Your tax dollars at work

So now, Dear Readers, it's time for a fine old tradition: my yearly rant about how lousy the New York State Regents Exams are.

The total cost for developing, printing, and distributing Regents exams is $15 million annually, a cost of about $250,000 per exam.  You'd think that for that kind of money, we'd be getting something pretty spiffy, right?

This year's exam in Biology (oh, excuse me, "Living Environment."  Ten years ago, as part of their drive to improve curricula and "raise the bar," they changed the name of the course) was once again the combination of goofy, poorly worded questions, strange diagrams, and ambiguity that we've all come to expect.  Here are just a few highlights from this year's exam:

30.  Depletion of non-renewable resources is often a result of

• (1) environmental laws
• (2) human population growth
• (3) reforestation
• (4) recycling

Wow!  That is what I call one high-powered question, there.  If you can puzzle through "environmental laws = good, human population growth = bad, reforestation = good, recycling = good" you got that one right.  It's like the game on Sesame Street -- "Which of these things is not like the other?"

Equally awe-inspiring were #37-39, which were to be based on an outline diagram of a human body, with only three organs -- (A) the brain, (B) the kidney, and (C) the uterus.

37.  Failure of structure A to function would most directly disrupt

• (1) autotrophic nutrition
• (2) chromosome replication
• (3) cellular communication
• (4) biological evolution

38.  Structure B represents

• (1) cells only
• (2) cells and tissues, only
• (3) an organ with cells and tissues
• (4) a complete system with organs, tissues, and cells

39.  Structure C is part of which body system?

• (1) digestive
• (2) reproductive
• (3) circulatory
• (4) nervous

Note that you don't have to understand a single thing about how the brain, kidney, or uterus functions to get these questions right.

Then, we have a reading passage, as follows:

Plants of the snow lotus species, Saussurea laniceps, are used in Tibet and China to produce traditional medicines.  These plants bloom just once, at the end of a seven-year life span.  Collectors remove the taller-blooming plants, which they consider to have the best medicinal value.  Some scientists are concerned that the continual selection and removal of the tall plants from natural ecosystems may result in a change in the average height of the snow lotus in future populations.

Ready for the question?

50.  The removal of the plants is an example of

• (1) genetic engineering
• (2) direct harvesting
• (3) selective breeding
• (4) asexual reproduction

Yup, after all that, that was the best question they could come up with.  Even more interesting, my specialty is evolutionary biology, and I wasn't even sure what the correct answer was supposed to be.  Neither was my colleague, Sue, the other biology teacher.  Were they implying that this was selective breeding?  Didn't seem right; selective breeding implies a deliberate selection of the traits by humans, in order to alter the population's characteristics.  This was deliberate, but the farmers weren't trying to create a population of shorter plants, so that seemed kind of weird.  Answers #1 and #4 were definitely wrong.  Answer #2?

Yup.  That's the answer.  "Direct harvesting."  In order to get this one correct, students had to know the following important biological fact: collecting pieces of a plant is called "harvesting."

And so on.

I had not just one, but two, students tell me after the exam, "You didn't have to know anything about biology to pass that exam."  One student, in particular, was indignant.

"I really studied for that exam," she said.  "I knew a lot of stuff -- all the parts of the brain, how the kidney works, how to solve genetics problems.  I could have saved a lot of time and effort -- I wasn't any better prepared to take that exam after four weeks of review and studying than I was before, because you hardly had to have any specific factual knowledge about anything to pass it."

When you have students complaining that an exam is too easy, you know there is something wrong.

Of course, when people decry the lousy quality of the exam, New York state educational leaders are quick to disagree.

"People may complain about the Regents, but it does provide a teacher with a basic road map of what should be covered in a course," said Jack J. Boak Jr., superintendent of the Jefferson-Lewis Board of Cooperative Educational Services.

I'm sorry, Mr. Boak, but you're wrong.  What the Regents exam does, at least in Biology, is set the bar so low that students can walk over it.  I could write a better, and fairer, exam in two hours flat, and I wouldn't even charge $250,000 to do it.

In recent years, I have typically spent the last weeks of school telling kids, "Just focus on the broad-brush terms.  Details don't matter on this exam.  Hardly anyone fails it."  This is true.  What I don't mention, however, is that also, hardly anyone scores above a 95.  Students whose knowledge of biology is exemplary get caught by weirdly-worded, ambiguous questions like #50.  They start to question themselves, just as Sue and I did -- "Can the answer they're looking for really just be 'harvesting?'"  The sprinkling of bizarre questions means that we very rarely have anyone ace this exam, even the kids who could probably teach the course themselves.  The test is designed so that most of the scores get crammed together in the middle, between 75 and 85 -- because a bell curve makes the b-b stackers in the Education Department happy.

So, that's how our year ends -- not with challenging, fair exams, but with a series of pointless hurdles for students to amble over, and thousands of exam papers for teachers to wade through.

Seems like there are better uses that $15 million a year could be put to, doesn't it?

Memory chips and brain signal transmitters

In the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a technique has been developed which allows your memories to be selectively erased.  If you want to forget an unpleasant breakup, erase the pain of a traumatic event, or just have the opportunity to experience again reading your favorite book for the first time, you can go in and have Lacuna, Inc. selectively delete those memories.

We have just taken a step closer to being able to do that.

A team of scientists from Wake Forest University and the University of Southern California have developed a "neural prosthesis" which, when installed into the brain of a rat, allowed the scientists to delete and retrieve a specific memory.  Rats were trained to press one of two levers for food, but had been given a drug which inhibited a part of the hippocampus that allows the processing of short-term memory into long-term memory.  With the prosthesis in place, electrodes inserted into the hippocampus, the scientists were able to trigger them to remember what they'd forgotten.

“Flip the switch on, and the rats remember.  Flip it off, and the rats forget,” team leader Dr. Theodore Berger said.

The application of this technology to individuals with memory loss from Alzheimer's, dementia, or stroke is obvious.  There needs to be a memory trace there to amplify -- so the idea of using it in cases of severe brain damage is probably going to be limited, at least for the reasonable future.  But the ability of doctors to enhance memory selectively is heady stuff.  Couple that with more information about how memory is encoded in the first place -- a hot area of research at the moment -- and we'll be that much closer to creating prosthetic memory interfaces for the human brain.

Also in the news is a story about a different sort of brain implant -- one which might eventually help the paralyzed to walk again.

Developed at the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, the BioBolt implant allows the brain to use the skin as a conductor, and send wireless signals.  This could allow a quadriplegic to, for example, operate a computer.  Ultimately, the interface could allow the brain to send signals to muscles, effectively routing motor impulses around the sites of damage that are preventing a person from walking.

"The ultimate goal is to be able to reactivate paralyzed limbs, by picking the neural signals from the brain cortex and transmitting those signals directly to muscles," said Dr. Kensall Wise, who is also founding director of the NSF Engineering Research Center for Wireless Integrated MicroSystems.  Wise did state that scientists are years away from these applications in humans, but just having a low-energy brain interface that can be installed in a minimally invasive fashion is a tremendous advance.   Previous incarnations of the the device had to be implanted through a hole in the skull; the BioBolt is implanted under the skin of the skull, and acts like a "microphone" to pick up, amplify, and transmit signals from the neurons.

Advances such as these never fail to awe me.  I know we're still a long way from restoring memory in individuals with brain damage (or enhancing memory in people who are normal), or seeing the paralyzed walk.  But just the fact that the scientists have accomplished this much is positively stunning, and my sense is that this is only the beginning.  It makes me think of the quote from Napoleon Hill:  "What the mind can conceive, it can achieve."

Witch hunting

The Salem Witch Trials, held in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts, were triggered by the hysterical reaction of a group of girls who claimed to be possessed.  They "cried out against" various members of the village, accused prominent townspeople of cursing them and "sending their spirits out" to torment them, and appearing in the form of a cat and a giant yellow bird.  Court proceedings were held, and such accusations were held as evidence.

In the end, nineteen people were executed by hanging for the crime of witchcraft.

Oh, but that was a long time ago, right?   We live in more enlightened days, right?

Wrong.

Yesterday an article appeared in The Swazi Observer, the primary English language newspaper in Swaziland.  It describes various goings-on in Mdzimba High School which sound amazingly like what happened in Salem Village in 1692.  The article, in all apparent seriousness, describes a plague of "demons" which have overrun the high school. 

"The children run away from invisible apparitions, which at times direct them to a nearby pool, where they claim to see a register with the name of pupils targeted by the demons," writes Fayana Mabuza, journalist for the Observer.  "At times, they claim to be instructed to drink water from the school tap, saying the instructions were coming from the school’s principal, Sgwili Dlamini.  They writhe around as if in agony while screaming loudly and if not restrained, they dash full speed to the pond where they return to inform others whose names they claim they saw at the pond."

Dlamini, perhaps out of fear because his name had been mentioned as being complicit with the demons, called in a pastor, Reverend Mdudzi Manana, who is a well-known exorcist.  He prayed for them, targeting individual children, "doing battle with the demons" -- and the situation calmed.

“Initially only nine were affected," Principal Dlamini said.  "I even sent them home advising their parents to take them to people who could treat such affliction.  They returned again with the situation having normalized. But towards last term’s closure it struck again.  When we opened this term the problem was still there and this time around it engulfed the whole school.  But we believe the prayers from this pastor will contain the situation as he has a track record of dealing with such things. Otherwise, since Monday he and his team have been fervently praying at the school, and we can only wish them all the success.”

Okay, you might be saying; that happened in Africa, in a place known for its superstitions.  These people share with the Puritans of 17th century Massachusetts a belief in demons, and under circumstances of stress or fear those beliefs can manifest as mass hysteria.  Then, the preacher gets called in to quiet things down, and once again -- because they believe -- it works.  And in this case no one got hurt, so the belief isn't really doing any permanent harm, right?

There are still executions in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East for witchcraft.  Just last year, five people were burned alive in Kenya for "harming their neighbors by magic."  And given their belief system, it makes perfect sense.  As C. S. Lewis wrote, in Mere Christianity:

But surely the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things.  If we did - if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbours or drive them mad or bring bad weather, surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings did.

In 2002, a Barna Group poll showed that 34% of Americans think that Satan is a real, living being who can be invoked to cause direct harm.  39% believe in demons or other malevolent spirits, who can target particular people, places, or events.  Two years ago, Sarah Palin notoriously participated in a ceremony at her church, the Wasilla Assembly of God, run by an pastor who claims to have "driven out a spirit of witchcraft" from a Kenyan town.  American pastor Bob Larson, whose radio ministry is listened to by tens of thousands of people each week, claims that in the last twenty years, he has performed over 6,000 exorcisms in 90 countries.  

Belief is a powerful thing, and its influence doesn't seem to be affected by whether the thing believed in has any objective reality.  Furthermore, superstition and credulity are not the sole property of any country or ethnic group.   In recent polls, atheism and rationalism were on the rise in the US -- but so were the ranks of the extremely religious, devotees of fundamentalist, evangelical sects whose members are the most likely to believe in devils, possession, and supernatural evil.  (In the above-mentioned poll, 75% of Americans who described themselves as "born again" believed in Satan, demons, and the rest.)

There is increasing emphasis in political spheres on a candidate's beliefs.  Mitt Romney's Mormonism is "an issue," particularly amongst the two groups mentioned above -- atheists and evangelical Christians.  The Christian Right has become more and more vocal about demanding candidates who pass a religious acid-test, whose beliefs are in line with theirs.  This scares me, and not just because I'm an atheist, but because I know what belief can engender.  Recall that James Watt, Secretary of the Interior under Ronald Reagan, famously stated that the environment wasn't worth protecting because when the Second Coming of Christ occurred, "the Earth was going to be destroyed anyway."

It is an open question as to whether it is even possible for a political figure not to allow his or her religious beliefs to drive decision making.  Because of this, it is critical that we consider carefully before voting for religious ideologues.  If as generally rational and moderate a Christian as C. S. Lewis admits that the only reason we don't execute witches is because don't believe they exist, what will happen when we elect leaders who do believe in witchcraft?

I'll move to Costa Rica, that's what.

It boils down to one thing.  Anyone who believes they'd like to live in a theocracy hasn't actually lived in one.

Beyond reproach

The question of the day is:  is it possible to criticize strongly the beliefs of an oppressed ethnic, religious or social group, without that criticism being motivated by bigotry or prejudice?

I think the answer is a resounding "yes."

I ask this in light of the story yesterday of an ultra-Orthodox group of rabbis in Jerusalem, who condemned a dog to death by stoning because the dog's behavior reminded one of the rabbis of an incident from twenty years earlier.  Apparently, a secular lawyer had criticized the rabbis of this sect, and they had "cursed him and ordered his spirit to enter a dog when he died."  The lawyer apparently died shortly thereafter, and this particular dog somehow reminded the rabbis of the lawyer, so they held a religious court session and determined that the dog should be stoned.  (Fortunately, the dog made itself scarce before the sentence could be carried out.)

Yes, I know that the Jews have been the victims of persecution and genocide.  There are still people (Mahmoud Ahmedinijad comes to mind) who want to see the Jews exterminated.  All of that is hateful and evil, and should not for one second be tolerated.

But I'm sorry, those rabbis who wanted to stone the dog are straight out of the Dark Ages.  Their beliefs -- at least the ones apropos of curses and ordering spirits into "impure animals" -- are ridiculous and backwards superstitions.  Interestingly, there were comments to this effect posted on the news article I read -- and resulting accusations of anti-Semitism.

The evils of oppression do not give the victimized group some kind of insurance against being accused of idiotic beliefs, nor does it make the people who criticize those beliefs bigots.  To pick a few examples that come to mind: the "afrocentrist" twist on history calls dark-skinned people "Sun People" and light-skinned people "Ice People," and credits every advance in knowledge to people of African descent.  I know more than one lesbian who hate all men and consider having a Y chromosome and the requisite anatomy sufficient reason to assume that the person in question is a macho, sex-obsessed victimizer.  Traditional Basques and Rom (Gypsies) often ostracize, sometimes to the point of physical violence, members of the group who marry someone from another ethnicity.

My statement that I think all of the above beliefs are patent nonsense should not have to be followed up by my saying, "... but I'm not a bigot."  In no case did I say that the groups in question were evil, simply that they were wrong.  There's a difference.  Any of us can be wrong.  Most of us, in fact, are frequently wrong.  Being wrong is no respecter of ethnicity, sexual preference, or religion. 

But in today's super-sensitive climate, people are on edge.  The "race card" (or "religion card") is played so often that the phrase has become a cliché.  (I even had a student accuse me of being "prejudiced against African-Americans" because she'd received a bad grade -- on a math test.)  For some of these people, the feeling of finally being in a position of power -- of being able to say anything, without fear of contradiction -- is a heady one.

There is no difference, however, between an anti-feminist's statement that "all women are inferior" and an ultra-feminist's statement that "all men are jerks."  Both are prejudiced nonsense.  If belonging to a dominant, majority ethnic group should not make you immune to criticism, belonging to an oppressed, minority ethnic group should not, either.  There is, of course, no justification for oppression.  That said, regardless of what group you belong to, if you make an idiotic statement, you should be called on it.

Move to France, escape the apocalypse

The United States has more than its fair share of wackos.  Maybe it's a side effect of our freedom; if you're free, you're given license to believe whatever ridiculous version of reality you choose to.  It's no particular surprise to me that Scientology, Heaven's Gate, the Oneida Community, the Branch Davidians, the Aryan Nations, and the Westboro Baptist Church are all American creations.  (Of course, given the beliefs of the Islamic fundamentalists, it's not like we have exactly cornered the market, either.)

What's unfortunate is that the US is becoming a major exporter of loony apocalyptic wingnuts.  If you don't believe this, allow me to direct your attention to the picturesque little town of Bugarach, France, population 200.

Bugarach, near Carcassonne in southwestern France, has become the unwilling epicenter of a doomsday cult that buys the whole December 21, 2012 nonsense, but is also connected to the Ramtha cult of J. Z. Knight.  Never heard of Knight, or Ramtha?  Let me tell you a little about  her, and it.

Knight, appropriately enough, was born in Roswell, New Mexico.  She currently lives in Yelm, near Mt. Rainier, Washington, where she runs "Ramtha's School of Enlightenment."  Who is Ramtha, you might ask?  Ramtha is, according to Knight, a "35,000 year old Lemurian enlightened mystic" who Knight is able to "channel."  Lemuria is, of course, the continent that used to be in the Indian Ocean, connecting Madagascar to India, which was destroyed in the same cataclysm that swamped Atlantis.  When Ramtha was alive, the Atlanteans and the Lemurians were at war, and Ramtha escaped to the Indus Valley, thus avoiding death when both lands were destroyed.  There he became a great teacher, mastering out-of-body experiences, and after death his disembodied soul wandered the Earth until it found a person wise enough to channel him, and selected Knight.

Interestingly, when Knight is "channeling Ramtha," she is never able to answer concrete questions such as "what languages were spoken, back in Paleolithic times?  What was the social structure like?  How do you know you lived 35,000 years ago?"  When asked those sorts of questions, she deflects them as "focusing on inessentials," and reverts to her central message, which has five parts:

• You are god.
• Consciousness and energy create reality.
• Make the unknown known.
• Conquering yourself is the only justifiable battle.
• Send J. Z. Knight large quantities of money.

You'd think that anyone making these sorts of claims would be referred for psychiatric evaluation, but this being Americans we're talking about, Knight immediately became famous and attracted hordes of followers.  She was instrumental in the creation of the 2004 movie What the Bleep Do We Know? which set a record for being the longest continuous stream of woo-woo bullshit ever filmed.

What, you might ask, does all this have to do with Bugarach, France?   Well, the deal is that the Ramtha people have jumped on the bandwagon of the Mayan end-of-the-world people, and have decided that Bugarach is going to be the only place on Earth that survives the apocalypse.  The explanations for this vary, but include that Bugarach has a "magnetic field," that it is a holy site for the aliens, or that it contains a portal to another world.  So wingnuts of a variety of stripes have been descending upon Bugarach like locusts to a wheat field.  Just the Ramtha people alone have set up six settlements nearby.

Jean-Pierre Delord, the mayor of Bugarach, is dismayed.  "At first, we treated it as a joke," he said in an interview with Figaro.  "But now, we're taking it very seriously.  What if on the big day, ten thousand people try to assault the village?  Already we have found a strange statue, surrounded by crystals, cemented to a rock near here.  They are trying to turn our village into some sort of Solar Temple.  Enough is enough."  He has ordered a local battalion of French legionnaires to practice maneuvers in the area, presumably to ready themselves to deal with the wackos should they get restive.

Of course, given the way nutjobs think, this has only further convinced them that Bugarach is The Holy Place.  Why, else, would Delord have called in the legionnaires?  It's clearly because he's part of the conspiracy to keep them away from The Holy Place.

I find the whole thing disturbing.  I'm a firm believer of freedom of speech, and also freedom to believe any damnfool thing that you want to, as long as you don't try to force it on me (and don't mind my laughing at you).  And so far, the Ramtha loonies and the other mixed nuts that have arrived in Bugarach don't appear to be trying to convert the populace.  But what if they are ruining the quality of life of the residents by their mere presence?  I recall when another group of wackos, the Rajneeshies (devotees of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, he of the fleet of 74 Rolls-Royces), literally bought the town of Antelope, Oregon, descended upon it in such numbers that they had a majority, and changed its name to Rajneeshpuram.  Fortunately for the residents of Antelope, Rajneesh was shortly thereafter charged with fraud and tax evasion and was run out of the country.

A pity we can't do that with J. Z. Knight, but she's a US citizen and so we're stuck with her.  She's still blathering on about Ramtha, and people are still, astonishingly enough, believing her.  And now, her followers are making life miserable for people in a little village in France.  There ought to be some kind of law that countries have to deal with their own crazies, and they could all be sent back here, hopefully under heavy sedation.  But given that there's no such helpful piece of legislation, the people of Bugarach are simply watching, and waiting, until December 2012 approaches.  At that point, I hope the legionnaires are ready, because I think it's going to get ugly.

Memorial Day Bigfoot report

New from the "34,208th Time's The Charm" department; a group of hikers claim that they've found conclusive evidence of Bigfoot in the Sierra National Forest.

Now, you should know from the outset that this group (1) were up there looking for evidence of Bigfoot, and (2) was being led by the founder of the Sanger Paranormal Society.  But still, before we start to scoff, let's hear the story.

Jeffrey Gonzalez and several friends were camping in the Sierras over Memorial Day weekend, and had been poking about looking for evidence of the hairy hominid.  To their dismay, it began to snow, and remembering what happened to the Donner Party, they decided to bag the trip.  So they returned to their vehicles, packed up, and drove off -- mysteriously leaving two of the vehicles behind.  (Both of the sources I read state that the group was "forced" to leave behind the vehicles, but neither explains why.)

Be that as it may, they came back two days later to retrieve the vehicles, and found that beside one of them was a "twelve-inch footprint," and there was a "face print" on the driver's side window.  (You should look at a photograph of the face print here.)  A similar, but smaller, face imprint was on the passenger side, indicating "two unexplained visitors to the campsite."

"Apparently," Gonzalez said, "the creature was looking in the window and left behind dirt and oil on it, leaving such an awesome picture, you can see the nose, the eye, the hair all over the face and the shoulders -- it's creepy, and it's not a bear.  An impression was left of a nose, eyes and lips, but they were extremely large.  The lips measured about six inches long. You can see that the whole face was full of hair, so when it leaned up against the window, you can see the depth of the eye socket in the glass. "I've shown people -- non-believers -- this photograph and this totally freaked them out."

Hair left at the site is being subjected to DNA analysis, but we are advised not to get too excited about it all, says Loren Coleman, director of the International Cryptozoology Museum of Portland, Maine, the man who but for financial concerns could have been my boss.

"One of the cautions I have about finding a nose print or anything on the side of a car is that it could be a homeless person, resulting in people letting their imaginations go wild" Coleman said.  "Of course, if you take a DNA sample and it comes back near-human or primate, then it would match both Bigfoot and a homeless person.  A twelve-inch footprint is not too exciting, because it could be a human or bears imprinting on top of each other.  In this case, it might not have been a homeless person, but in wilderness areas, there are other hikers and somebody would've naturally put their nose up to the window to look inside the car."

So, if you're up in the Sierras, you should be on the lookout for hairy hikers and homeless people with six-inch lips.

My own guess is that Gonzalez faked the lot.  It'd have to be a mighty greasy-faced Bigfoot to leave a complete facial imprint against a car window.  (Try smooshing your own face against a window and see how good an impression you leave.)  Besides, the whole "we had to leave behind two of the cars" thing sounds mighty convenient to me.  I wonder if we'll ever hear anything from the "forensics expert" who is testing the hair -- despite Coleman's caveat that a DNA test wouldn't be conclusive, I would think that the DNA of a hominid whose lineage has been separate from humans for perhaps five million years would be sufficiently different to be discernible with a sensitive enough analysis.  And given that the Bigfoots in question apparently shed fur all over the site, it's not like they're lacking for material.

So, I'm skeptical.  Predictably.  But we can always hope.  I still would love to see proof of Sasquatches in my lifetime (not to mention proof of life on other planets).  So perhaps one of these reports, one day, will turn out to have some weight of evidence behind it.  As for this one -- we'll wait to hear what the forensics experts say.  And if it turns out to be true, I'd be happy to chip in for a bottle of greasy-hair-formula shampoo for those Sierra Bigfoots.  Sounds like they could use it.

Sunspots, climate, and frozen turkeys

In my Environmental Science class, I present them with what appears to be a simple little problem.  I draw a graph on the board, passing through (0,0), (1,30), and (2,60) as follows:

I then ask them to do a little mental math, and predict what the y-value will be when the x-value is 6.  I deliberately have not labeled the axes, and rarely does anyone ever ask me what the numbers mean, or even what their units are.

AP-level high school seniors are great at extrapolation, and without too much trouble they figure out that when x = 6, y = 180.  At that point I label the axes.

The x axis is "Time, in days."  The y axis is "Temperature of a frozen turkey left on the kitchen counter to thaw, in degrees Fahrenheit."  After the laughter dies down, I say, "So, this Thanksgiving, don't bother putting your turkey in the oven.  Just put it on the counter and wait six days, and it will cook itself."

This type of error is called a misextrapolation, or an "assumption of linearity."  We tend to assume that once we've seen a trend, the same trend will continue forever.  It's what has resulted in the "some is good, so a lot must be better" attitude some people have toward taking vitamin supplements, for example.

It's only one of several logical errors I saw in an article yesterday in The Register, called, "Earth May Be Headed Into a Mini Ice Age."  This article notes a recent decrease in sunspot activity (data presented from 2000 to 2010).  Whoever constructed the graph gamely drew a regression line through the data, all the way up to the year 2026.  The regression line crosses a dotted line between a region of the graph labeled "spots" and one labeled "no spots" around 2022.

Well, yeah, if the trend continues, that's true; but nowhere in the article do they mention that the regression line itself is a prediction.  A quick glance at the data would convince you that, yes, it certainly looks linear.  You will read the article in vain looking for a discussion as to why anyone is expecting that it will remain linear.

Then the whole thing gets even worse.  They tie a decrease in sunspot activity to a cold period between 1645 and 1715, a time in which "many European rivers which are ice-free today – including the Thames – routinely froze over, allowing ice skating and even for armies to march across them in some cases."  The author calls this the "Maunder minimum," or the "Little Ice Age," which is half right; actually, the Little Ice Age was the drop in temperatures that began in the 14th century, which froze out the Viking settlements in Greenland and was probably contributory to the spread of the Black Death.

Besides the misextrapolation, we have two more logical problems going on here.  The first is that tried-and-true error in thinking, "correlation does not imply causation."  That the Maunder minimum coincided with a decrease in sunspot activity is true; that the decrease in sunspot activity caused the Maunder minimum is hardly proven.  Also, there's a problem with sample size here; even if you accept that there is some sort of connection between sunspot activity and global temperatures, the link between the Maunder minimum and the 17th century sunspot minimum is a sample size of one.  Sunspots normally fluctuate in numbers on an 11-year cycle, and there is to my knowledge no corresponding cyclic fluctuation in global temperatures.  (There is apparently a weak correlation between average sunspot activity on the hundred-year-scale and solar irradiance, which could have an effect on climate; to read about this from a more authoritative source, go here.)

Then, after reading the article, I made it worse by doing what I should never do, namely, reading the comments.  This article brought the climate-change-deniers out of the woodwork, howling brilliant lines such as, "The sun has an effect on Earth's temperature?  Really?  Wow, these scientists are so smart!"  The whole thing comes from the usual problem; reputable scientists publish a paper (describing decreasing sunspot activity, suggesting that the sun is going into a magnetically quiescent state, and noting that a similar quiescent period coincided with the Maunder minimum).  This gets picked up by the popular media, who then commit various acts of illogic upon it, give it a catchy, sensationalized title, and put it online.

It's no wonder that the general public mistrust scientists, given the generally poor understanding that they have of basic critical thinking combined with the crappy reporting that is typical of the popular media.  The danger is that this has turned scientists into Cassandras; they, better than anyone else, understand the problems we face, but when they talk, no one believes them.