The appeal of the underdog

We skeptics like to think that our logic will always be convincing, that people who believe in counterfactual nonsense will come around to a more scientific way of thinking if only we point out how silly they're being.  Turn on the lights, we think, and people can't help but see more clearly.

Unfortunately, it turns out that the human brain doesn't work like that.

We have two strikes against us right from the start.  One of them is the backfire effect, the well-documented tendency of people to double-down on their beliefs when they're presented with hard evidence against them.  Shown data, facts, and a logical argument that people are wrong, and often they'll come away even more convinced that they're right... and threatened.

But a second one has to do with how people react when they see others attacked.  Many people end up espousing woo-woo beliefs because they were persuaded by some charismatic public figure, so the figure him/herself ends up being representative of the ideas.  And an attack on someone we revere often leaves us outraged on their behalf, and thinking that the ones mounting the attack are simply arrogant assholes.

Because as Robert Park tells us in his wonderful book Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud (which all of you should order right now and read), we love backing an underdog.  If the spokesperson for our favorite silly idea appears unfairly besieged by the establishment, we rally to the cause.

Describing the campaign of the amazingly persistent crank Joe Newman, who claimed for years that both the First and the Second Laws of Thermodynamics were false and that he'd created a perpetual motion machine that could create energy, Park writes:

An intense, handsome man in his forties, dressed in work clothes, his dark hair combed straight back, the plainspoken mechanic looked directly into the eyes of his viewers.  He declared that his Energy Machine could produce ten times the electrical energy it took to run it.  "Put one in your home," he said, "and you'll never have to pay another electric bill." 

It's the sort of story Americans love.  A backwoods wizard who never finished high school makes a revolutionary scientific discovery.  He is denied the fruits of his genius by a pompous scientific establishment and a patent examiner who rejects his application for a patent on "an unlimited source of energy" without even examining it, on the ground that all alleged inventions of perpetual motion machines are refused patents.  Not a man to be pushed around, Joseph Wesley Newman takes on the U. S. government, filing suit in federal court against the Patent and Trademark Office.  It's the little man battling a gigantic, impersonal system... 

Perhaps the most endearing characteristic of Americans is their sympathy for the underdog.  They resent arrogant scientists who talk down to them in unfamiliar language, and the government bureaucrats who hide behind rules.  Moreover, Joe Newman's claim invoked one of the most persistent myths of the industrialized world -- free energy.  Who has not heard stories of the automobile that runs on ordinary water?  Suppressed, of course, by the oil industry.  The public never tires of that story.

And just lately, we've had two examples of just this.  First, Vani Hari, the self-proclaimed "Food Babe" whose ideas basically boil down to "if you can't pronounce the name of a chemical, you shouldn't have it in your body," was systematically taken apart by analytical chemist Yvette d'Entremont in a Gawker article entitled, "The 'Food Babe' is Full of Shit."  The article is well-researched, well-written, and its logic seems incontrovertible.

And yet, Ms. Babe and her followers, the self-proclaimed "Food Babe Army," are still going strong.  Food herself has responded to her critics with a shrieking diatribe that amounts to nothing more than one long string of loose-cannon ad hominems.  Food is rather notorious for this approach; when last year she wrote a piece on her blog about how horrible it was that the air in airplane cabins wasn't pure oxygen, and within hours received 4,847,901 responses that (1) ordinary air is only 21% oxygen, and (2) if airplanes were filled with pure oxygen, they'd be explosive, she responded by taking down the post and claiming that her views were being misrepresented by a hostile cadre of shills for Big Nitrogen.

And her followers loved it.  "Go Food Babe!" one of them wrote.  "Keep fighting for the health of Americans!  We're behind you 100%."

Then we had Dr. Mehmet Oz, whose weird brand of holistic alternative medicine has raised the ire of everyone who thinks that medical modalities should be based on, you know, actual hard data.  Here are three of his claims (quoted from a wonderful article by Scott Gavura in Science-Based Medicine):

• (On green coffee extract) — “You may think magic is make-believe, but this little bean has scientists saying they found the magic weight-loss for every body type.”
• (On raspberry ketone) — “I’ve got the number one miracle in a bottle to burn your fat”
• (On Garcinia cambogia) — “It may be the simple solution you’ve been looking for to bust your body fat for good.”

This is just scratching the surface.  Oz has become rich off of telling people not to listen to their doctors, that science is actually a religion, and that all they need to do is buy his books and come to his speaking appearances and they'll know how to improve their health. 

And just last week, there was a well-meant campaign against Oz that threatens to fail spectacularly.  A group of medical researchers banded together to try to get Oz fired from his position at Columbia University, saying he promoted "disdain for science" and "quack medicine," statements which are fairly unarguable to anyone who understands how scientific research works.  But Oz, like Food Babe, isn't quelled in the least by these accusations -- and now has said that he will use his television show (of course he has a television show) to take on his critics.

"We plan to show America who these authors are, because discussion of health topics should be free of intimidation," Oz said.

It should also, apparently, be free of logic, data, evidence, and peer review.

And the sad thing is how unlikely all this is to change anyone's opinion.  My guess is that neither Food Babe nor Dr. Oz will experience the least drop in their popularity or book sales from the criticisms they've received.  Indeed, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they increase, because as Brendan Behan famously said, "There's no such thing as bad publicity."

Sorry if all of this is depressing.  The human mind, unfortunately, is more often swayed by emotion than it is by logic.  But the news is not all bad.  If you'll send me $39.95, I'll send you a device that you can hook into your home wiring system that will provide for all of your electricity needs.

You'll never have to pay the electric company another cent.  I promise, cross my heart and hope to die.

It is your mind that bends

Two days ago, I was in my car on the way to a gig with my band, and I was listening to some classical music on satellite radio.  The announcer came on with some of the usual sort of background information before a piece is played.  In this case, she said, "Next, we're going to hear from one of the masters of the classical guitar."  And immediately, I thought, "it's going to be Narciso Yepes."

And she continued, "... here's Narciso Yepes, playing Bach's Lute Suite #1."

Now, it's odd that I thought of Yepes at all.  I don't know much about classical guitar players -- the two I've heard the most often are Andrés Segovia and Christopher Parkening, but even them I only listen to intermittently.  I think I have one CD of Yepes, but I'm not sure where it is and I don't think I've listened to it in years.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

So the certainty of my thought is peculiar from a couple of standpoints, even if you believe that it wasn't a premonition (which, predictably, I don't).  The first is that I came up with the name of a guitarist I barely know at all, as soon as the announcer mentioned "classical guitar;" and the second, of course, is that it turned out to be right.

Interestingly (and you might consider this another synchronicity), just yesterday a loyal reader of Skeptophilia sent me a link to a subreddit called Glitch in the Matrix which is devoted to exactly these sorts of occurrences.  The name comes from the movie The Matrix, in which odd coincidences and experiences of déjà vu are indicative that the Machines are making minor alterations to the computer simulation inside of which we all live.  (On second thought, the reader sending me the link is not so surprising after all; it was in response to yesterday's post on déjà vu.)

The fact that we all have these experiences now and again certainly deserves some consideration. Let's take a look at three excerpts from the subreddit:

For about 5 or 6 years now (I'm 21 as of now), I've noticed that, whether it's the time that I check my phone, or it's a donation on a Twitch stream, or any number of other things, there's a decent chance that it'll be the number 619.  It's nothing I'm too worried about, but it pops up every so often naturally that it just doesn't seem like a simple coincidence anymore.  It's something that I noticed happened, and then it continued to happen long after that. 

I'll notice the time as 6:19 every once in a while, and at first I chalked it up to being stuck in the same routine, but it continued to occur after several changes in sleep schedules and school/work schedule.  Again, it's not only the time of day either, but I'll notice it in a phone number, or any number of places.  It's gotten to be like my own private joke that people or places attached to the number must mean something to me, although I never act on it... 

So any theories on my special little number?  Does anyone else have a number or idea "follow" them around like this?  Or is this an underlying symptom of a mental disorder that I've been ignorant of for 21 years?

Here's another:

One of the most terrifying experiences I've ever encountered was with my friend Gordie last summer and to this day still makes me feel uncomfortable to talk about because I genuinely can not explain what happened on any logical level.

We were driving to Mission and on the way back I noticed I had forgotten something at the store.  By this time we were in downtown Maple Ridge and considering we had nothing to do so we went back. It's about a 20 minute drive to Mission from where we were.  The clock read 3:23.

The clock reads 3:37.  Gordie and I look at each other.  And he asks me "what happened?"  Neither of us remember the drive between Maple Ridge and Mission.  We lost 15 minutes of lives and we have no idea where it went.  All we know is that in between post A and B nothing or probably something happened.

Not a single word was said.  The last thing we remember talking about was how Skyrim will never have a follow up.  Then at the snap of a universal finger. Nothing.  15 minutes gone.

The rest of the ride was very quiet and we were both very much on edge and uncomfortable.  We have both experienced something completely unexplainable but yet at the same time we experienced nothing.

I'm the grand scheme of things, 15 minutes seems inconsequential and minimal to the many minutes in our life.  But nevertheless it remains unknown as to where time went. 

My only explanation is that I passed though a wormhole and somehow ended up on the other side.

And one last one:

I had a problem with a programming question, so I googled it, and I went to the forum Stackoverflow (in which I had signed up 2 years ago).  I found an excellent answer that solved my problem, and I told myself "Oh.. So many intelligent people out there... I would have never been able to write something like that." 

And then I realized... the author of the answer is my account.  It's me... 

I am convinced this is caused by a glitch in the matrix.  Most probably, many answers on the forum are generated by the matrix, and the glitch was to attribute my username to it.  Of course, a couple of seconds after that, I was getting a vague idea that I may have written the answer (false memory), but I am not fooled!

So, given that we are starting from the standpoint of there being a natural explanation for all of this, what is going on here?

I think the key is that all of these rely on two things; the general unreliability of perception and memory, and our capacity for noticing what seems odd and ignoring pretty much everything else.  Starting with our 619-noticer, consider how many times (s)he probably looks at clocks, not to mention other sources of three-digit numbers, and it's not 619.  Once you have a couple of precedents -- most likely caused, as the writer noted, by being in the same routine -- you are much more likely to notice it again.  And each subsequent occurrence reinforces the perception that something odd is going on.

As far as the time-slip friends, I think what happened here is a simple failure of attention.  I've driven on auto-pilot more than once, especially when I'm fatigued, and suddenly sat up straight and thought, "How the hell did I get here?"  I honestly had no memory at all of driving the intervening distance.  But a mysterious time-slip is less likely than my brain being elsewhere (leaving some portion of my attention still focused on my driving, fortunately).

And the last one, the person who answered him/herself on an internet forum, certainly has to be a case of a lost memory.  I have a friend from college who has an excellent memory for details from the past, and periodically reminds me of things that happened to the two of us -- and more than once I've had to admit to him that I have no recollection of the events whatsoever.  It's disconcerting, but our memories are far less thorough and accurate than we think they are.

My own premonition-like decision that the radio announcer was going to be playing a piece by Narciso Yepes is clearly something of the sort.  Considering how often I listen to the radio, and hear the announcer give a bit of information about the next selection, it's likely I have thoughts like, "I hope she plays something by Scarlatti next!" several times a day.  Most of them, of course, are wrong, and because that's the norm, such events are immediately forgotten.  It's only the coincidental ones, the outliers, that get noticed -- yet another example of our old friend dart-thrower's bias.

But even so, I think I'll dig up that Yepes album and put it on.  Whether or not it was a glitch in the matrix, he's a pretty damn good guitarist.

Stop me if I've already told you about this

One of the most ubiquitous, but mysterious, phenomena in neuroscience is déjà vu.

We all get it from time to time -- the uncanny sense that what we're experiencing has happened before.  For some people, it's usually visual in nature; that they've seen that room, seen those people, know that particular part of the city, despite a certainty that such foreknowledge is impossible.  For me, it's most often auditory.  Just a few weeks ago, I was talking with a colleague about the discovery of some new fossils from the early Cambrian era (the age of the "Cambrian Explosion," the sudden diversification of animal life into multitudes of forms), and I had the unsettling feeling that I'd had that conversation with her already.

"Didn't we already talk about this?" I asked her.

She assured me that we hadn't.

There are a multitude of unsupported woo-woo explanations for the phenomenon -- a premonition, a memory from a previous life, even a momentary side-slip into an alternate timeline (à la the "Many Worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics).  Predictably, I don't think much of these, mostly because they have little testability and even less evidence in their favor.  So they really don't count as scientific explanations.

The problem is, science has come up pretty much empty-handed itself.  Déjà vu is so unpredictable, so quick to strike and so quickly over, that it's not like you can stick someone in an fMRI machine and just sit around and wait until it happens.  It's known that there are some medications that can increase the frequency of déjà vu -- a combination of phenylpropanolamine and amantidine, used to relieve flu symptoms, has been documented to trigger intense and recurrent déjà vu in some people.

No one is really certain why.

[image courtesy of the National Institute for Aging and the Wikimedia Commons]

Other explanations include a subconsciously-recalled memory being stimulated by a different, but similar, stimulus, creating a sensation of the event having already been experienced; and a dreamed scene producing what amounts to an "invented memory" that could be similarly triggered.

Neither of these, to me, explains the commonness, nor the power, of these experiences.  I know that memory is unreliable and plastic, but even so, déjà vu is so striking that it deserves a better explanation.

Recently, however, a study by Christine Wells et al. has shed some interesting light on this phenomenon.  Wells and her team found that a patient with severe anxiety disorder was experiencing profound and repeated déjà vu, and the researchers speculate that this is no coincidence:

Whereas previous cases with déjà vu due to MCI [mild cognitive impairment] and dementia have largely been anosognosic [not acknowledged as clinically relevant by the patient], our case is aware of the abnormal familiarity in his memory, and is in fact greatly distressed by it.  This suggests two dimensions along which déjà vu experiences can vary: awareness and distress.  In this psychogenic case, our patient is similarly aware of the unreality of his experiences and they are constantly accompanied or caused by pathological levels of anxiety...  In relation to our case, distress caused by the déjà vu experience may itself lead to increased levels of déjà vu: similar feedback loops in positive symptoms are reported in other anxiety states (e.g. panic attacks). 

It is plausible on neurobiological grounds that anxiety might lead to the generation of déjà vu.  The hippocampal formation, a structure of central importance in declarative memory and the ability to engage in recollection, is also implicated in anxiety as part of the septo-hippocampal system.  Although this report does not prove a link between anxiety and déjà vu, it does further support the suggestion that this area is worthy of further investigation.

It certainly is.  You have to wonder if even people who do not suffer from a clinical anxiety disorder might experience déjà vu more commonly when they're distressed or anxious about something.  Stress does affect health -- there's no real doubt about that -- could it also be responsible for fleeting pseudo-memories?

All of which is fascinating and suggestive.  It's further evidence of what a friend of mine once said -- she's a retired professor of human genetics at Cornell, and she said if she were going into research now, she'd go into neurology instead of genetics.  "Right now, in terms of our understanding of the brain, we're where our understanding of genes was in the early 20th century.  We know a little about what's going on, mostly descriptively, but little real comprehension of how it's all happening.  The 20th century was the century of the gene; the 21st will be the century of the brain."

But I've told you that quote before, haven't I?  I'm sure I've used that quote before.

The derp is strong with this one

Here we go again.

First, we had people who believe that J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is actual history.  Next, we had people who think that H. P. Lovecraft's pantheon of elder gods is real.

Now we have people believing that people time-traveled backwards (or forwards; sources differ on that point) from the Galaxy Far Far Away, all for the purposes of including Master Yoda in a medieval manuscript.

First the facts, okay?  There's a 14th century manuscript called the Smithfield Decretals, which are some of the expositions of Pope Gregory IX on points of canon law, written in France and then brought to England and illuminated.  It currently resides in the British Library, and its graceful calligraphy and odd illustrations are what prompted a use of one of the images from it in a newspaper interview with Julian Harrison, the Library's curator of pre-1600 manuscripts.  Interestingly, Harrison has quite a following; his blog, Medieval Manuscripts,  gets an average of 36,000 hits a day, and his Twitter feed has over 24,000 followers.

Who knew the Medieval Period had so many fans?

But anyway, Harrison made an offhand comment in one of his posts about the image of Yoda in the Smithfield Decretals, and it got picked up in the interview.  So, without further ado, let's take a look:

Other than the fact that his expression is not so much "wise Jedi master" as it is "derpy and confused," I think we can agree that this is quite a match, yes?

Apparently, so do the woo-woos.  This thing has been popping up all over on sites like Mysterious Universe and CosmosTV, prompting thousands of people to comment.  And while some of them are undoubtedly posted for the humor value, I'd say a good 3/4 of them have the ring of truth.  Here's a sampler.  (Spelling and grammar are as written, so you can get the full effect):

• The Force is real.  I've felt it and am still learning how to control.  With a powerful Master you can transcend time and space.
• Because of Quantum Mechanics and the Many Worlds Theory scientists now believe that everything is possible somewhere.  So why is it crazy to say there's a universe where Yoda exists.  And if that universe intersects with us, that could explain this.
• Art imitates life.  George Lucas didn't make up everything.  These monks who drew this had to have a model right?  This is too close to be a coincidence.
• The Jedi religion has more morals than the Christians.  Master Yoda is somebody I would follow not a priest.  Maybe him appearing here will show people were on the Dark Side.  Look at the world and you have to agree.
• Mocking something doesn't make it not true.  Their is no reason this couldn't really be Yoda.  Just because something is wierd it doesn't mean that you can just pretend it doesn't happen.

Yes, of course!  Wierd real Yodas!  Intersecting universes and the Force because of quantum mechanics!  Ha ha!  Please tell me you people don't know where I live!

And learn some critical thinking skills, they should.

Anyhow.  I'm always amazed at how little it takes to set these people off.  And, of course, given that the trailer for the next installment of the Star Wars saga was just released, and has been inducing multiple orgasms in the crowd who (1) wanted to become a tie-fighter pilot, (2) dreamed about owning a light saber, (3) had the hots for Luke and/or Leia, and (4) went into a prolonged period of mourning when Obi-Wan died, I suppose it's not going to die down any time soon.

And honestly, I have to admit that I'd take Yoda over Sauron and the Elder Gods, if I had the choice.

All in the family

Racists have cast about for years for some sort of scientific basis for their horrible worldview.  Evidence that their race is the superior one in intelligence, physical strength, or vigor, or simply support for their contention that interracial marriages are bad in a biological sense.

Of course, the problem for people who turn to science is that science often provides answers whether you end up liking them or not.  And inquiries into a biological basis for race have shown that any real genetic variations between different ethnic groups are tenuous at best.  Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, one of the leading specialists in human population genetics, says:

Human races are still extremely unstable entities in the bands of modern taxonomists…  As one goes down the scale of the taxonomic hierarchy toward the lower and lower partitions, the boundaries between clusters become even less clear.  There is great genetic variation in all populations, even in small ones. 

From a scientific point of view, the concept of race has failed to obtain any consensus… the major stereotypes, all based on skin color, hair color and form, and facial traits, reflect superficial differences that are not confirmed by deeper analysis with more reliable genetic traits and whose origin dates from recent evolution mostly under the effect of climate and perhaps sexual selection.

Now, let me make it clear that this doesn't mean that there are no differences between racial groups.  It's just that those differences are primarily social and cultural, not biological, which neatly kicks the legs out from underneath some of the racists' primary arguments.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

And it's been known for years that lumping together all dark-skinned Africans as "black" is ignoring the fact that there's more genetic variability on the African continent than there is in the entire rest of the world put together.  The Zulu and the !Kung people of southern Africa, for example, are more distantly related to each other than a typical white American is...

... to a person from Japan.

And just last month, Iain Mathieson of Harvard University punched another hole in racist genetics when he released his research team's findings that the genes for white skin are only about 8,000 years old.

According to Mathieson et al.:

(M)odern humans who came out of Africa to originally settle Europe about 40,000 years are presumed to have had dark skin, which is advantageous in sunny latitudes.  And the new data confirm that about 8500 years ago, early hunter-gatherers in Spain, Luxembourg, and Hungary also had darker skin:  They lacked versions of two genes—SLC24A5 and SLC45A2—that lead to depigmentation and, therefore, pale skin in Europeans today... 

Then, the first farmers from the Near East arrived in Europe; they carried both genes for light skin. As they interbred with the indigenous hunter-gatherers, one of their light-skin genes swept through Europe, so that central and southern Europeans also began to have lighter skin.  The other gene variant, SLC45A2, was at low levels until about 5800 years ago when it swept up to high frequency.

The reason the two light-skin genes took hold in northern latitudes is thought to be vitamin D synthesis -- while having dark skin is an advantage in equatorial regions, from the standpoint of protection from ultraviolet skin damage, dark skin inhibits endogenous vitamin D production in areas with low incident sunlight.  So once the mutations occurred, they spread rapidly, but only in regions at high latitude.  This explains why even distantly-related equatorial groups have dark skin (such as the Bantu and the Australian Aborigines), and even distantly-related high-latitude group have light skin (such as the Swedes and the Inuit).

And apparently the gene for blue eyes is of equally recent vintage.  The earliest genetic evidence for the gene HERC2/OCA2, which causes blue eyes, is in southern Sweden from about 7,700 years ago.  The gene's provenance might date back to 10,000 years ago, but certainly not much before that.

So all of us descend from dark-skinned, brown-eyed people.  Sorry, white supremacists.

Of course, given that there is good evidence that around 70,000 years ago, an eruption of the Toba Volcano in Indonesia caused climate shifts that killed nearly all of our ancestors -- best estimates are that there were only 10,000 humans left on Earth after the bottleneck occurred -- we're all cousins anyway.  After that event, those 10,000-odd survivors can be put into two groups; the ones who left no descendants at all, and the ones who are the ancestors of everyone on Earth.

It'd be nice if we could count on people using science to inform their behavior, but we don't have a very good track record in that regard, do we?  I mean, think about it; we're still pushing the fossil fuel industry as the world warms up and the climate destabilizes around us.  So unfortunately, even when we have direct and incontrovertible evidence that what we're doing isn't reasonable, we usually continue doing it.

And I guess the argument that the genes for white skin are 8,000 years old is going to gain no traction whatsoever with the people who believe that the Earth is 6,000 years old.

But still, it'd be nice, wouldn't it?  Just as the first photographs of the Earth taken from the Moon changed a lot of folks' perspective on our place in the universe, it'd be wonderful if research like this could alter us from "those people... they're not like us" to "we're all one family, and we're all in this together."

E.T. called. Your lunch is ready.

It's okay to be ignorant, as long as it doesn't become a way of life.

Even the best educated of us don't know stuff.  Lots of stuff.  Socrates, after all, had a point when he gave his famous answer to followers who asked him, "How can you be so wise?"  "If I am wise," he said, "it is because I alone of men realize how little I know."

It is our response to ignorance that counts.  And it seems to me that when people are asked for information about which they are ignorant, they generally have one of two reactions:

1. They act like it's perfectly okay to be lazy enough not to want to know the answer.  This is the "oh, well, I'm not good at science" thing I sometimes hear from students.  (My usual answer -- "Work harder, then" -- seldom has any result except their looking at me like I have three heads.)
2. They start making stuff up.  This often happens when the person in question is one of those types who has to know everything, or when the answer that's being sought is so critical or so interesting that (s)he just can't bear saying, "I don't know, and we may never know."

As an example of the latter, consider the recent odd astronomical discovery that the dwarf planet Ceres has two mysterious bright spots that show up intermittently on NASA photographs.  

[image courtesy of NASA]

The writer of the news article linked above, Mariette LeRoux, seems a little put out that scientists aren't explaining the spots.  All we know, she said, is that the spots "behave differently," as if they are not being caused by the same phenomenon.  Federico Tosi, who analyzes data from the Dawn probe's Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer, said, "For sure, we have bright spots on the surface of Ceres which, at least from a thermal perspective, seem to behave in different ways."

Which summarizes the observations, and tells us exactly nothing beyond that.  And that is what scientists should do, given that this is all they have at the moment.  They're still trying to find out more, or come up with a model of what could explain the spots, so they're not falling upon one horn of the dilemma.  But they're also not just inventing wild ideas when they have almost nothing to go on, and thus are avoiding the other horn of the dilemma as well.

Which is more than I can say for the woo-woos, who are having a field day with this.  Here are a few of the "explanations" (if I can dignify them by that word) I've seen on such sites, since the observation was made a month ago:

• The spots are a signaling device that was placed on the surface of Ceres to keep an eye on us and relay information to our Alien Overlords to let them know when we were getting too uppity.  Prepare for an imminent invasion of the Earth.
• Ceres is a hollow artificial sphere, inside which is a fantastically old civilization.  This enormous spacecraft has been battered over the eons by meteorite impacts (see all the craters?) and finally the external hull has cracked, and we're seeing light leaking out.
• This is an Illuminati base to which our leaders periodically teleport.  Why any Illuminatus would want to go to Ceres -- which, last I checked, was cold, colder even than upstate New York -- is beyond me.  You'd think if they were having a convention, they'd choose Hawaii or Costa Rica or somewhere like that.
• Ceres is a giant weapon that is heading for the Earth, and these are the targeting lasers.  Yes, I know that Ceres has been in a completely stable, nearly circular orbit since its discovery in 1801, but silly things like "facts" never discourage these people.

So anyhow.  We start with "there are two mysterious spots on Ceres" and end with alien superweapons.  All of which makes me want to take Ockham's Razor and slit my wrists with it.

But on a happier note, there's a second story this week that reinforces science's stance that it's always better to be patient in our ignorance, and look for natural answers, than to jump to ridiculous and outlandish ones.  Some aberrant signals that have been picked up by the Parkes Radio Telescope, and that were being considered by the UFOs-and-Aliens crowd as possible candidates for signals from extraterrestrial intelligence, were shown to be...

... coming from the microwave oven in the observatory's staff break room.

(Note: these are not the Fast Radio Bursts I described in my post last week; but some completely natural, earthly source may be the explanation for those, too.)

To demonstrate this, astronomer Emily Petroff ran the microwave oven three times, each time opening it before the timer went off.  And each time, the radio telescope recorded a peryton -- an odd, narrow-band signal.  Petroff writes:

The two ovens responsible for most or all of the observed perytons are from the same manufacturer (Matsushita/National) and are both in excess of 27 years of age though still working reliably.  Our tests point clearly to the magnetron itself as the source of the perytons since these are not detected unless the oven door is opened. 

Further, our analysis of the peryton cluster of 23rd June 1998 implies the perytons are a transient phenomenon that occurs only when the magnetron is switched off.  That we have observed perytons from at least two ovens over 17 years suggests that they are not the product of an unusual failure or fault but are inherent to, and long-lived in, at least some common types of oven.

So there you have it.  How to steer between a state of lazy ignorance and a state of absolute certainty. Navigating your way past these obstacles is critical if you want to know the real answer -- and neither make up loony ideas, nor simply shrug your shoulders and accept being permanently ignorant.

Because, after all, isn't accepting your ignorance, and ceasing your efforts to find out answers, that much more awful state called "being stupid?"

Pharmacies, the FDA, and homeopathy

It seems like mostly what I cover in this blog is bad news.

People believing crazy stuff, bizarre actions people take (or refuse to take) because of their superstitious beliefs, mind-bending cases of illogic.  But today, I want to deliver some good news to anyone who thinks that rationalism and evidence should carry the day:

The FDA is finally moving toward taking a stand on homeopathy.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Next Monday and Tuesday, April 20 and 21, 2015, from 9 AM to 4 PM Eastern Daylight Time, the FDA has actively solicited input from stakeholders regarding the preparation and sales of the preparations that homeopaths refer to as "remedies" but the rest of us call "water" and "sugar pills."  These stakeholders include, but are not limited to, "consumers, patients, caregivers, health care professionals, patient groups, and industry."  The hearing is to be held at the FDA White Oak Campus in Silver Spring, Maryland, and required preregistration (which unfortunately closed two days ago; I didn't find out about this until yesterday).  However, you can watch a live webcast of the proceedings if you're so inclined (information about how to do this can be found here).

Even if the opportunity to present publicly has passed, you can still voice your opinions to the FDA review board in writing until June 22.  Here are the questions they are trying to resolve:

• What are consumer and health care provider attitudes towards human drug and biological products labeled as homeopathic?
• What data sources can be identified or shared with FDA so that the Agency can better assess the risks and benefits of drug and biological products labeled as homeopathic?
• Are the current enforcement policies under the CPG appropriate to protect and promote public health in light of the tremendous growth in the homeopathic drug market? Are there alternatives to the current enforcement policies of the CPG that would inform FDA’s regulatory oversight of drugs labeled as homeopathic? If so, please explain.
• Are there areas of the current CPG that could benefit from additional clarity? If so, please explain.
• Is there information regarding the regulation of homeopathic products in other countries that could inform FDA’s thinking in this area?
• A large majority of human drug products labeled as homeopathic are marketed as OTC drugs. These products are available for a wide variety of indications, and many of these indications have never been considered for OTC use under a formal regulatory process. What would be an appropriate regulatory process for evaluating such indications for OTC use?
• Given the wide range of indications on drug products labeled as homeopathic and available OTC, what processes do companies currently use to evaluate whether such products, including their indications for use, are appropriate for marketing as an OTC drug?
• Do consumers and health care providers have adequate information to make informed decisions about drug products labeled as homeopathic? If not, what information, including, for example, information in labeling, would allow consumers and health care providers to be better informed about products labeled as homeopathic?

If you are a medical researcher or health care provider, it's crucial to get information to the FDA that would give them leverage to remove these worthless "remedies" from pharmacy shelves.  It's critical, however, that any submissions not be simple rants.  Make them evidence-based, and specific to the questions for which the FDA is seeking information.  Sharon Hill, over at Doubtful News, directs you to frame your responses thusly:

If you are in the medical profession, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU SPEND SOME TIME TO SUBMIT COMMENTS.  If you have pertinent info as an educator, parent, or consumer, your voice is needed also...  You can submit either electronic or written comments to http://www.regulations.gov or Division of Dockets Management (HFA-305), Food and Drug Administration, 5630 Fishers Lane, rm. 1061, Rockville, MD 20852.  Organize your comments to identify the specific questions or topic to which they refer and be sure to reference the docket number.

Let me reiterate what I've said before: there is no scientific evidence that homeopathy works, and no logical mechanism by which it could work, given that the dilutions involved result in there being not a single molecule of the original active ingredient left by the time the preparation is sold.  There is no reason these quack cures should be sold in pharmacies, even with any number of disclaimers on the label, given the potential for uninformed or misled consumers to take them rather than seeking out legitimate medical help.

And high time for the FDA to take a stand on this.  Let's make sure that they get the information necessary for it to be the right stand.