominid creatures with features that are progressively less apelike and more human-like. And that’s what the fossil record shows, including the appearance of hominids capable of a bipedal gait about 100,000 years ago. As my son grows older, he’ll get more of an understanding and we can go into more detail. When that happens, here are some negative evidence arguments he may encounter from creationists. 

The silliest and simplest, and hence likely the first one he will encounter, is “Were you there?” Seriously, this is passed off as a point by Ken Ham and his ilk. And no, neither my son, Lewis Leakey, nor Stephen Jay Gould were there, nor do they need to have been. Science goes where the evidence leads, which is why DNA testing and fingerprints are better evidence than an eyewitness during a home burglary trial. Likewise, the fossil record, comparative anatomy, and so on are windows to evolution.

Subatomic physicists don’t see electrons, astronomers don’t see dark matter, and archaeologists didn’t see Greeks developing farm implements. These scientists make discoveries based on inferences and employment of the Scientific Method, and biologists work the same way.

While not ridiculous like “Were you there,” a similar ploy is to construct a deliberately narrow definition of science meant to necessarily exclude evolution from being so described. The crucial claim is that it must be observed, and the Rashid video centers on the interviewer trying to get biology students to admit this has never happened with evolution. In truth, evolution has been observed; more on that later.

But first, a definition. Science is a set of methods for empirical hypothesis testing. Done properly, it is able to support or refute some testable idea.

As Dr. Steven Novella noted in his response to the Rashid video, creationists prefer an inaccurately rigid definition of science that stipulates it must be observed at the precise moment it is happening (although that leaves them unable to meet their own criteria when arguing that God created man in his current form 5,000 years ago).

And evolution has been observed, most prominently in Richard Lenski’s ongoing e. coli experiment at Michigan State University. It has also been observed on three Florida islands. In 1995 researchers introduced brown anole lizards onto these islands, and when the researchers returned in 2010, they learned that to evade the invasive brown anoles, native green anoles had moved to higher perches. Consequently, the green anoles had developed larger toepads with more fringes in order to  provide increased surface area. This improved the lizards’ ability to cling to narrow, unstable branches. In short, they had adapted due to random mutation and natural selection, the driving forces of evolution. 

In addition to these direct observations, scientists base their conclusions about evolution on fossils, genes, population distributions, comparative anatomy, and developmental biology. These observations include learning that there are species that live exclusively in isolated locales, which is consistent with the idea of evolution. Examples include glowworms found only on New Zealand, giraffe weevils found only on Madagascar, and scaly-toed geckos found only on Vanuatu.

Also like other scientists, evolutionary biologists check the physical evidence to see whether it leads to verifiable predictions. That’s why anthropologists were looking for evidence of a hominid ancestor in the horn of Africa when they came across one of the field’s most significant finds, Lucy. It’s also why biologists suspected they might find a creature with features of both fish and land dwellers near Ellesmere Island, which led to the Tiktaalik fossil.

Just a few months ago, I had to explain to a successful 47-year-old man that evolution does not teach that humans descended from monkeys. He also wanted to know why there would still be monkeys if this were the case. A common response to such questions is to criticize science education, but I cannot put the blame on our public school system. There would be rare exceptions, such as parts of Louisiana and Mississippi where creationism is snuck into biology class, and where a student may be leading an insular existence where these notions are reinforced at church and home.

Otherwise, persons are without excuse. The information is easily accessible to anyone that wants it. A cursory Google search will reveal that evolution teaches that monkeys and other primates share a common ancestor with humans. The same search will show that we know this because of the geologic column, our sharing of 98 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees, and other anatomy inferences. The website will further reveal that when an evolving species becomes isolated from the main family it split from, it will eventually acquire characteristics that make it distinct. The parent species may survive or go extinct.

Creationists will sometimes say that evolution cannot explain the origins of life, and this assertion is perhaps the only common ground they and evolutionists occupy. Abiogenesis studies how life may have arisen from non-living matter and includes a combination of laboratory experiments and an examination of genetic information from today’s organisms. Evolution is a separate field centering on the study of inherited characteristics in biological populations over time. Trying to count being unable to explain how the first living organism got here as a strike against evolution is as nonsensical as dismissing the entire physics field because botany has yet to produce a blue rose.

My position is, quite literally, an evolved one. I was once a 15-year-old Young Earth Creationist asking my erudite biology teacher where each preceding life form came from. We kept going at least as far back as her positing that a lighting strike into a body of water may have produced Earth’s first life form. Which caused me to ask where the lightning came from, and what happened before that, and before that, and eventually her answer was, “I don’t know.” I took this as a weakness in her line of reasoning, whereas today I realizing that admitting one doesn’t have all the answers, but is still looking for them, is something commendable. And it never occurred to me that I was just as unable to explain where God came from. I was still several years away from understanding the fallacies of negative evidence and special pleading.

Some creationists say how awful it must be to think one came from an apelike creature or something resembling a salamander creeping though the slime. This is the appeal to consequence fallacy and, as such, has no bearing on whether these descriptions of human origins are true.

Another common creationist objection is that it’s inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, much less the humans that house them, could result from chance. First, their inability to comprehend is irrelevant to whether it’s happening. That is merely the personal incredulity fallacy. Second, this argument misstates the role chance plays in evolution. Chance does determine random mutations, but natural selection is the opposite of chance. Natural selection preserves advantageous traits, enabling biological populations to adapt to their environment. Because of this, a single-cell organism that lived in water 3.5 billion years ago is the deep ancestor of an 8-year-old who is having the process explained to him.

 

 

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“Unappealing bananas” (Naturalistic fallacy)

MULECAR

The appeal to nature fallacy rests on the easily disprovable assumption that nature is necessarily good. It comes in forms such as, “I use herbal medicine because it’s what nature intended,” or “I won’t vaccinate because natures knows best.”

This assumption relies on nature being conscious and benevolent. Of course, nature is not conscious and, while human interaction with it may be good, bad, or neutral, it’s all by coincidence, and comes with no intent on nature’s part.

Berries that grow wild do so because the soil, conditions, and weather are conducive to that happening, not because nature wants to bestow upon us a free source of Vitamin C. Plants that excrete chemicals which lead to medicine don’t have our inflammation reduction in mind. It’s the result of natural selection and climate. Canada geese fly in formation for means of transportation and migration, not for our esthetic enjoyment.

What’s more, those who appeal to nature don’t realize many of their examples of it are actually unnatural. The banana, for instance, is synonymous with potassium and is one of the healthier foods available. But the one we eat is not natural. It has been modified over thousands of years, from a tiny, green fruit full of large, hard seeds, to today’s easily-peeled, delectable Corn Flakes accompaniment. Cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, savoy, and kohlrabi are all modified versions of brassica olearacea. This plant can usually only grow near limestone sea cliffs, but thanks to unnatural modifications, we have an abundance of leafy greens to eat. A diet high in these unnatural vegetables goes a long way toward reducing one’s chance of experiencing natural cancer.

Probably the best way to cure someone of their naturalistic fallacy is with a trip to the Australian Outback. If the sun, wind, and other natural elements don’t do them in, there are scorpions, taipans, and even a venomous snail. The flora can be deadly as well. One mushroom indigenous to the Outback will, if consumed, produce two days of anguish and pained vomiting, followed by death unless a liver transplant can be effected. Then there is the Stinging Brush, whose tiny hairs have been responsible for at least one human fatality. Another victim who survived the plant described his encounter with nature thusly: “For three days, the pain was almost unbearable. I couldn’t work or sleep. The stinging persisted for two years and recurred every time I had a cold shower. It’s ten times worse than anything else.”

Leaving Australia for Africa, lions may seem majestic when they roam across the savannah with their manes waving. But the lion ripping a zebra’s back open with its claws and gashing its jugular vein with knife-like canines is also nature in action. Nature is what the Discovery Channel aired during its glory days. It is not represented by the adorable, chirping, cooperative gang of anthropomorphic animals in Disney movies. Examples of nature include poison oak, tapeworms, smallpox, earthquakes, hungry polar bears, and mercury poisoning.

Some people prefer to double dip their naturalistic fallacy and add the appeal to antiquity. They may say, “That’s the way people did it for thousands of years.” And in this naturopathic Shangri-La without gluten, vaccines, antibodies, or GMOs, and where food was grown locally and the medical treatment was herbs delivered by shamans, the average lifespan was one-fourth of what it is today. Since 1900 alone, the average lifespan has risen 50 percent, owing mostly to vaccines and antibiotics.

Some who appeal to nature claim that sanitation is the real reason for this, which is kind of strange since plumbing, sewers, and solid waste disposal are unnatural. But hypocrisy aside, the claim is only partly accurate. Sanitation was a major plus for public health, but sanitation standards in the developed world have changed little since being introduced. Meanwhile, lifespans keep increasing even though sanitation standards have been steady.

Another argument from the naturalistic crowd is that without vaccines and antibiotics, homo sapiens would evolve resistance to disease and, eventually, nature would act to our benefit. While this might be possible, the idea that this could happen a million years from now is a lousy reason to let your child die from polio today.

Besides, pathogens evolve just like humans do so natural selection might work against immunity. Whenever a new mutation arises, the pathogen may evolve a response to it and this could lead to an even more lethal disease.

Truth is, those who live this fallacy already realize how unnatural products improve their lives. They learn of all-natural shampoos on an unnatural blog; they live somewhere other than a cave; their organic squash in kept fresh using an unnatural storage method; and the hybrid that gets them to their anti-GMO protest is a Prius, not a mule.

 

 

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“Fusion delusion” (Cold fusion devices)

frozenstar

Dr. Steven Novella has ruminated that cold fusion might enable jet packs, flying cars, and the end of reliance on fossil fuels. With all manner of tremendous applications, both practical and amusing, there would seem to be a strong incentive to find a way to produce massive amounts of energy while outputting very little.

However, as Novella noted, cold fusion is highly unlikely, to the point of not even having a theoretical model to work with. Because of this and numerous public failings after many promises, there are only about 100 persons seriously pursuing it, and only a tiny percentage of those are bona fide scientists. It’s OK to research and experiment, of course, but those doing it should be honest about their methods and findings, should submit for peer review, and should invite inspection and questions. With few exceptions, this is not how cold fusion proponents operate.

Cold fusion is a hypothetical type of nuclear reaction that would occur at room temperature, compared with the (very) hot fusion that takes place within stars. It has been pursued since the 1920s, with several tantalizing but untrue claims made on its behalf. The most spectacular failure was the Stanley Pons-Martin Fleishman debacle in 1989. This electrochemist duo had published an article in a science journal asserting they had achieved cold fusion. They made the cover of several national magazines and were a worldwide sensation for a few weeks.

Many scientists tried to replicate the work, with a few seeming successes. However, further investigation revealed that these were due to inaccurate heat measurements that resulted from faulty equipment. Furthermore, none of the experiments were showing the neturon flux that would result from fusion.

The attempts to replicate the alleged Pons-Fleishman findings fueled a surge in funding research, but this dried up after the experiments repeatedly fizzled. The few who attempt it today receive little if any funding and the field has become insular, opaque, and resentful of mainstream science, which it thinks is repressing it. In other words, it is a paranoid pseudoscientist’s playground.

There are highly complex, very technical descriptions of how time travel might be possible if 100 hypothetical methods go precisely right and another 100 speculative technological advances are developed. Cold fusion devices are similar. Coming up with one is about as likely as transporting George Washington back to witness it.

It would require, among other obstacles, joining nuclei lighter than iron into heavier elements. This demands a lot of energy since the nuclei must overcome significant electrostatic resistance to manage this. Regular fusion happens because of the high temperature and pressure in a star’s core. Being able to do that without those temperatures and pressure is the behemoth of a problem that almost certainly dooms cold fusion dreams.

Still, feeble attempts continue, with infrequent demonstrations that go nowhere. In order to be convincing, a cold fusion demonstration would need to show proof of gamma radiation, as well as heavier elements that result from fusion. Most tellingly, there would need to be gobs of excess energy. Instead, any seeming excess energy is infinitesimal, so little that experimental error may be the cause. Despite lofty promises, cold fusion advocates have yet to produce a working model. The best example would be for a demonstrator to give a presentation in an auditorium powered by his or her cold fusion device.

In lieu of this, we get years of talking about almost being there and of continual repression. The latest manifestation is the Leonardo Corporation’s ECAT device. The corporation’s website includes a description of what the ECAT is, how it works, and who invented it. But when it comes to answering when it can be purchased in order to fuel those jetpacks, we get this: “The ECAT currently operates as a pilot plant, gathering useful data to feedback in preparation for the mass production which is planned to start late 2016 to early 2017.” This date have moved to the right several times and is a microcosm of the cold fusion crowd’s shadowy operations.

Meanwhile, the Norwegian company R&D says it will have such a device to the world within 10 years. One believer, who seems reminiscent of Charlie Brown running toward the football, posted his feelings about the latest tease and those who would suppress it. It was a typical cold fusion advocate ad hominem, featuring hostility to criticism and strawmen. “I am appalled that the so called scientific community has so little vision.” (He posted this to the Internet using an iPhone). “The insults from the physics associations around the world indicates to me they are a little worried. Cold fusion makes them angry and gives them a headache. There are no facts of physics, only theory.” He must have wrote that while experiencing weightlessness instead of gravity.

The poster then complains that the few dozen persons who are pursing cold fusion devices are not taken seriously, a problem that would be fixed by one of them inventing it.

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“Cancer answer” (Repressed cures)

cancerasnwer

I have a friend who hosts Ayurveda seminars and Reiki healing sessions. Another friend frequently posts links denying climate change and evolution.

Maintaining cordial relationships with these people is easy because I compartmentalize. I may be a skeptic, but I am also a relative and friend. I am not so shallow or insecure in my beliefs that I would forsake friend or kin just because they are into New Age or Old Time Religion. This works both ways, as the other parties maintain a similar mindset. I may see them as a little too credulous, they may see me as a joyless cynic, but we still get along. This agreeing-to-disagree also occurs between me and members of my circle who rave about their psychics, who are convinced their father can dowse, and who believe ghost hunters are landing their prey.

Alas, there has been one outlier. I was unfriended by a fellow who became consumed by naturopathy, the idea that the body can heal itself if we can just find the right plant, fruit, leaf, twig, or extract. He also became convinced that modern medicine was a fraud and that Big Pharma was hiding the cure for cancer. This conspiracy theory and his love of naturopathy is oxymoronic. Since naturopathy teaches that nature has all the answers, it is contradictory to think that traditional laboratory research, double blind studies, and the Scientific Method would yield the cure that is being hid.

After unfriending me, he sent me another friend request, which I accepted. He followed with an apology about how he had immediately regretted hitting the unfriend button and about what a sour mood he had been in. I can only surmise that the regret subsided and the sourness returned, because another unfriending followed. There had been no personal attack or anger on my part leading to this. I had merely calmly laid out why the idea of a suppressed cancer cure was unfounded.

By this time, he had grown even more unhinged, and he may have thought I was part of the conspiracy. I have worked in journalism and am employed by a federal agency. And media and government are two of the three pillars in this evil cover-up, along with the pharmaceutical industry. Furthermore, I am a skeptic blogger and many theorists feel we are sock puppets for Monsanto or Big Pharma.

Whether I am part of a conspiracy or not, here is why such a cover-up wouldn’t work. First, there are many types of cancer, with many different causes. The idea that one panacea would cover all of them is untenable.

The most frequent argument from the hidden-cure crowd is that pharmaceutical companies would rather keep selling pills and injections that mitigate a symptom rather than come up with a cure that would cause them to lose customers. However, not all research is done by companies. Universities and charities are also seeking a cure, aided by funding from the American Cancer Society and other similar groups.

Besides, the idea that there is money to be lost by finding a cure in laughable. Selling a tablet or vaccine that renders one immune to cancer would be highly profitable. It would also be consistent with pharmaceutical industry practice. Medical research has given us antibiotics and cures for polio and smallpox. The hidden-cure theory requires believing that pharmaceutical companies let these cures out while suppressing one for cancer.  

Further, despite this all being allegedly controlled by Big Pharma, the pharmaceutical industry is not a monolithic monster. There is more than one drug company and they are in competition. There would be no reason for Johnson & Johnson to hide a cure in order to protect Pfizer.

If many other drug companies are selling a lifelong regimen which treats cancer symptoms, and one company alone has the cure, that company need only set the cure’s price below the cost of the treatment, and it will make a fortune while driving competitors from the market.

And if the entire pharmaceutical industry is in on it, that’s even more problematic. Each company would have trust their competitors, and every current and former researcher and executive, to keep silent. The conspirators would also have to know where every independent researcher works, be able to monitor every moment of research, and kill or bribe any scientist who finds the cure.

Another sizable obstacle to the notion of a hidden cure is that medical researchers and their loved ones also get cancer. Heads of state, CEOs, and pharmaceutical executives die of the disease just like janitors, teachers, and carpenters. For the conspiracy to work, those who get cancer while engaging in the cover-up would have to willingly endure a slow, agonizing death so their evil heir apparent can continue to operate.

It’s not that drug company executives cannot be cruel. Former Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli preferred increasing his already massive wealth to saving lives. This extreme narcissism, however, dictates that his needs come before others. The hidden-cure theory, meanwhile, holds that not just one Martin Shkreli exists, but 5,000 of them, with each putting aside their borderline sociopathy in order to continue the ruse. These people are so selfish they hide a cure in order to benefit, yet are so selfless they die needlessly and painfully to protect the conspiracy.

Also impossibly evil, yet somehow intensely loyal, are cancer researchers. They would have to decline the massive fame, adulation, and riches that would come with ending a disease synonymous with fear and death. They must forsake the name branding, Nobel Prizes, and hospitals being named in their honor. Being mentioned in a revered tone reserved for Einstein, Newton, and Curie would be secondary to keeping a secret.

Finally, these theories usually consider governments and pharmaceutical companies as the two perpetrators. Yet countries with socialized medicine would substantially reduce their health care costs if cancer were wiped out. The theory also holds in extreme contempt the intelligence of insurance company executives, who continue to pay for expensive treatments that are superfluous if there is a cure out there. Yet these executives are unable to find the cure even though any naturopathic conspiracy theorist with access to YouTube can do it.

Much as we would love to think there is a cure out there that could be found any minute, there is not. Maybe someday there will be, which would be wonderful for all of us  because cancer equally targets skeptics, energy healers, and creationists.