Comet ISON, and the end of the world as we know it

Ever since the media started calling Comet ISON the "Comet of the Century," I was waiting for the woo-woo hoopla to start.

There's something about comets that excites the imagination, to be sure, and I use the word "imagination" deliberately.  When the 1910 appearance of Halley's Comet was imminent, astronomer Camille Flammarion let slip that one of the materials present in comet tails was cyanide, and furthermore stated that the passage of the Earth through the comet's tail could "possibly snuff out all life on this planet."  This unleashed a panic wherein people purchased gas masks by the thousands, and more improbably, "anti-comet pills" and "comet umbrellas."  Because we all know that if you are exposed to cyanide, all you have to do is huddle underneath your umbrella and things will be just fine.

Of course, none of that came to pass, but that doesn't mean that people are any more sensible about things nowadays.  Halley reappeared in 1986, but not before we had another "Comet of the Century," Comet Kohoutek in 1973, which was supposed to be spectacular but which got downgraded to the Comet of Next Tuesday At 11 PM when it turned out to be nearly impossible to see.  This didn't stop noted wingnut David Berg, leader of the fringe group the Children of God, from claiming that Kohoutek was the harbinger of doom and a sign of the End Times, thus becoming one in a long series of instances where the world failed to cooperate and End, as planned.

Then, of course, we had the never-to-be-forgotten Comet Elenin, which in 2011 was rumored not to be a comet at all, but (1) a UFO, (2) a planet called Nibiru, (3) an incoming megaweapon that would destroy Earth, or perhaps (4) all of the above.  Elenin also sparked mass panic amongst people who failed 8th grade science when it was claimed that the comet was going to spark massive tsunamis, and cause the magnetic poles to flip.  Or possibly cause the whole Earth to flip over.  Or slingshot us right out of our orbit.  But fortunately for us, the Law of Gravitation is still strictly enforced in most jurisdictions, and Elenin's miniscule mass relative to the Earth's caused no effects whatsoever other than a disappointed "Awwww" from the woo-woos, especially when it disintegrated completely on close pass with the sun.

But all of that isn't stopping people from claiming that ISON is going to be the one.  Really, this time we mean it.  We already have one site claiming that ISON is an alien spacecraft, because when you digitally monkey around with the NASA photograph of the comet...

... you get this:

Well, q.e.d., as far as I can tell.

Then, there's the chance that ISON will cause a solar flare -- something not outside the realm of possibility, apparently, according to recent research by astronomer David Eichler of Ben Gurion University in Israel.  Eichler believes that even something as relatively small as a comet could cause a shock wave when it struck the sun because of how fast it's moving, and that shock wave would cause a solar flare/coronal mass ejection event that could wreak havoc with electronics here on Earth.  Not content with just having our cellphones get fried, the alarmists have already nicknamed ISON "the Sungrazer" and predicted that it will cause an "Extinction-Level Event."

Is it just me, or do these people seem to be happy about the obliteration of all life on Earth?

In any case, the actual research on ISON seems to indicate that (1) it's going to be another Kohoutek-style flop, visually, and (2) if it gets close to the sun, it will just disintegrate, like Elenin did.  Which means we'll have to wait for the next Comet of the Century to kill us all.

I'm sure there'll be one soon.  Me, I'm content to wait.

Attack of the fnords

Today I learned a new term that is apparently gaining popularity amongst the conspiracy-theory crowd, and that term is "fnord."

Originally coined for the Illuminatus! Trilogy by authors Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, a fnord is a typographic or symbolic representation of disinformation, intended to misdirect or hypnotize.  Wikipedia says about its use in Shea and Wilson's writings,

In these novels, the interjection "fnord" is given hypnotic power over the unenlightened. Under the Illuminati program, children in grade school are taught to be unable to consciously see the word "fnord". For the rest of their lives, every appearance of the word subconsciously generates a feeling of uneasiness and confusion, and prevents rational consideration of the subject. This results in a perpetual low-grade state of fear in the populace. The government acts on the premise that a fearful populace keeps them in power...  To see the fnords means to be unaffected by the supposed hypnotic power of the word.

So of course, it was only a matter of time before the conspiracy theorists latched onto this idea, despite Shea and Wilson's trilogy clearly being shelved in the "fiction" section of Barnes & Noble.  And once they decide that the government is planting fnords around, the next question is obviously... where?

Answer?  The logo for "Wendy's Old-Fashioned Hamburgers."

According to a guy who goes by the handle of "Solomon Sevens," this logo is just so fnordful that it's a wonder we don't lapse into some kind of catatonic state when we look at it.  If you listen to his YouTube presentation on the subject, which he delivers in a nasal monotone so dull that I expected him to end his sentences with, "Anyone?  Anyone?  Buehler?", you come away convinced either that (1) the entire superstructure of civilization is trying to destroy your mind, or else (2) the conspiracy theorists really need to institute some kind of quality control.

Because what is it that Mr. Sevens thinks are the super-evil symbolic fnords present in this logo?  He tells us that there are three of them:  (1) The circle around the little girl's head; (2) the curlicues underneath the word "Wendy's;" and (3) the fact that the logo is printed in all primary colors.

And I'm thinking, "that's it?"  That's the best you can do?  You're not even going to use numerology to show that the name "Wendy's" somehow generates the Number of the Beast?  You're not going to tell us that you can rearrange "Old-Fashioned Hamburgers" to spell "Balderdash! Humoring Foes?"  You're not going to comment on the oddly hypnotic black eyes which the little red-haired girl uses to bore into your soul and convince you that you really want to eat a truly terrible hamburger right now?

All you can come up with are a circle and a curlicue and some red and yellow printer's ink?  Those are your ultra-evil fnords?

Oh, Mr. Sevens tells us, it's because circles represent the Eye of Satan!  And the curlicues are just like the designs on the dollar bill that are next to the All-Seeing Eye in the Pyramid!  It's the Illuminati!  Trying to control us all!  Even coming at us when we stop for lunch!

It's kind of an anticlimax, isn't it?  Here I was expecting to find out that logos were going to be full of all kinds of subliminal messages, and I find out that I'm supposed to be afraid of clip-art.

So, anyway, that's what a fnord is.  I'm a little disappointed, frankly.  I thought they'd at least have some gravitas, given how weird the name is, but no luck.  So I'll just go get my breakfast, which I will eat off a circular plate using a fork with a curlicue design.  If I go missing, just look for me in the local insane asylum.  I'll be housed in the wing where they keep all the "sheeple."

Jack the cuddly Chupacabra

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I had been interviewed for a podcast by a fellow named Robert Chazz Chute, a journalist and writer who was curious about how a guy who was born into a devout Roman Catholic family in southern Louisiana had ended up becoming a skeptic and atheist.  The podcast is now live -- I hope you'll give it a listen!  Check out Gordon Bonnet on The Cool People Podcasts.

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I try not to spend too much time focusing on individuals who either (1) are yearning for attention or (2) have a screw loose, or possibly (3) both, but this one was too good to pass up.

Much has been made in cryptozoological circles of El Chupacabra, the "goat sucker," a canid cryptid that apparently first was mentioned in Puerto Rico about twenty years ago.  Since that time, reports have come in from all over, largely concentrated in the southwestern United States, although there have been mentions of the beast from as far away as Siberia.  Where there has been evidence, apart from eyewitness accounts and blurry photographs, the creature in question has always turned out to be a coyote or wolf, usually with mange (a condition that makes the affected individual lose patches of hair).

So, imagine my surprise when there was a story on the bizarre site Who Forted? wherein someone said that not only is El Chupacabra real, but he has one as a pet.

The gentleman in question, one Craig R. of San Diego, thinks his pet dog is a domesticated Chupacabra.  Let's hear his argument:

Chupacabras are real..

I am sure there are generations of groups that have figured out how to live in the wild. The wild ones will of course have more exaggerated wild features.

Jack is a coated Xolo. 4 out of 5 in a litter are black skin and hairless. One out of 5 still have the black skin but they have coats (like Jack) and a full set of teeth (hairless ones are missing most of there [sic] teeth which explains the wild hairless Xolo feeding habits). Standard size of Xolo is 35 pounds. Jack is an intermediate 20 pounds. They have minis to that look like Chihuahuas.

So forget that Jack is not hairless and study the features of Jack. The paws….the teeth. Jack has elongated fangs. I play tough [sic] of war with them they are so long. Look at the nose, the head, the ears.

The Shorter front legs. The rabbit like hips.

He is pretty much a spitting image of the museum Chupacabras and pics.

I can even explain the padding on the hind end of the Texas one. They’re hip bone because he has rabbit like hips stick out on each side of the tale.

If its [sic] a wild one, they will need extra PADDING there to comfort from hard rocks and hard surface while sitting. Plus they wedge they’re hips with those bones against a vertical surface to help them curl up in a tight ball. So those pads are easily explainable...

Chupacabras are wild or feral Xolos that’s it.

The "Xolo" he's talking about is short for Xoloitzcuintle, the so-called "Mexican Hairless Dog."  Craig is right that despite the name, some members of the breed do have hair.  But as far as his pet being an exact match for the fearsome goat-sucker, as he implies, let's look at an image of an alleged Chupacabra corpse:

Then, we have El Chupacabra, as artists have pictured it, from eyewitness testimony:

Then we have... Jack.

I don't know about you, but I'm just not seeing it.

Given that genetic testing on the small number of dead Chupacabras that have been recovered (including the one pictured above) have, one and all, shown them to be sick coyotes, I just don't think I'm ready to cast myself into Craig R.'s camp just yet.  If there were any other evidence of wild packs of Xolos running around...  but right now, that's it.  Just his word, with an assurance that Jack is really a great deal fiercer than he looks.

Because, face it; doesn't Jack just look a little... cuddly to be labeled as a "goat-sucker?"  If he really was a Chupacabra, you'd think that the general reaction would be running away screaming, while all I want to do is to skritch his head.  But that's just me.  I haven't, after all, played "tough of war" with him.

So, that's today's news from the cryptozoological world.  Once again, a wild claim and nothing really much to back it up, but it's not like that's anything new.  Who knows what's next?  If this sets any kind of precedent, the next thing we know, we'll have the Yeti being characterized as "very much like a baby panda."

Climate change, congress, and ice cubes

I'd like to say, for the record, that it would be a nice thing if I felt confidence that the people elected to public office in the United States were smarter than I am.

Isn't that a good thing to wish for?  I know I don't have what it takes to be in congress, or (heaven forfend) to be the president.  The number of disparate fields that you have to be conversant with in order to be effective, the degree to which you have to understand the government, law, foreign policy -- I'm overwhelmed just thinking about it.

It is, therefore, a little terrifying to me when I see people in leadership roles in our government who seem to be kind of... dumb.

I don't make this statement lightly, and it's not just on the basis of the fact that I might disagree with some of them.  I would expect that, considering the complexity of what they deal with.  But when someone in government, an elected official that a majority of voters thought the best person for the job, makes a statement that is pure, unadulterated idiocy -- that I find alarming.

Take the pronouncement that came from Representative Jeff Miller (R-FL) this week, regarding an increasingly hot-button issue -- climate change.

During a "Coffee With a Congressman" event held on Tuesday, Miller was confronted by some residents of the district he represents, and asked to defend his views on the environment.  Miller railed against the people who are in favor of tougher environmental safety standards as follows:

There are people who want to shut down that entire facility [a factory in his district].  The president wants to shut down all coal facilities.  He wants to bankrupt the entire state of West Virginia, and Pennsylvania, too...  All these people who drive electric cars around, talk about how great they are, forget that when you plug that thing into the wall, it's getting its electricity from a power plant somewhere, and it probably is a coal plant.

Well, so far, okay; maybe he got a little carried away when he claimed that the president wants to bankrupt two entire states, but he's got a point that unless we clean up electrical production at the source, electric cars are just one step away from producing the pollution ourselves.  But then he goes right off the deep end:

Lemme tell you, this whole Al Gore thing of climate change, unfortunately, it's not doing this nation any good...  The scientific community is not at consensus with this... I will defund the EPA, it has done more to slow the growth of industry than any agency out there...  You ask, why do I go against the scientists?  Well, I have scientists that I rely on, the scientists that I rely on say our climate has changed [sic].  Look, it wasn’t just a few years ago, what was the problem that existed?  It wasn’t global warming, we were gonna all be an ice cube.  We’re not ice cubes.  Our climate will continue to change because of the way God formed the Earth.

 I... okay.  What?

Look, I know that there are still questions about climate change.  We don't know to what extent the current warmup is a natural rebound, and to what extent it is anthropogenic in origin -- although the vast majority of climatologists attribute the rapid rate of warming to anthropogenic causes.  We don't know how far it will continue, or how much we could slow it down if we cut back on fossil fuel use.  We can still discuss those issues, as well as discussing what, if any, response our government should have toward them.

But to have someone like this guy, behind the microphone, and clearly babbling incoherently... about "ice cubes?"  And the "scientific community not being at consensus?"  And that he consulted "scientists he relies on" and they say the climate is changing because of god?  I don't know about you, I sure as hell don't want the decisions regarding the welfare of this nation made by people who seem to have trouble stringing words together into sentences, and whose understanding of scientific principles apparently leveled out in fourth grade on a visit to the Creation Museum.

Like I said, it's not that I think being a congressperson would be easy.  It's not a job that I would ever want.  But at least I am honest enough to admit it when I don't know something.  I guess that's taboo in politics, though, isn't it?  You can't ever say, "I'm sorry, I don't know about that."  But is it really any better to stand in front of a large, increasingly surly crowd, yammering on about climate change happening because god wants it to?

And regarding climate change, it's an answer we'd better get right, because as a friend of mine put it, it's an experiment we only get to run once.  Getting it right will mean having people in charge who have some basic knowledge of the science involved.  Not, unfortunately, talking heads like Representative Miller, who frankly sounds to me as if his IQ doesn't exceed his shoe size.

Orson Scott Card, and separating creator from creation

Today I'm going to ask a question that I'm not at all certain I have an answer to:  Is it possible to separate creative people from their works, especially in cases where the work is good but the creators themselves are reprehensible?  Or outright crazy?

I bring this up, of course, because of Orson Scott Card, whose book Ender's Game is brilliant, but who personally seems to be a grade-A wingnut.

First, we had the revelation that Card had served for years on the board of the National Organization for Marriage, an organization whose entire raison d'être is opposing gay marriage.  (He quietly resigned in 2009, possibly because he knew that it would result in bad press for the upcoming movie version of his book.)  The story came out anyway, of course, as did homophobic vitriol he'd written that included the following [Source]:

The dark secret of homosexual society -- the one that dares not speak its name -- is how many homosexuals first entered into that world through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse, and how many of them yearn to get out of the homosexual community and live normally.

He still refers to the gay marriage question as requiring the "radical redefinition of marriage," which I find wryly amusing, given that he's a devout Mormon.

Be that as it may, his anti-homosexual opinions are sadly commonplace.  Not so his more recently revealed opinions, which move him from "narrow-minded right-winger" directly into the "card-carrying loony" column.  Because now Card is now claiming that there is a leftist conspiracy to trash the Constitution and turn President Obama into an emperor [Source]:

Obama is, by character and preference, a dictator. He hates the very idea of compromise; he demonizes his critics and despises even his own toadies in the liberal press. He circumvented Congress as soon as he got into office by appointing "czars" who didn't need Senate approval. His own party hasn't passed a budget ever in the Senate.

In other words, Obama already acts as if the Constitution were just for show. Like Augustus, he pretends to govern within its framework, but in fact he treats it with contempt...

Michelle Obama is going to be Barack's Lurleen Wallace. Remember how George Wallace got around Alabama's ban on governors serving two terms in a row? He ran his wife for the office. Everyone knew Wallace would actually be pulling the strings, even though they denied it. Michelle Obama will be Obama's designated "successor," and any Democrat who seriously opposes her will be destroyed in the media the way everyone who contested Obama's run for the Democratic nomination in 2008 was destroyed.

How will Obama accomplish all of this? By hiring gang members as his personal hit men, of course:

Where will he get his "national police"? The NaPo will be recruited from "young out-of-work urban men" and it will be hailed as a cure for the economic malaise of the inner cities.

In other words, Obama will put a thin veneer of training and military structure on urban gangs, and send them out to channel their violence against Obama's enemies.

Instead of doing drive-by shootings in their own neighborhoods, these young thugs will do beatings and murders of people "trying to escape" -- people who all seem to be leaders and members of groups that oppose Obama.

All righty, then. I guess that's clear enough.

What is a bit perplexing is how little of this nuttiness comes through in Ender's Game, a book that is rightly popular and is (in fact) required reading in 10th grade English classes in the high school where I teach.  How could someone who has so clearly gone off the deep end can write a book as morally complex as this one?   (I know more than one person who is boycotting the movie, largely because of a desire not to put more money in the hands of a person who has such repellent ideas.)

Of course, Card is hardly the only author whose odd personal life has given readers pause.   Robert Heinlein, whose Stranger in a Strange Land, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and Starship Troopers are classics of science fiction, was during his life a peculiar mix of forward-thinking and reactionary. (What other nudists who supported Free Love can you think of who worked on the Barry Goldwater campaign?)

And of course, you get into even deeper water when you throw actors, artists, and musicians into the mix.  I know one person who can't even watch a Tom Cruise movie because of his role in suppressing negative press for the Scientologists.  I have less of a problem here, because when Cruise is on the screen, he's playing someone else, after all.  (There's still the difficulty of bankrolling someone who is morally reprehensible -- I do get that.)

So, it's a question worth asking.  Do the repulsive and (frankly) counterfactual beliefs of people like Orson Scott Card give us a reason to avoid their creations, even if those creations have their own merit?  To what extent can you separate the creation from the creator?  I suspect, from personal experience, that this may not even be possible. In addition to writing Skeptophilia I write fiction, and it is undeniable that my views of the universe have a way of creeping in -- however much I try to make the characters their own people, with their own worldviews and their own motivations.  And sometimes it works better than others.  For example, I deliberately tried to shake up my own sensibilities when I wrote the novella Adam's Fall -- the point-of-view character is an elderly and devout Anglican clergyman, and (I think) a highly sympathetic and complex man. The separation isn't quite so clear in other cases, though, and when a friend read my novel Signal to Noise, she said about the main character, "Um... you do realize that Tyler Vaughn is you, don't you?"

I'd be interested to hear what my readers think about this question, particularly apropos of the homophobia and conspiracy-theory aspects of Orson Scott Card's beliefs.  Do these diminish your enjoyment of his fiction?  Or stop you from reading it entirely?  Should it matter what sort of personal life an author or artist (or, for that matter, a scientist) leads?  Should it matter that geneticist James Watson thinks that Africa will never amount to much because "their intelligence is [not] the same as ours"?  Does the child molestation conviction of biologist Carleton Gajdusek decrease the worth of his research into the etiology of mad cow disease, research that led to protocols that have undoubtedly saved lives?  Does it make a difference that Isaac Newton, the "father of mathematical physics," was a narrow-minded religious fanatic who spent his spare time poring the bible for secret messages so he could figure out when the Antichrist was coming to Earth?

Myself, I think this just points up something that bears remembering: humans are complex. We are all combinations of good and bad -- some of us, really good and really bad.  What positive things we might accomplish don't excuse us from the repercussions of our darker sides, of course; but perhaps we should stop being surprised when they occur in the same person.

Maybe the problem here is our desire for clear-cut heroes and villains.  People are never two-dimensional, however easier it might make the world if they were.  Realistically, we shouldn't expect them to be.  When we are surprised at how odd, and seemingly self-contradictory, the human mind can be, perhaps it's our assumptions that are at fault.

The dubious science of the "Spirit Story Box"

Those of you who are (1) ghost hunters, and (2) into high-tech gadgetry, have a new tool to try out.

It's an app for your iPhone called the "Spirit Story Box."  Its creators, Roger Pingleton and Jill Beitz of StreamSide Software, summarize its operation as follows:

Spirit Story Box works by examining values within the device that a spirit should theoretically be able to manipulate. An algorithm tracks and measures these values while at the same time selectors are constantly updated, which are then used to determine what words should be output.

Simply put, the app allegedly is taking readings from the "energy field" of an area, and outputting words on the screen.  Marvel at its features:

• Exclusive story engine may allow spirit energy to communicate with multi-word answers
• Mesmerizing energy swarm visualizations
• Built-in sharing support for social networks, email, or iMessage.
• Stuning, realistic graphics create the impression of an actual piece of equipment
• Functional meter indicates impending single-word answers

Stories about this app have been popping up all over, and I bet Pingleton and Beitz are making a tidy little sum of money from their creation.  Just yesterday, Fox 8 of Cleveland, Ohio ran a story about a couple of their reporters who went out with a "paranormal investigator" to test the thing at a café that was the site of an alleged haunting.  Here are the results:

We wondered what it might say at the café, and it didn’t take long to find out.

Within minutes of turning the app on, it began spitting out words and phrases including but not limited to: shin, engineer, using chisel, crow bar and harm neck.

“The random phrases all seemed like they related to someone being injured,” said Roberta [the café owner].

Was it a coincidence or something else?

There is no way to know for sure but both the ghost hunter and business owner agreed that the 99¢ app, which took only minutes to download, was super easy to use and a whole lot of fun.

“Sort of like the Magic 8 Ball. It’s more for entertainment but it is possible for a spirit to communicate that way so I wouldn’t rule anything out,” said [paranormal investigator] Carissimmi.

Okay.  So, where do I start?

One of the most common comments I've heard regarding stuff like this is to the effect of, "isn't it great that the psychic investigators are now approaching things in a scientific way?"  Somehow, the fact that the data -- if I can call it that -- is being generated by a little box, the internal workings of which most of us don't comprehend, makes it "scientific."

The problem is that whether something is science or not has nothing to do with what tools you're using.  The fact that, in this case, the tool is something that's high-tech and works in a complex fashion (and has "stunning, realistic graphics [that] create the impression of an actual piece of equipment") is entirely irrelevant.

A key feature of science is falsifiability.  If you make a conjecture about something, there has to be a way of knowing if your conjecture is wrong.  If I, for example, said that birds navigate during migration because they are in touch with a Psychic Energy Field that is inherently undetectable by anyone or anything else, that is not a scientific statement, because by definition there is no way of determining if the statement is right or wrong.

The problem with Spirit Story Box is a little more subtle, but amounts to the same thing.  Consider the question, for example, of what kind of word output the app could produce that would show that it wasn't in touch with spirits.  You're holding the thing, standing in the haunted café, and watching the words appear on the screen -- and it still remains for you, the user, to interpret what you see.  And as we've seen over and over, features of human cognition like dart-thrower's bias (not to mention more insidious ones like confirmation bias and the Texas sharpshooter fallacy) make it almost inevitable that people will spin the output to make it appear to be relevant.

There's the additional problem that Pingleton and Beitz aren't telling anyone any details about how the app actually works.  "It's proprietary," they told the Fox 8 reporters.  So, couldn't they just have come up with a list of a thousand vaguely suggestive words that the app cycles through, all the while showing an image of brightly glowing dots and a flickering needle?  Most importantly, how could we tell if this was all it was?

Now, let me emphasize here that I don't know that this is what is going on.  My problem with this app is that there none of the "experiments" I've read about thus far would allow me to differentiate between its actually picking up the presence of spirits, and just popping out random words and leaving the humans to interpret how they're relevant.  If the creators of the app, or the people who are using it, want to move this up to the level of "science," either set up a scenario where we can apply the principle of falsifiability, or else tell us how the thing works.  Preferably both.  Until then, paranormal investigator Annie Carissimmi was unintentionally accurate when she compared the app to a Magic 8 Ball.

It could be that Pingleton and Beitz really have a device that allows you to communicate with the spirits of the dead.  My sense, though, is "Outlook Not So Good."

The physics of holy water

A couple of days ago, I had the honor of being interviewed by Robert Chazz Chute, the journalist, writer, and deep thinker who sponsors the Cool People Podcasts.  The conversation was varied and interesting, touching on skepticism, atheism, science, pseudoscience, and education -- all of which regular readers of this blog will know are particular fascinations of mine.  (And a link to my interview will be posted as soon as it becomes available, should any of you be interested in hearing what I sound like -- and seeing whether I make the same amount of sense when speaking extemporaneously as I do when I've had time to plan what I'm going to say ahead of time.)

At one point, the question came up (during a discussion of conspiracy theories) of how heavily we should lean against rules of thumb like Ockham's Razor and the ECREE principle.  Although different in their details, both of these guidelines for sound thinking revolve around the idea that the world generally behaves in a predictable manner, and that wild claims that rest on large numbers of ad hoc assumptions require a higher standard for evidence than do ones for which the mechanism is already well understood.  To give an admittedly facile example, if I said that I dropped a stone off the railing of my deck, and it fell straight down and hit the ground, I shouldn't need to prove it; if I claimed that it fell upwards and finally vanished into the clear blue sky, something more than just my word for it would be rightfully demanded of me.

The sticking point comes with where, on the spectrum of weirdness, a particular claim lies.  Not everything is quite as clear cut as stones falling upwards rather than the usual down.  There is no meter to measure the sensibility of an idea, more's the pity.  Also, there are realms of what is now experimentally-supported science -- subatomic physics comes to mind -- where the conclusions are so counterintuitive that if they had been presented as simple statements of fact by a physicist a hundred years ago, (s)he would have been laughed into oblivion.

So, how do you decide, then?  "That sounds specious" isn't exactly a rigorous analysis.  Is there some better way to approach the question?

Let's turn to a specific example that came out of Russia last week -- a claim that making the sign of the cross over a container of water changes the water's properties.

Here's the claim.  I'm quoting the article directly, but this is the English version created by Google Translate, so any grammatical errors are probably not in the original and should not be blamed on the author.

Studies conducted by the Laboratory of Biomedical Technology Institute of Industrial and Marine Medicine, became a sensation. Scientists have proved experimentally that the sign of the cross kills germs and changes the optical properties of water.

- We have confirmed that the ancient custom of going to baptize food and drink before the meal has a deep mystical sense - says physicist Angelina Malakhovskaya - For the practical use of it is hidden: the food is cleared in just a moment. It is a great miracle that happens literally every single day.

Its research strength sign of the cross Angelina Malakhovskaya spent almost 10 years. Carried out a large series of experiments that repeatedly cross-checked before publish the results.

They are phenomenal: identified the unique antibacterial properties that appear in the water from its consecration prayer and sign of the cross. A new, previously unknown property of the Word of God to transform the structure of water, greatly increasing its optical density in the short ultraviolet region of the spectrum.

The very possibility of this research to Malakhovskaya Angelina and her fellow St. Petersburg was a miracle - they were not funded, is beyond the scope of research institutes. But scientists do a large amount of work free - just to give people an opportunity to feel and see the healing power of God.

The scientists tested the effects of prayer "Our Father" and the sign of the cross on the pathogenic bacteria. For the study, samples were taken from the oceans of water - wells, rivers and lakes. In all the samples contained E. coli, Staphylococcus aureus. But it turned out that if you read the prayer "Our Father" and make the sign of the cross test, the amount of harmful bacteria decreased in 7, 10, 100 or even 1000 times!..  

- It was found that the optical density compared to its original value before the consecration increases - says Angelina Malakhovskaya - This means that the water as if to "discriminate" the meaning of the prayers uttered over it, it remembers the impact and keeps it indefinitely - in the form of increased absorbance values. She seemed to be "saturated" with light. The human eye can catch these salutary changes in the structure of water, of course, can not. But spectrograph instrument provides an objective assessment of this phenomenon.

Sign of the cross changes the optical density of the water almost instantly. Optical density of tap water is sanctified by the commission sign of the cross over her ordinary believers increased by 1.5 times! And at the dedication of the priest - almost 2.5 times! So it turns out that the water "distinguish" the degree of dedication - a layman or a priest who has his right hand in blessing so stacked that represent the first letters of the name of Christ.

An interesting result of the consecration of the waters of baptism, but the unbeliever, not wearing a crucifix. It was found that water "distinguishes" faith even degree - optical density changed only by 10%!

Now, I doubt I have to state for the record that I think these claims are grade-A horse waste.  But in science, that's not enough.  That's yet another fallacy, the Appeal to Authority -- that I have set myself up as some sort of Arbiter of What Makes Sense, and you should agree with me just because I say so.

So let's take the claim apart.  What Dr. Malakhovskaya seems to be saying is that after being blessed, two things happen to a container of water: (1) its bacteria count goes down; and (2) its optical density in the short ultraviolet region increases.

Let's take those two claims in order.

A fundamental rule of doing science is that if the changing one variable causes another to change, it will do so in a regular fashion.  This predictability is the basis on which all science rests.  As science educator Roger Olstad puts it, "Science is, simply put, the search for regularity among observations."  A corollary of this idea is that if perturbing a particular variable causes different results each time, there must be something else going on that you haven't accounted for.

In scientific parlance, the experiment is not "well controlled."

Note that in the alleged experiment with the Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, the blessing of the water made the bacterial count drop by a factor of 7.  Or 10.  Or 100.  Or "even 1000."  Is it just me, or does this sound like there's a problem with her experimental design, here?  Maybe she didn't measure the bacteria accurately in the first place.  Or maybe they weren't uniformly dispersed throughout the water sample.  Or maybe she made errors in her sampling protocol after the water was blessed.  There are a hundred things that could have gone wrong with this experiment, each of which would be a far better explanation of the variability of the results than the alternate explanation, which is that the Sign of the Cross works better as an antiseptic on Sundays than it does on Thursdays.

So let's take a look at her second claim, which gets us into (if you'll forgive the pun) even deeper water.

Seeing the problem with the second experiment -- that blessing water increases its optical density -- requires that you understand a bit of physics.  The wonderful site The Physics Classroom explains optical density as follows:

The optical density of a material relates to the sluggish tendency of the atoms of a material to maintain the absorbed energy of an electromagnetic wave in the form of vibrating electrons before reemitting it as a new electromagnetic disturbance. The more optically dense that a material is, the slower that a wave will move through the material.

One indicator of the optical density of a material is the index of refraction value of the material. Index of refraction values (represented by the symbol n) are numerical index values that are expressed relative to the speed of light in a vacuum. The index of refraction value of a material is a number that indicates the number of times slower that a light wave would be in that material than it is in a vacuum.

So, the claim is that blessing the water somehow changes the speed with which light travels through it -- but only the speed of light waves in the short ultraviolet region.

Herein lies the problem.  The optical properties of transparent substances have been studied extensively (largely because otherwise, we would have a hard time making camera, telescope, microscope, or eyeglass lenses that worked).   The optical density of a substance is dependent on wavelength -- the relationship is called the Sellmeier Equation.  And what the Sellmeier Equation implies is that it would be impossible to change the optical density of water at one wavelength without changing its optical density at every other wavelength.  You can't, in other words, selectively alter water's optical density in one region of the spectrum, which is what Dr. Malakhovskaya is saying.  In order to accept what her claim, you pretty much have to trash everything we know about optics.

So which is more likely -- that every physicist who has studied the behavior of light transmission in the past hundred years is wrong, or that Dr. Malakhovskaya's spectrograph wasn't working?  Or that she fabricated her results?  Or that there was a flaw in her experimental design?  Be honest, which requires you to make the least ad hoc assumptions, here?

That is how you apply Ockham's Razor.

Now, I know that there are some devout folks who at this point are saying, "Yes, well, what if god had something to do with it?  Anything is possible with god."  Okay, fine, but you have now moved the discussion outside of the realm of science.  Once you have allowed for the finger of the deity tinkering with the results in some kind of capricious fashion, you have put paid to anything science can say about the matter.  That is not how science is done.  And I must, in the interest of honesty, throw in a quote from Tim Minchin: "Every mystery ever solved, in the history of the world, has turned out to be NOT MAGIC."

I have deliberately chosen a rather ridiculous example, here, at least in part so as not to raise hackles.  But there's no reason why you have to stop with this one.  Look at other claims using this method.  A few suggestions: homeopathy; astrology; telepathy; clairvoyance; astral projection; remote viewing; divination; witchcraft; and, I might add, the majority of the beliefs of the world's major religions.   Ask yourself what the evidence really supports.  Ask what well understood, experimentally supported laws of science the claim is asking you to jettison.

Then, and only then, decide what you think is correct.