Plausible deniability

One of the things I've never understood is the certainty a lot of people have that the universe is designed in such a way as to line up perfectly with their personal opinions.

It crops up fairly regularly in religion.  You think gays are icky?  Well, what a coincidence.  God doesn't like them, either!  You would rather that the power structure keep men in control of everything?  How about that, Allah would like that, too!

It'd be kind of an odd coincidence, don't you think?  Conservatives think god is conservative, liberals think god is liberal.  Never once do you go to a conservative church and hear the preacher say, "Sorry, brethren and sistren.  God told me that we need to welcome in illegal immigrants."  Nor do you go to a liberal church and hear, "God has a new directive.  Balancing the federal budget is more important than funding social programs."

Doesn't it seem like people are designing their religious beliefs so that they support their political biases, and not the other way around?

To be fair, there are exceptions, such as Reverend Danny Cortez of the New Harmony Community Baptist Church of Los Angeles, who recently broke with the party line of the Southern Baptist Convention and came out in support of LGBT individuals.  But it's rare.  Most of us are convinced we live in a comfortable little universe that in the Big Picture, works exactly the way we would like it to.

This tendency isn't confined to religion, though.  A study done at Duke University and published just this month supports the troubling notion that we even approach scientific findings this way.  Troy Campbell, a Ph.D. candidate in Duke's School of Business, and his team found that when test subjects were presented with scientific evidence of a problem, followed by a policy solution that would run counter to their political beliefs, they were more likely to believe that the problem itself didn't exist.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Conservatives, for example, were given a statement to read that showed evidence that the global average temperature would rise by 3.2 degrees in the 21st century.  Half of them then read a proposed solution requiring increased government regulation -- carbon emissions taxes, restrictions on fossil fuel use, and so on.  The other half were given a solution that involved support of the free market, such as reducing taxes on companies that use green technology.

When asked whether they believed that the Earth's temperature would rise by the predicted amount, only 22% of the first group said they did -- compared to 55% of the second group!

Liberals are no less prone to what Campbell calls "solution aversion."  Liberals showed a much lower belief in statistics about violent home break-ins if they were then presented with a solution that doesn't line up with liberal ideology, such as looser restrictions on handgun ownership.

"Logically, the proposed solution to a problem, such as an increase in government regulation or an extension of the free market, should not influence one’s belief in the problem.  However, we find it does,” Campbell said about the study.  "The cure can be more immediately threatening than the problem...  We argue that the political divide over many issues is just that, it’s political.  These divides are not explained by just one party being more anti-science, but the fact that in general people deny facts that threaten their ideologies, left, right or center."

All of this strikes me as kind of bizarre.  Whatever my other biases, I've never thought it was reasonable to deny that the disease exists because the cure sounds unpleasant.  But apparently, that's the way a lot of people think.

But it does give some hope of a solution.   Says study co-author Aaron Kay:  "We should not just view some people or group as anti-science, anti-fact or hyper-scared of any problems.  Instead, we should understand that certain problems have particular solutions that threaten some people and groups more than others.  When we realize this, we understand those who deny the problem more and we improve our ability to better communicate with them."

To which I can only say: amen.

This may sting a little...

At what point do homeopaths and other purveyors of woo non-medicine cross the line into committing a prosecutable act of medical fraud?

I ask the question because of a recent exposé by Marketplace, a production of the Canadian Broadcasting Company, called Vaccines: Shot of Confusion.  In this clever sting operation, mothers were fitted with videocameras on visits with their children to homeopaths.  The videocameras recorded, predictably, the moms being given lots of advice about the (mostly fabricated) dangers of vaccination, and how little pills with no active ingredients were a better choice.

One mother was even told that "measles is virtually harmless for children over the age of one."  This would have come as a shock to my grandfather's two sisters, Marie Emelie and Anne, who died of measles in 1902, five days apart, at the ages of 22 and 17, respectively.

Not to mention the one million children who die annually from the disease, and the 15,000 a year who are left permanently blind from its effects.

The homeopaths in the video call today's children "the sickly generation."  And admittedly, there are some medical conditions that have increased in incidence in modern times (asthma, allergies, and autism come to mind).  However, it has been thoroughly demonstrated that none of the diseases which have increased are caused by vaccines (nor, by the way, are they treatable using sugar pills).  Further, given that there used to be epidemics of diphtheria, typhoid, measles, mumps, and other infectious diseases that killed thousands of children, you can only claim that this generation is "sickly" if you ignore historical fact.

Know of anyone in the last fifty years who has died of diphtheria?  Nope, me neither.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

It seems to me that we have crossed some kind of threshold, here.  We're no longer talking about people trying to treat insomnia with caffeine that has been diluted a gazillion times (and yes, they do that; here's one source to prove it).  We're talking about combining anti-vaxx fear talk with pushing useless "remedies" on gullible individuals, and putting children's lives at risk as a result.

Look, I'm no legal expert.  But I do know science, and I know that (1) serious side effects from vaccines are extremely uncommon, (2) the risk of infectious disease if you're unvaccinated is very high, and (3) it is impossible that homeopathy works, as advertised.  If you doubt the last statement, consider an exhaustive study of homeopathic "remedies" by Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council earlier this year, which found zero evidence that any of them worked.  "Homeopathic remedies contain nothing whatsoever," University College London pharmacologist David Colquhoun said about the study.  "The Americans have spent $2 billion investigating the things... they haven't found a single one that works."

How much evidence do you need?  Do you really believe that "Big Pharma" has co-opted every single study of homeopathy ever done by a reputable scientist?  The level of credulity you'd have to have to believe that is staggering.

Oh, wait.  These are the same people who believe that if you dilute a substance, it gets stronger.  Never mind.

I'm not in favor of rampant government interference, and I do think that people bear the responsibility of being well informed about their own bodies when they receive medical treatment.  But this is hitting people at their weakest point -- scaring them about the welfare of their children.  And ironic, isn't it, that the same people who criticize "Big Pharma" for profiting from medications are profiting themselves from the sale of pills that do nothing at all.  A 2009 report by the Center for Disease Control found that Americans were spending $2.9 billion annually on homeopathic "remedies."

Those are some expensive sugar pills.  Kind of makes you wonder who might be pulling the wool over your eyes for profit's sake, doesn't it?

And it demands that we ask the question of when enough is enough.  The time for controlled studies is over.  The results are in; homeopathy is quackery.  It is now the responsibility of medical oversight agencies to shut these people down, and take homeopathic "remedies" off the pharmacy shelves.

Grist for the mill

Over the Thanksgiving holiday we were in Northampton, Massachusetts visiting family, and we took the opportunity to visit an amazing used bookstore called The Bookmill, in Montague.

[image courtesy of photographer John Phelan and the Wikimedia Commons]

The Bookmill is sited in an old mill house on the Sawmill River, and bills itself as "books you don't need in a place you can't find."  We found it anyhow, and spent a diverting couple of hours wandering around its maze of little wood-floored rooms and creaking, narrow staircases, and (of course) came away with a box full of books, which we did too need, thank you very much.

For my son Nathan: a book on quantum physics and The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy.  For my wife Carol: several books of poetry and essays.  For me, on the other hand, three masterpieces:

• Ghosts Among Us: Eyewitness Accounts of True Hauntings, by Harry Ludlum
• UFOs and How to See Them, by Jenny Randles
• How to Read the Aura, Practice Psychometry, Telepathy, and Clairvoyance, by W. E. Butler

All of this elicited a great amount of eye-rolling on the part of various family members.  Myself, I was thrilled, and these books will now occupy a nice spot on my bookshelf next to Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life by Ivan T. Sanderson.

But not, of course, before I entertain you with a few excerpts.

From Ghosts Among Us, we read the following, in a story called "The Council House Horrors:"

A family of four, a couple and their grown-up son and daughter, living in a post-war council house in Swindon, Wiltshire, were rehoused when it was feared they were heading for nervous breakdowns. 

First, Mrs. Gladys Tucker saw the shadow of a man standing on the landing.  Then all manner of strange things began to happen.  Objects moved themselves mysteriously; windows that should have been shut were found open; door handles raised and lowered themselves.  Apparitions of animals were seen.  The daughter saw strange lights on her bed and bedroom walls.  The son was held pinned to a wall by an unseen force. 

The daughter was driven to seeing a nerve specialist, while the son was so shaken that he left home to live with a relation. 

When their father, Mr. Herbert Tucker, a storekeeper, now deeply concerned for the health of his wife and daughter, called on the council for help, police went over the house thoroughly and the local electricity board inspected wires and lights, but they found nothing.

Because that's a logical thing to do if your kid is "pinned to a wall by an unseen force."  "Well, Mr. Tucker, your son may have been thrown against a wall by an evil spirit, but your wires and breaker boxes look fine.  I'll leave you with my bill, shall I?"

We are told that the Tuckers moved out, but were followed by other tenants who had bizarre experiences, including seeing the ghost of a dead window-washer who had fallen and broken his neck, and a specter of a headless girl.  But eventually the whole thing died down, presumably because the ghosts got bored and moved to somewhere nicer than a "post-war council house."


Now, let's turn to my second find, UFOs and How to See Them.  My first thought, on picking this one up, was, "How can you write an instruction manual on how to see UFOs?  It's not like they come when called, or anything."  But this is exactly what Ms. Randles has set out to do.  In it, we read such tantalizing hints as:

• UFOs are often sighted near geologic fault zones
• UFOs are more likely to be seen after cold fronts pass through an area
• Crop circles are left behind by aliens as an intelligence test
• William Shatner got lost on his motorcycle in the Mojave Desert, and was guided to safety by a "silvery UFO"
• Ezekiel's visions in the bible were UFO sightings
• "City folk are largely unobservant.  A giant UFO could drift overhead and many of them would never see it!"

So there you are, then.  To her credit, Ms. Randles does give a lot of information on "IFOs" -- "identified flying objects."  She tells you how to recognize known phenomena, so you are less likely to be fooled if you see a weather balloon, a distant jet, a bird, or the planet Venus.  So that's all to the good, although I do sort of wish the aliens had left William Shatner out there in the desert.

Then we have the amazing How to Read the Aura, Practice Psychometry, Telepathy, and Clairvoyance, the book that was thrown across the room in disgust by my brother-in-law after reading the following:

The etheric vision is sometimes called "X ray vision" as it allows its possessor to see through physical matter.  In the early days of mesmerism it was developed for the medical diagnosis of diseases, and since the etheric clairvoyant can, in some cases, apparently see into the interior of the human body and closely observe the working of its various organs, it is easy to see how very helpful this form of clairvoyance can be.

My sense is that it wouldn't be so much "helpful" as "disgusting," but that's just me.

Of course, I was curious about auras, and so I turned to the chapter called "What is the Aura?" to read the following:

... (T)he aura is defined as "a subtle invisible essence or fluid said to emanate from human and animal bodies, and even from things; a psychic electro-vital, electro-mental effluvium, partaking of both mind and body, hence the atmosphere surrounding a person..."  The aura is usually seen as a luminous atmosphere around all living things, including what we regard as inanimate matter.

So, living things, including non-living things.  Got it.

Nathan's comment about the above was that if you're experiencing an electro-mental effluvium, you should probably see a doctor.  I replied that he only thought that because he had a puce-colored aura.


Anyhow.  If you're ever in northwestern Massachusetts, you should definitely visit The Bookmill.  You probably won't find books as entertaining as the three I bought, but I'm sure you'll come away with something awesome.

Secrets of the pyramids

Hi, y'all...

Just to let you know that I'm taking a couple of days off for Thanksgiving.  So there won't be any posts for the rest of the week, as I'll be in a turkey-induced coma.  Don't worry, though... I'll be back in the saddle on Monday, December 1, so keep those cards & letters coming.

And for my American readers, enjoy your holiday!

*************************

What is it with people thinking that pyramids are magical?

I knew a woman a long time ago who was so convinced that there was something special about a square and four equilateral triangles that she built one by hot-gluing together some dowels.  Then she'd store her apples and bananas under it, and told everyone how much longer they stayed unspoiled than if the fruit was just sitting on her counter.

And lo, over at the Self Empowerment and Development Centre, we find out why this is:

Pyramids don't kill bacteria. However the bacteria feed by absorbing nutrients as entropy breaks the tissues down. In a pyramid there is so little entropy that the bacteria barely survive and don't multiply prolifically. Food therefore stays fresher longer and has a chance to dehydrate before it goes bad.

So these people not only don't understand physics, they don't understand microbiology.  Epic fails in two completely disparate fields.  Quite an accomplishment.

Other claims include the idea that pyramids act as a giant "cosmic battery," that sleeping underneath a pyramid can cure illness (or at least alleviate insomnia), and that placing a dull razor blade under a pyramid will re-sharpen it.

The whole thing has gotten so much traction that it actually made Mythbusters.  They tested a bunch of these claims, with a certified pyramid made to the exact proportions of the Great Pyramid of Giza, and to no one's particular surprise, none of the claims turned out to be true.

Which makes you wonder why sites like The Secret Power of the Pyramidal Shape still pop up.  This one was sent to me by three different loyal readers of Skeptophilia, and it's quite a read.  The thing I found the most amusing about it was that it had in-source citations, so it looks a little like an academic paper, but when you check the "Sources Cited" you find out that three of them come from the aforementioned Self Empowerment and Development Centre; one comes from a man named David Wilcock, who claims to be the reincarnation of Edgar Cayce; and one of them comes from Above Top Secret.

Not exactly a bibliography that would inspire confidence.

The site itself is worth reading, though, because it has some fairly surreal passages.  Take, for example, this:

The best passive torsion generators are formed by cones or pyramidal shapes built according to the “phi” ratio of 1 to 0.618 and it can, therefore, be said the pyramid shape has the power to harness torsional energy because torsion waves are phi-spirals and for this reason a pyramid will hold positive energy and deflects negative energy wavelengths and therefore inhibit natural decay.

Okay!  Right!  What?

I mean, about the only things that was doing spirals were my eyes after reading that passage.  Torsional energy is well understood by physicists, and has nothing to do with "phi."  But it's unsurprising that it comes up, honestly.  "Phi" is, of course, the Golden Section, about which much mystical nonsense has been written.  It's a pretty cool number, no question about it, and crops up with great regularity in nature; but it doesn't repel "negative energy wavelengths."

Whatever those are.

We also have some lunar lunacy added to the mix:

Parr has... found that the width of the energy containment bubble or orb expands and contracts with the phases of the moon. This suggests again that the spherical orb on the outside of the pyramid is a static torsion field that gathers around the pyramid and is strengthened by absorbing other dynamic torsion fields.

It was also, apparently, found that a pyramid's "energy field" oscillates at 500 to 1000 hertz.  Should be easy to measure such a phenomenon, right?  I mean, physicists do this sort of thing.  But then we read, "...it was found that every now and then Pyramids quit responding to recordings and measurements."

Convenient, that.

Then we get a photograph of a Mayan pyramid shooting a beam of light up into the air.  Proof, right? Here's the photograph:

This struck me as especially amusing, because I did a piece on this photograph back in 2012 when it first started making the rounds of the interwebz, and included an analysis by Jonathon Hill, digital image analyst for the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University.  Hill noticed something odd about the "energy beam" -- that it was perfectly vertical with respect to the image orientation.  Not a single pixel's variation along its entire length on either side, which is pretty odd if it's a natural (or even a supernatural) phenomenon.  (But easily explainable if it's a digital image artifact.)

But maybe pyramids make these sorts of exactly coherent beams of biocosmic resonant wavelength positive energy vibrations.

Oh, and "quantum."  Don't forget "quantum."

So even despite Mythbusters and other round debunkings, and the completely lack of scientifically admissible evidence, "pyramid power" is still out there.  I guess there is something kind of special about these archeological sites; I remember being awed by visiting the Jaguar Temple, a Mayan pyramid in Belize.  My sons and I climbed to the top, and it was pretty cool, although we didn't experience any surge of harmonic energies (mostly what I remember is looking down the stairs and thinking "Good lord that is A LONG WAY DOWN").

So don't waste your time putting your fruit under a pyramid.  There's another magical device that is much better at keeping fruit fresh.

It's called a "refrigerator."

Nukes on Mars

If you're near Monmouth, Illinois this weekend, you should see if you can drop by the fall meeting of the American Physical Society, being held in Pattee Auditorium at Monmouth College, at 5 PM on Saturday

Why?  Because a guy is going to give a talk to a bunch of physicists about... well, let me just let you read the abstract:

Analysis of recent Mars isotopic, gamma ray, and imaging data supports the hypothesis that perhaps two immense thermonuclear explosions occurred on Mars in the distant past and these explosions were targeted on sites of previously reported artifacts. Analysis rules out large unstable "natural nuclear reactors'' [1], instead, data is consistent with mixed fusion-fission explosions [2]. Imagery at the radioactive centers of the explosions shows no craters, consistent with "airbursts.'' Explosions appear correlated with the sites of reported artifacts at Cydonia Mensa and Galaxias Chaos [3], Analysis of new images from Odyssey, MRO and Mars Express orbiters now show strong evidence of eroded archeological objects at these sites. Taken together, the data requires that the hypothesis of Mars as the site of an ancient planetary nuclear massacre, must now be considered. Fermi's Paradox, the unexpected silence of the stars, may be solved at Mars. Providentially, we are forewarned of this possible aspect of the cosmos. The author therefore advocates that a human mission to Mars is mounted immediately to maximize knowledge of what occurred.\\[4pt] [1] J. E. Brandenburg ``Evidence for a large Natural, Paleo- Nuclear Reactor on Mars'' 42$^{nd}$ LPSC (2011).\\[0pt] [2] J.E. Brandenburg, "Anomalous Nuclear Events on Mars in the Past'', Mars Society Meeting (2014)\\[0pt] [3] J.E. Brandenburg, Vincent DiPietro, and Gregory Molenaar, (1991) "The Cydonian Hypothesis'' Jou. of Sci. Exp., 5, 1, p1-25.

Yup.  This guy is saying that there used to be civilizations on Mars, but they were wiped out by a nuclear attack.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The speaker, John Brandenburg, isn't just some kind of crank, however his theory might suggest that he has a screw loose.  He is a plasma physicist with a Ph.D. from UC-Davis, and apparently prior to this has had a rather distinguished career in research.  How he got off in this direction is a matter of speculation, but what's clear is that he's entirely serious.

His, um, "research" was the subject of a story in Vice last week, and the author, Jason Koebler, was treated to a preprint version of Brandenburg's paper, which concludes thusly:

It is possible the Fermi Paradox means that our interstellar neighborhood contains forces hostile to young, noisy, civilizations such as ourselves," he added. "Such hostile forces could range from things as alien as AI (Artificial Intelligence) ‘with a grudge’ against flesh and blood, as in the movie Terminator, all the way to things as sadly familiar to us as a mindless humanoid bureaucrat like Governor Tarkin in Star Wars, eager to destroy planet Alderaan as an example to other worlds.

Yes, Brandenburg did just end an academic paper with a conclusion that cited as evidence not one, but two, science fiction movies.

Of course, NASA and associated scientific researchers think this whole thing is nonsense.  The alleged "archaeological objects" are natural geological features, not the ruins of buildings.  There is no evidence whatsoever of intelligent life ever having existed on Mars, as cool as that would be.

But of course, the conspiracy theorists beg to differ.  They just love the fact that an actual scientist is proposing all of this.  Partly it's because they automatically approve of anyone who is seen as an iconoclast; and partly it's because before you can get your Conspiracy Theorists' Society membership card, you have to sign a pledge to disbelieve everything that NASA says.  So Brandenburg has scored a twofer, here, and it's no wonder that he's the new hero of the conspiracy world.  You should go to Koebler's article (linked above), because he has actual excerpts from various conspiracy websites that have to be read to be believed, and about which I will only say the following: 1) NASA has, as its primary function, protecting us from alien nuclear bombs from space; and 2) the movie Stargate was not fiction.

So there you have it.  A man who is apparently a loon giving a talk at an actual convention of scientists.  I would love to be there to see their reaction.  I wonder if it's considered impolite to burst into guffaws at an academic talk?

Healing the ocean with syphilis

I think the homeopaths have reached some kind of Derp-vana this week with the announcement by British practitioner Grace DaSilva-Hill that we need to administer homeopathic preparations...

... to the ocean.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

I'm not making this up.  In a story broken by Andy Lewis on Quackometer, we find out that DaSilva-Hill is lamenting the state of the world's oceans, a sentiment with which I have to agree.  But what she proposes to do about it is to treat it with homeopathic "remedies:"

Thanks in advance to all of you who have already agreed to participate in this initiative of sending a homeopathic remedy to heal the oceans. 

The remedy that has been selected is Leuticum (Syph) in the CM potency. 

Just mix one or two drops in some water and offer it to the ocean wherever you happen to be, on 21 November, with pure love and intention...  If you live close to a river that can be done, too, or even just send the remedy down the toilet wherever you happen to be.

Well, I can't argue with the value of flushing homeopathic "remedies" down the toilet.  In my opinion, that should be done right at the factory where they're manufactured.

And what is "Leuticum," you may be wondering?  According to a homeopathy website, Leuticum is a "nosode" -- a "remedy" made from diluted bodily discharges.  And if you're not sufficiently disgusted yet, the bodily discharge involved in Leuticum is infected material from someone with syphilis.

Oh, but wait!  Leuticum is good stuff!  According to the site, it's useful for treating people who:

• are afraid of the dark
• are in chronic pain
• suffer from hair loss
• smell bad

In addition, we find out that you can use it to treat "persons with pale, fine textured skin, who are slender, having graceful movements," and also people with oral cancer.

What this has to do with the ocean is beyond me.

Of course, since the whole idea of homeopathy is that the more dilute the stuff gets, the more powerful it is, dumping it in the ocean is sort of the right approach, isn't it?  You might want to know what we're starting with, though.  What is a "CM potency" -- the strength of the original remedy?  Well, I looked it up on the Wikipedia page on homeopathic dilutions, and therein I found that a CM dilution represents a dilution of 1 part of the original substance in 10 to the 200,000th power parts of water.  If that's a little hard for you to visualize, it amounts to taking a milliliter of the original substance, and diluting it in a sphere of water about 100 light years in diameter, then taking a drop of that and diluting it again by the same amount, and repeating the process 4,000 times.

So what she's saying is to take a drop of that, and throw it in the ocean.

Or in a river.  Or down the toilet.  Or, she says, if you can't even manage that, just take some regular old water and think happy thoughts at it:

Even if you do not have the remedy in a physical form, you can still speak the name of the remedy to a glass of water, and the water will memorise the energy of the remedy (Dr. Masaru Emoto's work).

Dr. Emoto, you may remember, is the Japanese nutjob who thought that if you swear at water and then freeze it, it will form ugly crystals.

But like I said, maybe this is a good thing.  Keeping the homeopaths busy chucking their "remedies" in the ocean is better than what they have been doing lately, like going over to West Africa to try to treat Ebola with water and sugar pills.  I guess if it keeps them busy and out of harm's way, it's all good.

Especially since they can't be accused of putting something that has any side effects into the ocean.  Or, actually, something with any effects at all.

A prehistoric hoax

One of the hazards of becoming more aware of how biased and (sometimes) duplicitous popular media can be is that you finally, de facto, stop believing everything you read and hear.

It's called, of course, being a "cynic," and it's just as lazy as being gullible.  However, because the credulous are often derided as silly or ignorant, cynics sometimes feel that they must therefore be highly intelligent, and that disbelieving everything means that you're too smart to be "taken in."

In reality, cynicism is an excuse, a justification for having stopped thinking.  "The media always lies" isn't any closer to the truth than "everything you eat causes cancer" or "all of the science we're being told now could be wrong."  It give you an automatic reason not to read (or not to watch your diet or not to learn science), and in the end, is simply a statement of willful ignorance.

Take, for example, the site Clues Forum, which has as its tagline, "Exposing Media Fakery."  In particular, consider the thread that was started a little over a year ago, but which continues to circulate, lo up unto this very day... entitled "The (Non-religious) Dinosaur Hoax Question."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

And yes, it means what you think it means.  And yes, the "Question" should simply be answered "No."  But let's look a little more deeply at what they're saying... because I think it reveals something rather insidious.

Take a look at how it starts:

Dinosaurs have, in recent years, become a media subject rivaling the space program in popularity and eliciting similar levels of public adoration towards its researchers and scientists.  The science of dinosaurs and other prehistoric life is also directly linked to other controversial scientific topics such as evolution, fuel production, climate and even the space program (i.e., what allegedly killed them).

So right from the outset, we've jumped straight into the Motive Fallacy -- the idea that a particular individual's motive for saying something has any bearing on that statement's truth value.  Those scientists, the author says, have a motive for our believing in dinosaurs.  Supporting controversial ideas for their own nefarious reasons.  Getting us worried about the climate and the potential for cataclysmic asteroid strikes.  Therefore: they must be lying.  We're never told, outright, why the scientists would lie about such things, but the seed is planted, right there in the first paragraph.

Then, we're thrown more reason for doubt our way, when we're told that (*gasp*) scientists make mistakes.  A dinosaur skeleton found in New Jersey, and now on display at the New Jersey State Museum, was reconstructed with a skull based on an iguana, since the actual skull could not be found.  The article, though, uses the word "fake" -- as if the museum owners, and the scientists, were deliberately trying to pull the wool over people's eyes, instead of interpolating the missing pieces -- something that is routinely done by paleontologists.  And those wily characters even gave away the game by admitting what they were up to, right beneath a photograph of the skeleton:

Above is the full-size Hadrosaurus mount currently on display at the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton.  The posture is now recognized as incorrect.  At the same time the skeleton is fitted with the wrong skull of another type of duck-bill dinosaur.  Signs at the exhibit acknowledge that both the mounted skeleton as well as nearby illustrated depictions of what the living animal looked like are both wrong.  Both are slated for correction at some unspecified future date.

So yet another hole punched in our confidence, with the revelation that (*horrors*) there are things scientists don't know.  Instead of looking at that as a future line of inquiry, this article gives you the impression that such holes in our knowledge are an indication that everything is suspect.

Last, we're told that it's likely that the paleontologists are creating the fossils themselves, because fossils are just "rock in rock," leaving it a complete guessing game as to where the matrix rock ends and the fossil begins.  So for their own secret, evil reasons, paleontologists spend days and weeks out in the field, living in primitive and inhospitable conditions, grinding rocks into the shape of bones so as to hoodwink us all:

But, in our hoax-filled world of fake science, doesn't this rock-in-rock situation make it rather easy for creative interpretations of what the animal really looked like? And, once a particular animal is “approved” by the gods of the scientific community, wouldn't all subsequent representations of that same animal have to conform with that standard?

By the time you've read this far, you're so far sunk in the mire of paranoia that you would probably begin to doubt that gravity exists.  Those Evil, Evil Scientists!  They're lying to us about everything!

Of course, what we're seeing here is the phenomenon I started with; substituting lazy gullibility with lazy disbelief.  All the writer would have to do is sign up for a paleontology class, or (better yet) go on a fossil dig, to find out how the science is really done.

But I've found that people like this will seldom take any of those steps.  Once you suspect everyone, there's no one to lean on but yourself -- and (by extension) on your own ignorance.  At that point, you're stuck.  So there is a difference between gullibility and cynicism.

Gullibility is curable.