A trip through the vegetable aisle

Times are tough for psychics.  There have been the legal troubles dogging famous names like "Psychic Sally" Morgan and Theresa Caputo, "The Long Island Medium," not to mention the efforts of people like The Amazing Randi to debunk professional psychics as charlatans and hoaxers.

So with all of this unpredictable bad stuff going on, you can imagine that it's becoming increasingly difficult for your average working psychic to afford crystal balls and magic wands and flowing robes, and all of the other necessities of the job.  That stuff has got to be expensive.  So no wonder that some of them have turned to doing divination using cheaper tools...

... like garden vegetables.

You probably think I'm making this up, but in a link sent to me by the inimitable writer, skeptic, and deep thinker Tyler Tork, we meet one Jemima Packington, a British woman who says that she is the world's only "asparamancer."

Yes, "asparamancer," as in "asparagus."  Because what Packington does is she goes out and buys some asparagus spears at the local grocery store, and then comes home, tosses them in the air, and then from the pattern they make where they fall, she tells us what's going to happen.

In the video in the link, which you all must watch, she does a demonstration of "asparamancy," in which the asparagus spears are supposed to tell us about the weather.  So she chucks her asparagus spears around, and proceeds to tell us that because some "little bits and pieces" fell off, that "this would suggest some rain."

What, the fact that you live in England didn't suggest that to you by itself?  I was in England on holiday for the entire month of July about fifteen years ago, and it rained pretty much continuously.  The locals, of course, didn't seem to be bothered at all.  I walked into a pub, soaked to the skin after a ten-mile hike in the Yorkshire Dales in a chilly downpour, and the owner of the pub looked over at me as I stood there, dripping and shivering, and said, and I quote, "Mistin' a bit thick out there today, ain't it?"

For cryin' in the sink, predicting rain in England is a little like predicting that January in upstate New York is going to be "a bit nippy."

She also said that because of the direction of the spears, there was going to be a lot of wind.  Note, in the photograph I posted above, her hair blowing in the wind, which once again you'd think would be sufficient, without the asparagus.  It reminds me of the magical Weather Forecasting Stone, have you seen it?

But Packington doesn't just forecast the weather.  According to the article, she has made a number of other predictions, to wit:

1. There will be sad a loss to the Royal Family.
2. But there will also be a happy addition.
3. A major entertainment mogul will retire.
4. Politics in the Middle East will continue to raise concern.
5. One political party leader will be dogged by turmoil and not recover.
6. A storm this month will bring more misery to Britain.
7. The weather in the Far East will deteriorate as the year progresses.
8. A musical supergroup will split.
9. There will be a string of celebrity divorces.

Whoo!  Trouble in the Middle East and a string of celebrity divorces!  Those are some insightful predictions, there.  It's no wonder that Packington says that her predictions always come true.  That happens when you predict things that everyone already knew were going to happen.

But that doesn't stop her from claiming that she has magic powers that allow her to make accurate predictions about the future.  And you can follow her on Twitter if you want to keep up with them, @Asparamancer.  As for me, I think I'm going to go to the grocery store, but not for asparagus.  I think I should buy some eggplant instead.  Just last week a chef in Baton Rouge, Louisiana found an eggplant slice whose seeds spelled out "GOD," and promptly declared that it was a miraculous message from the Lord.

If I was a deity, I'd find a better way to sign my name than to inscribe it inside an eggplant, but what do I know?  Maybe vegetables do channel magic and/or holy messages, and instead of the bacon and eggs I had planned for breakfast, I should go cook up some brussels sprouts or something.

Seeds of doubt

C'mon, people, it's time to grow up a little.

When we're toddlers, we accept things without question.  If our parents say something, we pretty much believe that it must be true.  (Whether we do what they tell us afterwards, though, is another issue.)  After a time, we start experimenting, and testing the world -- sometimes with unfortunate results, such as when we decide to find out why Mommy says that Mr. Finger and Mr. LightSocket can't be friends.

But this highlights an important principle, which is that our first and best way to find out about things is by finding evidence.  "Show me why" is a pretty important first step to knowledge.

It's not the last step, though.  After the "show me why" stage we should move on to "but how do you know it's true?", which is a deeper and more sophisticated question.  Okay, from the evidence of my eyes, it looks like the Sun is moving across the sky.  In order to move past that to the correct explanation, we have to ask the question, "What if there is a better explanation that still accounts for all of the evidence?"

And in this case, of course, it turns out that there is.

There are other facets to this mode of inquiry.  What confounding factors could there be?  What if there are uncontrolled variables?  What if the person who made the original claim was lying?  What if my preconceived biases made me misjudge the evidence, or (perhaps) ignore some of the evidence entirely?  What if there is correlation between A and B, but instead of A causing B, B causes A -- or, perhaps, some third factor caused them both?

This whole process is what is collectively known as "Critical Thinking."  What is unfortunate, though, is that a lot of people seem to be stuck at the "I see evidence, so it must be true" stage, which is probably why the whole WiFi-kills-plants thing is making the rounds of social media... again.  Just a couple of days ago, a friend of mine ran across it, and asked the right question: "can this actually be true?"

The claim is that five ninth-graders from Denmark had noticed that if they slept near their WiFi routers, they "had trouble concentrating in school the next day."  Because clearly, if ninth graders are distracted, it must be because of WiFi.  So the kids allegedly set up an experiment with cress seeds, placed some near a router, and had others in a "room without radiation," and had the results pictured above.

Well.  The whole thing is suspect from the get-go, because we're told nothing about other conditions the seeds were experiencing -- light, humidity, temperature, air flow, and so forth.  Was the "room without radiation" well-lit?  Were the seeds near the router warmer than the supposed control group?  There are a hundred things about this so-called experiment that we're not being told, and yet we're supposed to buy the results -- in spite of the fact that "control all variables but one, or the results are suspect" is the first thing taught in high school science classes.  (For a nice take-apart of this "experiment," take a look here -- and note, especially, that attempts to replicate the girls' experiment have not produced any results.)

What else?  First, it's from Spirit Science, a notorious peddler of woo.  Second, unless they were in a lead-lined vault, I doubt whether the control seeds were actually in a "room without radiation."  Even if you're some distance from the nearest router, you (and your room) are constantly being pierced by radio waves, which pass easily through most solid objects (if they didn't, old-fashioned (i.e. pre-cable) televisions and almost all modern radios would not work inside houses or cars).  Then there's the issue of how many thousands of WiFi routers in the world are sitting near perfectly healthy house plants -- for years, not just for thirteen days.  And even if WiFi did kill cress seeds, there's no guarantee that it would have the same (or any) effect on humans.  Don't believe me?  Go for a nice swim in the ocean, and then pour a cup of seawater on your marigolds, and see if the results are the same.  (In all seriousness, researchers face this all the time when developing medications -- therapies that work well in vitro or on lab animals might have different effects on human subjects.)

So to the people who are unquestioningly passing this around, just stop.  Exercise something past the You-Showed-Me-A-Picture-So-It's-True level of critical thinking.  If you see something that seems suspect, ask someone who might know the answer (as my friend did with this claim).  Or, in this day of information accessibility, you could simply Google "cress seeds WiFi experiment debunked" and you'll find everything you needed to know.

We all were toddlers once, and no harm done, unless you count unfortunate encounters with light sockets.  But let's exercise a little higher-level thinking, here, and not just accept whatever comes down the pike.