The postman always rings twice

When I started this blog ten years ago, I knew that I was gonna get hate mail.  It was inevitable, given my own strong opinions and the nature of the topics I write on.  I try to be as fair as I can, but I have no particular problem with identifying bullshit as such, and that has the effect of pissing a lot of people off.

 The thing that never fails to amaze me, though, is which posts get people stirred up.  I wrote a post comparing Donald Trump to Hitler, and nary a peep.  And yesterday I get two -- count 'em, two -- vitriolic screeds, both from posts I did ages ago -- one from the post I did in 2013 about the claim that hair is basically extended nerve endings, and the other about the claim I looked at a year earlier that there are giant glass pyramids on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean that collect and focus cosmic ray energy.

The first one lambasted me for not going out and doing a study on the topic myself before criticizing it, despite the fact that the story I was responding to had no evidence presented whatsoever except for an alleged study by someone whose name was changed to protect privacy.  Because, presumably, studying hair is frowned upon by the scientific community and could result in death threats, or something.  The original article was also laced with claims that were demonstrably false (such as that hair "emits electromagnetic energy"). But I guess my pointing this out pasted a target on my chest:

Humans have predators in the natural world...you're trying to say that our primitive ancestors were as lazy and non-attentive as some random douche canoe 'skeptic' on his computer, shovelling Bugles into his mouth in his Family Guy jammie pants?  HA!  No.  They slept in fucking trees to stay alive (hence the hypnic jerk) and had to intuit and be aware of their surroundings.

No, what I'm saying is that hair, being dead strands of keratin, are not nerves.  Keep your eye on the ball, here.  Also, being that I spent years teaching a neuroscience class, I'm well aware that we have sense organs, and the evolutionary origins thereof.

You honestly believe that there is NO WAY somebody with longer hair might be able to sense changes in the wind, movements from other animals around them, foreign predatory energy (as in E=MC squared) approaching?  REALLY?  It makes SO much sense, that it warrants a study, and it should be done.

Actually, if you'll read what I wrote, you'll see that I did say that hair increases skin sensitivity, and that whiskers in many animals function as tactile sensors.  And did you really just say that Einstein's mass/energy equivalence has something to do with picking up "foreign predatory energy?"

And as far as this warranting a study, I'll simply quote Christopher Hitchens: "What is asserted without proof may be dismissed without proof."

You clearly have no fucking CLUE what you're talking about, and that's coming from somebody who actually comes from the scientific community.  Stop trying to play scientist; you're bad at it.  So many of you Atheist/skeptics/whatever say the things you BELIEVE a scientist would say, when they would NEVER say it; you don't have the knowledge to back a claim, and just go around saying something is bullshit because you think it makes you appear intelligent...but something you clearly don't know is that an actual researcher or scientist would know WITHOUT A DOUBT that something was correct or incorrect before saying so. 

Cf. my earlier comment about my teaching neuroscience. Your move.

[Image is in the Public Domain]

The second one, about the ocean floor pyramids, was, if possible, even snarkier.  It began as follows:

The thing that makes me fucking angry about idiots like yourself is that you dismiss stuff you've never seen.

Another quote comes to mind, this one from Delos McKown, to wit: "The invisible and the nonexistent look very much alike."  But point made. I've never been to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.  Do continue.

If something doesn't fit the way you think the world is, you say it doesn't exist, piss on it, and walk away. 

It's hard to see how I'd piss on something that doesn't exist.  Even worse, how I'd piss on a nonexistent object that's not at the bottom of the Atlantic.  But all purely mechanical problems aside, I guess I was a little dismissive.

How do you know what the effects of cosmic rays are on the energy of the planet?  You talk like you have proof that pyramids couldn't be channelers of energy, but you can't prove it because you never leave your fucking armchair long enough to do anything but scoff.

I get out of my armchair pretty frequently, actually.  As far as how I know what cosmic rays can and cannot do, I once again feel obliged to point out that I have a degree in physics, teaching certificates in physics, biology, chemistry, and mathematics, and the ability to read.  Those put together give me at least a reasonably good ability to understand actual science.

And another thing: there's this fallacy called "shifting the burden of proof."  If you make an outrageous statement -- such as there being giant glass pyramids in the ocean that focus quantum energy frequency vibrations -- it is not the responsibility of those who say "bullshit" to prove they don't exist.

The pyramid guy ended by saying:

I bet you don't even have the balls to post this comment on your blog.  People like you hate it when you're challenged, because you want to be right without doing any work.  Anyhow, fuck you.

You're right that I'm not posting it, because it is, as you point out, my blog.  (Although I am writing an entire post about it instead, the irony of which does not escape me.)  Let me be plain about this: commenting is a privilege, not a right.  I'm happy to post contrary points-of-view -- not that I enjoy being wrong, mind you, but having new information brought to light is how we learn.  I've more than once printed retractions when I have been dead wrong, an experience which is profoundly humbling but is necessary for honesty's sake.

But it's a little frustrating to be accused of being a shallow-minded scoffer by people who retort with shallow-minded scoffing.  If someone has legitimate science -- not just a screaming post of "it could be so, and you can't prove it isn't, so fuck you!" -- I'm happy to listen.

Until then, I'm sticking with my original stance, and don't expect me to rise to the bait and argue with you.   Or even post your comment.  Call me a douche canoe skeptic, but there you are.

In any case: keep those cards and letters coming.  I'm not fond of hate mail, but as Brendan Behan put it, "There's no such thing as bad publicity."  

So I tend to agree with Captain Jack Sparrow.  If people are sending me hate mail, at least they're reading what I write, and there's nothing wrong with that.

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Just last week, I wrote about the internal voice most of us live with, babbling at us constantly -- sometimes with novel or creative ideas, but most of the time (at least in my experience) with inane nonsense.  The fact that this internal voice is nearly ubiquitous, and what purpose it may serve, is the subject of psychologist Ethan Kross's wonderful book Chatter: The Voice in our Head, Why it Matters, and How to Harness It, released this month and already winning accolades from all over.

Chatter not only analyzes the inner voice in general terms, but looks at specific case studies where the internal chatter brought spectacular insight -- or short-circuited the individual's ability to function entirely.  It's a brilliant analysis of something we all experience, and gives some guidance not only into how to quiet it when it gets out of hand, but to harness it for boosting our creativity and mental agility.

If you're a student of your own inner mental workings, Chatter is a must-read!

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Nyeti

Diehard believers in the Yeti -- known in North America as Sasquatch or Bigfoot -- have this tendency when confronted to bring out such dubious evidence as photographs of prints and blurred video footage.

Skeptics, of course, need more than that.  While those could be evidence of the fabled proto-hominin, the fact is that it's all too easy to fake that sort of thing.  In these days of Photoshop, creating absolutely convincing videos or photographs of Bigfoot (or UFOs or ghosts or what-have-you) is child's play.  And given the combination of attention-seeking behavior and desperation by the pro-Sasquatch cadre, it's not to be wondered at that we skeptics look at all this stuff with a wry eye.

"But wait," the squatchers cry.  "We have hard evidence!  In the form of hair, teeth, feces, and so on!"

And, in fact, so they do.  The Messner Mountain Museum (amongst other places) has a variety of bits and pieces from the Himalayas that have been long claimed to be from the fabled Abominable Snowman.

But of course, the problem is, until that claim is evaluated by a trained scientist, it remains conjecture, given that unless you know what you're looking at, a great deal of mammal fur (not to mention mammal shit) all looks kind of alike.

Finally, the museums have acquiesced.  You can see their reluctance; if the samples proved to be from a non-Yeti source, it's kind of an anticlimax, which would be bad for business.  But the demands of science proved persuasive, and they handed over the goods to Charlotte Lindqvist, professor of biological science at the University of Buffalo.

So, without further ado: the samples from the museums turned out to be from...

... eight bears and a dog.

Which is simultaneously expected and a little disappointing.  Being a biologist myself, no one would be happier than me if the Yeti did turn out to be real.  For one thing, it would be highly entertaining to watch the creationists trying to explain that away.  For another, the sheer magnitude of the coolness factor of there being a hitherto-undocumented giant primate species is undeniable.

But alas, Lindqvist has shot down our hopes and dreams.  "Science does not (or at least should not) have an agenda, and I didn't set out to debunk the Yeti myth," Lindqvist said.  "Although we had a hypothesis that they could be bears, the samples we analyzed were of unknown identity to us and we didn't know what to expect...  Our findings strongly suggest that the biological underpinnings of the Yeti legend can be found in local bears."

Or, as my pal and fellow writer Andrew Butters (of the wonderful blog Potato Chip Math) succinctly put it: "Yeti?  Nyeti."

The scientific method wins again, even though the win is a bit of a Pyrrhic victory for us cryptozoology buffs.  We keep hoping for another coelacanth, and the scientists give us eight bears and a fucking dog.

I mean, no disrespect intended toward bears and dogs, which are cool in their own right.  But still.

So I guess it's back to square one, which I have to admit we kind of never left in the first place. There are other cryptids left to search for, but none of the remainder seem all that likely to me.   For example, I just can't take seriously things like the Scottish Kelpie, which is a man-eating horse-headed water creature, who can also shapeshift into a beautiful naked woman.

Call me skeptical, but I just don't think that one will bear out.

Anyhow, if you're a Bigfoot aficionado, sorry to rain on your parade.  But as I've so often said, you can't argue with the facts.  (Well, you can, but you won't succeed, and you'll make yourself look like a damn fool in the process, as the inimitable Melba Ketchum proved when she claimed she'd found Bigfoot DNA, created a journal so she could publish a paper she'd written that no peer-reviewed journal would touch, had a major online meltdown when everyone laughed at her, and thereby torpedoed her own career.)

As for me, I'm on to bigger and better things, like planning a trip to Australia so I can search for the legendary Drop Bear, which has been likened to a "giant carnivorous koala."  I hear they can be dangerous, so I plan on doing what the locals suggest, which is to walk around holding a screwdriver point-up over my head, so if a Drop Bear drops on me, he'll impale himself.  Better safe than sorry.

The postman always rings twice

When I started this blog five years ago, I knew that I was gonna get hate mail.  It was inevitable, given my own strong opinions and the nature of the topics I write on.  I try to be as fair as I can, but I have no problem with identifying bullshit as such, and that has the effect of pissing a lot of people off.

The thing that never fails to amaze me, though, is which posts get people stirred up.  I write a post comparing Donald Trump to Hitler, and nary a peep.  And yesterday I get two -- count 'em, two -- vitriolic screeds, one from the post I did in 2013 about the claim that hair is basically extended nerve endings, and the other about the claim I looked at a year earlier that there are giant glass pyramids on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean that collect and focus cosmic ray energy.

The first one lambasted me for not going out and doing a study on the topic myself before criticizing it, despite the fact that the story I was responding to had no evidence presented whatsoever except for an alleged study by someone whose name was changed to protect privacy.  Because, presumably, studying hair is frowned upon by the scientific community and could result in death threats, or something.  The original article was also laced with claims that were demonstrably false (such as that hair "emits electromagnetic energy").  But I guess my pointing this out pasted a target on my chest:

Humans have predators in the natural world...you're trying to say that our primitive ancestors were as lazy and non-attentive as some random douche canoe 'skeptic' on his computer, shovelling Bugles into his mouth in his Family Guy jammie pants?  HA!  No. They slept in fucking trees to stay alive (hence the hypnic jerk) and had to intuit and be aware of their surroundings.

No, what I'm saying is that hair, being dead strands of keratin, are not nerves.  Being that I teach a neuroscience class, I'm well aware that we have sense organs, and the evolutionary origins thereof.

You honestly believe that there is NO WAY somebody with longer hair might be able to sense changes in the wind, movements from other animals around them, foreign predatory energy (as in E=MC squared) approaching?  REALLY?  It makes SO much sense, that it warrants a study, and it should be done.

Actually, if you'll read what I wrote, you'll see that I did say that hair increases skin sensitivity, and that whiskers in many animals function as tactile sensors.  And did you really just say that Einstein's mass/energy equivalence has something to do with picking up "foreign predatory energy?"

And as far as this warranting a study, I'll simply quote Christopher Hitchens: "What is asserted without proof may be dismissed without proof."

You clearly have no fucking CLUE what you're talking about, and that's coming from somebody who actually comes from the scientific community.  Stop trying to play scientist; you're bad at it.  So many of you Atheist/skeptics/whatever say the things you BELIEVE a scientist would say, when they would NEVER say it; you don't have the knowledge to back a claim, and just go around saying something is bullshit because you think it makes you appear intelligent...but something you clearly don't know is that an actual researcher or scientist would know WITHOUT A DOUBT that something was correct or incorrect before saying so.

 Cf. my earlier comment about my teaching neuroscience.  Your move.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The second one was, if possible, even snarkier.  It began as follows:

The thing that makes me fucking angry about idiots like yourself is that you dismiss stuff you've never seen.

Another quote comes to mind, this one from Delos McKown, to wit: "The invisible and the nonexistent look very much alike."  But point made.  I've never been to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.  Do continue.

If something doesn't fit the way you think the world is, you say it doesn't exist, piss on it, and walk away. 

It's hard to see how I'd piss on something that doesn't exist.  Even worse, how I'd piss on a nonexistent object that's not at the bottom of the Atlantic.  But all purely mechanical problems aside, I guess I was a little dismissive.

How do you know what the effects of cosmic rays are on the energy of the planet?  You talk like you have proof that pyramids couldn't be channelers of energy, but you can't prove it because you never leave your fucking armchair long enough to do anything but scoff.

I get out of my armchair pretty frequently, actually.  As far as how I know what cosmic rays can and cannot do, I once again feel obliged to point out that I have a degree in physics, teaching certificates in physics, biology, chemistry, and mathematics, and the ability to read.  Those put together give me at least a reasonably good ability to understand actual science.

And another thing: there's this fallacy called "shifting the burden of proof."  If you make an outrageous statement -- such as there being giant glass pyramids in the ocean that focus quantum energy frequency vibrations -- it is not the responsibility of those who say "bullshit" to prove they don't exist.

The pyramid guy ended by saying:

I bet you don't even have the balls to post this comment on your blog.  People like you hate it when you're challenged, because you want to be right without doing any work.  Anyhow, fuck you.

You're right that I'm not posting it, because it is, as you point out, my blog.  (Although I am writing an entire post about it instead, the irony of which does not escape me.)  Let me be plain about this: commenting is a privilege, not a right.  I'm happy to post contrary points-of-view -- not that I enjoy being wrong, mind you, but having new information brought to light is how we learn.  I've more than once printed retractions when I have been dead wrong, an experience which is profoundly humbling but is necessary for honesty's sake.

But it's a little frustrating to be accused of being a shallow-minded scoffer by people who retort with shallow-minded scoffing.  If someone has legitimate science -- not just a screaming post of "it could be so, and you can't prove it isn't" -- I'm happy to listen.

Until then, I'm sticking with my original stance, and don't expect me to rise to the bait and argue with you.  Or even post your comment.  Call me a douche canoe skeptic, but there you are.

In any case: keep those cards and letters coming.  I'm not fond of hate mail, but as Brendan Behan put it, "There's no such thing as bad publicity."  If people are sending hate mail, at least they're reading what I write, and there's nothing wrong with that.

The hair apparent

Just recently, there's been a claim making the rounds of social media sites by virtue of the "Forward," "Repost," and "Share" functions.  The original seems to have been written about a year and a half ago, but for some reason it's really been circulating in the last few weeks, which is odd given that it is composed of pure, unadulterated, USDA-Grade-A bullshit.

The claim?  That you shouldn't cut your hair (that includes facial hair, guys), because it's an "extension of your nervous system."

Naturally, we have to begin the whole thing with allegations that this critical information has been covered up by the government, because nothing is complete without a hint of conspiracy:

Our culture leads people to believe that hair style is a matter of personal preference, that hair style is a matter of fashion and/or convenience, and that how people wear their hair is simply a cosmetic issue. Back in the Viet Nam war however, an entirely different picture emerged, one that has been carefully covered up and hidden from public view. 

We then hear from "Sally" [name changed to protect privacy] whose [unnamed] husband worked as a psychologist for a VA hospital.  He uncovered something really strange in some reports of mysterious "government studies:"

Sally said, “I remember clearly an evening when my husband came back to our apartment on Doctor’s Circle carrying a thick official looking folder in his hands. Inside were hundreds of pages of certain studies commissioned by the government. He was in shock from the contents. What he read in those documents completely changed his life. From that moment on my conservative middle of the road husband grew his hair and beard and never cut them again. What is more, the VA Medical center let him do it, and other very conservative men in the staff followed his example. As I read the documents, I learned why.

It seems that during the Viet Nam War special forces in the war department had sent undercover experts to comb American Indian Reservations looking for talented scouts, for tough young men trained to move stealthily through rough terrain. They were especially looking for men with outstanding, almost supernatural, tracking abilities. Before being approached, these carefully selected men were extensively documented as experts in tracking and survival.

With the usual enticements, the well proven smooth phrases used to enroll new recruits, some of these Indian trackers were then enlisted. Once enlisted, an amazing thing happened. Whatever talents and skills they had possessed on the reservation seemed to mysteriously disappear, as recruit after recruit failed to perform as expected in the field.

Serious casualities [sic] and failures of performance led the government to contract expensive testing of these recruits, and this is what was found.

When questioned about their failure to perform as expected, the older recruits replied consistently that when they received their required military haircuts, they could no longer ‘sense’ the enemy, they could no longer access a ‘sixth sense’ , their ‘intuition’ no longer was reliable, they couldn’t ‘read’ subtle signs as well or access subtle extrasensory information.

This, we are told, is why "Indians keep their hair long."

But what is the science behind all of this?  Simple, they say; hair is actually a bunch of... nerves:

Each part of the body has highly sensitive work to perform for the survival and well being of the body as a whole. The body has a reason for every part of itself.

Hair is an extension of the nervous system, it can be correctly seen as exteriorized nerves, a type of highly-evolved ‘feelers’ or ‘antennae’ that transmit vast amounts of important information to the brain stem, the limbic system, and the neocortex.

Not only does hair in people, including facial hair in men, provide an information highway reaching the brain, hair also emits energy, the electromagnetic energy emitted by the brain into the outer environment. This has been seen in Kirlian photography when a person is photographed with long hair and then rephotographed after the hair is cut.

When hair is cut, receiving and sending transmissions to and from the environment are greatly hampered. This results in ‘numbing-out’.

Right!  Because highly complex cells, with nuclei and other organelles, and an intricate set of transport proteins, that are capable of sending and receiving electrical signals, are exactly the same thing as a bunch of dead strands of keratin.

In one sense -- one very limited sense -- they are correct.  Hairs on the skin do increase its sensitivity, and some animals (cats are an excellent example) use whiskers as tactile sensors.  But the idea that hair is acting as some kind of conduit for psychic energy is ridiculous.

And as for Kirlian photography, of course you get a different image if you remove someone's hair.  Kirlian photography is just a method for photographing the static electrical discharge from something (or someone) when you subject it (or him) to a high voltage at low current (the equivalent of a bad carpet shock).  Have you ever seen photographs of people who are holding on to a Van de Graaff generator?

This photograph would look completely different if she was bald.

And I suspect that the Dalai Lama might disagree with the statement that guys who are bald are "numbed out."

As for me, I have had long hair.  Really long, at one point in my life, like down to the middle of my back.  I also, at one point, had facial hair.  I did not notice a bit of difference in my Sensitivity To External Stimuli the day I simultaneously had my pony tail cut off, (and in fact, got what was damn near to a buzz cut) and shaved off all of my facial hair.  Mostly what I noticed is that getting ready for work in the morning took drastically less time, my head was cooler when the weather was hot, and I didn't have to deal with unmanageable snarls on windy days.  But I was no more in tune with "the Sixth Sense" when I had long hair than I am now (i.e. not at all), despite what all of the vague, uncited "government studies" allegedly show.

So that's our dose of pseudoscience for this morning.  Leaving your hair long so you can pick up, and broadcast, psychic signals.  I'd like to say that this will be the end of the discussion, but that may be a forlorn hope given that this article seems to be making the rounds (one Facebook link to it I saw had been "liked" over 5,000 times, and had hundreds of comments).  Be that as it may, I'm done discussing it, because I need to go take a shower and wash my nerve endings.