Ghost baby

In the "Loyal Reader One-Upmanship" department, over the last couple of days we have had here at Skeptophilia an escalating series of topics suggested by fans.  First, we had the one about "sound-induced orgasms."  That prompted another reader to send me a link to an article about "astral sex," so I wrote about that yesterday.  And just this morning I got yet a third email, this one with the rather hysterical message, "I THOUGHT YOU SAID ASTRAL SEX NEVER RESULTED IN PREGNANCY???!!!!  WELL, EXPLAIN THIS, BUB!!!!" along with a link to an article about a couple in Plymouth, England whose apartment is being haunted by a "ghost baby."

I suppose his concern is logical enough.  I mean, what would astral sex produce if not "ghost babies?"  It does raise some purely biological questions such as how someone's spirit would give birth, not to mention things like ghost baby gestation period, how genetics works in the spirit world, and so forth. Not to mention the issue of custody if one of the spirit parents decides to disappear in a swirl of ectoplasm.

Be that as it may, the article tells us about a British couple who is remarkably blasé about the fact that they're being haunted by a ghostly infant, which is doubly strange because said spirit baby has been seen in the crib of their own real, flesh-and-blood baby.

What Haigh and Evans saw on the baby monitor.  The yellow circle is a little superfluous, don't you think?

I don't know about you, but however open-minded and accepting I am, I would draw the line at having my kid sharing a bed with a ghost.  But the couple, Laura Haigh and Dean Evans, don't seem especially concerned how a ghostly visitor might affect their son, Sebastian.  They were certainly alarmed enough when it happened the first time.  Haigh says she and Evans saw something peculiar on the baby monitor, a shape next to their sleeping son who appeared to be waving things and moving around:

When I noticed this face appear in the corner of his cot I got my sister to look on Skype and there was nothing there at all.  Sometimes [Sebastian] brings a teddy to bed with him so at first I thought it could be that, but this just looks weird. 

Dean said straight away, 'it will be just a teddy' and went straight upstairs.  However he was a little bit gobsmacked that there was nothing there but it was still appearing on the monitor.  He was a bit spooked as he doesn't believe in that kind of thing and just can't explain it. 

He usually says 'don't be silly' about anything like this.  This has opened his mind a little but he doesn't like to talk about it much.  He just kept asking on the night 'has it gone yet?' as he was a bit freaked out.  I have checked out the camera and I'm sure there's nothing wrong with it. 

Friends think it's really creepy.  Whatever it was stayed in the cot until 1.30am and disappeared when I went to feed him.  But during the night it moved positions.

Yes, you read that right: this couple saw a ghostly figure leaping about in their son's crib, and they left the baby in the crib.  For hours.  I don't know about you, but if I saw something like this, "a bit gobsmacked" would be putting it mildly.  Honestly, I'd have grabbed my kid and my significant other, and gotten right the fuck out of the house.

And that's coming from a guy who doesn't believe any of this stuff.

But belief is one thing, and risking my kid's safety is another.  My general response in situations like this is "panic first, think afterwards."  I figure if I freak out and run, there'll be plenty of time later to sit down and ponder it rationally and have a good laugh at my own gullibility.  On the other hand, I've watched enough horror movies to know that the guy who says calmly, "Come on, it's safe, there's nothing here" is always the first one to get eaten by the monster.

So I find their reaction completely incomprehensible.  Unless, of course, they're making the whole thing up for attention, which upon reflection seems the likeliest explanation.

Anyhow, the upshot of it all is that you can't even have some hot astral sex without worrying about pregnancy.  It's a shame, really, since real sex is fraught with risks of various kinds, and here I thought that at least the astral variety would be safe and fun.  I guess the conclusion is that if you decide to send your soul out to look for a hookup, you should still use protection.

Although it does open up the question of how you get a condom on a spirit.  But if yet another loyal reader has found an article about birth control in the spirit world, I don't want to know about it.  Seriously.  This has gone far enough.

The spirit is willing

Yesterday's post, wherein a set of musical pitch combinations that was supposed to induce a "mind-blowingly intense hands-free orgasm" ended up inducing nothing more than a puzzled frown and a head-tilt, prompted a loyal reader of Skeptophilia to send me an email saying, "Well, if the 'binaural beats' didn't juice up your libido, maybe 'astral sex' will."  And he provided a link to a page on the site Mysterious Universe called, "Astral Sex is the Latest Thing in Out-of-Body Experiences."

My first thought was to wonder how astral sex would work, given that sex is one of those things that (insofar as I understand it) pretty much requires that you and your significant other both have bodies. But according to "astral projection specialist" Steve G. Jones, the whole point is that with "astral sex," you're "more than naked," and you and your friend kind of merge your souls together, or something.

Which brings up a number of questions, first and foremost of which is, how do you become an "astral projection specialist?"  Do you go to Woo U. and major in Soul Travel?  Most importantly, how do you study a phenomenon which even the Wikipedia page labels unequivocally as evidence-free pseudoscience?

That, of course, doesn't stop Steve G. Jones, who says that "astral sex" is totally real, and he gives us some fascinating details on how it's done.  Instead of foreplay, you spend the time beforehand "getting into a meditative state that is somewhere in the sweet spot between awake and asleep."  Then, apparently, you just float together, and proceed to engage in some out-of-body bow-chicka-bow-wow.  It doesn't end in orgasm, however, at least not in the usual sense:

That intertwining depends on how adept you and your partner are at astral projection. The merging of souls or energy is the ‘orgasm’ that is reportedly a combination of both physical and astral pleasure that is said can still be felt after each person returns to their physical bodies.

Which I guess is fine if that's what you're after.

Then we're cautioned that there's a sketchy side of "astral sex."  Because you're out-of-body when you're doing it, there's nothing (except for morality) to stop you from merging with someone while they're asleep, without their permission.  The result for the unwitting object of your attention is that they'd dream of having actual sex with you, but it's really not something you should do.  It's critical, Jones says, to ask the permission of the person you're intending to get down-and-dirty with.

I wonder how that'd go, don't you?  You're in a bar, looking for a hookup, and propose to the nice-looking person sitting next to you that you'd like to seal the deal with them.

"So we'll both go to our respective homes," you say, "and meditate for a while, and meet in the astral plane for some hot spirit-on-spirit action."

I don't know about you, but if someone approached me with this kind of proposal, I would suddenly remember a pressing engagement elsewhere.

But the possibility of non-consensual astral sex isn't the only hazard of playing the etheric field, says Steve G. Jones.  Besides unscrupulous human spirits, there are also demons who are eager to have their way with you.  And both genders are at risk.  There are incubi, lustful male spirits looking for human women to couple with, and succubi, the female equivalent who are trying to find a human man.  No matter how horny you are, Jones cautions, it's best to stay away from these entities, because they can "sap your energy."

Charles Walker, Incubus (1879) [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

So you'd think that the astral plane would somehow be more refined and genteel, but what goes on there doesn't strike me as any better than your typical nightclub.

Anyhow, there you have it.  If yesterday's libido-enhancing "binaural beats" didn't do it for you, there's still the possibility of "astral sex," which at least has the advantages of not passing along STDs and having zero risk of pregnancy.  I doubt it'll ever replace the real thing, however, regardless of how nice a "spirit orgasm" is.

The beat goes on

A loyal reader of Skeptophilia sent me a link yesterday with the question, "Could there be anything to this?"

The link was to a website called "Binaural Beats: A Meditation Shortcut."  The idea, apparently, is that you listen to two sounds simultaneously, which differ slightly in frequency (the example given was a 114 hertz tone in the left ear and a 124 hertz tone in the right).  This will result in your hearing a "beat frequency" or "binaural beat," whose frequency is equal to the difference between the two (in this case, 10 hertz).

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

So far, nothing too strange, and a phenomenon that would be familiar to anyone who has tried to tune the strings of a guitar.  But what this site, and others like it, claim is that the induced beat frequency will change the frequency of your brain waves, and cause... well, all sorts of things.

The site he sent says that it will bring on a "meditative state:"

When you listen to sounds of a certain frequency, your brain waves will synchronize with that frequency.  You entrain every time you hear a musical beat that has you bobbing your head or tapping your foot. 

By listening to MP3s or CDs that produce brainwave entrainment, you can induce a desired brainwave pattern quickly and reliably.  Binaural beats is one of the most popular methods to utilize the phenomenon of brainwave entrainment... 

Using binaural beats provides an easy shortcut.  All you have to do is put on a set of headphones or earbuds, relax, and listen.  For many people, this brings their brains into the same state as deep meditation quickly.

Which was interesting enough, so I decided to do a little digging.  I found out quickly that meditative states aren't the only things that binaural beats allegedly can induce.  If you hit the right binaural beat frequency, supposedly you can:

• lucid dream
• boost your memory
• get past creative blocks
• (safely) simulate the mental effects of drugs such as marijuana, cocaine, and ecstasy
• lose weight and increase your metabolic rate
• jumpstart your physical and mental energy levels
• have a "mind-blowingly intense hands-free orgasm"

So naturally, I had to investigate all this.  I skipped the first three, given that (1) I already sleep poorly and have weird dreams, and have no particular desire to make this any worse, (2) I'm too impatient to conduct a long enough experiment to see if my memory improves, and (3) I do pretty well in the creativity department already.

The fourth one, on the other hand, was intriguing.  I thought it might be interesting to see if I felt high and/or stoned after listening to some tones going "wah-wah-wah" in my ears, so I gave it a shot.

If a sample size of one means anything, I can report back... nothing.  I didn't feel any loopier after listening to drug-simulating binaural beats for fifteen minutes than I did before.  So I went on to the "jumpstart your energy levels" one (I really don't need to lose weight), and once again... nada.

Then -- purely in the interest of scientific research, of course -- I had to try the last one.

I found two places that supposedly had orgasm-inducing binaural beats.  Listening to the first one was about as arousing as listening to a washing machine on spin cycle.  So I thought, "Maybe my sex frequency isn't attuned to that one, or something."  So I clicked on the second one, and I found out that on this recording, the binaural beat frequency was overlain with the sounds of a couple in the throes of noisy, and apparently extremely pleasurable, sex.  (And no, I'm not going to provide a link.  You'll have to track that one down yourself.)

So it was not exactly a well-controlled experiment.  Of course, I didn't listen for all that long, because otherwise my wife would have come down to my office to see what the hell I was doing down here.  ("Research, honey!  Empirical research!  Really!")

In any case, my own investigation of binaural beats was kind of a bust.  So I decided to see if there'd been any good studies done of the effect, and I found a site that had what seemed to me to be fair and unbiased summaries of the research.  And the general conclusion is...

... it doesn't seem to work. Most of the effects recorded were small and very temporary, and the consensus is that your expectations going into the experience have a major effect on what you'll get from it.  If you think it's going to relax you, then you relax.  If you think it's going to energize you, then you're energized.  If you think you're going to have a spectacular orgasm...

... well, you get the idea.  Although I have to add that throwing in the sex noises was hardly fair.

I suppose the whole thing is harmless enough, of course, and if it helps you to attain whatever it is you're after, then more power to you.  I've done a bit of meditating over the years -- never consistently enough to make it a practice, but enough to get the flavor of it -- and found it to be great for calming the mind and centering the body.  If "binaural beats" helps you to get there faster and deeper, cool.

As for the rest of it -- have fun experimenting, but if you're approaching it skeptically, keep in mind that the results might be less than "mind-blowingly intense."

Sinking the ark

I guess Ken Ham is finally seeing the handwriting on the wall with respect to "Ark Encounter," his $92 million temple to young-Earth creationism in Williamstown, Kentucky, given that the number of visits it's received during its first year is only about 60% of what he and his financial partners had predicted.

The Ark Encounter parking lot on a typical day

But if you thought that this realization was going to lead to some kind of epiphany on the part of Ham et al., vis-à-vis the fact that spending huge amounts of money to convince the general public that a rather perverse fairy story is science was not a great investment strategy, you are fated to be disappointed.  Because Ham doesn't blame himself for Ark Encounter's dismal performance.

He blames us atheists.  Of course.  Ham said:

Sadly, they are influencing business investors and others in such a negative way that they may prevent Grant County, Kentucky, from achieving the economic recovery that its officials and residents have been seeking.  Why so many lies and misinformation?  Simply because we are in a spiritual battle, and the intolerant secularists are so upset with such world-class attraction like the Ark (and Creation Museum) that publicly proclaim a Christian message.  They will resort to whatever tactics they deem necessary to try to malign the attractions.

No, Ken, honestly we see this as more of a "battle against anti-scientific bullshit," and I find the lack of interest the public is showing a welcome ray of sunlight in a year that has otherwise been pretty dismal.  And I'd love to claim responsibility for Ark Encounter's falling on its face, but I honestly think it's more that people deep down realize that the idea of a 600-year-old man and his family getting two of every kind of organism on Earth, including gorillas from Uganda and mountain lions from the Rocky Mountains, and keeping them all fed and happy on a boat whose dimensions would have (by one estimate I saw) given each creature 6.5 square millimeters of space to roam around in, followed by it raining enough to cover the whole Earth and then the water just kind of disappearing, is really fucking stupid.

But people like Ken Ham won't get within shouting distance of that as an answer, so they have to find something else to blame.  And if it's not the atheists, maybe it's... fake news:

Nowadays, it seems very few reporters in the secular media actually want to report facts regarding what they cover as news.  I’ve found that not only do these kinds of reporters generally do very poor or lazy research, they will actually make things up for their agenda purposes.

Yes, those evil reporters with their agenda purposes!  I'm quite sure that a reporter without an agenda purpose would have reported the above photograph as showing a completely full parking lot, much the way that if you looked at the photos of the less-than-impressive crowds at Donald Trump's inauguration just right, and tilted your head a little, he had the best-attended inauguration ceremony ever.

Keep in mind that all of this less-than-impressive performance was with a tremendous influx of public tax money.  Amazingly, legislators decided again and again to give their support to this project, despite the clear intent of the place to proselytize.  According to an analysis by the organization Church & State:

[Ark Encounter received] $18 million in state tax incentives to offset the cost of the park’s construction; a 75 percent property tax break over 30 years from the City of Williamstown (a town of about 3,000 near where the park will be located); an $11-million road upgrade in a rural area that would almost exclusively facilitate traffic going to and from the park; a $200,000 gift from the Grant County Industrial Development Authority to make sure the project stays in that county; 100 acres of reduced-price land and, finally $62 million municipal bond issue from Williamstown that Ham claims has kept the project from sinking.

If I lived in Kentucky, I would be raising hell over this.

Of course, there's a wryly funny side to the whole thing, and that's that Ham and his pals believe that the project was built because it was part of god's divine purpose and holy plan, and yet a few atheist bloggers, secular organizations, and reporters were apparently sufficient to thwart the Omnipotent Deity's intent.  Kind of calls into question god's ability to make stuff happen, doesn't it?  He's coming off more like one of the inept bad guys in an episode of Scooby Doo, whose plans to get rich off a haunted carnival came crashing down when Shaggy pulled off his mask.  I bet Yahweh is up there right now, scowling and muttering, "Ken and I would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for you crazy kids and your mangy mutt!"

Anyhow, my general feeling is that it couldn't have happened to a more deserving individual, and I wish him many more years of this kind of turnout.  Now we just need to make sure that this same load of nonsense doesn't end up in public school science curricula, in the guise of "religious freedom."

We may be winning this battle, but the war's far from over.

In the dark

To further investigate our general topic of people giving woo-woo explanations to damn near everything, today we investigate: The Dark.

First, a brief physics lesson.

Things are generally called "dark" for one of two reasons.  First, there are objects whose chemical makeup results in their absorbing most of the light that falls on them.  Second, there are things that don't interact with light much at all, so they neither absorb nor reflect light -- light passes right through them.  An example of the first would be a charcoal briquet.  An example of the second would be interstellar space, which is sort of dark-by-default.

This whole thing comes up because of the discovery of an extrasolar planet with the mellifluous name TrES-2b.  TrES-2b orbits the even more charmingly named GSC 03549-02811, a star about 718 light years away.   More interestingly, it has the distinction of being the darkest extrasolar planet yet discovered.  David Kipping, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, stated, "TrES-2b is considerably less reflective than black acrylic paint, so it is truly an alien world."

Artist's conception of TrES-2b [image courtesy of of NASA/JPL-Caltech and the Wikimedia Commons]

That was all it took.  Whereas my reaction was, "Huh!  A Jupiter-sized charcoal briquet!  That's kinda cool," the woo-woos just couldn't resist wooing all over this story.  We now have the following speculations, all from websites owned by people who probably shouldn't be allowed outside unsupervised:

• TrES-2b is made of antimatter, and we shouldn't go there because it would blow up.  We know it's antimatter because antimatter has the opposite properties to matter, so it's dark. 
• TrES-2b is made of "dark matter," and yes, they're not just talking about stuff that's black, they're talking about the physicists' "dark matter," about which I'll have more to say in a moment. 
• TrES-2b is dark because it's being hidden by aliens who are currently on their way to Earth to take over.  Lucky for us we spotted it in time! 
• TrES-2b is hell.  No, I'm not making this up. 

Well. You just opened the floodgates, now didn't you, Dr. Kipping?

The first two explanations left me with a giant bruise on my forehead from doing a faceplant while reading.  At the risk of insulting my readers' intelligence, let me just say quickly that (1) antimatter's "opposite properties" have nothing to do with regular matter being light and antimatter being dark, because if it did, the next time a kindergartner pulled a black crayon out of the box, he would explode in a burst of gamma rays; and (2) "dark matter" is called "dark" because of the second reason, that it doesn't interact with much of anything, including light, so the idea of a planet made of it is a little ridiculous, and in any case physicists haven't even proved that it exists, so if some astrophysicist found a whole freakin' planet made of it it would KIND OF MAKE HEADLINES ALL OVER THE FUCKING WORLD, YOU KNOW?

Sorry for getting carried away, there.  But I will reiterate something I have said more than once, in this blog; if you're going to start blathering on about science, for cryin' in the sink at least get the science right.  Even the least scientific woo-woo out there can read the Wikipedia page for "Dark Matter," for example, wherein we find in the first paragraph the sentence, "The name refers to the fact that it does not emit or interact with electromagnetic radiation, such as light, and is thus invisible to the entire electromagnetic spectrum."  (Italics mine, and put in so that any of the aforementioned woo-woos who are reading this post will focus on the important part.)

And I won't even address the "secret alien base" and "hell" theories regarding TrES-2b, except to say that it should come as a relief that the evil aliens or Satan (depending on which version you went for) are safely 718 light years away.  To put this in perspective, this means that if they were heading here in the fastest spacecraft humans have ever created, Voyager 1, which travels at about 16 kilometers per second,  it would still take them eleven million years to get here.

In any case, I guess it's all a matter of how you view what's around you.  I find the universe, and therefore science, endlessly fascinating, because what scientists have uncovered is weird, wonderful, and counterintuitive.  I don't need to start attaching all sorts of anti-scientific bunk to their discoveries -- nature is cool enough as it is.

Okay, thus endeth today's rant.  I will simply end with an admonishment to be careful next time you barbeque.  I hear those charcoal briquets can be made of antimatter, which could make your next cook-out a dicey affair.  You might want to wear gloves while you handle them.  Better safe than sorry!

The sticker price

Once again, famed medical professional Gwyneth Paltrow is promoting the latest be-all-and-end-all for your health, to wit: "Body Vibes stickers."

These are silver-dollar-sized stickers that you stick on your body to "rebalance the energy frequency in your body."  Whatever the fuck that means.  But the pseudoscience technobabble doesn't end there:

The concept: Human bodies operate at an ideal energetic frequency, but everyday stresses and anxiety can throw off our internal balance, depleting our energy reserves and weakening our immune systems.  Body Vibes stickers come pre-programmed to an ideal frequency, allowing them to target imbalances.  While you’re wearing them—close to your heart, on your left shoulder or arm—they’ll fill in the deficiencies in your reserves, creating a calming effect, smoothing out both physical tension and anxiety.  The founders, both aestheticians, also say they help clear skin by reducing inflammation and boosting cell turnover.

The stickers, Paltrow tells us, are made of "the same conductive carbon material NASA uses to line space suits so they can monitor an astronaut’s vitals."  But herein lies the problem.  Because once you make an easily-verified statement -- i.e., veer away from vague, hand-waving bullshit about imbalanced energy frequencies -- you've kind of sealed your own fate.

And it didn't take long for NASA to respond.

Mark Shelhamer, former chief scientist in NASA's human research division, was unequivocal.  "Wow," Shelhamer said.  "What a load of BS this is...  Astronauts do not have any conductive carbon material lining the spacesuits.  Not only is the whole premise snake oil, the logic doesn’t even hold up.  If they promote healing, why do they leave marks on the skin when they are removed?"

This, of course, has exactly zero impact on the alt-med crowd, who absolutely hate it when people bring up pesky stuff like "facts" and "science" and "peer review."  Richard Eaton, founder of AlphaBioCentrix, which developed the stickers, was undeterred by NASA's skepticism.  "Without going into a long explanation about the research and development of this technology, it comes down to this," Eaton said.  "I found a way to tap into the human body’s bio-frequency, which the body is receptive to outside energy signatures.  Most of the research that has been collected is confidential and is held as company private information."

Oh, no, please, Mr. Eaton.  Do give me your long explanation of the research and development.  Define such terms as "bio-frequency" and "energy signatures" using scientifically valid language.  Show me how you can "pre-program" a fucking sticker to "target imbalances."  Give me some well-controlled research showing that the things actually work through something more than the placebo effect.

Until then, don't pretend that what you're hawking is anything more than a convenient way to make money from the gullible and ignorant.

Speaking of which, did I mention that "Body Vibes" stickers cost $120 per pack of 24?

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Just as a contrast, let's look at some actual science having to do with stuff you stick on your body, which coincidentally just appeared over at New Scientist yesterday.  Joseph Wang, of the University of California-San Diego, has just published research on a new technology -- a small, flexible square that you can stick on your skin, and which will generate enough power to run a mobile device, using chemicals from your sweat.

It's a biofuel cell -- a power-generating device that runs on organic chemicals broken down by enzymes in the material.  Mirella DiLorenzo, of the University of Bath, was impressed by Wang's creation.  "The most exciting application is wearable sensors that can monitor health conditions, then sweat could generate enough power for a Bluetooth connection so that the results could be read straight from a smartphone," DiLorenzo said.  "This is an amazing proof-of-concept work.  The applications will come quickly in the near future."

Those applications could include monitoring an athlete's performance by tracking lactate levels in the sweat -- which is an indication of how hard the muscles are working.

See the difference, here?  We have, on the one hand, Paltrow and Eaton babbling about quantum bio-energetic frequency vibrations as if anything they said made sense; and on the other, Wang and DiLorenzo talking about actual experimental science, producing a measurable and replicable effect, and based on a solid understanding of biochemistry.

The problem is that actual research just isn't as sexy as alt-med, which can claim any damn thing it wants without the need for verification.  You want to claim that smearing peanut butter on your face will cure your anxiety by resynchronizing your chakras and changing the color of your aura?  No problem!  No one can challenge you, because what you're claiming is that a useless remedy will fix something that almost certainly doesn't exist, which even if it does, is apparently invisible for some reason to every piece of scientific equipment available.  I.e., you're making an inherently unverifiable statement.

But I wish more people would turn to the actual science when they have questions, rather than unscientific charlatans like Gwyneth Paltrow.  Because not only are the victims of these scams wasting their money, they're not seeking effective care for actual medical conditions.

And that crosses the line from just being a bunch of harmless bullshit to being truly dangerous.

Fake news agenda

If you needed something else to feel discouraged about, a study released this week in the journal New Media & Society found that fake news and political clickbait sites had twice the effect on the media landscape in the United States as legitimate sources and fact-checking sites.

Authored by Chris J. Vargo, Lei Guo, and Michelle A. Amazeen, "The Agenda-Setting Power of Fake News: A Data Analysis of the Online Media Landscape From 2014 to 2016" looks at not only the influence that fake news has on politics and culture, but how difficult it is to fight it.  The authors write:

Journalists have little ability to proactively fight fake news. Even worse, partisan media can be susceptible to its influence.  Other news organizations fight fake news. The BBC, for instance, has announced a commitment to debunk fake news that is shared widely on social media Fact-checking organizations have become another bulwark against fake news with PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, ABC News, the Associated Press, and Snopes all fighting it on Facebook.  However, this reactive desire to thwart fake news has required traditional media to divert resources—in the form of time and attention—to fighting it.  What is worse, by being forced to respond to fake news journalists may be affording fake news websites with the ability to push topics, issues, and even attributes into the public agenda.

The worst part of all, of course, is the fact that many of these partisan media sources wield tremendous influence over voters' understanding of the issues:

The relationship between fake news and partisan media is worthy of particular attention. Instead of valuing balance, fairness, and objectivity, partisan media often frame stories in a way to advance certain political agendas driven by in-group or tribal identification.  Traditional partisan media include cable news (e.g. Fox News) and talk radio (e.g. the Rush Limbaugh Show).  The Internet has contributed to the proliferation of new forms of partisan media: partisan websites and blogs such as Drudge Report and Daily Kos.  With the emergence and popularity of social media services, partisan news coverage is more popular than ever before.  Moreover, these social media networks facilitate the spread of misinformation via automated, anonymous accounts which target users already engaged in conversation on a particular topic.

Crown that with our current administration's tendency to shriek "Fake news!" whenever there's a news story they don't like, and you have a complete political clusterfuck, and one that I see no way out of any time soon.

Lead author Chris J. Vargo isn't much more optimistic than I am.  "Fact checkers largely were independent in what they chose to cover, but their topical focus didn’t really translate very well to other media," Vargo said.  "The media landscape isn’t listening to fact checking as much as it is to fake news, which is particularly troublesome...  I think the big thing that I’m realizing across these studies is that anything can distract us."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The problem is that exaggerated, sensationalized, or outright false headlines are much more likely to grab our attention than are headlines about the actual issues, which (by comparison) are often boring.  Add to this a heaping helping of confirmation bias -- our tendency to believe with little evidence things that conform to our preconceived notions -- and it's no wonder that the folks who detested Hillary Clinton's politics fell for the whole idiotic "Pizzagate conspiracy" last fall.

Vargo remains optimistic, however, and cites the fact that even in the face of partisan media and fake news sites, the responsible and balanced media have soldiered on even in the face of repeated attacks.  "Our study found that to a small degree, yes, fake news does influence what the press talks about." Vargo said.  "But largely, the press has the ability – and maintains the ability – to cover the issues that are most important to a society today."

Of course, covering the important issues and getting the voters to listen are two entirely different things.  Encouraging people to stop paying attention to such serial offenders as Fox News and Daily Kos, and to get their information from places like BBC, is proving to be pretty difficult.  After all, once you have a government leader convince you that 99% of what you hear on the most reliable media sources is fake, and that fact-checking sites are biased and unreliable, you are set up to believe damn near anything.

So unfortunately, I don't share Vargo's optimism.  I think the last vestiges of my positive attitude toward people's ability to think critically were shattered when Fox News persuaded the evangelical Christians to support a sociopathic serial adulterer who lies every time he opens his mouth, claiming that he was the perfect embodiment of the Ten Commandments.

After that, I don't hold out much hope for the collective brainpower of humanity.