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“The Write Stuff” (Graphology)

SHOCKED MAN

Graphology is studying someone’s handwriting in an attempt to analyze their character and personality traits. Spirograph-ology is using multiple shapes and colors to create designs and is much more fun. But it has nothing to do with skeptic issues, so it’s back to graphology.

The graphologist will look at loops, dots, crosses, slants, spacing, and strokes, then try to use them as a graphite gateway to discern a person’s characteristics. The most obvious deduction about someone writing two pages by hand is that they are severely anachronistic.

In graphology, there is no peer review, uniform theory, or agreed upon standards, and it relies on claims that aren’t falsifiable. As such, the attributes associated with it vary widely, and include the ability to detect a person’s illnesses, morality, memories, past experiences, and hidden talents. Because of these competing theories, graphology claims are difficult to gauge. I found one graphologist online who claimed the technique could be as revealing as astrology, palm reading, and Tarot cards, a point which I must concede.

If doing a one-time analysis, the graphologist will typically employ the technique of sympathetic magic, also known as Like Affects Like. As applied to graphology, this means asserting simple ideas such as an introvert’s writing tilting to the left, while an extrovert’s tilts to the right. Presumably, this is reversed in Hebrew. The graphologist may claim that a dot directly over the ‘i’ indicates practicality, while an off-center dot means creativity. Sometimes, sinister motives are asserted, such as a slanted crossed ‘t’ being said to resemble a whip, indicating sadism. Looking at my writing, a sloppy living room might be correctly deduced.

If a person sees the same graphologist regularly, the graphologist will expand his claims of insights into the subject’s personality. What might seem like increased potency of graphology is really just the tester getting to know the subject better. It is similar to cold reading, only a little easier since some information has been given by the writer. Graphologists will say behavior and personality continually change as a cover against giving contradictory information. Or they will propose taking handwriting samples for analysis over many months so as to gather more information about personality traits. But it is being around the person (and their money) that reveals the personality, not the penmanship.

When the graphologist no longer has the luxury of reading the subject’s original words, the ability vanishes. The British Columbia Civil Liberties Union conducted one of few controlled blind studies of graphology. In the test, subjects wrote not on issues important or relevant to them, but simply copied from a magazine. In this study, the graphologists were no better at predicting personality traits than chance.

As to why a civil liberties group was concerned with the topic, it is because graphology can be used to deny someone employment. Despite there being no empirical evidence or research showing that graphology can determine a person’s abilities or personality, some companies use it when hiring workers. But the only way graphology can determine a potential employee’s compentence is if the applicant signs his name with an X.

Alleged successes are due to confirmation bias and communal reinforcement. I’m unsure where to find a graphologist, but per the online man referenced above, you can probably find one if you read some Tarot cards creatively enough.

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“No shot” (Anti-vaccine movement)

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The “anti-” prefix has a negative connotation, so instead of anti-vaccination, perhaps we should call those in that camp pro-disease.

That might seem a little harsh, but let’s check the results whenever preventable diseases aren’t vaccinated against. In Japan, the vaccination rate for Whooping Cough dropped 70 percent from 1974 to 1976, leading to a 30-fold increase in the disease. Whooping Cough killed no one in Japan in 1974, then 31 persons died from it two years later. After anti-vaccination movements gained steam, France experienced a measles outbreak of 15,000 cases in 2011, and the next year, the United States saw 50,000 cases of Whooping Cough.

At the other end of the spectrum, consider the results of a strong vaccination program. Smallpox killed an estimated 500 million people before being conquered. Until Jonas Salk, polio paralyzed 16,000 Americans annually. Measles once killed 3,000 children per year in the United States.

Being a skeptic means more than taking potshots at Tarot cards and magic crystals. One must continually question and analyze everything, including sacred tenants of the skeptic movement. When assessing the above numbers, one must consider correlation/causation and post hoc reasoning. For instance, Dr. Robert Mendelssohn has noted that rates for some diseases dropped in United Kingdom without immunization.

However, we can know vaccinations work because of how the immune system operates. The system detects pathogens and differentiates them from the organism’s healthy tissue. Vaccines mimic diseases by posing as a pathogen, thus prepping the body’s immune system to attack if it detects the real thing.

No vaccination is without risk, but outbreaks of contagious diseases are a far worse danger. Also, consider the comparative risk factor. Serious complications from the measles vaccine are about one in a million, while a child with the disease has a one in 20 chance of developing a serious complication, according to the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins University.

Much of the anti-vaccine movement is centered on thimerosal, a compound that contains mercury and is in many vaccines. It is most associated with the Mumps Measles and Rubella vaccine, and the claim it causes autism.

Dr. Boyd Haley said of thimerosal, “It’s too toxic. If you inject thimerosal into an animal, its brain will sicken. If you apply it to living tissue, the cells die. If you put it in a Petri dish, the culture dies. It would be shocking if one could inject it into an infant without causing damage.”

But pouring chemicals into a Petri dish is different from exposing it in vaccine form to a human because of the body’s defense mechanisms. Haley’s opening words are true, but as he never mentioned vaccines, patients, or dose levels, his conclusion is a non sequitur. In fact, many promising antibiotics and medicines fail because they work on cells but not on people. Furthermore, the toxicity of mercury compounds in fish oil pills exceeds that of thimerosal.

One key element of the anti-vaccination movement are anecdotal tales, many of them the result of post hoc reasoning. Some parents of children with autism believe there is a link between it and the MMR vaccine. This is because the vaccine is administered at the time autism signs are usually first noted, when a child is 12 to 15 months old.

The anti-vaccination movement owes its success to celebrity endorsers, the fear of harm to children, and a science most people can’t understand.

A pro-vaccination campaign exists to counter this. While pamphlets, public service announcements, and science are helpful, the best way to win converts is for them to become diseased. In August 2013, a member of the Eagle Mountain church in Newark, Texas, contracted measles in Indonesia, then spread it through the congregation. All 21 afflicted persons had refused vaccines. Following the outbreak, church members reconsidered their stance and were inoculated against other diseases. It may take the current rise in preventable diseases among the First World population to stem the anti-vaccination movement.

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“Truth or Err” (Polygraphs)

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There is no doubt polygraphs work. They accurately records changes in heartbeat, respiration, temperature, and blood pressure. But while polygraphs are physiological change indicators, it would be a lie to say they can detect one.

Though associated with relatively modern times, purported lie detectors have a long history. The ancient Chinese had suspects chew and spit out rice powder. If the powder was dry, the suspect was deemed a liar since it was believed fearful persons experienced a decrease in saliva. During the Inquisition, suspected liars were made to chew bread and cheese. If they choked due to a dry throat, this was considered proof of mendaciousness. Persons accused of witchcraft in Puritan America were submerged in water and, if they rose, considered liars. If they stayed submerged, they were shown to be honest and were vindicated, albeit victimized.

Polygraphs have as much use as rice and bread when it comes to weeding out lies. But they regularly appear in popular culture. And this, along with the graphs, needles, wires, and readouts, all overseen by men in white suits, give it an air of legitimacy.

Techniques vary, but the sessions usually begin with an examiner asking a subject general questions to establish a baseline. Then the serious questions are asked, with deviations from the baseline deemed to be lies.

Even the introductory questions can pose issues. The examiner may ask, “Have you ever cheated on a test?” Assuming most everyone has, a ‘no’ response will be seen as untruthful, even if it comes from a lifelong straight A student with no reason to ever do so. The examiner can then use that response as a baseline for determining deception, even though the response was honest. Also, if an examiner suspects a subject is untruthful, he could assume a more aggressive stance, making the subject more prone to a nervous response.

No science supports the idea of a correlation between physiological changes and lying. There are no studies suggesting examiners and their polygraph can detect lies at a significantly better rate than anyone else using a different method. There is no uniform physiological reaction to lying.

Furthermore, changes in heartbeat, respiration, and blood pressure can be caused by anger, embarrassment, fear, nervousness, sadness, or medical conditions. During one test of the polygraph’s efficacy, subjects were told, “I’m going to ask you an intimate and personal question.” This triggered the strongest reaction during the testing, even though no question was asked.

This highlights the polygraph’s biggest flaw: It cannot distinguish between deception and nervousness. An innocent person being grilled by police about a double murder won’t have all their mental and physical faculties. Since taking a polygraph test can make a subject nervous, it will be difficult for the baseline to be established. This will lead to inconclusive results, which can be interpreted as guilt.

Then there is the opposite issue, where a criminal like CIA spy Aldrich Ames can pass multiple polygraph exams. Likewise, most sociopaths will show no deviation from their baseline when being interrogated about a crime they committed.

Polygraph results are usually inadmissible in court and employers are generally proscribed from administering them. But governments are allowed to use them on their employees and this has led to ruined careers.

Counterintelligence officer Mark Mallah was considered deceptive when he denied ever having had unauthorized contact with foreign officials and was grilled for two days. Agents raided his home and placed him under 24-hour surveillance. It took 20 months for his full vindication to come. Mother Jones related the experience of Secret Service candidate Bill Roche, who had zipped through the year-long process until the final portion, the polygraph. The seven-hour session became increasingly belligerent, and Roche was accused of drug use, crimes, and workplace dishonesty. The hostile line of questioning made Roche more nervous, so the examiner labeled him deceptive and he lost any chance of being a federal law enforcement officer.

Despite incidents like this, governments continue to use polygraphs. Senator Richard Shelby led the drive to increase their use in the CIA, FBI, and Department of Energy. Shelby had his limits, however. He drew the line at extending its use to Richard Shelby. The FBI suspected he had leaked classified documents and wanted to test him, but he refused. And that’s the truth.

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“Falling flat” (Flat Earth proponents)

FLATEARTH

I’m feeling lazy today. I skipped the gym. I’m taking the children to the backyard instead of the park. And my skeptic laser is being focused on flat Earth proponents.

These were once an abundant breed, but Eratosthenes proved Earth was round, and calculated its circumference almost exactly, in the third century BCE. This was widely accepted within a few centuries, and Christopher Columbus’ first journey was about opening trade routes and determining Earth’s size, rather than a courageous gamble against superstition.

Deacon White, a 19th Century Hall of Fame baseball player was, until the modern incarnation of the Flat Earth movement, one of the last believers. I mention him primarily to have an excuse to include a quote of his which has nothing to do with Earth’s shape:  “No man is going to sell my carcass unless I get half.”

With that out of the way, we move onto the modern flat Earth movement, if it can be called that. Englishman Samuel Shenton was responsible for this lunacy lauch in 1956, although it was the result of ego, not eccentricity. Still in a round Earth mindset, Shenton floated the idea of an aircraft lifting off from England, hovering for a few hours while Earth rotates, then landing in the United States.

This wouldn’t work because a plane on the ground is moving with the surface of Earth and is imperceptibly going 1,000 miles per hour. When it takes off, it still has this speed. To fly east, the plane increases its speed relative to Earth’s surface and then overtakes it. If flying west, the airplane decreases its speed relative to the surface, and Earth chugs on by. I won’t be addressing north and south travel, due to the aforementioned laziness.

Shenton rejected these ideas, and postulated that his plan was shot down due to Earth being flat, and that a conspiracy was keeping this secret. Emboldened, he founded the Flat Earth Society.

The Society was still active in 1980s, headed by Charles Johnson. I talked with this man by telephone, and he assured me that, “The Flat Earth Society runs the world.” It certainly ran the flat Earth portion of it. At the time we spoke, in 1986, he and his wife were the theory’s only known proponents. Johnson said if Earth was round, people on the bottom would fall off. He compared Earth to a beach ball that drops to the ground. When it is picked up, grains of sand will stay at the top of the ball, but fall from the bottom. For any third graders reading this, Johnson was failing to realize the gravity that drew the sand to the beach would also keep people from plummeting into outer space.

When attempting to counter the flat Earth movement, the first protest usually lodged is that one would go over the edge. But Flat Earth Society members claim there is a 150-foot tall ice wall that encompasses the ring around the edge of Earth. There are no photos or videos of this because, according to the Society’s website, the wall has “snow and hail, howling winds, and indescribable storms and hurricanes in every direction. Human ingress is barred by unsealed escarpments of perpetual ice, extending farther than eye or telescope can penetrate, and becoming lost in gloom and darkness.” Since observing it even indirectly is deemed impossible, it remains unclear how Flat Earthers arrived at the 150-foot figure. Also, in spite of the impenetrability, the society maintains that NASA employees access the region to stand guard and prevent mortals from discovering the secret.

NASA are the Round Earther’s most sinister element, but they have plenty of cohorts, such as every GPS manufacturer, communications industry worker, and pilot. Also in on the fix is Felix Baumgartner, whose jump from the edge of space showed Earth’s curvature.

The second most common point made by normal people Round Earth proponents are pictures of the planet so shaped. The Apollo mission pictures were dismissed as fake by Johnson in the 1960s. By now, we have many more fake pictures, numbering in the thousands. Flat Earthers point out how easy it is to manipulate and stage photos today. For all this ease, we have yet to see a photo, real or fake, of the ice wall or anything else vouching for a flat Earth.

Johnson’s Flat Earth Society died with him, but another was started by Daniel Shenton (not related to Samuel through biology, just through illogical).

The group is very tiny and most members are British, so you are unlikely to encounter one. But if you do, here are arguments to use if inclined. These observations are consistent with a round Earth: 1, Seeing the top of ships first when they come over the horizon. 2, The farther one travels from the equator, the farther stars go toward the horizon. 3, If you put two sticks in the ground a few feet apart, they will produce shadows of different length. 4, The higher up you are, the farther you will see. 5, Every other known heavenly body is round. 6. When one half the world is light, the rest is dark. 7, During a lunar eclipse, a round shadow is cast on the moon.

Now that the Flat Earthers have been dispatched, it’s off to the backyard to take down my 5-year-old daughter in a game of one-on-one.

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“The Mozart Defect” (Mozart Effect)

MOZART
At the University of California-Irvine in 1993, Gordon Shaw and Frances Rauscher studied the effects of listening to a Mozart piano sonata on about 35 college students. They found that participants experienced a temporary enhancement in spatial-temporal reasoning abilities.

Subsequent attempts to replicate this finding failed more often than not. But even if the results were genuine, the study’s authors were making only a limited claim. Nevertheless, through a mix of misunderstanding, misinterpretation, and fraud, this possible temporary enhancement of spatial-temporal reasoning in young adults morphed into a conclusive permanent increase in intelligence for infants and toddlers. Proponents gleefully dubbed it the Mozart Effect.

What had been an eight percent increase in the ability to fold and cut paper was paraded as an improvement of 51 on the SAT. With reputable outlets like ABC News and the Boston Globe hawking the idea, buying Mozart CDs became a de rigueur part of the expecting process, along with hosting showers and designing nurseries. Don Giovanni was played at daycare centers and The Magic Flute was handed out in OB-GYN wings.

Georgia Governor Zell Miller proposed using state funds to provide every newborns’ mother with classical music. During the announcement, Ode to Joy played and the governor asked, “Don’t you feel smarter already?” Thing is, you can feel smarter without being so.

Perhaps the boldest claims were made by Don Campbell, who started a commercial website dedicated to the idea. He also wrote a book called the Mozart Effect, subtitled Tapping the Power of Music to Heal the Body, Strengthen the Mind, and Unlock the Creative Spirit. Campbell attributed these traits to listening to Mozart: Deep sleep, rejuvenation, intelligence, learning, creativity, and imagination, as well as the mitigation of anxiety, depression, dyslexia, autism, and 20 other diseases and disorders. Listening to Mozart can cure every malady except the one that killed him at 35.

Following the initial burst of enthusiasm, more serious and in-depth studies were conducted, with sobering results. Researchers at the University of Washington reported a decrease in standard language-development among infants after hearing the music.

Psychologists Kenneth Steele and philosopher John Bruer followed the protocols set forth by UC Irvine study and found no impact in a study of 125 students. Furthermore, Nature reported that studies with positive results tended to be associated with any energetic music, not just classical. Similarly, psychologists Christopher Charbris and Daniel Simons found that even the minor, temporary, limited-use effect touted in the original study only works if you like the music.

In short, meta-analysis found no improvement for IQ tasks and a statistically insignificant improvement of spatial abilities. This finding is hardly surprising, since the authors of the original study had never made the boasts associated with it. The duo put out a statement reading, “It has been widely reported that our study showed that listening to Mozart enhances intelligence. We made no such claim. The effect is limited to spatial–temporal tasks involving mental imagery and temporal ordering.”

Coming from the study’s authors, that should put to rest any debate about a supposed link between the music and increased intelligence. But as a final nail in the coffin: I listen to Mozart every week.

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“Warped speed” (Tachyons)

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Tachyons are theoretical particles that move faster than warp speed, have negative mass, and travel backwards in time. They would be unknown outside the world of advanced theoretical physics were it not for being occasionally referenced on shows like Star Trek Voyager.

There is no evidence for tachyons, they have no known use even if they exist, and there is no method of capturing them even if they exist and have a use. Nevertheless, several websites purporting to harness tachyon power sell products such as beads, belts, blankets, lotions, oils, pillows, sweatbands, tablets, wafers, and wraps. Pretty much everything except the kitchen sink, although I suppose if you cleaned yours often enough with tachyon water, you’d have that, too.

The Carbondale Center for Macrobiotic Studies reports that, “The Tachyon Field supplies the energy needs of all living organisms until balance is achieved. Whenever depletion occurs, tachyons rush in until balance happens again.” And the company will sell you this product, which everyone has a naturally recurring, inexhaustible supply of.

It further states, “The nervous system and brain are a sophisticated antenna and receiver that absorb, process, and transform resources of the Tachyon Field.” These sophisticated antennas apparently work best in conjunction with the company’s $75 shoe inserts. Tachyon products are also sold for dogs and cats, with nary a canine or feline consumer complaint yet.

The Advanced Tachyon Technologies website suggests Nikola Tesla tapped into tachyon energy when he tried developing an alternative to AC generators. He didn’t finish, but, no worries, the work of a pioneering engineer genius will be completed by an untested theory using a tachyon doo-rag.

Yet another site claims to have developed a tachyonization process, although the inventor has yet to apply for a patent. He explains that unsavory lawyers would file baseless patent infringement suits, and the costs associated with defending himself would deprive consumers of $50-a-bottle consciousness-raising pills. It also sells Tachyonized Water, which some New Age gurus think has flowed from the Fountain of  Youth. If they’re reading this 200 years from now, they were right.

Going deeper into the site, we learn that “Most people exist in a fragmented, horizontal energy system. Becoming vertical in our energy flow is a way of accelerating our shift in consciousness.” When I want to leave my fragmented, horizontal state and access increased consciousness, I get out of bed. Another suggestion is, “To gain extra energy, regenerate connective tissue, and clear the mind, we recommend tapping the Subtle Organizing Energy Field, or SOEF.” Furniture to the rescue again, as when I want these benefits, I access the SOFA.

The company also makes clear that their internal products work from the inside out. That would seem obvious, but I guess in the time-traveling, negative-mass, beyond-light-speed world of tachyons, one should never assume anything.

Heralding another product, the site announces, “This is a catalyst or energy source for the evolution of self-organizing systems to greater and greater states of order. They protect from electromagnetic dangers by energizing subtle organizing energy fields. It has a variety of special applications and offers deep, lasting rejuvenation. It contains botanical component extracted from the aqueous solution of rare algae. It stimulates the metabolic actions of the body so that the body can fight illness and or disease.” This product cures every ailment except muddled writing.

At one point, the site stresses the importance of “interacting with the lepton family, beginning with a pion.” Now, a pion is not a lepton, but a meson. Maybe they just let their secret slip, and the key to harnessing tachyons is converting a pion into lepton form. If you don’t know how to do that, you can still be part of this. Because while these sites misuse medical, scientific, and mathematical vernacular, the one term they use correctly is multi-marketing.

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“On the Origin of Specious” (Creationism)

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Creation Ministries International runs a “Question Evolution!” campaign. Presumably the “Question Gravity!” campaign will follow. I have no doubts about evolution’s legitimacy, although I wonder about its efficacy when members of its most advanced species are joining Creation Ministries International.

There have been a couple of bizarre, albeit tasty, attempts to disprove evolution through bananas or jars of peanut butter. The answers to those challenges might be worth a quick Google search, but we won’t be addressing those here. Instead, we will start by touching on a few ideas that are still put out by neophyte Young Earth Creationists, then work our way to, how shall we say, more evolved ideas. Young Earth Creationists, by the way, are those who maintain God created animals in their present form less than 10,000 years ago. The term does not refer to those who believe in a creator who oversees evolution, and who accept the scientific evidence for the age of the universe.

Sometimes the existence of gorillas or similar apes is presented as evidence against evolution. The thinking, if you can call it that, is if these animals evolved into humans, they would no longer be around. This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept, which posits that man and apes have a common ancestor. The evidence of a common ancestor is shown by the similarity of our bone and muscle structure to that of the chimpanzee and other apes. The farther back the common ancestor, the fewer shared traits there are.

Another tactic is to claim evolution violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics. But this Law applies only to closed, isolated system. Since Earth receives continual energy from the sun, it is an open system.

A third point is that there are animals which have changed little in millions of years. But environment drives the change, or lack thereof. Creatures like sharks or the coelacanth have evolved adequately for their mostly static surroundings.

A relatively recent attack on evolution centers on the idea of irreducible complexity. This argues a system is irreducibly complex if its function is lost when a part is removed, and claims that evolution could not work this way. But evolution involves more than adding parts. It also involves changing or removing parts. An irreducibly complex system can evolve from a precursor by adding a part and making it necessary. This has been demonstrated in the attempt to combat Pentachlorophenol, a toxic chemical.

A few soil bacteria devised a method to destroy Pentachlorophenol, and they did it in an irreducibly complex way. The bacteria use three enzymes in succession to break down the toxic chemical. The first enzyme replaces one chlorine with OH. The resulting compound is toxic, but not as much as the original. The second enzyme acts on this compound to replace two chlorines with hydrogen. The resulting compound is much easier to handle, allowing the third enzyme to break open Pentachlorophenol. By now, what had been a toxic chemical is food for the bacterium. All three enzymes are required, so we have irreducible complexity, arrived at through evolution.

Another frequent Young Earth Creationist line is that evolution has never been observed. Yet it is on display every day at Michigan State University, where Richard Lenski continues his ongoing e. coli long-term evolution experiment. Since 1988, he has been tracking genetic changes in 12 initially identical groups. The population has now topped 60,000, and Lenski has observed many genetic changes along the way.

Natural selection leading to evolution can also be shown in a Petri dish of bacteria. When an antibiotic is introduced, most of the bacteria dies, but a few are immune. The subsequent generation will inherit that immunity from the survivors.

Most Young Earth Creationists begrudgingly concede this point. They allow that these changes take place on what they call the microevolution scale. They are OK with a butterfly’s wings becoming more efficient, but deny that whales developed in a series of changes that included Pakicetus evolving into Ambulocetus. Microevolution and macroevolution are terms used almost exclusively by Young Earth Creationists, and are intended to create a false chasm between the two. Macroevolution is nothing more than a series of microevolutions.

For many decades, Young Earth Creationists claimed there were no transitional fossils, even though were many, with Lucy and Archaeopteryx the most prominent. A biologist would announce a new fossil, and present this find as being a link from an earlier animal to a later one. Young Earth Creationists would insist the fossil was merely a microevolved example of the earlier animal, or a not-quite-as-microevolved example of the later creature. So whenever biologists presented a transitional fossil, creationists would insist this was instead two more gaps to fill in. They could keep up this charade indefinitely. Or so they thought.

Then Tiktaalik came along. This is probably the biggest find in evolution history. Tiktaalik has features of both the fish it swam with and the four-legged tetrapods that came along 12 million years later. It has fins, scales, and gills like fish. It also has a flat head and body, and eyes on the top of its skull, like a crocodile. Unlike fish, it has a functional neck, and it has ribs resembling those of early tetrapods. These ribs helped support Tiktaalik and allowed it live and breathe out of water.

In what seemed more like a skeptic’s satire than a serious position, some Young Earth Creationists argued Tiktaalik was a crocodile that ate a fish. Others opined it proved creation. You see, since there was no other creature like it, God made it special. Young Earth Creationists, it seems, have an unmatched ability to adapt to their environment.

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“Strange notion” (Stranger danger)


STRANGERDANGERPIC

This month, Judge Kathleen Watanabe sentenced a Hawaii man to one year of probation and fined him $200 because his son walked a mile home from school. He also has to attend a parenting class for being convicted of endangering a minor’s welfare.

Now in my day, sonny, we walked a half mile to and from school every day, much of it up a steep hill, with no coat, in 10-degree weather. This is actually true, although the coat-free trek was optional, as I had one, but dragged it home in the snow. I also put my wool cap away and arrived home with my ears as red as the Chiefs coat I was dragging.

In her sentencing, Watanabe allowed that children once walked long distances to school. But, she said, it’s different today, with dangers like more cars and child predators. I have no information on Pacific Island traffic patterns, but with regard to child predators, the judge is greatly mistaken. She’s not alone. I bemoaned that my oldest child, a 7-year-old boy, isn’t traipsing the neighborhood on foot and bike, going to friends’ homes and tree houses, and playing on creek banks, like I did at his age. My mother said this was a good thing, and she cited the same beliefs as the judge.

But these are fears, not facts. There has been a 35 percent decrease in juvenile homicides since I dragged my coat home in the snow. I can’t blame the judge or my mother for thinking otherwise. With dozens of 24-7 news sources in competition, any missing child is going to be publicized. It’s simply much more reported today. Interestingly, that technology also makes it more likely the child will make it home safely. Cell phones, Amber Alerts, and social media have all played roles in children being recovered and kidnappers being arrested.

Beyond the drop in crime targeting juveniles, there have been improvements in health care, food sanitation, and automobile safety. Child labor in the U.S. went away 100 years ago. These factors combine to make today in the developed world the safest time in world history to be a child.

This is seldom pointed out, nor is the panic new. Despite my mother’s insistence that things are worse now, she thought they were plenty bad back in the day. In a well-meaning but frightful tactic, she plied me with stories of youth who were abducted and abused by strangers. An inordinate number of these horrors seemed to take place in public restrooms. I don’t think anyone was killed in these terrifying toilet tales, but they were harrowing enough that I was in junior high before I felt OK going into one. Sometimes my mother would ask me to accompany my little brother into a restroom. HELL NO! This would make her angry, as she remembered what supposedly went on in there. She never seemed to make the connection between her telling me these stories and my reluctance to enter such locales.

This is not the usual type of subject for my blog. Whereas Reiki practitioners, mediums, and astrologers are always fraudulent or self-deceived, Stranger Danger is sometimes a terrifying reality. The reason I’m addressing it is to point out four ways that Stranger Danger is misapplied. The first has already been mentioned, as numbers show that juvenile abductions and murders have declined significantly in the past four decades.

The second myth is that strangers pose the most danger to children. In most years, there are about 250,000 minor abductions, of which only about 100 are by strangers. The overwhelming majority are by family members or supposed friends. From a purely statistical standpoint, a stranger is the safest person for a child to be with.

The third issue is the inconsistency with which many parents apply safety lessons. Only three percent of juvenile murders are committed by strangers and the chance that any given child will be killed by a stranger is one in 5 million. It is hard to relay these messages effectively to people because, by using “only” or “just” in conjunction with the most emotional topic possible, the speaker comes across as insensitive. This causes the listener to double down on their beliefs, and that’s partly why these myths continue.

The usual response is that these numbers are irrelevant if your child is that one in 5 million. This is true, but there are still inconsistencies because other dangers are not regularly stressed. Children are also killed by lightning strikes, but most parents have not instructed on lightning safety. I have, by the way, had the lightning talk. And to be clear, my children have also heard the stranger talk. I don’t want to leave the impression that I would be OK with my children jumping into a car with an unknown person wielding a candy cane. We’ve had that conversation and have plans in place to prevent the scenario from occurring. But I had the talk and made the plans while recognizing the unlikelihood.

When I was dragging that coat home, there were Block Mother signs in some windows along the route. Children lost or otherwise in peril knew they would find harbor there. In other words, we were taught to talk to strangers. This is the final, most ironic point: That lost children should be encouraged to talk to strangers, preferably a police officer, firefighter, or even a letter carrier. If none of those are sighted, a lost Kindergartener is still more likely to get back safely if they ask a stranger for help instead of navigating their way through traffic, weather, rivers, and railroads. This should be done as a holistic approach that includes measures taken to minimize the chance of that 5-year-old ever being lost, and they should have phone numbers and addresses memorized. Following these methods are far more efficient than perpetuating the Stranger Danger myth to children and adults.

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“Obtuse triangle” (Bermuda Triangle)

TRIANGLE
On Dec. 5, 1945, U.S. Navy aviators on a training mission went missing in the Atlantic Ocean. The 14 sailors and five airplanes were never found. Later in the week, a plane searching for the missing crewmen blew up.

The head pilot in the original flight thought he was headed toward the Florida Keys, when in fact he was already past them, and he continued farther east. The Navy attributed the incident to pilot error. Because faulty instruments, darkness, and weather were also thought to be factors, the head pilot’s family objected, and the official report was changed to attribute the incident to “causes unknown.” The report on the subsequent tragedy noted that “it too never returned,” an accurate but unnecessarily cryptic description of an aircraft lost when its fuel tank exploded. These unrelated and explicable tragedies birthed the belief in nefarious forces at work in a triangle whose points are Miami, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda. The Bermuda Triangle term had never been used before and was created to fit this new narrative.

The number of aircraft and sea vessels lost over the years is consistent with a busy shipping lane in a storm-prone area. There is no more percentage of unexplained loss here than in any other triangle, rectangle, or hendecagon one could invent. A NOVA investigation concluded that ships and planes behave no differently in the Triangle than anywhere else. Lloyd’s of London, which insures ships against disappearance or wreck, reports the number lost in the Triangle is consistent with its size and traffic.

The most thorough examination of Bermuda Triangle claims was conducted by author Lawrence Kusche. He researched original sources for each incident of missing craft in the Triangle, and regularly noted inconsistencies between writers’ claims and witness testimony and weather logs. Some embellished reports spoke of ideal conditions, when a check of the weather that day showed the opposite.

More egregious, some writers included media reports of missing aircraft, without bothering to learn that they were later located. Perhaps most ridiculous, some accounts listed aircraft and sea vessels lost after leaving the Triangle. This included a ship that went missing near Singapore after starting the journey in Miami. So even craft that went missing halfway around the world and were then found were added to the Triangle tally. There were also attempts at historical revisions, with false claims that the Mary Celeste and Santa Maria were lost in the area.

Besides the 1945 Navy incidents, there were three occurrences that garnered significant attention at the time. In 1963, the S.S. Marine Sulphur Queen tanker disappeared. None of its 39 crew members were found. Author Charles Berlitz claimed this occurred in good weather and baffled Coast Guard officials. Kusche’s research showed that, in fact, there were rough seas, structural damage, and a cargo of 15 tons of molten sulfur. During prior voyages, tons of sulfur had leaked into the tanker. This is a possible explanation, though it lacks the creativity of the theory which holds craft are shot down by a laser fired from the sunken Atlantis continent.

A freighter dubbed The Sandra was purported to have mysteriously disappeared in ideal weather, when it had gone down after encountering hurricane-force winds. The Freya was listed as being found ominously adrift in the Triangle, when it had been found abandoned in the Pacific Ocean.

Kusche found that most writers relayed their speculations onto fellow “researchers,” who did no follow up investigation. This sloppy research and communal reinforcement created the Bermuda Triangle myth that continues.

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“UFOh no” (Roswell Incident)


ROSWELL

Even as I became immersed in the skeptic movement, the one holdout for me was the Roswell Incident. Based on the story I had heard, nothing seemed inherently unbelievable. There could be life on other planets. Those beings could be more intelligent than us, good enough perhaps to manage interplanetary travel. Their advanced spacecraft could crash. Government officials do lie and engage in cover-ups. And there were reports of eyewitnesses seeing alien beings and wreckage.

My first doubt crept in when I considered the distance. Aliens leaving from the closest exoplanet and averaging an impressive 250,000 miles per hour would take 11,400 years to reach us. Sure, they could have amazing life spans and traveling space colonies, but could doesn’t mean they do. Other ideas centered on worm holes, an unknown science permitting beyond warp speed travel, String Theory utilization, creatures from inside a Jovian moon, or coming and going as they please from another dimension. But a vague, science fiction hypothesis is hardly the same as fact. So this got me looking into it more skeptically.

The Roswell crash made a minor news splash at the time. The Roswell Monitor headline read, “RAAF captures flying saucer on ranch in Roswell region.” The description of it as a flying saucer was no accident. The previous month, pilot Kenneth Arnold made the first report of seeing one, and the Roswell incident was one of hundreds of such reports in Arnold’s wake.

The U.S. Army knew the wreckage was from a radar reflector that was part of a developmental nuclear weapons test detection system. Military officials claimed it was a weather balloon, then shut up. This lie and subsequent silence would be the seeds of a conspiracy theory that germinated three decades later.

In the late 1970s, with Watergate a fresh memory and Close Encounters the hot movie, the time was ripe for a scoop on the government cover-up up an alien crash. Stanton Friedman and Charles Berlitz started interviewing people, which would be like trying to compile a first-hand account the Beirut Barracks bombing today.

Author Charles Ziegler argues that the Roswell story rings of a traditional folk narrative, noting it has six distinct narratives. A core story exists, but it is shaped by listeners into new versions. Here’s the gist:  Aliens were monitoring atomic and rocket test sites when their ship crashed. Strange debris was recovered, four-foot tall humanoids whisked away, and witnesses told to keep quiet.

Skepticism and investigation of government and media is healthy, but using that same lens on the claims of Roswell proponents finds their own obfuscation and inconsistency.

In 1978, Friedman met Jesse Marcel, who was a major stationed at Roswell in 1947, and who claimed to have flown the wreckage back. It turned out he wasn’t a pilot. He acknowledged that a newspaper photo of him holding debris was a weather balloon, but claimed objects in the background of another photo were the real wreckage. Examination showed it to be the same balloon.

The key witness was Frank Kaufman, who claimed to have seen alien bodies. After his death in 2001, his widow allowed researchers access to his private papers, and that’s when the Roswell story collapsed. He had fabricated evidence and documents for years. He would present suddenly-new found evidence when his credibility was questioned or the story was unraveling. Further, Kaufman claimed to be a radar expert with intelligence experience. He was really a civilian clerk in the personnel office. His collection was a forgery. Clinging to the Roswell story now would be like Lewis and Clark being exposed as frauds, but claiming their diaries were still a first-hand account of early 19th Century western U.S. exploration.

Another person whose story Roswell enthusiasts cited as major proof was Sgt. Melvin Brown. He is alleged to have said that he saw the bodies. But he died without being interviewed about this, and the claim is a second-hand report from his daughter, with no corroboration from other family members. Records show he was a cook with no security clearance who never performed guard duty.

This leaves no truthful person who claims to have seen alien bodies. With regard to the wreckage, Roswell investigators claimed to have conducted over 100 interviews, yet only five of them were with persons who handled it. And some of those, including Irving Newton and Sheridan Cavitt, insist it was not extraterrestrial.

Another claim is that reinforcing tape on the wreckage had alien hieroglyphics. On investigation, they were shown to be rainbows, clouds, and flowers.

I saw a television news program that presented a re-creation of the event. In one scene, a person at the site picks up material similar to sheet metal, but that could be crinkled, then revert to its original shape when released. The narrator made the claim there is no known material on Earth with this distinction – even though it had just been shown in the reenactment!

With these revelations, my last resistance to the skeptic movement came crashing down, much like the world’s best known developmental radar reflector.