Music, DNA resonators, and mind control

Every once in a while I'll run into a woo-woo whose determination, creativity, and style evoke in me some grudging admiration.  Such is Leonard Horowitz, whose theories are so out there that they read like well-crafted fiction (which, in fact, they are).

Horowitz himself was a dentist, who despite the medical training that is required for the field, evidently never absorbed much in the way of standard biological information, nor (for that matter) common sense.  He claims, for example, that flu vaccines cause sterility, which I know will come as a great shock to the millions of presumably fertile individuals who get flu shots yearly.  Instead of getting a flu shot, Horowitz says, you should merely dose up on vitamin C and D, and purchase from his website (c'mon, you knew he was selling something) "alkalanizing water" and "covalently-bonded silver hydrosols" that will render you invincible.

Two other wonderful Horowitz creations are the "Water Resonator" (a sticker you apply to the water jug in your fridge) that "displays the precise sound frequencies of universal creation to restore nature's resonance energy and electromagnetic purity of water," and the "DNA Enhancer," another sticker that you place on your acupuncture points, which works because "DNA is nature's bioacoustic and electromagnetic (that is, 'spiritual') energy receiver, signal transformer, and quantum sound and light transmitter."

But by far my favorite Horowitz claim is that the standard musical tuning of A = 440 hertz is gradually turning music listeners into mindless zombies.  The problem, apparently, is that the "natural" tuning of A = 444 hertz was suppressed by the Rockefellers, who realized that tuning orchestral instruments to 440 would allow them control the minds of anyone exposed to music.  The whole thing involves the Illuminati, the Federal Reserve, Lucifer, Muzak, the Manhattan Project, Elvis Presley, Pat Robertson, the Nazis, Pythagoras, Nikola Tesla, and the Beatles.  Which, I believe, makes it the single most comprehensive conspiracy theory ever invented, needing only a mention of HAARP to make it a shoo-in for the Gold Medal of Woo-Woo.

To prove to you that I'm not lying, here's a link to Horowitz's paper on the subject, which you really should read in toto, because just the illustrations alone make it one of the most inadvertently hilarious things I've ever read.  But in case you don't have the time, inclination, or spare brain cells to kill, here's the abstract (yes, it's set up like a traditional scientific paper, with an abstract, introduction, background, methodology, and so on):

This article details events in musical history that are central to understanding and treating modern psychopathology, social aggression, political corruption, genetic dysfunction, and cross-cultural degeneration of traditional values risking life on earth.  This history concerns A=440Hz “standard tuning,” and the Rockefeller Foundation’s military commercialization of music. The monopolization of the music industry features this imposed frequency that is “herding” populations into greater aggression, psychosocial agitation, and emotional distress predisposing people to physical illnesses and financial impositions profiting the agents, agencies,  and companies engaged in the monopoly.  Alternatively, the most natural, instinctively attractive, A=444Hz (C5=528Hz) frequency that is most vividly displayed botanically has been suppressed. That is, the “good vibrations” that the plant kingdom obviously broadcasts in its greenish-yellow display, remedial to emotional distress, social aggression, and more, has been musically censored. Thus, a musical revolution is needed to advance world health and peace, and has already begun with musicians retuning their instruments to perform optimally, impact audiences beneficially, and restore integrity to the performing arts and sciences. Music makers are thus urged to communicate and debate these facts, condemn the militarization of music that has been secretly administered, and retune instruments and voices to frequencies most sustaining and healing.

 Myself, I like the "greenish-yellow good vibrations" part the best, and will now immediately re-tune my flute to A = 444 hertz.  (I'd also attempt to do the same with my bagpipes, but given that "soothing psychosocial agitation" is really not something most people associate with bagpipe music, I probably shouldn't bother.)

His "About the Author" bit at the end of the paper (in case you didn't get that far) also makes for good reading, and includes a mention of various accolades he's received:  "Dr. Horowitz has been honored as a 'World Leading Intellectual' by officials of the World Organization for Natural Medicine for his revelations in the musical mathematics of creationism that are impacting the fields of metaphysics, creative consciousness, sacred geometry, musicology, and natural healing according to his life’s mission―to  help fulfill humanity’s Divine destiny to actualize world peace and permacultural sustainability."

Whoooo.  Those are some credentials, dude.  You had me at the "revelations in the musical mathematics of creationism" part, not to mention the whole "sacred geometry" thing, which always makes me picture people worshiping equilateral triangles and chanting Euclid's Postulates while burning incense.

Anyway.  That's our woo-woo of the day, and one of my particular favorites.  Whatever else you can say about Dr. Horowitz, he's certainly earnest, and one should never discount the humor value of some of these people.  So thanks for the chuckles, Lenny.  Keep up the good work.

The mathematician and the Bible decoder

One of my besetting sins is riffing continuously on the same themes, and if I seem to be saying the same thing over and over again in different guises, I hope I can be forgiven on the grounds that there is so much work to do in the realm of getting people to think critically.

I feel the need to start with this disclaimer because once again I've bumped into a wonderful example of how good humans are at assigning meaning to random patterns.  Our minds are really pattern-finders; we are constantly, and mostly subconsciously, looking for relevance in what we experience, because (as I've commented before) we evolved in a context where a rustle in the grass might or might not have been a hungry lion, and far better to assign that meaning to it and be wrong than to fail to assign that meaning to it -- and be wrong.  The result is we often invent meaning where there is only randomness, only chaos.

Enter Michael Drosnin, author of The Bible Code, The Bible Code II: The Countdown, and The Bible Code III.  Drosnin is the fellow who took the Hebrew original of the Torah (Genesis, Leviticus, Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Numbers) and purported to find hundreds of encoded messages predicting the future -- everything from the Holocaust to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.  His technique, if you can dignify it by that name, involved running all of the letters in the Torah in a string, and then finding patterns -- taking every nth character, or characters that formed straight lines (including diagonal ones) when the text was assembled in lines of X letters long.  He generated hundreds of diagrams like the following, which supposedly predicts the attacks of 9/11:

Well.  This whole thing got various mathematicians and statisticians in a lather, because the general rule is, if you're allowed to assemble a string of characters of sufficient length any way you want, and apply the rules of character selection any way you want, you can create any message you want.  The whole thing seems self-evident to me, not to mention my general skepticism that prediction of the future is possible however you might want to go about it.  Mathematician David Thomas was more blunt than that, saying, "The Bible Code is a silly, dumb, fake, false, evil, nasty, dismal fraud and snake-oil hoax."

And Drosnin responded, "When my critics find a message about the assassination of a prime minister encrypted in Moby Dick, I'll believe them." 

As the saying goes: be careful what you wish for; you may get it.

Mathematician Brendan McKay rose to the challenge, and took the text of Moby Dick, applied Drosnin's technique to it, and found "predictions" of the assassination of:

• Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of India
• President René Moawad of Lebanon
• Soviet exile Leon Trotsky
• Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Chancellor Engelbert Dolfuss of Austria
• Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel
• John F. Kennedy
• Robert F. Kennedy
• Princess Diana

For the entire thing, which is well worth reading, go here. And to Drosnin, I can only say:  ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

None of this is recent news; but on the other hand, none of it seems to be discouraging Drosnin from continuing to Bible Code like mad.  His most recent book (The Bible Code III) was just released a year and a half ago, and the word is he's working on a fourth book (tentatively titled The Bible Code IV).  And, of course, his books still sell like hotcakes, which I have to admit bugs me for a variety of reasons.  It galls me that someone who is so obviously using spurious reasoning to make ridiculous, illogical claims is making money by taking advantage of the credulity of the book-buying public.  It also bothers me when someone just won't quit when they're debunked; we've seen it with such luminaries of the woo-woo world as Erich von Däniken, Uri Geller, and Immanuel Velikovsky, not to mention apocalyptic religious fanatics like Harold Camping.  Arguments, facts, and evidence pile up, you're shown to be a misguided wingnut at best and a deliberate hoaxer at worst -- and you don't do what most of us would do in this situation, which is to turn bright red, mumble an apology, and vanish -- you keep going.

Unfortunately, the fact is that there are still enough people who believe all of this stuff that the money still flows, even after the theories are debunked and disproven.  So whatever else you can say about woo-woo bullshit, it's lucrative.  And if I can be allowed to make a rather depressing prediction of the future myself -- I'm sure that The Bible Code IV, V, and VI will all be raving successes.

Birds, ancestors, and intellectual honesty

Last week I was messing about with a genealogical search engine called RootsWeb.  RootsWeb indexes, and allows you to search, the submitted databases of thousands of genealogical researchers, and can be a valuable tool for finding out bits and pieces of information that other folks have uncovered.

It's also a fine way to perpetuate error.  When I was using it last week, for example, I came across a database in which a researcher had identified one of the early residents of Louisiana as having been born four years before his father was.

Now, having done genealogical research for years, I can tell you that this kind of mistake is easier to make than it would seem.  Genealogical software allows you to link up people quickly and easily, and while some (mine, for example) has features which give you an error message if you try to link two people who can't possibly be parent and child (or husband and wife), not all of them do.  So, my point is, not all errors of this type are careless research; many are probably just the genealogical equivalent of a typo.

In any case, the point of all this is that the RootsWeb server allows you to place an electronic post-it on others' databases, asking questions, giving additional information, or whatever.  So I posted, "How can this be _____'s father when he was born four years before his father was?"

The following day, I got a very snarky email from the owner of the database.  The gist of it was that I was finding fault with research that she had identified on her site as "tentative," and it ended with, "... you should have read my website notes before you posted your rude commentary, which clearly wasn't intended to be helpful."

Now, leaving aside the presumptuousness of thinking you can discern a total stranger's motives from a single sentence on a post-it, I find this attitude baffling.  I felt like writing back, "you 'tentatively' thought a person could be born prior to his father?  Are you ignorant of biology, or just generally stupid?"  But of course, I didn't; I sent a quick note apologizing, saying I hadn't meant to offend.  But really; why would any researcher object to having an obvious, simple error pointed out?

I ran afoul of the same attitude years ago, with a cousin of mine who wanted our mutual great-grandmother's family (the Iams family) to be descended from royalty.  He proposed a scheme for descending them from the kings of Scotland, which (upon delving into it a little) I found to be impossible.  In this case, I was a little more tactful right from the get-go, sensing that he was pretty happy to have royal blood - I sent him a letter gently breaking the news to him, and providing photocopies of the records I'd found that disproved his cherished hypothesis.

He never spoke to me again.

It's all about intellectual honesty, really.  I have had some theories of mine run headlong into the stone wall of factual evidence, and it's not pretty when that happens.  It's hard to go in, and where you had answers, put back in those blank-looking question marks.  But otherwise, what's the point?  Why would you engage in a pastime like this if you're satisfied with perpetuating falsehoods?

I have another hobby in which intellectual honesty plays a part, and that's birdwatching.  I'm what some birdwatchers derisively call a "twitcher" or a "lister;" I keep track of my sightings and actively search for birds I've never seen.  Now, anyone who's ever watched wildlife will know that the word "seen" isn't as clear-cut as you'd think.

A good example was the first time I "saw" a Ruffed Grouse, a bird which had eluded me for years.  I heard it first -- anyone who knows the fauna of the American Northeast will attest that this is generally the case, the call of a Ruffed Grouse carries for miles but the birds themselves are remarkably elusive.  Anyway, I'd been trying for nearly an hour to get a glimpse of the bird I heard calling, and suddenly there was a flurry of wings and a brownish blur took off through the trees and disappeared.

So, the dilemma: should I count it?   I knew what it was; I heard it, and was sure that this was the same bird I'd heard.  But by the rules I'd set for the game, that wasn't good enough -- to count it, I actually had to see it well enough to recognize it.  It was another year before I saw a Ruffed Grouse well enough to tick it off my list.

But I've met birders who don't have the same standards -- if they see a speck flying away, and someone else in the group is sure it's a particular species, they'll count it.  My question is, how is that honest record-keeping?

I know these are both just hobbies, and that I'm getting all serious about something that is just lighthearted recreation, but I still think the question is a valid one.  I find myself wondering about this when I read about intellectual dishonesty in other, far more serious venues -- when politicians will lie, or be selective with the truth, to achieve their political ends; when scientific researchers will falsify or ignore data to create an appearance of support of their favored theories. 

Just last week, a story broke about allegations that Dr. Dipak Das, whose research was responsible for the widespread contention that drinking red wine increases longevity and improves general health, had engaged in fraud.  His papers, which had appeared in peer-reviewed journals, and whose findings became part of the conventional wisdom on health and nutrition, were found to have 145 instances of "fabrication and falsification of data."  Das has, over the years, been the recipient of millions of dollars of federal grant money; the University of Connecticut just announced that they were returning to the government the last two grants, totaling $890,000.

Das, of course, has been "unavailable for comment."  But it is clear that these allegations are valid, and it is highly probable that his career is over.

What would possess someone to do such a thing?  How could someone, steeped in the honesty-at-all-costs tradition of the scientific method, not at least realize that sooner or later, he was bound to get caught?

I wonder if people like Das start small, like my genealogical acquaintances, and the cheating birders; if once you've become anesthetized to the effects of lying about small things, it becomes increasingly easy to lie about large ones.  It may seem silly, but it's the same thing; the only difference is scale.  We have a favorite theory, an outcome we really desire to be true, and we tell ourselves that it won't matter if we stretch the truth. 

And like anything, it becomes easier the more we practice.

Risky business

One thing that I find that many people don't understand is the concept of risk.

Risk has a formal, mathematical definition: it is equal to the probability of exposure times the probability of harm.  For example, an activity which is a commonplace occurrence (probability of exposure) and which, for those who participate in it, is very likely to cause injury or death (probability of harm) is considered to be highly risky.  An example is riding a motorcycle without a helmet.  Likewise, an activity for which both quantities are low -- such as eating a mango -- is a low-risk activity.

So far, easy.  When it becomes less intuitive is when one of the quantities is low, and the other is high -- such as riding in an airplane.  The probability of exposure is high (it's commonplace), but the probability of harm is extremely low (almost no one, of all the millions of people who fly daily, gets hurt doing it).  The overall risk is therefore quite low -- but the times when injury and death occur are spectacular, leading most people to overestimate the risk wildly.

An additional complicating factor occurs when engaging in one behavior stops you from doing another -- in which case you need to consider the net risk.  For example, if you're going to take a thousand-mile trip, and are undecided whether to fly or drive, the risk for flying is almost certainly lower than the risk for driving, so your net risk for the trip goes down by taking an airplane.  (I realize that there are other factors that can influence the decision -- such as cost.)

The whole issue comes up because of an article sent to me by a reader of Skeptophilia.  The article (here) is entitled "Twenty Things That Are More Dangerous To Children Than Lead Paint In Toys."  It is a perfect example of a combination of pseudoscientific bunk, alarmism, and a complete misunderstanding of the concept of risk.

To take just a few of their examples of their "things that are dangerous:"

1)  Mercury in dental amalgam.  Never mind that hundreds of controlled, peer-reviewed studies have concluded that the amount of mercury absorbed by the body from dental fillings is far below the amount that would cause harm; this article repeats the tired old claim that the mercury in your fillings is "poisoning you."  Odd, then, how many of us live long, healthy lives with mouths full of metal, isn't it?  (Here's one nice debunking of this claim -- with references.)

2)  Sunscreen.  Contains many "poisonous chemicals," says the article, and yet we "slather it all over our children."  First, given that the other options are getting sunburned, or avoiding the sun altogether, I think we can apply our concept of "net risk" here.  Ever heard of malignant melanoma, folks?  Second, the repeated use of the word "chemical" as something we should avoid is another ploy of the "holistic health" crowd, which cheerfully neglects the fact that we humans are really just a big bag o' chemicals already.  (Another statement from the article is that children's clothes should not be "washed in chemicals."  What, pray, should we wash them with, then?)  "Natural" does not mean "good;" the naturalistic fallacy is rampant in these sorts of claims.  I always get a laugh from food packages that say, "Made From All-Natural Ingredients."  I wonder what food made from "All Unnatural Ingredients" would look like?

3)  In the same vein, "synthetic vitamins" made the list.  I'm sorry to inform you, Mr. and Ms. Holistic Health,  but there is no difference between ascorbic acid (vitamin C) produced in a laboratory, and ascorbic acid extracted from oranges.  The body can't tell the difference.  There is no sorting station in your cells, looking at vitamin C molecules and saying, "Ooh, goodie!  This is a nice, natural vitamin C molecule from an orange!  Oh, YUK.  This is a horrid, unnatural vitamin C molecule from a laboratory!"

4)  Vaccines.  This one torques the absolute hell out of me, largely because of a personal connection; my mother contracted polio as a child, and as a result limped for her entire adult life; and my grandfather's two sisters, both teenagers, died three days apart from measles.  Died.  All of this occurred in the days before vaccines, and yet these "Natural Health" people somehow claim that vaccines are harmful to your health.  Yes, they often contain methyl mercury as a stabilizer (but like dental amalgam, the quantity is so low as to be insignificant to health), and every once in a while someone, somewhere will have an adverse reaction to a vaccine.  But if you compare the actual risk of vaccination as compared to the actual risk of going unvaccinated, they are orders of magnitude apart.  Vaccines have saved millions of lives -- and, to put not too fine a point on it -- if you are going to let unscientific bullshit like this persuade you not to vaccinate your children, you should be prosecuted for child endangerment.

Oh, and another thing; there is no connection between vaccines and autism.  None.  It has nothing to do with the "dumbed-down press" (direct quote from the article).  Once again, we have peer-reviewed studies that have repeatedly found no correlation, and the wild, unsupported claims of a "natural health practitioner" who sits there shrieking that vaccines cause "severe neurological damage" (another quote).

Well, I know who I believe.

All of this is not meant to say that we shouldn't be careful about what we put into our bodies.  Some of the things on the list (soda, fast food, and preserved meats such as hot dogs and bacon) clearly can have adverse effects if consumed in large quantities.  (In fact, I find it curious that "dryer sheets" made the list, while "high fructose corn syrup" didn't.  Compare the risk of type-2 diabetes from habitual overconsumption of sugar with recorded cases of dryer-sheet toxicity.  Let me know what you find.)

So, that's today's rant.  I'm off to consume my all-natural, chemical-free breakfast, and pray that the cumulative effects of my three dental fillings and years of vaccinations don't make me suddenly drop dead from "severe neurological damage."

Here lies an atheist: All dressed up, and nowhere to go.

I've been thinking a lot about death lately.  But for what it's worth, I'm not getting depressed about it or anything, so no need to start planning your intervention, or take away my Swiss army knife, or whatever.

I think the reason is because in the last two months, I've had three people I know die.  One, as I mentioned in a previous post, was my therapist, who died suddenly two days after Christmas.  The other two were long-term long distance friends, distant cousins of mine whom I'd met because of a mutual interest in genealogy, and with whom I had been corresponding for over twenty years.  Both were selfless and funny and kind, and although I'd never met either face-to-face, they were people that I counted amongst my friends.

The whole thing leaves me thinking about connections, and the holes left behind when people die.  I find myself wondering (and I ask honestly, without any feeling of self-pity) who have I touched?  My students, presumably, at least some of them.  My family, obviously.  I've never found it easy to make friends, but I have lots of what I'd call "good acquaintances" -- people who'd probably come to my memorial service, but whose life would roll on more-or-less unchanged in my absence.  It's really struck me in the last couple of years that I hardly ever socialize with anyone unless they're someone my wife knows, so I really have few close friends.  I'm not sure how much this bothers me -- some days yes, some days no -- but I do sometimes wonder why in my five decades I've consistently found it easy to get along with almost everyone, and to have a deep friendship with almost no one.

So what would my memorial service be like?  And why do I care?  If my worldview is correct, I won't be there in any form whatsoever to pass judgment on what my loved ones do to remember me, or what they do with my remains.  If they decide to have a full-blown Catholic funeral, complete with a nun reciting the rosary, I'll be none the wiser.  Part of me, though, just can't bear to think that this could happen.  Maybe it's the last thing we want to have control over -- "just follow my wishes until after the memorial service is over, and after that, do what you please!"

Me, I want to have music.  And food.  I suppose dancing is too much to ask, but honestly, that would be cool.  Bring some instruments.  Have a jam session.  Don't play anything maudlin.  (I swear, if anyone sings "Danny Boy"...)  I can think of one lightning-fast Finnish tune that would be a great sendoff.  Show some photos of travels, dives, gigs.  Break open a bottle of really good Spanish red wine.  Maybe more than one.  Maybe the Irish had the right idea, with their wakes.  Leave 'em laughing -- or at least, smiling.

And afterwards, everyone will go home, and the world will keep spinning, the stars will still shine at night; the only difference is that I won't be there to see it.  It's boggling, really.  I doubt I really fully comprehend what that means.  I doubt anyone does.  How could anyone conceive of being gone -- really gone, really and truly entirely gone?  Strange thought.  Doesn't scare me, honestly, it's more just inconceivable.

Or, maybe I've been wrong all along, and there's an afterlife.  Could be, I suppose.  There are certainly enough traditions which propose such a thing, and enough tales of people's spirits hanging around after the funeral for various reasons.  (If I die before our local pharmacist, and I become a ghost, I'm coming back just to scare the piss out of him.  I can't stand that sonofabitch.  But I digress.)

Either way, I'm not really scared to die.  I was with my father when he died, and mostly what I thought was... how peaceful.  Not really very scary at all.  It was sad, but it was sad for me and my mom -- not sad for him -- wherever he was, if anywhere, he wasn't there anymore.  He was gone, or far, far away, beyond any more pain or anguish or sorrow.

So that's how I look at my own death.  The biggest question mark I will ever face.  I do fear pain, I fear debility, I fear being dependent; but I don't really fear death.  My attitude is that when I die, it will simply be my turn to leap forward into the unknown.

It's all in the wrist

In what I consider a nice bit of good news, PowerBalance has finally admitted that their bracelets are useless.

For those of you who haven't run into this particular piece of woo-woo nonsense, PowerBalance is an American-based company that came out a few years ago with a selection of brightly-colored plastic bracelets, with a holographic logo imprinted on them, and claimed that wearing them would somehow improve your health.  Users swore by them; for a time I used to see them regularly at the gym I belong to.  Supposedly, these things improved your lifting ability, flexibility, and reduced your likelihood of sore joints and muscles afterwards.  For an explanation of how a plastic bracelet could do all of that, the company had to resort to pseudoscience of the most egregious sort; the claim was that their "holographic technology" made the bracelet "resonate with and respond to the natural energy field of the body."

One of my pet peeves (okay, admittedly I have quite a few) is people who use scientific terms in a non-scientific way.  A favorite term for these folks is "field," which to a physicist means something specific, measurable, and quantifiable, but in the hands of these charlatans it becomes something mysterious -- an aura that surrounds your body and interacts with the world (and the fields of other people, presumably) in magical ways.  And somehow, this little strip of plastic was supposed to "resonate with your field" and improve your ability to bench press.

Well, finally, someone has forced them to admit that it's all a bunch of crap, and high time.  Apparently, PowerBalance has been under attack from consumer organizations all over Europe, but it was in Australia that they were forced to print a public notice that they'd hoodwinked the people who had purchased their products:

In our advertising we stated that Power Balance wristbands improved your strength, balance and flexibility.
We admit that there is no credible scientific evidence that supports our claims and therefore we engaged in misleading conduct in breach of s52 of the Trade Practices Act 1974.
If you feel you have been misled by our promotions, we wish to unreservedly apologise and offer a full refund.
To obtain a refund please visit our website www.powerbalance.com.au or contact us toll-free on 1 800 733 436.
This offer will be available until 30th June 2011. To be eligible for a refund, together with return postage, you will need to return a genuine Power Balance product along with proof of purchase (including credit card records, store barcodes and receipts) from an authorised reseller in Australia.
This Corrective Notice has been paid for by Power Balance Australia Pty Ltd and placed pursuant to an undertaking to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission given under section 87B of the Trade Practices Act, 1974.

My general response was: hallelujah.  It's about time that one of these ripoff artists gets called on their fraudulent claims.  I'm saddened (but not surprised) that it hasn't happened in the US yet; at the risk of overgeneralization, I think Americans tend as a whole to be more superstitious (and therefore more easily suckered) than are citizens of most other industrialized countries.  Worthless quack cures (such as homeopathy) still are multi-million dollar business here, and (to my knowledge) there has been no concerted effort on the part of consumer organizations to try to stop them.  The only consistent push in that direction has come from skeptics, notably James Randi.

But this is a start.  One can only hope that it'll spread.  I'd like to live to see the day that psychics have to put disclaimers saying "Any Predictions I Make Are Probably Going To Be Wrong" underneath their sandwich boards, astrology columns come with a header saying "Warning: The Contents Of This Column Are Fiction" -- and the homeopaths are simply out of a job.

The flying saucers of Iran

I am fortunate, for a variety of reasons, to be a teacher.  I am in the middle of my 25th year in the profession, and still (most days) look forward to going to work.  In large part, this is due to the enthusiasm of my students.

Given that I teach two AP-level science classes and various science electives (including Critical Thinking), most of my students know about my passion for skepticism, and my general disdain for ridiculous, counterfactual (or counterlogical) claims.  I'm happy to report that the majority of them share my views with regards to irrationality, and like me, find such beliefs simultaneously maddening and hilarious.  They have been some of my best advance scouts, bringing in stories on a regular basis that I probably would not otherwise have found.

Just yesterday, one of the students in my AP Biology class came in, obviously excited.  "Wait till you hear this one," he said.  "This needs to be picked up by Worldwide Wacko Watch."  He then reminded me of the capture last month by Iranians of the RQ-170 drone aircraft, one of the high-tech "flying wings" that are used to perform unmanned surveillance missions.  "Do you know how they managed to do that?" he asked me.

To say I'm not knowledgeable about aircraft and military technology is an understatement, so I merely said, "No."

He responded, with barely-contained laughter, "Using a flying saucer."

Upon investigation, I found that Mehran Tavakoli Keshe, an Iranian engineer, has claimed to be the mastermind behind the downing of the drone.  Although the US has yet to confirm that it was the RQ-170 that was captured, Keshe has recently released a photograph showing either the captured drone or else a model (it's not clear which they're claiming it is).  He then went on to crow that the capture had not been done using any kind of conventional technology, but had been accomplished using "field forces generated by a flying saucer... (harnessing) a fusion reactor that manipulates dark matter, regular matter, and antimatter.'

Wow, dude.  You really should have stopped while you were ahead.  You almost had us believing you, there, when you showed us the photograph.  But you really expect us to buy that you Iranians have a flying saucer when you can't even seem to manage to build a conventional nuclear reactor that works?  And the whole thing about "field forces" (we presume he means "force fields") and fusion reactors and so on is clearly the product of someone who has spent too many hours watching Battlestar Galactica.  Given that physicists haven't even been able to demonstrate that dark matter exists -- if it does, it seems not to interact with regular matter much at all -- I am at a loss to explain how you could have a spaceship whose engine runs on it.

What's next?  A spaceship that runs on fairy dust and rainbows?

Even though Keshe obviously has a screw loose, his heart seems to be in the right place with respect to aggression.

"We invite the US government and other nations to enter into negotiation with the Foundation and The Iranian government,” he posted on the Keshe Foundation's online forum, “for disclosure of the full space technology to all nations simultaneously that there shall be no more war race, but a pace [sic] race to join and conquer the space and not each others little peace of lands so called nations, this offer stands and is extended to all nations irrespective of their colour, race and religion."

Which I have to admit is pretty friendly, coming from a spokesperson from a government that routinely calls for the United States to be annihilated.

In any case, I think the more likely explanation for the downing of the drone was proposed by Wired magazine writers Spencer Ackerman and Noah Shachtman (here) -- that the Iranians simply jammed the drone's navigation systems.  That doesn't have the cachet, however, of "we locked onto your drone with our tractor beam, which is powered by dark matter and antimatter.  And dilithium crystals."

Still, nothing I can say can beat the response from George Little, the Pentagon's chief spokesperson, who said, "We have no comment on this individual's claims -- but tell him the Secretary wants his light saber back."