The dubious science of the "Spirit Story Box"

Those of you who are (1) ghost hunters, and (2) into high-tech gadgetry, have a new tool to try out.

It's an app for your iPhone called the "Spirit Story Box."  Its creators, Roger Pingleton and Jill Beitz of StreamSide Software, summarize its operation as follows:

Spirit Story Box works by examining values within the device that a spirit should theoretically be able to manipulate. An algorithm tracks and measures these values while at the same time selectors are constantly updated, which are then used to determine what words should be output.

Simply put, the app allegedly is taking readings from the "energy field" of an area, and outputting words on the screen.  Marvel at its features:

• Exclusive story engine may allow spirit energy to communicate with multi-word answers
• Mesmerizing energy swarm visualizations
• Built-in sharing support for social networks, email, or iMessage.
• Stuning, realistic graphics create the impression of an actual piece of equipment
• Functional meter indicates impending single-word answers

Stories about this app have been popping up all over, and I bet Pingleton and Beitz are making a tidy little sum of money from their creation.  Just yesterday, Fox 8 of Cleveland, Ohio ran a story about a couple of their reporters who went out with a "paranormal investigator" to test the thing at a café that was the site of an alleged haunting.  Here are the results:

We wondered what it might say at the café, and it didn’t take long to find out.

Within minutes of turning the app on, it began spitting out words and phrases including but not limited to: shin, engineer, using chisel, crow bar and harm neck.

“The random phrases all seemed like they related to someone being injured,” said Roberta [the café owner].

Was it a coincidence or something else?

There is no way to know for sure but both the ghost hunter and business owner agreed that the 99¢ app, which took only minutes to download, was super easy to use and a whole lot of fun.

“Sort of like the Magic 8 Ball. It’s more for entertainment but it is possible for a spirit to communicate that way so I wouldn’t rule anything out,” said [paranormal investigator] Carissimmi.

Okay.  So, where do I start?

One of the most common comments I've heard regarding stuff like this is to the effect of, "isn't it great that the psychic investigators are now approaching things in a scientific way?"  Somehow, the fact that the data -- if I can call it that -- is being generated by a little box, the internal workings of which most of us don't comprehend, makes it "scientific."

The problem is that whether something is science or not has nothing to do with what tools you're using.  The fact that, in this case, the tool is something that's high-tech and works in a complex fashion (and has "stunning, realistic graphics [that] create the impression of an actual piece of equipment") is entirely irrelevant.

A key feature of science is falsifiability.  If you make a conjecture about something, there has to be a way of knowing if your conjecture is wrong.  If I, for example, said that birds navigate during migration because they are in touch with a Psychic Energy Field that is inherently undetectable by anyone or anything else, that is not a scientific statement, because by definition there is no way of determining if the statement is right or wrong.

The problem with Spirit Story Box is a little more subtle, but amounts to the same thing.  Consider the question, for example, of what kind of word output the app could produce that would show that it wasn't in touch with spirits.  You're holding the thing, standing in the haunted café, and watching the words appear on the screen -- and it still remains for you, the user, to interpret what you see.  And as we've seen over and over, features of human cognition like dart-thrower's bias (not to mention more insidious ones like confirmation bias and the Texas sharpshooter fallacy) make it almost inevitable that people will spin the output to make it appear to be relevant.

There's the additional problem that Pingleton and Beitz aren't telling anyone any details about how the app actually works.  "It's proprietary," they told the Fox 8 reporters.  So, couldn't they just have come up with a list of a thousand vaguely suggestive words that the app cycles through, all the while showing an image of brightly glowing dots and a flickering needle?  Most importantly, how could we tell if this was all it was?

Now, let me emphasize here that I don't know that this is what is going on.  My problem with this app is that there none of the "experiments" I've read about thus far would allow me to differentiate between its actually picking up the presence of spirits, and just popping out random words and leaving the humans to interpret how they're relevant.  If the creators of the app, or the people who are using it, want to move this up to the level of "science," either set up a scenario where we can apply the principle of falsifiability, or else tell us how the thing works.  Preferably both.  Until then, paranormal investigator Annie Carissimmi was unintentionally accurate when she compared the app to a Magic 8 Ball.

It could be that Pingleton and Beitz really have a device that allows you to communicate with the spirits of the dead.  My sense, though, is "Outlook Not So Good."

The physics of holy water

A couple of days ago, I had the honor of being interviewed by Robert Chazz Chute, the journalist, writer, and deep thinker who sponsors the Cool People Podcasts.  The conversation was varied and interesting, touching on skepticism, atheism, science, pseudoscience, and education -- all of which regular readers of this blog will know are particular fascinations of mine.  (And a link to my interview will be posted as soon as it becomes available, should any of you be interested in hearing what I sound like -- and seeing whether I make the same amount of sense when speaking extemporaneously as I do when I've had time to plan what I'm going to say ahead of time.)

At one point, the question came up (during a discussion of conspiracy theories) of how heavily we should lean against rules of thumb like Ockham's Razor and the ECREE principle.  Although different in their details, both of these guidelines for sound thinking revolve around the idea that the world generally behaves in a predictable manner, and that wild claims that rest on large numbers of ad hoc assumptions require a higher standard for evidence than do ones for which the mechanism is already well understood.  To give an admittedly facile example, if I said that I dropped a stone off the railing of my deck, and it fell straight down and hit the ground, I shouldn't need to prove it; if I claimed that it fell upwards and finally vanished into the clear blue sky, something more than just my word for it would be rightfully demanded of me.

The sticking point comes with where, on the spectrum of weirdness, a particular claim lies.  Not everything is quite as clear cut as stones falling upwards rather than the usual down.  There is no meter to measure the sensibility of an idea, more's the pity.  Also, there are realms of what is now experimentally-supported science -- subatomic physics comes to mind -- where the conclusions are so counterintuitive that if they had been presented as simple statements of fact by a physicist a hundred years ago, (s)he would have been laughed into oblivion.

So, how do you decide, then?  "That sounds specious" isn't exactly a rigorous analysis.  Is there some better way to approach the question?

Let's turn to a specific example that came out of Russia last week -- a claim that making the sign of the cross over a container of water changes the water's properties.

Here's the claim.  I'm quoting the article directly, but this is the English version created by Google Translate, so any grammatical errors are probably not in the original and should not be blamed on the author.

Studies conducted by the Laboratory of Biomedical Technology Institute of Industrial and Marine Medicine, became a sensation. Scientists have proved experimentally that the sign of the cross kills germs and changes the optical properties of water.

- We have confirmed that the ancient custom of going to baptize food and drink before the meal has a deep mystical sense - says physicist Angelina Malakhovskaya - For the practical use of it is hidden: the food is cleared in just a moment. It is a great miracle that happens literally every single day.

Its research strength sign of the cross Angelina Malakhovskaya spent almost 10 years. Carried out a large series of experiments that repeatedly cross-checked before publish the results.

They are phenomenal: identified the unique antibacterial properties that appear in the water from its consecration prayer and sign of the cross. A new, previously unknown property of the Word of God to transform the structure of water, greatly increasing its optical density in the short ultraviolet region of the spectrum.

The very possibility of this research to Malakhovskaya Angelina and her fellow St. Petersburg was a miracle - they were not funded, is beyond the scope of research institutes. But scientists do a large amount of work free - just to give people an opportunity to feel and see the healing power of God.

The scientists tested the effects of prayer "Our Father" and the sign of the cross on the pathogenic bacteria. For the study, samples were taken from the oceans of water - wells, rivers and lakes. In all the samples contained E. coli, Staphylococcus aureus. But it turned out that if you read the prayer "Our Father" and make the sign of the cross test, the amount of harmful bacteria decreased in 7, 10, 100 or even 1000 times!..  

- It was found that the optical density compared to its original value before the consecration increases - says Angelina Malakhovskaya - This means that the water as if to "discriminate" the meaning of the prayers uttered over it, it remembers the impact and keeps it indefinitely - in the form of increased absorbance values. She seemed to be "saturated" with light. The human eye can catch these salutary changes in the structure of water, of course, can not. But spectrograph instrument provides an objective assessment of this phenomenon.

Sign of the cross changes the optical density of the water almost instantly. Optical density of tap water is sanctified by the commission sign of the cross over her ordinary believers increased by 1.5 times! And at the dedication of the priest - almost 2.5 times! So it turns out that the water "distinguish" the degree of dedication - a layman or a priest who has his right hand in blessing so stacked that represent the first letters of the name of Christ.

An interesting result of the consecration of the waters of baptism, but the unbeliever, not wearing a crucifix. It was found that water "distinguishes" faith even degree - optical density changed only by 10%!

Now, I doubt I have to state for the record that I think these claims are grade-A horse waste.  But in science, that's not enough.  That's yet another fallacy, the Appeal to Authority -- that I have set myself up as some sort of Arbiter of What Makes Sense, and you should agree with me just because I say so.

So let's take the claim apart.  What Dr. Malakhovskaya seems to be saying is that after being blessed, two things happen to a container of water: (1) its bacteria count goes down; and (2) its optical density in the short ultraviolet region increases.

Let's take those two claims in order.

A fundamental rule of doing science is that if the changing one variable causes another to change, it will do so in a regular fashion.  This predictability is the basis on which all science rests.  As science educator Roger Olstad puts it, "Science is, simply put, the search for regularity among observations."  A corollary of this idea is that if perturbing a particular variable causes different results each time, there must be something else going on that you haven't accounted for.

In scientific parlance, the experiment is not "well controlled."

Note that in the alleged experiment with the Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, the blessing of the water made the bacterial count drop by a factor of 7.  Or 10.  Or 100.  Or "even 1000."  Is it just me, or does this sound like there's a problem with her experimental design, here?  Maybe she didn't measure the bacteria accurately in the first place.  Or maybe they weren't uniformly dispersed throughout the water sample.  Or maybe she made errors in her sampling protocol after the water was blessed.  There are a hundred things that could have gone wrong with this experiment, each of which would be a far better explanation of the variability of the results than the alternate explanation, which is that the Sign of the Cross works better as an antiseptic on Sundays than it does on Thursdays.

So let's take a look at her second claim, which gets us into (if you'll forgive the pun) even deeper water.

Seeing the problem with the second experiment -- that blessing water increases its optical density -- requires that you understand a bit of physics.  The wonderful site The Physics Classroom explains optical density as follows:

The optical density of a material relates to the sluggish tendency of the atoms of a material to maintain the absorbed energy of an electromagnetic wave in the form of vibrating electrons before reemitting it as a new electromagnetic disturbance. The more optically dense that a material is, the slower that a wave will move through the material.

One indicator of the optical density of a material is the index of refraction value of the material. Index of refraction values (represented by the symbol n) are numerical index values that are expressed relative to the speed of light in a vacuum. The index of refraction value of a material is a number that indicates the number of times slower that a light wave would be in that material than it is in a vacuum.

So, the claim is that blessing the water somehow changes the speed with which light travels through it -- but only the speed of light waves in the short ultraviolet region.

Herein lies the problem.  The optical properties of transparent substances have been studied extensively (largely because otherwise, we would have a hard time making camera, telescope, microscope, or eyeglass lenses that worked).   The optical density of a substance is dependent on wavelength -- the relationship is called the Sellmeier Equation.  And what the Sellmeier Equation implies is that it would be impossible to change the optical density of water at one wavelength without changing its optical density at every other wavelength.  You can't, in other words, selectively alter water's optical density in one region of the spectrum, which is what Dr. Malakhovskaya is saying.  In order to accept what her claim, you pretty much have to trash everything we know about optics.

So which is more likely -- that every physicist who has studied the behavior of light transmission in the past hundred years is wrong, or that Dr. Malakhovskaya's spectrograph wasn't working?  Or that she fabricated her results?  Or that there was a flaw in her experimental design?  Be honest, which requires you to make the least ad hoc assumptions, here?

That is how you apply Ockham's Razor.

Now, I know that there are some devout folks who at this point are saying, "Yes, well, what if god had something to do with it?  Anything is possible with god."  Okay, fine, but you have now moved the discussion outside of the realm of science.  Once you have allowed for the finger of the deity tinkering with the results in some kind of capricious fashion, you have put paid to anything science can say about the matter.  That is not how science is done.  And I must, in the interest of honesty, throw in a quote from Tim Minchin: "Every mystery ever solved, in the history of the world, has turned out to be NOT MAGIC."

I have deliberately chosen a rather ridiculous example, here, at least in part so as not to raise hackles.  But there's no reason why you have to stop with this one.  Look at other claims using this method.  A few suggestions: homeopathy; astrology; telepathy; clairvoyance; astral projection; remote viewing; divination; witchcraft; and, I might add, the majority of the beliefs of the world's major religions.   Ask yourself what the evidence really supports.  Ask what well understood, experimentally supported laws of science the claim is asking you to jettison.

Then, and only then, decide what you think is correct. 

The state of GRACE

One of NASA's ongoing experiments is the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE for short), which was launched, both literally and figuratively, in March 2002.  GRACE uses data from a pair of satellites to do detailed measurements of the Earth's gravitational field, information that can be used in such disparate fields as plate and mantle tectonics and the study of groundwater flow rates, deep ocean currents, and ice cap melting.

The data is frequently represented visually, using bulges, dips, and colors on the Earth's surface to represent various variables such as measured gravitational strength, temperature, and water salinity.  This generates images like the following:

And that's where the trouble started, because someone posted this image on the unfailingly bizarre site Godlike Productions with the caption, "This is the current shape of our planet?!!! WTF!!!  As modeled by the GRACE Gravity Data.  Planet being torn apart!"

Now, I don't know whether the original poster was a troll, or really believed that what (s)he was posting was true, but you'd think that once it was posted, there would be a Greek chorus' worth of shouts of "Are you a complete moron?  Or what?"  After all, if there really was something stretching the world into the shape depicted on the map, the folks in Australia would have something to say about it.

But no.  The vast majority of the responders thought that this, in fact, showed what the Earth really looks like, and that NASA was covering the whole thing up for their usual evil motives.

Oh, there were voices of reason, but they were the ones being shouted down.  Here are some comments that appeared, in order, after the original post.

Could it be since the moon is pulling away from Earth that it is pulling a chunk off Earth with it?

If that is really the current shape of our planet, then we are in deep shit. This is worse than anyone has thought! The moon is gonna pull a chunk off the planet. That or planet X's effect on our planet? No wonder there are so many quakes? The planet is being torn!!!

This is for real folks! This is imaged by GRACE Twin Satellites. This is so off from past projections. The planet is literally being torn apart.

This explains everything from sink holes, mass animal dies offs, weird weather, increase in quakes, oil leaks, continent movements, poles shifting etc...

Something is pulling a chunk off the planet, or the destabilization of the Arctic and Antarctica is distorting the planet.

Then, one person posted the following:

It is a GRAVITY map.  For fuck's sake.

But you don't stop a whole herd of Chickens Little that easily, because the outcry continued as if the Voice of Reason hadn't said a word:

Notice the three areas of extreme magnetic pressure and the weak area in the Indian Ocean. That is going to continue to sink and eventually break off completely, a chunk off the planet. Maybe it will become our new moon with an atmosphere to make it habitable.

None of the other planets look like that. The moon sure doesn't.

Seems to me like we are literally splitting ourselves apart.

the bible does say that the earth shall be destroyed including the heavens and a new heaven and earth shall be born or created. Maybe there is an earth being born within, black sun? Vril? Or the beast raising from the deep? Very interesting.

One person even responded directly to the Voice of Reason, implying that (s)he was the one who didn't understand:

No Duh! A gravity map also showing the current shape of our potato planet.

And on it goes:

Even the stretching effect can clearly be seen. It's starting to look like a skull?

Doesn't look normal to me.

After watching that again, I think the planet is rarely anything close to spherical. How come other planets don't look like that?

Then, we had one other person chime in who evidently has some understanding of what's going on here:

Wow.... I thought for a minute second that ultimate doom has befallen us.... Finally..... BUT, it's a gravity map. It's NOT a geophysical depiction... It's based on gravitational data. Kind of like the "hole in the ozone layer" enhancement maps. This is not the shape of the planet folks, it's the shape of the planet's gravitational plus and minuses, which change daily due to moon placement and other factors... Kind of like an mri if you will... If you remove certain colors from an mri does that mean you have removed parts of the person's brain?

Unfortunately, no real doom here. As this map will look very different on the next full moon.

But of course, the doomsayers paid no attention whatsoever.  They never do, somehow.

What gets me about all of this is how a quick internet search for "GRACE gravity survey" would have turned up websites -- several of them, in fact -- that explain what the image means.  So I've often railed against people who want to be able to talk about things like quantum mechanics without doing the hard work of learning what quantum mechanics really is; here we have people who are so catastrophically lazy that they can't even be bothered to do a search on Google before deciding whether or not Australia is being forcibly ripped off the surface of the Earth.

I don't know, folks.  I should have some sort of trenchant comment to make about all of this, but at the moment I can't think of anything to do but weep quietly into my coffee, and quote Professor Farnsworth:

Of course, if the people who think that the GRACE map actually represents the real, physical shape of the Earth are correct, I may get my wish sooner than I realize.

Barefoot in the park

Are you stressed, tired, and feeling low?  Do you suffer from chronic conditions like arthritis, liver dysfunction, or heart disease?  Maybe what you need isn't conventional medicine.

Maybe what you need is more electrons.

I know you probably think I'm joking, but that is the contention of one Dr. Stephen Sinatra, who has a website that claims that just about everything that is wrong with you can be cured by "grounding" yourself.  In his parlance, this means "walking around barefoot."  Let's hear what he has to say about this amazing medical breakthrough:

The terms "earthing" and "grounding" are interchangeable. It is simply the act of placing your bare feet on the earth, or walking barefoot. When you do, free electrons are transferred from the earth into your body, and this grounding effect is one of the most potent antioxidants we know of...  (I)nflammation thrives when your blood is thick and you have a lot of free radical stress, and a lot of positive charges in your body. Grounding effectively alleviates inflammation because it thins your blood and infuses you with negatively charged ions through the soles of your feet.

The earth is struck by lightning thousands of time each minute, primarily around the equator. Subsequently, the earth carries an enormous negative charge. It's always electron-rich and can serve as a powerful and abundant supply of antioxidant free radical-busting electrons.

The human body appears to be finely tuned to "work" with the earth in the sense that there's a constant flow of energy between our bodies and the earth. When you put your feet on the ground, you absorb large amounts of negative electrons through the soles of your feet. In today's world, this is more important than ever, yet fewer people than ever actually connect with the earth in this way anymore. Free radical stress from exposure to mercury pollution, cigarettes, insecticides, pesticides, trans fats, and radiation, just to name a few, continually deplete your body of electrons.

 Okay.  I mean, I only have one question, which is, "What?"

I'm with him that the Earth, being a large object made of atoms, has lots of electrons.  Those electrons move around some, which generates static charges that can be redistributed via lightning.  Sometimes you do the same thing, on a small scale, when you walk across a carpet and then touch a metal object, generating a cracking sound, a spark that jumps from you to the metal object, and a lot of swearing.

But that's where the science ends and the bullshit begins.

There's a name for "transferring electrons rapidly through a substance."  It's called "electricity."  There's also a name for when that process uses a human body as a conduit.  It's called "being electrocuted."  The health effects of being electrocuted include death, so I'm not really all that sanguine about anything that purports to transfer large amounts of electrons into my body.

Of course, there's also the minor problem that any slight imbalance between the electrical potential of your body and that of the Earth is adjusted every time you touch anything that is in electrical contact with the ground.  If human disease really was caused by a lack of electrons, you could cure yourself by leaning on a chain-link fence.

The nonsense doesn't end there, however.  Dr. Sinatra, whose ideas lead me to wonder if he got his medical degree from Big Bob's Discount Diploma Warehouse, claims that walking barefoot (1) helps you to make more ATP, (2) thins your blood, and (3) helps you make white blood cells.  He throws around terms like "zeta potential," which turns out to be a real thing -- it's the degree of stability in a colloidal dispersion -- but I think mostly he likes how it sounds.  We are also treated to a highly scientific experiment in which a sunflower in a vase that was plugged into a grounded wall socket lasted longer than one that was plugged into an ungrounded socket:

What I want to know is how putting the end of a plugged-in electrical cord into a vase full of water didn't either trip the breaker or electrocute the experimenter.

My favorite part of all of this comes near the end, when he blames all human disease on wearing shoes:

Throughout history, humans mostly walked barefoot or with footwear made of animal skins. They slept on the ground or on skins. Through direct contact or through perspiration-moistened animal skins used as footwear or sleeping mats, the ground's abundant free electrons were able to enter the body, which is electrically conductive. Through this mechanism, every part of the body could equilibrate with the electrical potential of the Earth, thereby stabilizing the electrical environment of all organs, tissues, and cells.

Modern lifestyle has increasingly separated humans from the primordial flow of Earth's electrons. For example, since the 1960s, we have increasingly worn insulating rubber or plastic soled shoes, instead of the traditional leather fashioned from hides. Rossi [one of the researchers Sinatra quotes] has lamented that the use of insulating materials in post-World War II shoes has separated us from the Earth's energy field. Obviously, we no longer sleep on the ground as we did in times past.

During recent decades, chronic illness, immune disorders, and inflammatory diseases have increased dramatically, and some researchers have cited environmental factors as the cause. However, the possibility of modern disconnection with the Earth's surface as a cause has not been considered.

Because, as we all know, humans were so much less prone to disease centuries ago, when we were all sleeping on "perspiration-moistened animal skins."  It's not like average lifespan has increased in the last century, or anything.

Oh, but please continue, Dr. Sinatra, and by all means don't let silly little things like facts get in your way.

Interestingly, Sinatra's pseudoscience has been getting enough press that he merits a mention in The Skeptic's Dictionary, on the page devoted to "Vibrational Medicine," wherein he is slapped down as follows:

So what's the treatment for all this potentially damaging electropollution? As noted above, one treatment is "very low frequency pulsed electromagnetic waves." Hmm. I thought these electromagnetic gadgets were the problem, not the solution. Anyway, there's another treatment called grounding or earthing. What's that, you may wonder. It's standing barefoot on the earth so electrons can flow through your feet into your body and thin your blood, kill free radicals, and who knows what else... So, two of the main treatments for electropollution is more electrons and more electromagnetism. Sounds just about right to me. What's the treatment for a broken arm? Hitting it with a hammer?

Now, don't get me wrong.  I love being barefoot myself, and in fact on warm days generally wear the legally permissible minimum amount of clothing.  But I'm not buying that it has the slightest effect on anything but my overall mood.  And if you're ill, you really are better off seeking out conventional medical help, not subscribing to the bullshit ideas of a guy who sounds like he failed freshman physics.

SATs, STDs, and school prayer

Yesterday, we saw one example of mistaking correlation for causation -- that being a skeptic (or materialist, or rationalist) is why two prominent skeptics had apparent serious moral lapses.  Today, we'll look at a second -- a group that is claiming that the elimination of school prayer is why student SAT scores have dropped in the United States.

The American Family Association of Kentucky currently has a petition out asking people to vote on whether or not prayer should be allowed in public schools.  First, we have the following photograph, to put us all in the right frame of mind:

And then, there's the meat of the argument, if I can dignify it with that term:

Prayer was in our schools for over 200 years before the anti-God forces took it out in 1962. After prayer was removed from our schools, teen pregnancy went up 500%, STD’s went up 226%, violent crime went up 500% and SAT scores went down for 18 years in a row, opening the door for the AIDS epidemic and the drug culture.

WE NEED PRAYER BACK IN SCHOOLS!

We need to do this, the author of the petition (Frank Simon) says, in order to "return God's protection to America."

Wow.  Where do I start?

First off, if someone is claiming that two things are not only correlated, but exist in a causative relationship, the first thing to do is to determine if there really is even a correlation.  So I looked up the Commonwealth Foundation's breakdown of SAT results state by state.  If god really does care about SAT scores, to the point where he awards the best scores not to the kids that are the smartest or the hardest working but to the kids who pray the most, there should be a correlation between the most religious states and the highest scores, right?  Interestingly, in three states that are pretty solidly Christian -- Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana -- only 4%, 8%, and 9% of qualified high school students even took the SATs last year, although admittedly the average scores of the students who did take it land those states solidly in the middle of the pack.  And I guess even god can't give you good scores on an exam you didn't take.

So what about teen pregnancy?  Once again, if you think the spread of atheism has caused this supposed 500% increase in teen pregnancy, you should see the godly states having lower rates than the ungodly ones, right?  So I looked at the National Campaign to End Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy's page on state data, and guess where Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi fell?  14th, 8th, and 2nd worst (i.e. highest teen pregnancy rates) overall.  Other states in the top ten were Tennessee, Georgia, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas, also so-called "Bible-Belt" states.

Hmm.  I guess that when it comes to preventing teen pregnancy, sex education and availability of birth control work better than praying.  Whoda thought?

And because I'm nothing if not thorough, I decided to check STD rates state-by-state, so I went to the Center for Disease Control's Data Atlas, and guess where the most new cases of STDs in 2012 were?  Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.  In that order.

Well, well.

I think what bothers me most about this, though, is the way these people are framing this as a religious freedom issue -- the subtitle on the petition page says, "Restore Student Religious Liberty."  One of my first mentors, when I started teaching, was a wonderful science teacher who was also a devout Christian.  I was discussing religion with him one day, and he said something that was very interesting.  "I never bring up religion in class," he said.  "My own beliefs are irrelevant in the classroom.  But more than that; teachers need to keep in mind that they are talking to captive audiences made up of kids of diverse backgrounds and beliefs.  Because of that, you have to be extremely careful when discussing anything that has bearing on political or religious issues.  The best teachers challenge all of their students, not just the ones they disagree with."

So, the bottom line is, students are free to pray in their churches.  They are also free to pray, silently, during class, or any other time during the day.  (I suspect a lot of prayer goes on prior to my administering exams.)  On the other hand, it is not ethical for teachers or administrators to lead prayers in public schools.  At that point, it is no longer an issue of religious liberty, it is an issue of forced proselytization.  And that, actually, is the opposite of liberty.

Retrying the Lord

New from the Well, If It Makes You Happy department, we have a story about a lawyer in Kenya who is trying to have Jesus' conviction overturned.  [Source]

Dola Indidis, a former spokesperson for the Kenyan judiciary, is petitioning the International Court of Justice at The Hague to give Jesus a posthumous pardon.  "The selective and malicious prosecution (of Jesus) violated his human rights," Indidis said, adding that Pontius Pilate was guilty of "judicial misconduct, abuse of office, bias and prejudice."

This isn't the first time Indidis has attempted this.  In 2007, he brought his case to the Kenyan High Court, but they threw it out, claiming that they "lacked jurisdiction."

Now, I'm no expert in international law, but it does strike me as a bit of a legal quagmire, given that (1) all of the people involved in the trial have been dead for almost 2,000 years, (2) the only documents referring to the case are in the New Testament, which even true believers can't claim to be an unbiased source, and (3) the governmental body by which Jesus was tried doesn't, technically, exist any more.  The Roman Empire itself more or less ceased to be 1,500 odd years ago, so it's not like there'll be any possible response from them.

My gut reaction has always been that posthumous pardons are a little... pointless.  It's not that they're uncommon; the convictions of the Salem "witches" were overturned one by one, the last ones in 1992 (and honestly, it surprises me that it took that long).  Joan of Arc was retried in 1456, only 25 years after her execution, and found innocent of heresy -- the first step that would lead to her eventual canonization in 1920.  Even poor Alan Turing, convicted of homosexual acts in the United Kingdom in 1952 and "chemically castrated" with female hormones (a treatment that many believe contributed to his severe depression and ultimate suicide in 1954), stands a good chance of receiving an official pardon this year.  And while I certainly think that the motivation for these pardons is good, and I can understand the desire of family members to clear their relatives' unfairly besmirched names, it doesn't do the victims much good in the here-and-now.

Might make better sense to work on improving the justice system we currently have, to make sure such injustices don't continue to happen, don't you think?

Be that as it may, Dola Indidis' quixotic quest to secure a retrial for The Son of God opens up the far thornier problem of whether the religious folks in the world want Jesus to be pardoned.  As far as I understand it, the whole point of the New Testament is that Jesus died for our sins, and God The Father sent him down here specifically so he would die.  Right?  So wouldn't pardoning him kind of be... counterproductive, salvation-of-humanity-wise?

Now, I have to admit that I have never understood this whole point, and even though I'm an atheist I've read a good bit of what various Christian apologists have to say about it.  It seems to boil down to god sending himself to be tortured and executed for crimes he didn't commit in order for him to forgive us for sins we did commit, which makes no sense whatsoever.  After all, if god wanted to forgive us, why didn't he just go ahead and do it without all of the unpleasant flogging and crown of thorns and crucifixion business?  I don't really see what was gained by the whole episode other than generating hundreds of thousands of pieces of really grotesque statuary, suitable for scaring Christian children lo unto this very day.

Indidis, himself a Roman Catholic, doesn't seem to see any problem with this, but the whole thing has clearly shaken up the powers-that-be in Kenya.  Father Maloba Wesonga, spokesperson for the diocese of Nairobi, seemed to be uncertain how to respond, when he heard about Indidis' idea.  "As we know it, the trial had to happen," Wesonga said to reporters.  "We must understand that Jesus was not vulnerable and nobody can do justice to God."

Which puts him in the odd position, as a Catholic priest, of saying he is in favor of sustaining Jesus' conviction and execution.

You have to wonder how the Catholics are going to reconcile that stance.

I'm guessing that the International Court of Justice will probably refuse to hear Indidis' case, given that they have plenty of better things to do with their time.  So this whole issue will probably fizzle, which honestly is kind of a shame.  I'd love to see how they'd decide the case, because any way it came out, it'd be hard to predict how the Christians would spin it.  As far as Indidis goes, he really should find a new hobby, like putting his mind to seeing that justice is done for people who are still alive.  He could start with his own country, which hasn't exactly had a sterling track record, especially in its turning a blind eye to child prostitution.  Seems to me that this would be a better use of time, energy, and money than trying to determine whether a guy who lived and died almost two millennia ago should receive an official pardon.

Hark, hark, the shark

I guess it was bound to happen.

It started decades ago, with Jaws.  Then you had the hyped-up "documentaries" of the 80s and 90s featuring lines like, "Let's put the bikini-clad Baywatch wannabee in the giant metal cage, lower it into the water, and throw around bleeding fish parts, and see what happens."  But things ramped up considerably when the Discovery channel started "Shark Week."  Then we had the following, which made a lot of us science types shake our heads and say, "Um... really?":

Oh, if only it were "enough said."  Because you know it's not.  It is never enough said, once the ball gets rolling, especially if the ball has teeth and fins.  Because just a few days ago we had a new "documentary" on Discovery, one that upped the ante even further, by claiming that one of the largest seagoing predators that has ever lived... is still alive.

 Called Carcharodon megalodon, or just "Megalodon" for short, this thing was, to put it bluntly, freakin' huge.  Fossils have been found that indicate that the biggest ones could reach 18 meters in length (for reference, the largest great white sharks get to be about 6 meters long).  So, this was one scary-ass beast, the likes of which would make me hesitant to set foot in the ocean again.

If it still existed.  Which it doesn't.  Scientists are in agreement that Megalodon went extinct about 1.5 million years ago.  But of course, given the foolishness that has appeared on Discovery (remember Finding Bigfoot?  and The Haunted?  and, most germane to our discussion here, Mermaids: The Body Found?), I shouldn't really be surprised.

Oh, but there's a poll!  Because scientific truth is determined by public consensus, evidently.  You can vote that "YES! The evidence for Megalodon can't be ignored! The monster shark lives!" or "Maybe.  95% of our oceans remain unexplored, so it's possible that Megalodon is still out there."  Or (and I imagine this choice accompanied by a sad shake of the head), "No.  The scientists are right."  So, anyway, I voted (guess which way?), mostly so I could see what the results were, and was unsurprised that 32% of the respondents voted "yes," and 48% "maybe," leaving the poor scientists in the dust with a paltry 20% of the vote.

Of course, given that a common attitude is that public school biology curricula should eliminate the teaching of evolution "because lots of people don't believe in it," I shouldn't be surprised that (1) the public is easy to hoodwink into believing nonsense, and (2) there's a sense that science is a democracy.

Now, don't misunderstand me.  I love the ocean, and I think sharks are really cool.  And there's no doubt that charismatic megafauna are big sellers, explaining why you see lots of calendars and framed prints and greeting cards and tattoos with images of wolves, lions, and jaguars, and far fewer with wombats, possums, and naked mole rats.  I get why there's never been a film called Rabbitnado, although I have to admit I would watch it, especially if the bunnies turned out to be like the Beast of Caer Bannog:

But that's just me.  And since these media outlets exist to make money, not to promote good science, it's no wonder they jump on the bandwagon.

Sharon Hill, in her wonderful blog Doubtful News, did a piece on Megalodon recently, and expressed hope that "Shark Week" and other dubious attempts at nature documentary would raise awareness of shark conservation.  Me, I'm less sanguine.  When the movie Jaws came out in 1975, there followed a senseless slaughter of sharks of all sorts, including the completely harmless gray nurse shark.  Just as people don't get that science is done based on evidence, not on voting in a poll, they also don't tend to respond rationally when an irresponsible media outlet has ramped up the fear.

Anyhow, that's today's exercise in futility.  Given that Megalodon got "record ratings," I'm doubtful that anything I say is going to have an effect.  Maybe I should make my own documentary, you think?  You can't beat 'em, join 'em.  How about Hopping Mad: Is Australia's Carnivorous Kangaroo Still Alive in the Outback?  Start with some photographs of fossil skeletons:

Follow up with some scary drawings:

Hire a scientist or two to weigh in on how we can never be sure that an animal is extinct, because the Coelacanth, you know, and so on.  Then have a poll.   Sure fire winner, right?

Of course, right.