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“Immunized against reality” (Anti-vaccine movement)

MEASLESFor the first time in my 100 posts, the accompanying photo makes no attempt at humor. There is no lazy PhotoShopping, trademark thievery, or aspiration of ingenuity. Instead I am presenting the face, neck, arms, and torso of the anti-vaccination movement. This is the principle they are fighting for. This is the result of demanding freedom to infect infants and children. This is a boy with measles, a disease declared eradicated in the United States 15 years ago, but which was spread at Disneyland thanks to the anti-vaccination movement. The U.S. is once again home to a highly contagious disease that kills over 100,000 children annually and leaves others blind, deaf, and brain damaged.

Christopher Ingraham and Jason Millman of The Washington Post put together a map of measles vaccinations rates and noticed those not immunized were clustered in wealthy Southern California communities. When many unvaccinated persons are congregated, a serious issue becomes much worse.

It’s not just the offspring of the willfully defiant who suffer. Also impacted are those too unhealthy to be vaccinated or those too young, such as the six infants who were Disneyland victims. There is also the rare person for whom a vaccine will be ineffective, and they are at risk if they encounter someone diseased.

The anti-vaccine movement defies political categorization. It afflicts alternative medicine leftists, religious conservatives, and libertarians insistent on keeping the government away from all health decisions.

But there is nothing progressive in denying science and causing some public schools to become disease incubators. There is nothing conservative about equating the eradication of disease with socialized medicine and government overreach into parental domain. There is nothing libertarian about allowing one person to harm another or to infect the vulnerable.

One anti-vaccination parent told The New York Times why she refused to vaccinate in the wake of the measles outbreak. She also ignored a doctor’s advice to have her son receive a tetanus shot after being cut. She said, “It’s good to explore alternatives. Vaccines don’t feel right for me and my family.” Science is based on facts, not feelings. And alternatives are for selecting a living room carpet, not for gambling with your child’s health.

Denial such as this is a growing public health menace that results in unnecessary suffering and death for children. It is irresponsible for Chris Christie to present this as just another lifestyle choice on par with which car to drive or what hobbies to embrace. It is abominable that Rand Paul, a doctor, would say, “I have heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.” This assertion is without merit, but gained traction after a study in the Lancet medical journal. This article has been discredited and was redacted in 2010.

While the anti-vaccine throng is a small percentage of the country, it is creeping dangerously close to impacting the herd immunity threshold. This is the vaccination rate required to prevent disease outbreak. The threshold is between 75 and 94 percent, depending on the disease. The measles outbreak was the manifestation of vaccinations dipping below the threshold in impacted areas.

As to what the victims are suffering through, here is the account of John Snyder, who contracted measles as a medical student in 1991: “For the next 10 days I lay on my friend’s floor coughing uncontrollably, hallucinating, and dehydrated, with fever spikes to 105 degrees. I have never been sicker in my life, and I could easily have died.” In Snyder’s case, the measles advanced into encephalitis, which can kill. It’s easy to see why he concluded that, “The failure to fully vaccinate our children is extremely dangerous.”

Diseases have been a main cause of death, illness, and disability for all of history. But germ theory and the advent of vaccination curtailed this immensely, tackling mumps, measles, smallpox, polio, and much more.

But the anti-vaccine movement, based on unfounded fears, bad science, and celebrity endorsers, has caused a decline in immunizations and a rise in preventable diseases. In the United Kingdom, vaccination rates for Whooping Cough were cut almost in half, leading to deadly epidemics in 1978 and 1982. In the Pacific Northwest, the disease skyrocketed by 1,300 percent in 2012 after vaccination rates plummeted. In California, 10 children died from Whooping Cough in 2010, the result of parents who refused vaccination.

By contrast, instances of Hib meningitis have gone from 15,000 a year to 50 since a vaccine was developed. More than 15,000 Americans died from diphtheria in 1921, whereas there has been one case in the United States since 2004. In 1975, rubella affected 12.5 million Americans, causing 11,000 miscarriages and 2,000 infant deaths. In 2012, there were nine rubella cases reported in the country.

These numbers are not post hoc reasoning because we understand how the immune system works and we know the science behind vaccinations.

Rare side effects can occur, but the regulatory process ensures they are within an acceptable risk boundary. Hence, vaccination is statistically much safer than letting a disease rage unchecked.

For instance, adverse reactions to the HPV vaccine were reported by four-tenths of one percent of those vaccinated. These reactions were mild, such as headaches, nausea, sore arms, rash, and dizziness. Reactions are no reason to abstain from vaccination since complications are far more likely to arise from illness than being inoculated.

The FDA ensures that new drugs work and that benefits outweigh risks before they are made available. Drug companies seeking to sell a drug in the United States must test it, then send results to the FDA. There, physicians, statisticians, chemists, and pharmacologists review the company’s data and proposed labeling. If this review shows the drug’s benefits outweigh the risks, it can be sold.

Going back to how this infects the entire political spectrum, some vaccine deniers prefer untested, “natural” remedies, some prefer to rely wholly or partly on prayer, and others think vaccinations are an attempt to control citizens. These views tend to be deeply entrenched and denial of science runs strong. Acerbating the problem is that persons can seek refuge in likeminded Internet communities, where rejection of health advancement is lauded.

Also, vaccines are a preventive measure, not a treatment, making them a more abstract concept for some. Vaccine denial was almost unheard of when nefarious diseases were common.

Another issue is false balance in media. Presenting all sides of the issue is necessary to political reporting. Without balance, it’s not journalism. But when reporting science, only facts should be presented. When celebrating the moon landing, the media doesn’t give equal time to proponents of the hoax theory. But it will present two talking heads when the issue is vaccination, giving the false impression the scientists and doctors are in disagreement, when the overwhelming majority favor vaccination.

There is one incidental benefit to false balance. It exposes anti-vaccination leaders such as Dr. Jack Wolfson. When asked on CNN about the leukemia patient who was at great risk from measles because she could not be vaccinated, Wolfson retorted that vaccines had probably given her the cancer.

That’s the side we’re fighting against.

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“Apocalypse Not” (Doomsdays)

FORECASTIf doomsayers had a .001 winning percentage, I wouldn’t be writing about them.

There have been predictions about the imminent destruction of the planet for as long as Man has been aware of his mortality. As the year 1000 approached, some Christians crucified themselves as a sign of repentance and a way to connect with Jesus, since they were sure the end was near. A millennium later, some were convinced that nuclear bombs would set themselves off and we would be collectively fried.

Most panicky prognostications are religious in nature, though some involve aliens and a few attempt a more scientific spin. There are two main types of doomsday predictions: The vague assertion that the end is coming, and the one that pegs a day or at least a year. I have seen online commentators insist Earth is doomed due to gay marriage, a cross being removed from a public park, or a busy hurricane season. These pronouncements are reactionary at best and gain no traction. To get a doomsday cult of your own, specifics are needed. For maximum attention, assign a date for Armageddon.

Some of the better known of the last 20 years include Aum Shinri Kyo (1995), Heaven’s Gate (1997), the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandants of God (1999, altered to 2000 when that apocalypse came and went), The Lord Our Righteousness Church (2007), Harold Camping (2011), and the Mayan calendar brouhaha (2012). When ATF agents surrounded the Branch Davidian compound, David Koresh told his flock this meant the end was nigh. Jim Jones adopted similar tactics when his empire began crumbling.

Let’s examine one of the reasons people come to this way of thinking. The Lord of our Righteousness Church is led by Michael Travesser, a former Seventh-Day Adventist. He now refers to that denomination as a “daughter of the great harlot” referenced in Revelation. The great majority of Christians who read Revelation come to a different conclusion, or none at all, about who these harlots might be. This highlights a crucial point about Christian portents of doom. Books like Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation, with their vivid imagery, and lack of proper names and known places, are open to wide interpretation. This is why people analyzing the same script come to such different conclusions.

Ronald Weinland of the redundant Church of God Preparing for the Kingdom of God has picked dates in 2008, 2012, and 2013 as the time it all comes to an end. One of his failures was explained away by clarifying afterward that he meant the beginning of the end would start on that day.

But clairvoyant Christians aren’t the only players in the End Times Lottery. A partial list of doomsayers over the centuries includes:

• Psychics (Gordon-Michael Scallion and Edgar Cayce)

• Seers (Nostradamus)

• Astrologers (Richard Noone and Jeanne Dixon)

• Proponents of the theory that Neptune’s mystery neighbor Nibiru is about to smack Earth (disciples of Zecharia Sitchin)

• Iconoclastic, self-important astronomers insisting that the alignment of Jupiter will trigger massive earthquakes (John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann).

When the end date approaches, some believers commit mass suicide to attain a higher plane, while others feel they will be spared death and snatched to paradise.

While the tactics are similar through the ages, Doomsayers adapt for the times. The 1950s saw the advent of UFO-related cults, such as the one led by Marian Keech. She gathered followers in her home on Dec. 21, 1954, to await salvation from flying saucers, which would spare them from Earth’s fiery end. When the alien rescuers failed to arrive, Keech told her followers their faith had saved the world. She got away with it, as the cognitive dissonance was especially strong. The deeper the investment of time and emotion, the stronger the rejection of alternate truths. Some followers of William Miller reacted the same way when they woke up on Oct. 23, 1844, to find the planet still here.

Marshall Applewhite, however, took no such chance. He instructed dozens of Heaven’s Gate followers to swallow a mix of cyanide and chocolate pudding so their souls would ascend to an alien craft being shielded by the Hale Bopp comet. As far as we know, it worked. No one is here to tell us otherwise. But the subsequent destruction of Earth hasn’t happened.

Another adaptation to the modern day is offering a more plausible-sounding scenario, such as asserting that a dwarf planet or asteroid is on a collision course with Earth. This is distinct from scanning the cosmos for such a phenomenon in order to be ready with defensive measures. Doomsayers, by contrast, dissect the Old Testament, Nostradamus prophecies, or other cryptic texts, then shout that rouge heavenly bodies and mass extinction are hurtling our way.

Then we had the alarmist concern about the Large Hadron Collider creating black holes that would gobble Earth and its inhabitants.

For most of Mankind’s history, we had no idea where we came from, why we were here, or where we were going. This left us primed to create and embrace myths, as way to find meaning in it all. While all the questions aren’t answered, astronomy and biology give us a good idea of how we got here. Astronomy and physics, meanwhile, let us know how it might end. This should mean the end of doomsayers, but cataclysmic events require some persons to square them with the Bible or Nostradamus, and interpret it to mean that it’s almost over. But every generation has seen catastrophic events without the world ending.

Another factor is that some people feel more important to think they are living in the last days. Also, it can be exciting to think the end is coming, especially when it’s also the beginning of something better. Accompanying many doomsday beliefs is the notion that a savior is coming to reward the faithful. These saviors have been many, but the best-known is Jesus. People still think he’s coming back, in some cases to help the South rise again.

Jesus hasn’t returned, but several others have filled the messiah void. Rabbi Sabbatai Zevi had a sizable following in 17th Century England. It was a huge blow to many of his believers when he converted to Islam. But other followers rationalized that the conversion was part of Sabbatai’s plan to bring Muslims to Judaism, or Jews to Islam, as part of a unifying plan that would precede the Rapture. There are people in Turkey, called Dönmeh, who still anticipate Sabbatai’s return.

If you know of anyone who would like to read this, let them know now. Markbeast.com warns that they have only until summer 2016 to do so.

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“Loco-motor” (Ideomotor response)

OUIJA WITH DOWSINGWith your team needing to stop the clock to set up a last-second field goal, you spike an imaginary football into the living room carpet. You sway your head back and forth to John Michael Montgomery (or preferably something better). You make a subtle chewing motion and lick your lips when someone mentions chocolate-covered cherries.

These are manifestations of the ideomotor response, a physiological phenomenon in which physical movements occur simultaneously with our thoughts, memories, and emotions. They are sometimes mostly conscious, such as the imaginary football spike, and other times semiconscious, such as with the music or cherries. It is the unconscious manifestations we will address, manifestations that are sometimes harmless, sometimes comic, and sometimes tragic.

In these instances, the person has no awareness they are executing the movements, which leaves them open to the suggestion that something magical, mystical, or sinister is in play.

Dr. William Carpenter discovered the phenomenon in 1852 and created the word, a portmanteau of idea and motor (for muscle movement). He deduced that the influence of suggestion or expectation led to involuntary and unconscious motor behavior. While Carpenter gave it a name, its use went back several centuries prior. Its most frequent appearance was in divining rods or dowsing tools. These were primarily used to locate water, but were also touted as being able to find oil, gold, golf balls, missing persons, or anything else a person was after.

It usually involved a wishbone shaped rod or twig, which the operator swept over an area. Eventually, the point would swivel, indicating the area where digging should commence. Advocates traditionally employed metallurgical mumbo-jumbo to explain how it worked, though today one is more likely to hear something mystic like Qi given as the magic power.

In actuality, the keys are involuntary muscle movements and motivated reasoning. It might fail once, twice, thrice, or a dozen times, but if it eventually unearths what one is looking for, the previous failures are overlooked and success declared. If all efforts fizzle, there are any number of justifications offered: Bad energy, crossed signals, too hot, too cold, static electricity, solar flares, or the operator’s poor body chemistry.

Divining rods have adapted for the 21st Century. The identifying factors of modem dowsing devices include technobabble, a sleek look, and an outrageous price. The most expensive ones run close to $10,000 despite featuring ersatz electronics and no success in independent testing.

It would be one thing if purveyors were just taking money, but they have also taken lives. In Iraq, dowsing rods were modernized for the War on Terror and rebranded as bomb detectors. Desperate and gullible militaries and governments gobbled them up.

The most infamous was the Alpha 6, which Sam and Joan Tree fastened together with cheap parts from China. The assembly was a plastic box without electronic components and a freely-rotating piece of metal passing as an antenna. The Trees had essentially reworked a $12 golf ball dowser, attributed life-saving properties to it, and sold it for $25,000. They raked in $3 million before being busted. It was sold to other audiences as a device for finding lost children. It must have been really good at locating juvenile suicide bombers.

Meanwhile, Paul Johnson offered the Sniffex explosives detector to the U.S. military and sold $50,000 worth. The Navy conducted double blind tests on the Sniffex and found it performed no better than chance. In a typical failure, a truck laden with a half-ton of explosives was driven next to a Sniffex without the combustibles being detected. Johnson offered the ad hoc reasoning that the testing area was polluted with explosive residue, throwing off the device. Rather bad trait for a bomb detector to have, being confused by too many explosives.

Another unfortunate consequence of the ideomotor response has occurred with facilitated communication. This is used to assist persons who have speech impairment due autism, cerebral palsy, or similar conditions. A facilitator supports an arm of the subject, and moves toward the place on the keyboard it feels drawn.

The technique has failed repeatedly in scientific testing. In every instance, the responses were those of the facilitator rather than the subject. For instance, a partition was placed between the two, and the facilitator would be shown a photo of crocodile and the subject a photo of a dog. Invariably, it was the amphibian that was typed in when the tester asked what animal was seen.

When more involved questions were asked, the same vernacular, phrases, and even misspellings of the facilitator were prevalent. Elementary school children were typing words like dissertation and ameliorate. This proved to be devastating for parents who thought their children had been able to communicate with them for the first time. The biggest victims were two fathers whose facilitators had typed in accusations of sexual assault against the men.

Perhaps the most well-known ideomotor responses are in conjunction with the Ouija Board. Though accused by some of being Satan’s spawn, the board is merely a game invented in the 1890s and manufactured today by Hasbro. Like facilitated communication, it relies on users to manually spell out words. One or two persons will hold a teardrop-shaped implement called a planchette and move it about the board. Of course, the contacted spirit always uses the same language, speaking style, and grammatical errors of the planchette operators.

That the Ouija Board was merely the ideomotor response in action was best demonstrated by Penn & Teller. The illusionist duo had a couple use the Ouija Board, then blindfolded them before stealthily turning the board 180 degrees. Subsequent responses had the couple moving the planchette to the opposite side of the board from where the letters had been previously.

I’ve been addressing alternative medicine with enough frequency that I was hoping to get away from it for a while. But alas, it rears its unscientific head here. For the ideomotor response figures prominently in radionics and applied kinesiology.

Radionics is the purported ability to detect radiation in people. Devices allegedly measure radiation (or vibrations or Qi) in order to diagnose disease. This treatment is done by using an unproven energy said to be akin to radio waves. Radionics is inconsistent with biology and physics and has no scientific basis. The practitioner does little more than wave a box with protrusions around a client until he feel pulled in one direction. The boxes may produce measurable readings, but there’s no connection between these measurements and disease or tissue damage.

Onto applied kinesiology, which is the claimed ability to diagnose and treat illnesses by gauging muscular strength. Its methodology is to assess how a client’s muscles respond to being pushed against, with this somehow revealing what ails him. Testing relies on subjective assessment, so different practitioners could decide the same patient is at high risk, medium risk, or no risk. Or one advocate could find that the client has strained quadriceps, while another thinks the trouble is bloating.

When put to a scientific test, the field has never scored better than chance. It has this in common with all other ideomotor response-driven fields, where spooky tales and uncontrolled, unscientific experiments are given more credence than empirical evidence.

In personal experience, I have found the ideomotor response to be of mixed value. The last time I utilized the spike motion, the Chiefs stopped the clock, but missed the field goal.

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“Dead nor alive” (Between Lives therapy)

inbetweenWhile I enjoy blogging about skeptic issues, there’s only so many times I can write about Bigfoot, tarot cards, and curing rabies with coconut juice. So it was with glee that I unearthed the ideas of Dr. Michael Newton and his application of hypnotherapy.

Hypnosis can be used to help persons deal with their present life, but some of the more ambitious hypnotherapists use it to delve into past lives. There are also future life readings. But Newton rushes in to fill the gap by examining what the hell we do between incarnations. And it’s more than just floating in another dimension or showing up in poltergeist form is someone’s drapes.

Newton claims that between-life specifics have been revealed to him by 7,000 patients. He has pieced together what they told him and put it together in four books. Despite the trepidation most people have about death, Newton finds that most end up embracing it since the afterlife is so pleasant. But there are a smattering of exceptions. A few bitter souls prefer to stay on Earth and annoy us as ghosts. Then there are souls who suffer from what Newton dubs “criminal abnormalities.” These cursed types “are not activated along the same travel routes as other souls.”

But it works out in the end. Newton lets us know that, “All souls eventually arrive at a central staging area where returning souls are conveyed in a spiritual form of mass transit.” Pretty sure he stole that from Defending Your Life. Or they stole it from him.

The next stop on the Soul Train is an appearance before a Council of Elders, who pepper the undead with questions about decisions made in the previous life. The unexamined death is not worth living, I suppose. From there, souls are dispatched to join their appointed clan. Newton says of the clans, “These tightly-knit clusters are composed of like-minded souls with common objectives and they continually work though issues with each other.” The gist is, you reunite with your old drinking buddies.

Newton said his sessions are designed to awaken dormant memories of the time between incarnations. He sprinkles his work with esoteric goodness, such as “reconnect with your soul self,” “understanding your immortal identity, and “incredible support offered by countless Higher Beings in the inter-life.”

Those in the Beginner Soul state keep working at it until full maturity is reached, an idea pilfered from Buddhism and Hinduism. At the intermediate level, souls are akin to student-teachers, as they start working with netherworld neophytes. However, Newton cautions, “Only if this preliminary training is successful are we allowed to function even at the level of a Junior Guide,” which seems to be the Tenderfoot equivalent in these Cosmic Boy Scouts. Some never gain competence and are sent to do some other, unspecified task. Apparently none of the 7,000 patients got around to telling Newton what this is.

The final stage is advanced status. Newton says he can tell us little about these beings because souls this far along would never seek a between-lives therapist. If that’s his standard, there are about 6 billion advanced souls wandering the planet.

Whatever level a soul is at, it eventually must return to Earth. To prepare for departure, souls are mentored by guides and are then shown various lives in a setting similar to a movie theatre, presumably complete with extra-butter popcorn. After further consultation and a return trip to the Council of Elders, the souls decide which body to occupy. Yep, you chose your current circumstance as opposed to being born again as Mikhail Prokhorov or Jennifer Lawrence.

With regard to the plunge into amniotic fluid, Newton reports that, “You begin to cross this bridge between your current life and your soul’s true home.” Sounds like Dr. Kevorkian.

Newton’s claims could be true. But it could also be true that a long series of highly relaxed patients, on a comfortable couch and in a suggestable state, who were there with the intent of accessing these memories, would come to these conclusions, while satisfying their desire to please the cordial doctor with a pleasant voice.

Furthering the likelihood of this development is that Newton’s ideas come with the promise of an eventual home “where only pure, unconditional love, compassion, and harmony exist side by side.” There is also no sickness or injury, so you can leave the coconut juice behind.

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“Lacking essentials” (Aromatherapy oils)

EGYPTOIL2After advertisements for products I would never consider and the full spectrum of opinion on police tactics, one of the most frequent features of my news feed the past few months has been essential oils and Facebook Friends attesting to their power.

I set out to determine if essential oil claims were backed by the gold standard of research: A double blind reproducible study proving effectiveness. A friend of a friend suggested one site, which had a lot of information, though it was about the process of extraction, the chemistry, and the history, not the research I was looking for.

I later found other sources that had some positive double blind study results for essential oils. But they were far fewer and far narrower in scope than what would be needed to justify the industry’s claims.

On the recommended site, armoaticscience.com, there were some pseudomedicine red flags. Featured prominently is the appeal to irrelevant ancient authority, specifically, “The use of plant-based therapies has been recorded as far back as 3000 BCE with the Egyptians.” Also noted was its use by Romans, Greeks, Indians, and Chinese. But none of this attests to the product’s effectiveness. A treatment is based on its efficiency, not its antiquity.

Another red flag came from conflicting ideas about the basics of the field, such as this sentence: “There are many opinions about how essential oils should most effectively and safely be used.” Science is continually questioning and challenging itself, but the primary knowledge, tactics, and techniques are accepted because they have been proven in repeated studies and experiments. Essential oil purveyors present their internal disagreement as a positive, pointing out that everyone’s body chemistry is different and won’t be impacted in the same way. This is taking a veracious idea and twisting it into a falsehood. Not every Hodgkin’s patient will respond to chemotherapy, and Tylenol might work better on my back pain than on my neighbor’s. But the Hodgkin’s patient will not be helped by Tylenol, nor my neighbor given chemotherapy for his aches. By contrast, jasmine might be used for aggravated sinuses by one essential oil user, for anxiety relief by another, and for arthritic flare-ups by a third. This is a strong sign that it’s useless for all these ailments, and any seeming successes are owed to the placebo effect, post hoc reasoning, and the tendency of symptoms to fluctuate. This will be compounded by communal reinforcement and selective memory.

A third red flag is the trumpeting that the field is almost there: “Scientific publication on essential oils is accelerating as researchers continue to study both individual aromatic constituents and whole essential oils.” This is preferable to the purveyors of tachyon treatments or the Joy Touch, who just make stuff up, but it’s still different from having data on your side. Again to its credit, the site acknowledges this by noting that “Finding accurate, validated, and applicable scientific literature pertaining to essential oils can be a major challenge.”

I accepted this challenge and did unearth some double blind studies that suggested the effectiveness of some oils for specific conditions. Peppermint oil seems to be good for Irritable Bowel Syndrome, eucalyptus helps with Rhino-sinusitis, and copaiba does the same with acne. Could have used me some of that when I was 14.

Another potential validation for essential oils came in Iran. Guess the country has given us more than the Iron Sheik and apostate beheadings. In a study, 47 migraine sufferers were divided into a test group and a control group. When a migraine struck, patients were instructed to record its severity in 30-mintue intervals for two hours. 92 of the 129 headaches that were treated with lavender met with significant relief. In the control group, 32 of 68 headaches were lessened after taking a placebo. This means 40 percent better results were achieved with lavender over a placebo.

Assuming this study was conducted with proper prescribed protocols, this is strong evidence that lavender works. If this study is repeated 50 times, with 43 of them reaching the same result as in Iran, this would be metadata double blind study evidence, and I will champion lavender’s effectiveness in migraine mitigation. I am a skeptic, not a cynic or hardheaded mule. My view of a very limited number of essential oil products has altered upon investigation. What has not changed is my view of claims lacking scientific backing.

Essential oil purveyors should not be promising health benefits that are not supported by empirical evidence. It is wrong to tell someone their sore throat will be made better by rosemary if it won’t be. And it is highly unethical and criminal to sell someone myrtle with the promise that it will take care of their Parkinson’s. Marketers of Young Living Essential Oils have made such claims, even saying their products would cure cancer, PTSD, and Ebola, before the FDA put a stop to it.

While aromatherapy seems to have some benefits, the field remains rife with nonsense and shady marketers. They give undue relevance to oils’ use among ancient cultures and to the scores of anecdotes they have to cull from. Young Living boasts that its products reside “at the intersection of cutting edge research and traditional wisdom.” Put another way, they are a hybrid of stuff not yet proven and stuff that may have never worked, but is touted because of its antiquity.

With regard to modern research, most claims by essential oil marketers are vague and focus on an oil’s potential, not its potency. They lack empirical data backing and credit an oil’s ability to assuage a wide variety of ailments, which is not how medicine works.

Moreover, pseudoscientific jargon such as “immune booster” and “restoring of the body’s natural energy balance” are seen in some advertisements. Another flaw is they will sometimes highlight in vitro results, which fail in vivo.

The most frequent defense I hear for essential oils is that, “They work for me.” But it is faulty thinking to assert that coriander cures a rash because a friend said it worked once. Or because 50 friends said it worked 50 times. The plural of anecdote is not data, and the relative lack of studies leaves the essential oil field resting on post hoc reasoning, such as, “I had a stuffy nose, used some sage, and ta da.” Peer-reviewed, replicated research and double blind studies are needed to eliminate bias, pet beliefs, the regressive fallacy, and selective memory.

Another common justification is that there is nothing to lose, except for maybe money. This is also unsound thinking. I have nothing to lose by hopping on one leg to increase my thriftiness, but that doesn’t mean it will work.

Essential oils are not hogwash to the extent that astrology or telepathic communication with Inner Earth inhabitants is. There is at least one essential oil product, Vicks VapoRub, that is backed by empirical evidence, and the studies noted earlier, if replicated, would establish the field’s use for other maladies. Furthermore, the industry somewhat acknowledges its deficiencies, owning up to the scarcity of validating research.

However, the relatively few success stories are not keeping essential oil purveyors from claiming their products have the ability to cure and mitigate almost anything. Some of these supposed treatments could eventually be proven. If lavender does indeed zap migraines, someone using it 10 years ago would have gotten the same result then. Likewise, someone may get flu relief from basil oil, with this connection being verified by science 10 years from now.

But marketers should not attribute unproven abilities to their products. And essential oil users should not use them in lieu of traditional medicine and methods. If you want to slap on frankincense for that lump on your neck, lather away, but do so before heading to the doctor.

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“Rend me your hand” (Palmistry)

BETTERSEVEREDHANDIn the Middle Ages, palm reading was used to detect witches. These days, it is used to detect the gullible. The lack of studies, empirical evidence, and explanation for how it works are no match for the thrill of hearing one’s future revealed, and of having one’s personality dissected by a mysterious stranger.

Palmistry was practiced in ancient China, Egypt, and India, and modern-day practitioners make a big deal out of this. The practice is also synonymous with Romania, and a big deal is made of this as well.

Palmists, also known as chiromancers, read fortunes from lines, marks, and patterns on the hands. Like most good pseudosciences, palmistry varies by practitioner. Depending on the reader, they key factor can be the size of the hand, its shape, or which one is dominant. Others put emphasis on bumps, intersections, fingers, fingernails, texture, flexibility, or skin patterns. Color was once considered crucial by some palmists, but they ceded to the KKK the ability to determine a person’s character based on melanin levels.

For some readers, the left hand indicates inherited personality traits and potential, while the right hand indicates individuality and accomplishments. The reverse is true for southpaws, and it’s unclear what the ambidextrous are to do. What the hand reveals is up to the reader, which indicates the practice is invalid. The same person will get very different readings depending on which palmist they see.

While there are different schools and philosophies, most palmists base their practice on the idea that hands show three main lines. The Life Line reveals physical vitality, the Head Line shows intellectual capacity, and the Heart Line correlates to emotions and passion. Chiromancy is based on sympathetic magic, the simplistic metaphysical belief that like affects like. For instance, if the line that is supposed to reveal romance is broken, it means the person has a tough time committing to relationships.

Without any explanation for how this would work or why we should believe it, palmists assert, as another example, that those with fan-shaped hands are sensitive. Readings like this leave the customer open to self-fulfilling prophecies or self-delusion. The practice is built on communal reinforcement, confirmation bias, and cold reading. A cold reader employs high-probability guesses and infers details from facial or vocal cues from the person being duped. Cold readers mostly tell people what they want to hear, while keeping it generic enough that the description applies to most people. With these loose standards, a 70 percent success rate is almost guaranteed, and that will be enough to convince a person who wants to believe.

Some try to put a modern twist on it by comparing palms to DNA or cells, pointing out that no two people are identical. But a person’s career path cannot be determined by examining their saliva in a laboratory or from their cell sample. Nor can it be deciphered through the palms. You might be able to guess that a man with calloused hands is a laborer, or that a woman with wrinkled hands is elderly, but you could find that out by asking them, so palmistry is useless in determining traits.

The conflicting interpretations of what various lines and features tell, along with the lack of empirical evidence for palmistry, cement its place among the pseudosciences. In a real science, such as biology, there will be agreement of the basics because they are empirically proven and continually tested. There will be disagreements in specialized areas, which is where experiments, peer review, and analysis come in. Palmists, meanwhile, bicker about which hand tells what, or reach vastly different conclusions on what a Life Line shows. This would be like biologists arguing over whether babies are the result of sex or the stork.

Chiromancy is still practiced everywhere, and it has adapted to the modern day by offering online readings where a person sends scanned handprints for analysis. I decided to keep it old school and go for a reading in person. My palmist asked for my dominant hand, which she said would serve as a window to my conscious mind. I was unsure why I would need someone to tell me what my conscious mind was thinking. However, my dominant hand would also reveal what she called my “realized personality,” while my opposite hand would show my subconscious and my potential. As a test of her ability, I went undercover as a southpaw and presented my left hand as dominant.

She assured me that hand shapes are either Earth, Air, Water, or Fire. I was told that I have Air Hands, consistent with long fingers, protruding knuckles, and dry skin (I forgot to put on my Patchouli Essential Oil that morning). Oh, and the key point is that my middle finger is the same length as my palm, so I’m squarely in the Air Hand category.

Gazing at my Life Line, she let me know that I have great potential and a sense for adventure. She didn’t say potential for what, but I hope to tap into my ability to expose ridiculous ideas. I love to travel, so she nailed that one. Her opening sentence, then, was a microcosm of the divination charade: Tell the customer what they want to hear and sprinkle it with open-ended ideas that will apply to most people.

My Head Line is telling her that I think before acting. I asked to get this one in writing so I could show my wife. However, she cautioned, there were some breaks in this line that might represent a lack of focus. Or it might suggest something else, but I can’t remember what since I was watching a fire engine go by.

My Heart Line indicated a combination of sentimentality and good instincts. But I instinctively know that I’m not sentimental, so she only scores 50 percent on that one.

She gazes with more intensity at some of my minor lines, then asserts that major changes might impact my life and that I should pay attention to my diet. Each handprint that chiromancers examine might be unique, but the advice they give is universal.

Looking at something called the Line of Apollo, she tells me, “Your success is almost guaranteed, but some effort must be put forth.” So if I succeed, the palmist’s advice worked. If I fail, it’s because I didn’t try hard enough. Of course, I’m unsure exactly what it is I will be succeeding or failing at since she didn’t tell me. But I can see her failure, as she was unable to detect that she was reading the wrong hand.

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“Bilbo’s buddies” (Cryptozoology)

BB
We will look today at some of the beliefs that are unorthodox even by the usual standards of gullibility. Unicorns are just as likely as Skunk Apes, and thinking mermaids are out there is as unwarranted by the evidence as thinking the same about ghosts. But the beliefs we will examine are less frequent and thus more distinctive. We will also uncover the mindset and motivation involved in embracing these ideas.

Some people adopt these beliefs because men claiming to be a god wrote something on parchment paper in the Bronze Age. While this is common, the folks at Answers in Genesis take it further than most. Their Creation Museum is more than children getting piggyback rides from Stegosauruses and Sleestak cavorting about. It also champions a belief in dragons.

As with its claim that the universe is 6000 years old or that representatives of every animal congregated on Noah’s Ark, the Creation Museum bases this on no science or evidence, but on its interpretation of a specific Bible version. The book of Job references a mammoth fire-breathing leviathan, and they infer this creature was what came to be known as a dragon. Dragons fly as opposed to swim, but this detail must have been lost over the millenniums. Job is full of long, flowery prose and graphic imagery that make it easy to see the book as allegorical. But for those who insist it is literal, something has to fit in spite of the evidence, so dragons it is.

There are no dragon fossils or animals presumed to have been descended from such. Hence, Answers in Genesis puts stock in the fact that dragons appear in other cultures. But 20 fictional dragons doesn’t equal one real giant monster with a heart-shaped tip on its tail. AIG writes, “There is evidence in art found around the world that indicates humans interacted with cryptozoological types after the Flood.” By this logic, Salvador Dali interacted with a perpetually melting watch.

Joining dragons in the Creation Museum’s Middle Earth zoo are unicorns. The only two pieces of “evidence” are that some versions of the Bible contain the word “unicorn” and that the rhinoceros has one horn. These are the types of arguments put forth by a group who insists that an insidious government is conspiring with their heinous henchmen scientists to keep the truth from schoolchildren.

With regard to the unicorn’s existence, it wouldn’t take much for even a committed conservative Christian to see it differently than AIG. Other Bible versions refer to the animal as a wild ox. Also, the reference in the King James Version comes in a series of questions about challenges that would be impossible to overcome. Hence, involving a fictional creature in such a line of questioning would be consistent. Like dragons, AIG points to unicorns in other cultures as proof they were real. But this only establishes their existence in fairy tales, not on Earth.

It’s not just biologically-challenged biblical literalists getting in on the magical creatures fun. Even highly-educated Icelanders are susceptible. Highway work was delayed in 2013 over fears it would disturb elven habitat. The matter was settled when a woman who communicated with elves conducted a telepathic mediation. She reported the bearded miniatures were OK with the highway crew blasting away as long as a large jagged rock that served as their sanctuary was relocated.

Over half of the people surveyed in the nation that ranks 19th in education were open to the possibility that elves are real. This shows how ingrained a religious or mythological idea can be in a culture, and how hard it is to extricate, no matter how much evidence is presented or how much the nation advances in other areas.

A British newspaper reporter wrote that Icelanders suspected that elves were behind bulldozer breakdowns and road worker misfortunes, a classic piece of post hoc reasoning. Another example of this came from a man who identified himself only at Petur, whom the reporter interviewed. As a youth, Petur related, his father told him to pay homage to an elf he felt was in the area. But the petulant youth considered this silly and refused. His punishment for this disobedience came in the form of blistered feet the next day. From then on, he believed. Couple this type of subjective validation with communal reinforcement, and you get belief in elves in the 21st Century in one of the worlds most developed, forward-thinking countries.

Staying with European island nations, we venture to Lancashire, England, where John Hyatt claims to have taken photos of fairies. He says he just asked people to keep an open mind. I’ve never met Hyatt, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt (about his commitment to open-mindedness, not about fairies existing). But whenever I’ve encountered “keep an open mind” or “just examine the evidence for yourself” exhortations from Truthers, reflexologists, and fairy people, they are OK with it only if my open mind accepts what theirs does.

Hyatt has photos that could be viewed as an out-of-focus Tinkerbell. They could also be viewed as flying insects impacted by reflection, refraction, flashes and flaws. You can judge for yourself here.

He was standing close enough to capture these creatures and remove all doubt. So the doubt remains, enabling believers to replace it with comforting thoughts. In fact, Hyatt inadvertently explained the reason folks believe: “A lot of people who have seen them say they have brought a little bit of magic into their lives and there’s not enough of that around.” So it gives their existence a little more meaning, perhaps offers comfort, a warm feeling, a sense of hope. Some of those interviewed felt the fairies held special powers. This is always an appealing idea, especially when you can infuse these magical beings with whatever benevolent actions you wish.

Also campaigning for fairy awareness is all-about-fairies.com. Despite its restrictive name, the website also informs its readers about leprechauns, mermaids, and pixies. On the FAQ, “Are fairies real?” is met with this persuasive, reasoned, thoroughly documented argument: “Of course.”

Later, it informs us, “Some people see fairies, and some see a white misty shape, other people see colored lights, and some sense their presence.” Everybody is a winner! This allows any action to be interpreted as a fairy. For those who can’t even sense a presence, that’s because, “Fairies must know that you believe in them and their magic before they show themselves.” That’s hardly right, it seems we incredulous folks need the most fairy love.

As to their habitat, “They like to live near meadows or gardens or in a fairyland.” Could you be a little more vague? Continuing, it is written, “They do interact with humans sometimes, but with only good intentions.” This is idealizing our wants, and this personification of total kindness and generosity offers peace and reassurance.

Here are the five pieces of proof for fairies that the website operator offers: 1. I’ve seen ‘em. 2. Others seen ‘em. 3. People in Days of Yore seen ‘em. 4. YouTube videographers seen ‘em. 5. People at fairy festivals seen ‘em.

While most believers prefer the elastic descriptions unencumbered by form or facts, a few try to bridge mythological creatures to real occurrences. For instance, a leprechaun-believing site tries to tie the Lilliputians in green fedoras to a historic event by claiming they hid gold from the invading Danes. Since the Danes couldn’t see them, it seems that guerilla warfare may have been a better response, but maybe leprechauns are pacifist.

The site reports that captured leprechauns offer gold for ransom. One hundred percent of leprechaun hunters have accepted this offer, as there are many gold coins in Ireland, but no captive leprechauns. The website also attributes to leprechauns “the ability to turn into a swirl of dust and be gone.” As such, it’s unclear why they would make the gold coin offer.

I also came across a mostly–abandoned blog run by a guy who runs around trying to capture photos of leprechauns. It mostly contains shaky images with green swirls, One picture shows really tiny humanoid feet in the sand, and, of course, the only creatures capable of making such impressions are leprechauns.

Most proponents of these fields appeal to myth and folklore, but some attempt are more pseudoscientific spin. This is often the case when dealing with belief in mermaids.

On cryptid.com, it is pointed out that a fish/mammal combination wouldn’t work from a zoological or practical standpoint. So it weaves a storyline, sprinkled with terms thieved from evolution and biology, then ties it up with this speculation: “What if not all of our ancestors left the sea and moved to the Savannah? What if some stayed in the ocean, and continued to evolve into mermaids?”

These hypothetical mermaids, we are assured, are not the kind we think of, but are a form of aquatic ape. What follows are a series of guesses which it calls theories. But they are at best hypotheses since they offer no observation or experimentation, and present only cursory predictive behavior, such as this: “It seems likely that a big-brained primate would utilize tools. We’d have to assume that, like chimpanzees, they may use objects like rocks or other undersea items as tools.”

It also seems likely that other big-brained primates are utilizing tools such as a computer and modem to keep ideas fit for the Middle Ages alive today.

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“nataS teewS” (Backmasking)

DEMONDRUMS
I position myself on the front line of the skeptic wars and over the past year have engaged cryptozoolgists, dowsers, ghost hunters, mediums, Reiki practitioners, Young Earth creationists, and so on. While conspiracy theorists might occasionally test my ability to do so, I refrain from launching personal attacks.

For one thing, such attacks are at the bottom of the debate pyramid, resting even below an ad hominem, and are unworthy of someone blogging about critical thinking. Moreover, it is going to be irrelevant to the point being made and will drive off potential converts. Finally, it would be hypocritical, since I formerly believed that Nostradamus fired a shot from Roswell’s grassy knoll. I may have some of the details mixed there, but the point is that I once gulped up ideas such as ghosts, demons, the Loch Ness Monster, the Bermuda Triangle, and using red cherry bark to treat the flu. If Robert Todd Carroll, Steven Novella, and James Randi had ridiculed people like me, rather than using facts, logic, and persuasion, I would have never adapted.

One of my first forays into the skeptic movement came during a seven-year stretch in the 1980s when I viewed a series of mostly poorly-produced and reactionary videos centering on backward masking in music.

First, a critical distinction. Taking recorded music and putting it in reverse on an album has happened many times. The Beatles were the first to use it regularly. Frank Zappa employed it on a song when his record company wouldn’t let him say the lyrics forward.

The key, though, is that the sound in these cases is garbled and distorted, and it is clear that backward masking is being used. In contrast, some Protestant Evangelical preachers and broadcasters insisted that bands could make music that sounded normal, perhaps even wonderful, while implanting a sinister message that played in reverse. All record producers queried about this testified to its impossibility. Audio engineer Evan Olcott noted that the allegedly backwards messages were in fact phonetic reversals, with sung phonemes forming new combinations when played in reverse. Olcott explained, “Engineering or planning a phonetic reversal is next to impossible, and even more difficult when trying to design it with words that fit into a song.”

I have never known of an attempt to explain how the technical process would work. And only a handful of attempts were made to explicate why the backward message would matter. One of these few tries was made by Dr. Joe Stuessy during the PMRC hearings in 1985. He said, “These are heard by the subconscious but not the conscious mind. Some experts believe that while the conscious mind is absorbing the forward lyric, the subconscious is working overtime to decipher the backwards message.” He cited none of these experts, nor any evidence, nor any hypothesis for how it would work.

This was not backward masking at all, but a form of mass apophenia and pareidolia that peaked in the mid- to late-1980s. It was part of the Satanic Panic that included the McMartin Preschool injustice, Geraldo specials, and the Night Stalker trial.

Some artists responded to these accusations with witty lines spoken in reverse on their albums. Weird Al commented on how bored the backwards listener must be. An Iron Maiden track included a backward masking of an intoxicated Nicko McBrain doing an Idi Amin impersonation. A backwards message from Electric Light Orchestra announced, “The music is reversible,” in response to having been accused of the practice. Another accusation was launched at Styx, and this served as the impetus for “Kilroy Was Here.” In this concept album, an organization similar to the ones that had attacked Styx gains enough power to ban rock and roll. Some copies of the album came slapped with a sticker bearing the satirical message, “By order of the Majority for Musical Morality, this album contains secret backward messages.” In probably the most delicious irony of the backward masking hysteria, at least one anti-rock crusader took this seriously and included this “admission” in future backward masking presentations.

It wasn’t all funny, however. That same year, the Arkansas legislature voted to require warning labels on any record containing back masking. Though nothing ever came of it, owing to a veto by Gov. Bill Clinton, it took little imagination to envision an agenda-driven prosecutor convincing culturally conservative jurors that Journey needed to pay for paving children’s path to Hell. Attempts at regulation in Texas and at the federal level failed, though California’s legislature passed the only document in jurisprudence history to contain the phrase, “turn us into disciples of the Antichrist.”

One proponent of the sinister backward masking theory agreed that it was impossible to do so intentionally. But he claimed that the messages were still there, with demons controlling the guitarist’s fingers and singer’s vocal chords since them there devils is tricky like that. His evidence (apologies to Noah Webster for mangling the definition) was that all the deciphered messages were homage to Satan or at least his spawn, recreational drugs. Were the backwards messages coincidence, he opined, there would be an equal number of praises to God and nonsensical sentences. Of course, there were many such messages, using the standards of the Peters Brothers, Paul Crouch, Dave Benoit, Jacob Aranza, and many other obscure crusaders. For instance, Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” was said to have announced, “We decided to smoke marijuana.” In fact, the line is more accurately transcribed as “Wheesua arDEEEscher fff Zrv%&$*72 DENONO Jhermin jaja.” Hence, this could also be interpreted as “We love Mary and her son, Sweet Jesus,” or “What’s the optimal way for a Bulgarian to install a carburetor?”

Detecting any of these messages would require, first, that someone play it backwards for you since most people listen to music the other direction. Then you would need to have the supposed message pointed out to you. Next, you would have to be highly susceptible to suggestion, which is easier if one is a teenager or already holds a negative opinion of loud music.

If you can meet all these criteria, you may be all set. As skeptic Michael Shermer noted, “The human brain evolved with a strong pattern recognition ability that was necessary to process the large amount of noise in man’s environment. But today this ability leads to false positives.” Given this tendency to recognize patterns, it’s easy to cram satanic meaning into any sound if one is prepped for it.

Listeners may also suspend incredulity since backwards music has the distinction of being distorted and may sound a little spooky. Combine this with an “aha” moment, and the realization that Satan is in our midst, and people can freak. I may have witnessed the zenith of this hysteria when I watched a friend spin a 45 of “Oh Mickey!” in reverse. In this case, Toni Basil was deemed clean, with no detection of backward Beelzebub beatitudes.

While mostly comic fodder and a lesson in panic, there was one serious manifestation beyond the legislative attempts and PMRC hearings. Judas Priest was unsuccessfully sued over the unfounded idea that one of its songs contained a subliminal message. The trial was not precisely over backward masking since the claim was that the message was subliminal. But one cannot miss the connection between the backward masking hysteria and a heavy metal band being hauled into court for a clandestine evil.

Though associated with the 1980s, playing tunes in reverse goes so far back in antiquity that the first person to listen to it this way was the inventor or recorded music, Thomas Edison. Aleister Crowley suggested in a 1913 book that his minions “train themselves to think backwards by external means, such as by listening to phonograph records reversed.”

Of course, neither of these instances were backward masking. When the Beatles began doing it, rock DJ Russ Gibb encouraged his listeners to find messages from other artists. Fundamentalist Christians soon joined in. They were emboldened by the idea that some Satanists incorporate backward motions into their ceremonies, such as writing in reverse or reciting the Lord’s Prayer that way. The idea that Black Sabbath was incorporating an Alesiter Crowely technique proved a dream for Satan slayers.

The idea mostly died with the CD. While the digital era would seem to create a ripe new market for evil backward masking message deciphering, this has not happened. Demons have apparently moved onto writing Twilight screenplays and officiating gay marriages.

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“Peer review review” (Peer review process)

BOBBY4Most of my posts deal with phenomenon I don’t believe in, such as Yeti, homeopathic medicine, and crystal balls. Today we will focus on something I believe in strongly: The peer review and publication process as it applies to science.

The process, in brief: 1. A scientist conducts an experiment. 2. The scientist writes about it and submits the paper for review by other subject matter experts. 3. The paper is possibly revised after comments from reviewers. 4. The paper is published, if warranted. While the process of making it into a peer-reviewed journal ends there, attempts at replication and falsification continue, and may even lead to publication later in a peer-reviewed journal that reaches the opposite conclusion.

Peer review is a key part of the Scientific Method and the process helps reduce the chance that papers which rely on faulty conclusions or shoddy research methods will be published. Having the worked dissected by a handful of Ph.D.s, then read by many more subject matter experts, is an attempt to validate the science.

Consider why this is important. If a geologist suspects he has found holes in climate change theory, he should submit his work for peer review, not e-mail his findings to Sen. James Inhofe. If a microbiologist thinks she has cured the common cold, this should be announced to a journal’s review board, not hawked in newspaper advertisements. If the Institute for Creation Research claims to have a satellite photo of God speaking the world into existence 5,000 years ago, this evidence should be submitted to a peer-reviewed astronomy journal, not posted to the ICR website. Indeed, the surest sign of pseudoscience is when the peer-review process is bypassed in favor of going straight to a populous selected for their bias or blissful ignorance.

A last-second victory by your team may cause you to have a mostly sleepless night. Eating guacamole can cause one to overdo it and end up feeling stuffed. So even the most wonderful events can have drawbacks, and that brings us to potential deficiencies in the peer review and publication process.

Confirmation bias can occur even in a field whose role largely consists of combating it. With contentious issues like String Theory or the Multiverse, prejudice can seep in and the reviewer may give unmerited credit or undeserving scorn to a viewpoint. This is where editors really earn their money, though they could acquiesce to bias as well. There is also the possibility of personal favoritism or disdain directed at a researcher, which is why some journals prefer researchers remain anonymous in the review process. While science is cold and detached, those executing it are still susceptible to human frailties.

From this regrettable foible, we move to outright fraud. Unscrupulous researchers have been known to review their own work under an assumed name, then praise it mightily. In the most extreme case yet uncovered, mathematics journal editor Mohamed El Naschie reviewed several articles of his own before publishing them. Although more effort is now made to verify the existence and credentials of reviewers, there are more than 100 articles published in peer-reviewed journals that were, in fact, not peer-reviewed.

Another issue is vanity publishing, where a journal will print anything for a price. This has been standard practice in the novella and poetry business for years, and this tactic has been adapted for science journalism. To illustrate how easily the system can be taken advantage of, skeptics have gotten articles published in lorem ipsum or in long strings of gibberish that were said to be authored by Simpsons characters. While these were not, of course, peer-reviewed journals, the fact that they are advertised as such harms the reputation of the process.

These journals with technical-sounding names that bypass peer review are the bane of science and a lifeline for alternative medicine gurus, anti-vaccine activists, and creationists. They can be aided by lackeys in mainstream media who fail to properly vet news of miracle cures and government-pharmaceutical industry cover-ups. Even the Wall Street Journal allowed a creationist to write a column endorsing the idea.

Despite these shortcomings, the peer review process remains the most objective and preeminent way to assess scientific work. And while laudable, peer review is only a preparatory step to help ensure research methods are satisfactory, and that the Scientific Method is followed. Flaws could still slip by well-meaning, skilled reviewers, but the goal is to keep the process transparent. Peer review and publication means the paper’s conclusion is realistic, but this does not necessarily validate the theory. Replication and experimentation should continue.

The importance of the process has even been recognized by the legal community. In Daubert vs. Dow Pharmaceuticals and subsequent cases, the courts have ruled that research must be sound, independently reviewed, and use unbiased methodology before it can be considered science. This is crucial for some types of cases, where the validity of a potential cure that a hospital refused to administer may be the focal point of a malpractice suit.

Like mediums who refuse the James Randi challenge or Therapeutic Touch practitioners who decline to participate in double blind studies, self-described researchers who never engage in peer review have a litany of excuses for not doing so. Creation.com goes on for a few thousand words ostensibly explaining why it won’t submit, though it never answers the question. It meanders on about supposed flaws in the peer review publication process and about the majesty of God’s creation, but the closest it comes to explaining why it won’t submit is saying that science writers and editors are biased against them. Creationists’ complete lack of merit, education, and competence in biology and cosmology are deemed nonfactors.

Among the reasons creationists would not be published in Science, Nature, or a lesser journal is because their field is not falsifiable. There is no way to test the alleged framework of the process, and it lacks any predictive quality.

Hence, creationists have created their own print products and deemed them peer-reviewed journals. Persons who ignore all contrary evidence and cite the Bible as science peruse tripe from their brethren and then publish it. From a linguistic standpoint, this could probably be called a peer-reviewed journal. But it is not a scientific peer-reviewed journal. The same applies to alternative medicine publications and periodicals dedicated to psychic awareness.

Answers in Genesis posits that the complexity of life is proof of their position, and that it defies belief that the nervous system could have come from anything by God. The circular reasoning of the first point and the logical fallacy of relying on personal incredulity to bolster the second point have been addressed in other posts. But here, the premise is that since creationism cannot be falsified, there would be no reason to examine the evidence, or to consider it for peer review.

As it so happens, this blog is not a peer-reviewed journal, so I can examine the evidence. The proof for creation put forth by Answers in Genesis are “miracles,” the “marvelous reflection” of that creation, and that “things looked designed.” Those are the arguments of those who contend heathen hatred and bias are the only reasons their ideas are considered inferior to those of Hawking, Sagan, and Einstein.

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“Pisces and crises” (Astrotherapy)

ASTROTHERAPYPIC
Astrotherapy challenges the assertion that two wrongs don’t make a right. It combines the fallacy of horoscopes with shaky psychology and uses the resulting mongrel to sell people a path to success.

While it taps into the discredited ideas of Carl Jung, the psychology aspect of the practice is relatively scant. Its main connections to that field is its use of leather couches and fern-laden offices. The sessions are primarily an extended horoscope, with little in the way of therapy.

The man most responsible for the field is Dane Rudhyar, who ruminated on Jung’s notion that the psyche needs wholeness, and figured the Zodiac would help that along. He became the first astrotherapist in the 1930s. There are not a lot of astrotherapists these days, but we’ll take a look at the few that I could find.

We’ll start with Alan Salmi and his description of his profession. He starts by accurately noting that changes happen all the time. He then leaps blindly to this unfounded follow-up: “Astrology gives us a map of the ongoing changes and where they came from.” He then ventures back toward possible accuracy by asserting, “Learning to take advantage of change can enhance and smooth our way in life.” Next, he makes the usual New Age appeal to long-lost enlightenment, writing, “Ancient wisdom and knowledge is applicable today.” Salmi closes by setting the conditions for piggybacking on legitimate science and psychology by telling us, “Modern understanding of the mind complements our traditional understandings.”

Salmi uses a patient’s birth chart to determine their position in life. It’s akin to a horoscope, except that it takes at least three expensive sessions to arrive at. During these meetings, therapist and patient will focus on strengths, weaknesses, changes, challenges, goals, and interactions. So it’s pretty much like a job review, except you’re paying the guy to give it to you and not the other way around.

One common thread of astrotherapists is that they provide a ubiquitous New Age benefit, a holistic approach. I feel better just writing that, holistic, holistic, holistic. The mystics of yore, while benevolent and talented, missed the larger picture, astrotherapists insist. The planets impact people, yes, but only in the sense that everything is interconnected. This assertion ties into Carl Jung’s theory of synchronicity and gets in the requisite psychobabble to justify the “therapy” part of the field.

The synchronicity idea merits a quick explanation. During a session with a patient, a golden scarab flew kamikaze style into Jung’s window. The patient related that she had dreamt about just such a flying insect the night before. Jung excitedly reached the conclusion that this was no mere coincidence. The consciousness and the physical world work in concert, he now realized. He further inferred that the cause of the patient’s neurosis was her unilateral personality, and that if it would die, so would her illness, much like the scarab met its demise.

It’s clear how an idea this grandiose and coming from Jung could be embraced by those wanting to combine astrology and psychology. One such proponent, Linda Hill, offers this explanation of Jung’s theory: “It just works. We are somehow synchronized to the celestial patterns that were present at our birth.” That’s what passes for an explanation from an expert in the field. My counter: “It just doesn’t work. We are in no way synchronized to the celestial patterns that were present at our birth.”

Stated goals of these sessions vary from the comprehensible (“find dormant abilities”) to the esoteric (“delve into the subconscious”) to the nonsensical (“become cosmically synchronized.”)

Since the field is not legitimate science or medicine, it requires no licensure or education, and most practitioners have no competence in therapy. Still, legitimate doctors can be part of the work, such as psychologist Glen Perry. Though a fan of astrology, Perry insists it has limitations and he works to eliminate them. For instance, traditional astrologers might stipulate that a Capricorn and Gemini would be incapable of a long-term loving relationship.

He says ideas like this result from misinterpretation of the art. While two persons from these amorous-challenged signs may end up lovelorn, another possibility is that an even more profound passion may result. This is because the love would need to be built on patience, searching, understanding, and support (something it would have in common with every meaningful romance ever). Perry’s system allows maximum flexibility for the doctor. If it works, great, the system succeeds! If not, well, yeah, you know that Capricorn-Gemini thing can be a doozy.

Others in the field likewise steer far wide of definitive statements when analyzing someone. A typical line from an astrotherapist reads, “The readings symbolize the type of adult that the individual may become.” None of the sites list any analysis, methods, or research. In fact, this field is beyond empirical testing.

For those that prefer the Jung angle, we have the aforementioned therapists. For those that want the stars to guide their way, we have Max Heindel, who has convinced people to pay for advice like this: “At the time of conception the moon was in the degree which ascends at birth. The vital body was then placed in the mother’s womb as a matrix into which the chemical elements forming our dense bodies are built. The vital body emits a sound similar to the buzz of a bumblebee.” He then goes on to explain how people can lose this matriarchal moon-flying insect goodness, and how he can fix it.

Another of the more astrology-themed practitioners, Jennifer Forchelli. lets us know that, “The position of the planets on the day you were born have miraculous information regarding your behavior, thoughts and lessons in this lifetime.” On her website, she attributes so much power to these traits, it’s perplexing why she wastes money on advertising, or spends time creating websites. If the stars preordained every action as much as she suggests, the customers would show up anyway.

She also assures us that each session with her is “a deep dive into crystal clear self-awareness.” Which begs the question, if the patient experiences self-awareness, why does Forchelli even bother showing up? My favorite of her abilities: “Cleaning toxic energy within your family dynamics.”

While comical, this field can have serious ramifications. Kimberly Carson boasts, “My clients tell me that during our astrotherapy sessions, we uncover in a matter of minutes what they’ve been trying for years to figure out in traditional therapy. Once you realize that you chose the conditions in your life you are immediately transformed from victim to victor and can live the life you were meant to live in peace, harmony and prosperity.” Offering advice this shallow and simplistic to someone suffering from mental issues is disturbing. Successful resolution takes years of therapy from licensed, educated professionals, not 15 minutes with someone impersonating Sydney Omarr and Sigmund Freud.