Publicity stunts and "Aura Babies"

Ordinarily I don't pay any attention to celebrities.

Part of it comes from not having a working television connection.  I live too far out in the middle of nowhere for cable, and I'm too cheap to get a satellite dish.  Besides, if I did have satellite, I'd just spend hours watching The Weather Channel and updating my wife about weather systems in North Dakota, and she has to put up with enough of this kind of thing already, given that my internet browser's homepage is the website of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

So there's the lack of access, but a big part of it also comes from a lack of caring.  My general impression is that a lot of celebrities are talentless hacks who will do anything to remain in the public eye, and I just don't have a lot of patience for that sort of thing.  But when Sharon Hill, over at the wonderful site Doubtful News, posted a story on a couple of "reality" television stars, I thought, "If Hill thinks it's worth paying attention to, I should probably see what it's all about."

Turns out it was worth the effort.  Because that's how I found out that plastic-surgery-queen Heidi Montag and her partner, Spencer Pratt, are trying to conceive...

... an "aura baby."

(photograph courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons)

I'm not making this up.  And in the time-honored fashion of couples everywhere, she posted details about what she and Pratt were doing, on Twitter.  Here was the first tweet:

1 reason we're trying to get fit is Spencer & I are trying to conceive #speidishow

But she hastily followed it up with additional tweets, that they weren't just trying to have a regular old boring baby, but an "aura baby."  What is an "aura baby," you might ask?  Do you conceive one from having aural sex?  No, but Montag has the answer:

An Aura Baby is a product of the soul born out of the bio-chemistry of the universe! #speidishow

Oh!  Okay!  Because that clears it right up!  But fear not, she went on with a more detailed explanation:

An Aura Baby isn't the child of your fame, not YOUR Aura & NOT Aura like when they say a  painting has an Aura #speidishow

I...  what?

An Aura Baby is born of 1 thing – the love of 2 people channeled & focused to go out to the whole world!  #speidishow

 Just... stop...

Since i beat @spencerpratt in yoga he's carrying our aurababy! #speidishow

And so forth and so on.

Now, I'm aware that this is just a publicity stunt.  A weird publicity stunt, but a publicity stunt.   But apparently some of Montag's fans don't.  I looked at her Twitter feed, and while there were a few people who seemed to react with disdain (including more than one who questioned Montag's sanity), most people who responded seemed ostensibly to think that she was somehow talking about reality.  One woman, in fact, said she was "Soooo excited" about the upcoming happy cosmic event, and hoped that they would "televise the delivery" when Pratt gives birth to his new little astral offspring.

Okay, that could be an example of Poe's Law, but given some of the other insane things people believe, I'm not entirely sure.

So, that's the news from Hollywood these days.  Further reinforcing my determination not to watch television, which in my opinion went into a tailspin, quality-wise, the day The X Files went off the air.  I'll just stick with my online news reports of weather systems in North Dakota, which at least have a basis in reality.

WiFi woes

A clever, although questionably ethical, marketing technique is to create a problem in people's minds, and then sell them a solution to the (nonexistent) problem.

I first saw this happen with the invention of "cellulite" in the 1970s.  Cellulite, supposedly, was some kind of special, hard-to-get-rid-of fat, predominantly on the upper legs of women, where it manifests as dimples and bumps.  Almost instantaneously that it was named (and identified as "difficult to treat"), various diets, exercises, and supplements appeared that were specifically intended to "flush cellulite from the body."

Sad to say, but cellulite is just plain old fat.  No different than fat anywhere in the body.  It only appears different on the upper legs because of the presence of fibrous connective tissue there.  And you can't get rid of it except the same way you'd get rid of any fat, i.e., to eat less and exercise more -- and because of skin wrinkling with age, older people probably won't ever be able to rid themselves of it entirely.

A similar kind of thing is going on today, in a completely different area -- this one with regards to the safety of WiFi networks.

Somewhere along the line, someone got the idea that the radiation emitted by WiFi networks was dangerous, leading to sites like the EMF Safety Network, which acts as a clearinghouse for all sorts of links on the subject.  On the "Welcome" page, we're given a taste of how seriously they take all of this with a quote from Dr. Robert O. Becker, who was "twice nominated for the Nobel Prize:"

I have no doubt in my mind that at the present time, the greatest polluting element in the earth’s environment is the proliferation of electromagnetic fields. I consider that to be far greater on a global scale than warming, and the increase in chemical elements in the environment.

Well, that's just terrifying, but allow me to point out that (1) anyone can be nominated for a Nobel Prize, (2) Becker's work with the role of electricity in disease and healing has been found to be unsupported, and (3) he thought that telepathy was real and caused by "low-frequency electromagnetic waves."

Be that as it may, there is now all sorts of scare-literature out there about how we should protect our children from the dangers of WiFi.  The general consensus by scientists, of course, is that this is nonsense -- the radiation from WiFi networks is non-ionizing (i.e., sufficiently low in energy that it cannot break chemical bonds) and of very low intensity.  A public statement by Princeton University identifies the dangers of WiFi as what they are (minimal):

(A) newly published paper entitled “Radiofrequency Exposure from Wireless LANS Utilizing Wi-Fi Technology” discusses a study in which measurements were conducted at 55 sites in four countries, and measurements were conducted under conditions that would result in the higher end of exposures from such systems. An excerpt from the abstract states “.…In all cases, the measured Wi-Fi signal levels were very far below international exposure limits (IEEE C95.1-2005 and ICNIRP) and in nearly all cases far below other RF signals in the same environments.”

Dr. Steven Novella, in SkepticBlog, also addresses the claims of certain individuals who believe they are "electromagnetic hypersensitives:"

What about electromagnetic hypersensitivity – the reporting of common non-specific symptoms, such as headache, fatigue, dizziness, and confusion, while being exposed to EMF? Well, the same review also summarizes this research, which finds that under blinded conditions there is no such hypersensitivity syndrome. Even with people who consistently report symptoms with exposure to EMF, in blinded conditions they cannot reliably tell if they are being exposed to EMF.

This hasn't stopped the claims from flying, and dozens of cases of parents petitioning school boards to have WiFi networks removed from schools to "protect the children" -- in some cases, successfully.  Novella concludes,

What we have here are the seeds of yet another grassroots movement that is disconnected from science and hostile to authority. This is a scenario we have seen played out many times before, and no doubt we will see it many times again.

And, of course, wherever you have panic over risk, you'll have some shrewd marketer who decides to capitalize upon the fear.

Take, for example, EarthCalm, which purports to shield you from the dangers of the nasty WiFi waves.  Here's their sales pitch:

Concerned about WiFi radiation dangers?  You have reason to be.

WiFi uses hazardous radiation to send its signals through walls.  If you have WiFi, you are receiving massive amounts of radiation that may be causing you and your family health problems.

WiFi Health Risks:

• headaches
• fatigue
• sleep disorders
• digestive problems
• brain fog and memory loss
• depression and anxiety
• dizziness

Research on WiFi Radiation Dangers:
There's a great deal of research that's been done on the non-thermal kind of radiation that WiFi emits.

One comprehensive report is the Bioinitiative Report.  Written by 29 scientists, researchers, and health policy professionals from 10 different countries, this report documents clear evidence that numerous health issues, including DNA breakage and risk of cancer, are created by exposure to radiation from cell phones, cell towers, power lines, and WiFi.

They must define "massive amounts" differently than I do, given that the Princeton study (cited above) found that the levels of low-frequency radiation given off by WiFi networks was so small as to be nearly indistinguishable from the background noise.

However, don't let little things like "facts" stand in the way of your sales pitch.  Because the EarthCalm people aren't just saying to give in; no, they're saying that they want you to purchase a "shield" -- the "EarthCalm WiFi Pak" -- that "eliminates WiFi health risks by transforming the hazardous cloud of radiation into a calming field of protection throughout your home."

For only $457.

And I'm sure they're selling like hotcakes, given the current scare tactics being used by the anti-WiFi cadre.  Same, actually, as the scare tactics used by the chemtrails people, the anti-GMO folks, and the anti-vaxxers.

Wouldn't surprise me if there was a significant overlap between those four groups, actually, because the conclusions they've reached come from the same source -- fear, distrust, and a poor understanding of the science.

Now, don't misunderstand me; I know there have been times that people have thought something was safe, sometimes for decades, and then it turns out not to be.  It's just that I don't think this is one of those cases.  The science, here, is well understood; the whole thing has been tested to a fare-thee-well; and the claims of the people who disagree virtually entirely rest on anecdote and poorly-controlled "studies" that wouldn't pass peer review even if there were hefty bribes involved.

So, in my mind, it's case closed.  But I'm sure that doesn't mean the controversy will go away, nor the clever salespeople trying to capitalize on it.  Because one thing hasn't changed since P. T. Barnum's time; there's still a sucker born every minute.

Mob brain

I told myself that I wouldn't blog about the government shutdown.

As I've mentioned before, I'm not a very political person.  To my untrained ear, most politics seems to fall into one of two categories; (1) arguing about things that are blatantly obvious (such as whether gays should have the same rights that straight people do), and (2) arguing about things that are so impossibly complex that a reasonable solution is probably impossible (such as how to balance the federal budget).  Given that impression, it's no wonder that most political wrangling leaves me a little baffled.

So, any opinion I might have on the government shutdown, or what to do about it, wouldn't be worth much.  But I did hear one commentary on the shutdown, and President Obama's role in it, that left me feeling like I had to respond.  It came from one Larry Klayman, the attorney who founded the right-wing organization Freedom Watch:

I call upon all of you to wage a second American nonviolent revolution, to use civil disobedience, and to demand that this president leave town, to get up, to put the Qu'ran down, to get up off his knees, and to figuratively come out with his hands up.

This unusually stupid statement was made at an event called the "Million Vet March on the Memorials," which was an accurate name only if you believe the mathematical equation 200 = 1,000,000, but which did attract noted wingnuts Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz.  And when Klayman made his wacky pronouncement, the crowd went wild with glee and waved their anti-government flags they'd brought along for the occasion.

My thought was, "Are you serious?  You people still think President Obama is a Muslim?"  I thought that had finally been laid to rest along with the whole birth certificate nonsense and the question of whether Donald Trump is wearing a toupée or if a raccoon had simply crawled on top of his head and died.

But no, the whole thing is still a burning issue with these people.  Klayman apparently arrived at the position using the following logic:

1.  I don't like Barack Obama.
2.  I don't like Muslims.
Therefore:  Barack Obama is a Muslim.

Possibly augmented with a second airtight argument, to wit:

1.  Muslims have funny names.
2.  Barack Obama is a funny name.
Therefore:  Barack Obama is a Muslim.

Logicians describe two basic kinds of one-step reasoning, the modus ponens and the modus tollens.  The first is when you have an implication, and can show that the first part is true, and deduce that the second must be true ("If today is Wednesday, then tomorrow must be Thursday.  I know today is Wednesday.  Therefore I know that tomorrow will be Thursday.")  The second is the converse; if I have an implication, and the second part is false, the first must be false as well ("If it's July, the weather is warm.  It's not warm this morning.  Therefore I know it must not be July.")

Klayman appears to have invented a third mode of reasoning, the modus morons.  I guess I need to revise my notes next time I teach logic in my Critical Thinking classes.

But what gets me most about all of this is how ridiculous it is from another standpoint, which is to consider how President Obama would act if he were a Muslim.  Let's look around us at Muslim-dominated countries in the world, and see if we can see some commonalities.  Here are a few:

• Religion is overtly present pretty much everywhere you go.
• Religion drives law, policy, and jurisprudence.
• School curricula incorporate religious principles, and schools that are predominantly religious in nature are fully supported by the government.
• The holy book of the dominant religion is to be considered as literal fact.
• Women are subjected to subordinate roles, and any kind of reproductive rights issues are completely off the table.
• Homosexuality is condemned; acceptance of homosexuality is considered a sign of moral decay, to be eradicated by any means.
• Obedience to authority is one of the most fundamental virtues.
• The death penalty is justified for a variety of crimes.

So, really, folks; who does that sound more like, the Democrats or the Republicans?

I mean, okay.  Even if you think that Klayman and his idiot friends are right, and that President Obama is a Muslim, you have to admit that he's a really lousy Muslim.  I think that if he is a Muslim, he should turn in his membership card, because he's acting like...

... well, like a liberal American.  Go figure.

And even so, when Klayman said his piece about the President "putting down his Qu'ran," the people listening didn't seem to react that way.  They applauded.  They yelled for more.  Instead of doing what I would have done -- which was to laugh directly in Klayman's face and take away his microphone -- they cheered him on.

There's something, I think, that happens to people's brains when they're in mobs.  Somehow, being part of a mob makes you incapable of thinking rationally.  So maybe that's all that happened here -- one fool got up and babbled foolish stuff to the crowd, and the crowd simply agreed, because that's what crowds do.  It's like the inimitable Terry Pratchett said: "The IQ of a mob is equal to the IQ of the stupidest person in the mob, divided by the number of people in the mob."

Considering that this particular mob contained Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz, and Larry Klayman, I think this formula results in a small number indeed.

COPE, Kansas, and the battle over evolution (again)

It's with a sense of "Oy, here we go again" that I must tell you that a group of parents in Kansas calling themselves COPE (Citizens for Objective Public Education) have sued the Kansas State Board of Education for adopting the Next Generation Science Standards, which explicitly endorse the teaching of evolution.

Here's the gist of the suit:

The Plaintiffs, consisting of students, parents and Kansas resident taxpayers, and a representative organization, complain that the adoption by the Defendant State Board of Education on June 11, 2013 of Next Generation Science Standards, dated April 2013 (the Standards; http://www.nextgenscience.org/) and the related Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts and Core Ideas, (2012;
(http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13165#), incorporated therein by reference (the "Framework" with the Framework and Standards referred to herein as the “F&S”) will have the effect of causing Kansas public schools to establish and endorse a non-theistic religious worldview (the “Worldview”) in violation of the Establishment, Free Exercise, and Speech Clauses of the First Amendment, and the Equal Protection Clauses of the 14th Amendment.

So it's pretty much same old, same old.  They never get tired of the game, somehow, despite their repeated defeats, most tellingly the stinging slapdown they got in the Kitzmiller vs. the Dover Area School Board decision of 2005, which read, in part:

After a searching review of the record and applicable caselaw, we find that while ID [Intelligent Design] arguments may be true, a proposition on which the Court takes no position, ID is not science. We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are: (1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980s; and (3) ID's negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community...  It is additionally important to note that ID has failed to gain acceptance in the scientific community, it has not generated peer-reviewed publications, nor has it been the subject of testing and research. Expert testimony reveals that since the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, science has been limited to the search for natural causes to explain natural phenomena...  ID's backers have sought to avoid the scientific scrutiny which we have now determined that it cannot withstand by advocating that the controversy, but not ID itself, should be taught in science class. This tactic is at best disingenuous, and at worst a canard. The goal of the IDM is not to encourage critical thought, but to foment a revolution which would supplant evolutionary theory with ID.

So, yeah.  Ouchie-wawa.  But if you're on a Holy Crusade, you never accept defeat.  So they're back at it again, with (one hopes) the same results in store for them.

What makes this more interesting, though, is a piece on the subject by the eminent neurologist, writer, and skeptic Steven Novella, in his wonderful blog NeuroLogica.  The post, entitled "Kansas Citizens Vote to Reject Science," is (of course) a thorough rebuke of the motives and rationality of COPE and any members of the judiciary who might agree with them, but it contained a passage that made me frown a little:

Science does not require non-theism. It does not even require naturalism. Science merely proceeds as if the world is naturalistic, that there is cause and effect and nothing magical that violates cause and effect. This is called methodological naturalism – science is a set of methods that work within a naturalistic framework of cause and effect.

Science is officially agnostic, however, toward any deeper philosophical conclusions about whether or not anything supernatural actual exists. It simply relegates such questions outside the sphere of science.

This does not mean that philosophers cannot rely on empirical evidence and scientific notions to argue for a naturalistic universe. That is my personal belief – the simplest explanation for why we cannot know about anything supernatural, and why science works within the assumption of naturalism, is because naturalism is actually true. But science does not require that belief.

While I agree with him insofar as his views speak of religion in general, I disagree entirely when they are applied to specific religions.  And, after all, almost no one belongs to a "religion in general."  There are religions that see no conflict whatsoever between science and a belief in god (the Unitarians, for example).  There are others which very much do.  So it's all very well to say that "science is officially agnostic... about whether or not anything supernatural exists," but when push comes to shove and science runs headlong into religion, a Southern Baptist (for example) is going to have to decide where (s)he stands on the matter.

It's a little disingenuous, I think, for Dr. Novella (however much I respect him and approve of his views) to say that mandating the teaching of evolution in public schools is outside of the purview of religion, just as religion is outside of the purview of science.  But if part of your religious belief is that god created the world in six days, six-thousand-odd years ago, then my saying that the Earth is six or so billion years old, that organisms have evolved into the forms we have today, that there was no Great Flood, and so on, certainly has religious implications.  By stating that the latter are to be taught in science classes -- and I believe, of course, that they should be -- I am stating, not so subtly, that your religion is wrong on those points.

You can surely see how both viewpoints can't be true.

So, however much we'd like to accept the Stephen Jay Gould idea of non-overlapping magisteria -- that science and religion both have their places, and those places do not intersect -- there is a significant percentage of Americans who don't see it that way.  Young-Earth creationists, in particular, are completely correct in seeing scientific statements as affecting, and in many cases negating, their religious claims.

To them, scientific statements are religious statements.  Not that science and religion have the same methods; in fact, precisely because they don't.  They have accepted the religious way of knowing as the ultimate truth -- anything that comes into conflict with that, then, must be false and evil.

Now don't get me wrong; I think the members of COPE are a bunch of irrational nitwits.  Their stance about evolution is demonstrably incorrect.  However, that doesn't mean that their claim -- that teaching their children evolution is a practice that carries with it an intrinsic statement about their religion -- is false as well.

So as much as I wish we would stop pussyfooting around and playing nice with these people, the Establishment clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."  At first glance, this would clearly seem to place religion in the context of a personal practice -- making any public mandate of a religious point of view illegal.  But what if, as in this case, kids are being made to learn, and to treat as truth, a viewpoint that directly contradicts their religious beliefs?

How is that itself not a religious statement?

I dunno.  Makes me glad I'm not a judge.  Despite my inclination to tell the members of COPE, "Hey, y'all just get yourselves back to the 17th century where you belong, I'm sure there are some witches y'all need to take care of back there," I'm not sure it's that easy.  I hope that this latest lawsuit goes the way of Kitzmiller vs. Dover, but however it's decided, I don't think the war is over quite yet.

Peter Gariaev, wave genetics, and the problem of being a dilettante

There's an inherent problem with skepticism, and the heart of it is that you can't be an expert in everything.

There are, in fact, damn few things that I do consider myself an expert in.  Judging by my ability to read technical, peer-reviewed papers, I can handle myself decently in the fields of evolutionary biology and population genetics (which I focused on in college, and which I teach every year) and historical linguistics (the subject of my master's degree).  Outside of that... well, I'm a dilettante.  So despite my B.S. in physics, research papers in Science on just about any topic in physics lose me after the first two sentences.  Even in biology -- a subject I've taught with (I think) at least some degree of competence for 27 years -- I am instantaneously lost in the details in scholarly papers on a variety of topics, including (but not limited to) cellular biology, physiology, ecosystem dynamics, and most of biochemistry.

Now, let me say up front that there's nothing inherently wrong about being a dilettante.  Dilettantes make good high school teachers, and my opinion is that it's more fun to be a generalist than a specialist.  Dilettantism was positively celebrated in the 18th and 19th centuries, when it was the sport of gentlemen (and more than a few gentlewomen) -- some of whom have some significant and far-reaching research to their credit.

But being a generalist does bring with it a problem, and that is that it leaves you unqualified to weigh in on topics where specialized knowledge would be required to know if the person in question was even making sense.  And the specialists aren't much better off -- because even they are out of their element in all but their chosen field.

So how, as skeptics, do we make a decision about whether someone is a groundbreaking pioneer or a spouter of bullshit -- when the field in which they are making their pronouncements is less than familiar to you?

I ran into an especially good example of this a couple of days ago, when a friend asked me what I thought about Dr. Peter Gariaev.  I hadn't heard of Dr. Gariaev's research, so I did a little digging.  And what I found left me with the same impression my friend had -- his comment was that it "sounded like a bunch of woo."

But let's face it, relativity sounded like a "bunch of woo" when it was first proposed.  So did quantum mechanics.  So, honestly, did the germ theory of disease.  None of these ideas were particularly intuitive; none gained instant acceptance; all three seemed, for a while, to be blatant nonsense.  So let's look at some of Gariaev's writing, and see if he's an Einstein or a Schrödinger -- or a David Icke or a Richard C. Hoagland.

Here are a few paragraphs from Gariaev's own website about his theory, called "Wave Genetics:"

The quintessence of the wave genome theory may be represented as following: genome of the highest organisms is considered to be a bio-computer which forms the space-time grid framework of a bio-systems.

In that bio-system, as the carriers of a field epi-gene-matrix - wave fronts are being used, which are assigned by gene-holograms and so-called solitons on DNA – distinct type of acoustic and electromagnetic fields, produced by biogenetic apparatus of the organism/bio-system under consideration and being a medium of strategic regulatory data/information exchange between cells, tissues and organs of the bio-system.

It is also vital to note that the holographic grids/frameworks, which are also the elements of fluctuating structures of solitons, are, in fact, discrete simplest cases of code-originated information, anchored in chromosome continuum of an organism...


A group of scientists headed by P P Gariaev and M U Maslov, developed a theory of so called fractal representation of natural (human) and genetical languages. Within the confines of this theory it is said that the quasi-speech of DNA possesses potentially inexhaustible “supply of words” and, moreover, what had been a sentence on the scales of DNA–“texts” “phrases” or a “sentence” becomes/turns into a word or a letter on the other scale. Genetical apparatus can be viewed as the triunity of its structure-functional organization consisting of holographic, soliton and fractal structures.

This theory allows a refined quantitative comparison of symbolic structure of any texts including genetical. Thereby a possibility has been wide open to approach a deciphering of a lexicon of one’s own gene-code, and accordingly, more accurate composition of algorithms of addressing a genome of a human with an aim of potentially any type of programming of one’s vital activity such as treatment, increasing one’s life expectancy and so on and so forth.

Empirical tests of wave genetic theory in the light of “speech” characteristics of DNA demonstrate strategically correct stance and direction of the research.

Made it through all that?  There's lots more, but it all pretty much sounds like what you just read.  Lots of use of words like "holographic" and "fractal" and "soliton;" not much in the way of data.  As far as his qualifications, Gariaev himself apparently has a Ph.D., even though nowhere could I find any mention of where it's from.  To be fair, this may just be that his biographical details aren't widely known outside of his native Russia.  So given that, is there a way we can parse his research, despite not being molecular biologists ourselves?  (Well, maybe some of my readers are, but I'm not.) 

When I run across something like this, the first thing I look for is to see where he's been published.  And when you look at his publications list, an interesting pattern emerges.  Back in the early 1990s, Gariaev was publishing in what seem to be reputable, peer-reviewed journals -- the Journal of the Society of Optical Engineering and Laser Physics, for example.  Even back then, though, you could see what appears to be a trend toward oddball interpretations of science, with his solo paper "DNA as source of new kind of God 'knowledge'" (published in the Act and Facts/Impact series, N12, pp. 7-11).  I'm just going off the title, here -- I wasn't able to find the paper itself -- but unless he was using the term "God knowledge" metaphorically, which doesn't seem very likely in a scholarly paper, I think this one already shows that he'd gone off the beam.

Since then, though, he's not had a single publication in a reputable peer-reviewed journal, with the exception of a 2002 paper in the International Journal of Computing Anticipatory Systems.  His other publications have appeared in places like the Journal of Non-Locality and Remote Mental Interactions (and lest you think that I'm being too harsh, here, a quick survey of other articles they'd published include one having to do with using "Qigong" to treat cancer, one trying to use quantum mechanics to explain telepathy, and one called "A Scientific Validation of Planetary Consciousness"). 

Other papers by Gariaev have appeared in DNA Decipher Journal -- which just this summer published a paper called "Quantum Intelligent Design in Contrast to Mindless Materialists' Evolution."

Mercy me.

So, if Gariaev is the next Einstein, why no papers in Nature or Science?

Why, too, is he cited all over -- but only in places of highly dubious reputation, like Above Top Secret and Godlike Productions?

And don't start with me about how he is a Maverick and a Pioneer and the other scientists hate him and are suppressing his work because it is too revolutionary.  C'mon, now.  How many careers were made based on the ground broken by the likes of Einstein and Schrödinger?  Peter Higgs just won the Nobel Prize, for fuck's sake.

I may not be an expert in biophysics; but I do know that if Gariaev really had shown (as he has claimed) that "genetic traits can be changed, activated and disactivated by use of resonant waves, beamed at the DNA" and that this was going to allow humans "to regrow vital internal organs, in vivo, without the requirement of difficult, dangerous and expensive surgical procedures," then he'd be elbowing Higgs out of the way to get to Stockholm.

So we can, as generalists (or as specialists outside our particular specialty) still use the principles of skepticism to come to some sort of judgment about what we read.  Fortunate for me; a dilettante I always have been, and (I'm afraid) a dilettante I always will be.  If it weren't possible for us to think through such situations, we'd fall prey to just about every crazy claim that came along.

Some of us still do, of course -- which is why it's absolutely critical to train your brain to be, well, absolutely critical.

Winged Chupacabras and naked Sasquatches

Here at Worldwide Wacko Watch, we're keeping our eyes on two stories that will be of interest to cryptozoology buffs.

First, from Chicxulub Puerto, in the state of Yucatán, Mexico, there are reports of an "unknown big, black, ugly, and winged creature" that is terrorizing innocent citizens.

The Yucatán Times reports that a gas station worker named Alejandra was attacked last week, but that she's not the only one.  The same creature has been seen in the middle of the town, and Alejandra's coworker Julio has reported that he's heard strange whistling noises coming from the lagoon.

"All this information combined with the fact that many domestic animals have been found dead and dismembered lately in Chicxulub and surrounding areas, are generating the rumor that the 'Chupacabras' might be on the loose in this part of the State of Yucatán," said the writer for the Times. 

Admit it.  You knew it'd be Chupacabras.

This one doesn't have wings.  Maybe it's a different species of Chupacabra.

So it seems like once again we're confronted with a mystery beast who has been seen only by a couple of people, plus reports of noises that could have any number of explanations, plus some animal deaths that could be from a variety of causes.  Myself, I don't think this amounts to much, but then, I have to admit that it takes a lot to convince me.

Apparently, it was also a considerable task to convince a Washington County, Oregon man that he wasn't a Sasquatch.

KOMO News reports that 58-year-old Jeff McDonald, of Banks, Oregon, was out hunting last Thursday, when he was accosted by a naked man who proceeded to hit McDonald with a rock.

When McDonald, predictably, objected to this, the man, who has been identified as 20-year-old Linus Norgren, also of Banks, started yelling that he was the last of a long line of Sasquatches.

Okay, that explains your behavior entirely, Mr. Norgren.

An Oregonian Not-squatch

So anyway, McDonald fought off the rampaging non-Bigfoot bravely, despite the fact that Norgren continued to pelt rocks at him, and at one point, tried to strangle McDonald with a piece of clothing.  McDonald eventually triumphed, although he suffered broken fingers, bruises, and an eye injury (happily, he's expected to make a full recovery).  Once Norgren was subdued, McDonald held him at bay with his hunting rifle and blew a whistle until deputies arrived.

Norgren is now being held on charges of strangulation, assault, and menacing, with the bail set at $250,000.  Apparently the sheriff's office has looked into his antecedents, and found that he's not a Sasquatch at all, but the son of a "well-known mushroom picker."

So that clears that up, and perhaps explains Norgren's bizarre behavior.

And that's our news from the cryptozoological world,  unless you count the fact that Melba Ketchum is still at it, trying to convince the world that her Sasquatch Genome Project is producing valid science.  Her latest attempt garnered her an interview on that stalwart bastion of support for scientific research...

...Fox News.

I'm not making this up.  You should check it out.  Fox News takes every opportunity to claim that intelligent design is real and climate change is false, and then interviews a Sasquatch researcher whose results have been discredited at every turn.

Which, now that I think of it, makes some sense, doesn't it?

Moon tracks

My friend and fellow blogger Andrew Butters (of the wonderful blog Potato Chip Math, which you should all check out) recently sent me a couple of links that are interesting by virtue of what they almost certainly won't accomplish.

Jesus Diaz, writing for Gizmodo, tells about a question he asked to Grey Hautaluoma, of the NASA Department of Public Affairs.  Diaz asked if the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was going to be taking photographs of the lunar landing sites.  Hautaluoma responded, "Yes, it will. We don't have a timeline yet for viewing the Apollo sites, but it will be in the near future."

And Diaz, in his Gizmodo piece, said, "Suck it up, conspiracy theorists, because soon your cuckoo stories about the US simulating the Moon landings will be over forever."

And sure enough, eventually the LRO did get photographs sharp enough to do that.  Here is one:

 The lines are the paths of the LRV (the "Moon Buggy") and the paths of footprints of the astronauts!

The problem is, there is no way this is going to silence the conspiracy theorists.  Nothing will.

There is a saying that is widely used amongst skeptics, that "you can't logic your way out of a position that you didn't logic your way into."  Now, let me be up front that I don't think that's always true.  Logic, and inductive reasoning, are marvelous ways to bootstrap yourself up out of error, and none of us came into this world pre-fitted with a logical view of the world.  Erroneous ideas, after all, are easy to come by -- our perceptual apparatus is notorious for getting it wrong, and between that and wishful thinking out of fear or desire, it's no wonder we sometimes don't see the world as it is.

But the aforementioned cliché does get it right in one sense; if on some level you don't buy logic and evidence as the sine qua non of understanding, then you and I aren't even speaking the same language.  It's why it is generally futile to argue with the devoutly religious.  Faith is, at its heart, not a logical process.  We're not accepting the same basis for how you "know" something, and pretty quickly the argument devolves into either pointless bickering or "well, you can believe what you like, of course."

And the same is true of conspiracy theorists.  Theirs is a different non-logical basis for understanding, but as with the devoutly religious, it has little to nothing to do with evidence.  The foundational idea for the conspiracy theorists is that there is a giant disinformation campaign on the part of Someone (the government, the Illuminati, the Reptilians, the Russians, the Muslims, the Vatican, the Jews -- or some combination thereof).  Because of that, you can't trust anything that comes from them or from anyone in cahoots with them (which, after all, could be anyone).

After that, there is nothing you can do.  Nothing will ever convince them, because any evidence you bring out -- such as the above photograph of the Moon's surface -- will be judged as altered, Photoshopped, faked.  If you claim that you've analyzed the photograph and it shows no signs of having been doctored, the response is, "They're a pretty clever bunch, those Conspirators."  If you insist, you're considered a dupe or a pawn.  If you really insist, you must be... one of them.

So with conspiracy theorists as with the Borg, Resistance Is Futile.  That's why conspiracy theorists are the only group of people I enjoy arguing with less than I enjoy arguing with Young-Earth Creationists.  The creationists are at least demonstrably wrong.

With the conspiracy theorists, you can't demonstrate anything.

So the LRO photographs, unfortunately, haven't accomplished much, and the Moon-Landings-Were-Faked crowd is still going strong.  I continue to hope that one day they'll give it up and admit their mistakes, but the only way that will happen is if they change their criterion for belief to "whatever the evidence supports."

It could happen, but I'm not holding my breath.