I have a cognitive bias. When I come across a new phenomenon, and am trying to wrap my brain around it, I need to understand the mechanism by which it works. If no mechanism is forthcoming, this raises (considerably) the level of evidence I demand before I'll accept that what I'm seeing is real.
I realize that this is, in many ways, getting the cart before the horse. Rarely in science do researchers discover something, and understand the mechanism by which it works, simultaneously. Almost always we start out by making some sort of observation that requires explaining, and describe the what of the phenomenon long before anyone is able to give a good explanation of its how.
The problem is that given this bias, this automatically makes me doubt studies that show results that don't seem to have any reasonable mechanism by which they could have occurred. I'm aware that this could be potentially preventing me from accepting evidence that would be convincing in any other realm, a position hardly befitting a skeptic -- but in my own defense, at least I'm aware of it.
This brings us to today's bit of possibly scientific weirdness -- two studies, just released in the past week, that allege a factual basis for ESP.
The first one, done by a team led by Julia Mossbridge, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University, apparently gives support to the contention that some people experience premonitions. Mossbridge and her associates analyzed the results of 26 psychological studies, some dating back as far as 1978, looking for evidence that people were experiencing emotional reactions to information they hadn't seen yet. Subjects were shown photographs that varied in content -- some neutral, some pleasant, some disturbing, some sexually arousing -- and they experienced physiological changes (alterations in electroconductivity of the skin, blood vessel dilation, pupil dilation, EEG readings, and so on) two to ten seconds prior to being shown the relevant photograph. Mossbridge claims that she has controlled for factors such as the Clever Hans Effect, and has stated, "These results could not be explained by experimenter bias in the normal sense." Her statistical analysis has placed the odds of the results being due to chance or coincidence at 400 billion to one.
My problem, predictably, is that I don't see how this could possibly work. I don't see a mechanism. If you're asking me to believe Mossbridge's results come from some sort of real phenomenon at work, it seems to reverse the temporal order of causality -- placing the effect before the cause. Causality seems to me to be one of those rock-solid ideas, about which there can't be any reasonable doubt. But then, that's just all part of my bias, isn't it?
The second study is even sketchier. In it, a group of neuroscientists from the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences went to Bangalore, India, to do an fMRI on a gentleman who claimed to be telepathic. In the study, one of the experimenters drew a picture, and simultaneously a control subject and the alleged telepath tried to reconstruct the drawing while inside the fMRI machine. The telepath created a drawing that had a "striking similarity to the original drawn by the experimenter;" the non-telepathic control's drawing had no resemblance at all. More interestingly, the fMRI results showed increased activity in the alleged telepath's right parahippocampal gyrus, and no such increase occurred in the control.
This one activates my skepti-senses not only because of my bias against anything for which I can't see a possible mechanism; I also wonder why such a stunning result wasn't published anywhere but the International Journal of Yoga. But let's pass over that, and attribute that to the known biases that grant funding agencies and peer-reviewed science journals have against anything that smacks of woo-woo. So even assuming that the study was valid, how on earth could such a thing as telepathy work? What you're telling me is that somehow, as I draw a picture, my thoughts are creating a change in the electromagnetic field surrounding my head, and you (ten feet away) experience that through the neural connections in your right parahippocampal gyrus, and this makes your visual cortex fire, making you suddenly realize that I'd just drawn a picture of a kitty cat?
I'm just not seeing how this could possibly work. You'd think that any changes in the electromagnetic field in my vicinity caused by my brain activity would be so weak as to be undetectable at that distance -- especially given that the test subject was inside the giant electromagnets of an fMRI machine at the time!
Of course, many believers in telepathy don't think it's communicated electromagnetically, that there is some sort of "psi field" by which it is transmitted -- but to me, this doesn't explain anything, it just adds one more item to the list of ESP-related phenomena that no one has ever proven to exist.
In any case, the problem is that Mossbridge et al., and the unnamed scientists who fMRI'd the telepath in Bangalore, may well have stumbled upon something that needs explaining. (Assuming that neither group are hoaxers; I mean no slight to their reputations, but that possibility can never be discounted without consideration.) If either or both of these results is real, and not a fluke, a hoax, or a statistical artifact, then despite my objection that there seems to be no possible mechanism by which either one could work, we have some serious explaining to do.
But my bias won't be silenced quite so easily. Despite Mossbridge's claims of a 400 billion to one likelihood against her results being due to chance, and the hard evidence of the fMRI photographs, I just can't bring myself to overturn everything we currently understand about neuroscience, physics, and causality, and throw myself into the Believers' Camp. I hope, just for the sake of balance, that some scientist or another takes on the challenge of sifting through these studies -- but if I were a betting man, I'd be wagering that neither one will stand up to any kind of rigorous analysis.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Induction, inference, and the fate of six Italian seismologists
There are two basic kinds of reasoning; deduction and induction. Deduction consists of putting together statements about generalizations, or categories, and then drawing a specific conclusion from those statements. Induction is, in a way, the opposite; analyzing specific instances of phenomena, and then inferring a general, overarching pattern from them.
Neither is infallible. Deductive logic, for example, is only as good as the premises. The argument, "All dogs have tails; boxers do not have tails; therefore boxers are not dogs" is a perfectly valid piece of deduction (it follows the pattern called modus tollens), but it leads to a wrong conclusion because it started out with a false premise (that all dogs have tails). In induction, it is the process of inference that can lead you astray; there might be instances you haven't considered, causalities about which you were unaware. No one was more aware of this than Einstein -- when congratulated on experimental data having proven his Special Theory of Relativity, Einstein soberly replied, "A thousand experiments could not prove me right, but one could prove me wrong."
However, there is a vast public misperception that both of these methods of reasoning are (or should be) infallible. Logic, of either flavor, should always lead you to correct answers. More to the point, if scientists know what they are doing, they should be able to get it right every single time. If they don't get it right, something serious is amiss -- perhaps they have a political agenda that they are trying to foist. Maybe they fudged their data to get grant money.
Or maybe they're just criminally malfeasant.
That last one is the chilling conclusion reached in Italy Monday regarding six geologists, who the courts declared guilty of manslaughter because of their failure to predict the earthquake in L'Aquila in 2009 that killed over 300 people. The judge sentenced each of them to six years in prison, and the government agency for which they worked (the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology) to pay 7.8 million euros ($10 million) in damages. [Source]
This is such a bizarre miscarriage of justice that I barely know where to begin.
Saying "scientists are human, and therefore fallible" is only the shallowest layer of why this verdict is absurd. It's more than just six fallible individuals who made a regrettable mistake; it's a complete misunderstanding of what science and inductive reasoning does, and in fact what it is capable of doing. Scientific inference is never going to give you certainty; even in fields about which a great deal is known, and about which the mechanisms are generally understood (let's say, biological evolution), there will always be pieces of the puzzle that don't seem to fit. There are still species (plenty of them) whose position on the Grand Tree of Life is poorly understood, and therefore subject to revision; there will always be features, adaptations, and structures still to explain. If they weren't, well, we biologists would be out of a job, wouldn't we? There'd be nothing left to research.
The necessity of maintaining an awareness of uncertainty, of living on the edge of what is known, is even more pronounced when you are in a realm of science about which the mechanisms are only partly understood. Climatology falls into this category -- and so does seismology. While we understand a great deal more about these subjects than we did fifty, or even twenty, years ago, they are not yet at the point of being models that can predict with anything near 100% accuracy. (And as I pointed out above, 100% isn't reachable no matter what.)
The fact that scientists in general, and especially ones in fields that are perched on the edge of what is explainable, get it wrong sometimes is inevitable. More importantly, these missteps aren't indicators of some hidden agenda, or of outright malfeasance; they are indicators that we don't fully understand the system being studied. Which we already knew, right? The fact that climatologists are nearly unanimous in attributing the climate changes we've seen in the past century to anthropogenic carbon dioxide doesn't mean that they can yet tell you how those changes will manifest in weather events day after tomorrow, or how far those trends will continue, or what the ultimate result will be for the Earth's climate. The fact that seismologists understand a great deal about plate tectonics doesn't mean that they can tell you when and where the next major earthquake will strike. We simply don't have enough information yet to make those kinds of pinpoint-accuracy predictions.
I trust science. I trust the majority of scientists. At the same time, I am always aware of its limitations and boundaries, and the fact that by nature, inductive reasoning gives you a tentative, incomplete picture of the world. "Scientists are always at the drawing board," astronomer Neil DeGrasse Tyson said. "If they're not at the drawing board, they're not doing science. They're doing something else." The six scientists who are facing prison terms in Italy are where they are because inevitably, the scientific process generates partial solutions and uncertain predictions. That's simply how science works. Progress is made in science not by someone having a flash of insight and figuring out the "right answer," but by slow, painstaking motion toward a model that seems to be consistent with everything that is observed, the majority of the time.
To put it bluntly, the judge who ruled them guilty of manslaughter apparently has no understanding whatsoever of science as a process. My fear is that this verdict will place a further chill on scientific research -- a scary thought, in a time when accusations of political bias, and claims that pure research is a waste of money, are already chipping away at the public's perception of science as a worthy endeavor. Who will want to publish a supported, but controversial, result if now you not only can be accused of having a secret agenda, or wasting money, but be found criminally responsible if your model turns out to be wrong, if your predicted results don't come to pass? In one way, saying "scientists are only human" is relevant -- scientists have lives, and families, and value their freedom, and if they think that some idiot judge is going to imprison them for manslaughter because they failed to predict an earthquake, they are likely to leave the field altogether. Which, incidentally, two other Italian seismologists, Mauro Dolce and Luciano Maiani, did on Tuesday after hearing about the verdicts.
The whole thing is a travesty of justice. I don't know enough about the Italian judicial system to know with any certainty how likely it is that an appeal will be successful, but it is to be hoped that these men will ultimately be freed and their names cleared of these charges. If not, I fear for the future of science, which remains our best and most reliable method for finding out about the world we live in.
Neither is infallible. Deductive logic, for example, is only as good as the premises. The argument, "All dogs have tails; boxers do not have tails; therefore boxers are not dogs" is a perfectly valid piece of deduction (it follows the pattern called modus tollens), but it leads to a wrong conclusion because it started out with a false premise (that all dogs have tails). In induction, it is the process of inference that can lead you astray; there might be instances you haven't considered, causalities about which you were unaware. No one was more aware of this than Einstein -- when congratulated on experimental data having proven his Special Theory of Relativity, Einstein soberly replied, "A thousand experiments could not prove me right, but one could prove me wrong."
However, there is a vast public misperception that both of these methods of reasoning are (or should be) infallible. Logic, of either flavor, should always lead you to correct answers. More to the point, if scientists know what they are doing, they should be able to get it right every single time. If they don't get it right, something serious is amiss -- perhaps they have a political agenda that they are trying to foist. Maybe they fudged their data to get grant money.
Or maybe they're just criminally malfeasant.
That last one is the chilling conclusion reached in Italy Monday regarding six geologists, who the courts declared guilty of manslaughter because of their failure to predict the earthquake in L'Aquila in 2009 that killed over 300 people. The judge sentenced each of them to six years in prison, and the government agency for which they worked (the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology) to pay 7.8 million euros ($10 million) in damages. [Source]
This is such a bizarre miscarriage of justice that I barely know where to begin.
Saying "scientists are human, and therefore fallible" is only the shallowest layer of why this verdict is absurd. It's more than just six fallible individuals who made a regrettable mistake; it's a complete misunderstanding of what science and inductive reasoning does, and in fact what it is capable of doing. Scientific inference is never going to give you certainty; even in fields about which a great deal is known, and about which the mechanisms are generally understood (let's say, biological evolution), there will always be pieces of the puzzle that don't seem to fit. There are still species (plenty of them) whose position on the Grand Tree of Life is poorly understood, and therefore subject to revision; there will always be features, adaptations, and structures still to explain. If they weren't, well, we biologists would be out of a job, wouldn't we? There'd be nothing left to research.
The necessity of maintaining an awareness of uncertainty, of living on the edge of what is known, is even more pronounced when you are in a realm of science about which the mechanisms are only partly understood. Climatology falls into this category -- and so does seismology. While we understand a great deal more about these subjects than we did fifty, or even twenty, years ago, they are not yet at the point of being models that can predict with anything near 100% accuracy. (And as I pointed out above, 100% isn't reachable no matter what.)
The fact that scientists in general, and especially ones in fields that are perched on the edge of what is explainable, get it wrong sometimes is inevitable. More importantly, these missteps aren't indicators of some hidden agenda, or of outright malfeasance; they are indicators that we don't fully understand the system being studied. Which we already knew, right? The fact that climatologists are nearly unanimous in attributing the climate changes we've seen in the past century to anthropogenic carbon dioxide doesn't mean that they can yet tell you how those changes will manifest in weather events day after tomorrow, or how far those trends will continue, or what the ultimate result will be for the Earth's climate. The fact that seismologists understand a great deal about plate tectonics doesn't mean that they can tell you when and where the next major earthquake will strike. We simply don't have enough information yet to make those kinds of pinpoint-accuracy predictions.
I trust science. I trust the majority of scientists. At the same time, I am always aware of its limitations and boundaries, and the fact that by nature, inductive reasoning gives you a tentative, incomplete picture of the world. "Scientists are always at the drawing board," astronomer Neil DeGrasse Tyson said. "If they're not at the drawing board, they're not doing science. They're doing something else." The six scientists who are facing prison terms in Italy are where they are because inevitably, the scientific process generates partial solutions and uncertain predictions. That's simply how science works. Progress is made in science not by someone having a flash of insight and figuring out the "right answer," but by slow, painstaking motion toward a model that seems to be consistent with everything that is observed, the majority of the time.
To put it bluntly, the judge who ruled them guilty of manslaughter apparently has no understanding whatsoever of science as a process. My fear is that this verdict will place a further chill on scientific research -- a scary thought, in a time when accusations of political bias, and claims that pure research is a waste of money, are already chipping away at the public's perception of science as a worthy endeavor. Who will want to publish a supported, but controversial, result if now you not only can be accused of having a secret agenda, or wasting money, but be found criminally responsible if your model turns out to be wrong, if your predicted results don't come to pass? In one way, saying "scientists are only human" is relevant -- scientists have lives, and families, and value their freedom, and if they think that some idiot judge is going to imprison them for manslaughter because they failed to predict an earthquake, they are likely to leave the field altogether. Which, incidentally, two other Italian seismologists, Mauro Dolce and Luciano Maiani, did on Tuesday after hearing about the verdicts.
The whole thing is a travesty of justice. I don't know enough about the Italian judicial system to know with any certainty how likely it is that an appeal will be successful, but it is to be hoped that these men will ultimately be freed and their names cleared of these charges. If not, I fear for the future of science, which remains our best and most reliable method for finding out about the world we live in.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Potions 101
One of the coolest things about writing Skeptophilia has been the connections I've made with other skeptics. The friendly comments, and (even better) the suggestions for topics, have been a continual source of cheer for me, far outweighing the outraged rantings of various woo-woos I've offended, not to mention the occasional death threat.
I've recently (and more or less by accident) achieved quite a following amongst some of my current and former students. I certainly don't believe in proselytizing during class; not only would this be unprofessional and ethically questionable, given that they are a captive audience, I have always preferred keeping my own views about most things out of the scope of my lectures. It's far better, I've found, to present the facts of the matter, and give students the tools to think critically, and allow them to make up their own minds. But it was inevitable that a few of them would discover Skeptophilia, and once that happened, the news spread, leading to the formation of what I think of as a sort of junior branch of Worldwide Wacko Watch.
One particularly enthusiastic young man that I only met this year has taken it upon himself to become something of a research assistant, ferreting out crazy stories and loopy websites in his spare time, and sending them to me. And just yesterday, he found a real winner, that has all of the hallmarks of a truly inspired woo-woo website: (1) a bizarre worldview, (2) no evidence whatsoever, and despite (1) and (2), (3) complete certainty.
So allow me to present for your consideration the Lucky Mojo Free Spells Archive.
The first fun bit about this site is that it's run and maintained by someone named "Cat Yronwode." Having a background in linguistics, I have deduced that the latter combination of letters is an attempt to spell "Ironwood" in a vaguely medieval fashion, but who the hell knows for sure? In any case, Ms. Yronwode has requested that the spells contained therein not be copied, because some of them are copyrighted material, and I have honored this, so if you want more details about exactly how to concoct the magic potions described below, you'll have to take a look at the site yourself. (Who knew that pagans could be so legalistic? I didn't. But better to play along with her request than to find myself hexed with, for example, "Confusion Oil #3." Heaven knows I'm confused enough, most days.)
In any case, what the "Lucky Mojo Free Spells Archive" turns out to be is a set of recipes for magic potions, and instructions in their use. Thus we have the following:
If you are, like me, a Looney Tunes fan, you might remember that he got out of this particular fix by chanting such powerful spells as "Abraca-pocus" and "Hocus-cadabra." It worked, but I bet he'd have defeated his vampire captor even more quickly had he had access to some "Damnation Oil," or even better, "John the Conqueror Root."
I've recently (and more or less by accident) achieved quite a following amongst some of my current and former students. I certainly don't believe in proselytizing during class; not only would this be unprofessional and ethically questionable, given that they are a captive audience, I have always preferred keeping my own views about most things out of the scope of my lectures. It's far better, I've found, to present the facts of the matter, and give students the tools to think critically, and allow them to make up their own minds. But it was inevitable that a few of them would discover Skeptophilia, and once that happened, the news spread, leading to the formation of what I think of as a sort of junior branch of Worldwide Wacko Watch.
One particularly enthusiastic young man that I only met this year has taken it upon himself to become something of a research assistant, ferreting out crazy stories and loopy websites in his spare time, and sending them to me. And just yesterday, he found a real winner, that has all of the hallmarks of a truly inspired woo-woo website: (1) a bizarre worldview, (2) no evidence whatsoever, and despite (1) and (2), (3) complete certainty.
So allow me to present for your consideration the Lucky Mojo Free Spells Archive.
The first fun bit about this site is that it's run and maintained by someone named "Cat Yronwode." Having a background in linguistics, I have deduced that the latter combination of letters is an attempt to spell "Ironwood" in a vaguely medieval fashion, but who the hell knows for sure? In any case, Ms. Yronwode has requested that the spells contained therein not be copied, because some of them are copyrighted material, and I have honored this, so if you want more details about exactly how to concoct the magic potions described below, you'll have to take a look at the site yourself. (Who knew that pagans could be so legalistic? I didn't. But better to play along with her request than to find myself hexed with, for example, "Confusion Oil #3." Heaven knows I'm confused enough, most days.)
In any case, what the "Lucky Mojo Free Spells Archive" turns out to be is a set of recipes for magic potions, and instructions in their use. Thus we have the following:
- "Seven Holy Waters" -- allegedly invented by Marie Laveau, the "Witch Queen of New Orleans." Contains whiskey, which I've never found to be especially water-like, but given that the word "whiskey" comes from the Irish "uisge beatha," meaning "water of life," we'll just let it slide, because arguing with both the Witch Queen of New Orleans and the entire nation of Ireland seems like a losing proposition. In any case, it's supposed to bring you peace, and is "very old-fashioned and Catholic."
- Three different recipes for "Money-drawing Oil."
- Two recipes for "Love Bath," one of which is called "Courtesan's Pleasure," and about which I will not say anything further in the interest of keeping this blog PG-13 rated.
- Something called "John the Conqueror Oil." Made, predictably enough, with "John the Conqueror root." We are warned to "beware commercial John the Conqueror and High Conquering Oil" because they "rarely have the root in them," especially if it was made in a factory. This made me ask, in some astonishment, "There are factories for making this stuff?" Notwithstanding that I'm supportive of anything it takes to keep Detroit solvent, you have to wonder how you could mechanize making magic spells. Don't you have to be all pagan and ritualistic and druidic and so forth while you're making up potions? I just can't imagine that you'd get the same results from cooking up your potions in a cauldron in the woods as you would if you made them using electric blenders, pressure cookers, conveyor belts, and so on. At least one has to hope that the machinery is operated by certified witches.
- "Haitian Lover Oil," "for men only," about which we are told that it is "not to be used as a genital dressing oil." Okay, we consider ourselves duly warned.
- "Damnation Powder." Used to hex someone you don't like. "To be used with extreme caution." Don't damn anyone lightly, is the general advice, which seems prudent to me.
- And the best one: "Harvey's Necromantic Floorwash #1." Just the name of this one almost made me spit coffee all over my computer. But hey, I guess even necromancers need to scrub the linoleum in their kitchens every once in a while, right?
If you are, like me, a Looney Tunes fan, you might remember that he got out of this particular fix by chanting such powerful spells as "Abraca-pocus" and "Hocus-cadabra." It worked, but I bet he'd have defeated his vampire captor even more quickly had he had access to some "Damnation Oil," or even better, "John the Conqueror Root."
Monday, October 22, 2012
Homeopathy goes to Haiti
Well, in today's contribution from the I Despair For Humanity Department, we have a report in courtesy of Sharon Hill's wonderful site Doubtful News that a group called "Homeopaths Without Borders" is going to Haiti.
At first, I thought that (despite Hill's outstanding reputation for veracity) this couldn't possibly be real. But no, sad to say, Homeopaths Without Borders does exist, and on their website (here) they describe their most recent project:
Homeopathy is, pure and simple, quackery. When you take a homeopathic "remedy" you are consuming either a sugar pill or else pure water, depending on whether it's in solid or liquid form. The process of serial dilution used in creating these "remedies" removes every last potentially bioactive molecule, and there is nothing left but the carrier -- generally either lactose or water. (For a wonderful summary of the scientific impossibility of homeopathic claims, go here.)
Unconvinced? Here's a list of people who have died while under the care of homeopaths, most from disorders that would have been treatable had they been given standard medical care. Note that they include a number of children. Pets aren't immune to this kind of neglect, either; just last week, a woman in Britain was fined £1000 and banned from keeping animals for three years after courts heard how she refused to give anything but homeopathic "remedies" to two dogs with advanced mange. (One of the dogs was ill enough that it had to be euthanized.) [Source]
And now, these people are going to spread their foolish, counterfactual nonsense to Haiti. And train others in how to use their useless "remedies." Bad enough that they push these "remedies" on people in places like the USA, the UK, and Australia; given our access to information, and good public education systems, there is an argument to be made that it's our fault if we fall prey to these snake oil salesmen.
But don't places like Haiti have enough problems, what with natural disasters, some of the highest poverty levels in the world, lack of access to clean food and water, and lack of access to standard medical care? Now, what we have on top of that is people from "Homeopaths Without Borders" coming in, and convincing sick Haitians that all they need to do is to take "potentiated remedies imprinted with the vibrations of the biological molecules that were present" (if you don't believe that this is what they're claiming, check out this article from Natural News). And talking Haitian doctors and nurses into doing the same thing for their patients. If this doesn't constitute the encouragement of medical neglect, I don't know what does.
It may well be that the "Homeopaths Without Borders" sincerely believe that they are doing the right thing. So did the parents of Gloria Thomas, age 9 months, whose father gave her homeopathic remedies instead of an antibiotic when she contracted a skin infection. She died. So did the homeopath who told 55-year-old Jacqueline Alderslade that her asthma medication was contributing to her asthma, to stop taking her medication and to take a "remedy" instead. She died after an asthma attack that almost certainly would have responded to conventional treatment. So did the homeopath who told 52-year-old diabetic Russell Jenkins to treat a cut on his foot with honey instead of an antibiotic salve. The wound became gangrenous, his foot had to be amputated, and he died shortly thereafter of blood sepsis.
Getting the picture?
It doesn't matter whether they think they're doing the right thing. It doesn't matter that they claim that science is blind, that we skeptics are ignoring all of the vibrations and potentiations and whatnot because we're closed-minded. It doesn't matter if they claim that controlled studies show that homeopathy works. The fact is, there has not been a single reputable controlled study that has shown homeopathic "remedies" to have any effect at all beyond one: the placebo effect. And the people who are spreading this nonsense to Haiti should be turned away at the borders.
At first, I thought that (despite Hill's outstanding reputation for veracity) this couldn't possibly be real. But no, sad to say, Homeopaths Without Borders does exist, and on their website (here) they describe their most recent project:
Homeopaths Without Borders (HWB) staff and volunteers are busy preparing for the organization’s final trip in 2012 to Haiti. Leaving on November 4, this team will fulfill two missions during a two-week stay. HWB Education Director, Karen Allen and Executive Director Holly Manoogian will be joined by Marina Braun, CCH and Mikael Manoogian.Words cannot convey how outraged I am about this.
First, the team will be in Port-au-Prince to complete the final session of the Fundamentals Program—a foundational curriculum in homeopathic therapeutics incorporating theoretical and clinical training. Fifteen students are preparing to complete their requirements for graduation at the end of the week.
The second part of the mission brings the team to Belle Anse for the first of four week-long trainings in the Fundamentals Program. In Belle Anse, they will join Bekert Descollines of Belle Anse Timoun Family School, who has convened the 30 students for the course.
Homeopathy is, pure and simple, quackery. When you take a homeopathic "remedy" you are consuming either a sugar pill or else pure water, depending on whether it's in solid or liquid form. The process of serial dilution used in creating these "remedies" removes every last potentially bioactive molecule, and there is nothing left but the carrier -- generally either lactose or water. (For a wonderful summary of the scientific impossibility of homeopathic claims, go here.)
Unconvinced? Here's a list of people who have died while under the care of homeopaths, most from disorders that would have been treatable had they been given standard medical care. Note that they include a number of children. Pets aren't immune to this kind of neglect, either; just last week, a woman in Britain was fined £1000 and banned from keeping animals for three years after courts heard how she refused to give anything but homeopathic "remedies" to two dogs with advanced mange. (One of the dogs was ill enough that it had to be euthanized.) [Source]
And now, these people are going to spread their foolish, counterfactual nonsense to Haiti. And train others in how to use their useless "remedies." Bad enough that they push these "remedies" on people in places like the USA, the UK, and Australia; given our access to information, and good public education systems, there is an argument to be made that it's our fault if we fall prey to these snake oil salesmen.
But don't places like Haiti have enough problems, what with natural disasters, some of the highest poverty levels in the world, lack of access to clean food and water, and lack of access to standard medical care? Now, what we have on top of that is people from "Homeopaths Without Borders" coming in, and convincing sick Haitians that all they need to do is to take "potentiated remedies imprinted with the vibrations of the biological molecules that were present" (if you don't believe that this is what they're claiming, check out this article from Natural News). And talking Haitian doctors and nurses into doing the same thing for their patients. If this doesn't constitute the encouragement of medical neglect, I don't know what does.
It may well be that the "Homeopaths Without Borders" sincerely believe that they are doing the right thing. So did the parents of Gloria Thomas, age 9 months, whose father gave her homeopathic remedies instead of an antibiotic when she contracted a skin infection. She died. So did the homeopath who told 55-year-old Jacqueline Alderslade that her asthma medication was contributing to her asthma, to stop taking her medication and to take a "remedy" instead. She died after an asthma attack that almost certainly would have responded to conventional treatment. So did the homeopath who told 52-year-old diabetic Russell Jenkins to treat a cut on his foot with honey instead of an antibiotic salve. The wound became gangrenous, his foot had to be amputated, and he died shortly thereafter of blood sepsis.
Getting the picture?
It doesn't matter whether they think they're doing the right thing. It doesn't matter that they claim that science is blind, that we skeptics are ignoring all of the vibrations and potentiations and whatnot because we're closed-minded. It doesn't matter if they claim that controlled studies show that homeopathy works. The fact is, there has not been a single reputable controlled study that has shown homeopathic "remedies" to have any effect at all beyond one: the placebo effect. And the people who are spreading this nonsense to Haiti should be turned away at the borders.
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Final exams for the psychics
Regular readers of Skeptophilia may remember my writing a few months ago about a challenge issued a while back by the Merseyside Skeptics Society to "Britain's Favorite Medium," Psychic Sally Morgan, to prove her alleged abilities under controlled conditions. The whole thing happened because Psychic Sally had been accused of hoodwinking her audiences; the claim was that she was not picking up communiqués from the Other World, she was receiving information about her subjects from assistants via wireless earphones. Psychic Sally, of course, heatedly denied the allegations, and in fact sued the reporter who broke the story for libel. (The outcome of this case is yet to be decided.)
Psychic Sally and the others of her profession recently received a second chance to prove that they're telling the truth. The MSS has just announced that they have arranged for a controlled test of two supposed psychics who have volunteered to have their abilities examined by skeptical scientists, including psychologist Chris French and noted skeptic and atheist writer Simon Singh. They have issued invitations to Britains top five psychics -- Sally Morgan, Colin Fry, Gordon Smith, Derek Acorah, and T. J. Higgs -- to participate, or at least to attend. Thus far, all five have refused. However, two unnamed psychics have agreed to participate, and the results of the test -- scheduled to be performed tomorrow -- will be released on Halloween.
I find two things interesting about this. First, I am rather impressed that they found any psychics who were willing to undergo rigorous testing. Every time there's been a close look taken at psychics by people who understand how easy it is to dupe the layperson with sleight-of-hand and misdirection, the psychics have turned out to be cheating. (Consider, for example, the remarkable failure of famed spoon-bender Uri Geller to bend so much as a paperclip on the Tonight show with Johnny Carson, and James Randi's public exposure of James Hydrick as a fraud. Note that both Carson and Randi were professional magicians, and knew how to fool an audience -- so they were quick to figure out how Geller and Hydrick were cheating. And if you haven't seen these clips, they're well worth watching.)
So anyway, it's fascinating that there are people out there who are either (1) so cocky that they think they'll be able to game French & Singh, or (2) are really convinced that they are, in fact, psychic. Either way, it should be interesting to see what happens.
Equally interesting -- or damning, depending on how you look at it -- is the failure of any of the top-grossing psychics in the UK to agree to participate in the study. The first time Psychic Sally was asked, she responded, "I have better things to do with my time." You'd think -- if she really does believe she's psychic -- that there would be no better thing to do with her time than to prove, under controlled conditions, that she really can do what she says she can. I can only imagine the boost in attendance at her shows if two respected scientists publicly stated, "Yup. Psychic Sally is the real deal. She really can get in touch with the spirit of Grandma Betty." Hell, I'd attend in a heartbeat. I'd love to talk my Aunt Florence again, for example, if for no other reason to get her chocolate-almond fudge recipe, which I have tried repeatedly to replicate without success.
Of course, the most likely reason that Psychic Sally et al. are refusing to attend is that they know that they won't be able to perform. And that, of course, would be another nail in the coffin for their reputations, which have already come under enough fire lately. So I suppose a refusal is less of a blow to her business than an outright failure would be.
But of course, as Michael Marshall, vice-president of the MSS states, there is always the chance that some people really do have psychic abilities. As skeptics, we are required to keep our minds open to that possibility. And if so -- if such things do exist -- there is no reason why they should not be accessible to, and analyzable by, the methods of science. So whatever the outcome tomorrow, it's gonna be interesting.
Psychic Sally and the others of her profession recently received a second chance to prove that they're telling the truth. The MSS has just announced that they have arranged for a controlled test of two supposed psychics who have volunteered to have their abilities examined by skeptical scientists, including psychologist Chris French and noted skeptic and atheist writer Simon Singh. They have issued invitations to Britains top five psychics -- Sally Morgan, Colin Fry, Gordon Smith, Derek Acorah, and T. J. Higgs -- to participate, or at least to attend. Thus far, all five have refused. However, two unnamed psychics have agreed to participate, and the results of the test -- scheduled to be performed tomorrow -- will be released on Halloween.
I find two things interesting about this. First, I am rather impressed that they found any psychics who were willing to undergo rigorous testing. Every time there's been a close look taken at psychics by people who understand how easy it is to dupe the layperson with sleight-of-hand and misdirection, the psychics have turned out to be cheating. (Consider, for example, the remarkable failure of famed spoon-bender Uri Geller to bend so much as a paperclip on the Tonight show with Johnny Carson, and James Randi's public exposure of James Hydrick as a fraud. Note that both Carson and Randi were professional magicians, and knew how to fool an audience -- so they were quick to figure out how Geller and Hydrick were cheating. And if you haven't seen these clips, they're well worth watching.)
So anyway, it's fascinating that there are people out there who are either (1) so cocky that they think they'll be able to game French & Singh, or (2) are really convinced that they are, in fact, psychic. Either way, it should be interesting to see what happens.
Equally interesting -- or damning, depending on how you look at it -- is the failure of any of the top-grossing psychics in the UK to agree to participate in the study. The first time Psychic Sally was asked, she responded, "I have better things to do with my time." You'd think -- if she really does believe she's psychic -- that there would be no better thing to do with her time than to prove, under controlled conditions, that she really can do what she says she can. I can only imagine the boost in attendance at her shows if two respected scientists publicly stated, "Yup. Psychic Sally is the real deal. She really can get in touch with the spirit of Grandma Betty." Hell, I'd attend in a heartbeat. I'd love to talk my Aunt Florence again, for example, if for no other reason to get her chocolate-almond fudge recipe, which I have tried repeatedly to replicate without success.
Of course, the most likely reason that Psychic Sally et al. are refusing to attend is that they know that they won't be able to perform. And that, of course, would be another nail in the coffin for their reputations, which have already come under enough fire lately. So I suppose a refusal is less of a blow to her business than an outright failure would be.
But of course, as Michael Marshall, vice-president of the MSS states, there is always the chance that some people really do have psychic abilities. As skeptics, we are required to keep our minds open to that possibility. And if so -- if such things do exist -- there is no reason why they should not be accessible to, and analyzable by, the methods of science. So whatever the outcome tomorrow, it's gonna be interesting.
Friday, October 19, 2012
Charlie Fuqua and the implications of biblical literalism
I wonder how many folks outside of the state of Arkansas have heard of Charlie Fuqua. Fuqua is a former state representative, and is seeking reelection to that position this year. He is also, much to the chagrin of some of his supporters, the author of a book released this year called God's Law.
The reason that Fuqua's book has provoked such a fury of facepalming amongst his fellow Republicans is not, technically, that they don't agree with his views, which basically follow the conservative Christian, fundamentalist, biblical literalist pattern that so many of them espouse. It's more that Fuqua did what you should never, ever, ever do as a politician:
He told the truth regarding what those views imply.
Fuqua first landed himself in Huffington Post last week, when writer John Celock gave national exposure to a story from the Arkansas Times that had quoted Fuqua's book. Fuqua wrote a nice long passage in his book that suggests creating laws in the US based on Deuteronomy 21:18-21: "If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear."
Yes, people, you are understanding correctly: Fuqua wrote in his book that the USA should have laws that provide for the execution of rebellious children.
Now, wait, Fuqua says: it's not that I think it should happen all the time, fer Pete's sake:
Of course, that's not the only repellent thing Fuqua said in his book. Here are a few other gems:
It is mighty convenient, the way the vast majority of people who claim that the bible is the 100% true, literal word and law of god just ignore the passages that are unpleasant or troubling. If anyone needed further proof that literalist Christianity demands an ethical code that is repulsive, bizarre, and inherently immoral, Fuqua and his ilk are it. And as for the supposed fundamentalists who are squirming in their seats as they read the bits of Fuqua's book that aren't nice... well, I think you're the ones who have a bit of explaining to do.
The reason that Fuqua's book has provoked such a fury of facepalming amongst his fellow Republicans is not, technically, that they don't agree with his views, which basically follow the conservative Christian, fundamentalist, biblical literalist pattern that so many of them espouse. It's more that Fuqua did what you should never, ever, ever do as a politician:
He told the truth regarding what those views imply.
Fuqua first landed himself in Huffington Post last week, when writer John Celock gave national exposure to a story from the Arkansas Times that had quoted Fuqua's book. Fuqua wrote a nice long passage in his book that suggests creating laws in the US based on Deuteronomy 21:18-21: "If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear."
Yes, people, you are understanding correctly: Fuqua wrote in his book that the USA should have laws that provide for the execution of rebellious children.
Now, wait, Fuqua says: it's not that I think it should happen all the time, fer Pete's sake:
This passage does not give parents blanket authority to kill their children. They must follow the proper procedure in order to have the death penalty executed against their children. I cannot think of one instance in the Scripture where parents had their child put to death. Why is this so? Other than the love Christ has for us, there is no greater love then [sic] that of a parent for their child. The last people who would want to see a child put to death would be the parents of the child. Even so, the Scrpture [sic] provides a safe guard to protect children from parents who would wrongly exercise the death penalty against them. Parents are required to bring their children to the gate of the city. The gate of the city was the place where the elders of the city met and made judicial pronouncements. In other words, the parents were required to take their children to a court of law and lay out their case before the proper judicial authority, and let the judicial authority determine if the child should be put to death. I know of many cases of rebellious children, however, I cannot think of one case where I believe that a parent had given up on their child to the point that they would have taken their child to a court of law and asked the court to rule that the child be put to death. Even though this procedure would rarely be used, if it were the law of land, it would give parents authority. Children would know that their parents had authority and it would be a tremendous incentive for children to give proper respect to their parents.Yup, Rep. Fuqua, that it would. Respect through fear. That's just the kind of relationship a parent should shoot for. No wonder he won a "Friend of the Family" award from the Arkansas Christian Coalition, is it?
Of course, that's not the only repellent thing Fuqua said in his book. Here are a few other gems:
- American citizens who are Muslims should all be deported. To where isn't specified.
- Liberals are trying to overthrow the US government via "bloody revolution."
- Anyone who cannot support their children should be surgically sterilized.
- Anyone in the US who is not a Christian is, by definition, against the government, and they should be considered "conspirators" and "traitors" and dealt with accordingly.
It is mighty convenient, the way the vast majority of people who claim that the bible is the 100% true, literal word and law of god just ignore the passages that are unpleasant or troubling. If anyone needed further proof that literalist Christianity demands an ethical code that is repulsive, bizarre, and inherently immoral, Fuqua and his ilk are it. And as for the supposed fundamentalists who are squirming in their seats as they read the bits of Fuqua's book that aren't nice... well, I think you're the ones who have a bit of explaining to do.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Public schools, boring classes, and science as a verb
A couple of days ago, the Washington Post ran an op-ed piece by David Bernstein entitled, "Why Are You Forcing My Son to Take Chemistry?" In it, he points an accusing finger at the Maryland public school system for mandating that students take technical classes that they will, in all likelihood, never use again. "It doesn’t take a chemist to know that my son is not going to be a chemist," Bernstein writes, in response to the objection that all students should be exposed to a variety of subjects, so they can make informed decisions on which career to pursue. "He’s 15, not 7. It’s really that obvious. You took chemistry... What do you remember from that year? Nada, I bet. Next time a school official preens about the importance of chemistry, I’m going to ask him or her how many elements there are in the periodic table."
He goes on to rail against the system for making his son sit through a class where "It's all about memorization anyway." "He will forget everything he 'learned' a week after the class is over," Bernstein writes. "I can’t remember a thing, and I was a pretty good chemistry student."
He ends by pointing out (correctly) that choices like this one have opportunity costs -- by taking chemistry, the cost is that his son was deprived of the opportunity to take other classes that he would have enjoyed, and profited from, more. More flexibility in what students study, Bernstein contends, would benefit everyone.
On one level, Bernstein is correct. I have long been a supporter of more choice in paths for students, especially once they reach high school. Forcing every student to sit through every general-ed class the school offers, just because "it's a graduation requirement," is wrong-headed. Our own school system took a step away from that mentality a few years ago, and instituted a highly successful electives program -- there now are, in each subject, multiple tracks students can take to arrive at graduation, and the choices are largely driven by what topics students find intriguing. (We do still have a great many basic survey courses that are graduation requirements, however.)
I think, though, that Bernstein misses one major point -- a question that is uncomfortable, perhaps, but it should be at the heart of any discussion of why public schools don't, by and large, turn children into competent life-long learners. That larger question is (apropos of Bernstein's own experience) not why his son is being required to take a tedious class like chemistry, but why his son's chemistry teacher is teaching so as to make chemistry appear tedious.
After all, that's why some people go into chemistry, isn't it? They find it fascinating. And think about it... good heavens, chemistry is about stuff reacting. If anything should be inherently interesting, it should be chemistry. Why does dynamite explode? How do chemical hand-warmers work? Why does Drano clear clogged plumbing? Why don't the oil and water in Italian salad dressing stay mixed? Why does salt dissolve in water, but plastic doesn't? All of these are questions you can only answer if you know some chemistry.
Yes, I know, you have to do some applied math to understand fully what's happening in chemical systems, and the math is what gets a lot of kids stuck. But the math should be secondary to an understanding of the processes. Because that's what science is -- a process, a way of knowing. To quote the eminent astronomer Neil DeGrasse Tyson: "Science is a verb." The fact that Bernstein misses this point illustrates that it isn't just his son's generation that got shortchanged this way. Note that to illustrate how irrelevant chemistry is to most people's lives, the question he wants to ask a school official is, "How many elements are in the periodic table?" As if a factlet like that somehow is what scientists are concerned with, as if a collection of such trivia is what science is.
And of course, the problem isn't confined to chemistry. My own field, biology, is often taught as if it were nothing but a long list of vocabulary words, as if somehow being able to name the parts of the cell or correctly spell "photophosphorylation" means that you understand how cells work, or how plants capture and store light energy. Once again, there is no way around the fact that you have to know some terminology; we have to be speaking the same language so that we have some common ground upon which to discuss how living systems work. But too many science teachers teach science as if it were some kind of static body of knowledge, as if the best scientists are the ones who remember the most abstruse words.
No field is immune to this characterization of learning as dry-as-dust memorization. I had history teachers who taught us that history was just a list of dates, names, and treaties, not what it really is -- a complex interplay of personalities and motives, driven by circumstance, context, culture, and ambition. It took me five years after graduation from college before I realized that history was interesting. One of my English teachers in high school once told me, in a superior fashion, "It's low-minded to think that all literature is meant to be enjoyed." Oh, really? I wonder if the author would have agreed. I doubt seriously that (s)he wrote a novel, all the while thinking, "Wow, I bet it will be really difficult for those idiot 11th graders to find the symbolism in this chapter!"
Now, I've been a high school teacher for 26 years, and I know that just as students often have little choice over what classes they have to take, teachers often have little choice over what, and in some cases how, they teach in those classes. But we can as educators make our classes interesting, relevant, and exciting. That much freedom we all have. I have no qualms when I hear a student say about my class, "That was difficult," or "That lesson was a challenge to understand." I do have serious qualms when I hear a student say, "Biology is boring." If students, on a regular basis, find your class boring, make no mistake about it: you are failing as an educator, whatever their scores are on the standardized tests that educational policy writers are so enamored of. Because the bottom line is, there is no subject that is inherently boring. Taught properly, the universe, and its components and systems and interactions and history, are pretty damn fascinating, and our primary job as educators is to shine some light on a bit of it, and say, "Hey, look! Look at this! Isn't this cool?"
He goes on to rail against the system for making his son sit through a class where "It's all about memorization anyway." "He will forget everything he 'learned' a week after the class is over," Bernstein writes. "I can’t remember a thing, and I was a pretty good chemistry student."
He ends by pointing out (correctly) that choices like this one have opportunity costs -- by taking chemistry, the cost is that his son was deprived of the opportunity to take other classes that he would have enjoyed, and profited from, more. More flexibility in what students study, Bernstein contends, would benefit everyone.
On one level, Bernstein is correct. I have long been a supporter of more choice in paths for students, especially once they reach high school. Forcing every student to sit through every general-ed class the school offers, just because "it's a graduation requirement," is wrong-headed. Our own school system took a step away from that mentality a few years ago, and instituted a highly successful electives program -- there now are, in each subject, multiple tracks students can take to arrive at graduation, and the choices are largely driven by what topics students find intriguing. (We do still have a great many basic survey courses that are graduation requirements, however.)
I think, though, that Bernstein misses one major point -- a question that is uncomfortable, perhaps, but it should be at the heart of any discussion of why public schools don't, by and large, turn children into competent life-long learners. That larger question is (apropos of Bernstein's own experience) not why his son is being required to take a tedious class like chemistry, but why his son's chemistry teacher is teaching so as to make chemistry appear tedious.
After all, that's why some people go into chemistry, isn't it? They find it fascinating. And think about it... good heavens, chemistry is about stuff reacting. If anything should be inherently interesting, it should be chemistry. Why does dynamite explode? How do chemical hand-warmers work? Why does Drano clear clogged plumbing? Why don't the oil and water in Italian salad dressing stay mixed? Why does salt dissolve in water, but plastic doesn't? All of these are questions you can only answer if you know some chemistry.
Yes, I know, you have to do some applied math to understand fully what's happening in chemical systems, and the math is what gets a lot of kids stuck. But the math should be secondary to an understanding of the processes. Because that's what science is -- a process, a way of knowing. To quote the eminent astronomer Neil DeGrasse Tyson: "Science is a verb." The fact that Bernstein misses this point illustrates that it isn't just his son's generation that got shortchanged this way. Note that to illustrate how irrelevant chemistry is to most people's lives, the question he wants to ask a school official is, "How many elements are in the periodic table?" As if a factlet like that somehow is what scientists are concerned with, as if a collection of such trivia is what science is.
And of course, the problem isn't confined to chemistry. My own field, biology, is often taught as if it were nothing but a long list of vocabulary words, as if somehow being able to name the parts of the cell or correctly spell "photophosphorylation" means that you understand how cells work, or how plants capture and store light energy. Once again, there is no way around the fact that you have to know some terminology; we have to be speaking the same language so that we have some common ground upon which to discuss how living systems work. But too many science teachers teach science as if it were some kind of static body of knowledge, as if the best scientists are the ones who remember the most abstruse words.
No field is immune to this characterization of learning as dry-as-dust memorization. I had history teachers who taught us that history was just a list of dates, names, and treaties, not what it really is -- a complex interplay of personalities and motives, driven by circumstance, context, culture, and ambition. It took me five years after graduation from college before I realized that history was interesting. One of my English teachers in high school once told me, in a superior fashion, "It's low-minded to think that all literature is meant to be enjoyed." Oh, really? I wonder if the author would have agreed. I doubt seriously that (s)he wrote a novel, all the while thinking, "Wow, I bet it will be really difficult for those idiot 11th graders to find the symbolism in this chapter!"
Now, I've been a high school teacher for 26 years, and I know that just as students often have little choice over what classes they have to take, teachers often have little choice over what, and in some cases how, they teach in those classes. But we can as educators make our classes interesting, relevant, and exciting. That much freedom we all have. I have no qualms when I hear a student say about my class, "That was difficult," or "That lesson was a challenge to understand." I do have serious qualms when I hear a student say, "Biology is boring." If students, on a regular basis, find your class boring, make no mistake about it: you are failing as an educator, whatever their scores are on the standardized tests that educational policy writers are so enamored of. Because the bottom line is, there is no subject that is inherently boring. Taught properly, the universe, and its components and systems and interactions and history, are pretty damn fascinating, and our primary job as educators is to shine some light on a bit of it, and say, "Hey, look! Look at this! Isn't this cool?"
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