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“Biorhythm blues” (Biorhythm cycles)

BIORHYTHMWhen Mark Spitz won seven Gold Medals in 1972, U.S. Olympic fans weren’t the only ones celebrating. Biorhythm proponents noted Spitz was at the peak of what they called his physical and mental cycles. These cycles allegedly dictate our health and actions. The cycles are said to begin at birth and go through a varying number of days, depending on which school of biorhythm thought one subscribes to. They are not to be confused with the circadian rhythm, which has been scientifically validated to regulate periods of sleep and alertness.

Five years after Spitz’s dazzling, biorhythm-fueled performance, Reggie Jackson hit home runs on his final four swings of the World Series, each blast coming off a different pitcher. However, Jackson’s biorhythm cycles were all at their nadir.

Biorhythmist Russ Streiffert had a retort for this seeming refutation of the theory. Streiffert posited that since Jackson’s cycles were all at their low point, he benefited from being recharged and synchronized. To summarize, negative days can be positive. And positive phase days can be negative, since much energy has been expended. Sort of how “good” and “bad” can both mean excellent, I suppose.

In the ballpark of ad hoc hypotheses, Streiffert had hit a grand slam. An even more creative ploy is asserting that some people are a-biorhythmic. So if the person’s results aren’t what the chart shows they should be, biorhythmists can make this claim. Taking the Get Out Of Jail free card even further, we learn that some people are a-biorhythmic just some of the time. Those times coincide with whenever biorhythm theory isn’t confirmed. These ad hoc hypotheses make biorhythm claims untestable and, thus, not scientific. They also make them unverifiable and, indeed, no biorhythm proponent has ever published a paper in a peer-reviewed journal.

Wilhelm Fliess first devised the idea as an offshoot of numerology in the 19th Century. Fliess was fixated with 23 and 28, so he chose those as the number of days in the cycle. A person’s fitness, alertness, and so on would be determined by these rhythms. Despite the hormonal differences in males and females, he gave both genders the same rhythm. This glaring error has never been addressed. It is also problematic that everyone would have the same rhythm despite the diversity in physiology among the population. Also left unexplained is why the cycle would begin at birth.

About a century after Fliess, 33 days become the more popular number. Others have proposed 38, 43, and 53 day cycles. While the methods were overhauled, the results were kept, which is a pseudoscience giveaway. The main idea is that one’s biorhythm foretells what kind of day is ahead. Where one is at in the cycle will determine what attributes are conferred, be it increased agility or susceptibly to illness. The worst day is when all cycles are in a transition phase. These are called Critical Days and they occur about thrice monthly. Rather than pouring over the mounds of data necessary to see if there is a connection, proponents are content to point out Clark Gable had a heart attack on such a day.

Even worse, some biorhythmists count the day before and after a Critical Day as being just as pernicious. This bumps the number of danger days to just past one in four, making any supposed comparison between those days and misfortune statistically meaningless.

Biorhythm proponents advocate keeping a daily log. This would be potentially more valid if the subjects recorded how each day went, then checked their biorhythm charts. Instead, people scan the chart first, then see what happens. This opens them to self-fulfilling prophecies and subjective validation.

This was best demonstrated by Patron Saint of Skeptics, James Randi. He had proponent George Thommen prepare some biorhythm charts. Then a subject followed it for two months and reported a 90 percent success rate. Randi then revealed the subject had been given Randi’s chart. Randi said this was by mistake and the “real” chart was given, with the subject finding it even more accurate. A second ruse was revealed, as this chart was really done for Randi’s secretary. Who knows, maybe Thommen would have detected Randi’s trickery if his alert cycle had been ascending.

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“Change the channel” (Summoning the dead)


CHANNELPIC
Channeling is when someone claims to have been overtaken by a deceased person who is speaking through them. To date, no one has channeled a janitor. It is invariably someone prominent or from an interesting period. The channeler usually appears trancelike and speaks slowly in varying volume. So it’s similar to being drunk, except you can get paid for it.

Probably its best known proponent is Shirley MacLaine, though the spirits don’t speak through her. She endorses other persons, such as Kevin Ryerson. He channeled John, a being who spoke perfect English despite being a compatriot of Jesus. John told MacLaine she was co-creator of the universe, an assertion she heartily gulped. In fields like this, people are more persuaded if you tell them what they want to hear, although this example seems especially egomaniacal.

MacLaine is also fond of Ramtha, a 35,000-year-old warrior who stopped by J.Z. Knight’s kitchen one night for some Doritos and a body invasion. In the almost four decades since, Ramtha has taught Knight about out of body experiences, quantum mechanics, and therapeutic healing. Knight has also invoked less than 35,000-year-old ideas by copyrighting the character and charging $1,000 per performance.

Ramtha insists his was a great civilization. He may be speaking in relative terms, since persons in the Upper Paleolithic Era lived in caves, wore caribou hides, and proudly pointed to the flint blade as their preeminent accomplishment. He also reports commanding a 2.5 million man army, which would have comprised 1,000 percent of the men at the time.

Part of the reason people gobble this up is a wistful desire for a better time. It gives them a chance to briefly escape their existence and live a more exciting one vicariously. There is nothing wrong with appreciating elements of another era. It is fine for a 25-year-old to sport a Bowler or listen to Jimmy Dorsey. But if that person starts pining for an era in which he never lived, there’s a problem. It’s an indication he finds his current circumstances unfulfilling. The same principle applies here, even though the time period is several millenniums. To those caught up in the romantic idea of Ramtha, the men were braver, the women more virtuous, and the mead sweeter.

Jose Alvarez, in conjunction with James Randi, demonstrated how easy it is to fool people through channeling. He invented a 2,000-year old character named Carlos and toured Australia in 1988. Alvarez mimicked every channeler he knew and included every horrible cliché he could uncover. His press releases touted interviews with non-existent publications. Towns he said he performed in weren’t real. Audience members and reporters went along with it. Even after Alvarez revealed the ruse on the Australian version of 60 Minutes, some refused to accept it. While it went further than he expected, Alvarez had succeeded in showing that deception often requires the cooperation of the deceived.

Channeling is one of the easier charades to pull off. If the channeler invokes Ramesses II, who talks about his personal life, there’s almost nothing he could say that would reveal fraud. Even if a historical inaccuracy slips in, the channeler could claim the voice in his head got it right and the historians got it wrong. After all, Ramesses II was the one who was there. And now he’s in the Milwaukee Convention Center!

By contrast, a séance is more difficult since you can’t just make up any incident. In a séance, the medium is supposedly mentally transcribing messages from someone audience members knew. This requires cold reading skill or doing one’s hot reading homework.

Séances are one of the most fraudulent paranormal businesses. Some astrologers, palmists, and Tarot readers may think they have the skills. This is seldom the case with séance mediums. Séances are done with lights off, partly to heighten suspense, but mostly to allow undetected trickery.

Skeptics have turned on lights during séances to show that spirits were actually the medium’s assistant lifting items playing an instrument. The medium may have his or her hands “tied” to a chair, but the chair’s arms will be loosened. This allows the medium to slip free and ring bells or move objects. A similar trick is to have the victim put their feet on top of the medium’s to guarantee the medium can’t use them. However, the shoes have been hollowed and glued to the floor, enabling the medium to remove their feet and use them in the deception. Another fraudster used a ball that seemed to rise and move. However, a clandestine cohort had snuck and picked it up with a stick. This was easy because the ball, like séances, was full of holes.

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“Kind of stupid” (Baraminology)


WALRUSPARROT
Baraminology is a largely unexplained and utterly unworkable attempt to drastically redefine animal taxonomy. Its only proponents are Young Earth Creationists, who need it so between two and seven of every creature could fit on a 450-foot boat. The more than 10 million species today needs to be whacked way down. Twenty thousand critters squeezing on the floating menagerie is a generous concession, but we’ll allow that total. But even that number equals just .2 percent of the known species today.

When baraminologists use the word Kind, it refers to one of the pairs of animals aboard Noah’s Ark. They could find nothing in a literal reading of the King James Bible to support this desperate shoehorning attempt, so they resorted to Hebrew. There, they found the words bara and min, which mean created and kind, respectively.

Baraminologists claim these Kinds are responsible for all the animals today. That means they think each species that emerged from the Ark is the ancestor of an average of at least 500 different types of animals. There are some animals that can interbreed, such as tigers and lions or camels and llamas. But the vast majority of animals are incapable of breeding with others. The ones that can hybridize can do so only with a few other animals. We could end the post here since that is a fatal error to barmainology. But let’s have some more fun.

Rather than all animals having common descent, baraminology asserts there were multiple creation events. In other words, each Kind was made separately. So baraminology seeks evidence of discontinuity in the Animal Kingdom. The only points are negative evidence, such as DNA differences, unique features of each Kind, or the lack of a specific fossil. However, this negative evidence does not prove discontinuity, it only shows that a common ancestor is not immediate. Besides, if their assertion were accurate, the 20,000 Kinds of flood victim animals would be at the same layer of the geologic column, with no animals beneath them.

Baraminologists have created trees of descent based on common anatomical features. But they do it without being too Darwinian. An Appaloosa and a Clydesdale can descend from the same baramin. But an appaloosa and a giraffe, while vaguely similar, are different enough that giving them mutual ancestry makes creationists nervous. And an appaloosa and a crab, forget it.

Humans automatically get their own category, even though we share 98 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees. The difference is Homo Sapiens’ Chromosome 2, which resulted from the fusion of two ancestral chromosomes that are still separate in other primates. Normally braminoloigsts would put animals this similar in the same baramin, but their arrogance won’t allow it in this case.

Looking at the fossil record, we see that 5 million species would have to derive from 20,000 Kinds within 400 years. If genetic differentiation could occur this fast, we would see a new species emerging within a lifetime. A monkey’s grandson would be similar to a gorilla or some such creature.

Furthermore, the rate required for such rapid genetic change would leave too few viable genomes for negative mutations to be weeded from the gene pool. Baraminology would require the mutation rate be sped up by a quarter million times. If this happened, there would be one million detrimental genetic changes per fertilization. This would be fatal for the Animal Kingdom. Plants, your time may be coming.

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“The Scientific Wretched” (Scientific Method, or lack thereof)

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A fair portion of my posts contain the word pseudoscience. As such, I owe my ones of readers a description of what it is and how to spot it.

Pseudoscience is a nefarious form of nonsense that dresses itself in scientific clothing while failing to use the field’s methods and standards. The main motivators are ego, money, and trying to prove Genesis.

First, let’s get an understanding of how science is done so we can identify its impostor. The Scientific Method consists of the following:

1. Defining the question

2. Developing a hypothesis

3. Making a prediction

4. Testing that prediction

5. Analyzing the results using proper statistics

6. Replication

7. Peer review

8. Data sharing

Science is testable, falsifiable, and properly done using double blind studies. It is clear what the scientists are trying to discern, how they will test it, and how they will interpret the results. Pseudoscientific claims are grandiose, vague, and use ambiguous language. An advertisement may read, “This will increase alertness, strengthen immune systems, and block the flow of negative energy.” Nowhere are the processes explained, nor is the reader given any idea how to tell if these benefits have occurred. 

A certain giveaway is a lack of peer review. Pseudoscience practitioners prefer their work be lapped up by credulous masses rather than perused by Ph.D.s in the field. Closely related to no peer review is being disinterested in replication or outside verification. Science is a work in progress, while pseudoscience is presented as a done deal. There’s no need to go further since the panacea has been discovered or the secret formula unearthed.

Stagnation is another sign. An acupuncture patient today receives the same treatment that Confucius got. Compare that to advances in electronics over the last 75 years. Science continually adapts, evolves, and improves. At the other end of the spectrum from stagnation, pseudoscience might drastically overhaul its methods while keeping the same results. The theoretical ideas of Transhumanism have little resemblance to those of 50 years ago, but its proponents are still assuring us that immortal supermen are on the way.

Scientists are forever publishing in journals, holding forums, appearing on podcasts, and exchanging ideas. By contrast, a pseudoscientist works alone or with select cronies and lashes out at questions that request too much detail. Before reverting to their Frankenstein laboratory, they may unleash an ad hominem about critics being resistant to change or being Big Pharma shills. Science also explains its methods. Conversely, in almost 700 pages, L. Ron Hubbard never reveals how he reached his conclusions.

In science, the gold standard is a controlled, double blind study which involves a substantial amount of data. The use of statistics and an emphasis on statistical significance is also seen. In pseudoscience, the focus is on anecdotes and testimonials. If pseudoscientists are pressed on the lack of Scientific Method usage or the dearth of double blind studies, ad hoc reasoning abounds. Homeopath proponents and aromatherapists, for instance, have claimed such testing is impossible because each person responds differently to treatment. Crystal healers may claim they are using a holistic approach that includes working the mind, an area that can’t be measured. Creationist Jason Lisle asserts he has deduced how starlight from two galaxies away arrived here in 5,000 years. But he refuses to publish his work in peer-reviewed astronomy journals because astrophysicists don’t submit their work to creationist publications.

Also, beware the appeal to irrelevant authority, such as a doctor of economics weighing in on a weight loss miracle. Similarly, Intelligent Design proponents gleefully pass around a list of about 100 Ph.D.s who support creation. But this list includes persons with doctorates in history and English. Skeptics have countered with a List of Steves, a collection of Ph.D.s who reject creation. This list is 13 times longer and consists solely of men named Steve or women named Stephanie. Other examples of appeals to irrelevant authority are claims that a long-lost Mayan cure has been found or that an energy-boosting method is similar to what ancient Egyptians used. Another squirrelly technique is relying on an unrelated field. Cryonics advocates insist raising the dead will commence once nanotechnology does its part.

Also, beware the misuse of scientific terms. Alternative medicine gurus will mention energy, particles, and waves, but use the terms improperly. For years, cold fusion and perpetual motion were misused buzzwords in the pseudo-physics arena. They’ve been largely replaced with quantum. There’s almost no limit to what a pseudoscientist will claim when they toss that word into the sentence.

One of the hardest pseudoscience techniques to detect is quote mining. The most frequent violation is probably the creationist ploy of quoting this from On the Origin of Species: “To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.” They stop there, since the next sentence reads: “Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist…,” and goes on to explain the process. This is an extreme case, but any cherrypicking of data and reports is a hallmark of pseudoscience.

Another obvious sign is reaching one’s conclusion first. A person or group using this method is, by definition, failing to do science. The Institute for Creation Research’s mission is to find evidence that meshes Genesis with the Cosmos. Nessie hunters presume his existence, then seek evidence that supports it.

Pseudoscientists will also stealthily put the burden on the other side. They will make a claim, and if it can’t be disproven, will present this inability as proof their claim is true. For instance, creationists will say that evolution cannot account for morality so it had to come from God. Yet evolution is merely the change in inherited characteristics in biological populations over time. It has nothing to do with morality or anything besides animals adapting to their environment. And anyway, the insinuation that evolution fails to account for morality proves that it comes from God relies on the appeal to ignorance. Just because we can’t prove it doesn’t come from God doesn’t meant that it does. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The burden of proof always on the one making the claim. This can be closely tied to not be falsifiable. A magic jewelry hawker may boast, “This will balance your harmony,” a conclusion that could never be tested or falsified.

Then we have Moving the Goalposts, where an answered challenge is met with consternation, excuses, and a different challenge. When the Theory of Relativity was validated, Newtonian proponents embraced it. By contrast, Intelligent Design advocates for years claimed there were no fossils showing a sea creature evolving into a land dweller. Then Tiktaalik came along, so they switched their focus to there being no fossil showing an invertebrate developing a spine. And, of course, they’re again relying on the appeal to ignorance by claiming this lack of a particular fossil proves that the Abrahamic god created everything.

Finally, a pseudoscience red flag should is raised when ideology is involved. Lysenkoism taught that acquired characteristics, rather than genetic ones, were passed onto offspring. For example, if you cut the tail off of a mouse, the next generation would also have that feature. This had zero validity, but Soviets revered Lysenkoism because the Communist Party endorsed it as part of its ideology. Science promoters in the United States today face no threat of extermination from Joseph Stalin for pushing back against charlatans and hucksters, so pseudoscience should always be exposed. 

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“L. Ron Shuttered” (Scientology)

CLAMMANThe four main targets of skeptics are the paranormal, alternative medicine, pseudoscience, and religion. The one entity that fits in all these categories is Scientology.

It started in the early 1950s as a mix of hypnosis, science fiction, and terrible psychology. A few years later, L. Ron Hubbard founded the Church of Scientology after saying he discovered the soul (and its accompanying tax exempt status).

He outlines his ideas in Dianetics. Throughout the book, Hubbard makes vague, extraordinary, and unfalsifiable claims, such as “Dianetics contains a therapeutic technique which can treat all inorganic mental ills and organic psychosomatic ills, with assurance of a complete cure.” Grandiose, untestable, and non-peer reviewed claims like these are featured in many other pseudosciences and pseudomedicines. What differentiates Scientology from the rest is its $100,000,000 in annual tax free income.

If Dianetics truly is medicine, that means Scientologists should be arrested for practicing it without a license. Moving onto the pseudoscientific, Hubbard writes, “Dianetics is an organized science of thought built on definite axioms and natural laws and physical sciences.” However, Hubbard never uses the Scientific Method, never explains his research (generously assuming he conducted any), and subjected none of it to peer review.

The gist of it all is that mental and psychosomatic illnesses are traced to engrams. These are ghosts of unpleasant experiences. If something bad happens when hearing a lawn mower, hearing the same sound later might bring back that bad feeling or illness. Anxiety, claustrophobia, and hacking coughs all come back to the engram. There is no way to empirically test such claims and Diantetics “research” is limited to anecdotes from persons who may not be real.

Dianetics is an arduous read, full of undefined terms, unproven claims, and insufferable, tangential language. One example: “An engram is a definite and permanent trace left by a stimulus on the protoplasm of a tissue. It is considered as a unit group of stimuli impinged solely on the cellular being. Engrams are only recorded during periods of physical or emotional suffering. During those periods the analytical mind shuts off and the reactive mind is turned on. The analytical mind has all kinds of wonderful features, including being incapable of error.”

Imagine going through 600 pages of that. No telling how many engrams that has caused. Elsewhere, Hubbard writes, “Cells are evidently sentient in some currently inexplicable way. Unless we postulate a human soul entering the sperm and ovum at conception, there are things which no other postulate will embrace than that these cells are in some way sentient.” Hubbard here gets in three logical fallacies in just two sentences: The false dilemma, the appeal to ignorance and begging the question.

Like all good religions, Scientology creates both the problem and the solution. To get cured of an illness, you need a Dianetic therapist to release the engram. To do this, the Scientologist uses what Hubbard calls a reverie. He describes this as intense use of a faculty of the brain which everyone possesses, but only Hubbard got around to noticing. Hubbard goes through a verbose description of the process, but in the end it’s little more than one man telling another his worries. A bartender does that, plus you get a beer with it.

Accompanying these release sessions are a piece of ersatz electronics called an Electropsychometer, a sort of rudimentary polygraph. Per Dianetics, the meter is used to measure “the state of electrical characteristics of the static field surrounding the body,” a scientifically worthless claim. Usually, the subject holds something akin to a soda can with protruding wires, while repeating “Thetan.” Once free of engrams, the person “would be in full control of their mind and psyche. As such they would have special abilities, such as perfect memory and analytical powers.” So then, an hour with Scientology Man and one’s problems are solved for life, right?

In reality, sessions get more costly and can create a cycle of persons returning for more expansive and expensive cures. The meter, when used by a trained Scientologist, is supposed to show if a person has been freed of spiritual baggage. With a claim this vague, as well as there being no way to tell how the meter works or how the therapist is reading the data, the subject can be kept coming back indefinitely. With the money some people spend on this, they could have started their own movement.

Since it only became a church for legal benefits, Scientology barely ventures onto religious terrain. But when it does, it can compete with the Venusian telepathic communicators and Magic Underwear purveyors. It teaches that an alien dubbed Xenu led a contingent of space ships to Earth 75 million years ago and blew up some volcanoes. Aliens died in the explosion, with any persons that have come along since bearing the Scientology equivalent of Original Sin. Blurring the thin line between religion and the paranormal, Scientology holds that the alien genocide victims are still around in energy form, emitting negative vibes that Diantetics will protect from. Hubbard was a science fiction writer before penning Dianetics, so Xenu and his minions may be part of a shelved work.

Scientology doesn’t really address god, but Scientologists who attain a higher level can access Thetans, which are the dead space aliens. These are the same aliens that were best avoided before, but graduate level Scientologists presumably have some secret knowledge that allow them to do this safely. Scientology maintains man is immortal, but offers little about the afterlife or how people can increase their chances of a good one.

The movement has a litany of other oddities, such as believing in man’s descent from clams. Also, Hubbard was against both breastfeeding and baby formula. So he came up with his own concoction, one conspicuously lacking in vitamins. He was also against pain medication for birthing mothers, a great irony since he was also against noise in the delivery room. Then we have the Purification Rundown, where Scientologists ingest large doses of vitamins before hopping in the sauna for a five-hour sojourn. I actually do this one. Except the vitamins are in orange juice form and I skip the sauna part.

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“Ploy Touch” (Joy Touch energy healing)

JOYTOUCH2There are people who make a good living selling homeopathic tablets, Q Ray bracelets, and tachyon water. But those who really have it figured out eliminate shipping and manufacturing costs by selling consumers nothing.

Joy Touch is a meditative technique developed by MIT graduate Pete Sanders. He says the Joy Touch will help people conquer fear and disease, aid in weight loss and smoking cessation, and do whatever else the customer needs it to. It works, at least for Sanders, as customers will attribute whatever good comes after using the technique.

In the Joy Touch method, one assumes the standard meditative pose and posture. Next, the subject imagines a line from the center of their forehead to the center of the brain. Then, they envision gently massaging that region while contemplating the desired change. The idea is that the center of the brain works as a remote control for the hypothalamus, the brain’s pleasure center. That’s pretty much it for the Joy Touch. So if you were thinking about using it, I just saved you $25 and a trip to Sanders’ business in Sedona, Ariz.

Sanders also authored, “You Are Psychic,” which would seem to make buying a book on becoming one superfluous.

Sanders wiggles technical terms into his work in order to impress and confuse. For instance, he references String Theory, but presents it as a settled issue that there are 10 dimensions, all of which humans can enter. In truth, the world’s best physicists have genuine disagreement on String Theory, and none of them assert it can be used to foresee people’s emotions, access undiscovered senses, or interpret a body’s energy field.

With no proof, he asserts the existence of four Psychic Reception Centers. He claims these will lead to four senses that remain locked inside most of us. “By doing this you will double your number of senses,” he asserts, using rather shaky math for an MIT graduate. Whatever the numbers, Sanders claims this will help the customer increase the amount of information they receive about people, places, and events. None of his claims are falsifiable, none of his work has been subjected to peer review, and none of the conclusions have been arrived at by the Scientific Method. Another pseudoscience trademark is the book abounding in undefined and unproven terms, such as free soul reflection, joy center, and scientific vortex.

As to the Psychic Reception Areas, Sanders writes that, “Once you know their location and how to use them, you will be able to access your four psychic senses on command.” The only thing students will have command of is improved post hoc reasoning skills, as whatever good that occurs will be attributed to their new abilities.

Jumping back onto scientific coattails, Sanders writes, “Vision depends on light waves striking the eye. Hearing works by sensing sound waves.” From that he veers into, “Psychic senses follow a similar pattern, except the energies they interact with cannot be discerned physically or measured by current technology.” Put another way, there’s no evidence for them.

He writes that we didn’t always understand electricity, but now enjoy its benefits. This is another common pseudoscience technique, trying to attach one’s self to vindicated geniuses.

Sanders notes one need not access the four bonus senses continually and, in fact, you want to be able to turn them off when needed. To be sure, we wouldn’t want to disrupt our sense of Future Time or overwork our Cosmic Energies.

Sanders relates that his interest in this stuff began in his teens, when he “went on search for spiritual sustenance with my mother, Aurora.” I have issues with most of what Sanders writes, but I believe him here. Searching for spiritual sustenance with Aurora, no way he could make that up.

This search succeeded, and he writes he learned that mystics and psychics knew things that “could not be known or obtained through physical senses.” To be sure, they are known or obtained through cold reading, generalities, and subjective validation.

Sanders says some psychics, feeling pressured to perform, exaggerate their abilities. They want to help, so they make the people think they can do it. But when the expectations or promises fall short, customers become disillusioned. To relieve the overburdened fortune tellers and their frustrated clients, Sanders wrote “You Are Psychic” so everybody can become one. Among the advantages of using these techniques is being able to gauge people’s genuineness. For example, he writes, “Wouldn’t you like to be able to hear the truth about a product when a salesman is trying to sell you something?”

Careful what you wish for, Sanders.

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“Spontaneous Humorous Combustion” (People going boom)

INFERNOIt is rather excellent to be referenced by both Charles Dickens and Spinal Tap. This distinction goes to spontaneous human combustion.

But while it has a long history in folklore, a close look at the supposed phenomenon finds little reason to believe it’s real. The term refers to a human bursting into flames because of heat generated by an internal chemical action. Common characteristics attributed to victims are a severely burned head and torso, unscathed extremities and unaffected areas around them, and a smell akin to perfume. Most telling, the other common factor is no witnesses.

There are a tiny handful of cases that have no determined cause, so there is a razor thin chance of it being due to spontaneous human combustion. But there are better reasons to think it’s not true, and making it a default or even eventual position is unjustified.

For a few centuries, many people believed being soused to be the cause. Perhaps persons felt this was divine retribution for sinning, or maybe it was due to a poor understanding of chemistry and anatomy. But this idea is unreasonable because there would be many more instances of drunk persons catching fire if it were true. I would have gone poof sometime in my mid 20s. Besides, it takes a Blood Alcohol Content of about .5 percent to hasten death. By contrast, one would need about a 60 percent concentration to set ablaze a water-ethanol mixture.

An equally unlikely idea posits that spontaneous combustion comes from static electricity. Static discharges can cause fuel explosions, but they can’t light up humans. If they could, you’d be in danger every time you drug your feet across the carpet. A drunk slinking across a room would have been in great peril, per the old way of thinking.

Since the middle of the 20th Century, the idea of spontaneous human combustion has been championed primarily by police officers and fire inspectors when unable to determine how a fire victim died with little damage to the surrounding area. In 2011, even a reputable British coroner ascribed a case to spontaneous human combustion because he could come up with nothing else.

But this commits a logical fallacy of Affirming the Consequent. The thinking here is, “If spontaneous combustion were real, the person would be roasted while areas around him would not be. This describes the victim and his surroundings. Therefore, this is spontaneous combustion.”

However, the human body is about 60 percent water, so it’s not terribly flammable. It takes two hours of being broiled at 1600 degrees to complete cremation. Short of quaffing two gallons of pureed oil rags, followed by a chaser of tanked oxygen, spontaneous combustion ain’t happenin’.

Most alleged cases can be resolved by considering the Wick Effect. Once a body is ignited by an external source, the Wick Effect from body fat would burn hot enough in some places to destroy bones.

This was demonstrated by Dr. John de Hann, who wrapped a dead hog in a sheet, poured on some gasoline, and fired it up. This Pig in a Blanket ended up almost identical to purported spontaneous human combustion victims. It took five hours to complete, so most of the pig was thoroughly blackened, but the extremities are surrounding area were unscathed. de Hann had selected a pig since it has the same fat amount as a person, lending more credence to his theory.

In supposed spontaneous human combustion cases, the victim’s clothing acts as a wick, with body fat being the fuel source. The burning clothes are maintained by liquid fat, causing a slow, controlled, burn. This burning is intense and long enough to cause great damage without spreading the fire. This explanation would also account for the perfume aroma, since sugars and fats are being vaporized.

National Geographic highlighted the case of a woman whose clothes suddenly caught fire and burned her thigh. She had put a seashell in her pocket, a seashell that was covered in sodium from a fireworks show. Later, she stuck a wet handkerchief in the pocket. This caused a fire, probably due to sodium reacting with water, thus releasing self-igniting hydrogen.

This demonstrates the type of events that could take place and lead to supposed cases of spontaneous combustion. There are humans and there is spontaneous combustion, but it’s unlikely they are ever combined.

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“Tower of Babble” (Xenoglossy)

TONGUESXenoglossy refers to making a big deal about babbling incoherently. More specifically, it is the purported ability to speak a language one has never been exposed to. There is no way to test the claims because researchers would have no way of knowing if the subject had studied the language before.

This ability is, of course, impossible. And there would seem little reason to pretend to have it. As such, there are only about a half dozen documented cases of persons claiming to have the ability, or someone making the claim on their behalf. University of Michigan linguist Sarah Thomason analyzed these cases and found them without merit.

In one case, an American woman supposedly spoke Swedish while under hypnosis. Since she used a vocabulary of about 100 words, this initially seemed legitimate (that she was speaking Swedish, not that she was doing it without having heard it before). But more careful research revealed 40 of those words were spoken first by the hypnotist. Another 30 words were cognates, words that have the same etymological origin and may sound nearly the same in two languages. There aren’t a lot of Swedish-English cognates, and that she would have 30 of them ready to rattle off seems to indicate she was speaking English, with it being counted as Swedish by the hypnotist, who was also her husband. The words she supposedly managed were poorly pronounced, but still written down in transcription as if her enunciation were flawless.

Another claim centered on a woman named Gretchen, with German being the language and hypnosis again the method. She mostly just repeated words the hypnotist was saying, changing only the intonation. She also improvised words that sounded German, but were not. Gretchen managed only a miniscule vocabulary with inconsistent pronunciation. Even a better performance wouldn’t have counted, as it was revealed she had prior limited access to German books and television.

The case that appeared to hold the most promise of being genuine came from India. It focused on a woman who was said to be able to speak Bengali without having been exposed to it. Unlike the first two examples, she was speaking the language. It was in a rudimentary but unmistakable fashion, similar to a 3-year-old. But a deeper investigation revealed she had heard the language as a preschooler and had attended an elementary school that taught it to first-graders. By the time her purported xenoglossy was highlighted, she was nearing middle age and seemed to have forgotten about the Bengali lessons from 30 years prior. She wasn’t being fraudulent, but also wasn’t demonstrating xenoglossy.

The best known case is about a girl known only by the pseudonym Rosemary. It is based solely on the works of Dr. Frederic H. Wood and his associate, Howard Hulme. Wood claimed the girl channeled an ancient Egyptian princess and spoke about 5,000 words or phrases, with Hulme jotting away.

All this appeared in a book, with no independent testing or even a confirmation Rosemary existed. Egyptologist Battiscombe Gunn examined the case and determined Hulme to be severely deficient in understanding ancient Egyptian. Any utterance that had even a remote similarity to ancient Egyptian counted as a hit. All this would be like trying to transcribe a Cannibal Corpse song. You would pick up almost nothing, but since you know they’re probably growling about blood and murder you would throw that in there.

The only contemporary case is that of Matěj Kůs of the Czech Republic. He was in a crash and after regaining consciousness, according to his friends, spoke perfect English. By the time the media and scientists showed up, his English was limited to “Go away,” or some such approximation.

Whereas xenoglossy claims are very rare, glossolalia is quite common. This is better known as speaking in tongues. Originally, there were two purported forms of speaking in tongues, both equally implausible. One was a flawless xenoglossy, with the person being able to fluently speak a tongue foreign to them. The other form held that listeners had the power to understand a language they never heard before. This was cited in Acts, with Paul claiming it fulfilled the prophecy in Joel that believers would have this ability in the end days. By my count, that puts us in End Day No. 710,000.

Besides early Christians, ancient Israelis and Apollo worshippers got in on the tongue fun. Today, speaking in tongues consists of strings of gibberish that make Ned Flanders’ ramblings seem eloquent. The speaker will eventually form a very loose pattern of similar sounds and inflections, but it is not a language.

Speakers structure their patterns, perhaps unconsciously, on their surroundings and audience expectations. There are sometimes accompanying physical reactions, also specific to locale. Some convulse, some go limp, while others are trancelike. With the speech being nonsensical, interpreters have a broad range to work with. They hear what they expect a person awash in the spirit to be saying, creating an instance of auditory pareidolia.

A study by psychiatrist Andrew Newberg at the University of Pennsylvania showed that persons speaking in tongues have a steep decline in function in the brain’s frontal lobe, which enables reason and self control. Meanwhile, there is increased activity in the parietal region, which oversees sensory information. This pretty much explains the rolling around on the floor yelping bit.

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“Smoked Ham and Rabbit Stew” (Pseudoscientists)

SMOKEDHAMRABBITSTEWMy favorite irony is someone using computer technology and the Internet to bash science. The main point of these screeds is usually to highlight mistakes science has made.

Indeed, it has made plenty. Carl Sagan said if you’re not making mistakes when doing science, you’re doing it wrong. He added if you keep making the same mistakes, you’re really doing it wrong. Finally, if you don’t admit the mistakes, you’re not doing science. Making mistakes is no disgrace. Refusing to admit them is.

This seems the logical time to introduce Ken Ham, head of Answers in Genesis. His organization’s Statement of Faith reads, in part, “No evidence in any field can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record.” It is one (rather lame) thing to have that as a philosophy. It is quite another to hold such a view and claim to be doing science. Science, in fact, is forever trying to prove itself wrong.

It is inadequate for Jenny McCarthy to note that her son was given a vaccine, developed autism, and then tie the two occurrences together. The Playboy Bunny would need her hypothesis to be tested in double blind, reproducible studies, with the results made available for peer review. In the case of vaccines and autism, that link was disproven in a series of those double blind, peer-reviewed studies. On July 1, a systematic review of these studies was published in the journal Pediatrics. It found, “There is strong evidence that the MMR vaccine is not associated with autism.” If a better study comes along and disproves this, it will be accepted. That’s how science works. In fact, science reserves its greatest praise for those who disprove conventional wisdom. Someone scientifically disproving evolution, for instance, would be as revered as Einstein and Newton.

The proper method of science is not to invent a conclusion, then find evidence that supports it, which is what creationists and cryptozoolgists do. Dr. Jeffrey Muldrum, an associate professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University, spends his time, resources, and talent foraging for Bigfoot. He believed in it as a kid and never gave up.

In the academic world, Muldrum is a pariah, as shunned as the monster he’s looking for. Muldrum is one of my least favorite characters because of his credentials. He should know much better. Somewhat to his credit, he has dismissed some pieces of Bigfoot evidence as hoaxes, rather than trying to cram them into his preconceived ideas. Further, he seems to be genuinely looking for evidence, as opposed to deciding ahead of time he will find it, then fulfilling that prophecy. But he puts stock in eyewitness accounts, a distinction belying a man of his education. Someone in his position should know that hundreds of pieces of weak evidence don’t add up to one strong piece. He should know a creature of Bigfoot’s description could not have a sustainable population that has escaped detection, especially with so many people searching in the place the beast supposedly resides. At a minimum, he should consider the possibility so remote as to warrant no use of resources, which could be spent on trying to find undiscovered bugs or small reptiles.

Still, he’s at least applying scientific principles in his search. For a much worse example, let’s go back to Answers in Genesis and its take on the age of Earth. Rather than addressing the scientific proof, such as Clair Patterson’s radiometric dating, the group simply chides geologists for not adhering to the Bible. Their evidence to counter Patterson’s is this: “A global, year-long, catastrophic flood did happen at the time of Noah. We can say this with confidence because of the clear authority in Genesis.” To reach this conclusion, they used no developed question, no hypothesis, no observation, no testing, no studies, no peer review, and certainly no science.

Here’s another goody: “Whose word we are going to trust: the all-knowing truthful creator or finite, sinful creatures who give us their books that contain errors and therefore are frequently revised?” They offer no retort to Patterson’s science or any support of an alternative theory. Just an ad hominem or two, an assertion that admitting errors is a fault, and declaring it was all made by an invisible sky creature.

To hopelessly understate the case, they are failing to employ the Scientific Method. The Method’s first step requires defining the question. And this means asking, “Why is the door slamming shut,” not “Which ghost is slamming the door?”

The next step is observation. James Randi notes that, “The plural of anecdote is not data.” Three hundred people claiming that jasmine cured their backache and increased their success in the real estate market doesn’t count as proof. It must be put to a scientific test, including the third step in the Method, developing a hypothesis. For instance, after observing that milkmaids seldom developed smallpox, Edward Jenner hypothesized that persons exposed to cowpox would eventually be immune to its more sinister cousin.

Next, the scientist tests his or her hypothesis with experiments and collects the data, without a preconceived conclusion. This is perhaps the key point of science: Attempting to nullify one’s hypothesis is necessary to promoting the field. Studies should be random, controlled, and double blind. Double blind means neither the subjects nor researchers know which is the test group and which is the control group. Then, results should be carefully analyzed using proper statistics.

Sometimes, these results cause a revision of the hypothesis, necessitating going back to the third step. If the hypothesis seems validated, the next step is to publish the results in a scientific, peer-reviewed journal. A creationist paper in an astrophysics journal would get swallowed up like objects in a black hole that the paper was probably trying to rationalize out of existence. Seeing if a claim stands up among world-class experts is an important part of the scientific process.

Ideally, the research should be repeated by others and the hypothesis may be slightly adjusted. This is because science admits its errors and shifts its thinking if warranted. Science long ago moved on from Piltdown Man, while Answers in Genesis is still asserting light can travel at thousand warp, or whatever its rationale is for being able to see stars millions of light years away in a 5,000-year-old universe.

In the Piltdown Man hoax, an amateur archeologist combined a modern human skull with the jaw of an orangutan and claimed it was an evolutionary find. Once radiocarbon dating came along, science disproved this.

Creationists still use Piltdown Man in their railings against evolution, even though it was science, not religion, that unmasked the hoax. If Piltdown Man was the only proof of evolution, it would be different. But there is a wealth of documented, researched, and peer-reviewed evidence showing man has a common ancestor with apes. The mountain of evidence for evolution also includes Archaeopteryx, Lucy, and Tiktaalik. Further evidence includes the geologic column and animals perfectly adapted for their environment, or existing only on Iceland, Madagascar, and Tasmania.

So far, I’ve spent precious little time addressing the anti-vaxxers, so let’s get back to them. Among the points some of them try to make is that science cannot be trusted because of its history. For instance, it will claim that scientists once thought smoking was healthy. This is doubtful, as what passes for evidence is usually advertisements featuring smoking doctors. But the more important point is that using the scientific method will eventually lead to getting it right.

By the late 19th Century, medical journals were publishing articles warning about smoking’s danger. By the 1930s, researchers had made the connection between smoking and lung cancer. Once studies using the Scientific Method were published, the scientific community was uniformly against smoking, and Surgeon General’s warnings were added in 1964.

Another frequent smear is that scientists thought thalidomide was safe. The truth is, it was the lack of scientific research that led to it being allowed on the market in West Germany. In the United States, the FDA rejected its use because adequate testing had not been done. Left out of the thalidomide rants is that the Scientific Method led to the discovery of its use in patients who aren’t pregnant. For instance, it is part of the treatment for leprosy.

In summary, science is an orderly, self-correcting process. Still, anti-vaxxers, cryptozoologists, and Young Earth Creationists continue to merrily spread their anti-science messages, probably by cell phone, Facebook, and Skype.

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“Zzzzzzermatism” (Zermatism)

WBSNOWMANZermatism is a bizarre mix of horribly misguided archeology, anthropology, biology, linguistics, and other stuff I surely missed. Knowledge of its existence is almost exclusive to those immersed in the skeptic movement, and even then, it’s mainly because it provides the ‘Z’ when completing an alphabet of nonsense.

It draws some parallels to the origin myths of various religions, the key difference being it wasn’t written long enough ago to become gospel. Zermatism originated entirely in the mind of Stanislav Szukalski, an extremely gifted and precocious Pole who won two Gold Medals at Krakow’s Fine Arts Academy, among many other accolades.

Szukalksi was highly creative and could have turned this into an excellent novel, although the best part had already appeared in “The Time Machine.” He authored “I Claim the World!,” a work longer than the Bible, Koran, and Rig Veda combined. The gist of the 39-volume monstrosity is all that people are descended from inhabitants of Noah’s Ark, which landed on Easter Island (thus shortening the kangaroos’ jaunt to Australia).

Furthermore, all languages derive from a single source, the Protong tongue. And all art is a variation of ideas developed by the ancient Easter Islanders. These creatures were almost flawless until being raped repeatedly by Yeti. The resulting descendants are dubbed Yetisynys. And their evil forefathers did not have to travel from the Himalayas to the South Pacific to consummate their cryptozoologic crimes. For these Morlocks, per Szukalksi’s explanation, included varieties in the Amazon, Europe, Japan, Mongolia, North America, and Siberia. They ravaged the Eloi wherever they showed up since, for all of the advanced species’ perfections, they never managed the ability to mass communicate or produce weapons. And how the Yeti developed worldwide when there had only been eight perfect specimens, all on Easter Island, is left unexplained.

The theory incorporates some elements of racism, the most blatant being the assertion that, of all Earth’s languages, the one closest to the ideal Protong is Szukalski’s native Polish.

Similiar to the Reptilian conspiracy theory, Zermatism asserts that Yetisynys can be discerned by their features. These include: Long upper lips; sharply angled, undercut noses; a squat, round physique; and most awesomely, a short ape tail. One need not pore over and memorize these anatomical traits. Szukalksi makes it clear the Sons of Yeti commit all the atrocities, so Nazis, Commies, and serial killers are the ones.

The teaching is similar to the anti-Semitic extremists who think Jews are descendants of Eve and Satan. However, Zermatism offers a reprieve to the cursed offspring, if they study arts, engineering, literature, medicine, and science. Szukalski explains, “To endure their mental hardships, they develop extraordinary patience and perfect imagination. Along with their animal vitality, this makes them capable of miraculous inventions.”

Zermatism was Szukalski’s ego personified, as it was extremely creative, iconoclastic, antagonistic to opposition, and featured mild apophenia. He threw in whatever he wanted, jammed it in to make it fit his preconceived idea, and subjected it to no peer review (though finding other Zermatists to look it over would have been an issue).

The work mixes unvarnished opinion, speculation of the both somewhat reasonable and utterly implausible varieties, and uses one science to prove another. For example, he examines a Greek vase featuring a Pan-like creature attacking a woman, then ties it all to the immaculate creatures of ancient Easter Island: “This is one of many paintings where the woman has the pictographic Tree with her with the Snake wound around it. This, being a Rebus for Polish “drzewo,” refers to her origin, for Protong “Drze Wo” means “Where Water,” hence she was one of the humans who came from the now flooded homeland. The Serpent, as always, represents the Great Flood.”

The volumes abound in this type of elastic thinking and represent perhaps the most extreme shoehorning I’ve come across. All art, culture, history, language, and migration is shaped to fit Szukalski’s narrative.

I could not ascertain any modern Zermatism movement, even among conspiracy theorists, cryptozoologists, or fans of Szukalski’s art. Ironically, the only ones I saw promoting his ideas were those in a countermovement, which was a type of messianic, apocalyptic Judeo-Catholic cult. They argued that the Yetinsynys are the true geniuses and are no longer flawless only due to mixing with the Easter Islanders. As I am a lowly humanoid, I lack the Yetisynys’ vast intelligence and was unable to deduce if this was serious or satirical.