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“Walking on coals to a higher vortex” (Pseudoscience)

QUACKERS

Science doesn’t know everything. If it did, we would have stopped doing science. But limits on science does not mean that the unexplained is inexplicable. Some will try to fill in the gaps with supernatural or paranormal explanations. A much better idea is to continue the quest for knowledge.

Fire walking was once thought to be mystical and indicative of a greater power. Then science revealed that coal has a poor ability to contain and conduct heat. Hence, walking on coals is similar to putting your hand in a 350 degree oven, not like touching the pan.

Proclaiming to have inexplicable mystic powers is only one way the pseudoscientist operates. Another common technique is creating a scientific façade through linguistics. Online, I found this gem about gems: “All crystals have a magnetic energy flow and this energy is able to be channeled in order to increase frequency to encourage healing. It opens a vortex to the higher realms to receive and transmit messages from your guides and helpers. Crystals have a strong energy and they are useful for using in a grid formation to protect an area or place from negative energy.”

We have a reference to magnetism, which is genuine physics. We have energy, which science defines as the ability to do work. Also thrown into the mix are vortex, healing, transform, and grid. This language is designed to display air of legitimacy, but the terms as they are applied here are medically worthless. Without a double blind study and critical peer review, these claims are without merit.

Another ploy is claiming to be the latest in a long line of misunderstood and eventually vindicated geniuses. It’s true that ridicule was heaped on Copernicus, the Wright brothers, and Alfred Wegner. But far more wannabes were scoffed at for good reason. Flying in the face of conventional wisdom takes guts, but not necessarily a lot of brainpower. Most heretical ideas are wrong. This doesn’t mean they should be dismissed out of hand, but they must be looked into.

Some people are convinced that sleeping with a bar of soap prevents their legs from cramping. This could be true and there might be a chemical reason behind it. But it could also be selective memory or the result of the cramping having been mitigated for other reasons. Until a double blind study confirms the results, this is not a scientific claim.

If the soap test is ever carried out, legitimate researchers will accept whatever conclusion is reached. That’s the way science works. Biologist Teruhiko Wakayama appeared to make a groundbreaking discovery in stem cell research. He deduced that stem cells could be made quickly and cheaply by dipping them in acid and converting them to the biological building blocks. But after the experiment could not be duplicated, Wakayama acknowledged he had reached the wrong conclusion. He also requested that he no longer be considered for an award he had been nominated for.

Contrast this to Sylvia Browne when she met with public failure. On The Montel Williams Show, an audience member told Browne her boyfriend had never been found. Browne said this was because he was under water. The guest then offered that he had died in the Sept. 11 attacks. Aided by apologist Williams, Browne spun a wildly improbable tale that a firefighter’s misdirected hose may have been the reason for the boyfriend’s demise.

Another time, parents were trying to figure out how their son died. When Browne told them he was shot, the parents responded that he had been in his room and collapsed. Again, Browne and Williams attempted a ludicrous spin. They offered he might have been hit in the chest somehow, someway, leading to cardiac arrest, and that this magically equated to being killed by a firearm.

Science has its limits. Not so pseudoscience, which has infinte power to stretch logic and mangle reason.

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“Chi-Reiki-practors” (Chiropractic and Reiki)

BACK
Most patients seek out chiropractors because their back hurts. There is some evidence that chiropractics can be effective in the short-term relief of lower back pain, although Advil and a massage may work just as well.

Beyond this limited and narrow focus, chiropractics has never been proven effective in treating or preventing any disease or symptom. Despite this, some chiropractors claim to be able to cure or mitigate a wide range of maladies that have nothing to do with the back. The theory is that since the spine is the center of the body’s nervous system, twisting and turning the back in different ways and places will be beneficial to overall health.

Like many pseudosciences, chiropractics uses medical-sounding terminology to impress and confuse the uninitiated. The most common phrase associated with the practice is “vertebral subluxation.” Subluxation is a real medical condition and refers to a partial dislocation of a joint. But Vertebral Subluxation Theory holds that misaligned vertebrae are the cause of disease. There exists no medical evidence to support this position. Furthermore, it leaves the patient vulnerable to repeated visits for “subluxation correction” as a preventive measure, although what it is meant to prevent is unclear.

Whereas chiropractors will forcefully push, pull, and turn a person in all directions, Reiki practitioners won’t touch the patient at all. Hands are just moved around the body in various patterns and speeds. Reiki asserts that all hands have natural healing energies, but that some persons’ hands have more healing power than others. The percentage of those with the extra power squares precisely with those who have paid $350 for Reiki training.

The original Reiki man was Mikao Usui. He ascended to a Japanese mountaintop, fasted, flipped through some sacred texts, and came tumbling down with healing energy powers. Usui was kind enough to pass his powers onto others for a price. Those who received this healing ability could then do the same for others. This energy has to passed on linearly, so don’t try to bypass the process by going up on the mountain yourself.

A person who went through the process of having the magic energy transferred described it thusly: “The instructor grasped my palms with hers, and lifted my arms above my head and we went in a circle. Then she patted my crown three times, whistled a strange tune, and touched my back.” I have also undergone this experience, although I called it Ring Around the Rosie and Duck Duck Goose.

Reiki teaches that the energy possesses an advanced form of intelligence, and can serve as cosmic doctor and surgeon. It is thus able to diagnose and heal the patient. This is handy for the 100 percent of Reiki practitioners who have no medical training.

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“Chi blinded me with science” (Pseudoscience)

BAD SCIENCE
Since I am not a scientist, it follows that I am qualified to write about things that aren’t science. We can deal with the logic of such conclusions during another post, but for now, let’s take a look at some of the hallmarks of pseudoscience.

The brightest of the red flags is taking one’s claims straight to the public or, more ominously, to a selected sympathetic audience. New claims or ideas should be announced to fellow scientists, who can conduct peer review and tests.

In 1989, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann made the astounding claim that they had managed cold fusion, a nuclear reaction at room temperature, as opposed to the seven-figure temperatures thought to be required. Because of the significant implications, this claim attracted worldwide notice. But Pons and Fleishmann revealed little about their methods and resisted requests to validate the claim. Other physicists were unable to replicate the alleged findings, and the purported methods could never be proven. Pons and Fleishmann withdrew from public life, and the only thing cold was their reception in the scientific community.

Similarly, the company Steorn announced it had produced a perpetual motion machine, dubbed the Orbo. Again, this claim flew in the face of accepted science. The Orbo could never be verified under independent testing conditions and it met the same fate as cold fusion.

Ken Ham regularly issues pronouncements asserting evidence for a Young Earth or Intelligent Design. But he publishes these on his website, with no independent verification and without inviting challenge. When I asked on his Facebook page if any of his work had been published in a scientific, peer-reviewed journal, the response was to delete the question and ban me from further posting. Someone doing genuine science is going to want it tested. Getting it right and adding to the field’s knowledge takes precedence over bias, personal vindication, and accolades.

When dealing with new products, another major red flag is failing to use a control group alongside the group being tested. Furthermore, the subjects, and those researching them, should never know which group is which. This equates to a double blind test, which should always be used if practicable and ethical.

Once the test is complete, it should be accepted or rejected as a whole. Cherry picking results to support one’s position is pseudoscience.

Another dead giveaway is being agenda-based. When a researcher announces a finding, he or she should detail the method, evidence, and conclusion. There should be no mention of the dangers of engineered food or of the environment being bombarded with toxins. There should be no rants about impending pandemics or about Intelligent Design being denied a spot in biology class by a nefarious cabal of political and educational bigwigs.

When such alarmist language is used, it is probable that the “study” had predetermined results. Scientists search for evidence, develop a hypothesis based on what they’ve found, then test those ideas. Pseudoscience starts with a desired hypothesis, then seeks evidence to support it, perhaps even relying on anecdotes. Testing, if done at all, is shoddy and conducted by biased researchers, who either agree with the agenda or who are being paid to reach desired conclusions.

It is true that research can reveal serious dangers. But the results should speak for themselves. If there are shouts of alarm, they should come from those hearing the report, not those giving it.

Warning bells should also sound when hearing that something is “all-natural.” The product is probably all-natural, but there would be no reason to mention this, as all natural does not necessarily mean all good. Hemlock, mercury, and mamba venom are all-natural. Throwing this term around is meant to appeal to persons seeking a healthy lifestyle and has little scientific relevance.

Similarly, vague, undefined terms with no scientific meaning are another red flag. Examples included negative energy, immune booster, and chi. And products that are claimed to be based on ancient or long-lost knowledge are best avoided.

While not fraudulent like the previous examples, there is another point to address. An honest mistake can be made by confusing correlation and causation. A study at the University of Pennsylvania, whose results were published in Nature, revealed that children who slept with the light on were more likely to develop myopia. However, another study at Ohio State University found that the true cause was genetics. It turned out that myopic parents were more likely to put their children to sleep with the light on. While there was a correlation between the light being on and developing myopia, it was not the cause.

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“For the sake of argument” (Critical thinking)

FALLACY

Today’s critical thinking spotlight focuses on how to spot bad arguments. This refers to bad arguments as a form, not the arguments themselves. This takes no position on any issue, and people of all opinions are susceptible to poor logic and false conclusions. This list is not comprehensive and the examples cited are not the only possible manifestations on the particular bad argument type.

Personal attack. This is a somewhat debatable inclusion, as it may not even rise to the level of bad argument.  “Screw you, you’re an idiot,” or more ironically, “Screw you, your an idiot,” might as well be saying, “I concede.” It adds nothing to the debate and will bring no one to your side. This is the one bad argument everyone recognizes, so we need spend no more time here.

Ad hominem. These come in many forms, but it is primarily shifting the debate from the argument to the person making it. These can sometimes be closely related to the personal attack. If Joe uses statistics and studies to call for an increase in the minimum wage, an ad hominem response would be, “Where did you get your economics degree?” Joe’s level of economic education is irrelevant to the legitimacy of his point. Similarly, someone may attack the person’s incentive, rather than the policy. “You don’t care about the tax money or the environment. You just want marijuana to be legal so you can smoke it.” Again, this fails to address the point made.

Circular reasoning. This is using the conclusion as your premise. When the Kansas Jayhawks won the conference for the ninth straight year, an acquaintance of mine claimed this dominance was a sign of the Big 12’s weakness. I responded that, of 35 conferences, the Big 12 had ranked between first and fifth in the Ratings Percentage Index in each of those nine seasons. Furthermore, there had been 48 Tournament games won by Big 12 teams other than Kansas in that time. KU continued its run the next year, a season in which the Big 12 topped the RPI and sent 70 percent of its teams to the Tournament. The acquaintance, however, continued to use his conclusion that KU’s dominance was a sign of the Big 12’s weakness to support his premise. His argument consisted of nothing more than, “We know Kansas won a bad conference because Kansas won the conference.”

Argument from consequences. We’ll keep with the sports theme for just one more, I promise. Major League Baseball’s free agency era began when an arbitrator struck down the way it applied its reserve clause. The players’ attorney had the legal and historical evidence on his side. MLB’s lawyer conceded this, but pleaded, “If this happens, the wealthiest teams will dominate and it will be bad for baseball.” Maybe so, but the consequences of it happening were irrelevant to the case being arbitrated. This flawed argument makes its points on the possible results rather than the facts.

Appeal to ignorance. This is very common among conspiracy theorists. It is often prefaced with phrases such as “There is no way that…,” or “This can only mean…”. It asserts there can only be one conclusion. It further assumes an argument, no matter how tenuous, has to be true because there is no argument against it. For instance, the conspiracy theorist may show a picture of reporters at a mass shooting, and if one of them is smiling, will write, “There is no way someone would act like that if they were at the scene of a mass murder.” This appeal to ignorance presents absence of evidence as evidence of absence. In other words, because I can’t show why a person would be smiling in this situation, it means the shooting was a hoax. This is flawed thinking because the burden of proof always lies on the person making the claim. One of my favorite exchanges involved a man saying, “There is no way I can believe it’s possible to put a man on the moon.” The response: “That’s why you’re not a physicist.”

Confusing correlation and causation. “94 percent of meth addicts report having smoked marijuana first, so we know marijuana is a gateway drug.” And 100 percent of meth addicts ate cereal before, but we don’t conclude it’s a gateway breakfast food. Most serious investors read the Wall Street Journal, but that doesn’t mean reading the Wall Street Journal will make one a serious investor. It means that serious investors are drawn to the publication.

Equivocation. This is when two meanings of a word are used within the same argument. “Man” can refer to males or to homo sapiens. An equivocation conclusion would be, “Sharks are man-eaters, so they are no threat to women.” A similar tactic is inventing one’s own definition of a word in order to support a position. “A minority cannot be racist because racism is institutional control of a privileged set over the oppressed.” No, racism is the belief that all members of a race possess characteristics or abilities that distinguish it as superior to other races.

Strawman. This is making up a false, usually ridiculous, opposing position in order to attack it. Failed House of Representatives candidate Christine O’Donell insinuated that evolution proponents think monkeys can give birth to humans. This is a substantial mischaracterization of evolution, which posits that man and apes have a common ancestor.

Guilt by association. Pointing out that Stalin was an atheist or that Lord’s Resistance Army members are Christians, as a point against atheism or Christianity, are arguments of no value.

False conclusion. This was most entertainingly demonstrated by my high school economics teacher. “All dogs bark. Johnny barks. Therefore, Johnny is a dog.” This uses two accurate statements, but arrives at an incorrect ending.

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“Dilution delusion” (Homeopathy)

HOMEO

We have a word for alternative medicine that is proven to work: Medicine. Once it has shown to be effective in double blind studies and passes critical peer review, the qualifier can be dropped.

One of the longest, most bizarre histories in alternative medicine lore belongs to homeopathy. It originated in the mind of 18th Century physician Samuel Hahnemann, who had pure motives. Leeches were among the medicines of his day and he worked without benefit of Germ Theory. Hence, he deserves credit for trying to come up with something better and can’t be faulted for failing to recognize its impracticability.

He deduced if large doses of something cause a symptom, than a lower concentration would remove that symptom. He also held that the more diluted a substance was, the better it would be at removing the symptoms it would otherwise cause.

Even if Hahnemann had been correct, homeopathic remedies are so diluted they have no active ingredients. Calling it medicine would be like calling 400 blank pages a novel.

The original is diluted to one part in 100, agitated vigorously, then repeated ad infinitum. Even if there were reason to believe in the basic ideas of homeopathy, its method takes it beyond any possible value. A solute cannot be infinitely diluted since its molecules cannot be divided. Once the solute is down to its last molecule, each succeeding dilution makes is less likely that even that final molecule will remain.

James Randi, the man most responsible for my immersion in the skeptic movement, gobbles a bottle of 32 homeopathic sleeping pills in seminars without impact. He can do this safely because the original substance has been diluted to one part in a nonillion, a number so astronomical I don’t think I’ve used it before.

Since that number is beyond most people’s ability to comprehend, let’s look at it from another perspective. If Randi’s pills had been in liquid form, he would have had to drink 16 public swimming pools of it to ingest one molecule of the original substance. Homeopathic medicines are nothing more than well shaken water and alcohol. Drinking vodka would be as effective, and more pleasureful.

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“My trip to the psychic fair” (Undercover at a paranormal expo)

BROKEN CYRSTAL BALL
Today, I attended a Paranormal and Psychic Fair. Purveyors of otherworldly abilities plied their wares to those seeking answers. My body was in no need of healing, Shamanic or otherwise. My aura dislikes being photographed. My essential oil supplies are adequate. So I focused on a medium.

She was a pleasant enough lady, bespectacled with shoulder length, curling brown hair, probably in her late 50s. I watched her do a couple of 15-minute readings of the persons in front of me. Then it was my turn.

“Would you like a reading?” she asked. For a psychic, her vision of the near future seemed cloudy.

“Well, how does this work?”

“I see, hear, and feel guides and I go in the direction they take me.”

“Do you actually hear a voice?”

“No, it’s more of a presence. It’s sort of a hiss, but it varies in intensity. It’s free-flowing, I just go where it takes me.”

“Who are these guides?”

“They are those who have gone before us.” I’m guessing she meant the dead, not the guys she had just done readings for.

“I’ve seen things like this before, but it seems they lack specifics. Why wouldn’t the dead just come out and say who they are?”

“They say what they want to. They only have certain information they want to impart to us.”

On the two readings I saw, what they wanted to impart were extremely vague superficialities delivered in white noise gibberish.

“Oh, I see. Since you’re not actually hearing a voice or seeing anything, how do you know it’s real?”

“Because they are thoughts that I’m not thinking. They belong to someone else.”

“What percentage of the stuff is right? Do you ever miss anything or misinterpret it?”

“I always tell my clients not to worry about what I get right or wrong.” (That makes for an interesting business strategy. I have yet to hear a mechanic tell me, “Don’t worry about the days your car won’t start.”)

“How long have you had this ability?”

“Since I was a child. I didn’t say anything about it because I assumed everyone could do it. As I got older, I realized it was a gift. People would ask me, ‘Why are you always talking to yourself?’”

“How often do you have these feelings?”

“The senses just come over me, it’s like something that wells up from within. It’s not something I have much control over.”

“What does it feel like?”

“Well, it’s really hard to explain.” Certainly, I had heard nothing that would dissuade me from that accepting that description. Then she added, “It’s all in my head.”

I think we just found common ground.

Her previous reading was on a man contacting his grandmother. I was amazed at the coincidence of a deceased person speaking to her only on the day that the grandson showed up.

She said she could do my grandmother, too. Goodness, two dead grandmothers showing up on the day their grandsons came to the medium!

“That is because you are here to direct her. Without having the focus your presence provides, I would have no ability to pull her from the ether. You serve as the channel.”

And here I was, thinking I had no talent as an ether-snatching conduit.

Piecing this together, the gist seems to be that she filters through static, grabs hold of a mystic middle man, then does what the voices in her head aren’t telling her.

Besides speaking to the dead, she also claimed to be proficient in fortune telling, mind-reading, and general clairvoyance.

“Well, it all sounds good. But I’m still uncertain. I want to be sure this is real before I spend money on it.”

“I understand that, but you will leave here a satisfied customer.”

“Do you take Visa?”

“I do.”

“OK. If you can give me my credit card number I’ll know this is real and that I’m spending my money wisely.”

“Oh, it doesn’t work like that. I can’t control what comes. I just filter and interpret it when it does.”

I knew she was going to say that.

Well, gosh darn it, I came for a reading and that’s what we’re going to get. So I decided to do a reading on her. I didn’t say it to her. I just projected it to her telepathically. As she was psychic, that was sufficient. It went thusly:

“I’m overcome by a strong sense that you are excellent at tossing out generalities that apply to anyone. You are resilient and can gloss over your many misses. When I look inside of you, I see a woman who has significant abilities in using the Forer Effect to her advantage. You have a strong ability to impact those around you, filling them with subjective validation and guiding them toward self-fulfilling prophecies. It’s becoming even stronger. It is clear to me that cold reading is a big part of your past, present, and future. You are decisive, as you will reject the James Randi Million Dollar Challenge paperwork I will offer you at the end of this in-body experience.“

She was a nice enough person, but nothing I saw indicated any kind of paranormal ability. If she has these powers, neither she nor her fellow psychics have employed them when buying lottery tickets. None of the powers were of any use on Sept. 10, 2001.

In terms of seeing psychic ability, the day was a wash. There was, however, one correct vision of the future. She declined the James Randi challenge.

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“Horror-scopes” (Astrology)

horoscope
My horoscope for the day read, “You don’t have to create everything alone. Life isn’t an individual sport. To live life fully, you must participate. Often this involves interacting with other people. This is an exercise in confidence. Do you want to be with us? Regardless of your answer, outside events will lead you in a direction that you cannot predict.”

Let’s see how this played out. I was tasked to create a social media usage presentation for another office on the post where I work. It was made clear the office supervisor would preside over the meeting’s opening, and that another worker would send me some material for inclusion. So, check on the first prediction about not having to create everything alone and life not being an individual sport.

I participate in the Unitarian Church as the unofficial media relations person and am on one of the welcome teams. I am active in the PTA, spearheaded the creation of the school’s Facebook page, served as school carnival chair, and am co-president for next year. I help out with the community theater group when I can. And, indeed, these activities help me live a fuller life, so check again. And, man, every one of those interactions involves other people. Amazing. And it scores again with the point that I can’t predict things, since I’m not an astrologer.

It’s rather difficult to put astrology to a scientific test, but I did the best I could by creating a control sample. I picked the first line of horoscopes from six signs not my own, to see how well they would have predicted my future.

We’ll go through each of these Pick Six and see if they hit. Lines from the horoscopes are in italics.

Your projects have taken some time to get set up. I had been kicking the idea of this blog around for three months before launching it.

When we have found our path, we naturally want to walk down it. When I left work that day, one foot was continually put in front of the other. In a more figurative sense, I have decided to live the rest of my life in Moline, after having lived in 21 other places before.

You feel compelled to pick up the pieces of the past and save them. Just the day prior, I had cleaned the house, and this included collecting plastic dinosaurs I played with as a child and putting them away.

Your opinion will carry weight later on. The next week, my guest column ran in the Moline newspaper.

The day will be fairly quiet for you. My boss and his boss were both gone that day.

It would be much more reasonable for you to think first about the basic material needs of you and your family. I wasn’t sure if I was going to the grocery store today or later in the week, but now I know.

You can expect to have to settle a number of minor technical problems involving communications or transmissions. That’s what I do every day! This thing is reading my mind.

So it made for a stunningly accurate horoscope. Except that it wasn’t mine.

The reason horoscopes can seem accurate is because they use ideas and terms so general that they will apply to almost anyone. They even use contradictory ideas, such as “You can be indecisive, but aren’t afraid to take a stand.” And it doesn’t hurt to throw in what people like to hear, such as “You have a great deal of untapped potential,” or, “You are someone who can be trusted.”

This was most famously demonstrated in a 1948 psychological study by Dr. Bertram Forer. Participants were given a reading, then asked to rate it for accuracy on a scale of 0 to 5. The average score was 4.4.

It turned out that everyone had been given the same reading. Pieces of different horoscopes and been plucked and thrown into an astrological gumbo. The ideas were elastic and vague enough that they connected with whoever read them, regardless of age, race, class, or gender. This is known as the Forer Effect, where persons put stock in broad ideas because they seem personal.

A similar phenomenon is subjective validation, where an idea is deemed correct if it has personal meaning to the listener. Certainly, the idea may very well be correct. But it might also be wrong, and the tendency when reading horoscopes is to find meaning in it and square it with one’s existence.

Everyone is searching for meaning and significance in life, and when something like a horoscope seems to be filling the need, the tendency is to embrace it. That can lead to many self-fulfilling prophecies, as the person starts acting out the prediction. It is harmless fun for some, put potentially dangerous and psychologically destructive for others.

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“Crossing Over to Long Island” (Mediums)

GHOUL
Psychics have come in many forms over the years: Soothsayers with their portent of doom; fortune tellers hovering over crystal balls; intense men in suits presiding over a séance in the dark. The most prominent these days is a woman who is from Long Island, is a medium, and is short on specifics.

While the skeptic movement is my greatest passion, I try to keep my posts light and nonjudgmental. That is not the case when I address the likes of Teresa Caputo and John Edward. I reserve great disdain for those who tell persons they are speaking with their dead relatives. I called them vultures until I realized this analogy was amiss. Vultures scavenge from the dead.

John Edward and Teresa Caputo prey on the living, making millions off grieving parents, children, and siblings, when they are at their most vulnerable.

These hucksters are graduate students in the twisted art of cold reading. They will ask, “Is there anyone here that has lost a sibling?” Well, yes, in an audience of 500, of course someone is going to qualify. Then they keep subsequent “guesses” vague enough that they keep scoring “hits” and the person, desperate to think they are connecting to a lost loved one, will buy it, and discard any “misses.” What seems like innocent conversation is actually the medium mentally feeling out the subject. They can gauge body language and voice inflection, and know when to proceed further. On television, of course, any misses are edited out, and there is the possibility of it being scripted.

Mediums claim the dead person is saying they loved music, being outdoors, or family time. Not once has the deceased announced, “My name is Joe and I was born on Jan. 26, 1931, in Tyler, Texas.”

Even some who acknowledge that Edward and Caputo are charlatans believe some good comes from what they do. They think Edward and Caputo offer those left behind peace and comfort. At best, this is true in the short term.

In the Kübler-Ross model, the five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Someone who buys what Edward or Caputo are selling is vulnerable to spending an indeterminate amount of time in stages one or three. If someone claims to be speaking to a deceased loved one, the departed might not seem dead at all, and denial is an ongoing process. Those who see the same medium regularly are especially susceptible to the bargaining stage. For a price, the medium will send a few more pieces of netherwordly reassurance your way.

Not everyone accepts the Kübler-Ross Model and, of course, people grieve in different ways. But relying on a medium, rather than going through the normal process, will keep a person stuck in their grief and no genuine healing will occur.

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“Seeking spooks and Sasquatch” (Ghost and Bigfoot reality shows)

BIGFOOT

If someone struggles through two weeks of incompetence at work, that person will likely have a talk with the boss. If it goes on for another month, that talk is put in writing. Still another month means another meeting with the boss, who is probably the ex-boss by meeting’s end.

And a decade of incompetence and total failure means a million-dollar contract and being brought back for more. “Ghost Hunters” is in its 10th season on Syfy. Ten years so far, with nary one captured spirit. In fact, no ghost hunter in history has captured one. If ghosts exist, their hunters are the planet’s most inefficient workers.

Among the issues with shows like “Ghost Hunters” is that only one solution is considered. Noises can never be the house settling, a board creaking, or the wind blowing. Let’s say the search is on for the ghost of a man whose fiancee, named Leigh, met a premature death. A high-pitched noise that vaguely sounds like, “Icy” has to be the poltergeist announcing, “I miss Leigh.” It can never be a pipe whistling or, for that matter, the apparition declaring, “I kissed a tree.”

These shows attempt to have an air of validity by using electronic equipment and scientific-sounding terms, however poorly-defined. They employ electromagnetic field measurements, Geiger counters, geophones, and night vision devices. But no explanations are offered as to how this equipment would reveal the ghost’s existence. No criteria are given for what constitutes a capture, the alleged point of the show. The practitioners try to appear scientific, but they have no established standards, no stated goals, no checks and balances, no critical peer review, and no definition of proof.

Those who hire ghost hunters think there’s a spirit present, so they already have feelings of dread or fear when in the house. This causes a self-fulfilling confirmation in someone who has decided ahead of time the place is haunted. That fear itself becomes more evidence in the continuing cycle, and the feelings are themselves claimed as proof by the hunters. The hunts are almost always done at night, even though there’s no reason to suspect this would lead to more success. It’s done only to make for a more theatrical production and to heighten the feelings of fright and mystery.

“Ghost Adventures” airs on the Travel Channel, an irony since ghosts never seem to travel. They are always sought out in the home where they lived and died.

Considerably more mobile is Bigfoot, the animal kingdom’s most rapid and stealthy offering. They are so fast and cunning that a sustainable population of 10-foot bipedal apes has lived within 50 miles of Seattle for a century without being caught. Not once have they been successfully hunted, captured, or hit by a vehicle. They keep moving even after death, as no camper or hiker has happened upon their remains.

Undeterred, producers of the History Channel’s “MosterQuest” trudge ahead in pursuit of this giant walking carpet. My idea for a History Channel episode: A story about the days when the History Channel covered history.

Like their ghost-chasing brethren, Bigfoot hunters have spent more than a century in the precise places they expect to find their prey and have yet to bag one. The strongest evidence, of course, would be the capture of a live creature, verified by biologists to be an undiscovered species. Other examples of strong evidence would be a corpse, skeleton, or sizable patch of fur. None of these have materialized. There have been thousands of pieces of weak evidence, in the form of eyewitness claims, shaky videos, and widely varying footprints easily faked with plaster. But 5,000 pieces of unverifiable evidence does not equate to strong evidence any more than 5,000 cups of weak tea dumped in a giant vat would make for a strong drink.

Cryptozoologists point out that Western science only confirmed the existence of the somewhat Bigfoot-like gorilla in the 19th Century. Okapis were found later still, and the coelacanth was thought to be extinct for millions of years. These points are not entirely without merit and, of course, the search for undiscovered animals should be encouraged. But using your desired conclusion as the starting point, then seeking support for that position, isn’t how science is done.

Furthermore, if discovery is the incentive, there are options that will yield more fruit. Entomologists estimate there are 10,000 undiscovered species of ant. But to a cryptozoologist, ants are boring. Also, it requires years of tedious study, learning the characteristics of all known ants, before foraging for their newfound crawling cousins.

So cryptozoologists spend their time looking for Bigfoots (Or Bigfeet, maybe. They’ve never found even one, not sure what they would call two). They also search for an extinction-defying plesiosaur in Scotland or for Frosty’s antithesis on the world’s highest mountain. At a minimum, they hope to land something with a backbone, like Chupacabra.

Since neither the poltergeist nor crypto camps have had success, maybe they should pool their resources and start hunting for Bigfoot’s ghost.

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“Morals, molecules, and myth” (Religion)

TIKTAALIK
THIS IS MY COLUMN THAT RAN IN THE MOLINE DISPATCH-ARGUS

In the April 9 column, “What colleges teach young believers,” it was written that persons deserve to hear all sides. This is true. A person should never be afraid to have his or her beliefs challenged. If the beliefs are true, they’ll survive the challenge. If the beliefs are wrong, the person will be enlightened.

In that spirit, I offer a different viewpoint. In the column, it was written that if a person believes there is no god, then anything goes. Yet nonbelievers make up 19 percent of the country, but are just .02 percent of the prisoners. One need not be religious to be moral. I commit all the assault, robbery, and pillaging I want, which is none. I don’t need a book to tell me those things are wrong.

Those are my morals; now let’s look at the Bible’s. We have, on God’s instruction, a man being stoned to death for picking up sticks. We have, at God’s prompting, bears tearing apart 42 children for teasing a bald man. A woman marrying her rapist is mandated in Deuteronomy 22:28-29.

The greatest irony was the columnist criticizing the indoctrination of children because, without this, religion would collapse. Thailand is overwhelmingly Buddhist, Qatar is overwhelmingly Muslim, India is overwhelmingly Hindu, and the rural South is overwhelming Christian. This is because a strong majority believes what they’ve been told to since pre-school. You’ve got to get them when they’re young because if you wait until adulthood, they will likely reject a talking donkey and a 969-year-old man.

The columnist offered God as an alternative to evolution, yet her best evidence was citing the Bible as its own confirmation. Science, meanwhile, has Lucy, Archaeopteryx, and Tiktaalik.

Such evidence shows that Genesis is not a first-person account of creation. It is a myth written by Bronze Age Middle East nomads. It teaches that the universe is 6,000 years old, which we know is false because we can see light from stars millions of light years away. It teaches that humans came along within a week of Earth being formed. Yet the geologic column shows that man came along much later than less-developed animals. It teaches that the moon has its own light, an idea inconsistent with astrophysics.

When Nebraska Man was shown to be an error and Piltdown Man proven a hoax, science admitted the mistakes and changed its thinking accordingly. By contrast, religion holds onto its teachings in spite of the evidence, as cited in the previous paragraph.

Besides science, the Bible is also in conflict with itself. Has a man ever seen God, as Moses did in the Torah (Exodus 33:23), or has man never seen God, as declared in a New Testament gospel (John 1:18)? Was Joseph’s father Jacob (Matthew 1:16) or Heli (Luke 3:23)? Does a Christian man follow God’s command that males have long hair (Numbers 6:5), or obey his dictate that it be short (I Corinthians 11:14)?

Persons in some ancient cultures believed the wind was a god’s breath. This and similar explanations helped them try to make sense of the world. As science advanced, we needed deities less and less to explain our universe. That search for truth continues today, as does the denying of that truth. Science essentially says, “I don’t know, let’s find out.” Religion essentially says, “I don’t know, therefore God did it.”