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“Culture clubbed” (Lynn Andrews)

ANDREWSPICWhen I visit my wife’s hometown in the rural Philippines, I encounter a culture different from the one I grew up in. The religion is a Catholicism-witch doctor mix that includes a belief in a quasi-reincarnation which enables deceased relatives to sojourn in spirit or butterfly form. Neighborhoods are not quite tribal, but they feature a much stronger sense of identity than what is found in the United States. Most families grow at least some of their own food, usually rice and coconuts. While I’ve been warmly received in my handful of trips, it is unlikely that an outsider such as myself would ever be accorded access to the area’s deepest secrets and beliefs, even though I married into the culture. And it is much less likely that this scenario would happen six times to an interloper visiting disparate locations that prize tradition and secrecy.

But that is the claim of Lynn Andrews, who says she has been trained and mentored by shamans from various cultures, all of whom make up a highly-select group called the Sisterhood of the Shields.  

Her story of where these ideas and practices come from is almost certainly fabricated. Not that it matters much. Whether she came up with it on her own, or if she is heir to a multi-cultural conglomerate has no bearing on the legitimacy of what she’s peddling. And that is the notion that there is a magic emotional healing available through all of nature, and which has been used by every ancient culture and it still bursting through everyone’s chakra. Despite this ubiquity, it can only be accessed by purchasing it from Andrews.

Most of her writing features undefined New Age terms, but she is adaptable enough to throw in a dash of pseudoscience, such as, “Quantum physics, along with discovering the different ways the right and left hemispheres of the brain process information and function, are giving modern societies a greater understanding of the energy waves of life that bind us together and sometimes pull us apart when we are out of sync with the rhythms of our lives.”

In this sentence, she uses science terms, but tosses them into a gibberish gumbo. Quantum physics is the study of the behavior of matter at the molecular, atomic, and smaller levels. It is unrelated to society’s understanding of energy. As it happens, society’s understanding of energy is somewhat limited, as evidenced by the fact that Andrews and those like her get away with misusing the word. Her writing wows those who don’t know she is mangling terms, and the reader is left impressed, or at least confused and looking to Andrews to explain further. She also gets away with claiming to be on the cutting edge since her verbiage is unfamiliar.

While appealing to the future, she still makes the standard alternative medicine appeal to antiquity, writing, “These are the natural energies of the universe that Shamans have practiced for millenniums.” Of course, how long something has been used has nothing to do with its effectiveness.

Andrews excitedly reports that we are nearing the end of a 5,200-year Mayan cycle, a 1,000-year Incan cycle, and are entering a new Chinese cycle. In each case, this will lead to increased “cosmic wisdom, peace, harmony, and tranquility.” There have been multiple waits of 1,000 years or more, but they all happen to end in time for Andrews to take commercial advantage of it. Her energy waves do seem quite in synch after all. Even more, “new feminine energies” will use Lake Titicaca as a conduit, and pilgrims can soak these up by signing on for Andrews’ spiritual journey to Peru.  

With regard to this feminist energy, Andrews writes briefly about the “millenniums- long patriarchal oppression,” but never encourages voting, blogging, dialoging, campaigning, or organizing. Rather, the solution is to dress in natural fiber clothes, adorn sun jewelry, bang drums, and dance about a fire. Or more specifically, participate in these liberating activities at Andrews’ $800 retreats. There is also the option of paying $150 to talk with her by telephone for an hour. Or you can call me instead. Your cosmic energy won’t be any more attuned with Neptune or elk, but the chat is free and I will have Iron Maiden playing in the background.

If purchasing her phone services, seminar seats, or study programs, Andrews says students will be privy to knowledge she gained while apprenticing under shamans on four continents. Locales for these spiritual awakenings included the Yukon, the Yucatan, the Australian outback, the Himalayan foothills, the Pyramids, and Hawaiian shores. She never made it to Moline, Schenectady, or Tulsa. She knows the more exotic the locale, the more mystic it will seem to her followers. At some point in this spiritual journey, she claims to have been enshrined into the highly-secretive Sisterhood of the Shields, which numbers just 44 members. Furthermore, they appointed her as their spokesperson.

It is highly unlikely that Andrews gained access to folk medicine women from each of these cultures, and was encouraged to publicize what had been secretive methods. There is no indication of the Sisterhood’s existence separate from Andrews’ claims. These women from all parts of the world would had to have organized into an extremely tight group, then tapped an interloper to the spread cultural secrets of proud peoples. There is no good answer for how women raised in disparate cultures and religions would have sown together a seamless spiritual tapestry. In one case, Andrews  claims to be quoting a Lakota while using Cree terms.

Furthermore, she has cited Agnes Whistling Elk and Ruby Plenty Chiefs as two of her mentors, but  has never provided even a photo to document their existence. She did, however, relate that they had visited her again in 2014 and told her of a new vortex near Sedona that will open DNA doorways and provide energies from Mother Earth. Best of all, this new vortex coincided with the location of Andrews’ spring gathering that year. For several hundred dollars you get it all: Love, tranquility, and a previously unknown dimensional doorway.

Usually for my accompanying photo, I try to dig up something that highlights the ridiculous nature of the subject and maybe add some lazy Photoshopping. In this case I’m just using a picture from Andrews’ website because it accomplishes both of those goals nicely.

As to the words on that website, check this out: “Discover the ancient teachings of the Feminine Divine and learn how to heal and integrate your Sacred Feminine Energy Shield into wholeness. Through sound, action and intention, you heal the energy centers of your body – your heart, solar plexus and chakras. Move into Oneness and harmony with Mother Earth and the world around you as she shows you how to heal your life. This is the Way of the Wolf.”

In the end, is matters not whether these ideas are from Andrews alone or something cobbled together by herself and 43 other shamans. In either case, the result is pseudoscientific psychobabble that appeals to those comforted by platitudes, myths, tales, mysticism, and the appeal to nature fallacy, all wrapped in a bow of bastardized feminism.

 

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“Adjusted development” (Climate change denial)

HEAD

In a Phil Plait column on climate change this week, one reader posted a contrarian response. When asked to provide evidence of his claims, the reader told those he was arguing with to find it themselves. I sometimes encounter persons who erroneously shift the burden of proof, but this was a rare instance of someone adding the preposterous stipulation that their opponent provide the point they were arguing against.

For good measure, the reader added that any evidence on climate change doesn’t count if it comes from the NOAA, NASA, the International Panel on Climate Change, or skepticalscience.com, a website dedicated to the topic. Hey, it’s called climate change denial for a reason.

A couple of weeks prior to this, I read a column by Jay Taylor at the Liberty Alliance that also espoused the denialist position. To this, I posted my boilerplate response to such assertions:

“The central question of this issue is whether deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels contributes to more CO2 and other greenhouse gases, thus driving up average global temperature.

“99.8 percent of articles published in peer-reviewed journals over the past 25 years have concluded the answer is yes. If Taylor has evidence to the contrary, he is encouraged to submit his findings, methods, data sets, etc., to Science, Nature, or some similar publication. Instead, he bypasses peer review and takes his message straight to a sympathetic audience; doing so is the number one sign of pseudoscience.”

A reader responded to this by warning the government will use the issue to try and regulate businesses and power companies. This is the argument of consequences fallacy, and it bypasses the central point of whether the planet is warming and what’s causing it.

Later, the reader wrote that volcanoes are more responsible for rising temperatures than humans are. In truth, volcanoes cool the temperature. Volcano eruptions pump aerosols into the stratosphere, and these aerosols increase the reflection of radiation from the sun back into space. As to the carbon dioxide that volcanoes release, a 2010 study by climate scientist Pierre Friedlingstein showed that human activity normally releases about 35 gigatons of CO2 into the air each year, compared to about one-quarter of one gigaton from volcanoes.

I have yet to respond to the reader, but I assume his take on Friedlingstein’s data would be the same as his view of other scientists and their publications. He wrote, “The peer reviewed claim is a joke. Environmentalism is a religion to the left. It is defended as boldly as Allah by a Muslim. Both produce the same result. Misery for all who don’t subscribe to their point of view.”

Actually, I have yet to see a climate change denier stoned to death. But even if climate science were a religion with bold defenders, that would say nothing about the validity of the claims that are being made or denied. And dismissing peer review as being 5,000 climate scientists fabricating data in order to enrich themselves and provide the government cover to launch a Marxist-style takeover of the oil, gas, and coal industries is the definition of denial.

Making the scenario even more implausible is government hostility to the climate change position. Sen. James Inhofe has been the most conspicuous climate change denier in Washington, D.C., but he is danger of being usurped by Rep. Lamar Smith. In fact, it was Smith’s accusation that scientists are producing fraudulent data that Plait addressed in his latest column.

One of the deniers’ favorite talking points is that warming has slowed. This only works if you use 1998 as your starting point because there was an unusually strong el Niño season that year. Using any other year as the starting point shows a warming trend. However, this weak point for deniers became even more hobbled when NOAA published recalibrated data that showed the slowing since 1998 was less than had been thought.

Smith described this scientific recalibrating of data as an altering of the truth in order to push a nefarious agenda. However, let’s look at what really happened when past climate change data was recalibrated. First, the NOAA set up 114 pristine temperature stations. These stations include three temperature sensors that measure every two seconds and automatically send in data though a satellite uplink.

A frequent denialist argument is that urban heat sources can give contaminated data – and they are right. And these are the types of mitigating factors that are accounted for in the recalibration that Smith is describing as fraudulent and conspiratorial.

Scientists have been recording weather station measurements worldwide for 150 years. This data is used to determine Earth’s average temperature. However, over this century and a half, stations have moved, instruments have changed from mercury thermometers to electronic sensors, the time of day the temperature is taken has changed, and cities have sprouted around the stations. All of this opens the possibility of the temperature record being unreliable. To find out how much temperatures have really changed, scientists have to consider how the measurements were taken and under what conditions, then adjust accordingly.

As mentioned earlier, the adjusted data shows the slowing trend since 1998 is less pronounced than what scientists had thought. However, it also shows that the overall warming trend in the last 150 years is slightly less than thought. This finding is inconsistent with the theory that scientists are being paid to fabricate data to falsely make it appear things are heating up.

There was very little adjustment made for the period 2004 to 2015, consistent with improvements in equipment and methods over the years. Lead author Zeke Hausfather explained, “Over the last decade there are plenty of issues with the raw data, but they tend to roughly cancel out in their trend effects.”

NOAA’s adjustments account for faults in raw data and ensures temperature change is more accurately reflected. It works, even producing one result that deniers would like. Of course, this only further illustrates the evil shrewdness of the conspirators. Smith said the NOAA “conveniently issued its news release that promotes this report just as the administration announced its extensive climate change regulations.”

Sounds like he needs an attitude adjustment.

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“The ploys from Brazil” (Zika conspiracies)

mosquito

Since the outbreak of the mosquito-spread Zika virus in eastern Brazil nine months ago, the same region has seen an increase is the congenital defect microcephaly. A connection is suspected, but not confirmed.

But online conspiracy theorists would never become such if they bothered waiting for confirmation or even suspicion. Instead, within minutes, you can let your minions and cohorts know that Zika is being spread by genetically modified mosquitoes as part of a population control plot. Regarding the population control part, the theorists are right.  The  biotech corporation Oxitec began breeding specialized mosquitoes as a means to limit the flying insects’ numbers.

From Christie Wilcox at Discover, we learn these mosquitoes were genetically engineered to need a certain antibiotic to survive in the wild. Then when a wild female mosquito breeds with a male Oxitec one, it is a death sentence for the offspring. Wilcox explained, “If you release enough such males in an area, then the females won’t have a choice but to mate with them. There will be few to no successful offspring in the next generation, and the population is controlled.”

Now, what does all this have to do with a human birth defect that results in a small brain? The theorists’ main argument is the mistaken belief that the Zika outbreak began in the same time and place as the first Oxitec mosquito release. However, the virus epicenter is on the Brazilian coast, hundreds of miles from where the mosquitoes were released. And again, these mosquitoes are unlikely to be able to reproduce and there is no evidence they are carrying the virus.

A competing conspiracy theory concedes the genetically modified mosquitoes are not carrying the virus, but only because it does not exist. It is a ruse to further enrich Big Pharma with a new vaccine, which the government will use to further increase peoples’ blind obedience to it. This plot would had to have been hatched it least as early as 1947, when the virus was first identified (or fabricated, if you’re a conspiracy theorist).

Yet another evidence-free option to choose from is the claim that the virus is caused by the Tdap vaccine. Anti-vaxxers point out that the same year the virus began spreading, pregnant Brazilians began receiving the anti-pertussis vaccine in the third trimester. 

However, obstetrician and skeptic blogger, Dr. Amy Tutuer, noted that third-trimester Tdap vaccines are common worldwide, while the microcephaly outbreak is limited to coastal Brazil. Moreover, she said, “Microcephaly is a defect that originates in the early weeks of pregnancy when the brain is forming,” meaning an event in the third trimester would have no impact on a process that was completed months earlier.

If unable to decide which of these baseless assertions is most attractive, theorists can watch an Alex Jones video that, at various times, describes the virus as either nonexistent, the result of vaccination, or a Bill Gates plot to foment genocide. What skeptics would see as inconsistency, theorists see as sensationally supple and awesomely ambiguous.

 

 

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“Goode grief” (Truth11.org)

NAZIMARS

I spend enough time in critical thinking circles and examining anti-science and conspiracy claims that I have developed a sensitive Poe-meter. The satires are getting better and the ideas they ridicule are becoming more unhinged, so distinguishing between the two is getting tougher, but I can usually tell. But I failed when I came across truth11.org.

The site hawks plenty of generic conspiracies, along the lines of “Monsanto and the Rockefellers pulled off the Boston Marathon false flag in order to cause autism in the monkeys which the Bilderberger aliens used to start the AIDS virus,” or theories to that effect.

But my meter misfired when I saw my first headline from the site: “German secret societies and U.S. corporations nuked subterranean Martians and built slave colonies.”

I clicked on it, expecting to enjoy a good Poe, but ended up finding the real thing, which is usually better. The website goes beyond the normal conspiracy. The idea of Bush minions pulling off 9/11 with explosives is ever so trite. From truth11.org, we learn that instead lasers and mysterious orbs did the trick. The apparent airplanes being actually holograms coordinated to arrive at the precise time as the weapons of light. 

Truth11.org frequently features the happenings of secret societies – secret societies the website always know everything about. The articles provide no substantiating evidence beyond the words of someone calling himself Corey Goode. This man claims to have been a member of a number of projects and organizations that are far more clandestine than the societies he aims to expose.

With regard to Mars, he relates that the reason U.S. corporations conspired with a German Skull & Bones variant to eliminate the planet’s reptilians and insectoids was to access precious metals. This necessitated first exterminating the indigenous aliens, followed by the building of an advanced infrastructure on the red planet. This means it has been under construction for 70 years without so much as a cement truck spotted in one of the craters.

The appeal to ancient authority happens even when dealing with aeronautics, for Goode describes the spacecraft used as being based on BCE Hindu technology. Just to be safe, he had the reverse engineering take place at Area 51.

This website uses extreme post hoc reasoning in lieu of evidence. For instance, it cites a federal law that stipulates if any U.S. corporation ever mines in space, it would not be subject to government oversight. And this law is used as proof that Americans and Germans cooperated on a Martian genocide.

This eradication of Marvin and his underground cronies was followed by the enslavement of engineers and business executives, who were lulled to Mars by being told they would live in a futuristic utopia they would help build. They certainly made for the most affluent and learned chattel in history.   

Whether a theory is as unbelievable as this one, or is one that is more mainstream among conspiracy theorists, the hook is the same: The listener, owing to his shrewdness and independent thinking, is privy to a fantastic secret. This is all leading to the glorious day of revelation that takes place in an Eternal Tomorrow. It is always so close to happening, but never quite arrives. The website reports, “Goode remains confident that his disclosures are a prelude to massive document dump by a secret space program alliance that will finally confirm the truth.”

While waiting for this verification of alien extermination committed by Nazi leftovers, we can learn about giants sleeping in chambers that arrest the aging process. Goode again reaches into the ancient angle grab bag to explain the chambers were constructed by an unspecified lost civilization using undefined crystal technologies. This created a time warp in which 30,000 Earth years speed by while the slumbering behemoths age just 30 minutes.

And while it’s been going on for these tens of thousands of years, the payoff is again taking place in the Eternal Tomorrow: “Goode believes the beings are still alive, and in the process of being revived.”

Goode never explains where the giants came from, what they are, why they are super hibernating, who oversees this, or if it’s good, bad, or neutral. But he does relate that Abraham Lincoln claims to have seen them, so that says something for the honest nature of these accounts.

When the giants wake up, they will learn that Mankind has developed a manner of space travel using the sun as a portal. Goode said this mode of transportation employs “a form of hyper-dimensional mathematics based on sacred geometry.”

And this is just the first of many galactic airport layovers: “This model links all the stars in our galaxy,” allowing astronauts to travel anywhere in the Milky Way. These travel nodes also exist in places such as the Bermuda Triangle and open and close without warning. When activated, these nodes transport unwilling ship captains and airplane pilots anywhere in the galaxy.

Back on Earth, Goode is captivated by a humanoid robot statue at the Grove Hotel in Watford, England. Specifically, he ponders what this means for our future physiology. The Bilderbergers met at Grove in 2013, so Goode deduces that was an endorsement of the statue, and by extension, transforming people into Avatar warriors. This same hotel also hosted a Google event, and the company’s director of engineering is someone Goode describes as a transhumanism proponent.

Transhumans will largely resemble people but will have immense intelligence, strength, and durability. Not quite Superman, but at least Underdog. Goode said the Google executive “must have felt a kindred spirit with the metallic humanoid sculptures. This will lead to a new arms race that will force our society into a transhuman future.”

Or maybe they could just use the weapons they used to nuke the Martians.

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“Fallacy galaxy” (Critical thinking)

thinker

I work most days on building critical thinking skills and am also on Facebook and other online sites each day. These two items go together. After all, if looking to spot logical fallacies, it is best to search for them in their natural habitat.

I have yet to see a definition of critical thinking that I find satisfactory. I have been working on my own, but am still at it. More than anything else, though, it is sticking to the point. Most logical fallacies in some way deflect the key point or stray from it.

Another distinction is that critical thinking reaches conclusions that are logically supported by a series of sound premises. Just declaring something to be so without offering proof is inadequate.

One key to critical thinking is to detach one’s self from one’s beliefs, for they are not the same. This may be the hardest part of the exercise. Cognitive dissonance and the backfire effect are potent enemies of critical thinking. But they can be overcome with practice. 

I saw an anti-vax article that included a graph which showed that measles rates were going down before the vaccine was introduced. To think critically about this, I would need to investigate the claim for accuracy and analyze what it would mean if true. Just dismissing it as the ramblings of a pro-disease lunatic would not be thinking critically.

Multiple reputable sources confirmed the chart’s findings. But this does not mean that the eradication of measles from U.S. is not owing to vaccination. Measles is an endemic disease, so populations can build resistance to it, but it can also be deadly when introduced to a new population. This, when combined with measles’ highly contagious nature and the susceptibly of preschoolers to it, explains the nine spikes on this chart, occurring at approximately four-year intervals. There has been no such spike, or even a tiny bump, since the vaccine was introduced in 1964. In fact, there were 364 measles deaths in 1963, and none in 2004, a reduction of 100 percent.

As this experience demonstrates, I am never afraid to have my views and beliefs challenged. If they are correct, they will survive the challenge. If they are wrong, I will be enlightened. Not everyone can embrace this concept. I have been unfriended multiple times for respectfully pointing out inconsistencies in an argument or offering a different opinion. Some persons are that welded to their positions. I can only lead them to the dihydrogen monoxide, I cannot force them to consume the liquefied molecule.

Maintaining its status as the runaway frontrunner for most frequent logical fallacy is the ad hominem. This is where the retort is to belittle the speaker rather than attempting to counter the argument. This is most often in the form of a genetic fallacy. It is ubiquitous in the anti-vax and anti-GMO camps, where the shill line is frequently employed. It is so extreme that some anti-vaxxers accused billionaire Mark Zuckerberg of being paid by Big Pharma to post a photo of his daughter getting her shots.

Almost every time the shill accusation is made, it is untrue and childish. But more importantly, it is irrelevant to the argument. I often point there are 1,783 studies that suggest GMO safety, and that vaccines work by mimicking disease in order to prep the immune system for the real thing. These statements are true whether or not someone is clandestinely paying me to write it.

Another common logical fallacy is the strawman. This is making up or greatly misrepresenting the opposing position to make it ridiculous and easy to tear down. For example, Ken Ham claims skeptics are desperate to find evidence of life on another planet since it would bolster the case for evolution. He then gleefully points out that no such evidence has been uncovered, so this proves the other side is wrong. In truth, skeptics are the most vocal in questioning claims of ancient aliens, abductions, Roswell, and Nirubians. Part of the reason for this position is realizing that the enormity of space makes contact unlikely, and that any hypothetical alien civilization would had to have developed the same type of technology as us for signals to reach from one planet to another.

Another example of misrepresenting a position comes in the form of challenging persons to shake disassembled watch parts in a box and see if a working timepiece results. This is meant to speak against the idea of random chance, and by extension, evolution. I could issue a counter challenge of providing an empty box and asking God put a watch in it. But that would be the logical fallacy of appealing to hypocrisy. A better response is to point out that while mutations are random, the natural selection that drives evolution is the opposite of chance. It’s also rather silly to tie the changes of biological population over time into a broken up Rolex, but that’s a little beyond a critical thinking lesson. So we’ll move on, but stay with the religion vs. atheism theme. 

Christian apologist author Frank Turek says there must be a God because if men created their own values, morals would be subjective and everyone would have their own and chaos would result. However, this is the argument from consequences. Whether chaos would result has no bearing on whether man got his idea of right and wrong from a deity or through experience, reflection, observation, upbringing, and society. As an aside, I don’t think Turek takes his morality from the Bible; otherwise he would support ISIS members who sell their daughters into slavery and stone adulterers.

Now we’ll look at some fallacies are that are more difficult to spot. Ad hominem are easy to detect since the person isn’t addressing the argument. We can know an argument to be a strawman if the opposing person didn’t say it. And it’s easy to see that possible results are not an argument for your point. But with denying the antecedent, it is possible to make a series of accurate statements, but structure them in such a way that makes for an illogical conclusion.

In this logical fallacy, the speaker starts with a conditional statement, then denies it, and finally arrives at a conclusion though these two. Example: “If Wayne is on the treadmill, he is exercising. Wayne is not on the treadmill. Therefore, Wayne is not exercising.” This is faulty logic since the treadmill is not the only way to exercise. Even if I were NOT exercising, this is still unsound thinking. Of course, an example this transparent would seldom be offered. In fact, other than Answers in Genesis, I know of no entity that speaks in such a manner. But more subtle examples abound. It might come in a form like this: “If the president cared about police officers, he would address the nation about the three killed this week. Yet all the White House offers is silence. So we know he hates cops and their families.”

Denying the antecedent has an equally erroneous twin, affirming the consequent. This switches the order of “if-then” propositions to include the consequent as part of the conditional statement. This is very common among creationists, in some cases being the central or only point. Answers in Genesis asserts that “No evidence can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record,” then points out that the Big Bang is incompatible with the Bible. It follows by deducing this means the Big Bang could not have happened. This is faulty logic because AIG assumed its original premise to be true without offering supporting evidence.

Another tactic AIG uses is to poison the well. In these instances, the information might be factual, but is irrelevant to the point being made. For example, AIG condemns Old Earth Creationists for not being anti-Big Bang enough when thinking God blew the universe into existence. The organization’s resident astrophysicist, Jason Lisle wrote, “Some professing Christians agree with atheistic astronomers that the stars and planets formed by slow natural processes over billions of years, but stipulate that God’s hand directed these processes.”

That this subset of Christians finds fairly narrow common ground with atheists and scientists has no bearing on whether their beliefs are true. Lisle drops the word “atheistic” only to bias AIG readers against the Old Earth Creationists.

A similar tactic is guilt by association, such as pointing out that Stalin was an atheist. Indeed he was, but he was also white, male, mustachioed, Caucus-born, a former choir boy, a Sagittarius, and the son of a cobbler. Having one common trait with someone does not mean every view or distinction is shared. Nazi Germany was 94 percent Christian, but that is not a sound argument against the religion.

Then we have the appeal to authority, when someone who is an expert in his or her field is assumed to know a lot about whatever the topic is being addressed. I made several attempts to explain science to one of the guys who unfriended me. It was without success, as this man considered every doctor and scientist to be part of an evil cabal that deliberately kept people sick and uninformed. Yet he allowed an exception for Linus Pauling, praising his Nobel Prize in chemistry (an honor he would otherwise belittle), since Pauling had an iconoclastic view on illness and thought Vitamin C could cure everything. The former friend held up Pauling’s accomplishments in chemistry as reason to suppose we should trust his views about an unrelated field. Incidentally, the former friend was also engaged in the logical fallacy of special pleading, where one must carve out an exception to one’s own rule in order to make the argument work. In this case, the pleading was what we can never trust any scientist, unless it’s Pauling.

This is different than relying on someone who has expertise in the area they are addressing. Five years ago I came across a manner for scoring NCAA Tournament pools that used the Fibonacci Method. It purported to be a better way of finding who picked the best tournament, but it used some advanced math, so I was clueless about it. I e-mailed the description to a mathematics Ph.D, who wrote back that the ideas were sound. Since he was an expert in the field, I could reasonably trust his conclusions. This is especially true when consensus is strong. Since 99.8 percent of peer-reviewed papers published over the last 25 years endorse the notion of anthropogenic climate change, this is overwhelming reason to believe it.

This doesn’t mean they or any other experts can never be questioned or be wrong. It means that we need to go where the evidence leads. In the case of climate change, it is backed by a ton of data, peer review, and proper science, and until someone comes up with something better, we go with what the evidence shows.

To be clear, a person with a chemistry degree can make an intelligent, accurate, and original observation about medicine. If they did so, a rebuttal of “Where did you get your medical degree” would be committing a genetic fallacy. But using only a degree, or similar authority, as evidence that they are correct, is erroneous. thinking. 

Finally, I know the mathematics Ph.D. was right about the pool method being a better way to determine a champion because I won it.

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“The Kids Are All Might” (Indigo children)

SKID

Indigo children are said to be youngsters who possess highly desirable supernatural abilities. These awesome offspring are variously suspected to be multidimensional beings, human-alien hybrids, super-evolved hominids, or prophets destined to lead humanity to full enlightenment. While none of these distinctions have been confirmed in indigo children, we can be certain of their parents’ traits, most notably a massive ego.

The concept of indigo children originated with Nancy Ann Tappe, who attributed her discovery to her synesthesia. This is an neurological phenomenon where a person is using one sense but has another stimulated. Everyone does this to some extent. For instance, if someone hears the word giraffe, they likely will “see” this giant animal in their mind. But synesthesia primarily refers to such experiences as hearing a car start and associating it with the color green, or looking at a circle and getting an itching sensation. Tappe, then, attributed synesthesia to her seeing an indigo glow around select children.

A fairly minor point here, but that would not be synesthesia since only sight was involved. Perhaps she was claiming the color was her “seeing” the sixth sense. In any case, whether or not she is seeing shimmering children would be easy to determine. A dozen partitions could be set up, and behind each would sit either a person she considers indigo, a person she does not consider indigo, or an empty chair. She could then tell testers which partitions had an indigo glow rising from them. However, New Agers don’t normally care for these types of tests, instead preferring feelings, intuition, and client gullibility. Boyued by these elements, Tappe writes books on the subject and holds seminars, where hundreds of disciples bathe in each other’s bluish brilliance.

In her writings, Tappe lists traits to look for to know if your child is indigo. It’s unclear why this is needed, since having Tappe look at the kids would seem enough. Also, the list of indigo traits is so long and vague it could apply to everyone and so the Forer Effect comes into play. These descriptions include being curious, headstrong, unusual, driven, intuitive, intelligent, and resistant to structure.

Thinking one’s child is a hyper-evolved multidimensional being is attractive to those whose credulity is matched by their vanity. But author Sarah Whedon suggests the indigo label also appeals to parents who seek to excuse their child’s behavior and their parental responsibility to do anything about it. For instance, pro-indigo authors Jan Tober and Lee Carroll say such children may function poorly in conventional schools due to their rejection of rigid authority, their being smarter than their teachers, and their inability to embrace discipline.

Whedon suspects that many children who have ADHD or autism are instead labeled as indigo by their parents. This also gives a fabricated reason to avoid Ritalin or other medication, a plus in this mostly anti-vax, anti-Big Pharma community. Here, autism is just another word for telepathy. Skeptic author Robert Todd Carroll said, “It’s much easier for them to believe their children are special and chosen for some high mission instead of having a brain disorder.” Anthropologist Beth Singler considers the movement as part of a moral panic about children, parenting, ADHD, autism, Big Pharma, and vaccinations.

From a list of identifiers at indigochildren.com, we learn, “If this seems to describe you, chances are you are an Indigo,” followed by an exhaustive list of personality traits. Most are positive, such as creative, honest, sympathetic, and confident. Like astrology, it is kept general, while also telling the listener what it wants to hear. There are handful of negative traits thrown in – rebellious, antisocial, strange – in order to have cover for ADHD and autism.

I doubt if anyone who has wanted to know if their child was indigo has looked into it and decided the answer was no. If someone has gotten to the point of seriously asking that question, it reveals their motivation and mindset.

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“Disregarding Henry” (E! psychic)

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Because people will always get sick, there will always be others selling the latest, greatest cure, regardless of how inexplicable or unreasonable it might be. The Old West traveler hawking elixirs from his wagon became Orthomolecular Medicine Man in the 20th Century, promising to remedy aliments with a Vitamin C overload. His descendant today has online stores and holistic health huts from which he sells detoxifying peach-mango mixes, Himalayan salt treatments, and craniosacral rubs.

The seriousness of adopting these methods is parallel to the affliction. If your aunt treats her mild lupus with corticosteroids from her rheumatologist, she will likely get better results than her neighbor who treats the same illness with jasmine-infused owl feathers from a shaman. The latter would likely experience swollen joints and fever, meaning a less enjoyable life, but not an extinguished one. The greatest danger, of course, comes in the form of cancer patients bypassing chemotherapy for ionic foot cleanses and milk thistle.

But whether one goes with what centuries of research and double blind studies show, or with what 30 minutes on Google reveals, both patients will die eventually, either from the disease or something else. And that is when those who prey on the sick and frightened are replaced by those who pounce on the grieving and lonely.

In the past, these charlatans preferred to project an element of mystery. They were septuagenarians with eastern European names, accents, and accoutrements. They resided in rural villages and gave readings in hushed tones with raised eyebrows and eyes opened in amazement. By contrast, today’s mediums are often telegenic, loquacious, eager to help, and easy to find.

The latest example is Tyler Henry. Like snake oil salesman, the conniving ghouls have adapted for the times. Séances with mysterious strangers in darkened rooms have given way to unrealistic reality shows featuring fresh-faced congenial chaps and ladies with immaculate coiffures and snazzy semiformal wardrobes. Having turned 20 this month, Henry brings a youthful exuberance to the art of preying on the grieving at their most vulnerable.

While he is young, there’s nothing original in his techniques. He keeps it vague, jettisoning misses and focusing instead on what his subjects considers hits. He then shuts up and lets his client fill in the significant blanks. For instance, on a reading with Jaime Pressley, Henry insisted he was driven to write the letter B over and over, which he did. Pressley excitedly shouted, “Brittany Murphy,” and indeed, Henry confirmed that’s where the spirit was leading him. 

About this revelation, Bobby Finger at Jezebel noted, “Mediums expect us to believe that the dead, in their desperate attempts to tell their survivors that everything’s just great on the other side, are only able to communicate in single words or syllables. The afterlife is apparently filled with stuttering apparitions of the formerly living.”

Whether Pressley was genuinely impressed or putting on for the camera, I’m unsure. But skeptics recognize what Henry did as a garden variety cold read. But Henry is versatile, as evidenced by his use of a hot read while victimizing retired basketball player John Salley. Henry mentioned “Moses” and Salley knew this was a message from beyond the grave from his friend Moses Malone. That Malone had died four months earlier and was friends with Salley are facts anyone could look up, but Henry added the extra element of procuring monetary gain from his online search.

His versatility is also seen by his purporting to have multiple psychic abilities. Besides speaking with the dead, he also claims clairvoyance, the ability to see the future. Put another way, he knew about the Paris attacks and did nothing to warn the victims. But can you blame the guy? Look how many potential new clients he has now.

He shows some originality by claiming another ability most psychics don’t, the capacity to diagnose medical conditions by merely sensing someone’s energy. What does your silly old oncologist know, I’m getting nothing but good vibes from your aura.

His public readings have so far been limited to the likes of Pressley, Salley, and Dr. Phil. But his stated goal is to fill a specific lowly niche in the pond scum of ghoulish mediums. He plans to specialize in parents whose children killed themselves. No one is more ravaged by guilt, tormented about words said or not said, actions taken or suppressed, than those whom Henry seeks to exploit. Dr. Steven Novella, founder of the New England Skeptical Society, said of Henry’s career ambition, “This is the worst grief a human can suffer. These are people at their most vulnerable. He is not a trained counselor, and working with the grieving is very tricky. The potential for harm is tremendous.”

Henry describes himself as a skeptic. Hold on a second while I hurl into my trash can. OK, I’m back. Henry said, “It’s important to have a healthy degree of skepticism. So in my readings, my goal is to bring up information that there really is no way I could know. I don’t like saying general things. I don’t like saying information that everybody knows. I focus on information that can’t be researched or Googled, and that usually includes inside jokes or sentimental pieces of information that only families really know.”

Skeptic activist Susan Gerbic noted this would be an easy assertion to test if Henry is sincere about it. She said, “If Henry really is a skeptic, surely he’s be up for a carefully designed and controlled test of his powers. I doubt that’s going to happen any time soon.” Indeed, Henry has relayed no premonition of when this test will take place.
Gerbic is correct. If I woke up with a newly-discovered ability to levitate objects, I would want scientists and doctors to examine it. I would want Penn & Teller and James Randi to see it, not to fool them and get a million dollars, respectively, but so that skeptics and scientists could try to deduce what unknown physics phenomenon was being accessed, how it could be controlled, and how it could benefit Mankind. Alas, as of this morning, I still lack this ability. The only thing I’m able to lift is the veil off of Henry’s fraudulent world.

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“Weather or not” (Chemtrails)

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Moline became the focus of chemtrail warriors last week when they learned WQAD meteorologist Eric Sorenson was addressing the issue using science. Sorenson posted a video explaining that contrails were merely hot jet engine condensation. He also ruminated that the government would be reducing its funding pool were it to engage in a taxpayer genocide.

The meteorologist related what happened next: “My video was shared on a geo-engineering page with a call for people to “Go get him.” Within minutes, the comments turned hateful and angry. One poster wished that my family be poisoned and that a brick be thrown through my head. There are dozens of people who believe I am paid by the government, and a surprising number of people wish me some sort of harm.”

One of the attacking posters seethed, “Anyone denying geo-engineering is in fear of losing their job. When you and your family are so full of aluminum you can’t remember each other, you might realize there is a huge scale weather modification going on.” This is a good example of how a conspiratorial obsession warps a person’s thought process. For in the first sentence, the poster calls Sorenson a liar. In the second sentence, the poster calls Sorenson the one being lied to.

The Sorenson story flittered away after a few days, but the chemtrail saga will endure. Posters such as the one who fantasizes about weathermen offspring being pumped with toxins have raised many questions about contrails over the years. Contrailscience.com does phenomenal job of cataloging these inquires and also answers them, on the outside chance that the questioner is genuinely seeking a scientific explanation.

The website features extensive interaction between the contrails and chemtrails camps, and provides good insight into the mindset of each. As one example, a chemtrailer ties together three unrelated items: A Guardian article about Great Britain supposedly being exposed to bacteria spraying during World War II; geo-engineering weapons previously proposed; and the lingering white lines he sees overhead today. A reader calling himself Uncinus pointed out the items having nothing to do with each other, then added, “None of the geo-engineering proposals would produce a trail that looks like a chemtrail.”

That brought this response from the chemtrailer: “The truth is eminent (think he means imminent). It will be revealed soon. Uncinus will disappear as if he never existed and there will be no one for all of his foolish followers to hold accountable for it. Then it will suddenly become so obvious to you, and you will ask yourself over and over, how could I have been so stupid!” The chemtrail warrior posted this is 2010, so I’m unsure what his definition of soon is. But he does provide a nutshell of conspiracy think. He provides no science, just some name calling accompanied by a warning about something that is perpetually nigh, yet never arrives.

The general idea he and his kind promote is that contrails are filled with dangerous amounts of chemicals – usually aluminum or barium – and the U.S. government sprays them on its citizens, intending to either kill them or engage in mind control. Countering this theory are the fact that its proponents are alive and able to think in a way contrary to their overlords’ wishes.

Many of them claim that yesteryear’s contrails were visible for no longer than auto exhaust is today. Short of unearthing a heretofore unknown database of contrail duration, we can rely on contrailscience.com, which documents non-hysterical references to contrails dating to before World War I. The website has also assembled hundreds of photos taken from books, photo albums, and newspapers that all point to lingering contrails having been with us for decades.

This is because contrails sometimes persist and spread, depending on the weather at the moment of dispersal. Contrails are the consequence of surrounding air and ice crystals from exhaust. They vanish when the ice turns to water vapor. They disappear more quickly in dry, warm air and linger in cold, humid conditions. In frigid enough temperatures, even automobiles can produce contrails. Depending on one’s viewpoint, this is further evidence of contrail innocuousness, or a frightening realization that there are millions more chemtrail disbursing agents amongst us.

Many chemtrail sites include links to an Arkansas television station’s story that allegedly uncovered dangerous amounts of barium that were said to be caused by airplane exhaust. The reporter was mistaken, and when the errors were brought to his attention, he altered his position. Full details on this case are here. But the point I want to make is that, to the theorist, the original story is irrefutable evidence of chemtrail danger, while every other mainstream article and newscast on the subject is wrong or part of the coverup.

Similarly, believers claim the government confirmed the existence of deadly chemtrails in HR 2977. In actuality, this bill bans space weapons, and commercial airliners are neither spacecraft nor weapons (excepting 9/11). But, again, the larger point is that this government “admission” is touted as unassailable truth, yet anything else the government tells us about chemtrails is a lie.

Another common line is that some patterns prove they are not mere contrails. But X’s, grids, and similar shapes are the result of air traffic, wind, and the weather, not the CIA pumping aerosol weapons at us. If the agency is trying to poison us, it is stunning evidence of government incompetence. For starters, they are turning chemical weapons on themselves with hundreds of daily flights into and out of D.C. Further, if aerosol is being spewed from an airplane, it would fall one foot per second, meaning it would take eight hours to reach its intended victims from 30,000 feet. This also means it would be spread over thousands of miles and thus be far too diluted to do damage by the time it reached Eric Sorenson’s nostrils.

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“Field of Schemes” (Torison fields)

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Torison fields are something Einstein discovered and about which I can tell my readers precisely nothing. But I can relate how a handful of fraudsters have coopted and mangled this idea. In these cases, torison fields are alleged to be bundles of energy through which neutrinos shoot through vacuums at speeds well beyond warp. This is one of the least known pseudoscience topics and I could only identify about half a dozen persons who subscribe to the idea. These include the Russian duo Atatoly Akimov and Gennady Shipov, who were funded by their government before being exposed and hightailing it to Thailand, where they sell ersatz medical products purporting to access these fields.

The nonchalant nature of claiming beyond warp speed is an obvious pseudoscience giveaway. In 2011, CERN physicists reported seeming to have observed neutrinos traveling two-billionths of a second beyond light speed. This was met with extreme suspicion in the quantum mechanics community, even among those who had done the research and who announced the findings. These scientists made it clear this finding needed to be rechecked, and that this was less to seek confirmation than to find out where the error lay. It turned out it was due to flaws in equipment setup.

By contrast, torsion field proponents claim speeds over 100 times beyond warp. With about the same velocity, they whip through the pseudoscience landscape and credit torsion fields with being responsible for ESP, levitation, telepathy, telekinesis, clairvoyance, miracle cures, perpetual motion machines, and alien spacecraft propulsion.

They also claim that neutrinos, which have almost no mass, can easily be detected by a homemade device sitting on their desk. Genuine neutrino detectors are massive, built underground to avoid background radiation, and have an infinitesimal winning percentage.

In the universe Atatoly and Shipova have created,  when massive objects rotate at high speed, they create torsion fields that move through space and interact with any matter they pass through and change the matter’s inertia. Massive objects, of course, would include planets and stars, but in this case, they also include pyramids, because one might as well add the ancient Egyptian angle to your cart while shopping at the alternative science store.

The only other active torsion field proponent I am aware of is Richard Hoagland. His signature item is a Bulova wristwatch hooked up to a precision frequency sensor, which is connected to a laptop and displays the watch’s frequency. Hoagland describes this as a tuning fork that can detect and measure torsion fields. He usually conducts experiments near large stone objects during an eclipse, presumably to add an element of mystery, although how anyone could buy off on this seems perplexing enough. This is self-tested, self-reviewed, self-validated, and self-congratulatory. He describes his results as “stunning,” “astonishingly confirmatory,” and “a technology that can save the planet.”

Yet he has never published data showing that he established a baseline for measurement or how he arrived at it. Further, in the only video showing Hoagland with his gizmo, he is failing to control its orientation. This would be like claiming a new comet sighting without looking into a telescope. Also, he has never explained how his apparatus would receive this information, nor attempted to falsify his hypothesis.

The only other guy I could find out in torison field was Buryl Payne, who claimed that these fields emanate from living organisms, be they humans, crickets, protozoa, or bananas. These fields can be detected by a Biofield Meter, which Payne constructed from household items. I was looking forward to building one and conducting my own experiments, but Payne’s link, like the torsion field crowd, is broken. That’s OK, if I want to read science fiction, I’ll grab some Asimov.

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“Watered down” (Masaru Emoto experiments)

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I wanted this post be about Michael Tellinger, who purports to fuse creationism with abiogenesis and evolution. He claims his research reveals how “evolutionists and creationists can finally co-exist in one pond,” presumably one comprised of holy water and primordial soup.

He asserts that God made a deliberately inferior hominid species 250,000 years ago, but that evolution began with Abraham and was further advanced by Jesus, who was the messiah without knowing it. Tellinger came to these conclusions through reinterpretations of the Bible, Sumerian clay tablets, and genetic engineering principles.

Alas, most of his work requires a subscription and the Moline Skeptics monthly budget is about four mills. So I will instead be testing the claims of Masaru Emoto, as doing so requires only access to water and rice, plus working vocal chords.

Emoto, who died in 2014, asserted water could be influenced by words. He separated water into 100 petri dishes and half of the samples were praised and half were scorned. Then each petri dish was frozen and Emoto said that when viewed under a microscope, the water which had been praised was in the shape of beautiful crystalline structures, while the berated beverage lacked symmetry and sported a jagged appearance.

However, in a post for Skeptoid, Carrie Poppy quoted former Stanford University William Tiller as saying it is easy to manipulate water’s crystalline structure with contaminants or by tinkering with its cooling rate. Emoto had no controls for this and there is no way to tell anything about the water’s temperature or other conditions when he made his observations.

More significantly, Emoto offered no evidence of water having auditory capabilities or language comprehension skills. Another problem is that he made no attempt to falsify his hypothesis, a necessary step in the Scientific Method. He did, however, follow the Pseudosceintific Method, mixing misused and undefined terms with the obligatory reference to vibrations. He said the water responded to flattering or belittling words because of “intrinsic vibrational patterns at the atomic level that is in all matter and is the energy of human consciousness.”

Emoto said even large bodies of water would believe it if they were told they were a bad little lake. He described observing one such body that appeared to him to resemble a pained person. He then chanted loving words in its direction and the lake made a smiley face, or some such pattern. Later, the body of a drowning victim was found in the lake, causing Emoto to conclude, “Perhaps, through the crystals, the spirit of this woman was trying to tell us something, and her suffering was alleviated in part by the incantation.” Short of submerging additional corpses, there is no way to test this theory.

Emoto expanded his repertoire to include food, specifically rice, to which hot water was added. The doused grain was split into three beakers, one being lauded, one being scorned, and the third being ignored. Emoto reported that the fawned-over rice had a pleasing aroma and texture. The insulted rice was blackened, and the ignored rice fared the worst, turning moldy. Emoto attributed this to “negligence and indifference being the absolute worst things we can do.” And here I’ve been letting my sack of rice languish in the cupboard, without adoration, criticism, or inquiring if it and the can of black beans were an item.

Emoto never revealed his protocols or if he used any controls, so his experiment cannot be replicated with certainty. But if it really was just a monologue with rice, there have been many attempts to copy it on YouTube, and Poppy performed one as well for Skeptoid. None of these experiments showed any change in the rice, meaning that Emoto was either fraudulent or unusually persuasive when gushing over his Uncle Ben’s.

The High Wizard of Skeptics, James Randi, pointed out the lack double blind testing. To test properly, Emoto should have had someone else love or loathe the samples, then give them back to him without Emoto knowing which samples had been subjected to which words. Upon further review, to do this properly, one wouldn’t waste time and scientific resources on seeing if calling water your good buddy would make for happy H2O molecules.

Randi offered Emoto the chance to test his ideas under controlled conditions as part of the Million Dollar Challenge, but Emoto declined. No worries, I attempted my own test.

I gave my 4- and 6-year old sons one Twix bar apiece and instructed them to either encourage or belittle the chocolatey caramel confectionary while I was out of the room. I came back five minutes later, but the test subjects had been consumed by my compatriots. That’s OK, we have plenty of candy bars, so this test is repeatable.