Well, up here in lovely upstate New York we're about three-quarters of the way through the remnants of Hurricane Sandy, and we only lost power for a short time yesterday afternoon. Thus far, we've been mighty fortunate -- when I look at the photographs coming in of the devastation along the coast, I'm reminded of hurricanes I lived through as a child in southern Louisiana, of flooded streets, ripped-off roofs, and electricity out for days or weeks. So all in all, we've been pretty lucky.
Sandy has been a weird storm in a lot of ways. It's amazingly powerful, for a late-season hurricane; it followed a highly uncharacteristic track; and it merged with an on-land winter storm as it made landfall, causing it to strengthen as it moved over land, not weaken (as most tropical storms do). All of this, I'm sure, is making you wonder what could be the cause of such a peculiar set of circumstances. And I'm certain that it will come as no surprise for you to find out that the answer is:
Gays.
Yes, folks, the homosexual contingent are at it again, according to ultra-religious wingnut Reverend John McTernan. [Source] "God is systematically destroying America," McTernan said. "Just look at what has happened this year. ...Both candidates are
pro-homosexual and are behind the homosexual agenda. America is under
political judgment and the church does not know it!" He then goes on to explain that god is creating storms to smite the US because of our increasing acceptance of gays.
All of this makes me pretty angry. I mean, really: give us atheists a little credit, too! Every time God Smites The Wicked With His Mighty Hand, all you hear about is how he was aiming for the gays. Don't you think he'd be even more eager to smite us godless nonbelievers? After all, a good many of the gays and lesbians I know are Christians, and barely any of the atheists are. It kind of pisses me off that here I sit, as obvious a target as any I can think of, and all god smote me with was a stiff breeze. It seems kind of anticlimactic.
There's also the problem with this theory that if god is trying to Smite The Gays using Hurricane Sandy, his aim could use some improvement. One of the areas that Sandy clobbered was rural West Virginia, which saw blizzard conditions including two to three feet of wet snow, knocking out the power and shutting down roads. And it's not like Appalachia is exactly a hotbed of homosexuality. Yeah, okay, New York City got hit pretty hard, as did Atlantic City, and I'd expect the Gay Sex Quotient of both of those places is fairly high. But you'd think that given the tools god has to work with -- tornadoes and lightning, not to mention your tried-and-true method of just having something heavy drop out of a window -- he could take out the gays with pinpoint precision if that was what he was really trying to do. A hurricane seems awfully broad-brush.
It does bring up, too, the question of why these preachers are so concerned about who is having sex, and how they're doing it. Is it just me, or do these guys seem a little bit sex-obsessed? After all, the bible goes on and on about all sorts of other things that are Naughty In God's Eyes, but you barely hear any preachers saying that god created a hurricane because you collected firewood on the sabbath, or because you ate pork, or because you wore clothing made of two different kinds of thread woven together. All of these are expressly prohibited in Leviticus -- in fact, a guy got stoned to death for the first one -- but these days, god has apparently forgotten about all of the other rules. Maybe it's because god finds what goes on in people's bedrooms more interesting to watch, I dunno.
In any case, if you live in the northeastern US, I hope you escaped the worst of the damage from the storm. And whether it was caused by the gays, or by what anyone with an IQ that exceeds his shoe size thinks -- that it was caused by a confluence of weather phenomena -- let's concentrate on helping the folks who weren't so lucky pick up the pieces and put their lives back together. Because, after all, that's one of the things that the atheists agree with the Christians on; charity is a virtue.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Monday, October 29, 2012
Storms, earthquakes, and coincidences
Here I sit, having battened down the hatches in preparation for Hurricane Sandy (due to arrive in the wee hours tonight), and two things are on my mind.
First, why don't you ever hear the verb "to batten" used for anything other than "hatches?" No one battens down windows, doors, throw rugs, or anything else. You never hear of anyone leashing their dog to a post, for example, and then saying, "I have battened down Rex." It seems like a useful word, and it's a pity it has such a restricted usage. So I think all of you should make a point, during the next few days, of using the verb "to batten" in unorthodox ways.
Second, I've already begun facepalming over the eruption of woo-woo conspiracy theories claiming that Hurricane Sandy, Typhoon Son-Tinh (which just slammed into the Philippines and Vietnam this weekend), and the 7.7 magnitude Canadian earthquake that caused tsunami warnings to be issued in Hawaii (there were high waves, but no serious damage) are all due to President Obama using HAARP to monkey around with things. Or possibly chemtrails. Or both. They don't seem to have any clear idea of how any of this actually could be manmade, but that still hasn't stopped them from claiming that it is, that President Obama is sitting in his underground bunker, an insane smile on his face, and pressing buttons and pulling levers, and saying, "Now they'll be sorry! I've caused a massive hurricane that will hit Washington, DC, causing widespread flooding and destruction! Despite the fact that I live there! That's how evil I am! Mwa ha ha ha ha ha ha!"
You think I'm joking. Already websites like the rather ironically-named "Aircrap" are buzzing with statements such as, "You can't be expecting me to believe that all three of those events, occurring so close together, is just a coincidence?"
Actually, yes, that is exactly what I'm expecting you to believe. When events coincide, this is called "a coincidence." Given that the Earth experiences storms and earthquakes virtually on a daily basis, there will be times when several of these events happen in close succession because of no other factor than random chance. We don't have to posit such absurdities as President Obama activating tractor beams from space via HAARP, or jets out of Newark spraying aerosols via their contrails to lay down a pathway for the storm, to account for this. Both of which were, in all apparent seriousness, claimed by people on these sites. And all of which shows that people who don't understand (1) the laws of statistics, (2) atmospheric science, and (3) geology, and who also (4) have spent too much time watching bad disaster movies on the Syfy channel, should really just keep their mouths shut.
So, anyway, that's our dip in the deep end of the pool for today. Me, I'm not worried about HAARP or chemtrails, but I am a little worried that we'll lose power for a while, because we're supposed to get some serious wind here. So if I am incommunicado for a few days, that's why, and I offer my apologies in advance, and a promise to write again as soon as I can. I'll sign off here with my hopes that if you are in the path of the storm, you and your loved ones are safe and sound, and your homes undamaged. As for me, I'm off to school to batten down the students.
First, why don't you ever hear the verb "to batten" used for anything other than "hatches?" No one battens down windows, doors, throw rugs, or anything else. You never hear of anyone leashing their dog to a post, for example, and then saying, "I have battened down Rex." It seems like a useful word, and it's a pity it has such a restricted usage. So I think all of you should make a point, during the next few days, of using the verb "to batten" in unorthodox ways.
Second, I've already begun facepalming over the eruption of woo-woo conspiracy theories claiming that Hurricane Sandy, Typhoon Son-Tinh (which just slammed into the Philippines and Vietnam this weekend), and the 7.7 magnitude Canadian earthquake that caused tsunami warnings to be issued in Hawaii (there were high waves, but no serious damage) are all due to President Obama using HAARP to monkey around with things. Or possibly chemtrails. Or both. They don't seem to have any clear idea of how any of this actually could be manmade, but that still hasn't stopped them from claiming that it is, that President Obama is sitting in his underground bunker, an insane smile on his face, and pressing buttons and pulling levers, and saying, "Now they'll be sorry! I've caused a massive hurricane that will hit Washington, DC, causing widespread flooding and destruction! Despite the fact that I live there! That's how evil I am! Mwa ha ha ha ha ha ha!"
You think I'm joking. Already websites like the rather ironically-named "Aircrap" are buzzing with statements such as, "You can't be expecting me to believe that all three of those events, occurring so close together, is just a coincidence?"
Actually, yes, that is exactly what I'm expecting you to believe. When events coincide, this is called "a coincidence." Given that the Earth experiences storms and earthquakes virtually on a daily basis, there will be times when several of these events happen in close succession because of no other factor than random chance. We don't have to posit such absurdities as President Obama activating tractor beams from space via HAARP, or jets out of Newark spraying aerosols via their contrails to lay down a pathway for the storm, to account for this. Both of which were, in all apparent seriousness, claimed by people on these sites. And all of which shows that people who don't understand (1) the laws of statistics, (2) atmospheric science, and (3) geology, and who also (4) have spent too much time watching bad disaster movies on the Syfy channel, should really just keep their mouths shut.
So, anyway, that's our dip in the deep end of the pool for today. Me, I'm not worried about HAARP or chemtrails, but I am a little worried that we'll lose power for a while, because we're supposed to get some serious wind here. So if I am incommunicado for a few days, that's why, and I offer my apologies in advance, and a promise to write again as soon as I can. I'll sign off here with my hopes that if you are in the path of the storm, you and your loved ones are safe and sound, and your homes undamaged. As for me, I'm off to school to batten down the students.
Saturday, October 27, 2012
The LHC, lawsuits, and the time-traveling seagull of doom
Sometimes I feel like all I do in this blog is to deliver bad news. Gullibility and credulousness are rampant, not to mention hoaxers and charlatans who are eager to turn a quick buck by ripping off the less rational segment of society. All around us we see examples of absurd, counterfactual nonsense, and evidence that a regrettably small number of laypeople have any idea of how science actually works.
It thrills me no end that today I have a cheering story, a story of the triumph of critical thinking over fearful, superstitious woo-woo. The gist: German courts have ruled, once and for all, that the Large Hadron Collider is what physicists say it is -- a scientific device designed to investigate the subatomic world -- and that it most definitively is not going to destroy the entire universe, or even just the Earth. [Source]
Claims that the LHC is going to kill us all have been going around for some time. I suppose that it was inevitable that people would be afraid of the device, given the fact that subatomic physics is a fairly esoteric area of study, poorly understood by anyone who doesn't have a master's degree or better in physics. For another thing, it's hard not to be awestruck simply by how amazingly big it is. The tube down which particles are accelerated to near-light speed, and then smashed into targets, is 27 kilometers in circumference. The magnets in the device alone weigh over 27 tons, and require 96 tons of liquid helium to keep them at the right (extremely cold) temperature.
So it shouldn't be surprising that the woo-woos got freaked out by the thing. Here are a few cheery suggestions they made about what was going to happen when the LHC was activated:
Well, of course, now that the LHC has been running off and on since 2009, and we haven't died, a lot of the furor has died down. There have been no black holes, new universes, or strangelets, France remains unvaporized, and there have been no further visits from the Time-Traveling Seagull of Doom. But not all of the craziness has ceased, of course. Whatever else you might say about woo-woos, they're tenacious. Just because the destruction of The Universe As We Know It hasn't happened yet, they claim, doesn't mean that it won't ever.
So there have been lawsuits to try to stop the research. The most recent was launched by a German woo-woo who filed suit in both Germany and Switzerland to halt operations, because, after all, you never know when we might all be swallowed by a black hole, and when that happens it will be too late.
And unlike the court case earlier this week in Italy, where unscientific foolishness won the day, here the courts ruled in favor of science. There is no evidence, the judge ruled, that anything being done at the LHC is dangerous in the global sense. Physicists are quite certain that any claims of black holes and new universes are impossible, and that was good enough for the court. The suit was thrown out, and (it is to be hoped) the plaintiff was instructed to become better educated in science before wasting the legal system's time further.
So, it might be rare, but we should cheer it when it happens: sometimes the rationalists win.
It thrills me no end that today I have a cheering story, a story of the triumph of critical thinking over fearful, superstitious woo-woo. The gist: German courts have ruled, once and for all, that the Large Hadron Collider is what physicists say it is -- a scientific device designed to investigate the subatomic world -- and that it most definitively is not going to destroy the entire universe, or even just the Earth. [Source]
Claims that the LHC is going to kill us all have been going around for some time. I suppose that it was inevitable that people would be afraid of the device, given the fact that subatomic physics is a fairly esoteric area of study, poorly understood by anyone who doesn't have a master's degree or better in physics. For another thing, it's hard not to be awestruck simply by how amazingly big it is. The tube down which particles are accelerated to near-light speed, and then smashed into targets, is 27 kilometers in circumference. The magnets in the device alone weigh over 27 tons, and require 96 tons of liquid helium to keep them at the right (extremely cold) temperature.
So it shouldn't be surprising that the woo-woos got freaked out by the thing. Here are a few cheery suggestions they made about what was going to happen when the LHC was activated:
- It would produce a mini black hole that would devour the Earth.
- It would produce a Higgs boson that would then generate a new universe inside ours, ripping apart our universe from the inside out.
- It would create a particle called a "strangelet" that then would convert everything it touched into "strangelets," and the whole world would explode in a burst of, um, strangeness.
- The beam would break loose from containment and vaporize France. Some American conservatives, of the sort who still eat "Freedom Fries" with their cheeseburgers, thought this was a good idea.
Well, of course, now that the LHC has been running off and on since 2009, and we haven't died, a lot of the furor has died down. There have been no black holes, new universes, or strangelets, France remains unvaporized, and there have been no further visits from the Time-Traveling Seagull of Doom. But not all of the craziness has ceased, of course. Whatever else you might say about woo-woos, they're tenacious. Just because the destruction of The Universe As We Know It hasn't happened yet, they claim, doesn't mean that it won't ever.
So there have been lawsuits to try to stop the research. The most recent was launched by a German woo-woo who filed suit in both Germany and Switzerland to halt operations, because, after all, you never know when we might all be swallowed by a black hole, and when that happens it will be too late.
And unlike the court case earlier this week in Italy, where unscientific foolishness won the day, here the courts ruled in favor of science. There is no evidence, the judge ruled, that anything being done at the LHC is dangerous in the global sense. Physicists are quite certain that any claims of black holes and new universes are impossible, and that was good enough for the court. The suit was thrown out, and (it is to be hoped) the plaintiff was instructed to become better educated in science before wasting the legal system's time further.
So, it might be rare, but we should cheer it when it happens: sometimes the rationalists win.
Friday, October 26, 2012
Playing with a full deck
So, today is my 52nd birthday, so Happy Birthday To Me, and all that sorta stuff. 52 seems like an interesting number -- not only is it hard for me to believe that I'm this old, it's the number of weeks in a year, the number of white keys on a piano, and the number of cards in a standard deck. (I mentioned this last one to a friend of mine, and said that as of today, I'd finally be playing with a full deck. She looked at me, raised one eyebrow, and said, "I think it's gonna take more than that.")
So I thought I'd step aside from my usual fare for a day, and present a list of 52 things I've learned in the last 52 years. I hope that you'll find some of them worthwhile.
1) Make a habit of being genuine. Deception, even of yourself, can't be maintained forever.
2) If you want to find out whether someone is actually nice or not, watch how they treat dogs, cats, children, restaurant wait staff, and salespeople.
3) Live life with passion.
4) Don't take everything so damned seriously. Most of the things that happen are, in the long run, irrelevant.
5) Don't overeat, but eat food you like. Vegan raw-food enthusiasts who drink only wheat grass juice will still eventually die.
6) Being a loner isn't noble. Being a loner is cowardly.
7) Complaining a lot pisses people off and solves essentially nothing.
8) Don't be ashamed of your tastes in art, music, books, and so on. Anyone who ridicules you because of something that is a simple matter of opinion is an asshole.
9) There is nothing shameful about crying in public.
10) Relaxing and wasting time are not the same thing.
11) There are some people in this world who will be determined to see you as a different person than who you really are. Fighting this is probably a waste of time.
12) Changing things from the top down seldom works. The only real way to change things is from the bottom up.
13) People are always in love with their own delusions, and we all have them.
14) Spending more time outside is usually a good thing.
15) You can't be depressed if you are speaking what is truly in your heart.
16) Don't be afraid to take off your clothes in a gym locker room. Most of the people who would care what you look like naked are in the other locker room.
17) In general, you will have more regrets about what you didn't do than what you did do. (Unless what you're planning on doing is killing someone.)
18) Find some way to be creative. Everyone is creative if they allow themselves to be.
19) You can't be unhappy for long if you have a snoring dog at your feet.
20) If you can, travel. It is the most mind-expanding thing you can do.
21) Most of us could do with having fewer opinions and asking more questions.
22) If you put only half of yourself into an endeavor, it will be a waste of time for everyone involved.
23) There is very little that you will not be able to deal with better after a good night's sleep.
24) No matter how good you are at something, there will always be people who are better and worse than you are. Be happy for the ones who are better and be courteous to the ones who are worse.
25) Don't be afraid to say no to people.
26) Don't be afraid to say yes to people.
27) Get out on the dance floor. You're more conspicuous just standing there than you would be if you were out dancing with the rest of us.
28) If life hands you lemons, the hell with lemonade. Make lemon meringue pie.
29) If you go to another country, eat what they eat. You can get Big Macs at home.
30) Cultivate tolerance.
31) Be willing to laugh at your own quirks.
32) One of the best tests for whether or not you should do something is to ask, "Will I be glad I did this ten years from now?"
33) Be willing to lose an argument once in a while.
34) Cruelty is never justified.
35) Be unpredictable sometimes.
36) Don't talk once the movie has started.
37) Always keep in mind that much of what is on the internet is complete bullshit.
38) Pay attention when children talk to you. It may not be interesting to listen to, but it's still important.
39) Exercise more.
40) You are not in competition with everyone. All conversations aren't battles for superiority.
41) Sarcasm can be funny, but use it with caution.
42) Life is too short to drink bad beer.
43) Fundamentally, gullibility and cynicism come from the same place; an unwillingness to commit oneself to the hard work of thinking.
44) Every once in a while, go out at night and spend some time looking up at the stars. It’s worthwhile being reminded how small we are.
45) A sincere apology goes a long, long way.
46) Don't trust anyone who comes to your door trying to sell you a political ideology or a religious belief system.
47) Play more.
48) Waste less.
49) Remember that most of the things we worry about won't come to pass.
50) There are times when things look hopeless, and the world seems bleak. Hope anyway.
51) You will sometimes fail at things you desperately want to succeed at. Try anyway.
52) You will sometimes get your heart broken. Love anyway.
So I thought I'd step aside from my usual fare for a day, and present a list of 52 things I've learned in the last 52 years. I hope that you'll find some of them worthwhile.
1) Make a habit of being genuine. Deception, even of yourself, can't be maintained forever.
2) If you want to find out whether someone is actually nice or not, watch how they treat dogs, cats, children, restaurant wait staff, and salespeople.
3) Live life with passion.
4) Don't take everything so damned seriously. Most of the things that happen are, in the long run, irrelevant.
5) Don't overeat, but eat food you like. Vegan raw-food enthusiasts who drink only wheat grass juice will still eventually die.
6) Being a loner isn't noble. Being a loner is cowardly.
7) Complaining a lot pisses people off and solves essentially nothing.
8) Don't be ashamed of your tastes in art, music, books, and so on. Anyone who ridicules you because of something that is a simple matter of opinion is an asshole.
9) There is nothing shameful about crying in public.
10) Relaxing and wasting time are not the same thing.
11) There are some people in this world who will be determined to see you as a different person than who you really are. Fighting this is probably a waste of time.
12) Changing things from the top down seldom works. The only real way to change things is from the bottom up.
13) People are always in love with their own delusions, and we all have them.
14) Spending more time outside is usually a good thing.
15) You can't be depressed if you are speaking what is truly in your heart.
16) Don't be afraid to take off your clothes in a gym locker room. Most of the people who would care what you look like naked are in the other locker room.
17) In general, you will have more regrets about what you didn't do than what you did do. (Unless what you're planning on doing is killing someone.)
18) Find some way to be creative. Everyone is creative if they allow themselves to be.
19) You can't be unhappy for long if you have a snoring dog at your feet.
20) If you can, travel. It is the most mind-expanding thing you can do.
21) Most of us could do with having fewer opinions and asking more questions.
22) If you put only half of yourself into an endeavor, it will be a waste of time for everyone involved.
23) There is very little that you will not be able to deal with better after a good night's sleep.
24) No matter how good you are at something, there will always be people who are better and worse than you are. Be happy for the ones who are better and be courteous to the ones who are worse.
25) Don't be afraid to say no to people.
26) Don't be afraid to say yes to people.
27) Get out on the dance floor. You're more conspicuous just standing there than you would be if you were out dancing with the rest of us.
28) If life hands you lemons, the hell with lemonade. Make lemon meringue pie.
29) If you go to another country, eat what they eat. You can get Big Macs at home.
30) Cultivate tolerance.
31) Be willing to laugh at your own quirks.
32) One of the best tests for whether or not you should do something is to ask, "Will I be glad I did this ten years from now?"
33) Be willing to lose an argument once in a while.
34) Cruelty is never justified.
35) Be unpredictable sometimes.
36) Don't talk once the movie has started.
37) Always keep in mind that much of what is on the internet is complete bullshit.
38) Pay attention when children talk to you. It may not be interesting to listen to, but it's still important.
39) Exercise more.
40) You are not in competition with everyone. All conversations aren't battles for superiority.
41) Sarcasm can be funny, but use it with caution.
42) Life is too short to drink bad beer.
43) Fundamentally, gullibility and cynicism come from the same place; an unwillingness to commit oneself to the hard work of thinking.
44) Every once in a while, go out at night and spend some time looking up at the stars. It’s worthwhile being reminded how small we are.
45) A sincere apology goes a long, long way.
46) Don't trust anyone who comes to your door trying to sell you a political ideology or a religious belief system.
47) Play more.
48) Waste less.
49) Remember that most of the things we worry about won't come to pass.
50) There are times when things look hopeless, and the world seems bleak. Hope anyway.
51) You will sometimes fail at things you desperately want to succeed at. Try anyway.
52) You will sometimes get your heart broken. Love anyway.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Mechanisms, cognitive bias, premonitions, and telepathy
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.
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.
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."
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