The evolution of Little Red Riding Hood

Every once in a while, I'll run across a piece of scientific research that is so creative and clever that it just warms my heart, and I felt this way yesterday when I stumbled onto a link to the article in PLoS ONE called "The Phylogeny of Little Red Riding Hood," by Jamshid Tehrani of the University of Bristol.

The reason I was delighted by Tehrani's paper is that it combines two subjects I love -- evolutionary biology and mythology and folklore.  The gist of what Tehrani did is to use a technique most commonly used to assemble species into "star diagrams" -- cladistic bootstrap analysis -- to analyze worldwide versions of the "Little Red Riding Hood" story to see to what degree a version in (for example) Senegal was related to one in Germany.

Cladistic bootstrap analysis generates something called a "star diagram" -- not, generally, a pedigree or family tree, because we don't know the exact identity of the common ancestor to all of the members of the tree, all we can tell is how closely related current individuals are.  Think, for example, of what it would look like if you assembled the living members of your family group this way -- you'd see clusters of close relatives linked together (you, your siblings, and your first cousins, for example) -- and further away would be other clusters, made up of more distant relatives grouped with their near family members.

So Tehrani did this with the "Little Red Riding Hood" story, by looking at the similarities and differences, from subtle to major, between the way the tale is told in different locations.  Apparently there are versions of it all over the world -- not only the Grimm Brothers Fairy Tales variety (the one I know the best), but from Africa, the Middle East, India, China, Korea, and Japan.  Oral transmission of stories is much like biological evolution; there are mutations (people change the story by misremembering it, dropping some pieces, embellishment, and so on) and there is selection (the best versions, told by the best storytellers, are more likely to be passed on).  And thus, the whole thing unfolds like an evolutionary lineage.

In Tehrani's analysis, he found three big branches -- the African branch (where the story is usually called "The Wolf and the Kids"), the East Asian branch ("Tiger Grandmother"), and the European/Middle Eastern Branch ("Little Red Riding Hood," "Catterinella," and "The Story of Grandmother").  (For the main differences in the different branches, which are fascinating but too long to be quoted here in full, check out the link to Tehrani's paper.)

Put all together, Tehrani came up with the following cladogram:

WK = "The Wolf and the Kids," TG = "Tiger Grandmother," "Catt" = "Catterinella," GM = "The Story of Grandmother," and RH = "Little Red Riding Hood;" the others are less common variations that Tehrani was able to place on his star diagram.

The whole thing just makes me very, very happy, and leaves me smiling with my big, sharp, wolflike teeth.

Pure research has been criticized by some as being pointless, and this is a stance that I absolutely abhor.  There is a completely practical reason to support, fund, and otherwise encourage pure research -- and that is, we have no idea yet what application some technique or discovery might have in the future.  A great deal of highly useful, human-centered science has been uncovered by scientists playing around in their labs with no other immediate goal than to study some small bit of the universe.  Further, the mere application of raw creativity to a problem -- using the tools of cladistics, say, to analyze a folk tale -- can act as an impetus to other minds, elsewhere, encouraging them to approach the problems we face in novel ways.

But I think it's more than that.  The fundamental truth here is that human mind needs to be exercised.  The "what good is it?" attitude is not only anti-science, it is anti-intellectual.  It devalues inquiry, curiosity, and creativity.  It asks the question "how does this benefit humanity?" in such a way as to imply that the sheer joy of comprehending deeply the world around us is not a benefit in and of itself.

It may be that Tehrani's jewel of a paper will have no lasting impact on humanity as a whole.  I'm perfectly okay with that, and I suspect Tehrani would be, as well.  We need to make our brains buckle down to the "important stuff," yes; but we also need to let them out to play sometimes, a lesson that the men and women currently overseeing our educational system need to learn.  In a quote that seems unusually apt, considering the subject of Tehrani's research, Albert Einstein said: "I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge.  Knowledge is limited.  Imagination encircles the world."

Magic rock knowledge

The one thing I appreciate most about science is that it gives you a standard protocol by which to determine if a claim is supported or not.

That's not to say that the scientists can't get it wrong.  They do.  But science is self-correcting -- it is based on evidence and logic, and if at some point evidence and logic send you in a different direction than the prevailing wisdom, you have to abandon the prevailing wisdom and head off where the arrow points.  So the oft-quoted criticism of science by high school students everywhere -- "Why do we have to learn this, when it could be proven wrong tomorrow?" -- is actually science's great strength.

Better than studying something whose "truths" couldn't be falsified whether you wanted to or not, where there is no way to tell if a claim is wrong or right, where the directive is "just believe it because."

And I'm not just pointing a finger at religion, here.  Much of pseudoscience operates by this same evidence-free approach.  Take, for example, the page called "The Health Effects of Gemstones" on the site PositiveMed.  On it, we are told that rocks can help us in all sorts of ways, from physical health to mental health to relationships to "activating various chakras."

As an example, we are told that fluorite "enhances memory, intellect, discernment, and concentration, (and) brings wisdom."  Which sounds nice, doesn't it?

(photograph courtesy of Rob Lavinsky, iRocks.com, and the Wikimedia Commons)

Selenite "stimulates brain activity, expand(s) awareness, develops telepathy, and symbolizes the clearest state of mind available."  Carnelian "enhances creativity and sexuality, recycles past-life experiences, (and) speeds up the law of karma."  Black obsidian is a "spiritual protector, (and) helps one to understand and face their [sic] deepest fears."  Labradorite, on the other hand, "protects ones [sic] aura, (and) keep(s) the aura clear, balanced, and free of energy leaks."

Psychic Fix-a-Flat, is kind of how I see the last-mentioned.

All through reading this, I was thinking, "How on earth do you know any of this?"  There is no possible evidence-based way that someone can have come up with this list; it very much has the hallmark of some gemstone salesperson making shit up to sell polished rocks to unsuspecting gullible people.  I very much doubt, for example, that anyone did an experiment by leaving his black obsidian home, and seeing whether his deepest fears were more or less terrifying to face that day.

The whole thing, then, is a completely fact-free way of knowing the world, which I find fairly incomprehensible.  Even before I knew much science, I remember pestering my parents about how they knew things were true, and (more specifically) how you could tell if something was real or not.  As a five-year-old, I remember having a discussion with my mom about how she knew that Captain Kangaroo was real but Bugs Bunny was not, since she had clearly never met either one in person.

A junior skeptic I was, even back then.

It is perpetually baffling to me that there are so many people who don't see the world that way -- a bias, I suppose, that represents my own set of blinders.  My failing as a thinker seems to be that I just can't quite bring myself to believe that everyone doesn't evaluate the truth or falsity of statements the same way I do.

So those are today's philosophical musings, brought about by a rather silly website about magic rocks.  And now that I've gotten this written, I should go and apply some aquamarine to my forehead, which is supposed to "encourage the expression of one's truth, (and) reduce fear and mental tension."  Heaven knows I could do with more of that, some days.

One ring to fool them all

There are some swindles that are so clever that you can't help but feel a grudging admiration for someone who could pull them off straight-faced.

P. T. Barnum, he that observed that "There's a sucker born every minute" and who co-founded Barnum & Bailey's Circus, perpetrated some doozies in his life.  But I think my favorite was one that was brilliant in its simplicity.  In his circus, he'd sometimes put up a big, elaborately-painted sign that said, "This way to the Egress!"  You followed the arrows, and saw subsequent, even bigger and more attractive signs, until finally you got to one that said, "To experience the AMAZING EGRESS, if you dare, go through this door!"

So you go through the door, and find yourself outside the circus -- and then have to pay to re-enter.  Because "egress," of course, is just a fancy way of saying "exit."

I ran into an example of this just yesterday on The Million-Pound Page (subtitled "Have a Bright Future!"), where we meet a gentleman named Alex Chiu who has developed something called an "Immortality Ring."  Before I tell you about immortality rings, though, you should check out Alex's "About Me" page, wherein we find out a variety of weird facts about Alex, including:

• He thinks that China should take back Taiwan, and that any Taiwanese who doesn't agree with him "doesn't deserve to be immortal."
• If Hilary Duff threw herself bodily at him, Alex would still prefer his cat over her.
• He has had four stepmothers.
• He thinks Alicia Silverstone represents physical perfection.  No mention of whether he'd choose her over his cat, however.

None of this, of course, gives us any information supporting the contention that we should believe anything he says, so I guess we'll have to evaluate his "immortality rings" on their own merits.

So, what are they?  Apparently they're a pair of magnets encased in ceramic rings that you are supposed to wear, one on each pinky, and they'll give you eternal life.  There's a cheaper pair (at $28, plus shipping and handling), if you're satisfied with a bargain-basement kind of eternal life; or the upgraded neodymium-based pair (at $39, plus shipping and handling) if you want grade-A eternal life.  The better pair has a field of 21,000 gauss (compare that to 50 gauss for a typical refrigerator magnet) -- wearing something like that on both hands seems to me to be fraught with risks, such as completely fucking up every computer you walk by, attracting metallic objects like meat cleavers and sledgehammers, and possibly becoming accidentally stuck to the side of a moving city bus as you're crossing the street.

Remember this scene?  It didn't end well for Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius.

Be that as it may, Alex Chiu is claiming that if you wear his rings, you'll live forever, as long as you don't get your head chopped off in the kitchenware department of WalMart or get dragged to your death by a metro bus.  How does it work, you may ask?  Well, Alex Chiu has answers for you:

How do Eternal Life Devices fix the wounds and scars back to perfect or close to perfect, in order to free blood circulation?

Alex believes this is how it works: "Well, every cell in our body is a magnet. Cells have north and south poles. They attract each other. That's why cells form into a straight line. That is also how they form into a community, an animal body."

And lo, he has pictures to prove that cells form into a straight line:

So q.e.d, as far as I can tell.  Furthermore:

Cells with weak magnetic energy don't attract too well. Cells with strong magnetic flux attract to each other strongly and tighter. Just like magnets.  But strong magnets attract strongly and tight - just like human cells.  If cells are weak. if cells don't have enough magnetic flux, they break apart easily and heal back slowly, or sometimes don't heal back.

We then find out that if your cells don't have enough "magnetic flux" they grow back "unstraight" when you're injured, and you form scar tissue, which is bad.

But here's the punch line:

Now cells can grow back 100 percent or close to perfect. Remember, every cell is a magnet. If magnetic forces are applied, cells attract to each other more strongly. Ugly scars disappear. Cholesterol, which jammed in damaged areas, slowly desolves [sic]! If cholesterol desolves [sic], blood circulation is liberated. With blood circulation liberated, enough food and oxygen goes to every cell of your entire body. Then, at this stage, you turn physically younger or stay physically young FOREVER. You will have a never ageing [sic] body. Your body condition stays the SAME for years and years!!

Well, that might sound more attractive to me if I didn't already have arthritis to the point that my knees sound like velcro when I stand up.  But maybe the rings could fix that first, and then I could stay the same for years and years after that.

The most hilarious part of all of this, though, is that there's a money-back guarantee if they don't work.  But how could you apply for it?  Just imagine the phone call to customer service:

You:  I'd like to return my "immortality rings" for a refund.

Customer service: Why?  Are you dissatisfied with them?

You:  Yes, I don't think they're working.

Customer service:  Are you dead yet?

You:  No, but...

Customer service:  There you are, then!  100% success rate achieved!  What are you complaining about?

The whole thing reminds me of what Woody Allen said, when someone asked him what he'd like written on his gravestone.  He responded, "He's not here yet."

So, that's today's contribution from the Chutzpah Department.  I wish Alex Chiu luck, although I have to say that I won't be buying any magnetic rings.  I already have enough computer problems, and the other risks just don't seem to me to be worth it, even if I would end up with "cells forming into a straight line."

Lies, evangelicals, and girly hats

Is it just me, or do others find it weird how much the Religious Right focuses on issues of sexuality, and ignore the other biblical rules?

And I'm not just talking, here, about the oft-quoted bits in Leviticus that are just plain weird, such as the prohibition against wearing cotton-polyester blends (Leviticus 19:19).  I'm talking about much bigger stuff.

The whole thing comes up because of Gordon Klingenschmitt, the outspoken evangelical Navy chaplain who has been increasingly in the news because of his vitriolic opposition to anything approaching LGBT equal rights.  Most recently, he weighed in on the story that President Obama was changing the United States Marine Corps dress uniform code to require unisex hats, which an article in the New York Post described as "so 'girly' that they would make the French blush."

I'll ignore the Post's obnoxious characterization of the French, which I would have thought would be beneath any reputable news source, because that snide little remark was minor compared to the outcry from conservatives that erupted when the story hit.  The howls from Fox News alone were enough to bring down the walls of Jericho.  And then Klingenschmitt and other members of the Religious Right took up the thread, claiming that the whole thing was part of an evil plot to turn the members of the military gay.

"You can't have men in the United States Marines wearing clothing that's designed for women," Klingenschmitt said, on his weekly show Pray in Jesus' Name. "So you know what President Obama's solution is?  To make all the uniforms the same.  And this is going to usher in the possibility of transgender, cross-dressing men who want to look like women, they'll be able to wear a women's uniform.  This is not just a fashion stunt, it's setting the stage for transgender cross-dressing men to enter the military.  This decision came down from on high, I guarantee it, and that's a demonic spirit."

Righty-o, Reverend Klingenschmitt.  The only problem is, the entire story is false.  There was no command from President Obama, no plan to change the design of the Marine Corps' dress hats, no evil desire to turn everyone in the military gay.  And worse still, Gordo, you knew that, didn't you?  Because immediately after the story hit the Post (and launched into Fox News), the Marine Corps' own news source -- Stars & Stripes -- ran a story debunking the whole thing.  "The president in no way, shape or form directed the Marine Corps to change our uniform cover," said an official statement from the Marine Corps headquarters.  "We are looking for a new cover for our female Marines for one overriding reason: The former manufacturer went out of business. … The Marine Corps has zero intention of changing the male cover."

That's right; given that the story from the Marine Corps headquarters predated both Klingenschmitt's screed, and most of the hoopla on Fox News (and that it took me a thirty-second Google search to find the story debunking the claim), it's not too far-fetched a surmise that Klingenschmitt, and the reporters on Fox News, weren't just wrong; they were lying.

So it's all very well for Klingenschmitt and his pals to indulge in their peculiar obsessions about what people might be doing in their bedrooms, and claiming biblical justification for their stance.  The problem is, doesn't the bible have a few things to say about lying?

Oh, yeah, like the Eighth Commandment, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."  And Leviticus 19:11, "Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie to one another."  And Psalms 101:7, "He that worketh deceit shall not dwell within my house: he that telleth lies shall not tarry in my sight." And Proverbs 19:9, "A false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that speaketh lies shall perish." And Jeremiah 9:3, "And they bend their tongues like their bow for lies: but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith the Lord."  Oh, and my favorite one: Zechariah 13:3, "...Thou shalt not live; for thou speakest lies in the name of the Lord."

Hmm.  A few more lying-related verses to fret about, there in the bible, than there are ones defining what people are allowed to do with their naughty bits.  A bit worrisome, that.

It's funny to me, in a wry sort of way, how the evangelicals claim the moral high ground over atheists like myself, and yet so many of them are perfectly happy to twist the truth into knots to support whatever political position they prefer.   And they will stand there and declare, with no apparent sense of cognitive dissonance, that because my general attitude is that I don't give a rat's ass what two consenting adults do in their bedrooms (and, if they're having fun, more power to 'em), that I'm the one who is somehow evil and depraved.

On that count, Klingenschmitt et al. might want to refresh their memories about another biblical verse that comes to mind, namely Matthew 7:1-5: "Judge not, that ye be not judged.  For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.  And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?  Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?  Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."

The different flavors of "why"

In my last few posts, we've been looking at some of the various reasons that people believe odd, counterfactual things.  We've looked at fear, wishful thinking, lack of knowledge, and being hoodwinked by fast-talking, plausible charlatans, each of which plays its role in drawing people into the ethereal realms of pseudoscience.

There's one more, though, that we haven't looked at; and that is the desperation people have to know why things happen.

Most folks are uncomfortable with the idea of chaos -- the thought that there are random forces at work in the world, that some things are simply the result of chaotic processes that we couldn't predict if we tried.  This idea was brilliantly investigated in Thornton Wilder's novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey, which I can truly say is one of the few books that changed my life.  When I read it, in my Modern American Literature class when I was in 11th grade, I felt like my outlook on life would never be the same.

In it, Wilder's main character, Brother Juniper, an 18th century Franciscan monk, witnesses the collapse of a rope bridge in Peru.  Five people are on the bridge at the time, and all die.  He sets out to trace the history of the five victims, to see if there was some underlying reason why those five people, and no others, were killed.  And in the end, he realizes that if there was an explanation -- if god really did have a plan in engineering this situation -- it is so subtle that we could never know what it is.  And for this heresy, Brother Juniper and his book are both burned at the stake in the public square.

We always, somehow, want to know why.  And when science came along, there was a lot of hope that it would supplant religion in answering that question.  In some ways, it succeeded; but it didn't give people the answers to the "whys" that most were looking for, because there are different flavors of "why" -- and science is exceptionally good at answering one of them, and not so good at the other.

There are proximal "whys" and ultimate "whys," and the first is easy, and the second spectacularly difficult.  I saw a good example of the difference when, in an AP Biology class a few years ago, I asked, "Why are virtually all marsupials found in Australia?"

A student responded, in complete seriousness, "Because that's where they live."

Well, yes, but that's not what I was looking for.  I was looking for a deeper why -- an answer to the question of why marsupials had survived in Australia, but very few other places (the North American opossum being the sole counterexample).  And that's a difficult question, one that requires speculation.  Frequently questions of "ultimate why" either lead to unprovable guesses, or else are outside of the provenance of science to answer.

Which is why people have been turning to woo-woo craziness to explain the devastation that Typhoon Haiyan has wreaked upon the Philippines this past weekend.

Why did the typhoon form?  Why did it become so powerful?  Why did it take the path it did?  Science can explain how it formed, and give some answers to the proximal "whys," answers that involve steering currents and sea-surface temperatures.  But as far as the ultimate "why" -- why Haiyan devastated the city of Tacloban, why it struck where it did and not somewhere else -- science is silent.

So we're already seeing the nonsense rearing its ugly head.  Haiyan was created as part of a super-secret experiment by the US military, using a microwave burst.  It was sent on the path it took because the US was trying to divert radioactive water coming our way from Fukushima.  Even further out, we have loony evangelicals claiming that god sent Haiyan to devastate the mostly-Catholic Philippines in order to punish them for "worshiping idols."

It's not hard to see how some people see science as offering incomplete answers.  Because it does, honestly.  Whenever we're in the realm of "why" we have to be careful, as scientists, because the ultimate "whys" often don't admit easy explanation.  Even such simple "whys," often taught in elementary school science classes, as "why do giraffes have long necks?" are almost certainly oversimplified answers to questions that are much more difficult to answer than they would have appeared at first glance.

So no wonder some turn to other realms, where the answers to "whys" come hard and fast -- conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and (okay, I know I'm gonna get flak for this) religion.  Those models for understanding the world give the comfort of explaining why things happen -- sometimes, even the horrid things like illnesses, accidental deaths, personal losses... and typhoons.  Science is silent on the ultimate "whys," most of the time, and if you are uncomfortable with that, you either have to do what I do -- remain uncomfortable -- or leap outside of science.

Because, as Brother Juniper learned, if you don't make that leap, you just have to accept that sometimes the events in the world are subtle and unexplainable.

Elaborate nonsense

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I can understand how fear and lack of knowledge can drive you to accept counterfactual nonsense.  I also get how wishful thinking could draw you in to a set of beliefs, if they line up with the way you would like the universe to work, even though, as my grandma used to say, "Wishin' don't make it so."

This combination of desire for the world to be other than it is, and fear of what the world actually is, probably drives most superstition.  All, as I said, understandable, given human nature.

But what continually baffles me is how byzantine some of those beliefs become.  I can accept that it might be an attractive model for some people that the position of the stars and planets somehow guides your life; but I start really wondering once you start coming up with stuff like the following (from Susan Miller's astrology site, on a page devoted to predictions for this month for my astrological sign, Scorpio):

Here is why I say that: Sometimes, in about 20 percent of the cases, an eclipse will deliver news a month to the day later plus or minus five days. More rarely, an eclipse will introduce news one month to the day before it occurs, but only in about 5 percent of the cases. In most cases, 75 percent of the time, an eclipse will deliver some sort of news that things are about to change almost instantly.

This eclipse will be in Scorpio, 11 degrees, and will come conjunct Saturn. This alone says that the decision you make now will be a big one, and that you will commit all your energy to this decision. You will be in a serious mode, and it appears a promise you make now will last a very long time, possibly forever. Mars and Pluto are your two ruling planets (Scorpio is one of the few signs that have two rulers), and remarkably both will be supportive by tight mathematical angles to this eclipse. This tells me that the final outcome of this eclipse will be very positive. Every eclipse has two acts, so see how events unfold in coming weeks.

Yes, it's bullshit; but it's really elaborate bullshit.  You might criticize these people for pushing fiction as reality, but you have to admit that they spend a lot of time crafting their fiction.

I ran across an unusually good example of this yesterday on the Skeptic subreddit, which is a wonderful place to go for articles debunking pseudoscience.  The site I found posted there is called "TCM - the 24-hour Organ Qi Cycle," which immediately should raise red flags -- "TCM" is traditional Chinese medicine, much of which has been double-blind tested and found to be worthless; and "qi" is a pattern for "energy flow" through the body that basically is non-existent, making "qi" only useful as an easy way of getting rid of the "Q" tile in a game of Scrabble.

What this site purports to do is to get you to "balance your body" using information about when during the day you feel most ill-at-ease.  This then tells you what organ in your body is "out of balance" and which of the "elements" you should pay attention to.  And no, I'm not talking about anything off the periodic table; we're back to a medieval "Earth," "Fire," "Water," "Metal," "Wood," and "Ministerial Fire" model, although the last-mentioned sounds like what they used back in the Dark Ages to burn people at the stake for heresy.

So, naturally, I had to check out what my own out-of-balance part was.  I'm frequently awake, and restless, at 3 AM - 5 AM, so I rolled the cursor over the "color wheel" and found that this means my lungs are out of balance.  "The emotions connected to the lungs are Grief and Sadness," I was told, which makes sense for the time of day because if I'm awake then it means I won't be able to get back to sleep before my alarm goes off.  It goes on to ask me some questions, to wit:  "Have you buried your grief?  Are you sad?  Are you always sighing?  It is most healthy to express your emotions as you feel them.  You may need to express your emotions by crying, writing and/or talking to a friend."

Well, thanks for caring, and everything, but I'm actually doing okay, and don't sigh all that much, except at faculty meetings.

Oh, but I am told that if I can get my lungs in balance, I'll have "lustrous skin."  And who could resist that?

On it goes.  If your small intestine is out of balance, you should eat only "vital foods chock full of enzymes."  If you have diarrhea, you need to "strengthen your spleen qi."  If your "kidneys are deficient," you won't have much in the way of sex drive, but you can bring them back into balance by eating black sesame seeds, celery, duck, grapes, kidney beans, lamb, millet, oysters, plums, sweet potatoes, raspberries, salt, seaweed, strawberries, string beans, tangerines, walnuts, and yams.

The entire time I was looking at this site, I kept shaking my head and saying, "How do you know any of this?"  The stuff on this website seems to fall into two categories -- blatantly obvious (e.g. "crying if you're sad helps you to feel better") and bizarrely abstruse (e.g. "engaging in loving sex keeps your pericardium healthy").

I suppose the elaborateness is understandable from one angle; if you want people to believe what you're saying, you'll probably have better success if you make your sales pitch sound fancy.  Convoluted details convince people, especially people who don't know much in the way of science and logic.  So the intricacy of some pseudoscientific models is explainable from the standpoint that the purveyors of this kind of foolishness will sound like scientists, and therefore be persuasive, only if they couch their message in terms that make it appear they've tapped into a realm of knowledge unavailable to the rest of us slobs.

Or, as my dad put it: "If you can't wow 'em with your brilliance, baffle 'em with your bullshit."

Giant radioactive mutant dog attack!

It's funny to what extent people will believe unscientific bullshit when they've been primed to do so by fear.

And by "funny" I mean "so frustrating that I facepalmed hard enough to give myself two black eyes."

The tsunami that struck Fukushima, Japan two years ago still weighs heavily on people's minds, and for good reason.  It was a disaster of massive proportion, causing almost 16,000 known deaths (another 2,500 are still missing and are presumed dead).  Add that to the damage to a nuclear facility, and it's no wonder that people consider this one of the scariest events in recent memory.

So let's start there; horrible earthquake, terrible death toll, radiation release from a nuclear plant.  So far, frightening enough.  But the problem is, the last-mentioned -- nuclear radiation -- is a phenomenon that few people understand well enough to judge accurately the hazards it might generate.  This combination of fear and lack of information is a powerful one, and probably explains why hundreds of sites started cropping up last year (and continue today) claiming that the radiation plume from the damaged nuclear reactor was "frying the west coast of the United States."  Usually the story is attached to this map, that allegedly shows the progress of the radioactive water across the Pacific:

The problem is, this isn't a map of radiation -- this is a map, made by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shortly after the tsunami, showing wave heights across the Pacific.

But boy, it sure looks scary, doesn't it?  All those reds and oranges and purples.  That's got to be bad.

And just to (I hope) put your mind further at rest, a study done at the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Physics and Complex Systems found that the radiation, when it reaches the United States west coast, will be so dilute that it will pose no threat to human health, thus further highlighting the difference between the words detectable and dangerous.

Yet the panic continues, which as I mentioned, sets people up to believe nonsense.  And the nonsense reached new heights in the past couple of weeks, with a set of claims that evidently originated with Topeka's News, an online media outlet that apparently is "news" in the same sense as The Weekly World News is.  Now, let me be up front; I think this could be satire.  It could be that Poe's Law has reared its ugly head again.  But honestly, I'm not sure, and it really doesn't matter, because I'm beginning to see these stories making the rounds of social media -- and people believe them.

Let's start with this one, about a giant radioactive killer dog.

Here's what they have to say:

Russian officials are confirming the existence of a new dog species: the giant Tibetan Mastiff.

Genetic tests have confirmed Fukushima radiation in the dog’s genes, confirming that runoff from Japan has contaminated Russia waters and is not creating genetic monstrosities in the nation [sic: I'm guessing they meant "now creating...," although "not creating..." makes more sense in context].

To date, dozens of reported sitings [sic] of giant Tibetan mastiffs running throughout the Russian Siberian tundra have been reported, but it was not until this week that researchers were able to confirm the dog.

Well, there are a few problems with this claim, beginning with the fact that (1) Tibetan mastiffs are not new (the Wikipedia article calls the breed "ancient," actually); (2) they're not a separate species, but are just ordinary dogs, albeit really big ones; and (3) since Tibet is up in the mountains, it's hard to imagine how "runoff from Japan" could have gotten there since water generally doesn't flow uphill all that well.

Oh, yeah, and you can't have "radiation in your genes."

Yes, but they have photographs, to wit:

Big!  Scary!  Look at the teeth!  Must be a radioactive mutant, right?

Of course, right.

Oh, but they're not done yet.  Not only do we have giant scary mutant dogs running around, we have the rare Fukushima Radioactive Mutant Hamster Lion:

The writer for Topeka's News admits that this photograph hasn't been verified, but says, "the picture does provide an excellent opportunity to once again delve into the topic of nuclear energy."

Then there's the Fukushima Radioactive Mutant Megaturtle:

If you're curious, this photograph is actually a still from the 2006 Japanese horror movie Gamera the Brave.  [Source]

But the problem is, these are being circulated around all over the place, usually with headlines like, "What is the radiation from Fukushima doing to animal life, and what could it do to humans?"  And very few people, that I've seen, are responding to those posts with, "You're joking, right?"

I have a solution to all of this, and it's the same one I always recommend; before you start panicking, learn a little science.  Apply some logic and skepticism to what you read.  And for cryin' out loud, find out what the scientists themselves are saying.  These days, you can often find out the straight scoop just by appending the words "skeptic" or "debunk" to a search (e.g. "giant Fukushima mutant dog debunk"), and you'll pull up what usually reputable sources like Doubtful News or The Skeptic's Dictionary or Skeptoid or Snopes have to say about it.

To sum up; no need to worry about the radiation from Japan causing mutations that will result in gigantic herds of carnivorous Bunny-Jaguars terrorizing downtown Omaha.  As devastating as the situation was (and still is) in Japan, the radiation isn't going to have much of an effect on us here in the United States, and that's not how mutations work, anyway.

Which is unfortunate, actually, because the idea of a "Bunny-Jaguar" is kind of cool.