The skeptic goes to Malaysia

My dear Skeptophiles,

This will be my last post for a couple of weeks... by this time tomorrow morning, I will be on my way to the lovely country of Malaysia for a hiking and birdwatching trip that I've been planning for months.  Some things I will be experiencing:

• amazing natural beauty, including six days in Taman Negara, one of the largest pristine stands of rain forest in Southeast Asia
• an opportunity to see over 300 species of birds, almost all of which will be new to me, and including one called the "Fluffy-backed Tit-Babbler," which I swear I'm not making up
• fantastic local cuisine, including several different kind of curries and a fruit called a "durian" that allegedly smells like a combination of garlic, wet dog, skunk, and sweat socks
• the experience of having my biological clock try to keep track of being twelve hours different from my home time zone

I will be largely incommunicado while I'm there -- although I've been told that a couple of the places I'll be will have WiFi, I'm not counting on having anything like frequent access to the internet.  So I will bid you a fond farewell for a couple of weeks, with the solemn promise that when I get back I will resume my battle with the woo-woos.  Look for the next Skeptophilia post on Monday, August 27.

Until then, there are a few things you can do to keep your appetite for critical thinking sated.  First, you can buy my book, if you haven't already done so.  It has the creative title Skeptophilia, is a bargain at only $3.99, and is a collection of 120 of my essays on science, skepticism, critical thinking, and woo-woo-ism.  You can get it for Kindle (here) or Nook (here).   If you do decide to buy it, many thanks -- and please leave a review.

This is also a chance for you to check out some other skeptical blogs and webpages, so here are a few of my favorites:

Science, Reason, and Critical Thinking
James Randi Educational Foundation
Pharyngula
SkepChick
The Skeptic's Dictionary
The Call of Troythulu
The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Science and Reason
Friendly Atheist
Quackwatch
Bad Archaeology
Bad Astronomy


That should be enough to keep you occupied while I'm gone, don't you think?


In any case, I should return refreshed and re-energized, and hopefully without any loathsome tropical diseases, the last week of August.  Until then, keep hoisting the banner of logic!

Amber teething beads and alternative quackery

Every once in a while, I'll happen across a story that outright makes me angry.  Usually this has to do with a woo-woo claim that doesn't just put the believer at risk, but others as well.

And it's worse when the ones whose health and safety are being put in danger are children.  Children depend on adults to make good decisions, and when hype, credulity, and commercialism team up to sell parents a bill of goods, it is placing an innocent individual in harm's way -- and one who is not capable of standing up for him/herself, or necessarily even recognizing the danger.

This is the case with the latest fad in "holistic baby care" -- amber teething beads.  I was first alerted to this oddball idea by a regular reader of Skeptophilia, who asked me if I'd ever heard of such a thing.  I hadn't.  But a little bit of research brought me here, where we are given the following combination of half-truths and outright falsehoods:

• Amber releases "healing oils," which are absorbed through the skin and into the bloodstream.  (It doesn't.)
• Amber is "electromagnetically alive" and "produces significant amount of organic, purely natural energy."  (Well, it can be electrically charged if you rub it with a silk cloth -- but then, so can a balloon, and I've never seen "holistic medicine" sites recommending wearing necklaces made of balloons.)
• Amber contains succinic acid, which is good for you because it is an amino acid.  (Succinic acid is not an amino acid.)
• Succinic acid is a therapeutically proven analgesic.  (This is true, but you can suck on a blob of amber all day and not absorb enough succinic acid to reduce any pain you might be experiencing.)
• Wearing amber protects you against "the negative effects of electrical equipment such as computers, televisions, mobile phones, and microwave ovens."  (Controlled studies of exposure to electromagnetic fields from commonly-used equipment showed no health effects whatsoever, so there's nothing much to protect you from.)
• Amber is good for you because tree resin has anti-microbial properties.  (A good antiseptic works much better.)

Then, at the bottom of the page, they write, "Please note: Amber Artisans does not dispense medical advice."

Oh, no?  Then what were the preceding paragraphs of hogwash?  These people -- who are only one of dozens of sites I found that are now hawking amber for teething babies -- are clearly dispensing medical advice.  Erroneous advice, but medical advice nonetheless.

I'm wondering how long it'll be before the first baby chokes to death on an amber necklace.  These things have screw clasps, and the silk cord that the beads are strung on is supposed to break if sufficient tension is given -- reducing the strangulation risk -- but what if a bead pops off the necklace and is inhaled?  And then, we have the problem of sites such as this one -- that claim that amber can be used for other purposes than soothing teething pain, such as treating rashes and fevers.  So, compound the (1) pseudoscientific claims, with (2) the choking and strangulation risk, and finally (3) the fact that gullible parents are being convinced that children with treatable illnesses will be cured by wearing a necklace, and potentially delay seeking good medical care, and perhaps now you'll see why the whole thing made me furious.

We have lots of ways of giving our children their best shot at healthy lives.  Good diet, exercise, and the usual suite of childhood vaccinations (sorry, anti-vaxers, you're simply wrong) are still the best bets for avoiding the illnesses that used to kill tens of thousands of children annually (and still do, in some countries where medical care is poor or nonexistent).  We now have an excellent understanding of how immunity works, and can use that knowledge to benefit those who depend on us.  And if we take the time to learn a little bit of genuine science, it can immunize us adults as well -- against the false claims of hucksters who are trying to sell us medically worthless items as cure-alls.

Life in the danger zone

Well, it's hurricane season, and we have a tropical storm and a tropical depression currently setting their sights on the Gulf of Mexico.  Couple this with the fact that the surface water temperature in the Gulf -- the driver for storm size -- is in some places at a record high, over 90 degrees Fahrenheit.  The whole thing has me feeling distinctly twitchy.

I'm a southern Louisianian born and bred.  My father was from Lafayette, my mother from Raceland.  Despite spending the past thirty years in the frozen North, a large part of my heart is still in the swamps where I was raised.  Southern Louisiana is a place of amazing natural beauty, and I still miss the wonderful Cajun food and music on which I was raised.

It's hard to know what to say as I watch these storms bearing down on the unprotected lowlands of the Gulf Coast.  From 2000 miles away, I can do little but check in on the NOAA's hurricane site several times a day, and watch as the forecast track gets shorter and shorter.   For my family and friends who still live there, I can only hope that as the storm progresses and its point of landfall becomes more certain, that you will evacuate to safer places if you need to.  After that, all I can do is what I did with Katrina, Rita, and Wilma; sit and wait.  And watch.

This brings up, as reluctant as I am to say it, the question of whether there are places in the world where people just shouldn't live.  New Orleans, much as I love the place (I have many fond memories of strong coffee and beignets at the Café du Monde), tops the list.  Hit by another major hurricane, the levees will eventually fail again.  Half of the city is below sea level.  How can it be sensible to gamble with your life, family, and property in such a place?

The fault-zone area in Marin County, California.  The Sea Islands off the coast of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.  The foothills of Mount Rainier, Mount Shasta, Mount Hood, and Mount Lassen, all of which are still active volcanoes.  The canyon country of south central California, with its wildfires and mudslides.  Countless volcanic islands in the Indonesian archipelago.  The Stromboli region of Italy, which is a ticking bomb for a Pompeii-style pyroclastic eruption.  All of these places are prone to natural disasters of terrible magnitude.  Ironically, all are places of incredible beauty.  Many are thickly populated; the volcanic ones are often important farming regions because of the fertile soils. 

I'm not foolish enough to propose that all of these areas should be evacuated permanently because of the risk.  Besides the complete impracticality of this, the sorry truth is that no place is truly safe.  Even in the geologically and meteorologically quiet area I currently live in -- the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York -- we occasionally have major storms.  The first winter I lived here, 1992-1993, was the winter of the never-to-be-forgotten "hundred-year storm," the Blizzard of '93, which dropped 54 inches of snow on my little town in one weekend.  (You can imagine how traumatic that was for a transplanted Louisianian, for whom "snow" was "that white stuff that's pictured on Christmas cards for some reason.")

Nowhere is safe, and everywhere you live is a tradeoff.  You simply pick what natural disasters you're most willing to risk, and choose what benefits you want badly enough to risk them.  And then, of course, there's the part about not blaming others for your choices, or expecting everyone to come rally around you when your house falls down due to a natural event you knew was likely to occur.  Even given that, however, everyone has different standards for acceptable risk, and what they think would be worth the potential danger.  I would, for example, happily live in western California (if I could afford it, which I can't) -- risking the earthquakes and wildfires to have the wonderful climate, natural beauty, accessibility to the ocean, and the ability to grow damn near anything in my garden.  I would not move to the Sea Islands -- beautiful as they are, one major hurricane and the island in the bullseye could well simply cease to exist, along with every structure and living thing on it.

I do, however, wonder how much of that is because I've been through several hurricanes (including Camille, the strongest hurricane ever to hit the Gulf Coast), but I've never been in an earthquake.  I know how completely terrifying a hurricane is.  I remember standing at night in my garage during Hurricane Allen, which scored a direct hit on Lafayette, and watching the strobe-light effect of the lightning strikes coming fifteen to twenty seconds apart.  The whole neighborhood would light up, and there'd be a garbage can seemingly suspended in mid-air; then darkness.  Another flash, and you'd get a picture of a huge tree branch standing on end in the middle of the street; then darkness.  The roar is like standing in front of a jet, and it doesn't let up for hours.  With Allen, we passed right through the eye -- all of a sudden, the wind drops, and silence falls, and a spot of blue sky opens up; animals come out, people come out, looking dazed.  The air doesn't feel right; you're at the point of lowest barometric pressure, and human senses have not yet degenerated enough that we can't feel that something's wrong.  There's a breathlessness, a feeling that sound won't carry right.  Then, ten minutes later, maybe fifteen -- there's the first flutter of a breeze, the leaves and branches stir.  Everyone runs for cover.  In twenty minutes, the wind comes screaming back, from the other direction, and it all starts again.

So I don't know how much of my lighthearted willingness to live in an earthquake zone is simple ignorance of what it's really like.  They say (whoever "they" is), "better the devil you know than the devil you don't know," but I've seen the devil I know, and he's a mighty scary guy.  I expect a sufficiently long conversation with a Californian could well change my mind.  After all, my impressions of earthquakes come from my imagination; and in my imagination I can say, "I could deal with that."  It could well be that the first little shake would leave me saying, "screw this, I'm outta here."

So here I sit, in my comfortable house in placid upstate New York, watching the storms ramp up.  I'm not a praying man, so to say "I'm praying for the people along the Gulf Coast" would be an outright lie, however noble the phrase sounds.  All I have to fall back on is the weakness of hope, and the breathless watching and waiting for the inevitable to occur.

Irony, irrationality, and self-contradiction

It is a source of immense frustration to me that people seem to be quite good at accusing those they disagree with of being irrational, while ignoring completely the irrationality of their own arguments.

And I'm not pointing fingers at any particular political or philosophical stance here; liberals and conservatives both seem to do this with equal frequency.  For example, take the recent Chick-fil-A kerfuffle.

Probably all of you know that the controversy started when Dan Cathy, CEO of Chick-fil-A, told the Baptist Press that his company is "very supportive... of the biblical definition of the family unit."  This started a firestorm of reaction, with gay rights advocates clamoring for a boycott (and organizing a "kiss-in," in which same-sex couples would kiss in a Chick-fil-A).  All of the "sanctity of marriage" folks responded by singing Cathy's praises.  Mike Huckabee organized a "Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day," and from the preliminary numbers, it looks like the company may have had its best sales day ever.

Now, I have no intent in this post to address the human rights issue; I've stated my opinion on that subject loud and clear in other posts.  What I'd like to look at here is the fact that Chick-fil-A's supporters characterized this as a free-speech issue -- that Cathy had a perfect right to state his opinion, and those supporting a boycott were advocating a restriction on constitutionally protected free speech.

Interesting that when the tables were turned, exactly the opposite happened.

Remember the "rainbow Oreo?"  Of course, the huge rainbow cookie itself was never manufactured; but a photoshopped image of an Oreo with rainbow layers was widely publicized, and Kraft Foods captioned the image, "Proudly Support Love."  Gay rights supporters gave the advertisements shouts of acclamation, while religious conservatives advocated boycotts, with one outraged customer stating, "I'll never eat an Oreo again" -- and the gay rights supporters objected to the conservatives' proposed boycotts on the basis of free speech!

It puts me in mind of Ted Rall's quote, "Everyone supports the free speech they agree with."

Honestly, my own position is that if you don't like a particular company's political stance, it is entirely your choice not to patronize it.  But in this country, a CEO -- like the rest of us -- has the constitutionally-protected right to state his or her opinion.  And this includes opinions that might not be popular.

The acceptance of contradictory stances (often while decrying the contradictory stances in our opponents) doesn't end there, however.  Take a look at this website, entitled "Confuse a Liberal Use Facts and Logic" (lack of punctuation is the author's).  A brief look at the statements there (I hesitate to dignify them with the name "arguments") will suffice, because the majority of them are classic examples of the Straw Man fallacy -- take an example of a view held by the most extreme of your opponents, exaggerate it, and then knock it down, and claim that thereby you have destroyed his/her entire political party's platform.  The most interesting ones, however, are:

• Ask them why they oppose the death penalty but are okay with killing babies.
• Ask them why homo****** parades displaying drag, tran******s and bestiality should be protected under the First Amendment, but manger scenes at Christmas should be illegal.
• Ask them why criticizing a left-wing actor or musician for the things they say or do, and refusing to attend their concerts, buy their albums, or see their movies, amounts to censorship, but boycotting Rush Limbaugh's or Laura Ingraham's advertisers is free speech. 

Okay, fair enough (even though I have to wonder why this guy thinks that "sexual" is a dirty word and needs to be bleeped out; but let's ignore that for the moment).  Does he really not see that the same arguments could be flipped around, and would be equally contradictory?  "Thou shalt not kill" means, so far as I can see, "thou shalt not kill;" if you're using that to argue against abortion, you have a lot of explaining to do if you support the death penalty.  (One commenter said, when confronted with this question, "A fetus never brutally murdered an innocent person," which is true but doesn't answer the question.)  Liberals who support gay-pride parades and the like as free speech, but object to a manger scene at Christmas, are espousing a contradiction, sure; especially if the manger scene is in someone's yard or in a privately-owned business, and the issues of taxpayer money and church/state separation don't enter into it.  But the reverse is an equal contradiction -- as long as the gay paraders follow the law, they are just as covered under free speech as the Christmas crèche creators are.  And conservatives are just as guilty of #3 as the liberals are; ask the Dixie Chicks.

The bottom line is that you have no real right to call out your opponents for holding self-contradictory stances while you're doing the same thing.  Both sides do it, with equal abandon, and neither one seems to notice as long as these crimes against logic are being committed by people whose position on the issues they already agree with.  And if you haven't already had enough irony in your diet from reading this, I'll end with a quote from Jesus (Matthew 7:5):  "Thou hypocrite!  First cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."

Science, credulity, and the "Ark Encounter"

I was just reading an article in the Louisville Eccentric Observer, a weekly online news source that bills itself as an "alternative" news source that tackles issues that the mainstream media won't touch.  The article, entitled "Investors of the Lost Ark," describes the financial troubles that are facing the "Ark Encounter" project, which had as its goal to build a life-sized replica of Noah's Ark by 2014.

The "Ark Encounter" project, which is the brainchild of Ken Ham, of Answers in Genesis, has the full support of Kentucky governor Steve Beshear, who arranged for $43 million in tax breaks for Ham's projects.  Beshear's budget also included a 6.4% cut to funding for public education.  [Source]  Funny how those two go together, isn't it?

In any case, the LEO article tells of a visit by LEO staffers and a variety of scientists to the Creation Museum, another of Ham's projects.  One of the visitors was Daniel Phelps, president of the Kentucky Paleontological Society, who reports that he had a contact with a 13-year-old "volunteer guide" who informed him that King Arthur's sword was made of iron from a meteorite.  Phelps, who was standing in front of a display of St. George slaying a dragon at the time, asked the boy if King Arthur had killed any dragons with that sword.

"I'm not sure if he did," the boy replied.  "But Beowulf killed three dragons."  The boy went on to describe the third dragon Beowulf killed as being of the flying and fire-breathing type, and told Phelps that "it was probably a pterosaur."

"Aren't those just fictional stories?" Phelps asked the boy.

The boy was vehement.  No, tales of dragons interacting with humans are proof that dinosaurs and humans coexisted, he said.

Okay, now skip downward to the comments section, and you will find two outraged comments directed at Joe Sonka, who wrote the article.  I quote:

Regarding your opening paragraph: I have been to the Creation Museum many times, and I know they don’t have tour guides, much less 13-year-old ones. It’s a self-guided museum. The teen might have been at the museum with a parent to do some volunteer work (like stuffing envelopes) and was taking a break inside the museum. But there are certainly no guides in the museum, and this young man (though obviously a bright kid) was not representing the museum.

And also:

You are to be pitied: taking the words of a 13 year old boy who is not a guide at the museum (and thus does not represent it) and implying that his beliefs are those of the museum (you wrote that ” fantasies” such as his are a part of the museum’s mission) is low journalism. In my academic life, I was told to seek out primary sources when researching and writing an accurate paper about a topic. Oppose the museum’s message if you want, but to quote a teenager barely out of childhood -- and who is not a representative of the museum -- to help make your case is pathetic journalism.

So, let me get this straight: Sonka's calling the boy a "volunteer guide" (which was misleading; I, too, thought the boy was an official volunteer, and in fact thought it was curious they were using guides that young) somehow negates his main point -- than the fact that the museum is so scrambling fact with fiction that it leaves a 13-year-old unable to tell the difference?

And that's the problem, isn't it?  By undermining the gold standard of scientific induction as a way of knowing, the Creation Museum calls all of actual science into question.  Dragons in Beowulf?  Oh, sure, they were dinosaurs.   How did the animals not kill each other on the Ark?  Because god made them all peaceful plant eaters for the duration of the voyage.  What about fossils of animals that don't exist any more?  Those species died in the Great Flood.  What about the light from distant stars showing that the universe has to be older than 6,000 years?  The speed of light isn't constant, and neither is the rate of flow of time, and both have altered by just the amount necessary to reconcile astronomical measurements with Genesis.  (If you don't believe me that this last one is something that creationists actually argue, go here.  Make sure you have a soft pillow on your desk for when you faceplant.)

So, anyway, back to the LEO article, which describes the financial troubles that Ham's organization is having, and the gloomy projections of budget shortfalls that will force the opening of "Ark Encounter" back to 2016.  Sonka seems pretty cheered by this.  Myself, I find the whole thing profoundly discouraging -- even if the "Ark Encounter" is delayed, they still seem to be raking in money hand-over-fist.  Mike Zovath, vice president of Answers in Genesis, stated that they already have $100 million of funding committed for the project.  "God's raised up investors," Zovath told an enthusiastic crowd at a Grant County town hall meeting last August.

What bothers me most is that this project, and the Creation Museum as well, are specifically designed to target children.  They're intended to be flashy, eye-catching, and entertaining, with interactive exhibits and displays of biblically-themed stories.  The underlying, and more sinister, message is: don't believe what your public school teachers are telling you.  Don't believe what the scientists are saying.  They're being tempted by Satan to mislead you.  Whenever you have a question, go back to the bible; and if what the bible says is different from what anyone else ever says, about anything, the individual is wrong and the bible is right.  In other words: stop thinking, stop trying to figure things out, just believe.

And that stance is completely antithetical to real science, which takes nothing on authority, and only respects the firm ground of hard evidence.  Groups like Answers in Genesis hate science for this very reason.  But the end product of such bizarre thinking is what Phelps saw in his 13-year-old helper -- a teenager who actually, honestly thought that Beowulf was real and had fought a dinosaur.

If you can be indoctrinated to believe something for which there is no evidence, and then to doubt the principles of scientific induction themselves, there is no end to the foolishness you can be induced to swallow.

A study of life after death

Today we have news that the Templeton Foundation is giving a three-year, five million dollar grant to John Martin Fischer of the University of California-Riverside to conduct an in-depth study of the afterlife.  [Source]

"People have been thinking about immortality throughout history.  We have a deep human need to figure out what happens to us after death," said Fischer, the principal investigator of what is being called the Immortality Project.  "Much of the discussion has been in literature, especially in fantasy and science fiction, and in theology in the context of an afterlife, heaven, hell, purgatory and karma.  No one has taken a comprehensive and sustained look at immortality that brings together the science, theology and philosophy."

The project will involve an in-depth analysis of reports of near-death experiences, spirit survival, and out-of-body experiences.  Fischer is careful to emphasize the rigorous nature of the study his team intends to undertake.

"We will be very careful in documenting near-death experiences and other phenomena, trying to figure out if these offer plausible glimpses of an afterlife or are biologically induced illusions," Fischer said.  "Our approach will be uncompromisingly scientifically rigorous.  We’re not going to spend money to study alien-abduction reports.  We will look at near-death experiences and try to find out what’s going on there — what is promising, what is nonsense, and what is scientifically debunked.  We may find something important about our lives and our values, even if not glimpses into an afterlife."

And that's the problem, isn't it?  How can you tell the difference between the two -- a true, scientifically verifiable "glimpse into an afterlife," and a mere collection of stories that tell us "something important about... our values?"  With near-death experiences, and anything else that relies solely on anecdotal reports, it is often impossible to eliminate the effects of the inevitable skewing of memory that occurs because of inherent flaws of our perceptual and integrative neural mechanisms.  If there is a commonality between stories of NDEs, what does that mean?  Are reports of NDEs similar because people are experiencing contact with a consistent, real afterlife, or because we all have basically the same brain wiring and that wiring fails in a consistent way when we are nearing death?

I just don't know how you'd sort the two out, frankly.  Myself, I have no idea if there is an afterlife -- but even if there is, it may well be out of the reach of an acceptable empirical protocol that would convince someone who wasn't already convinced.

And that brings up the second problem.  The Templeton Foundation is a granting agency whose stated purpose is

[to serve] as a philanthropic catalyst for discoveries relating to the Big Questions of human purpose and ultimate reality.  We support research on subjects ranging from complexity, evolution, and infinity to creativity, forgiveness, love, and free will.  We encourage civil, informed dialogue among scientists, philosophers, and theologians and between such experts and the public at large, for the purposes of definitional clarity and new insights.  Our vision is derived from the late Sir John Templeton's optimism about the possibility of acquiring "new spiritual information" and from his commitment to rigorous scientific research and related scholarship.  The Foundation's motto, "How little we know, how eager to learn," exemplifies our support for open-minded inquiry and our hope for advancing human progress through breakthrough discoveries.

All of which sounds nice, but it does put a rather heavy burden on the researcher receiving their grant money to find a connection between science in spirituality, given that taking five million dollars and turning up empty-handed would be a bit of an anticlimax.

I'm not alone in having some questions about the Templeton Foundation's motives.  Rationalists such as Richard Dawkins, John Horgan, and Peter Woit have all made pointed comments about the Foundation's money biasing any projects that they might support.  Sean Carroll, a cosmologist at the California Institute of Technology, said, "the entire purpose of the Templeton Foundation is to blur the line between straightforward science and explicitly religious activity, making it seem like the two enterprises are part of one big undertaking. It's all about appearances."  Carroll did add, however, "I appreciate that the Templeton Foundation is actually, in its own way, quite pro-science, and is not nearly as objectionable as the anti-scientific crackpots at the Discovery Institute."

It's telling if in order to place a funding agency on the side of rigorous research, you have to compare it to the Discovery Institute.

On the other hand, I'm cautiously in favor of such research.  As I've said many times before in this blog, I'm perfectly willing to entertain the possibility of there being many phenomena that fall outside the ken of current understanding -- but if you think such things are real, you damn well better have some hard evidence to support your position.  The "Big Questions" -- and the existence of an afterlife is certainly one of the biggest -- are deserving of research, and if it is done with acceptable scientific rigor, the Immortality Project is a fascinating thing to undertake.  I can only hope that the researchers involved with the project aren't going to end up being corrupted by the inherent bias of their grant foundation.

Ignorance, evolution, and space weather

Self-awareness is tragically uncommon amongst humans.

There are lots of kinds of self-awareness, and I suspect that none of them are abundant; but here, I'm thinking in particular of the kind of self-awareness that involves an understanding of what you don't know.  Ignorance, per se, is not something to be ashamed of; it is simply something to correct.  Ignorance only becomes a problem when you are unaware that you are ignorant -- and then trumpet your views to the world as if they had the same relevance as those of someone who actually understands the topic being discussed.

I find this problem to be especially bad in the realm of politics, where everyone seems to feel the need to have an opinion about everything, despite the problem that many of those opinions are entirely unencumbered by facts.  But given that this is a touchy subject for many, and one that I myself am admittedly ignorant on, let's turn to a different and (hopefully) less controversial example.

A friend of mine sent me a link yesterday to the webpage of one Susan Joy Rennison.  Ms. Rennison begins her homepage thusly:

This website keeps online some of my research about the new phenomena of space weather driving massive evolutionary change. When I wrote my book Tuning the Diamonds: Electromagnetism & Spiritual Evolution, I was well ahead of the curve. I realised that Modern Mayan Elders were trying to point out that the citizens of planet Earth were entering a New Age dominated by aether or space, and the basic premise of my book was that the dramatic increase and impact of Space Weather was the predicted arrival.

We are put on notice that she is perhaps not a pinnacle of self-awareness a little further along, wherein she states:

Please note: I am NOT a New Ager and this is NOT a New Age website. Please read my Joyfire Philosophy webpage and my essay Spiritual Evolution in the Cultic Milieu, where I make it very clear that not every Seeker in the Cultic Milieu is a New Ager and thus steeped in certain New Age beliefs.

Ah.  So, you think that the Mayan Elders are ushering us into a "New Age dominated by aether or space," but you're not a New Ager.  Thanks, it all becomes clear, now.

Anyhow, Ms. Rennison's lack of awareness of her own ignorance is demonstrated fairly graphically when she starts blathering about solar weather, geomagnetic storms, and their significance to... evolution.  Yes, she seems to think that space weather is causing evolution.  No, I'm not making this up.  To wit (this is a bit of a long quote, but worth reading):

In September 2008, NASA announced that the inhabitants of Earth will be exposed to significantly more cosmic and galactic radiation, as part of a long term trend that started in the mid 1990s. The new phenomena of Space Weather, is the bombardment of Earth by solar, cosmic and galactic energy now causing concern to government agencies, satellite communication manufacturers and the power supply industry. Yet, the September 2008 announcement by NASA, that our planet is now being flooded by galactic cosmic rays as part of a long term trend that started in the mid 1990s, was even more startingly [sic], as scientists speculate that the shielding around our solar system might 'evaporate'.

On January 5th 2009, a press release about a NASA funded study stated that severe space weather will have “an impact” on humans, after years of only stressing the impact on technological systems. As galactic cosmic radiation floods our planet, this will most certainly cause an increase in DNA mutations and therefore generate evolutionary change. Certainly, environmental signals are now being affected by fluctuating geomagnetic signals, which humans use to maintain balance.

Whatever, as the shield around our solar system provided by the solar wind continues to drop, as the Earth's magnetic field also continues to drop, with the December 2008 announcements of recent evidence that current magnetic configurations are generating massive breaches that will permit stronger geomagnetic storms in the future and the ionosphere has also contracted permitting more radiation to reach the ground, there can be no denial that all life on Earth will be greatly influenced by new cosmic conditions. My book, Tuning the Diamonds: Electromagnetism & Spiritual Evolution explains the myriad of effects, including the spiritual and evolutionary implications of this high energy bombardment. The Human Genome Project that cost 2.7 billion dollars over 13 years revealed that our DNA is actually 'tuned' by the environment and our consciousness. Therefore, I hope the many recent announcements from the Space community will propel many in the alternative and mainstream world to consider how well placed they are to co-operate with this evolutionary impetus.

Well, now.  Where do I begin?  Here's a list of the errors I found in this passage, without even trying hard:

1.  "Space weather" is nothing new.  All of the indications we have are that solar storms, solar flares, and coronal mass ejections have been going on for millennia.  Yes, the incidence of such violent solar events waxes and wanes, for reasons that are poorly understood; but they seem to have relatively little effect on the Earth, causing minor problems for communications networks but otherwise not doing a hell of a lot except for creating impressive auroras.

2.  Humans do not use "geomagnetic signals" to maintain balance.  Balance is maintained by the fluid pressure in the semicircular canals, a structure in our inner ears that works a little like a carpenter's level.

3.  The shielding around our solar system is not "evaporating."  To be honest, I don't even know what the hell that means.  I can only think that she's referring to the heliopause, the point outside the solar system where the solar wind finally is slowed to zero by contact with interstellar material.  But this point is not some kind of Star Trek-style "shield" that's keeping cosmic bad stuff from hitting us, and there's no evidence whatsoever that it's somehow contracting.

4.  Evolution is not speeding up because of "galactic cosmic rays."  Yes, cosmic rays do cause mutations, but so do naturally-occurring radiation from radioactive minerals, and chemical mutagens (both natural and artificial) in the environment.  The speed of evolution is far more sensitive to the amount of selective pressure than it is to the amount of mutations in any case; and since most mutations are deleterious, an increased mutation rate (should it occur) would cause more cases of cancer than it would some kind of burst of evolution.

5.  The Human Genome Project said nothing about DNA being "tuned by the environment and our consciousness."  This statement makes me wonder if Ms. Rennison actually has any background in science at all, or, perhaps, is simply incapable of reading a press release.


Okay, so I guess I've hacked enough at the poor woman's webpage for now.  My point in going through all of this is not simply to poke at another New Ager -- heaven knows, those are a dime-a-dozen, and if I started to analyze every one of them I'd never be done.  My main point here is that it is as critical to be aware of what you don't understand as it is to be aware of what you do.  There are many areas in which my knowledge is significantly lacking, but I try my hardest not to pontificate on those topics as if I actually knew what I was talking about.  And if it's an area in which I feel that I should be more knowledgeable, I work to rectify that gap -- because, after all, ignorance is correctable.

It puts me in mind of a conversation I had with my dad when I was perhaps ten years old.  He was talking about a man we knew, and he said the man was ignorant, and then amended his comment to state that the man was actually stupid.  I asked my dad what the difference was.

"Stupidity is willful ignorance," he said.  I said I still didn't understand.

My dad looked thoughtful for a moment.  "Ignorance is only skin deep," he finally said.  "Stupidity goes all the way to the bone."