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“Tooth and dumb” (Alternative dentistry)

CLOWNDENTIST

I’ve had my share of dental unpleasantries. There was the brutal wisdom tooth surgery that took seven times longer to recover from than what had been forecast. More recently, there has been a sustained inability to find decent dental insurance for my family. But Ben Goldacre notes that flaws in aircraft design do not prove the existence of magic carpets, and likewise, any dental care deficiencies are no point in favor of holistic dentistry.

Alternative approaches to dentistry are not as ubiquitous as in other medicines, but they do exist. Like other naturopathic remedies, the overarching idea is to find a way to help the body heal itself. Hence, the field purports to consider not just patients’ mouths, but also their bodies, mindsets, and spirituality. Put another way, chakra realignment and aura balances are said to impact gingivitis.

Naturaldentistry.us asks the difference between traditional and alternative dentistry, then provides this photo to symbolize this latter:

DENTAL DIFFERENCE

Indeed, that’s different than the poster of an anthropomorphic smiling tooth I’m used to seeing in most dental offices.

The Holistic Dental Network’s mission statement fits two logical fallacies into one sentence, appealing to both antiquity and nature: “Holistic dentistry encompasses…knowledge drawn from the world’s great traditions on natural healing.” It then defines the field as “an approach to dentistry that promotes health and wellness instead of the treatment of disease.” This insinuates that mainstream dentists are merely reactive, concerned only with fixing problems once they arise. Yet traditional dentists consider a patient’s oral health, history, and habits when planning treatment. They focus on prevention as well, for every trip to the dentist I’ve ever made has included free toothpaste, toothbrush, and floss. There were also pamphlets and posters focusing on how to avoid cavities and decay.

Alternative dentists are usually opposed to fluoride, even though the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention lists fluoridated water as one of the 10 greatest health achievements of the 20th Century. Most alternative dentists instead prefer the use of Vitamin D. Studies do suggest Vitamin D to be an effective strategy in combating decay, but this is no reason to halt fluoride use.

Some alternative dentists go so far as to proclaim the mouth to be the key to the health of the rest of the body. In this sense, it is the oral equivalent of chiropractic, reflexology, and craniosacral therapy. What is so strange about these disparate claims is that there never seems to be debate within the alternative medicine community over them. The mouth, spine, feet, and skull cannot all be the center of health, yet clinicians from the various alternative medicine branches never challenge each other when such claims are made. A chiropractor’s entire existence is based on the idea that all disease and illness emanate from the spine. Thus a claim that they all come instead from deficiencies in the mouth would, if true, render the entire chiropractic field useless. If a skeptic or mainstream doctor questions the central point of these alternative practices, the practitioners respond, but when fellow alt-med clinicians essentially say the same thing, no protests are raised.

Alternative dentistry may use some genuine science, but it also throws in various fluff based on the whims of the particular practitioner. This can include using herbs in lieu of toothpaste, or creating an oil concoction to combat periodontitis. If being serviced by Natural Dentistry in Gordon, Australia, these treatments will be administered in their “peace-inducing, Zen-like premises.” Meanwhile, lame mainstream dentists respond with an ambiance of Muzak and Goofus and Gallant comics.

Probably the most frequent claim in alternative dentistry is that mercury is one of the most toxic heavy metals; however, toxicity is determined by dosage, not element, and the amount of mercury absorbed from fillings is only a tiny percentage of what a person ingests through daily food intake.

Despite this, Natural Dentistry blames the mercury in amalgam fillings for “fatigue and lack of energy, poor short-term memory, poor concentration, anxiety, depression, and susceptibility to infections due to a depressed immune system.” Other alternative dentists blame amalgam fillings for goiter, heart trouble, tuberculosis, diabetes, anemia, high blood pressure, hardened arteries, rheumatism, neuritis, arthritis, kidney stones, leaky bladders, fever, constipation, weight problems, cataracts, and cancer. Attributing all these conditions to poor dental work is post hoc reasoning and is cast with a net so wide that it will snare most patients, especially seniors.

Alternative dentists frequently employ a mercury vapor analyzer to convince these patients they are in danger. The practitioner has the patient chew vigorously for 10 minutes, which will likely produce tiny amounts of mercury. The exposure lasts just a few seconds and most of the mercury will be exhaled, but the machines still give a false high reading.

This mercury poisoning and other dental ails will, depending on the practitioner, be treated with herbs, vitamins, essential oils, green tea extract, acupuncture, or body chemistry balancing. With regard to the last item, the International Academy of Biological Dentistry and Medicine’s mission statement reads: “We are committed to integrating body, mind, spirit, and mouth…and to relieving the body of infections, toxic chemicals and metals, electromagnetic disturbances and radiation, food allergens and nutritional deficiencies, biomechanical imbalances, and psycho-emotional distress and dysfunction, in order to restore natural biological function, mind-body vitality, and the ability to self-regulate and maintain homeostasis.”

However, Dr. Stephen Barrett at Quackwatch wrote, “The human body contains many chemicals, ranging from water and simple charged particles to complex organic molecules. Legitimate medical practitioners may refer to a specific chemical or a balance between a few chemicals that can be measured, but the idea that body chemistry goes in and out of balance is a quack concept.”

These treatments are often done under the umbrella of promoting wellness, which is an undefined term offering unspecified benefits. Hence, wellness can be advertised and sold without the customer getting anything in return. The patient may even be in ideal health to begin with.

Another nonexistent entity sold by some holistic dentists is cavitation therapy. This was most associated with Hal Huggins, who died two years ago. Huggins maintained that facial pain, heart disease, arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and leukemia were caused by cavitations, a byproduct of amalgam fillings which lurk somewhere in the jawbones. These cavitations are said to be undetectable by X-rays and are incapable of being treated with antibiotics. Only Higgins’ disciples, then, are capable of detecting and treating them. Per his website, finding them “requires lots of skill and years of experience.” A gullible patient is presumably another huge plus.

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“Cause and reflect” (Causation and correlation)

SOCPLUS

A favorite maxim of skeptics, right up there with the plural of anecdote not being data, is that correlation does not prove causation. Many times it does not even imply causation. To illustrate this point, there is a graph showing an almost identical correlation between organic food sales and autism, and another chart that demonstrates the stunning consistency of string cheese sales and persons dying while getting out of bed.

While few people would insist that nighttime provolone cravings are fatal, causation is often erroneously inferred in less obvious instances. Consider an example from the classroom. In general, student grades go down the farther back one sits. Yet some classrooms are arranged with the desks forming a circle and the teacher in the middle, so if distance from the teacher caused the grades, everyone would score the same. So sticking a D student front and center will not put him or her on the honor roll. The primary relationship between seating location and grades is that the more studious students want to be near the teacher and visual aids, while their more indifferent counterparts prefer to be out of view, in order to pass notes in days of yore, and to send text messages today.

The string cheese-accidental deathbed is only one example of unrelated items that produce mirror-image data. Another centers on the sale of ice cream and the commission of violent crimes. Overlaying graphs show almost identical peaks and valleys relating to these two incidents. This is not because Rocky Road engenders Road Rage, despite the name similarity. Rather, violent criminals, like other people, get out much more often when it’s warm, which is also when folks buy most of their cool confectioneries.

Most people would understand this, perhaps even intuitively. But less obvious correlation/causation errors are regular features in online news sites and in links shared by members of your social media circle. They take the form of, “Persons who drink tea daily are half as likely to catch cold,” “Young professionals who have goals in writing will accumulate 10 times the net worth of those who don’t,” and, “Excellent grades in high school will lead to better health as adults.”

Putting goals in writing indicates drive, organization, and planning, three traits frequently seen among successful professionals. As to the supposed link between grades and health, persons with strong high school grades have, in general, more resources than those with lower marks. They have the latest gizmos and gadgets, may attend private schools, have access to high-quality tutors, and enjoy the type of health care that leaves them less vulnerable to a lengthy illness that would keep them from school for a long stretch. This same affluence will later allow them access to healthy food, gym memberships, and premium health care plans that result in better fitness.

But pointing out that correlation does not necessarily imply causation is only getting at half of the equation. The other half is determining when correlation and causation are interwoven. Three criteria must be met to determine this.

The first and easiest step is to verify that there is indeed a correlation. We learned earlier there is a correlation between violent crime and ice cream sales. There is no such correlation between violent crime and rap album sales, much as William Bennett and C. Delores Tucker wish that there was.

Second, for X to lead to Y, X must come first. I have seen some persons blame public school shootings on mandatory prayer being removed from these institutions. But there were 119 deadly school incidents prior to the 1962 Supreme Court ruling forbidding the practice. So without even getting into the post hoc nature of such an assertion, X could not lead to Y because Y came first.

Thirdly, other potential causes must be ruled out. Persons who jump off the Empire State Building die. We can conclude that the jump (well the landing, really) causes the persons’ demise because the leap precedes the death, there is a fatality rate of 100 percent, and there is no other factor in the deaths.

This example is obvious, but let’s look at how causality can be inferred from correlation in less clear instances. We will do this by focusing on necessity and sufficiency.

A condition is necessary if the effect cannot occur without it. For an unassisted triple play to occur, at least two runners must be on base with nobody out. The condition is necessary, but insufficient. The overwhelming majority of plays with two on and none out result in something other than an unassisted triple play.

A condition is sufficient if the effect always occurs when the condition is met. For example, the aforementioned Empire State Building jumpers always die. Here, the condition is sufficient for death but not necessary since there are many other ways of dying.

For a condition to be both necessary and sufficient, the effect must always occur when the condition is met, and never happen when it is not met. For example: To be married, you must have a spouse.

The most difficult to detect is when a cause is neither necessary nor sufficient. To be a cause without these distinctions, it must be what James Randi Educational Foundation Programs Consultant Barbara Drescher calls “a non-redundant part of a sufficient condition.” To illustrate this, Derscher pondered a forest fire that resulted from a lit cigarette carelessly tossed aside.

The cigarette, of course, would not be a necessary condition for the blaze. Forest fires can also result from unattended campfires, arson, and lightning ripping a tree asunder (I woke up this morning determined to use that adverb).

Besides not being necessary to start a fire, a discarded lit cigarette is also insufficient. The initial spark would have last long enough to combust, sufficient oxygen would be needed to fuel it, the surrounding brush, leaves, or sticks would need to be dry, the weather would need to be conducive to blazes, and no one with the desire and means to put it out could be nearby.

But if all these criteria are met, the condition is sufficient for a forest fire to rage. But for the cigarette to be a cause, it must still be non-redundant. Meaning that nothing else in the equation can do the job of the cigarette. And, indeed, none of the other factors – combustion, weather, dryness, present oxygen, absent firefighters – does the job of the cigarette. Turning this around, the cigarette cannot do the job of any of the other factors. Oxygen is present with or without the cigarette, the weather and surroundings would be dry without it, the cigarette does not spontaneously combust, nor cause an area to be unpopulated. Hence, the tossed tobacco product is a non-redundant part of a sufficient condition, so in this case the correlation and causation are related.

 

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“Truth and Consequences” (Polygraph)

POLY

In 2013, Chad Dixon was imprisoned after being convicted of threatening national security. Did he aid ISIS, copy Timothy McVeigh, or act as a courier for North Korean agents? Nope. Rather, he taught government job applicants how to pass polygraph exams. Prosecutors never questioned the validity of his techniques, but focused only on the fact that he taught them. This amounted to a de facto admission that the techniques work and that polygraphs do not.

At least they don’t work as far as determining dishonesty. The polygraph is able to record a subject’s blood pressure, respiration, pulse rate, and skin resistance. But this means it only that is able to detect rattled nerves, not prevarication.

In most polygraph sessions, the examiner compares responses to relevant questions with answers to control questions. The latter are intended to mitigate for the anxiety of being suspected of serious crime. Control questions concern misdeeds that are similar to those being investigated, but are broad and take such forms as, “Have you ever stolen anything?”

A person telling the truth is assumed to fear control questions more than relevant questions since control questions are designed to arouse a subject’s discomfort over abstract misdeeds as opposed to focusing on a specific crime. Greater physiological response to relevant questions leads to a being suspected of deception. Greater response to control questions leads to a judgment of no deception. If no difference is found between the two, the result is considered inconclusive.

However, deception is a cognitive function and there are no scientific studies that show the emotional response linked to prevarication can be measured. The National Academy of Sciences issued a comprehensive report on polygraph research, and concluded that it was “unreliable, unscientific, and biased.” It found 57 of the 80 research studies it looked at were significantly flawed. Some studies showed a success rate of no better than chance, and others performed still worse.

Despite this, polygraphs are still used on prospective employees of the FBI, CIA, and the Secret Service, even though needing to pass a polygraph test to land a prestigious job would make almost anyone nervous.

Another shortfall is that reactions to lying and being suspected crimes vary with each person. Aldrich Ames and the Green River Killer, Gary Ridgway, both passed their polygraph exams. This is because lying with no physiological change is standard for sociopaths. Others, by contrast, would get freaked out if being questioned about assassinating James Garfield. In Ridgway’s case, an innocent suspect failed the polygraph when asked the same questions that the perpetrator had been given.

Such false positives are common, which is unsurprising. Being falsely suspected of a crime, then being questioned by police detectives while hooked up to wires is going to be very stressful. Hence, the polygraph often causes the result it is meant to be determining.

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“Qigong Show” (Qigong medicine)

 

SHADOW

In the same week, my 7-year-old daughter showed me a yoga pose, while my 5-year-old son assumed the lotus, complete with closed eyes and thumb-index finger circles. I have no idea where this interest in eastern mysticism is coming from, but decided it could come in handy while preparing this post on qigong. I could have my children practice the techniques and test the results.

Qigong is a system that incorporates posture, movement, and breathing in order to benefit mental health, spirituality, or martial arts. Its use can be valid or vacuous, depending on what the practitioner hopes to achieve.

This can be true with other religious practices as well. Some Hindus use yoga to help them achieve kaivalya, which they consider a state of liberation, unification, and contentment. Secular practitioners of the art, meanwhile, are satisfied with a more supple spine and are not seeking life on an elevated plane.

Likewise, wine aficionados may enjoy a merlot for its aroma, taste, and mouthfeel. But for Catholics partaking in communion, this same drink enables them to become momentary vampires, as they believe transubstantiation allows them to literally drink the blood of Christ. This could be tested easily enough, although a result deemed unsatisfactory by the Vatican would presumably be explained away as the blood turning back into wine when it was spat out for chemical analysis.

The meditation, flowing movements, and deep rhythmic breathing of qigong can have a calming effect and can be a means of improving one’s martial arts ability. These attributes can be seen on brainwave scans and in growing karate trophy collections. Claims that go beyond these abilities that are the focus of this post. We are mainly concerned with the assertion that qigong facilitates the flow of qi, which is vaguely explained as life energy. According to Taoist, Buddhist, and Confucian notions, qigong allows access to higher realms of awareness and helps awaken one’s true nature. This is because it unblocks the flow of qi along twelve meridians, all of which correspond to major organs. This idea incorporates an alternative anatomy and physiology, and has no basis in biology.

While tranquility and flexibility are benefits one can gain from the practice, the idea that qigong has preventive or curative properties is unfounded and backed by no science or double blind studies. Testimonials and self-validating statements are offered in place of controlled experiments. Claimed benefits include the elimination of hypertension, carotid arteries, peptic ulcers, chronic liver disease, diabetes, obesity, menopause, chronic fatigue syndrome, insomnia, cancer, myopia, and leg pain. Besides being backed by no research or peer review, this is a typical strategy of alternative medicine, where a curative net is cast so wide that almost any improvement can be credited to it. Any seeming successes, however, are owed to natural fluctuations of illnesses or the patient concurrently taking legitimate medication.

Some go beyond garden variety alt-med verbiage and make even bolder claims. For instance, some qigong instructors say they can distance heal and strengthen the immune system. Neither of these claims are true, which is a good thing with regard to the latter. Except in extreme cases like late stage cancer or AIDS, strengthening the immune system is undesirable. An overstimulated immune system means autoimmune disorders such as arthritis, lupus, and fibromyalgia.

Some martial artists give demonstrations in which they claim to use qi to knock people over without touching them. This only works as long as the person being knocked down believes it will, indicating either the power of suggestion or the victim going along with the ploy. It never works on skeptics, as demonstrated in these videos.

The man in these videos, George Dillman, is a black belt, leaving in unclear why he would need to harness invisible knockout powers. At any rate, he explains the failure by saying the skeptic’s negative energy was impacting the power, which doesn’t say much for the power. Another explication is that the “guy has his tongue in the wrong position.” I’m unsure if Dillman is referring to the pretend puncher or his intended victim, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter.

I had my children do some qigong iterations, hoping to use it help my daughter wake up more easily in the morning. This was about the only ability I hadn’t seen attributed to qigong, so this left me feeling innovative and cutting edge. And since my son loves wrestling and roughhousing, I decided if qigong practice would help him tap into the knockout power. I would be the test subject to see if he could bowl me over without touching me.

I can’t say qigong did anything to help my daughter rise with less protestation and flailing, but a scratch on her arm disappeared. By conflating correlating and causation, and using this anecdote in lieu of evidence, I can declare this to be a qigong success. As to my son, he seems to have misunderstood that his punch was supposed to stop short of my mouth.

 

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“Medi-careless” (Alternative medicine overview)

AMDOC

Attempts have been made to catalog the various forms of alternative medicine, but a complete rundown is impractical. That’s because the field is forever adapting to the market and coining new buzzwords and ostensibly new practices. The one constant is a lack of verifiable cures and treatments.

There are three main approaches when peddling supposed medicine not backed by peer review, research, and double blind studies. Some practitioners prefer the angle of antiquity and present their procedure or pill as the product of Chinese dynasties, the Pharaohs, or as hailing from the day Hinduism was the hot new religion. The logic employed is that something wouldn’t be around for so long if it was ineffective. While the purported medicine is usually of a faux antiquity, this logic falls flat no matter how ancient or recent its roots. This thinking fails to consider communal reinforcement, post hoc reasoning, and selective memory. There is a reason why double blind studies are medicine’s gold standard and why alternative practitioners flee from them. There is another way the appeal to antiquity is used, and that’s when the cure is said to have been recently rediscovered in some lost manuscript or treasure chest.

Other alternative medicine practitioners prefer the opposite approach and advertise their product as cutting-edge. Forms of this include faster-than-light tachyons, disease-eradicating ions, and maintaining optimal health by manipulating bio-energy fields. The relative affordability of these practices, compared to long-term mainstream medical treatment, is one of the main attractions, but for those without such concerns, theta healers will rearrange and optimize your DNA for $5,000.

While some prefer to sell unlocked ancient secrets, the avant-garde crowd offers exclusive cures that have been hushed up by corrupt politicians and industry insiders. Some alt-med proponents are openly anti-science, some are more subtle about it, and still others present themselves as an extension of scientific knowledge. In any case, they all try to sound science-like by fabricating modern-sounding terms or pilfering from medical vernacular.

A third option for alternative medicine marketers is to fuse the strategies and claim that cutting-edge physics is validating the mystics and seers of yore. This is most often found when the word quantum is used.

While “quantum” is threatening to overtake it, “energy” is still the most ubiquitous term in alt-med circles. Alt-med energy is invisible, cannot be felt, has no taste, sound, or aroma, and would seem to be, well, energetic, so it is the perfect ploy for someone who is peddling nothing. Many energy medicines are touted as treatments that encourage the body to heal itself, which would make purchasing them superfluous. Other words that are usually pseudo-medicine giveaways are holistic, wellness, and integrative.

With integrative, the trick is to make the patient feel they are getting the best of both worlds. Mainstream medicine proponents don’t get along with quacks, and vice versa, but integrative medicine purports to bridge this curative gap by providing, perhaps literally, the whole pill. However, there is no eastern, alternative, complementary, or supplementary medicine. There is only medicine, which refers to techniques and products proven to cure or mitigate illnesses by the metadata of double blind studies.

The lack of agreement on even the most basic points among alt-med practitioners is a telling sign that it’s hogwash. Ask a physician how many ribs a person has, and he or she will answer 24. Ask an alternative medicine practitioner how many charkas there are and the answer may be three, seven, 12, or 300. Chakras are touted as vital to health by those promoting their maintenance, yet those doing so cannot even agree on how many there are or what they do. Back to the ribs, the physician knows their functions are to protect internal organs and to enable the lungs to expand when a person breathes. Chakras, meanwhile, can be credited with increasing energy flow, unblocking cosmic clutter, strengthening the nervous system, detoxifying the body, improving the immune system, and giving one a more pleasant personality. It is limited only by the creativity of the charlatan clinician. Alt-med has no agreed-upon standards or ways to determine the validity of research, resulting in a hodgepodge of hocus pocus. Whatever chakras do, they are in need on continual cleansing, unblocking, realignment, balancing and straightening, with again no continuity among practitioners as to how this is done.

Energy healers take patients’ money while giving them literally nothing in return. They gyrate their hands and draw imaginary shapes around the customer, then declare them healed. But the more enterprising have found a way to further enhance profit by eliminating 100 percent of office and fuel expenses through distance healing. Since practitioners of Reiki, chi gung, prana, and aura realignment never touch the patient, some have figured out they can offer the service from one’s own home via the Internet or cell phone. Perhaps the next step will be to eliminate electricity use by just sending the healing energies into the air and letting the wind carry them to the patient.

From distance healing we move to the other end of the pretend medicine spectrum, the extreme hands-on approach of osteopathy. This is a catch-all term that can’t quite catch-all since the field keeps branching off onto new tangents. But examples of osteopathy include chiropractic, craniosacral therapy, and watsu, which uses currents of warm water that are generally pleasing and lull the patient into thinking some healing is going on.

Many osteopath techniques are specific to a region: lomilomi for Hawaii, acupressure or China, shiatsu for Japan, Ayurvedic for India, nuat phaen boran for Thailand, and Rolfing for the mainland United States. These are all variants on the principle that rubbing on someone will result in undefined and broad wellness benefits.

While not yanked and pressed on quite as dramatically as those undergoing osteopathy, applied kinesiology patients get squeezed, twisted, and twirled about and get nothing from it except maybe a momentary increase in flexibility. The field assumes that allergens, toxins, viruses, and so on can be detected by pressing on the subject with varying amounts of pressure. At odds with biology and anatomy & physiology, applied kinesiology proponents contend that organ dysfunction is accompanied by a weakness in specific corresponding muscles. Once the practitioner arrives at a diagnosis through guesswork, boredom, and the Ideomotor Effect, treatment may include more joint manipulation and purported therapies centering on muscle tissue and the cranium. There may be some nutritional counseling as well, which would be the one potential health benefit, though that could be accomplished without an extensive and pointless rubdown.

As stated earlier, “energy” is the most frequent buzzword in alternative medicine, but Emotional Freedom Technique tries a relatively novel approach on this hackneyed phrase by insisting energy can heal mental problems. This is not entirely original; others have asserted that emotional baggage can be dealt with by body rubs and saltwater immersion. But this goes another mile down the Credulity Trail by offering an invisible medicine to cure the blues. Emotional Freedom Technique appeals to antiquity by pointing out the Chinese have long used acupuncture, but also says that a scientific breakthrough available only to EFT patients will give them the ability to access this power painlessly. The EFT website boasts, “This process enables you to release stuck or blocked energy by tapping on your meridian system. You have the ability to release stuck emotions and limiting beliefs simply by using your fingers.” The creator noted the technique’s beautiful simplicity by pointing out that his 4-year-old niece can do it. I noted this technique’s absurd inefficiency by pointing out that his 4-year old niece can do it.

EFT is another idea that presents itself as new and exciting, but for those who like their healing to be old and preferably wrinkled, we have shamans. Believers like to think of them as bronze-skinned, adorned with a necklace of animal bones, and wearing a multi-colored robe of natural fibers. Ideally, they reside in a bamboo hut either on a mountaintop, deep in the jungle, or a three-day canoe journey from the nearest village. In truth, most drive Beamers and live in places like Moline, Toledo, and Spokane. To their patients, they literally blow smoke, dab with ointment, chant incoherently, and possibly incorporate feathers and drums in some capacity. For maximum effect, it’s done in an ambiance featuring burning incense and R. Carlos Nakai music.

I could have easily written ten times as many words in this post, as it would probably be impossible to fully document the alternative medicine world. But at least that means I’ll never run out of topics.

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“A new pair of genes” (Evolution denial)

dish

I regularly run across claims from the biology-challenged that evolution has never been observed. Yet it is on display every day in Richard Lenski’s ongoing E. coli experiment at Michigan State University.

Since 1988, Professor Lenski and his compatriots have charted genetic changes in 12 initially identical populations of asexual e. coli bacteria. The researchers have observed a wide array of genetic changes, occurring in anywhere from one to 12 of the populations. The population reached its 60,000th generation two years ago.

To deal with the cognitive dissonance of observed evolution, creationists fabricated a  distinction between micro- and macro-evolution. Since it would be straining credulity for even Ken Ham or Kent Hovind to deny what was literally being seen, they needed to come up with the ad hoc rationalization that these changes were merely improving an existing species, not creating a new one. They have yet to explain what would constitute a new species (breeding abilities, new appendages, just looking way different?)

But even if one accepts the term macroevolution, the Lenski experiment has now shown an example of this in its first stage. That’s because one of the e. coli cultures has evolved the ability to use citrate as a carbon source. Until then, the inability to do this was one of the traits that defined the e. coli species.

To be clear, neither Lenski, myself, nor anyone else claims this is a new species yet, as speciation is not a single event. It is a series of processes, with a beginning stage of initial divergence, a middle stage where species-specific characteristics refine, and an end where a new species becomes a separate evolutionary lineage. From there, it begins its own diversified branch or goes extinct.

Some creationists say that science doesn’t count if it contradicts their interpretation of a specific Bible version. As such, I’m unsure why they even try to answer scientific research with their own creative biology. Why not just limit their response to quoting Malachi this or Heznekeriah that? But since they do sometimes try to sound science-y, we will examine their attempt to finagle their way around Lenski’s observation of macroevolution.

Leading the creationist charge is Scott Minnich, who has genuine scientific credentials, as he works as a microbiology associate professor at the University of Idaho. More specific to this case, he had a critique of the citrate-using e. coli find published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Bacteriology. He and his associates replicated Lenski’s findings, so the disagreement was over what it meant. Minnich’s overarching point was that since the bacteria gained its new ability by rearranging existing genetic elements, no new genetic information evolved.

University of Toronto biochemistry professor Laurence Moran compared that to “saying a new book…contains no new information, because the text has the same old letters and words that are found in other books.”

Minnich argued that since genetic information was merely moved around as opposed to being created that this was not an example of macroevolution. Yet an e. coli strain gained an ability it had never had before, so this could be a necessary step toward speciation.

Also, the result allowed microbiologists to observe the ecological and genetic factors that cause change in organisms – changes that over time can lead to a new species. Contrast that with summarily dismissing the notion of speciation because Genesis suggests otherwise.

Moran further explained: “A genome encodes not just proteins and patterns of expression, but information about the environments where an organism’s ancestors have lived and how to survive and reproduce in those environments by having useful proteins and expressing them under appropriate conditions. So when natural selection favors bacteria whose genomes have mutations that enable them to grow on citrate, those mutations provide new and useful information to the bacteria.”

Moran’s words describe one example of how evolution works. Existing DNA is modified to create new genes or regulatory elements from existing sequences. Genes and functions don’t just poof and appear, much as creationists would love for them to.

 

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“Tunnel vision” (Near Death Experiences)

HELL

While skeptic is the adjective I most use to describe myself, it would be fascinating to learn that there really are Yetis, Venusian visitors, or jasmine extracts that cure Multiple Sclerosis. And the most pleasant example of my doubts being proven unfounded would be to learn of irrefutable evidence of an afterlife. There is clearly death after life, but does another life or series of lives follow that?

Bill O’Reilly and Dennis Prager have touched on this subject and argued that if there is nothing to look forward to when this is over, then all life is ultimately pointless. I find that unnecessarily pessimistic. To me, hopelessness would be knowing there is an eternity and that it will be spent in a North Korean gulag. But the larger point is that O’Reilly and Prager are committing the Argument From Consequence fallacy. How much value there is in our Earthly existence has no bearing on whether it’s all we get.

The term Near Death Experience was coined by psychiatrist Raymond Moody, who interviewed hundreds of persons who had reported unusual experiences while hovering near death. The best-known elements are a light at the end of a tunnel, being detached from the body, and reviewing one’s life. Other than a buzzing or ringing sound, the experience is usually pleasant, though about 15 percent of respondents found the experience upsetting or even terrifying. Some report seeing deceased relatives or a religious figure, always someone from the dying person’s faith, as portrayed in their culture’s artwork. Some persons have increased religious fervor after these experiences, but there are no reported conversions. Muhammad has never appeared to a dying Jew, nor Buddha to a moribund Hindu.

These are NEAR death experiences since no one reporting them has died. This means they are not proof of an afterlife. The persons could be entering another plane, portal, or state of existence, but they could also be experiencing what happens to someone with a dying brain.

Vision researcher Tomasz Troscianko speculates that an overload of information in the visual cortex creates an image of bright light that gradually increases. NDE researcher Susan Blackmore, meanwhile, attributes the feelings of extreme peacefulness to endorphin release.

One of the stronger pieces of evidence that NDEs are all in the mind come from the experiments of Dr. Karl Jansen. He has produced the effects of Near Death Experiences using a short-lived hallucinogenic dissociative anesthetic. According to Jansen, this anesthetic reproduces features such as traveling through a dark tunnel toward light, communing with a higher power, and feeling detached from one’s body. Excessive release of dopamine and noradrenaline could explain seeing dead relatives and religious figures or watching key moments from one’s life pass before you.

Neurologist Kevin Nelson suggests a reduced oxygen supply is the main culprit in NDEs, as this causes various brain regions to slow down in order to conserve energy. This messes with the hypothalamus and temporal lobe, thereby impacting emotion, memory, and limb control.

While backed up by some data, these skeptic speculations involve some guesswork. The nature of NDE claims make them impossible to falsify, measure, or reproduce. This means they fall outside the scope of being dealt with by the Scientific Method. Thus, it is impossible to definitively conclude if NDEs are the result of persons entering a new consciousness that begins when biological functions cease.

But the same standard applies to the other side. P.Z. Myers exchanged online pieces with Salon writer Mario Beauregard, who had offered a series of vivid tales centering on NDEs. Myers explained why these anecdotes were inadequate evidence: “Beauregard could recite a thousand vague rumors and poorly documented examples with ambiguous interpretations, and it wouldn’t salvage his thesis.” Beauregard attempted a vague scientific spin by throwing in the word “Quantum,” which is the New Age version of God of the Gaps argument, where anything that can’t be explained is brushed away with this buzzword.

Meanwhile, Mike Adams at townhall.com related the tale of “Carl” and his NDE, and noted there are many such stories. He’s right, there are many undocumented, unverified, anonymous anecdotes out there. I hope Adams is right about Carl having glimpsed the unending bliss that awaits us all. Or really, even perpetual mediocrity punctuated by occasional doughnut breaks with Chuck Connors and Benjamin Franklin would be enough. But until proof is available, I’ll focus on making the best of this life, which is the one I’m sure I have.

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“Illogical alien” (Otherworldy visitors)

'Great job Zork, we're lost... you couldn't find Uranus with both hands and a flashlight!'

All manner of accomplishments and actions have been attributed to aliens, who for some reason seem to have a travel preference for the Americas. There are relatively few sightings or handiwork left behind on other continents. Some aliens are malevolent beings like the Robot Monster, while others like E.T. are friendly. Still others are neutral and satisfy themselves by scratching images on Ica rocks.

Aliens are also said to be responsible for Nazca lines, crop circles, destroying Atlantis, building Pyramids, reproduction experiments, Mayan temples, cattle mutilation, unpleasant prodding, New Mexico desert wreckage, and providing the blueprint for reverse engineering of advanced spacecraft. For all this, believers have yet to produce a confirmed alien artifact, souvenir, implant, or DNA sample. This is sometimes attributed to aliens having the ability to erase memories. More ad hoc reasoning explains why extraterrestrial creatures would travel unimaginable distances just to build stuff or screw with us and never engage in meaningful outreach or dialogue. It’s because the various alien populations have entered into a no-human contact agreement. This makes the lack of proof the proof.

We don’t know of any life on other planets, though there could be. There may be microbes, which would be significant but not that fascinating. There may be an equivalent of a mammal or reptile, which would be better but still not entirely cool. The best would be intelligent life, which I define as being able to appreciate what finding comparable life elsewhere means. For example, if intelligent life were discovered at the outer edge of the Milky Way, humans would comprehend this and understand the implications, whereas goats would not.

With billions of galaxies each having billions of stars, most of which are orbited by multiple planets, life could have developed on one or more of them. In the search for this life, astronomers look for traces of water and oxygen in the Goldilocks zone. On one hand, this could be myopic, as life may have other ways of developing. On the other hand, this is the only way we KNOW life can form, so it makes the most sense to look there first.

But if beings do exist elsewhere, the idea of them dropping by unannounced seems highly improbable due to the distance. Earthlings are 500 light seconds from the sun, but four light years away from the second nearest star, Alpha Centauri. That equals 24 trillion miles. Buck Rogers would need a sustained speed of 100 million miles per hour to get there in 30 years. By contrast, the fastest spacecraft to leave Earth, Voyager, travels at 40,000 miles an hour.

So aliens would need to travel at amazing speeds, plus keep a population housed, fed, clothed, medicated, entertained, cooperative, and sustained, probably for millenniums. Also necessary would be equipment repairs, plus planning and good fortune to avoid the perils of deep space. All this just to flatten some corn, scribble some artwork, or take skin samples from unwilling medical subjects.

Accounts of alien abduction have precursors in Medieval and ancient times. Some European nuns believed they had been seduced by demons. BCE Greek women reported that the gods Jupiter and Dionysus had incarnated as animals, then had sex with them, resulting in Minotaur and Centaur offspring. There were no reports of alien visitation until man began pondering interstellar travel in the late 19th Century. Jules Verne and the 1902 movie A Trip to the Moon, which featured a rocket crashing into the lunar body’s eye, popularized the concept of otherworldly beings.

Whether holding a prod or a paintbrush, the aliens are described by witnesses as being about four feet tall, with heads shaped like inverted eggs, having large craniums, slanted eyes, usually earless and with very small noses. This mirrors how movies, novels, and comic books have usually portrayed them. The first widespread abduction tale was that of Betty and Barney Hill, who told their story following a hypnosis session in 1961. Hypnosis can have limited value in specific instances, but is an unreliable method of accessing lost memories, and can even be used to create false ones.

Mr. Hill reported that the aliens had “wraparound eyes.” Not coincidentally, beings with these features were broadcast 12 days earlier on The Outer Limits. After the Hills story became public, reports became commonplace as the cultural delusion and communal reinforcement took hold. It helped that this took place during the Cold War, a time of a technological and arms races against a mostly faceless Red Menace. The situation seems to have not been reversed in Soviet Union, as its citizens had no access to Invaders From Mars or Flash Gordon comics. Most reports indicate a period of forgetfulness after the encounter. Hypnosis or some other type of suggestion session is needed to lift the fog of being sprayed with alien amnesia juice.

Scientists and skeptics have answered many of the challenges. The crop circle ruse was uncovered by hidden night vision cameras. Erich von Däniken claimed to have alien artwork but this fraud was exposed. He had hired someone to paint spaceships and aliens on rocks and tried to pass them off as ancient. Cattle and other animals can take on an eerie, bloated appearance after scavengers eat their tongues, eyeballs, and other soft parts.

While science demands proof, the alien visitation position asks for considerably less evidence. Nevada businessman Robert Bigelow financed a survey to determine the frequency of alien abduction. It asked respondents if they had ever sensed a presence in the room, had an hour unaccounted for, seen unusual lights, noticed unexplained scars, or had a sensation of flying. Answering four of five yes was counted as evidence of having been snatched by aliens, an especially absurd illustration of magical thinking. It seems more like evidence for having fallen down drunk.

 

 

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“Healthy, wealthy, and lies” (Anti-GMO seminar)

MONSANTO

I strolled past the signs near the entrance proudly proclaiming that gluten-free food was available within. The store’s names stressed that the food was natural, leaving an unstated assumption that this was necessarily good. There was a detox section, although no one in it was receiving a liver transplant. There was also a sizable aromatherapy section and I was here for an anti-GMO presentation, so I figured I was deep in enemy territory. The organic dog food removed all doubt.

I was one of about a dozen attendees and presumably the only one doing undercover skeptic blogger work. I expected a one-sided presentation, but figured the speaker (a 67-year-old naturopath) would at least be aware of pro-GMO points in order to try and counter them. However, she had never heard of Golden Rice until I mentioned it. This is rice that is infused with Vitamin A, with a goal of preventing blindness in Third World children. Her retort was that Vitamin A should be distributed in other forms, without specifying this form, or how it would be paid for, transported, and delivered.

I thought we might have a chance at some evenhandedness when she described a GMO as “an organism which has been altered.” Anti-GMO types frequently prefer phrases like “manipulated into an unnatural state.” However, that hope vanished when she told us, “In the original Omen series, the antichrist was the CEO of a company thinly veiled on Monsanto. That is fitting, and they knew something.”

She touched on foreign policy as well. “Russia has totally banned GMO foods. They won’t have to launch a war, they will just be able to walk in and take our country because people here will just be zombies from eating that stuff.” I know the undead has been a saturated pop culture topic lately, but burned-out Commies vs. capitalist zombies, I think we’ve got a ratings winner there.

By the end she was explaining “how to avoid these Frankenfoods.” She also regretted that GMO opposition in the United States hasn’t mirrored what has happened in France, where she says the citizenry has ripped up cobblestones and dumped farm animal excrement in the streets. Indeed, the drive home was the one part of my seminar attendance that was without bullshit.

The Omen and Frankenfood references nicely mirrored the naturopath’s own horror tales. These included how 70 percent of U.S. foods are genetically modified and that these products cause liver malfunction and heart failure. And we are washing these GM foods down with aspartame-riddled drinks, which causes Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s. Yet we were somehow all alive and spry enough to be hearing this. The other attendees presumably douse themselves in patchouli oil before heading out to buy organic pears and honey lemon shampoo, but that wouldn’t explain why I’m still healthy.

There was frequent praise of organic produce. “Does it cost a little more? Up front, yeah. But do you know how much it costs to be in a nursing home’s Alzheimer’s unit?” This was asked without offering evidence that this is the inevitable destination for the GMO corn-fed amongst us. It also glossed over the fact that Alzheimer’s substantially predates the appearance of GMOs .

She repeated the usual ad populum associated with anti-GMO talk. She pointed out that 26 nations have banned GMOs, with “Europe” being one of the countries she listed. In truth, most of the countries she cited only ban portions of the GMO process. I was unable to get a definite picture, but I could only verify that Zambia and Zimbabwe have truly banned GMOs, meaning they outlaw their cultivation, import, and sale.

“There can be contamination in organic produce, but there’s a difference between 90 percent clean organic produce and 100 percent bad for you regular food.” What is 100 percent bad for your diet is no food, as some Zambians and Zimbabweans can attest.

In any case, the number of countries that have banned it has nothing to do with whether they are safe. Governments can and do pass bad laws based on bad information.

She described GMOs as “Round Up Ready,” which is only true occasionally. Most Round Up ready crops are GMOs, but not all GMOs are Round Up Ready. She used this introduce the idea that glysophate is a danger. Indeed, it can be, but like all chemicals, toxicity is determined by dosage.

I raised this point, asking, “Since the dose makes the poison, what is a safe amount of glysophate? For instance, if you had two acres, how much glysophate could safely be spread?” She answered, “There’s no safe level of glysophate, just none.” I decided to fact check this and came across the National Pesticide Information Center at Oregon State University. Its information about glysophate shows potential danger in certain conditions and doses, but it is far from the death sentence our neighborhood naturopath had guaranteed.

We were shown photos of severely bloated rats that supposedly had been fed GM soy. I’ll give the benefit of the doubt and assume that these rats were bloated for this reason. But if so, the studies test for such dangers, and when proven unsafe, the food is not allowed to be sold.

She made no mention of the 1,783 studies that indicate GMO safety, other than to say such studies are pushed through by wickedly wealthy Monsanto executives and a compliant government. Not all studies are industry-funded, though many are, and with good reason. Most automobile safety tests are funded by the industry, in part because they are liable if they sell a defective product. The same is true with those who sell genetically modified organisms.

Next, the naturopath offered, again without evidence, that industry and government elites “who push all this junk on us, you better believe they’re eating high-quality organic food.”

Between what she said and audience members chimed in with, here were some other memorable quotes from the day:

BEST POST HOC REASONING: “I have a friend whose adult daughter was struggling with infertility. She asked what she could do, and I said, ‘Get her off soy and tell her to eat organic.’ Now she’s pregnant with her second child.”

BEST POLITICAL BIPARTISANSHIP: “It doesn’t matter if it’s Republicans or Democrats. GMO stuff is Obama, and aspartame was Bush and Rumsfeld.”

BEST GRAMPA SIMPSON IMPERSONATION: “These people that are 20 and 30 years younger than I am are idiots and zombies, out there eating all this stuff. It effects the way you think, the way you reason, and your reaction time. In places where they don’t have GMOs, people are bright, they’re engaged, they’re energetic.” Or in the case of Zimbabweans, they are starving because President Mugabe won’t accept GM corn for drought victims.

As mentioned earlier, the only countries I could determine that have banned the cultivation, import, and sale of GMOs are Zimbabwe and Zambia. So unless the naturopath is vacationing exclusively in the Victoria Falls vicinity, at least some of the peoples she’s encountering on her travels are consuming GMOs. Attributing all pleasant character traits to a GMO-free diet, and all negatives traits to consuming GMOs, was part of the presentation’s continual post hoc reasoning.

BEST NON-GMO TERROR CITED: “Fluoride reduces people’s IQ by 10 percent.”

BEST OMINOUS, HUSHED, REPEATED USE OF THE WORD “THEY”: “They created the Zika disaster and then they say we’ve got a vaccine to treat it. They do that again and again.”

BEST REFERENCE WITH WORLD WAR I OVERTONES: “It’s mustard gas when you take a shower because the chlorine heats up the water and turns the water into it.”

 The naturopath closed with what she said was a true tale about a Greek nun.

 “She never kept more than a day’s supply of food. She ate what anyone offered her and she never got sick. Then she had a girl who came to stay with her who tried the same approach, and she got deathly sick the first day. The difference was that before the nun ate anything, she prayed over it, and the young girl didn’t.”

It seems, then, that the naturopath and her kind can dump their anti-GMO food campaign in exchange for praying before consuming it. I can live with that compromise.

 

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“Envision problems” (Anthroposophic medicine)

PLANT DOCTOR

Imaginary energy is a staple of alternative medicine. It goes by various names and can be summoned by someone using futuristic-looking ersatz electronics, or by someone waving their hands to replicate an ancient shaman’s. But in all cases, there is no explanation for how the energy is accessed, how it is measured, how it is controlled, or what type of energy it is.

In anthroposophic medicine, this energy is a vital force that needs to be manipulated in order to maintain health. The body is dependent on this energy and illness results when the flow is blocked. We have Rudolf Steiner and Ita Wegman to thank for this knowledge. They revealed it to the world in the 1910s and just look at how much the average lifespan has skyrocketed since.

Anthroposophic medicine comes with built-in ad hoc reasoning for the lack of double blind studies. These treatments are unique to the individual, so what works for one person won’t work for anyone else. What’s more, the field embraces reincarnation, with past lives assumed to impact current health. So the clinician must consider the current state of the patient’s soul, which would have no bearing on the person the practitioner is seeing next.

Steiner and Wegman taught that the soul, the senses, and consciousness all exist separate from the body, and that various homeopathic and alchemist techniques can bring these elements into harmony. Consistent with the stated inability to perform double-blind studies, these claims are limited to anecdotal evidence.

In lieu of research and employment of the Scientific Method, Steiner used his superhero powers to remotely view alternate dimensions and gain insight available only to him. He then dictated his visions on paper and announced the resultant cures and prevention techniques. These included a revelation that mistletoe cures cancer. Not just any mistletoe, however. Steiner’s vision included the stipulation that the plant’s medical potential was influenced by the position of heavenly bodies at harvest time.

In an anomalous lapse into accuracy, Steiner noted that mistletoe is a parasite that lives off host trees and sometimes kills them. So why not use this plant to fight rouge cells? Skeptic leader and physician Edzard Ernst has said, “Mistletoe might have some ingredients which possess pharmacological activity, but to claim that it is a cancer cure is still a huge leap of faith.”

Besides basing its cures on hallucinations instead of evidence, anthroposophic medicine also features an alternative anatomy and physiology. It claims blood is not pumped by the heart, but rather is propelled by the mysterious force that underlies the anthroposophic field. Astrology, crystal healing, and the shape of plants used in treatment can all play a role in patient healing, although exactly how and why are hard to determine since treatment is different for each person. It all makes for a highly idiosyncratic practice, essentially a manifestation of Steiner’s delusions and ego.

Anthroposophic medicine has received bewildering mainstream acceptance at Germany’s Witten-Herdecke University. It rides on legitimate medicine coattails and presents itself as an additional tool, in the same way that Reiki and craniosacral therapy have snuck in the backdoor of U.S. hospitals and taken up residence in integrative medicine wings.