Foxes, hedgehogs, and extreme politics

As if we needed anything to make us less confident about what goes on inside our skulls, an article in e! Science News appeared on Monday, entitled, "Extreme Political Attitudes May Stem From an Illusion of Understanding."

The study's principle author, Philip Fernbach of the University of Colorado, explained that the study came out of an observation that people who loudly expressed views on politics often seemed not to have much in the way of factual knowledge about the topic upon which they were expounding.

"We wanted to know how it's possible that people can maintain such strong positions on issues that are so complex -- such as macroeconomics, health care, foreign relations -- and yet seem to be so ill-informed about those issues,"  Fernbach said.

What the study did was to ask a group of test subjects to rate how well they understood six different political issues, including instituting merit pay for teachers, raising the age on Social Security, and enacting a flat tax.  The subjects then were asked to explain two of the policies, including their own position and why they held it, and were questioned on their understanding of facts of the policy by the researchers.  Afterwards, they were asked to re-rate their level of comprehension.

Across the board, self-assessment scores went down on the subjects they were asked to explain.  More importantly, their positions shifted -- there was a distinct movement toward the center that occurred regardless of the political affiliation of the participant.  Further, the worse the person's explanation had been -- i.e., the more their ignorance of the facts had been uncovered -- the further toward the center they shifted.

This seems to be further evidence for the Dunning-Kruger effect -- a bias in which people nearly always tend to overestimate their own knowledge and skill.  (It also brings to mind Dave Barry's comment, "Everyone thinks they're an above-average driver.")

I'm also reminded of Philip Tetlock's brilliant work Expert Political Judgment, which is summarized here but which anyone who is a student of politics or sociology should read in its entirety.  In the research for his book, he analyzed the political pronouncements of hundreds of individuals, evaluating the predictions of experts in a variety of fields to the actual outcome in the real world, and uses this information to draw some fascinating conclusions about human social behavior.  The relevant part of his argument, for our purposes here, is that humans exhibit two basic "cognitive styles," which he calls "the fox and the hedgehog" (the symbols come from a European folk tale).

Foxes, Tetlock says, tend to be able to see multiple viewpoints, and have a high tolerance for ambiguity (in the interest of conciseness, quotes are taken from the summary, not from the original book):

Experts who think in the 'Fox' cognitive style are suspicious of a commitment to any one way of seeing the issue, and prefer a loose insight that is nonetheless calibrated from many different perspectives.  They use quantification of uncertain events more as calibration, as a metaphor, than as a prediction.  They are tolerant of dissonance within a model - for example, that an 'enemy' regime might have redeeming qualities - and relatively ready to recalibrate their view when unexpected events cast doubt on what they had previously believed to be true.

Hedgehogs, on the other hand, like certainty, closure, and definite answers:

In contrast to this, Hedgehogs work hard to exclude dissonance from their models. They prefer to treat events which contradict their expectations as exceptions, and to re-interpret events in such a way as to allocate exceptions to external events. For example, positive aspects of an enemy regime may be assigned to propaganda, either on the part of the regime or through its sympathizers...  Hedgehogs tend to flourish and excel in environments in which uncertainty and ambiguity have been excluded, either by actual or artificial means. The mantra of "targets and accountability" was made by and for Hedgehogs.

The differences, Tetlock said, are irrespective of political leaning; there are conservative and liberal foxes, and conservative and liberal hedgehogs.  But, most importantly, the foxes' tolerance of many viewpoints, and awareness of their own ignorance, gives them the appearance of knowing less than they actually do, and lessens their influence on policy and society; and the hedgehogs' certainty, and clear, concise answers to complex problems, gives them the appearance of knowing more than they actually do, and increases their influence.

Hedgehogs, Tetlock found, were more often wrong in their assessment of political situations, but their views achieved wide impact.  Foxes were more often right -- but no one listened.

So, anyway, I read all of this with a vague sense of unease.  Having a blog, after all, implies some level of arrogance -- that you believe your views to be important, intelligent, and interesting enough that people, many of them total strangers, will want to read what you have to say.  Given Fernbach's study, not to mention the Dunning-Kruger effect and the conclusion of Tetlock's research, it does leave me with a bit of a chill.  Would my views on topics become less extreme if I were forced to reconsider the facts of the situation?  Do I really think I'm more knowledgeable than I actually am?  Worst of all (for a blogger), am I a simplistic thinker that is often wrong but whose views have wide social impact, or a complex thinker that no one pays attention to?

Oy.  I'm not sure I, um, want to reevaluate all this.  I think I'll just go have breakfast.  That sounds like a definitive solution to the problem, right?

Of course right.

Why anecdote isn't enough: the strange story of Clarita Villanueva

When I was a kid, I was big fan of books with names like Strange True Tales of the Supernatural and World of the Weird.  These books often had seriously nightmare-inducing cover illustrations, stories that were (to a twelve-year-old, at least) pantswettingly terrifying, and that important little word on the spine: "Non-fiction."

I still enjoy many of those stories, all these decades later, but now it's solely for their entertainment value.  Some of the most memorable ones have all of the hallmarks of a great Tale For Around The Campfire -- a scary monster or ghost, an innocent victim, brave people trying to combat the forces of evil and bring order back to the world.

One of the ones I still recall to this day is the tale of Clarita Villanueva.

According to the best-known version of the story, Clarita was a young Filipina girl in her upper teens, living in poverty in Manila in 1951.  One night in May, she was found on the street, having an apparent seizure, by a policeman, who (not knowing what else to do) took her off to the local jail to "sleep it off."  But during the middle of the night, the girl began to shriek, claiming that a "bug-eyed man" all in black had floated through the bars and was biting her.  The policeman ran to her cell, and found the girl writhing on the floor, and bite marks -- surrounded by saliva -- were appearing on her arms, and in one case, on the back of her neck.

Whatever was biting her, though, was invisible to everyone but Clarita herself!

The policeman got the girl calmed down, and summoned the medical officer on duty in the jail, one Dr. Lara.  Dr. Lara arrived just in time to see the girl go into hysterics again, this time saying that the bug-eyed guy in black had returned, this time bringing a friend.  The doctor, too, saw bite marks appear on her skin.

The doctor, in an understandable state of fear, had the girl transferred from jail to a local hospital, where he saw to it that her wounds were treated.  She gradually relaxed, and the attacks weren't repeated.  She remained at the hospital for six weeks, gaining strength, and her fear of the strange creatures diminished.  Eventually, she was released, and (as far as the story tells) led a completely normal life thereafter.

The reason for the attacks, and who the mysterious creatures were, were never explained.

So, anyway.  See why this one scared me?  Everything about it is classic backbone-shivering horror, even down to the fact that no one ever figured out who her attackers were.  But now, forty-odd years later, I've come to think of this as the perfect example of why skeptics should not rely on anecdotal evidence.

Because if you do a search for "Clarita Villanueva," you'll come up with (literally) hundreds of versions of the tale.  The one I've related was the one popularized in those books I was so fond of as a child, but it's not the only one.

You have your religious versions.  Those seem to have been launched by a Christian evangelistic minister named Lester Sumrall, who had worked in Manila and probably heard the story there, but who claimed he actually saw, and treated, the girl.  In his version, Clarita Villanueva was a prostitute whose mother had been "a fortuneteller by vocation... holding seances, communicating with the dead, and using clairvoyance to predict to sinful people what they could expect in the future."  In this version, Clarita was not just being tormented by the monsters, she was (more or less) possessed by them; at one point, she shouted out "in a cold and inhuman voice" at one of her jailers, "You will die!" and the guy died four days later.  Dr. Lara finally called in a minister -- in Sumrall's original version it was Sumrall himself, but in others it's a Catholic priest -- and the minister after a "three-day confrontation with the devil inside her" expelled the evil spirits, and she fell to her knees with a smile and said, "The evil one is gone."

Then you have the "Reptilian Alien" version of the story, in which Dr. Lara is female (her first name is given as "Marianna"), and the creatures are interdimensional aliens from another world.  Cautions are given that these extraterrestrials are "non-emotional creatures intent on performing acts that are considered by humans as evil or malicious."  In this version, no religious folks of any kind were involved; the attacks subsided on their own.

A third version takes a psychic angle on the whole thing.  Here, Clarita Villanueva was a "vagrant" who was arrested for living on the street.  It occurred in 1952, not 1951, as the other versions claimed, and the attending doctor was male again -- "Dr. D. Mariano Lara."  In this version, she also was given an exorcism, but before that was apparently receiving information as well as bite marks from the creatures -- prior to the exorcism she was speaking in English, but afterwards didn't understand the language at all!

And so on.  Some versions call her "Carlita," not "Clarita."  The girl's age varies from 15 to 23.  The outcome differs wildly, from her returning to her poverty-stricken existence, to her finding Jesus and devoting her life to religion.  Even the inimitable Jack Chick took a crack at the story, in his bizarre über-Christian "Chick Tracts:"

All of this is why anyone who is interested in more than a quick scary story -- i.e., fiction -- needs more than anecdote to be convinced.  Human memory being what it is, not to mention the human capacity for embellishment and outright lying, a story by itself proves nothing.  In order to believe something -- or even to determine if there's anything there to believe -- we need hard evidence, something beyond the vague reports of one, or ten, or even a hundred people.

And the problem goes deeper than that, because (of course) these aren't all independent reports.  A researcher, with adequate time and energy, might be able to track all of these versions backwards and see where they'd come from, developing (as it were) a cladistic tree for this odd urban legend.  Ultimately, we might find the Last Universal Common Ancestor of all of the versions of the Clarita Villanueva story, and see what form it took.

But even then, there's no guarantee that it was true in the first place.  There may have really been a girl named Clarita Villanueva who lived in Manila in the early 1950s and had some bizarre experiences; but if she did, my bet is that she was either epileptic or schizophrenic, and everything else about the story (including the bites on the back of the neck) were later additions to add a nice frisson to the tale.  The fact that the story is still making the rounds, sixty years later, doesn't tell you anything about its truth or falsity.

As Gary Taubes put it, speculations and assumptions do not become the truth simply because they are endlessly repeated.  And anecdotes, however much they are embellished, and however often they end up in "non-fiction" anthologies, remain tall tales without much in the way of real value to skeptics.  In science, we need more than just a good story to convince us.

Calling a fraud a fraud: James McCormick and the bomb dowsers

I know I tend to write about frustrating topics -- my usual fare is illogic, irrationality, gullibility, hoaxes, and general foolishness.  And it's got to be wearing, at times, to read a non-stop parade of human craziness and credulity.  So it's heartening to me that today we'll start the day with a positive story -- a story of the triumph of science over woo-woo nonsense.

You may have heard about James McCormick, the man who developed a "bomb detector."  The device, he said, worked on the same principle as a dowsing rod; it was a metal antenna that sits in a hole in a plastic sleeve, and it detects the "electromagnetic disturbance" created by the bomb and swivels toward it.  (The whole thing is described in detail in Phil Plait's wonderful blog Bad Astronomy, in an article called "Dowsing for Bombs" that then appeared in Slate.)

You can see how such a device, if it worked as advertised, would be invaluable to the military.  The problem is, it didn't work.  The whole thing was basically just a plastic handle with a ten-dollar Radio Shack antenna glued into a rotating plastic cylinder.  But the military was suckered right in -- to the tune of between $16,500 and $60,000 per device.  Well, it wasn't long before the people in charge realized that they'd been sold a bill of goods; as Plait said, the devices "might as well have been crayon boxes full of rocks.  They were useless."

And, they cost lives.  The Iraqis began to use them at terrorist checkpoints, and (of course) their reliance on them caused them to miss bombs -- including one incident where terrorists sneaked two tons of explosives past a checkpoint, right past McCormick's dowsing rods, resulting in 155 casualties.

Well, the military finally wised up, and McCormick was arrested and charged with fraud.  And last week, he was convicted.

This should be a cause for celebration by skeptics the world over -- that finally, a major governmental institution has seen to it that science triumphs over the peddlers of woo-woo.  But I do have a question, however, that tempers my jubilation.

Why stop at McCormick?  If what he was doing is fraud -- in the sense that he was knowingly hoodwinking the gullible, making claims that were demonstrably false, and becoming filthy rich in the process -- then so are the homeopaths.  So are the psychics, the astrologers, the faith healers.  And yet we still have psychics like Theresa Caputo, the "Long Island Medium," who is booked for readings two years ahead and allegedly charges $400 for a thirty-minute reading over the phone.  (I say "allegedly" because she doesn't reveal her fees publicly; all we have to go by is claims by former clients.)  We still have astrologers like Susan Miller, "astrologer to the New York City fashion set," whose astrology website gets six million hits per month.  (If Skeptophilia gets six million hits in my lifetime, I will die a happy man.)  We still have faith healers like Peter Popoff, who was roundly debunked by James Randi and yet who still attracts tens of thousands of hopefuls to his "healing ministries."

We still have homeopathic "remedies" sold online -- and over the counter in damn near every pharmacy in the United States and western Europe.  Worse, there are groups like "Homeopaths Without Borders" making sure that their useless, discredited sugar pills and vials of water get distributed to needy (and poorly educated) people in places like Haiti, Honduras, and Guatemala, where they are used by the ill in place of actual, effective medications.

How is James McCormick guilty of fraud, and these people are not?

Oh, I know the difference is in who McCormick defrauded.  "Don't piss off the military-industrial complex" is a pretty good guide for life.  But even though the woo-woos of various stripes aren't ripping off the US Army -- they're just ripping off ordinary slobs like you and me -- the principle is the same.  They're making claims that are unscientific bullshit, are charging money for their useless services, and yet they seem to get away with it, day after day and year after year.

Okay, I know I said I was going to be positive, here.  And honestly, I'm glad that they nailed McCormick -- he richly merits everything he gets.  And perhaps this will act as a precedent; maybe the fact that the courts stood by reputable, testable science, and identified fraudulent woo-woo as such, will be one step toward pasting that same label on other deserving targets.

The bottom line is: the good guys won, for a change.  Let's hope that it's a trend.

Precision, presumption, and "time crystals"

If there's one thing I have learned from years of studying science, it's that precision is critical.

I'm not talking about mathematical precision, here, although that's pretty important, too.  What I'd like to consider today is how imprecise, or even flippant, use of terms can lead to misunderstanding.  Further, it can result in a complete misrepresentation of what the science actually says.

It can also give false hopes to the woo-woos, and heaven knows, we can't have that.

We've already seen this in two other cases -- how physicist Leon Lederman's injudicious choice of the nickname "The God Particle" for the Higgs boson led some ultrareligious types to claim that its discovery last year proved that god exists, and how demonstrations of quantum entanglement resulted in wingnuts of Diane Tessman's ilk to write reams of nonsense describing how the phenomenon was the explanation of everything from consciousness to telepathy.  (In fact, entanglement seems to be useless for communicating information; the speed of light remains the upper bound to the speed with which meaningful information can be transmitted.  Oh, and the Higgs boson has nothing whatsoever to do with a deity.)

I ran into another example of this yesterday, in an article whose title alone was enough to raise eyebrows: "Perpetual Motion Test Could Amend Theory of Time."  In it, we hear about the research of MIT physicist Frank Wilczek, who has been researching a peculiar construct called a "time crystal:"

In February 2012, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek decided to go public with a strange and, he worried, somewhat embarrassing idea. Impossible as it seemed, Wilczek had developed an apparent proof of “time crystals” — physical structures that move in a repeating pattern, like minute hands rounding clocks, without expending energy or ever winding down. Unlike clocks or any other known objects, time crystals derive their movement not from stored energy but from a break in the symmetry of time, enabling a special form of perpetual motion.

Now, the author of this piece, Natalie Wolchover, is pretty clear that the emphasis should be on the words "special form" and not on the words "perpetual motion:"

Now, a technological advance has made it possible for physicists to test the idea. They plan to build a time crystal, not in the hope that this perpetuum mobile will generate an endless supply of energy (as inventors have striven in vain to do for more than a thousand years) but that it will yield a better theory of time itself.

Further, the article ends on a cautionary note:

(S)ome physicists... remain deeply skeptical.  "I personally think it’s not possible to detect motion in the ground state," (theoretical physicist Patrick) Bruno said. "They may be able to make a ring of ions in a toroidal trap and do some interesting physics with that, but they will not see their ever-ticking clock as they claim."

Unfortunately, the caution hasn't traveled along with the story.  The site io9, which covers "science, science fiction, and the future," amplified Wilczek's research into an article titled "Physicists Believe It's Possible to Build a Perpetual Motion Machine."  It quotes, and links, the Wolchover story, but begins with the rather presumptuous phrase "All bets are off."  And if you want to take a further climb down the ladder, read the comments that follow the io9 iteration of the story, a few of which I quote verbatim below:

"Let's say this turns out to be true: how much energy could these things generate? Are there any immediate practical uses that come to mind?  ...I mean if a football field sized grid of these things could only power an alarm clock it's not very practical, but I am completely in the dark about what sort of energy yield we are talking about here."

"If we up the scale a bit, we can get nearly or very long perpetual motion/energy from a Dyson sphere, so of course it's possible.. Is it doable now - well that's completely different matter."

"Haven't we watched enough movies about how this will lead to a black hole, tear to a different dimension, or the entire planet crumbling?"

"What's more important, in my mind, is "breaks in the symmetry of time" which sounds so much like science fiction I wonder if it could lead to time travel...  More interesting than that... could it lead to reactionless space drive or faster than light travel?"

Okay, can you people just chill out a little?

First, let's focus on the fact that first, Wilczek hasn't even demonstrated that these things exist on the microscopic level, much less the macroscopic.  I mean, I think they sound intriguing, and wish him all the luck in the world, but maybe it might be a good idea to see if they're even real before we start trying to power our spaceships with them.

Second, even if they do exist, I'm pretty sure they'll be reconcilable with the existing laws of physics, which have been tested every which way from Sunday.  The idea that Wilczek's "time crystals" (speaking of an injudicious choice of a name for a phenomenon...) turn out to be real, I highly doubt that this will revoke the General Theory of Relativity or the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  "Free energy," in the sense of some system generating more energy than it consumes, will remain impossible.  So calling this thing a "perpetual motion machine" equates it with the device the cranks have been trying to produce for hundreds of years, just as Wolchover pointed out, and isn't all that accurate in any case.

Of course, all this won't stop the wingnuts from making all sorts of bizarre claims about what Wilczek's yet-to-be-tested theories imply.  Look for Diane Tessman to weigh in soon, probably stating that "time crystals" explain déjà vu and precognitive dreams.

I'm already arranging cushions on my desk to protect my forehead from the faceplant that will result.

Breaking the lockstep of standardized tests

I've been an educator for 26 years.  During that time, I've handed out, proctored, and graded more quizzes and exams than I would even try to estimate.  Through it all, when asked why I give conventional tests (at times when I have a choice), my answer has been that they act as formative assessments -- allowing students and teachers to see how far their understanding of the subject at hand has progressed, and (importantly) to give them feedback on where the "holes" in their knowledge lie.

Standardized tests are defended with some of the same arguments, with the added one that (given that everyone is taking the same exam at the same time) it also allows administrators to judge how the school as a whole is performing.  In other words, it gives a basis for evaluating the entire system.

The Educational Testing Service, which is responsible for a large percentage of the standardized tests given in the United States, defends standardized testing in schools as having the following purposes:

• Placement: Determine which courses or level of course a student should take.
• Curriculum-based End of Course Testing: Determine whether students have mastered the objectives of the course taken.
• Exit testing: Find out whether students have learned the amount necessary to graduate from a level of education.
• Policy tools: Provide data to policymakers that helps them make decisions regarding funding, class size, curriculum adjustments, teacher development and more.
• Course credit: Indicate whether a students should receive credit for a course he or she didn't take through demonstration of course content knowledge.
• Accountability: Hold various levels of the education system responsible for test results that indicate if students learn what they should have learned.

This is predicated, however, on a pair of assumptions that runs through all of these justifications.  These assumptions are rarely questioned, but if either one of them is false, it would be sufficient to call into serious question our increasing reliance on test scores.  These assumptions are:

 (1)  Test scores are an accurate measure of student understanding;

and (2) How well students do on tests is solely due to how well they're taught.

I have come to believe that both of these statements are wrong.

The flaw in Assumption #1 comes from the definition of the word "understanding."  What does it mean to "understand" something?  Does it mean that you can recall, and use correctly, the relevant vocabulary?  Does it mean that you can apply your knowledge in some practical way?  Does it mean that you can draw connections between that knowledge and your knowledge of other fields?  I would argue that traditional tests -- even well-designed ones -- measure vocabulary-related knowledge fairly well, but almost never measure practical application or creative divergent thinking.  To measure those would take a great deal of time -- far more time than teachers or students are ever given for testing purposes.

It brings up the question, too, of "how does understanding happen, and how do tests contribute to that understanding?"  In my experience, understanding is unpredictable, sudden, and frequently comes out of collaborative problem solving; and that tests, as they're usually administered, almost never improve understanding in any way.  More often than not, test scores are looked upon as an end in themselves, not as a benchmark for growth or an opportunity to remediate.

A recent experiment by Peter Nonacs, a professor of behavioral ecology at UCLA, turned the whole exam model on its head by creating a novel testing environment.  Students were told a week ahead of time that they'd be allowed to "cheat" on a major exam.  They could do whatever they wanted during the exam, short of anything illegal.  They could bring in books, bring in notes, bring in a knowledgeable friend.  They could talk to each other, talk to students who'd taken the class before, call someone on their cellphone, leave the room to go consult a reference they'd forgotten.  They could ask the professor for hints (whether he provided them would be his decision.)  Work alone, work in groups, have the whole class take part and turn in identical answers.  In short: it was a free-for-all.

The result?  Most of the students chose to collaborate.  They divided up the class into teams, and gave each team a piece of the test -- but the individual groups had to present their answers to everyone to make sure they were good enough.  They argued points, proposing solutions that were ranked for plausibility and eliminating weak arguments.

In the end, they turned in a strong, well-reasoned examination, and I would argue that they learned far more from that experience than they would have learned by studying, and testing, alone.  Nonacs writes, "In the end, the students learned what social insects like ants and termites have known for hundreds of millions of years. To win at some games, cooperation is better than competition. Unity that arises through a diversity of opinion is stronger than any solitary competitor."


Then, there is Assumption #2; that somehow, test scores are well-correlated with what the classroom teacher is doing, and that teachers (and, by extension, the curriculum) are accurately assessed by how well students do on examinations.  If this were true, shouldn't there be far greater uniformity on assessment scores given by the same teacher using the same curriculum?  Of course, the flaw in this idea is glaringly obvious to everyone who has spent any time teaching; students are not little empty vessels that we can fill with knowledge, and measure by opening up their brains at the end of the school year and seeing how much is still there.  They come with differences in their mental hardwiring, differences in attitude, differences in their emotional and physical maturity.  They have different home lives, different amounts of parental support, differences in the demands they deal with outside of school.  Some use drugs and alcohol.  Some are mentally ill or developmentally disabled.

And we pretend, for some reason, that a sufficiently trained and motivated teacher, using an excellent curriculum, can get all of these children to the same place at the same time.

Get real.

The problem is, oversight agencies haven't admitted that reality yet, so that is exactly what they do pretend.  The pressures to "succeed" in that impossible task (whatever form "success" would actually take) are incredible, and the penalties for failing are harsh.  More and more there is a push to tie teacher salaries and job retention to test scores, and to link educational funding for school districts to the pooled results on standardized examinations.

The result has been panic on the part of a lot of school administrators, and some of the solutions they have come up with have been byzantine, not to mention disheartening.  Just this week, the Broward County (Florida) School District proposed that the minimum grade for students be raised from 0 to 50.  Students would receive the same grade -- a 50 -- for doing half of the required work as they would for sleeping through class, every single day, for 180 days straight.

The argument by the school board is that it creates a safety net.  "It's eliminates situations a child cannot possibly recover from, thus allowing them an opportunity," said Cynthia Park, the district's director of college and career readiness.  "Once they become hopeless, it's like why should I try?"

I would like to ask Ms. Park, however, if the real message here isn't that grades simply don't mean what educators have claimed that they mean, and that we need to reconsider our reliance on them.

But how can we change things?  To alter this model, it would take a complete overhaul of how we approach education; it would be costly.  It would require administrators to let go of their demand that everything in student and teacher performance be turned into numbers.  It would require us to redefine what we mean by "learning," to include the kind of creative, collaborative problem solving that Professor Nonacs saw in his class.

But it might, perhaps, change the face of education, and pull us out of the downward spiral in which schools have been locked for decades, and create an environment where all children get the opportunity to learn the knowledge they need, and progress as fast as they are able.  It might free us from the lockstep march toward uniformity that insists on throwing away talent that it cannot, or will not, foster.

Is this utopian?  Why?  If our commitment is, as it should be, to create smart, versatile, creative individuals, we had better rethink what we're doing -- because the system, as it is, is not working.

The horse worshipers

I am endlessly fascinated with animal behavior.  Besides having been a pet owner for more or less my entire life, I have been a fanatical birdwatcher for years.  Beyond this, though, I just think the interactions of the non-human species with which we share the planet are interesting from the standpoint of evolutionary biology and neuroscience -- two areas of biological science that are intrinsically awesome.

It may be because of this that I tend to react with revulsion toward an all-too-common human tendency, which is to treat non-human animals as if they were something other than they are.

This can take many forms, and they are not all equally bad.  Our anthropomorphizing of pets is usually fairly harmless, and I've fallen into that trap, myself; what dog owner out there has looked into those loyal, liquid eyes and not thought, at least for a moment, that Rover is far more intelligent than he really is?  It's understandable, particularly since dogs are highly social animals who have been selectively bred for millennia to be responsive to humans.  It'd be surprising if we didn't by this time have dogs who were capable of eliciting this reaction in us.

It can lead to problems, however, when this natural and rather innocent tendency leads us to treat animals in (*ironic word choice alert*) inhumane ways.  I've seen more than one obese, unhealthy dog whose owner insisted on feeding it, both in quantity and quality, as if it were human.  But there's even worse than that; in our determination to make non-human animals into something other than they are, we ignore the (interesting) reality and create a (dangerous) fiction surrounding them.

We, in effect, create a modern-day mythology, analogous to our distant ancestors' imbuing of animals with magical powers.

It's not just domestic animals that we do this to.  The people in Tuesday's post who thought they were magically in touch with whales are examples of this phenomenon.  (One reader posted a comment wondering why woo-woos think that only the charismatic megafauna have mystical powers -- why they try to connect to the Wolf Spirit and the Whale Consciousness, but no one tries to create a telepathic link to, say, a chicken.  It's a good question, although I must say that it would be entertaining to watch someone try.)

I was sent a particularly egregious example of this whole phenomenon yesterday by a frequent reader and contributor to Skeptophilia.  Entitled "Equinisity Retreats: A Transformational Journey," this website describes a ranch in British Columbia where horses are... more than just horses:

Our Sacred Land is home to a herd of free roaming horses, llamas and our resident Buddha, Tesoro the bull. The 320 acres of enchanted forests, hills, lakes, rivers of underground crystals and magnificent views, is an energetic matrix for personal transformation through higher consciousness, universal love and connection to all life...  Equinisity Retreats are transformational journeys hosted by Liz Mitten Ryan, Author, Artist and Animal Communicator and her herd of equine higher beings.

Now, I will be up front with you; although I've been around animals my whole life, I am not a horse person.  I have ridden a horse exactly once, a patient, gentle old guy named Tonto on whom I sat for an hour's beach ride in Montauk fourteen years ago.  That's it: my one and only contact with horses.  I have, however, a friend who is a passionate equestrian, with whom I have had many conversations on the topic.  She understands that horses are, first and foremost, herd animals, who have evolved for millions of years to interact with each other and with members of other species in the ways evolution molded them.  In their original habitat, they are highly social animals, but are also prey; any interaction with them has to be predicated on that understanding.  And like any social animal, they have unique gestures, signals, and modes of non-verbal communication that you must understand in order to interact with a horse without its either running away from you or kicking you into the middle of next week.

But her understanding of horses is based on science, not on wishful thinking about their being "spiritual masters."  She studies, appreciates, and loves horses; she doesn't worship them.  On the other hand, listen to the way Liz Mitten Ryan talks about the interactions with her "equine higher beings":

These spiritual retreats offer re-connection, re-vitalisation and healing, dispelling illusion, shifting consciousness and tuning and raising personal and universal vibration...  Untainted by human mass mind consciousness, this perspective provides a life-changing understanding of the enlightened journey. You are invited to rest, reconnect, and heal with the Land and the Herd. Tune and raise your vibration through the powerful crystals of Gateway and healing sessions with the Herd; learn to see vortices, feel and see auras, and connect and communicate with all life.  Learn animal and communication with all life through journaling, dowsing, opening to channel and trusting and refining your innate abilities.

Now, I'm not claiming that what she's doing is in any way detrimental to the animals.  From what I could tell from the website, the horses are probably well cared for.  But her selling point -- that somehow, she is allowing you to learn animal communication through some kind of mystical contact with equine "higher beings" -- is absurd.  Be that as it may, if you wanted to, you can even go there to get certified to lead "horse healing sessions" yourself:

Horses are coming forward as teachers and healers in programs everywhere. Here at Gateway 2 Ranch we have pioneered the Equinisity Programs and have interest from people all over the world who would like to incorporate these at liberty horse healing programs that are producing miraculous results. 

The most miraculous result for the owners of Equinisity is that there are people who are willing to shell out $6,800 to take the training.

On some level, I get why people do this sort of thing.  Horses are beautiful, majestic animals.  But they are animals, not "spiritual beings," and are far less intelligent than humans.  Worshiping them as if they are "higher beings" that are "enlightened" and can allow you to see vortices and auras is, simply, false, and taking people's money on this pretext is unethical at best.

Once again, the reality is far more interesting (not to mention far cheaper).  Most places in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe are within a reasonable drive of a place where you can learn to ride and to interact with horses, if that's what you want to do.  And learning about how the behavior of horses (and every other animal in the world) has been driven by evolutionary pressures will help you to see why horses do what they do, in their interactions both with humans and with their herdmates.  In the long haul, you will learn more than you would by going to British Columbia to have a "spiritually transformative experience" involving a made-up view of animal nature.

As usual: learn some science.  Learn some facts.  Allow yourself to be awestruck at how cool the biological world actually is, even if it forces you to abandon your mythology.

Spiritual ascension, triple helices, and the tragic story of Alfie Clamp

Yesterday, we saw an example of how woo-woos will embrace a warm fuzzy fiction in order to escape the hard work of learning science.  While I think this is a shame, and that said woo-woos are losing out on the thrill of actually understanding the universe, I have some sympathy for the desire to have the universe be like you would like it to be (not to mention the mental indolence that prevents you from sticking with the actual science until you understand it).

Unfortunately, however, there is a darker side to such things.  Sometimes the woo-woos lie outright.

I ran into an especially sad example of this yesterday, and it has to do with a bizarre claim by the "spiritual ascension" crowd.  These folks have taken a wafer-thin understanding of genetics and evolution, and onto this they have duct-taped all sorts of goofy ideas -- aliens, channeling, ESP, and a quasi-Buddhist "progress toward enlightenment."  Out of it has come a completely wacky amalgam that basically claims that some kind of "life force" is driving us to evolve into "higher beings," and that part of this "spiritual ascension" will involve activating parts of our DNA that are currently switched off.  Many of the proponents of this idiotic idea believe that we'll be able to tell the "ascended masters" from the rest of us slobs because they will have three, four, or even (in some versions) 1,024 strands per DNA instead of the standard-issue two.  (I.e., their DNA will not be composed of double helices -- it will be triple, quadruple, or 1,024-uple helices.)

Now, so far, this is just in the same realm as yesterday's post, wherein an alt-med wingnut claimed to be in psychic touch with alien whales -- weird but essentially harmless.  But this one took a turn toward the Dark Side of Woo-Woo with the claim by some of them to have discovered a child who is the first person who has this triple-stranded DNA, and thus represents the first step toward "ascension."

His name is Alfie Clamp, and he lives in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England.  Listen to what Greg Giles, of the site Ascension Earth, had to say about this child in his post "First Child Officially Diagnosed With Three DNA Strands":

As we as a species approach the culmination of our ascension in 2012, our outdated 2 strand 'Double Helix' DNA must experience an upgrade. What has long been considered 'junk DNA' by the scientific community must now be reevaluated as the human species experiences an incredibly rapid advancement of our evolution. All throughout the existence of the human species on this planet, thee has never been gradual shift in our evolution, instead there have been a series of massive leaps. One of the more recent leaps in our evolution could never be explained by science, hence a name for this mystery was implemented instead, resulting in this phenomena being referred to as the 'missing link'. Human DNA is now evolving from a mere two strands (which are responsible for lower dimensional traits such as survival and pro creation), to three, four, and even twelve strands of DNA fully activated. A human with two strands of DNA activated is plugged into a 3rd dimensional reality which we have experienced here on earth. When a third strand is activated, a human can experience the fourth dimensional reality, and after activation of a fourth strand of DNA, the fifth dimensional reality can be experienced, which is precisely where we are headed in 2012. These third and fourth strands of DNA have remained dormant within the DNA structure, and are being activated throughout our planet by energies currently bathing our world. It is believed forerunners in our ascension process, known as Indigo Children have been born with three and four strands of DNA fully activated. The scientific community, which has shown strong skepticism towards new DNA theories, must now reevaluate their position as a two year old British boy named Alfie Clamp has become the first person in the world to be officially diagnosed with a third strand of DNA located in his seventh chromosome.

We are then treated to a picture of what this supposedly looks like:

Esoteric Online went even further, in their post "Scientists: Our DNA is Mutating As We Speak!  We Are Developing Twelve Strands!"

I was amazed to read that the modern medical industry finally released to the press that the 'first human with 3 DNA strands' had been born. Of course, the case of little Alfie is the first one to be officially acknowledge by the medical community, but not the only one existent.

In fact, I've read years ago that independent doctors were already working with children who developed the third DNA strand. But are they different than the average human? I am absolutely delighted to inform you that they are very special and in fact all humans are mutating to a superior species, as we speak...

The changes are not known publicly, because the scientific community feels it would frighten the population. However, people are changing at the cellular level. I am working with three children right now who have three DNA helixes. Most people know and feel this. Many religions have talked about the change and know it will come about in different ways. We know it is a positive mutation even though physically, mentally, and emotionally it can be misunderstood and frightening...  These are children who can move objects across the room just by concentrating on them, or they can fill glasses of water just by looking at them. They're telepathic. You would almost think by knowing these children that they are half angelic or superhuman, but they're not. I think they are what we are growing into during the next few decades...  We are being changed physically from carbon-based beings with 2 strands of DNA into crystalline beings with 1,024 strands of DNA (eventually, in time), because only crystalline substances can exist on higher dimensional levels. But the immediate changes are from 2 to 3 DNA strands, and later into 12.

My first thought was that these people are merely deluded individuals who believe that the X-Men movies are historical documentaries, but when I started looking into it, I realized something more insidious was going on here:

They weren't delusional, they were lying.

I found what appears to be the original public-media article on Alfie Clamp's condition (here).  It was published in April of 2011.  In it, it says that Alfie doesn't have a third strand of DNA -- i.e., triple helical DNA -- he has a third arm on his seventh chromosome, which is not the same thing at all.  His chromosomes, like yours, are tightly-wound bundles of double-helical DNA.  His having an extra arm on a chromosome is basically an odd form of duplication, which is a chromosomal mutation in which genetic material appears three times in the genome (instead of the normal two).  Duplications, like all chromosomal abnormalities, are devastating to the individual (in fact, most never survive to be born).  And poor little Alfie Clamp, far from being a "superior species" that is "half angelic or superhuman," has had medical issues since the day of his birth.  He nearly died when he was only a few days old, his eyes didn't fully develop until three months after he was born, and he was a year and a half old before he was strong enough to roll over unassisted.  He is two now, and still requires daily medications just to help him digest his food.

The original story was intended to be inspirational -- the devotion of a pair of loving parents to a little boy whose physical condition was profoundly impaired, and whose problems are likely to be incurable.  And it was inspiring... until the woo-woos got a hold of it, and twisted it to buoy up their ridiculous concept of reality.  They are coldly, callously capitalizing on the tragic story of Alfie Clamp for one reason and one reason only -- they don't have any facts to back up their views, so they have to lie about a sick child's plight in order to gain credibility in the eyes of their gullible followers.

Greg Giles simply pretended that Alfie's medical problems didn't exist; the people at Esoteric Online went a horrifying step further, claiming that Alfie's symptoms are just growing pains, because we should expect ascension to hurt:

Is it any wonder therefore, that there is a great deal of anxiety and fear being felt because these changes are already in progress, even though most people are not conscious of it. Also, the changes to our physiological makeup are currently speeding up and there are MANY TEMPORARY PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS that are occurring in our bodies as a consequence of this...  Some of these symptoms are being felt by a great many people. Many are rushing off in panic to their doctor, chiropractor, herbalist, etc. and are usually told that there is nothing wrong with them. And this is the truth. For all these symptoms are just temporary and simply indicate that these physiological changes are occurring.... You aren't dying, you're just changing!

Somehow, I doubt Alfie's doctors, or his parents, would agree with this.

It's bad enough when woo-woos try to twist reality to fit their mythology, and then hoodwink others.  It's worse when they use their warped worldview to bilk the public out of their hard-earned money.

Worst of all, though, is twisting the story of a little boy's pain, and his parents' commitment, into "proof" for a false claim about the universe.  That they would sink to this level shows that what needs to ascend isn't the number of strands we have in our DNA, but the morality with which we treat the truth and our fellow humans.