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“Positively mistaken” (HIV denial)

Medical Claim REJECTED

Today, HIV denial is a garden variety conspiracy theory. A scapegoat is pegged, the establishment is accused of a coverup, and evidence is cherry picked. Logical fallacies and ad hominem are sprinkled liberally and when backed into a counterpoint corner, proponents move the goalposts.

But in its early days of 1984, HIV denial might not have seemed all that crazy. For some, identifying HIV as the cause of AIDS was just too convenient to have happened in a presidential election year. Specifically, a reelection year for a conservative darling whose administration had been criticized for doing so little to combat the disease. Coming not long after Vietnam and Watergate, it’s easy to see how a person could have doubted it when government scientists announced this major breakthrough.

One classmate during my sophomore year of high school wondered what the big deal was, since AIDS was primarily killing homosexuals and drug users. While this extreme position was not a consensus opinion even in small-town 1983, AIDS was a peripheral concern among many considering how serious it should have been taken by all. It was primarily impacting some of society’s most scorned populations, so questioning whether the solution had even been sought could have seemed legitimate. 

However, once the science was explained and repeatedly demonstrated, the doubt turned into denial, and it cost some people their lives. This was most true in South Africa, where Thabo Mbeki’s terms as vice president and president were marred by his pushing of sham treatments for HIV positive persons. He championed the use of virodene, which contains dimethylformamide. Unlike those cited by the Food Babe, this chemical is dangerous to ingest, as it can lead to irreversible and even fatal liver damage. Mbeki considered other treatments to be a fraud meant to enrich pharmaceutical companies. He also embraced a homemade remedy of Africa potato, olive green leaves, and grapefruit seeds.

In what would be comical sideshows were the issue less serious, other denial camps claimed HIV was the result of voodoo, or that it was a western plot to undermine communism. Alas, the issue was of utmost seriousness. Denial caused some to reject medication until it was too late. Mbeki’s shameless denial and promotion of bogus cures led a third of a million South Africans to die without seeking legitimate treatment. And one of the saddest ironies of the denialist movement was when some of its main proponents, the editors at Continuum magazine, all perished from AIDS.

Another poignant case was that of Christine Maggiore, who promoted HIV denial while HIV positive and pregnant. She and her baby both died from AIDS-related illnesses. With these deaths, the HIV denial movement largely collapsed. Today, it would likely gain momentum, as the Maggiores’ deaths would be followed by immediate, baseless claims that they had been murdered by government agents and Big Pharma thugs. Of course, there are still pockets of deniers, just like there are those who think super-evolved reptilians and lording over a Flat Earth.

HIV denial fails to address the fact that AIDS is successfully treated with anti-HIV medication, and that almost anyone with HIV develops AIDS if untreated. The counterarguments are flimsy. Maggiore, for instance, pointed out that other factors could lead to symptoms experienced by HIV positive persons. That would be like arguing that fatal crashes can be caused by texting or whiteout conditions, so therefore, no one has died from drunk driving.

Meanwhile, Cal-Berkeley professor Peter Duesberg thinks it a crucial point that AIDS can stay latent for five years, whereas other viruses attack the host within days. This is irrelevant since latency is unrelated to causation.

When CDC epidemiologists searched for the cause, one of the earliest clues was the mode of transmission. People with AIDS had been exposed to bodily fluids of others with the disease. Another key realization centered on hemophiliacs. Though the blood they received was filtered, they still became ill, and only viruses were able to bypass these filters. During CDC research, HIV was found to be present in all AIDS-afflicted persons, while no other agent was present in every patient.

This leads us to the Koch Postulates. These are the four criteria that must be met to establish a causative relationship between a microbe and a disease. All are met when trying to tie AIDS to HIV: The microorganism is found in all organisms suffering from the disease; the microorganism has been isolated from a diseased organism and grown in a culture; the cultured microorganism should cause disease when introduced into a healthy organism; and the microorganism must be re-isolated from the inoculated, diseased experimental host, then identified as being identical to the original causative agent.

However, Duesberg continues to insist that AIDS stems from drug use – not the sharing of needles portion, but from the ingestion of drugs such as cocaine. Duesberg is either mistaken about cocaine causing AIDS, or reports of the drug’s prevalence among upper middle class white urbanites has been greatly exaggerated since that demographic is not disproportionately impacted by the disease.

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“Loon gunman theory” (JFK assassination)

JFKLate November traditions in the U.S. go beyond turkey and football. At this time each year, old and new JFK conspiracy ideas are floated. This is the only conspiracy theory that the majority believes. It’s a fairly strong majority, too, with 61 percent in the latest Gallup poll saying they believe.

Of course, such numbers are irrelevant to what happened. No amount of belief makes anything true. But these numbers do shed some light on how conspiracy theories operate. Because the reason JFK assassination theories have the most believers is not because of evidence. More than 50 years and hundreds of books and videos later, not one irrefutable piece of proof has been presented. Rather, so many believe because of the momentous nature of the event: The head of the free world at the height of the Cold War was murdered in public in the presence of his wife. And it’s all pulled off by a barely employable drifter. People want to believe there is more there.

Another factor in so many believing is that there are dozens of sub-theories to choose from. This is made still easier in an era when anyone with a laptop and camera can present their ideas to the world in what skeptic leader Dr. Steven Novella calls “the cottage industry of conspiracy theorists.”

There is one question about the assassination that has always bugged me: What the hell is up with the failure to secure a tall building on a presidential motorcade route? But this question is about Secret Service laxity, not a suggestion that Kennedy’s protective detail was in on the plot. But if I was a conspiracy theorist, the unsecured schoolbook depository would be used, through the appeal to ignorance, as a point for my position. That’s how conspiracy theories work. Also, if the theorist is unable to present strong evidence, that’s proof the evidence has been hushed up. If contrary evidence is presented, it was fabricated. Those presenting strong counterarguments are shills or insiders.

But perhaps the most telling distinction among hardcore conspiracy theorists is what Novella calls “anomaly hunting,” where believers look for anything that might seem out of place. In the most extreme cases, the theorist goes in already convinced that the shooting, derailed train, or natural disaster is fake. In the wake of the on-air murder of TV reporter Alison Parker, some theorists were declaring her widower to be an actor. They said he was not emotional enough for someone who had lost his wife 36 hours prior. This supposed stolidity was presented as proof that no one was murdered. This overlooks the fact that grief is a rollercoaster. A person can be laughing at a memory of a loved one, then three minutes later be convulsing because they are crying so forcefully. The burden of proof is always on the one making the claim, and the vultures in these cases spectacularly fail to prove their point.

In most conspiracy theories, the conclusion is reached first, then the theorist works backward from there. For example, they will watch a press conference or memorial service and seek out ANYTHING that looks funny to them. They always find something, owing to their nonexistent standards. The most extreme of the extreme is nodisinfo.com. At a memorial for the Charleston church shooting victims, a woman seemed to have a hint of a smile and this was presented by nodisinfo as proof it was all fabricated. For good measure, she was said to look Jewish, proving the Zionists were behind the hoax. Then there was the YouTube video is which the fact that a spectator was looking at the sky after the Space Shuttle Challenger had already fallen was proof it was the Free Masons had staged it.

These two examples are especially silly, but others can seem a little more plausible when apparent anomalies are highlighted. These are easy to find because hundreds of people and thousands of actions can be involved in such incidents, so it would be impossible to fully explain every detail to the minutest point. This is especially true in times of extreme chaos, such as 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombing, or mass shootings. Also, everyone has their quirks and complexities, so not all people will not react the same to the situation around them, making supposed inconsistencies easier to find. Throw out enough of these and something may stick, especially if the listener wants it to.

For instance, there is a meme showing a falling Twin Tower that includes a window blowing out a few stories below the main collapsing cloud. A theorist had inserted a red arrow next to the smaller cloud and wrote, “Oops. We set this bomb off too soon.”

This could be the result of unequal pressure and it seems reasonable that it would be less than perfectly uniform when a massive building soaked with jet fuel collapses. Since I’m not completely sure about the specific reason for the smaller cloud is, the theorist can appeal to this ignorance and claim it has evidence for  his position. But he’s ignoring that the burden of proof is still on him to prove that it was done by Bush or Jews or Free Masons.

By contrast, NatGeo aired a multi-hour special that detailed the bin Laden plot. This included released documents and interviews with national security personnel, plus airport camera shots of the hijackers boarding the planes and telephone calls from victims to family members relating that Muslim extremists had commandeered the aircraft.

While we’re at it, I never understood what these bomb theories were supposed to mean anyway. Even if it the towers were brought down by explosives, how does that prove they were planted by government agents instead of terrorists?

Getting back to JFK and anomaly hunting, one supposed inconsistency centers on a photo of Lee Harvey Oswald holding the rifle used to kill Kennedy. I’m unsure why the theorists are fixated with this. Of the dozens of theories I’ve heard, none have claimed that Oswald didn’t do it. Rather, he’s presented as a stooge or lackey, a pawn in an Illuminati Bilderberg Cosa Nostra Commie Nazi game. But for whatever reason, the theorists chose this hunting ground to try and bag another anomaly.

The main points when claiming the photo is fake are allegedly inconsistent shadows and asserting that Oswald is positioned strangely, supposedly indicative of him being added to the shot.

With regard to the latter, it’s hard to guess precisely how a three dimensional object will look on a two dimensional image. Or it was until researchers at Dartmouth published a computer analysis of the photo. They created a 3-D reconstruction of the image, including Oswald’s skeleton and skin. They distributed the weight throughout his body, copied his stance, and determined his center of gravity. They concluded that his center of gravity was within his base of support, meaning his stance was stable. They also reconstructed the lighting and camera angle, and demonstrated that the shadows were consistent.

For the hardcore believer, this is easy to dismiss. Dartmouth merely works in conjunction with the CIA, Castro, and the mafia. For the more reasonable, the explanation will likely suffice, but this case shows how time-consuming it can be to do battle with conspiracy theories. It takes five seconds assert that Oswald or his shadows are fake. It takes five weeks to refute it.

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“Hollow idea” (Concave Earth)

EARTHEGGAt various times, Alaska, oceans, and space have been presented as a last frontier for Mankind to explore. But while we’ve gone to, dove into, or rocketed to all these locales, we have yet to go down very far. The deepest drilling ever went down seven and a half miles, during scientific research done near the Russian-Finnish border. This got us .002 percent of the way to Earth’s core.

That leaves plenty of room for the imagination. Greeks and the Norse figured that’s where souls migrated to. Some still speculate that’s where Hell or purgatory might be. Dante, Jules Verne, and Rick Wakeman are among the many who have pondered the deep subterranean in entertainment form.

Edmund Halley proposed the idea that our planet is a series of spherical shells spinning in different directions and all surrounding a core. He suggested that Aurora borealis may be escaping gas. His name is still dropped by those who support ideas about something cool being underneath us all.

These ideas include the center having a miniature sun, a giant cavern, or being a lush paradise. In the 19th Century, an era when people had middle names like Cleves, John Cleves Symmes Jr., took it further, arguing the entire universe was hollow. Good luck trying to falsify that one. Closer to the modern day, some speculate inner Earth was the final stop on an escape route used by Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels. Göring apparently showed up late for the ride and ended up at Nuremburg instead.

Admittedly, there is a little guesswork when trying to determine what’s down there. But most evidence points to Earth being a series of layers, crusts, and liquid magma, leading to a dense core of extremely hot iron and nickel. Seismic waves bounce around, changing direction and speed based on the material they pass through. By determining how fast a wave moves, geologists can calculate what those waves are passing through.

Another clue comes from above, as meteorites suggest iron is a common building block. And without a partially liquid core, convection wouldn’t occur, which would make it impossible for Earth to form a magnetic field and give us protective atmosphere goodness. Then we have gravity’s impact. Ordinary matter is too weak to support a hollow shape of Earth’s size against gravity, so an empty planet would collapse.

So some say Earth has layers and crusts, some say giants and lizards, still others say Holocaust perpetrators. Then we have Rodney Cluff, who argues inner Earth contains Big Macs, cricket teams, and polyester suits. That’s because we are inside the planet already.

Cluff’s ideas are driven mainly by an idiosyncratic interpretation of the Book of Mormon. He cites the book as the key to understanding science, and vice versa. Since he has gained these understandings, he knows the outer Earth inhabitants are the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and that have achieved an ideal state. Specifically, “They have flying saucer technology, they live lives of perfect health for hundreds of years, and their science is much more advanced than ours.” They also enjoy a perpetually perfect climate and grow to 15 feet tall, with their trees reaching thousands of feet.

Cluff insists humans have traveled there, but that this has been hushed by an “international banking conspiracy.” That is normally code for “Jews,” but not in this case since he is presenting Hebrew descendants as the most enlightened and advanced. They are the ones promoting this ideal, not the ones trying to suppress it.

Besides relying on his interpretation of the Book of Mormon, other distinctions of Cluff’s work are highly speculative geology and a misuse of physics principles. He also gets in some unorthodox anthropology. To establish that the Ten Lost Tribes made their way from Jerusalem to north of the Arctic Circle, he selects groups of people, each a little more northerly than the last, and says each of them were actually those tribes in migration.

After making it to the North Pole, they went through a secret passageway out of inner Earth, and their descendants reside there today. He also claims descent from the tribes’ patriarchs, and for the last few decades has been trying to arrange a trip to meet them, in what would be the ultimate family reunion. He was once in the serious stages of planning, including selling $20,000 tickets for the expedition, but everything fizzled with the death of the man who was going to fund it. With his travel plans on hold, Cluff is free to  self-publish ideas such as gravity not pulling matter, but being pushed toward it.

Lost Tribe members share their world with wooly mammoth and others supposedly extinct creatures. Cluff said that when these animals are found in the Arctic, they are recently deceased, having floated from an icy river, through the mysterious pole opening, and out into the Arctic Ocean, somehow ending up under an ice sheet.

And while others are arguing if Christopher Columbus was a noble visionary opening trade routes or a genocidal monster, Cluff refuses to be pigeonholed. To him, the 15th Century Genoan seafarer was looking for the Garden of Eden. (Indies, Eden, get it? How could we have all missed it?) But Columbus didn’t get very close, since Cluff tells us that the Garden is 800 miles beneath Independence, Mo. Or, I guess that would be 800 miles above Independence. I lose my sense of direction easily.

People who create these types of bliss in their mind are allowing themselves to vicariously experience a utopia to make up for whatever is missing in their lives. But at least Cluff is cheery enough. An angrier version of Concave Earth Man is a fellow dubbing himself Lord Steven Christ. This may be the closest call I’ve ever made with regard to Poe’s Law, but I have concluded that he is genuine in his beliefs. His videos seem too voluminous, too detailed, and too much work (lots of him drawing by hand, plus video graphics) for it to be someone playing a joke.

Christ is not one for much dialogue. Most of his videos have a disabled comment section and he encourages those who disagree with him to, somewhat cryptically, “keep popping those blue pills.” You can check him out on YouTube, where you will be treated to titles such as, “Saturn is 50 feet wide,” “Stanley Kubrick knew there was glass in the sky,” and “Fuck you to people who believe Earth spins.”

While we haven’t made it very far under Earth, delving into the minds of those who think it houses giant creatures and tiny planets has been almost as interesting.

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“Blue it” (Project Blue Beam and China sky city)

skyguy

This fall, we had something a little different in skeptic news. It was nice to see something besides the usual essential oils, chemtrails, and clairvoyance. Specifically, there was a video that appeared to show skyscrapers floating on clouds above Foshan, China.

Attempting a scientific explanation, some suggested it was a fata morgana, a mirage that can distort the appearance of distant objects, and is the likely reason for ghost ships spotted by 17th Century sailors. According to Wired science writer Matt Simon, when the sun heats up the atmosphere, it can create a gradient of temperatures. The air near the surface is cooler than the layers of air higher up. So when light hits a boundary between two layers that are different temperatures (and therefore different densities), the light refracts. Transitioning from Simon’s scientific explanation to my unscientific one, this screws with the viewers’ eyes and makes them think objects are higher than they actually are.

However, skeptic blogger Mick West notes that a fata morgana creates only a thin illusion close to the horizon. It also appears small and in the distance. None of these are consistent with the video of skyscrapers on a cloud.

Seeking another scientific explanation, some observers noted that, under specific conditions, clouds can isolate and obscure the foreground. This means that that tall objects, such as city buildings, can appear to be floating on those clouds. This is what happened in Huangshan City, China, in 2011. Mist arose from the flooded Xin’an River and made it appear the buildings downstream were floating above it.

But in the Foshan case, no mist is involved. There is just a fairly clear shot of buildings floating on a cloud. I anticipated hearing explanations centering on alien architecture, a government sanctuary city for an impending nuclear war, or a crack in space-time continuum that allowed us to briefly view another universe (albeit one that looks boringly like ours).

However, if any such ideas were voiced, they were shouted down by those blaming it on Project Blue Beam, the Illuminati’s space warfare division. The most popular conspiracy theorist guess is that NASA, as part of the New World Order, is creating a hologram of invading aliens or the second coming of Christ. The reasons given for doing this are typical of the ill-defined but nefarious purposes that the Illuminati is said to be doing anything. The floating city was intended to be a test to see if the hologram generator is ready. Indeed, what better way to keep an above Top Secret plot quiet than to have it include a spooky image that appears in broad daylight over a metropolitan area? It was never explained how NASA had gained permission to use Chinese airspace, although the default conspiracy theorist position would be that China is part of the plot, as am I for questioning this premise. Also never addressed was the flaw of hoping to gain control over a population by having Jesus return to a country that is three percent Christian.

While the video seems to lack a reasonable explanation, the fact that there is only one image would suggest it was fabricated. The idea that no one else would grab their cell phone and take a shot of a floating city seems unlikely. Also, it attracted attention only after the video was made, as there are no other reports of anyone noticing it at the time it was allegedly overhead.

But this is speculation. I like wrapping my posts up in nice, orderly, scientific bows, and I cannot do that in this case. I can only write, “I don’t know, let’s find out.” Although in this case, it’s more like, “I don’t know, that was kind of interesting, let’s go to Taco Bell.”

Both of those declarations indicate an ambiguity that is nowhere to be found by those on the other side. For example, YouTube poster Gaia declared the sky city to be, “Even more evidence of multinational shadow government megalomaniacs spending trillions of taxpayer dollars in order to further mess with our heads and push a few more million people onto psychotic drugs, dumbing down or killing us.”

Sounds like the dumbing down is proceeding as scheduled.

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“Doctored” (National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine)

STETH

 

Today we will examine how an unproven technique formulates in a shaman’s mind and germinates at Ivy League medical schools, despite bypassing peer review and shunning the Scientific Method.

Most cultures have had folk remedies which were passed down from prior generations. Much of it was nature-based, using whatever shrubs and bark were handy. Various deities may have been summoned through different hand movements, dances, and tools. Moving from folk remedy to quackery meant little more than charging people for it and maybe assuming a title like witch doctor or gypsy healer. Accouterments like beads and masks made the image complete.

About 40 years ago, we saw the next stage of development, with practitioners adopting the term alternative medicine. It was presented as another choice, something else to consider. For decades, doctors and medical school professors looked at alternative medicine practitioners the same way NASA physicists would look at horoscope writers, or how a chemist would size up an alchemist. The disdain was mutual, as alternative medicine clinicians thought mainstream doctors to be uncaring, uncreative, and stodgy. Perhaps they were even part of the Big Pharma cover-up. The adversarial relationship was reflected in advertisements that declared, “What doctors don’t want you to know!” or “Dermatologists hate this!”

Then Sen. Tom Harkin spearheaded the creation of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine in 1992. By incorporating both terms, the leap was made from alternative to complementary. Now, the mainstream and the alternative were no longer doing battle. It was presented as the best of both curative worlds. There was no harm in trying everything. To mitigate shingles you can do both: Employ a regimen based on Germ Theory, the Scientific Method, double blind studies, and peer-reviewed articles; plus have a woman named Moonwolf Rainwater rub you with amethyst crystals and sage oil.

Harkin became enthralled with alternative techniques when he was convinced that bee pollen extract had cured his hay fever. Such post hoc reasoning is the lifeblood of alternative cures, but most persons making this correlation-causation error don’t wield the power that Harkin did.

Harkin said the U.S. health care system was “based overwhelmingly on conventional medicine and in so many ways wasteful or dysfunctional.” Take your pick, this harangue could be called either tu quoque, negative evidence, or the appeal to emotion. In any case, it has no relevance on whether biorhythm therapy can cure gout.

While Harkin succeeding in getting Congress to set up and fund the center, it otherwise did not go as planned. In 2009, Harkin complained, “One of the purposes of this center was to investigate and validate alternative approaches. Quite frankly, it has fallen short. Most of its focus has been on disproving things rather than seeking out and approving.” Yes, it’s called attempting to falsify and is a key component of the Scientific Method.

Harkin did not give up, nor did he start embracing science. Rather, he hopped back on the euphemism treadmill and called the field integrative medicine. He pushed quackery into Obamacare bills, using the Trojan horse words “preventive” and “wellness.” With this, the odyssey from being folk remedy to a being welcomed at Johns Hopkins was complete.

Today, the line between medicine and quackery is terrifyingly tenuous. To the best of my knowledge, all of the unproven techniques are still limited to a hospital’s “integrative care wing,” where a patient must seek them out. As far as I know, there is no hospital in the country where a preschooler who drinks bleach will first be tended to by a naturopath. There is no ER where a severed artery is left in an aura therapist’s hands. However, these techniques are increasingly being taught at many of our foremost medical schools, so this could someday be the case. A quarter century ago, a Reiki practitioner at an elite hospital would have seemed unthinkable. Yet today, such techniques are embraced by persons with extensive medical backgrounds. Worse, they pass them onto aspiring doctors, not unlike the handing down of folk remedies.

The most extreme case I am aware of is that of Dr. David Katz, a Yale medical school graduate who is founding director or his alma mater’s Prevention Research Center. His rationale for embracing unproven techniques is that, “Integrative Medicine provides patients access to a wider array of options.” Including some which hold that illnesses do not come from viruses and bacteria, but from a chakra imbalance.

Dr. Katz also tells us, “If analgesics or anti-inflammatories fail to alleviate joint pain, such options as acupuncture could be explored.” This is a non sequitur. There is no reason to suspect ideas based on vitalism and qi would fix the inflammation.

He paints his approach as benevolent, believing doctors should always be trying to help the patient. However, these techniques only give false hope. The patient must always be tended to, but it should be with treatments that are proven safe and effective. In extreme cases, experimental drugs can be tried on willing, dying patients. But this is far different from treating lupus with applied kinesiology.

Dr. David Gorski describes the mix of authentic and artificial medicine as a parasitic relationship. In such a relationship, one organism benefits at the expense of the other. The folk remedies that masquerade as cures benefit from being promoted by hospitals and universities. This allows them to enjoy a level of respectability they could never attain on their own. Meanwhile, medical schools should be educating aspiring doctors on the scientific method and how it is used to evaluate potential treatments. Time, money, and resources wasted on implausible ideas takes away from this. It also creates the possibility of universities cranking out less efficient physicians, surgeons, and specialists.

The Harkin-inspired center has spent 55 billion tax dollars, with not one cure found or one symptom alleviated. But the colossal waste of money the center is responsible for is not near as drastic as its role in the mainstreaming of quackery.

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“Sour sweetener” (Aspartame)

diet soda health risks

The main argument against the supposed dangers of aspartame is that I’m alive and healthy enough to write about them.

The artificial sweetener was the target of one of the Internet’s first wide-ranging smear campaigns, and has since been linked to serious disease and even death. Given the number of diet sodas I drank from ages 25 to 45, I should be either be dead or writhing in agony wishing I was. The 1998 e-mail was forwarded millions of times and, despite being almost completely inaccurate, is still cited in some credulous circles.

However, an FDA report called aspartame, “one of the most thoroughly tested and studied food additives the agency has ever approved.” Indeed, metadata of hundreds of peer-reviewed studies done by private industry and government agencies showed the sweetener to be safe in normal doses. The one exception is that it should be avoided by those with the genetic disorder phenylketonuria.

Aspartame’s beginnings are similar to that of LSD, minus the crazy visions and sounds. Chemist James Schlatter was working to create an anti-ulcer drug when he licked his finger, unaware it had aspartame on it, and he noticed the sweetness. Had it not been for this accident, aspartame would have been an obscure gastrointestinal medication, as opposed to one of the world’s most ubiquitous substances. It also would not be part of Internet lore, specifically, the chain mail written by someone using the pseudonym Nancy Markle. The letter linked aspartame to Gulf War Syndrome, lupus, Multiple Sclerosis, and birth defects. Much of the e-mail consisted of silly correlation-causation errors, such pointing out that a significant percentage of lupus sufferers were diet soda drinkers, without offering evidence of a direct connection.

One isolated accuracy was the claim that aspartame ingestion produces methanol and formaldehyde. However, the author omitted just how little of these are made. The amounts are less than what is found in citrus fruit, which some anti-aspartame crusaders recommend being 75 percent of a person’s detox diet.

Like anything else, it’s the dose that matters. Two Tylenol will ease your backache, while two bottles will permanently relieve it and all other pains. A soda drinker would need to down 20 Diet Cokes a day to do damage.

The conspiracy allegations centered mainly on suggestions of an improper relationship between regulators and industry executives. Two persons, Samuel Skinner and Arthur Hayes, had worked for both government regulators and (indirectly) with G.D. Searle, an aspartame producer. An extensive review by the Government Accountability Office determined there was no impropriety and that the relationships did not impact the studies’ results. Depending on one’s viewpoint, this either ended the controversy or expanded the conspiracy, which now included the GAO.

For those that embrace the latter interpretation, Janet Starr Hull hosts a website where persons with scary sweetener stories can relate their experiences to others in a perpetual communal reinforcement party. Hull also issues dire warnings about adverse reactions and side effects from aspartame that seem to include almost every disease or malady ever identified. The absurdly exhaustive list is here. 

Per this list, diet cola aficionados should be a raging hoard of blind, deaf, suicidal epileptics. Any health concern, from a scratchy throats to lymphoma, can be blamed on aspartame. Hull even cautions that if nothing is wrong, that could be the artificial sweetener playing tricks: “It is typical that aspartame symptoms cannot be detected in lab tests and on x-rays. Textbook disorders and diseases may actually be a toxic load as a result of aspartame poisoning.”

Using pseudoscience standard operating procedure, Hull cites no peer reviewed studies, conducts none of her own, and wraps it in a commercial bow by selling products to fix the mess. She throws in the usual detoxing message, glossing over the fact that only the liver and kidneys can manage that. She also recommends a 10-step program, which includes such groundbreaking advice “be happy” and “get control of your life.”

Additionally, she advises asking people drinking diet soda if they have any of the symptoms Hull had outlined. So next time you see a strange woman downing Tab, ask her if she has been experiencing irritability or severe PMS. I’ll bet the reaction will indeed be hostility, one of the items on the list.

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“Thought for food” (Tilapia, superfoods)

EVILFISH

Much of the U.S. public lacks a strong grounding in science and this distinction extends to many journalists. However, unlike the rest of the public, journalists are professionally obligated to learn more, or at least find a source who does, when reporting on science stories. Often, this does not happen, which is how Dr. Oz and the Food Babe can go so long before being challenged.

It also allows unfounded fears to foment, which is why tilapia is often in the same sentence as “warning” and “risks” in mainstream newspapers articles and television news broadcasts. Tilapia is sometimes said to contain high amounts of PCB and mercury, even though it has very little of these, driven by the fact that tilapia have a short, mostly vegetarian lives.

Another alleged danger is that tilapia contains low amounts of omega 3 fatty acids, as well as higher amounts of omega 6. The first part is wrong. Tilapia has the same omega-3 levels as lobster and tuna and is a good source of this essential fat. It is high in omega 6, which only means it should probably be avoided by those with inflammation problems. But the fish is not inherently unhealthy for everyone. It is low calorie and packed with protein, potassium, and B12.

There is one legitimate concern about how they are raised. Small farmers in China often feed the fish manure, which may contain salmonella and makes the fish more likely to spread foodborne disease. This is a reason to avoid tilapia raised in Chinese farms, but it does not justify eliminating all such fish from the diet, nor does it vindicate the fearmongering.

Just as avoiding tilapia is an overly broad suggestion, so too is the idea that certain foods should be ingested by all in great quantities. There are also lists of foods every person should avoid in every instance. Depending on a person’s condition, some foods may legitimately be encouraged, discouraged, or eliminated. But there are no superfoods or super bad foods, as indicated by avocados showing up on both types of lists. Similarly, tips that fail to consider differences among people are problematic. The most prominent example is encouraging all persons to avoid gluten, when this really only applies to those with celiac.

Some foods are more nutritious than others, of course, but there are no superfoods. Healthy eating requires a balanced diet that includes all the vitamins, along with fiber, potassium, calcium, and protein. Egg whites are low-calorie and packed with high-quality protein, but they have no fiber or vitamin C. Loading up on egg whites and six similar “superfoods” would leave one consuming an unbalanced diet.

While traditional foods appear on these lists, the ones that generate the most excited squeals among anti-GMO, gluten-free, organic types are the ones the readers haven’t heard of before. Fruits and vegetables that are exotic (i.e. obscure) periodically pop up and are touted as the latest, greatest undiscovered superfood that will cleanse the body, neutralize toxins, strengthen immunity, slow aging, prevent Alzheimer’s, shine your skin, mow your lawn, and change your oil.

Examples are açaí, baobab, maqui, and goji. Extra points seem to be given for foods ending in ‘i.’ There also exists major love for wheat germ, blackstrap molasses, cider vinegar, and wheat grass. Standard fare such as milk, blueberries, mushrooms, and salmon also make some of the lists. These are healthy foods with strong nutritional value, but no food contains everything a person needs, and superfood is an undefined term. There are various superfood lists, and it’s telling how little overlap there is. Getting people to accept a food as super is just marketing, which is nothing new. Bananas are associated with potassium, but orange juice has more. Those squeezed oranges, meanwhile, are synonymous with Vitamin C, but red bell peppers have nearly twice the amount.

A varied diet with an emphasis on grains and plants will likely provide all the needed nutrients. There is no need to consult the dozens of superfood lists floating around out there. Besides, none of those lists contain doughnuts.

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“Null and Bones Society” (Scientific Method, Challenger conspiracy)

MIXEDNUTS

I cringe when usually well-meaning people declare something to be “settled science.” This is most frequently heard with references to evolution, the Big Bang, and climate change. It is true that the evidence for all of these things is overwhelming. We’ve dealt with these evidences on this blog, and far better, more extensive documentation exists elsewhere. Still, scientists will always give a fair hearing to an alternate viewpoint that is reached by following the Scientific Method. This method consists of defining the question, developing a hypothesis, making a prediction, testing that prediction, attempting to falsify the prediction, analyzing the results using proper statistics, replication, peer review, and data sharing.

If scientific consensus meant an issue were settled, we would have never accepted heliocentrism, Germ Theory, or airplanes. However, those advances came from employing the Scientific Method. By contrast, denying evolution, the Big Bang, and climate change is based on negative evidence or cherry picking, both of which are inconsistent with sound science.

Here is an example of negative evidence, in this case for creationism. Answers in Genesis writes that chimpanzees are only capable of being bipedal for short distances. The writer therefore concludes that, “God created Adam and Eve fully functional and able to walk and talk. Humans were created on the same day as all kinds of land animals and did not evolve from apes or have to evolve the ability to walk.” There is nothing about man and chimps having distinct locomotion that would negate evolution or point to them not having common ancestors. But even if this were the case, it would be no point for creationism. Additionally, steps in the Scientific Method include testing a hypothesis and attempting to falsify it, and AIG never attempts this with their idea that God did it.

With regard to cherry picking, climate change deniers are fond of pointing out that warming has paused in the last 17 years, and they have graphs to prove it. However, this only works if you use 1998 as the starting point. Using 1997, 1999, 1915, 1950, or 2010 shows a rise in average global temperature. 1998 is the exception because of an unusually strong El Niño season.

If negative evidence and cherry picking are unavailable, there is always simply rejecting the truth. Consider Homo naledi. Naledi is an anagram of denial, and when this major discovery of extinct hominin bones was announced this year, some foxnews.com posters insisted the bones had been fabricated and planted. This blurs the line between anti-science and conspiracy, so let’s segue into the latter.

Just as astronomy, biology, chemistry, and physics are open to change through the Scientific Method, history can also be adjusted if supported by evidence. However, conspiracy theories rest on negative evidence, the argument from ignorance, and the appeal to personal incredulity.

I bravely entered the world of YouTube conspiracy videos to observe these creatures in their natural habitat. I felt an IQ drop of five points by the time I was done. I’ll need to hit the acupuncturist today to unblock this negativity.

In the argument from ignorance, a conclusion is reached based on a lack of proof from the other side and without considering all possibilities. The video I watched purported to expose the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster as a Free Mason hoax. It beings by begging the question, asserting without evidence or deference to logistics that if we went to the moon in 1969, we should be making daily commercial flights by now. This is used so establish that NASA is fraudulent.

Addressing the Challenger disaster specifically, the commentator points out that onlookers were not upset enough. He never considered that they might have been unaware what had happened in the immediate aftermath, that they were in shock, or that they were trying to digest it all. Since it is impossible to prove what anyone was thinking 29 years ago, this ignorance is claimed by the commentator as proof of his position that the observers were actors and the event staged. In still more appeal to ignorance, he chirps, “We don’t actually see the astronauts walk into the space shuttle. That could have been filmed anytime, it could have been faked.”

He also regularly uses the argument from incredulity, where one’s inability to believe something could be true is proof that it is false. Not only is that an unsound conclusion, it is often a deliberate ignorance. A short while after the Shuttle explodes, Christa McAuliffe’s parents were shown on the screen. The commentator said, “What I find strange is that 13 seconds after this massive explosion, if you were the cameraman, you wouldn’t take your shot off of it.”

For starters, there is more than one camera involved when national networks cover space launches. More importantly, there is zero evidence offered to support the commenter’s assertion that the parents being shown is indicative of a hoax. He provides only arguments from ignorance and unsupported speculation.

In another example of arguing from ignorance, he again excitedly notes the mostly stolid expressions. However, there was already smoke and fire from the boosters, so when the shuttle exploded, it was not readily apparent to everyone what had happened. The commentator said the spectators were not upset enough, yet later when they were crying, he cited this as proof they were planted actors.

Beyond these logical fallacies, another hallmark of conspiracy theorists is extreme hostility to contrary positions. Differing views are presented as evidence of the questioner being a shill or a fool. One poster asked what the incentive would be for Free Masons to stage the space shuttle hoax. The response: “There are all sorts of reasons to do this. The biggest one is to FUCK WITH OUR MINDS and by doing that they control us. WAKE UP IDIOT. For fucks sake get your head out of your asshole.”

Conspiracy theorists instruct us to disbelieve all media except their YouTube videos. Moreover, we are told to accept that a wicked cabal of anonymous men has the ability to stage elaborate hoaxes, invent AIDS, and instigate hurricanes, but remain unable to shut down videos exposing them.

When appealing to ignorance, the theorist is limited only by imagination. “There is no real shock from these people, a bit of a smile from one of them actually.” Because a skeptic cannot explain 29 years later why a person had a little grin, it proves that Free Masons and NASA blew up an unmanned Space Shuttle for the purpose of psychological warfare.

Later, the theorist shows a photo of Christa McAuliffe alongside a photo of Syracuse University professor Sharon McAuliffe and claims they are the same person. This even though the shape of the chin, nose, and ears are different. He makes no attempt to verify any of this is unchallenged by posters who are too busy calling skeptics sheeple. I’m sorry, that would be “SHEEPLE!!!!!”

Photos of six of the seven victims alongside pictures of persons with the same or similar names have made the Internet rounds. In some cases, the accompanying photos were of siblings of the deceased, and only one of the six bore a strong resemblance to his namesake. Snopes goes through an astronaut-by-astronaut refutation of the claim and points out, “This exercise demonstrates how easy it is to weave a conspiracy theory out of a few suggestive elements, but its premise defies credulity: NASA faked, for no explicable reason, the deaths of seven astronauts in a shuttle accident, then allowed those astronauts to openly live out the rest of their lives without even taking the basic steps of disguising their physical appearances or real names, and nobody noticed it until nearly 30 years later.” Of course, all this makes Snopes part of the conspiracy.

While the commentator is unconvinced of moon landings, shuttle flights, or satellite launches, he is not entirely averse to accepting aeronautic development. Late in the video, a white blur speeds across the screen. Skeptical sheeple think it’s is a bird, but our commenter assures us it is an alien spacecraft. Probably with a cargo of fabricated hominin bones.

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“Leeches and herb” (Naturopathy)

NATUROPAHTY

I get frequent headaches, which Excedrin takes care of, but I wouldn’t mind zapping them for good. Doing so would make my life less annoying and save me some money. So I headed to my neighborhood naturopath to see what he could tell me, again planning to get as much as I could without paying.

I strolled to the receptionist’s desk and asked the bespectacled woman with sandy-colored hair how it works.

“We would start with a urine and saliva sample and then the doctor would analyze it and design a program for you.”

“Oh, he’s a doctor?”

“He’s a doctor of chiropractic and a doctor of naturopathy.” Translation: No.

“What is the program?”

“It’s working with vitamins, herbs, and minerals for overall health, and using supplements to balance the body and make your body feel good. We would start with a bio-synchronization assessment, and after the samples come back, we would determine what is causing the imbalance. You would start a herb and vitamin regimen, as well as avoid every activity, situation, or substance that interferes with total wellbeing. We would also work to remove any interference that may have already accumulated.”

That ramble lasted long enough that by the time she was done, the naturopath had shown up. Now we’re getting somewhere. Where that might be, I have no idea.

We exchanged greetings and I asked him if he could explain how his field worked.

“We’ve had all these tools in the past,” he said. Might as well get the appeal to antiquity out of the way early.

“We’ve only had medicine as we know it for the last 150 or 200 years.” Which coincides with a tripling of the average life span in developed countries.

“God has always provide food, rest, water, and cognition, but we must use them according to the original intent of the creator.” If you’re going to appeal to antiquity, you may as well go all the way.

We were briefly interrupted by an agitated preschooler who couldn’t get a door open. Must not have taken his vitamins that morning. With this obstacle overcome, it was back to my consultation.

“I get headaches all the time. Excedrin takes care of it, but I’d like something more permanent.”

“Our strategy is to get rid of interference. Interference can be anything that would keep you from expressing wellness. It could be a pollutant, it could be negative emotions, it could come from electronic signals, it could come from eating the wrong food.”

Or disease could come from pathogens, and illnesses from viruses, bacteria, and parasites. But if I had wanted the Scientific Method and medicine, I wouldn’t be talking with a man who praises the era of leeches and trepanation.

“You’re having frequent headaches. If there’s a physical symptom that won’t go away, I usually find that people in these situations haven’t experienced a deep passion or excitement about life for a while. Persistent illnesses usually have an emotional undercurrent.”

So Parkinson’s isn’t caused by the central nervous system deteriorating, it’s from not being enthused about Bingo Night. And if I can get excited enough about knowing what causes my headaches, they will go away.

“Everything has an analog. Air’s is enthusiasm, water’s is serenity, food’s is peace. Er, I mean food’s is joy, and rest’s is peace.” Oh, almost mixed his element-emotion connections there. Must be having memory trouble, which I deduce stems from a lack of companionship.

I’m getting the gist of this. When we get sick, it’s because our serenity, peace, and joy is jolted, so we need to pop vitamins and ingest herbs. This was seeming so easy, but then the naturopath cautioned there would be preliminary steps to my noggin-fixin’.

“The healing is always present within the individual, awaiting only the removal of interference. To get there, we must assess, strategize, and employ the proper tools. Then nature takes over.” He’s misunderstanding what nature is if he thinks it requires strategizing and tool employment.

To kick start this repair, he stresses the importance of “air, water, food, rest, movement, and cognition.” This is the most I’ve ever agreed with an alternative medicine practitioner. He highlights oxygen, food, water, and sleep, the four items we would die without. Then he throws in exercise and increased mental agility, both beneficial.

But then he added, “These are the only tools one needs as long as they are employed according to the original and primary intent of the creator.” Never fear, these primary intents are sold here. He also suggested monthly cleanses and their accompanying monthly naturopathy bills.

He then returns for a brief visit to Scientifically Literate Land, noting the filtering abilities of the intestines, liver, spleen, and kidneys. “These filters have a natural ability and tendency to self-clean and maintain themselves.” Precisely, which means there is no reason for these organs and the person who houses them to be at a naturopath.

He quickly transitions from the scientific to the pseudoscientific: “Nutrient-poor foods, synthetic additives, GMOs, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and pollution overwork our filters.”

If your liver and kidneys were being overworked, you’d know it, as would your emergency room physician. With regard to his specific claims: If unhealthy foods introduce a toxin to the body, the body will eject it, as he had correctly noted 15 seconds prior; Nothing is inherently dangerous about synthetic chemicals. It depends on which ones and in what amount; GMOs are positive, as the reason they are modified is to transfer benefits that do not occur naturally; Pesticides in the right dosage are likewise beneficial, protecting the crop. Pollution is unfortunate, but smog is not screwing with your kidneys’ ability to function.

The naturopath recommends using herbs and vitamins to cleanse the bowels, liver, spleen, and kidneys. “These are not flushes,” he said, which is good. There is a reason the guck is in there and it will be leaving the body soon enough. An attempted cleansing through vitamins and herbs will be neither good nor bad, nor will it do any cleansing. The body will clean itself and it neither needs help with this, nor will it accept it.

Besides, why not just take a multi-vitamin each day and achieve optimum health that way?

“Everyone is different,” he replied. “The key is finding a system for the individual to consciously participate in.” I’m unsure how one would unconsciously participate in this. Maybe by having organic, gluten-free, soy cranberry juice slipped into their Cap’n Crunch.

Next, the naturopath again recommends water, sleep, exercise, a balanced diet, and limited use of sugars and alcohol, all of which will leave you feeling peachy without his wonder vitamin regimen.

Still, he assures me, “These cleanses are part of the strategy of bio-synchronization assessment. It is the long-term benefit of cleansing conducted quarterly for years that pays health benefits for life.” And which keep the naturopath being paid for the same duration.

He stressed the need for an experienced teacher, which would be best complemented by a patient who is unaware of the Scientific Method, double blind studies, and anatomy.

Working as a team, the practitioner and patient can meet their goal, but both must be committed. “Each system can be only as strong as its best teachers and most dedicated students. Intelligence, attitude, and action determine results.” But a person reluctantly dragged into hernia surgery will have the condition fixed if the doctors are component and the body cooperates. A surly attitude won’t be deleterious to the surgery, nor will a cheery one help it.

I’ve seen much worse pretend doctors. He stressed that he was not in competition with mainstream medicine, and he’s pushing herbs and vitamins that might have tiny value and probably cause no harm if taken in the right dose. But it is a mistaken idea that Vitamin K will fix a backache, which is the result of a clogged spleen, which is the consequence of picnicking on a genetically-modified papaya near a polluted river.

He closed by telling me, “Using the lab analysis and bio-synchronization assessment, you will be able to determine your starting point for the avoidance, reduction, and removal of unwanted conditions.”

I didn’t need a lab analysis or bio-synchronization assessment to manage the avoidance, reduction, and removal of unwanted conditions. I did all that by not going back.

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“Lesion legion” (Morgellons Syndrome)

KAFKA2

We all feel bugged now and then, but no one has it worse than those with Morgellons syndrome. This is a psychotic condition in which people think their skin is infested with disease-carrying parasites or similar nastiness. For maximum effect, this condition is sometimes attributed to chemtrails. The victim may experience sensations of biting, stinging, or itching, or have seemingly unexplained lesions.

A CDC multi-year study concluded there were no disease organisms present in supposed Morgellons sufferers. The study consisted of skin biopsies and blood tests of more than 100 people said to be afflicted, and revealed no evidence of an infection or common environmental factor among the subjects.

In another era, this would have been the end of it. The Dallas Observer noted a “long line of weird diseases that have swept through populations, only to disappear without a trace once public concern subsides.” But with the Internet, there is no subsiding. Here, persons can find communal reinforcement for their suffering and search for cures, and possibly present the CDC report as part of a government cover-up.

This problem can be exacerbated by false balance in the media. If the topic is a minimum wage increase or whether our military should intervene in Lower Eastern Craznovia, a good journalist will present all sides of the issue and let each source give his or her opinion. But with science and medicine, opinion is of no value. A person could think gravity is a hoax or that Sirhan Sirhan was framed, but a journalist doing a documentary on high jumpers or the RKF assassination would be under no obligation to present these silly sides to the stories.

But in cases like Morgellons, reporters feel it necessary to let everyone have a turn. So one side says, “No biological agent has ever been shown to be consistent with this supposed malady,” or “No biopsy has ever identified a pathological agent.” The other side counters with “My skin is crawling and itching, this is real,” and scores of similar anecdotes.

Now, this is a real condition, as it is a form of delusional parasitosis. As such, it can best by treated with antipsychotics, which many sufferers will shun because they don’t think that’s addressing the problem. The notion that they don’t have a physical condition makes them more deluded and desperate.

With no mainstream doctors to turn to, sufferers may do their own diagnosis, inspection, and treatment. In doing so, they sometimes claw at the phantom parasites, causing lesions to form, with these being considered an advanced stage of the disease. So the rapid scratching is accelerated and the sore made still worse. Many turn to alternative remedies. All will be ineffective, but they can range from as innocuous as crystals, sage, and reflexology to as dangerous as bleach treatment, equine medicine, and industrial insecticides.

Unlike much of pseudomedical lore, this phenomenon has a known starting point. In 2002, Mary Leito claimed her son demonstrated the symptoms of a disease described by Sir Robert Browne in 1690. This story was passed around the web and the hysteria began. 

It is good to identify previously-undiscovered diseases and start seeking treatments. But this needs to start with a working definition of the disease and involve corroborating with other medical and science professionals. It should not start with a definitive declaration by an amateur and spread unchallenged online. That really bugs me.