The twisted world of the Tornado Truthers

If I can sum up the rationalist view of the world in one sentence, it would be: your belief in something does not make it the truth.

If you would like me to agree with you, I need more than hearing that you believe it's so.  I need evidence -- or failing that, at least a good, solid, logical argument in favor.

The problem is, there is a slice of humanity for whom a lack of evidence for a claim becomes some kind of twisted argument for its correctness.  These are the people who become conspiracy theorists -- people whose belief in their warped view of reality is so strong that a complete absence of any support for their views is turned inside out, is used to show that the coverup is real.  They are absolutely convinced, and are damn near impossible to argue with.

And now, of course, they have weighed in on the tornadoes that hit Oklahoma in the last three days.

They call themselves the "Tornado Truthers."  Don't believe me?  Here is a collection of direct quotes, taken from Twitter and Facebook.  [Note to readers who are offended by such things; there's a good bit of bad language in these quotes, but to edit that out would diminish the intensity of these people's feelings on this subject.  In any case, be forewarned.]

255 tornadoes issued today.  43 caused by HAARP.

TORNADO WARNING.  YEAH FUCK YOU TO HELL #HAARP

Government-made tornadoes - HAARP - check out HAARP maybe with one A - can't remember offhand Tesla's work

That tornado pic is insanity, hey government, I know you [sic] watching, TURN THAT FUCKING HAARP MACHINE OFF!!!!

Tornadoes is wild man it's not tornado season... #haarp

Dutchsince on YouTube.com issued a warning for the east coast.  The HAARP induced tornadoes that leveled cities in the midwest is now on its way to the east coast.  East coast get prepared.  Facebook just like Obama refuses to post information to warn America.  Why?

Notice to all these tornados this week are the result of haarp to set the stage for martial law and FEMA camps

30 + People Dead & Thousands of Homes/Towns DESTROYED cuz of The Illuminati & Their Weather Modification Machine (HAARP) ITS A FACT!  LOOK IT UP AND START SPEAKING OUT TO CREATE SOME WEATHER RELATED DISASTER TO FORCE US OUT OF OUR HOMES INTO THEIR NEW HOMES (FEMA CAMPS)

Thank you h.a.a.r.p. for this crazy fucked up weather

HAARP, of course, stands for High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, a government-run ionospheric research station in Alaska.  It has nothing to do with weather modification.  It cannot generate tornadoes (or earthquakes, or volcanoes, or hurricanes, or sinkholes, or any of the other hundreds of things it's been claimed to do).

Oh, yeah, and it is tornado season, actually.  The peak of it.  But by all means, "Tornado Truthers," don't let any facts get in the way of your beliefs.

And then Alex Jones, of course, had to weigh in.  Could the recent tornadoes be generated by the US government, a caller asked?  Don't be a ninny, of course they could.  After all, we now know that the insurance companies have been using weather modification to avoid having to pay out to ski resorts during winters when it doesn't snow.  "Of course there's weather weapon stuff going on," Jones said, one eyelid twitching spasmodically.  "We had floods in Texas like fifteen years ago, killed thirty-something people in one night.  Turned out it was the Air Force."  Of this week's tornadoes, he admitted that he wasn't sure that it was the government, but that if you saw small aircraft "in and around the clouds, spraying and doing things, if you saw that, you better bet your bottom dollar they did this, but who knows if they did.  You know, that's the thing, we don't know."

Heh.  We don't know.  *wink wink nudge nudge*  It's the government.

To Jones and his intrepid band of loony followers, anything constitutes evidence.  In fact, nothing constitutes evidence.  "I haven't seen any aircraft spraying stuff and immediately triggering a tornado" simply becomes, "They've got cloaking technology.  Of course you didn't see anything."  And all you have to do is append the word "Truther" to your particular warped view of the universe, and it becomes de facto Truth, capital T, no evidence necessary.

The whole thing makes me want to scream.

Better, though, to focus on what we should be doing; assisting with the cleanup and rebuilding, donating money if you can't go there to help directly.   (Here's a site that has a list of places to donate.)  Beyond that, focusing on the positive stories that have come out of this tragedy -- of the selfless teachers who tried to save their students' lives, some of them who lost their lives in the process; of the first responders who risked their safety to dig survivors out of the rubble of their homes; of the neighbors, friends, and families who pitched in to help as soon as the funnel clouds lifted.  And of the little miracles, like Oklahoma resident Barbara Garcia, who lost her home but was reunited with her little dog who she thought had been killed when her house collapsed.  (Have kleenex handy if you watch the video on this link.  Don't say I didn't warn you.)

 

Focus on what's important, here.  With any luck, the deafening silence that greets the screeching pretzel logic of the "Tornado Truthers" will convince them to crawl back under their rocks where they belong -- at least until the next natural disaster occurs.

Shame, lying, and Archie Bunker

One of my sensitive spots has to do with embarrassment.  Not only do I hate being embarrassed myself, I hate watching other people in embarrassing situations.  I remember as a kid detesting sitcoms in which a character (however richly deserving) was made to look a fool -- the sensation was close to physical pain.

Of course, it's worse when it's a real person, and worst of all when (s)he doesn't realize what's going on.

This whole wince-inducing topic comes up because of a wonderful academic paper called "Cooperation creates selection for tactical deception," by Luke McNally and Andrew L. Jackson of Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland).  The paper describes research into the evolution of deception, and is a sterling piece of work, showing how a game-theoretical model of cooperation results in selective pressure favoring "tactical deception" -- better known as lying.

"Our results suggest that the evolution of conditional strategies may, in addition to promoting cooperation, select for astute cheating and associated psychological abilities," the authors write.  "Ultimately, our ability to convincingly lie to each other may have evolved as a direct result of our cooperative nature."

It's a fascinating piece of research, and it generated some buzz in the media -- even meriting an (also nicely done) summary in HuffPost Science.

So far, what's the problem?  A well-written paper on how game theory predicts the evolution of behavior, and the media (for once) reporting it as they should.  No cause for wincing here, surely?

Nope.  The winces started once the creationists got wind of this.

The site Creation Evolution Headlines evidently found out about McNally and Jackson's paper -- although whether they actually read it remains to be seen.  Because the piece they wrote in response is called...

... wait for it...

"Evolutionists Confess to Lying."

Yes, you're interpreting this correctly; they think that because the paper supports an evolutionary edge for people who are deceptive, it is equivalent to the evolutionary biologists stating, "Ha ha!  We were lying all along!"

I couldn't make something this ridiculous up if I wanted to.

Don't believe me?  Here is an excerpt.  Make sure you have a pillow handy for when you faceplant.

If lying evolved as a fitness strategy, can we believe anything an evolutionist says?...  Brooks [the author of the HuffPost piece] has the Yoda complex.  So do McNally and Jackson.  They believe they can look down on the rest of humanity from some exalted plane free of the evolutionary forces that afflict the rest of humanity.  No; they need to climb down and join the world their imaginations have created.  In the evolutionary world, there is no essential difference between cooperation and deception.  It’s only a matter of which side is in the majority at the moment... 

Having no eternal standard of truth, the evolutionary world collapses into power struggles.  The appeals by Brooks and Sam Harris to try to “resist our temptations to lie” are meaningless.  How can anyone overcome what evolution has built into them?  How can either of them know what is true?

Since all these evolutionists believe that lying evolved as a fitness strategy, and since they are unable to distinguish between truth and lies, they essentially confess to lying themselves.  Their readers are therefore justified in considering them deceivers, and dismissing everything they say, including the notion that lying evolved.

My wincing-at-people-embarrassing-themselves response was activated so strongly by all this that I could barely tolerate reading the entire article... especially given that the Creation Evolution Headlines piece got linked on the Skeptic subreddit by the obviously astonished friend of one of the original paper's authors.  (Of course, you're probably thinking, "If you hate seeing people embarrassed so much, why are you calling further attention to it by writing about it?"  To which I can only respond: touché.  And also, that my outrage over a nice bit of evolutionary research being trashed this way trumped my dislike of watching morons shame themselves.)

Let's just take this a piece at a time, okay?

First, McNally and Jackson didn't say that everyone is lying; they said that some people are lying, and benefit by it, a contention that I'd guess atheists and theists would both agree on.  Second, given that the original research looked at cooperative species -- of which there are many -- why does that somehow turn evolution into "power struggles," into a world of every man for himself?  Do ants in a colony only cooperate because they recognize an "eternal standard of truth?"

And I always find it wryly amusing when the theists claim that we atheists must be without morals because we don't think morality comes from some higher power, and suggest that we aren't to be trusted.  Honestly, devout Christians; if the only thing that's keeping you from running around stealing, raping, and murdering is some Bronze Age book of mythology, I think you are the ones we should be watching out for.

And last: saying that lying is an evolved strategy doesn't mean that we "are unable to distinguish between truth and lies."  If evolutionists were unable to distinguish between truth and lies, IT WOULD BE KIND OF HARD TO WRITE A SCHOLARLY PAPER ABOUT LYING, NOW WOULDN'T IT?

*pant pant gasp gasp*

Okay, I'll try to calm down a little.

What's the worst about these people is that they don't seem to have any awareness that what they're saying, with apparent confidence, is absolute nonsense.  It reminds me of watching the character of Archie Bunker on the 70s television series All in the Family, who week after week would have conversations like the following:

Mike (Archie's son-in-law):  Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Archie: Denmark ain't no state, it's the capital of Colorado.

 

And, of course, Archie would never admit that he was wrong.  In his world, he was always right, world without end, amen.

I bet Archie would have loved that article in Creation Evolution Headlines.  And he'd probably look at me and say, as he did to once to his wife, "You don't believe in nothin', Edith.  You're one o' them, whaddyacallem, septics."

Breaking news: precision matters.

I keep telling myself not to expect much from how science is covered in commercial media.  They are beholden to sponsors, who pay attention to only one thing; how many people partake.  So if media can get more sponsors (= more money) by sensationalizing scientific news, that's what they do, however it misleads the gullible and undermines the reputation of science as a whole.

I guess I just thought that National Geographic would be above that kind of thing.

Yes, National Geographic, that venerable institution that sends out the monthly glossy, yellow-edged magazine that from its density appears to be printed on sheets of lead.  That wonderful source of information and photographs from exotic locales that teenage boys the world over peruse in the hopes of seeing a topless native woman.  Yes, National Geographic.  Even they have succumbed.

I came to this realization when I was perusing the News section of the online National Geographic, and I saw the headline, "New Sea Monster Found, Rewrites Evolution?"  It happens that this particular turn of phrase is one that really grinds my gears -- it seems like every time some paleontologist finds a new fossil, the media shrieks that it's going to "rewrite everything we know about evolution!"  And, of course, it never does.  Given that what we have from the fossil record represents a tiny percentage of the living things the Earth has seen during it's three-odd-billion-year hosting of life, it's only to be expected that we'll find new and amazing things in fossil beds, more often than not.  And surprisingly, astonishingly, the evolutionary model has survived, intact, despite all that "rewriting."

Now, to be fair, this discovery was pretty cool -- a new species of ichthyosaur, Malawania anachronus, so named because it dates to 66 million years after its nearest cousins were supposedly extinct.  But like I said: this is interesting, but hardly earthshattering.  A group of seagoing prehistoric carnivores were still around more recently than scientists thought.  No "rewriting of evolution" necessary.

Also, must they always call them "sea monsters?"

Now, you may well think I'm overreacting, here.  But cut me some slack; given that I'm a biologist, it's to be expected that precision in speech on this particular topic is something I value.  But seriously, you may be saying; does anyone take that "rewriting evolution" thing as more than hyperbole?

You have only to look at the comments section on the article in question to see that the answer is "yes."

"As most scientists now know who are brave enough to admit it, the entire 'theory' of evolution needs to be rewritten," said one commenter.  "As long as we try to cover up its many problems, we are the problem."

"Evolved animals 'appear' in the Jurassic or whatever period...I guess out of nowhere," wrote another.  "As if by magic without numerous specimens leading to the found fossil.  You would think that life on earth after 3 billion years of evolution would look like the 'Island of Doctor Moreau' of blended animals."

One person, at least, tried to bring some sense into the discussion.  "Oh come on, National Geographic, pul-eezzze stop using the word 'monster' in your headlines to suck in readership," he wrote.  "That's tabloid journalism, and National Geographic should know better.  A ten-foot long aquatic reptile is not a 'monster' in any sense of the word.  This animal was a sleek, efficient predator of fish and has many characteristics of already-discovered fossils of similar animals.  And while it may ADD valuable information to our understanding of how evolution has worked, it will NOT 'rewrite evolution' as the headline further claims.  That would seem to shred Charles Darwin's masterpiece of science, and is plainly not what's happening here. "

Unfortunately,  he was immediately shouted down.  "Stop whining," one person responded.  " If you don't like the headlines here, go elsewhere and complain."  Another said, "So, you are complaining about how they try to suck in readers with the word monster, yet you were here, reading this article. Think ahead before you comment mouse brain."

Herein lies the problem, and it's not just an issue of civil discourse.  Precision matters, especially when writing about topics that are, by their very nature, controversial.  I'm guessing that the author of the piece, Christine Dell'Amore, had no intention of giving fuel to the fire of the creationists -- but what are the anti-evolution crowd supposed to think, when every other week there's an article with the headline, "Evolution Has To Be Rewritten?"  However much I lambast them for their anti-science, anti-rational stance, you have to admit that anyone would begin to wonder about a scientific model that has to be "rewritten" every time some tiny new piece of evidence is found.

Okay, I'm ranting.  But really, it's National Geographic.  I expect better from them.  I've completely written off the Discovery network, for example, which has just announced that ANIMAL PLANET'S MONSTER WEEK BEGINS TODAY.  (Capitalization theirs.)  And despite the fact that to a biologist, the word "animal" means "a type of real, live creature, i.e. not fictional," they are going to kick off the week with a special about...

... mermaids.

Just 'scuse me while I go pound my forehead on the desk.

Squatchery antics

Some free advice to any woo-woos who complain that we skeptics don't take their claims seriously: try not to act like a bunch of raving lunatics.  Turning your chosen field of study into some kind of bizarre street theater does not improve your credibility in the eyes of those of us who aren't already convinced.

This suggestion comes too late for the Bigfoot enthusiasts, who created a piece of performance art last week that was Harry and the Hendersons meets "the Keystone Kops."

The whole thing started on May 16 with a claim that some hunters in Pennsylvania had shot a Bigfoot.  Here's how it appeared in Cryptomundo:

This is unconfirmed at the moment and we’re still trying to figure out what exactly transpired here.

According to our source, PBS is looking into a possible shooting of Bigfoot somewhere in Pennsylvania. “It has been all over the police scanner in the area,” our source tells us, but he will not confirm the exact location.

Last month, a surge of Bigfoot sightings In Clearfield PA prompted police to put up traffic signs in an area where they were alerted to “increased animal activity.”

PBS, I hasten to point out, is not what you were thinking.  It's the "Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society."

They went on to add:

We think we know where this Bigfoot shooting claim originated from. About 4 hours ago, Daniel C. left the following message on the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society’s Facebook page:

“You guys might want to check out the somerset county state police call log. I heard a call come over my scanner about a gobbler hunter shot a bigfoot this morning and they did find a body. This is no joke that call was real.” – Daniel C. On Twitter, received a message from @pabigfoot saying the shooting probably took place north of Altoona (either Clearfield or Tyrone). It’s unclear how this person got the information. Altoona is a city in Blair Country, and it’s popularly known as “the Mountain City.”

 Why throwing in Altoona's nickname was considered important, I don't know.

So, anyway, now we had a real, verifiable claim -- that the police in Somerset County, Pennsylvania had received a call that a turkey hunter had shot a Bigfoot.  So, naturally, the police were contacted, and they stated unequivocally that they had received no such call.  So, what do the Bigfoot chasers do?  They decide that they were simply looking in the wrong state.  Here's what happened next, according to the site Bigfoot Evidence:

Johnny Bigfoot just posted on his blog that the alleged "Bigfoot shooting" probably took place in Somerset WI -- not Somerset PA or North of Altoona, Pennsylvania as we reported Tuesday.

Right!  Because (1) a claim becomes more plausible if you can't even figure out what state you're talking about, and (2) we should give a lot of credibility to someone named "Johnny Bigfoot."  I mean, really.  If I were to claim that I'd seen a live Woolly Mammoth, and someone asked me where, and I said, "I saw it in Ogunquit, Maine!  Or maybe Poughkeepsie!  Or possibly Nebraska!", you'd be perfectly in your rights to guffaw in my face.  Especially if my name turned out to be "Mikey Mastodon."

Anyhow, the Squatchers all went running off to Wisconsin, where they found a report of a guy who had been shot by some turkey hunters:

SOMERSET TOWNSHIP, Wis. - A Washington County Sheriff's commander is recovering at a Twin Cities hospital after being shot while scouting for a turkey hunt in western Wisconsin. St. Croix County deputies were called to the 1900 block of 80th Street in Somerset Township just before 7:30 a.m. Tuesday on reports someone had been shot. When they arrived on the scene witnesses told deputies that a group was hunting turkeys when one hunter fired a shotgun and struck 53-year-old Commander Jerry Cusick. Washington County Sheriff Bill Hutton says Cusick, a 28-year veteran of the department, was unarmed and was walking an area where he often hunts when he was shot.

Cusick was transported to Regions Hospital in St. Paul; The Pioneer Press says he is reported in good condition. St. Croix County investigators and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) are looking into the shooting to determine if criminal charges will be filed. 

So, the story of a Bigfoot being shot in Somerset County, Pennsylvania turned out to be completely correct, as long as you changed the word "Bigfoot" to "guy" and the word "Pennsylvania" to "Wisconsin."

And they wonder why we're unconvinced.

I mean, really.  First we had Melba Ketchum going off the deep end trying to defend her claim that she'd found Sasquatch DNA, and now we have these folks.  It's enough to make a cryptozoologist sing the blues.

The new, eviscerated AP Biology exam

You would think that, after spending 26 years as an educator, I would have figured out that whenever an educational oversight group says, "We are restructuring and reconfiguring this, for sound pedagogical reasons, in order to improve it," this really means, "We are going to scramble this for no good reason whatsoever, and the result will be something far worse than what you started with."

It happened with the New York State Regents Examinations, which (for those of you who do not live in New York) are the high-school-level course exit exams.  The rallying cry was "Raising the Bar," which makes it a little hard to explain why the biological sciences Regents examination is now so easy that it can be passed by anyone who has three working brain cells.  This exam was passed by a student who, on a quiz on human anatomy, incorrectly labeled the "anus" as being on the left arm.

Oh, but there was one major outcome of the exam restructuring: they changed the name of the course from "Regents Biology" to "Regents Living Environment," which raises the bar by virtue of having more letters.

So, when the College Board decided to restructure the curriculum and examination for AP Biology -- a course I've taught for twenty years -- I should have expected the same to happen.  Here's their rationale, as per the 2011 announcement of the planned changes on the College Board website:

“The revisions were enacted to address a challenging situation in science education at a critical juncture for American competitiveness,” said Gaston Caperton, president of the College Board. “The body of scientific knowledge is constantly expanding. The revisions will help science educators ensure that their instruction is fresh and current and that students develop not just a solid knowledge of the facts but also the ability to practice science and think critically about scientific issues.”

The revised AP Biology course and exam align with the knowledge and skills that many rigorous college-level introductory biology courses now seek to nurture, emphasizing the development of scientific inquiry and reasoning skills. Lab work is a critical component of the course, requiring students to master such skills as posing questions; collecting, analyzing and evaluating data; connecting fundamental concepts; and then defending their conclusions based on experiments.

“The revised course objectives will enable teachers and students to explore key topics in depth and will help students learn to reason with the rigor and objectivity of scientists,” said Trevor Packer, vice president of the Advanced Placement Program at the College Board.

So, I dutifully resubmitted my curriculum, and had it approved by the powers-that-be at the AP Central.  "How different can the exam be?" I thought.  "Biology is what biology is; the concepts are the same.  I already teach a rigorous course, that helps students to draw connections between disparate fields of science, that has an emphasis on application, reasoning, and synthesis, and that uses a strong lab component.  I'm told every year by students returning to visit from college that my class was a good preparation for college-level science.  It will be fine."

Optimism is a losing proposition, sometimes.

My students sat for the exam on Monday.  As you are undoubtedly predicting by now, I was not only wrong, I was so far wrong that it has made me question whether I should even offer this course next year.

The New and Improved AP Biology exam -- of which I only ever get to see the free-response section, the multiple choice section is hardly ever released to teachers for analysis -- was, in my opinion, a vague, confusing muddle that left students wondering, "is that all they're looking for?"  Here are four examples, which I will describe rather than quote in their entirety, for the sake of brevity:

1) A question in which fruit flies are placed in a "choice chamber" and given the choice of flying toward a dry cotton ball or one soaked in glucose solution.  Students are asked to "predict the distribution of the flies after ten minutes, and justify your prediction."  (As a student said to me after the exam, "A central principle of the animal world is that 'some food is better than no food.'")

2)  A question showing a "simplified carbon cycle" that looked, more or less, like this (but without the words in blue):

Students had to correctly label the arrows with "photosynthesis" and "respiration," and state that an example of an organism that does both processes is "a plant."

For reference, the unsimplified carbon cycle I use in my class is shown below:

3)  A question regarding the evolution of the earliest amphibians (363 million years ago) from lobe-finned fish (observed in rocks that are 380 million years old), that asked students to predict when, in geological history, you would might find fossils of the transitional species between the two groups.

4)  A question describing an experiment in which rats are given alcohol, and it is found that their urine output increases over rats that are given water.  Students were asked to "pose one scientific question that the researchers were most likely investigating with this experiment" and then "describe the effect of ethyl alcohol on urine production."

And so on.

Understandably, my students were pretty frustrated by gearing up for an examination that turned out to have been eviscerated of virtually all of its technical content.  And when you have a bunch of students who are pissed off because an exam isn't hard enough, you know there's something wrong.

Here are some direct quotes from some of my students:

"You needed to have barely any actual knowledge of biology in order to take this exam.  A few of the terms from Regents Biology would have been enough to get by on."

"I had worked hard and prepared for this exam.  I'd read the new curriculum and course outline, and I worked hard in class.  I felt like I had this material down.  This test was an insult to all of the hard work I put in."

"The reading passages and experimental design descriptions were too long to justify the extremely simple questions we were asked about them."

"The rat pee question wasn't even at the Regents level, it was below Regents level.  We already knew alcohol is a diuretic -- we discussed it in class when we were learning about the kidney.  If I had proposed to my Regents Biology teacher to do this as a final project, she would have said, 'You can do better than that.'"

"My brother is in college, and is taking biology.  I've looked at his textbook and lab manual.  And if I'd taken a course that prepared me to be successful on this exam, that course wouldn't have prepared me to be successful in the college biology course he's taking."

"I felt like even though they were shooting for a more conceptual approach, I wasn't being asked to apply concepts at a very high level.  The carbon cycle question, in particular, was not at a college level.  We knew that amount of detail in seventh grade."

Allow me to interject at this point that this group of 29 young people ranks amongst the top three AP biology classes I've ever taught in terms of drive, curiosity, and depth of understanding.  We're not talking about a bunch of slackers, here.  They had good mastery of the material, and are ready to make the jump to college science classes.  The fact that they ended the school year this way is a crashing letdown, and will remain that regardless of what their scores turn out to be.  (And interesting, too, that one of my best and brightest, who aced damn near every quiz and test I gave her this year, when I asked her what score she thought she got, replied, "I could have gotten a one.  I could have gotten a five.  I could have gotten a three.  I really, honestly have no way to tell how successful I was on this exam.")

So, there you have it.  The College Board has fulfilled its educational goal of taking a test that was, on the whole, rigorous but fair, and turning it into a hash.  Again, I shouldn't be surprised; that's been the result of virtually every educational shift I've seen in the last twenty years.  Oh, and one other thing I'm expecting: not only do educational oversight agencies take their Great Leaps Forward by mucking things up royally, they never admit afterwards that they screwed up.  So expect to see press releases soon from the College Board about how wonderful their New and Improved exam was, and how teachers and students everywhere are singing its praises to the skies.  Look, too, for them to begin to "improve" the exams in all of the other AP courses.

I hope I'm retired by then.

The Welsh measles conspiracy

If, as I do, you have strong feelings about the irresponsibility of the anti-vaxxer movement, and the mountain of science that they ignore in order to bolster their beliefs that vaccination is dangerous, I recommend not reading this post.  Just reading the background material for it means that I'm probably going to have to double up on my high blood pressure medication today.

Because now the anti-vaxxers are claiming that the measles epidemic in Wales this year, in which 700 people were sickened and one killed by a disease that is 100% preventable, was faked.

Yes, you read that right.  Heidi Stevenson, writing for Gaia Health, has a stomach-turning "exposé" that begins as follows:

The Great Measles Epidemic of Wales—the one that’s being used to stampede sheeple into vaccine clinics for the MMR jab—never happened. Seriously! It was faked. The actual data from the Welsh government on cases of measles proves it.

Here's her "proof:"

The fact is that, though 446 measles notifications were made between 1 January and 31 March of this year, those were merely reports. The reality is that only 26 cases were actually confirmed!

You may have noted that this faux measles epidemic started in November, and the figures for last year weren’t included. However, that doesn’t help make the case for an epidemic, or even come close to the claim that 83 people had to be hospitalized for measles. You see, the total number of confirmed measles cases in Wales for all of 2012 was 14. So, adding 14 for all of 2012 to 26 for the first three months of this year, we get a total of 40 confirmed cases of measles—less than half the falsely reported 83 hospitalizations!

 The actual reason for the discrepancy was picked up on almost immediately, with one of the first comments on the story reading as follows:

Note that only the minority of measles test samples are sent to Welsh labs.

So in conclusion it shouldn't be surprising if the lab confirmed figures are low at present because the majority of samples are sent to English labs for confirmation and are not included in the All Wales reports.

You're drawing conclusions based on at best incomplete data.

Stevenson went on the attack in the comments section, responding to the above commenter with, "But the reality is that this is not an epidemic and even if every reported case had proven to be genuine measles, it would not amount to an epidemic - nor has it amounted to anything that anyone needs to fear."  She responded to another person who objected to her stance with, "You're a shill.  Goodbye."  To another, who had mentioned herd immunity and that it was "thought that a 95% vaccination rate was enough to protect the population from epidemics in most cases," Stevenson snarled back:

What garbage! It's isn't known, it's merely "thought that". The belief in how high the rate of vaccination must be to stop a disease keeps changing - it keeps going up. The fact is that no one knows if there is even such a thing as herd immunity. It's an idea, not a fact. And that 95% figure is something that was pulled out of the air. It's meaningless - nothing but a coverup for the fact that the vaccines are nowhere near as effective as they'd have you believe.

Regarding learning math: The fact is that you've just spewed out figures that prove nothing in relation to this particular issue, and most assuredly do not demonstrate that you have any knowledge of the topic - just that you are able to spew out published figures.

You aren't actually providing any information that elucidates the topic at hand - the fact that the actual number of cases of measles is a small fraction of the reported number, though the reported number has been used to declare an epidemic and push for vaccination.

 Oh, yeah, and to further trivialize the Welsh epidemic, she threw in the following "photograph:"

Hmm, herd immunity is "meaningless?"  That would certainly come as a surprise to Dr. Paul E. M. Fine, whose 1993 paper on epidemiological modeling (available here) is considered the go-to source on how a sufficient pool of immunes in a population can prevent epidemics from taking hold.  Research by Thomas L. Schlenker et al. (available here) on measles in particular concluded that "Modest improvements in low levels of immunization coverage among 2-year-olds confer substantial protection against measles outbreaks. Coverage of 80% or less may be sufficient to prevent sustained measles outbreaks in an urban community."

And on a more emotional level, perhaps Ms. Stevenson would like to discuss the matter with Cecily Johnson, an Australian woman whose unvaccinated daughter Laine Bradley contracted subacute sclerosing panencephalitis as a complication of a measles infection, and lingered for five years, unable to speak, unable to feed, clothe, or wash herself, before dying at age twelve.

The long and short of it is that the actual research shows what we've known for years.  Vaccination has an extremely low rate of complications, while the complications from what are now entirely preventable diseases -- measles, polio, diphtheria, typhoid -- are often debilitating and sometimes fatal.  No medical intervention is 100% safe, and if you scour the records you can find cases of bad side effects (mostly allergic reactions).  But if you weigh those against the millions of people who are now alive because of vaccines, the choice is obvious.

At least, it is to me.  It apparently isn't to Stevenson and others in the anti-vaxxer movement.  Maybe it's because any quantification of the lives saved by vaccines is always going to be a guess -- it's not like you can look at someone and say, "If you hadn't been vaccinated, you'd have died at age six of diphtheria."

But all you have to do is to look into historical records to gain that perspective.  One of my hobbies is genealogy, and being that my family is from the French part of southern Louisiana, I own several books of church and courthouse record abstracts from that region that I have used in researching my family history.  That was how I found out about the 1853 yellow fever epidemic that struck southeastern Louisiana, costing thousands of lives -- the records are there, the chronicles of individuals who were killed by that gruesome disease:

Boutary, Adela Marie, wife of Théophile Daunes, d. 10 Sept. 1853 at age 20 years during yellow fever epidemic (Thibodaux Church: vol. 1, death record #55)

Himel, Mélasie d. 17 Sept. 1853 at age 16 years during yellow fever epidemic (Thibodaux Church: vol. 1, death record #92)

Poché, Joseph d. 3 Oct. 1853 at age 19 years during yellow fever epidemic (Thibodaux Church: vol. 1, death record #151)

Any guesses as to why we don't even have yellow fever in the United States any more?  I'll leave you to figure that one out.

The Black Death, aliens, and the role of chaos in history

Yesterday's post, about the alien origins of humanity, generated a nice round of "you think that's a crazy belief, wait till you see this one!" from my readers.  The best contender in this game of Wingnut One-Upmanship came from another student, who found out that not only did aliens produce our species, they've been trying to kill us ever since.

I guess it's understandable, really.  Our stewardship of the globe hasn't exactly been praiseworthy.  It's no wonder that our superpowerful alien cousins, who still presumably live on our original homeworld (with its clement temperatures, 30-hour rotational period, and "no geomagnetic storms or glaciers"), would have some second thoughts about sending us here.  So it turns out that they've repeatedly tried to get rid of us.

This conclusion comes from a stellar piece of research entitled "Did Aliens Create the 'Black Death' and Other Diseases During the Middle Ages?  (And Are They Still Creating Diseases Today?)," which not only would win an award for the longest article title ever, but is yet another example of a piece of journalism that should say, in its entirety, "NO."  Unfortunately, the author doesn't take that route.  We're told that the 14th century plague has to be extraterrestrial in origin:

A great many people throughout Europe and other plague-stricken regions of the world were reporting that outbreaks of the plague were caused by foul-smelling “mists” and bright lights were reported far more frequently and in many more locations than were rodent infestations. The plague years were, in fact, a period of heavy UFO activity.

Well, I hate to be unimaginative, but the foul smells during the Middle Ages don't really require UFOs to explain them.  There was a fairly appalling lack of sanitation, particularly in the big cities.  Apparently just the amount of human waste lying around in heavily populated areas was enough to create a smell that would blow your hair back -- even 19th century London was a frightful-smelling place, according to Steven Johnson's wonderful book The Ghost Map (which chronicles the cholera epidemic of the 1850s, and how it led to the creation of an efficient city-wide sewer system).  And the fact that rodents weren't "reported frequently" is pretty certainly because of their ubiquity, not because they were absent.

But of course, it's not just the stinky mist and bright lights that are brought out as evidence:

A second phenomenon was sometimes reported: the appearance of frightening human-like figures dressed in black. Those figures were often seen on the outskirts of a town or village and their presence would signal the outbreak of an epidemic almost immediately. It appears that the “scythes” may have been long instruments designed to spray poison or germ-laden gas. Strange men dressed in black, “demons’ and other terrifying figures were observed in other European communities. The frightening creatures were often observed carrying long “brooms,” “scythes,” or “swords” that were used to “sweep” or “knock” on the doors of people’s homes. The inhabitants of those homes fell ill with plague afterwards. It is from these reports that people created the popular image of “Death” as a skeleton or demon carrying a scythe. In looking at this haunting image of death, we may, in fact, be staring into the face of the UFO.”

Right.  Because we're not talking about a superstitious, credulous bunch of people here.  They can't possibly have made this up to explain a terrifying event that they didn't have the science to understand.

 Maybe it wasn't rats or aliens.  Maybe it was the "saaaalmon mooouuussse."

But then we find out that it wasn't all aliens who were impersonating Death; it was only the crazy homicidal aliens who were responsible:

This Awareness indicates that what in Medieval times were termed demons, and what many of the Christian faith considered to be demons, are in fact what entities refer today to as extraterrestrial aliens. The Greys from Zeta Reticuli today are not precisely the same invaders as those of the Medieval times. The Medieval aliens were both Reptoid and also of the Grey community that now is underground and known as the Deros. The Deros underground are demented forms of Zeta Greys, which have been here for many thousands of years, living underground to avoid sunlight and to avoid communication with humans except on those occasions where they seek to make contact for one reason or another.

Oh.  Okay.  Because that makes sense.

You know, I think that the problem here is that people are uncomfortable with the chaotic, random nature of much of life, especially the bad parts.  If something bad happens, the immediate impulse is to look for someone, or something, to blame.  This explains so much woo-woo thinking, doesn't it?  Without even trying hard, I found three examples that were linked on Reddit in the last two days -- an article on the website of the Institute for Natural Healing that attributes all cancer to eating meat, a claim that the government is covering up how dangerous vaccines are, and an allegation that WiFi in schools is causing headaches in children. 

Somehow, we just can't accept that people get sick, sometimes for no obvious reason.  It's not enough to celebrate the astonishing advances in medical science over the last hundred years, that have generated new records in the healthy human life span -- because, unfortunately, they haven't eliminated all disease and suffering.  The fact that we still get sick, we still grow old and die, must mean that there is some insidious plan behind it all.

It can't just be that we live in a world that's kind of a rough place, a world where bad things happen sometimes.  Not even in the case of the Black Death, where we (1) have identified the bacterium that causes it, (2) know the vector that transmitted it, (3) have evidence from medical records of the time that the symptoms are consistent with subsequent outbreaks, and even (4) have tissue samples (bones) that show evidence of Yersinia pestis infection.  No, that's not enough.  It has to be the evil demented aliens causing it all.

Anyhow, however understandable it is to want there to be some kind of overarching reason why stuff happens, rationality forces us to concede the role that chaos has in human history.  No extraterrestrial epidemics necessary.

And in case any of you were considering trying to one-up this story, I have to request, with all due respect: if you know of anything loonier than this claim, you probably shouldn't tell me about it.  I've done enough facepalms over this one to last me a while.