The fire of the mind

In Umberto Eco's masterful medieval murder mystery The Name of the Rose, we meet a villain who is willing to kill, over and over, to stop his fellow monks...

... from reading a book.

The following is a spoiler, so you can skip the next few paragraphs (scroll down to where it says [end spoiler alert]) if you haven't read Eco's novel.  Which I hope you all will, because it's brilliant.  But the punchline makes a point that needs to be made now, seven centuries after the time in which the novel is set, as strongly as it did then.

Europe of the early 14th century was a grim place, and life was, in Thomas Hobbes's words, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."  Religion had an iron grip over people's lives, and the learned men of the time taught that the fear of god was paramount.  This fear was translated downwards into fear of the "hierarchy of heaven," as represented here on Earth by the Pope, Cardinals, Bishops, and the monastic system.  And within that system, questioning and freedom of thought was considered heresy, punishable by death.

In this system we find two opposing characters: the brilliant and curious scholar Brother William of Baskerville, and the stern and unyielding Brother Jorge of Burgos.  William is called in to solve a series of murders that have occurred in an unnamed abbey in the mountains of Italy.  The murders revolve around the abbey's magnificent library, the secrets of which are only accessible to the librarian and his assistants.  And one by one, the monks connected with the library are being picked off by someone who is bound and determined to keep some of its knowledge out of the hands of the monks (or anyone else).

The knowledge in question turns out to be a book by Aristotle that was thought lost; the second volume of his Poetics, in which he describes the proper use of comedy, and argues that laughter is freeing, proper, and purifying for the soul.  When Brother William solves the mystery, and discovers that Brother Jorge is behind the murders and has hidden the book, he confronts the old man, and asks him why it was so important to keep such a seemingly innocent volume out of people's hands.  Brother Jorge responds:

(L)aughter is weakness, corruption, the foolishness of our flesh... (H)ere, the function of laughter is reversed, it is elevated to art, the doors of the world of the learned are opened to it, it becomes the object of philosophy, and of perfidious theology...  You saw yesterday how the simple can conceive and carry out the most lurid heresies, disavowing the laws of God and the laws of nature.  But the church can deal with the heresy of the simple, who condemn themselves on their own, destroyed by their own ignorance...  Laughter frees the villein from fear of the Devil, because in the feast of fools the Devil also appears poor and foolish, and therefore controllable.  But this book could teach that freeing oneself from the fear of the Devil is wisdom.  When he laughs, as the wine gurgles in his throat, the villein feels he is master, because he had overturned his position with respect to his lord; but this book could teach learned men the clever, and from that moment, illustrious artifices that could legitimize the reversal.  

To Brother Jorge, it is worth killing, and dying, for his desperate necessity to keep others from knowing the justification of laughter, mirth, and irreverence.  And in the end, he destroys the book and burns down the library to keep that knowledge from the world.

[end spoiler alert]

Which brings us to what has happened in the Middle East in the last few days.

The depredations of ISIS have been all over the news lately, but none have seemed more bizarre and pointless to the western world as two that have occurred recently.  The Islamic State's arm in Libya four days ago burned a pile of musical instruments, saying that such things are "un-Islamic."  Then, just two days ago, ISIS members in Iraq burned the hundred-year-old library in the city of Mosul, destroying 8,000 rare books that were a treasure-trove of cultural information and history.  "900 years ago, the books of the Arab philosopher Averroes were collected before his eyes...and burned," wrote activist and blogger Rayan al-Hadidi.  "One of his students started crying while witnessing the burning.  Averroes told him... the ideas have wings...but I cry today over our situation."

[image courtesy of photographer Alan Levine and the Wikimedia Commons]

Why, in a situation where ISIS members are fighting daily to maintain ground and to keep control of the people they've conquered, would they stop what they're doing to burn musical instruments and ancient manuscripts?  It seems pointless.  Wouldn't they have better things to do with their time and energy?

No.  What ISIS is doing has its own pervasive, evil logic.

It has to do with exactly the same thing that Venerable Jorge hated the idea of: reading, laughter, and music free people from fear.  If you are going to control people, you must control their thoughts.  The first thing you do, therefore, is to destroy any opportunity for them to experience something outside of that control.

Music lifts our emotions into heights that cannot be measured.  When we read, our spirits are free to think any thought, put ourselves in other people's minds, other places, other times.  Dancing does the same thing, which probably explains why Saudi Arabia's "morality police" arrested some young men four days ago for dancing at a birthday party.

Can't have people experiencing anything outside of the narrowly prescribed range of thoughts, feelings, and actions.  If people go outside that range, anything could happen.  And would.

And then, the sword-bearing horrors who are now running much of the Middle East would not be in control any more.  People would learn that there's more to life than fear and obedience, more than living in terror of a grim, humorless cadre of thugs who are so afraid themselves of intellectual and emotional freedom that they will stop at nothing to prevent it from spreading to others.

I live in hope that in our world of interconnectedness and free flow of information via the internet, such control cannot be maintained for long.  We have seen the difficulty the Saudis are having in keeping the holes in the dam from leaking; bloggers and activists who openly criticize the regime are growing in numbers.  Some, such as Raif Badawi, have paid a horrible price for exercising that freedom.

But the truth that ISIS doesn't want their victims to realize is that the spirit of free thought burns hotter than the flames of destruction.  Even if you set fire to books and musical instruments, you can't really control thoughts, even through threats and terror.  The human mind is stronger and more resilient than that.  So even though I weep for the treasures that were lost in the burning of the Mosul Library, I remain optimistic that the desperate and amoral men of ISIS will one day be trod underfoot and forgotten to all but historians, just as their brothers-in-spirit -- the Inquisition of the 14th century -- have been.

The myth of the moral high ground

I have a big sign on my classroom wall that says, "Don't believe everything you think."

It's an important rule-of-thumb to keep in mind.  Far too many people become completely convinced that whatever has popped into their brain must be the truth -- sometimes to the point that they don't question it.  Especially if the "truth" under consideration appeals to a conjecture that they've already fallen for.

It's our old friend confirmation bias again, isn't it?  But instead of using slim evidence to support the claim, here you don't need any evidence at all.  "That seems obvious" is sufficient.

Which brings me to two studies released in the past two weeks that blow a pair of neat holes into this assumption.

In the first, a study by IBM's consulting arm looked into whether it's true that millennials -- people who reached their majority after the year 2000 -- are actually the entitled, lazy twits that many think they are.  Because that's the general attitude by the rest of the adult world, isn't it?  The stereotype includes:

• having been taught by an emphasis on "self-esteem" that there's no reason to push oneself, that "everyone should get a prize" just for showing up
• being idealists who want to save the world without doing any actual work
• being narcissistic to the point of unwillingness to work on a team
• having a severe aversion to criticism, and an even stronger one to using criticism constructively
• having no respect for authority

And the study has shown pretty conclusively that every one of these stereotypes is wrong.

Or, more accurately, they're no more right about millennials than they are about any other generation. According to an article on the study, reported in The Washington Post:

The survey... didn't find any support for the entitled, everybody-gets-a-trophy millennial mindset.  Reports of their doting parents calling bosses to complain about performance reviews may be out there, but, on the whole, IBM's survey shows a different picture.  Millennials list performance-based recognition and promotions as a priority at the same rate as baby boomers do, and they cite fairness, transparency and consistency as the top three attributes they want in a boss.  Someone who "recognizes my accomplishments," meanwhile, comes in at only sixth place... 

If there's any big takeaway about millennials from IBM's study, it's that they want pretty much the same thing most employees want: an ethical and fair boss, inspirational leadership and the opportunity to move ahead in their careers. Where there were differences, they tended to be relatively small.

And at the risk of sounding cocky -- because I'm as prone to this bias as anyone else is --  I have to say that I wasn't surprised by its findings.  I've worked with teenagers for 28 years, and despite the frequent "kids these days!" and "we never got away with that when I was in school!" grousing I hear from my colleagues, my general attitude has always been that kids are kids.  Despite the drastic differences in cultural context between today and when I started teaching, there have always been lazy kids and hard-working kids, motivated kids and unmotivated kids, entitled kids and ones who accepted responsibility for their own failings.  The stuff around us changes, but people?  They remain people, with all of their foibles, no matter what.

The second study hits near to the quick for me.  It revolves around a common perception of atheists as angry ranters who are mad at the whole world, and especially the religious segment of it.  I've been collared about this myself.  "Why can't you atheists be more tolerant?" I've been asked, more than once.  "You just don't seem to be able to live and let live."

But according to a paper soon to be released in The Journal of Psychology, the myth of the angry atheist is just that -- a myth.  The study's authors write:

Atheists are often portrayed in the media and elsewhere as angry individuals. Although atheists disagree with the pillar of many religions, namely the existence of a God, it may not necessarily be the case that they are angry individuals.  The prevalence and accuracy of angry-atheist perceptions were examined in 7 studies with 1,677 participants from multiple institutions and locations in the United States.  Studies 1–3 revealed that people believe atheists are angrier than believers, people in general, and other minority groups, both explicitly and implicitly.  Studies 4–7 then examined the accuracy of these beliefs.  Belief in God, state anger, and trait anger were assessed in multiple ways and contexts.  None of these studies supported the idea that atheists are particularly angry individuals.  Rather, these results support the idea that people believe atheists are angry individuals, but they do not appear to be angrier than other individuals in reality.

Of course, there's a logical basis to this stereotype; it's the militant ranters who get the most press.  And not only do the angry individuals get the greatest amount of publicity, their most outrageous statements are the ones everyone hears about.  It's why, says Nicholas Hune-Brown, the public perception of Richard Dawkins is that he's the man who "seems determined to replace his legacy as a brilliant evolutionary biologist with one as 'guy who’s kind of a dick on Twitter'"

Once again, we should focus on the outcome of the study -- that atheists are no more likely to be angry than members of other groups.  It isn't saying that there aren't angry atheists; it's saying that there are also angry Christians, Muslims, Jews, and so on.  The perception of atheists as more likely to be intolerant and ill-tempered is simply untrue.

[image courtesy of photographer/artist Emery Way and the Wikimedia Commons]

So back to my original point.  It behooves us all to keep in mind that what we assume to be true may, in fact, not be.  How many times do we all overgeneralize about people of other political parties, religions, genders, gender preferences, even appearance and modes of dress?  It's easy to fall into the trap of saying "All you people are alike," without realizing that what seems like an obvious statement of fact is actually bigotry.

It may be impossible to eradicate this kind of bias, but I'll exhort you to try, in your own mind, to move past it.  When you find yourself engaging in categorical thinking, stop in your tracks, and ask yourself where those beliefs came from, and whether they are justified.  And, most importantly, whether there is any hard evidence that what your brain is claiming is true.

And if the answer to either of the latter questions is "No," then take a moment to suspend your certainty.  Look at the people you'd been judging without needing to make a judgment.  Get off the moral high ground.  I think you'll find that empathy and tolerance are, in general, a far better perspective from which to view the world.

The dark side

I love science, but sometimes scientists can be their own worst enemies.

The reason I say this is that scientists sometimes have a tendency to throw caution to the wind and engage in speculation, which then gets reported by the media as "scientific fact."  When said speculation turns out to be false, or is superseded by other models for which there is more evidence, laypeople get the wrong idea that scientists sit around all day making shit up, and when it turns out to be wrong, they just make more shit up, and on and on it goes.

So media bears a large share of the blame for this, as usual.  But that said, it would be nice if there was some way for scientists to identify in their academic papers when they're engaging in tentative hypothesis, and when they're elaborating on a well-established and rock-solid theoretical model.

Amongst the latter would be evolution and anthropogenic climate change.  Just had to throw that in there.

But as an example of the former, let's look at a paper by Michael Rampino, professor of biology at New York University, who recently published a paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society proposing that the periodic mass extinctions that have occurred on Earth might be caused by the interaction between the Solar System and a thin layer of dark matter along the galactic plane.  Rampino writes:

A cycle in the range of 26–30 Myr has been reported in mass extinctions, and terrestrial impact cratering may exhibit a similar cycle of 31 ± 5 Myr. These cycles have been attributed to the Sun's vertical oscillations through the Galactic disc, estimated to take from ∼30 to 42 Myr between Galactic plane crossings. Near the Galactic mid-plane, the Solar system's Oort Cloud comets could be perturbed by Galactic tidal forces, and possibly a thin dark matter (DM) disc, which might produce periodic comet showers and extinctions on the Earth. Passage of the Earth through especially dense clumps of DM, composed of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) in the Galactic plane, could also lead to heating in the core of the planet through capture and subsequent annihilation of DM particles. This new source of periodic heating in the Earth's interior might explain a similar ∼30 Myr periodicity observed in terrestrial geologic activity, which may also be involved in extinctions. These results suggest that cycles of geological and biological evolution on the Earth may be partly controlled by the rhythms of Galactic dynamics.

The difficulty, of course, is that dark matter is still yet to be detected, despite years of search.  We can observe that there's something out there that, from its gravitational effects, seems to make up most of the universe's mass.  But what it's made of, and what its properties are, are completely unknown.  "WIMPs" -- the Weakly Interacting Massive Particles Rampino references in his paper -- are one candidate for the constituents of dark matter.  But they, too, are yet to be confirmed to exist, despite multiple experiments designed to detect them at the Large Hadron Collider.

So Rampino is proposing that a 31 ± 5 million year mass extinction cycle (5 million years representing a 15% variability either way) links to a 30 to 42 million year galactic-plane-crossing cycle (which represents a 16% variability either way) via a mechanism connected to a type of matter we've never seen and whose properties can only be guessed at.

Map of the "dark matter halo" surrounding a galaxy [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Now, don't get me wrong.  Thinking outside the box is the way great discoveries are made.  For example, it was Einstein's decision to throw away the "problem of the constancy of the speed of light" that led to the discovery of the Theory of Relativity.  Einstein's contemporaries had spent decades trying furiously to explain away the fact that in a vacuum, light seemed to move at the same speed in all reference frames, something that couldn't happen according to classical mechanics.  All sorts of wild ideas were proposed -- for example, a universal "ether" that permeated the universe, and through which light moved -- and one by one they were knocked down.

Einstein, however, decided to take the "problem of the constancy of the speed of light" and turn it into the "law of the constancy of the speed of light" and see what mathematical predictions came out of that assumption.  And then, run experiments to see if those predictions worked.  Lo: the Theory of Relativity, with its wild time dilation and Lorenz Contraction weirdness.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that there's nothing wrong with speculation.  I just wish there was some way for scientists to differentiate between when they're proposing a speculative hypothesis and reporting on an experimentally-supported theory.

Maybe they should write speculative articles in "Comic Sans."  I dunno.

I say this because I'm seeing stories come up all over the place, just in the last couple of weeks, claiming that "dark matter killed the dinosaurs."  Which Rampino himself would admit is not justified at this time (note in the passage I quoted how many times he uses the words "could," "might," and "may").  And when someone else proposes a different mechanism to explain the periodicity of extinctions, it'll also get reported as fact, and laypeople will have further evidence that all scientists do is come up with wild tales all day long.

So I really should revise my initial statement.  It's not that scientists are their own worst enemies.  It's that popular media are the scientists' worst enemies.  That, and the fact that the public still doesn't really understand how science is done (look at the ongoing confusion about what the word "theory" means).

And given the fact that a significant proportion of the public still doesn't accept the findings of science that aren't speculative, the last thing we need is to sow more doubt in people's minds by misrepresenting the parts of science that are still only conjecture.

Backfires and improprieties

If there is one cognitive bias that makes me want to punch a wall, it's the backfire effect.

The backfire effect is a well-studied psychological tendency wherein people with strong opinions on a subject are presented with a logical, rational, fact-supported argument against what they believe in.  The result?  Those people double down on their original opinion.  In other words: given evidence against what people believe, they will believe it even more strongly.

Take, for example, something I've discussed more than once in this blog: anthropogenic climate change.  The data and the jury are both in.  The world is, on the average warming up, and this is due to human activity, especially the burning of fossil fuels.  This warm-up has destabilized the climate, resulting in the worst drought California has seen in recorded history, two years of record high temperatures in Alaska, and two consecutive winters where the northeastern and north central United States have been punished by a chunk of Arctic air that has been cut loose and sent southward by a meander in the jet stream, resulting in a series of snowstorms that buried Boston under eight feet of snow in the last four weeks.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

So there's no real doubt about all this any more.  But that doesn't mean there's not doubters, because that's not the same thing, apparently.  And we got a nasty dose of the backfire effect, apropos of said doubters, just in the last couple of days, with the announcement that one of the most prominent climate change deniers, Dr. Wei-Hock (Willie) Soon, has received a huge percentage of his funding from the petroleum industry...

... without disclosing that information in his scientific papers.

In scientific circles, this is known rather euphemistically as an "impropriety."

And we're not talking about small amounts of money, either.  Soon received a total of $1.2 million from the fossil-fuels industry, including $409,000 from Atlanta-based Southern Company, which has invested heavily in coal-fired electrical plants -- and which sponsors an anti-climate-change lobby in Washington, D.C.  Then we have the $230,000 Soon got from none other than the Koch brothers.  Additionally, he has been heavily funded by Donors Trust, an Alexandria (Virginia)-based funds transfer outfit that takes anonymous donations and passes them on to (mostly conservative) causes.

Can you say "conflict of interest," children?

I knew you could.

Soon, who is employed by the Smithsonian Institution, is likely to find himself in completely merited hot water over this.  W. John Kress, interim undersecretary for science at the Smithsonian, said about Dr. Soon's actions, "I am aware of the situation with Willie Soon, and I’m very concerned about it.  We are checking into this ourselves."

So this seems like something that would be hard for the deniers to explain away.  For years they've argued that all you have to do is "follow the money" -- that the climatologists are biased to find evidence for climate change where there is none, because that's the way they get funding.  The knife should cut both ways, shouldn't it?

Apparently not.  The screaming denier-machine swung into action almost immediately, with a slimy little smear piece appearing in Breitbart.com that made it look like Dr. Soon was the victim.  Referring to the people who accept that human activity is causing the planet to warm up as the "lickspittle posse" -- a phrase that may win the award for throw-up-a-little-in-your-mouth metaphor of the year -- the author, James Delingpole, portrays Dr. Soon as a beleaguered champion of the truth, fighting against what amounts to the environmental mafia.  But after blathering on in this fashion for a while, he goes on to say something that's actually kind of interesting:

I spoke to Soon last night. He told me that of course he receives private funding for his research: he has to because it’s his only way of making ends meet, especially since the Alarmist establishment launched its vendetta against him when, from 2009 onwards, he became more outspoken in his critiques of global warming theory. 

Harvard-Smithsonian strove to make his life harder and harder, first by banning him from working on anything even remotely connected with issues like climate change or CO2, then by moving his office away from the astrophysics department to a remote area Soon calls Siberia.

Of course Dr. Soon is allowed to accept private funding.  What is required by scientific ethical standards, however, is that he admit the source of those funds up front in his papers, which he has not done, and now he got caught.  But what's more interesting, here, is that Delingpole inadvertently points out one of the central problems with all of this.

Soon isn't a climatologist.  He's an astrophysicist.

Okay, it's vaguely connected, I suppose, because his claim all along has been that any warming is due to an increase in the radiant energy the Earth receives from the Sun.  But if you're trying to find the errors in the climate model, wouldn't you ask a climatologist to do it?

Oh, wait.  The climatologists are all in the pockets of Greenpeace.  Never mind that Soon is in the far, far deeper pockets of the Koch brothers.  That, apparently, is irrelevant.

But the overall effect is to make the deniers deny even harder, as the world warms up further (c.f. a Scientific American article in which we find out that there have been zero months since February 1985 that have had average temperatures below the overall 20th century average), and the climate continues to oscillate wildly, and we continue to do absolutely nothing about it.

Easier, I suppose, to accept the status quo than to change your habits.

Or your opinions.

What the cat dragged in

One thing I try to keep in mind when I'm reading something controversial is the fact that all humans have biases, including me.  And sometimes these biases are so powerful that they become blind spots -- something we believe so strongly that we flatly refuse even to consider any evidence to the contrary.

And when you tie in powerful emotions to these blind spots, people become so immovable in their convictions that trying to change their minds is damn near impossible.

One rather unexpected case of such a blind spot surfaces periodically on a listserv I belong to.  As some of you may know, I'm a rather rabid birder, and have been known to stand in the freezing cold for hours or trek through a leech-infested steam bath of a southeast Asian jungle just in order to see birds I've never seen before.  So I belong to a listserv called "BirdChat," so I can connect with other similarly-obsessed and dubiously-sane people around the world.  And every once in a while, someone will bring up the topic of...

... cats.

When you bring up cats -- more specifically, outdoor cats -- you immediately sort the birding world into two groups.  The first has a mortal hatred of outdoor cats, and considers their toll on bird populations to be ridiculously high.  The second, which consists almost entirely of people who own cats that are allowed outdoors, dismisses those contentions as nonsense.

[image courtesy of Mark Marek Photography and the Wikimedia Commons]

And the battle escalates quickly.  Usually someone brings up the Stephen's Island Wren, a little flightless bird that lived only on one island near New Zealand, and which was exterminated by the islanders' pet cats.  Someone else will counter that we're not talking about small islands, here, that allowing Mr. Fluffums to catch a sparrow or two every once in a while is just allowing him to express his natural hunting instincts, and isn't hurting anything.  Some hothead will then propose turning loose coyotes near Mr. Fluffums' stomping grounds, and seeing how his owners will feel about "natural hunting instincts" then.  Tempers rise, unsourced facts and statistics are thrown around, and no one gives an inch.  Usually a moderator will have to step in and say, "You people need to stop this right now," and everyone will return, grumbling, to their respective corners, until the next time the subject comes up.

So at the risk of setting off a firestorm here, how 'bout we look at an actual peer-reviewed study regarding the subject?  Can it be true that outdoor cats are a problem, or are we looking at people who take bird conservation way, way too seriously?

Scott Loss, Tom Will, and Peter Marra wrote an article for Nature about two years ago that settles the issue, fact-wise, once and for all.  Called "The Impact of Free-Ranging Cats on Wildlife in the United States," it describes a "systematic review and [quantitative] estimate [of] mortality caused by cats," and came up with the following staggering statistics:

We estimate that free-ranging domestic cats kill 1.4–3.7 billion birds and 6.9–20.7 billion mammals annually... Our findings suggest that free-ranging cats cause substantially greater wildlife mortality than previously thought and are likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals.

That's "billion" with a "b," folks.  And focus especially on the last sentence; cats are the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for American birds.  More than legal and illegal hunting; more than pesticides; more than collisions with automobiles, wind turbines, and airplanes.

In fact, more than all of those put together.

About the study, Dr. George Fenwick, president of the American Bird Conservancy, said:

The very high credibility of this study should finally put to rest the misguided notions that outdoor cats represent some harmless, new component to the natural environment.  The carnage that outdoor cats inflict is staggering and can no longer be ignored or dismissed.  This is a wake-up call for cat owners and communities to get serious about this problem before even more ecological damage occurs.

Pretty unequivocal, you'd think.  But the response from cat owners has largely been: silence.

The reason I bring all of this up is a conversation I had a couple of days ago with someone who was troubled because she has a bird feeder, and also an outdoor cat.  So she is, in effect, luring in birds so the cat can kill them.  Is there anything, she asked, that she can do to keep the cat from killing the birds in her yard?

I said, "Keep the cat indoors."

She looked dubious.  "But... I don't want to do that."

I gave her an incredulous look.  "Then you shouldn't have a bird feeder."

"I don't want to do that, either.  I like the birds."

"Then keep the damn cat indoors."

Having seen the firestorms that have erupted on the BirdChat listserv, I let the topic drop.  Because when you tie in biases and preconceived notions with the emotions -- especially about something as emotionally-laden as pet ownership -- things can escalate really quickly.

The data is out there.  Let me reiterate: outdoor cats are the single worst cause of bird mortality in the United States (and, I believe, in Great Britain as well).  So if you care about wildlife, the only responsible thing to do is to keep your cats inside.

But I have to wonder how many minds this will change.  On topics like this, it's far easier to frown, say, "Oh, but this can't really be about my cat," and go on doing what you've done before.  I hope I'm wrong, mind you, because this is one topic on which the jury has weighed in, and the verdict is unarguable.

But as we've seen all too many times before, changing people's minds when they've already decided what they believe is often a losing battle.  Sometimes the attitude is "evidence be damned, I'll do what I like."

Fluid morality

I try not to let my skepticism slide over into cynicism.  The latter, a disbelieve-everything-they-say approach, seems to me to be as fundamentally lazy as gullibility.  Being a skeptic is harder, but ultimately more likely to land you near the truth; keep your mind open, wait for hard evidence, and then follow that wherever it leads.

But there are some realms in which I am reminded of Lily Tomlin's line, "No matter how cynical I get, it's just not enough to keep up."  And one of those is the way fracking is being presented by the powers-that-be.

Consider the highly publicized publicity stunt by Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, who in 2013 drank a glass of fracking fluid to show how safe it was.

"You can drink it," Hickenlooper told the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.  "We did drink it around the table, almost rituallike, in a funny way.  It was a demonstration… they’ve invested millions of dollars in what is a benign fluid in every sense."

[image courtesy of photographer Joe Sullivan and the Wikimedia Commons]

The gas companies have stated outright that the ingredients are "sourced from the food industry," but still refuse to give a complete formulation for how it's made, saying such information is "proprietary."  Hickenlooper agrees, and said, "If we were overzealous in forcing them to disclose what they had created, they wouldn’t bring it into our state."

Under pressure from environmental groups, the gas industry has released a list of "the chemicals used most often" in fracking fluid, along with their purpose.  They state that "there are dozens to hundreds that could be used as additives" above and beyond these, although this is downplayed.

They look like they're doing everything they can to be completely transparent, up to the point where it starts to jeopardize their trade secrets.  "Here, we'll show you what we're doing!" they seem to be saying.  "You want the water supply protected, and safety to be paramount?  Well, so do we!"

Then you have to wonder why the industry has not rushed into the breach when people have been injured by the chemicals in their "benign" fracking fluid.  Makes you almost think they're... covering something up.

In 2008, a gas driller, Clifton Marshall, came into the emergency room in Durango Mercy Regional Medical Center in Durango, Colorado, after he had spilled fracking fluid on his clothes and boots.  Marshall was in a bad way, but it didn't end there; Cathy Behr, an emergency room nurse, spent ten minutes working on Marshall without using adequate protective equipment.  By this time, the emergency room had to be cleared because the smell of the chemicals was strong enough to make people gag.  But Behr, who had come into direct contact with the contaminated clothing, was to experience worse.  Two days later, the nurse found herself back in the emergency room, but this time because she was sick; she had jaundice, and was vomiting and feverish.  The doctors found that Behr was in multiple organ failure from "poisoning by an unknown chemical."

Pressed by the hospital to tell them what was in the fracking fluid that sickened Behr and Marshall, the gas company -- Halliburton Industries -- refused, saying it was a trade secret.  If anyone released what was in the fluid, they said, they would sue -- and then pull their multi-million-dollar drilling operation from the state.

Hospital officials backed down.  To this day, no one knows what was in the fluid.

In a rural community in Pennsylvania -- no one knows exactly where, for reasons you'll see in a moment -- the owners of a 300-acre dairy farm signed a land-use agreement with a gas company, allowing fracking on their land.  The disturbance would be minimal, the gas company said, and the risk slight.  After the drilling began, though, the family who owned the farm, the "Rogers" family (not their real name), began to question the effects that the operation was having on their drinking and agricultural water, and agreed to participate in a study by an independent agency to monitor what was happening.

But they couldn't do that, they found out quickly.  Here's how TruthOut reported the story:

The Rogers did not realize they had signed a nondisclosure agreement with the gas company making the entire deal invalid if members of the family discussed the terms of the agreement, water or land disturbances resulting from fracking and other information with anyone other than the gas company and other signatories... 

Mrs. Rogers initially agreed to participate in a study Perry [the scientist coordinating the study] was conducting on rural families living near fracking operations. She later called Perry in tears, explaining that her family could no longer participate in the study because of the nondisclosure clause in the surface-use agreement. She told Perry she felt stupid for signing the agreement and has realized she had a good life without the money the fracking company paid them to use their land.

There are also dozens of cases where gas companies have been sued because their operations have permanently contaminated drinking water supplies, and have settled in the litigants' favor -- but only on the condition that the litigants sign a statement mandating that they never disclose what the gas companies did.  This is an easy out for the gas companies; people will usually settle for an amount of cash that the gas industry considers a pittance as compared to the bad press they'd receive if such information became public.  "At this point they feel they can get out of this litigation relatively cheaply," Marc Bern, an attorney with Napoli Bern Ripka Sholnik LLP in New York, who has negotiated on behalf of homeowners, said in an interview.  "Virtually on all of our settlements where they paid money they have requested and demanded that there be confidentiality."

There are also multiple cases where doctors have appealed to gas companies to release what is in fracking fluid, to allow the doctors to treat patients poisoned by exposure to it, and the industry has complied -- but only if the doctors themselves agree to a lifelong nondisclosure statement.

And state governments are caving in from the pressure by the industry.  Just last year, North Carolina passed a bill that made it a crime for anyone to disclose the constituents of fracking fluid.  The name of the bill?  The "Energy Modernization Act."

Still think that the gas companies are all about safety and transparency?  Then consider one more story, again from southwestern Pennsylvania, only two years ago.

Chris and Stephanie Hallowich lived with their two children, then 7 and 10, in a house in rural Washington County, when they started experiencing health issues from water that had been fouled by a fracking operation nearby.  They were desperate to get out of their house, and sued the gas company, Range Resources, for enough money to cut their losses and move.  Range Resources agreed to a $750,000 settlement, but required (guess what?) a nondisclosure agreement.  The Hallowichs could not speak to anyone about fracking, or the Marcellus Shale, or Range Resources, or their symptoms, or the contamination to their water supply, ever.

And that lifelong gag order also applied to their children.

The Hallowichs' attorney, Peter Villari, said directly to Washington County Common Pleas Court Judge Paul Polonsky, who heard the case, "I, frankly, your Honor, as an attorney, to be honest with you, I don’t know if that’s possible that you can give up the First Amendment rights of a child."  Pozonsky didn't have an answer to that except that this is what the Hallowichs had to agree to if they wanted to settle.

"That someone would insist on confidentiality of a minor child," Villari said, "or that it would be discussed within the context of a proposed settlement was unusual.  I have not encountered it before and I have yet to encounter it again."

"Unusual" isn't the word I'd use.  I think "unconstitutional" comes closer to the mark.

The frightening part of this is that because the gas industry is wealthy and powerful, they are pulling the strings here -- and everyone else is dancing to their tune.  They have no reason to bend.  They've been getting their own way at every turn, from politicians and courts that conveniently ignore the dangers to ordinary citizens because (frankly) money talks.

Where this skein of lies comes full circle, though, is in asking why the gas companies are this protective of the ingredients in the fracking fluid.  I simply don't believe that this is a trade secret that is worth keeping simply from a proprietary-protection argument alone.  Surely each of these companies can't have discovered a formula that they think is so wonderful, so much better than their rivals', that they'd engage in all of these dubiously-legal shenanigans to protect it?

Isn't it just slightly more likely that there's something in this fluid that is not exactly "benign?"  Something that might, in fact, be toxic enough that to make it public would alert the public to how much danger they're actually in?

But surely the Toxic Substances Control Act would protect the public from this kind of thing.  That's why it was passed.  Right?

Wrong.  TSCA has an exemption for reporting "Tier 2" exposure to chemicals -- i.e., exposure that happens after the chemicals leave the site of manufacture -- for "petroleum process streams."  If you're exposed to fracking chemicals, you have no federal leverage to force the industry to give you information, much less to force them to stop what they're doing.

So the only way all of this will halt is if enough people know about it, and refuse to sign the fracking leases.  Already we're seeing cases of eminent domain being invoked in laying in pipelines to carry the gas; the only way to halt the industry is to cut off its source.

Which is why it's so critical that people find out about these things.  Because as we've seen, once the damage is done, the industry has been more interested in hushing it up than cleaning it up (or, heaven forfend, changing their ways).  And if that doesn't justify some level of cynicism about their commitment to decency, safety, and public health, I don't know what would.

FBI versus Facebook

For the latest reason to freak out, consider the claim over at America's Freedom Fighters that some of your Facebook friends are actually FBI agents conducting surveillance on your activities.

Now, there's good reason to be careful of what you post, and it has nothing to do with some undercover cop posing as your old college drinking buddy.  Doing anything online leaves a digital footprint so big it can be seen from space, and potential employers and college admissions officers now do routine checks to make sure that the person they're considering hasn't done anything too sketchy.  

Or stupid.  There are hundreds of stories of people who have been reprimanded, fired, or expelled for posting inappropriate stuff on social media, and most of them make you wonder how the people in question manage to tie their own shoelaces.  Examples include:

• The bank teller who told his boss he had to be away for a family emergency, and then the same day posted photos of himself at a Halloween party dressed as Tinkerbell.
• An Ohio school bus driver who was fired after posting photographs of herself drinking beer -- while seated behind the wheel of the school bus.
• A woman who called her boss a "total pervvy [sic] wanker" who made her "do shit stuff just to piss her off" on Facebook, evidently forgetting that she had recently friended him on Facebook.

And so on.  So yes, it is possible to get yourself into hot water from what you post.  It's why I'm pretty careful; I'm a teacher, a public figure in our little community, and I try to be fairly guarded about what I say and do online.  (Not, mind you, that my life is rife with drunken debauchery, or anything.  I'm such an introvert that I consider drinking a beer and watching an episode of Lost in Space a wild night.)

But still, there's such a thing as taking paranoia too far.  And the article "How Many of Your Facebook Friends are Undercover Feds?" takes the concept of being cautious about one's digital footprint, and runs right off the cliff with it.  The writer contends:

U.S. law enforcement agents are following the rest of the Internet world into popular social-networking services, going undercover with false online profiles to communicate with suspects and gather private information, according to an internal Justice Department document that offers a tantalizing glimpse of issues related to privacy and crime-fighting.

Which applies to me how, exactly?  They can check me out all they like.  Oh noes!  The Justice Department is going to see my vacation photographs!  Horrors!

The best part, though, is the article's signoff:

We urge you to very careful about who you ‘friend’- They could be a part of the government or the Left’s attack on Conservatives… GOD BLESS AMERICA!

And of course, they never tell you how you might tell your true friends from the Undercover Leftist FBI Covert Operatives.  You're left suspicious of everyone, which I have no doubt is the intent.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

What I find funny about this is two things.

First: you seriously think that you're that important?  Unless the person reading this blog is some kind of master criminal or terrorist or spy, the FBI clearly has better things to do with their time and resources than to go through photographs of what you had to eat at the Chinese restaurant last night.

Second: do you really think that if the FBI were interested in you, they wouldn't be able to find out about you unless they friended you on Facebook first?  That's so naïve, it's kind of adorable.  I mean, can't you just hear the conversation?

Agent #1:  "We've got to crack this case, and it all depends on finding out what Steve Hickenlooper had for dinner last night!  But dammit, he won't accept my friend request!" 

Agent #2:  "He's a wily one, Steve is."  *snaps his fingers*  "Hey, I've got it!  Maybe if you sent him a friend request posing as his high school girlfriend, LouEllen Finkwhistle!  He'd fall for that!" 

Agent #1:  "Isn't LouEllen the one who got fired for calling her boss a 'pervvy wanker'?" 

Agent #2:  "Yup.  She deleted her Facebook account after that happened.  So if you pretended to be her, Steve would never know it wasn't actually her." 

Agent #1:  *rubs his hands together*  "EX-cellent."

So anyway.  My advice is continue to have fun on social media, but do be careful what you put out there.  The rule of "once you put it online, it's online forever" is a pretty good one to follow.  But as far as thinking that your online contacts are all undercover agents spying on you -- relax.  No offense, but you're honestly not that interesting.

Of course, that's what I would say, isn't it?  So thanks for clicking on this post, and all.

*reaches for little black book to write down your name and email address*

EX-cellent.