Leaving the echo chamber

It is natural, I suppose, to surround oneself with people whose political, religious, and philosophical beliefs we share.  We tend to get along best with people whose values are aligned with our own, and having the same opinions makes conflict less likely.  So what I'm going to suggest runs completely counter to this tribal tendency that all humans have.

Anyone who aspires to a skeptical view of the world should seek out interactions with people of opposing stances.

I won't say this isn't frustrating at times.  Hearing our most cherished viewpoints criticized, sometimes stridently, brings up some pretty strong emotions.  But there are two outstanding reasons to strive for diversity in our social circles, and I think that both of these make a cogent argument for overcoming our knee-jerk reactions to having our baseline assumptions called into question.

First, being exposed to a wide range of opinions keeps us honest.  It is an all-too-human failing not to question things when everyone around us is in agreement.  This can lead not only to our making mistakes, but not realizing them -- sometimes for a long time -- because we've surrounded ourselves with a Greek chorus of supporters, and no one who is willing to say, "Wait a minute... are you sure that's right?"

Second, it becomes less easy to demonize those who disagree with us when they have faces.  You can slide quickly into "those awful conservatives" or "those evil atheists" -- until you meet one, and spend some time chatting, and find out that the people you've derided turn out to be friendly and smart and... human.  Just like you.

How to build an echo chamber [adapted from Jasny, Fisher, et al.]

The danger of living in an echo chamber was illustrated vividly by a new peer-reviewed study led by Dana Fisher, professor of sociology at the University of Maryland.  Fisher et al. looked at how attitudes about climate change in particular are affected by being surrounded by others who agree with you.  They found that networks of people who are already in agreement, sharing information that supports what they already believed, create a context of certainty so powerful that even overwhelming scientific evidence can't overcome it.

"Our research shows how the echo chamber can block progress toward a political resolution on climate change," Fisher said in an interview.  "Individuals who get their information from the same sources with the same perspective may be under the impression that theirs is the dominant perspective, regardless of what the science says...  Information has become a partisan choice, and those choices bias toward sources that reinforce beliefs rather than challenge them, regardless of the source’s legitimacy."

Lorien Jasny, a lead author of the paper, emphasized how important it was to venture outside of the echo chamber.  "Our research underscores how important it is for people on both sides of the climate debate to be careful about where they get their information.  If their sources are limited to those that repeat and amplify a single perspective, they can’t be certain about the reliability or objectivity of their information."

While the study by Fisher et al. was specifically about attitudes regarding climate change, I would argue that their conclusions could be applied in a much wider context.  We need to hear opposing viewpoints about everything, because otherwise we fall prey to the worst part of tribalism -- the attitude that only the members of the tribe are worth listening to.  It's why liberals should occasionally tune in to Fox News and conservatives to MSNBC.  It's why the religious shouldn't unfriend their atheist Facebook friends -- and vice versa.  It's why my friend and coworker who tends to vote for the opposite political party than I do is someone whose views I make myself listen to and consider carefully.

Now, don't mistake me.  This doesn't mean you should put up with assholes.  The social conventions still apply, and disagreeing philosophically doesn't mean you call the people on the other side idiots.  I have chosen to disconnect from people who were rude and disagreeable -- but I hope I'd do that even if they shared my political views.

Put simply, we need to be pushed sometimes to overcome our natural bent toward surrounding ourselves with the like-minded.  When we do, we become less likely to fall prey to our own biases, and less likely to pass unfair judgment on those who disagree with us.  The work by Fisher et al. shows us how powerful the echo chamber effect can be -- and why it's critical that we get ourselves out of it on occasion, however comforting the illusion of certainty can be at times.

Death sounds and Mexican demons

Allow me to reiterate a plea I've made more than once in Skeptophilia; would everyone just stop and learn a little bit of science and a few critical thinking skills before forwarding every damn thing you see on Facebook and Twitter?

I say this because of two stories I ran into in the last couple of days.  The first was sent to me by a friend and loyal reader of this blog -- not because he believed it himself, allow me to point out, but because he was in awe that anyone did.  It involves a claim that there's a "death sound" that is so amazingly intense that it can kill you instantly if you hear it.  Here's the direct quote:

There's a sound that is 36 octaves below middle C, that is so low that it kills you.  The sound waves literally kill you.  And this sound is only found in dark matter (for what we know).  This is so cool.

I love science!

Well, the originator of this claim may "love science," but I'd settle for less love and more understanding.  Because the number of ways in which these five short sentences don't make sense are so many and varied that it may set a record for bullshit-to-verbiage ratio.

Let's start with there being a sound that's 36 octaves below middle C.  Middle C has a frequency of 262 hertz (give or take), and for those of you who aren't physics-adept, one hertz = one vibration per second.  For each octave the pitch drops, the frequency goes down by a factor of a half.  (So one octave below middle C would be 131 hertz, two octaves below would be 65.5 hertz, and so on.)

This means that a sound 36 octaves below middle C would have a frequency equal to 262 divided by 2 raised to the 36th power hertz.  This is what is known to mathematicians as "a really freakin' small number."  Put simply, a sound wave at that frequency would correspond to one pulse of the sound passing your ear every 3,040 days.

So what we have here is the equivalent of someone shouting "WAAAH" in your ear, waiting 8.3 years, and then shouting "WAAAH" in your ear again.  The sound itself isn't going to kill you, but you might well die of boredom from waiting around for it.

Then there's the problem that it isn't the frequency of a sound that's dangerous to your hearing (or other bodily functions), it's the amplitude.  Amplitude corresponds to loudness and/or energy transfer capacity, so it's easy to see why high amplitude sounds can be dangerous.

Last, the "dark matter" part of this is just bizarre.  I tried to find out what this could possibly be about, and I did find an article about a discovery in astrophysics in which certain black holes have been discovered to create compression waves in the gas clouds surrounding them (i.e., sound waves) of extremely low frequency.  One, a black hole in the Perseus cluster, generates compression waves with a frequency 57 octaves below middle C.  (For you music geeks, apparently this means that the black hole is singing a B flat.)  No one is claiming that this sound can kill you, although being near a black hole certainly could -- and for the record, black holes have nothing whatsoever to do with dark matter.

Moving on to our other story, we have a new goofy psychic phenomenon that is buzzing on Twitter and other social media platforms.  It goes by the alliterative name of the "Charlie Charlie Challenge," and apparently has gotten so much hype that the hashtag #charliecharliechallenge is now trending.

So the idea is that there's this Mexican demon named Charlie, and you can summon him as follows.  Draw a cross on a piece of paper, thus dividing the paper into four rectangles.  Write "No" on the upper left and lower right, and "Yes" on the upper right and lower left.  Then place a pencil along one of the lines of the cross, and balance a second pencil at right angles to the first, as shown below:

Then you say, "Charlie, Charlie, are you here?"  The balanced pencil is supposed to rotate to give you the answer.

Once again, there are a variety of problems here.  First, if the pencil rotates to "No," then who's moving the pencil?  Even if this works, it's not very interesting, given that apparently all Charlie has to say is whether or not he's there.

Second, do you really think it's that easy to summon a demon up?  I'd think that demons would have much more important jobs to do, such as giving career advice to Ann Coulter.

Third, of course, we have a much simpler explanation for all of this, which is that a precariously-balanced pencil is going to be easy for stray draughts to move, as well as any other minor jostling.  So if you do this, the balanced pencil is eventually going to rotate one direction or the other whether there are demons present or not.

Fourth, a Mexican demon named "Charlie?"  "Charlie" is neither convincingly Mexican nor particularly demonic sounding.  You'd think he'd at least be called Mefistófeles or something.  Although I have to admit that saying "Mefistófeles, Mefistófeles, are you here?" is a bit of a mouthful.

So what we have here is basically a kids' game along the lines of "Bloody Mary," with the difference that we now have online social media to assure that such bullshit gets lots of traction.  

Anyhow, there you are.  Death sounds and Mexican pencil-rotating demons named "Charlie."  Further indication that the most powerful information-processing system ever built is now primarily used as a conduit for nonsensical claims and humorous pictures of cats.

Mike Huckabee, Josh Duggar, and hypocrisy

Rape and pedophilia are two of the most unforgivable crimes.  From the horrific emotional scars they leave in the victims, to the complete disconnect from anything remotely close to human empathy in the perpetrator's mind, attacks of this sort turn my stomach so quickly that I can barely stand to read news stories that cover cases of rape or child molestation.

It is why I have, up to now, avoided dealing with the whole debacle surrounding Josh Duggar, and the allegations that when he was a teenager, he molested five little girls, including his younger sisters.  It seemed to me that the police were dealing with it, and the backlash against the hyper-Christian, ostensibly ultra-pure family would take care of itself.

The Duggars have been the darlings of the Christian Right for some time; their TLC show 19 Kids and Counting was held up as an example of how good Christian families should behave.  Everything was about traditional family values and going to church and dedicating your life to Jesus.  When the allegations surfaced, it was a devastating blow; the "reality show" was cancelled, and Josh Duggar resigned his position as a lobbyist with the Family Research Council, an organization that raises money and support for conservative causes.

Which is as it should be.  You get accused of something like this, you retreat in disarray.  So far, nothing much to comment, unless you count exclamations of disgust.

But then the support for Josh Duggar began to surface.  His family came out on his side, which was unsurprising until you think about the fact that some of the alleged victims are his sisters.  Josh's parents, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, said, "Back twelve years ago our family went through one of the most difficult times of our lives.  When Josh was a young teenager, he made some very bad mistakes, and we were shocked.  We had tried to teach him right from wrong.  That dark and difficult time caused us to seek God like never before."

Which, you'd think, would include getting his victims some counseling from professionals trained to help molestation victims, something that there's no indication ever happened.  Josh, on the other hand, was told what could happen to him if he did it again, and was sent to "stay with an acquaintance and do manual labor."  Apparently, in their eyes, this did the trick; Josh Duggar said he's patched it all up with Jesus. "I asked Christ to forgive me and come into my life," he said.  "In my life today, I am so very thankful for God's grace, mercy and redemption."

So far, still not something that's all that surprising.  In this worldview, if you apologize to god, you're just hunky-dory no matter what you did.  When this happened, I still thought, "Nope.  Not going there."

But then Mike Huckabee got involved.

Huckabee, a contender for the Republican nomination for president, has been vitriolic in his stance against LGBT rights.  In a speech just last month sponsored by the Family Research Council, Huckabee said that legalizing gay marriage would lead to Christians being arrested for their beliefs:

If the courts rule that people have a civil right not only to be a homosexual but a civil right to have a homosexual marriage, then a homosexual couple coming to a pastor who believes in biblical marriage who says ‘I can’t perform that wedding’ will now be breaking the law.  It’s not just saying, ‘I’m sorry you have a preference.’  No, you will be breaking the law subject to civil for sure and possible criminal penalties for violating the law….  If you do practice biblical convictions and you carry them out and you do what you’ve been led by the spirit of God to do, your behavior will be criminal... Christian convictions are under attack as never before.  Not just in our lifetime, but ever before in the history of this great nation.  We are moving rapidly towards the criminalization of Christianity.

And this same man, who has over and over again claimed that marriage between two same-sex people in a committed relationship is an abomination, has come out unequivocally in support of Josh Duggar:

The reason that the law protects disclosure of many actions on the part of a minor is that the society has traditionally understood something that today’s blood-thirsty media does not understand — that being a minor means that one’s judgement is not mature.  No one needs to defend Josh’s actions as a teenager, but the fact that he confessed his sins to those he harmed, sought help, and has gone forward to live a responsible and circumspect life as an adult is testament to his family’s authenticity and humility... (F)ollowing Christ is not a declaration of our perfection, but of HIS perfection.   It is precisely because we are all sinners that we need His grace and His forgiveness.  We have been blessed to receive God's love and we would do no less than to extend our love and support for our friends.  In fact, it is in times like this that real friends show up and stand up.  Today, Janet and I want to show up and stand up for our friends.  Let others run from them. We will run to them with our support.

Then, there's the fact that when the story about Josh Duggar hit the media, Judge Stacy Zimmerman ordered that the file on the allegations be destroyed.  No reason was given, and Springdale Police Department spokesperson Scott Lewis said that this was unusual -- that records of this kind are typically kept indefinitely.  But the situation becomes a little clearer when you add to that the fact that when Huckabee was the governor of Arkansas, he twice appointed Zimmerman to serve on influential committees, and that she gives prominent mention of her ties to Huckabee on her re-election website.

Gotta stick together, you know.  Can't have any nasty allegations stinking up the party of the pure of heart.

The whole thing has such a nauseating smell of hypocrisy that I barely know where to begin.  The man who in his stump speeches has been all about "traditional family values" rushes in to support an accused pedophile, while simultaneously expressing revulsion toward consenting adults who happen to be attracted to members of the same sex.  The fact that the Duggar family is "saved" somehow puts them outside of the realm of criticism; the media that has brought to light these charges is "blood-thirsty," and Josh himself is "responsible and circumspect" because he "confessed his sins."

So let's make sure that a judge orders the documents destroyed, and pretend the whole incident never happened.

I think that it's the self-righteousness that bothers me the most.  Even the mealy-mouthed "we're not perfect" declarations by the Duggars, and by Huckabee about them, smacks of "but because we're saved, we're going to heaven no matter what, so we're still better than you godless scum."  They've set themselves as paragons; just the fact that they felt the need to have a "reality show" about their family speaks volumes.

Yes, I know, I'm not perfect myself.  I've done bad things, things that I very much wish I could go back and undo.  I've tried to make amends when I could, and (most importantly) tried not to repeat my mistakes.

The difference is, I know that the times I've fallen short morally can't be fixed by apologizing to some invisible Sky God.  Forgiveness comes from the people you've hurt, not from Jesus.

Nor, incidentally, from Mike Huckabee.

Money, allegiance, and faith

Someone I know posted a cartoon on social media a couple of days ago.  It had a pissed-off looking old woman on it, and the caption was, "It's 'One Nation Under God," or bite my ass and leave."

I've always been a little mystified about the fervor with which some people demand that those words be in the Pledge of Allegiance.  The same fervor is invoked when anyone mentions taking "In God We Trust" off our currency.  Besides the fact of marginalizing people in this country who are not religious -- a number that by recent polls now amounts to one in five -- these statements also imply that Buddhists, Muslims, Sikhs, and members of other religions who do not worship the Judaeo-Christian god have no place here.

More to the point, however, I've never heard a cogent argument for why those phrases should be part of our statement of allegiance to our country, or on our money.  In the first case, you're expecting people either to recite a statement in public that is, for them, a lie, or else refuse (or at least refuse to say that line) and invite censure.  But even more mystifying is the statement of faith on currency.  What happened to "The love of money is the root of all evil" (1 Timothy 6:10) and "Render unto Caesar those things that are Caesar's, and unto God those things that are God's" (Mark 12:17)?  It seems to me a little odd to put a religious statement on something that the bible repeatedly derides as bad.  (Remember "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven?")

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Be that as it may, every so often you hear vitriolic attacks launched against people who, like me, would like that language removed, not because we object to other Americans believing in any god they want to, but because the implication that we all have to believe that way is exclusionary.  You can pray anywhere you like; contrary to popular belief, you are free to pray in public schools, as long as (1) those prayers don't interfere with what's going on in the classroom, (2) you're not requiring anyone else to pray along with you, and (3) such prayer is not school-sponsored.  (I'm guessing there's a lot of praying going on immediately prior to my final exam, for example.)  Why the demand that there be public, government-endorsed language that seems to exist only to make a good quarter of American citizens feel that they aren't welcome in their own country?

As more and more people recognize that such statements are not only disrespectful but unnecessary, the people who want to keep them where they are become more and more desperate.  Take, for example, what religious writer Jessilyn Justice had to say last week about her views and those of radio talk show host Paul McGuire. Apparently, Justice and McGuire think we have to keep "In God We Trust" on the dollar bill, because otherwise we're going to initiate the End Times:

Money and spirituality are heavily intertwined, says eschatology professor and prolific author Paul McGuire.

"The world system is a control system that is both spiritual and economic," McGuire said at the Prophecy in the News conference.  "Money is all about captivity, slavery and control.  That is its essential purpose.  It's [sic] essential purpose is not an economic instrument of exchange.  It's about control and the occult and spirituality." 

McGuire points to one of the founding theories of atheism, Darwin's theory of evolution, and Space Odyssey co-author Arthur C. Clarke to connect atheism, money and the occult: Science is magic. To remove God from the money would allow the occult to take over. 

McGuire says the dollar bill is bursting with blatantly occult symbols, meaning the United States economic system is based on magic and sorcery opposed to logic and principles.

"The world system of economics is based on magic and illusion.  It's based on your willingness to believe in it," McGuire said.  "It's about the manipulation and control of the masses. That's what Jesus is talking about when he's talking about Mammon and the world system."... 

The answer?  To keep God in money, McGuire says, which could mean leaving Him on the bills, as well.

Well, first of all, Arthur C. Clarke didn't say "Science is magic," he said, "Magic is science we haven't understood yet," which is kind of the opposite.  And second, I don't think having "In God We Trust" on our currency has had much effect in keeping money from being about manipulation, power, and control.  If that's why the phrase is there, it's not working.

But third, something I've found puzzling is why a lot of the Christians go on and on warning us about preventing the End Times.  You'd think they'd be knocking themselves out to encourage us atheists to do stuff to bring the End Times on, because don't they believe that the first thing that will happen is that all of the holy people will be assumed bodily into heaven?  Meaning that after that, they won't have to deal with all of the annoying people who don't believe exactly like they do?  You'd think they'd be saying, "Go ahead.  Take "One Nation Under God" out of the pledge.  See what happens next.  Ha ha ha."

But they don't.  Most of the stuff I've read is all about making sure that individuals and governments do everything they can to prevent the End Times, which is a little peculiar if you really believe that you're going to get your eternal reward in heaven and all the bad guys are going to get their just deserts.

Almost sounds as if they aren't completely convinced that stuff is true, either.

So the bottom line is, unless you believe in some sort of occult magical significance of the words, there's no good reason to keep statements of religious faith in the Pledge of Allegiance and printed on our money.  But given that McGuire was right about one thing -- this isn't about logic and principles -- I'm expecting that change isn't going to happen any time soon.

The cost of scientific ignorance

Arrogance (n.) -- having or showing the insulting attitude of people who believe they are better, smarter, or more important than other people; exaggerating one's own worth in an overbearing manner.

There.  Just thought I'd clear that up, right at the outset.  Because evidently Jeb Bush needs to consult Webster's before he starts throwing the word around.

[image courtesy of photographer Gage Skidmore and the Wikimedia Commons]

The subject comes up because of a campaign stop in New Hampshire that the presidential hopeful made earlier this week, in which he brought up the topic of climate change.  He was specifically responding to President Obama's comment that climate change was a national security risk -- something just about every climate scientist in the world would agree with, given its projected effects on sea level, storm intensity, and shifts in rainfall.

Bush, however, disagreed.   "If the president thinks this is the gravest threat to our national security," he told the crowd, "it seems like he would say, 'let's expand LNG (liquefied natural gas) as fast as we can to get it into the hands of higher carbon-intense economies like China and other places. Let's figure out ways to use compressed natural gas for replacing importing diesel fuel, which has a higher carbon footprint,'"

This conveniently ignores the role that methane itself has in climate change.  It is true that natural gas produces less carbon dioxide, both per pound of fuel and per kilowatt-hour of energy, than coal does; however, leaked natural gas from fracking is already outweighing any savings in the carbon budget that would be accrued from switching from coal to gas.  In a paper from last October by Schneising et al., the authors write:

In the past decade, there has been a massive growth in the horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing of shale gas and tight oil reservoirs to exploit formerly inaccessible or unprofitable energy resources in rock formations with low permeability.  In North America, these unconventional domestic sources of natural gas and oil provide an opportunity to achieve energy self-sufficiency and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions when displacing coal as a source of energy in power plants.  However, fugitive [i.e., accidental/unreported] methane emissions in the production process may counter the benefit over coal with respect to climate change and therefore need to be well quantified.  Here we demonstrate that positive methane anomalies associated with the oil and gas industries can be detected from space and that corresponding regional emissions can be constrained using satellite observations... calling immediate climate benefit into question and indicating that current inventories likely underestimate the fugitive emissions.

But then, Bush goes even further, accusing the scientists who have brought such data to light "arrogant:"

Look, first of all, the climate is changing.  I don't think the science is clear what percentage is man-made and what percentage is natural.  It's convoluted.  And for the people to say the science is decided on, this is just really arrogant, to be honest with you.   It's this intellectual arrogance that now you can't even have a conversation about it.

Governor Bush, let me clarify some of the "convolution" for you; speaking with authority about a topic on which you are an expert is not arrogance.  Arrogance is when you exaggerate your knowledge for the purposes of self-aggrandizement.  (Cf. the above definition.)  And ignoring the evidence, and stating that the science is "unclear" when it is not, is one of two things; if it's done unwittingly, it's called "ignorance;" if it's done deliberately so as to placate voters and tell them what they want to hear even though you know it is untrue, it's called either "pandering" or "lying outright," depending upon how harsh you want to be.

And of course, it is exactly this sort of thinking that is why the House passed a bill last year forbidding scientists to give expert testimony on their own research.  Can't have those arrogant scientists tooting their own horns, dontchaknow.  Gotta make sure we're only taking advice from reg'lar folk.

You know, folk who don't know what they're talking about.

I don't know how we got here, in a place where being knowledgeable about a field makes you arrogant, and being an expert on a topic makes you biased.  The politicians, I think, have largely forgotten that in science we're talking about facts and evidence, not opinions and beliefs.

Put succinctly, stating that the data support a causal connection between fossil fuel use and climate change is not arrogant.

It's simply true.

SLAPPdown

One of the most frustrating things about the country I live in is the extent to which money drives policy.

So often, it doesn't matter if you're right; all that matters is whether you have enough cash to sway the people making the decisions.  Questions of justice, fairness, even of truth and falsity, are superseded by whoever can buy the most influence.

Every so often, though, someone will try to change that.  It's an uphill battle, of course.  Trying to reduce the influence of wealthy people is hard, because the people who want things to stay this way are... wealthy.  They've bought themselves into power, and will buy their way into remaining in power if they possibly can.

One of the worst aspects of this is the SLAPP -- strategic lawsuits against public participation.  SLAPPs are suits initiated by rich people or corporations for one reason only; to tie up their less well-heeled opponents in protracted, expensive legal battles.  The ones filing the SLAPP couldn't care less if they win.  Winning isn't the point.

Bankrupting their enemies is.

[image courtesy of photographer Brian Turner and the Wikimedia Commons]

The two most commons sorts of SLAPPs are those filed by industry against environmental organizations, and those by charlatans against their critics.  The cost for the legal feels to defend oneself against a frivolous lawsuit is astronomical, and it's often easier to cave in -- to stop the environmental activism, or withdraw the criticisms, than it is to pursue the defense in the courts.

Dr. Steven Novella, for example, has been dragged for several years through the ordeal of defending himself from a libel suit by Andrew Wakefield, author of the discredited study that linked vaccination to autism.  In spite of the fact that Wakefield's study was withdrawn by The Lancet as "utterly false," and Wakefield's devastating smackdown in 2010 by the British General Medical Board (Wakefield was convicted by the board of three dozen charges, including having acted "dishonestly and irresponsibly" in his published research), he has still pursued a vindictive lawsuit against Novella, who has been one of his most outspoken critics.  Novella writes:

What I learned when I became the target of a SLAPP suit (that is still ongoing) is that anyone with money can take away your free speech at will. It works like this: if you express an opinion publicly that someone else doesn’t like because it is critical of them, their beliefs, their business, etc. then they can hire a lawyer and send you a cease and desist letter. You are now faced with a dilemma – take down your blog, article, podcast, video, or whatever and allow your free speech to be suppressed, or potentially face tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. 

Except for those few states with effective anti-SLAPP laws (California, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Texas and the District of Columbia – Florida just passed one which has not yet gone into effect), if you refuse to remove your free speech and you get sued, then expect to spend large sums of money and years of your life defending your rights. Here’s the thing – even if the case against you has zero merit and no chance of winning in the end, the lawsuit is a financial game of chicken. There is no way to shut the case down early. There is no bar for meritless cases. 

The net effect of this is that if someone has money they can shut down your free speech at will. This, of course, has a chilling effect on free speech that can go way beyond the one instance of speech being targeted.

A similar case is that of Harvard medical researcher Dr. Pieter Cohen and three other scientists who are being sued by Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals, Inc., for a scholarly paper they wrote regarding a supplement that may contain biologically significant doses of an amphetamine isomer.  Cohen et al. wrote:

Consumers of Acacia rigidula supplements may be exposed to pharmacological dosages of an amphetamine isomer that lacks evidence of safety in humans. The FDA should immediately warn consumers about BMPEA and take aggressive enforcement action to eliminate BMPEA in dietary supplements.

Hi-Tech has sued the researchers for a total of $200 million in compensatory and punitive damages for libel and slander.

Both the environmental and the free speech aspects of this practice are profoundly distressing to me.  The idea that rich corporations are driving our environmental policy and squelching the ability of scientists and writers to criticize, or even bring to light, what is going on, is something that should raise red flags for anyone who values the truth and fair play.  The implications cut deep; even as a blogger, I've had my worries about pissing someone off, and getting sued.  I can't afford the legal fees -- so whether I was in the right or in the wrong, such a lawsuit would have the effect of shutting me down pretty much instantaneously.

There's a hope, though; Representative Blake Farenthold (R-TX) has introduced a bill into congress called the SPEAK FREE Act, which would have the effect of establishing a procedural mechanism for dismissing frivolous lawsuits rather than pursuing them at the expense of the defendants.  The defendant has the right to file a motion showing "that the claim at issue arises from an oral or written statement or other expression by the defendant made in connection with an official proceeding or about a matter of public concern."  It then falls back on the plaintiff to demonstrate that his/her case has merit.  If that cannot be established, the case is summarily dismissed, and the court costs are borne by the plaintiff.

In other words, this acts as an anti-SLAPP law.  It takes nothing away from legitimate libel and slander suits; it simply makes it far harder for wealthy individuals or corporations to pursue frivolous lawsuits that have, as their sole aim, bankrupting the people they're attacking.

I strongly urge you to support this legislation.  You can find out ways to make your voice heard here.

So as disheartening as our Money-Talks system of government can be, here in the United States, it's encouraging that sometimes people stand up.  It happened only a couple of weeks ago, with the unprecedented slapdown of billionaire Harold Hamm, CEO of the petrochemical corporation Continental Resources, Inc.  Hamm had demanded that the University of Oklahoma fire scientists who were researching the connection between hydrofracking and earthquakes, reminding the administrators along the way of the huge amount of financial support he'd given the university.

The effort backfired.  An email from Larry Grillot, Dean of the College of Earth and Energy, was made public, and it said in part, "Mr. Hamm is very upset at some of the earthquake reporting to the point that he would like to see select OGS staff dismissed."  Grillot came down on the side of the scientists, saying, "Foremost for us is academic freedom," and politely told Hamm to shove off.

This announcement was tempered, however, by the passage immediately afterwards of two bills in the Oklahoma state congress that makes it illegal for community governments to ban fracking.  So the news, as always, was a mixed bag.

But the University's stance, and the anti-SLAPP bill, are both important steps toward reducing the influence that money has on policy.  We have a long way to go before our government can be called anything but a plutocracy; but we should all support any movement in the right direction.

Font of knowledge

Punching yet another hole in our sense that humans are at their core a logical, rational species, filmmaker Errol Morris has done an elegant experiment that shows that our perceptions of the truth value of a statement are influenced...

... by what typeface it's set in.

Morris conspired with The New York Times to run a part of David Deutsch's The Beginning of Infinity that looks at the Earth's likelihood of having its habitability destroyed by an asteroid collision.  (Deutsch's conclusion: not very likely.)  Afterwards, the readers were invited to take a survey entitled, "Are You an Optimist or a Pessimist?" which ostensibly measured the degree of pollyanna-ism in the reader, but was really set up to see to what extent readers bought Deutsch's argument that humanity has no real cause to worry.

The variable was the font that the passage was written in.  He used six: Baskerville, Helvetica, Georgia, Comic Sans, Trebuchet, and Computer Modern.

40,000 people responded.  And the results were as fascinating as they were puzzling; Baskerville had a 5-person-out-of-a-thousand edge over the next highest (Helvetica), which may not seem like much, but which statisticians analyzing the experiment have declared is statistically significant.  Cornell University psychologist David Dunning, who helped design the experiment, said:

(The score spread is) small, but it’s about a 1% to 2% difference — 1.5% to be exact, which may seem small but to me is rather large.  You are collecting these data in an uncontrolled environment (who knows, for example just how each person’s computer is rendering each font, how large the font is, is it on an iPad or iPhone, laptop or desktop), are their kids breaking furniture in the background, etc.  So to see any difference is impressive.  Many online marketers would kill for a 2% advantage either in more clicks or more clicks leading to sales.

The whole thing is a little disturbing, frankly -- that our perceptions of the truth are so malleable that they could be influenced by a little thing by what font it's set in.  Morris writes:

Truth is not typeface dependent, but a typeface can subtly influence us to believe that a sentence is true.  Could it swing an election?  Induce us to buy a new dinette set?  Change some of our most deeply held and cherished beliefs?  Indeed, we may be at the mercy of typefaces in ways that we are only dimly beginning to recognize.  An effect — subtle, almost indiscernible, but irrefutably there.

 Morris was interviewed about his experiment, and was asked a particularly trenchant question: When people read this for the first time, how do you hope that will change their own perception of the world?  Morris responded:

I'm not really sure. I'm not even sure what exactly to make of the results, in truth.  Everything I do—everything I write about and everything I make movies about—is about the distance between the world and us.  We think the world is just given to us, that there's no slack in the system, but there is.  Everything I do is about the slack of the system: the difference between reality and our perception of reality.  So in the sense that this essay lets us further reflect on the world around us, and even makes us paranoid about the slack in the system, then I think it's a good and valuable thing.

And I certainly agree.  Anything that makes us aware of our own biases, and the faults in our logic and perceptual systems, is all to the good.  We need to realize how inaccurate our minds are, if for no other reason, to reinforce how important science is as a tool for improving our knowledge.  Science, relying as it does on human minds for data analysis and interpretation, is far from perfect itself; but as a protocol for understanding, it's the best thing we've got.  Without it, we have no way to winnow out the truth from our own flawed assumptions.

So watch for more and more articles and advertisements appearing in Baskerville, because you just know that the media is going to jump on this study.  And I hope that this once and for all stops people from using Comic Sans, because I can't see that font without thinking of Garfield, and heaven knows that's not a good thing.